Chip Conley on Happiness

Here is a link to Conley's TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile.html

Chip Conley is the founder and CEO of a hotel chain called “Joie de Vivre”. His business thrives on its exceptional hospitality and he hopes that all of his employees and customers can realize their full potential in life. Conley never once strayed from his point and used many outside sources to accent his views. He tells it like it is (in other words: blunt) and this manages to captivate the audience for the full time slot because people are used to speakers beating around the bush before they actually say what they came to say. Conley uses his TED talk time to explain his opinion on happiness. Or, more specifically, he talks about the difficulties that many have encountered while trying to “count” this happiness.

                “Joie de Vivre” is defined as an exuberant enjoyment of life. The point that Conley brings into the light is the fact that large businesses, countries, and even small social groups only take into account the GDP (gross domestic product) and not the GNH (gross national happiness). The world has been so focused on industrialism and investment in these past couple centuries that the leaders of the countries have overlooked a very essential part in their society: happiness. They count the tangible, not the intangible. A very famous scientist named Albert Einstein (you may know him, but if you don’t…I’m not here to judge) once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” The word sort of loses its meaning after a while, doesn’t it? (Look! It’s even in the word “country”!) But maybe that’s what we need. We need to find a new meaning to the word, or at least a new way of looking at it. Why is it that the only things that are cared about are the physical products of humanity? What happened to caring about the emotions of a society as a whole? When asked about his country’s GDP, the most recent king of Bhutan answered with this point exactly. He was extremely perplexed by the state of mind that this world has been in. Frankly, so am I. How are we supposed to know what should really be counted in life? In my opinion, you should judge your happiness on how you feel about how you spend your time each day. Time is the most limited thing right now in the world (right next to money, I assume). If there is at least one thing that puts that warm and fuzzy feeling in your core every day, then that should probably be enough. That’s the way I feel, at least. However, this can all lead back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow states that there is a pyramid that starts at the bottom with basic human needs and goes to the top with finding one’s purpose in the world. If the basic needs are met, then people slowly move up the pyramid. Eventually, happiness is going to have to amount to something more than just the small moments in life. It all depends on a person’s definition of happiness.

Conley ended his talk by asking, “What counts?” Well? What do you say?

“It’s the heart that really matters in the end” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhZ1BdMtw_Q