Jessica Weiss: Happy is the New Bold Strategy

About This Episode

In this episode, Jessica Weiss, positive psychology expert, speaker, and author of Happiness Works: The Science of Thriving at Work, explores why real happiness at work is not a perk but a system you can design. From her first TEDx talk to reshaping Fortune 500 cultures, Jessica shares how bold leadership is rooted in authenticity, trust, and psychological safety. We unpack the five pillars of durable happiness, challenge common myths about happiness, and offer simple, evidence-based practices you can use immediately to build energy, connection, and meaningful momentum in life and at work.

About Jessica Weiss

With a background in positive psychology and over 15 years of experience in corporate leadership, Jessica Weiss brings a unique blend of scientific research and practical business acumen to her work. She has helped Fortune 500 companies, tech startups, and everything in between to cultivate thriving workplace cultures that drive success.

Witnessing firsthand the toll of stress and burnout on both individuals and organizations, she became passionate about finding a better way to achieve success without sacrificing well-being. This led her to pursue advanced studies in positive psychology and develop her groundbreaking “Happiness, Works.” methodology. Today, Jessica is a sought-after speaker, bestselling author, and trusted advisor to leaders who understand that happy employees are the key to a flourishing business.

Additional Resources

Website: jessicaweiss.com
LinkedIn: @JessicaWeiss
Instagram: @thejessicaweiss 

Transcript

Meet Jessica Weiss

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast. My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host. If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world. This podcast is all about those kinds of stories. Every week we'll hear from someone who has taken the leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey. In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen. Whether they faced challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals. These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey. I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be free. Tune in and get ready to be inspired. Welcome to the Bold Lounge. Today we have Jessica Weiss. With a background in positive psychology and over 15 years of experience in corporate leadership, Jessica Weiss brings a unique blend of scientific research and practical business acumen to her work. She has helped Fortune 500 companies, tech startups, and everything in between to cultivate thriving workplace cultures that drive success. Witnessing firsthand the toll of stress and burnout on both individuals and organizations, she became passionate about finding a way to achieve success without sacrificing well-being. This led her to pursue advanced studies in positive psychology and develop her groundbreaking happiness works methodology. Today, Jessica is a sought-after speaker, best-selling author, and trusted advisor to leaders who understand that happy employees are a key to flourishing business. Her new book, Happiness Works, The Science of Thriving at Work, came out in November. Welcome to the Bold Lounge, Jessica. So great to have you. Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to hear about your definition of bold. We were in the green room talking and catching up, but we've never really said what is your definition. So I'm curious, what does that word bold mean to you in your life?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

So for me, bold, I think really would capture this idea of showing up as your genuine self. So much of the work that I do around helping people find more happiness at work really starts with being able to be vulnerable, being able to trust people, being able to be trusted. And as part of all of that is really to show up as your real self, warts and all, and understanding how that will make you a bold leader, a bold friend, a bold human being. But it's just this idea of showing up completely as ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah. And it's definitely bold to do that. And it's not easy. You know, at least it doesn't feel as easy for me all the time. I think I'm very straightforward, like straight shooter. But when you have to say, hey, like this didn't work like I wanted, or I was feeling this way, you know, sometimes we worry about being judged, you know, a lot of the times, I think, or compared, or those types of things, or people thinking less of us because, you know, we we're human. Exactly. So a lot of times in our lives we're working to be authentic or be aligned with who we genuinely are. Do you have a moment in time that stands out for you where you were really bold and you know you did it anyway?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

