Stephanie Harrison: The Truth Behind What Truly Makes Us Happy, Surprising Research on Happiness, “Old Happy” and How it Ruins Our Lives.
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
"We've been told that achieving our own success will make us happy. But happiness comes from helping other people to live happier lives."
Stephanie's childhood joy revolved around self-expression —corralling her siblings and neighbors to put on musicals, performing with a voice-altering karaoke machine, reading, and making things.
It's what shaped a lot of her early years.
For many years, she "lost" that self-expression and only started to re-discover it again in her late 20s.
What she learned is that acceptance of the creative process is a rejection of everything that she had been conditioned to believe:
"You have to be perfect."
"You can never make mistakes."
"You have to follow this set path."
"You have to know exactly where you're going."
These are lies.
Creativity has none of that. You must let go of those ideas to do things according to your creativity.
Today, Stephanie Harrison is an expert in the science of happiness and the creator of The New Happy philosophy and company. Founded in 2018, The New Happy has revolutionized how people understand and pursue happiness.
The New Happy reaches millions of people worldwide every month through resources and tools. On May 14, 2024, she will be coming out with a new resource – A book called "The New Happy: Getting Happiness Right In A World That's Got It Wrong." It's described as "the definitive guide to happiness."
Stephanie is a Harvard Business Review and CNBC contributor, and her expertise has been featured in publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, and Architectural Digest.
Stephanie has a master's in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She regularly speaks at Fortune 500 companies and advises on employee well-being and company culture.
This episode is for you if:
You’ve lost your sense of self-expression and wrestle with thoughts of not being ”good enough.”
You’re introspective but unsure how to translate those insights into action.
You want to learn a new definition of happiness that will actually make you happy.
Your conditions of self-worth come in the form of achievement.
Looking for a specific gem?
[4:00] As a child, Stephanie loved making art, creating things, putting on musicals for her family and neighbors, and reading.
[5:43] Grew up feeling self-conscious about whether her art was "good enough."
[6:40] Losing access to her creativity because of society's definition of happiness (Old Happy).
[7:29] Stephanie had encouragement and support to tap back into her creativity.
Embrace the messiness of the process as an antidote to the brittle perfectionism.
[8:46] Science shows that introspection is a flawed method of getting to know yourself fully.
[11:57] It's okay that this feels hard, is messy, that you don't know what you are doing, that you will figure out where this will go, that you don't have a final product, that you don't know exactly where this will take you.
[12:20] The false belief that you have to achieve your way to happiness.
[12:50] The New Happy started as a newsletter with 17 subscribers.
[13:57] It is an Iterative process that yields amazing results, but you must show up.
[17:37] Introspection should set you up for practice.
[17:54] She spent eight years feeling stuck until she started 'doing stuff' and practicing.
[18:44] Old Happy – what it is and how it ruins our lives.
[20:02] Conditions of self-worth come in the form of achievement that we must pursue.
[20:47] Physical illness, struggles with mental health, panic attacks, loneliness, and more are the costs of believing society's definition of happiness.
[21:09] Epidemic of depression, anxiety and loneliness.
[21:18] 1 in 3 Americans say they don't have somebody to confide in – a consequence of our individualistic culture.
[21:39] What is the cost of worrying about pursuing our own achievement-oriented goals and desires?
[24:10] Can I use who I am to contribute to the world?
[27:00] Why Stephanie started The New Happy.
[28:45] Stephanie hated social media, so she started sharing her message via newsletter.
[33:05] Creating the New Happy art was also healing for Stephanie.
[36:24] What is the biggest misconception people have about Stephanie?
[37:59] If I do my job well, no one is thinking about the person behind the brand.
[40:37] "When I forget that my job is to serve, I lose sight of what matters most."
[45:00] What Stephanie has learned from the New Happy community by asking, "What do you need help with" every week for four years.
Conversation Transcript
Naomi Haile: What is your origin story? Growing up in Canada, what did you love to do as a child? What were you curious about?
Stephanie Harrison: The first answer that comes to mind is reading. Finding books exploring new domains. I've been reading nonfiction about psychology, philosophy and religion since I was a teenager. And I really love nothing more than doing that. I also love to make art, I love to create things.
