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What if happiness wasn’t the reward for success but instead the foundation for it?
Jackson Kerchis is here to share the science and psychology of happiness—not as an abstract, feel-good concept, but as a practical tool for navigating uncertainty, overcoming career challenges, and unlocking creativity. From the neuroscience behind gratitude and mindfulness to why we’re so bad at predicting what will make us happy, Jackson offers real, actionable strategies to reshape our thinking—and our lives.
Jackson Kerchis is a former strategy and operations leader, startup executive, and Zen monk. He’s the co-founder of Happiness Means Business and Warrior Leader Training, where he helps business and military leaders solve people problems through the lens of psychology and well-being. Jackson created the world’s first college major in Happiness at the University of Alabama and is the author of Beyond Profit & Productivity, an Amazon bestseller on workplace culture. He brings a grounded, research-backed approach to helping individuals and teams thrive—without the hustle-and-grind mentality.
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Zack Arnold: So what I find really intriguing and interesting about you and your background is you very intentionally said, I want to really dig in and understand happiness. How we achieve happiness? How do we define it? But to not to throw a loop for this entire conversation, but I'm wondering if there's even a different way to look at this, not to discredit everything you believe in and what you do, but happiness is a really hard word to grab a hold of, and I've found, at least in the very limited learning and teachings and podcast interviews that I've done, that happiness is hard to define because it's kind of a fleeting thing where you can be happy. The inverse is sad. The inverse is loneliness. And I find that what I'm really working towards more than happiness is the pursuit of peace. So I guess where I wanted to start today's conversation, why choose happiness to pursue? How do you feel about the synonym with also pursuing peace at the same time? Given you're also a former Zen monk?
Jackson Kerchis: Yeah, absolutely, you know. And I think it's the term happiness kind of has a lot of baggage and connotations, and it's almost like, if I were an academic, maybe one of the worst choices of word I could have used. But that's why I've tried to make it so much of my vocation. Because I think if I were to just say, I don't know, I'm a subjective well being, it's like, oh, well, yeah, that doesn't have the same punch to it, right? Happiness is a bit more visceral. And so I think I agree with you, in the spirit of it, and what I mean by that is, you know, there's all these different constructs of happiness, because, as you touch on, so Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winning economist, has really interesting work on this where you can be happy in your life versus with your life. And it turns out those two constructs are rather different, that the one is more stepping back life as a whole. I'm feeling meaning and purpose. I'm satisfied versus day to day experiences. Okay, I won't go too far down this rabbit hole, but you can start to see how nerdy I am. You can even define it across past, present, future, okay? Happiness about the future. What is that? Well, that's kind of optimism. Happiness about the past. That's your life satisfaction, contentment, happiness in the present moment. Can be one of Barbara Fredrickson, 10 emotions of happiness, joy, engagement, enthusiasm, interest, humor. Okay, so all these different constructs, but yeah, Zack, I would agree that if you're just thinking of it as happiness as like, Yeah, I'm feeling really happy right now, then that's not a very rich view of life. Whether you call it peace, I sometimes call it happiness with a capital H, quote, unquote. Yeah, happiness that's expansive enough to contain maybe all of those dimensions of time that when I look back, I'm satisfied with where my life is. When I look ahead, I feel positive about where my life is going. And most of the time, moment to moment, I tend to be in a state of contentment or peacefulness or joy, great.
Zack Arnold: I love the way that you frame that, because I just, I want to, I like to just kind of identify the skeptics and the cynics immediately like happiness. That's a bunch of Instagram platitude bullshit, right? And I know that you see it in a much more comprehensive, holistic view as do I, and I always try to remind myself, and I'm not very good at it, and I'm working towards this, but that there really is only the present moment and all of the anxieties and fears and apprehensions and limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome about me in the future, it's like none of that literally actually exists. All I have is the present moment, which is why I was so interested and intrigued and drawn to you, because you're kind of this really interesting intersection of these two extreme ends of the spectrum, which is a neurotic over achiever that was also a Zen monk. So tell me a little bit more about how that works. Yeah.
Jackson Kerchis: So this idea of connecting to the present is, as you say, very important. One of my favorite little sayings is, anxiety is a disease of the future, depression is a disease of the past. And I love that,
Zack Arnold: by the way. To interrupt you, I just want to tell you that to me, was a mic drop moment like that hit me right there. I'm like, holy shit. So say that again and continue.
Jackson Kerchis: Anxiety is a disease of the future, depression is a disease of the past. And there is I will, you know, anytime I start on a study, you know, you can wave me off because I'm just very nerdy, but wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Okay? This is a very well researched publication from Gilbert, I think, Norton at Harvard. They basically find just this, that anytime your mind is wandering, even if you're wandering towards good things, like a pleasant daydream, or you're wandering away from a boring task, okay, so you can imagine, Oh, I hate doing the laundry, so I'm going to fantasize about eating a piece of cake while I do it. Okay, even that makes you less happy than if you're just fully engaged and fully present, okay? In the moment. So anyway, just grounding it in a bit of the research, but yes, for my personal journey, yeah, I don't know how it happened. I guess I just stumbled into mindfulness practice at a relatively young age. I think it was 18. I had taken a gap year to kind of travel the world live alone before college, and I just happened to start meditating, and realized that it transformed my experience of daily life. And so said, I know I'm going to do some experience, some period of intensive practice, but yeah, so, so how this kind of fits for me? Productivity, overachiever, neurotic as all hell, and Zen. It can all be summed up in one of my favorite phrases from Dogen Zenji, okay, he's kind of the founder of Japanese modern Zen, and he had this writing where he would combine these words that are show shock ujo Shaku, I think, which is kind of this combination of mistake and ongoing process. And it so the word kind of means one continuous mistake. And he went on to write, the life of the Zen master is one continuous mistake. And I really resonate with that. I'm not a Zen master by any means, but in the sense of, yeah, it's like there's really an addiction to productivity that I think is quite common nowadays. I certainly fall into it. I often feel like my fundamental orientation is, how do I get more done? You know, my mind is always just scanning, okay, well, I can move, you know, Zack meeting around, and then I can do check my email, and then I can do all these things. And so we can maybe talk about how to manage that. But the long and short of it is, yeah, it's a real it's a real challenge. And I don't know that you ever figure it out. You know, the Middle Way is something you're always turning towards. Is another phrase my Zen teacher told me,
