Ingrid Fetell Lee, Author of JOYFUL: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness
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[0:40]Hi, I'm excited to be here today with Ingrid Fatelle, who is a joy expert. She started as a design director
[0:46]at IDEO, a global innovation firm, and was a founding faculty member at the School of Visual
[0:51]Arts in New York City. She's been featured in the New York Times, Wired and Fast Company,
[0:56]among others. Apparently last year's TED Talk got her a standing ovation. Yes.
[1:02]The mini version of the TED Talk, which everybody listening should go to YouTube and watch,
[1:06]has 12 million views online, and it will brighten up your day. With a master's in industrial
[1:11]design from Pratt Institute and a bachelor's in English and creative writing from Princeton University,
[1:16]Ingrid has established herself as a leader in the design field. Her popular blog,
[1:20]the aesthetics of joy, showcases her work and ideas, and she currently lives in Brooklyn. So welcome,
[1:25]Ingrid. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I have to say I had a case on IDEO at my business school,
[1:31]and I thought it was like the coolest company ever. It must have been. It is. It's an amazing place.
[1:35]You come up with just innovative ideas, or what does it do? So yeah, I know is an innovation,
[1:41]design, and innovation company, and works across disciplines. So, you know, everything from
[1:48]designing medical devices to redesigning the way that an entire education system works.
[1:55]So applying the ideas of design, the methods of design to some of the world's biggest challenges.
[2:01]Yeah. Awesome. So how can you tell listeners how you stumbled upon this
[2:06]sort of life-changing idea, which is the premise for your book, that joy, and I should have said
[2:10]the book is called Joyful, the Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to create extraordinary happiness.
[2:16]So how did you come across this idea that these joy is not a fleeting feeling, but really
[2:25]you can be, you can take over. So I wasn't looking for this. You know, this is something that
[2:32]sort of happened to me almost by accident. So I was in a design review. I was in my first year of
[2:37]design school, and I had just finished that first year, and at the end of the first year,
[2:41]they do this review where they make you take everything that you made over the course of the year,
[2:46]and sort of set it out so that professors can give you feedback on it. And it is sort of this
[2:53]grueling, you know, you prepare and you prepare and you lay everything out and you're so nervous.
[2:58]And I think the bar for like a good one of those reviews is like if you don't leave in tears.
[3:04]Yeah. Like what's like a good one? So I was standing there and of course really nervous and
[3:09]terrified, and then one of the professors says your work gives me a feeling of joy. And this is
[3:16]not obviously what I've ever seen. But also like that's weird. I mean, there was
[3:21]a lot of feelings out once. The first one was like joy isn't that like light and fluffy,
[3:26]and I left, you know, a pretty serious career in branding to come back as, you know,
[3:33]years out of school to like come back and do a degree in design, and you're telling me that I
[3:38]made joy. Like, you know, maybe that's I sort of felt like it was a little not serious. And what I
[3:44]wanted to be doing was really solving serious problems. And so I was a little thrown.
[3:51]But I was also curious because, you know, we think about joy as this intangible ephemeral
[3:58]feeling. And it's kind of this thing that I think we are almost passive to, you know, it sort
[4:06]of drifts by us. And we can catch it as it floats past. But that's really our main relationship to
[4:12]it. And so when this professor said, you know, that there were these tangible things, and it was
[4:16]like a cup and a lamp and a stool. And like, how did those things create a feeling of this sort of
[4:23]lofty and ephemeral joy? And so I asked them, and they couldn't answer the question. And this sort
[4:31]of sent me off on this journey. And looking at the things, like if you're understanding they're
[4:37]looking at it, yeah, would I be able to see what they were talking about or were you completely
[4:41]blindsided by this comment? I was pretty blindsided by the comment because I had not tried to
[4:45]create joy, obviously. I was trying to make serious things. So, you know, for example, the
[4:48]story, what did they say? Yeah, what it was a stool was designed to be, to help people with balance
[4:53]issues. It had foam and sort of layers of foam, and it moved, you know, and now that, I mean,
[4:58]the other thing is, like, if you remember first year of design school, nothing looked very good.
