PDF Summary:Happy Sexy Millionaire, by Steven Bartlett

In Happy Sexy Millionaire, Steven Bartlett calls out the myth that you can find happiness, love, and wealth if you just follow three simple steps and a hack or two. Bartlett says the internet, social media, and algorithms have dazzled us into believing that we can have the perfect life if we just chase the “right” dreams—a lie that pulls us off the path of genuine contentment, meaning, and fulfillment.

Bartlett, a social media mogul and public speaker, was born in Botswana to a Nigerian mother and British father and raised in a predominantly white area in England. A university dropout, once so poor that he scavenged for food, Bartlett founded the successful internet company Social Chain at age 21 and was by all objective accounts “living the dream.” But when wealth and fame didn’t bring him happiness, Bartlett reevaluated his priorities. He wrote Happy Sexy Millionaire to warn against chasing false idols and encourage others to find contentment and success by being themselves and doing what has meaning to them.

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Bartlett says that truly successful people—those who experience consistent contentment—are motivated by internal factors and doing things that they genuinely enjoy. This is because you feel most fulfilled when you genuinely care about the dream you’re chasing and feel you have control over the way you pursue it. He cites research that finds that:

• People who pursue things that bring them authentic joy experience more lasting contentment than those who chase things that don’t.
• People lose interest in activities they love when they’re provided financial incentives to do them—because the incentive negatively alters their motivation to do the thing they love.

(Shortform note: Some experts say that following your internal passions can put you on a path to success—but only if you have the right expectations. For example, many people assume that when you’re passionate about something, the chips will miraculously fall into place and lead you to instant fame and fortune. But a more realistic view is that passion teaches you resilience by helping you slog through difficult times on what’s often a long, bumpy road to success.)

In contrast, Bartlett argues that people who are motivated by external factors—like wanting money or avoiding negative consequences—typically feel unfulfilled and are unsuccessful as a result. He says that when you pursue goals that aren’t genuinely yours, you risk becoming disengaged and stagnating, or burning out, because you’re wasting time doing things you don’t really care about. He says the less true you are to yourself and the more you ignore what truly matters to you, the more unmotivated, unhappy, and regretful you ultimately feel.

(Shortform note: Bartlett cites the work of an expert on dying who says that people entering their final stages of life report regret at having lived lives that others wanted them to live instead of being true to their own desires. In The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer offers a different take, arguing that you don’t have to wait until your final days to learn important lessons about life; death can teach you how to live differently and better now. He says that death teaches you to pay attention to the small stuff, worry less about minor problems, let go of grudges, be present when you’re with the people you love, and say yes to life’s many experiences.)

Bartlett’s Revelation About Motivations

When Bartlett was 27 and at the height of his career, he quit his job as the millionaire head of Social Chain. He says this decision mystified most people around him but made complete sense to him. He says he quit Social Chain for the same reason he quit university: He always quits when things “suck,” when he knows he can’t make them suck less, or when the effort to make them suck less isn’t worth whatever the payoff might be for making them better. He says that quitting under these conditions has always put him on the road to greater contentment and it gives him the feeling of doing right by himself.

(Shortform note: In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson counters Bartlett’s idea that quitting is the answer when things suck, arguing that a culture of toxic positivity and happiness has deluded people into believing that they’re entitled to feel good all the time. When people expect to always feel good, they vigorously avoid pain. But pain is an unavoidable part of life. So you should accept that sometimes things won’t go well and you’ll feel bad and use this reality as fuel for improvement.)

Part 2: Bartlett’s Best Practices for Pursuing Happiness and Success

We’ve discussed Bartlett’s arguments about how social forces have warped our sense of ourselves and our goals, and how reclaiming your true self and your own goals will increase your levels of contentment and feelings of success. Next we’ll look at Bartlett’s best practices for pursuing happiness and success.

Recommendation 1: Be Consistent

Bartlett argues that consistently taking steps to achieve your goals is the under-acknowledged and underrated key to success. The more time and energy you regularly put into doing things that will help you reach your dreams—even if the steps you take are small—the more growth, momentum, and progress you’ll experience.

Bartlett credits consistency over time as the factor that enabled him to build a global business at age 21, get in the best shape in his life, and have millions in the bank. He also says it was the key to his hitting the million-follower mark on social media, explaining that with each post he made and each follower he gained over a five year period, he learned, grew, and moved steadily closer to the six-figure number.

