Most people in the US are entering their third month of quarantine right now. Since I’m about two months ahead of everyone else on the timetable, I started thinking: what did I learn in the painful third and fourth month that might help you to avoid that pain in your own life? Maybe it’s a blessing that I went through this earlier, so I can be a sort of time-traveler sharing what’s coming if you follow my blunders?!
Read MoreThis pandemic has exposed a hard truth to us and delivered it in an incredibly harsh way. It has made it unequivocally clear that we are, in fact, not in control. Our collective worst nightmare. We are not in control of the world, we never really were, and all of the ways we tried to pretend we were have been exposed as flimsy delusions that can be ripped away within a moment, without a thought or care for our opinion on the matter.
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While playing in tournaments, professional golfers bring along another very important person as a part of their team, who in the game of golf is called a caddy. The caddy accompanies the pro along the course throughout the game, playing a number of roles. Utility-wise, they carry the golf bags and help hand over, clean, and store the clubs after usage; but more importantly, and most significantly, they are also there to offer advice, support, and their perspective on how to navigate each step of the long golf game. For the pros, their caddy is like their secret weapon to help them win when the stakes are high.
My dad, one of our few golf-loving-New-Happiers, posed this question to me the other day: are there other types of caddies, ones that aren’t for the golf course, but for the hard-for-us moments in our life?
Have you ever noticed that when you’re in a good groove in life, things start to magically become easier, and life transforms into something better? Things seem to flow more smoothly. You are more active. You’re more connected to people. You eat healthier. You’re kinder to others. Life is just good!
And then, when the opposite happens, when you’re in a rut, and it feels like you’re sliding down a slippery mountain of frustration? Maybe you eat a bit too much cake, and then feel bad about yourself, so you skip your regular workout, and then you sleep in, and then you don’t fall asleep as normal the next night, and then you eat unhealthy because you’re tired, and all of a sudden, you’re looking around, wondering how you got into this massive rut?
The wild thing about these upward spirals or downward spirals is that they 1) are real, and 2) really do change your life, because they impact your choices and behavior, your relationships, your sense of self, and how you engage in the world. 40% of all premature deaths could have been prevented through behavioral changes, which very often start with a downward spiral that isn’t halted in time.
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My partner is an inventor. He creates magical things that have never existed before. Through years of grit and courage, and the persistent application of his talents to a specific question or problem, he turns what was once a scribbled wisp of an idea into something real, something that people can hold and touch and play with and make their own.
He received a few new patents this week (so incredibly proud of him!) and I started to think about how aligned the idea of being an inventor is to what we are trying to do here with The New Happy community.
Our mission here is to create happiness for all beings everywhere. To make that mission a reality, we all need to become inventors, too, but of a different type: we need to become happiness inventors.
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One absolutely mind-bending thing is that, so often, the way that we think about happiness is actually what's keeping us from being happy.
Most of us live our lives according to incorrect, outdated or even harmful ideas about happiness. Some of them come with a body (like that your brain is designed to keep you focused on what’s going wrong.) Some of them come from our culture (like that following your passion is the key to happiness at work.) And some of them come from well-meaning friends and family or school, who think that they are teaching us something helpful about happiness, but often end up leading us in the wrong direction.
To live a life aligned with our goals - where we are both happy and positively contributing to others - it’s essential that we learn, first, how to be aware of those myths, and second, how to replace them with the truth.
There’s one really big lie that I so often see getting in the way of people’s pursuit of a good life.
I call it The Getting Lie: the story we tell ourselves about how our happiness is dependent upon what we get.
Today, I want you to reclaim your freedom from this lie by learning the truth that, in fact, pinning your hopes for happiness upon what you get is not a good strategy, and instead, that happiness reliably ensues from the intentional choices we make about how to be, how we see, and how we connect.
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Today, I want to share something from my diary: a list of the things I’ve learned in my life thus far, that I reread whenever I’m going through a hard moment, or just need to be re-centered.
Many of the items on this list come directly from one of you in this community, who have taught me something incredibly important - I hope you know how much that means to me, and my gratitude for you and your wisdom.
What have you learned so far?
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“I had an argument this week with my boyfriend about scheduling and making plans. I’ve been reflecting on it, and I realized that when I’m not looking about life through a compassionate filter, I’m incredibly quick to make everything about me, and that leads to me feeling hurt, annoyed, or defensive. But when I am able to look at things compassionately, I have this amazingly wise inner dialogue that says, “Okay, sometimes Boyfriend gets anxious about scheduling, and he is also natural people-pleaser – how can you approach this situation in a way that is fair to both of you?”
Unfortunately, though, in most conflicts, I find myself being reactive or defensive. I’d like to be more compassionate instead, especially in these charged moments. What can I do?”
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One of the inescapable facts of life is that voluntarily doing hard things leads to highly valuable outcomes.
In a prior newsletter about how to make habits for happiness, I wrote:
“All the things that are good in life - great relationships, thriving health, exceptional performance, happiness - are founded on what my professor Angela Duckworth called “the accretion of mundane acts.”
