How AI can Amplify Human Flourishing with Tamara Lechner

Humans know what we need to do to be happy, to perform our best, to contribute to things that matter. And yet we often get knocked off our pathway to doing that because of external voices telling us, oh, you need to have more status, have more money, do more things.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspirations to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode, we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives, and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. What if AI could become the greatest ally in our search for meaning, purpose and connection? I'm Ashish Kothari and on today's episode I'm joined by Tamara Lechner, author, speaker, happiness expert, and chair of the Harvard Working Group on AI and flourishing. In this conversation we explore how AI, when designed with care and intention, can help bridge the gap between knowing and doing when it comes to flourishing. Not just protecting us from harm, but amplifying the very ingredients of flourishing. Stronger relationships, continuous growth, meaningful work, and true well being. Tamara reminds us that flourishing isn't about a lofty academic theory. It's grandma science, the timeless wisdom of wanting to live with joy, love and purpose. And she challenges us to consider how technology, guided by compassion and humility, might just be the tool that helps us get there. This is a powerful conversation about AI, humanity and reimagining the future of flourishing together. Hi Tamara, it is so exciting to have you with us on the Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for joining us.

Oh, thank you for the invitation. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

So my friend, I want to really just start from, you know, you are somebody who started, you know, you wrote a book on happiness, you've been in that space and then and peak performance. And not to put words in your mouth, but from all of the work that I see you doing today, all of your commitment and dedication is on flourishing and really being at the center of flourishing and AI conversations as part of your role as the chair at Harvard for that working group. So I am curious about what led you to double down on really exploring AI and the science of flourishing as kind of this focal point at this stage in your life right now.

Yeah, what a great place to begin. I think one of the things I've been in this space talking about happiness and then happiness transformed to, well, being and then, well, being transformed to flourishing. And at the heart of it, it all comes back to this knowing doing gap that humans know what we need to do to be happy, to perform our best, to contribute to things that matter. And yet we often get knocked off our pathway to doing that because of external voices telling us, oh, you need to have more status, have more money, do more things. And so what I really have been curious about for a long time is how do we create the conditions and the behaviors that lead to flourishing as an individual and as a collective? If we do this together, we all rise together. And so I see AI as an amplifier that's a helper to individualize this, because as you know, the science of happiness isn't a recipe, it's a list of ingredients. And it's very different for every human in every context, in every geography. And so my wish when I started to first hear about AI was that this technology that can do some things that humans can't, could look at this vast contextual knowledge and help us to know what's the thing I can do that will make the most impact on my happiness or performance with the least effort from me. And I think AI is the perfect companion to help us bridge that knowing doing gap.

Amazing. Well, I mean, I love that. You know, when I started happiness squad about three years ago, it was August of 22. I left McKinsey after 17 years. That was the driver, right? I was seeing that we were drowning in knowledge, drowning in knowledge, but we were completely parched for practice. People were so busy doing that they had no space to be forget about practicing. And so we really set that as kind of the anchor for everything that we did on the Happiness Squad. In fact, that was the reason I actually didn't go down. Unlike many colleagues around that time that I was leaving, the McKinsey Health Institute was actually being formed, and I had an opportunity to be a core part of that research. And I fundamentally believed, and the reason I left is we don't need more research. Now, you know, Jan Emanuel and so many others, Right. Jackie and others would disagree. But my point was not that we don't need more research. We always need more research. But my point was if we even implemented 5% of what we know over the last 20 plus years on individual, team and system level flourishing, we would be miles ahead, right? So, yes, research is needed, but what was really needed was to actually translate that research to practice and practice that we can do as teams together. And that became the origin story for Happiness Squad.

Well, you're preaching to the choir, I guess, is a Great way to say that because my why is really the same and I do not come from an academic background. So it always cracks me up a little bit that I'm involved with this group that is based in Harvard and of course the school is prioritizing research. And it's beautiful, there's so much out there. But like you, I really recognize that we write this paper that takes three years and tells us so much and then it's kind of a fizzle, it doesn't go anywhere. And so my real hope as a business woman is to create a sustainable business that helps people apply this science in a very digestible way rather than keeping it up high level. For those who have spent years researching it, I often liken it to grandma science. I say it's all the things my grandma wanted for me. She wanted me to be happy, she wanted me to have a good social life. She wanted me to have a life that was meaningful and purposeful and accomplish things. And you can say it in very plain English without having to get all of this academic jargon out there. Kids understand it. So yeah, I'm absolutely aligned with what you're saying, Ashish.

