MarketPulse: Pros & Pioneers

Why Chasing Happiness Is Making You Miserable | Erin Burgoon

• Erin Burgoon • Season 2 • Episode 13

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What if chasing happiness is the very thing making you miserable?

We’ve been sold the idea that happiness comes from achievements, success, and checking all the right boxes. But what if we’ve got it backwards?

Dr Erin Burgoon, author of Joy-Full AF: The Essential Business Strategy We’re Afraid to Put First, has spent years researching what truly leads to fulfilment—and it’s NOT what you think.

In this episode, we discuss:
🔥 The difference between happiness and joy (and why it matters)
🔥 Why chasing happiness leads to burnout
🔥 The "Joy Audit" that reveals what's draining your energy
🔥 How finding joy in work transforms success

If you feel stuck, exhausted, or like you’re constantly chasing something you never quite reach, this conversation will change the way you think about fulfilment and business.

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PAul:

Hello and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen in the audience. you roll your eyes when somebody mentions joy? It feels like a really fluffy concept for many, and I'm not gonna lie, I felt exactly the same until I was fortunate enough to be gifted with the title of our guest today's book, is Joyful as. f*ck or"how to be"! today is somebody who I've wanted to meet for the longest time because one of my clients worked with them on their own coaching business and actually featured in our guest's book. And that gave me reason to read the book even though I thought the ideal behind it might be a bit cringe, might be a bit, not me,'cause I'm quite a direct. Earth person. I've come from a background of retail and yet I was blown away by the book, blown away by the concepts and how the concept of joy could be something other than what I pictured it to be. And being joyful is very different to being joyful, which is an important differentiation to make. Today's guest is no than Dr. Erin Burgoon. lovely to have you on the show.

Erin:

It is so good to be here.

PAul:

Dr. Erin is a social psychologist, an executive coach, and a bestselling author on a mission to help business leaders and entrepreneurs build prosperous, purpose-driven businesses with a PhD in psychology and leadership roles at Facebook and Microsoft are in combined science-backed strategies with human-centered coaching to help organizations cultivate joy as a business advantage. Their book, joyful As f*ck. Can I dunno if I can say that on LinkedIn?!! AF! The essential business strategy we're afraid to put first" Challenges the notion that success and joy are a separate for a new way to lead market and grow a business. Aaron's approach blends internal family systems with neuro transformational coaching and user experience psychology to help leaders break limit patterns and create businesses that thrive without. Burnout. I can't like waited so long for somebody to say that it's possible to run a business without burnout or in, and it is possible. Before we get into the meet and boards, I've got, again, I feel like I, I do bios for our guests and I have so many questions brimming at the surface that I want to get into, but I'm gonna pause on some of those questions. I'm gonna come right back to the beginning. You've done an incredible amount with your life. Take us back to the beginning of that journey, wherever that means for you wherever the starting point was of your journey into the aspects that make you who you are, Was, what was that inflection point for you? Would you say?

Erin:

I'll start with saying I was fascinated with the human mind from my whole life, right? Which is what got me into social psychology. And not everybody knows what social psychology is. They think of psychologists as therapists and working on mental health and. I was just fascinated with how does our brain work and how do we tick? And that led me down the path of my PhD and led me to Facebook where I could, think about how do we help people in the social world of billions. But come 2017, my mom actually was about this time, 2017, my mom had a really freak illness. She went in the hospital with back pain and it turned into. Spinal meningitis and she was in the ICU for about five weeks. We didn't even know if she was gonna wake up, didn't know if she was gonna ever move again. And at the same time, I was working at Facebook, I was leading a team of researchers. We were trying to get Facebook stories launched to the world. And so I was managing all the stress of getting, my team to, to do the work they needed to do. Working with, Zuckerberg even about are we launching this thing while also sitting in the ICU waiting room? Hoping my mom's gonna wake up. And that inflection point was really that space of what am I really doing here? Every time I was with my mom, she was in a rehab hospital for almost six months, relearning to move literally a finger at a time, and I'm sitting here going, okay. I wanna be present for this, but I've got a team of researchers that need me back in San Francisco. And then when I was in San Francisco, I was like my mom needs me, right? And so I really just settled into, yeah, what am I here to be doing? What impact do I wanna make on this planet? And it started me down this entire path of I really wanna help people. I didn't know the word joy was not on my radar at that point. And it was only a few years later after that when I realized it. But it was really, I want everybody to, to. To live an impactful, purposeful life. And I watched myself on this ladder and this kind of bullet train, at Facebook. I went, what am I doing this for? I know, Paul, we've had some offline discussions about shoulds, right? I was, should upon myself, all over myself about, this is the career trajectory I'm supposed to be on. And now wait a sec, there's more to life than this career path. What don't wanna do with my life, and who do I wanna help? And so that was really the inflection point that got me into the coaching business. And I realized that for years I didn't have coaching as a word, but that's what I had been always wanting to do.

