Stephanie Harrison is an expert in the science of happiness and founded a company called The New Happy, where she teaches millions of people how to be happier. Through it, she hosts The New Happy podcast. She is also a Harvard Business Review and CNBC contributor, and her work has been featured in other publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, and Architectural Digest. She regularly speaks at Fortune 500 companies, advising on employee wellbeing and company culture.

Below, Stephanie shares five key insights from her new book, New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That’s Got It Wrong. Listen to the audio version—read by Stephanie herself—in the Next Big Idea App.

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1. Everything you know about happiness is a lie.

When I was in my early twenties, I had everything that I thought would make me happy. I had a prestigious job, lived in New York City, and had complete freedom. Yet, I was absolutely miserable. At first, I ignored my emotions. Then, over time, I started to experience more challenges: getting physically ill, struggling with my mental health, and feeling lonely. One day, I found myself lying on my bedroom floor sobbing hysterically, wondering why I was so desperately unhappy.

Then, I had a moment of clarity. What if there wasn’t something wrong with me? What if I had been lied to by the world around me? Perhaps everything I had been told about what I needed to do to be happy was wrong.

At that moment, I didn’t know exactly what the lies were, but now, after ten years of research, I do. I call it Old Happy: our society’s incorrect definition of happiness and the culture we’ve created around it. Old Happy begins with the messages we receive as children from our families, all the way through to the media we consume and the institutions that enforce it. It comes from three cultural forces of individualism, capitalism, and domination, which tell us that to be happy, we must perfect ourselves, do more and more, and do it all by ourselves.

The devastating truth is that pursuing these objectives won’t make you happy. In fact, both research and experience show that it will actually make you miserable.

2. A happier life starts with unwinding Old Happy.

Due to Old Happy, Americans are struggling with unprecedented levels of unhappiness, illness, burnout, and loneliness, with no idea what’s wrong or what they need to do to feel better again. The evidence I’ve amassed about the harms of Old Happy is astounding. To live truly happy lives, we start by letting go of our Old Happy beliefs and adopt new ones by undergoing three key shifts:

• Old Happy taught you that you’re not good enough and that there’s something wrong with you. Instead, you need to start seeing that you are worthy exactly as you are.
• Old Happy taught you that, to prove how good you are, you must achieve a certain set of external goals and succeed. Instead, you need to focus on expressing yourself and growing as a person in whatever way feels authentic to you. You are not defined by your successes or failures.
• Old Happy taught you that you have to do everything by yourself. Instead, you need to see that you are connected to others and that no one does anything alone. We are social creatures who are wired to need support. You are inextricably connected to others.

The best way to do this is by naming Old Happy when you see it pop up in your life. When you feel the pressure to overwork, say to yourself, “That’s Old Happy, not me.” When you judge your appearance, remind yourself, “I’m comparing myself to Old Happy’s made-up standards.” When you feel like you can’t ask for help, tell yourself that no one ever does anything alone, and it’s perfectly human to need support.

3. The real secret to happiness is counterintuitive.

Once we’ve named Old Happy and started unwinding it from our lives, we can discover the real secret to happiness. If you want to be happy, you need to help other people be happy. This is the proven path to happiness, supported by my research across multiple fields.

Everyone wants to live a happy life. The way to experience that is through finding ways to be of service to one another. Helping others is scientifically proven to benefit our wellbeing; it connects us to one another and helps us find a greater purpose in life. It doesn’t just improve your mental health but your physical health, too. Just like we have a need for food and shelter, we also have a profound need to go beyond ourselves and help others.

“If you want to be happy, you need to help other people be happy.”

Many people have a narrow definition of helping: we think of it as going out and volunteering. While that’s a wonderful way to help, we need a more expansive understanding. You help by listening to your loved ones, holding the door for someone, collaborating at work, sharing your ideas and unique perspective, and encouraging others to be their best. Every day, there are countless ways to help, meaning there are countless opportunities to experience happiness.

4. You possess unique gifts that need to be shared.

I argue that the best way to help others comes from sharing your unique gifts with those around you—whether in your family, communities, at work, or for the broader world.

There are three types of gifts that all human beings possess: humanity, talent, and wisdom:

• Your humanity is who you are as a person. It’s your character, your best qualities, your good and loving nature. When you call a friend to listen to them talk about a challenge, take time to play with your kids after work, or smile at a stranger on the street, you are using your humanity gifts.
• Your wisdom is what you have learned. Each of us possesses a completely unique life packed with experiences that teach us important and meaningful lessons. That wisdom can be used to help people in countless ways—from helping others through hard times to preventing them from ever happening.
• Your talent is what you can do. Talents are cultivated through time, energy, and effort. Every single one of us has the power to either develop new talents or deepen existing ones, using them to inspire others and make powerful contributions.

