Move From Surviving to Thriving With Jon Rosemberg

0:03Thank you for joining us for episode 553 of Live Happy Now. As we enter this new year, we want to look at how to make the most of it. And this week's guest says that means going from surviving to thriving. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I sit down with Jon Rosenberg, a leadership coach and consultant and author of A Guide to Thriving. He's here to break down some of the misconceptions we have about what it means to thrive and explain the role that agency, or the ability to make intentional choices, plays in building a meaningful, connected life. And even better, John gives us his formula for developing more agency in our lives.

0:40Let's have a listen. John, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Paula, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Great topic. Very timely, any time of year, but particularly as we're starting a new year, you have a lot of great tips for us. And before we really dig into those, I wanted to start with a big question and get us all on the same page. And that is, what does it mean to thrive these days? I love that question. And I'm going to start by saying what it doesn't mean. I think we often confuse thriving with success. This is an equivalence that we're making in a lot of places in society.

1:17We're saying, I'm thriving if I'm successful. And if I'm successful, I'm thriving. Now, let's kind of define the two. When we talk about success, we're talking mostly about extrinsic motivators. We're talking mainly money, power, and status. Those are the main success drivers. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with success. I want success just as much as the next person. And we actually need it to navigate our systems and our society, which are built for success. So those would be kind of the success drivers. When we look at thriving, it's a little bit different. And what I would say, it's mostly intrinsic motivators.

1:57And the ones that I, as I went deep into the research and started reading about what thriving is, there are three things that kept coming up. Agency, which is the main thesis of the book. Connection. And by connection, I mean human connection or connection to nature or to animals or connection to something transcendent like God or whatever it is that you believe in. and meaning. And meaning is the why behind we make the decisions that we make. So that's the difference between success and thriving. I love that. And we are going to get into agency a little bit later in the talk because you have a great formula for it that's really science-based that I want to dig into.

2:39But let's talk a little bit about connection. That's been a huge theme of ours for the last couple of years because we're having more and more difficulty connecting with others in this highly connected world. Why is that such an integral part of thriving? Yeah. So the longest running study on human wellbeing shows that social connection tends to be the most important predictor of wellbeing. So we know this is really important at a social level. And I think, well, if we look at the history of humanity, this is the first time since humans have have navigated this planet, that you could actually graduate high school, get a job, rent an apartment, assuming you can pay rent, because we know a lot of folks are struggling with that, and then live within those four walls for the rest of your life.

3:32You can get your foot delivered, your medicine delivered, you can talk to your doctor online, you can date online, you can talk to chat GPT if you need advice, which is what a lot of people are doing. And there's a big question mark around that. And the fact is that we could actually go through our lives without engaging with other folks. If you think about just 100 years ago, community was essential to surviving. Without a community, you might not have access to the right types of food or to the right type of care. And today, because it's no longer necessary for our survival, a lot of folks are spending a lot of time alone.

4:11And we know this from Dr. Vivek Murthy's report only a couple of years ago that was talking about the loneliness epidemic. And we know that one in three people in the United States right now are falling to the bucket that is defined as chronic loneliness. So connection is a very important element of thriving based on what the research is telling us. And someone who's not connected, a lot of times they may not even realize that they've slipped into this mode where they are simply surviving. Would you say that's true? Yeah, I think we often don't realize when we're in it. And that's why when we talk about agency, and we'll talk about AIR, which stands for Awareness, Inquiry, and Reframing, that's when we talk about agency, it often starts with awareness, with actually realizing that we are in that state of survival mode.

5:01And in the book, I describe that as this state of 911 emergency where we feel like our vision narrows and we feel like we are just putting out one fire after the other one. It often comes with, you know, our jaw feels tense or our shoulders feel tense, or we feel pressure in our chest. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with survival mode in certain situations. I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, which was a very dangerous place. When I left the country in 2009, by some estimates, there were 52 ,000 violent murders that year in the country. It's a war zone. So living in that environment, survival mode was highly adaptive and very helpful.

5:44So for me to be thriving in that space might have been quite dangerous, as a matter of fact. So survival mode is useful and thriving is useful as well. So we need to figure out contextually what makes the most sense for us. So when you're helping people move from survival mode into thriving, what would you say is the biggest misconception they have? That's a really good question. So when I was writing the book and trying to find a publisher, And I'm very grateful to Wiley, who finally decided to offer me to publish it. But one of the challenges that I encounter is that the publishers kept telling me, your book is not prescriptive enough.

6:28It's not telling people what to do. And I said, well, I'm writing a book about agency. If I'm telling people what to do, isn't that a little ironic, right? It doesn't make a ton of sense. So what I would say is developing agency is a really important skill set. and it looks different for every single person. So I would say the biggest misconception is thinking that we can read an article online and suddenly figure it out. If we drink eight glasses of water, sleep eight hours, I don't know, the number eight seems to be coming up a lot. Or if you just get enough sunlight and physical activity, of course, all of these things are important, but each of us are different and different things will work for different people.