Yeah. So let's go to the second question that I have for you. AI in the context of flourishing. Friend or foe?

Yeah, I think brilliant question. And like any tool, it's both. It depends on your use, it depends on your context. And so we've seen a lot of media telling us that AI is a foe. When we are doom scrolling, when it is using us, we are not using it. It's definitely a foe. And this is part of what we're endeavoring to do with the AI for Human Flourishing framework that we've created is to help builders and buyers understand that it's not only about protection from harm and fair and responsible AI, that's just the baseline. We actually want AI to lift us, to help us connect better socially, to help us form and fix really solid and meaningful relationships, to help us perform at our best, to help us get into flow, to connect with others who can move faster without breaking things. So the question is kind of a trick question because like any tool, it can be used for the good or to harm. And it really depends on our moral compass beneath the use of the tool. So that is why I am spending so much time out there challenging people that we can use this to make being human better. Human intelligence is different than artificial intelligence and I think they have a beautiful synergy. But if we can't shift our mindset first, and I Spend a lot of time talking about mindsets. There's a lot of fear, as there should be, around this technology because we've seen what went wrong when we released social media out to the world without truly thinking about the impact. So I encourage people to think of the intent, yes, but the impact even more importantly. So before you start to use something, think about, is it dragging my attention to something, or am I in control of where my attention goes? Is it doing something without my consent that I could regret later, or is it using my information in a way that I might not want it out there? So it's really about asking good questions. And I wish it was protected by a government regulation that helped us do this. But in the absence of that, as humans, we really need to start educating ourselves and sharing our knowledge with one another in order to make sure that it's used to help us all really flourish.

You know, I've thought about this question a lot, right. It was a trick question. It wasn't really a trick question. So. And what your response is actually has sparked a couple of thoughts for me. So, yes, it is a tool, but it is so much more than that, Right. It was a conversation I was having with a dear friend of mine two days ago as we drove to one of the meetings for the conscious Capitalism chapter in Colorado that we started not long ago. So, and it comes from this, right? A knife is neither good nor bad. In the hands of a surgeon, a scalpel saves lives. In the hand of a murderer, it takes lives.

Yeah.

Right. And so, yes, nothing inherently is good or bad. It is the intent and with how we use it. Right. But what is also true is when we look at us humans as a collective, we are at the top of the food chain because we've been amazing at inventing technology, right? We are living way longer. We have basically eliminated so many of the external microbes that. That used to kill us. Today, what kills us are our own lifestyle created chronic ailments. They are not the ones that killed us. You know, obesity was not a problem hundred years ago. Starvation was. Right. Starvation was. Cancer was not a problem. Diphtheria was. Right. But when we look at the how humans have used technology more as kind of groups of humans, right? So organizations like these amorphous beings that are created by humans but almost seem to have a different consciousness, we've not used these technologies for progressing us. We've actually for amplifying flourishing. In fact, we've created suffering. And I'll give you some examples of why I say that. Right. So, you know, we invented. We discovered nuclear fission. All of a sudden, unbelievable source of energy. And we turned that into the largest Cold War because we made bombs out of it. And we put the whole world into fear of how powerful these were and started the largest race of everybody wanted to have nuclear armaments. We invented the Internet. Amazing, right? Unbelievable. The number one industry that made money and really grew out of that, of course, it made emails and all that possible was porn. So we, you know, corrupted people's minds. We invented social media. I can tell you, I was so excited with Facebook because all of a sudden and WhatsApp, that all of a sudden I was connecting with friends I'd lost in touch with from high school 20 years ago. Instead of making that as the biggest source of getting people together, we turned it into actually one of the biggest reason why the world is polarized today. Right. Instead of bringing us together, we've actually created this connection by grounding us and only feeding information that Tamara agrees with or I agree with. And all of a sudden we have the story, right? That. No, like, everybody agrees with me. I don't know. You're the one who's odd. Like, everybody agrees with me, Right? And I feel that with AI, I think we are, if not wielded, the right way. I think this technology, because it's more than a tool, it is an intelligence, can actually do so much harm, you know, because we can. Every business today, I feel, has one of three choices. I can use it to give people a day back. I had the CEO of 4 Day Workweek on our podcast not that long ago. We can give everybody a day back because we are so productive. We can use it to let one third of our workforce go because we don't need them anymore. Seems to be the path so many companies are going down. That seems to be the latest badge of, you know, you're doing good. How many people did you lay off based on AI and the news? Or you can have a middle path, which is if you go back to why the company started in the first place, we can actually use this to amplify that purpose. We can reach way more people with the same number of people I have because I've made them so much more productive. Right. And I do think. I think there is a need for us. Whether it was football injuries, whether it is tobacco, whether it is social media, the government policies show up 20 years later after harm is documented and is massive. I agree with you, Tamara, that I really do think we can't wait for that long we can't wait for 20 years before actions are taken to make sure that we actually use this intelligence the right way to amplify human flourishing and not actually train a bunch of the next two generations of humans who actually decline in iq, who become cognitively lazy, who are subject to biases, who through deepfakes, don't know what reality is, and further get, you know, indoctrinated into their own way of being.

