What Did I Learn at Happiness Camp?
Reflections on attention, beliefs, human connection, sustainable performance, hope — and what it means to stay human.
Last week, I attended my first Happiness Camp in Porto — a gathering bringing together voices from around the world to explore happiness, human sustainability, wellbeing and the future of work.
I came home with pages of notes, a few new books, meaningful new connections and many ideas still moving through me.
But as I started going through my notes, what struck me most was not any single insight. It was how often the same themes appeared through completely different voices.
Attention. Beliefs. Energy. Trust. Care. Love. Hope. Mattering.
Different perspectives, but perhaps one underlying question:
How do we live, work and lead in ways that allow us — and the people around us — to truly thrive?
Here are some of the ideas I’m taking with me.
Protect your attention — and choose where it goes
One of the conversations that stayed with me most was with Steven Bartlett.
He spoke about some of the foundations he protects in his own life: sleep, relationships, what he puts into his body, and how intentionally he allocates his time and attention.
His reflections on sleep particularly resonated with me. We often think about sleep in terms of what happens just before we go to bed — our evening routine, our bedroom, our screen habits. But good sleep also starts with how we live during the day. The pace we maintain, the stress we carry and the state of our nervous system all accompany us into the night.
He also spoke about relationships and the importance of investing in human connection. Decades of research continue to reinforce the relationship between strong social connections, health and longevity.
And then there was attention.
Research into our digital behaviour has found that the average time we spend focused on one screen before switching has fallen dramatically over the past two decades.
In a world competing constantly for our attention, protecting it is becoming a wellbeing practice in itself.
It is also about intentionality.
What deserves my time? What deserves my energy? What deserves my attention? And what am I willing to say no to in order to protect those things?
I had the opportunity to ask Steven how he protects his own ability to focus when his work exposes him to such an extraordinary volume of people, experts, information and ideas.
His answer was beautifully simple: meditation and writing.
He described meditation as a form of undistracted space — a place to step away from the constant noise and allow ideas to emerge. Writing gives him another space to process and think.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are two of my favourite practices too.
The deeper reminder for me was one of agency. We may live in an attention economy, but we still have choices about where we place ours.
Progress matters too. We don’t need perfection. We need a sense of forward movement, meaningful challenge and people around us who support the journey.
Question the beliefs shaping your reality
This idea of agency appeared again in Nir Eyal’s session — this time through the lens of our beliefs.
One of my favourite ideas from his talk was very simple:
Beliefs are tools.
We often treat our beliefs as facts. This is who I am. This is what people think of me. I’m not capable of this. This will never work. I have to do this. I can’t change.
But what happens when we become curious about those beliefs rather than automatically accepting them?
Nir explored three elements — attention, anticipation and agency.
Our beliefs influence what we pay attention to. They shape what we expect and therefore how we feel and respond. And they influence what we believe we are capable of doing.
This is why he talks about moving from limiting beliefs to liberating beliefs — beliefs that free us from interpretations and judgments that may be keeping us stuck.
A simple practice is to take a belief and ask:
Is it a fact?
Can I know with 100% certainty that it is true?
What does believing this lead me to see, feel and do?
What might I see, feel or do differently if I stopped holding onto this belief?
We don’t always need to discover the one “correct” interpretation. Sometimes what we need is a wider portfolio of perspectives.
What else could be true?
What interpretation creates more possibility?
Where can I reclaim agency?
This connects deeply with something I explore in my own work: we cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can become more conscious of the meaning we give to what happens. And sometimes, changing that meaning changes everything.
People need to know that they matter
Another message echoed throughout Happiness Camp:
People need to feel that they matter.
Adam Hickman shared Gallup’s research into four fundamental needs people look for from leaders: trust, compassion, stability and hope.
Trust creates credibility and clarity.
Compassion asks us to see the human being beyond their performance — to be present, listen before immediately trying to solve, and combine care with candour.
Stability means becoming a steady anchor, particularly when the world around us feels uncertain.
And hope helps people see a way forward.
Gallup’s global research reinforces just how important these needs are, with hope emerging as the most frequently cited need people have from leaders.
But one of my favourite moments from Adam’s session was much simpler than any framework.
He invited us to think about someone who has been an anchor in our own lives — someone who has given us stability when things around us felt uncertain — and send them a message.
So I picked up my phone and wrote to my sister. Just a simple thank you.
