On December 18th, 2020, I created a document titled “The Happy Leader Project.”
After 11 years of building, breaking, and rebuilding businesses, I was burnt out (again).
Specifically, I’d just resurrected my main company at the time, Amazing.com, for the second time.
We burnt a lot of cash in 2019. We generated over $4 million in operating cash in 2020, aided by the pandemic-fueled ecommerce boom.
Performance was slipping again.
I couldn’t drive that company forward by sheer willpower, discipline, and caffeine anymore. It just wasn’t worth it.
I was miserable.
I wanted to be happy and successful, not trade one for the other.
The Happy Leader Project
So I started a project. For one year, while growing my companies, I’d spend one month each on 12 different scientifically backed practices to increase my happiness.
I spent money on experiences, took control of my schedule, wrote in a gratitude journal, looked for the positive, meditated, and spent entire days trying to stay in the present moment (very hard to do).
Many of those practices, such as meditation, provided temporary armor against the daily, unpredictable onslaught of potential problems.
Others, such as being kind, helped me avoid much of the negative karmic feedback loop I’d create by criticizing others.
After 16 months, I abandoned the project.
I wasn’t any happier day-to-day.
I didn’t yet fully understand the single most powerful tool we have to permanently increase our happiness.
Gratitude in motion
Gratitude is for cowards.
I know, I practiced a lot of it.
Gratitude is saying, “Thank you for all this good stuff I have.”
Gratitude is expressing appreciation for your good fortune and the good deeds of others in your head.
The problem with gratitude is that you acknowledge something good in the past without paying it forward.
I kept a gratitude journal for months. It felt good to at least focus on the positive rather than the negative.
But I wasn’t any happier.
I started to experience what researchers call the “Happiness Paradox”: the more you chase, monitor, and try to force happiness, the less of it you experience.
Then it hit me:
The reason I was miserable was that I was focused so much on myself.
My company. My income. My wealth. My success. My misery. My gratitude.
The solution hit me: generosity.
Generosity is gratitude in motion.
You don’t just mentally acknowledge your good fortune; you pay it forward.
The 5-word secret to happiness
Some people will hate me for saying this….
There’s so much research, so many books, so many articles, so many social media videos giving all the protocols, practices, emotional tools, and routines you need to be happy, yet the solution is simple.
Give without expectation of return.
When we give, even in small ways, we are forced to focus less on ourselves and more on others. Our problems become lighter, less important.
One of my favorite small ways to give is when I’m alone in a public bathroom and pick up a piece of trash. Nobody will ever know it was me. I receive no acknowledgment, yet I make someone’s life—the janitor or low-paid employee of that business—a little better.
We can give with our words, time, energy, attention, and money.
Give without expecting anything in return, in small ways and big, and I guarantee your problems will become smaller, your load lighter, and your smile brighter. (Too cheesy? Whatever, I’m living that dad life now; I’ve earned it.)
—Matt