Good Life Project - Rethinking Happiness, What We’re Getting Wrong | Stephanie Harrison

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

What if everything society told you about how to find happiness was misleading? My guest Stephanie Harrison, author of New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got It Wrong, challenges the cultural conditioning around chasing achievements, wealth, and status as the path to joy. She provides insights from positive psychology research and her own experience with depression to unravel the myths behind our collective pursuit of happiness. Stephanie offers a practical philosophy centered on sharing our gifts of humanity, wisdom, and talent to create ripples of lasting well-being for ourselves and others. Tune in to rethink what true happiness means and how you can live it.You can find Stephanie at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Dan Lerner about the science of passion.Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every person has three different types of gifts. There's your humanity, which is who you are as a person. That's what shows up in those helping moments when you're with somebody you love and you want to be there. There's your wisdom, what you've learned from the unique life that you've lived that nobody else will ever have access to. And then there's your talent, which is all the great things you know how to do or you want to learn how to do. And the funny thing is, though, is that your humanity gifts are the most reliable source of happiness because they connect you to other people and they allow you to express all of your inner goodness. So if we neglect those, then often we're neglecting a really big source of well-being. So what if the pursuit of happiness itself is actually making you less happy?

My guest today, Stephanie Harrison, she challenges the way that we've been conditioned to think about happiness in her new book, New Happy, Getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got It Wrong. In the second chapter of her book, she introduces the concept of what she calls the happiness myth. It's all about the lies that we've been told about how to be happy, like chasing achievements, accumulating wealth, and focusing only on ourselves, and so many other elements. And she describes from her own experience, directly aiming for

happiness often backfires. Yet that is exactly what so many of us spend so much of our waking lives doing. I found that in my own life, that the more I cling to happiness as a direct goal, the more elusive it becomes. And Stephanie really encourages us to unravel the cultural conditioning and narratives that led us to this point. Instead of pursuing happiness, she offers a refreshing approach that's centered around sharing our unique gifts with others, our humanity, wisdom, and talents with a really interesting and innovative new framework. Imagine being able to tap into a deeper wellbeing, one that ripples out and elevates not just yourself, but everyone around you too. What would your life look like if you could get happiness right? That's where we're headed today. So excited

to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell feel like the sort of the quote canon of happiness books was kicked off, I guess, more than a decade ago now with Dan Gilbert's book, you know, like Stilling in Happiness. And then Jonathan Haidt came after it and then just a series of books came in. And all of a sudden everyone's like, whoa, like the world of positive psych has been into this for decades before, but now it really became part of the public conversation in a different way.

And I feel like we just keep having better and better understandings of how to explore these ideas and from different voices and different perspectives. For you, it sounds like this is also really personal. Yeah. I think with a topic like happiness or any of the work that we do, how do you separate the personal out of it, right? Because you get to benefit in so many ways from learning this knowledge. But for me, it was motivated in part by my own profound unhappiness and the struggles that I had trying to find a way to be happy where nothing ever really worked for me. Take me into that a little bit. Tell me what was going on and what led you to sort of say, like, I need to really explore this. When I think back to my childhood and my young adult life as a teenager and into my early twenties, I don't remember being very happy. I

don't have these emotional experiences that really had any level of any sort of joy or positivity I felt was very intense and short-lived and then quickly faded away. There wasn't anything that felt like it provided me with a grounding or any sort of stability. And often those highs were also accompanied by lows that lasted for a long time and were hard to get out of. And for me, what really started to change things was when I had gone through and sort of checked off this list of all the things that I thought I had to do in order to be happy. And then I looked at my life and I looked at myself and I thought, why am I still so miserable? isn't wrong with me at all. Maybe I just was given the wrong manual to pursue this goal of happiness that I have. And maybe I should look into that a little bit more. And little did I know that that would end up dictating the next 10 years of my life. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I know you ended up at University of Pennsylvania in their master's in applied positive psych, which I have a number of friends who've been through from the, I think it was the second class up until like fairly recently. When you drop,

decide to sort of like say like, this is actually becoming so important to me. I really need to understand this, that you want to devote yourself to a year of developing, like going and getting your degree in it. Was that more personal or did you have a sense underneath that you wanted to actually transform this into something that you would then turn around and somehow bring to the world? At that point, I felt this was the time that I decided to go to Penn and do the degree was probably about, it was about two and a half or three years after that moment, that low point in my life. And I had sort of figured out a lot of the personal stuff for me at that point. I had identified here are some of the problems and here are some few ways to fix it. But what I was

really motivated by was discovering that there was this research underpinning it and how I could learn more about that. I felt like I had kind of come to the point where my personal study, I was in a good spot, but there was so much more I wanted to learn and I needed help and support and teaching to help me to be able to get a firmer grasp on it. And my hope was always to take whatever I learned out of my own pain and share it with others in hopes that maybe they could avoid it or at least maybe get out of it a little faster than I did. So it was always motivated by that. Specifically, I was just so enthralled by the idea that there were these scientists out there studying these really hard topics that I'd always been obsessed with and inspired by from a spiritual perspective or from a religious or kind of all these other different angles on well-being. But the scientific one was something that felt really interesting and appealing. Yeah, it's so interesting.