Zack Arnold: Well, I can tell you right now that if I didn't have to worry about plagiarism, I'm pretty sure that I could write an entire anthology series of books titled one continuous mistake, that would be my memoir. I've talked for many years about the value in being willing to embrace failure, and especially with the creative process, you got to suck before you get good at it. And for many, many years, I was a perfectionist. I'm not called myself a recovering perfectionist, but for many years, over achiever, valedictorian in high school, top 5% University of Michigan, got my first job in Hollywood six days after I graduated. And it took my, you know, my fellow students, months or even years, to get where I got, like, just kept climbing the ladder and then hit these then hit this giant, massive wall of I'm getting all the things that I want. Why am I not any happier? Why is this getting harder? Why am I more miserable? Why am I burned out all the time? What is this depression? Bullshit, right? So I learned very early on, both with all the success that I had, which I'm very fortunate for, fortunate to have, but I also realized that it comes at a tremendous cost, and decided that instead of being a perfectionist and always putting myself out there with success, I want to be the fastest at failing, and I've learned that when I'm willing to fail faster than everybody else, that's what helped me move forwards with podcasting, with writing, with coaching, with whatever it might be like. I'm just gonna see how quickly can I get the shitty version out into the world and get feedback. And that is completely transformed my relationship with the way that I define it as peace, you saying contentment. That's like right there too. But I can very much identify with this idea of just life is one continuous mistake over and over and over,
Jackson Kerchis: absolutely and it reminds me even one of my favorite kind of mental models is, I say, start before you're ready. Okay, so to your point about how quickly can you fail? It's like, okay, and I don't have children, but I understand this is the case. Like, you know you're never like, ready to have a child, right? Like, it's so, you know, it can be planned, but are you? Do you feel ready? And it's like, no, you're not gonna feel ready to start a business. You're not gonna feel ready to write your book, because feeling ready would require that you had already done the thing and anything that's hard or worth doing. Like, there's no ready, so you have to just start, and then later you might feel ready. So anyway, that's I like that. Yeah, I couldn't
Zack Arnold: agree with that more. And while I'm certainly not an anthropologist or an expert at evolution, I have this hypothesis myself that if we truly express to people what it was like being a parent, that our entire species would die out within two generations, because if we told the truth, nobody would ever have children. So I was like, Oh, they're a gift. It's such a blessing. It changes your life and your perspective. And then as soon as you have a kid, you're like, everybody lied. This is so hard, right? So, yeah, you just I, it's so funny because I I say the same thing to my students, specifically. Those that I train for Spartan Races again, speaking of being a recovering over achiever, have done Spartan Races and Ninja Warrior for many years, and I train people to run their first Spartan Race. And I say it's not about being ready at the starting line. It's about being ready to not be ready. So having said that, I think one of the core areas that I really want to dig into today is looking at this difference between happiness is something that you achieve and happiness is something that you cultivate, or literally, it's there and you just can't see it. So let's talk a little bit more about this idea that we really believe, by and large, that what's going to lead to happiness is success, is achievement, is once I achieve this material possession or this award or this prestige or whatever it is, then that equals happiness. And you see it as the exact opposite.
Jackson Kerchis: Yes, absolutely. And I want to be mindful here that it's not just because there's so much when you say happiness or anything positive, really, there's a lot of the Guru ness and the oh well, if you just think positive, you know, you'll have everything you ever wanted. I don't, you know that's fine, but I don't know. So that's a great strategy. In a lot of cases. This is really years now of positive psychology literature that suggests we have a bit of a paradox, and that we've gotten it wrong, and that, in many ways, happiness actually leads to more success. Okay? And there's a really wonderful meta study by Leo burmierski King and deaner that looked at almost 275,000 participants across 200 studies. And they're looking at, okay, what is this relationship? Is it just that you get more successful and then that makes you happier. And what they find is, know it, when people are happier, they tend to engage in more behaviors and have more traits that are then indicative of more success. Okay, so just two quick research examples, and if you want more later, we can talk more later, but I know you have a lot of very, you know, productive, high achieving, creative people that listen to this show. So you can think about a study done in physicians. Okay, they're gonna bring these physicians into the lab, and they're gonna basically prime them to be more negative or more positive in terms of their mood, and then they're gonna see how quickly and effectively they solve a made up case of a, you know, here's a fake patient. You know, they have liver disease, but here's the symptoms, blah, blah, blah. We've got a panel of expert physicians evaluating you. Let's see what happens. And you see the group that's in a good mood anywhere from 20 to 50% faster they're solving that case. We see, I'll even show this one's my favorite. I use in my keynotes. I'll do it for your people who are watching the video here, but I'll explain it. You have this little box of thumbtacks. Okay, so you listening? You have a box of thumbtacks. You have a candle and you have a lighter or matches. Okay? They're bringing people into the lab. How do you create a scenario in which you can light the candle and not have it get wax on anything. So you can't hold it in your hand, because it'll get wax on your hand. You can't light it on the table. You can't, you know, some people think, well, I'm going to take one of the thumbtacks and, like, jam it into the candle and hold it to the wall. Somehow, that doesn't work. And so the question is, what do you do? And this is something, it's assessing Okay, out of the box, thinking functional fixedness. The solution is you actually have to take the thumbtacks out of the box, and then you put the candle in the box, and you use the thumbtacks to pin the box to the wall, almost creating a little lantern. And so that's this idea that when you're in a good mood, you solve that problem much more quickly, because you have a more expansive mode of perceiving the world. And then everything else, from sales to even physical health and physical energy. So all these areas, right? We see that when you're in a state, kind of positive mood or positive outlook, that tends to set you up for more success later. So that's maybe part number one, and then part number two, which, of course, we can go deeper into. You know the words I think you use Zack where, yeah, happiness is not so much something you achieve, but maybe something that you what's the phrase you use, cultivate? Is that cultivate, yeah? And that's exactly right. So the model I often teach is happiness is learned a the learned happiness model, and so, I mean, think about like, baking a cake, okay, or just becoming a good baker. It's like, well, you have to first, kind of learn how to do it. You got to get the recipe right, and kind of acquire knowledge. How does this work? You know, how do I bake a cake here? Right? But that's not enough. Okay, you can imagine you're just sitting on the couch watching, you know, the British Bake Off, and someone comes in and, hey, what are you doing? You're gonna say, Well, I'm baking a cake in here. No, you have to actually take the ingredients off the workbench, out of the pantry, mix them up, and then you bake the cake. You bake another, you bake hundreds of cakes. And finally, you're pretty good at baking cakes. I don't bake. I don't know why I picked this, but whatever. So I was gonna
Zack Arnold: say it's so funny, because this is now the second cake metaphor. I'm like, You must be really into cake.