We used to love to put on shows like corralling my siblings and our neighbors and musicals for our family and friends that we forced them to watch. I had this karaoke machine that changed your voice, so it could make it higher or lower and put on funny voices, and we used to love playing with that. Any form of self-expression revolved around my childhood joy and has ended up shaping a lot of my life.
I lost a lot of that self-expression for a while, and only in my late 20s did I start to re-discover it. So, it wasn't necessarily consistent throughout my whole life.
Naomi Haile: I don't think any of that surprises me just given the way that you share your message with the world. It incorporates design, seemingly complex ideas into very simple messaging, and you do so in an artistic way. What happened between that time [losing your means of self-expression]?
Stephanie Harrison: I grew to be self-conscious and embarrassed, feeling the typical things: “Oh, I'm not good enough to be an artist,” “I'm not good enough to be a writer,” or “That's impractical. You can't do something like that; you have to choose a more professional career or professional interests.”
I think all children are creative and have these wonderful gifts that they tap into so easily. And then as we get older, we lose track of them because of how we're conditioned by our society, our culture, and our institutions. And I certainly wasn't immune to that either. Believing that I had to do something different to be happy, something more “successful”, something that would lead me to success… that was probably what steered me away from doing that. And then ultimately, sadly, losing access to that part of myself for a long time.
Naomi Haile: You've been exposed to many different cultures. You moved to New York when you were 17. Now you're on the West Coast. Throughout school, working in the consulting world, before you started the New Happy. What messages did you receive that slowly led you back to tapping into your creativity? Or did it all come from within?
Stephanie Harrison: It definitely didn't all come from within. I was just thinking about this for the last two weeks.
“The pressure we put on ourselves to have all this stuff come from within is misguided.”
It definitely didn't come from within. It came from having someone and people in my life who believed in me, encouraged me to tap into that, and almost embracing the messiness of the process as an antidote to the kind of brutal perfectionism that had ruled my life for so long.
And that acceptance of the creative process is, in many ways, a rejection of everything that I had been conditioned into– and that so many of us have been conditioned into of: “You have to be perfect”, “You can never make mistakes”,
“You have to follow this set path”, “You have to know exactly where you're going”.
“Creativity has none of that. If you want to do things according to your creativity, you have to let go of all of those ideas.”
For me, my partner, who is a very creative person, encouraged me to start embracing those different values and approaches. In the process, it was like freeing myself from some of those restrictions that have been placed upon me that I didn't know about while also helping me tap into more of those sources of joy and fulfillment.
Naomi Haile: Creativity is a very natural part of who we are. I actually do want to dig into your "misguided" comment. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Specifically, when you speak about introspection being a flawed approach to discovering who you are.
Stephanie Harrison: Well, the interesting thing is that the science shows that introspection is a really flawed method for getting to know yourself in many ways. Meaning, sitting down and trying to introspect doesn't give you access to your true self in many ways, and it can often actually provide you with misguided data and information.
I think it's interesting to consider other ways of getting to know yourself or unpacking what is within you that don't rely upon an introspective process. I'm not saying there's no value in that. I certainly have found processes, like identifying my core values and journaling, and tools like that can be really useful. Still, I think that it paints an incomplete picture. This puts so much pressure on people to figure it all out for themselves.
If there's one message that I would tell people that The New Happy represents is “You're not supposed to do any of this by yourself”. And all of our conditioning has taught us that we are. And it's making everything so much harder. So, again, going back to my own story, I believe that because I couldn't tap into my creativity anymore, I felt like it was gone or walled off from me and that there was nothing I could do. That was just the state of affairs for me, right? I thought I would never be able to return to that sense of joy and self-expression, but that wasn't true at all.
It was simply that I needed the right help to tap into it. I needed the right support and encouragement and information. And until I had that, it was really hard for me to overcome that barrier. We put all of this pressure on ourselves and say “I have to discover who I am and then figure it all out and come up with this perfect offering, or this perfect creative service or XYZ, and then I'll be able to be the creative person I know I am”. And that's just Old Happy perfectionism in another guise.