I think, you know, we do have such a robust body of science around the study and the exploration of happiness. And yet it seems like increasingly the research shows that, you know, happiness, actually the direct pursuit of happiness often leads us to be less happy rather than happier. One of those interesting paradoxes, isn't it? I think you've said it so beautifully. And I think for me, in my case, I felt like my direct aim at happiness, like what you're describing was, it was all external stuff. It was all these things that I thought would then lead to happiness. It wasn't pursuing them for the sake of pursuing those things.

It was only for the result that I believe would ensue. And I think that, unfortunately, we have all this conditioning happening in our lives that leads us to believe that those things will make us happy. And I suppose I want to invite us to question those narratives a little bit more and reconsider what it is that matters most. Yeah. And I want to dive into this because you kind of lay this out as what you call the happiness myth. But before we get there, the word happiness alone is interesting. And I feel like it's also a little bit loaded and probably more than a bit confusing because if you ask 10 different people, like what is happiness, you'll probably get 10 different answers. So when we're talking about happiness for the purpose of this conversation, what are

we actually talking about? Such a great question. I think that the type of happiness that I think we should be talking about, if you agree, you have to tell me if you agree with this definition, is a more lasting state, probably something more similar to contentment, but also encompassing states of joy and purpose and meaning. I think if you think about happiness as a short-term pleasure-based emotion, that is going to lead you astray. And so I want it to be a broader, more,

I think more holistic understanding of what that word might mean. Yeah. Are you familiar with Arthur Brooks? He coined the phrase happierness to sort of denote the fact that there's no there there, that this is more just something, it's more just a moving toward. And also it's not something where you check off the happy box and I'm good. I love that. So take me into the notion of, and you were referencing it in sort of like the context of your own life. So many of us pursue happiness from the outside in. We think it exists out there. Take me deeper into the ideas behind this. I think that from the time that we're born,

we developed this idea about how the world works. And we use all the information that we receive from our caregivers or from the way that the experiences that we have, the messages that we get in the media and from our schools and from all sorts of culture. And then we build this mental framework about how we should live our lives. And what I have essentially tried to argue with my work is that within that set of beliefs, there are three core beliefs that matter most, that end up having this disproportionate impact upon your pursuit of happiness. And the beliefs are about who you are as a person, about what you should do and how you're related to other people. And I believe that the messages that we have internalized about the answers to those three questions are ultimately convincing us to pursue

the wrong things, even though we think we're pursuing the right things. We think that we're moving to a point about happierness. We think that we're moving towards happierness, but we're not. And then unfortunately, you have to go through all that pain. You get to the end, it doesn't work. And then you have to start all over again. And you've invested all this time and it becomes a very difficult cycle to break for people. Yeah. And I think we probably all felt that maybe as an example, one of the things you talk about in the mythology of it is the notion of happiness based on material success, accumulation of stuff, things, status. And that is such a common part of what we're told. We're taught from the earliest days that when you get X, you will feel Y. That's not the case.

I have so many memories. If I really think about it, I think, oh man, my life is going to be so much easier if I get this new computer to do my work on. And I get the computer and I'm happy for what, like an hour? I feel the sense of relief that I expected. But to your point, how many commercials have you watched that promise eternal happiness when you buy that thing? It's just countless. What does the research actually tell us about the relationship between happiness and the achievement of, or the accumulation of things, the acquisition of stuff or status? Yeah, it's a negative relationship. So the more that you value getting all that stuff and

the more materialistic you are, the less likely that you are to be happy. And the more challenges that you're likely going to have with your mental health. And unfortunately, these messages, they're very prevalent in young people. So, you know, we are exposed to these ideas from a very early age and some interesting research has also found that if you grow up in a less privileged background economically, then those messages hit even harder for you and it becomes an even more difficult belief to overcome. And so I often say that if you have placed your faith in happiness and stuff in the past, it's not your fault. You're just a product of our environment and we can start to unwind that with awareness and time, but it goes deep. One of those ones.