Your gifts are what make you you. When you use them in service of others, you’ll experience profound joy, purpose, and contentment. That’s what New Happy is all about: being yourself and giving of yourself.

5. Your happiness has the power to change the world.

When we live by Old Happy, we are not only making ourselves miserable, but we’re contributing to creating a world that makes the collective unhappy, too. It only leads to competition, judgment, disempowerment, burnout, and isolation. No one wins when Old Happy is our dominant understanding of happiness.

But when you adopt New Happy, all of that changes. Through your daily actions, you’re now contributing to making the world a better place. By helping others experience happiness and by devoting your incredible gifts to the problems we face, you are slowly but surely transforming the world into a place where more and more people get to be happy. Isn’t that what we all long for? A better, more just, more compassionate world?

I often hear from people in my community that they feel so helpless about the state of the world. But you can start making it better right now simply by changing your definition of happiness and living in alignment with it. Working for the greater good facilitates your highest good.

To listen to the audio version read by author Stephanie Harrison, download the Next Big Idea App today:

Swedish startup Enerpoly has opened the world’s first zinc-ion battery megafactory. Its vision is to scale a better alternative to lithium-ion for storing renewable energy over longer periods of time.

The Enerpoly Production Innovation Center (EPIC) facility is located north of Stockholm. Commissioning has already begun and the plant is expected to make the first zinc-ion batteries next year. The company aims to reach a maximum production capacity of 100MWh by 2026 — enough energy to power around 20,000 homes.

In 2018, Dr. Mylad Chamoun made a breakthrough in zinc-ion battery chemistry while pursuing his PhD at Stockholm University. Later that year, he teamed up with his former colleague Dr. Samir Nameer and the duo founded Enerpoly. The partners saw a gaping hole in the market where lithium-ion wasn’t competitive — offering 2 to 10 hour energy storage. They believed zinc-ion batteries could fill the gap.

Making zinc-ion batteries work

Using zinc in batteries isn’t anything new. The AA batteries that power your most precious (read, junk) toys and gadgets are made from zinc and manganese oxide. This chemistry has made companies like Energizer and Duracell a tonne of money.

However, zinc-ion batteries have historically, for lack of a better word, sucked at recharging. This is because zinc-ion chemistries are plagued by dendrites — crystals that cause short circuits. They also lose capacity fast.

“Enerpoly has innovated across the entire zinc-ion battery system — including anode, cathode, electrolyte, and separator design — to solve these inherent problems,” the company’s CEO, MIT-educated aerospace engineer Eloisa da Castro, told TNW.

Enerpoly uses zinc metal for the battery’s anode, manganese dioxide for the cathode, and a water-based electrolyte to carry charged particles between the two sides.

Unlike lithium, zinc is globally abundant. Moreover, Sweden is home to the largest zinc reserves in Europe — about 2% of the world’s total. Enerpoly hopes to establish a completely European supply chain for its batteries and make the continent a “zinc-ion powerhouse.”

Zinc-ion for energy storage

Different from lithium-ion battery developers, Enerpoly is targeting the energy storage market – not EVs and smartphones. Use cases include renewable energy storage, shifting energy loads on the grid, and increasing power resiliency — within the 2-10 hour storage mark.

The batteries are modular — multiple packs can be placed in parallel to make larger systems. The company claims the packs are non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-explosive.

Because the materials they use are a lot more abundant, Enerpoly believes it can be cost-competitive with myriad other short-to-mid term energy storage technologies under development. These include lithium-ion batteries, thermal heat storage devices, liquid air batteries, iron flow batteries, gravity batteries, and even this CO2 dome.

And investors seem to agree. To date, the company has raised just shy of €15mn. Over €8mn of that came from the Swedish Energy Agency to construct the EPIC factory.

CEO Da Castro told TNW the company is also planning to close its Series A this year, as they look to scale up towards the 2026 target of 100MWh. In July, Enerpoly acquired state-of-the-art dry electrode manufacturing equipment from bankrupt startup Nilar that it will use in its new plant. Beyond 2026, the startup is eyeing its first gigafactory.

In 2010, Uruguayan president-elect José Mujica made headlines for the bright blue mini-truck he rode to his inauguration ceremony.