So the opportunity is to say “Well, I'm struggling to tap into this part of myself that I want to tap into, who can help me with that? Who can help support me in that journey?” Whether it's reading a book, watching a video, or learning from somebody in your life, who's a mentor or asking for support and encouragement from someone in your life. We put all of this emphasis on discovering it for ourselves, but what if we could get there so much faster and with a lot less pain if we allowed other people to help us along the way.
Naomi Haile: What did support look like for you? What did you realize were some of the really helpful ways that you were able to tap into your creativity?
Stephanie Harrison: For me, it was the tacit permission from somebody I loved to say, “It's okay that this feels hard. It's okay that this is messy. It's okay that you don't know what you're doing. It's okay that you will figure it out as you go. It's okay that you don't have a final product. It's okay that you don't know exactly where this will take you.”
All of those pressures and those feelings hold us back from expressing ourselves. So many of the barriers to creativity are psychological in nature. For me, I would anchor all of those in the belief that I had to be perfect and that I had to achieve my way to happiness.
We've known each other for a long time. The New Happy has evolved a lot over the years, and it's changed and grown. It started as a newsletter that I sent every week. The first email I sent went to about 17 people or something. It was pink and had a gradient color on it. The fonts were totally different. And there was a gray background, if I remember correctly.
It looked completely different from what I do today in terms of the actual product that I was producing. And I just kept writing, and sometimes I wrote something I was really proud of, and sometimes I was like, “Oh, that was a little crap. I could have done better on that.”
But I just kept trying. And then over time, with more practice and effort, it became easier over time. I became more able to express myself in ways that continue to feel more and more authentic and more effective simultaneously. Even the artwork. When we spoke four years ago, the artwork was different. It had different vibes, different colors, different approaches. It took me a while to land on the creative voice of what feels right for me. And if I didn't have somebody there saying, “Hey, you showed up this week, and great job, do it like next week”.
And each time you get a little closer.
“It's an iterative process that yields so many amazing results, but you have to be willing to show up for the process and embrace the fact that it's uncomfortable at the beginning and it's not going to feel perfect and easy the way that I wanted it to.”
Naomi Haile: You have an article on your website about purpose and in it you shared that “Most of the people who are purposeful and passionate did not get to be that way through a magical light bulb moment. But because they tried stuff, they got curious. And they started to investigate the topic, which led to more interest and more curiosity and more investigation.” And it's interesting, because I ask so many questions, which did not start through the podcast, but really just in daily life with my peers, my friends and my family. And there were moments where I found myself experiencing time with people and I would ask them questions, just out of curiosity. And these were questions that they had never been asked before and they were also questions that they never asked themselves. And through those kinds of conversations, you get to connect dots from your past. And I think it is a process of discovery for someone in uncovering, “Hey, what am I motivated by? What do I value? Who am I?” Some of those big questions.
And in my mind, whether you're doing that, yourself through a process of examining your thoughts and your emotions, on paper in your bedroom, or you have someone that could be a partner to you, as you explore. I do appreciate that process, because I think it does, if anything, that magical light bulb moment, I think for some, like I've seen it multiple times where they did have that moment of release, and be like, oh, like, this is something that I 100% should lean into and continue to explore. So it was something dormant that could be released, but from what I heard from you, it's not about over emphasizing that, but rather it’s about getting out in the world and trying things. Am I hearing that correctly?
Stephanie Harrison: Yeah, I mean, to your example, you were already doing that. I think the introspective example would be like us sitting around making a list of questions that you would like to ask somebody someday, and then never actually doing it.
For example, coming up with the best 20 questions that could ever exist versus what you're describing, which is, I'm going to go practice asking questions of people whenever I see them and engage with them.
It's far easier to discover your passions and your purpose, if you're out there doing stuff. Because you get instant feedback, and you get feedback in the form of your feelings. You discover, “Wow, that was interesting”, or “Oh, I feel a little tug of excitement around that” or, “That felt really fulfilling”. And then that motivates you to keep doing it.
