Unlocking Happiness: Nataly Kogan's Journey Through the Lens of the Six Needs

I continue to read books about happiness. Part of me hopes that someone else has already explained my theories, and I can lay down this burden of responsibility I feel to try to change how we think and talk about happiness. I still enjoy taking in others’ ideas of what happiness is and what factors affect our mental well-being, and I love experiencing others’ journeys of discovery. What’s universal is that at some point we all reach a certain depth of misery, and those of us who write books about our journeys are determined to find out why we get that low and how to re-surface, hopefully never to see such depths again.

My latest foray into the self-help space was Nataly Kogan’s book Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments (Even the Difficult Ones). The first quarter of the book is devoted to Kogan’s experience with unhappiness. Her major blocker appears to have been a low self-esteem. She details how, as an immigrant, her esteem took hit after hit, especially during the difficult teenage years where our esteems are in their most fragile state. She was ashamed of her accent, of her clothes, of a bookshelf falling while a friend was at her house. Everything was an indicator of how she was less than her peers.

But even after Kogan addressed all of those (perceived) shortcomings and gained success in her profession, she still had feelings that she wasn’t good enough. Writing about her time as CEO of Happier Inc., she says:

I felt intense pressure to make Happier a succes. Some of the stress I felt came from the real challenges of getting the company off the ground [staff dynamics, users not loving certain features, raising money] [safety]…. I was afraid of failing, of screwing up, of running out of money, of the team not being satisfied, of not being a competent leader…. In my mind, if Happier didn’t work, I was a total failure as an entrepreneur and as a human being [esteem].

From there Kogan spiraled until she reached a “breaking point,” and this description not only felt very familiar to me (from my own experience with depression) but also sounds like a lot of other stories I hear of people struggling with sadness/depression:

I either ate too much or nothing at all. I drank too much wine [physiological]. I stopped doing anything I enjoyed, like going to museums or watching movies, two of my favorite things [growth]. I slept in short increments of a couple hours here and there [physiological]. I tried to avoid any unnecessary interactions with other people including my parents, friends, and the team in the office [social]. A single day seemed to contain years. It was dark, like a light inside of me had been extinguished. All I could feel was dread [hopelessness or lack of agency to improve her situation: autonomy].

Records of depression such as this are why I am convinced that depression generally starts when we experience a major blocker (or multiple blockers) to one or more of our Six Needs. We become overwhelmed by the blocker(s) and stop working to meet our other Needs, and it simply becomes a vicious cycle: we withdraw from fulfilling our Needs, which makes us feel worse, which makes us further withdraw, and so on.

Luckily, Kogan had a friend who pointed her to a coach. This coach not only made Kogan feel unconditionally accepted (safety, social, esteem), she also drilled right down to Kogan’s prime challenge, helping her to love herself and be kind to herself (esteem). Kogan, with guidance from her coach, couldn’t fix everything overnight, but she was knocked loose of the negative feedback loop of depression. Once free she was able to find the energy to work her way up from the depths.

What’s interesting to me is that Kogan mentions Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but she doesn’t seem to make the connection between those needs and the larger arc of her journey. However, despite that, Happier Now is one of the better books about happiness that I’ve read. Kogan has a way of clarifying concepts that simplifies her message and makes it easy to digest. Have you read any books on happiness lately that you’d recommend? Let me know!