So I've been speaking for a while. I do keynote speaking and I've been doing it for for quite a while. Well over a decade, if not at this point, 15 years, which I should probably not admit because I'm too young to admit. You are too young and you're totally a pro. Yeah. But I think the moment where it was really like I needed to be bold was when I did my first TEDx. Because that is one of those moments where I think you say to yourself, Oh my God, am I really the person who can be doing this? Like, who am I to be able to be doing this? So I needed to really step into, you know, that imposter syndrome that plagues each and every one of us at every moment in time when we're doing something that is pushing outside the comfort zone. I think that when I did that TEDx was really when I felt like I had stepped into a bold moment for myself.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Okay. And you've done more than one now, right? Yes. Yeah. So what was your greatest learning after that first one when you were genuinely yourself? You did the thing, you stepped out of side of your comfort zone. What did you learn about you?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

I learned that I constantly need to be stepping out of that comfort zone to find satisfaction and happiness with my work. And speaking is one of the key pillars of my work. I need to know that I am constantly growing, learning, making progress. So for me, it is critically important that I'm always pushing that boundary of that comfort zone, which is sometimes a little bit difficult because you know, you're someone like me, we're entrepreneurs. I don't necessarily have anyone pushing me other than myself. Right. But that is something that I need to continually be doing.

Path To Positive Psychology

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah, we just got to make sure we don't push ourselves too far. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, taking that breather every now and then. So have you always been interested in the topic of happiness? Like when did it start to form up as really like one of the primary things you're an expert in and talk about and teach others about?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So it's an interesting road to get there. So happiness has always been something that I've been interested in, just from a very um personal perspective, right? So just in terms of like pop culture or, you know, hearing an interview on TV or reading a book about it. I mean, literally from when I was probably a freshman in college or a sophomore in college, it was just, it was just something that was very interesting to me. And at that time, I was actually able to take a class with Dr. Martin Seligman, who is the father, grandfather, whatever we want to say, the person who is behind this entire positive psychology movement. And I took a class with him, just knowing that he was a fantastic professor, but not really understanding what I was about to encounter. So that really opened my eyes to it, it really kind of shifted my entire perspective on what it means to be happy. What is the study of psychology and sort of um, should we look at it from the angle of how do we live fuller lives, or should we look at it from the angle of how do we fix problems? And so for me, when I realized that there's a study of psychology that's about how we find more happiness, it was fascinating to me. So that was kind of how it started, just from a very personal perspective. Then I went on and I got an MBA and I, you know, I did exactly what people do when they get an MBA and I became a management consultant. And um, the work that I was doing was around organizational design. So basically like culture work. So we would go in, we would go into like big Fortune 500 companies, Coca-Cola's, Pepsi's, Citibanks, American Express, embed in those companies, and we would do an examination of like an audit, so to speak, of like what's going on with this culture, where are the problems, where are the strengths, how do we make this company more innovative, more growing? Essentially, how do we help them make more money? Right. And then I did that through like coaching and group workshops. And what would often come up in those conversations is people would often like hone in on this idea of like when I'm doing work that I love, I'm so much happier as a human being. I'm so much happier at work. I do so much better work, I'm so much happier at home. And once I started hearing that theme constantly sort of bubble up, time and time again, out of like, not because I was asking about happiness, not because that was what we were there to do. Just it was just a point of conversation. I was like, okay, there's something here. There's something here around when people feel happiness at work and when we have happiness in life, how can we actually start to cultivate that for human beings? Right, hold on to it or nurture it.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

How do we actually do that so we can all feel that feeling that comes like once in a while? Maybe we make that feeling come along more than once in a while. Yeah. And that is how I started to do all of this happiness work and do the research and really hone in on it.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Okay. So, like, wasn't in your undergrad, but you took some courses, got more interested in it. Then certainly in org design and doing the things you were doing around culture, it's going to come up, you know, engagement and retaining employees. Retention, exactly. Okay, so it kind of naturally fit and then it really stuck with you and took off.

Designing Your Dream Job

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yes. What I essentially did was, and what it's what I talk about in the book, we all have this like search for our dream job, right? We all want to find the quote unquote dream job. And how many times have you heard people when they look for their jobs and they're like, oh, this is my dream job. I found it, it's my dream job. Six months later, it turned out not so much to be the dream job.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

There's a lot of other variables to it besides the description. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Exactly. So what I realized is if I want that dream job, I need to create my own dream job. And that was really what I did.