The vehicle, which looked like any ordinary pickup truck, was used to convey a message: Uruguay was serious about its quest to become more environmentally friendly. The gas-powered four-wheeler had been transformed into an electric vehicle by Organización Autolibre, a local retrofitting company.

Viral press coverage of the ceremony put the company in the spotlight, sparking interest from EV enthusiasts inside and outside Uruguay who wanted to convert their gas-guzzling vehicles into economical EVs. 

“This news coverage in many media outlets across Latin America gave a lot of visibility to this technology, and to this day we tour the region every year across Peru, Mexico, Argentina,” Gabriel González Barrios, founder and CEO of Organización Autolibre, told Rest of World. “The same distributors of Autolibre systems permanently invite us to train the necessary technicians to generate the local ecosystem for the local development of this industry.”

Over the years, González Barrios and his team at Organización Autolibre have helped convert thousands of traditional vehicles into e-cars across 14 Latin American countries. The company trains individuals and mechanics through online courses, and supervises conversions for corporate fleets. So far, at least 40 companies have used Organización Autolibre’s services, González Barrios said. While some countries have flagged concerns about the safety of retrofitting vehicles, González Barrios said his company is leading efforts to make it a safer and standardized practice across Latin America.

“We want to show it’s an industrialized process,” Andrés García, the owner of a retrofitting shop in Bogotá, Colombia, which works with Autolibre, told Rest of World. “This is not for hobbyists or people who are inexperienced.”

González Barrios had the idea for the company in 2006 after watching the Al Gore-produced climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. A distributor of chemical products for gas-fueled vehicles at the time, he was inspired to address environmental concerns from his corner of the world.

“We decided to change the combustion engines of our own vehicles into zero-emission electric ones,” said González Barrios. The experiment was successful and affordable, and led him to found Organización Autolibre.

González Barrios initially used some American EV kits to retrofit vehicles, but when those became too costly, Autolibre partnered with Zhuhai Enpower Electric, a Chinese electric power system company.

Over the last few years, as the popularity of EVs has grown, so has interest in retrofitting regular vehicles, Bruno González, head of sales at Autolibre, told Rest of World. In 2011, the company retrofitted a fleet of delivery vans for Bimbo, the largest bread-making company in the world. Bimbo did not respond to questions from Rest of World.

In its 2020 report about the practice, the Latin American Association of Sustainable Mobility revealed that at least 145 retrofitted vehicles had been officially registered.

The Latin American Retrofit Association, co-founded by González Barrios, now has more than 30 members across the region. All are either distributors of EV retrofit kits or have workshops specializing in the process.

Retrofitting electric vehicles has been practiced worldwide for over 30 years, with countries like Japan and Australia establishing national guidelines for the process. A report from the Latin American Association of Sustainable Mobility lists 21 companies that currently sell EV retrofit kits for different vehicles across the world.

The biggest incentive to retrofit a vehicle is its affordability, said González Barrios. Most new EVs available in Latin America remain out of reach for regular car users. One of the most popular models, the electric Renault Kwid, costs around $18,100. Converting an existing gas or diesel-engine car into an electric vehicle using Autolibre’s process starts at $6,000.

Since the practice is largely a DIY process, there are no official statistics on the retrofitting industry in Latin America. Many retrofitting jobs are done “by tinkerers who seek to extend the life of their petrol cars since they can’t afford a new electric one,” Adolfo Rojas, president of the Association of Entrepreneurs to Promote Electric Vehicles in Peru, told Rest of World.

The retrofitting process requires skilled EV technicians to remove the engine, gas tank, exhaust, and other components within a regular car, and fit the electric motor, batteries, on-board charger, and computer into the empty space. Weight has to be carefully distributed so the car doesn’t tilt to one side. The original electrical components — such as airbags and sensors — must function properly, and the battery shouldn’t overheat. Autolibre Academy, the company’s educational branch, offers online courses on these basic skills to any EV enthusiast interested in retrofitting, González said.

But Rojas said there are risks associated with the retrofitting process.

Retrofitting kits, many of which are available on online marketplaces like Alibaba or MercadoLibre, often don’t guarantee a “minimum level of safety and quality for the retrofit unit,” Rojas said.

Once they’ve been modified, retrofitted vehicles must get government permits that allow them to be on the road in specific countries, according to retrofitting experts.

In 2021, the Chilean transport ministry passed legislation banning the retrofitting of all used passenger vehicles. “Retrofits were being done, but keeping the car’s safety level was being overlooked,” Rodrigo Salcedo, president of Chile’s Electric Vehicle Association, told Rest of World. A safety compliance regulation is being prepared by the transport and energy ministries.