PAul:

To rewind back, like getting to the point where you have a PhD is a lot of commitments, a lot of time over a lot of years

Erin:

Yeah,

PAul:

you can't, you don't get that far without the drive.

Erin:

right.

PAul:

What was your original intended career path? Was it to be that person that Facebook or did that kind of happen because you got where you were?'cause nobody ever gets where they

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

Go. They go where they're meant to be.

Erin:

Yes. I tell people all the time people come to me for coaching and they want a five year vision and they wanna map, every step along the path of that five year vision. And I say, you cannot even imagine. What's outside the map of what's possible. Right now your map is based on your past history and your current viewpoint, and so I say that because none of my career path was an intentional thing. I say I'm an accidental, I was an accidental Facebook researcher. I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I just knew at some point I grew up with academic parents and I knew I was really into social psychology, and so I went to grad school with a, I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. But I thought I would stay in academia because that's what I knew as possible. And so I was going down that path and my advisor was preparing me for all the job market. And there was another researcher in the clinical side of the department who said, Hey, I just had an internet chip at Facebook. They're hiring. And I went, a, they're not gonna hire me. Why would they hire me? And also, I didn't like Facebook. I'll be real honest, I was not a social media user, but I thought, I'll take the interview. Why not? This will be an experience. And lo and behold, on Christmas Eve, the year, the six months before I graduate from my PhD program, I got an offer saying, would you come join us? And I went, huh, okay, here we go. So it was not planned. It was, it had a lot of positives, a lot of negatives working there. And then the coaching piece was not planned. It was just, oh, there's this, I actually hired a woman I met at a conference. I thought she was, I thought coaching was bullshit, to be honest, and, but I hired her for a couple hundred dollars and she was changing my life. And I went, huh, this is what I've always wanted to do. And so I've just followed, huh. And that's a big part of following joy, right? Is, oh, I'm curious about this. Lemme go try this and see what comes of it.

PAul:

I think that's the bit that, that we should spend more time educating young people and children on at a very early age there are so few people who are able to articulate to them what, following your passion and being curious means. We are so busy pressuring young people into following a career path, and then for their whole career, we pressure them into committing to further to that career path that we forget that there are so much, there's

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

so many Jobs and opportunities out there

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

that you can Carve out for yourself brave enough to follow what makes you smile?

Erin:

Yes.

PAul:

I think that's the beauty of what you've said today is. You were able to follow what made you smile and you can call that fortunate if you like, but I also know it's intentional. You've gotta be brave. And this,

Erin:

Yes,

PAul:

and ive no

Erin:

doubt there

PAul:

were some moments along that way where you questioned yourself.

Erin:

Always. I still do on a regular basis, what am I doing? But it's, I've taught myself now after, I've finished my PhD over 10 years ago, so I've been on this path. Of just following what comes my way and being curious. And I've taught myself that I always end up doing something way more interesting than if I would've followed that, demarcated path or having that map. And I've also taught myself that if something goes, sideways, which in life everything can go sideways in an instant. My mom's illness was like overnight, right? And I just taught myself, okay, when things go sideways. I know how to ride that. I know how to now, okay, find something else to do, right? That makes you smile or temporarily do something that you don't love, knowing that in a few months you can go back to the thing you do.

PAul:

Yeah, I think that's. It's about experimenting so you can figure out for you Which leads us nicely into, and I'd love to hear your take on this. What in your eyes is the difference between, we, we talked about joy being a fluffy concept,

Erin:

Yes.

PAul:

I think a lots of people who are listening along or be nodding along In your description, your words, what's the difference between being joyful and joyful?

