Beavan - How to be alive: a guide to the kind of happiness that helps the world

For the little girlrapidly becoming

young womanwho has taught me how to love.

I am so, so proud of you. My daughter,

Isabella Conlin Beavan

Likewise, helping oneself and helping others

Are like the two wings of a bird.

ZEN MASTER WON HYO

Climate-change-induced superstorms that have killed many thousands and put tens of thousands out of their homes. An economy that seems permanently too weak and stingy to offer dependable jobs. Social and racial inequality filling the news and making us feel we are going backwards. A world political system that is too broken, deadlocked and corrupted by money to deal with any of it.

Everything seems so suddenly unstable.

We can all choose to live in fear about that. Or, we can look to a new set of aspirations and life choices that many people are already finding exciting and inspiring.

I dont mean the problems and the suffering are exciting, of course. I mean the opportunities are. Because as things shift, you (and I and everyone else) have the opportunity to make new choices and build new lives where you not only get to feel secure and enjoy your life but also get the chance to contribute to solutions that help other people, and feel like your life really means something in the process.

Thats what this book is aboutthe quest for a joyous and meaningful life while living in a frightening, confusing world that needs our help. I know such a life is possible because, as Ill explain shortly, Ive somewhat famously begun to experience it myself, and Ive seen it in many thousands of others.

But first, listen:

It used to be that you had to follow a very specific path to get what you were supposed to want. Now, a college education no longer guarantees a corporate job, and a corporate job no longer guarantees health care. Even securing your retirement may seem like a pipe dream.

Meanwhile, a lot of us who do manage to get ahead cant stop feeling a sense of futility. We sit in our cubicles all day tapping at our keyboards while not using the talents we prize in ourselves. Not only do we not believe in the missions of the companies we work for, but we often find ourselves willfully ignoring the harm our employers cause. We cant escape the nagging feeling that our success comes at the expense of the rest of the world.

The standard approaches to life no longer lead where so many of us actually want to gonot when it comes to feeling as though were helping with world problems and not when it comes to having secure and meaningful lives of our own.

Which leads us back to the exciting partsthe opportunities.

The first exciting part is this: since fitting into societal molds no longer pays off in the ways it traditionally did, we are freer to stop forcing ourselves into those molds. With fewer so-called rewards to supposedly miss out on, we have less to lose if we break away from the societal directions people traditionally follow and much to gain by experimenting with life choices that are actually truer to our values, our passions, and our world concerns.

The second exciting part is that in this time of numerous crises, how we choose to live can truly make a difference in the world. Back when the world was stable, it felt unchangeable. What impact could one person have? Now the world is a changing and fluid place.

Each of us is like a butterfly whose wing flaps could start a hurricane. A world with many ills needs many different kinds of doctorsmany different kinds of people with many different kinds of talents and passions and personalities. We all have the chance to matter in an entirely new way.

The third exciting part is that we dont have to embark on this quest for the happy, impactful, values-based life alone, nor do we have to figure out the quest entirely for ourselves. It is true that our culture constantly nudges us toward the work-to-spend treadmill that so many of us want to escape. There is still no societal pathway to the authentic, meaningful, service- and passion-oriented life. But it is also true that there is already a growing national and international movement of people breaking away from those old broken paths and laying down new ones. They are questing for and finding new ways of making life choicesin careers, in what they do with their money, in their living situations and lifestyles, in how they eat and travel, and in all the many other ways we relate to each other.

As fate would have it, I became a well-known figure in this movement of seekers back in 2007, when I launched a one-year lifestyle experiment in environmental living. It was in many ways the climax of my lifelong quest to find a fulfilling, meaningful, happy life that helped others and was in line with my values. This year-long project became the subject of an autobiographical book and a documentary film, both titled No Impact Man.

The book has been translated into thirteen languages and is required reading on hundreds of college campuses. The Sundance-selected film has been screened in cinemas and broadcast by television networks around the world. Most important, this project, book, film, and the work that has evolved from my experience since have put me in touch with literally tens of thousands of seekers who are on the quest for a better way of life.

Ive met and given talks to thousands of people who are creating their own new ways of relating to the society we live in. They are making lives that are better for themselves, better for their communities, and better for the world. Youll find some of their stories and much of their wisdom in the pages of this book.

The world needs entrepreneurs who use business as a tool for increasing happiness. It needs activists who speak with love instead of fear and anger. It needs gardeners and local farmers who care for the land. It needs a whole different kind of bankers and politicians who care more about communities than corporations. It also needs more musicians on the subway platforms and artists on the streets to bring us joy in these difficult times. The world needs so much. It needs all of us.

Which is not to say this is a job or career book, because its not. Thinking that careers and jobs are the only way to security and meaning and helping the world is another of those standard life approaches we need to move away from. How we work matters, yes, but so do how we make friends, have families, think about possessions, run our homes, live in our communities, engage as citizens, have sex, relate to children, and on and on.

In this book, we are going to discuss the choices that will help us build great livesnot just great careersbased on who each of us really is, what we really care about, and what we most want to help with in the world. It is a book about asking the questions that will nudge you along a path to your own personal version of the Good Life. A life where your happiness and safety come not at the expense of the world but as the result of doing good for the world.

That idea, by the way, is what distinguishes this book from most other self-help books and why, as we will discuss later, I actually think of it less as a self-help book and more as an each-other help book. There is a multitude of books about the worlds problems. And there is a multitude of books about how to try to extract a happy life from that world. Whats missing are the books about fixing our lives in ways that fix the world and fixing the world in ways that fix our lives. Thats what this book is about.