Cultivating Joy in Everyday Life with Eric North

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Hiring, Indeed, is all you need everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we are joined by Eric North, a lifelong entrepreneur turned happiness coach.
Happiness is something we all want in our lives, but yet we oftentimes do not prioritize or pursue. This is an incredible conversation.
You're going to get a ton out of this, particularly if you're an ambitious and driven person, lots of tidbits, lots of ideas,

lots of tactics to build moments of happiness into your life that can culminate in ultimately

a happier life in general. If you enjoy this show, guys, make sure you subscribe,

whether you're listening to the audio podcast or watching on YouTube and know that I love you

for watching this show. Let's get on to Eric North.
My mindset is very, very, I used to be, I'm a very, I'm a businessman, so I'm aur and i'm i'm i i had spent so many years building my businesses that i stopped having fun and being creative you know you know and i just was like oh what's going on so i started doing all this stuff to kind of change my direction and i want to make money with my mouth yeah and my words okay that's that's why i'm so i'm getting ready to publish a book working on negotiations is really rough but the major publisher um and what i really am trying to just you know my goal is thomas the public my publicist has made his his vision is i will be like a household name someone that people will say hey man we're having a really bad day let's you know hold on let's click into the happiness warrior so he has to say okay yeah that's my dream that's what i could really do that's what you know, hold on. Let's click into the happiness words.
So he has to say, okay. Yeah.
That's my dream. That's what I could really do.
And that's what I know I can do. Yeah.
That's where we're going with it. Anywhere you want to go with me, ask me any questions.
I don't care. I'm very open.
I don't, I don't have any, you can't trip me up because I'm open. It's not an open book.
Okay. Yeah.
No, I love it. And, and I'll be honest with you.
Uh, my journey is, is very similar. I'm actually in a weird moment where I just exited from a business that I started in 2020, seven days before COVID hit upstate New York.
And got rocked by that, invested all this money in starting this business and put all this work in, launch day, seven days later, everything gets shut down, blah, blah, blah. Well, I sold it two years later, or we were acquired, worked there, and then negotiated in an early exit in November of 2023.
And I've kind of been of two minds. And I've had one foot in the, I love being an operator.
I love running businesses. I feel like I have the disposition for it.
I've been executive multiple times, both as CEO, CMO, and then as a founder. And I love that side.
I also have this other equally powerful and equally driven side, very similar to you, where I love helping. I love educating.
I love sharing. I love creating.
And this podcast has been a through line for my career. Oh, it's amazing.
And you do such a professional, you're in charge. I can tell that this is your thing, you know? So that's great.
I feel the same way. I know I tell you, I had a very similar experience.
I had a partnership with one of my businesses, which grew kind of, 2019 was a boom year for me. So 2019, and then the first quarter of quarter 2020 we opened up a really expensive extra student new studio and i let one of my other partners go crazy with the budget and for everything and all of a sudden we were shut down and i had health insurance to pay for for everybody you know i had all kinds you know i had a lot to do and then i had to get rid of that partner and i had a huge financial you know if you're the right thing, you'll make money.
I'm never, I don't want to lose money ever, but if I have to part with it to get away from something, it's going to be like a divorce maybe. You know, look at that.
We should be really careful who you go into business with. Right.
And that's, that's really the lesson that I learned. And it's more about, I don't really need anyone.
Okay. I have myself.
Okay. So maybe that so maybe that's how you are too yeah you know I struggle with that as well because you know it's been weird man this has been like an existential time for me because I love working with teams at the same time I do too I love creating teams yeah yeah I found that there are certain there are very particular in certain types of people that I work really well with.

And there are a larger number of personality types that I do not work well with.

So, and I've had to learn that lesson the hard way a couple of times.

So it's just business and life is so interesting, man.

And I think you said it like it's, it's, it's driving towards what your calling is.

And really that, that's where I want to start the show here.

