Transcript of Stephanie Harrison: Beat Burnout in Business and Unlock an All-New Type of Happiness | Mental Health | YAPClassic

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After years of studying what truly makes people fulfilled, she realized the version of happiness we've been sold is broken. Most of us chase the old happy model, perfection, status, and constant achievement. But that formula will lead to burnout and loneliness. Stephanie's new happy model flips the script, showing that real happiness comes from being authentic, aligning with your strengths and using them to serve others. So if you're ready to stop chasing I'll be happy when, and start living with purpose and joy right now. Stick around for this eye-opening chat with Stephanie Harrison.

We've talked a lot about happiness on the podcast. And when I talk When I talk to people about happiness, I feel like they know what happiness is really all about. If I say, What is your secret to profiting in life? I ask that at the end of every show. And really, that's me asking, What do you think the secret of happiness is? And everyone always says, Relationships, connection, service. And so we all know the answer to happiness, but our actions are still trying to make more money, work harder, get achievements. So I want to start off with this paradox. Why do we not do the things that we know are going to make us happy?

This is the heart of all of the work I do. So you just nailed it with this description. Honestly, it's because we live in a culture culture in a society that tells us to do certain things to become happy. And as you said so beautifully, even though it doesn't align with our own experience and our inner knowing, we end up being very much influenced by that, and it ends up driving our actions to deprioritize the things that do make us happy, and unfortunately, pursue things that don't end up contributing to lasting well-being in the long term.

So talk to us about the old model of happiness. What is the old model of happiness?

It's really what you describe this cultural understanding of happiness that teaches us that if you want to be happy, you need to perfect yourself. You need to achieve more and more and consume as much as you can, and you need to dominate other people and essentially cut yourself off from them and be completely independent. And these messages about happiness, they seep into our lives in so many different ways, whether it's through our workplaces or through the institutions that we see or what we see in the media. And so it becomes very hard to untangle them if we don't have that awareness about what Old Happy is.

In your book, it's called The New Happy, you have a lot of lies that you say society tells us. So what are some of the lies that you break down about the Old Happy in your book?

The first Old Happy lie is that you have to be perfect because you're not good enough. And so this pressure that we all feel, that voice in your head that tells you, I'm not worthy. There's something wrong with me. I'm broken, that we all have. It really comes from this old happy culture. And in order to address it, we think that we have to perfect ourselves and essentially be almost like a robotic version of ourselves. Somebody who's always doing everything perfectly and never makes a mistake and never struggles. The second lie is really deeply connected to that, which is that you have to achieve more and more in order to prove how worthy you are. And so that becomes a coping mechanism for so many people, particularly in our culture, where these things are rewarded and celebrated, and we end up doing things like burning ourselves out, working ourselves into sickness or ill-being, neglecting our relationships, and doing all these things in order to say, Oh, I'll be happy when I got there. And the third lie is that we're separate from other people, that the actions of another person don't influence us, that our culture and systems don't have an impact upon us, and that we can basically do everything alone.

I think all of us, as an entrepreneur myself, as somebody who has worked in a number of different environments, who has relationships with people who matter to me, I can pretty clearly acknowledge that I'm not able to do any of that by myself. Even if I do some of those things independently, I'm still drawing upon support and resources and lessons and wisdom from other people at all those times. And so that's the third lie.

I can't wait to unpack all of that. But first, I want to hear about your personal story, because like you were just saying, these old models of happiness, these lies that we've been told, they're actually the root of our unhappiness. So working harder and harder, always trying to wait to be happy, always waiting for the next thing that's going to bring us our happiness. All these things are the root of our unhappiness. And you were unhappy in your early 20s. You found yourself living in New York, having a great job, having a great apartment, but then you were still so unhappy. So talk to us about what was going on for you at that period of time.

Yeah, I fell hook, line, and sinker for old happy. So I often say that the reason why I can write and talk about it is because I know it so well. It affected me so much. And I believe that, oh, if I can just create this perfect dream life for myself, then I will finally be happy. But in order to do that, I had to disconnect myself from others. I had to try and be perfect all the time, and it was just exhausting. And I ended up being very lonely, very depressed, struggling with my physical health, struggling with my emotional well-being, with basically everything that you could think of because I was living in this way that was so deeply out of alignment with the true sources of well-being. And eventually, one day, I found myself having a break down, lying on my bedroom floor, crying and realizing that maybe it wasn't that I wasn't trying hard enough or I wasn't doing enough. It was that I was doing things in the wrong way. And that's ultimately what led me to want to go and study the psychology of happiness and try to figure out a better pathway.

So tell us about that journey. What did you do in that moment where you're like, All right, I'm in a corporate. I'm not happy. What did you go seek out? What learnings did you seek out?