[5:03]So the professors were sort of like seeing things that maybe, you know, I mean, I don't even
[5:09]have good pictures of them, which is funny because, you know, you're so embarrassed of the first
[5:13]thing to make in school, that, you know, you don't even save the photo. It's just like, oh, that's
[5:18]terrible, you know. But, yeah, so, you know, it was designed to help people with balance issues
[5:28]sort of improve their core strength, right? But it had all these layers of colored foam that,
[5:34]I guess, is what gave it the feeling of looking joyful. But it was really a byproduct of the
[5:38]utilitarian goal that I had, you know. So, yeah, it wasn't on purpose. So then you went out
[5:46]and decided to try to find out these experts or what came next. So what came next was, obviously,
[5:51]I went to the library, you know, I was supposed to be on some application. I wouldn't say that
[5:55]was obvious. I did, I was not expecting that. So, the first thing that I went to the library,
[6:00]you know, and I thought, okay, let me go to the design section and see if there's anything
[6:04]about how to create happiness and how to create joy. And so, yes, and how, how, how do those things
[6:11]connect? And of course, there's a lot of, you know, people's opinions, but there's nothing
[6:16]grounded in science. And then I go to the happiness section and I'm like, okay, let's look in
[6:21]psychology. Let's see if, you know, what is there that might have to do with the physical world? And
[6:26]there's nothing there because psychology is this very inward-looking discipline. It's all about
[6:30]what's going on inside of us, our minds, our behaviors, our attitudes, all of those things. And now,
[6:36]obviously, our neurochemistry and all of that, but nothing about the physical world. It's almost like
[6:41]that is just completely incidental to the field of psychology. And so, you know, it became this effort
[6:46]of trying to piece together all of the research out there. So that was the sort of, that was the first
[6:52]thing. So I recognized there was a gap. And so I started just by talking to people and I went out
[6:56]and I like stood out in the middle of Rockefeller Center and I just started asking people,
[7:00]tourists, people on their lunch breaks, what brings you joy? And I started to gather.
[7:06]Does you have a little table on this tree? No. It was just me and a clipboard.
[7:09]You and a clipboard. You have people starting to look official. Wow, I'm a friend. Yeah, I'm a friend.
[7:14]Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just, you know, you move in your city. But, you know, when you're talking
[7:19]people about joy, it's a lot easier because most people are happy to talk about joy.
[7:24]They're a little reserved at first and then when you're like, I just want to talk to you about
[7:27]joy. You know, that's it. It's actually a lot easier. So I started making lists of the things
[7:34]that people would say. And some of the things were personal, you know, and we all have these
[7:38]sort of individual things that are quirky and, you know, it's like the t-shirt from the fish show
[7:42]from 10 years ago that was like, you know, have great memories of it and no one else would
[7:45]understand why that's joyful. And then there are cultural things, you know, things like
[7:51]foods and sports teams and things like that that have to do with where we grew up. And, you know,
[7:56]they're very specific or grounded in place or in sort of a group of people. And then there was
[8:02]this other set of things that was not explained by either of those factors and they were things
[8:07]like, you know, balloons and bubbles and cherry blossoms and tree houses. And those things were
[8:17]kind of not limited to one group of people. They cut across lines of age and gender and ethnicity.
[8:25]And it began to seem like they were universally joyful. And I would start to look at, you know,
[8:30]other cultures and see, for example, kites, you know, kites are everywhere. And we've people on
[8:36]every continent like kites. And so, you know, what is it about these certain pleasures that are
[8:42]so universal. And so I started putting pictures of them up on my wall to try to see if I could
[8:49]an actual physical wall. Not like a Pinterest. No. It was before Pinterest. It was more
[8:54]of an interest. It was, you know, in the days of Flickr and Google. And that was how you found
[8:58]images back then. And, yeah, I know I had a physical wall in my studio. It was like a linen covered
[9:06]sort of inspiration board. And I just used, you know, thumbtacks. And I just would sort of put
[9:10]these images up and then move them around and move them around. And try to see if I could spot
[9:17]something that, you know, some common thread. Because I think as a designer, you want to understand
[9:24]not just that these things exist, but how to actually make more of this, you know, designers
[9:30]always want to put more of something into the world if it's good. And I wanted to understand
[9:35]what that essence was. And what I noticed was that there were these physical patterns. So, you know,
[9:42]bright color, round things, you know, a sense of lightness or elevation. And as I looked at these patterns,
[9:51]they sort of emerged from the wall. I realized that there are, you know, joy is intangible and
[9:58]from wrong. But there are-
[10:00]ways, there are triggers, physical triggers that sort of elicit that joy within us.
[10:06]And that is sort of a bridge between the physical world around us and the emotional world
[10:12]within us.
[10:13]And so I started calling these things aesthetics of joy because all of them were aesthetic
[10:18]elements.
[10:20]And I found 10 of them.
[10:22]And so there are 10 of these patterns.
[10:24]And that's what the book is based on is these 10 patterns.
[10:28]But when you first started researching this and you're there with your linen board
[10:31]and everything, was it just to be a better designer or were you trying to make it into
[10:36]some sort of project for your design school or were you like, oh, I'm working on a dissertation
[10:43]about, you know what I mean?
[10:44]Yeah.
[10:45]Well, it became my master's thesis.
[10:46]But it first it just became the sort of area of curiosity for me where I was like, I'm
[10:51]going to see if I can decode this because this is just, it wouldn't leave me alone.