Okay, let's do it. you said it like it's it's it's driving towards what your calling is and and really that that's where i want to start to show here okay you know my first my first question is is really around uh you know in in researching you and i think you posted this i found this particular thing on instagram and of all the things that i want to get into this was the first one that popped out at me was this idea that that uh you said a happier life is an easier life and oh yeah i have not necessarily found that to be the case and i don't mean easy in a negative way i just mean oftentimes in in the pursuit of happiness you have to do hard things so maybe just break down this concept because i think some people may not necessarily understand i when i write first of all it just flows out i have a writing time every day it's designated by eight if you see me doing anything else at 8 30 8 o'clock in the morning then i'm there's something really crazy going on and i'm the word and i don't even know what i'm really going to write about that day i'm going to write a column i'm going to two columns a week that they could publish all over the web but i start thinking about sort of themes and and trends that i see with with people and how they're talking about themselves and how they're feeling about themselves and how angry everyone is all the time and how quick they are to judge and run away and i think about my past life and how i was raised and there wasn't it was a sort of dysfunctional home great parents but they didn't really do a great job, always with their example.
It's okay, but they were loving, good parents. And I just, I want to teach.
So when I started this, I'm going to teach. I want to help people.
So I started this kind of mindset about talking about how important it is to have a cheerful attitude. A cheerful attitude can really show a really strong sense of power and strength because over everything that's going on, and there's a cheerful attitude.
A cheerful attitude can really show a really strong sense of power and strength because over everything that's going on there's a cheerful attitude I can take and there's usually a twinkle in that person's eye. You know those people you're probably thinking about.
With me it was my aunts. I had three aunts that were super super super intelligent and really good people that they did all their lives were devoted to doing good and there was always a twinkle in my's eye, even though she was going through a really hard time or she was facing a lot of stuff that came out of her at once.
And she just got through life. And she was the original happiness warrior.
Everywhere she went, people just flocked to her and came to her and shared their life. And she listened to them and she gave them love everywhere every person that came to her she gave part some part of her love and i just thought if they're figuring out she's not with us now but i think that's all the other good things she did i can go into that forever but just that was the basic lesson that i learned from her and also i was kind of a weird kid okay so i i was i thought differently than other kids i i i saw problems faster and different solutions than anyone else ever thought of.
And it kept me kind of apart. I was part of everything, but in the way I wasn't.
And sometimes I felt very disconnected. I felt like I was on a different track, a different age group, or anything like that.
And it was my happiness warrior aunt that always made me feel like I was incredible. Always throughout my entire life.
Every success and victory I had, everything that was heartache, anything, she was always there. But she always was like a warrior.
So she kept things going and it kept me going and it kept me feeling a sense of self-esteem. So I'm writing these things.
You know, it's hard to be hard to be happy every day sometimes. So let me stop, ask another question.
I'm not going to say I'll ramble on, but that's really my heart gets into it for people. Cause I feel, I feel for them.
Yeah. I think, you know, what I've found in my own life and I'm interested in your take on this being that you've studied happiness so much is, uh, I feel people get hung up on happiness as a goal.
And to me, that is not the appropriate way to think about happiness. It's so much more about the pursuit and, and for a long time, and I'll just give you the context of this question is for a long time.
I believe that, you know, that, that cliche phrase, life is about the journey. Not that it was complete bullshit.
I was, I, I, I was like, that's nonsense. I think part of it was that I grew up poor in a tiny little town and nowhere.
And I was like, yeah, the journey. Okay.
Try being poor as shit for a while. You know, living on garage sale and, you know, going to school with holy sweatpants.
Cause it was the only pair of pants that you had. And you know what I mean? Tell me it's about the journey, right? And, but as I, you know, fought and scrapped and made my way out and went to college and all these different things, um, I started to really understand that this, this pursuit of a destination or, or, or focusing on the destination did not bring any happiness in all the success I've achieved.
It was never when I was there. It really was the grinding time of working through problems, sweating with people, being in the foxhole, whether it's on a sports team or in business or in a community group, that I actually found happiness.
So why do you think so many people get hung up on the destination and never take the time to enjoy the moment when they're actually in it in that grind time? Well, that's the thing. When we're in the moment and I'm having a really good time, I generally forget to take pictures.
So if I'm in a special moment with a lot of special people, I generally forget to take pictures because I'm having such a good, I'm so involved and I'm so into what I'm doing in the present. And that's where you find your happiness.
Happiness comes from within. You have to have a sense of I'm capable.
I give myself permission. I can give myself permission to be happiness.
I deserve to be happy. Those are all things anyone can say.
Those are all things anyone can deserve to say and should be able to say in their lives. I deserve to be happy.
I give myself permission to be happy and I am happy. Those are so important.
And, you know, it starts, like you just said starts it's not it's not that what's the destination is is is a trip to Paris for three days that's gone like that is that going to make you happy it's going to you're going to tell a lot of people and show off but maybe some people get happy showing off with conquest I think sometimes I think it's a it's a we live in such a competitive world you know my happiness is better than your happiness that kind of thing and sometimes that comes down to uh showing off okay so you think about it too and i tend to think that we're we're much better when we're when we're quiet about our accomplishments and we show our strength through our actions and behaviors and our values yeah that. Yeah.
That's where we find the happiness is the grind. It is the grind because it's like the satisfaction of figuring out a problem is so amazing, you know? Yeah.
So if we agree that, you know, kind of being present in the moment and living through the experience as it's happening can, can yield a lot more happiness than maybe focusing on the destination. How can people be more present in the moment? How can they actually take that deep breath, look around for a second and go, wow, like this might be hard, but geez, I'm having a lot of fun while I'm here.
Okay. Well, I am the happiness warrior, but I've had a lot of unhappy times in my life.
And I think that's how I got here in some ways too. So went through a really bad period of my life where it's usually another person involved that causes us trouble and um i walked i got out of that relationship and everything was really my life was just just blown up i had to start over again and that was daunting i was like in my late 30s i was like oh this is kind of embarrassing i'm starting over again i'm not kind of screwed up my career.
It was going really well. And now all I have left really is my body and my mind, and I need to work on that.
And I thought I can do anything as long as I start taking care of myself. So I started taking better care of myself.
I started working out really hard, and then I started looking for jobs that challenged me that I wanted to work in. And then I started working for myself.
And that was kind of another way to feel confident in myself and get out of that period where I forget about that, forget and forgive myself for the past. And that was really important too.
Do you think you have to go through conflict in order to be happy? Yes. Yes.
I think we can't hide from conflict. I think the best