Eating your vegetables. Practicing kindness. Building the tiny components of a skill. Cultivating your mind to be resilient and optimistic.
Day in, day out. The accretion of mundane acts.”
These mundane acts are also the hard acts.
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“Be yourself.”
“Get in touch with your true self.”
“Follow your heart.”
How many times have you heard this advice? It’s so central to the way that we talk about happiness in the West that you probably take it for granted. Of course it’s right and good to find your truest, most authentic self. How could it be anything but?!
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Are you on stuck on a self-help treadmill, constantly reading advice about how to be happier and more productive?
There’s a simple test to know if you’re on the treadmill. If you’ve read a bunch of articles like this this week…
“The Top 10 Most Important Things To Do Every Morning”
“The Habits of the Most Productive People”
“Do This One Thing And You’ll Be Happy”
… my dear friend, you’re on it. I’ve been there. Today, let’s talk about how to jump off of it and how to plant your feet on the ground to live.
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This epic quote comes from Bill Parcells, a legendary NFL coach who was known for taking struggling teams and turning them into champions.
I love it so much. It captures so many of my core values - and important lessons of well-being, both for ourselves and for society - in seven words.
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Sometimes, when life is really hard, happiness feels impossible. But something that is always possible, no matter what is happening, is the experience of joy. Today, I want to explain why aiming at joy, especially in hard times, is a solace, a game-changer, a life-saver, and a balm for suffering.
If you are going through something hard in your life, this newsletter is especially for you ❣️
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Hello friends! Today’s newsletter is way behind schedule - I’m curled up in bed with a cold that’s knocked me out, so I’ll be brief (and hopefully, lucid!)
But I’m savoring the fact that despite this momentary setback, today’s newsletter marks six months of The New Happy! Thank you to all of you for reading it, for your questions, your feedback, and your friendship. I’m feeling so grateful for this amazing community.
To be honest, I’d normally blow right past this date, without acknowledging it or mentioning it to anyone. I’d notice it quickly, in a business-like manner, as though I’m seeing an email come through with some boring-yet-maybe-useful information, and then just zoom right past it. Can anyone relate? 🙋
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Lately, I’ve been thinking about the people surrounding me, both at work and in my broader life - my teams.
This reflection comes from leaving behind a team at LinkedIn, both the team I built and the broader team that I spent five years with, as well as finding my space in new teams at Thrive Global. I’ve also been spending a lot of time thinking about how to effectively show up for people who are going through hard times and tackling major life challenges: teams really matter when life throws you curveballs, when a setback is too big to handle on your own. Only teams can tackle the biggest challenges and opportunities that we face.
We’re all part of teams: teams at work, in family, in friendships, in communities, in cultures, in countries; in big teams, and small ones; some that change our lives and make us better, and others that might actually end up bringing us down. Today, I want to talk about how to consciously think about your teams and why they matter.
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Our first advice column!
“Dear Stephanie,
I’ve read many editions of your newsletter, and something that has really resonated with me has been the idea of finding meaningful work. I’ve been trying to align myself with work that I find fulfilling compared to just solely being financially focused, but as a young professional, it can be really hard to do. I want to grow as a professional and to feel like I’m making a difference at the same time.
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A few weeks ago, I was driving my boyfriend home from Stanford, zooming down the left lane of the 101 with just a handful of cars driving alongside of us.
All of a sudden, a car that had been parked on the shoulder pulled out - without indicating, out of nowhere - directly in front of me, while going about a quarter the speed it should have been moving in order to merge on the highway. Within a split second, I slammed on the horn, hit the breaks, veered into the (luckily empty) lane next to me, and narrowly avoided a crash. A crash that would have been utterly devastating, that could have altered our lives.
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I recently made a big life decision: to leave my beloved company, role, and team at LinkedIn after five years and move on to an amazing new opportunity.
It was not a decision that I took lightly, and luckily, it wasn’t one that I had to make quickly. I had several months to reflect deeply on my choices prior to making the call.
Part of that period of reflection included taking the time to review the academic research on better decision-making, which I then turned into a checklist (because I’m extremely cool like that.)
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A few months ago, I heard about a new app called ALMA on Twitter. Their Twitter bio described them as “an optimistic community of philanthropists and changemakers” which obviously piqued my interest immediately. I discovered ALMA is a new technology platform for supporting important causes, and they’re offering a completely innovative way to donate to non-profits.
Our whole thing at The New Happy is the science-backed belief that giving is the path to changing the world and to living a personally happy life. Any new technology that helps us to do that is incredibly exciting, and something that I want to share with you all!
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“Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” - Confucius
We have this quote up on the wall in our Chicago office. I love our Chicago office, but I really hate this quote.
I understand why it’s there: it’s aspirational, it’s motivating, and it’s a great, easy soundbite. What it is not, however, is accurate or helpful.
I’m also quite certain that it is not a direct quotation from Confucius, considering that he lived in a time that wasn’t particularly known for its thriving, flexible job market.
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