Yeah, I would imagine. And I wonder if there was a time where a lot of those messages were coming through, quote, mainstream media or old media. But now with social media, it's literally coming from everywhere. It's almost impossible to not get hit by. And I'm not a Luddite. I think there are some great advantages to social media. It flattens the world and connects us. But it does seem like a lot of research is starting to show that there are real problems. And part of it, I think everyone's trying to figure out what's really happening here. But I wonder how much is what you're talking about. It just sets these expectations

that you will feel better when you get or accumulate or have this thing in your life, because you see all these people having it and you're like, oh, they look awesome. Yeah. They look really happy. Right. But that's just a fiction. You know, it's like the story they're telling, um, in order to get, you know, likes and all these other things. Yeah. It's so painful, isn't it? Because sometimes I just think about social media. The best way to think about it is everyone's just pretending. If you have that perspective in your mind of, if you just assume that nothing is real and everyone is showing a front, so to speak, then you can start to separate yourself a little bit from it.

Because it is really hard, right? If you're feeling unhappy with your life or dissatisfied or lonely, and then you open your phone and you see all of these people who seem to have everything and living these beautiful, joyful lives, it's very hard not to compare yourself to that and to feel inadequate in so many ways. Yeah. And to believe that what they have is the key. Yeah, exactly. That's going to make me feel better. Like beyond the fact that it's fake, then it just breeds intensity into the lie. Speaking of lies, you sort of tease out what you describe as these three different lies. Let's walk through them. Lie number one, you're not enough. Yeah. When I started doing this work publicly, which was about, I guess, like almost five years ago,

I thought I was the only one who didn't think I was good enough. I thought it was just all me and it was my problem. And then I started doing this thing with the community that I facilitate on Instagram. And I would ask people, you know, what's something that's feeling hard right now, or what are you struggling with? And every single time I would say about half the responses all said the same thing. I don't feel like I'm good enough. And I started to realize that it's not a me problem. It's a we problem. We are all struggling with these feelings that were not enough in so many ways. And to your point, social media can be a prime breeding ground for that belief and providing you with all this evidence, presumably, to show you why you're not good enough. And unfortunately, it seems to be this core wound that so many of us carry around.

I'm curious. You said you had that feeling for a long time. When you're doing your master's degree in applied positive psychology, surrounded by like, you know, every weekend there, when you go there, these brilliant researchers and professors who are talking about all this research, but you're also in a cohort of people who are smart, who are striving, who like want something. In that environment where literally you're being taught about all of these different things, did you have the feeling of like, I'm not up to this? Like I'm not enough in this context, in that room, in that setting? I definitely did before going into it. I was so scared walking into that, you know, the first room where you gather as a class. I was so nervous.

I remember going for a walk around the campus to try and psych myself up. And then looking around it, you know, Penn has such a gorgeous campus and looking at all the buildings and thinking, this is a mistake. I should have just stayed in my room. The program does such a great job at making people feel welcome. So it did fade after a little while. But yeah, of course, I felt, who am I to be here with all of these people? Why should I think that I deserve any of this? And I'm probably going to be the worst student and, you know, have nothing to contribute and all of those horrible things that we say to ourselves.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. This is sort of a broad question and maybe just too individual, but I'm curious just what your take is. Like, where does that come from? You know, because it is such, I don't want to say universal experience, maybe not every single person experience, but it is so common. Yeah.

You know, this feeling of not enoughness. Do you have a take on where it comes from? What it's about? experience, maybe not every single person experiences, but it is so common. This feeling of not enoughness. Do you have a take on where it comes from, what it's about? Yeah. I argue that these beliefs come from the values and forces of our society and specifically these forces that shape so many of our values and our systems, including individualism, capitalism, and domination. And specifically, this feeling of not enough, while it's exacerbated by the other two, I think it's really rooted in these ideas of domination, that some people are better than others, and that your self-worth as a person is determined in comparison with another. For example, like going back to our social media example,

if I'm having a good day, let's say, and then I open Instagram and I see a friend of mine who's just won a prestigious award or something amazing happening for her. If my self-worth is based upon my comparison to her, then I might feel like deep sense of, oh, wow, I'm not good enough. I'm behind. There's something wrong with me. And previously up until that point, I was having a great day. There wasn't anything going wrong in my day, but because my self-worth is unstable and it's founded on this form of comparison, ultimately what happens is that ending up fluctuating based upon who you are and who you're talking to and how successful you are and what you achieve.

And that in turn creates even more instability where you want to go out and prove how good you are through different activities. And ultimately you get locked in this cycle of never feeling enough and striving to show how good you are, which then contributes to other people feeling not enough. And so it's the system I think we've gotten locked into. And it's also then exacerbated by many of the forces that we and the kind of institutions and things that we participate in, which have a very narrow understanding of what it means to be good enough and what it means to be worthy as a person. And so if you don't measure up to those levels, then you're constantly getting poked

all of the ways that you need to be better. So part of it then also is about the metrics that we choose to use to sort of like measure our enoughness to a certain extent. Like we're looking at all these things that almost can't help but make us feel bad. Exactly. That sounds fantastic.