What did you go It was a long journey. I often think that sometimes from the outside, these experiences that people have to follow their purpose or their calling, they look very simple from the outside. But my experience is that it was very two steps forward, one step back. So I was living in New York. I was on a work visa, so I wasn't able to leave my job. And I essentially thought, what are my options here to try and make one small step to move a little bit closer to a better life? And so I realized that I could move, and I ultimately ended up having my company move me out to California, where I thought I would be able to have a little bit of a different lifestyle and cultivate some of these new things that were coming into my life. And then eventually, I was recruited to go work at another company in the tech space where there was a great work-life balance and culture. It was a very supportive place to work. And while I was there, I also was able to go and pursue my graduate studies in positive psychology at the same time.

So working full-time while studying, and then while I was in grad school, that's when I wrote the beginnings of this philosophy as my graduate thesis, arguing many of these same things. And after I graduated, I had no idea what to do with it or how to use it or put it into practice or start a business. I ended up going to work for Ariana Huffington at Thrive Global, where I was responsible for building out and running the learning programs of her company. I was able to take a lot of these learnings and apply them in an organization. But eventually, I decided I wanted to my own thing, and so I left in 2020 to do that.

And so I know that as an adult, you had a second turning point when your partner was bedbound and got very sick, and then you turned to a caregiver suddenly, and you're so young. So usually this is something that happens to us a little bit older in life. A lot of our listeners, we might be caring for a parent, but certainly, usually it's a little unusual to care for your partner at this age. So talk to us about some of the feelings that you got and how that helped shape your perspective of happiness, or at least use the tools that you had learned.

After I graduated from school, I had all these new tools and insights about happiness. And when Alex, my partner, got sick, I realized that I had this opportunity to try and put them into practice, even in this very difficult time. I was 28 when he fell ill, and we spent many, many years trying to navigate his illness and the medical system and all the challenges that having a rare disease has. And so much of what I talk about in my work is this idea about true happiness coming from being who you are and using it to help other people. And through showing up for Alex and being able to practice how I could be there for him, I was actually, in fact, able to tap into a level of well-being that I never imagined, and that's certainly not generally associated with being a caregiver and all the stresses that are associated with that. And I realized that the more that I gave, whether it was to him or to the work I was doing with my company by that time, that the more joy I was able to experience, even though I was objectively also really suffering at the same time.

And that duality of that experience of going through something that was tremendously difficult and prolonged, while also realizing the fulfillment of love and purpose and community, it really gave me an appreciation on a whole other level for these concepts and hopefully gives people some level of trust in that I'm not trying to tell you to do something that I wouldn't do myself. It's something that I have witnessed profoundly changed my life in ways I never would have imagined.

Let's zoom out for a bit and get the broader picture here. Why is unhappiness such a problem in America?

How long do you have? I think that the latest statistics show that one in two Americans will experience difficulties with their mental health in their lifetime. 25% of people in the country are suffering right now. 40% of people say that they're incredibly lonely and have no one to confide in. We witness the manifestations of this every day through seeing the division in the country, through the lack of community support that people have, through all of these different manifestations. And I really think it comes down to the way that we conceptualize and understand happiness, because if we think fundamentally that our happiness can only be fulfilled by achieving and perfecting and dominating, then we're going to go out and do those things without realizing that they're hurting people and contributing to the problems in our world. And so in the US, many of these forces that lead to Old Happy are very, very strong, like individualism, for example. And that ends making it a perfect breeding ground for a lot of these beliefs and makes it even harder for us to unwind them here.

I hate to break it to all the entrepreneurs listening, but it's even worse for us entrepreneurs. I had a webinar that I did with Better help about three months ago, and I ended up doing a lot of research about entrepreneurs and mental health. I found that 49% of entrepreneurs say they have a mental health condition, three times more likely to have depression, three times more likely to have addiction, 12 times more likely to have ADHD, and all these other problems. The reason why we have so many mental health issues, like depression and anxiety, is because it's very uncertain to be an entrepreneur. There's a lot of pressure from stakeholders, from our employees, from our clients. There's a lot of issues also with tying our self-worth to the success of our companies, which I know I'm going to definitely pick your brain about that. So there's lots of things that make it especially hard for entrepreneurs. I think the root of it all is that entrepreneurs are capitalists, and capitalism is not very good for happiness. So talk to us about capitalism and how that's not that conducive for happiness.

It's so tricky, isn't it? I argue that capitalism is one of these driving forces of old happy, because no matter what we do, it's never enough, right? Because in a capitalist society, in a world with intense competition, where there are so many entrants into the marketplace, where there's always something more that you need to do, you really have to push yourself more and more and more. And it's almost like there's never a ceiling to what's enough. I've witnessed this in my own journey, feeling like, Oh, I just need to work a little bit harder or push a little bit more, and then I'll be able to experience the success that I want because that'll make me happy. And this pressure, this hamster wheel that capitalism puts us on without offering broader solutions that support people as they go through difficult times or setbacks or challenges really ends up doing a number on our mental health as those statistics so beautifully illustrate and devastatingly show. And I think that we really have to be mindful of reckoning with the fact that, yes, we want to build businesses or achieve certain goals or outcomes, but how are we doing in this in a way that's sustainable and good for all of us in order to experience well-being, which is ultimately, at the end of the day, what we want and why we're working to do that business because we think it'll help us to be happy in the future.