[10:55]You know, it was one of those questions that wouldn't leave me alone.
[10:57]And I was fortunate that I had to do a thesis.
[10:59]Right.
[11:00]And so it was like a perfect occasion to spend, you know, a year dedicated to researching
[11:05]this talk.
[11:06]They would be pretty hard to just, I was just imagining like the pursuit of information
[11:12]with no deadline.
[11:13]Like I feel like that, yes, it can be harder in the deadline.
[11:16]It was very helpful.
[11:17]And also, yeah, there was some structure to it from the beginning.
[11:21]Definitely.
[11:22]Yeah.
[11:23]And then of course, you know, I started working at IU right after this.
[11:27]So I worked on it on the side.
[11:30]This project.
[11:31]So when did you do, give me like the 10 second bio here, see you went to college.
[11:35]Yeah.
[11:36]And then you went to work in branding.
[11:37]I worked in, yeah, market research and branding.
[11:39]I lived in Sydney for two years.
[11:41]And then I came back from Sydney and I knew at that point that I wanted to be a designer.
[11:44]I didn't know exactly how I would get there because I had no design experience.
[11:49]So I started applying to design schools and sort of, you know, making things myself to
[11:54]try to show that, you know, taking drawing classes and things like that to sort of improve
[11:58]my tangible skills.
[12:00]And I ended up, you know, getting into Pratt.
[12:04]And so I started, I went there.
[12:07]And then I left Pratt the day that I presented this work as my thesis.
[12:11]I got the offer to join IDEO.
[12:14]And so I spent six years at IDEO and all along the time that I was at IDEO is working on
[12:19]this mornings and weekends.
[12:22]And yeah.
[12:23]Were you trying to bring this into these concepts into your work?
[12:27]Yeah.
[12:28]To some extent, yes, there were, you know, there are always intersections and places
[12:32]that you can infuse that.
[12:34]But it's also, you know, you are trying to find the, you know, I was still trying to sort
[12:42]of develop the principles.
[12:43]And so at times there would be opportunities to test that.
[12:46]I think the biggest thing that helped me during that period was I spent a lot of time in
[12:50]people's homes and in their workplaces and in call centers.
[12:55]And, you know, because I was doing a lot of ethnographic research, so I was seeing how
[12:59]people lived.
[13:00]And so in a way, I was sort of seeing a talk a little bit about a lack of joy in some
[13:06]of the places that we spend a lot of our time, that these aesthetics of joy are very,
[13:11]you know, present in certain places, but really absent in others.
[13:16]And the workplace is one of the places that it's really absent.
[13:19]So spending a lot of time with people in their cubicles and in their conference rooms
[13:23]and in their, you know, at call centers and out in the field, you know, with people who
[13:29]have more, like out in the world kinds of jobs, you see that that joy is missing.
[13:37]And so that was sort of like a, it raised the importance of this for me.
[13:42]Yeah.
[13:43]And you said in the TED Tech, you showed all these slides of all these happy things,
[13:47]like balloons and concetti and whatever, and, you know, bubbles and happiness and color.
[13:53]And then your next slide is of like these giraffe hallways and office conference rooms and
[13:59]you're like, why do we live?
[14:00]Exactly.
[14:01]Why do we live like this?
[14:02]And there are, I mean, there are reasons, you know, one of the reasons.
[14:05]I mean, the reasons I have to do with the fact that we are, as a culture, we sort of suppress
[14:10]joy.
[14:11]We hold ourselves back from joy.
[14:12]And the reason is that, you know, we sort of feel like joy is something we're supposed
[14:15]to grow out of as we get older.
[14:17]So children are given free rein to be playful and joyful.
[14:22]And then as we get older, we sort of feel like we have to grow up and set that aside.
[14:27]And, you know, we, we, I mean, to exhibit joy in our culture as adults, to wear a lot of
[14:34]bright color and to be playful and silly is often judged as childish or superficial or self
[14:44]indulgent.
[14:45]You know, I mean, I know a lot of women who like don't, who don't want to buy themselves
[14:49]flowers because they feel like it's self indulgent, you know, by the way, after I read that
[14:54]chapter, I was walking home from dropping off my daughter's school and passed like letting
[14:58]so florist.
[14:59]And I was like, I'm just going to do it.
[15:00]I'm just going to go in and buy flowers for no reason.
[15:02]Right.
[15:03]And I bought them and they have been like the highlight of my week every time I walk by and
[15:07]like, those are flowers.
[15:08]And I for no reason.
[15:09]Look how beautiful.
[15:10]And I smile.
[15:11]And I keep going.
[15:12]I've been thinking of you a lot.
[15:14]I'll show the tea on you.
[15:15]Yeah.
[15:16]But I mean, I think that is, and that is a much deeper equation, you know, that sort
[15:23]of runs deep in our culture.
