What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Andy Hughes, Scott Miller, and Samantha Powell.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
81 - The Happiness Project - March
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of true happiness at work? Discover the transformative power of aligning your career with your Ikigai as we delve into Gretchen Rubin's "The Happiness Project." You're invited to explore Rubin's insightful March resolutions: from launching a blog and savoring the fun of failure to asking for help and working smart. Learn how happiness at work can boost your performance, improve relationships, and foster cooperation. Our personal stories and experiences underscore the critical role of enthusiasm and passion in achieving both mastery and joy in your professional journey.
Ever wondered how taking on new challenges can expand your potential? Inspired by John Maxwell's "High Road Leadership," we discuss the profound impact of aiming higher in your endeavors. By embracing challenges, such as starting a blog, you don't just grow your skills; you expand your identity and social circles. Through engaging personal anecdotes, we reveal how risks and perceived failures can become your greatest learning opportunities. Embrace the art of experimentation and playfulness as essential elements for personal and professional growth and find out why aiming higher is a game-changer.
Coaching young athletes offers unique joys and challenges, and this episode brings those lessons into the spotlight. Discover how the perseverance required in sports translates into valuable life skills. We'll share strategies for working smarter, the importance of asking for help, and the concept of the "arrival fallacy," which reminds us that happiness is in the journey, not the destination. As we wrap up, we encourage you to set incremental yet meaningful goals to achieve greater fulfillment. Join Denise Russo and Sam Powell and aim higher in your work and contributions to society. Small steps can lead to significant differences in your overall satisfaction.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Russo and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome back. It's another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are living out loud the pages of the books on our shelves. My name is Denise Russo, I'm here today with my friend and co-host, sam Powell, and we are exploring a book called the Happiness Project. We're spending all of 2024 talking about the topic of pursuing and living through lives of happiness, and this book is a book written by Gretchen Rubin. The way that the book is set up is that she explores an entire year of finding happiness, or really elevating the happiness she already had inside of her, and today we're going to be talking about how to be happier in your work not just at work, but in your work, sam, I found a lot of happiness in work, working with you in our past and now in our present, just in different ways, and I'm looking forward to working together with you on this episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same, same for sure, and I thought it was interesting, right. So we've gone on this journey. Like she, in January was boosting energy, in February was working on her marriage and now in March is working on work and, and her goal around work was to aim higher, which I thought was really interesting, and the five she has five resolutions for this month and her first one was to launch a blog. Second was to enjoy the fun of failure, ask for help, work smart and enjoy now, which was an interesting list for aiming higher at work, and I thought it was a little surprising for me. I mean, it's obviously very personal for her. Not everyone's going to launch a blog, but some people do, so I just thought it was an interesting list when it came to like the happiness in the work space.
Speaker 2:I think that that was probably a good list for her personally. Probably a good list for her personally. Maybe the way I would reframe it a little bit is looking at what we taught in our very first episodes of what's on your Bookshelf about Ikigai, which is getting the center of your purpose, and that finding that center stems around things like if you're good at something, could you become great at that thing. If you like something, could you love that thing. If you are involved in a culture or a team that isn't resonated deeply at the heart of who you intrinsically are as a person, could you find that team or be a leader for that team. And finally, if you're not doing work that actually matters, are you finding happiness and joy in your work if you're just kind of waking up to make the donuts every day and doing the same thing over and again? So I think for me and for listeners, what's important here is to think of this as that at work, if you think about people that are happy versus people that are not happy, happy always wins. Happy people outperform unhappy people. Happy people have better relationships than unhappy people. Happy people enjoy investing their time, not feeling like they're spending and wasting their time at work. Happy people are more cooperative, they're less self-centered, they're more willing to help others. So why wouldn't you want to be happier in and at your work?