I can't wait to understand how we as entrepreneurs can do what we love and make money and produce what we're producing while also feeling fulfilled and happy. So you've got this new philosophy that you call the new happy. Can you break that down for us?

Yeah, it's really simple. After 10 years of research, I've basically been able to boil it down that true happiness comes from being who you are and then using it to help other people. And so this can be very translate it to running your own business, of course. You can think about all of the unique skills that you have, the ideas that you possess, the gifts of character and wisdom, and all of these beautiful things that are within you, and then find a way to express them through the work that you do. And the more that we can do that and craft environments where people are able to tap into those two experiences, the happier we can all become.

So be who you are and then help other people. Exactly. So how do we find out who we are?

Such a great question. I mean, it's the work of a lifetime, obviously, of course, right? Because we're always changing and we're always interacting with the world and it's affecting us in these different ways. But I think that usually what I like to advise is inviting people to think about who they are from a lens of strength rather than weakness. Again, which is what we learn in old happy capitalist individualistic culture. When you think about your self-awareness, it's all about the problems that you have and the things that you're lacking. But if instead you think about it from a lens of, what am I good at? What are the things that make me feel joy? What makes me feel alive or I'm able to express myself in a specific way? And you start making a list of all those unique gifts, then you can start to become a fuller understanding of who you are as a person and then figure out how you want to express that outward in different ways.

I know one of the things that you talk about in your book is how it's dangerous to identify yourself with your talents and your skills. To say, I'm an electrician. That's who I am. I'm a podcaster. Why is that so dangerous to do?

What happens if you lose your job or electricians are no longer needed or all of the technology goes away and you're no longer able to keep up with it for whatever reason? It's putting all of It's just self-worth eggs in one basket, so to speak. When I think about myself, even though I feel very proud of, for example, the work I've done, I try to remember that that work is just an expression of me rather than me itself. And that means that if a piece of work is not well received, it doesn't mean that I'm not well received. It just means that that specific outcome or that output that I did was not where I wanted it to be. And it's that mindset that helps us to bounce back. And of course, as entrepreneurs, life is just full of setbacks and bouncebacks, right? We have to navigate that all the time. And so anything to my mind that helps us to look at these setbacks that occur on a daily basis and say, Hey, this This isn't me, and let me figure out a healthier way to respond, is a really helpful tool and technique.

Yeah, and especially for entrepreneurs, because we're often equating our happiness with the success of our company or the value of our company. What are some ways that we can get out of those types of thought processes?

One tool that can be a little bit difficult to put into practice, of course, because sometimes as an entrepreneur, your business can become very all-consuming in many and that's why it's so important, is to expand your life a little bit. And so if you have a hobby you've been neglecting or a sport that you used to do or a specific thing that you do with your kids or whoever, your friends, anything that you can do to prioritize that in your life helps you to remember that you're more than just your business. You're more than just your performance or your achievements. And then I also like to recommend that no matter how good you do that day at work, no matter how poorly you perceive yourself doing, you can still celebrate yourself every single day for showing up. And that encouragement that we give ourselves, it doesn't make you soft or weak. It doesn't decrease your motivation. It doesn't backfire in helping you to achieve your goals. That kindness to yourself has actually been shown in multiple studies to make you even more determined and even more persistent as you work towards your goals. And so simply every day, just saying, I did what I did today, that was enough.

I'm proud of myself for this, and really taking 30 seconds to savor your accomplishments, that'll really help you to show up again tomorrow with that same determination that you hope to bring to this project or to this task or to your business.

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I've been an entrepreneur for five, six years now. I have an incredible company on track to make $10 million this year. Everything's going great. But I remember when I was first starting, every setback just felt so heavy. If a client left, I felt so bad. Everything was just such a big deal. And I want to tell everybody out there who's just starting their business that it gets better. Now, if somebody leaves or if somebody's unhappy, I'm like, All right, well, I have 50 clients who are happy, so you can't make everyone happy or this person is dealing with their own issues. Everything just gets a little bit easier to handle. As you get more achievements in your business. Things become less of a deal. And I just wanted to put that thought out there for everyone is that as you get more wins, when you do get the setbacks, they don't feel as heavy because you're just like, that's life, ups and downs, and you can't control everything.

So wise. I think that's It's such beautiful advice. I wish that you had been around to tell me that when I was just getting started, honestly, because it's so true, right? It's building up a bench of strength, right? You know that, Hey, I've been through this before and I've navigated it, or I have all these other things I can lean on and resources I can draw upon, and that makes you more resilient. And that resilience is what then carries you through. And one of the things that I've experienced in my work has been the fear of making mistakes, being so difficult to reconcile with the need to take risks and to try new things as an entrepreneur. And the more that I tried to simply show up for that fear of making mistakes and being kind to myself and realizing that no matter how bad it is, I'll figure it out because I've figured everything else out before in the past. That then made it so much easier than to take these bold steps or do things that really scared me. And so it's sometimes like you described, it's a little bit paradoxical. You really want to focus on those strengths in order to help you burnish your weaknesses in those ways.