thing in life is to face conflict head on, make sure and have a plan for it and have a measured reaction, you know, and not to do it just haphazardly. And we need, I think everybody, I have horrible things that happen to me sometimes, you know, a dog of mine will die or something will happen i had a major accident a couple years ago and i couldn't i i had my legs rebuilt i had to rebuild that and you know and i only felt bad one time i felt like a little bit when i couldn't really walk i was feeling like a little bit and i was sliding into some dark space and i i closed my eyes i opened them up and I looked around the room and I started

saying, hey, there's my sofa, there's my TV, there's my dog. And then I felt better.
And I

heard that that was something that helps people deal with anxiety. And at that moment, that's all it took to save me.
From that moment on, I went up. I went up and every day I got better and every day I got stronger and every day I was able to move better.
And it was just that, I think that dark period that was like it was a wake-up call it's very fast it's like an explosion in my brain that was like don't go this way you know don't go this direction let's let's let's stop right now so is this why gratitude is so such an important component to happiness gratitude is everything i always say that all the time if we're not grateful then we're then we're not living our lives fully we're not experiencing happiness fully we're just taking and taking things for granted how how does that go for most people to take things for granted not very well so we think those things are just i'm not i'm not a scientist of happiness but i'm just it's observations and feelings in life that i want to share just how i can turn a life that did have has had a lot of adversity and that will have more adversity I'll have further adversity um and keep happy all the time and I'm always happy I'm always happy I'm always I'm always in a good mood I wake up every day with an affirmation saying today's gonna hey Eric today's gonna be a great day and I say that aloud it's kind of crazy right yeah it's gonna be a great day. And I say that aloud.
It's kind of crazy, right? Yeah. It's going to be a great day.
Sometimes verbalizing is the best way to get out of our own heads. Have you ever read The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer? I've seen the book, but I have not read it.
I like the word untethered, though. Yeah.
Incredible. Very quick read.
You can read it in a weekend, no problem. And what he talks about in that book, and one of the reasons that it's one of the core books that I've probably recommended dozens of times on this show, and people listening are probably sick of hearing me recommend it, is because he breaks down in probably the most tangible way that I've experienced this idea that we're not our mind and we're not our body and that the voices

