Imagine ticking every box society hands you: the career, the income, the freedom to do what you want, whenever you want. Now imagine meeting people with almost nothing who seem happier than you are. That is where author and coach Larry Kesslin found himself in 2012, and it changed the direction of his life.
Larry joined me on the Joyful Mate podcast from San Diego to talk about joy, belonging and what it means to have "enough". Here are the ideas from our conversation that stayed with me.
Larry's story begins in 1993. He was working at General Electric when he spent a week teaching 85 inner-city kids to ski in Colorado. He got home on a Saturday night and quit on Monday. He had no plan, only the knowledge that corporate life was not for him. He went on to spend more than three decades building businesses, including a peer group company, and learning from the entrepreneurs he met along the way.
The second turning point came in 2012, when he spent a month in Uganda and Kenya bringing computers to rural villages. His own definition of success at the time was "the ability to do what I want whenever I want to do it", and he had achieved it. Yet the people he met, who had very little, seemed filled with joy. He has spent the years since asking why.
Larry's theory is that the people he met were still in survival mode, and a shared purpose of survival brought them close. Around the campfire, he says, you either belonged or you did not. Then came farming, cities, the Industrial Revolution, nuclear families, television and now screens for everyone. His point is that disconnection is not new, and it is not just a story about AI. It has been unfolding for more than a thousand years.
I have visited Uganda, where my brother lives, so this resonated with me. The sense of community there is something you notice straight away.
Larry's new keynote, Human Connection in the Age of AI, explores how joy and purpose can be doorways to deeper connection. His Substack, Back to the Campfire, asks how we build modern campfires, places where we feel we belong.
Larry now coaches successful business leaders who have everything they thought they wanted but not the peace of mind they expected. In his experience, happiness has little to do with achievement. He distinguishes between the two:
He lists seven needs: food, water, shelter, safety, love, air and health. Everything beyond that, he calls a want. The working title of his book Success Redefined was When Wants Become Needs, because he believes that is the trap many of us fall into.
When I asked where someone who feels stuck and unfulfilled should begin, Larry's answer was awareness. Much of what we believe, he says, was handed to us by family, advertising, Hollywood and religion, and we interpreted it as children. The first step is noticing that what you were taught is your truth, not the truth.
He describes three steps:
He also shares what he calls the "20-something rule". From birth to about 20, the world tells you who it wants you to be. After that, you get to decide whether to stay that person or work out who you were born to be.
Larry draws on The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. If your thoughts were a person sitting beside you on a bench, how long would you want to spend with them? He suggests that most of us hear a lot of negative self-talk and believe it because we think we are our mind. His alternative is to see yourself as the observer of your thoughts and feelings. He explains that he now has some agency over his mind, and when he is not feeling at peace he tells his mind that it is only input, not an authority.
He also invites us to question the labels we place on moments. Looking back 20 years, he points out, events that felt like the worst thing ever often turn out to be formative. The title of his company, Five Dots, comes from Steve Jobs's line that you can only connect the dots looking backwards.
If this idea of catching your own interpretations sounds familiar, it pairs well with another Joyful Mate episode: Same Picture, Different Eyes: How to Catch Yourself Mid-Judgment.
We spent a good part of the conversation on social media and what Larry calls relative deprivation. When we only see the best one percent of other people's lives, we feel as though we are missing out. He told me about his 26-year-old daughter, who stepped away from social media after a hard year and, in his words, is a better person for it.
His "enough equation" is a simple way to think about this:
Being + Giving + Having, divided by Comparison.
Being means being your authentic self. Giving means giving with intention. Having means knowing the difference between a want and a need. No matter how strong those three are, he says, if you divide by comparison you will never feel enough.
Larry's central message is that joy and "enoughness" were inside us when we were born. We have simply been taught things that block them. So the work is less about solving a puzzle to find joy and more about peeling away the stories and wounds that cover it. He also believes joy is found in the process, in the people we do things with and in feeling alive in our bodies, not at the top of the mountain.
He lives this out through connection tools. His spark cards are a deck of conversation starters, with the "deuce" being the least vulnerable question and the ace the most. He described a group at a university who got to know the people at their tables far better within 15 minutes.
Larry's books The Joy Molecule and Success Redefined are available on Amazon. You can also find him at five-dots.com (larrykesslin.com redirects there), on LinkedIn, and through his Substack, Back to the Campfire.
If you are feeling disconnected right now, you may also enjoy Reconnecting: The Three Key Relationships for Feeling Whole Again.
This post shares one guest's personal views and experiences and is general information only, not individual advice.
Listen to more episodes of Joyful Mate on the me&my wellness podcasts page, and join us next time on the Joyful Mate podcast.