The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

Author’s Note

I have spent more than a decade developing leaders.

I have had incredible experiences speaking about leadership to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, eating dinner with royal families in the Middle East, sharing stages with Harvard deans, and consulting on leadership to organizations like Audi, Viacom, and GE. I have worked as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart, interviewed billionaires, and worked directly for two CEOs at the world’s largest company.

But after years successfully helping people lead teams, lead businesses, and lead organizations, something slowly dawned on me.

Hardly anyone was happy.

Every conference lunch was filled with conversations about struggling to find balance, feeling too busy, and keeping up with others. So many leaders said they didn’t have space in their lives, were stressed about time and money, and felt burdened with endless decisions and conflicting advice. Even the greatest leaders in the world—even billionaires, even Fortune 500 CEOs—were all plagued with dramatic crises on a daily basis. Fiery cauldrons of stress were bubbling in their heads and stomachs.

I also realized I wasn’t happy myself.

I was searching for simple models to decide what to do, searching for structure to relieve stress, and searching for guidelines to steer me through tough decisions constantly bogging me down. I thought about all the times I felt guilty not getting work done, burned out after a crazy week, or struggling in messy mental states for days navigating tough choices.

Looking back, I can’t believe how much time I wasted.

Being happier is the biggest challenge you face every single day at work. Same if you’re a stay-at-home mom, studying through school, or traveling abroad. Teaching and training your brain to stay positively focused while navigating the bumps of life is something we’re not taught at school. I mean, have you ever taken a course called “How to Be Happier”?

For the past few years, I have led workshops every summer with high school students who are brought together for the entire month of July for a world-class enrichment camp. These students have the highest grades in their schools, participate in the most clubs and teams, and are all destined for Ivy Leagues. They love the program because they get to meet and spend time with people like them. I do the workshops because I was lucky enough to attend when I was in high school.

What started organically, with no notes and no slides, has slowly evolved into a talk I give called “9 Secrets to a Happier Life.” And at the end of my talk I open up to questions. I am always surprised by what is asked. The students don’t have questions about getting better grades, getting into the best schools, or landing the highest-paid jobs. They know they can do all that. Everything they ask comes from a desire to be happier.

“How much money do I need to retire?” “What’s the best way to handle criticism?” “How do I get more done with less stress?” “How do I find my true passion?” “How can I cure my anxiety?” “What’s the best way to achieve more inside and outside work?” “What do I do when everyone gives me different advice?” “How can I become a more positive person?”

The sessions are illuminating because they show how some of the smartest kids around don’t care about developing brainpower or technical smarts. They want contentment . . . freedom . . . and happiness. They want to want nothing . . . do anything . . . and have everything.

They just want to live happier lives.

So don’t you think every college, university, and library would be full of courses and advice on how we can become happier? On how we can make decisions that spur ourselves into positive action every day?

When I asked a hospitality CEO if he knew a book, model, or website that actually helped people navigate and simplify their most challenging decisions so they can live with contentment, freedom, and happiness, he said, “That book doesn’t exist. It would be like asking every high-powered executive, successful person, and positive leader to distill all the personal mental models they’ve created over their lives into one book. Nobody has ever done it.”

I know this is true because I’ve been searching for a practical book with real frameworks on leading myself to happiness for years. I wanted something beyond stories about generals, parables about penguins, and research studies with data pointing any which way. I wanted real, I wanted practical, I wanted clear. I wanted an action book that I could use every day.

This is that book.