Yeah, it's great. Great news. I'm the happiest person to come on this podcast, bringing all the positive news. Yeah. Bridge one gap here for me though, because I'm curious, because you used the word domination, leave your domination. Walk me into how that contributes to this feeling. If we live in a world that says some people are better than others and that all lives are not equal and there are specific types of people who are valued, there are specific activities that are valued, and then we have all of these systems that then in turn implement rewards or punishments in order to force those and coerce that kind of behavior, then ultimately it becomes in everybody's self-interest to conform to that system and to

participate in it. And that ability to step outside of that and to say, I'm not basing who I am on anyone else. And I'm not judging myself in comparison to anybody else. That would be removing yourself from a system of domination and instead saying, I'm operating from a system of collaboration or of compassion or of equality. And those shifts that we can make are often just really small. Like it can start with just refusing to judge yourself based upon somebody else's actions who really has nothing to do with you. You know, my friend's award, it's all about her and her work and all of the great things that she has strived so much to do.

And it doesn't have to be a reflection on me. It's only that because I've been conditioned into thinking that it should be that way. And I can start to break that cycle and that pattern through my choices and my actions. Yeah. As you're describing that, I think so many people who came up in the world of business who are a little bit further into their careers also, they came up in an ethos where whether it was stated or not, the ethos was kill or be killed. And that was literally taught as a model in grad schools. When that is the way that you step into the world of work, and then it's going to ripple out into every other part of work, it's kind of what you're talking about here. It's that sense of dominate or be dominated, right? That's how we succeed. And then that's going to give us

that magical capital H happiness that we seek. And then that's going to give us that magical, like capital H happiness that we seek. And yet so many people, even when they quote win, they're not feeling what they want to feel. No, no. Cause how can really like, how can you experience real happiness through domination? Like how can you expect that? It's never going to help you to truly feel good because as we all know, truly feeling good is far more likely to be found in helping people and connecting and being supportive and caring and kindness. And to your point about that mantra that you're taught, right? Like it still happens. I think about, I started my career in management consulting and the big fear I had was like up or out.

If you're not performing, then you don't get to stay and it's tamer than kill or be killed for sure. But it still has the same kind of message. Yeah. I mean, and that even exists in academia. I mean, the mantra there is publish or perish, which on the surface doesn't sound like kill or be killed or dominate or be dominated. But like if the mindset is, okay, there's scarcity here, there are only a certain amount of articles that can be accepted by a certain number of journals every year. And if I don't have mine accepted, that puts my entire career and my tenure in jeopardy. So I have got to somehow basically, I've got to beat all the other people. That's the only way that I get what I want, which is just fascinating. I would imagine

that if you'd looked in almost any domain, you could see this culture in some way woven through it. Does that make sense? Yes. I think you've nailed it. It's the perfect way of describing it. And work is probably the best lens for us to start to notice its presence in that way, right? Because it's almost like, to your point, domination is coded into the workplace in many ways, right? You get promoted, you get into a leadership position. And in many ways, right? You get promoted, you get into a leadership position, and in many ways that gives you the right to tell other people what to do and to assert control over them. And luckily, thanks to work like yours and many others, we're shifting towards a better way

of working and to creating collaborative relationships at work. But I think that it's so deeply coded into the way that we see the world and even taking a step back from it can be very disorienting at the beginning. Yeah. I would imagine in the world of work, it's like the level of wholesale change that has to happen within the culture of an organization. It's like if it's a bigger, older organization, it's just knocking your head up against a really big wall. As I would imagine with your work in management consulting, it's like, okay, I'm dropping into a big organization. And to try and even steer that ship a fraction of one degree,

this direction or another, it takes a massive amount of effort. It really does. So the second lie is, and we've kind of talked about it a little bit, but it's this notion of you'll be happy when. But we talked about it in the context of accumulation or achievement. Is there something else or other things that might follow that dot, dot, dot as well? Yeah. And it's funny, you already nailed it really when you talked about the currency of how

we value ourselves, because in our world, achievement is the currency of how we value ourselves because in our world, achievement is the currency of how we value ourselves. So achievement might be that acquisition of material goods, but it could also be the pursuit of goals or a power, fame, popularity, anything that exists outside of you or that is acquired for the purposes of giving you something other than what it is. So for example, if you're striving to get promoted because you think it will lead to happiness versus you're striving to get promoted because you really want to learn and you want to become a leader and that feels really fulfilling for you. Yeah. I mean, so part of it is about the intention of that underlies the striving.

