--:-- Host: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we are joined by Eric North, a lifelong entrepreneur turned happiness coach. Happiness is something we all want in our lives, but yet we oftentimes do not prioritize or pursue. This is an incredible conversation. You're going to get a ton out of this, particularly if you're an ambitious and driven person. Lots of tidbits, lots of ideas, lots of tactics to build moments of happiness into your life that can culminate in ultimately a happier life in general.
--:-- Host: If you enjoy this show, guys, make sure you subscribe, whether you're listening to the audio podcast or watching on YouTube and know that I love you for watching this show. Let's get on to Eric North.
--:-- Guest: My mindset is very, very—I used to be, I'm a very—I'm a businessman. So I'm a very entrepreneur. And I had spent so many years building my businesses that I stopped having fun and being creative. And I just was like, "Oh, what's going on?" So I started doing all this stuff to kind of change my direction. And I want to make money with my mouth and my words. That's where I'm at.
--:-- Guest: So I'm getting ready to publish a book with it. I'm working on negotiations. It's really rough, but the major publisher. And what I really am trying to do—my goal is—Thomas did the public—my publicist, his vision is I will be like a household name. Someone that people will say, "Hey man, we're having a really bad day. Let's click into the Happiness Warrior." So he has to say, "Okay, yeah, that's my dream. That's what I could really do. And that's what I know I can do." Yeah, that's where we're going with it.
--:-- Guest: Anywhere you want to go with me, ask me any questions. I don't care. I'm very open. I don't have any—you can't trip me up because I'm an open book. Okay.
--:-- Host: Yeah, no, I love it. And I'll be honest with you, my journey is very similar. I'm actually in a weird moment where I just exited from a business that I started in 2020, seven days before COVID hit upstate New York. Got rocked by that. Invested all this money and started this business and put all this work in. Launch day, seven days later, everything gets shut down. Blah, blah, blah. Well, I sold it two years later, or we were acquired, worked there, and then negotiated an early exit in November of 2023.
--:-- Host: And I've kind of been of two minds. I've had one foot in the—I love being an operator. I love running businesses. I feel like I have the disposition for it. I've been executive multiple times, both as CEO, CMO, and then as a founder. And I love that side. And I also have this other equally powerful and equally driven side, very similar to you, where I love helping. I love educating. I love sharing. I love creating. And this podcast has been a through line for my career.
--:-- Guest: Oh, it's amazing. And you do such a professional—you're in charge. I can tell that this is your thing. So that's great. I feel the same way. I tell you, I had a very similar experience. I had a partnership with one of my businesses, which grew—2019 was a boom year for me. So 2019 and then the first quarter of 2020, we opened up a really expensive extra student new studio. And I let one of my other partners go crazy with the budget for everything. And all of a sudden we were shut down and I had health insurance to pay for for everybody. I had all kinds of a lot to do. And then I had to get rid of that partner.
--:-- Guest: I had a huge financial—I look at money as if you're the right thing, you'll make money. I'm never—I don't want to lose money ever. But if I have to part with it to get away from something, it's going to be like a divorce maybe. So you don't look at that. We should be really careful who you go into business with. Right. And that's really the lesson that I learned. And it's more about—I don't really need anyone myself. Okay. So maybe that's how you are too.
--:-- Host: Yeah. You know, I struggle with that as well because it's been weird, man. This has been like an existential time for me because I love working with teams at the same time.
--:-- Guest: I do too. I love creating teams.
--:-- Host: Yeah. I found that there are certain—there are very particular types of people that I work really well with. And there are a larger number of personality types that I do not work well with. So I've had to learn that lesson the hard way a couple of times.
--:-- Host: So it's just business and life is so interesting, man. And I think you said it like it's driving towards what your calling is. And really, that's where I want to start the show here. My first question is really around—in researching you, I think you posted this particular thing on Instagram. Of all the things that I want to get into, this was the first one that popped out at me. This idea that a happier life is an easier life. And I have not necessarily found that to be the case. And I don't mean easy in a negative way. I just mean oftentimes in the pursuit of happiness, you have to do hard things. So maybe just break down this concept because I think some people may not necessarily understand.