and, and, and feelings that we experience from these things are not actually who we are, that we're this separate thing. You know, you can call it the soul, you can call it whatever you want, but that all the voice in our head is oftentimes is there strictly to keep us alive in the next moment, right? The, the, the feelings and emotions and pain that we feel in our body, et cetera, is are just they're just data points meant to keep us alive for the next moment, right? The feelings and emotions and pain that we feel in our body, et cetera, they're just data points meant to keep us alive for the next moment.
And that if we can untether our soul from the voices and the feelings and the emotions, then we can start to experience who we really are. And I believe as you do, that gratitude is an incredibly important part of de-tethering ourselves from these voices because it pushes back against all the negativity that you get quite often.
Now, so I guess my next question is being that gratitude is so important to happiness. How can someone who's listening to this, who wants to build more happiness into their life and maybe isn't being intentional about it, how can they start to experience more gratitude or practice more gratitude in their life? Well, I think here's what I do.
And I have routines. I have routines for everything.
And I have things that I have spiritual routines that I do. And my biggest one is I'm not so much praying, but before I go to sleep at night, I'm sitting here, I'm doing some deep breaths on the side of my bed.
And then I say, I say, I did my best today, I'll do better tomorrow. And that is my mantra every single night, as I say before.
Everything before I go, I want to rest myself, I want to go to rest, sleep peacefully, and I'll have to check myself and make sure I, and when I say that statement, if there's anything that I regret, I'll say that aloud too, and I'll say, this is something I don't need to do ever again, or this is something I can handle differently. And I think about that.
And then the next day is awesome. Next day I wake up and I'm in a great mood and I have a good day every day.
Even if something hits me hard, you know what? Something better shows up in the next minute. That happens a lot too.
Yeah. Serendipity.
I firmly believe in serendipity and particularly how Stephen Pressfield talks about serendipity in the art of or the war of art. When he talks about the muse and the resistance and what comes out of feeding the muse.
Again, if you guys at home haven't read The War of Art, regardless of, you know, take the art part out of it because you can insert whatever it is that you do in your life. That book is incredible.
Very good book. I read that.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's tremendous. Pressfield's pressfield's wonderful.
So, um, you know, I think one of the things that you talked about was, uh, permission to be, to be happy. Uh, I think, I think the idea of giving ourselves permission to do things is incredibly powerful.
So when we're talking about happiness in particular, there's a lot of people who I run into and a lot of my work has to do with advising startups and executive coaching. So I run into a lot of people who are either one of two scenarios most of the time when people reach out to me, they're either incredibly overwhelmed or they're stuck on something.
And oftentimes when they're stuck, they find themselves in a place of, they start doubting themselves. Incredibly talented, brilliant people, 99 out of a hundred times, exponentially more brilliant than I will ever be in my entire life.
Yet they find themselves in these places where they're doubting themselves. And I'm like, you can do things that other people can't even imagine, yet you're questioning your ability.
And it's mostly because of what you said. They're not giving themselves permission.
So how would you recommend to someone who does find themselves in a moment of darkness or despair or negativity or just a brief moment of self-doubt, how would you recommend that themselves that permission to, to turn that corner and start to come back to the light? There's two easy things. It's two easy little tricks.
First one, just to close your eyes with the closure, you can do anything you want. Think of three things that make you happy right away.
Okay. The first three things that make you happy and you just reflect on that, that'll usually raise happy.
That'll usually raise happiness. Maybe smile from that too.
Cause a fake, smile is actually a real smile, and it raises our endorphins and makes us feel happier. And the second thing I think is really important is to be able to write down your accomplishments in life.
Because sometimes we kind of forget all the great things that we've done, and we kind of forget all the people that we've helped, and we kind of forget about all the value that I think a lot of people forget about all the value they've created in their lives and they take one little step back or they'll look at somebody else that's doing better than they are and just kind of be a step backwards where we're a lot of we're missing out on a lot of talent because people are afraid to move forward because they're afraid of failure they're afraid of success success is a is a big one. Success is really kind of hard to take.
It's not easy. I agree with you.
I'm interested in your take on this particular concept. I talk a lot on this.
I do solo episodes as well. So the cadence of this show is an interview and a solo episode.
And in solo episodes, I talk a lot about a fear of status and that I actually do not believe, failure to me is just a label. It's a, it's a, it, it, it really, it doesn't exist.
It's, it's not real. However, what I think people are actually saying when they may have a sense of a fear of failure or a fear of success, because, because I think these both play into the same thing is that they actually have a fear of status and that they're very worried about their status changing.
And for the consequences that come if you improve your status as well as the consequences that come if your status falls in a particular community or group, et cetera. And there's so much negativity attached to a change in status.
And so I think how do we internalize, to me, a big part of being able to weather a status change in your life is an intrinsic motivation or happiness that you have regardless of where you are in a social structure. So how do we cultivate that so that it's not just something that we can call on when we need it, but we're literally living in a sense of happiness kind of every moment of every day as as much as possible? I think it's that removal of that cutting off that need for external validation.
First of all, if we need external validation for something that we do, that we're not on the right track anyway. So we're not doing anything for us.
We're doing it for the sake of others. And I think we just place into what you're just saying

is we do much in our life.

We do most, most people get stuck in a trap

where they think they're doing,

they're living their lives in expectations of others,

under the rules of others, under the dictations of others.

They're being told what to do, told how to think,

told how to do everything.

And they get used to that.

And then it puts you in a big trap.