The Five-Part Happiness Framework

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah. So how do you define happiness? What's your definition of it?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

So for me, and in the book, I really define happiness as like a five-piece framework. And the way that I look at happiness is it's not really a hard and fast and it's not a black and white, but there are five pieces that we can ladder up to in order to get happiness at work. So for me, the way that I define happiness is this idea of connection, so friendship. It is this idea of progress that you feel like you are living up to your potential. It's this idea of living life with optimism. And it's really a specific brand of optimism. It's not this toxic positivity, but it's this idea that we could be strategically optimistic in our life. It's this idea around resilience and finally around trust. And I think if you somehow can find those five pieces of the framework in your life, you will start to achieve more happiness. Happiness at work and happiness in life.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Yeah, and it might be incremental, right? Absolutely. I don't think as I read your book and work through it, it's not as if you like one and done either. So it isn't like you check, check, check the box, kind of like the bold framework. Like you go back to it, you go revisit it. Like you may be strong one month, but maybe a couple months later you need to kind of revisit resilience or you know, looking into some of the things that, you know, where you get to be creative and you get to do the things that you're good at, so to speak. Exactly. What's the difference between joy and happiness?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

So people love to ask these kind of questions, and it's this idea of like, is happiness a fleeting feeling? Is joy a constant feeling? Do we just overanalyze it too much? Well, is satisfaction a sustainable feeling? For me, when I talk about happiness, and whether we decide to say happiness, whether we decide to say joy, whether we decide to say satisfaction, I think the most important thing to remember is that happiness is something that is sustainable and long-lasting. Okay. So it is not this feeling of that you wake up one day and you're in a good mood. It is how to generate a sustainable happiness practice in your life. In other words, you have a toolkit that you can go to, whether it's a good day, whether it's a bad day, whether you are emotional or not emotional, whether it's crappy weather, whatever is happening in your life. Yeah. It's this idea that there's sustainable happiness or sustainable joy or sustainable satisfaction, but it's this feeling that it's ongoing and it's not ephemeral and it's not mood-driven.

Four Myths Of Workplace Happiness

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Okay. I like that. One of the things you start off with is the, you know, four myths. And I love when a book talks about, you know, what especially when you have a definition of something, just getting people settled into what it is, what your definition of it is, and how you're going to really walk them through your framework. So can you share some of the myths or the you know, some of the myths that you hear a lot that people are surprised that's a myth or or not? But I love how you started off with those.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

The first one that I said to you was this idea that we look for our dream jobs rather than we create our dream jobs. For me, that's the first one that I would start to say. Okay. And then in terms of some other myths, the ones that I mention in the book. Okay, give me a sec.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

No, that's cool. No, I think one of them was, you know, more money will make me happier. And I did, I've heard that a lot, you know, like, oh, I just want the next promotion. I want the next title because it's more money. And it's like, I always say, and this is a line from a song, I think it's a Neil Young song, is the money you make worth the price that you pay? Because sometimes you make a lot of money, but it makes you miserable.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Well, you know, we all think that it's this idea that you're chasing the money, the title, the promotion. A lot of the times, yeah. Right? Effectively, what that does for you is it just puts you on a treadmill of chasing the next goal. And what I was talking about when I was talking about sustainable long-term happiness is it goes way beyond the money. I mean, we've looked I'm not going to be cavalier and say that money is not an important factor.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Oh, it's important. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Of course it is.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

But it isn't going to make you happy. There was a statement, I'm reading a book now, and it said you don't need wealth to be happy, but you have to be happy to have wealth. And it could be just wealth of like loving your life, being healthy, like those types of things. In addition, you know, monetarily. So I think it was just an interesting thing of like not putting all your eggs in one basket there.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah. The second one was happiness is a choice, which I love. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that one, where people get that wrong.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah. So I, you know, this is like one of my personal pet peeves. And I feel like this is like where the hallmarkization of America has done us a little bit dirty.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