--:-- Guest: When I write, first of all, it just flows. I have a writing time every day. It's designated by eight. If you see me doing anything else at 8:30, 8 o'clock in the morning, then there's something really crazy going on. And I don't even know what I'm really going to write about that day. I'm going to write a column. I'm going to write two columns a week that are published all over the web. But I start thinking about themes and trends that I see with people and how they're talking about themselves and how they're feeling about themselves and how angry everyone is all the time and how quick they are to judge and run away.
--:-- Guest: And I think about my past life and how I was raised. It was a sort of dysfunctional home. Great parents, but they didn't really do a great job. Their example was okay. But they were loving, good parents. And I just want to teach. So when I started this, I want to help people. So I started this kind of mindset about talking about how important it is to have a cheerful attitude. A cheerful attitude can really show a really strong sense of power and strength because over everything that's going on, there's a cheerful attitude. And there's usually a twinkle in that person's eye. You know those people you're probably thinking about.
--:-- Guest: With me, it was my aunts. I had three aunts that were super intelligent and really good people. All their lives were devoted to doing good. And there was always a twinkle in my aunt's eye, even though she was going through a really hard time or she was facing a lot of stuff that came at her at once. And she just got through life. Everyone—she was the original Happiness Warrior. So everywhere she went, people just flocked to her and came to her and shared their life. And she listened to them and she gave them love everywhere. Every person that came to her, she gave part of her love. And I just thought, if they're figuring out—she's not with us now, but I think that's all the other good things she did. I can go into that forever. But that was the basic lesson that I learned from her.
--:-- Guest: And also, I was kind of a weird kid. Okay. So I thought differently than other kids. I saw problems faster and different solutions than anyone else ever thought of. And it kept me kind of apart. I was part of everything in the way I wasn't. And sometimes I felt very disconnected. I felt like I was on a different track or different age group. And it was my Happiness Warrior aunt that always made me feel like I was incredible, throughout my entire life. Every success and victory I had, everything that was heartache, she was always there. But she always was like a warrior, so she kept things going. And it kept me going and it kept me feeling a sense of self-esteem.
--:-- Guest: So I'm writing these things. It's hard to be happy every day sometimes. So let me stop asking other questions. I'm going to ramble on. But that's really my heart for people because I feel for them.
--:-- Host: Yeah. I think what I found in my own life, and I'm interested in your take on this being that you've studied happiness so much, is I feel people get hung up on happiness as a goal. And to me, that is not the appropriate way to think about happiness. It's so much more about the pursuit. For a long time, I believed that cliche phrase "life is about the journey" was complete bullshit. I was like, "That's nonsense." I think part of it was that I grew up poor in a tiny little town. And I was like, "Yeah, the journey. Okay, try being poor as shit for a while. Living on garage sale finds, going to school with holy sweatpants because it was the only pair of pants that you had. Tell me it's about the journey, right?"
--:-- Host: But as I fought and scrapped and made my way out and went to college and all these different things, I started to really understand that this pursuit of a destination, or focusing on the destination, did not bring any happiness. All the success I've achieved, it was never when I was there. It really was the grinding time of working through problems, sweating with people, being in the foxhole—whether it's on a sports team or in business or in a community group—that I actually found happiness. So why do you think so many people get hung up on the destination and never take the time to enjoy the moment when they're actually in it, in that grind time?
--:-- Guest: Well, that's the thing. When we're in the moment and I'm having a really good time, I generally forget to take pictures. Okay. So if I'm in a special moment with a lot of special people, I'm having such a good time, I'm so involved and I'm so into what I'm doing in the present. And that's where you find your happiness. Happiness comes from within. You have to have a sense of "I'm capable. I give myself permission. I can give myself permission to be happy. I deserve to be happy." Those are all things anyone can say. Those are all things anyone can deserve to say and should be able to say in their lives. "I deserve to be happy. I give myself permission to be happy. And I am happy." Those are so important.
--:-- Guest: And it starts, like you just said. It's not that the destination is a trip to Paris for three days. It's gone like that. Is that going to make you happy? You're going to tell a lot of people and show off. But maybe some people get happy showing off with conquest. I think we live in such a competitive world. "My happiness is better than your happiness," that kind of thing. And sometimes that comes down to showing off. I tend to think that we're much better when we're quiet about our accomplishments and we show our strength through our actions, behaviors, and values. That's where we find the happiness—the grind. It is the grind because the satisfaction of figuring out a problem is so amazing.
