Three Keys To A Happier Life

We break happiness into three sturdy pillars—connection, contribution, and meaning—and explore how each one shows up in daily life. Along the way, we unpack mental “time travel,” awe, and the small acts that make joy more likely.

Austin Hill Shaw's website: https://austinhillshaw.com/

• defining happiness through human needs
• the many forms of connection including self, people, and nature
• distraction, memory, and future thinking as barriers to presence
• contribution as usefulness matched to talent and values
• meaning as both a guiding framework and ineffable experience
• awe, grief, and beauty as forces that reshape our maps
• a simple weekly check to spot gaps across the three needs

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
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

(00:22):
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

(00:44):
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

(01:06):
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.

(01:30):
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.

(01:54):
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 ourlives.
We actually want to make ourlives and our you know, our
lives and other people's livesand you know, make things better

(02:14):
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
our desire for contribution.

(02:37):
And then the third aspect thatwe need, that all of us need as
a core human need, need, ismeaning.
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

(03:00):
of framework or cosmology orunderstanding or philosophy of
our life that makes sense.
Like and you know, kind ofespecially more than ever, we we
we need to, you know, in thesevery unique times that we're in,
we want to have some way inwhich we can make sense of the
world.
Does that make sense?

(03:22):
But the second act act ofmeaning are those experiences
that are beyond thought, thatare beyond description, 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

(03:43):
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

(04:05):
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 experiences,you know, those are those are
the those two types of meaning,the the basically the conceptual
frameworks that we use toorganize our lives.

(04:26):
And then those experiences thatare beyond words, uh, those that
that's constitutes the thirdaspect.
So again, connection, uhcontribution, and meaning.