7:13So I think experimenting, having this mindset of, let me try and see what actually works for me, it's quite agentic. And it ensures that whatever thriving you find is more sustainable over time. That makes perfect sense. And how does someone identify that they are in survival mode? Because as we talked about, a lot of times people, they've slid into that spot and they didn't notice themselves sliding and now they're in it. But how do they finally recognize that? Yeah. So I think one big sign that we can find is when we feel like we don't have a choice. A lot of times we say, oh, I just have no choice here.

7:55And let's just acknowledge for a second that there are folks who actually don't have a choice. If you're living in a war zone or paycheck to paycheck, like there are a lot of people in our society who may have very limited choices. But Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who wrote Man's Search for Meaning and Holocaust Survivor, he suggests that even in the most dire of human circumstances, which is what people experience in concentration camps, in the Nazi concentration camps, what he noticed is that those prisoners who chose their attitude and the way they engage with their circumstances often had a higher likelihood of survival.

8:34and often found a different way to engage with their situation. Now, let's not use, this is a big comparison that I'm using. The intention behind that comparison is to say that if Viktor Frankl, who was interned in a concentration, in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust, was able to find small choices, most of us can find small choices, even in the difficult moments. We'll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

9:08The International Day of Happiness may be behind us, but its ripple effects are still going strong. And honestly, we're loving it. Hearing how you are spreading joy, kindness, and connection has been the highlight of our month. If you haven't already jumped into the conversation, now's the perfect time. Head over to our social pages at at mylivehappy and see how people everywhere are celebrating happiness in their own unique ways. And while you're there, tell us what's changed for you this March. What lifted you up? What inspired you? And what made you smile just a little bit bigger? Remember, happy acts don't have to end when March does.

9:45Happiness isn't a moment. It's a movement. So let's keep this wave rolling, keep lifting each other up, and keep choosing joy one small act at a time. because when we live happy, we live better. So tune in, get inspired, and keep the happiness going.

10:04And now let's hear more from John Rosenberg. Once we've made that choice that we're going to shift our mindset, we are going to find a way to thrive even in small steps. How do we start that? That's super challenging. Yeah. So this is one that framework of error may be useful. So again, AIR stands for awareness, inquiry, and reframing. So as they're working through this process, I know you have a workbook too. How do they use that AIR formula? Again, it depends. Some people like journaling and that can be really useful. So writing can be a really powerful way to do. I find that in connection with others tends to be the best way for me.

10:51talking to somebody who can non-judgmentally ask me questions and try and challenge my beliefs and my ideas about what is happening in the current moment, it's a really good way to start practicing air. Eventually, the more we practice, the better we get at it. And it's not a one and done situation. When you're making this choice to shift and you're going to go and move into thriving, it's a practice that you have to do consciously. Can you talk about that, how we make that part of our fabric of each day? Yeah, I think we often hear in the media about this major breakthroughs that we can get in life, right?

11:31If you work with the right coach or the right therapist, if you go to the right retreat or take the right course online, then you'll have this major breakthrough and your life will change. And what I suggest in the book is that I rarely see that happen. And I've rarely experienced that happening for me. What's most common is that there are small little increments that start building and they accumulate. For anybody who's in the investment world, they understand the power of compounding. This is the exact same thing. It's the power of compounding every little bit. Our brains are powerful because we have this capacity called neuroplasticity in which our brains can change if we start changing our habits.

12:17And habits can be actions that we affect into the world, or they can be thinking habits, how we think about things, right? They can be cognitive habits. They can be emotional habits. So the more we practice this on a daily basis, the more likelihood we're going to strengthen that muscle and the easier it becomes. And since it is different for each person, how do we create this plan? Say, I want to thrive in 2026. How do you create that plan of action so that you can do that every day and have something to practice? So there are lots of tools available out there. What I suggest to many of my coaching clients is to do small experiments.

13:02Try one thing and see how it treats you. And if it works for you, then stick with it and try and drive it, you know, try and figure out how you can augment it and build on top of it. I used to, for about two years, I was trying to learn how to meditate. And I still have a meditation cushion here in my office that's gathering dust. I would sit on this cushion and try and meditate. And it sucked. I used all the apps and I downloaded them and I tried them and it just wasn't for me. And one day somebody said to me, have you ever tried a walk in meditation? And I try to walk in meditation. I was like, I could do this.

13:44I'd like this. It was a little experiment. Eventually it became a habit that I've been building. And now I can go. I actually go on walks every day up to two hours. I just walk and meditate. That's really helpful for me. Now, I also go on work calls while I'm walking. Don't think that I, it sounds like, oh my God, who has two hours to meditate every day? Not me. But I try, you know, and I try to find these moments of mindfulness on a daily basis, which help with awareness, which in turn help with inquiry and in turn helps with the reframe. So for each person, trying to figure out what may work for you in terms of a habit that you can develop could be a really, a really good approach.

