Kogan - Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments (Even the Difficult Ones)

For my Mia.
I love you
more
always.

Contents

Practices

Gratitudes

T o my parents, my heroes, my most amazing humansthank you for you. None of this incredible, difficult, beautiful journey would be possible without you, your love, your care, your courage, your being. This book in its entirety is my letter of gratitude and love for you. Ive been lucky to grow up with four loving grandparents, and Im deeply grateful to my grandpa Misha, without whom we would not have dared to begin our journey to the United States, and to my grandmas Mirra and Sarra, and grandpa Sasha, who are no longer with us but are always in my heart.

Im so grateful to Jaime Schwalb at Sounds True for nurturing this bookand mewith such tender care and passion. Thank you for believing in my voice before I did. Thank you to the entire team at Sounds True for your creativity, tenacity, and working like true partners through every step of creating and bringing this book to life.

Joelle Hann, my incredible editor, Im eternally grateful for your wisdom, insight, and the kindness of your guidance. You have been an invaluable partner in helping bring my best self to write the best version of this book.

Thank you to my fearless agent, Janis Donnaud, for sticking with me and making sure we found the best home for this book. I am grateful for your tenacity and always looking out for me.

A huge thank you to the Happier team, past and present, close and far, for your hard work and dedication to bringing our mission of helping millions of people cultivate their happier skills. To everyone who has supported me on this quest, including our investors, advisors, and friendsthank you for being part of the most meaningful and unexpected journey of my life.

I wish I could give an enormous, larger-than-life hug to the Happier community and all the kind souls who have inspired, supported, and encouraged me through the years and continue to do so every day. This book isnt mine aloneits ours, together. Thank you for your courage not only to be real and to be okay with not always being okay, but also to fight for moments of joy and beauty and kindness.

My deepest gratitude to the many people who generously shared their stories for this book. Some of you are dear friends, others Ive never met in person, but you have all enriched this book by sharing parts of yourselfand helped to inspire many by doing so.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. This was true in my case. Janet, my teacher and spiritual guide, Im so grateful for your acceptance and invaluable guidance. I hope I honored your wisdom in this book; I continue to cherish it daily. I have also been incredibly lucky to learn from so many amazing yoga teachersmy soul sister Joanna, JoJo, Larissa, Elena, David, Amy, and many more. Thank you for your dedication in sharing yourselves and this sacred tradition, which has become my lifes anchor. And without listing them all, I want to offer my deepest gratitude to the many teachers whose words have helped guide me, even though Ive never met them.

My dear Sharon, thank you for your friendship, for flying with me to catch the rainbow, and for catching me when I fall. Thank you for seeing my true self before I had the courage to allow it to emerge.

The journey that led to this book began almost thirty years ago, and for twenty of those years Ive walked this path with Avi, my husband, my partner, my greatest supporter, my love. I dont have the words to express my gratitude to you for holding my hand through this rocky, amazing, scary, incredible adventure, for believing in me when I wanted to give up, for making me smile, for reading endless drafts, and for wrapping me with your kindness when the world was too harsh. I love you for always.

My Mia, my most amazing, dearest, magical human. This book is for you and because of you. Thank you for being the light on this journey, for being my staunch supporter, and for your invaluable help with the bibliography. But most of all, thank you for your being. I love you, more.

None of what we do, we do alone, and Im grateful for the energy, the spirit, the beauty that is this life force that is within and surrounds us.

And finally, I offer my gratitude to you, my dear readers, for joining me on this journey. Knowing that this book might help another person find more moments of joy and weather lifes storms with strength and compassion has been the bridge of resilience that carried me through my own storms as I wrote it.

Introduction

I sat on the steps outside my companys office, leaning against the brick wall. It was a chilly October night. I wasnt wearing a jacket but I didnt feel coldeven though Im always cold. It was around two in the morning. I didnt have a clue as to how long I had been sitting there or where I needed to be.

Our launch of Happier had been going extremely well. It had been a year of very hard work to bring our appA Social Network Dedicated to Happy Moments, as the New York Times called itto life. Happier was a place for people to share little moments they were grateful for, no matter how small. I knew that gratitude worked (based on mountains of scientific research). It had helped me shift from always trying to chase happiness through hard work and achievements to being able to experience the many moments of joy, kindness, and beauty that were already present in my life. Happier mattered to me like no other company I had launched or worked at. It was born not just from an idea but also from my own struggles to feel content, to be in peaceful agreement with my life rather than constantly pushing and battling it.

I had a deep sense of gratitude for the great team of people who made the app and the launch happen, for having investors, friends, and family who had supported us. And there was so much to celebrate. Enthusiastic users. Fan mail telling us how lives were changed by using Happier. Invitations to exclusive conferences, speaking engagements, and lots of great press. It was the best a start-up could hope for at this early stage, and I knew it.

So why was I sliding into a total meltdown at work, at home, and in every part of my life?

Why were strangers asking me if I was all right as I stood frozen in stores, on streets, or inches away from the subway tracks?

Why did my daughter, who meant the world to me, and my husband, who was my rock, seem as if they were avoiding me?

Why did I wake up every morning with an intense feeling of dread?

Nothing made sense. I had realized my American dream for which I had worked so hard. I had broken through barrier after barrier in my life, outdoing myself with each one, and Happier was my crowning achievement. Ever since my parents and I came to the United States as refugees from former Soviet Russia, I had felt an intense desire to prove that the hardship of our immigration was worth it. Now that I had worked so hard and achieved so much, I should have been feeling ease, contentment, peace, and abundant happiness, all of which I was certain was on the other side of my achievements.

But it wasnt happening. I wasnt floating on cloud nine of never-ending amazing joy. Not even close. After the bighugeachievement of the Happier launch, something vital was missing. Without it, I felt as if I couldnt breathe. It was something I had come to depend on with every major milestone, from learning to speak English without a Russian accent, to getting into a top college, to getting rare and coveted jobs at a young agethat feeling of elation. I didnt feel elated. I did for a little while, only to have an odd and uncomfortable feeling rise from deep in my stomach to replace it. Instead of escaping the tight grips of insecurity, anxiety, and fear that had accompanied me on our immigration so long ago, I was starting to drown in these feelings. I couldnt find the relief I had come to expect from another great performance.