[15:24]So if you look at Goethe and his theory of colors, he says, you know, savage nations
[15:30]uneducated people and children have a predilection for bright colors and people of refinement
[15:36]try to avoid bright colors as much as possible.
[15:39]So there's a equation between, you know, the visual signs of joy and to be ignorant,
[15:47]to be, you know, immature, to be primitive and savage, you know, that is, it sort of has
[15:56]colonialists or overtones.
[15:59]But that is a sort of a kind of baggage that has followed us into the present day.
[16:04]And so when you look at the world that we have built, we've built a world that sort
[16:09]of separates joy out from the rest of life.
[16:12]So there are sort of circumscribed spaces for joy.
[16:15]We have joy in parks.
[16:16]We have joy in playgrounds.
[16:17]We have joy in, you know, amusement parks and resorts, hotels and resorts.
[16:24]And pretty much everywhere else is designed for function only and that means it's gray,
[16:30]space, it doesn't have any embellishment or ornamentation.
[16:35]Maybe houses of worship or like the only other place that sort of has is designed for
[16:40]joy and a kind of transcendence.
[16:42]But generally speaking, most of the places we spend most of our time are sort of the joy
[16:47]has been stripped out of them.
[16:49]Sad.
[16:50]It is.
[16:51]It is.
[16:52]And, you know, when I started looking at those images, in fact, when I was doing the
[16:58]et cetera, I almost choked up at that point because it is really sobering to see it.
[17:03]And I think it's especially sobering to see it when you look at, it's, I think it's
[17:09]the worst in the places where people have no choice but to be.
[17:14]So, you know, nursing homes and hospitals.
[17:17]People who have no, you know, and housing projects and homeless shelters, those kinds
[17:22]of places where, you know, people are, you know, they have limited mobility or they're
[17:29]down on their luck and they don't have a lot of options.
[17:32]And there's almost like a, we feel like we have to deserve joy or we have to earn joy.
[17:37]And so, we sort of don't put it into those places because those places are designed
[17:42]for purely for function.
[17:44]And I think it really harms now that I understand the research, now that I understand
[17:48]the connection between our environment and our emotional well-being, you can see that
[17:53]it's sort of a self-perpetuating thing, that by stripping that out of the environment,
[17:56]we're also stripping a lot of the things that suggest life, that's a just vibrancy and
[18:01]that make people, you know, excited to get up in the morning and live.
[18:08]So, yeah.
[18:09]I want to go into the 10 different, you know, components of joy.
[18:14]But do you think, like, do you think people would be receptive, have you found the people
[18:18]receptive?
[18:19]Like, your book was so inspiring to me.
[18:21]And I was like, I think I'm going to go talk to the head man, I shouldn't say this.
[18:24]I want to talk to the head manager at the kid's school because we just did this huge
[18:27]innovation and it's now completely colorless.
[18:31]Like, if they had you come in and present, like, would that, you know, are people open
[18:36]to this idea?
[18:37]Have you seen like, if you give them factual evidence or are they still just like, nah, I think
[18:42]if there are some people who are open, I think seeing stories like, um, the story of public
[18:47]color and, you know, what they've done in New York City schools where they go in and to
[18:51]these neglected school districts and they transform these schools with vibrant color and,
[18:56]you know, they find that graffiti disappears and attendance improves and that kids and
[19:01]teachers both say they feel safer in these buildings.
[19:05]I think when you start to see results like that, I think color is probably one of the trickiest
[19:09]ones.
[19:10]It's a difficult one to measure.
[19:11]I think there's much better studies on things like light and the quality of light in schools
[19:17]that is actually directly connected to educational performance.
[19:21]So need your performance.
[19:22]And you said also, um, in the 1980s a group of patients with gallbladder surgery recovered
[19:27]faster.
[19:28]The patients who are facing trees recovered faster and needed less pain medication than
[19:33]the people who are facing a brick wall.
[19:35]Yes.
[19:36]Amazing.
[19:37]It is amazing.
[19:38]I think the fact that it's amazing to us is that it's like, no, no, no, it isn't.
[19:44]I think the fact that it's amazing to us to me shows just how much we have absorbed
[19:51]the idea that our surroundings are irrelevant, right?
[19:54]That we have sort of been trained to believe that all joy and happiness really comes
[19:58]from within and that it doesn't.
