How to Talk to People - How to Build a Happy Life: Find the Secret to Meaningful Work

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

The road to purposeful work is paved with good intentions; but for many, happiness at work can feel like a hopeless cause. What if the secret to happiness at work has less to do with our extrinsic motivations—money, rewards, and personal gain—and more to do with our intrinsic motivations—the meaningful relationships we build, and the ability to be in service to those who need it? In this episode of How to Build a Happy Life, we’ll explore workplace practices to live out purpose-driven principles. We’ll also talk about why authenticity is vital to strong leadership and “walking the talk,” and how to factor emotional needs into our workplaces. A conversation with Chief Happiness Officer and CEO of Delivering Happiness, Jenn Lim, helps us tackle one big question at work: Why do I do this everyday? This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Arthur Brooks. Editing by A.C. Valdez. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Sound design by Michael Raphael. Be part of How to Build a Happy Life. Write to us at [e-mail] or leave us a voicemail at 925.967.2091. Music by Trevor Kowalski (“Lion’s Drift,” “This Valley of Ours,” “Una Noche De Luces”), Stationary Sign (“Loose in the Park”), and Spectacles Wallet and Watch (“Last Pieces”). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is How to Build a Happy Life, the Atlantic's podcast on all things, happiness. I'm Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor, and happiness correspondent at the Atlantic. People like to complain about their jobs, and there's a lot in popular culture about people having terrible bosses. But it's amazing to me when I look at the data on work satisfaction and how it's actually gone up over the last few years. As I've written about in my column at the Atlantic, Gallup. asks a sample of American adults, kind of a loaded question. How much do you like your job? The portion of Americans who say they are completely satisfied at work has risen dramatically over the past two decades, from 41% in 2001 to 55% in 2019. And in 2020, despite the fact that

millions of Americans had shifted to remote work, still, 89% said that they were either completely or somewhat satisfied. That's great news. But there's bad news, too. For better or for worse, people spend their time and most of their mental energy at work. Now, let's think about what we've tackled on this show so far. We've talked about emotional management and mindfulness with Dan Harris, managing your emotions so they don't manage you. We've talked about the importance of relationships and friendships

and reorganizing our priorities to ensure that we live a people-centric life with Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General. general. We've talked about avoiding self-objectification or the idea that you are your job or you are a particular role in life. We talked about that with Dr. Sheffali. But what about the thing that most often distracts us from all these projects work? Well, this time on how to build a happy life, working toward happiness with happier days at work. Purpose and having that higher meaning of doing something that's beyond yourself is what makes us as individuals have this more sustainable form of happiness. So I really wanted to take that concept from

what it means for an individual to the workplace. Jen Lim is the CEO and chief happiness officer of delivering happiness, a company redesigning workplace organization around positive psychology. Jen's mission is to embed happiness and humanity in all workplaces. from the individual to the institutional level. Delivering happiness applies science-based happiness research to help companies improve their corporate strategy and their company culture, which all begins with individuals showing up to work

with their most authentic selves. Jen co-founded delivering happiness with the late Tony Shea, who also was the famous entrepreneur behind Zappos and who wrote the book called Delivering Happiness, which was a huge bestseller. Tony passed away in 2020, sadly, and this was a tragedy for a lot of people, including Jen, but he continues to be an inspiration to her and to many other people around the world. And this is funny to say, right?

Like there was a demand for happiness in the world. So the company essentially evolved to adapt to what that meant. And for us, we were focused on workplace happiness and what scientific happiness means using that research and academics around all that. body of work of positive psychology, and actually how do you make it practical and tactical in the workplace? So essentially, from some ways, we're consulting company, but I'd rather see us as more of like part coach, part consulting. So we call ourselves coach consultants in terms of what we put out in the world. And it's not just like the inspirational stuff. That's important, but, you know, that's short-lived and that's kind of like a raw, like keynote or workshop.

but we're all about systemic change and making sure that we embed these kind of practices and behaviorally so that companies can actually not just be quote unquote happier from a sustainable basis but also realize the results from an ROI perspective. So in terms of retention, attraction of the right people, and especially right now, as we see, like, you know, the great resignation, it just seems like more than ever it's important to have these things embedded in how we actually grow companies for the long term. So it's been pretty cool to see how this whole, you know, lofty, Rambles and Unicorn's Happiness thing has actually landed in a universal way.