Jackson Kerchis: Yes, it's, I don't know. Well, I can tell you, I'm working on a talk, but whatever, long story. So apply this to anything, though, playing the guitar, learning to run Spartan Races. This is actually a universal model of learning. That's why I picked the analogy. It's something that one of my favorite researchers, Dr Richie Davidson, talks about the plasticity of well being. And it's that if you have that, that knowledge, okay, in the neuroscience, this is called declarative learning. So the kind of concepts, the skills, the causes, but then you actually put it into practice. Okay? So that's performative, learning. Your your brain changes, and you acquire the skill, you learn how to do it. And it's like, okay, how could happiness be any different? It's not, and that's plasticity of well being, where that term comes from. It's like, if you can actually just learn and study kind of identify. Well, what are the ingredients for happiness, which we can talk about, but they're really simply physical health, mental health and relationship health. And then, okay, I kind of understand them now I have the ingredients, but like we said, You got to actually take them out and work with them. So you practice those ingredients you will learn to be happier. So success is wonderful. I don't want to mislead people in some areas. You know, if you're not making a lot of money, for instance, and you increase your earnings up to about $118,000 in 2025 inflation adjusted income, yeah, you might be a little bit happier you achieve a meaningful goal. Okay, those things are all wonderful, but we can actually, in a lot of ways, manufacture this commodity that we're constantly chasing. Yeah,
Zack Arnold: and it's funny, you bring this up, I can think of at least seven different rabbit holes I want to go down right now. But this idea of, there are these studies that say once you achieve this certain amount, like, money doesn't buy happiness. And there, there are two ways to look at this, where, yes, that can absolutely be true to a certain extent, but then you can also think that the you know, if you all of a sudden to triple your income, you could say, well, yeah, that leads to more kinds of happiness, better living. You can be able to take more trips, create more experiences with your kids, etc, etc. But I'm curious. I don't know the answer to this, and that's why I'm asking you. But my understanding is that, by and large, we kind of sort of have a set point of happiness where somebody can win the lottery, they're amazingly jovial for three, six months, then all of a sudden they're like, they're the same miserable person they were before. And the opposite can be said of people, that when they lose everything, you know, there's a lot of depression, there's darkness, there's sadness, but then they just kind of reset to a set point. So have you found in your research in PS, you're amongst nerds, so you no longer have to apologize for the nerdiness. I embrace it. But have you found that generally, people kind of sort of have a set point for their happiness?
Jackson Kerchis: Yeah, I would say that a lot of the research echoes this idea that, yes, largely, and it's a, it's a kind of a constellation of factors, some of which are even genetics, that, yeah, we tend to kind of have a relatively fixed range. Now, part of the The challenge here is something called hedonic adaptation, which is just this idea that pleasures wear out. Okay? The, you know, cup of coffee is really wonderful, but after six months of a cup of coffee, it's like, wow, this doesn't do that much. And so it is true that that we tend to adapt in that way, but the inverse also tends to be true. So when we have something really bad happen, it often, you know, it sucks, but we kind of get over it. And even Dan Gilbert is a Harvard guy who talks a lot about effective forecasting, which means how you forecast how things are going to change your affect, as in your emotional state. And he typically finds, I think he calls it maybe the impact bias, or something like that, that in both directions we often overestimate how much things are going to have our happiness impact our happiness. We think, well, if I get that promotion, it's going to make me like, you know, 12 out of 10, the happiest man alive for five months. And then we think, but if I get fired, I'm going to be so depressed. Okay, typically it's just not as extreme as we tend to think. But that said, and this is, I think maybe more like a merging area of some of the research, and I think maybe a hopeful area is there. There is a lot out there now on how certain practices. Can change the brain for positive so just to give like three examples, I don't recall the studies off the top of my head, but practicing gratitude, practicing mindfulness meditation, consistently, and pro social behavior like, I think it was acts of kindness, okay, they've actually looked at each of those things and engaging in those consistently, they can even start to see some changes in the brain. So I think there's still, I don't want to make it sound like there's a total scientific consensus on this one yet, but I do think there is a perspective that one could make a quite valid argument for that says, Yes, we have this kind of set point, but regardless of what your genetics and circumstances are, that if you engage in certain behaviors that are supportive of happiness and you apply them over the long term, that you can actually learn to be happier. Yeah, and
Zack Arnold: I want to dig more into these ingredients and kind of, what are the different ways that we can cultivate a little bit more of this happiness, but this conversation about, well, once I achieve this thing, I'll feel this I'll be a 12 out of 10, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes of all time. It's from Jim Carrey, and he said, I really hope that everybody gets everything they want in life, because then they'll realize it's not the answer, right? So, So, having said that, the other thing that I want to make sure I kind of put a pin in is you just kind of casually drop the idea of a gratitude practice. We're definitely talking more about that, because I would say, if you're looking for bang for your buck, that might be the number one most important determinant of my shift in what would be like my new set point in happiness or peace or contentment. But before I get lost down that rabbit hole, I now want to kind of come back to this concept of the ingredients, right? So there is a general kind of ish set point, but there is still some control where we can cultivate or we can bring a little bit more happiness, bring ourselves into the present moment. So let's just start breaking this down into the bare component parts. What are some of these ingredients of happiness that you mentioned?
Jackson Kerchis: Yeah, well, there's really, I want to, I want to, you know, not do any injustice to the incredible work done by all the various researchers and disciplines. And so there's probably dozens of really brilliant happiness models. You know, some of the people have influenced me, a guy like tal Ben Shahar has Spire, which is spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational and emotional health. Seligmans got perma, you know, we've got Kahneman and his constructs. You've got a million different things. But I say, look, I think at the end of the day, I'm big on simplicity, and so I just think of it as a simple checklist, you know, a three ingredient recipe, biology, psychology and relationships. Okay, so it's just like BPR checklist. BPR checklist every day you're gonna learn to be a bit happier. And so biology, to me that just refers to everything in the kind of more physical realm. And I should say right at the beginning, these things all overlap into, like a triple Venn diagram, of course, right? Because, you know, you can just imagine, if I, you know, call you some sort of insult. Right now, you get a feeling in your gut like, oh, what just happened? But physical health, so sleep, quality, nutrition is on point, even light exposure and dark exposure at the right times, and, of course, physical exercise, okay, all of those things are influencing your your state. Then we've got the kind of psychological dimension, okay, so that your thoughts and emotions and beliefs are generally positive and constructive. And then finally, you've got relationship health, which if you have love and social connection. So I kind of say, look, yeah, really simply, if you're healthy in terms of your physically, mentally and in terms of your relationships, you almost cannot help but be happy. And then you can imagine the inverse, where maybe, like, let's say I've got really great relationships, a very happy marriage. My kids are wonderful, and I meditate every day, and I'm super positive and grateful and optimistic, but I've been stranded in the airport for 40 hours, and I haven't had anything to eat, I haven't slept, I haven't worked out you're not going to be feeling super happy in that moment. And so right? If I think, if any of these kind of like a tripod, you know, if anyone is is missing, you're not going to have a very stable foundation. It's
