Last week, something slightly bad happened to me. I spilled something. Or we ran out of milk. Or the dog stepped on my foot. It was a small inconvenience, and truthfully, I can’t even remember it now. But I do remember what happened next: Standing in my kitchen, I pictured, of all things, something I saw posted on Instagram. And I felt better.
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As odd as that sounds, I’m hardly alone. Nearly 400,000 people follow the New Happy, an account founded by Stephanie Harrison—who also runs the New Happy newsletter and podcast, and is currently working on a book. In an internet filled with countless memes and endless platitudes about self-care and mental wellness, Harrison cuts through the noise with her artfully illustrated, scientifically backed visualizations about mindfulness, kindness, and the general mental framing to live a happier life
“We have all this great research, but it’s just locked in these scientific journals,” Harrison says. “If I can help break it out of there and help people . . . that was my goal in sharing on Instagram.”
In Harrison’s hands, self-help clichés are reimagined as novel data visualizations. Using a simple language of basic shapes and colors, Harrison guides you to savor the moment . . .
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. . . illustrates why burnout isn’t a personal failure . . .
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. . . reminds you to pursue joy . . .
. . . stops you from worrying about what you can’t change . . .
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. . . and subtly urges you to face your fears.
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You won’t just find just one fresh visualization on her feed but dozens, each of which garners tens of thousands of likes. Not bad for someone who didn’t even start out in design.
Harrison spent a decade climbing the corporate ladder before finding her new purpose. She worked at the ad agency BBDO, the consultancy Deloitte, and, eventually, at LinkedIn, where she managed product launches.
“I’d gone through this treadmill of accomplishments and achievements I thought would lead to a state of lasting fulfillment and bliss,” Harrison says. “And of course, I never got there.”
By the time she was at LinkedIn, Harrison opted to go back to school part time, where she pursued her master’s degree in applied positive psychology. And ultimately she came to the conclusion that many others have: that the capitalist rat race teases an existential joy that never arrives.
After wrapping up her studies, Harrison landed a position leading digital learning at Arianna Huffington’s wellness startup, Thrive Global. While she stayed only a year, Harrison also used this time to found her own company, the New Happy. It’s a company of one, and Harrison makes her living by consulting at firms including Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Capital One to teach executives how to create cultures with an emphasis on well-being. But along the way, her Instagram account has become a mini empire of its own—and no doubt, her everyday viral posts reach as many people as any new best-selling self-help book.
“The corporate consulting is really how I pay my bills, and the rest is working more toward the long term of setting up these platforms that will hopefully [help society],” she says.
Getting to this point has been a bit of a grind. Harrison, like many, grew up appreciating art but never knowing design was a profession. As she studied psychology, Harrison began to visualize concepts for herself with small doodles. She founded the New Happy Instagram account in late 2018. Then around the beginning of the pandemic, with lots of free time on her hands, she decided to put some more of her visual thoughts out there. She gave herself an initial goal of publishing one illustration relating to mental health a day.
“I try to keep it as simple as possible,” Harrison says. “What can you do with a shape? That’s what always blows my mind with masters at work. What they can do with a shape, or colors of the shape, or lines. . . . I’m always reminded there’s an infinite number of ways to [convey an idea].”
However, just because she is successful doesn’t mean the job is easy. Now posting about four times a week, Harrison readily admits that she has all sorts of ideas in her sketchbook and on her computer that she just can’t quite illustrate—yet—and so she’ll come back to them again and again, hoping inspiration strikes.
As for the future of Harrison’s business, she plans to keep investing her energy into her Instagram feed, her podcast, and her newsletter, but she’s not currently planning to monetize the New Happy through ads or subscriptions. “They’re for our community,” she says. “Our whole thesis is that well-being is collective, and in order to experience personal or individual well-being, we have to prioritize the collective. For my job, I view it as being the facilitator of this community and help[ing] them get what they need to be well and take that out into the world around them.”
Keeping that relationship “sacred” is Harrison’s chief priority. So for now she’ll continue to consult with companies and publish her first book, which will be a mix of writings and illustrations similar to her Instagram feed when it’s released in the winter of 2023.
“[Ideas like] living with compassion or in service to the world can sound very divorced from our day-to-day reality, but they’re not,” she says. “And figuring out how to embody them and represent them in a way is something I find helpful as well. Even if I didn’t have anyone following me, I think I’d still be making them, because they fill me with a great deal of joy.”