All right. Be careful. I'm a big Hallmark lover, but you know, I like it because it is predictable and always has a happy ending.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Listen, I love a good Hallmark movie, but I'm just saying it's this idea that happiness is a choice. And let me put a caveat on that. So basically, what I'm saying is happiness is not a choice, which people look at me like I have four heads when I say that. So the reason why I say happiness is not a choice is because happiness is something much more tangible than a choice. So it goes beyond this idea that you wake up in the morning and you say, Okay, I choose to be happy. Now, I am not saying that you can't do that. And I would never take away tools from people. If that works for you, that's fantastic. But what this really levels up to is this idea that happiness has to be more sustainable than simply choosing it one day over another.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

There's more to it.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Exactly. It's more than a choice, it's a toolkit. There's actual habits and strategies that you can rely on day in and day out that go beyond making happiness a choice.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah. The third one, working less will make you happier, which, you know, I don't I don't know about that. For me, I would never think that one. But why do people think if they work less, they'll be happier?

Why Friends At Work Matter

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Well, it's this idea, you know, when people have this fantasy of like, oh, I'm gonna retire or I'm gonna, I'm gonna live my life on a tropical island and I'm gonna go to the beach every day, and or maybe it's I'm going to, you know, I should say this to you, I'm gonna move to Vermont, I'm gonna live in the countryside, it's gonna be fenced. Exactly. So that idea that we all like crave this escape where we're not working at all, that's actually not the answer. And there's been a number of studies around it that if you give people too much free time, it actually undermines your happiness. Yeah. So yeah, and I feel that too. Like if I'm idle for too long, I'm miserable. This might be a topic for therapy, but when I have too much free time, it's not a good thing. But the studies actually back it up. So there's a study that says, like, if we can have like that sweet spot of free time, so somewhere around two hours to five hours a day. Now, when I say that, people are like, five hours a day of free time, but it's not five hours in one chunk, right? Yeah, so it's somewhere between two and five hours. Maybe it's an hour at lunch, an hour at dinner, an hour in the morning. See, we're now already at three hours of free time. Like you do a workout in the morning, you take time to actually connect with another human being and have a proper lunch, right? You spend time with your family for two hours during the day. But it's this idea that we do need a fixed number of free time of hours, but not an endless sea of free time.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Yeah. And the last the myth number four is happiness is genetic and there's nothing you can do about it. So people actually think that, you know, it's just the way I'm made up and that's just the way it is.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah, like I'm just not a happy human being. So what the studies have shown here, and there's been a bunch of like really brilliant, like twin studies on this, is that yes, there's 50% of our genetics do determine our happiness set factor. So some of us are naturally born happier than others, but the other 50% is completely within our control. So even if you were born to a family of curmudgeons, there's still hope for you that if you employ the right habits, strategies, and tactics, you also can live a happy life.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah. So it sounds, you know, happiness is part of our health.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

A hundred percent.

Psychological Safety And Team Trust

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Yeah. So when we think about, you know, working out and the habits and the discipline we have around that, this is also working out your mindset in a way, you know, kind of the mindset gym of like being able to understand what are the mechanics that are happening around it and how like the word you've used a couple of times now is sustainable. Like it can be sustained or it can be returned to, and you know how to do it. Because I don't think, but correct me if I'm wrong, you think that people can be happy 24-7, 365, right? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

And that's not a realistic definition of happiness, right? We unfortunately need to have a little unhappiness to feel the happiness, right? But having negative emotions does not mean that you have not built a long-term happiness practice, right? Yeah, it doesn't negate it. Exactly. You know how exactly what you just said, how to come back to it, how to be resilient, how to bounce back. What are the things that you need to do in order to bring that happiness back into your life?