So you're not saying that striving in and of itself is bad. No. But it's about like, what is driving the striving? Yeah. Oh, that's so good. You need to copyright that. That's so good. I think that's spot on. We're driven to do stuff. We're action-oriented creatures. We can't get rid of that. And I've been studying, for example, Buddhism for a while, and I was very attracted to almost like a monastic view of happiness at the beginning in terms of contentment in spite of everything. And I thought there was so much to admire in that, obviously, so much to admire in that way of life and that

perspective. But the more that I thought about it, the more I realized that it's not very practical. And it, first of all, of course, and then second, it's for most of us, it denies that truth of our nature, which is like, we want to make things, we want to do stuff, we want to build things, we want to create experiences that have never existed before. And there's a profound satisfaction and fulfillment in that. So how do we take that striving energy and use it for good and for positive outcomes rather than having it be sort of funneled on autopilot towards these things that we think will make us happy but don't actually. I know so many folks who have at some point considered or even said yes to the monastic

life and vows and then come back to certainly be, quote, householder life because they're like, you know what? I believe deeply in the ideas and the philosophy, but I really feel like my place is in the world and there's just human impulses that I have that I don't think are bad. They just need to be sort of like properly held and directed. I love that. I remember reading something back in the day that really changed my perspective on this as well, which was the Dalai Lama, I believe, said that there's more spiritual growth in one parent's night of nursing a sick child than there is in a year of meditation practice. And I was so struck by that because I had sort of attached all these mental ideas about, oh, this is the right way to do things, or it's the most worthy way of

doing things, right? It's treating it in many ways like an accomplishment, of course. And realizing that actually you can have this profound personal and spiritual and professional growth simply by the way that you live your life and show up for the people in it. And that's where a lot of the goodness or most of the goodness is for many of us. So I agree with that. And as somebody who's actually had both experiences, like with the kid overnight and meditating for a year and studying, I think I agree with that. Wow, that's so cool.

You'll learn a lot really, really fast in like an eight hour window overnight when, yeah, everything's on the line. The third element is this notion, and this ties back to a certain extent of one of the things that you referenced, this sort of like notion of individualism is this notion that you're, you're on your own. And that is one of the other lies that you kind of say like, You're not separate. That's what that's, this is the lie that I think is most for me, the hardest one to spot and the hardest to divest myself from as well in many ways, because the idea that we are separate from one another is, you know,

it's coded into us from the very beginning. Like there's Stephanie, Stephanie is in school, Stephanie is doing this and that and the other. And we have so much of this attachment to the self. And what has fascinated me about some of the emerging research in this area is that you really can't have a self without other selves. There's no way to be truly separate from people. And even thinking about people living a monastic life, they're not separate either. They're reliant upon other people and they're engaged in relationships with them, even if they look very different. And the more that we can realize just how connected we are, the more that we're motivated to invest in those relationships that we have. And the more that we can realize just how connected we are, the more that we're

motivated to invest in those relationships that we have. And that is the source of our truest wellbeing. I'm nodding along. And yet at the same time, as with so many of the other things that we've been talking about, like so much of just culture tells us like it's based around this like myth of, you know, quote, rugged individualism. You quote, you shouldn't be dependent on others. That's not happiness, that's weakness. And whether it's said overtly or whether it's just like the undercurrent of what you observe as a kid or wherever it may be. Whereas it's so baked into us that to break from the notion that to need somebody else, to be open and vulnerable to and with somebody else is not weakness.

It's for a lot of people, it's no easy thing. No, it's not. I actually just found a study about this that showed that by the age of seven, kids are already reluctant to ask for help because they know it will make them look weak. I just broke my heart a little bit when I read that. And so I'm thinking, God, what about us 27, 37, 47 year olds, all of those years on top of it? We have a lot of unlearning to do on that front. Yeah. Where do we start with that unlearning, especially in the context of that? I think that the first step that I think can make a really big difference is starting to

acknowledge how connected you are to others in any way that you can. So whether that's looking for the things that you share with another person or the ways in which you see yourself in them or looking for their, you know, like their goodness and all of the wonderful qualities within them. And then when you feel connected to them, think about how they have contributed to your life and how you have contributed to theirs. If we imagine these two people and then the space between them and all that they have given and received in that space, bringing it to mind and reflecting on the fact that this relationship is one of entire mutual need and care, that there has been nothing in that relationship that wasn't based upon that in one way or another. And then reflecting on the fact that it's perfectly human to continue that relationship and whether that means that you have the capacity today to offer help to them, or whether today is a day where you need some help, that's what the flow of connectedness should be all about.

And the more that we can start to practice in small ways, asking for help, showing others that it's okay to ask for help, the easier it becomes also to continue giving and to contribute in the ways that we want to as well. And I think that this mantra I have is we're here to help each other. That's what we're here for. It's the point. And if I buy into that idea, then that means that I can't just be the only one helping. I also have to be willing to receive from others because if not, I'm cutting them off from participating in

this flow. And so in many ways, I argue that asking for help can be a very selfless act because it allows somebody else to experience happiness. No, that makes a lot of sense. It's like Ram Dass's famous quote in the end, we're all just walking each other home. I love that. But I think what you're also teasing out here is, if this lands with you, distinction between dependence and interdependence.