And then you've kind of lost every sense of who you are. There's no happiness there.
There's no sense of accomplishment. So the first thing to do is to stop that, and to stop the ego right in its tracks.
Change of status is a change in direction. It doesn't necessarily mean nothing's permanent.
Time changes everything. So time changes everything, and we have lessons to learn.
There are there are always messages everywhere we are at any point in the day there are messages sometimes we see them sometimes we receive them sometimes we just they get lost in in the energy of the universe but they're always there there's always the next step ahead it's right in front of us so yeah i'm reading a a good book on decision i love reading about decision making and i'm reading a book by annie duke called thinking and bets and she references a strategy and i apologize anyone who's listening or watching if you can leave it in the comments on youtube if you uh if you know the name of the person and i'll go back and try to find it uh she references someone else's work called the 10 10 10 strategy for this at this time element which i think is so incredibly important And I'm so glad you brought this up in which the, the, the creator of this strategy, who, again, I apologize that I forget. I just know it's an Annie Duke's book.
Um, uh, she says think about how this thing will impact you 10 minutes from now, 10 days from now, and then 10 years from now. And she said, if, if it's not gonna, if it's not going to change your life, 10 years from now, then 10 years from now.
And she said, if, if it's not gonna, if it's not gonna change your life 10 years from now, then 10 days from now and 10 minutes from now doesn't matter. Right.
And, and I'm not doing the full strategy justice, but I think we, we put so much pressure on things as if this small change in our life is going to last forever. And oftentimes we attach a preconceived notion that a change is going to be for the negative, right? Something will happen and maybe, yeah, it doesn't feel good to get fired or to miss a promotion or not get a sale or be rejected by a partner, a relationship partner or whatever.
But we, it doesn't just because that thing isn't perceived publicly as a positive doesn't mean it's not a positive for you. And, you know, do you have any strategies for reframing the events that happen in our life to, to kind of swing them towards what could potentially be the positive aspect of that change versus focusing only on kind of the external, maybe societal negative implication of that change? I have a rule.
I won't let my thinking, I won't let my mindset go into a negative space. I won't start thinking what ifs.
I won't start because I don't think you can ever tell what's going to happen. You may have no idea what's going to happen.
I also believe that we don't know anyone else is ever thinking at any time we don't know what's inside our partner's brain or in our husband wife's brain we don't know what they're really thinking we we have a general idea but we don't we make too many assumptions we make too many assumptions that hold us back keep us moving forward keep us from being happy keep us from showing up for life really is what it comes down to i use use that terminology a lot. My work is very simple.
I think I use things like show up, you know, learn it. And that actually has a lot of meaning.
Show up has a lot of meaning. But just simple things that we can take.
I always have one of the reasons I love what I do is because throughout my life, as I was trying to find out my calling, is I would listen to people and they would talk to me and they would start telling me, you know, how they feel about their value and where they're going in their lives. And I would always say, I don't want to solve anyone's problems.
That's not who I am. I'm not going to tell you what to do.
But I'll put a little spark in them with some words. You've used some really good phrasing today of how you talk to people.
It's putting that spark in. You have so many great things about you behind me.
And there's like those words, your words changed my life. And I have a lot of, so as I was becoming the happiness warrior in the stage that I haven't even gotten to that yet, but I was with my best friend on vacation in Miami.
And I was talking about, you know, being an entrepreneur and owning businesses. and I was with my best friend on vacation in Miami.
And I was talking about being an entrepreneur and owning businesses. And I was feeling like I'm on the go.
I'm on the go all the time. But I'm not getting a chance to really express myself other than being kind of like this important guy out in public in a conference or something.
And I wanted to be more authentic. And my friend said, you are a way better version.
i'm not going to say someone's name but you're a way better version of of of a um you know how to make people feel good you know you know how to bring the best out in people you're you're you're a motivation expert and you do it in a way that people don't feel threatened they don't feel they they don't feel like their finger there's someone pointing a finger at them empowers them instead and you can forget about me and forget what i've told you but still those words will stay in your head and to me it's just about helping others have a better journey you know have a better time in life so how did you become the happiness warrior well that's a little bit i'll make it really short i um when i was 18 i kind of thought i had potential to be a model and i was like well i'd be a model in york city but i never would i was too afraid to ever have any voice that ever but in my 40s i um i did some i did some uh of uh men's physique competitions and npc men's physique competitions i got kind of into that i got kind of into that the self-discipline and all that stuff and then as as I did that, I started getting a lot of invitations to do photo shoots. And then I kind of liked that kind of life for a little while because I'd travel somewhere and take some shoots.
And then I said, okay, I want to take this to a professional level. I want to get an agent in New York City.
And there's an agent that I had to visualize that does all the body models,

all the guys that were fit,

a lot of the athletes would come to this agency

and sign there.

I see them getting signed all the time online.

So I said, okay, no one's ever done this before.

Let me go to LA and do a photo shoot and get discovered.

No one's ever done that before.

No one's ever gone to LA and go,

oh, yes, they have.