Erin:

Yeah, that's. That's one of my favorite questions, so I'm so glad you asked it. I'll start before I even say that, saying that people have a mis misconception of joy and happiness, and a lot of us in our careers are chasing the happiness. And that's the the promotions the revenue targets the monuments like buying a house, a car. And we'll say, I will be happy when I get that promotion, when I finish that project. And so along the way, there's what I call it miserable in it because they're holding off that positive feeling until that external circumstance happens. And to me, that's no way to live because external circumstances, sometimes we don't get that promotion and we don't get that project done. And it's not because there's something wrong with us, just life happens. And so Joy is this great thing where it's about being. In the moment, it's accessible to us at any time. It's about being present and being, we've already talked about, curious and connected to what, feels purposeful and connected to how we best do things and taking courageous action. And I say don't put off your happiness. Don't chase happiness at the expense of your joy. And joy is not just some joyful versus joyful. Joy is not just focusing on that fluffy I'm feeling good, I'm feeling delightful. Joyful is about, yeah, taking some courageous risks, which can be scary. It's about being with the failure and being with the pain. I've been writing a lot about this with the current situation in the United States, right? We are scared about what is happening and following Joy is not about putting our heads in the sand and saying, this isn't happening. It's about how do we allow these moments of delight and satisfaction alongside the fear, alongside the pain, alongside the anger and all of it. So it's really about how do we be with the fullness of our human experience and experience what I call true joy, which is being fully human.

PAul:

And I think that's a totally different answer to most people would've expected you to come out with and, when i Read that in the book, there was a bit of a light bulb moment for me because I was like, ha, somebody else who thinks the same way I do It, it, it shouldn't, like you almo, it's almost like you give me permission to thi to believe that was all okay then, like it's, I'm not just this weird person who thinks that this should be the case. I've people on LinkedIn. Oh, look at my new Land Rover. I'm over the moon for you. Look at my new house. Brilliant. I'm over the Moon for you. Are you happy? Because I think to your point, a lot of people confuse the word happy with the word joy they've got in their head, it probably means the same thing as what you are talking about with joy, right? Are you happy because Your Land Rover might give you a bit of excitement and it might be nice to drive around in it. I'm not gonna say it's a negative thing, but ultimately. in a week's time. In a month's time, you're gonna scuff the alloy on the side. You're gonna curb it, you're gonna,

Erin:

Yep.

PAul:

You're gonna have a prang on the front and,

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

like, it's just gonna be another car.

Erin:

Yeah, we have a happiness baseline, and science actually talks about this. We have this baseline that every, we can have that little spike of delight or whatever you wanna call it, and then eventually it goes back down and we end up being on this almost hamster wheel of chasing that next spike. Whereas Joy is this. It's not always calm. You can be excited in your joy, but it's this thing of am I really, immersed in my work right now? Am I really present? Am I in? People talk about flow. I think flow and joy are very similar and it's, yeah, you don't have to look outside of yourself for it and it doesn't spike. It's this endless. And even if you, I'll ask your listeners, think back to last time you really felt joyful in your day. And I'm, I imagine it felt steady rather than spiky.

PAul:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I wonder then what's. What was the path for you to release the book? Because the book starts as an idea. It necess necessarily start as a book. And having spoke to a couple of other guests who've released book, I think it came from ideas that they were passing on to their colleagues and friends and it resonated and so they decided to do something about it. Is, does that sound familiar for you or did you have a different path for that?

Erin:

It was two twofold. One being I'll, I'm selfishly gonna admit I had this limiting belief that despite the fact that I did a PhD and wrote a dissertation, that I wasn't the sort of person who could write a book. And so I just turned on my inward and said, let me challenge myself to write a book even if it never gets released. The other piece was I was doing a podcast at the time called Life in the, and you already heard me heard talk about joy and right, joy and pain, joy and grief. But I really like this idea of living with nuance and complexity and people we live in such a black and white world. And so sharing a whole lot of stuff around that. And I thought maybe there's a book in that. So I went to work with a book coach and quite quickly after starting to write, and this isn't the book, but I don't know what is. And so the book coach and I said let's just start exploring what I have to share. What have I been putting, together with my clients? And it took, gosh, another eight months of me writing and going, this isn't it. This isn't it. I got all down the path of writing a book about the business wilderness. And it was really cheeky and I liked it, but it still wasn't it. And then my wife at the time and I were having a conversation and I asked her, what are your friends who are entrepreneurs struggling with? And she said they don't wanna hate their business. And I said that's not a, you can't write a book about not hating your business. What's the opposite of that? And the word joy came to me and it was so out of left field for me because I didn't resonate with that word. So those of you who are thinking, this is really fluffy, I was with you. I had a friend who had this world joy movement going, and I thought, yeah, that's, that makes sense for him. His smile, sends way outside of his face. But then when I started looking back at my business trajectory, and even my time at Facebook, the times when I was quote unquote successful was when I was following what now I call joy. And the times when things felt really sticky or stressful, it was when I was shooting upon myself and saying, this is what I'm supposed to be doing and not following my joy. And so it was this process of discovery along the way that there's this word that I didn't really resonate with, but is actually how I've been living my life and how what I've been passing along to my clients.