Congratulations. So the question before we talk about the results that can actually come from this is, what do you mean by systemic change with happiness? What does that actually look like? These moments, when we go to an event or we go to a conference or we see an amazing keynote speak. Like, we just get that fleeting high based on the science of happiness. It's like it's a pleasure point and it hits certain parts of our body, but then it falls really quickly. Systemic stuff comes in the very non-sexy, very non-glamour side of org design. Basically,

how do you design the organization in a way that these kind of things are not just nice words on the wall? Like, oh, this is our purpose and, oh, these are our values. But actually embedded it into how we recognize people, how we reward them, how we incentivize them, and to the point of hiring and firing based on it. So that even if they're like, you know, a rock star kind of like performer in whatever they do, if they're actually not living up to those values of what they believe in, and then it doesn't become systemic. So without divulging any confidentiality, obviously, give me an example of going into a company, finding something that's a real barrier to the happiness of the company and therefore the performance

of the company, quite frankly, and some changes systemically that you've made that's resulted in greater happiness of the employees and the executives and then the kind of results that you'd see. The one that's freshest in my mind, especially because so many companies are going through so many changes and what we have to do in the last 18 months of really evaluating ourselves as companies in terms of business 101. how are we going to adapt and pivot to all these economic changes around us? And then, of course, we have added the pandemic and social unrest and, like, you know, go on down the line of all these factors, external factors that we couldn't control.

My freshest example is Starbucks. So we were there for years. And then it was like we're just about to go into this huge project that they've never really done before because Howard Schultz was always the leader. like, you know, he's super iconic. To his credit, he did a lot of stuff and just bringing that whole culture, Italian culture, coffee culture,

into American society. And then his leaving and having a new leadership team, new CEO, they are like, how do we exist for another 50 years? So we're about to embark on this whole vision project. What is Starbucks today? How do we make them more current?

I don't know. Can I cuss on this? or is this not really that... You can say anything you want. You know, when the pandemic, shit hits the fan, as we know, like when it hits the fan for an individual, the true character of that person shows.

And I believe that of companies as well. So basically, they're triaging at the same time of saying, wait, who are we and what do we stand for? And this was most interesting to me because, you know, here's a company that's been known for their brand and known for being purpose-driven for so long and rightfully so.

So that was really interesting to see how these concepts of what does it mean to actually live up to that mission statement again? What does it mean to actually live by the values that we stayed on the wall? It was really eye-opening to see how people, when they are actually led by that statement of that purpose and that mission, how they all can just leave all the other baggage behind, all the politic behind, and say, actually, yes, this is what we're here for. and to see that company pivot in a way, and they're already going along those lines, but saying, hey, we have to triage because we want to take care of our people,

take care of our baristas, take care of, like, basically a community because they have a hand in a role in that given their, you know, around the world. But at the same time, they actually aligned more than ever as a leadership team. And they knew it's because they were not just

speaking to the mission of the company. They're speaking to their purpose of themselves. because I think everyone around that time and even more so, you know, as time goes on in this next phase of COVID, are just asking those questions. Like, why am I waking up again and going to this job? Or, you know, why am I spending every minute of this day, you know, towards this activity or role or event or, you know, and it sounds like, you know, purpose and value sounds just like, whatever that means. But when you get alignment around that, you can see the scale of how the impact can be. Because as the outcome of that, in addition to triaging what they did for their people and customers and especially their partners, they call it their employees, they launched this whole other program of what their next 50 years will be, which is not just profit positive. And they've been doing amazingly well in that space, but it's also people positive and planet positive.