Thousands of people come every day to LA

to get discovered and do photo shoots and then they get jobs as waiters for a while. They have to be patient.
And I wasn't really very patient. I'm in my late 40s.
I don't have a lot of time. And I did a really good photo shoot with a new photographer that I never worked with before.
And on Monday morning, I'm on the plane getting ready to take off. And the phone rings.
And it's the agent in New York that I had visualized signing me. Saying, hey, how fast do you get to New York? So I get to New York, a couple weeks later, sign as a model, and then that was another learning experience and humbling experience, and pounding the pavement, literally, and going to auditions and being a lot of really incredible people that you're up against.
And my whole mantra with New York is always the best of the best comes to New York. I need to make sure I'm my best, but I need to be happy.
So I always had this kind of happy expression. People always tend to like me when I came into the office to, you know, get lined up.
And my agent, I had another agent that came along and she was she was really incredible and I and but Kobe all these things were happening and I was kind of tired and that kind of I was in that was in New York I'm living in DC got a little hectic so I stopped modeling and I still wanted to do it I still wanted to be really good at it but I had to stop for a while and concentrate on my business and And then one day she called me up and she said, I know you don't want to hear from me, but that's not true. But she said, I know you don't hear from me, but I'm determined that you're going to be on television.
You know, I'm going to start using, I want you to be, I want you to go in a whole new direction with your career. And then COVID hit.
So then we stopped. New York shut down.
Everybody shut down. She moved to Hawaii.
I was very happy for her. She fell in love and moved to Hawaii.
And one last thing she said with me was, here's a publicist. Call him and he's going to help you.
So I said, what the heck is a publicist? I have no idea what a publicist even really does at that point. So I called my publicist, had about a one hour conversation with him.
It was a beautiful, like perfect october day the sun was perfect the sky was blue and he said i'm getting chills i'm going to call you the happiness warrior that's going to be my next you're going to be my next big thing i'm going to create i'm going to create the happiness where we're going to be you're going to write books and get tv and you know all this stuff and that's how it kind of happened and it's a lot of work it's hard work. And it's a lot of work.
It's hard work.

It's a lot of discipline every week.

Giving myself permission to write a column every week.

It's a big, life-changing steps

that a man in his late 50s, okay?

So it also takes a lot of faith in that, too.

The faith in that I am the happiness warrior.

Who gave me permission other than myself?

You know, that's the only permission that I need. So that's why I'm the happiness warrior.
Okay. And it's just unapologetic about it.
So, yeah, I'm proud of it. Yeah, no, I think it's phenomenal.
I mean, I think the world is in a moment, our society is in a moment where anyone who is working to spread happiness and positivity and connectivity throughout our culture is, you know, is someone who needs to be shared, their story needs to be shared, their voice needs to be shared. Because, you know, every day you if you turn on the TV, turn on social media, whatever, look in your email, all you see is negativity.
So do you think that this is a particular moment in time in which, you know, you are needed? And have you seen, have you seen that in your work? Have you seen the response to your work kind of play that out? I have been, I'm not surprised, but I've had, I have so many people who believe in me, who want help me who do who are all like they're they're they read my stuff they they comment on what i'm doing but they follow me and they and they look and they look at what i'm doing as uh something really important in their lives too and they tell me oh i read your column today i read or i saw your video and you know what your video is 15 seconds but it changed my whole day because you're up there helping someone, helping all of us. And it's just, it's just, I can see it growing.
And I don't want to be the only happiness warrior. I'd like to have a lot of happiness warriors.
I like to have kids become happiness warriors because ultimately it's really, it's really our young people that need so much right now. And us older folks, you know, we've, we've survived a lot of things and we've been through a lot, but I think it's the kids that I want them to have a better future, you know, a safer, emotionally safer, happier, you know, self-confident future and all kids.
I don't want to leave anyone else. Yeah.
Yeah. I, I, I agree with that.
I think that, um, I think that, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm of, I, I'm always of two opinions on kids.