“I feel like maybe the best way to think about it is that there's a short term period where introspection can be really helpful in terms of setting you up.
But it should set you up for practice and for expression, and being out there. And if you're stuck too long in the introspection stage, you can get stuck and actually never move forward, which is how I spent eight years feeling stuck, unable to move forward.
It wasn't until I started doing stuff that it started to change.”
Naomi Haile: I love that instant feedback piece. That's the value of putting your work out there.
What are some of the costs of Old Happy? You’ve shared that while you were in graduate school, you had a lot of questions about what you are learning. Can you bring us back to that time?
Stephanie Harrison: Yes, where to begin? So Old Happy is my name for what our society teaches us about happiness and the culture that springs up surrounding it.
From the time that we're born, we get all these messages about:
What we should do with our lives
How we should behave, and
What we should look like
And then, most of us conform. Most of us take those messages on board, I certainly did. And we follow this predetermined script of trying to follow through on that.
“I argue in my book that it’s because we're trying to be happy. We think that doing these things will ultimately lead to happiness.”
And because happiness is the most important goal for all of us, it becomes very powerful. For me, one of the ways that manifested was thinking: “Okay, once I get this fancy job, then I'll be happy.” Or “Hey, if you can just lose XYZ amount of weight, then you'll be happy.” Or “If you can just find somebody to love you, then you'll be happy”.
Whatever it was— any sort of condition, but it wasn't even that I thought it would make me happy, it's that I thought it would make me worthy of happiness.
I thought it would show that I was good enough, finally! And then, that would lead to the feeling of fulfillment that I was looking for.
Our society has given us all of these conditions of self-worth, that come in the form of specific achievements that we have to pursue. And if you want to achieve those things in the right way, you have to do it by yourself. You can't ask for help, you can't lean on other people, you have to be totally independent, you can never struggle, you can never experience difficult emotions.
All of that combined adds up to this contract that I called Old Happy.
Naomi Haile: That's heavy.
Stephanie Harrison: It’s heavy, right? Yeah, it is. It's a weight that we carry. Literally, in terms of happiness. And for me, the cost of that was physical illness, struggles with my mental health, panic attacks, loneliness, feeling lost, feeling like I had no purpose, feeling like not getting out of bed in the morning, feeling like what was the point of continuing to pursue things that used to make me feel good.
And then, more broadly, at a societal level, when we look at the research on these impacts, it's all of that magnified.
We have an epidemic of depression and anxiety and loneliness, we have these profound struggles that we're facing with our mental health.
1 in 3 Americans say they don't have somebody to confide in and that's a direct consequence of our culture of individualism.
We have hundreds of massive, devastating global problems that could all be fixed. And yet, we refuse to attend to them most of us in a meaningful way because we're worried about pursuing our own achievement-oriented goals and desires; rather than devoting ourselves to the common good.
We have a planet that we're destroying, because we think that the short-term happiness of getting on an airplane and traveling is going to make us feel better, versus thinking more holistically about sustainability, and what each of us can do. As well as holding companies and governments accountable for what they do.
We have so many different challenges that we're facing and I ultimately think that a lot of them, if not all of them, stem from Old Happy.
Part of the book is actually like providing the research and the examples of what that looks like. I think that it affects everything in our lives, it affects our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with others, our communities, our workplaces, you know, there's so many impacts, and starting to unwind and unpack those is the next big step for all of us if we want to actually move towards a happier world.
Naomi Haile: What have you learned from other cultures that have inspired you to know and live by a better way?
Stephanie Harrison: There's so much we can learn from these other cultures and the values that they have, and that they teach and espouse as well.
There's been a lot of research looking at happiness in individualistic countries like the United States or Canada, and then ones that look at happiness in more collectivist countries. And, those include a lot of Asian countries. And there's amazing research being done on African countries and the different approaches and their worldviews and the emphasis that they put on interconnectedness which is something that we absolutely, completely need to honor in order to ever find any sort of happiness.
From my perspective, individualism is really baked into the American ethos and DNA, it's something that's a core part of this culture. And, I'm not going to change, I'm not gonna be able to change that, that's not something I have the power to do, but I think that the opportunity lies in asking: I have all this individual freedom, I have these opportunities to be authentic and express myself, am I doing it just for me? Or am I doing it for others?