[20:00]you know have any relationship to our surroundings when in fact you know I mean there's so much
[20:04]on nature I mean there's there's a really interesting study done in housing developments in Chicago
[20:12]and they looked at aggression and and crime and violent crime and they found that you know they took
[20:21]a project that had identical buildings that had all been planted with the same amount of nature
[20:26]initially the same amount of trees but some of the developments over time had been poorly
[20:31]maintained so the trees had died and so they had just been turned into concrete lots so you could
[20:34]sort of look at these compare these different buildings and they were basically identical circumstances
[20:40]but some had more nature than others and they found that violent crime was lower and that
[20:44]aggressive impulses were lower even in intra-family aggression and irritability that you know we
[20:51]really behave differently depending on the as the quality of our surroundings but we've sort of
[20:58]for I think we maybe we used to know it better than we do now when we first moved into this
[21:04]apartment my husband was like we need to get a ton of plants I was like plant I had never had a plant
[21:09]yeah in my life in my adult life and he's like no it's so important you gotta get plants everywhere
[21:15]literally like we like showed up in her her whole hallway was like we were gonna put all these plants it
[21:19]was like a forest or something in general anyway but now I really you know we watched them and
[21:24]then they grow and not to be created it sounds like nuts but there's something really exciting
[21:29]then the kids planted their own ones and watched them grow and they're like that's the one I
[21:33]planted from that little thing and yeah so it's profound I think plants are you know one of the
[21:39]simplest things that you can do to bring more joy to your living space and it is the thing that
[21:43]we underestimate and I think you know no one's done this study on house plants but there is
[21:47]research that shows that we underestimate the benefits of a walk in nature and that you know
[21:53]people you know they've done studies where they had people walk through a park or walk through a
[21:56]you know a sort of urban area and they found that people just consistently underestimated how
[22:04]much of a mood boost they would get from that very brief nature walk so I think the same thing
[22:09]is true with house plants we don't think that it's gonna have as much of an effect as it does and
[22:14]I know for me especially in the winter to be able to look over and see this greenery in my space
[22:19]when the world outside is brown is is really helpful do you think photography can help
[22:27]like I don't you know here we are in the middle of New York City like cousin nice second cousin lives
[22:32]in Crestedview Colorado and just posted on instagram like I can't believe this is the view from
[22:36]my morning walk and I'm like are you kidding that is amazing it's like the most gorgeous thing
[22:40]I think about my morning walk past like Dwayne Reed you know like pushing through people
[22:45]on getting off the subway so I can like get back to my area you know I don't obviously we can't
[22:52]like recreate that here without all moving which we're not going to do so one thing I've tried to
[22:57]use by photography that represents sort of aspiration like where I'd want to be or views more like
[23:04]that but do you think that the shortcut works or you think you actually have to be in nature
[23:09]I think it's pretty good I think you know there is some you know so for example there are
[23:13]studies that show that in prisons when you know they had in this one study researchers had
[23:19]prisoners inmates in a in a prison look at nature videos and just exposure to nature videos
[23:28]reduced violent incidents wow I think 26% so just having some exposure it doesn't necessarily
[23:36]plants do something special because they have other they change the they have other sensory
[23:43]modalities than just the visual you know so they change the humidity they move so there's something
[23:49]dynamic you know especially some plants that sort of open and close at during day and night
[23:54]so I have this purple oxalis that I love and it's leaves sort of open in the morning and then
[23:59]close at night and of course they grow so they have sort of a dynamic aspect to them which is
[24:04]beneficial but even just having the textures or the the visual elements of nature do help yeah
[24:14]so let's talk about the 10 components of joy that you list in the book and thank you for all
[24:20]the worksheets in the back by the way and that's also amazing so if you're buying the book don't
[24:25]forget in the back that there's a list in case you forget or you need examples but so the components
[24:30]joy our energy abundance freedom harmony play surprise transcendence magic celebration and renewal
[24:40]so can you give me a quick quick example or explanation yeah so energy is the aesthetic of color
[24:47]and light it's obviously the first thing that we see when you know looking at joy when people
[24:52]just immediately go to bright color and celebrations around the world always have it's almost
[24:56]seems like the more the brighter the colors the more intense the joy and it doesn't have to
[25:03]be any particular color but brightness as a dimension is usually understood to be joyful across
[25:09]cultures so energy abundance abundance so abundance is the aesthetic of multiplicity and variety
[25:19]it's like confetti so you know when you have one confetti which is the singular of confetti
[25:26]one confetti isn't very joyful when you multiply it suddenly it becomes joyful and so poke it
[25:31]out to another example of this phenomenon where it's just just one circle but when you multiply
[25:36]it it's suddenly joyful freedom so freedom is what we were just talking about with all the plans
[25:41]in the nature so it's the aesthetics of nature and open space and wildness and why we're particularly
