Stephanie Harrison

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 U.S., many of these forces that lead to old happy are very, very strong, like individualism, for example.

And

that ends up making it sort of a perfect breeding ground for a lot of these beliefs and makes it even harder for us to unwind them here.

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 wellbeing, 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.

It's so tricky, isn't it?