Zack Arnold: really funny that you bring this, this idea of the tripod. I never would have thought that this would have come up, but I was picturing like a three legged stool, right? You kind of had these three areas. And if I rewind to when I began this entire journey, over 10 years ago, and I launched my very first podcast, which is very different than what I'm doing now, I can viscerally picture the very first keynote presentation. I ever created, and I never want anybody to see it, because, dear Lord, like the font choices, like it was just horrible, but I remember I literally showed a three legged stool, and I basically had the three legs that you just mentioned. That's where it's like you and I are. We're definitely, you know, there's some cosmic connection between us, because I can relate to that so much so this idea that we're looking at our biology, our psychology and our relationships, you could say, well, it is what it is, but you could also say, these are all things that we can work towards by creating habits and systems. So this is another intersection where I'm really excited to talk to you specifically, because very rarely do you have somebody that really understands the world of literally being a Zen monk, and the psychology of happiness that also nerds out on habits and systems. So I want to, and again, what I want to do is I wanted to acknowledge what you said earlier and make a very clear point that I agree with you that productivity has a very negative connotation nowadays, and I think the notion of productivity in the traditional sense, from the Industrial Revolution, the assembly lines working towards endless efficiency, that is the exact opposite of what I'm looking for. But my own personal definition of productivity would be that the way that I spend my time, my energy and my attention are in alignment with my values. That to me, is being productive, and it's an effective, not an efficient use of my time. So I want to talk a little bit more about habits and systems. Let's start to give people some practical ideas, advice, or otherwise, how we can start to look at our life through the lens of kind of this new version of productivity and strengthening all three legs of this stool. Yeah,
Jackson Kerchis: it's a wonderful segue. And so yeah, I think of it as like, Okay, again, simple checklist here. I'm gonna invite you, as you listen to consider making a commitment to become what I call a student of happiness. And that doesn't mean I have, you know, some 10 part seminar to sign you up for. It means in your own life, living intentionally with a commitment to like I said, Okay, this is how the tripod and the learned happiness model come together. We know that there's these really three main ingredients. And we know that through studying acquiring knowledge and then putting that knowledge into practice, we learn. And so it just says, Well, if you were to just study Biology, Psychology, relationships, and then put those things with habits and systems into practice, you will learn to be happy or happier. I should say, no matter what your your baseline is. So I say, yeah, what if you just took 15 minutes in the morning and you said, All right, I'm going to do 10 minutes of go for a jog outside or throw on a fitness video on YouTube. Follow along. 10 minutes. Just break a sweat. Okay, wonderful. Now it's like four or five minutes, let's say four minutes. There's a certain pattern of breathing. This is from research at Stanford University, published in cell press that just a few minutes per day of cyclical size. They're called lowered anxiety throughout the day and improved mood throughout the day. And I'll, you know, I'll even show you how to do this. You It's a pattern. You may actually have seen your dog do this. When they go, they trying to lay down, and so they spin around a few times, and they kind of go. So you take a full inhale through the nose, fully inflate the lungs at the top with a second inhale, and then slowly sigh out so you're coming, and then a second one in, and then,
Zack Arnold: PS, don't do this if you're driving,
Jackson Kerchis: yeah. Or maybe you can just leave your eyes open. So okay, breathing in that way again, in that publication, improves your mood, reduces anxiety. Now we say we've got one more minute for this kind of 15 minute thing. You're gonna do something to spread happiness, to invest in a relationship. The longest running psychological study of its kind is called the grant study at Harvard University. They tracked people nearly 100 years now, across three generations, and they say, yes, there is a scientific consensus the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life period, not only your happiness, but how long you live. So someone in your household, you know, Hey, honey, I love you kids, I love you. Do some small thing for them, or the first stranger you see that day, maybe don't tell them you love them, okay, but some small micro interaction research from Nick Epley at U Chicago, again, shows this brings happiness. So it doesn't have to be this magical 15 minute thing. But you can see the spirit of it is, I have some habitual systems to invest, each day and each week in each of these three ingredients. And it's like, what like? What is that going to do for your happiness? I mean, it's insane. And. Not a big commitment. It's easy and Okay, one more, just because I think you'll like this Zack for your really type A listeners, too. You can even throw it on your calculator here, 1.01 to the power of 75 what that means is, if you were to just be 1% happier every day doing this little ritual, in 75 days, you would double your happiness level. Because, as you probably appreciate, you know, those compounding effects really add up.
Zack Arnold: You definitely sound like a fellow student of James clear. I have consumed many, many, you know, a blog post, voraciously consumed atomic habits, and also had the pleasure of having James on the podcast. So shameless self promotion portion of the program. You can look in the show notes, you can link to my episode with James clear about habit formation, and also you mentioned one of my favorite podcast interviews of all time, with Dr tal Ben Shahar. He has really helped shape the work that I do in teaching in my creative Academy, with helping creatives better understand like, how to not just like pursue the next job or even pursue happiness, but define what's my dream job, what is my true calling? So for anybody that wants to dig even deeper into this afterwards, I would say those are two places to start, but here's what I want to get into now, and I know that this is another area that you and I could probably nerd out for hours. Everything you said sounds wonderful. Get me to do it right? I don't think anybody's going to listen to that portion of the conversation and say, I don't believe you. I don't believe that if I move more, I'm going to feel better. I don't believe that the breathing process is going to work. That's bullshit, that healthier relationships lead to a healthier life. We're not We're not telling people, did you know that if you eat your vegetables, you're going to feel better? And they're saying, mind blown, right? The real trick is actually doing it and doing it consistently, myself included. So how can you help me and everybody else that, in theory, loves these ideas, but then they look at their calendar at the end of the day and they say, Well, those are things I'm going to try tomorrow. Yeah,
Jackson Kerchis: well, first acknowledging, yes, it's, it's not easy, maybe simple, but, but not necessarily easy. But I sometimes, well, there's, there's a few tactics I can do. One of the most my favorite, like frames of reference, is, what would this look like if it were easy? Okay, and so it might just be, yeah, especially when you're starting out. Because again, throwback to some James clear, you know, you have to have a habit in place before you can scale it. It's like, yeah. I mean, what? What if this were easy? And you're like, Well, if I just go to the gym an hour a day. Well, yeah, no, that's not easy. Okay. Well, what if I just went outside for a walk, got some sunlight, and while I did it, I took a few deep breaths. Okay, now maybe, maybe you're starting to get easy there. Okay, so, and the various kind of research I've looked at, I've developed my own sort of a behavior change model, and it really starts with the understanding the power of feedback, and why I'm such a big believer in starting with these small votes, so to speak, is you think about how humans change. Yes, that's one of the hardest things to do, is get a human being to change. It starts with an intention, okay, so some sort of, like, you know, I like to think of it as a, maybe a behavior based goal of some sort. So I will lose 10 pounds becomes, you know, I will do this exercise for 15 minutes these days per week. Okay, so, so you have some sort of intention. Now, what's going to happen is, you're going to set that behavior based goal or that intention, and your brain is going to go BS, you can't do that. You've never done that. You never follow through. So the second step is, then, of course, you have to take some small action. And then the beauty of that is that's going to give you proof. So where does self efficacy come from? Okay, self efficacy in the behavior change literature, is this kind of capacity to keep the commitments that you have made