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Yeah. One of the key pieces of happiness, and you you said it was one of the ingredients of the ingredients of your definition, is trust. So when you think about organizations that you've worked with, whether it be workshop or in you know, in the early days or even spoken to, what do we need to know about the relationship between trust and happiness and our employees and the world that we're in today?

Optimism Without Toxic Positivity

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Trust is one of those key building blocks to happiness at work. And it comes into play both on an individual level. So, in other words, you need to be able to trust your coworkers, right? You need to be able to work in an environment where you feel that you can trust people. But even more critically than that, I think this is really an idea that comes into play for teams. So, in order to have really productive, effective, creative, innovative teams, we need to have this building block of trust in and amongst all of the members of the team. So, uh, in order to start to do this, we start to talk about this idea of psychological safety, which goes back to the first question that you asked me, right? Which was around this idea of what makes you bold. And that's really about being able to come into work with your vulnerabilities, with your imperfections, and you're able to share that in an environment where other people trust you. So with psychological safety, you feel free to say exactly what you want to say without any fear of retribution or judgment. Okay. And that is the building block of trust on teams, and that is an essential thing, whether you are a leader, whether you are a team member, that is something that everybody needs to hone in on in order to start to have happiness at work.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Are there certain things that we do repeatedly or happen a lot within organizations that actually ding our happiness that just are part of what we do potentially? Maybe it's meetings. Maybe it's Zooms. I don't know. Like, you know, I know, like, if I would have a lot of meetings in a day, I would not say I was happy. You know, it just was draining and low energy and those types of things. Are there things that we're still doing today that we need to stop organizationally?

Enthusiasm And Escaping Autopilot

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah. The big one I find, and the most important one, quite frankly, is this idea that you don't need friends at work. Is that you go into work and you just do your work and you leave and you don't need friendship and you don't need connection. That is the biggest ding to happiness at work. And I wish people would open their mind to this idea that you need friends at work. In order to feel satisfaction and happiness at work, you need to have at least one person. And it doesn't even need to be more than one person, but you need to have one person at work that you can be, that you trust, that you share the good stuff, that you tell the bad stuff to. That is going to be the biggest thing. And I think that organizations really get that wrong, right? They feel like it's not my responsibility to facilitate connection and friendship at work. We are here to do a job. And I don't care about whether you have friends or not at work. And the truth is, if you cared a little bit as an organization, if you cared to facilitate those connections and those friendships, that would fall right down to the bottom line because people who have friends at work are more productive, are more creative, make more money, make fewer mistakes. I mean, the list goes on and on. So everything that organizations can do to facilitate friendship serves that.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yeah, not a lot of work. I mean, maybe they're doing something differently now, but I there certainly wasn't a lot of that. You know, we did things I probably could have done more now that I know what I know about creating community and connection, you know, since being out of corporate, but honestly didn't feel like I had enough time to do something like that. And I that was probably, again, a choice of, you know, a myth in my head. But as, you know, as a chief or as a leader, you know, you do things that are relational that probably are not things people like anymore. But like, you know, the get-togethers or the I would do town halls and stuff like that, which those are more formal with a little, you know, like punch hour afterward, you know, not alcohol, but just hanging out. So, like, I don't know, that's not enough. But I mean, at least it was something. But I think that is something that a lot of organizations don't really think about.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

No, they don't. And even more so, you know, I blame organizations for not thinking about it and not prioritizing it. But I also think we as humans misprioritize it as well, right? We we go into work and we say, we don't need friends at work. I'm here to do my job. That's a fallacy. And that's something that lies both in the hands of leaders of organizations and individuals. People need to be able need people need to come into work with this idea that they do need friendships with their co-workers. And that's not to say, like, I'm not being silly enough to think that you're going to be friends with everybody that you work with. Of course not. Like that's impossible. But one genuine friend at work is a difference maker.