Can I use who I am to contribute to the world around me, because that sort of takes the best of both worlds in many ways. It takes the emphasis on an individual's strengths and gifts, but also integrates them within a broader fabric of a community and thinking about how one affects the other and vice versa.
And where we can find not only harmony between the two, but an elevation of the two, can the individual be used to make that community or the world a thriving, more equitable, more compassionate place?
And then if so, what are the impacts of that community upon that individual? And then how does it ripple out to individuals who haven't even been born yet? Or towards, you know, people who might not be physically able or supported and being able to express themselves in those ways? How can that contribute to elevating the quality of life and well being for all of us? And so I think it’s that blended approach that I'm striving to advocate for here.
Naomi Haile: At the very essence of your work, is that what you're trying to give people?
Stephanie Harrison: Yeah, I think so. I always say that the unofficial motto of the New Happy is we are here to help each other. That's the secret to happiness. We are supposed to help, using who we are. And we're supposed to receive help using who others are. That is what allows us to experience happiness and joy. And at the same time, that's what will help us to make a better world.
Naomi Haile: Beautiful. You create many different mediums for people to interact with your work. Beautiful mind-catching illustrations, you have a daily newsletter, articles on your website, interviews with different media outlets, and you've done what 15 podcast interviews in the last two weeks. And now, a book.
Could you bring us back to 2018? What was your thesis for creating the New Happy? Meaning, what was your understanding at that time of the problem? And how The New Happy would fill that gap?
Stephanie Harrison: When I was in grad school, I ended up writing this thesis arguing that we had gotten happiness all wrong, and proposing a new approach to it. That was really the first, the first attempt that I made to provide a prescription for what I thought ailed our society and us as people. And it's funny, I went back and read some of it when I was in the process of finishing my book. So much of it is still there, it’s still in the book that I've written. It's communicated differently – hopefully, in a more interesting way than an academic paper, but the bones of it were all there.
I started the New Happy because I wanted to take that academic work and find a way to communicate it in a popular or accessible manner. And by popular I mean, not in an academic setting – not publishing papers on it.
I had no idea how to do that. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what I was working towards. All I knew was, I have this idea and I think maybe it could help some people and I should start talking about it. So maybe I can help some people avoid what I went through. When I think about my work, it's almost like the soil is the thesis, that general argument has kind of evolved into what I call the New Happy philosophy.
And then all of the different ways of communicating that are like the flowers that grow in the soil like there. There are different ways because I know that people learn in different ways. They like to consume information in their own time and in their own manner. Some people prefer listening to stuff, some people like the artwork, some people want to read, some people are interested in quotes.
There are so many different ways that you can reach people and it really all stems from the core philosophy. Then, the medium that I choose is tailored to help people to learn and understand. I think of myself now, as some combination of a happiness communicator or teacher in some way and my classrooms are just different ways of doing that.
But I had no idea that that's where I would end up. I just thought, “Okay, how does somebody share an idea with people?” And the only way I could think of doing that was starting a newsletter, because I hated social media. I didn't have my own account. The idea of doing a social media page was abhorrent to me at the time. And so I thought, “Okay, well email writing seems more authentic”. I'll start with that. Ironically, looking at where we are today, I didn't have any plans, I just wanted to share the idea with people who were interested.
Naomi Haile: With such a strong message, they were going to find you in so many different ways. It's so funny that you described social media like that back in 2018. Because you're probably crying with the way that things have gone.
Okay, this goes back to how you construct these beautiful images. You told us a little bit about your love for the arts and visuals? Have you always been into visual storytelling and design? How did you refine that skill set and think about combining your messages into that form?
Stephanie Harrison: I wanted to come up with a unique way to communicate these ideas in a way that would actually help people. As I said, everyone learns in different ways. But for me, it's rare that I see a text-based piece of content, and I'm able to remember that in a real way. The way that my brain works, I would read that and say “Oh, that's great”. And then it sort of flies out my head, unless I consciously reflect on it and integrate it into myself in some way.