So they basically put themselves on the line and say, hey, we're going to be accountable for this. I think it's a big lesson learned to see what can happen when big shifts happen in the world. So talk to me a little bit more. So what you're saying is a very bold thing because this is not just about companies. And I want all of our listeners to understand that Jen Lim is talking about the secret of happiness for all of us as well. So she said, like, the happiness comes when you know who you are, you know what you want to be and you live according to it. That's as true for a company as it is for a person. What are the values of an organization, which are most correlated with happiness?

The way we go about it is that we're not here to twist people's arms and say, hey, you've got to be happy now. Look what you have. Be grateful and, like, do your gratitude journal and, you know, all those things. That's not how it works. Happiness is pushing on a string, right? I mean, it... So I think the values that correlate best to happiness, and again, going back to the scientific side.

So we call them levers. So basically, these are little handles that we have across of what we can do to increase our happiness. And that's a sense of autonomy, control, call it freedom, a sense of progress, my learning, am I growing? Do I have a growth mindset? I feel like I'm developing in any and all ways of life, not just work.

Connection, and this one's a big one. And it's not just about connectedness anymore, but belonging is kind of this buzzword that's going on now with what that means and having a sense of not just being invited to the dance or being allowed to dance, but just being able to dance however the way you want and being accepted for that and then actually having a turn at the DJ. These definitions of like these values are expanding all the time, especially after 2020 in making it more current in what we can do now to make them real. Okay, back to Jen Lim in a second. But right now, let's talk a little bit about

business plans. By that I don't mean business plans for actual businesses. I mean plans for the business of your life. When you're going to work, when you're taking your whole self to work, when you're trying to be a happier person in your work, you need something like a little business plan for your life. A business plan, it has the answer to four basic questions. What am I doing? Who am I doing it for? How am I doing it? And most importantly, Why am I doing it? Why am I doing this thing? Maybe you're thinking to yourself, how do I find that why?

That's the hardest question, isn't it? Well, good news. There's somebody who's thought an awful lot about that that can help. His name is Simon Sinek. You may have heard of him because he wrote a best-selling book called Start with Why. That's about how you can find your why. I sat down with Simon, and he gave me some great ideas on how each one of us can do it. I've never defined myself by what I do.

I define myself by why I do it. Start with why is something I live every day of my life and have since I first articulated the concept. Why is this deep-seated purpose, cause, or belief? It's the sum total of how we were raised and the lessons we learned as kids that made us who we are. It's sort of the core of our personality. It is unchangeable and fully formed by the time we're probably in our mid-to-late teens. In other words, you are who you are. An understanding the deep core of what inspires you and makes you who you are

is the value you provide to the world as well. It's the reason your friends love you. It's the reason your colleagues trust you. It's the reason clients are drawn to you. It's being your true self in how you show up in the world and in your work. And it feels really good. What the process is of uncovering ones, why, is to go through a rational process. So we identify stories and experiences from your life in which we can discern patterns.

and that pattern is the why. And it's kind of an amazing thing. And then the opportunity is to do it on purpose, to live with purpose on purpose, as opposed to what most of us do, which is to live with purpose by accident. The reason most people struggle with it is because they start with the question,

what do I want to be or what do I want to do? It's not that it doesn't exist. It's like love, right? It's hard to put into words our feelings for another person. So we use metaphors and analogies. Human brains have an easier time talking about stuff and things because they're easier to see and understand than the ethereal.

Simon Sinek makes a really important point, which is that it sounds easy to come up with your why, but it's really hard. You know it when you see it, but you can't really describe it. It's an interesting problem, isn't it? So I decided the best way for me to be able to really put my finger on it so that I could pursue my why most effectively.

I was going to stop trying to say it, And I was just going to try to, I was going to walk it into existence. In the middle of 2019, when I left my job at the end of June, I got on a plane and I went to Spain. I was going to walk the commuter in Santiago, which is a walk across northern Spain. It's a pilgrimage that people make basically because they want to find the why of their life, either for religious or non-religious reasons. when they want to walk the why into their lives. And that's exactly what I did.