Totally agree with that. Let's talk about intrinsic versus extrinsic goals. Can you tell us about the difference between the two and how they impact happiness?

We all have goals for our life, right? And goals are a wonderful thing. Psychologists argue that we are very future motivated. So we are driven by a vision of ourselves and our lives in the future. And if you think about the times in your life where you were the most motivated, you probably had a really clear mental picture of what you wanted or what you were working for. And it doesn't actually matter as much for your motivation, how successful you are at working towards it. It's just that you're making some progress. That's a really great little hack for motivation. So all of these goals can be divided into two categories. Extrinsic goals are goals that are imposed upon you by old happy culture. So they say, if you want to be happy, you need to make X amount of money, you need to get this promotion, you need to become famous, you need to do A, B, and C, and then you will be happy. And so the easy way to pick up on those is if you're saying to yourself, I'll be happy when, that's usually a sign that it's an extrinsic goal. Intrinsic goals, on the other hand, they come from within you.

They're probably a little quieter. They're much more authentic, they're aligned with your true nature, and they tend to be things like, I want to make a difference in the world. I want to help people. I want to support my community. I want to be there for my family. I want to invest in my relationships. I want to grow as a person. And these intrinsic goals are significantly more likely to make you a happy person and to make a difference in the lives of those around you.

So the extrinsic goals to me are like dopamine hits, right? Like, Oh, my gosh, I went viral, or, I made a sale. I got a new client. How do we balance these short term dopamine hits that we crave so much with the long term importance of having in intrinsic goals?

It's fine to enjoy those moments when they happen, right? It's great to celebrate when something goes well and when you're able to make an experience or an impact or a sale or whatever it is. The problem lies with staking our happiness on them. And then the things that we do in order to do that tend to backfire and make us miserable. And so if you're finding yourself, again, the hamster wheel is a good analogy here, because if you're always chasing something and you're waiting for the next thing to hit in order to feel good about yourself, that's a sign that you might want to refocus more on an intrinsic goal. And it's going to be a little bit of a slower burn of happiness, but it's also going to last for much longer. So if these short term extrinsic goals are like little hits of really highs and then really, really low lows, intrinsic goals are more like the slope a mountain where it takes a little bit longer to gain the same elevation, but you keep going and the happiness keeps building, and you end up feeling that great sense of accomplishment. And so the more that you can in those moments where you're like, Oh, I've been hooked on an extrinsic goal, refocus on something that really does matter to you and that comes from within you.

Can you still have an intrinsic goal related to your business? If I was saying, Oh, I want to help a million entrepreneurs succeed in their business, is that an intrinsic goal or an extrinsic goal?

It can absolutely be an intrinsic goal. It just depends on where it comes from. So for example, For example, if I was asking you about it, I would say, Well, did somebody tell you that you have to help a million people in order to be successful? Or did you see somebody else who posted about that, and therefore you're using that as your benchmark? Is it something that's realistic in terms of the scope of your business and the reach that you have? Is it something where that number is really exciting for you because it represents the possibility of all the goodness that you could create? Those types of questions can help you to tease it out. But of course, any goal that you have that comes from within in that way, no matter what domain it's in, can be intrinsically motivated.

And what is the psychological and emotional risks of tying your goals to be extrinsic instead of intrinsic?

Essentially, things like depression, anxiety, lack of self-worth, difficulty with resilience. The most ironic thing, I think, the finding that most surprised me and really opened my eyes to this was learning that people who pursue extrinsic goals are much more likely to give up. They're much more likely to have a hard time pursuing them. And it makes sense when you really break it down because you don't have that real motivation driving you. You're doing it to get approval or to please somebody or to try and convey a certain level of image or whatever it is. So you don't have that real inner motivation. And I think that that inner motivation is the most powerful thing in the world. We've what people can do when they are really motivated. They do crazy, wild, amazing things, right? They build incredible businesses and they climb mountains and they swim across oceans, and they do all of these different things because they genuinely want to. And So I always want to tell people, don't chase an extrinsic motivation that doesn't belong to you. Find the one that exists within you because it is so much stronger than anything out there.

And by doing so, you will be able to get all of the things that you're looking for: happiness, well-being, mental health, a sense of accomplishment, the satisfaction of your needs and the people in your life. All of those things are fulfilled if we discover that intrinsic motivation within us.

I think a big part of that is actually asking ourselves the right questions and journaling and doing the work. So how do you suggest that we start to think about, Okay, am I being motivated right now by extrinsic goals? And that's why I feel depressed, anxious, stressed stressed out? How do we start to clear our head and start to think more in terms of intrinsic goals?

