Happiness, Made Human (with Austin Hill Shaw)

Happiness often feels slippery—too abstract to hold, too dependent on luck or perfect circumstances. We take a different path and lay out a grounded map you can actually use. The conversation with Austin Hill Shaw centers on three core human needs that, together, create a durable sense of wellbeing: connection, contribution, and meaning. Rather than chasing a mood, we practice a rhythm that returns us to what makes life feel alive.

Austin's website: AustinHillShaw.com

We start with connection in its many layers: a kinder relationship with ourselves, a deeper bond with loved ones, and a lived sense of belonging to neighborhood and the natural world. You’ll hear how our “time traveling” minds pull us into the past and future, and how simple attention—breath, body, and presence—brings us back. From there, we turn to contribution as the desire to matter. We explore how to match your real strengths to real needs, why small acts of service change your day’s shape, and how to protect generosity from burnout with clear boundaries and honest pacing.

Finally, we unpack meaning in two parts. There’s the framework that helps life make sense—your philosophy, spiritual path, or guiding principles—and there are those ineffable moments that words can’t hold: birth, grief, awe in nature, music that cracks you open. We talk about inviting awe without forcing it, and about letting meaning guide decisions when the world feels noisy. By the end, you’ll have a simple, memorable model you can act on today: connect, contribute, and cultivate meaning. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a steadier map, and leave a quick review telling us which pillar you’re working on next.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:50):
What it means to be happy.
We're going to start in thisplace.
Like, what is it?
What do we need in order to behappy?
The first thing that starts tocome up is a sense of

(01:12):
connection.
Like all of us need to feelconnected in the world in some
way, shape, or form.
All right.
And the interesting thing abouthuman beings is that we can
disconnect from the world,right?
More than any other creature outthere, we have this capacity to
time travel, meaning we canremember some aspect of who we

(01:34):
are in the past.
And we can also envision someversion of ourselves in the
future.
And as we all know, we can alsobe incredibly discursive with
our monkey minds, right?
Where we're in situations thatcould be engaging us and we're
just stuck in our heads, right?
So the first core, what I callcore human needs of being a

(01:57):
human being is the need forconnection.
And connection takes on a lot ofdifferent forms.
It's first and foremost aconnection with ourselves,
connection with significantothers or loved ones.
It's a connection to ourneighborhoods or the
environment.
It's a connection to the naturalworld.
But at our core, we need a senseof connection.

(02:21):
And I've seen that, seen a lotof that in the chat.
Connection is one of that.
And other things that are at,you know, part of connection are
love, communion, conversations,just a sense of fellowship, all
sorts of different ways in thatwe can feel connected.
So that's that's that's partone, basically.
The first core human need is ourneed to connect.

(02:44):
The second core human need isour desire to contribute in some
way, shape, or form.
So, you know, all of us don'tjust want to, you know, we don't
want to just be idle about uhour lives.
We actually want to make ourlives and our, you know, our
lives and other people's livesand you know, make things better

(03:05):
for people.
We want to contribute in someway, shape, or form.
And so, and that way in which wecontribute is very different for
every person because all of ushave different talents and
proclivities and things thatsort of draw us in.
And so that other aspect of ofthat second aspect is basically

(03:25):
our desire for contribution.
And then the third aspect thatwe need, that all of us need as
a core human need is meaning.
All of us need a sense ofmeaning on some some way, shape,
or form.
And really, there's two aspectsto meaning.
The first aspect of meaning isthat we want to have some sort

(03:51):
of framework or cosmology orunderstanding or philosophy of
our life that makes sense.
Like and, you know, kind ofespecially more than ever, we we
need to, you know, in these veryunique times that we're in, we
want to have some way in whichwe can make sense of the world.
Does that make sense?

(04:12):
But the second act of meaningare those experiences that are
beyond thought, that are beyonddescription, that are really
kind of ineffable.
Like, for example, for those ofyou who have are parents,
watching your a child being bornis one of those experiences that

(04:34):
meaningful, but beyond anythingyou could describe.
Sometimes you can find yourselfin natural places and experience
just the overwhelming sense ofconnectedness and beauty that's
that's available in nature.
And sometimes it can come fromintense grief too, just where

(04:56):
basically a thing that youthought, you know, was true,
suddenly something happens andyou're like, oh, it's actually
this thing over here.
You know, it's something.
So those meaningful experiencesare, you know, those are those
are uh those two types ofmeaning, the the basically the
conceptual frameworks that weuse to organize our lives.

(05:17):
And then those experiences thatare beyond words, uh those that
that's constitutes the thirdaspect.
So again, connection,contribution, and meaning.