Day after day, hour after hour, asking for my why. And when I finished, weirdly, I knew. It had gone from my feet into my brain, and then it was on my tongue. The why of my life is to lift people up and bring them together. It worked for me and it can work for you too, but you got to do the work. And now, back to Jen Lim. Going back to that sense of purpose, we could talk about all this all we want from like an organizational standpoint. But unless we as individuals can actually ground ourselves in our own purpose and our own values and define it for ourselves first, whenever I step into that work, you know, hat on, is it really the same hat that I'm wearing in my life and what's most meaningful to me?

There's a reason why people are like quitting their jobs, most of them without even knowing where their next step is going to be. be. And so I think that most important part of being our individual self, whether we're CEO or a frontliner, it's really getting real with that and revisiting those kind of concepts of like, how am I going to lead people? And even if I'm not a CEO, how am I going to be a leader of myself at work and in life? So there's two big points that I want our listeners to pay attention to that Jen is just raised. They're super important, really, really profound points. Number one is that the happiness values, the happiness lovers that are the difference between a company that's bringing happiness

and is not, they're all about people. They're all about the values that are going to serve the people, actualize people inside the organization, being autonomy, progress, and connection of having work being affirming force in your life. In other words, work should be something that brings happiness to your life as opposed to unhappiness in your life. And the two characteristics of work that will bring happiness to your life are earning your success, which is accomplishment, autonomy, progress, and a sense that you're serving other people. Okay, that's the first big thing. The values of a company that are going to bring happiness and create more success for the

company are all about values that you bring for the people in your world. Let's call that Jen's Truth Number One. Jen's Truth Number two is, for leaders, is put your own oxygen mask on first. People ask me all the time. You know, you teach happiness at Harvard and you write about it in the Atlantic and all that. You must be the happiest guy in the world. It's like, what are you talking about? If I were the happiest guy in the world, I wouldn't be writing about it and I'm looking for it.

It's me search. The effort of trying to get my oxygen mask on is actually delivering it to others. This is the point, and this is what you're actually trying to bring to leaders. Isn't that right, Jen? Totally spot on. I get all geeked out on this stuff. Like, when it all kind of boils down to this, like, how do we actually bring that into a practical way of living life? One of the things that I thought was really interesting during the research of the book was,

I didn't know that Maslow actually added another, basically, pyramid level on top of self-actualization. And it's basically before he passed away, he realized that it's not actually self-actualization at the top. It's actually transcendence. Transcendence is when you're actually providing and helping others self-actualized too. A quick side note to our listeners here, Jen is talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is a kind of a famous model based on the work of the social psychologist Abraham Maslow from the 1940s. He believed that the basis needs that we have are for food and shelter and security. And if we get those, we move on to higher needs like love and companionship. But at the very top, if we can get through all those other things,

we get to these higher, higher, higher order needs like self-actualization. And then, as Jen just told us, at the very highest level, transcendence. So give us some worse practices. What are the toxic companies? What are the ones that have one foot on a banana peel and the other one in the grave? What do they look like with respect to their workplace happiness practices? I'm going to caveat this because behind every tainted brand, there are really good people in it. Because sometimes we kind of cast brands as like, oh, everyone in there must be, like, why would they choose to work there?

So what first comes to mind, and this is different now because there's a new CEO, but so Uber has to come to mind of what was probably a poster child of toxic culture. I'm not trying to throw Travis under the bus because I know him and I've seen him grow over the years. I would say that their culture was already not established or grounded in values to begin with or a purpose other than what they were seeking at that time. By the way, for those who weren't, you know, following Uber's founder and CEO Travis Kalanak, ran the company and ran into problems having to do with workplace culture. So what did you see? I mean, people talk about bro culture in Silicon Valley.