We're a new philosophy of happiness, so we'll have to do things in a new way. Let's come up with different approaches. I’ve always had this ability to think in pictures, it's always been something that I remember. For example, if you tell me a feeling, I have a color in my head that's represented by that or if you describe something that happened to you, I could like mentally configure that into a series of shapes and different visual images.
But it certainly wasn't something that I had any control over or had the ability to meaningfully express outwards. When I worked at LinkedIn, my colleagues always used to tease me because I was obsessed with making PowerPoints. I loved making these PowerPoints that had colorful boxes and used bright colors. I would always get into trouble because I wasn’t using the LinkedIn brand colors, but I was like, “Whatever, screw this. I want to make this” But they always used to tease me about it. And looking back, there was a little clue that I missed. There was a little thing I didn't quite notice. I loved doing that and I loved the visual form of communication.
Whenever anyone at work was like, “Oh, I have to do this PowerPoint”, I'd say “Do you want some help? Do you want me to work on it for you?”
It's so dorky, but it shows a lot. And over time, I learned how to sort of refine that mental visualization element through practice. The first pieces of art that I made for the New Happy had at the core of it very intuitive of like, here's how I feel like communicating this message. And then over time, as it's evolved, it's become both easier and also more complex in terms of figuring out how to communicate these ideas in a way that's fresh and meaningful.
Under the core message at the heart of it, I never thought that anyone would resonate with them the way they do.
I didn't dare to hope that it was something that people would enjoy. I was locked in my house during the pandemic, my partner was incredibly sick, we were drowning in life, it was so hard. And I thought, “Okay, I have nothing to lose. I have nothing like nothing holding me back except myself.” And in the process of making the art, it was also healing for me. It was very meaningful and fulfilling. And so it became this form of self-expression at the same time, not only my original intent was to use it to communicate the science and like all of the things I had learned. But then at the same time, it also became something that brought me a great deal of peace and fulfillment.
Naomi Haile: Yeah, and for so many others. The way people engage with those visuals, and now you've turned for some of them into videos. So it's a lot more interactive. Sometimes I'll just scroll through your page and whichever one I click, I always have this desire to share it with other people. And especially when I know that they're going through something, and this message will resonate with them.
It's so accessible, so even if you don't read the caption, your message is intuitive. I'm glad that you kept refining it and kept going because the way that people interact with it, is amazing.
Stephanie Harrison: Thank you, that means so much to me. Honestly, when I think about it, it has been a gift in so many different ways. What you're describing is the most special thing, which is the fact that I can make something that's inevitably a reflection of my own, my emotional experiences or perspective on the world– as much as I'm communicating research, I'm also trying to put a really human spin on it. Where it is grounded in you rather than in science.
Like, it's what happens to you when you do these things. The fact that you can look at that and think, “Wow, this represents me, and something I'm going through.” That is the most beautiful thing I can imagine, because it shows me that we're so much more alike than we think we are right.
We think that we have all these unique experiences, and no one will understand us. But then, somebody can look at this image, which has like four circles on it and it’s something that connects with them. And that means that we're not alone.
That’s what it all comes back to for me. Like, if we could just acknowledge how much we share and how similar our inner experiences are, then what could we overcome in terms of our differences and our challenges?
That gives me so much hope because it connects us in this really meaningful way. And that's why that compliment is so meaningful to me. So thank you.
Naomi Haile: And you're right, we have a lot of misconceptions about other people and people who we engage with on a daily basis or don't. If I may ask, what do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about you?
Stephanie Harrison: Oh, my gosh, what a question. You just used your amazing question asking skills.
I don't know. Honestly, I sort of hope people don't think about me. You know what I mean?
I'm not trying to avoid the question, I'm just trying to unpack my initial feelings about this. So I'll get there, I promise. But you asked such a good question that you opened like a new door inside of me. So I have to stumble through the room and figure out what's going on in here.
I don't want people to think about me. I want them to think about themselves and then, the people in their lives who the work applies to.
That's why I never I never make any sort of information or content that's like about myself in any way.