One being one-sided and the other really acknowledging the mutuality of it. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think that interdependence is the ideal of what's possible in many ways, right? Like your individuality and service of somebody else, somebody else's wellbeing or the greater good, whatever it is. And at the same time, it's also okay to be dependent sometimes. It's okay to really need other people and to feel like I'm not in a place right now where I can contribute and give in the ways that I wish I could, but I'm going through something really hard or I'm in need and this is just where I'm at right now. And you can also know that in those moments that there will come a time where you will be able to

do the same for another person. You will be able to contribute to their lives in some way and perhaps be there for someone who truly needs you. And ultimately, I think that ends up contributing to interdependence in the long run. It's more of taking a step back and knowing that moments of dependence are okay as long as we're kind of like all in this together or like a sea of humanity, it's all going to come around in one way or another. But I wonder also if people sometimes resist this idea because there's also a bit of a, in addition to sort of like the dominance oriented or the killer be killer idea things, I feel like so many of us were brought up with this like scorekeeping tendency. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like, okay, so I really am in need

and I really need somebody to help me out right now. But if I really need to help and I take everything they have to give, at some point there's a deficit like on the books now and I'm gonna have to pay back that same amount because at some point we need to balance the books, right? And that people will say no because they don't want the sense of obligation that's been sort of drilled into them has to happen down the road rather than saying, maybe that entire assumption is wrong.

Yeah. Wow. So profound. I couldn't agree more with you. And it's tragic how people hold themselves back when they really need help from asking from it in that worry that maybe if they cash in their chips now, they won't be able to use them in the future. How devastating is that? That that's the world that we live in and that we feel that way. I would like to see that fixed. That would be amazing. Yeah. I feel like in times of just profound mass crisis and trauma that we often drop in to that for like a hot minute. I mean,

I was in New York and like living there during 9-11, it's New York for the first part of the pandemic. And there was this sense of what can I do? Like, I'm not keeping score. Like I'm in pain. Everyone around me that I know is in pain. I just need something to do. I need some way to help. And if somebody can figure out a way to help me, like I'm down with that.

But I feel like when we move away from the window of the immediate trauma or crisis, that ethos fades. I'm wondering whether you see that also. Yeah. It's been documented as well in studies. There was this body of work I read about 9-11, actually, and how essentially these psychologists went back and interviewed people who were volunteering on the ground. And basically what they all said was, I ran there to help. I ran toward ground zero because all I could think about was the people who were suffering and I had to do something about it. And I didn't even think about it. It was almost instinctive. And I believe that this comes from that lack of separation that we're talking about. So if you feel like if I'm not connected to you, then your problems are yours, not my problem, right?

I don't have to deal with them. But if I am connected to you, then they belong to me as well. So I have a responsibility and a duty and a care to be there for you and to support you. So when you're separate, not only does it hurt you in the short term in that way, but it also ends up cutting you off from the source of joy of your relationships of giving and receiving. I think that people, I respect the need to be mindful about the exposure we have to traumatic events that are happening in the news and to be mindful of what we consume and how we do it. But the more that we say, oh, that's not my problem.

It's too much for me to handle, all that kind of stuff. The more we're cutting ourselves off from people who are suffering, who need us and who we might very well be able to help. But we have to start with that connection in order to be willing to jump in. And those moments of trauma that you're talking about, like the pandemic, we're all in this together. Let's go out on our balconies and cheer for the healthcare workers. That's a moment of profound connection where the separation goes away. And so we become motivated to help. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. sleepy. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what's the difference between me and you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk part of what we're talking about here and and you write about this beautifully is is empathy and compassion you know so take me a little bit deeper just into what these concepts are and how these may be more of the truer core ingredients of genuine and more lasting happiness. Yeah. When we're connected, when we're no longer separate and I'm attuned to you, then I can experience empathy. So feeling with you, feeling your emotions like

they're my own or your pain, like it's my own. And then we can take the next step, which I think is the most important one, which is shifting into compassion, which is essentially giving love to the person who is suffering and giving of yourself in the ways that they might need. And when you're in a state of compassion, you can bear many challenges and stresses. You can face traumas and difficulties. You can do incredible things and acts of service because you actually have this source of positive emotion and meaning that's driving you forward. And you don't have access to that when you're just at the empathy level. So if you're really sad and we're connected, then I might end up feeling really sad too because of that. And then that might make it hard for me to help you, right? Like if you've,