--:-- Host: So if we agree that being present in the moment and living through the experience as it's happening can yield a lot more happiness than focusing on the destination, how can people be more present in the moment? How can they actually take that deep breath, look around for a second, and go, "Wow, this might be hard, but geez, I'm having a lot of fun while I'm here"?
--:-- Guest: Okay. Well, I am the Happiness Warrior, but I've had a lot of unhappy times in my life. And I think that's how I got here in some ways too. So I went through a really bad period of my life where—it's usually another person involved that causes us trouble. And I got out of that relationship and everything was just blown up. I had to start over again. And that was daunting. I was in my late 30s and I was like, "Oh, this is kind of embarrassing. I'm starting over again. I screwed up my career. It was going really well. And now all I have left is my body and my mind, and I need to work on that." And I thought, "I can do anything as long as I start taking care of myself."
--:-- Guest: So I started taking better care of myself. I started working out really hard. And then I started looking for jobs that challenged me, that I wanted to work in. And then I started working for myself. And that was another way to feel confident in myself and get out of that period where I forget about that, forget and forgive myself for the past. And that was really important too.
--:-- Host: Do you think you have to go through conflict in order to be happy?
--:-- Guest: Yes. Yes. I think we can't hide from conflict. I think the best thing in life is to face conflict head on, make sure you have a plan for it and have a measured reaction, and not to do it haphazardly. I think everybody—horrible things happen to me sometimes. A dog of mine will die or something will happen. I had a major accident a couple of years ago and I had to get my legs rebuilt. And I only felt bad one time. I felt a little bit when I couldn't really walk. I was sliding into some dark space. And I closed my eyes, I opened them up, and I looked around the room and I started saying, "Hey, there's my sofa. There's my TV. There's my dog." And then I felt better.
--:-- Guest: I heard that was something that helps people deal with anxiety. And at that moment, that's all it took to save me from that moment on. I went up. Every day I got better, and every day I got stronger, and every day I was able to move better. And it was just that dark period. It was like a wake-up call. It was very fast. It was like an explosion in my brain that was like, "Don't go this way. Don't go this direction. Let's stop right now."
--:-- Host: Is this why gratitude is such an important component to happiness?
--:-- Guest: Gratitude is everything. I always say that all the time. If we're not grateful, then we're not living our lives fully. We're not experiencing happiness fully. We're just taking things for granted. How does that go for most people to take things for granted? Not very well. So these things are just—I'm not a scientist of happiness, but it's observations and feelings in life that I want to share. How I can turn a life that has had a lot of adversity and that will have more adversity—I'll have further adversity—and keep happy all the time. I'm always happy. I'm always in a good mood. I wake up every day with an affirmation saying, "Hey, Eric, today's going to be a great day." And I say that aloud. It's kind of crazy, right? "Good morning, Eric. It's going to be a great day." Sometimes verbalizing is the best way to get out of our own heads.
--:-- Host: Have you ever read *The Untethered Soul* by Michael Singer?
--:-- Guest: I've seen the book, but I have not read it. I like the word "untethered," though.
--:-- Host: Yeah. Incredible. Very quick read. You can read it in a weekend, no problem. What he talks about in that book—and one of the reasons it's one of the core books that I've probably recommended dozens of times on this show, and people listening are probably sick of hearing me recommend it—is because he breaks down in the most tangible way that I've experienced this idea that we're not our mind and we're not our body. The voices and feelings that we experience from these things are not actually who we are. We're this separate thing. You can call it the soul, you can call it whatever you want. But all the voice in our head is there strictly to keep us alive in the next moment. The feelings and emotions and pain that we feel in our body are just data points meant to keep us alive for the next moment. And if we can untether our soul from the voices and the feelings and the emotions, then we can start to experience who we really are. And I believe, as you do, that gratitude is an incredibly important part of de-tethering ourselves from these voices because it pushes back against all the negativity.