[25:48]attracted to those things harmony harmony so harmony yes yes yes that is harmony aesthetic
[26:03]so harmony is all about symmetry and balance and repeating patterns and one of the reasons
[26:10]we find joy and that is that it creates a sense of order that allows us to spot opportunities
[26:15]and threats if you think about our ancestors and they're you know out in the world the more
[26:20]chaotic a visual environment the more work that the brain has to do on a regular basis just
[26:25]scan to try to understand what might be coming out at us or what we might be able to find in
[26:32]terms of food or shelter or other opportunities so you know when we reduce the visual noise by
[26:39]adding order symmetry and balance and and pattern that gives our brains sort of a chance to
[26:46]rest that allows other things to come to the fore and babysitter we organized our art closet for
[26:51]the kids and I did a closet cabinet and like labeled it got like break blue like container
[26:56]store things and I was like every time I look at it I'm like this is so amazing it's just one
[27:01]little cabinet yeah anyway the fact that it's organized yeah amazing so play play is the aesthetic
[27:08]so when I was first I mentioned that round shapes were one of the things that I first noticed
[27:13]and then as I started to look at it I realized that many of these round shapes occur in childhood so
[27:18]almost all of the objects of childhood hula hoops and balls and balloons and merry-go-rounds
[27:26]and care cells I mean the list goes on and on of things that around and even children are around
[27:31]you know you have a lot younger versions of adults with big round eyes and round faces and that's
[27:37]by designing a more body fat you know so they are naturally rounder and and being round makes
[27:42]them cute and that's another thing that I talk about in this chapter but but not as cute on me
[27:49]but but that you know the there's an innate connection between round shapes and playfulness
[27:59]and those things bring out playful behavior and surprise surprise this is the aesthetic of
[28:06]contrast and the unexpected so surprise is one of the simplest mechanisms of surprise is
[28:13]hide and reveal how we you know when we wrap a present for someone that is using the surprise
[28:18]aesthetic you're concealing some things that can then be revealed and you can do this in your
[28:22]home in lots of different ways by we have it in our house we have the inside the closet
[28:30]cabana stripes painted on the back of the closet when you open the closet it's there and it's
[28:35]the kind of thing because you're not seeing it all the time you sort of tune it out and then you
[28:39]open it and you get the reminder so anytime you can do that with you know drawer liner as you
[28:43]can do that in clothes with like wonderfully colored linings and clothes so there are lots of ways
[28:48]to do that one transcendence transcendence so transcendence is all about the fact that our emotions
[28:54]seem to lie on this vertical spectrum so you know we talk about one more feeling sad we're down
[29:01]or we're heavy-hearted and when we are joyful we are lighthearted or we are on cloud nine or
[29:08]walking on air so all of those metaphors track to the fact that you know we are all subject to
[29:16]one very pervasive force which is gravity and gravity defines the the arc of our lives and so
[29:23]anything that sort of escapes gravity hot air balloons and tree houses because they're elevated
[29:29]and the the ceilings in many cathedrals all of that sort of gives us this lightness this feeling
[29:38]of lightness which correlates to joy magic magic okay so magic is the aesthetic of things that we
[29:45]can't quite put our finger on it is the aesthetic of things like fireflies and you know when light
[29:53]it's shattered by a prism the sort of light of rainbows that you can't quite touch and
[30:00]You know, we always think that there's like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,
[30:03]but you can never find it because you're done or it ends.
[30:06]That's a classic example of magic because we can't pin it down.
[30:10]And magic aesthetics often have the effect of creating a feeling called wonder,
[30:14]which is sort of like a joy, sort of between joy and awe and surprise.
[30:19]And that wonder is sort of one of the things that fires up our curiosity.
[30:24]So magic is often connected to scientific discovery.
[30:28]Celebrations.
[30:30]Celebrations.
[30:31]So celebration is the aesthetic of what happens when people come together and joy.
[30:37]So joy is a highly contagious emotion.
[30:41]And when we celebrate, we are sort of transmitting joy to each other and among each other.
[30:47]And so that aesthetic, one of the mean things is bursting shapes as our bodies burst open.
[30:54]And we've ever seen fans at a sports game.
[30:56]and their team scores, their arms go up and their bodies sort of open up.
[31:00]And we often find other things that pop or burst in celebratory context,
[31:06]like champagne and fireworks and sparklers.
[31:09]I'll have these radiating or popping shapes.
[31:14]Last one, renewal is the aesthetic of blossoming and growth and expansion.
[31:21]And it has to do with creating a feeling of movement and potential in our lives.
[31:28]And it has to do with the fact that I think we often pursue this idea of happiness that is fixed
[31:35]and constant, but that's not actually how our emotions work.
[31:38]Our emotions are more like a wave and joy is like a wave.
[31:41]And so we catch a wave and it rises and then it sets us back down.
[31:48]And in those spaces between what can we do to actually feel like joy is coming back.
[31:54]So it has a lot to do with tapping into seasonal joys and cycles.
[31:58]And things like, you know, you talk about your kids joy when they see the plants growing.
[32:03]So things that move and change and grow are signals of renewal.
[32:10]Congratulations. You have passed the test.
[32:12]Your own book, glad you're officially an expert in this theory of joy.
