The Three Things No One Tells You About Happiness

This week on Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch tackles the value everyone assumes they already understand: happiness. Using data from the Values Bridge — the assessment that has now been taken by hundreds of thousands of people — Suzy reveals that Eudemonia, the value of personal happiness, self care, flourishing, and fun, is far from universal. It skews by gender, it drops off sharply with age, and it even shifts with income.

Suzy traces the philosophical fault lines around happiness, from Aristotle's insistence that it's a whole life and not a good afternoon, to the Stoics' case for tranquility over feeling, to the Buddhist idea that the chase itself might be the trap. Along the way, she shares a deeply personal story about discovering Dostoevsky in tenth grade and dropping it on her family at Christmas dinner — with her sister Elin along to set the record straight. Whether Eudemonia sits at the top of your values list or, like Suzy's, near the bottom, this episode makes the case that knowing exactly where you stand on fun and self care is one of the most useful things you can know about yourself.

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