I generally recommend starting with just taking an audit of what you're doing. What are you spending your time on right now? Because as we talked about, we're all driven by goals, even if we don't have a conscious awareness of them. And so grabbing a piece of paper, journaling about, Hey, what am I spending my time on these days? And you might write down a bunch of things. You might say, Oh, I'm trying to please my boss by doing on this project. I really want to run a marathon this year. I'm really nervous about a fight I'm having with my sister. You just write down everything that's on your mind that you're trying to figure out or solve, and then just go through and mark down any of them that seem like they're extra forensic and see if you can drop them, let go of them, change them in some way, or find something to replace them. And the more that we do that, the more that we can really orient our lives around the things that matter most to us.

Love that advice. So speaking Speaking of exercises, you have this exercise in your book that you call One Authentic Action. Can you tell us about that and how we can get started with it?

When people say to you, Oh, just live an authentic life, or whatever, I always get annoyed because thinking, What does that mean? How do we translate that into action? It feels really vague and really broad. And so this is an exercise where I encourage people to just turn inward and ask themselves, What do I need right now? Or, What do I want to do? What does my true self want to do in this exact moment? And then do it, even if it sounds weird, even if it's something that you wouldn't normally do, or maybe it gets in the way of how productive you are today. And simply doing that allows you to start moving in the direction of living an authentic and meaningful life. Because in fact, what you will be doing is with that action, you'll be tapping into something that's intrinsically important to you. So it's a little bit of a hack. If you don't want to go through the whole goal setting audit, you can just start acting intrinsically and seeing where that takes you and following the path as it's laid in front of you.

So literally, just think of something that you want to do and just do it.

Basically, and I know it sounds so simple, but it's actually quite radical in some ways in a world where we're often on autopilot. We're often doing so many things in order to please other people or to convey a certain impression, simply saying, What do I want right now? What matters to me? What would I like to spend the next 10 minutes doing? That's all it really takes to get you back on your path.

Especially if you do something that the goal is not to make money. Because so much of everything that we do is just to make money. And maybe you just want to bake a cake or just do something like that. Exactly.

Yeah, totally. And it's okay to make a cake, right? Maybe you making the cake is the exact thing that you need to get yourself unstuck on a problem. Maybe making the cake is just something enjoyable for you that you can do for yourself or something you can share with your kid. Not everything in life has to be optimized for our productivity, and in fact, doing so ends up backfiring and really hurting us.

So the next topic that I really want to target with you is relationships. You said one of the lies that we have from the old happy is that we're not connected. We're individualized We're not connected to anyone. Why is that a lie, first of all?

None of us are formed alone, for example. From the very minute that we're born, we are cared for in order to survive. We're completely reliant upon our caregivers in order to keep us alive. Human beings have the longest period of developmental needs of any species. And so every interaction that our caregivers have with us shapes us into the person that we become. We know that these early years of life end up forming the neural pathways that we draw upon as adults. They shape our attachment style, which influences every relationship that we have in our lives. They teach us how to regulate our emotions or not regulate our emotions, and that impacts every moment of every day. And so at a very basic biological level. No one is a human being alone. We require each other in order to be able to develop and then to function. And then as we go out into the world, none of us are able to do anything by ourselves. The only reason you and I are able to have this conversation is because there are people out there who have created these tools and platforms and the internet and the systems that make it possible for you and I to get on the phone together.

The more that we start to recognize our dependence upon one another, the more we can see that actually this need of each other isn't a flaw the way it's been painted in our world, where dependence is almost like a bad word in a way. But dependence on each other is what enables independence. And then independence then furthers dependence. And it's this relationship that I think we really need to return to in order to recognize our deep need of each other and how we can be there for one another to support each other every day.

If If somebody out there is feeling lonely right now, how should they think to feel more connected to the world and to other people?

Paradoxically, the most effective strategy that people can use when they're lonely is to go out and help somebody else. Because what happens is when you're lonely in your brain, basically it shifts into something that's called self-preservation mode, where it doesn't want to connect with people. And so a lot of the loneliness epidemic that we're seeing right now is because We're all focused on ourselves, and we're all really nervous about getting rejected and worried about how people see us. And then that makes it really hard to connect. But when you're helping somebody, when you go out with the intention of saying, Let me go out and help Stephanie with this problem that I know she's having, it's Much safer, right? Most people don't reject help. It's an easy way to start establishing connection. And so by doing that, you're able to say, Look, I'm not alone. In fact, there are people out here who need me. And while many of us think of loneliness as not having people to rely upon, it's also about you not being able to be reliable for other people, you not being useful and needed in your relationships. I know that my periods of deepest loneliness came when I wasn't contributing and that my loneliness has been alleviated by showing up more for other people.

It's that usefulness and that support that we can offer people that paradoxically ends up helping us the most.

That's so eye-opening. That loneliness is not only people not being there for you, it's you not being there for other people. Sometimes, if you want to get out of that loneliness, you have to take the first step.