--:-- Host: So my next question is, being that gratitude is so important to happiness, how can someone who's listening to this, who wants to build more happiness into their life and maybe isn't being intentional about it, how can they start to experience more gratitude or practice more gratitude in their life?
--:-- Guest: Well, here's what I do. And I have routines. I have routines for everything. I have spiritual routines that I do. My biggest one is—I'm not so much praying—but before I go to sleep at night, I'm sitting here, I'm doing some deep breaths on the side of my bed. And then I say, "I did my best today. I'll do better tomorrow." And that is my mantra every single night. That's what I say before I go to rest. I want to rest myself, sleep peacefully. And I have to check myself and make sure—when I say that statement, if there's anything that I regret, I'll say that aloud too. And I'll say, "This is something I don't need to do ever again," or "This is something I can handle differently." And I think about that, and then the next day is awesome.
--:-- Guest: Next day I wake up and I'm in a great mood, and I have a good day every day. Even if something hits me hard, something better shows up in the next minute. That happens a lot too.
--:-- Host: Serendipity. I firmly believe in serendipity, particularly how Steven Pressfield talks about serendipity in *The War of Art*—when he talks about the muse and the resistance and what comes out of feeding the muse. Again, if you guys at home haven't read *The War of Art*, regardless of—take the art part out of it because you can insert whatever it is that you do in your life—that book is incredible.
--:-- Guest: Very good book. I've read that.
--:-- Host: Yeah, it's tremendous. Pressfield's wonderful. So I think one of the things that you talked about was permission to be happy. I think the idea of giving ourselves permission to do things is incredibly powerful. When we're talking about happiness in particular, there are a lot of people who I run into in my work—advising startups and executive coaching. Most of the time when people reach out to me, they're either incredibly overwhelmed or they're stuck on something. And oftentimes when they're stuck, they find themselves in a place where they start doubting themselves. Incredibly talented, brilliant people—99 out of 100 times, exponentially more brilliant than I will ever be in my entire life—yet they find themselves in these places where they're doubting themselves. And I'm like, "You can do things that other people can't even imagine, yet you're questioning your ability." And it's mostly because of what you said: they're not giving themselves permission.
--:-- Host: So how would you recommend to someone who does find themselves in a moment of darkness, despair, negativity, or just a brief moment of self-doubt? How would you recommend that they give themselves that permission to turn that corner and start to come back to the light?
--:-- Guest: There are two easy things. Two easy little tricks. First one: just close your eyes. You don't have to close your eyes. You can do anything you want. Think of three things that make you happy right away. The first three things that make you happy, and you just reflect on that. That'll usually raise happiness. Maybe smile from that too, because even a fake smile is actually a real smile, and it raises our endorphins and makes us feel happier.
--:-- Guest: And the second thing I think is really important is to be able to write down your accomplishments in life. Because sometimes we forget all the great things that we've done. We forget all the people that we've helped. We forget about all the value that—I think a lot of people forget about all the value they've created in their lives. And they take one little step back, or they'll look at somebody else that's doing better than they are and just kind of take a step backwards. We're missing out on a lot of talent because people are afraid to move forward. They're afraid of failure. They're afraid of success. Success is a big one. Success is really kind of hard to take. It's not easy.
--:-- Host: I agree with you. I'm interested in your take on this particular concept. I talk a lot on solo episodes about a fear of status. I actually do not believe failure is real. Failure to me is just a label. It doesn't exist. However, what I think people are actually saying when they have a sense of a fear of failure or a fear of success—because I think these both play into the same thing—is that they actually have a fear of status. They're very worried about their status changing and the consequences that come if you improve your status, as well as the consequences that come if your status falls in a particular community or group. There's so much negativity attached to a change in status.
--:-- Host: To me, a big part of being able to weather a status change in your life is an intrinsic motivation or happiness that you have regardless of where you are in a social structure. So how do we cultivate that so that it's not just something we can call on when we need it, but we're literally living in a sense of happiness every moment of every day as much as possible?
--:-- Guest: I think it's that removal of cutting off that need for external validation, first of all. If we need external validation for something that we do, then we're not on the right track anyway. We're not doing anything for us. We're doing it for the sake of others. And I think we just place into what you're saying: most people get stuck in a trap where they think they're living their lives under the expectations of others, under the rules of others, under the dictations of others. They're being told what to do, told how to think, told how to do everything. And they get used to that. And then it puts you in a big trap. And then you've lost every sense of who you are. There's no happiness there. There's no sense of accomplishment.
--:-- Guest: So the first thing to do is to stop that. Stop the ego right in its tracks. Change of status is a change in direction. It doesn't necessarily mean nothing's permanent. Time changes everything. So time changes everything, and we have lessons to learn. There are always messages everywhere we are at any point in the day. There are messages. Sometimes we see them. Sometimes we receive them. Sometimes they get lost in the energy of the universe, but they're always there. There's always the next step ahead. It's right in front of us.
--:-- Host: I'm reading a good book on decision making. I love reading about decision making. I'm reading a book by Annie Duke called *Thinking in Bets*. And she references a strategy—and I apologize to anyone listening or watching, if you can leave it in the comments on YouTube if you know the name of the person—she references someone else's work called the 10-10-10 Strategy for this time element, which I think is so incredibly important. And I'm so glad you brought this up. The creator of this strategy says, "Think about how this thing will impact you 10 minutes from now, 10 days from now, and then 10 years from now." And she said if it's not going to change your life 10 years from now, then 10 days from now and 10 minutes from now doesn't matter. I'm not doing the full strategy justice, but I think we put so much pressure on things as if this small change in our life is going to last forever.
--:-- Host: Oftentimes, we attach a preconceived notion that a change is going to be for the negative. Something will happen. And maybe it doesn't feel good to get fired, or miss a promotion, or not get a sale, or be rejected by a partner. But just because that thing isn't perceived publicly as a positive doesn't mean it's not a positive for you. Do you have any strategies for reframing the events that happen in our life to swing them towards what could potentially be the positive aspect of that change, versus focusing only on the external, societal negative implication of that change?
--:-- Guest: I have a rule that I won't let my thinking—I won't let my mindset go into a negative space. I won't start thinking "what ifs." I won't start because I don't think you can ever tell what's going to happen. We have no idea what's going to happen. I also believe that we don't know what anyone else is ever thinking at any time. We don't know what's inside our partner's brain, or in our husband or wife's brain. We don't know what they're really thinking. We have a general idea, but we make too many assumptions. We make too many assumptions that hold us back, keep us from moving forward, keep us from being happy, keep us from showing up for life, really. That's what it comes down to.
--:-- Guest: I use that terminology a lot. My work is very simple. I use things like "show up." "Show up" has a lot of meaning. But just simple things that we can take—one of the reasons I love what I do is because throughout my life, I was trying to find out my calling. I would listen to people and they would talk to me and start telling me how they feel about their value and where they're going in their lives. And I would always say, "I don't want to solve anyone's problems. That's not who I am. I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I'll put a little spark in them with some words." You've used some really good phrasing today of how you talk to people. It's putting that spark. I mean, you have so many great things about you. And there are those words: "Your words changed my life." And I have a lot of that.
--:-- Guest: So as I was becoming the Happiness Warrior—and the stage that I haven't even gotten to that yet—I was with my best friend down on vacation in Miami. And I was talking about being an entrepreneur and owning businesses. And I was feeling like I'm on the go all the time, but I'm not getting a chance to really express myself other than being kind of like this important guy out in public at a conference or something. And I wanted to be more authentic. And so my friend said, "You are a way better version—I'm not going to say someone's name—but you're a way better version of—you know how to make people feel good. You know how to bring the best out in people. You're a motivation expert. And you do it in a way that people don't feel threatened, and they don't feel like someone pointing a finger at them. You empower them instead. And you can forget about me and forget what I've told you, but still those words will stay in your head."
--:-- Guest: To me, it's just about helping others have a better journey. Have a better time in life.
--:-- Host: So how did you become the Happiness Warrior?
--:-- Host: Well, I'll make it really short. When I was 18, I kind of thought I had potential to be a model, and I was like, well, I'd be a model in New York City. I was too afraid to ever have any voice that ever. But in my 40s, I did some men's physique competitions, NPC men's physique competitions. I got kind of into that, the self-discipline and all that stuff. And then as I did that, I started getting a lot of invitations to do photo shoots. And then I kind of liked that kind of life for a little while because I'd travel somewhere and take some shoots.
