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S2E91 - Beat Burnout with Science-Backed Happiness Skills (Catia Arnaut, PhD)
Are we chasing income while losing inner harmony?
In this powerful episode of Onion Soup, Dexter sits down with happiness researcher Catia Arnaut to explore why so many people—especially high-achieving women navigating careers, caregiving, and constant digital noise—feel burned out, disconnected, and overwhelmed despite outward success.
After living in Dubai, Angola, and Geneva, Catia began questioning what truly drives happiness beyond income. That journey led her to pursue a PhD focused on national wellbeing and why GDP alone fails to measure what actually matters.
Together, they unpack four research-backed skills that help regulate chronic stress and build lasting resilience:
• Gratitude (with effects that can last months)
• Meaningful relationships
• Purpose-driven living
• Genuine generosity
They explore the “silent pandemic” of mental health struggles and why work—where we spend a massive portion of life—cannot be separated from emotional wellbeing. The idea that we can “leave our problems at the office” is unrealistic. Our nervous systems don’t clock out.
Catia shares practical tools you can apply immediately:
• Identify the person you would call at 3 a.m.—then tell them why they matter
• Reduce screen time to restore presence
• Prioritize real conversations over digital noise
• Practice mindfulness, movement, and time in nature
• Reframe self-care as essential—not selfish
For women navigating burnout, invisible labor, and hustle culture, this conversation reframes progress. It challenges the obsession with productivity and income, referencing critiques of GDP—including a powerful 1968 speech by Robert F. Kennedy—and asks: What if we measured success through wellbeing instead?
They discuss climate stress, inequality, global instability, and how redefining progress around human vitality rather than income could transform societies—and households.
If you’ve been feeling:
• Burnout
• Overwhelm
• Disconnected from meaning
• Chronically stressed
• Emotionally fatigued
This episode offers grounded, research-backed practices that move beyond abstract philosophy and into nervous system regulation, emotional resilience, and inner clarity.
Because happiness isn’t passive. It’s trainable.
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Learn more about Catia Arnaut’s research and work on national wellbeing:
