Ideas I keep coming back to.

Adapted from my book proposal, Gross National Wellbeing.

The world and all of its brave activists are working on every kind of problem you can imagine: hunger, inequality, education, clean energy, violence. There is a movement and a documentary for everything. But I've come to believe the real deficit in the world isn't a budget deficit. It's a wellbeing deficit, and every one of those problems both feeds it and grows from it.

For years, Gallup has asked people around the world to rate their lives today and where they expect to be in five years. Year after year, only a small share of humanity says it is truly thriving. Despite all our progress, the way people experience their lives has barely moved.

Think about what that costs us. Not only the obvious problems, but the inventions never created, the talent never discovered, the leaders never made. When someone is busy trying to survive, stuck in a job they hate, or quietly depressed in a beautiful apartment, the whole world misses out on their genius. We are leaving most of humanity's creativity, kindness, and ideas on the table.

Our metrics hide this from us. When I was at Gallup, one example stopped me in my tracks. In Egypt, the share of people who said they were thriving fell sharply in the years leading up to the revolution, while GDP kept climbing. GDP said the country was doing fine. Wellbeing said people had lost hope. Only one of those numbers could have predicted what came next.

GDP isn't the enemy. I'm not anti-business, and I'm not anti-growth. But GDP was never designed to tell us whether people are thriving. Even its creator, Simon Kuznets, warned that the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.

Wellbeing is not a soft metric. It is a measure of empowerment. When people's wellbeing is high, they show up for their families, their colleagues, and their communities. They look for solutions instead of excuses. Their creative potential is unleashed, and problems big and small have a better chance of being solved.

So how do we close the wellbeing deficit? We measure it. But we have to measure it like we mean it. It can't be a nice-to-have reserved for the do-gooders. It has to be a core measure of success for countries, cities, companies, schools, and each of us, measured right alongside GDP and profit.

Until it is, other metrics will keep winning, and we'll keep choosing progress over purpose, speed over value, and money over integrity. Right now we're measuring everything except what matters. Changing that is the work of my life, and it's why I'm building WAIOS: so that one day, a successful society means a thriving one.

Danielle Posa

Updated from my 2022 article for Training Industry.

As a former Gallup consultant, I've always had deep respect for asking the right questions and measuring the right things. Measure the wrong things, or ask too many questions, and you end up busy solving problems that barely move the needle for employees or the business.

So of all the surveys and tools out there, what can you measure that, when it improves, almost guarantees better business results, a better culture, and a better quality of life for your people? The answer is wellbeing.

Employee wellbeing sits at the root of nearly every major people issue: retention, productivity, absenteeism, healthcare costs. It all comes back to whether people feel good about their work and their lives. And wellbeing is not a soft metric. It is a measure of empowerment. Empowered employees innovate, think clearly, and feel like they are in the driver's seat of their lives.

But you have to measure it the right way. You can't tack a few mental health questions onto the end of a long survey and call it a day. A real wellbeing measure covers three things.

Engagement. Work is where we spend most of our waking hours, and it's central to our identity. People have to feel an emotional connection to what they do. If they don't, the rest of life suffers too.

Individual wellbeing. How are people doing in their lives overall: socially, financially, physically, mentally, and emotionally? This is your end result. You want to see lives getting better over time.

The cultural barriers and drivers of wellbeing. This is where most surveys fall short. It's the impact the workplace itself has on people: the root causes of burnout, manager support, leadership behavior, and the signs of a toxic culture.

When I first wrote about this in 2022, I encouraged leaders to ask these questions at least once a year. Since then, my thinking has evolved. Once a year is not enough. People's lives change week to week, and an annual survey tells you what happened months ago, long after you could have helped. Too many employees tune it out, and too many leaders never act on the results.

That's why I co-founded WAIOS. Measurement has to be continuous, effortless for employees, and tied to action, so managers know what to do next and executives can see wellbeing as clearly as any other business metric.

And measurement alone will never move the needle. Pair it with learning on three tracks: one for every employee, to help them help themselves; one for managers, who are the glue of any wellbeing strategy; and one for senior leaders, who set the cultural tone and need to understand the ripple effect of their own wellbeing. Measure what matters, act on it, and teach it. That's how wellbeing becomes part of the fabric of a culture.

Danielle Posa

Originally written in 2020 for Chopra, at the start of the pandemic.

If there was ever a time to truly give yourself permission to be well, it is now.