I have to say I have two young kids right now, and I'm trying to raise them as best I can. You know, I'm divorced, but I co-parent pretty well with my ex-wife, so that works out pretty well.
But it's tough. I think there were a lot of things in my own childhood that obviously, per that time, were not necessarily positives in the way certain things were handled.
But at the same time, there are things that I feel like we've gone, the pendulum has swung a little too far towards safety. Oh, yeah we have to, there's a good balance.
Like kids shouldn't run wild, you know, intense bullying and things like that. Definitely, you know, it's definitely, those things need to be taught out and trained out of kids and understanding and communication and all that kind of stuff.
But we've also, you know, in an effort to curb, you know, just using as a microcosm bullying, we've made our, our, our, our youth programs and schools and education so helicopter-y that the kids don't even know how to react to mild situations. They need to be able to stand on their own.
They need to be, I agree 100%. They don't need a helicopter parent.
They don't even know how to react to mild situations and to be able to stand on their own they need to be a hundred percent they don't need a helicopter parent they don't they don't need to be involved in what they're learning they can just kids are going to learn what they're going to learn yeah right they're they're intelligent i mean most most of them figure things out on their own they know more than we think they do most of the time and you'll you'll i'm sure you're always like what you know so yeah i said, what? I don't have any kids, but I've always had a very sort of mentor approach to a lot of young people. And I have a lot of young employees that are really important to me because they work with me for years.
They stick around because I give everyone that works for me a really great opportunity to be successful. Yeah.
And that's also important. It's important everything, happiness comes from so many, it's just a collage of things because so many things make me happy.
I think to myself, one of my responsibilities every day is to hold myself up for my employees and to be a good example, to set a good example and to to communicate effectively, and to give them some hope in life, too. Because I came from, I had a lot of things in my life that were very difficult, and I had to also kind of go along with a lot of secondhand clothes and things like that at some points in my life, too.
So I know it's like to have very little money for lunch when you're working all day, you know? Yeah. So, and now my situation has changed.
It's really important for me for not, I don't want anyone else to have to live that way. But I do think you need to make your own way.
And I do think this whole, the safety, I said to have a safe environment without any predators, but to have a safe environment, they need to fight all out. They need to work things out themselves and learn.
Yeah. Yeah.
Good, good examples. You're going to have good examples in their lives.
And I think that's the key. You know, what I try to talk about with a lot of my friends when they're having kids and stuff is like, it doesn't, you know, what you say is important, but understand that it's what you do that's going to shape your kids.
And, you know, if they, you can, you can say respect women, but if you treat their mom like shit, that's what they're going to pick up on. Right.
And it's, and it's, and it's the body language. It's the way that you respond to them.
You know, if they make a simple mistake and you're overly sharp because you're tense, because you, you know, you can't leave work at work, that's, that's going to impact them. And, you know, it's these little things that, that we don't, that we don't think about.
And a big part of why I do this show is one, I, you know, I think that personal development and personal growth is, is the key to, to, to not just happiness, but satisfaction, purpose, meaning, you know, meaning in our lives. I think it personal development and personal growth is the key to not just happiness, but satisfaction, purpose, meaning in our lives.

I think it's incredibly important. Additionally, I like to bring on people like yourself who can help give just a new perspective on independent thinking.
We've lost, we've, we've, I feel like two, we've, we've outsourced our thinking to talking heads. And, you know, and I, and I know I do a podcast, so maybe it seems a little, uh, like, um, um, um, you know, I'm being disingenuous, but I try not, I try not to tell people how to live.
I just try to show them, you know, not even really the way I live as much. I try to just highlight you guys because the guests, because we need to be independent thinkers.
And I don't think you can be happy if you're allowing someone else to dictate what you think about and how you think about things. And, and, and to your point, going all the way back to kind of failure and status and all those kind of things it's like it's okay to have an opinion have that opinion be wrong and change that opinion right it's okay to think it's amazing but that that would that would solve almost all of our divisions in this country right yes but it's just seven words you know and yeah and it's it's my my my my one of my really heartfelt goals of this is I've had.
Most of us have relationships and things that have been really strained in the last few years. And we've and how do we get that back again? How do we how do we move forward? And I'm not going to solve that problem, but I want to solve the problem of how we think about ourselves.
Yeah, we have a better positive image of ourselves, we want to share that with our friends again.

We want to share our positive things that we're doing in our lives.

And I think that's how we come together with energy builds up and there's,

you know, and, and, you know, you follow that guy, he's not so bad.

You know, and you can,

and you can say I made a mistake and I'm thinking differently now and that's okay.

Yeah.