to yourself. Well, it's not about, well, positive thinking is great, but it's not so much about positive thinking. It's like, No, I literally have proof that I have done it. That's where that confidence and that sense of momentum comes from. And so I'm looking down because I just sketched out this beautiful little cycle here, which I'll show your people who are listening to love it. See how these things come together. So for those of you just listening, you have this intention, okay, so you've unders, you've identified why one of these practices or behaviors is important to you, and you've turned it into a tangible behavior based goal. Okay, so again, this is one I actually worked with, with, with people in the military. We do these seminars on happiness for soldiers, and one of the guys that I want to be a better dad, I. Like, okay, well, what does that even mean? And we did a few iterations, and it was like, Well, what would be the specific intentional behavior there? And he says, All right, I guess it'll just be like, being more positive emotionally. And I'm like, Yeah, but we still need to know when, where, how will you do it? How can we measure it? And we finally boiled it down to, whenever I walk through the door, when I get home from work, I will create one positive interaction with my wife or kids. Boom. You can literally track that now, quantitatively. Okay, so there's your intention, but then remember, you have this little arrow proving it by taking action. And once you start to stack up those actions, right, you get proof that's gonna reinforce that self efficacy that I just talked about, this inner sense of capacity and confidence, which then renews the intention, and then you take more action, which gives you more proof, which more self efficacy, which refuse. And you just keep going like this. And by the way, it works in reverse, too. If you say, Oh, well, you know, tomorrow I think I'll probably work out, and then you don't do it, and you kind of just now have proof that you're full of shit a little bit. And then that next day that intentions maybe a little weaker, and it's easier to say, Ah, well, maybe just this next week, actually. Okay, so that that sort of a self efficacy spiral, I think is is really powerful, and
Zack Arnold: it sounds like it's very much either a virtuous cycle or it's a vicious cycle, right? Like you said, it kind of goes in both directions. It's funny, because this very much reminds me of a personal experiment that I've been doing for the last few months. You tell me if this kind of sounds like the same thing, and maybe you can find some tweaks, but not to get too deep, dark or personal, but for anybody that's listened to this podcast or read my newsletter for a long time, 2024 was just a shit show instead of a dumpster fire, like it was the worst year I've ever had in my entire life, dealing with the very rapidly ailing health of both of my parents. My father ended up passing away, dealing with the implosion of the entire entertainment industry as we speak, watching my business massively contract because largely a lot of my clientele works in the entertainment industry, or at least did at the time, and also just unexpectedly having to relocate my entire family from our home because it was massively infested with rats. That's the really short version, right? And I came out of that, and I was just like, I just could barely move, like I just felt frozen and I felt stuck. And the overachiever in my brain said, You slept in over the weekend. It's Monday. Let's do this shit. And every other part of me was saying, Yeah, that's not gonna happen, right? So all of the Spartan training, the Ninja Warrior Training, like, all the like, really type A I can dig in and give it my all, like, I just I didn't have that button, I didn't have that lever to pull. And I said, what if I did the exact opposite of everything that I've ever done before? And I started with the smallest thing. And I said what I really used to enjoy, and it was a way that I used to train when I was in martial arts. I've always enjoyed jump roping. It's really simple, right? And at the time I had a hip injury, I was dealing with issues in both of my ankles, like I for anybody that's listening, there's, this is a side note you probably know about this. There's this recent study that came out that said there are two distinct years where your body ages rapidly when you turn 44 and when you turn 65 I just turned 44 at the time. I'm like, yes, that holds right. So all of a sudden, physically, mentally, emotionally, everything was falling apart. And I'm like, what if, before I started my day, I just went outside, literally right out there, and I said, I just do like 10. Like 10, jump ropes, 1-234-567-8910, like that. I can do so I did 10. I'm like, Well, I can probably do 25 right? I used to do it for 1015, 20 minutes when I was in high school, so I did 25 like All right? Well, now I have the evidence that shows that I can't make the excuse that I can't do 25 jump ropes in a row. So tomorrow I'll do 30, then I'll do 50, then I'll do 100 right? And it was also about finding that point between, here's where I feel like my calves are burning, my hip hurts like my lungs are burning. I'm just totally out of shape. All these horrible voices saying I'm gonna stop as soon as I start to feel any of that. I feel burning. I feel like I can't catch my breath. And I would find whatever that number was, and I would add one the next day, right? So now, just this morning, didn't even have to think twice about it. I felt absolutely nothing in my calves and my hips. It was almost like I hadn't done it at all. I did almost four minutes straight, which was, you know, 500 and some jump ropes uninterrupted, and I didn't even think about it. It wasn't a matter of, oh, this is exercise, or oh, this is difficult. It was like I was in the exact same state as before, and I tracked it. So it would say, I literally have as part of like, I had the atomic habits journal, yeah. How can I be 1% better tomorrow? And it says jump rope 480 jump rope 481 jump rope 482 it's. Completely changed my well being when I get on my calls in the morning,
Jackson Kerchis: absolutely. So
Zack Arnold: would you say that's that's similar to what you're talking about? Yeah,
Jackson Kerchis: absolutely. And I think the power of that too is, you know, once you have a few more of those reps, okay, so we've talked about that little spiral. You also sometimes I feel like can get to a point where, and maybe you'll have a thought on this too, Zack, I feel like, in some areas, I almost get to a point where motivation is kind of irrelevant, like discipline is kind of irrelevant. You know, I'm reminded there's a Zen spirit to that too, because, you know, they talk a lot about just chop wood and carry water. Like, when you're at the monastery, it's just like the wake up bell rings at 415 so you get up, everyone goes to the Zendo and you sit. And then when, though there's bells for everything, you know when the lunch bell rings, technically, an OOM Pon is the term you go and eat lunch. And then when the work Bell ends, even if you're in the middle of your task and you're just about to finish the big project and put the capstone on the arc, no, it's done. And so I do think that you get that positive momentum, and you start to get to a place after maybe months or years, where it's almost too like, like, I don't have to feel like doing it, like, it's almost not even a conversation. I'm like, Well, I have it on my calendar. I'm gonna go work out, or I'm gonna do my meditation, or I'm gonna call a friend at this time. I don't really feel like it, and it's like, well, that doesn't there's no this is not a negotiation, right? If you just do it. So anyway, like, there's probably a sweet spot for that too, about still having some spontaneity and not being too tense. But, yeah, I think motivation is kind of overrated in some ways.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree it's overrated, but it's coming from a place of, I wish I could say that I just do the thing, and I, you know, turn on my inner Jocko Willink and, like, it's 430 here's a picture of my watch. I'm doing my dead lifts and my squats. And discipline is just all discipline. And who cares about motivation, right? I wish that I had that, but there's still part of me. It's like, I can come up with a lot of reasons to not do the jump roping or the burpees or the I can. I'm really good at coming up with excuses. I can create some really complex arguments with myself on my own brain, right? So having said that, I guess what I want to kind of investigate a little bit deeper is this emotional side of it, which is how we get out of the self defeating cycle, right? Where we know what our intentions are. We know that we want to change things. But again, like you said, rather than the virtuous cycle of be clear with the intention, let's track it. Now. I've got evidence, etc, etc, right? So how do we get out of that cycle of, nope, I'm just the kind of person that doesn't exercise in the morning. I'm the kind of person that can't eat healthy. I'm just not a morning person, whatever it is, right? So how do we use some of these, these habits and this behavior change that we're talking about when we're working against ourselves?