(Shortform note: Bartlett points to his social media numbers and financial status as markers of his success after stating earlier that the internet, social media, and algorithms are responsible for brainwashing us into believing that these are important goals that will bring us happiness and success.)

Bartlett states that people often don’t want to take small steps toward their goals for two reasons:

1. They don’t see immediate results.
2. They believe society’s false narrative that success arises from one moment of greatness. For example, the media often focuses on Olympic gold medalists’ moments of victory, not the hours, months, and years of practice that got them there.

(Shortform note: Experts recommend crafting goals using the SMART acronym: Goals should be Specific, Meaningful, Achievable, Realistic, and Trackable. For example, setting the goal, “I want to do 20 pushups every day to get stronger” is more specific, realistic, trackable, and achievable than “I want to get in shape this year.”)

Recommendation 2: Make Decisions Rationally, Not Emotionally

Bartlett argues that you should make difficult decisions and react to crises from a place of calm analysis, not panic. Responding to challenging situations from a clear, rational headspace will land you in a more contented space in the long run than if you react from a place of instability, which will only fuel more instability and unhappiness. He says that the only thing you control in the heat of challenging moments is how you react to them, not how they arose or what their outcomes will be, so you shouldn’t waste time getting distracted by your emotions or how you feel about the situation.

(Shortform note: To respond to crises from a place of calm, not panic, you can try a strategy from Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now to disconnect from your emotions: Use cues from your body, like clenched fists or a tight jaw, to notice anger you may feel, then observe the thoughts at the root of that anger. The mere act of observing your emotion from a detached place, rather than simply being absorbed by feeling it, separates you from it.)

When you have to make a difficult decision and feel yourself reacting emotionally, Bartlett says you should stop, take a breath, check in with friends to process the situation, then take the time you need to make your decision from a place of calm. If you find yourself in a crisis, you’ll have less time to process information, so you should:

• Accept that you’re dealing with a bad situation.
• Quickly take action so you don’t drown in a state of uncertainty about why it’s happening or what might come next.
• Stay calm and positive, proactively gather information, and assemble a plan to address the issue at hand.
• Remind yourself that you’ve successfully navigated difficult situations in your life before and will do so again this time.

Principle illustrated: In 2015, as Bartlett drove to a company paintball retreat in the countryside, he learned that his company’s email had been hacked and a slew of offensive emails had gone out to his top clients. Calls canceling contracts poured in. Despite the natural inclination to panic, Bartlett says he remained calm and went into problem-solving mode to secure his compromised server. When he arrived at the retreat, he stepped out of his car, and in a confident, unemotional tone informed his employees that he needed them to join him back at the office to address the problem at hand.

Bartlett says that in the days that followed, his company lost 80 percent of their clients—but he never caved to despair, pessimism, or chaos, because that only feeds problems. He says that staying calm and being proactive, optimistic, and focused helped elevate his employees’ spirits. As a result, they regrouped, bounced back, and not long after signed a multi-million-pound deal that secured the company’s future for many years. Had Bartlett given into panic, the company likely wouldn’t have survived and succeeded.

(Shortform note: Psychologists agree with Barlett’s assessment that when you’re in crisis, you should accept your circumstances and act rationally and quickly. They further assert that typical human reaction to a crisis is to enter a state of fear, negativity, and panic that’s tied to hardwired survival instincts. This can be unhelpful because today’s dangers differ from the simple and immediate threats of primitive times—like wild animals chasing you. To counter your fear, negativity, and panic try confronting them by embracing an “opportunity psychology”: Stay positive and forward thinking, be open to all solutions, keep moving forward no matter what, and, if you’re leading a team, be optimistic, decisive, and calm.)

Recommendation 3: Take Responsibility

Bartlett asserts that you’ll experience greater contentment and success when you take control of your emotions, accept responsibility for problems you face, and acknowledge your weaknesses and failures. He says that the more control you feel you have in life, the more confident you are in your ability to navigate the challenges you face, and the more content, healthy, and independent you feel.

In contrast, people who blame and get angry at others for their problems are unnecessary hostages to their emotions and factors that they think are outside of their control but, often, are not. The less control you feel you have in life, the more unhappy, helpless, and victimized you feel, because it seems as if outcomes are the luck of the draw and you unfairly drew the short straw.

Principle illustrated: Bartlett says he had an employee who continually complained to him about a client who regularly failed to pay his bills on time. When he reviewed this employee’s process for collecting payments, however, Bartlett discovered that he hadn’t posted due dates on his invoices. They reformatted the invoices together to include a due date, and three months later his employee reported that the client hadn’t paid late since. By jumping to the conclusion that the client was to blame, Bartlett’s employee gave up control of the situation. When he stopped pointing his finger and looked at his own practices, he took back control over the situation.

