Eat the Spinach

It seems that everyone except Popeye turns their nose up at spinach. Yuck! Popeye may not love it, but he eats it because it makes him strong. We don’t all want the spinach but we usually wish we were stronger physically, emotionally, financially, etc.

I listened to a podcast (linked here) where Arthur C. Brooks was interviewed by Steven Bartlett on the topic of happiness. He is a bestselling author of 13 books and a Harvard professor where he teaches courses on leadership, happiness and social entrepreneurship. He is the columnist of the popular weekly “How to Build a Life” column at The Atlantic.

During the interview, he talks about the popularity of his columns depending on the topic. He calls the hard truth articles that nobody really wants to hear, the spinach articles. They are always the ones with the lowest readership. People want to feel happy and look to him as an expert on how to achieve happiness. They love it until they don’t. When he talks about happiness being something a person works on internally without blaming their circumstances or other people, the readers drop off drastically. It’s the spinach.

It’s tough to swallow the fact that nobody else can make you a happy person. Only you can do the work, make the choices and make the decision to become happier over time. His advice is simple. Be humble, change your mind, listen more than you talk and focus on humanity. He measures his own happiness progress by analyzing the following things, as defined by him, which he refers to as macronutrients of happiness.

1. Enjoyment- Something done with other people that creates a memory.

2. Satisfaction- The joy you get after struggle.

3. Meaning

The macronutrient profile needs to be right and in balance. Well shoot, I’ve thought the happiness macronutrients were tacos, margaritas and cookies!

After listening to his interview, I can completely agree that my happiness meter reads higher when I experience enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. I’m going to make sure that those things are on my daily menu more often this year.

Do the work.

Eat the Spinach, You are worth it!

XX,

MG

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