--:-- Host: And then I said, okay, I want to take this to a professional level. I want to get an agent in New York City. There's an agent that I had to visualize that does all the body models, all the guys that were fit. A lot of the athletes would come to this agency and sign there. And I see them getting signed all the time online. So I said, okay, no one's ever done this before. Let me go to LA and do a photo shoot and get discovered. No one's ever done that before. No one's ever gone to LA and go, oh, I want to get—yes, they have. Thousands of people come every day to LA to get discovered and do photo shoots and then they get jobs as waiters for a while.
--:-- Host: They have to be patient, and I wasn't really very patient. I'm in my late 40s, I don't have a lot of time. And I took a really good photo shoot with a new photographer that never worked before. And on Monday morning, I'm on the plane getting ready to take off, and the phone rings. It's the agent in New York that I thought I had visualized as signing me, saying, "Hey, how fast do you get to New York?" So I get to New York a couple weeks later, sign as a model. And that was another learning experience and humbling experience, pounding the pavement literally, going to auditions and being up against a lot of really incredible people.
--:-- Host: My whole mantra with New York is always, the best of the best comes to New York. I need to make sure I'm my best, but I need to be happy. So I always had this kind of happy expression. People always tend to like me when I came into the office to get lined up. And my agent, I had another agent that came along and she was really incredible. But all these things were happening and I was kind of tired. I was in New York, living in DC, got a little hectic, so I stopped modeling. I still wanted to do it, I still wanted to be really good at it, but I had to stop for a while and concentrate on my business.
--:-- Host: Then one day she called me up and she said, "I know you don't want to hear from me"—and that's not true—but she said, "I know you don't hear from me, but I'm determined that you're going to be on television. I want you to go in a whole new direction with your career." And then COVID hit. So then we stopped. New York shut down. Everybody shut down. She moved to Hawaii. I was very happy for her. She fell in love and moved to Hawaii. And one of the last things she said to me was, "Here's a publicist. Call him. And he's going to help you." So I said, what the heck is a publicist? I have no idea what a publicist even really does at that point.
--:-- Host: So I called my publicist. I had about a one-hour conversation with him. It was a beautiful, perfect October day. The sun was perfect. The sky was blue. And he said, "I'm getting chills. I'm going to call you the Happiness Warrior. And that's going to be my next big thing I'm going to create. I'm going to create the Happiness Warrior. We're going to write books and be on TV and all this stuff." And that's how it kind of happened. And it's a lot of work. It's hard work. It's a lot of discipline every week. I'm giving myself permission to write a column every week. It's big life-changing steps for a man in his late 50s.
--:-- Host: It also takes a lot of faith. The faith that I am the Happiness Warrior—who gave me permission other than myself? That's the only permission that I need. So that's why I'm the Happiness Warrior. And it's just unapologetic. I'm proud of it.
--:-- Guest: Yeah, I think it's phenomenal. I think the world is in a moment, our society is in a moment, where anyone who is working to spread happiness and positivity and connectivity throughout our culture is someone who needs to be shared. Their story needs to be shared, their voice needs to be shared, because every day if you turn on the TV, turn on social media, look in your email, all you see is negativity. Do you think that this is a particular moment in time in which you are needed? And have you seen that in your work? Have you seen the response to your work kind of play that out?
--:-- Guest: I have been—I'm not surprised—but I have so many people who believe in me, who want to help me. They read my stuff. They comment on what I'm doing. They follow me and they look at what I'm doing as something really important in their lives too. And they tell me, "Oh, I read your column today" or "I saw your video and your video is 15 seconds but it changed my whole day because you're up there helping someone, helping all of us." And I can see it growing. I don't want to be the only Happiness Warrior. I'd like to have a lot of Happiness Warriors. I'd like to have kids become Happiness Warriors because ultimately it's really our young people that need so much right now. Us older folks, we've survived a lot of things and we've been through a lot. But I think it's the kids that I want them to have a better future—a safer, emotionally safer, happier, self-confident future. All kids. I don't want to leave anyone else.