I know it's hard and scary and can be really uncomfortable, but if you can find a way to do it, even Anonymously, I often counsel people, Go out and see if you can volunteer at your local food bank or if you can do a trash pickup on the beach or wherever it is that you live, anything where the stakes feel very low. Even if that's too much, which I understand for some people, hold the door for somebody at a coffee shop or pay for the person behind you as you're going through the drive-through, right? There are all these little ways to give. And in giving, we realize, actually, we're not alone at all, that other people need us. And that in turn makes it easier for us to lean on them for the support that we want.

Something else that I learned in your book that I thought was really cool to think about was the fact that gratitude is so important and thinking about how other people have helped you before. So when you're feeling upset, But taking a mental note of, you know what? I've gotten so much help in my life, and I've had this mentor, and this person gave me a job when I didn't deserve it, and trying to think about all the good things that people have done for you. Can you talk to us about that?

It's my little spin on gratitude because at the heart, gratitude is about realizing that good things happen to you because of other people, as you so beautifully described. And this recognition of taking a moment and thinking about who helped me, we tend to take those actions for granted. I can witness it in myself. I have a much easier time because of my brain's negativity bias, thinking about the times that I didn't get help versus the times that I did get help. But the times I got help, way, way, way outnumber all of the times that I didn't get it. And that's because I'm not looking at it in the right way. I'm not thinking about, as you said, the mentor who showed up for me or the boss who helped me to learn a specific skill or my friend who in on me when I was having a hard day. Those are all moments of help. And if I open my eyes and really appreciate them and notice them, then all of a sudden, for me at least, I feel just so filled with love and gratitude and hope. And that makes me want to go out and do more for other people, too, and to help and to contribute to this virtuous cycle of giving and receiving that we're all in part of.

I think one of the best daily practices that I implemented in my life, I had Michael Jervis on the show, and he said he had this 90 second rule that he has before he even gets out of bed. He lays in bed before he even removes the covers and gets out of bed. He thinks of three things that he's grateful for. Then he visualizes the one thing he wants to get done today. Then he gets out of bed.

I love that.

That's beautiful. I do that almost every day. I think of it's usually people. What I'm grateful for is usually almost always people. And then I do that in my company, too. Every meeting, we start off with, how are you feeling today? And then what are you grateful for? What's your personal high or recognition? And so, yeah, I feel like it's so good to just constantly think about what you're grateful for.

It's so true. And I love that you've embedded that into your business. That's so powerful. And just building on that, it's really these little moments, right? If we can just fit a couple of those little moments of connectedness into our day where we realize how lucky we are, where we tune into ourselves, where we check in on ourselves, that's all we really need. It's just those little pulse check and so fitting it in before you get out of bed or in a meeting, those are such beautiful ways to immerse those little nudges into your life.

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A lot of people think happy, they talk about toxic positivity. When somebody's talking about happiness, they're trying to tell you you have to be happy all the time, you don't say that. You say that there's room for all different types of emotions. Can you talk to us how we should be dealing with pain and sadness? When things go bad, how should we be dealing with it while still trying to be as joyful and as happy as possible?

I think that the best strategy that we have, according to the research, is really just treating yourself with compassion no matter what you're feeling. And every emotion has a purpose. My fear protects me. My sadness inspires me to lean on other people. My loneliness makes me want to reach out. My anger is to protect me and others. And if we try and shove those emotions away and just be toxically positive, we're going to miss out on those things that are really important because they ultimately end up helping us in the long run with our happiness. And so When you're feeling a difficult emotion, just don't judge it. It's just a feeling, and you're a human being who's allowed to have feelings. It's okay if you feel stressed or angry or sad. And I often just do something very simple where I just put my hand on my heart and say, It's okay that I feel this way right now. And that little bit of soothing and connection to myself is all that I really need to meet it with compassion and then to be able to move forward and decide what I'd like to do.

And I think it's that combination of tuning into your emotions, honoring them for what they are, and then coming back to the wisest part of you and thinking, Well, what am I going to do with this? How am I going to act? How is this aligned with my values? How do I want to behave? And then using that emotion as an input to help me understand how to move forward.

We're living in an unprecedented time right now on the Internet, especially when it comes to all the global wars going on in the world. We are watching a live Holocaust in Gaza 24/7. There's just so much war and terrible things going on, and especially people my age, your age. We're just all privy to all the destruction and war going on. And it's hard to function like we used to. I feel like before 2024, it was just different. When war would happen, we wouldn't see it constantly. And now we're just seeing it constantly. And it's innocent children and families. And it's really hard. People are making the joke. It's not work-life balance anymore. It's like work-life genocide, trying to balance work and genocide, especially I'm Palestinian myself, and And it's been a tough year.

I can only imagine.

It's just crazy. I'm a very, very happy person. But every day I have to just battle seeing horrific things and being so sad about things and then continuing to be an entrepreneur and teach and live the life that I was living before all of this happened. So just wanted to pick your brain around how do we deal with the horrific things that we're seeing on the internet right now and how it's obviously going to be impacting all of our mental health and happiness.