Jackson Kerchis: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. And maybe I should even start there by saying, you know, even what I just said about the, you know, kind of motivation and discipline that, yeah, I mean, I don't know, right, in a lot of ways, is the start point, and that, I don't want to say I've mastered that either, and there's even something to be said for so we've been doing this culture change project in the National Guard, and, you know, sometimes the soldiers kind of make fun and they say, well, oh, that briefs, well, you know, and you can imagine, right? And the company, the CEO, comes and says, Hey, we're going to be the best customer service out there. We're going to be innovative, and we're going to do it. And it's like, yeah, that you know that briefs. Well, it all sounds good, but how do we do this? So where my mind goes, and I think for the kind of emotional dimension practices that that really have helped me. This is where, like, a lot of that, that Zen and contemplative practice come in, is, I would say, cultivating awareness, okay. And that sounds very ambiguous, but, but what we actually mean there is, I feel like, a lot of times you say like, well, I'm depressed, or, Oh, I'm down, or I'm feeling and you kind of almost, it's like you're you're in there. You've identified with the feeling. But if you actually step back, what's going on there is like, you're not, you're not the feeling. Your thoughts and feelings are not reality. They are thoughts and feelings about reality. They're certainly real in the sense that you experience them. But what you're really experiencing there is, I like the term often that's used in the east, which is, if you translate it, it kind of translates to, like a mental formation, okay, so it's sort of just this thing that's a. Occurring in your consciousness. And when we sit in meditation, okay? A lot of people ask. It's like, well, yeah, you just sit there and do nothing and try to pay attention. Why would one spend hours a day doing that? That seems not very productive well, because as you kind of intentionally practice awareness, okay, this ability to be where your feet are and try to pay attention on purpose in the present moment. It's not like an overnight thing, but you get better at being able to distinguish between the kind of the contents of the mind and the container of the mind. And so you're kind of in the thought stream, with the feelings, with the beliefs, and it's not that they stop, but it's sort of like I'm stepping back from the thought stream and just identifying with it, or identifying it, instead of identifying with it. And you know, for the listeners out there, maybe you can even just do this exercise, like in your head, just say your name to yourself a couple times. Okay? So it's like, Jackson, Jackson, all right, we just say it in your head, and it's like, all right, you probably heard, you heard the name while it's like, did you say it or did you hear it? Okay? So it's meant to illustrate that not only are the one, in some cases, generating the thoughts and feelings, but you're kind of the witness in there, hearing that mental chatter or seeing the mental images or feeling the emotional states. And once you have that little bit of separation that says Tony de Mello, he says, When it rains on your picnic, who is upset you or the rain, okay, you you start to just be able to step back and it's like, oh, I can court kind of, I can see this emotion. It's not that I'm depressed. There may be a depression here, or there may be anger here. I'm sort of stepping back and holding it in awareness. And so from that place, then you have a lot more, I would say, capacity to then choose your response. You know, awareness brings choice. So I'm saying, okay, so instead of just participating and being caught up and being kind of pushed and pulled by this emotional state, it's not that it's now easy, or you're going to do this every time, where you can just snap your fingers and be like, Oh, now I feel radiant ecstasy, but it's more like, oh, okay, so there's this mental formation occurring. I'm kind of stepping back and holding it in awareness, and then I can take some sort of action. I might change what I'm focusing on. I might try to change something physically. I might even just like harness it or use that negative emotion in a practical way. But I think it all starts with that awareness of this inner landscape. And I want
Zack Arnold: to go a little bit more into this awareness in a second. This is going to be another interjection for a little bit of shameless self promotion. I cannot emphasize enough what you just said about this idea of using your own name and kind of separating yourself from the identity and speaking in the second or the third person. I don't know if you're familiar with Ethan cross, but he digs extensively into the psychology of limiting beliefs, voices in our head, the chatter that we have all the time. So once again, I'm going to send my audience. If you want to dig more into where are these voices coming from, how do I develop a relationship with them? We'll send you to that in the show notes as well. And could be a good resource for you to look into if you're not familiar with Ethan. But I really want to hit this point home of awareness, and come back to something that I pinned earlier in the conversation, which is a gratitude practice. So for those of you whose woo, woo alarms are going off like crazy, I just I want your help. Jack said, knowing that you're a science and a research nerd, I can say unequivocally without the shadow of a doubt, the simplest and most profound way I've been able to reset my own set point for happiness has been a daily gratitude practice. It is so stupid simple, and I can't emphasize enough how much it works. So if we're talking about building these simple habits, I think this is one that I really want to zero in on, even a little bit deeper than we have so far.