Speaker 2:And so this chapter really helps us to explore what that looks like. I think I shared with you, sam, that years ago I had a boss and he said to me your only goal is to make your team happy. Now that team did not directly report to me, I was sort of like the project manager of the projects those teams performed, and I recall having a conversation with him saying how am I supposed to make them happy? There's no way to make someone else happy. You make yourself happy, and you can perhaps provide an environment where people can be productive, but until you know what drives a person's personal happiness, you also can't change that for them, which means that you can change it for yourself. And if you're an unhappy person, what can you do to elevate your own happiness?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, definitely, and I think it is. I think you're spot on, like it is so very personal, right, and um, I do a ton of networking events and groups and things like that. And right, I'm a career coach, I'm a leadership coach, so I always ask you know, what do you do? Right? It's normal question in a networking setting and the question I was followed up with is do you like it right? Do you like what you do? What about what you do you know makes you like it right, depending on if they say yes or no, it's you know, tell me more about that, tell me what what you enjoy.
Speaker 1:And what I found is that the people who really love what they do have this enthusiasm for the topic. Right, like it, just it. Like you're talking about the Ikigai, like it just really hits at the core of what drives them. And that was how she started this chapter was talking about how, like, hey, for me, work wasn't some big career shift because she had already done that. She was a lawyer and then was in, she pivoted to being a writer and I love this. She had one part where she was talking about as she had talked to colleagues, talked to other people. You know, she found that, like the people who really loved what they were doing, they were passionate about it all the time. Like she realized she wasn't passionate about law. When she talked to somebody who was really passionate, they're like oh yeah, I just read these journals all the time, like I'm reading these case studies, like I do this for fun, and she goes oh, I do not like. Right, like, this is just not what I enjoy.
Speaker 1:And she says in here that enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability. It turns out because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice. Right, it reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's outliers. Right, like, what really makes somebody an expert? Right, he talks about you know, the 10,000 hours, but it's repetition, it's I practiced this a million times. I built my expertise, but the only way you've spent 10,000 hours or 10,000 reps on something is because you love it. Right, you would never. You're just not going to invest the time, and so finding things that you love is really key, and it does not matter if somebody else loves it or not. Right, like there are people I know who do things that they are extraordinarily passionate about, and I'm like I would stab myself slowly in the eye with a pencil if I had to do what you were doing, but they love it and it's like I can just appreciate their enthusiasm for it and it takes all kinds of kinds of people right To make it through this life and make it through this world. And I think that that I just I loved that thought process with her and like when she was thinking about her own career shift which wasn't part of her happiness project because she had done it before that enthusiasm was the thing she was looking for. Like, right, what were the things she was doing for fun? She was writing for fun, and so it was like, maybe that's telling her something, right? Maybe that's. You know, that's what she's doing, right?
Speaker 1:Like you and I with this podcast, you and I are both avid readers. You have 900 million books. If there's anybody I ever need, that's like I need a book on this topic. You're who I go to every time. I read a ton of things more fiction than anything else. But, like, we love reading, so like, let's sit down and do a podcast about this, because why not? Right? We love to read, we love to talk about the things that we're reading and I think, following those passions, following that enthusiasm, all the people I know who love what they do, that's what they've done.
Speaker 2:They have just followed some random thread that they were just enthusiastic about and that led them to something really cool good leader is being able to invest the time with your team to make sure that they are in their sweet spot, their passion zone, their their area that does make them want to be alive. And so I recall recently talking with a client that I'm coaching, where she was really enjoying her job, but she was having this disconnect with her leader who was taking all the credit for the work that she was doing. And one of her love languages, if you will, was that she wanted to like we talked about last week with having expression of praise and appreciation. Was that she wanted to like we talked about last week with having expression of praise and appreciation was that she felt validated when she got praise and appreciation, and not only was she not getting it, but the manager was taking the credit for it. And so what ended up happening for her was she was doing the things that she loved doing at work, but she started resenting it. And so, if you're thinking from a business perspective, there are ways to manage, to measure, excuse me how your leaders are managing this process of happiness at work.
Speaker 2:It took me a while to get past that one manager I told you about, where he said make your team happy to get to the point of how can we quantify that? What can we actually do to see if it's working or is there a way to do it or not? And she does talk about it in here. She goes on to say that people who are happy do not show counterproductive behaviors, which are measurable things burnout, absenteeism, countering non-productive work, work disputes, retaliatory behavior. So if you think about what you were just saying, that if you know what your sweet spot zone is on things that you can do well, but you're still not maximizing your potential at work or your performance, output at work, then what's the disconnect? Is it because you're not happy? And is happiness really the driver to work?
