Jonathan Haidt is the author of the much acclaimed book “The Happiness Hypothesis” and as a bit of a happiness geek, I had been attempting to reach him for a while.
Interviewing Jonathan was a real pleasure and it feels like one of the biggest takeaways from interviewing “real leaders” is that they are all incredibly nice.
My favorite excerpts –
Love and work, and the essence of love and work are about your degree of connection or embeddedness.
Work isn’t just about achieving something. I came to understand that concept of vital engagement, of immersing yourself in something – you learn about it more and more and you become part of the community of people who are working at something. It seemed so similar to love that I realized that that’s really the key.
“Joy so lies in the doing.” It’s not the achievement, it’s the doing, and there’s a lot of scientific support showing that our brains get more pleasure from making progress towards a goal than actually achieving the goal.
I still say stupid things, but now I’m really, really good at apologizing. I know how self-righteousness works.
Know your body, and your energy cycle.
What I’m coming to see is that balance is of value in life overall but one should not strive for balance in every point in his or her life.
Full transcript as always on RealLeaders.tv. Enjoy
A Learning a Day 