#14 - Flip the Formula: Neil Pasricha on Happiness → Great Work → Success
Today’s guest is The Book of Awesome Author Neil Pasricha
We’re richer and busier than ever—and yet lonelier, more anxious, and less fulfilled. Neil’s work tackles the gap between abundance and wellbeing by turning happiness, resilience, and trust into simple, doable daily practices people actually follow.
In today’s conversation Neil Pasricha explores why the classic formula—great work → big success → happiness—is backwards, and how beginning with happiness drives higher performance and deeper fulfilment. He offers three 20-minute “how-to” prescriptions (nature walks, journaling, and reading literary fiction) and explains the neuroscience and psychology behind each. Neil also shares the origin story of his 3 Books podcast and the “confidence through quitting” strategy for reading more and better. Along the way, he reframes resilience with his “Three A’s of Awesome”: attitude, awareness, and authenticity.
You will learn why flipping the success model (start with happiness) boosts productivity, creativity, and sales; how to use a 20-minute nature walk to lower stress; why journaling the day’s highlight rewires attention toward positives; how reading 20 pages of fiction builds empathy via mirror neurons; and a practical system for reading more by quitting early and often.
You will discover that happiness is not a reward for success—it’s the input that powers it. Prime your brain first; the great work and big results follow.
When life feels noisy and overwhelming, we default to vague “shoulds” and stall. Neil replaces overwhelm with clear, 20-minute behaviors that steadily compound mood, focus, and resilience—without requiring more time than you have.
Key take aways:
Flip the model: happiness first, then work, then success.
Do one 20-minute nature walk today.
Journal your day’s highlight; relive it.
Read 20 pages of fiction nightly.
Quit bad books to read more good ones.
“You have to flip the model. Start with happiness—then comes great work, then big success.”
Today’s Expert Guest - The Book of Awesome Author Neil Pasricha
Neil Pasricha is an author, speaker, and podcaster best known for The Book of Awesome series and The Happiness Equation, international bestsellers drawn from his award-winning 1000 Awesome Things project. He’s a Harvard MBA, a globally in-demand keynote speaker, and host of 3 Books, a long-form podcast uncovering the world’s most formative reads.
Neil distills big topics—happiness, resilience, trust—into tiny, testable daily practices. His work blends personal story, positive psychology, and behavior design, then proves the ideas in the real world through a 22-year podcast experiment to surface 1,000 formative books and the habits of their readers.
Follow Neil Pasricha on Instagram & Linked In.
Check out his website.
Explore his book.
The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything
What is the formula for a happy life? Neil Pasricha is a Harvard MBA, a New York Times–bestselling author, a Walmart executive, a father, a husband. After selling more than a million copies of the Book of Awesome series, wherein he observed the everyday things he thought were awesome, he now shifts his focus to the practicalities of living an awesome life.
In his new book The Happiness Equation, Pasricha illustrates how to want nothing and do anything in order to have everything. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, you simply have yet to unlock the 9 Secrets to Happiness. Each secret takes a piece out of the core of common sense, turns it on its head to present it in a completely new light, and then provides practical and specific guidelines for how to apply this new outlook to lead a fulfilling life.
This podcast contains advice and information relating to health and wellness. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect that you have a health problem, seek your physician’s advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this podcast / interview / article as of the date of publication. The author and publisher disclaim liability for any medical or other outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this material.