PAul:

Amazing.There's, there's, I could probably spend up the rest of the afternoon asking you questions about all of this and at some point viewers need to stop listening to the podcast and go and live their life as well. So I'll,

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

kind fast forward through, through some of my questions. I might email you later. So then for yourself in attracting clients that you would like to work with. Could you outline what your basic approach is? Because you've got a very specific sort of clientele that you wanna work with,

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

It's quite hard to reach them most of the time because of their seniority in previous experiences. So what's your approach with that side of things?

Erin:

Yeah. So I'll say just who I work with. I tend to work with very mission-driven ambitious. Leaders who they don't necessarily know that joy is something they wanna work with. And that's not necessarily what I'm advertising. Joy tends to be the strategy we come to a little later down the road after working. It's really about they wanna be doing something that's really meaningful and impactful and changing lives, and they don't know exactly how to do it. And they wanna do it from a place of they'll use words like my way, right? They don't want the blueprint. And they're the type of people who shouldn't follow a blueprint. They really are brilliant people. So traditional marketing is not how I roll. It's not one of my joys either. And so I have built my entire business based on relationships. Having really good chats with people and realizing, oh, I can help you. Would you like to experience a coaching session or. Talking to a colleague and they go, oh, I know someone who's building a business right now who could really use your support. And so it's been a process of really for me leaning into what's my joy, which is connection and conversation and saying I don't have to do the traditional marketing strategies. And actually the traditional marketing strategies are not where my people are hanging out. So it's been really I'll say I struggle with it sometimes because the noise in the business community is so loud about what you're the, here's the blueprint, here's what you're supposed to be doing, and I have to come back and go, no, I'm gonna follow my joy and I'm gonna find my people that way.

PAul:

I think that's, I think that's a valid statement to make is that a lot of people feel that. Unless they're doing traditional marketing, unless they're spending money on paid media and they're getting an SEO done on their website and somebody's writing articles that they can correct and have listed on that's one way of doing things. But Organic marketing and what my colleagues might term near bound strategy, right? Like refferals And partnerships conversations with real people about real topics where. It's not transactional. Actually, that all works too, And I think it boils down to how much you can narrow down your target audience for a lot of people. So a lot of people are still too broad and are worried that by having individual conversations, they're not spending the time with the broader audience.

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

Whereas what I can see, what you've done is you've very clearly articulated who your audience is and who you want to be speaking to. And so it's easy to spot who you should or shouldn't be having conversations with, right? Like you,

Erin:

Yeah.

PAul:

Today, like for the podcast, like I've now got to this point where I know who my guests should be. I know who will be a great conversation, who not, and I'm cheeky enough to just drop them a message in a nice way and just ask for a conversation. I think in that way you probably, and correct me if I'm wrong, you probably feel as though actually doing those conversations is almost as much fun as doing the work itself.

Erin:

Oh, absolutely. It's such a joy and I tell people when it comes to building a business, I think there's kind of two sides of it. That's who's your target market and where are they? But also. What are you great at? So there are some people who are brilliant at writing and marketing, and so actually sure go for that, right? Or,

PAul:

Yep.

Erin:

They're great networkers. I know people who go to networking events all the time and walk away with all kinds of leads or they're great speakers and so they go speak at conferences and it's okay. Go follow what you are best at. That also your target people are gonna be there to hear you, right? Yeah, I find the conversation part very joyful. And I go in without into, and I know I never go in with an intention to, to market, right? I'm here to have a conversation. We'll see what happens. That might be a client, that might be a partnership, that might be a friend. That might just be a conversation. That was great and see you later.

PAul:

I have to say I think that your previous experience sets you up with the skills to be a great conversationalist as well. I think that's. Kinda the path that you've been on between neuroscience and psychology and user experience.'cause let's be honest, like I, I dunno if a lot of the audience understand the user experience world. I know a little bit about the user experience. I understand why psychology is important to but you need to again, be very good at interviewing people and

Erin:

Yes,

PAul:

getting things out of them, drawn out the things that they don't even know that they need to tell you yet. something that you've honed over a lot of

Erin:

Yes. It's one of my superpowers is getting to what's really underneath what this person's saying, what they need, and then drawing connections and patterns. And when it was a user experience, it may, might be patterns across, the 10 people I've spoken to, what are the themes? When it's a client, it's how do I draw those patterns out of them over time, and so I can come back and say, oh, hey Paul, we've worked together for a year and remember that thing you said a year ago now that's relating to this thing you're saying to me now. So it helps me both as a marketer and as a coach is what I'm trying to say.