Well, first of all, I just want to express my just profound sorrow, especially for what you're going through watching your people. How we can expect to experience well-being when we're witnessing what we're witnessing, to me, is a really good example of why the third old happy lie exists, because we're not separate, right? How am I? How are you? How is anyone supposed to witness and look at these images and what is being streamed to our phones, and to mostly to our phones, sometimes the televisions, and feel like we can possibly experience well-being? And we can't, right? We can't in the same way, because what we're witnessing is profound suffering on a scale that's, frankly, almost incomprehensible. And I think that to me, that's what real well-being is about, is about saying, there are people out there who are suffering, and I am going to choose to bear witness to their pain, to try and show up and help in the ways that I can, and to acknowledge that, yes, my happiness is dependent upon their liberation and their freedom and their self-determination and their ability to be well and healthy and happy. I don't think there's any contradiction there, to be honest.

And I think that the more that we deny that, the more that we say, Oh, I'm just going to close my mind and my eyes to all of the tragedies that are happening and try and be happy alone in my little individualistic bubble. I think that that's a delusion, to be frank. So I'm not really answering your question, but I just wanted to say that because I think it's a really important distinction here.

I love that answer to your question because it's so true. I feel like the world is split to two people right now, folks that are ignoring everything and then just in their little bubble, and then folks who are witnessing everything and trying to help. I think there's no real answer to this. It's just we've got to figure out how to have some joy in our lives regardless. It took me a while to figure that out. For a while, I was just so upset. And then I was like, you know what? I need to help as much as I can. That means I need to infusionize use joy in my life so that I can help.

I agree completely. I think that's really wise. And I also think, again, you or the people most affected by this, the people who have been directly harmed by conflicts like these. Not sure if you've ever seen the model of circles of concern, where if something bad happens to somebody, then there are these circles around them of the people closest to them, and it basically branches out until eventually you get to their acquaintances. So I often think about that in the context of suffering. And so there are people in Gaza who are at the center of the circle right now. They're the ones who are the most deeply suffering. And then there are the people who are related to them and connected to them in a part of their community and a part of their country. And And then there are these expanding circles outwards of care. And what often happens in times of suffering is that the people in the closest circle have to bear the greatest burden because the people in the outer circles don't take it up. And so for me, when I hear you say that, I think, well, of course, joy is really important for you because you're in an inner circle, and the people who are not involved need to take up the cause and to do their part and to help in some way to alleviate the burden so you can go renew yourself, experience joy, experience love, experience connection, get what you need, and then come back and be able to help.

And that's the problem in so many ways with our world is that there are some people who care and they're bearing a disproportionate burden while others don't realize that caring is in their self-interest and that by caring, they'd be able to get what they want, their own happiness and well-being, while also helping other people who are in those circles of care. I don't know if that resonates, but just something that sparked.

It really does. I loved that circle of care analogy. That's so good. Okay, so moving on to something less sad. Let's talk about entrepreneurship. Let's just circle back to entrepreneurship again. How do we balance our want to make money and build companies with also this conflicting notion of intrinsic goals that are going to make us happy?

I think that it's really important to have an understanding of what good looks like for you. And again, it sounds really simple, but how many of us have taken the time to actually think about that? In a world that tells you that you always need more and more and more and more, no matter what you do, it's never enough. Finding out your own version of enough can help to protect you and safeguard your well-being as well as make sure you don't get caught up in those things. So if you're an entrepreneur, what's your What is your goal for your company this year? What is your objective? What would enough look like? What would great look like? And how do you figure out how to balance those objectives alongside of the other things that mattered to you? The second thing I would say is really letting go of the concept that your worth is determined by how successful you are at reaching that goal. We all have to rediscover that our self-worth is intrinsic. It is not something that can be determined based upon your performance or how much money you raise or how many sales you made or anything like that.

Our worth is always, always, always present because it's deeply connected to our humanity. And so the more that we can divorce those two things and say, great, I hit my goal. And I'm worthy, or great, I didn't hit my goal and I'm still worthy no matter what I do. And I think that if we can remove that sense of self-worth that's tied to these ideas of performance, then that urgency to always push for more and more becomes a little bit quieter and a little bit easier to disconnect from.

Why is self-worth in general so important for our well-being? What does self-worth do for us? And what does self-worth even mean? I know this is such a basic question. I just wanted to distill it a little bit.

It's a great question. Basically, it's your sense of yourself and whether or not you have value as a person. There was a really interesting trend in the '80s and '90s when I was growing up, which was the self-esteem movement. Basically, it was prop up your kids, build them up by telling them how amazing they are and giving them trophies and trying to elevate them through their achievements. And that's really backfired, as we can see through people my age who are struggling with their well-being. And instead, I think that it's much healthier to seek out self-acceptance. So you are acceptable no matter what. And that means that if I do a terrible job on this podcast and embarrass myself, that I would do my best to hang up and say, Stephanie, you're still acceptable. I might have wished I'd done better. I might have wished I sounded more articulate or whatever it was, but it doesn't affect my inherent sense of well-being. And I think the more that we can do that in our most painful moments and recognize that, as well as also the more that we practice it with others, the easier it becomes for us.

