2. Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt agree on this
3. What can the healthiest one-hundred-year-olds in the world teach us?
4. The single greatest lesson we can learn from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
5. The horrible idea the Germans had that ruined things for everybody
6. “When you’re through changing, you’re through.”
7. The 4 S’s of work
8. The dream we all have that is completely wrong
Secret #5
How to Make More Money Than a Harvard MBA
1. What does Harvard do for your salary?
2. “Is everyone nuts?”
3. The single calculation to find out what you really make
4. How does a teacher or retail assistant manager make more than a Harvard MBA?
Secret #6
The Secret to Never Being Too Busy Again
1. Do this and you’ll suddenly have space back in your life
2. The 3 B’s of creating space
3. This is how NASA, Alfred Hitchcock, and Nicole Katsuras use this secret
4. Removal #1: How to make every decision at twice the speed
How do the President of the United States and the CEO of Facebook make every decision at twice the speed?
The curious case of Benjamin Lee
The most exhausting idea I’ve ever had
285 reasons why you’re tired right now
What do you find every morning and lose every night?
The only person whose rules you have no choice but to follow
The unanticipated joy of being totally stuck
4 simple words that will help you prioritize everything
5. Removal #2: The counterintuitive way to have more time
The single law that determines how long anything takes to do
How do you cut all meeting time in half?
How do you complete a three-month project in one day?
6. Removal #3: How to add an hour to a day with only one small change
How to protect your most valuable asset
The greatest misconception you share with every other employee
The only two modes your brain actually has and how to use them
One of the hardest and most important things you will ever do at work
7. “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”
Have Everything
Secret #7
How to Turn Your Biggest Fear into Your Biggest Success
1. The childhood trauma that made me quit swimming
2. Two barriers we place in front of anything we don’t want to do
3. The secret scribble to moving from fear to success
4. How does Jerry Seinfeld use this secret to write comedy?
5. It’s not easier said than done, it’s easier done than said
6. A 30-second technique to using this secret in your daily life
7. What does the greatest physicist of all time say?
8. The advertising slogan everyone knows because it follows this secret
9. The single greatest lesson we can learn from Home Alone
Secret #8
The Simple Way to Master Your Most Important Relationship
1. “I run a burlesque dancing troupe.”
2. This is the most authentic person of all time
3. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
4. 3 simple tests to uncovering this secret inside you
5. The 5 greatest regrets of the dying and how to avoid them
6. “When there are no enemies within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
Secret #9
The Single Best Piece of Advice You’ll Ever Take
1. “Ninety-seven percent of lung cancer patients are smokers and ninety-seven percent of smokers never get lung cancer.”
2. What can we learn from the most common advice of all?
Thank You
Acknowledgments
Index
Credits
Author’s Note
I have spent more than a decade developing leaders.
I have had incredible experiences speaking about leadership to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, eating dinner with royal families in the Middle East, sharing stages with Harvard deans, and consulting on leadership to organizations like Audi, Viacom, and GE. I have worked as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart, interviewed billionaires, and worked directly for two CEOs at the world’s largest company.
But after years successfully helping people lead teams, lead businesses, and lead organizations, something slowly dawned on me.
Hardly anyone was happy.
Every conference lunch was filled with conversations about struggling to find balance, feeling too busy, and keeping up with others. So many leaders said they didn’t have space in their lives, were stressed about time and money, and felt burdened with endless decisions and conflicting advice. Even the greatest leaders in the world—even billionaires, even Fortune 500 CEOs—were all plagued with dramatic crises on a daily basis. Fiery cauldrons of stress were bubbling in their heads and stomachs.
I also realized I wasn’t happy myself.
I was searching for simple models to decide what to do, searching for structure to relieve stress, and searching for guidelines to steer me through tough decisions constantly bogging me down. I thought about all the times I felt guilty not getting work done, burned out after a crazy week, or struggling in messy mental states for days navigating tough choices.
Looking back, I can’t believe how much time I wasted.
Being happier is the biggest challenge you face every single day at work. Same if you’re a stay-at-home mom, studying through school, or traveling abroad. Teaching and training your brain to stay positively focused while navigating the bumps of life is something we’re not taught at school. I mean, have you ever taken a course called “How to Be Happier”?
For the past few years, I have led workshops every summer with high school students who are brought together for the entire month of July for a world-class enrichment camp. These students have the highest grades in their schools, participate in the most clubs and teams, and are all destined for Ivy Leagues. They love the program because they get to meet and spend time with people like them. I do the workshops because I was lucky enough to attend when I was in high school.
What started organically, with no notes and no slides, has slowly evolved into a talk I give called “9 Secrets to a Happier Life.” And at the end of my talk I open up to questions. I am always surprised by what is asked. The students don’t have questions about getting better grades, getting into the best schools, or landing the highest-paid jobs. They know they can do all that. Everything they ask comes from a desire to be happier.
“How much money do I need to retire?” “What’s the best way to handle criticism?” “How do I get more done with less stress?” “How do I find my true passion?” “How can I cure my anxiety?” “What’s the best way to achieve more inside and outside work?” “What do I do when everyone gives me different advice?” “How can I become a more positive person?”
The sessions are illuminating because they show how some of the smartest kids around don’t care about developing brainpower or technical smarts. They want contentment . . . freedom . . . and happiness. They want to want nothing . . . do anything . . . and have everything.