They talk about excessively long work hours, the inability to get any sort of work life balance. People talk about the fact that they were never really appreciated, never really noticed. Other people would steal, take credit for their work, not necessarily at Uber, but at many companies that are noted to have toxic cultures. You as a happiness expert in the corporate context, what are you going to look out for? There are leaders that I've met along the way and worked with, actually, that are just trying to check off a box. And they're saying, oh, this is important now. We need to actually prioritize people and actually make it known that we want to focus on culture. So let's invest in that and say we got it.

Done. And so number one is being able to hold up the mirror and truly reflect on what is it that you're doing. That is not just self-actualization in your own right, but helping other people. And depending how you answer that, then that will answer that question of, like, what are the indicators of a toxic culture? Number one, are people walking in talk? Are people being consistent in living up to what you believe your values to be? And it's not just values either. It's actually defining specific behaviors.

Another poster child of what went wrong, like Enron's, one of their top values was integrity. We all know where that went. So it's kind of like, well, how do you define integrity? It's like, oh, well, I'm just going to squander all this money for myself. This is where the systemic change makes me the geek about how you embed this stuff. So being able to look whether or not people are actually living accordingly to what you think your values are and how you define them and how you define your behaviors by them. That's, I think, the biggest indicator of whether or not you're going in the right direction. And one of our metrics is it's not just retention or attraction, but it's also how happier people.

And now more than ever, it's not just the rainbows and unicorns, like, you know, happy hours and raises. The extrinsic stuff, as you know, it's the intrinsic stuff. And being able to have those honest and open conversations that bring up tensions and bring up the state of where we are, like, mentally or emotionally. You know, all these factors that were taboo, not, you know, just even 10 years ago. But now it's just like, hey, we have to talk about this stuff. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup

that provides a clear picture of your health today. And may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan, live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. And so, you know, one of the things that we know, for example, is if you want to be the happiest possible person, and you need to be thinking not about money, power, pleasure, and fame. You need to be thinking about faith, family, friendship, and work in which you earn your success and you serve others.

So when I am talking to an executive, you're telling me, if I'm going to go in, I'm going to coach an executive. That executive is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I want a culture in which people can live up to their transcendental values, and they have friends here, and they have time off for their family, and they understand that their work is a place where they can be realized and serve others, but I'm really personally about money, power, pleasure, and fame. You're like, ding, ding, ding, ding, red lights on the dashboard, that inconsistency per se will be perceived immediately, and no matter what you say it simply will not work. Is that a true statement?

It could work for a lot of short-term gain. It won't work for the long-term gain. And it won't work when the future of work is basically, well, we're living it now. Like we didn't know until the pandemic, social unrest, and global recession came, oh, we're actually living it now. So what does that mean? Well, we have to adapt as companies, as people. And if companies don't adapt, they're not going to be around.

And then all of a sudden becomes, unfortunately, this sort of survival mentality and this sort of like scarcity mentality. And at the end of the day, if we are comfortable living that kind of life and having those kind of priorities where it was extranging of the money title status and grow, grow, grow, buy, buy, then that's up to us for us to live and die by. But I think there's been a huge reckoning of leaders that are not, are more vulnerable and not as fearful of going down deep into, you know, whatever happened, those traumas that happen in childhood or, you know, upbringing and et cetera, et cetera. That's when it gets real. And then that's when you truly see the impact. With the time that we have left, I want to talk about your new book. And it's got a pretty interesting title. beyond happiness.

Jen, is there something beyond happiness? You're killing me. Coming from you, Arthur, that's kind of big question. Like, really? You don't think so? But what we're doing, of course, is that we've got to define happiness now. And then we've got to say what's more important than happiness. So take us there. So my history background is like delivering happiness, launched that with Tony, running the company.

And it was going well. I mean, the whole concepts that were born out of the scientific levers of happiness and all that, it works. But in the last several years, it just started feeling like, there's something more here that I'm missing. And so I started like, you know, petri-dishing on myself and just kind of like doing my social scientist thing and with clients and just being real, like, wait, there's something else here. And I realize, like, so one of our models is like me, we community. And it starts with the me in the middle. Then it kind of ripples to the we and then to the community, which is our customers, partners, and vendors and ecosystem.