Yeah, you've prompted so many ideas. And so I want to go back to your idea of the knife as a tool and.

Yeah.

And say it's interesting in the sense that this knife is. It looks like a knife, but we don't know what the handle is made of, and we don't know where the blade came from.

So true.

We are using this tool without knowing how it's been developed, what's going on with what we're doing with this tool. And so that's one massive problem with this, this lack of standards is that we are able to use something that's actually using up people rather than lifting up people. So that is incredibly problematic. And then to think a little further down what you were saying, I think one of the things I worry about most is we've become a competitive species rather than a collaborative species. And when I, as a business owner, you have to do your competitive analysis. But I always think of it as collabitition that these people are all trying to solve the same problem that I am. So we actually have something in common. And what if we could work together to solve that problem so that everybody had enough profit to keep going? Well, and I think it's that, that competitiveness that really concerns me around the future of AI, because as you were saying, Ashish, our regulators cannot move as fast as AI technology. It goes faster than humans. And so it's already out of the box. It's already doing things that we didn't tell it to do. And it will shut us down if we try to shut it down. And so we're already there. And so now the challenge for us as humans is to figure out how do we quickly adapt to this difference in human intelligence and artificial intelligence. And I think that academic speed that you were talking about earlier is one of those challenges. By the time we do the research, it's obsolete because everything about this technology has changed. And so we are going to need to adapt. And I think you and I both know how uncomfortable humans are with change. And I think that ability to think flexibly is really going to. The thing that helps Us going forward.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So, Tamara, you talked about at the heart of the work that's coming out of the group at Harvard is this framework. Right. For buyers and builders. It's, I think, anchored around these three pillars. So talk to us a little bit around the latest and greatest collaboration oriented thinking. Right. Coopetition is how I called it. But I like, you know, collaboration. What are the three pillars around ethical AI that as our listeners think about as leaders for their organizations and individuals? Keep that in mind.

Yeah, I think what I want to do, because I think the concept of ethical AI for most people is hard to digest. And so we really looked at boiling the ocean of all of the information out there about flourishing science. And we considered what was already being addressed and where we saw gaps and, and so what we see organizations and product developers thinking about is productivity. And you've touched on productivity a bit. And then because of things gone wrong, they're now thinking of protection from harm and they're thinking of fair AI, which in our world we think of as how the LLM might have been trained. Does it have biased information? Does it have stuff, stolen proprietary material that a writer is now not making money because people can access it freely? So that's protection from harm and fair AI. But then what we really started to think about is what other aspects of human flourishing are being left off the table here that are important to us as a species. And so the most important one is our social capital. We know, based on all the work out of Harvard, Robert Waldinger's work, that human relationships impact both our mental health and our physical health a lot. And so we wondered about AI technology that was being built to enhance the way we communicate, to help us understand one another better to instead of separating us by taking the human out of the loop, is it telling us when we need a human in that loop? And so we decided we needed to focus on relationships and collaboration. We also wanted to focus on growth and development. Because if you have an AI technology that can now do some of the things, hopefully the things that I didn't enjoy doing anyways, what am I going to do with that time? Well, hopefully I'm going to grow as a human, as a member of a team, as a performer. So what am I going to learn? And how is AI going to help me to recognize the gaps in where I am and where I want to be and help me to fill those? And it's beautiful at that kind of pattern recognition where humans are really bad at identifying what they don't know. I love some of the confidence research that shows especially with men, most men are very confident about things they know nothing about at all. They will say they can land a plane if there was an emergency. I think it's more than 50% of men believe without ever having been in a cockpit that they could successfully land a plane. And it's simply not true. So I think AI can help us to identify those blind spots and say, hey, you might want to actually learn how to do this because we see this coming in the future of work that you love to do. So growth and development was a section, then we went to that meaningful work. We know that the science of mattering. So understanding your purpose, your big purpose, your why am I here? But also your intention in the moment, why am I doing what I'm doing right now is incredibly important. And often as humans, it feels like such an overwhelming concept that we're blind to it. So I believe that AI technologies can help us to identify that red thread that gives our life meaning. And then personal well being is one that we've already seen a fair bit of work tracking. People are wearing aura rings to track their sleep. People are wearing garment watches to help them know where their blood sugar is and where they are resonating well with humans even I've seen Paul Zach has a wonderful technology, a wearable that tells you if you're having a great resonance, a great conversation with another human that boosts your well being. So those are the seven aspects that we think think about with technology. And then more and more frequently we're thinking about them with compassion, we're thinking about them with perspective. Who did we not consider that we might have impact on? And we're thinking about them with humility because so much academic work seems to lack humility. And so we really like to double down on that.

Yeah, I mean all of these, I mean I love these. One that I didn't hear, Tamra, and that's why I'm curious about that is we know how much of our wellbeing is actually outside of an individual system. Job and team, right. McKinsey Health Institute research 72% of holistic well being is driven based on demands and enablers there and 97% of burnout. So is that a conversation that the group is having around really more again, organizational. I'll tell you where I get from go. If we go back to our knife conversation, you know, individuals, I think there is a lot that individuals can do to use it. The AI, the technology, the right way. But oftentimes as much as we shape systems, systems shape us, and sometimes by overloading us, where you have no time other than to just get stuff done. Right. And so I'm curious if that is definitely one of the areas you all are considering or maybe would consider adding it.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm part of a working group for the IEEE right now where we're trying to take their well being standard for AI and expand it to become a flourishing standard. And what they've looked at adding is a section for agency, which to me feels very important. And I'm certainly considering how we might integrate that into the framework that we've been using. It's interesting when you look at the individual, right? And so much of the work in the realm of the science of happiness goes back to the individual. But my friend Jason Banshee, who has a company based out of Australia called Flourish Diagnostics, realized pretty quickly that organizations want to blame the individual because it takes the responsibility off of them. And that reminder of Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety, so much of that is the culture that you arrive to at an organization. I've done a lot of work looking at large sets of culture data on behalf of some clients that I've worked with. And it is fascinating to me. And I think it's part of the human condition that we want to go to the simple. So we want to go to the individual and say, well, here's your problem. Solve this will burn out. When you are underpaid, overworked, and in an environment that asks you to be on 247 responding to your phone, your email, your texts. It doesn't allow to not burn out. And so I think you're absolutely right that I can be the healthiest little goldfish in the bowl. But if the water in my bowl is toxic, eventually that's going to come back and bite me.

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Yes.

And it shapes us in so many ways around all aspects of our way of being. And I think a lot of the work we are doing is around that organization level of actually helping. And really, again, this is a conversation that was germane on Wednesday. We were with Timothy, who's the CEO for Conscious Capitalism internationally, for the whole organization. And this was the conversation which was at the heart of it, which is Conscious Capitalism has been around 17 years, right. It's literally been over 17. Actually, early 2000 is when Raj and John started talking about businesses as a force for good. Right. Purpose, people, conscious leadership, all of that. It's been 17 years, 16 years since Alex Edmonds published his paper linking employee satisfaction to shareholder return data that showed two to three and a half percent alpha. It's been almost two years since the anomanimal's work with Oxford, most recently highlighting the link. And yet, while all the data exists, the journey for most people from head to the heart to actually start to make the changes, the will to act, even when it is so clear that it is in their interests. Human flourishing, as I talk about in my TEDx talk, is not a perk, it's not a benefit. It is the point. Because it drives, allows us to grow the pie. It allows us to drive higher shareholder value. It allows us to serve customers better by putting employees at the heart of it. We're not moving, we're not getting there. Right. We're just not. I know the journey from the head to heart can sometime take a lifetime. I don't think we have a lifetime for organizations to take that journey and for leaders in those organizations to take the journey. So I'm curious about what are the conversations like and what are some things you're seeing, companies who really are choosing to actually step ahead, take a step forward. All of this research, all of these frameworks, how are we actually choosing to take a step forward and start to lead, start to role model, start to demonstrate that there is a different way where we can put humans at the heart of AI and flourishing, rather than as an afterthought.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with everything you're saying. And I think Patagonia is always a beautiful example of a company who does the right thing, even when it's hard. And I think it's incredibly unfortunate that the way technology has rolled out, I always think of the stereotypical tech bro, and they want a hierarchy where they're at the top of the food chain. They, for the most Part are looking for those hockey stick returns. And anytime I hear about a company that's getting unicorn status, that hockey stick return, it usually comes with the people at the bottom not getting their fair share.