I've had to share a little bit more personal stuff about the book as part of sharing and getting the word out there, but that's the most I've ever done and I feel deeply uncomfortable. It's been an exercise of stepping out of my comfort zone.
I feel like if I'm doing a good job, then no one is thinking about, “Who's the person behind this?”, they're thinking, “Oh, this applies to me. And it also reminds me of my friend Jack, who's going through something really hard”.
And just like you said, I'm going to share it with them and give them a little boost. Or this helps me to understand something my boss said, or my friend who's going through a tough time, and I've been struggling to be empathetic, I can do something different for them. That's ultimately my goal.
Maybe there are people out there who think I'm naturally happy. That would be perhaps one misconception, which I would say absolutely not. I've had to learn this, just like everybody else. And the tools that I share are ones that I use myself, and that helped shape my own life. So maybe that's one. Yeah, I'll go with that.
Naomi Haile: You know, it's so interesting that you shared because you don't share much about yourself on the New Happy page, and you also have a personal page that you started recently where you create videos that basically break down some of the concepts that you share on the new hobby page.
The reason I asked the question is because often, even though people may not know who Stephanie is, just by virtue of interacting with a lot of the content that you share, there may be some pieces of a puzzle that people put together in their head around “Oh, this person has it all figured out” I think there's a lot of value again, in not just making assumptions. And what you said previously is so profound. How you broke down my comment about resonating with the content that you share, that we are very similar. And I think if we just take a moment to immediately find the ways that we connect with the people who are around us. We would be in a much better place.
And so I appreciate that about you. And I appreciate the first thing you said, when I asked that question, which is my job is to serve and to serve other people. Because it actually releases you from having so many insecurities. When I think about public speaking, for example, so many of the fears around public speaking are as a result of thinking, “Oh, how am I going to look like up there? What if I forget what I'm going to say? But when you start thinking about how I can be the most valuable for the people who are going to be listening (in the audience), everything shifts.
Stephanie Harrison: It's magic. It's the most unbelievable perspective shift. And I would not be able to do anything that I do without grounding myself in that. And it's also the source of my happiness. It's the source of my joy and fulfillment and there's nothing in the world that compares and nothing ever will compare.
As you said, my job is to serve and when I forget that, that's when all of those problems crop up – insecurities, feeling overwhelmed, feeling stressed, losing sight of what matters most. For me, realizing that was sort of the unlock of everything good that is in my life now.
Naomi Haile: What are your markers for personal growth? How do you think about your own personal and professional growth as it relates to the work that you do with The New Happy or otherwise?
Stephanie Harrison: I view growth as the result of trying and making mistakes and learning. Because I value growing as a person and growing is what allows me to serve in new ways or in more expansive ways, then it also is what frees me to feel comfortable trying things and making mistakes, feeling scared, uncomfortable and all of that fun stuff that goes along with that. Not fun. Not easy.
I'm passionate about growing because of what it helps to fulfill in terms of my purpose and my service to others.
I don't have any metrics that I'm working towards, where I say: “I need to do A, B, and C, and that's how I'm going to show that I've grown”. I think that's ultimately misguided and often ends up leading to a lot of stress and unhappiness.
For me, a recent moment of growth I had was having a lot of challenges that hit me in the face all at once and feeling really emotionally overwhelmed.
Surprise, surprise. I'm a very sensitive person. I'm sure that's no shocker to you, or to anyone who knows me. I feel things very deeply and I react very strongly. I have very intense emotions and I struggle a lot with finding an equilibrium. And a couple of weeks ago, I was going through all these different challenges in my life, feeling totally overwhelmed and a moment of grace for me was allowing myself to cry and be sad and be mad and be frustrated and be pissed off and all of those things. And then being like, “Okay, well, you know, that happened. And it's okay, it's totally fine that you feel like that.”
I never would have been able to do that 10 years ago. A few years ago, I would have tried to control it more or judged myself more, but it came naturally to me. That was a moment of being like, “Wow, this is amazing. [I’ve made] so much progress on this front. And hopefully, that self-acceptance helps me to offer something to other people.