And we don't need to go into a big apology session. I don't like those either, but just a little acknowledgement and respect.
It's really what it comes down to. I completely agree.
I completely agree. You know, one of the episodes, uh, I had an episode about three months ago that, uh, I don't want to say it went viral, but it, it, it was very, it did very well for, you know, kind of commonly how the show does, you know, just exponentially more.
And it was all about how to have a political conversation with a friend who disagrees with you and still love each other was what the was what the show was about. And and I had a friend on who had different political views than I do.
And basically, and I and we've had so many conversations about stuff, you know, I knew that we would still be friends after, but what I wanted to show everyone is like, we can have different takes. We can see things from different angles.
Ultimately, when we're, when we're approaching any conversation, not just a political conversation from different viewpoints, from a place of being a good actor, trying, you know, not trying to impose my will or be right, but to ultimately just have a conversation and express views that you, most of the time we're, we're going for the same goal, just approaching it from different angles. And if we could come at things in our life from the standpoint of, I believe this person has best interest in mind, they're just approaching it from a different angle, then you can find all these common places, even if ultimately your end viewpoint is different.
there's so many commonalities and we've lost that right we've lost that. I pick a side on a topic and then I'm given 17 other topics that I have to have this view on because I've taken this view on this one thing and I can't change because I said I was this thing now.
And it's like, that's just not actually how any of us work. And I feel like it creates, you know, it creates so much, um, angst and anxiety and, and, and, and dissension in inside of organizations and in community groups and families.
And it's like, really, we're all pretty good people trying our best who, when we, when we actually look at the cross cuts, there's so much goodness and love and gratitude. And to me, it's this ability to think independently that allows us to see through the nonsense to get to the really good stuff in the middle, which is where all the happiness is.
Well, there you go. And I agree 100%.
That was something I would have said almost the same words. I have a, last summer I got, I started to be connected with an old friend and I started getting together with like five or six guys that I've known since I was in my 20s or college.
And we started walking, we were walking together. We walked together every Sunday morning, we meet at 8 a.m.
It's early. If someone else wants to come along, great.
But most people don't don't make the 8 a.m they just cut out so the five of us usually go walk six or seven miles sometimes it's in the parks it's kind of strenuous and we all have we're all entrepreneurs we all have our businesses we've all we're all established you know we've all been around town for a long time there's no competition we're all successful and we're all different types of nationalities and everything, too.

We have different political views.

We don't talk politics, but we talk about the issues that we have in our lives and our businesses and how dishwashers are $24 an hour now and things like that. And let me tell you what, our political differences may be, I mean, the overall, like you said, the overall goal, the overall at the end point, we're all the the same okay but i tell you if i'm slipping down that hill i'm going down the side of a cliff one of those guys is going to push me up okay i i know that we're all there for each other and yeah we tell each other every week hey love you guys and we think to us and i say we say hey we if we don't say that we're going to really be sad that we don't say that to each other and if we can do that everyone else can do that too and of times the best thing to do, and this is me too, because I think it's a body-mind connection, go for a walk.
Go for a walk with a friend. I do a lot of that.
I do a lot of videos about walking with friends. And I think walking with a friend is one of the most healthy things we can do.
So if you want to solve a problem, go for a walk with a friend friend i think more interesting things happen in my life

with on walks with friends hikes with friends so yeah i i completely agree i'll tell you and we can we can leave it here one of the best things that i i think about in our society today particularly for men this is particularly true for men yeah when i was growing up in my teens So I'm 43.

So this is 30 years ago.

Hugging a dude and telling them that you love them, you slap guys up, whatever, but it wasn't today when I see someone, big bear hug, love you, man. Great to see you.
That's a part of our society that I think I'm so, you know, I think I'm very happy. And I think we should celebrate the fact that, uh, it is much more, um, socially acceptable to express joy, compassion, love for other people, uh, openly.
And, and especially for men, I think women traditionally have been better at this, but men in particular have really taken, the culture has shifted to where men can be much more open with each other in terms of the feeling of connection and how they express that. I think that's a wonderful thing for our society and something that we need to cultivate.
I'm really big on that principle as well. I think that men need to reconnect with each other and have friendships.
And I think those friendships, they grow and they spread too. And then they become, hey, I know you guys, we trust you, you know, this guy, you know, and then it becomes something bigger than ourselves.
So that's what it's all about. Everything that we do in life, it's really bigger than us.
Our actions are bigger than us. Everything is about the community of people that we all share this planet with.
And it's not getting any less crowded. We better figure it out, right? That's for sure.
So, Eric, it's been a great pleasure speaking with you, man. This has been wonderful.
I love the work you're doing. I love the message you're sharing.
So if someone's listening to this, where can they get more from you? Where's the best place for them to go to learn more about you? I love Instagram, the Happiness Warrior official. Same thing on TikTok, which I'm starting to do a lot of videos on there.
My Facebook is also the Happiness Warrior. And then I have a website, thwarrior.com, where I just started selling merchandise.
So I have baseball caps and hoodies and t-shirts. So I'm getting out there.
Awesome. I love it.
Well, guys, I'll have links to all that in the show notes, or you can just look up Eric directly. But if you're listening, wherever you're listening to this, or if you're watching on YouTube, just go in the description and you'll find links to all of Eric's social properties.
Eric, it's been such a pleasure, man. I appreciate you.

I'm so grateful, Ryan. It was so awesome.
I could talk to you for hours, okay?

So we're great, okay? Thank you so much.

Thank you. Let's go.
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