I am a certified professional coach (New Ventures West), with additional experience in crisis counseling (Crisis Text Line), compassionate listening (7 Cups), and peer mentoring (NAMI). I shifted to mental health and well-being after 25 years of working as a designer, manager, and director at various Silicon Valley tech companies. I am passionate about helping others, and by guiding them to find their true calling, I amplify my impact on improving the world.
I have been a serious philanthropist since 2004 and part of the EA community since 2017. I am most passionate about global mental health and EA capacity building (through my coaching). I also support environmental and animal welfare causes. I am on the advisory council of Vegan Outreach, The Confess Project, and the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Board.
Great topic, and hopefully I’m not coming off as pedantic when I say that we really need to make a distinction between happiness (which I argue is one of the fleeting emotions no different than fear or anger or embarrassment) and fulfillment (aka serenity, inner peace, contentment). People who are fulfilled embrace all of their emotions (including happiness) without judgement or an attempt to control, and they process them by connecting with themselves and others in healthy ways, which further leads to fulfillment. We are social, emotional apes, and all of the higher order emotions exist in order to bring the social group closer together.
So when it comes to measuring good, we should be measuring fulfillment, which itself is just a proxy for healthy emotional connections with other people. See the Harvard Longitudinal Study, Blue Zones, and Awakened Ape and even what it means to be a prosocial ape as some sources that point towards this theory.