Ruth Whippman on the Complexity of Happiness

The One You Feed

Ruth Whippman is a regular contributor to radio shows, television, and podcasts, having made appearances on shows including NPR’s Brian Lehrer Show, To the Point, CBS news and Morning Edition amongst many others. She is also a regular speaker and has given talks at Google, Princeton University and UC Berkeley as well as many other venues. Her book is, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks and it is this – along with the flaws of the self help that she and Eric talk about in this episode.

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In This Interview, Ruth Whippman and I Discuss...

• Her book, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks
• How many people in the self-help industry are trying to sell easy answers and life is incredibly complex
• Sitting with a certain amount of complexity in life
• The flaws with studies
• The one thing consistent across all research and people’s experience about happiness
• The American tradition of self-reliance
• The victim blaming myth that we’re completely responsible for how we feel
• That circumstances absolutely play a role in our degree of happiness
• What’s behind the positive psychology movement
• How we need to think of well being as a shared responsibility
• That it’s easy to lose compassion when you go too far down the road of “your happiness is completely within your control and completely your responsibility”
• The flaws in The Law of Attraction theory
• How to cope with the anxiety-producing stuff going on in the news
• The importance of social support, community, and connection
• The challenges of social media

Ruth Whippman Links:

ruthwhippman.com

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