My definition of happiness

It’s early June, and that means one thing in my house: It’s Birthday Week.

My husband and both of my sons have birthdays this week. So does my 84-year-old father who, along with my mother, is still healthy and active enough to travel into the city and spend the weekend with us. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s four birthdays in one week... which means we’re up to our eyeballs in celebration. Dinners. Cakes. Shows. Drinks. Parties.

My brain expands. My heart expands. My waistline expands.
And I love every second of it.

You know those slow-motion movie scenes where the family is gathered around a warm table, everyone laughing, everyone glowing, and the camera eventually lands on the matriarch staring out at it all? Yeah. My face expands like that, too.

As someone who spends her days talking about success, purpose, potential, and fulfillment, I get asked a lot about happiness.

For years, I gave the professional answers.
Making an impact.
Contributing to something larger than yourself.
Helping other people live more purposeful lives.

And don’t get me wrong... I still believe all of that. But, it's really not the fullest response, and after a decade of studying this, I now know why.

In my Limitless Leader research — nearly 10,000 professionals across 113 countries — the variable that most predicted whether someone stayed in a job wasn’t compensation, or title, or even the quality of their boss. It was whether they felt known.

People leave good bosses almost as fast as bad ones, for the same reason: nobody in the building actually sees them.

And, yeah, I have spent a decade telling executives that being known is the work of leadership. But during Birthday Week, I remember that the same finding has been quietly running our personal lives as well.

My boys aren’t really boys anymore. They turn 22 and 24 this week. They have wonderful partners who love them deeply. My parents are here. My husband’s parents are coming next weekend. And as I do that "matriarch table stare," I realize that the purest definition of happiness is not what I have been answering all along.

And that's the thing I know to be true this week: the purest definition of happiness is watching the people you love be loved.

That’s it.
That’s the thing.
That's the whole thing.

But, you know me. Now that I'm in a doctoral program, I'm not just going to give you my data. I'm going to give you academic studies too. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has been tracking participants for more than 85 years — the longest-running study of adult life ever conducted. Through every iteration of the data, the headline holds: the warmth of your relationships at fifty is a stronger predictor of how you’ll be doing at eighty than your cholesterol number. Which is to say — the matriarch’s face at the end of the slow-motion scene isn’t sentiment. It’s data.

Could You Use Some Adjustments to Your Definition of Happiness... or How You Achieve It?

Most people spend years chasing success and almost no time defining what they’re actually trying to build. That’s why I wrote Limitless... not because success is bad, but because success without consonance — the alignment between what you do and who you are — eventually feels hollow.

The goal isn’t to achieve more.
The goal is to build a life big enough to hold the things that matter most.

The people.
The purpose.
The ambition.
The joy.

If you’re at a point where you’re asking yourself what’s next — and whether the life you’re building actually fits the life you want — join me in Going All-In. My 14-day email course, Going All-In, will show you exactly how to align ambition, love, and life — without losing yourself in the process. No fluff. No overwhelm. Just one tip a day, delivered straight to your inbox. Join the course here.

That’s the work.