The Recipe for a Happy Life with Jonathan Shapiro

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with my friend Jonathan Shapiro. Jonathan is a CEO coach. He is a former three- time CEO, who also has, in addition to his MBA, Master's degree in applied positive psychology. Jonathan, welcome to the Daily Bolster.

Jonathon Shapiro: Great to be here, Matt.

Matt Blumberg: So that is my question for today. What is applied positive psychology? And my understanding from having spoken to you a lot about this over the years is that you have a recipe for happiness in life, which quite frankly everyone should have. So talk to me.

Jonathon Shapiro: All right, so applied positive psychology. Let's deal with the positive psychology part first. That is the empirical study of what leads to a life of wellbeing. And sort of the acknowledged founder of the field, Marty Seligman, back about 25 years, maybe even 30 years ago, asked a simple question. Psychologists mostly were studying illness and people that weren't well, and he asked the question, " Well, what if we studied the people who were crushing it and what might we learn from them?" So that is the field of positive psychology, and applied positive psychology is simply taking what those researchers learn and making it prescriptive. How do we apply those learnings to life so that we can all live a life of a little more wellbeing?

Matt Blumberg: I love it. It kind of makes me want to go get that master's, but since I don't do that today, distill down your learnings for us.

Jonathon Shapiro: All right, so when it comes to a life of wellbeing and happiness, here's what I think the recipe is, and I'll start with, we've all heard the expression, money doesn't buy happiness. I used to say that to my wife frequently, and her response was, " You're a lot happier with a little money than before you had any," which was accurate. So my new response is, money can buy happiness, but you got to shop in the right stores. And here are the three stores you need to invest in or you need to shop in. The first is, and it's the most important, your relationships. Simply spend your financial resources and your time with the people you like and love and that like and love you back and have experiences. That is the number one ingredient to a life of wellbeing. If you've done your shopping at the relationship store and you've got that covered, the next is security, and there's roughly three flavors of security. You can think of it as the three spices in this recipe. There's financial security, and that simply is you're going to have a long life. You should plan for it and act accordingly. So rather than maybe Starbucks every day, maybe you make the coffee at home and put a little every week into your savings, but just plan for it financially. The next is physical security. You really need to take care of yourself because we're all headed in the wrong direction. And so the more you do now to take care of your physical plan, the better off you're going to be in the future. And then the last is spiritual security. So this is, we all have a value system. I don't know what the right one is for you, but I do know that you should live in accordance with your values because when you don't, you get up in the morning and you look yourself in the mirror, you know what you've done and whether you're proud of it or not. So live in accordance with your stated values that gives you emotional and spiritual security.

Matt Blumberg: All right, so we've shopped in the relationship store. We've shopped in the security store, which is a department store, and we've hit all three departments.

Jonathon Shapiro: Correct.

Matt Blumberg: What's our third store?

Jonathon Shapiro: All right, if you've got those two taken care of, you're well on your way to living a life of wellbeing. The last piece is purpose. And if you can add purpose to your life with the first two, you're on the path to real joy. And here's what that is. Purpose is the intersection of passion, something you love to do and service. Something you're doing in service of something bigger than yourself. So my favorite example is my Uncle Buddy. My Uncle Bud, Florida power and light engineer, loves to sail. Later in life after his kids have graduated college, he gets together with four friends and they buy a sailboat. One of the hurricanes down in Miami knocked out their sailboat and they could not afford a new one. So my uncle Bud volunteered to teach sailing to handicapped kids in the Shake a Leg program down in Coconut Grove. For a decade my uncle who did that three times a week, had a smile on his face. He had great relationships. He was financially secure, not wealthy by any stretch, but financially secure and he had purpose. He taught sailing, which he loved, to these handicapped kids. And man, that was just magical. So if you can get your relationships lined up, you take care of your security and you can add purpose to your life, something you're passionate about in service of something bigger than yourself, that's going to lead to a real life of wellbeing and happiness.

Matt Blumberg: There's an expression lots of people throw around, which is words to live by. Literally, Jonathan, words to Live by.

Jonathon Shapiro: Thank you, sir.

Matt Blumberg: Thank you much for being here.

Jonathon Shapiro: Pleasure.