44: Want Nothing, Have Everything: The Happiness Equation with Neil Pasricha

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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am absolutely overjoyed to have Neil Pasrica here today. Neil and I have been Internet friends for a long time. He is the New York Times bestselling author of the Book of Awesome series, which has spent over five years on bestseller lists and sold over a million copies. He's also the author of his latest book, the Happiness Equation. 1 Want nothing, do Anything, have everything, which started as a letter to his unborn child on how to live a happy life after his wife told him she was pregnant on the flight home from their honeymoon. Amazing. The Happiness Equation came out this year, March of 2016 and today Neil serves as Director of the Institute for Global Happiness. After spending the last decade of his life as a Director of Leadership Development at Walmart and this all started his momentum snowball of epic proportions from his award winning blog, which is called A Thousand Awesome Things. And I checked my email archives today. We first connected in March of 2010. So that was six years ago. Happy friendiversary, Neil.

Happy friendiversary, Teddy. And that was before the Book of Awesome Me had even come out in March of 2010. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. That was a long time ago. That was a really long time ago. In Internet years especially, it's like dog years. It's like I've had a 40 year friendship with you.

Totally. And it was. Totally. It was before my book came out too. And we were saying before we hit record, it's really crazy to just watch how much changes and evolves. You're now remarried, you have two kids, your latest book just came out. It's incredible.

I know, it's incredible. And you know, I have failed to do a follow up to my TED talk. So everyone who sees me is like, yeah, sorry to hear about your divorce. You know, because that's what I mentioned in my speech. That's online. You know what I mean? There's no speech online that shows like, and I'm married again. So thanks for mentioning that I'm married and have kids. Because usually if I bump into someone, they're like, it's the divorce that they talk about.

I know. Well, people have to read the book because there's some great stories in here. One of the things that really jumped out to me right away was kind of how you kick off the book and you say that the Book of Awesome had surpassed your wildest publishing dreams. It was number one on the bestseller list, which was your original goal. But then it was five weeks, then 10, then 50, then 100 weeks, then foreign press publishing it. And that your initial goals kept growing and growing. I'm going to read a small excerpt. You say I started smiling, tried to relax. A few days later, after working so hard for three years straight, lying in bed alone in my tiny apartment, getting three or four hours of sleep, eating takeout for every meal, developing black bags under my eyes, and losing touch with friends, I suddenly had a realization. No matter how many external goals I achieved, I just kept setting more. And you say I lost my self confidence because I started outsourcing it to signals outside of my brain which I couldn't always control.

It's just such a powerful example of, you set these targets and you kept hitting them and hitting them and hitting them, and yet you didn't feel happy necessarily. Can you take me back to that moment and that realization.

Yeah. So thank you for bringing that up. It's probably the most vulnerable part of the whole book. And it still is something I'm sort of new in, talking about all those people that say, write the truth. I'm like, okay, here it is. And then it's like, it's so painful for me to read that, because what I'm basically confessing to is that I started writing 1000Awesome Things.com because I'm like, let's see if I can cheer myself up. I'm processing this divorce. I'm processing loss of a friend and write a thousand awesome things for 1,000 days in a row. And I was smart to sort of not put external motivators on the website. I didn't collect ad money. I didn't do any SEO work. I didn't pay for anything on my website. It was like a free WordPress blog. So I was pretty good at making it intrinsically motivated for me. But soon, and this happens to anything you do in life, extrinsic motivators rear their ugly head block stat counters appear. You get one post that goes viral on Reddit or Digg, you suddenly want another one. Similarly with the Bestseller list, you crave more.

I got caught in that trap of setting goals and achieving them, but switching, and this is the important underpinning of what you're talking about, from intrinsic motivators to extrinsic motivators. And the problem with a lot of things in life is you start a job because you love the company, but then you get a job evaluation and a paycheck, and you literally lose your intrinsic motivator. And in the happiness equation, I quote a few studies that show if you ask little girls to teach piano to other girls just for the joy of teaching piano, they're awesome at it. And if you ask them to do it because they get a free ticket for the movies, they're terrible at it. They get upset more, they yell, and they take off after half an hour when their time's done. So it's sort of like I forgot that extrinsic motivators would distract me, and I became very addicted to them. And so the root takeaway from that secret is, do it for you, do it for yourself, and value your opinion and the opinion of others so much so that you can avoid extrinsic motive errors as much as possible, which is so hard to do, especially in our industry, where there's numbers and bestseller lists and we quantify every part of success. So how can you avoid it? It's hard.