[32:18]Thank you for that. I'll get the medal ready for later.
[32:21]I'll make sure it's round and sparkly, wrapped it in a pretty bright color.
[32:27]So one of the things that I love about all your ideas is that it seems so easy all of us
[32:36]to incorporate little things, big things into the day, into the house, into the desk
[32:42]that can literally change our moods. And it's just something you can easily control.
[32:48]Whereas I feel achieving happiness is so elusive and dependent on so many things.
[32:54]But this is like for a control freak like me and this is like perfect.
[32:57]Okay, I can like make a list. So what are some of the things to put on the list?
[33:02]Easy for people listening and me and what are some things to do to make your environment at home
[33:09]or any place to, you know, more joyful? Yeah. I mean, it's a good point. I do feel like,
[33:18]you know, right now, maybe it's the past 10 years, what we've been sort of taught about happiness
[33:24]has made it feel really hard. It's made it feel like, you know, it has to be a discipline and a practice
[33:29]as opposed to actually letting ourselves feel something and creating the conditions to make it
[33:35]easy to feel something. So I think, I mean, there's so many things. One obviously color,
[33:43]I think, you know, a lot of us have, I know for me, certainly with my wardrobe, I went through
[33:48]a phase where I wore only black and gray because it was easy and it all matched and it was simple.
[33:54]But just bringing color back into my wardrobe, bringing a little bit of it into my home,
[34:00]painting your front door, I think is a really good one. Anything in your entryway has extra
[34:06]impact because it's the last thing you see before you go out into the world and it's the first
[34:10]thing you see when you come home. And so that has sort of knock-on effects for how you face
[34:16]the world and then how you face your family at night when you come home. So having joy there,
[34:21]I can't paint my front door in my apartment building, but I have a light fixture that is
[34:28]made of different, it's like bubbles of different colors of glass and it casts reflections onto
[34:33]the walls around. So that's like a little, I love walking in the door and turning that on.
[34:38]And that's a simple thing. I'm just noticing your nail polish that you have a different color on
[34:42]every now in a rainbow. That's awesome. Very simple. So that's another simple thing you can do.
[34:48]do this on my diamond on the toes and on the toes. Yeah, that's a simple thing I started doing
[34:55]because you know you're sitting at your computer and you're looking at this thing all day
[34:59]and you look down at the keys and it's nice to see this sort of little, it's like good buddy.
[35:03]It's a little piece of abundance. We talked about plants, I think that's obviously one of the
[35:09]most important things you can do. I think the harmony aesthetic is actually one that's really
[35:14]easy to achieve and there are lots of ways you can do it. So one of the things that I like to do
[35:20]is look for objects of different colors that might be around my home and gather them together.
[35:26]So you know if you have three blue books and I remember there was a period of time I had
[35:30]two blue match books from a restaurant and I had you know a candle and I sort of brought them
[35:35]together and all of a sudden it was this cohesive thing. It was just, they were, it was when they
[35:42]were all separated they looked like junk but when you bring things together that have some common
[35:46]element they looked joyful. Similarly I think you can do that with things that you you know things
[35:52]that you collect or things that you find by ranging them in a grid even if it's just sort of
[35:56]out on a table top somewhere you know if you find pine cones or fall leaves or whatever it is and
[36:03]actually just sort of lay them out you know with an attention to their commonalities and
[36:08]using sort of you know similar you know rules of symmetry so just ranging them in symmetrical
[36:18]arrangements and how would you do how would you do like a car makeover because I spent a
[36:24]lot of time in the car right the interior is black yeah that's a really good question how could
[36:30]you how could you do that I don't know I haven't thought about the car in a while you know one thing
[36:34]that um so there are a couple things one is there are certain spaces that are really right for
[36:41]surprise so the glove compartment I think is like a space that could be turned into a space of
[36:46]surprise I think there's like the center console so I just found that. I've had so many
[36:52]car seats in the car and I moved over and I literally drive me home the other day it's like I pulled
[36:57]this thing down and the kids are like what is that? There's a couple of years. So it's really
[37:03]one of the things that I love to do is actually hide little souvenirs in like I hide them in my
[37:10]coat pocket so if I'm taking a walk on the beach and I have you know a vest on I'll put a shell in
[37:15]there and then you know the next time I put it on I sort of find that shell so I think you do the
[37:21]same thing in the car is sort of like hide little things that you see them and they bring you joy
[37:26]so that's one thing I think certainly bringing color in some capacity whether that's you know
[37:33]pom-poms from the rear mirror or something as long as it's not distracting so yeah bringing color