In Colombia, where retrofitted vehicles face no legal impediment, some are arguing for tighter controls.

García, from the car shop in Bogotá, said he is working with fellow retrofitting experts and enthusiasts to lobby for specific regulation, including meeting with the Colombian transport department and SENA, the country’s professional and technical training service. He said his company sells retrofit kits exclusively to certified technicians.

Jairo Novoa, one of García’s customers, retrofitted a 1981 BMW. He told Rest of World the process made sense for an old car like his because spare or repair parts are expensive and hard to find.

Although most of Colombia’s more than 11,000 electric vehicles are brand-new, retrofitted ones “do not need to envy” them, said Novoa. Except maybe, “really expensive ones like Tesla.”

“The level of sophistication with which they have evolved to care for their injured is unrivaled in the animal kingdom. Our human medical system would be the closest match,” said Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg who led the study, in an interview Wednesday. “These amputations stopped infections from spreading into the body … the same way medieval amputations worked in humans,” he said, adding that the findings mark the first recorded example of a nonhuman animal performing an amputation on a fellow member of its species to save its life.

The scientists observed the amputations in laboratory conditions as performed by the Florida carpenter ants, a reddish, black, or brown ant which typically measure under 1/2 an inch in length. Unlike some other ants, Florida carpenter ants do not have the ability to produce antimicrobial secretions from their glands to combat pathogens in wounds. “We wanted to see how a species that lost this gland would still care for their injured,” said Frank.

The scientists set out by deliberately injuring around 100 ants on the leg: either the femur (closer to the body) or the tibia (farther down the leg), to compare how fellow ants in their colony responded. They found that the ants effectively performed amputations when their nestmates had sustained femur injuries, but never performed amputations when an equivalent injury was sustained on the tibia.

In the former, a helper nestmate performed an amputation on the injured insect’s entire leg in over three-quarters of cases.

The ant amputation procedure lasted around 40 minutes and followed the same pattern each time: “They start licking the wound with their mouth parts and then they move up the leg with their mouth until they reach the shoulder. There, they will start to bite quite ferociously for many minutes at a time,” said Frank. “The injured ant will sit their calmly, allowing the procedure to occur and not complaining until the leg is cut off.”

Among the ants with a femur injury, 95 percent of those that received an amputation survived, while only 45 percent of those who did not receive an amputation survived, Frank said.

“The ants — in their world, in their context — have found a strategy that is highly efficient and has a very, very high level of success,” concluded Frank.

Laurent Keller, an evolutionary biologist who also worked on the study, said the amputations were performed very effectively. “It means that when they do the amputation they must do it in a very clean way to prevent bacteria from entering the wound,” he said.

In contrast to the treatment received by ants that sustained a femur injury, ants that sustained a tibia injury (further down the leg) were never observed receiving an amputation from fellow nestmates. “In this case, they only clean the wound,” said Keller, who said the nestmates instead provided an extended wound care session involving lots of licking.

The wound cleaning method also proved effective. While around 70-75 percent of those who received wound cleaning from fellow ants survived, only 15 percent of the ants with tibia injuries survived when they were isolated from their fellow ants and left unattended, Frank said.

One possible explanation offered by the scientists for the decision on when to perform an amputation has to do with how hemolymph — a fluid equivalent to blood — flows within invertebrates.

The theory has not been tested yet, but scans show that the tibia area of the leg has greater hemolymph flow than the femur area, meaning that pathogens that enter through the tibia will spread more quickly to the rest of the body. This, in turn, significantly shortens the window of opportunity for an amputation to stave off an infection from spreading. “If the wound is at the level of the tibia then they don’t do an amputation. This is because normally the blood — or hemolymph for insects — circulates quite rapidly. So within 40 minutes the blood will already carry the bacteria into the body of the ant,” explained Keller.

The painstaking efforts adopted by ants to care for each others’ wounds illustrates how social insects reap benefits from behaving altruistically, said Keller. “By helping each other, they are indirectly helping themselves,” he said.

“Evolutionarily speaking, the colony saves a massive amount of energy by making sure their injured keep well, rather than just throwing them away and replacing them with a new worker,” he said. Previous studies show that ants that have lost one or even two legs can still be productive members of their colony, returning to their normal running speed in as soon as one day — and are often deployed to perform the most dangerous tasks. He added: “Even in ant societies, the individual holds value.”