And there's so much compare and despair because of social media. I underlined, you should see my book. I have a double underline. I say ha and three exclamation marks and an asterisk next to this line. You say, the next level never ends unless you are literally the best in the entire world. What are the odds of that happening? Well, they are 1 in 7 billion. You have better chances of getting struck by light every single day of your life.

Isn't that so? I mean, it's so true though, right? Like, yeah. I mean, and that's true on the math, too. I had to do the odds of the1.7 billion, but it's amazing. Like, you have 30,000 followers on Twitter. You look at the guy that has 100,000, he's looking at the guy that has 500,000. That guy's obsessed with the one that has 5 million. And that guy's obsessed with Justin Bieber's Twitter follow. You know what I mean? Like, you can't stop until you're the best. And if you're the best, all you're doing is looking over your shoulder. So you have to unplug from that rhythm.

Of it. And it's more difficult today than ever before because you used to be able to be the best singer at your school and not compare yourself with people on YouTube. You used to be able to be the best basketball player in your high school or your town. Now there's videos of people online. You can't get out of it. So you have to kind of get into yourself and really find your authentic self a little bit more.

Through things I sort of prescribe, like the Saturday morning test or the bench test or the five people test to, like, figure out what you want to do, clear away all the extrinsic beeps and bells that are going to kind of blow in your face as you're doing it and double down on remembering that you're doing it for yourself. If you can kind of do all that, then actually you have more success in the long run.

How has that gone for you with this book launch? Because you wrote the book, but you've probably had to throttle that even while launching this one.

Yeah, and I loved the podcast you did with the happiness writer for the Guardian, Oliver Watts.

Oliver Berkman. He's so cool.

Oliver Berkman. Yeah, because he said this quote in the podcast and I loved it. And it was sort of like, you're ultimately writing for yourself. He's writing a self help, happiness oriented thing. Because he's looking for it himself. Similarly with the Happiness Equation, I drew the success triangle, you know, sales, social and self success, because I personally was struggling with it. So for those listeners, it's sales success, how many copies do you ship? Social success, how well regarded are you by your peers or industry? That means the New York Times Book Review reviews you or you're nominated for an award. And then there's self success, which is what do you think about it? And I argue that it's like a wobble board at an old school gym where when you press down on any two sides, the third one pops up into the. So if you focus on sales, like for example, Hotel Transylvania 2 did, you might get $300 million at the box office, but you get no Academy Award nominations. If you focus on making an awesome Academy Award movie like Spotlight, did you get $19 million at the box office? They conflict. And so you're asking me, like, which one did I do? Well, I really, really, really tried hard to focus on self. The Happiness equation is a letter to my unborn child. He gets to read it when he's older. The fact that this is the greatest gift I can ask for. But of course, Jenny, if I'm going to confess everything as you go through the book launch, the grind, the meat grinder, the speaking to the Googles and the Microsofts and watching the book on the Amazon rankings, you just get sucked into that whirlwind. And it's so hard to ignore. So I would totally be lying if I was all Zen Buddhist and had ignored all that. But I at least know how to talk my way out of it now. And that model helps me when I'm stressed, escape my own reality and say, have a hot bath, read some fiction, have some tea and, you know, just chill out about it. And the model helps me chill out more than it helps me kind of not get frustrated in the first place.

Right? And I love. There's so many fun doodles in this book for everybody listening and a lot of math, which I really give you props for. It's a really insightful math that I had never thought about before. But yeah, the success triangle. It seems like the goal is not to have perfection across these three prongs of it at all times, but just the awareness of, okay, I'm launching a book, the sales dragon is going to rear its head. And yes, of course you want the book to do well in the market, but like you said, being able to refocus on social and self when it seems like it's getting too out of whack.