Jackson Kerchis: Yeah, let's, let's do it. So for for the skeptics out there, well, I'll actually indulge them a little. But then I have some other research. So the piano study at Harvard University. I forget what the actual citation is, but whatever. It's an Italian guy's last name. You can look it up. They ask people to just practice playing the piano for couple hours a day, for five days. They scan their brains before and after, and there are some changes in the physical brain structure, in the areas associated with the piano playing muscles. Okay, relatively interesting. They had a second group. Just think about or imagine playing the piano for two hours a day for five days. And. That group showed almost just as much change in their physical brain structure as the group that actually played okay. So I share this because it speaks to the power of even just thought alone and visualization to change the brain and so then that sets us up for our discussion of gratitude, because gratitude practices kind of operate along similar lines that by in by engaging in that sort of neural circuitry associated with gratitude, right? Just like that other study, did you actually can change your physical brain to be a little bit more biased to looking for things that are going right, or things to be thankful for. Now, my little bit of you know fair fair play, to the skeptics out there, most like you, beerski, some other researchers talk about person activity fit, and this is an often overlooked thing in the positive psychology literature. A lot of these interventions. If I were to say, hey, gratitude journaling makes you 20% happier. What that usually looks like is for, let's say half the group, they got not really any benefit, but the other half got like a 40% benefit, so it averages out to 20 so yeah, I would say twofold, right? You got to find the thing that's right for you. If you are just like, hey, you know, I'm trying the gratitude thing, or I'm trying the meditation, and it's just not working. Like be an experimentalist, because, yeah, you may find something different. But that said absolutely, the gratitude practice, you know, for most people, is one of the most well, well established, well researched, simple protocols that in terms of that psychology piece, can be really, really effective. I'm
Zack Arnold: glad that you shared those studies and kind of laid that out there, because I'm always trying to look at both sides of the argument and not just kind of zero in and just be one of those parrots online that's got a podcast microphone that says, Oh, they say all this in the studies. I'm, I'm not a skeptic, but I'm like, man, maybe there's always another side to this, right. But just on the flip side of that, are there any studies that definitively prove that a gratitude practice makes you sadder and lonelier? That I don't think so. I don't think there is right, just kind of, you know, hitting that point home that, yeah, like I said, the just the the amount of investment versus the amount of reward, it's even if you're skeptical, it's like, when you just try it, the way that it just slightly reshapes your perceptions of your reality and what's going on around you really has made a tremendous difference for me, personally. And just to kind of habit stack this, you know, again, one of these ideas that James clear talks about to combine two things, which is a gratitude practice, and what you're talking about with relationships. I've actually found that there's tremendous benefit for multiple reasons, of creating what I call a gratitude outreach practice, which would be just randomly sending a text message or an email to somebody you haven't heard from in a while, just doing a little mic drop, right? Just like, you know, we haven't reached out for a while. It's just remembering the story from the other day and how you did this thing. For me, hope you're well, right? And I've noticed that that's yielded really great conversations. But even if it doesn't lead to something, I just feel better when I hit this end
Jackson Kerchis: button, yeah. Well, and Raven running with Zack. I don't know if you know this study or it's actually kind of a, now, a well validated intervention, but so you can stop me if you've already talked about it on the show before, but they actually as a more, you know, rich version of that same practice that's pretty well established as one, I would, I think, one of the most powerful, even single interventions you can do. And you know, if you're listening to this, you can also look it up. Gratitude letter Greater Good Science Center. They're a non profit kind of research center out of Berkeley that puts out really good practices for happiness. But basically, here's the instructions. Would be set aside, let's say 10 minutes. Start with a journal where you're almost thinking as though you're writing a letter to someone who has had an impact on you that maybe you haven't thought about in a while, someone you can still reach but an old friend, an old mentor, an old teacher, an old family member you haven't talked to in a while, and you're going to spend about 10 minutes writing about the impact they've had on you, Why you're thankful for them, what they mean to you. And obviously, as you do that, you're evoking these feelings of gratitude. And it can be really powerful emotionally. And then you actually schedule time, ideally in person, or you can do it on Zoom to just reach out to that person and say something like, Hey, I wanted to talk to you real quick. And we set aside a time you show up, and then you actually just read them that journal you wrote. And I always joke maybe at the beginning you should say, Hey, I'm not dying, but I want to share this with you, and that is just a life changing practice, potentially.
Zack Arnold: I love that idea, and it's so funny that as you were talking about. This idea of just taking, like, 1015, minutes to write a little bit more about here's the impact that you've had on me, et cetera, et cetera. That's actually my number one strategy for professional cold outreach, that if I'm doing cold outreach, either to connect with fellow peers, mentors, or even connect to people that I would consider like a gatekeeper between me and an opportunity, I don't pitch myself. I start with, I guess what in the within your lens would be a gratitude practice. I literally send them a message where I just say, here's why your work has had such a positive impact on me, just letting you know that I appreciate you exist, and that has gotten responses from people that have publicly made it very clear, don't email me. I will not respond to you, but that gratitude practice has built really rich relationships for me. So I just, you know, we're not going to get into networking psychology and strategy, because I can nerd out about that on hours and literally teach multiple classes about networking for introverts. But I just want to drop that, that idea that if it's just a gratitude practice, and it's not about getting the job, building the relationship, finding a mentor that's just going to make you feel better about yourself, right? It's a win, win. So I want to, I want to do a little bit of a pivot here, a little bit of a transition, dig a little bit less into the research, and I just want to pique my curiosity. There seems to be a recurring theme with your work with the military. Where does that come from? Yeah,
Jackson Kerchis: well, it kind of comes from stumbling into, you know, taking my passion for happiness as a into a vocation, I guess you could say so. I run two businesses. One is military first responders. One is more kind of corporate non profit. We speak a lot of conferences, associations, but really the crux of both is, can we try to take all of this research into happiness, or this learning about happiness, and try to bring it into organizations to improve their performance? So yeah, our largest client, I'd say, has been the Army National Guard. Actually, technically, it's the full National Guard, but we've done more with the Army side in the state of Wisconsin, because one of these surprising connections I always share is a study from UPenn that looked at nearly a million soldiers, finding that happier soldiers were more likely to win awards for both performance and for heroism. So we say, look, okay, happiness is really about readiness, and so we try to support them in terms of, how do you create kind of a climate in your organization supportive of soldier happiness and well being? We've seen some improvements in mental health, improvements in their sexual harassment, assault response and prevention, and probably the most powerful one, their recruiting and retention battalion that we worked really closely with over the period of about year and a half. It was kind of crazy to just see the research playing out in reality, where their scores around their command climate, which is kind of like culture, drastic improvements in terms of protective factors, reductions in like, you know, sexually harassing behaviors, reductions in hostile or toxic workplace. So climate totally turns around. And they had a 34% increase in recruiting production. They met just about all their missions for that, for the first time in like six years. So anyway, yeah, we were going to the Marine Corps actually, this coming week, do some work with them. I'm talking to some elite service members at some point this year as well. So yeah, I think it's a group that, you know, these folks, first responders to. We have a police pilot coming up in the spring. Like, these are groups that, like, really have a high stress, high demand environment. And so how can we bring some of this to them, too? So
Zack Arnold: is that something that you were very intentional about? It was part of your history, or was it like random email, Hey, Jackson, found your coaching services online. Come speak to the Army National Guard. And second part Wisconsin. I say that because that's where I was born and raised, and I'm just, I'm starting to get weirded out by all the random connections. Like, where did this come about? Because I, I, there's so many people in executive coaching, career coaching, but you seem, you know, not like it's exclusive, but there's a, you know, a large emphasis on the military. And was it literally an outreach email that landed in your inbox, or was there intentionality behind
Jackson Kerchis: that? Yeah, well, I'm kind of a and, yeah, you'll appreciate this model, because from your networking and being kind of, you know, an entrepreneurial type, I was, I like to talk about increasing my luck surface area. I don't know if that's an original idea. It popped into my head at some point. So if someone knows who that's from, you know, credit to them. I'm not that smart, but it was really that. So, you know, we speak at a lot of conferences. I think this one was actually my co founder and business partner, Paul. So he if he's a great guy, if you ever want to talk to him for the show, he spoke at a conference, there happened to be a two star general in the audience. And was basically like, Oh, my goodness, we need this. And so they brought us in, and then that's, you know, like, I say a lot of it, I feel like just, just happens where you, you know, put yourself out there, put yourself in that orbit, and then, right, that idea of the surface area expanding, yeah, we I feel like I stumbled into a lot of the career that I have now just by just moving forward, increasing, you know, getting, I think Google has this term, but, you know, I want to just get more at bats than than others. So sure.
