Hi Reader, "Mom, do you know how to play musical chairs?" This week, G started summer camp. He's 4 and there are a lot of things that are new to him, so sometimes I just say no for the delight of hearing him explain them. He proceeds to walk through all the rules in detail. "So, did you play musical chairs at camp today?" I ask when he's finished. "No." "Oh, why not?" I ask. "It's too stressful," he says. It's hard to describe the joy and pride I feel in this moment. You see, I hated musical...
6 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, This weekend we celebrate Mother's Day, a holiday that has long been complicated for me. So it's fitting that this week a question landed in my inbox that took me back to a time in my life when my dreams of finding a partner and being a mother felt tender and uncertain. I have a question and it’s totally fine if you don’t want to answer it. When I read your Renewal chapter in your book, I very much related to the first part of the chapter where you talk about feeling left behind in...
8 months ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, When things get good in your life, does something bad always seem to happen? I used to think that this was just bad luck. But recently I've realized that this pattern can be a sign of something called an upper limit problem. The idea, coined by psychologist Gay Hendricks, is that each of us has a certain tolerance for happiness. When something happens to exceed that threshold, we often engage in unconscious, self-sabotaging behaviors to bring our happiness back down to a more...
about 1 year ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Do you ever wish there were a "bad day" vaccine? Alas, no one is immune to bad days. (Yes, that includes those of us who study joy for a living.) In the past, when I found myself in the midst of one of those no-good-very-bad days, I would throw my hands up in despair. But when I learned about how even small moments of joy can shift our moods, I realized that no day is ever a lost cause. Joy is possible even on the worst days. It may only be a flicker, but it can change everything....
about 1 year ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, If there's one truism about happiness that gets bandied about more than any other, it's got to be "money can't buy happiness." This old saw has taken on the mantle of fact since 2010, when researchers Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman published a study that suggested that money's influence on happiness plateaus at an income of about $75,000 a year. This number always seemed somewhat arbitrary to me, but who was I to quibble with a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist? Until this year....
about 1 year ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, Last year, around this time, the lovely Kelle Hampton asked me if I had any research on why school buildings often feel so institutional, and so joyless. If you have a child, or were once a child, or you work in education, I'm sure you've also probably asked this question. Kids are joyful. Learning is joyful. Why, then, do the spaces we send our kids to learn feel more like warehouses or (I'll just say it) prisons, than the temples of wonder and play we might imagine? Ecole...
over 1 year ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, I used to think of toughness as one of my greatest virtues. I found a strange thrill in the way people underestimated me, a somewhat petite woman with a sunny disposition, not realizing the lengths I could push myself to if needed. Carry that absurdly heavy countertop up three flights of stairs by myself? Sure! Stay up until 4am for two weeks straight to finish my first-year design portfolio? Absolutely. Keep doing 10-hour days of field research while suffering from a nasty case of...
over 1 year ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, A few weeks ago, while squirreling around on Pinterest, I came across a particularly joyful little painted cottage. I clicked through, and found an explosion of color, with paintings of flowers, butterflies, and birds covering nearly every surface. A little digging revealed that the house belonged to a Canadian artist named Maud Lewis, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis beginning in childhood and lived in poverty for most of her life. She never sold a painting for more than $10...
over 1 year ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, I used to think I would never leave the city. It’s a common attitude among New Yorkers, who seem to live and die by their status as natives. Even though I grew up just outside the city and my memories were threaded with trips to the Natural History Museum and Zabar’s and the playground outside my uncle’s place near NYU, I wasn’t a real New Yorker until I moved there in my late 20s. Even then, people told me it took ten years before you could officially consider yourself a New...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read