--:-- Guest: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that I'm always of two opinions on kids. I have two young kids right now and I'm trying to raise them as best I can. I'm divorced but I co-parent pretty well with my ex-wife, so that works out pretty well. But it's tough. I think there were a lot of things in my own childhood that were not necessarily positives in the way certain things were handled. But at the same time, I feel like we've gone—the pendulum has swung a little too far towards safety. I think we have to find a good balance. Kids shouldn't run wild. Intense bullying and things like that definitely need to be taught out and trained out of kids, along with understanding and communication. But we've also, in an effort to curb bullying, made our youth programs and schools and education so helicopter-y that the kids don't even know how to react to mild situations and stand on their own. They don't need a helicopter parent. They don't need to be involved in what they're learning. Kids are going to learn what they're going to learn.
--:-- Host: Right. They're intelligent. Most of them figure things out on their own. They know more than we think they do most of the time. I don't have any kids, but I've always had a very sort of mentor approach to a lot of young people. And I have a lot of young employees that are really important to me because they work with me for years. They stick around because I try to give everyone that works for me a really great opportunity to be successful. Happiness comes from so many things—it's just a collage of things. One of my responsibilities every day is to hold myself up for my employees and to be a good example. To set a good example and to communicate effectively. And to give them some hope in life, too. Because I came from a lot of things in my life that were very difficult. I had to go along with a lot of secondhand clothes and things like that at some points in my life. I know what it's like to have very little money for lunch when you're working all day.
--:-- Host: Now my situation has changed. It's really important for me that I don't want anyone else to have to live that way. But I do think you need to make your own way. And I do think this whole safety thing—I want a safe environment without any predators, but to have a safe environment, they need to fight things out themselves and learn.
--:-- Guest: Yeah, good examples. Having good examples in their lives is the key. What I try to talk about with a lot of my friends when they're having kids is that what you say is important, but understand that it's what you do that's going to shape your kids. You can say "respect women," but if you treat their mom like shit, that's what they're going to pick up on. It's the body language. It's the way that you respond to them. If they make a simple mistake and you're overly sharp because you're tense because you can't leave work at work, that's going to impact them. These little things that we don't think about.
--:-- Guest: A big part of why I do this show is that I think personal development and personal growth is the key to not just happiness, but satisfaction, purpose, meaning in our lives. I think it's incredibly important. Additionally, I like to bring on people like yourself who can help give a new perspective on independent thinking. We've outsourced our thinking to talking heads. I know I do a podcast, so maybe it seems a little disingenuous, but I try not to tell people how to live. I just try to highlight you guys, the guests, because we need to be independent thinkers. I don't think you can be happy if you're allowing someone else to dictate what you think about and how you think about things. And to your point, going all the way back to failure and status, it's okay to have an opinion, have that opinion be wrong, and change that opinion.
--:-- Host: Yeah, it's amazing. That would solve almost all of our divisions in this country. But it's just seven words.
--:-- Guest: One of my really heartfelt goals is that most of us have relationships that have been really strained in the last few years. How do we get that back again? How do we move forward? I'm not going to solve that problem, but I want to solve the problem of how we think about ourselves. If we have a better positive image of ourselves, we want to share that with our friends again. We want to share our positive things that we're doing in our lives. I think that's how we come together. Energy builds up. And you can say, "I made a mistake and I'm thinking differently now, and that's okay." We don't need to go into a big apology session—I don't like those either—but just a little acknowledgement and respect. That's really what it comes down to.
--:-- Host: I completely agree. I had an episode about three months ago that did very well—exponentially more than how the show usually does. It was all about how to have a political conversation with a friend who disagrees with you and still love each other. I had a friend on who had different political views than I do. We've had so many conversations about stuff, and I knew we would still be friends after. But what I wanted to show everyone is that we can have different takes. We can see things from different angles. When we're approaching any conversation from a place of being a good actor, not trying to impose my will or be right, but to ultimately just have a conversation and express views, most of the time we're going for the same goal, just approaching it from different angles.