Zack Arnold: So then it really was, quote, unquote, luck for anybody that's just listening, putting this in giant air quotes, but yeah, the the idea of, when you put a very specific energy out there, you're going to attract energy in return. So maybe it wasn't conscious intentionality. If I really want to build the foundation of my business around helping soldiers be happier and, you know, safer and whatnot. But you know, again, I don't think it was luck that you were that they were attracted to you, and vice versa. And here's the reason that I bring this up, I think this will kind of segue to the final thing that I wanted to talk about today is kind of going back to what you've learned about monastic practices being a Zen monk, and understanding and really seeing the difference between the speed of life as a Zen monk and the speed of life that we have as human doers. Right? Not human beings, but human doers, there was something you mentioned in another one of your podcasts that just totally stuck in my brain immediately. It was this idea that we're kind of living life at 1.25 speed, like you're listening to a podcast. It's not like it's always this whirlwind racing, but it's going a little bit faster. And I feel like, if there's anybody that's learned how to take the speed and the adrenaline rush of life literally, when your life in danger, it's soldiers. So there's kind of an interesting connection there. So from all of your experiences, what do you think we can bring into the real world to just slow things down?
Jackson Kerchis: Yeah, that is a well, you know, it's like, this is the moment in the podcast where I reveal that I have no idea what I'm talking about, and I'm totally clueless, and this was all made up sometimes,
Zack Arnold: welcome to welcome to my club, by the way. Yeah, very much. What that feels like this? We'll call this the imposter syndrome portion of today's program.
Jackson Kerchis: Yes, absolutely no. I mean, I sometimes joke that I want to like my next book. You know, we mentioned earlier the idea of book titles, that my next book will be productivity. Aa, because, yeah, you know, the truth is, I don't have a great idea, but I'll tell you some of the practices. One is, and I want to be careful with this, because I come from a fairly privileged position, in the sense that, you know, I was a lower middle class, like rural town. It's not like I'm started this company and I had to claw my way out of the slums of Brazil. It's like, no, if I all crash and burn and fail miserably and I can just go get a good job. So something that's helped for me is, and maybe for some of your listeners, this will resonate, is, is having that perspective, or having that, you know, ability to just think through, like, is this actually life and death? Like, is this actually that serious? And don't get me wrong, for some people, they have no financial safety net, but it's like, you know, for for a lot of people, especially starting out that entrepreneurial side, I feel like there's this kind of narrative that's like, you know, oh, I'm working for Deloitte and this white collar job, and I want to go start my own app startup, so I've got to, like, burn the ships and, like, My life depends on this. And it's like, yeah, but also, know, like, I like, unless we get into a nuclear war, like, I'm probably always gonna have some, you know, financial safety. So not that I want to, you know, I don't want to encourage people to, you know, be one foot in, one foot out, and not have that determination. But I have found a lot of times the kind of inner, neurotic energy that's driving me to be like, Oh, if I can just get one more email, one more call done, one more thing, like when I remember that it's not actually truly as dire, okay, I'm able to step back. The other one I like to think about is I sometimes use the term, I may have used it earlier, fundamental orientation. And I say, what is your fundamental orientation? Or, fittingly, what are you optimizing for? When I look at my life or my lifestyle, still, a lot of the times, I try to ask, well, what am I optimizing for? Very often the answer is not happiness, okay, which, given my whole thing, bit of a red flag. But I think I'm really optimizing more for like, you know, getting things done and feeling productive. And I love Charlie Munger talks about Warren Buffett's late business partner, that a lot of like, creative. People, managers, leaders. Nowadays, they treat themselves like dentists. If they can squeeze one more 15 minute Zoom meeting into their day, then it's like a huge win. And it's like, no, your fundamental orientation needs to be probably I'm optimizing a bit more for happiness. I'm optimizing a bit more for being strategic, okay, and so that's really this idea of then, all right, I'm gonna slow it down a little bit, you know, I see I said, Sometimes I feel like my life's at like, you know, 1.2x speed, where it's like, okay, things are just happening a little too quick. I'm moving a little too much so, all right, what if I just sort of step back a little, what I'm really optimizing for in my life as a whole is not success, it's not money, it's not productivity. It should actually be just having a good day or a good week. And as Suzuki Roshi, I think, said Good enough is good enough, you know, if you just have a good week, okay, that's, yeah, that's pretty wonderful. Actually, you've succeeded.
Zack Arnold: I love that. So to wrap it up today, I want to go back to something you kind of dropped half jokingly, but really, I think is going to lead us to nice conclusion. You would say, Oh, this isn't like some kind of 10 part seminar. But then, ironically enough, you do actually have a 10 part course that you wanted to be able to send people to if they want to dig in deeper. So tell us a little bit more about where we can send some of our listeners and or viewers if they're thinking, I want to dig deeper. I really want to figure out how I can approach happiness. Like you said, it's something I can learn. It's a skill that I can develop. Where's a good place to start if they want to really live in your ecosystem.
Jackson Kerchis: Absolutely great segue there. So while I do, yeah, I guess I don't have a 10 part seminar, but I do have a 10 week course that I offer at the University of Alabama, and I have online now, so probably the best way is to go to study happiness dot blog. So study happiness dot blog, and you can even do slash about there's kind of an about page there that just lists all the different ways you can engage with me. So I've actually got a book coming out in this month of March. I've got some online courses on there, kind of a free sample one, a longer one, you can do one on one, coaching with me. If you think, oh my gosh, my company is just miserable. Okay, happiness means business is my training company, and then we've got, oh, I know someone in, you know, the police who could use this warrior leader training. But yeah, it's all right there. And even if you just say, Yeah, you don't have to buy anything, I just like this stuff, you know, I share out their emails, my YouTube, it's, it's all on that study happiness. Dot blog about page, great.
Zack Arnold: So then study happiness that blog is that also the place that somebody would go if they just wanted to connect with you directly as well.
Jackson Kerchis: Yeah, or anywhere on social media is fine too. I'm pretty responsive. I'm not that famous yet, so you can reach me. Yeah, give it to LinkedIn. Jackson Kerchis at Jackson Kerchis, K, E, R, C, H, I, S on just about all the socials. Yeah, I'd love to, love to talk to you. Yeah.
Zack Arnold: Well, when I interviewed James Clear, I don't think he knew he was going to sell 178 million books. So you never know where the future might lead. But again, bring it back to what we talked about. We talked about. We want to make sure that it's not about happiness in the future. We want to bring that happiness in the present. And I think you've helped to do that for me and everybody else listening and viewing today. So Jackson, just wanted to thank you so much for your time, for sharing your story and sharing your wisdom. Appreciate it
Jackson Kerchis: My pleasure. Thank you. Zack.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Produced by: Debby Germino
Shownotes and published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
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