Totally. Exactly. It's a route map as opposed to something hard and fast. And that's, I think, the same with all the scribbles or doodles in the book and the secrets in the book. The goal is not to be perfect. It's to be better than before. And so whether I'm advocating, for example, automating, regulating and effecting your decisions so you have more time to focus on kind of white space, I'm not saying I'm perfect at that. I'm saying here's a tool to help you get there.

One of my favorite chapters that got a slow standing clap from me was.

About, I like all these. I like the slow standing clap, the double underline, the exclamation mark. I kind of want to read your copy now just to see. And then, like, which ones did you. Which pages did you, like, tear out and throw in the garbage? Like, you know, you interact with the book in, like, such a visceral way. I love that.

Oh, yeah. I have different tiers of dog ear. Like, a small dog ear means something. A big one means something else. Then if it's a dog ear with a corner folded back over itself, that means read both sides of that page.

Oh, interesting.

I'll mail you my book as long as you send it back. Because with an autograph, that's so fast.

And I'm assuming you're pure, like analog.

Oh, yeah. When I can be. When I can be. Yeah. Your book came to Las Vegas with me, so it's been on a little adventure. And by the way, I learned from the best. Cause your language throughout the book and the awesome things, I mean, it's a real gift. But you talk about what the healthiest 100-year-olds in the can teach us. And they happen to be in a part of Japan called Okinawa. They don't have a word for retirement. And actually, you share the word ikigai. I don't know if I'm saying that right. You even say in the book pronounced like icky guy, which roughly means the reason you wake up in the morning. And if you're wanting to know about my notations, this one has a heart with two exclamation marks and a circle around it.

What size? A dog ear.

Oh, big one. Big dog ear with the double fold. Please can you explain us about this concept of ikigai?

Well, zooming out a little bit. This is secret number four, and I call it the dream we all have that is completely wrong. I tell a story that.

I share with my high school guidance counselor, who everybody loved, was eventually forced to retire and he sadly had a heart attack and died the week after. When I tell people that story, I'm met with a lot of, oh my gosh. And then I met with a lot of, you know what, my brother in law kind of quit work or my grandfather. And that kind of happened to them too. So I researched this topic a little bit more and I found two interesting things. Number one, Fortune magazine says the two most dangerous years of your life are the year you are born and the year you retire. Okay. And there's an incredible report in the New York Times. I can't remember the actual study, but I have the link which shows that your incidence of depression spikes 40% in the year you retire. So I start expanding this concept of retirement. Then I look and find that retirement was invented in 1889 in Germany. Okay? So it's not that old. And it was invented sort of out of the blue when they had a huge youth unemployment issue. And Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said, you know what, if you're 65 or older. So he made up that number. If you're 65 or older, you can kind of, you know, and you're not feeling too well, you're infirm, you can kind of leave the workforce and will pay a little bit money till you die. But average lifespan back then was 67. So penicillin wasn't invented for 40 years. So the point is he made an arbitrary world standard on the number 65. And it's pretty new. So then you zoom back in to your question and it's like you look around the world, you find that many of the world's healthiest places to live don't even have a word for retirement like Okinawa. Literally nothing in their language describes the concept of stopping work. Instead, they have a word called ikigai. The reason you wake up in the morning. So it could be to feed your family by fishing for them. It could be to educate young minds. If you're a teacher, it could be to increase happiness in organizations if you're me, and that's what I'm trying to do. And you know what? They live an average of seven years longer than Americans. Like, there's more a higher percentage of people over 100 there than anywhere else in the world. Like, maybe they're onto something. And so the ikigai concept is something that Leslie and I do, my wife, where we leave little cards beside our bed. They cost 10 cents. But when you open your eyes in the morning you kind of know which way you're going. And that super, super high level purpose of getting up in the morning, it's amazing how that clarifies your day. Because yeah, I subscribe to sort of write three things down on a cue card strategy, which a lot of people do. But unless I know my high level mission.