And ironically, I came up with an image that I really want to make that represents what this looks like. And so ultimately, hopefully, I'll be able to make that and share it and maybe people will find some value in it. It’s like this loop for me. It all comes around like that.
Naomi Haile: Yeah, life imitates art and art imitates life.
You do something, every week on your Instagram page, where you ask people “What do you need help with?” I'm sure it offers a lot of AHA moments, and pattern recognition around what are people going through, what they are navigating, what questions they have, what gaps in understanding exist, that maybe you could help fill with research and ideas. What have you learned about people in the last few months that's really interesting?
Stephanie Harrison: I love that question. I've learned the most from our community, from people sharing.
It has been the most valuable teacher because when you ask people like “What do you need help with?” for four years, every single week, you do have the pattern recognition and recognizing “Okay, here's sort of the big things that people tend to really struggle with”. Here's two things that I see again, and again. The first is not feeling like you're good enough. And, let me tell you, you are not the only one, I can promise you unequivocally that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who feel the exact same way as you do, at least probably all of the people.
I think that really shaped a lot of my book and the thinking around The New Happy philosophy. I don't think that when I started the newsletter and then a couple years later, doing the artwork on Instagram. I don't think I had an awareness of how pervasive that was. I believed it was just a me problem. I just have to figure out my stuff and everyone else feels like they're okay on the inside.
So I didn't pay as much attention to it. And that helped me to identify that this was a core need and ultimately led to a lot of light bulb moments that this needs to be a part of the philosophy, and we need to address it for people.
The second is loneliness. Feeling like you're alone, which is obviously very related at the end of the day, but feeling like you don't have someone to lean on, feeling like you can't ask for help, feeling like you don't have anyone to confide in. People are really, really lonely, and they don't know how to get out of it. They don't know what to do differently.
Those two are probably the core things that continually pop up no matter when I ask or who I ask.
Naomi Haile: Yeah, not surprising. There's a massive loneliness epidemic. And wondering, out of curiosity, is most of your audience in the United States and Canada?
Stephanie Harrison: That's a good question. Actually. No, it's pretty global, I think about half is in Canada, the US, and UK. And then the rest is from all around the world. So it's a global community.
Naomi Haile: I would be so interested, coupled with your data mind. How the questions and maybe some of the things that people navigate may look different depending on where they are in the world, and like what culture they are most familiar with.
Stephanie Harrison: Yeah, that would be so interesting. I would love to learn more about that, too. That can be our next project.
Naomi Haile: Thank you, Stephanie. I have one more question. How do you find moments of solace? And what do you go to or what activities or what experiences really help with rejuvenating your creative energy?
Stephanie Harrison: I would say walking is always amazing.
I used to do a lot of really high intensity workouts. And then over the years, I lost my appetite for that kind of stuff. And instead, I tried to walk a lot. And I love it. I can call friends, if I want to talk. I can think.
When I was writing my book, I used to do a voice memo to myself and I would talk as I walked with ideas and trying to figure out problems. Sometimes, talking things out can be a lot easier and I was stuck on a lot of things.
And then reading and immersing myself in other people's creative work, I find so much inspiration. Especially reading things that aren't related to my field. Fiction or poetry or looking at artwork. Different and other forms of creative expression. It's really inspiring to be able to reap the benefits of other people's gifts at work. And that always fills me up as well.
Naomi Haile: Yeah, the same way that you do for other people. Thank you, Stephanie. I'm so glad that we made the time to do this… three and a half years later.
Stephanie Harrison: So grateful.
Naomi Haile: I hope that everyone who had the chance to listen, heard everything that Stephanie shared today. Hopefully, it helps you unlock how you think about service and how you think about using your gifts to be a light in the world.
Thank you again, Stephanie. And for everyone else, we will catch you in the next episode.
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Connect with Stephanie
Pre-order Book: The New Happy: "The New Happy: Getting Happiness Right In A World That's Got It Wrong."
Website: The New Happy
Instagram: @newhappyco
LinkedIn: Stephanie Harrison
Connect with Naomi
Website: naomihaile.com
Instagram: @naomiahaile
Twitter: @naomiathaile
LinkedIn: Naomi Haile