I'm sure we've all had this experience where like you're crying and then you tell someone what's wrong and they say, they get upset about it and then you have to comfort them. And like, how did this happen? How did we get into this spot? And that's because empathy is really powerful. So the more that we can shift from that place of connectedness into compassion and helping and expressing love in the ways that we can, the more joy that we get to experience and the more motivation and power and energy that we have to keep doing it. How do we resource ourselves in a way that allows us to make that move from empathy to

compassion? Because it takes a certain almost like activation energy to go from feeling what another person feels to saying, I'm capable of not just I want to do something about it, but I'm capable of doing something about it and not feeling similarly locked down or sad or paralyzed. And some people may be just more organically able to flip that switch. But I would imagine others are feeling like, how do I bridge that gap? I want to do something. But I'm concerned about sort of dropping into the same abyss as this other person. And also I'm concerned about my own wellbeing in giving energy to this right now. Your second point, I think is the key issue that prevents us from doing that because yes, when you're in that state of empathy,

it can be draining, but when you're in the state of compassion, you're benefiting. So giving doesn't actually end up depleting you when you're coming from that state, it ends up fulfilling you. So to your first point, we have to figure out how to make that shift as often as we can so that we can resource ourselves appropriately. And from a very practical perspective, I think that something that holds us back is not knowing how to help when people are having a hard time, like not knowing, you know, like you have a crying person in front of you who's just lost their job or been broken up with, like, what do you do in that moment? No one ever teaches us how to be there in those ways that might be supportive. And then of course, every person is different and has different needs. So it's a little bit like helping is a whole other

additional skillset that we have to develop in order to reap those benefits that we're talking about. Yeah. On the one hand, as you're saying that, I'm thinking, well, maybe a good thing for us to all do is literally ask the other person, what do you most need right now? But then on the other hand, part of me is saying, is there a potential for that question alone to actually add to their burden? So hard. It's complicated. It's really complicated. I made this tool for the new happy, which is basically like a big list of needs. And the idea is that if you're having a hard time, you can sit with somebody you love and

check off the things that you think would make you feel better and start to build that vocabulary a little bit. Because it is really hard. Sometimes I think about my own needs and I think about my partner. If I'm having a hard day, sometimes I want him to know what to do, right? It's kind of unfair. It's my responsibility. I have to learn how to name my needs and the things that I want. And so I think that one of the best ways we can exist

in interdependence with one another is that practice of claiming, I would like this, or I need this right now. And again, it sort of ties back to what you mentioned about how hard it is to ask for help. It's the barrier getting in the way. Yeah. It's one thing, I guess, to see clearly enough to really understand what's going on. Another thing to even then know what to do. And then a third thing to then act on it. It's like, yeah, we're complicated little beasties. I love the way you say that. One of the other things that you talk about is this notion of understanding or uncovering why you matter, how you matter. Take me a little bit deeper into this. Yeah. So I think that everyone wants to know that they're special, right? And that they have

something within them that matters and that can be shared. And there's so many different ways to approach this question of identifying who you are and what unique capabilities you have. And I know you've done such fantastic work in this area. The model that I've proposed in this book is that every person has three different types of gifts and those gifts can be used to help other people. When you use them, you experience joy and then also you create happiness for other people at the same time. And so I argue that there's your humanity, which is who you are as a person. That's what shows up in those helping moments when you're with somebody you love and you want to be there. There's your wisdom, what you've learned from the unique life that you've lived that nobody else will ever have access to.

And then there's your talent, which is all the great things you know how to do, or you want to learn how to do. And the more that you can identify those gifts, you can start to share them with the world and make the impact that only you can make because no one else has your unique combination of gifts to share. Do you feel like at different points in our lives, we might feel like we have more or less access to one or more of those three different gifts? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I haven't thought about it before, but yes, I do. I think luckily you develop most of them with age, particularly humanity and wisdom can grow and grow and grow. And of course, you can continue learning. Maybe your range of talents becomes slightly more limited as you get older, but you

can still always master new skills and capabilities. So I think that aging presents us with an opportunity to develop those gifts more and more. And ultimately I think that they all do need that level of cultivation. For the most part, there are obviously masters and people who seem to spring fully formed with their talents and their gifts out of there. I'm not one of them. Nor am I. Definitely not one. I'm literally stumbling and fumbling. Me too. Oh yeah. Like doing the messy work. That's me.

So I think that you have to put in, you know, the effort and the time and like anything, that's what pays off. So, and I do think that to your point, it might also be dependent on the environment that you're in, the support that you're getting, what's valued in the relationships that you have, all of that can help to bring it out. Yeah. It does occur to me, and I'm curious what you think about this, that I wonder if many of us really, in the earlier stages of life, of those three, humanity, wisdom, and talent, we tend to lead with talent. If there's a way for us to help, where's my scale? Where's my unique thing about me? Because it just seems most on the surface and maybe most what we've been recognized for. And maybe we feel like we're not, like, we don't have the wisdom yet to actually be able to offer that in a meaningful

way. But I wonder if the humanity side of it is, which we all have from the earliest days, that's maybe not necessarily the most ignored, but least tapped in a way. Maybe we don't recognize that it's there for us to offer. I agree with you completely. I think some people, there are some people who seem to have a natural grasp on their humanity gifts and are so loving and kind and funny and just all of those wonderful human qualities and they share it broadly. But yeah, I mean, I didn't ever believe when I was younger that your humanity could be a gift. It felt like a liability. So the funny thing is, though, is that your humanity gifts are the most reliable source of happiness because they connect you to other people and they allow you to express all of your inner goodness.