I can get lost pretty easily and I fritter away a whole day or a half day. And so mine increasing happiness in organizations. I believe that work is for most people the unhappiest place and where we spend most of our time. So that's what I'm trying to do. And while I was finishing the script for this book, it was finish the script for this book. It's one big thing you're aiming for. And as a result.

It destabilizes the concept or notion of retirement because.

I no longer aspire towards doing nothing, ever. In fact, I know that's a recipe for unhappiness and, and for losing my sense of purpose. All I now ascribe for is always having an ikigai in my life. It might be volunteering, but it could just be doing something.

One of the ways you say people can find their ikigai is the Saturday morning test. Enlighten us, please.

Sure. And it doesn't apply to everybody because many people work Saturday. But if you pick the day, you don't work in the week. Okay, hopefully there is one. And for me it's mostly been Saturday because I've often have the sort of Monday to Friday jobs now. Now, on a Saturday, you have actually nothing planned, and I know those are rare, but when you actually have nothing planned on a whole Saturday, ask yourself one question. What do I do on a Saturday morning when I have nothing to do? What you naturally lean towards will let you brainstorm hundreds of ideas for interesting work you could be doing. So if you play guitar, you might want to teach guitar or start a musical instrument import company or busk. There's so many things. If you coach a baseball team or you just love sports, you could be a personal trainer, you could start a supplements company, you could be a coach for a team. And that's what I'm saying about the Saturday morning test. It's like to find authenticity is all the rage. But most people just say simply be authentic. What the Saturday morning test is trying to do is give you a tool to help you find that authentic self that's already inside you.

So what's your Saturday morning test? What are some of your things?

Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, if I'm honest, with two young babies right now, that's very rare, but actually that partly is it right. It's spending time with little kids and I'm doing that now more than I'm writing or speaking. And I love it, Jenny. So it's like you can't just. I can't be a full time dad in the sense that we do need money to live off of, but it does remind me that.

I need to be better at like blocking, you know, certain months and times of the year to not have any speaking engagements or have any travel or it's a reminder that maybe I could start a. This is something. I live in Toronto. Maybe I could start a dad's group. Like a group of, you know, the classic kind of group of dads that gets together at the park and lets. Lets their partners sleep in. Or group of dads that frankly talks and discusses and processes the emotions of fatherhood, which there's not a huge great dialogue around about that that I've encountered yet. There's so many emotions about wanting to be a provider and wanting to enable their success and what does that mean? So maybe me leaning into fatherhood a bit more now is helping to open my eyes. And when you and I connect, in six more years, another four years of Internet time, I'll have started some fatherhood oriented business or maybe a book or maybe I'm speaking about it, or maybe my natural things, the writing stuff kind of tips towards parenting more. I don't know. But thanks for asking me because this is exactly what you're supposed to do, right? You just naturally snowball away from the things you love doing. Right.

And I would like to highlight that you just came out with an awesome interactive children's book. So in that sense, you took your Saturday morning test, which was spending time with your kids and you made something for them and inspired by them.

Oh, thanks for saying that. Yeah. The children's book is so under the radar. Children's books are such a. It's hilarious because there's a small market, a subset of the book market, and the classics dominate. My grandmother got Goodnight Moon, so she bought it for her kid, who bought it for her kid. And you're not going to break into that. But with awesome is everywhere. I tried to give people an interactive guided meditation on what it feels like to be a child. So yeah, when I stare at my son's eyes and he stares back unblinking, not in a staring contest, but the master of a staring contest, that's what I wanted to give people in awesome is everywhere. The kids book.

After reading your book, I thought, what's my Saturday morning test? And normally I like to read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, a nonfiction book. And lately I work on Saturday mornings because it's really quiet and I feel I can work on whatever I want. Lately I jump off the couch to go edit podcasts, which is something that business people would say, oh, you should outsource that. Anyone else could easily do this just as well as I could. And maybe listeners, because I taught myself garageb listeners wouldn't know the difference. It takes a lot of time, but I love it. Neil. It's my Saturday morning test and it's so weird. I don't know where it's going to take me, but I almost procrastinate on real work by editing podcasts.