So what I realized is that unless we start with the me first, then the other stuff can't really actually fully get to the potential. Then 2020 happened. And all of a sudden these hypotheses and things that we were working with CEOs that were checking off the box and then realize, you know what, holy shit, this was about me. And then they realized, oh, this is what we're going to do. We're not going to do this for the company. We're going to do this for our community. We're going to do this for our country. Like, we need to be real with ourselves. So that was the light bulb of what's beyond it, because I think from a societal level, we have automatic connotations of what we think happiness to be.

But then unless we dig a little deeper and realizing that we learn as much of ourselves, From our highs and our lows, the buildup of all these events of 2020 and then the passing of Tony in November, then I just, you know, as I was processing his passing and as I was processing what I wanted to really try and capture, it had to be something beyond. And you can look at it in very different ways. And I guess I'm making it ambiguous and purposefully because there's a spiritual element here of, what truly is beyond. And then there's a practical, you know, here we are level in life of what can we create and understand and be real with, celebrating our highs and also really getting real with our lows. This book is, you know, going from delivering happiness to beyond happiness is kind of the move from self-actualization to transcendence in Jen Lim's life.

it sounds like to me. A person fully alive is a person who's really living everything, and that's the essence of transcendence. This is a book that digs in, isn't it? And digs into your own personal journey to be fully alive, isn't it? It is, yeah. And I think people might be surprised when they actually read it. They're like, wait, I thought this was about happiness. Beyond part is like there's something more to that. And by digging deep into that within ourselves freaking suck that it had to happen in that way with what happened with Tony in 2020 of all those things. But now I feel that this is squarely where I was trying to get to of, like, as you're describing it, living fully, living fully in a way that, you know what, we're all going to have

freaking crappy days. But we all are going to have those days and how are we going to be more human about it? And being able to say, you know, just be gentle with ourselves, say, what's going on? Like, it's okay. Just remote or just asking your coworker like, hey, you're all right? I think that you are saying something that's even deeper than it's okay if it's not all right. I think that you're saying it's actually part of the deal, and it's a good thing. Because you're not getting a full experience. You're getting the two-dimensional version. You're getting the cardboard cut out, the cartoon.

If we're really staying on the positive, we're not staying on the fully alive part. And it's hard, you know, holding bad feelings close to you. I can only imagine when you went through you were very close. to Tony. The lowest moments of my life before Tony passed was when my dad passed 18 years ago. And this was before delivering happiness was born. But that was a moment where I got laid off, 9-11, my dad got cancer, all those things. And that really put me to this place where what you're speaking of. It's that fullness and wholeness. And it's taken all these years. I would say just up until like four or five years ago,

realized I started reading more about grief and the beauty of grief. And being able to understand that, and the more I read about it, the more tapped into that side of acceptance and sitting in with it. But until you experience and feel it and actually understand

how that works within our life and our emotions and our psyche and our spirit, that's a whole other thing. You're talking about the sacredness of suffering, which of course is as ancient as any wisdom tradition and any serious religion that has ever existed.

Partial part of this book is to get us back to that place. There's so many things of ancient religions, our rituals, sense of rituals, that are lost. There was a place for a reason why we have funerals. There's a place and reason why there's, like, there's for some, you know, cultures, the morning period is for an extended period of time. It's not just a funeral service.

Right. And I think that, okay, let's update that now and actually be able to speak about this, especially with all the loss that we felt. I'm not talking for me. Like everyone in the world felt and make this not something that we want to shy away from or don't want to face when that day comes for us,

but actually embrace it in a way that that's how we live fuller lives. What a wonderful integration of delivering happiness and going beyond to the essence of being fully alive. What a gift you've given us. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Arthur. Thank you for all those great questions, too. As a happiness researcher, people are always my subject of choice.