And I am always even say not only they're not getting their fair share, I think it's more like those are built on the back and. And blood of the people.

Yeah, absolutely. You're 100% right. And I think if we look at, if we were studying chimpanzees and we saw one chimpanzee grab all of the bananas and not share them with the rest of the chimps, we would say there's something wrong with that chimpanzee. And actually we would probably get rid of that chimpanzee. And yet what we've done as a society is held these chimps who want all the bananas in the highest regard, where we have our youth wanting to be them. And we've shifted again. The. The whole influencer society kind of blows my mind that people want their 15 minutes of fame no matter what, no matter. No matter what they have to do to get it. And I think we are witnessing this at its absolute worst, probably because we have such access to so much more media because of the technology we've created. And I think it is so incredibly important, which is why I formed this group, that we start to speak with the same language around how to correct this, why it matters and really putting out as humans who have agency, even though we don't have the power to create regulations, we are not at the top of the political spectrum. We do have a voice. We can behave in the way we wish that those rules were written. And that's really where our movement is coming from. We talk about turning people from an audience into activists because as we're hearing from this next generation, not doing something is no longer acceptable. That's not allyship. It's not helping anyone. In order to move us where we need to be as a species. I'm really passionate about turning an audience into activists. And with AI technology especially, that comes with some education because the average human just does not have the information that these tech bros have. It is almost impossible to stay apprised of the rate of change of AI technology. And I certainly, I'm not a technologist. I listen to some very smart humans who I trust deeply. And I still have huge hope for us as a species because I've done the work moving from head to heart and I look for the others like you and like so many of the people involved in the Human Flourishing Network and the World Flourishing Organization. I do believe that drop by drop, we make a difference.

Yeah, drop by drop, we make a difference. I'm reminded of this beautiful Zen story of this man who was on a walk on the beach. Have you heard right? Have you heard that story?

It's one of my favorite stories, but please tell it for your audience.

And he sees this boy who's furiously running back and forth, throwing these starfish back into the water. And there's a bunch of starfish on the beach, and there are thousands and thousands of them. And the sun is rising, and it is such a beautiful sight. And instead of just sitting and taking the sight in, this boy just seems to be, you know, in activity. And so having burnt out and found that he needs to be rather than do, he wants to distill this wisdom to this young boy and says, hey, don't be like me. I spent all my time, all my life running. Step back and look at nature and how beautiful it is and take it all in. And he says, yeah, I don't have time for that. I'm trying to save the starfish. Join me and help me saving them, because when the sun comes out, they'll all die. And the man looks at the sun and says, yeah, these starfish are like the never ending to do list. It'll never get done. There's so many. You will never save all of them. And he says, yeah, but I can save that one. I can save that one. And he continues on doing what he's doing. And so I love what you just said, Tamara, which is to say, let's find others. Let's find others who, like us, are united in this mission. And let's actually join our lights so we can shine brighter. Because the world is getting more complex. Change is accelerating at an unbelievable pace. And unless we actually shine our light, you know, the darkness that comes from change and that fear that we feel with change, I think can take us and I think as individuals, when we pull together, combine together, amplify each other's work, amplify the message, support each other right when we are struggling to get people to move, those moments we can hold each other. I think that will make the difference in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years.