But you know what? You have a thing and I don't. You know, we know each other and we know each other a while, but like, just seeing how your bookshelf is curated and organized and your website and your book, which I've had the pleasure of reading, is amazing. And it's like, maybe there's a thing either tangential to what you're already doing or above it or below about like, curation and slicing and like, do you love interior decorating or like getting the right, you know, do you. Are you all about, like your pots and pans, cupboards, or is yours just like a pile like mine? You know what I mean? I don't know. But who knows what that could lead to? And I find it fun to talk about.

Yeah. And it's fun to just pay attention. I mean, I encourage everybody who's listening, just do the Saturday morning test and be an observer about what you gravitate toward and what you get most excited about. And I just love that as a way to find your ikigai. Because we often put so much pressure on ourselves. Oh my gosh, what's my one big thing? Or what's next? And it creates a panic. But if you can think about it in terms of the Saturday morning test, it's a great start.

Yeah. And it's periodical too, right? So my Saturday morning test in three to six months from now may be different than it is today. And that's why even if you don't journal or you don't diary kind of regularly, it's a real nice check in for yourself because you probably won't forget what you're passionate about before, but you can observe growth in yourself or changing Interests as they evolve. Like, for example, me, I used to love reading the New York Times like you, and I totally dropped it. I canceled my subscription. I don't even read it at all anymore. 0. Because my interest shifted to books. My love affair with books kind of grew as it was when I was a kid. And now I'm obsessed with just alternating fiction and nonfiction, and I can't fit in newspapers. Maybe it'll switch back in a year, I don't know. But it's something more different that I'm kind of living in my head now these days.

Yeah, I know. They definitely go in waves. Like mine will pile up, pile up while I'm reading books, and then I'll switch. One of my other favorite parts of the book is funny because you say, don't take advice, and of course, you are giving light suggestions throughout, but you talk about that contradictory advice. And I once wrote a blog post called, oh, what was it? It was like, it was about all the dating cliches, and you share a lot of them. Birds of a feather flock together. Opposites attract, or you have to want it. And law of attract the person. Oh, but don't be desperate. You can't actually be looking or actually care. You know, there's just so much contradictory. Oh, it was an open letter to love. It's not you, it's me. And I was just pissed at all the cliches that contradicted each other, and you sketch it out in a nice table. So give me the basic wisdom nugget of don't take advice.

Sure. Essentially.

I had a boss, the one that said to me, 97% of lung cancer patients are smokers. Which, in my mind made sense. And then he said, and 97% of smokers never get lung cancer. And I was like, well, that's weird. And he's like, I know. But he's like, the point is you can't trust any data. You can't trust any information that's given to you. And it's kind of like we're both big fans of, like, Black Swan and Talib stuff. His whole stuff just shakes the foundation of all your belief systems. So I looked into advice just as a common practice, and they found a couple interesting things. Number one.

This quote, which I love, which is from the 1800s, Charles Varlet says, when we're looking for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice. And that kind of really made me me. I reacted to that. I was like, that's so true. I asked someone, which high school, which College should I go to? Or what should I name my baby? You can imagine these things. It's like, no, I just want to run by my choice, by someone who will agree with me. And then I look at, well, what's the oldest advice at all? And as you just put out there, it's cliches.

Advice heard so frequently that it's become.

We just all know it. And so you just mentioned some of them. But, like, absence makes the heart grow fonder, but then directly conflicts with out of sight, out of mind, or you get what you pay for directly conflicts with the best things in life for free, or good things come to those who wait versus the early bird gets the worm. And my favorite of all is the pen is mightier than the sword, which as writers, we love. But. Or is it actions speak louder than words, you know, and it's like, if even cliches, like the most fundamental, foundational kind of things people tell you.

You know, have direct opposites that also are as quick to come to your tongue, then, like, what makes any advice you possibly hear.