Refuse to Be a Victim

In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone says that people who blame others (half the population) are unsuccessful because they’re whiners and victims who are so busy making excuses that they can’t take action. He says that victims give their control to others and feel powerless to change anything, so never feel in control or confident in themselves. Cardone says you can’t control everything, but you can control how you respond to things—and claiming control will allow you to act and improve your situation.

Cardone says you can take control and responsibility in your life by thinking about ways to minimize and prevent problems from recurring—which will help you avoid getting sucked into victim thinking. For example, if someone rear-ends your car you have a valid reason to be upset, but avoiding the victim role is more important than venting. So you should focus on figuring out how to avoid being rear-ended again. For example, take a less heavily trafficked route next time, leave yourself more time to get to your destination, and make sure you’re paying attention while you’re driving.

Recommendation 4: Challenge Yourself to Push Past Labels

Bartlett argues that when we allow labels to define us, we’re held back from being our true selves and achieving our goals, which prevents us from feeling contentment in our lives. He says that science shows that the longer you accept a negative label as something that defines you, the more likely you are to behave in ways that prove your self-categorization to be accurate—in other words, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Bartlett asserts that you should reject labels, good and bad, and focus on the fact that you are, first and foremost, a human being. You are not your job, your accomplishments, or your future dreams. This starts with pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and proving to yourself that you are more than any simplistic label.

Principle illustrated: When Bartlett was 18, he met a 26-year-old man at a hip-hop club who was short, unsure of himself, and poorly dressed. The man repeatedly asked Bartlett for work. Despite his appearance and demeanor, and unaware that the man lived with his mother and spent most days playing video games, Bartlett took a chance and hired him as his marketing director.

In the six years that followed, this man played an integral role in helping Bartlett build one of the most powerful social media companies in the industry, then he went on to run his own successful business. Bartlett says that the man’s repeated outreach to him after they first met—his persistence in seeking a job from Bartlett—reflected his refusal to be defined or held back by the kind of label that many might assign to someone living in his circumstances (slovenly, lazy, and so on).

(Shortform note: History offers an example that validates Bartlett’s rejection of labels: The Myers-Briggs personality test, one of the most popular personality classification tools, is neither rooted in nor validated by science. The mother-daughter team that created the test had no training in psychology, psychiatry, or testing and no experience in labs or academic institutions. They developed the test at home because women in the 1900s lacked access to universities. Psychologists say it’s problematic to rely so heavily on a classification tool that lacks scientific foundation. This is because when people are given a personality label that’s accepted as general truth, they believe it’s true even when their behavior doesn’t fit it.)

Bartlett states you can cultivate a meaningful, label-free belief in yourself by recognizing that you’re the product of your environment and circumstances, and that those things may have shaped you, but they are not you. You can support this recognition by gathering evidence that proves you’re different from—and more than—those experiences. Gather this evidence by taking on challenges that a) push you out of your comfort zone and b) force you to redefine who you think you are and what you’re capable of.

Bartlett acknowledges that taking on new challenges can be difficult because nobody likes uncertainty or feeling uncomfortable, but he argues that you must align your intention with action to grow and reach your goals.

He asserts that successful people directly confront the uncertainty that comes with taking on new challenges. They do this by calculating the risk of potential bad outcomes and accepting that no outcome will be perfect, and not allowing their emotions to sideline them. There’s no perfect decision or choice, so overthinking and procrastinating when you’re dealing with uncertainty is unhelpful and results in missed opportunities. Directly facing uncertainty (the space between your known, unhappy situation and your unknown, potentially happy one) opens the doors to opportunities for greater contentment.

Bartlett argues that if deep-seated issues prevent you from taking concrete steps to pursue your dreams, you should go to therapy to illuminate and address the roots of thinking and behavior that are getting in your way.

Navigate Challenges and Uncertainty

In Girl, Stop Apologizing, Rachel Hollis offers a different way to tackle fear and self-limiting beliefs that can hold you back: Recognize that everyone struggles when they start new, difficult things. She says that when you take on a new challenge, you should be willing to be bad at it for a long time rather than worrying about being innately good at it from the get-go, because expecting instant success will sabotage your progress.