--:-- Host: If we could come at things in our life from the standpoint of "I believe this person has best interests in mind, they're just approaching it from a different angle," then you can find all these common places, even if ultimately your end viewpoint is different. There's so many commonalities, and we've lost that. I pick a side on a topic and then I'm given 17 other topics that I have to have this view on because I've taken this view on this one thing, and I can't change because I said I was this thing now. That's just not how any of us work. I feel like it creates so much angst and anxiety and dissension inside organizations, community groups, and families. Really, we're all pretty good people trying our best. When we actually look at the cross cuts, there's so much goodness and love and gratitude. It's this ability to think independently that allows us to see through the nonsense to get to the really good stuff in the middle, which is where all the happiness is.
--:-- Host: Well, there you go. I agree 100%. That's something I would have said in almost the same words. Last summer, I reconnected with an old friend and started getting together with five or six guys that I've known since I was in my 20s or college. We started walking together every Sunday morning at 8 a.m. It's early. If someone else wants to come along, great, but most people don't make the 8 a.m. So the five of us usually go, walk six or seven miles. Sometimes it's in the parks. It's kind of strenuous. We're all entrepreneurs. We all have our businesses. We're all established. We've all been around town for a long time. There's no competition. We're all successful. We're all different nationalities too. We have different political views. We don't talk politics, but we talk about the issues that we have in our lives and our businesses and how dishwashers are $24 an hour now.
--:-- Host: Our political differences may be there, but the overall goal, the end point, we're all the same. If I'm slipping down that hill and going down the side of a cliff, one of those guys is going to push me up. I know that we're all there for each other. We tell each other every week, "Hey, love you guys." And we say, if we don't say that, we're going to really be sad that we don't say that to each other. If we can do that, everyone else can do that too. A lot of times the best thing to do—and this is me too, because I think it's a body-mind connection—go for a walk. Go for a walk with a friend. I do a lot of videos about walking with friends. I think walking with a friend is one of the most healthy things we can do. If you want to solve a problem, go for a walk with a friend. More interesting things happen in my life on walks with friends, hikes with friends.
--:-- Guest: I completely agree. I'll tell you, and we can leave it here, one of the best things I think about in our society today, particularly for men—this is particularly true for men. When I was growing up in my teens—I'm 43, so this is 30 years ago—hugging a dude and telling him that you love him, you just, you know, you slap guys up. But now when I see someone, big bear hug, "Love you, man. Great to see you." That part of our society, I'm so happy about. I think we should celebrate the fact that it is much more socially acceptable to express joy, compassion, love for other people openly, especially for men. Women have traditionally been better at this, but men in particular have really taken that on. The culture has shifted to where men can be much more open with each other in terms of the feeling of connection and how they express that. I think that's a wonderful thing for our society and something that we need to cultivate.
--:-- Host: I'm really big on that principle as well. I think that men need to reconnect with each other and have friendships. Those friendships grow and they spread. And then they become, "Hey, I know you guys, we trust you, this guy." And then it becomes something bigger than ourselves. That's what it's all about. Everything that we do in life is really bigger than us. Our actions are bigger than us. Everything is about the community of people that we all share this planet with. And it's not getting any less crowded, so we better figure it out.
--:-- Guest: That's for sure. Eric, it's been a great pleasure speaking with you, man. This has been wonderful. I love the work you're doing. I love the message you're sharing. If someone's listening to this, where can they get more from you? Where's the best place for them to go to learn more about you?
--:-- Host: I love Instagram, the Happiness Warrior official. Same thing on TikTok, which I'm starting to do a lot of videos on. My Facebook is also the Happiness Warrior. And then I have a website, thwthwarrior.com, where I just started selling merchandise—baseball caps, hoodies, and t-shirts. I'm getting out there.
--:-- Guest: Awesome. I love it. Guys, I'll have links to all that in the show notes, or you can just look up Eric directly. If you're listening wherever you're listening to this, or if you're watching on YouTube, just go in the description and you'll find links to all of Eric's social properties. Eric, it's been such a pleasure, man. I appreciate you.
--:-- Host: I'm so grateful, Ryan. It was so awesome. I could talk to you for hours. So we're great. Thank you so much.
--:-- Guest: Thank you. We appreciate it. Let's go.
--:-- [End of interview. Promotional content follows.]
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