Society

I've done what society tells you is successful, only to feel really empty and alone inside. True success is the discovery of your authentic self—discovering who you are before any wounding, trauma, or limitations were created in your life's journey.

Your mission in life is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. When we're being useful and doing what we love, there's a sense of bliss. It's that moment where you say, 'This is why I'm alive. This is reason enough to be alive, right here.'

Life Coach, Author & Self-Help Expert Known for Relationship & Purpose Guidance

In the 1960s, NASA commissioned a study to identify creative geniuses for hiring, and found that 2% of the adults they tested fit the bill. A few years later, someone thought to give the same test to four- and five-year-olds—and 98% of them qualified as creative geniuses. The researchers blamed the school system.

Life Coach, Author & Self-Help Expert Known for Relationship & Purpose Guidance

Too often, businesses today are driven solely by academic numbers. But customers aren't numbers. They're human beings who care about storytelling and integrity. You can tell when a product is made by people who care.

We also don't really have cultural mechanisms that emphasize what truly matters—not so much the hustle, but the rest. The social connection. The deeper forms of connection we get from meeting people face-to-face.

Psychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale

So many of the things our culture pushes us to pursue for happiness don't actually work the way we think they will. Material possessions, more money—if you're on social media, you get this strong sense that you should go after more of everything and then you'll feel better.

Psychologist known for teaching popular "Science of Well-Being" course at Yale

When you're young, you're basically a time billionaire, sitting on billions of seconds stretching out ahead of you. But here's the thing—most young people, even folks in the middle of life, don't see it that way.

Content creator and author known for insights on decision-making and business

Time wealth is all about having the freedom to decide how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, and what you trade it for. It boils down to one simple truth: recognizing time as your most precious asset—the only thing you can never get back.

Content creator and author known for insights on decision-making and business

One reason conflict resilience has declined is that it's become easier to fire off a snarky message or simply block someone and move on. If we share physical space, avoidance has limits; I can leave the room, but I might still run into you in the hallway. Online, though, I can just delete, mute, or block you with no further engagement.

Director of Stanford Law School's Negotiation and Mediation program

The less we engage with those who think differently, the more we demonise them. That demonisation can become dehumanising, reinforcing the idea that we have nothing in common. Worse still, when someone dares to engage across ideological lines, they risk being branded a traitor by their own group.

Director of Stanford Law School's Negotiation and Mediation program

The idea of selfish philanthropy is a push against the notion of philanthropy as simply 'giving back.' That phrase implies that wealth was accumulated by taking something from society. But if you've built a successful business, you've contributed to society—you don't owe anything back.

Success should simply mean enjoying what you do and feeling purposeful. If you have all the money in the world but spend every day miserably staring at a computer screen, feeling bored, uninspired, not learning or contributing meaningfully, then no amount of money makes you successful.

Being an entrepreneur is no harder than working for someone else; it's simply a different experience. I completely agree that the whole narrative of entrepreneurship being excessively hard is exaggerated and fundamentally untrue.

Measuring wellbeing solves two big problems: it tells us what truly matters (not just income or health metrics), and it lets us compare different types of charities—poverty relief, education, the arts—by how much happiness they generate. We move from vibes‑based giving to data‑driven giving.

I think that most of us, when we give to charity, hope that we ultimately help people live happier, less miserable lives. So we should measure what we care about.

If you want a caricature, life satisfaction is your self‑smugness rating—how smug you feel about your life. Western smugness has definitely slid over the past ten years.