If you find it difficult to give yourself permission to be bad at new things, try these two strategies for confronting your demons and getting support to vanquish them:

• Let yourself be “good enough” instead of perfect. To do this, identify and acknowledge the specific fear that’s triggering you. For example, “I’m worried that people will think I’m stupid,” or, “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to perform in the moment.” Experts say the assumption underlying these fears is often that if they actually play out you won’t be able to recover, but you only need to talk to people who have survived and learned from their failures to counter that assumption.

• Reach out and connect with someone. Part of the challenge of doing something new is feeling like you’re all alone. Reaching out to others and asking them for guidance and insight can make you feel less isolated and help you think through different ways to approach your situation that you hadn’t considered.

Recommendation 5: Protect Your Time

Bartlett argues that to live a truly fulfilled life, you have to pay attention to how little time you have on earth, know your dreams and goals, and devote as much of your time and energy as possible to achieving them. He asserts that time is the most precious resource that exists—it’s the key to your well-being because it gives you the freedom to invest in things that matter to you.

Only you can control your time, and you should factor that reality into every decision you make and every action you take, because every choice either pushes you toward or away from your goals. Bartlett says you should make every decision with the urgency you’d have if a timer was constantly in front of your face and you were watching the remaining minutes of your life on earth tick away.

(Shorform note: Unlike Bartlett, many experts contend that fulfillment comes when you practice mindfulness, the benefits of which include greater feelings of self control, improved mental clarity, and an increased ability to relate to yourself and others with kindness, acceptance, and compassion.)

Bartlett says that even as he wrote his book, competing interests like wanting to watch football or go to McDonald’s to get a Big Mac flooded his head, but he ignored both because taking time to do those things would mean he’d have less time to pursue the bigger goal that’s part of the legacy he wants to leave behind—writing the book.

(Shortform note: The value of time differs from one culture to another. For example, in America, a production-oriented society, time is money—a scarce resource—so efficiency is valued. In contrast, people from Spain and Italy are more concerned with the present moment than schedules and punctuality. And Japanese culture is focused less on how long things take and more on divvying up time in ways that adhere to priorities such as properness, courtesy and tradition.)

Recommendation 6: Practice Gratitude

Bartlett says you can improve your health and well-being, which can increase your feelings of contentment and success, by regularly practicing gratitude. He cites psychologist Martin Seligman, asserting that noticing positive things throughout the day makes you feel like you’re getting gifts all day long. In addition, research finds that practicing gratitude regularly releases the feel-good hormone dopamine and can counter the negative effects of anxiety.

Bartlett says that we often forget to express gratitude because we’re more focused on feeling like we’re not good enough (or not doing well enough) in relation to other people. However, for gratitude to become integrated into your life and improve your well-being, you must make a conscious effort to practice regularly.

Bartlett recommends journaling about your gratitude on a daily basis. He journals twice a day—just before bed and when he wakes up. He writes down things he appreciates, like his dog or his niece. He says that engaging in the practice makes him realize how special specific things in his life are, and that the process as a whole has made him more optimistic.

(Shortform note: Psychologists back Bartlett’s argument that regularly practicing gratitude improves your health and well-being, saying cultivating positive emotions on a regular basis “rewires” your brain by growing new connections that facilitate your ability to tap into these emotions in the future. So the process of swapping out negative emotions, such as anger or sadness, for positive ones, such as awe or gratitude, becomes easier and quicker the more you do it.)

A Final Word On Love

As we mentioned earlier in the guide, Bartlett doesn’t go into great detail about how to obtain love. He does believe that love is in the eye of the beholder—meaning that there’s no single, universal definition of what it is or what it means—and that we should conceptualize love in a more nuanced way than we do. He argues that there’s no way to develop a universal definition of love because every human being experiences and feels things differently.

For example, Bartlett says that his mother and father’s often volatile relationship taught him that love and marriage are a prison you can’t escape from. And although he’s been in relationships, Bartlett says he remains unconvinced that he’ll ever fully escape the deep-seated feeling that love is a form of entrapment.

Bartlett argues that there’s no single, universal definition of love, but in The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck contends that genuine love is five specific things:

• An intentional action that you take to support another person’s growth and well-being—whether or not you feel a sensation of love for them.

• A choice you make to be with someone—even as you know that you’re free not to be with them.

• An extension of the self that centers on spiritual growth—not an annihilation of the self.

• A conscious, deliberate effort that leads to growth.

• An entity that respects and honors the separation of the self and the other, and requires each party to fully and genuinely accept the other’s individuality.