It was a beautiful reminder that wellbeing and happiness are not always created through another programme, framework or intervention.
Sometimes, as I’ve written about before .One message can change someone's day
And sometimes wellbeing is created in a simple moment of genuine human connection.
So perhaps pause here for a moment.
Who has been an anchor in your life?
And when was the last time you told them?
Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer and author of Be Yourself at Work, reinforced the same message from another perspective: nurture people, particularly at a time when so many are overwhelmed and burning out, and make them feel that they matter.
Because they do.
And another invitation I loved from Riddhima was:
Make love part of your operating system.
As someone currently writing a book called From Fear to Love, that one naturally stayed with me.
Perhaps love, care and compassion do not belong only in our private lives. Perhaps they also have a place in how we lead, communicate, make decisions and create workplaces.
What does sustainable performance really require?
Lisa Bevill’s masterclass brought many of these ideas together through the lens of sustainable performance.
She explored four foundations: energy, trust and belonging, growth, and care.
Energy asks: Do I actually have enough energy to sustain the pace at which I am living and working?
And our energy is not only personal. The environment in which we work can replenish it or continuously drain it.
Trust and belonging reflect fundamental human needs: the ability to contribute, challenge, speak and participate while feeling that we belong.
Growth means having the opportunity not only to deliver, but also to develop.
And then there is care.
How do we care for human beings — especially when the pressure is high?
Because sustainable performance cannot simply mean sustaining output.
To me, it means creating conditions in which people can succeed over time without sacrificing their health and wellbeing in order to do so.
This also speaks directly to how I have approached holistic wellbeing for many years: as something integrated, considering the whole person — body, mind, heart and spirit.
Wellbeing is also a shared responsibility.
As individuals, we have agency and responsibility for how we care for ourselves, the choices we make and the boundaries we create.
Organizations, meanwhile, shape the environment in which those choices take place — through culture, leadership, workload, psychological safety, flexibility and the behaviours they reward.
It cannot be only one or the other. Sustainable workplaces require both.
What would a hopeful organization feel like?
Hope was another powerful thread running through the week.
Jen Fisher, who has played an important role in shaping the Happiness Camp community alongside António Pedro Pinto, has just published Hope Is the Strategy, which I am currently finishing — and wholeheartedly recommend.
What I particularly appreciate about Jen’s work is that she takes hope beyond passive optimism.
Hope becomes something we can cultivate — within ourselves, through leadership and through the organizations we create.
Her own life journey and transformation, which she shares throughout the book, make that exploration even more human and relatable.
At her European book launch in Porto, one question particularly stayed with me:
Do we want to create hopeful organizations or hopeless organizations?
I shared that question with my own manager a few days later, and it immediately opened another conversation:
What does a hopeful organization actually look and feel like?
I also had the opportunity to ask Jen what hope feels like in her own body.
She described alignment. Clarity. Purpose. A sense of forward movement.
I loved that answer.
Because hope is not necessarily only an idea we hold in our minds. We can experience it. And perhaps we can intentionally create more of the conditions that allow people to feel it.
For leaders, that creates another question:
What are we doing to give people meaningful reasons to hope?
What I’m taking home from Happiness Camp
Looking back, perhaps what stayed with me most from Happiness Camp was a sense of resonance.
I heard very different speakers, from very different backgrounds, returning again and again to principles that have been at the heart of my own work for years.
That wellbeing must consider the whole human being.
That sustainable performance cannot come at the expense of health.
That our attention is precious.
That our beliefs influence the possibilities we can see.
That human beings need trust, belonging, care and hope.
That people need to feel seen and know that they matter.
And that love has a place not only in our personal relationships, but perhaps also in the way we work and lead.
At a time when so much conversation is understandably focused on AI and what it will mean for the future of work, I left Porto thinking about something slightly different.
AI is a tool. Humanity is not.
Our ability to be present. To care. To listen. To connect. To create. To choose consciously. To give someone hope. To make another human being feel that they matter.
These are things worth protecting and cultivating.
Personally, the experience also gave me renewed energy to continue writing From Fear to Love. Because perhaps moving from fear to love is not only an individual journey. It can influence how we relate to ourselves.
How we relate to one another.
How we lead.
And ultimately, the kinds of organizations and communities we choose to create.
So I came home from Porto with one question I’m continuing to sit with — and perhaps you might too:
What deserves more of your attention right now — and what might it be time to let go of?
With love,
Flora
