FORGET PERFECT: BE HAPPY
Striving for a dream life is so last year. Meet the new wellness leader redefining what it means to be truly joyful today. By Martha McCully.
HAPPINESS has had its own mood swings in the past decade. First, we learned that it’s more satisfying to plant our own salad rocket than to build a McMansion. Then Instagram happened. We compared, we lamented, we read inspirational quotes to pick us back up. But happiness was in a downward spiral, with anxiety and loneliness spiking especially among younger people. By 2018, the most popular class at Yale was Psychology and the Good Life, taught by Laurie Santos, with nearly one out of four undergrads forgoing philosophy and physics to learn how to be happier.
Now the pursuit of happiness is taking a new track. Harnessing the science and plasticity of the brain, psychology and our digital devices (or not), we’re embracing the negative and letting our low mental states guide us to higher ground. Imperfection is the new perfection, self-honesty is all the rage, and our anxiety is helping us find our bliss.
Happy Not Perfect is a website, app, university-town Mind Your Mind tour, interactive exhibit in department stores and a line of mood-altering adaptogens, all created by Poppy Jamie, a 29-year-old Brit. When Jamie was growing up, her neurotherapist mum always asked her how she was taking care of her mind. Unusual at the time, especially in England, she says. Jamie—who apparently has an excellent mind, as she simultaneously completed a degree in politics at the London School of Economics and was the youngest TV presenter at ITN in the UK—noticed she was constantly in overdrive. Her stress intensified when she moved to LA in 2013 to work for MTV and ITV, and found herself in a new country without knowing a soul: “It was one part optimistic, one part sheer determination, and two parts overwhelming anxiety.”
Jamie woke up one night with a realisation. “I’ve been doing life so wrong. I believed that if I were more perfect, things would be easier. We often think, If I had a better life, job, body, then this wouldn’t have happened. How deluded we are, thinking perfection exists. What would it mean to strive for happiness instead?” That night she wished she could put her mum in an app for everyone who doesn’t have a therapist in the family. She bought the domain for the three words in her head, Happy Not Perfect, reinforcing her new priorities. Its mission is “to make it easy for people to look after their minds and, in doing so, make the world happier,” Jamie says. Her quick, eightstep Happiness Workout follows.