How to Train Your Happiness Muscle with Peggy Sullivan

happiness is a muscle: peggy sullivan can teach you how to train it

Peggy Sullivan has a really cool job: she’s a happiness expert. She wrote the book, Happiness is Your Responsibility, and is also the president and founder of SheCAN!, a non-profit helping women grow professionally and personally. Peggy teaches that happiness is a muscle which, when exercised, can help you reclaim control amid chaos. I spoke to her to find out what small things we can do every day to feel happier and more centred.

By Anna Myers / Sept 20, 2022

Save to Favourites

tell me about your happiness rituals, i love the idea of a happiness ritual!

I really believe happiness has magical powers. People ask me all the time, how can I jumpstart my happiness? The first thing is: know your go-tos, the things you go to every single day that provide no other purpose other than to make you happy. For example, every night I take my 28 pound siamese cat, I put it in a stroller, and I take him for a walk. I tell him about my day. It’s just one of my calming rituals. Candles. Happy dancing in my fuzzy pink slippers. Then one of the things I’ve been really big on lately is what I call value-based time management: it forces people to step back and say, what are my core values? Do I really know what’s important to me? What are the things that put me in thrive mode instead of survival mode? Think about the things you’ve done in your life that you’re really proud of, and eventually you’ll come up with your values, your three or four wow moments.

what about the happiness tripod?

I have this philosophy, I really believe three things need to be in balance in order to be happy. You need to have a positive mindset, you need to have your health and wellness, and you need professional development. If you focus on one and ignore the others, it just doesn’t work. I call it a Tripod because you need all three things to balance, otherwise —

otherwise you’re gonna feel very wobbly.

Exactly! I do a lot of market research with women. I love to understand what motivates them, what challenges them… recently, I contacted a couple hundred women, and was curious to see how women were feeling. You know, as we’re sort of pulling out of the pandemic. But unfortunately, 80% of the women I surveyed are still in survival mode. You know, they’re not thriving. Most of them were really struggling. They were saying, just give me a toolkit, I need a toolkit. That’s how I came up with these three things -know those go-to things that make you happy, know your values, and lead a purposeful life. And it’s not just having a toolkit, but making it actionable, checking in with yourself. That’s the space I play in —these easy, easy tools people can use to keep themselves accountable and not get lost. And it’s work! You know, happiness is not a thing you crash into, or a destination. It’s not that. It’s the little micro moments that you get to create every single day. It’s much more attainable, and sustainable for everybody.