It is easy to get caught up in the chaos and in panic. The panic causes us to overthink everything, fills us with fear, and sends us all into survival mode.

And as long as we are stuck in that space, we will never be able to see the greater message from the universe. The message that says, “This is the time for you. This is the time for you to focus on what matters. This is the time for you to give your body and your mind what they need in order to be healthy. This is the time for you to be home. To pause. To be grounded. To simplify and to recharge. This is the time to truly permit yourself to be well.”

But what does it mean to give yourself permission to be well?

It means that when the opportunity arises to prioritize your health or happiness, you take it. It means that when you know you are exhausted, you permit yourself to rest. It means that when you need to take a break to have lunch, you take the time to sit and enjoy your meal. It means that when your children are seeking your attention without distraction, you permit yourself to tend to them and to truly enjoy them. And it means learning to tell yourself, “Nothing is more important than my health, my vitality, and the things that feed my soul.”

But putting our wellbeing first takes practice, especially when difficult circumstances make it seem nearly impossible.

Perhaps that’s why we’ve gotten into this global mess to begin with. Perhaps the universe is saying: you all need to stop and make your wellbeing a priority, because you haven’t done a very good job of it until now.

We have to develop the ability to self-regulate: to know what’s important for our mind, our body, and our spirit, to actively seek it, and to get better at communicating what we need to those around us.

And our places of work play a crucial role in this.

So many people fail to make their wellbeing a priority because they feel their boss or colleagues will look down on it. They worry they will be seen as weaker, less committed, or less productive. Yet everyone, at every level of the organization, faces the same challenges in managing their own stress, physical health, and time for themselves and their loved ones.

This is where business leaders and CEOs need to take responsibility. The workplace needs a wake-up call to realize the detrimental impact that work is having on people’s lives.

According to a study of 3,000 people, 61% said workplace stress had made them physically sick. There is even a so-called Black Monday Syndrome, because more people have heart attacks on Monday morning than at any other time of the week. And the American Institute of Stress maintains that job stress costs US employers more than $300 billion a year.

This means that leaders and managers have enormous power to improve people’s lives, and they can do it by giving their employees permission to be well.

When they do, employees start to feel free, as if the reins have been loosened and a weight has been lifted off their shoulders.

It begins with leaders at the highest level setting the example: making their own lives and wellbeing a priority, giving themselves permission to be well, and making that known. When they do, employees will naturally see that it’s okay for them to do the same.

What does this look like?

It means openly communicating your wellbeing needs as a leader. Say explicitly how you’re making sleep a priority, talk about how you make time to work out or meditate, and be intentionally unreachable during the time you spend with your family. Brag about these things instead of bragging about your lack of time, your lack of sleep, or how busy you are.

Wear your wellbeing on your sleeve.

It means letting employees know that they are truly not expected to be “on” all the time, and that in fact they should be off. And then it means acknowledging the people who succeed in doing so.

There’s a major issue in the corporate world: employees feel a constant sense of guilt. They feel guilty if they aren’t responsive enough, fast enough, in the office enough, smart enough, productive enough. This is a product of a high-tech, hyper-connected world where we think ideas must move into execution at lightning speed, and where there is very little time for conscious, creative thought. We have to actively fight for those things.

And while more and more workplaces offer flexible work policies or say they care about employee wellbeing, far too often employees feel that it isn’t enforced or felt.

This needs to stop. And there has never been a better time to stop, to pause, than right now, in the midst of this global pandemic.

We must all truly support one another in being well. We must give ourselves, our colleagues, our teams, and our organizations real permission to do so.

With permission comes peace of mind. With peace of mind comes conscious action. And with conscious action, we can find far greater solutions, even spiritual solutions, that can help elevate humanity in a way that has us emerge from this crisis stronger, healthier, happier, and wiser than we have ever been.

Danielle Posa

Originally written in 2016, on what would have been his 60th birthday.

My father, Vincent Anthony Posa, would have turned 60 on August 14, 2016, just months after he died. I spent much of that day wishing I could thank him. So instead I wrote down the lessons he gave me, the ones that shaped who I am.

You'll never know unless you try. Whether we were ordering at a restaurant or facing a big decision, Dad pushed us to try new things. He got scuba certified, took flying lessons, and was always starting a new hobby or business. Because of him, I've learned to say yes.

You'll figure it out. I spent hours beside him in the garage, the engine room of our boat, or under the hood of the car. We never followed the manual. He taught me how to think: understand how something works, and you can find the solution yourself.