Gratitude Journals And Surprise Thanks

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Okay, start with one. Yeah, start with one. Like you said, someone you can be around, it's someone you can share the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, and be yourself, you know, and and that's what you you're looking for. And start small, you know, start with one. I think that's definitely an underestimated piece of happiness at work. So when you were writing this book, were there certain pieces that surprised you, percolated, or came up of like, oh, I better make sure that's included, or did you learn anything new?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

So, you know, one of my favorite chapters in the book is this idea around optimism. I love optimism. I'm a New Yorker, so like naturally, I don't know that I'm like the most optimistic human being on the planet, just from the the sheer fact of where I live and what I've been surrounded by my whole life, right? Okay. But optimism is a very important central tenet in my belief on happiness, right? I think it's a hugely important philosophy to embody. But when I was writing the book, that was actually the toughest chapter for me to write. It was the toughest chapter to actually create tangible tools and tactics to start to embody a real sense of optimism, not like a nonsensical, oh, it's all gonna be fine, it's all gonna work out. No, like a real tangible way that we could live our life with an optimistic outlook. That was the toughest chapter, and it's probably the one I believe in my heart the deepest, you know?

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah. It's definitely one I think that kind of walks you through some of the framework of it and then kind of takes you through what you call the method for optimism, right? Yeah. And so when you think about that, like the method starts with spark genuine enthusiasm. When someone's trying to do that, what's an example of sparking genuine enthusiasm? Enthusiasm is one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Like, you know, if someone is enthusiastic about their life, that's another pathway, right? It's a conduit to happiness. But it's one of those where if you tell someone, go be enthusiastic, they look at you like you have 12 heads.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yeah, yeah. It's hard to have that one on demand, right? It either is or it isn't.

Measuring Happiness And Business Impact

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Exactly. But I think the the best way to think about enthusiasm is to think about its counterpoint. So its counterpoint is this idea that we live life on autopilot, that we just go through the motions and we kind of just get really comfortable in our routine and we don't really think much about what we're excited about or what we're interested in. So I think there are very conscious things that we need to do to pull ourselves off of autopilot. And that's gonna look different for everybody. But I think that, like for me, in order to start to pull myself off of autopilot, I like to think of what my goals are, of what I'm really focused on getting accomplished, what I can feel excited about, where my energy, like, you know, it's a very intuitive, almost gut reaction when you do something and you feel energy around it. That's where you start to build that enthusiasm.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Is there a myth that it always has to be your job that makes you happy? No, absolutely not. But I think that the myth is that we can't get happiness from our job. And that's the thing that I always want you to sort of like myth bust, right? Because I think that work can be a huge source of satisfaction. And it's a place that we spend so much of our time. Why wouldn't we invest in that part of our life so that it can ripple over into our entire lives?

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Right. Because one affects the other. There is no kind of wall between that. One of the other things that you talk about is the key piece to optimism is the gift of surprise gratitude and expressing gratitude, building optimism. We hear that a lot. It's one of the things I encourage a lot of my coaching clients is to, you know, if you don't journal yet, I'd like you to just every night write what you're one line of what you're grateful for. You don't have to buy anything, but just starting that practice. What does it do for us when it comes to our happiness when we're we're grateful or showing gratitude to others or ourselves?

Agency, Autonomy, And The Buffet Method

SPEAKER_01 26:41

So there's really two ways that I would talk about this. I agree with you completely on the journaling. And when I coach people around how to find more happiness, I call it the joy journal. And that's about every single night writing down three things that brought you joy that day and why. And there is science and research behind that that simple task of writing down three things that brought you joy that day and why can cure depression. It takes people who are severely depressed to being not depressed. So imagine this is not about a medication. This is not about anything other than taking pen to paper and writing down three things that brought you joy that day and why. And it doesn't have to be big things. Like I say all the time, I'm like, it can be a great cup of coffee. It can be a meeting was canceled, you know, like it can be anything.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Roof over your head, you know, your car started.

Resilience As The Spine Of Happiness

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Exactly. It can be anything. So I fully believe in that idea of journaling. But getting back to what you were just asking me about is this idea about surprise gratitude. That is, and I love it. I call it like you're like a gratitude ninja warrior. So it's around this idea that there are moments in life where I think gratitude is almost expected, right? So it's like you did a good job and somebody tells you you did a good job, and it's sort of expected in that moment. Like you did a great presentation, you get out of the presentation, and maybe your manager or your colleague says, Oh, you did a great job. That doesn't feel like surprise gratitude. It still feels good, but it's not surprise gratitude. Surprise gratitude is when you get a text out of nowhere from maybe somebody that you worked with 10 years ago, five years ago, who tells you, you know, Jessica, I just wanted to reach out and I really wanted to tell you that I appreciate everything that you taught me, right? And it has served me so well in my next job. And I always remember the thing that you said, X, Y, Z. Thank you so much for that. And I appreciate it and think about it all the time. So it's this idea that it's unexpected gratitude, right? It you never saw it coming. It just feels so much more genuine and so much more heartfelt. And as a result, you will feel it so much deeper. So it's this idea of don't be afraid to tell people that you're grateful for something that they did, for who they are, whatever it is. And you know, we're all like reluctant to reach out to people who we haven't spoken to in a number of years, whether it's a colleague or a friend. But it's so powerful to be a gratitude ninja.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Yeah, I love that. Okay, I love that term too. So one of the things I talk about a lot is like, how do you measure, you know, what you're working on? How do you measure what matters most? So when it comes to happiness, are there key measures that we've always used that we can should continue to use? Are there new measures coming out around this in the workplace?

Using AI To Spark Connection

SPEAKER_01 29:25

So there was a really brilliant study, actually. You know, this is this is the problem with happiness, right? Because it's it's an emotion, it's a feeling, it's quote unquote subjective. So, how do we put objective measures to it in order to understand if it's if it's a real thing, right? Everyone's always like happiness. There was a brilliant study out of Oxford University that was a survey of thousands of organizations. And through a various number of questions, those who answered the question, are you happy at work? Do you have satisfaction at work? Are you engaged? Do you plan on staying? The people who rated their happiness at work, those organizations that got the highest ratings in that happiness column, outperformed the SP 500 by 30%. That's huge. That's huge. Yeah, there's something very real there in terms of figuring out what the quantitative measure is of something that is so qualitative as happiness, but there's nothing better than profits, right? That's the ultimate way to measure it. And, you know, I encounter skeptics on this topic on a regular basis. So when I hand them that statistic, they're like, oh, well, that that actually matters to me and my team. And that's something that I can get behind. And therefore, then we can start to have a really interesting conversation about it.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yeah. So when people are picking up this book and they're making that shift, you know, from just one understanding what happiness means, the definition, how you walk them through the framework and optimism, and then actually putting their own plan into action and all through the book. So step one, pick up happiness works, the science of thriving at work by Jessica Weiss. Step two, once they have the book, what is it that you want them to hone in on? Is it that they own it, that they have the agency to walk through it? It's not going to be given to them. Like what's that one nugget? Like maybe even you say it repeatedly in in your talks as well.

Closing Reflections And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah. So I do say that we own it, that we drive it, that we have control over it. And that's the best part, right? It's not, it's not in someone else's hands, it's not in your manager's hands, it's not in your partner's hands, it's not in your best friend's hands, it's in your hands. And what I also love about the book, I should say, um, well, if I don't love it, who's gonna love it? It's this idea that while I do give you a five-step framework, it's not that you need to do all five steps, right? It's a buffet, I say. And you can take the steps that resonate with you the most, double up on those steps. If something else doesn't hit it for you, it's okay. Leave that on the buffet. But the point is, this is all up to you and what works for you. This is not a book that's intended to be read chronologically. Like you don't have to start on page one and go to the end. You can dip in and dip out on the places that, oh, you know what? I'm really needing to understand the resilience chapter. Like life has been kind of sucky lately, and I need to understand how I can bounce back. And so you dig in on the resilience chapter, or, you know, she talks so much about friendship and it's always about friendship. All right, let me actually spend some time reading about the friendship and the connection chapter. But I think that if there's a word that describes it, it's agency and autonomy for sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Okay, great. And as we end out, time went very fast. I think a lot of people you just talked about resilience are kind of feeling it, whether it's the beginning of the year, end of the year, like they're, you know, need some renewal, or maybe it's just been a hard week, you know, or a hard day. When it comes to happiness and resilience, how do you work on those things together? Like what helps me be more resilient or know how to use my resilience for getting back to happy?

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, resilience, I like to say, is the backbone of sustainable happiness. It's like the spine of sustainable, right? It's the thing that holds it up.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Without it, it'll be hard to sustain it for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I love that visual.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah. So, what I think, you know, and everyone likes to talk about resilience and no one really tells you how to do it. I think there's a number of ways, and I'll just talk about two really briefly. The first one is having a really effective support system. So this goes back again to that idea around friendship and connection. And there was this wonderful study out of Harvard, the longest-running study on happiness. I'm sure you've heard of it, Lee, from Dr. Robert Waldinger, right? It was an 85-year-long study. And like there were people in the study, everybody from JFK, who was the former president, like the president JFK, to just like regular people. And what came out of that study is the importance of friendship and the quality of our connections. So getting back to resilience, it's this idea that you need to have a support system around you. That's the first one. And the second one is how you frame failure. So whether you look at failure as an all-encompassing, detrimental end of everything, or do you look at failure as a one-time event from which you can learn and move forward and process? So, if we're just going to talk about two really important building blocks to resilience, which is that that spine of happiness, it's having a sport system and it's about reframing failure.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Okay. I have to eke in one more question because it just came up as you were talking. How does AI play into being happy, the science of happiness at work in the sense of the things that you know? But, you know, where does AI come into our happiness of a good way to use it or a way to strengthen relationships or a way to do some of the things that we're talking about here?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

So, what I do think AI is useful for in terms of building happiness is, and it's what I use AI for regularly, is coming up with like a very tangible plan, right? It's for coming up with a strategy and tactics. So, like, for example, I'll say to people, friendship is super important. We all need friendship in our lives. Friendship is the key to happiness. And people will come back to me and say, okay, that's all fine and well, but like I'm an adult, and how do I make friends as an adult? Well, this is what I say you do put your life into AI, create a beautiful prompt about your life. I am someone who loves playing tennis. I go to yoga every single day. I live in New York City, it's super hard to meet people. I'm really looking to connect with other adults. Do you have some ideas around some things that I could do on a weekly basis that would help me start to cultivate friendships? Okay, nice. Okay. Use it to get you going in that way. And I think that in that way, AI can be really helpful.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah, yeah, because it does find things that you didn't even know were there, or you know, ideas you might not have had, or things that you like to do. Maybe it's a cooking class or maybe it's learning a language.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

No, exactly right. And I think AI is really helpful in terms of like getting you thinking, right? Getting you out of your own head, as opposed to going back to all of those blockers and obstacles and all of the reasons why not. I think AI opens the doors to the reasons why we can.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing not only your book, Happiness Works, The Science of Thriving at Work. So please do pick that up and also like pick up some of the things we talked about that you can just initiate just right after listening to this. So, you know, if you have to do an audit on friendships and relationships, like, you know, how solid are they? And do you have that friend at work? And then really starting to think through how do I get more contact? Because I do think in connection to that last question, it is going to be the thing that people crave is the realness, the genuineness, the people-to-people interactions. So I think your book is perfect timing for 2026. Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge and for sharing it with us.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Thank you so much, Lee.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge Podcast. Through the continuum of bold stories, vulnerability to taking the leap, you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story. By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset. We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.