How to Build a Happy Life: Identify What You Enjoy

11/23/21 • 42 min

79 Listeners

In adulthood, many of us are forced to recalibrate our relationship with joy. As responsibilities multiply exponentially, time grows limited, and challenges mount, it becomes harder to make time for fun, let alone remember what it feels like. As we explore the key components of happiness—pleasure, joy, and satisfaction—we ask the foundational question: What really brings me joy?

In this special-edition, bonus episode of How to Build a Happy Life, the psychotherapist and Atlantic contributing writer Lori Gottlieb demystifies one of the vital components of a happy life: enjoyment. Gottlieb believes that we not only find it challenging to make time for day-to-day enjoyment, but also struggle to identify what it should feel like.

This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Arthur Brooks. Editing by A.C. Valdez. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Sound design by Michael Raphael.

Be part of How to Build a Happy Life. Write to us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 925.967.2091.

Music by Trevor Kowalski (“Daydream in Silver”), Stationary Sign (“Loose in the Park”), and Spectacles Wallet and Watch (“Last Pieces”).

Click here to listen to every full-length episode in the series.

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This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Arthur Brooks. Editing by A.C. Valdez. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Sound design by Michael Raphael.

Be part of How to Build a Happy Life. Write to us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 925.967.2091.

Music by Trevor Kowalski (“Daydream in Silver”), Stationary Sign (“Loose in the Park”), and Spectacles Wallet and Watch (“Last Pieces”).

Click here to listen to every full-length episode in the series.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

How to Build a Happy Life: Live When You’re In Pain

1 Recommendations

As we wind down this series, a paradox remains in our pursuit of happiness—joy comes to those who have known pain. In order to overcome struggle—breakups, illness, even death—we must first accept and acknowledge its inevitability. Exploring the darkness of our suffering may seem counterintuitive, but often it’s the only way to see the light.

In this week’s episode, Arthur C. Brooks sits down with BJ Miller, a palliative-care physician, to uncover how we can face our deepest fears, why we should accept our natural limitations as human beings, and how to make peace with the ebb and flow of joy and suffering in human life—an experience we all share.

This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Arthur Brooks. Editing by A.C. Valdez. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Sound design by Michael Raphael.

Be part of How to Build a Happy Life. Write to us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 925.967.2091.

Music by Trevor Kowalski (“Lion’s Drift,” “This Valley of Ours,” “Una Noche De Luces”), Stationary Sign (“Loose in the Park”), and Spectacles Wallet and Watch (“Last Pieces”).

Click here to listen to every full-length episode in the series.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Episode

Trailer: How To Start Over

In this series, Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan analyzes what it takes to change our relationships, our work, and our perspective—with a practical approach to one of life’s greatest mysteries: how to start over.

Change can be really hard. Inertia is powerful, mortgages and marriages are long-term, and personality traits can feel pretty hardwired. But we’re in an era characterized by change. This series is your guide to starting over in the ways you’ve always wanted, why change is so hard, and whether it is, sometimes, overrated.

This series was produced by Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Olga Khazan. Editing by A.C. Valdez and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Sound design by Matthew Simonson.

If you have any questions, stories, or feedback, please email us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 925-967-2091.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices