The Joy of Well-Being

Introduction: We All Deserve the Joy of Well-Being

How do you know when it’s time to change your life? Sometimes the realization is simply the slow accumulation of nagging voices inside your head. Sometimes that knowledge lands all at once, like a cosmic kick in the butt. Before mindbodygreen officially launched in 2009, we thought we were doing pretty okay. We were both deeply ensconced in the rise-and-grind lifestyle of early thirtysomethings with high-pressure jobs. Colleen had been working for years as an apparel executive for corporations like Gap, Walmart, and Amazon. Jason was flying one hundred thousand miles a year for business, often forgetting which time zone he was in, and constantly glued to his laptop. We worked hard, we packed intense workouts into our schedules when we could, we dabbled with trendy diets, and then… our bodies gave out.

Jason suffered debilitating sciatic back pain that made it difficult to walk, and then Colleen experienced a terrifying pulmonary embolism that took six months to recover from. These experiences spun us out and turned our world upside down. Before our bodies stopped us in our tracks, we thought we were doing pretty well, compared to other people we knew. Colleen went on multiple five-mile runs a week, and Jason would go to the gym for hours at a time. We knew we could do a little better in the eating department—Jason actually had his picture up on the wall at the Palm steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan, next to those of Adam Sandler and Joe Namath, to commemorate his loyal patronage. Colleen enjoyed happy-hour drinks with her co-workers and friends most evenings. But during the week we always ate salad for lunch, so we figured it would come out in the wash, right? Not exactly.

It turns out that the grain-fed steak and sugar-laden margaritas weren’t great for us, but the bigger problems were chronic stress and depletion. It’s something that sneaks up on all of us at one time or another and can linger quietly for years, chipping away at sleep and energy levels, not to mention our overall well-being. Then, of course, there was the misalignment of our values and our jobs. Neither of us was sufficiently challenged or passionate enough about what we were doing in our working lives to feel that we were being fulfilled emotionally. More often than not we found ourselves doing what we thought we “should” do, instead of what we really wanted to do or what felt good for our bodies. But the body is wise. And it doesn’t forget, even if we are in denial about what we are doing to it. Years and years of stress, dissatisfaction, and pressure don’t dissipate—they accumulate. Sooner or later, your body demands your attention. Jason’s body literally laid him out flat on the ground, not allowing him to move. Colleen’s body landed her in a hospital bed, attended to by some very alarmed doctors who also wouldn’t let her move. Eventually, we healed ourselves and changed our lives. But we had a lot to learn first.

Our bodies demanded we pay attention to well-being, and soon we learned that health and happiness are a virtuous circle. Your mental and emotional well-being drives your physical well-being and vice versa. Frequent margaritas and steaks might make us happy, but they don’t make us healthy. Boutique fitness classes might make us healthy, but now, with two young children at home, contorting our schedules and blowing up our sleep just to fit it all in would definitely not make us happy. It’s hard to make room for joy when you can barely keep your eyes open. When we first started on our well-being journey, we were shocked by the lack of clear-cut information about how to live a healthier life in a sustainable, low-cost way—so shocked, in fact, that we eventually decided to turn our quest for science-backed, holistic health and wellness information into a company that curates exactly that. That’s how we started mindbodygreen. We figured that there were probably plenty of people out there like us who just wanted to feel better, people short on time who wanted a happier, healthier, and more joyful life but were not sure where to start.

We realized very quickly that we were not alone in our confusion. The current landscape of health and wellness, like many parts of our society, is full of discord. It’s no wonder that so many of us are lost and overwhelmed when it comes to how to feel better in our lives. Fitness trends and nutrition brands are marketed to us like cultural identities. Are you keto or vegan? Do you fast intermittently or are you an intuitive eater? Have you tried the TikTok chlorophyll trend, or do you believe it’s a scam? Is fruit hijacking your blood sugar, or is gluten the real culprit? Should you do F45 or sign up for Orangetheory Fitness? We are unable to reach consensus on a variety of hot-button health topics from the safety of sun exposure to optimal levels of protein intake, to whether you should salt your food, to whether you should avoid mouthwash (yes, that’s a debate). Social media algorithms inadvertently encourage medical professionals who are on these platforms to have strong, polarizing points of view, because this approach will garner more views and engagement and enable more doctors to become “doc stars.”

We all want to be happier and healthier, even if we can’t agree on how to get there, and that desire, that need is more important than ever. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have all had experiences navigating helplessness, confusion, and conflicting information about our health. We have lived through a collective trauma and are left to process it on increasingly depleted energy reserves. Skyrocketing rates of anxiety, long COVID, and health fallout from years of chronic stress are all now piled upon the increasing rates of chronic illness, heart disease, diabetes, and mental illness that were there before the coronavirus upended our lives. Getting back to a baseline of health and happiness has never been more critical, and it has never felt more challenging.

Because crisis often amplifies what is already wrong in the world, we know that the hardship of the last few years has only deepened existing inequalities in health, stability, and well-being. The massive differences between our needs, our access, and our life circumstances have become more obvious than ever. And yet, we still find ourselves faced with advice that presumes we all have the same amount of time, money, and energy. In the current world of health and wellness, it can often seem like the brass ring of a happy, healthy, and long life is only for the people who have surplus of resources. The echo chamber of the internet and influencers have hijacked the concept of self-care. We feel like we are losing the self-care game if we aren’t taking a nightly bath with sustainably sourced Epsom salts and keeping up with our daily gratitude journaling. Our social feeds have images of Kardashian-level wellness, filled with lymphatic drainage treatments, expensive vegan meal delivery, and workouts for a perkier posterior. In another corner of the wellness world are the elite longevity optimizers who are measuring their lactate after workouts and calculating their VO₂ max in a laboratory and wearing a continuous glucose monitoring device. These people offer great scientific insight, but at the same time they are bringing a technical intensity and rigidity to exercise and eating that sucks the fun right out of it.

We’ve got to face it: the internet does not get us closer to the work of understanding what will truly nurture our bodies and minds, nor does it help us understand what matters most in life. Some of us are hanging by a thread, others are taking it day by day, and many of us find ourselves in the position of making halting progress at best. We take a few steps forward; we take a few steps backward. Sometimes we have a hard time putting one foot in front of the other. We get on and off the wellness path, but we don’t know for sure where it’s even leading us.

The Joy of Well-Being is the title of this book, but we hope it’s also a reawakening. We want you to look at your health and happiness through a completely different lens: well-being. It’s a mindset shift that has the potential to change how you feel in your body, in your relationships, and in your life.

Wellness is about optimization and outcome. Well-being is about joy and journey.

You can dial in your VO₂ max, eliminate gluten, and stabilize your blood sugar all you want, but if your relationships are in shambles and you can’t remember the last time you laughed, none of that matters. Better to go to a dance class, make some friends, and go out afterward for an old-fashioned full-fat ice cream. If you stress yourself out by spending too much time, money, and emotional energy trying to do everything you “should” do to be healthy or happy, it actually has the opposite effect. Your health will suffer right along with your quality of life. And that life is a long and winding road. When we reach for wellness, we’re sprinting for goalposts, as if hitting a certain number on the scale or logging the right number of hours at the gym will unlock everlasting happiness. Life isn’t about hitting your marks or avoiding pain and challenge. It’s about engaging fully with all of your experiences and cultivating the small moments of joy along the way that bring the resilience we need to thrive through the struggle.

Using the word well-being instead of wellness is not just about swapping out one word for another. It is a fundamental frame shift that can reveal what’s truly possible. Well-being is a state of being comfortable, healthy, and happy. It is not something we chase; it is something we weave together, day by day. Each day it looks different, asks something new of us, and provides fresh opportunities to find joy. Each person is the foundation of their own well-being. So, we must sit down, set our intentions, and try like hell to nourish ourselves in ways that support our bodies and sing to our souls. When we embrace the joy of well-being as our North Star, the cacophony of expert opinions dies away, the obsession with biometric data calms down, the confusion evaporates, and you are left with the only question that matters: will this next step support my health and bring me joy?

Of course, some steps are better than others. Some choices are wiser, more likely to bring you closer to well-being. After over a decade in the health space, we know that feeling better is easier to achieve than most people think, but we also know that there is a lot of noise out there. Which is why we are writing this book. Our goal is to provide you with the raw material you need to weave well-being instead of chase wellness, and to navigate the noise and integrate the goodness. Through our work at mindbodygreen, we have had the privilege of curating and sharing the best advice from all the most brilliant minds in holistic, science-based health. We are the product of our mentors—hundreds of the world’s most brilliant well-being minds, PhDs, MDs, LAcs, therapists, movement specialists, spiritual leaders, and journalists. We’ve learned that doctors are people too (even though some have a God complex), and sometimes they can be driven to have a strong point of view and engage in tribalism to leverage social media algorithms or sell a book. Over the years we’ve developed a strong set of internal BS screeners that help us blend sources of information and listen for meaningful points of overlap in the chaos. We consider this act of discernment both an art and a science. This book is a distillation of almost fifteen years of experience on the forefront of the well-being conversation. In other words, we’ve done the legwork so you don’t have to.

While this book won’t tell you what adaptogen-laden beverage to buy at Erewhon, it will help you navigate the notoriously tricky wellness space by providing research-backed, agenda-free wisdom in fundamental areas of well-being: breath, sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, regeneration, social connection, and purpose. The first chapter of the book will explore what true well-being looks like, the challenges we face, and the mindsets we need to cultivate in order to live our best lives. The rest of the book dives into the heart of the matter and reveals how you can start feeling better, right now. We like to think about the subjects of the core eight chapters as intentions as much as practices—in fact, we’ll use the words interchangeably throughout the book. Why? Because well-being is both ongoing choice and discrete actions. Intentions help you get into the mindset of meeting your commitment to well-being with determination and flexibility, every day. Likewise, we use the word practice because you must do the thing you set out to do, again and again, improving and reflecting on the process over time. Intentions help you see the big picture. Practices ground you in the moment.

Consider the following intentions:

Each of these is important, useful, and potentially life-changing. The first five intentions focus on the changes we can make as individuals (breath, sleep, food, movement, resilience), and the last three concern our place in the world and our relationships with others (regeneration, connection, and purpose). Each of the practices we share to help you fulfill your intentions meet three criteria—they are easily accessible to everyone, they are science-backed, and they offer the possibility of joy. If it doesn’t hit all three, it’s not in the book. It’s as simple as that.

No matter what intention or practice you are working on, we will teach you how to integrate these changes in a way that works for your life and brings you joy. Because health and happiness are so deeply connected, in the long term, you can’t succeed at one without the other. Leave out the joy and you won’t be happy, and then those new healthy habits? Kiss them goodbye. We have seen it over and over again in listening to thousands of people talk about their own struggles and journeys. People who are physically fit but can’t sleep at night because of anxiety. People who are disciplined about their diet but lack meaning in life. People who are thriving at work but lack real connections with humans. By now we know that the all-or-nothing, “Try this! And this! And this!” approach to health and happiness doesn’t work. Worse? It’s exhausting. The opposite of joyful.

Choosing to support your well-being every day is far from impossible; moving the needle on all the markers of health is not hard when you have solid information, listen to your body, and use joy as a barometer for bringing new habits into your life. For some people, that might be by simply walking up a hill to work every day, and for others, it might be a yoga nidra class before bedtime. The secret is to develop the ability to listen to your body and be intentional about incorporating well-being into your life. These choices add up over time to improve your well-being status and become the lifestyle design elements that will change your life. By wisely weaving healthier habits and behaviors into your day, you can get to 80 percent of your maximum well-being—we promise. And we’re talking about minutes a day, not hours, and all that’s asked of you is integrating small moves that give you the biggest possible return on your investment.

But before you can do any of that, you have to take control. We call it being the CEO of your own health. Through a series of health issues that fell outside the ability of Western medicine to heal and alternative medicine to grasp, we have learned the importance of advocating for ourselves. There’s nothing worse than suffering and relying on professional help that ultimately does more harm than good. You have to know yourself, be able to call bullshit, and listen to your intuition. The best place to begin is by figuring out what gives you joy, how you feel in your body now, and how you want to feel tomorrow and next week, and when you are seventy-five years old. These questions are fundamental to well-being, ones we will come back to again and again in this book.

Whatever you are bringing to the table in terms of time, energy, and money, this book will help you feel better by working with what you already have, from where you already are. It will prompt you to ask the questions that will help identify your growth edges: Where could you bring more attention to your health? What doors to joy could be unlocked? We also want you to dream big: How do you want to feel in your body in ten, twenty, thirty years? If you are twenty-five or over, it’s probably time to start laying the foundation for sustainable well-being. We have both experienced the power of taking control of your own health and happiness, and we can’t wait to share what we’ve learned with you.

Ultimately, when life is going fine, you don’t invite radical change into your world, even though it might be exactly what you need. But when there are truly terrifying circumstances afoot, radical life change becomes a necessity. Our hope for you is that you don’t have to wait until there’s an emergency to make changes in your life. It’s time for us all to recognize the stakes of well-being. Health and happiness are not frivolous nice-to-haves; they are essential to making the most of our time on earth. We all deserve the joy of well-being.