Objectively true in all situations? And there isn't any. So if the Book of Awesome was a book where I didn't tell anybody what to do, it was just love or Mondorf and out of the Dryer and things like that. Now it's me at the end of 9 Secrets of Telling People how to Live a Happy Life. I'm saying in the Last Secret, as you're pointing out, my subversive piece of advice is to not take advice. So if you follow me, then you can't follow me. You just have to look back at the other eight secrets and find which ones resonate for you and just take those. And if you ditch three of them, I'm super happy. Because hopefully they help shape your own view of yourself to you either way. And so that's what I mean by closing the book with don't take advice. It's like, ultimately, this is all on you. And there's an underlying thesis of my book, which is it is in you. Whenever I get a nice letter or an email saying like, thank you, your book did this for me, I say, if it did, it's because it resonated with something you already had. So it's on you, not me. And in fact, I even hid those four words. I don't know if you have the book literally right in front of you, but underneath the book jacket.

Yes, I saw that.

Yeah. If you take off the jacket, it says it is in you. On the actual hardcover because it's like meant for people to find later on.

Oh, I know. That was such a great little Easter egg. I want to cut back to your personal story real quick, which is, well, maybe it doesn't have to be quick, but you were director of leadership development at Walmart for 10 years. And I know we were on a similar track because I was working at Google and then our sort of forks diverged and we were both discussing how long do we stay and when do we go. When's the right. How did you decide when it was time to bust out on your own? Which actually just happened a couple months ago.

Yeah, it's interesting because I'm an East Indian immigrant son. My mom's from Kenya, my dad's from India. And so the prevailing wisdom in the culture is be a doctor.

And do that because it's the strongest, securest job with the highest kind of steady income. It's rock solid. And if not, be a lawyer, and if not be a dentist, and if not be accountant. That's the prevailing wins. Of course I didn't do that. I went into business and I went into a big company.

But in my upbringing was this belief, don't quit the day job. If I look back, I started my blog in 2008. Book of awesome came out 2010. So there was money from that then I didn't quit Walmart until 2016. Here's what I'll say though. I'll say holding on to my job for very long period of time, I mean, after multiple books, lots of speaking, all that stuff enabled me to take crazy risks at Walmart. I took huge risks in every meeting I said what was on my mind, not what was political. I put proposals together to do crazy interesting jobs like work directly for the CEO as his personal assistant. And it was approved. So I got to do that for two years. And. And I just took crazy risks because I was like, if this fails, I've got this income in a side project from a book and speaking. And then similarly, it allowed me to take crazy risks with my writing. I never wrote to any advertisers. My blog had 50 million hits, no advertisements. I was able to, on the speaking side, say no to a lot, which artificially over time increased the price of my speeches because I was unable to do stuff during the days because I had a full time job. So suddenly suddenly, no, no, he's not available, he's not available, not available. Suddenly it's like the big ones start coming because you're only available to do 20 a year. Or something, you know what I mean? So it's like I was able to take risks in the speaking and writing world because I had the day job which paid me. And I was able to take risks in the day job because I had the writing and speaking which paid me. So it was a teeter totter effect where I think because I wasn't super confident, deep, deep, deep down, it let me be a little bit more confident than I actually was in both settings, which helped me do better in both settings. So now why did I quit? So if that's okay now you've just told us that, like why'd you quit? Like, why did I just break my own rule? Well, it's because I believe in the three bucket model of a work of a week. So you have 168 hours in a week. You have three buckets. You have a bucket for sleep, that's eight hours a night, 56 hours. Okay, that's a bucket. You have a bucket for work 56 hours. That's a standard 40 hour job. Plus commuting time, emails at home, on the weekends. Maybe you have a crazy job, that's 60 hours, hours, it's around 56. Okay, that's the second bucket. Those two buckets create, justify and pay for your third bucket. And Jenny, for the last five years, my third bucket was writing and speaking about positivity, right? Like it's thousandawesomethings. Com, booksofawesome, etc. But now that I'm a dad with two young children who I want to have dinner with every night and give a bath to every night and read a story to every night, well, pretty quickly that becomes, if not all three buckets, then at least one. And suddenly if I have sleep and if I have kids, I have one work bucket left. I can either do Walmart or I can do the awesome and happiness stuff. And so I didn't want to leave Walmart. I loved it there. I loved the people and they were always great to me and so flexible with me, et cetera. But push came to shove and I ran out of buckets. And so I made the tough decision to leave my dependable day job. And now I'm flying around in this balloon with a string at the end of it world called.