So if we neglect those, then often we're neglecting a really big source of wellbeing. And to your point, we'll often put talent well ahead of it and ignore all of the potential expressions of our humanity gifts in thinking that, you know, again, once I get there, I'll be happy and then it'll all be worth it. Yeah. And I would imagine this ties into what you were sharing earlier about like one of those big lies, which was like the sense of not enoughness. Like if we feel like, you know, if we've been maybe told at a young age that like, just on a human level, like you're not enough, then you're like, who am I to think that even just who I am as a human being is adequate to

in any way, shape or form, like share with another person. Yeah. And like, that could be good enough. Like, you know, one example, I'm curious to hear if, if this resonates with you is I was always told I was too sensitive and overreacting to stuff and I would cry too often and it became something that I was really ashamed of when I was younger. And especially when you're young and you don't have the ability to regulate your emotions, it becomes even more difficult. And I never, ever once thought that my sensitivity could ever be a gift. And now I couldn't do any of the work I do without it. It's probably one of the things that has helped me the most. And all of that time I spent beating myself up for something that's just

a part of who I am. I could have been using it in ways that would have helped me and helped others. And gosh, like we should just try and avoid that wherever possible. Yeah. And I think that probably resonates. It resonates with me. I'm sure it resonates with so many people who are like listening right now. Part of it is, you know, there's so much conditioning.

That's part of what we've been talking about. You know, that so much of what we're talking about here is, you know, it's an unwinding process. And this is actually like one of the words you know, it's an unwinding process. And this is actually like one of the words you use, like unwinding the old happy, so that we can basically set ourselves up to step into the new happy. When you think about, you know, if somebody's listening to this and say like, this makes so much sense to me, and yes, it makes sense that we need to unwind these things and access empathy and compassion. And it's like the relationships are really powerful

and they matter. And the notion of wisdom and talent and humanity, like that all lands. And maybe they're feeling okay, but like there's this voice inside of them that says, but I could feel better. I could feel different. Where do we start with that?

Because I think a lot of folks probably be like, but this feels a bit overwhelming to me. What are the easy on ramps here? Yeah. I think that one of the on ramps is the next time that you're having a bad day or a tough time, just go help somebody in some small way. Try and show up using your humanity gifts. It's free. It's simple. It takes five minutes or less. And it can make such a big difference in your day. Simply calling a friend or reaching out to a family member who's having a hard time or helping a stranger or whatever it is that comes to mind. And then when you're done, just notice how you feel and if it's changed anything within you.

If you feel more connected to yourself or to the other person, and if you have any joy or sense of purpose. The next is to start thinking about those gifts that you have and making a list of some of them, to be honest, thinking about, okay, what have I learned? Everyone has had a unique life. And no matter how old you are, you have been through some stuff that has taught you something. And we just have to extract it from those memories and those moments. So I often counsel, you know, think back to the things that you've achieved in your life that were meaningful for you or the experiences that were painful for you that you got through and overcame and then write down what you learned and what you'd like to do with that information. Because oftentimes our purpose is found in, hey, I went through this hard time and now I want to help other people going through that hard time, or I want to prevent it for them in some way or help support them in navigating it. And the other bit is, again, no matter how young

you are, there's always somebody younger than you who wants to do what you've done, who is excited and would be grateful for your support. And so figuring out how to contribute your wisdom in those ways. who has a life that excites you, you know, thinking about someone who gets up every day and they do something with their day. And you think, I want to do that with my day. And then think about the talents that they have and how you might start to develop them for yourself. And you do that by, you know, starting to practice and get feedback and all that good stuff. But with those, those three steps, you can really invest in your talents and your wisdom and your humanity, and then start to offer them up to others in a way that's not about overhauling your whole life. It's just making a couple of small changes as you go about it. That resonates so much. And the notion that, you know, even starting with the humanity side, like literally there's probably not a day that

you boo through where once you become open to it, once you sort of like set yourself on scan, like, okay, so how can I bring my humanity gift to like to someone, something, some moment, like you're probably just going to start to see them all around the place. Totally. And it's like, it's think about them as moments for your happiness, right? Like here's a chance to feel happier. What a gift. I'm so happy I can help. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Helping people in any way I can.

Thank you. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Dan Lerner about the science of passion. You'll find a link to Dan's episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter, crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adele for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or

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become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

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