PAul:

Oh, no, I, and I think that's, but I think people try and separate out marketing from running their business too much Right?

Erin:

Yes.

PAul:

For a small business owner or a solopreneur or a small business, like marketing isn't somebody else. It isn't something else. It's one aspect of what you need to do and do It well, rather than treat it as something different, you need to. To your point, use your strengths and skills to, to do what you can do best in a way that you enjoy.'cause if you don't enjoy doing the marketing side, or you're not doing it in a way that you enjoy it, you'll just not do it, which won't Business. You need to get some marketing done.

Erin:

right. I think also people try to do too many things at once. Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna network. I'm gonna post online. I'm gonna write blogs. I'm going to, and. They're just, their energy is so scattered and also they're doing more marketing than they need to be doing. It's to your point, when you know your target and you know what you're joyful at, you can do a whole lot less of it more effectively.

PAul:

Exactly that. Exactly that. My, my day-to-day business is video and I can't record enough videos. I can't, like LinkedIn won't let me post enough videos out in a day without penalizing me. It's, I genuinely, I enjoy doing the video. I don't see, I don't enjoy seeing them back. I have to admit I still hate seeing myself on video. And my

Erin:

I get that.

PAul:

is awful. But I do enjoy sharing value with people, which is I think there's no other way you can do that better than video. If you were to flip that idea on its head, what are two or three things that you would advise business owners out there today? Perhaps noticing that they've got some sight and some signs of burnout. That they're doing too much, they're not spending enough time with their family or whatever it is that makes them joyful in their. Joyful in their world. What would you ask them to stop and do and think about in order to put them in a better position to be, to move forward successfully?

Erin:

Yeah, so there's two things that come to mind that I think you can do simultaneously. One being, I know it's hard for people to rest. And it feels crappy when we do it because we're so used to being on all the time. It's almost like a detox from the stress, right? So rest feels worse than continuing going, but if you can give yourself even just a few moments of rest, and rest doesn't have to be on the couch. It could be creative endeavors, it could be social endeavors. There's, I think, seven different forms of rest. Seeing if you can challenge yourself to rest a little bit. That's the first part. The other is what I call the joy audit. And I would say take a week. And every day I just have a piece of paper with a line down the middle and on the left it's every person, project, thought activity that brings you joy. And then on the right side is the opposite, right? Every person, project, thought activity that drains you. And at the end of that week, I want you to look at first the left side of the joy, things that brought you joy. How do I do more of that? But on the right side, get really honest with yourself. How many of these joy drains do you really have to be doing? Which can you just drop all together or outsource? Lot of the source of our burnout is the things we are telling ourself. I should be doing this, I have to be doing this. You're honest. Do you need to? And then of the things that are, okay, I really do have to do this like it's tax season in the United States. I have to do my taxes. What can I do to make that just an ounce more joyful? And so for me, it might be just something simple as putting on a playlist that I like doing my taxes. But if you can get really honest with what's draining you and drop some of it, and then turn some of those into joy, infusers. That really starts to help with the burnout, and I recommend with my clients that they do this, every quarter even, because it's so easy for the plate to pile up again with the strips.

PAul:

That's fantastic advice. I love it. love it. Erin, it's been fantastic to talk with you today. I, we'll have to invite you back again for another round because I've thoroughly enjoyed it. There's so much more that we can dive into. But if people are listening along and they're curious to find out more about the book, I'll obviously put the link for the book in the shore notes below. How else can they read more about what you coach things about or contact you directly if they wanted to?

Erin:

Yeah, so there's a couple different ways. I, my website is dr aaron b.com, so there's a bit about my coaching there. You can also find me on LinkedIn and there's a link on my LinkedIn to my new Substack called, Hey, where's the joy? It's not just about professional joy, but how do we. In this time we're living in, and it's not just those of us in the United States in this time. We're living in how do we continue to seek joy in the uncertainty in these crazy times.

PAul:

Fantastic. Oh, drop me those links over and I will make sure they're in the show notes.

Erin:

Great.

PAul:

Thank you very much for being a fantastic guest in, it's welcome a

Erin:

welcome. Thank you for having me.

PAul:

Most importantly, thank you guys and girls at home for watching along. It's much appreciated that you join us. Thank you for your subscription. Thank you for your reviews, and please feel free to send the episode to somebody you think might get some benefit. Do you know somebody who's suffering from burnout? Do you know somebody who just needs a bit more joy in their life? Please send them the episode. If we achieve anything podcast, it's I want to be adding real value to people and there are so many people out there that are just miserable at work. This episode's for them. We'll see you next week on MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers.

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