You gotta enjoy what you do. Dad started as a paperboy and bought his first house at nineteen. He never told us what to do for work, only that we had to love it. If you're doing what you love, he'd say, the money will come.

You have no idea what it takes to maintain everything. By ten, I was doing paperwork in his office after school and learning how to manage his properties. He showed us the bills and what it cost to keep everything running. It kept us humble and grateful.

There's so much to see in the world. Dad was an explorer. He visited my sister in the Peace Corps and slept on an air mattress in her two-room house, and he backpacked through three countries with another of my sisters. When he died, he was on his motorcycle, headed back from the Hoover Dam. He was living an adventure until his very last day.

You can do it. He had a confidence in his daughters that still brings me to tears. He taught me to drive in his 1976 Cadillac convertible, a car so big I could barely see over the wheel. If I could drive that, he said, I could drive anything.

You only live once. He often said he could drop dead tomorrow. It was hard to hear, but it was true. Being honest about death is one of the most powerful ways to stop taking life for granted.

Nothing is more important than family. Dad loved family dinners, epic games of hide and seek, and stories of his big Italian family making sauce together. At the end of the day, he'd say, all you really have is each other.

Thank you, Dad, for my life. You live inside me, and I will keep living out these lessons for the rest of mine.

Danielle Posa

Originally written in India, 2016.

I was floating through the backwaters of Kerala at sunset on a tiny boat, pushed along by a fisherman with a long pole. His name was Sabu. He smiled often and seemed genuinely at peace.

I asked about his family. He told me he had a wife and a daughter, and that he used to have a son. His son died of bone cancer at twelve. Sabu had tried to save him, but the chemotherapy cost too much, and the cancer spread. Now his wife had breast cancer, and he was selling everything he owned, again, to pay for her treatment.

He pulled out his phone and showed me his son's picture, the background on his screen. His eyes filled, but he didn't cry. He just kept guiding the boat, looking out at the sunset.

Something about him got me. The peace in his face, the love in his eyes, the strength to keep going. And I thought: I don't know what it's like. I had cancer as a child too, but I had doctors, treatment, and a family who could give me everything I needed. Sabu's son did not.

It's easy to create the life of your dreams when you aren't busy trying to survive. Me and my perfect life: my laptop, my camera, my health, my access to everything. I'm the one who's supposed to know about happiness and wellbeing, and Sabu taught me more in an hour than most books ever have.

It isn't fair that a boy dies because his father can't afford care that exists. That isn't politics. It's a simple fact, and you'd see it too if you looked into Sabu's eyes.

I think of him often. He's part of why I believe so deeply that human potential is everywhere, and that it should never depend on where someone happens to be born. And he reminds me to honor the strength of everyone who has been through more than I will ever know.

Danielle Posa

Originally written in 2017.

An aha moment is a tiny instant when we realize something that changes the predictable path of our lives. It tells us what really matters, when to make a change, or how to solve the problem we've been wrestling with.

The most powerful ahas often come from a brush with death. Anyone who has had one will tell you it forced them to be present and to refocus on what truly matters. I know this from my own life.

The trouble is, it's harder than ever to be present. We're bombarded with emails, texts, and to-do lists. Life comes at us fast, and we spend most of our time reacting. That's what I call thoughting: when your thoughts run your mind instead of the other way around. Thought your way through life long enough, and one day you look back and wonder how you got here.

Thinking is different. It's an active process that requires you: your consciousness and your intention. And our best thinking needs something first, which is space. Here are four ways to create it.

Reflect on your death. We have to get over our fear of talking about it. Write your own eulogy. I've done it, and I reread it often. How did you live, how did you treat people, what did you stand for, and who showed up to say goodbye?

Invest in intense self-inquiry. A great course, retreat, or coach can interrupt your everyday thinking and show you something about yourself you'd never see on autopilot. If you roll your eyes at this kind of thing, you might benefit the most.

Get away. Go somewhere you've never been, ideally where people speak a different language. New sights, sounds, and smells exercise the brain. Give yourself at least a week, and if you can, two or three.

Get outside and disconnect. Being connected all the time leaves no room to think. Take an hour or a whole weekend in nature without your phone. Walk in the woods, spend time on the water, or find a cabin with no wifi.

Make one of these a priority. The value of a single aha can outweigh almost everything else on your calendar. The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the number of aha moments you experience.

Danielle Posa