Speaker 2:Because I've also heard people say recently to me I think at least two or more clients have said to me they had a manager say something to them about it's not our job to make you feel valued, and that really kind of shocked me because, as a leader of people for many years, that's actually is your job to make you feel valued and that really kind of shocked me because, as a leader of people for many years, that's actually is your job to make people feel valued. It doesn't mean making them feel happy all the time, because happy and value may not be the same thing. No difference in happiness and joy are not the same exact word. But to tell one of your subordinates that it's not your job to make them feel valued, it kind of struck me to think about. Have you chosen them the right work? Because tasks are only part of the work.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that hurts my leadership soul. A leader would actually think that, because I think that's one of the most important jobs of a of a leader is to is to, that is, to actually value the people who are working with them. Right, because I like I, you know, I think leadership is it's me working for you. Right, like my whole focus, all my goals as the leader, should be focused on your success, should be focused on your success. One of those markers has to be that I actually genuinely value you and even if I don't maybe necessarily like you as a person right, we just we're not exactly the you know same kind of people or we don't totally vibe there should be something that I genuinely value about you and I should be expressing that. Because that's what are you doing in leadership if you're not doing that with your people? Because how on earth do you expect somebody to show up if they feel no value? You know in the work that they do and what they do, like that's just, that's absolutely insane.
Speaker 2:That just hurts my, hurts myself A hundred percent, and so this goes back to even looking at. It's more than just what you do. It's more than just how you do it. It's more than just even who you do it with. It's about the drivers behind why, and so maybe this even harkens back to one of your favorite authors why, and so maybe this even harkens back to one of your favorite authors. Start with why and talking about the different books that Simon Sinek wrote is that if you're a leader and you aren't looking at why you chose to become a leader of people, and maybe you took it for reasons that you think were the right reasons. Maybe you wanted to climb a ladder, maybe you wanted a promotion and more money at work, but those aren't the reasons to become a leader of people, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:absolutely. You have to want to lead people, you have to want to serve people. You know in leadership. But I think that that's you know. A lot of times the problem is the people are. They don't go into it. For that reason, right, they, they don't, they don't even nobody even tells them to think about that. You know as a reason and you know it's very yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this chapter it's called Aim Higher Sam, and so it gets me thinking about John Maxwell's new book, high Road Leadership. It's a good book for anybody to get Scott let's put a link in the show notes for our friends to check out High Road Leadership. And this talks about how you know you think about that saying about take the high road, not the low road, and so we all know what that really means, which is that you want to take the road. That is right, and so when you're thinking about aiming higher at work or in your work, aiming higher doesn't mean just um, vertically climbing up a ladder and stepping on people to get to the tip top. It's about high, aiming higher for higher values, higher purpose, higher, higher potential passions and all those things that make you a more effective and well-rounded, holisticallyistically good person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's when her first, her first thing in this book right, her first resolution was to start a blog, but what it really came down to is this was a stretch for her, this was a challenge for her, and one of the lines that she has towards the end of her blog section was one reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self definition.
Speaker 1:You become larger. Suddenly, you can do things that you could never do before, and she says that a new identity brings you into contact with new people and new experiences, which are powerful sources of happiness. So when you're aiming higher, when you're stretching yourself to that thing like for her it was starting the blog for you it's something else, right, but when you stretch that out, when you expand it, this goes back, like you said, with atomic habits and identity based stuff I think we were talking about recently is that when you expand your identity by challenging yourself in an area, when you aim higher, then it expands who you are, expands what you're capable of, it expands the circle of people around you, and all of these things contribute to just your overwhelming sense of happiness. So, while it might not be starting a blog for you, what is that thing, that's that stretch goal for you. What is that thing that's aiming just a little bit more than what you are or have today.
Speaker 2:I recall having someone join a team that I led that was very nervous about joining the team because they didn't have really the skills or experience they thought to do the role that we were hiring for. But I knew the person's heart, their capacity to learn, their willingness to want to be their very best at something and their openness to try new things. And I recall having a conversation with that person right at about the year mark of their anniversary in the role and one thing he said to me was I can never thank you enough for giving me an opportunity that nobody up until this point in my career and I've been working for all my life and the person. This person was amazing, at least mid four decades old. So he said I never would have known that I could really love something completely outside of my blind spot areas if it hadn't been for someone giving me a chance. And I think back to my own career that there are key markers along my career journey where people took a risk on me to do something that was way outside of my comfort zone and it led to the next role and then the next role and my growth in all those areas.
