Chapter 1: What defines true happiness according to Stephanie Harrison?
A lot of people are successful and exhausted, connected but lonely, comfortable and still not happy. So what exactly are we chasing? We've been told happiness comes from achievement, more success, more money, more optimization. But what if that formula is incomplete or even backwards? Today's SYSK trending topic is how to successfully pursue happiness.
My guest, Stephanie Harrison, author of the book New Happy, says many of us have been sold the wrong definition of happiness and that constantly focusing on ourselves may actually be the problem. She'll explain why shifting outward, not upward, could be the key to more lasting joy. Listen, and you may just find this conversation changes how you define a happy life.
And we'll get to it right after this. Ah, the Regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.
Chapter 2: How have societal beliefs about happiness led us astray?
The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. In the quest for happiness, it just may be possible that we misunderstand what it means to be happy.
No one is happy all the time. Happiness is not a momentary feeling. Happiness is so much more than that, and it appears we often get it wrong. As you are about to hear, the secret to your happiness may lie with other people. Meet Stephanie Harrison. She is creator of The New Happy Philosophy. Her work has been featured in publications like Fast Company, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review.
And The New Happy's art, newsletter, podcast, and programs... reach millions of people around the world. Stephanie is also author of the book, New Happy, Getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got It Wrong. Hi, Stephanie. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
There does seem to be lately a big focus on happiness in popular culture, in the media, books, podcasts. And yet you say that we get it wrong sometimes or even a lot of the time. So explain what that's all about. Yeah, that's exactly right. The premise of my work is that our society has conditioned us into believing all of the wrong things about happiness.
And in fact, those beliefs are not only failing to make us happy, but they're actually leading us towards greater misery and suffering in our lives. Well, that's not good. I mean, here we are trying to make ourselves happy. And if you are right, then we're making ourselves miserable in the process. So explain how that works.
We have been conditioned into these three core beliefs that one, we need to be perfect because there's something wrong with us and we have to prove that we're good enough. And we can do that through what we achieve by doing more and more and more and that we have to do everything by ourselves.
And these three beliefs come together into something that I call old happy, which is our societal definition of happiness. And all three of these beliefs actually end up contributing to outcomes like mental illness, loneliness, disconnection from our relationships and our communities, a lack of a sense of purpose, essentially everything that we don't want in our lives.
And so what is happiness then to you? Define it for me. To me, after doing all of this research and scouring through everything that I could ever get my hands on written about happiness, I've come to believe that it has two components. True happiness comes from being who you really are and then using yourself to help other people.
And it's the integration of both your unique gifts and strengths and then how you offer it up to others that ultimately contributes to a lasting sense of well-being. And not doing those things is what makes you unhappy.
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Chapter 3: What is the difference between happiness, pleasure, and joy?
Because pleasure is not happiness, but pleasure seems to be somehow tied to it. And same thing for joy. Happiness, pleasure, and joy are, I would call them related, but as you're saying, they do have important differences. And so pleasure is most often described as hedonistic in nature. It's the satisfaction of one of your needs or your wants.
And so you could find deep pleasure from, let's say, a glass of water on a really hot day. That could give you a feeling of pleasure, but that's not gonna make you lastingly happy. And then there's joy.
My favorite understanding of joy comes from the scientific research, and it argues that joy is the result of connection, of being connected to others, to oneself, or even to something transcendent, like your relationship with a God or with a spiritual presence. And that sense of connection provides us with a deeper experience of well-being. But again, it's more of...
So it has a rise and a fall and fades away.
So it will last for longer than pleasure, but not as long as happiness, which is much more of, in my belief, it's much more of this sense of contentment that lasts, that pervades your life, that allows you to live a happy life amidst those ups and downs that we're talking about, the experiences of both joy and pleasure, but also of grief or sadness or anger and all of the other emotions that we experience.
Don't you think, though, and isn't there research that you can talk about, that it really depends in part on your ability to handle those down moments. Some people can handle them and, you know, it's water off a duck's back. Or maybe it's not that easy, but still it's not so. Whereas other people just take it and absorb it and it's really hard to overcome it.
Whereas other people just, you know, life's ups and downs. Well, for some people, those downs really take a toll. Yeah, they do. And those people, I think, just were never taught the skills that they needed to process it.
And I think one of the most common ways that we actually make this worse for ourselves is when we experience a painful emotion like sadness or grief, we beat ourselves up for it. We tell ourselves that we're bad or there's something wrong with us for experiencing that emotion. And ultimately, all that does is makes it even harder to bounce back for it.
So what I often counsel is to practice self-compassion and treat yourself with kindness when you are experiencing those difficult moments. It's not weak. It's not letting yourself off the hook. It's not, you know, wallowing in your pain. It's actually what helps you to transcend it and to move on. But
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