We put out a call to action for our listeners to answer this question. When is the last time you remember being truly happy? Hello, this is Brother Joe Trout. I'm coming to you from Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside Chicago. Actually, just last night, I was pondering this question of the last, of feeling really happy. I had worked an incredibly long day. I'm a high school morality teacher. and then a cross-country coach and part of a religious community.

So I got up for prayer at 6.30 was off to school, worked at an 11-hour day, and then came back home for prayer and community time, and then spent another two hours doing research for my classes. The end of it, I was dead tired, and out of nowhere just had this overwhelming sense of how wonderful it was, how great it was, that I got to, do something meaningful all day. You know, a lot of people think of trying to teach morality to teenagers

as some horrible job that they just want to do whatever they want, but it's not true at all. They're deeply invested in the question of how to live a rich, meaningful life. It's exhausting at times, but it's fun. You know, teachers, we don't see the fruit of our work all the time. We often are left hoping, but I just, at a certain level, don't really care. I enjoy it and I see what they're doing now and I hope they'll turn out well. I don't know what more I could ask for.

Today's exercise is called turning your job into your mission. Now it sounds pretty bold, doesn't it? There's the old story about somebody who's walking down the street and he sees somebody who's putting one brick on top of another. And he asks him, so what are you doing? He said, well, obviously, I'm just laying bricks. There's a guy next to him doing the same thing. And so he says to him, what are you doing? He said, I'm building a wall.

There's a third guy doing the same thing. And he says, what are you doing? And he said, I'm building a cathedral. So what's your answer? Are you laying bricks? You're building a cathedral. If you want your job to be a mission, you need to do two things. And this is where the exercise comes in.

The two things that take a job and make it into a mission that make it truly meaningful now and going forward into the future are earning your success and serving others. Now I'm going to talk about how you do each one. Earning your success is the opposite of what the great social psychologist Martin Seligman calls learning your helplessness. In his research, he's found that learned helplessness occurs when people feel like they don't have any control

that no matter what they do doesn't really affect the outcome. It's actually really clear in the research that is correlated with depression and anxiety. The opposite of learned helplessness where you just feel helpless. You're not going to do anything. You're not going to put any special effort forward. You're certainly not going to like what you're doing.

The opposite is earned success, where you're creating value with your work. To do that, you need a feeling of accomplishment and a path forward. So ask yourself this in your work. What am I doing? What am I accomplishing? And what is my path forward?

Now, I realize that this can be hard to do depending on your job. For example, let's just say you're an insurance agent. It's easy to be thinking, well, I'm trying to sell people insurance and they don't necessarily want it. I feel like I'm trying to get people to eat their Russell sprouts

because it's a responsible thing to do. I guess that's helping them. but on a lot of days, you probably feel like you're an annoyance. Well, let's think a little bit deeper. I've done a lot of research on that very industry. Insurance is truly a happiness engine for people because it takes uncertainty and takes fear out of people's lives. Go forward every single day saying,

I'm going to remove fear from somebody's life today so that that person can feel free to earn their success and so that they can, without fear, serve other people. that's a beautiful thing to do. And you can do that. And you can find that kind of link in any job that you have that's honest and that in point of fact is serving your values.

If you think where what you're doing is leading you and how it's creating value and how the value you're going to create is going to build on the value you're currently creating, you'll be building a cathedral. That's earning your success. Write it down, make a plan, see what it looks like over the next 10 or 15 years.

The second is that your job can't be about you primarily, not even that often. You need to serve other people. Think to yourself, who am I serving? I know it can be circuitous. I know it can be hard. I know it can be hard to imagine who it might possibly be. And on some days it's really, really frustrating.

But in some way, shape, or form, something that you're doing should be able, in your mind, to get to somebody who needs you, somebody with less power than you, somebody who will benefit, maybe benefit greatly from your work. Think of that person. Dedicate your work to that person

and watch your satisfaction grow. That's all for this week's episode of How to Build a Happy Life. This episode was produced by me, Rebecca Rashid, and hosted by Arthur Brooks, editing by A.C. Valdez, fact check by Anna Alvarado, our engineer is Michael Rayfeel.