Speaker 2:And so this part of her chapter where she talks about enjoying the fun of failure. I don't know that I really like the word failure, because you could say that. Well, did Thomas Edison fail every time he created a new light bulb? It took him over 100 to get to the point where he thought it was the right one, and even today there's still new inventions in the way that we express light. So were those failures or were those just adaptations of something he was learning and he was growing into?
Speaker 2:And I can recall the very, very first John Maxwell book I was ever given was probably about 23 years ago. It's called Failing Forward and the book really talks about how you take these opportunities that may seem like or feel like a failure, and you use that as a lesson to move you forward. And I think he actually took that book to then write a future book, which came out a couple years ago, which is sometimes you win, sometimes you learn, and I think it's in all the times that you can take lessons of learning, but it's often in the times you don't win something that you learn the most.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. Right, those are the things that keep us up at night. Right, those are the things we're going to still think about. That thing you did in junior high at two o'clock in the morning, when you're like, oh man, I wish I would. At two o'clock in the morning, when you're like, oh man, I wish I wouldn't do that. But I guess what? You don't repeat that mistake again, right, those, those failures that you know that haunt us are often the things that shape us and push us forward more than anything else.
Speaker 1:And I like it's funny I was just actually talking about this with my coach because I said I said like I have a goal for right now that I'm trying to accomplish with my business. And he was like, I want you to play. He goes, just play around with stuff, see what works, take stats, you know like just observe what's going on. And to me, like he used the word play, but I always use the word experiment because I love science. So it's like I always think about this as experimenting and just enjoying that. Experimenting is fun and most of the time the experiments are just going to be learning opportunities. They are not going to work out. You're like, well, don't do that. But eventually right, the iterative experience gets you to some goal that works, some, you know breakthrough that really does kind of lead you down the next path. But you've got to enjoy the experimenting process.
Speaker 1:You've got to enjoy the failure process. You've got to enjoy the playing process of it and I think that's good in anything anybody does and it lowers the bar. It like, lowers the pressure of like I haven't going to go try this thing and I have to succeed. It's going to go try this thing and I'm going to assume it will not work, but I'm excited to see what I learn and that will really set you free, I think, on a lot of the work that we do.
Speaker 2:This gets me to think about you and Dan both of you being coaches of young kids teams, whether it's baseball or basketball or what have you and I wonder how you feel about sharing that when you're coaching a young person like, say, your child and his team the difference in the excitement of them learning how to shoot for the first time or a technique for the first time, or swinging a bat for the first time, or catching a ball and doing a certain play for the first time what that excitement is like versus someone who thinks they already know how to do it. That just gets frustrated, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's like I always expect the first time to be messy, always right, and that's that's what I tell kids, that's what Dan's really good about, that of like okay, well, you learned something on that one, right, like no big deal it's, it's fine, but it's that it's the moment when the kid perseveres, right, when they've had, you know, 15 at bats, haven't had a single hit, and when they finally do, like, that's that, and it's that, that experience of learning, that experience of adjusting your stance, of adjusting how you're, you know, shooting a basketball, about doing whatever, and when it finally works, the joy that comes along with that, yeah, is the thing that, like just pushes you, okay, to the next thing. Well, like, all right, if I can shoot a free throw, I could probably shoot a three-pointer eventually. Right, like I like, all right, if I can shoot a free throw, I could probably shoot a three pointer eventually. Right, like I know I can. You know, if I can shoot it from three feet, I can shoot it from five, I can shoot it from eight, I can shoot it from 10, right, if I can hit the ball to the infield, I can hit it to the outfield. It's just.
Speaker 1:How do I do that and I think that, like, especially when you're teaching young people right, like we're learning how to deal with all of our emotions and what to do with them and how to work through all that sort of stuff and watching kids like triumph through the struggle is is just my favorite part of you know, watching I don't know just watching all of it come together and watching them learn how to deal with the feelings that come along with that is really that's something magical and that's something that, like it's why I love sports so much is because those are the types of things that you carry with you into the boardroom 40 years from now.