When I look at you and I hear how brilliant and wonderful you are, and I just think, wow, she's amazing and has so much to offer and is so excellent at what she does and who she is, and I offer that acceptance to you, then I can learn to turn that on myself as well. And that empowers me. And then it comes again, another beautiful virtuous cycle. So it's just accepting ourselves and saying, Yeah, I'm a human. Sometimes I mess up. Sometimes I don't do what I want to do. Sometimes I embarrass myself. And all of that is okay.

Now, I've been A type personality. When I hear that, I'm like, Well, wouldn't that result in mediocrity?

Yes, I understand.

You never get better or you're just like, Oh, I suck. Okay, I suck. I still accept myself. But then how do you get better, right? Or how do you accept that there's a need for improvement? Or if you want those goals, I guess, what's the balance there?

Well, actually, paradoxically, the self-acceptance helps you to grow. So we think that if we can just change or improve ourselves, then we'll become acceptable. But in reality, when we accept ourselves, we are able to grow and change and improve ourselves. So every transformation I've ever experienced in my life or any success or fulfillment that I've had has come from not pushing myself harder and harder, but from accepting who I am and then just trying to do my best the next day. And the more that we can honor that truth by practicing it in our lives and unwinding that, because I'm the same. I'm super type A. I never understood this. And then I always got so mad at myself because I was like, why am I struggling so much? I have all the systems, I have the plans, I have the goals. And yet no matter what I do, I'm never able to get to where I want to go. And it turned out it was because I was hating myself and telling myself how horrible I was all the time. And that made it so much harder to do the things that I wanted to do.

This is all such great advice. Now, some folks that are entrepreneurs on the call, I think, are going to get some ideas of how they can transform their business to have more intrinsic goals to serve people. What about the people who are in a job right now? How can they actually shift their mindset a bit to have more intrinsic goals when somebody else is paying them for certain goals?

Yeah. I think that in these cases, there are some strategies that we can use that are really, really helpful and that have been proven out in studies. They're called job crafting. It's essentially trying to make your job a fit for you rather than fitting to your job. I think that the best way to do this is to just be a little bit sneaky with it. You don't have to tell anybody you're doing it, but simply think like, what projects am I most excited about at work? Or what colleagues do I like to work with the most? Or are there any tasks or things I'd like to learn or grow in. Then just try to adjust your job a little bit. Raise your hand for certain projects, prioritize certain things, be proactive, and go to your manager and say, Hey, I'd really like to learn this new AI tool that we're exploring. Can I take the lead on this? Anything that you do in order to shape the job to fit you is going to help you to tap into your intrinsic motivation.

I love that. When I was working in corporate, I used to always volunteer for the employee resource groups. Yes. Doing charity events and whatever. And that was really satisfying when I was working for the man.

That's such a great example.

I know.

For me, when I was working in corporate, I really wanted to work full-time in corporate well-being because I thought that was what I wanted to do. And they said, No, no, we can't make that a job for you. And so I just decided, I'm going to run a well-being class for anybody who's interested. And I just went rogue and ran these hour-long classes every week for anybody who wanted to show up. And it was great. It gave me so much meaning. It helped me to grow and learn new skills. And I didn't have to ask permission for it. I could just do it. And then if anyone got upset at me, I said, Are you really mad that I'm helping your employees to feel better at work?

Okay, my last question to you on happiness is, what is the most important factor that you would say for long term sustainable happiness?

It's your relationships, really. It's building meaningful, beautiful, helpful mutual relationships with people who you care about, with people in your neighborhood, in your communities, the people who you work with. You said it so beautifully yourself at the very beginning of our chat. At the end of the day, we all know that people around us are so important. They make such a difference in our lives. They bring us meaning. And the more that we can really invest in those relationships and cultivate them, the happier we're going to become.

I feel like it's a reminder that I get every other week on the podcast, and I'm glad that I get it because it's something that we always forget. Relationships are everything. Okay, so I'm going to ask you two questions that I ask all my guests. They don't have to do with today's topic. You can just answer from your heart. What is one actionable thing our young in profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

I would recommend that you You give yourself just 10 minutes to spend with yourself and ask yourself what you need right now. And just whatever comes up, don't judge it, just accept it and learn from it. Because when you get what you need, you're going to be able to show up for your work, for your business, your employees, your customers in a way that is so transformative and incredible. So don't forget to tune in and tap into your own needs in those moments.

And what would you say What is your secret to profiting in life?

Giving.

Yes. And we learned today that giving is the best way to build relationships.

Yes, exactly. That's the secret. You nailed it.

I feel like it's a really good lesson. Where can our listeners learn more about you and everything that you do?

Thenewhappy. Com.

Amazing. Stephanie, thank you so much, everyone. I highly recommend you go grab her book, The New Happy. If you want to live a happier life, Stephanie, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for having me. It was such a joy to talk to you.