14:25And where can they kind of look for that? Because people always want an idea of like, okay, so what practices would be good for taking me to that level? Where do they start looking for options? If you have access to it, talk to a coach or talk to a therapist. If you don't, start maybe with AI. Just ask questions. Hey, here's who I am. Here's how I do things. And, you know, with ChatGPT or with Claude and say, based on what you know about me, what are some practices that you would recommend that I could test out? Again, when it comes to prescriptions, there's an unlimited number of them out there.

15:01The question is whether you can figure out what prescription works best for you. And that's something that I don't think anybody's going to be able to tell you. Right, right. So once someone finds what's going to work for them and they put it into practice, what will they notice as they move into the state of thriving? What does that look like? What does that feel like? Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So agency will be, in my view, it's one of the first thing that starts to shift. So from going on this place of very low agency where we say, I don't have a choice, we can move into a little bit higher agency, which is maybe looking at the world in black and white and say, so from just seeing black or white, we can see now black and white.

15:49So we say, okay, so I have two choices. I can stay in this job or I can leave this job. I can eat this chocolate cake or I could not eat that chocolate cake. And they both feel like actual choices that we can make, right? So that would be an increase in agency. Really high agency is when we look at the world as a rainbow instead of black and white. When we see a lot of choices, we can say, well, I can stay in this job, but I can refine the way in which I engage with this job. And I can maybe try and adjust my role or I can move to a different manager or I can, you know, and then we start leaning into that agency to make those shifts.

16:29Or instead of saying I can eat this chocolate cake or not eat this chocolate cake, we might be able to say I'm just going to eat three bites of the chocolate cake instead of the full piece. So that's when agency starts really making a difference because we start seeing complexity in the world. And as we navigate the world within that complexity, we start thriving more. And how does someone know if they're thriving? What does that feel like? What does that look like? It's different for all of us. If you can, if you can see a lot of options, if you feel calm and connected to other people, and if you feel like you can tap into that part of yourself that is creative and that can see beyond the immediate urgency of life, then you're likely thriving more than you are in survival mode.

17:21And let me just say, these are not like end states. I'm going from survival mode to thriving, and then I flip the switch and there, that's it. The way I describe it in the book is as a spiral, which means that sometimes we're going up in the spiral and thriving more, and sometimes things happen in life that send us back down into survival mode. One of the moments where I was thriving the most in my life, I got a call from my best friend, Nathan, and he said, John, I have stage four liver cancer. And that was really tough. And a couple of months after that, he passed away. And that was even tougher.

17:57So even though in the moment I felt like I was thriving, the experience of losing my best friend in such a short time sent me deep into survival mode. And I slowly started finding my way back into thriving. And by the way, thriving doesn't mean that it's just positive emotions and that life is beautiful. It just means, again, that we can lean into our agency, that we see meaning in how we navigate life, and that we can connect with other people or with nature or with the transcendental. I'm glad that you brought that up because we do tend to think of thriving as like joyous, everything is wonderful, we're in flow state all the time, and everything is working out magically.

18:37And so I do like that because very few people have that kind of utopian, I live in a snow globe kind of life right now, wherever. And so I'm really glad that you brought that up. So as we start this new year, people are like looking at how they're going to act in the next, you know, how things will unfold in the next few months. So what would you say are a couple of your best practices for starting on that path to thriving? Yeah, I would say you make a very good point, Paula, when you talk about this snow globe life. I would suggest I've never met anybody. I've met people who know how to keep the appearances of being in this snow globe.

19:19I haven't yet met anybody who actually lives in that snow globe. And if they did, and if they did, I'm not sure how good that life would be. Right? I'm not. But I think self-compassion is a really important skill set. And it's very difficult. You know, I was telling one of my really good friends last week, I was visiting some friends that I haven't seen since childhood. And we were talking about, oh, I'm the hardest person on myself. If people spoke to us in the way that we speak to ourselves, my goodness, we would not put up with it. Exactly. We would not put up with this. So I think going into 2026, figuring out what your intention is for the year.

20:05And by intention, I don't mean your goal. It's not losing 20 pounds. I mean, intention. How do you want to go into the year? So one of my intentions for 2026 is to have a little bit more self-compassion. It's to offer myself the same leniency and the same space and the same care and the same love that I would offer anybody else. I like that. Well, John, we are going to tell our listeners how they can find you, how they can find your book, how they can get the workbook for free. And I appreciate you coming on the show today and talking with me about this. Thank you, Paula. This has been such a great conversation and your questions are so incisive and they get to the bottom of it, which I really love.

20:50And I'm grateful to your listeners for listening and wishing everybody a great 2026 ahead. I love it. Thank you so much.

21:27a happy one.