Working out of your basement and hustling and running around and doing creative stuff, but also being home to pick up the kids from daycare. So I'm loving it, but it's not without its own new set of challenges.

Right? I love your perspective. You're the first person I've ever heard describe modern day moonlighting in this way, which is that it allowed you to take risks in both regards, both at Walmart, in your role and with your books and your blog and your speaking.

That'S in every income stream you grow is another leg at the bottom of your table. So picture a table that has one leg like a standing fancy table at a cocktail party. Those tables with one leg, you can knock those tables over pretty easily, just kick it. Then add another leg to a table that is called an income stream from say a book royalty, which is what my second income stream was on top of my day job income stream. So two legs a little bit more strong add. Speaking on top of that, three legs stronger add. I don't know if you're doing affiliate marketing or whatever else. Your other thing is you also are running a muse business, as Tim Ferriss would call on the side with a cell phone company in the mall, which I've a friend that does that. You have a fourth leg. The point is now you can rip out any of those four legs and the other three legs will still hold it. And that principle pull enables you to not overvalue any one thing and take more risk than all of them. Because an explosion say I never write another book again. I kind of feel more confident with 10 years of Walmart that I could get another office job, brush up the resume, go door knocking and there it is, hopefully and vice versa. But yeah, it's just adding legs to the table I think to make the table to make yourself more secure. And also so ironically, it's less risk to do what people will perceive as something riskier.

What surprised you most from the time you started working on the happiness equation to now?

Oh man, that's a great question.

Well, you're in the book publishing world, right? So you are familiar with just the back and forth and the copy editing and the processes there. I should not have been surprised by that. One thing that was surprising to me, here's an interesting thing, is that.

We all say you can't judge a book by its cover. And I was lucky with the Book of Austin that whoever designed it at the publishing company did a great job. But with this book, the Happiness Equation, we went through not just cover iterations, but title iterations for over a year. It exhausted and drained me. And also it's like.

Turns out you can judge a book by its cover and everybody does. So, oh, it's the most important decision about your book of all. And I think looking back I probably.

Spent 500 too many hours on that one problem. I should have been better at deciding that was a 10 hour problem and putting so tricky.

I know, and there's so many thousands of micro details and macro, the big ones that go into it. And what I'm noticing is at some point you gotta ship the thing and there's going to be stuff that could be different or better or is missing or isn't. You know, it's like at some point. So it's so weird about books in our current digital age, which is that the book is still a pretty fixed entity that goes out snapshot, moment in time.

I would like to end with reading one more excerpt from your book from a chapter called I Run a Burlesque Dancing Troupe, which is about your adventures in dating. And you say this, you say, be you, be you and be cool with it. There is nobody else you can be better. There is so much of you unique to the world. The deep down version of you is the best version of all. You are unique and complicated. You are different and dimensional. Those rare thoughts, those flying thoughts, those late night thoughts, grab onto those and hold them. Those things you think, those things you do, those things you say, those, those are what slowly help define who you are. Neil, thank you so much for writing this brilliant book to help us all be more of ourselves.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it and it's a pleasure talking to you as always.

Likewise, where can people find you if they want to connect and learn more?

You know, I think the best place is just email me. I mean, such a rare and weird answer, but I just feel like the end of the podcast community. The people in the gym right now, the truckers at 2am on a highway somewhere, the people around, you know, around the world and a job. If you're listening to this and something resonated with you, drop me a line. I'm@globalhappiness.org, so that's just my home base with links to everything on here and we can read the chapters of the book for free and all that stuff. But me, I'm just neil@globalhappiness.org, n e I l@globalhappiness.org People I meet through podcasts are like my favorite people in the world. So if you're a kindred spirit, I just love to chat.

That's so great. Well, thank you, Neil. We really, really appreciate it and look forward to talking again soon. Soon.

Thank you very much.

Thanks so much. For listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for pivotless, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.