A while back, my husband said something shocking.

“I know you love your work, I just wish it didn’t make you so miserable.”

Say what?  I demanded to know what he meant.

He reminded me that I tended to push myself harder now that I am so engaged with what I’m doing, which means I’m frequently sleep deprived, overworked, and stressed.

“For someone who loves their work as much as you do, you just don’t seem that happy.  That’s all I’m saying.”

And yet if you asked me nearly any day of the week if I am happy, I would smile broadly and give you an emphatic yes.  Nor would I be lying.

Such is the paradox called happiness.

Most of you don’t know this, but I didn’t start this blog talking about careers.  What initially occupied my mind was whether one could design a happier life, because I felt something was missing from mine.  And since my relationships were already in good standing, my writing gradually started to focus on the career part of the equation.

Which is not to say I’ve figured it out.  In fact, I still find happiness to be complicated and occasionally elusive.

So I decided to interview one of my favorite authorities on the topic: Gretchen Rubin, author of the international best-seller The Happiness Project.

I devoured the book and really felt like I’d found a kindred spirit (as is obvious in my rather giddy introduction).  But I still had a ton of questions.  In this interview, Gretchen and I talk about:

• How do deal with your lingering feelings of career illegitimacy, especially if you want to follow your passion
• Why you need an atmosphere of growth, even if it scares you silly
• How to balance short-term stress versus long-term happiness
• How to stop bullying yourself with personal development goals (as I discussed in this post)
• 3 trick questions for uncovering what you really what from work and life
• How success sometimes sets us up for failure (and the surprising way to prevent it)

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I hope you make time to listen to the interview or read the transcript.  It’s one of my favorites (among some amazing interviews).  But if you don’t, then take away this one quote

Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy

Not that I’m trying to tell my husband I told you so (ahem).

But it was wonderfully reassuring to know that I’m not crazy or delusional or teetering on the edge of that proverbial mid-life crisis. While I still have a lot to learn about designing a happy life, it’s also clear I’ve come a long way.

So what about you?  Are you happy?  And how do you know?

The more you struggle, the more you imagine a big change is just around the corner.

We tell ourselves that change is hard, that it only comes from effort and discipline and resolve.  We worry and plan and steel ourselves for the long haul.

It’s exhausting, but necessary.

Or is it?

As Chip and Dan Heath say in their book, Switch: How to Change when Change is Hard, you need to deal with three things when you want to make a change: your emotions, your rational decision-making, and the situation you operate in.

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?

And because it sounds complicated, we often make it complicated.  We try to solve the problem by staging a dramatic struggle (and make no mistake, it is largely an act, though an unconscious one).

We announce flashy resolutions, we have long internal arguments about the importance of willpower, then sink into pitiful despair when we fail to make sustained progress.

What if there was a single exercise that could help you make a big change in just a few hours?

Let me introduce you to Steve, who went from flirting with a mid-life crisis to getting those butterfly feelings of excitement in his stomach for the first time in years–all in just one week.  And then I’ll introduce you to Jennie, who transformed herself from welfare mom to CEO.

When I was 27, I left my reporting job to backpack through Africa.

The trip itself was amazing. I rode a camel in Timbuktu, discovered the howling lemur in Madagascar and bonded with a polygamous family in Cameroon. Those six months changed how I see the world.

But the coolest result of my career break was totally unrelated to travel: it catapulted me into a Life of Awesome.

Successfully taking that one big risk helped me realize I should take more. So I decided to write a book, a travel memoir. Then, two months ago, I left my day job to pursue my business full time. Now I’m launching an e-guide called How to Take a Career Break to Travel, daring to make my project public. I probably wouldn’t have made any of those moves if I hadn’t gone on my solo backpacking trip. Because of that trip, I now know the potential that lies behind each (scary) risk.

What I’m getting at is this: Once you’ve taken one leap, you’ll itch to take another. And another. And another. Once you’ve followed your dream once, you will want to do it again. You might even recognize or create big opportunities you wouldn’t have seen before.