[37:39]it's hard to bring nature in obviously into the car but yeah I think looking for ways to bring
[37:46]color and surprise that's that's what I would be looking for. Okay I'll work on that. Yeah the car's
[37:52]tricky one but the good news is you're moving so many pieces of so much time in the car
[37:57]I'm in the car I should do a full car makeover do a full car makeover you know I should do a
[38:01]car makeover yeah yeah that would be really fun okay deal I really do love it yeah so far yeah
[38:08]well maybe let me check it out but yeah I mean that's another area I feel like car manufacturers
[38:15]don't they don't think about it yeah I mean that's hard to appeal to but when you do see one of
[38:21]even on the outside of car that's painted in such unique colors it's wonderful so yeah so let's
[38:29]go back to the book if you don't mind I'm like really curious how this happened yeah so you had the
[38:33]blog someone just say amazing ideas we write a book or do you know I tried a book that's what happened
[38:41]did they roll it I know that a lot of people that happens that that was not how this happened
[38:46]I knew that I wanted to write a book because I knew that you know I was blogging about this and I
[38:52]was writing about it on a regular basis but when you have sort of an overarching framework and you
[38:56]have a lot of research it's hard to communicate the overall idea so you're just communicating on
[39:01]little pieces and it's hard for anyone to understand the full breadth of it so I knew that I
[39:07]wanted to write a book I really felt like what I had uncovered helped me see the world in a
[39:13]different way and I wanted other people to have that but so what I started doing was I started
[39:20]just gathering research I would read books and then I would you know see things I had
[39:27]another inspiration word where I had at least little files for my index cards and I would take
[39:33]notes on index cards and gather them for each aesthetic as I was seeing it and I did that for
[39:41]you know eight years I mean for a really long time that process went on and eventually you know
[39:49]one thing led to another I found a really great agent who understood the book but I think
[39:55]you know I'm really grateful that I waited because had I sort of pushed to
[40:00]write this sooner.
[40:01]I don't think it would have been as rich.
[40:04]I wouldn't have had the, you know,
[40:05]so much of a book like this
[40:07]because it's a different lens on something
[40:11]that everyone, it's just about the world around us.
[40:14]We all, and it's about happiness and joy.
[40:16]And these are things that we all have a lot of,
[40:18]you know, first of all, we all have our own experience
[40:21]of the world.
[40:21]So that's sort of natural to us.
[40:23]And we all have, you know,
[40:24]we've all read a ton about happiness,
[40:27]whether we want to or not.
[40:28]It's in the newspaper, it's everywhere.
[40:29]We look, so to have a book like this
[40:32]that sort of connects the two,
[40:34]it takes a while to find the stories.
[40:35]So it takes a while to find, you know,
[40:37]for example, that like Florence Nightingale believed in this,
[40:40]you know, I didn't know that.
[40:41]And I didn't find that to like year nine,
[40:43]you know, that I was working on this.
[40:45]So it was a really a process of gathering.
[40:48]And yeah, eventually I found the right age
[40:51]and I found the right publisher.
[40:53]And at that point it felt right
[40:55]to sort of bring it into the world
[40:57]and divert my focus to that full time.
[41:00]And so that's what you're doing now.
[41:02]Yeah, so I am focused on really thinking about
[41:06]how to scale and connect, right?
[41:09]So this idea, I think there are a lot of people out there
[41:13]doing things in schools, in hospitals,
[41:16]who are starting to see the need for this.
[41:19]But who maybe don't have access to this research
[41:21]because the research has been in many, many different labs.
[41:25]So it's trying to bring that together,
[41:27]looking at how to bring this into the deeper
[41:31]into the field of design and then how to,
[41:35]you know, it may be through courses,
[41:37]I'm not sure yet.
[41:38]But I think there's gonna be an educational component
[41:40]and I think there's gonna be a product component
[41:42]because for me, I'm excited to get back
[41:45]to my design roots and actually start putting
[41:49]some of what's in here into practice.
[41:51]That would be great.
[41:52]So I feel like this is like gonna be a revolutionary thing.
[41:56]I hope that everybody, I mean, I'm sure they will.
[41:58]But I really want people to read this.
[42:00]And like get on board with us
[42:02]because it's just gonna make all this smile
[42:04]and what's better than that.
[42:05]Like yeah, so yeah.
[42:07]Thank you.
[42:08]So I'm reading for it.
[42:09]Thank you so much.
[42:10]I'm gonna do my little consultation with it.
[42:12]Anyway, thank you for coming.
[42:14]I know we've talked for a while,
[42:15]but thank you so much for having me on this show.
[42:17]Just enjoy.
[42:19]Okay, so by joyful, the surprising power
[42:22]of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness,
[42:24]happiness by Ingrid Satelli.
[42:26]Okay, thanks, bye.
[42:28]Today's episode has been sponsored by Nini's Treats
[42:30]and E-N-E-S Nini's Treats available online
[42:34]and also at goldbellie.com.
[42:36]You won't leave a crumb.
[42:37]Try these delicious crumb cakes.