I hope so. And I think the one gap that I see that I'm working to discover how to bridge is the fact that for work that involves flourishing or happiness or peak performance, and probably less peak performance than happiness and flourishing, there is a lack of funding. And so I'm involved with a group that's based out of Harvard that has $0. And people will ask me, come speak at this conference. And the academics that are coming are coming funded by their schools. But I'm part of a network that is entirely volunteer. We don't even have a bank account. And I understand the value of forming a nonprofit and kind of structuring. But it's interesting to me how hard the lift is for that, versus if I'm a technologist developing something, I can go to a bunch of VCs, and if I have a great pedigree and a group of PhDs on my website, I can get millions of dollars for nothing. And as someone who's been looking at products because I'm filtering them through our framework to see does this product have positive impact on humans? I've seen some pretty unbelievably bad products that have gotten a lot of money. And so I have an incredibly high level of frustration about that when I see these ideas where someone decided that they have a very simple questionnaire that's going to change culture, and they've got no culture background and no research background, and yet they have a friend of a friend who went to this school and knows this VC and suddenly they have $10 million to spend. Incredibly frustrating to me. And so I'm curious, because you've been doing that kind of work longer, where are you seeing the bright spots? The people who are throwing the starfish back for the founders that are trying to do work that will lift all humans, but in the lack of funding for this.

So two years ago, I was at a retreat and, you know, I asked for inspiration, guidance on how to navigate this journey, right? For me, this is my second mountain journey. This is what I will do till the last breath on this planet. This is the mission, right? My mission is on democratizing flourishing and helping a billion people live with more joy, health, love and meaning. That's the mission. We're going to do it through organization, driving organizations, drive higher performance by integrating and changing work, fundamentally changing work. Address the elephant in the room, the 80% that drives all of these symptoms. And by the way, if you fix that, we will also save climate, because thriving humans create thriving planets and ecosystems. When only 20% of people are thriving, 80% are not. We are not going to create better outcomes for the planet or our communities. That's just the reality, folks. That is just the reality. And that's what my commitment is. But the inspiration I got in that was stillness in motion, polarities. We think about the world as polarities, funded and not funded, right and wrong, friend and foe, ethical and nonethical. Right, purpose and profit. We think about the world in polarities. That's how our brains are. Good and bad, light and dark. And yet when we go look at spiritual traditions, if we go look at even psychology, our own brains, the fundamental nature is light can't exist without dark, right? Stillness in motion. The inspiration for me, stillness is very different than motion. But yet the vision that came to me was that of an eagle soaring over mountains, just using natural wind currents to course over miles without the flutter of a wing. Stillness in motion. And so inspiration for me was to find the natural wind currents, find those who believe. And yes, it's not easy, because if it was easy, it would be not missionary work. If it was as easy as all the others who can do this, right? Shitty product. But I have a connection. I get there. If it was as easy as that, then we wouldn't be heroes, we would just be ordinary people. And that's why we need to actually group together and we need to do the hard work. There is no gain without pain. There is no gold without the heat. There is no diamonds without the pressure. It's just the reality, right? The most beautiful act we humans can do is give birth. There is no birth without suffering, at least for the mother. I think fathers are, you know, somewhat. We have no, no idea what it takes, right? But that's the reality. And so I think, for me, I think it's our mission. How we are going about that is finding those leaders, not finding other experts. Yes, we need those too. But really in conversations, you know, how can I have a thousand conversations in a year? Because from those thousand conversations, I'm going to find hundred people who might be interested or already on their way from the head to the heart. Out of those hundred, There might be 30 who say, not now. There might be 30 who say, I don't need the Taj Mahal, I just need a hut, because that's all I can afford. And maybe, maybe we'll find 30 who actually say, I am in. And if we can help those 30, those 30 affect 30,000. That's the strategy we are trying to use, Tamara, is have the thousand conversations every year so that we can actually go through and start to make change happen, but have conversation with people who actually have the dollars and have the positions, but most importantly, have done the journey. So we talked about this one phrase, this also came up on Wednesday, and it's a very bold idea, but. But you know I love the Bain Net promoter score. It's one question, right? Everybody had all these questions, all these questions around, scanning for, you know, hey, are you delighting the customer and are things happening? You know, there were like all these 10, 15, 20 questions and they had one the net promoter score 1 to 10. Where are you in terms of being able to refer promote the business? And one of the CEOs who was around the table on Wednesday said, if you want to find those people, have you thought about asking and testing for love, love in a workplace? Love. Because fundamentally, if we look at that dissolution of the self and the other, what comes? Love. Love for all. Not love for one, love for the other. Not love of a sexual nature, but love from a place that we all are one, we inter are. And yes, it will feel artificial and it'll turn off 90%, but those 90% are not doing anything anyway, right? And maybe that's what we say. Do you believe that by loving, you know, the core essence of love, do you want to build a company on the core essence of love? Love for the consumers, love for the customers, love for the suppliers, love for the employees, and love for the world around. And those who say, yes, love actually needs to be an integral value in the world going forward, then maybe there is something there and we start to work with them. I'm curious, what do you think about that?

Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that, Ashish, because I've certainly encountered more and more consultants and external experts who are using the language of love in the workplace, which does feel very jarring, especially if you're a worker on a line or a teller at a bank. It's not language that they're familiar with. And yet I think some of the greatest AI work that I've seen come out of Stanford recently really had that question of love in mind. Would you give this product to your child to use? And if not, why did you build it? And so if that's not love, I don't know what is. And I think you're right in saying that 90% will have huge pushback. And I think it's one of the things I've seen in organizational work. Lead leaders often ask me, what do I do with the resistors? Because there is going to be that pushback. And I always say what you focus on gets bigger. If you focus on those resistors, what you're going to be surrounded by is resistance. But what if you focus on those who already show up with love, those who already understand what you're talking about and amplify that. And so you are reminding me of something that I already knew. And I often say the journey to happiness is one of unlearning. And I think there's a lot of cultural beliefs that we tend to take on that we need to unlearn. And so you've reminded me of one that I want to unlearn today. So thank you for that.

My pleasure. My friend, this has been an amazing conversation. Keeping an eye on time. I want to know how you take care of yourself, how you love yourself. Make sure that your cup is full. You're a mother, you're a technologist. You're. You do your work with the Harvard. It's a voluntary work. You're a podcast host. You do individual happiness work. You serve companies. There is so many roles that you play. What are some practices that help you flourish personally, which if they didn't exist, you know, Tamra would not be the same.

Yeah, beautiful question. So I think at the heart of it, it is that presence. So I have a meditation practice that is just a must have. It doesn't even feel like a practice anymore. It's like brushing my teeth. It's just part of what I do that helps me to stay centered. But the way you described my life is another part of it. I am a human who loves novelty. And I would absolutely be crushed by doing a job. A job, as I call them, where you are paid for your time and have to do stuff that does not matter to you. And so all of the many things that you've described my doing are things that fill my cup. I love being a mother. I love being a partner. I love being involved with this AI group. I love the measurement of flourishing. I like writing. I love the novelty of all of these things. So for me, that contributes to filling my cup because I'm getting to play in lots of different spaces where somebody else that would be really depleting for me. That is one must have. And then I've started to consider what are the technology enhanced practices I do that help me and one that I will share with your audience because I find it really fun is something I wanted to show students that I was working with. That technology can be used to connect you and to lift you rather than get you on that downward spiral. And so I do something called Text yout Day in five Emojis. I've lived in lots of different places and it's a great way to stay connected with my good friends who are not in the same time zone. And we don't have time for a long, extended conversation. What we do is we just randomly, when the thought hits us, text five emojis to the person, they interpret them, usually in a humorous way. And so emojis are very open to interpretation. I'll text five emojis to my friend Mika, who lives in Ontario, and maybe a couple of hours later she'll text back what she thinks my day has been. And it's usually quite funny. And then we reverse it. It takes minutes, but we feel really connected in a way we didn't before that text chain. And so it is something that I think socially connects using a device. So it's modeling a good use of a device and then it goes away. You're not stuck into a doom scroll or on it any longer. It's just saying, hey, I'm thinking about you. I'm wondering what's going on in your day. Here's mine. And so that's a beautiful practice that I like to have as well.

I love that practice. You have my cell phone text me if possible today or tomorrow, five emojis and I'll try and tell you what that means. I'll also have to learn how to send emojis. I don't know how to do that, but I'll figure that out. But listen, I really love this conversation. I look forward to staying in touch. We, of course we're going to do lots of great stuff with the world flourishing organization. So I'm hopeful to see you obviously as part of that and we get a chance to collaborate together. Thank you for the wonderful work. Thank you for all that you put out into the universe and all the personal investment Tamara that you're doing. I'm grateful to know you and delighted to call you my friend.

Thank you so much, Ashish. And I think this as a to be continued.

Absolutely. Take care and have an amazing day, my friend.

Thank you. You as well.

That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a real, really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.