Speaker 1:When tensions get high, things don't go wrong. There's failures happening left and right, it's all that. Hey, I know how to, I know how to try again, I know how to experiment, I know how to fail, I know how to keep going and eventually we'll get it right, we'll figure it out and enjoying that process and not letting that, like those negative frustrations you know, get you down and cause you to stop.
Speaker 2:I wonder, at what point in our lives do we separate ourselves from those feelings that we had as a young person, learning, and now suddenly we're in this. You know bigger person's, older person's body, and that maybe it isn't that different, and it's in the way in which we perceive these things. So she goes on to talk about this in this next section on working smarter, which is about boosting efficiency and how to use your productive time, and we actually have talked about that a lot on a lot of different episodes that we've shared, and so I know we're coming close to the end of our episode, so tell me a little bit, sam, what your takes were on this last part of this chapter about aiming higher yeah, I, um, I just like the general concept a lot and I think that everybody has to define this for themselves.
Speaker 1:but she talked about asking for help. I think it is so important that we understand that nobody gets through life by themselves. There is no such thing as a self-made person. That's just not real. There's absolutely not real. Are there people that have to do a lot more on their own, you know, than other people who get more legs up? Sure, life's not fair. We all start at different starting places. But asking for help is so critical.
Speaker 1:But she ends this on enjoying now, and I think that that is I think that's the key to work is you've got to enjoy the experience. It can't be she talks about the arrival fallacy like I'll be happy when I get there, I'll feel accomplished when I reach the certain level right, I'll feel good when my business is doing this type of performance. And it's no just. You have to find the ways to live in the now, to enjoy the now, to live in those failures, to live in the experiences and really embrace what that is, because the happiness lies in right now. Happiness doesn't lie in tomorrow and it doesn't lie in yesterday. It lies in right right now, and so, when you're aiming high, when you're aiming high with what you do and how you contribute to this world, making sure that you're enjoying it along the way is, I just think, so critical.
Speaker 2:I agree. I do like what she said about the arrival fallacy, and I would encourage you, friends, to get a copy of this book and read this part a little bit more in depth than we have time to share today. She says that the arrival fallacy doesn't mean that pursuing goals isn't a route towards your happiness. To the contrary, having goals is necessary, just as is the process toward the goal. And then she quotes Friedrich Nietzsche by saying the end of a melody is not its goal, but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end, it would not have reached its goal either A parable. And so this is a process.
Speaker 2:We just finished March. Today, by talking through March, we're going to encourage you, friends, to follow us, please, through the end of this series. We're doing one a week, one month a week, with the hope that you create a goal for yourself at the top of the year, to make your own happiness project and reflect back on what you've learned from us over these weeks, what you're going to learn by going through the book in your own deep dive and to be able to pursue your own happiness, this last chapter that we just went through, aiming higher and what you just shared, sam, about enjoying the moments now is a great reflection on the book we recently finished Solve for Happy by Mo Gaudat. So if you're new to listening to our podcast, strongly encourage you to even go back to that series and grab a copy of that book, because that talks about how that man had happiness in his past. It was fleeting him for a little while and he wanted to embrace the happiness that he had in each moment, because tomorrow's not promised, so next week, though, we hope is promised, we're going to be lightening it up.
Speaker 2:The chapter is called lighten up and it is is the month of April for that chapter chapter four and it's going to be, I think, one of my more favorite of the chapters because it's about parenthood. So we talk a lot about our kids on these episodes and, sam, I am really looking forward to seeing what that chapter is all about on parenthood. Thanks for being here with me again this week and anything else to leave our listeners with.
Speaker 1:I think just the take some time to figure out what aiming higher looks like for you in your in your work life, right in your contribution to society, life in you know, in the work that you do. I think that concept and asking yourself those questions of what would a higher look like, even if it's just a little bit right now, I think you could find some really interesting goals for yourself. And if you need help with that, hire a coach. That's literally what they do. Go talk to Denise and I. That's what we do, and I just think that so much happiness lies in just aiming a little bit higher.
Speaker 2:Agreed Well. Friends, thanks for being here with us. My name is Denise Russo. Once again with my friend Sam Powell, this has been another episode of what's On your Bookshelf.