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Ingrid Fetell Lee
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Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness Paperback – June 8, 2021

by Ingrid Fetell Lee (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,133 ratings
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Make small changes to your surroundings and create extraordinary happiness in your life with groundbreaking research from designer and TED star Ingrid Fetell Lee.

Next Big Idea Club selection—chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant as one of the "two most groundbreaking new nonfiction reads of the season!"

"This book has the power to change everything! Writing with depth, wit, and insight, Ingrid Fetell Lee shares all you need to know in order to create external environments that give rise to inner joy." —Susan Cain, author of Quiet and founder of Quiet Revolution

Have you ever wondered why we stop to watch the orange glow that arrives before sunset, or why we flock to see cherry blossoms bloom in spring? Is there a reason that people—regardless of gender, age, culture, or ethnicity—are mesmerized by baby animals, and can't help but smile when they see a burst of confetti or a cluster of colorful balloons?

We are often made to feel that the physical world has little or no impact on our inner joy. Increasingly, experts urge us to find balance and calm by looking inward—through mindfulness or meditation—and muting the outside world. But what if the natural vibrancy of our surroundings is actually our most renewable and easily accessible source of joy?

In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explores how the seemingly mundane spaces and objects we interact with every day have surprising and powerful effects on our mood. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and psychology, she explains why one setting makes us feel anxious or competitive, while another fosters acceptance and delight—and, most importantly, she reveals how we can harness the power of our surroundings to live fuller, healthier, and truly joyful lives.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    368 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Little, Brown Spark
  4. Publication date
    June 8, 2021
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.3 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0316399272
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0316399272
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Joy is the most basic building block of happiness, and this mesmerizing book reveals where to find it -- and how to create it. Ingrid Fetell Lee's blockbuster debut will open your eyes to all the places where joy is hiding in plain sight. And it just might cause you to become more joyful too."―Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals, Give and Take, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg

"A completely original treatment of a completely new and original idea: we all have within the power to design joy into our lives. Joyful is an inexhaustible and exciting guide to what makes life good."―Arianna Huffington, New York Times bestselling author of Thrive, founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and founder of The Huffington Post

"I've never reached out to an author to request their permission to endorse their book...until now. Ingrid Fetell Lee invites us into a dimension of the human experience that was, ironically, hidden to most of us. She shows us how we can mindfully see joy in the simple aesthetics of our surroundings --and it has already changed my everyday life. If I'm feeling blue, I remember to look at the new leaves on the tree outside my window. It is simple but profound. Joyful is irresistibly compelling. The idea of Joyful fills me with joy."―Amy Cuddy, New York Times bestselling author of Presence

"This book has the power to change everything! Writing with depth, wit, and insight, Ingrid Fetell Lee shares all you need to know in order to create external environments that give rise to inner joy."―Susan Cain, author of Quiet and founder of Quiet Revolution

"Joyful overturns conventional wisdom about happiness: that it comes from within, and that experiences -- not things -- make us happier. Ingrid Fetell Lee's delightful book evokes the same positive feelings she describes. It is full of whimsy, wonder, energy, and joy. I loved it."
―Sonja Lyubomirsky, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, and author of The How of Happiness

"Joyful is a delightful book with a powerful message: joy is easy to find if you know where to look. In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explains why some experiences are laden with joy, explores how we can cultivate these experiences every day, and shows us how to identify the most joy-inspiring people, places, and objects in our lives."

―Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink

"Joyful reveals the powerful notion that joy can be cultivated to flourish within all of us. This idea can change the world."―David Kelley, founder of the design and innovation company IDEO

"Joyful is an invaluable field guide to discovering delight in all its forms. It's hard to look at the world -- and your place in it -- quite the same way again."
―Bianca Bosker, New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork

"A tender and moving book about one of our most important feelings -- joy."―Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author of Lost Connections

"Blending science and tips, Lee shows readers that looking outward -- at flowers in a vase or fireworks in the sky -- can brighten our days."―Real Simple

About the Author

Ingrid Fetell Lee is a designer and the founder of the blog The Aesthetics of Joy. She has been featured as an expert on design and joy by outlets such as the New York Times, Wired, PRI's Studio 360, CBC's Spark, and Fast Company, and her 2018 TED talk received a standing ovation.

Lee was formerly Design Director at global innovation firm IDEO, and was a founding faculty member in the Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She holds a Master's in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor's in English and Creative Writing from Princeton University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown Spark; Reprint edition (June 8, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316399272
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316399272
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,133 ratings

About the author

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Ingrid Fetell Lee

Ingrid Fetell Lee

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Ingrid Fetell Lee is a Brooklyn-based designer and writer whose work focuses on the way that design affects our health and happiness. As founder of The Aesthetics of Joy and in her role as IDEO fellow, she empowers people to find more joy in daily life through design.

Ingrid has over twelve years of experience in design and branding, most recently as Design Director of IDEO's New York office, having led design work for Target, Condé Nast, Eileen Fisher, American Express, Kate Spade, Diageo, Pepsico, and the US government, among others. She has been featured as an expert on design and joy by outlets such as The New York Times, Wired, PRI's Studio 360, CBC's Spark, Psychology Today, and Fast Company. She was a founding faculty member in the Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her design work has been exhibited at imm Cologne, Germany.

Ingrid holds a Master’s in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Princeton University. Her first book, Joyful, will be published in North America by Little, Brown in September, 2018. She loves pancakes, polka dots, and rainbow sprinkles, and has an extensive repertoire of happy dances for any occasion.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,133 global ratings
Life changing book
5 Stars
Life changing book
I’m a Creative Director and during a transition from Branding/Web/Marketing Design to Industrial Design (temporary experiential popup branded environments), one of my exhibit designers recommended this book. I bought it but didn’t read it until I left to start my own business. It has truly transformed my outlook especially on color, as someone who’s wardrobe is all black and interior aesthetic leaned towards minimal, white, gray, Scandinavian & mid century modern. I love that the data and science backs up what we inherently know as kids. I’ve formed my entire business based on this book, and have built a business that will make me happy and I’m passionate about. I also appreciated the references to other designers, entrepreneurs, business and places (hotels, banks, etc) that I was able to google after reading. I’m so happy that I read this book, it has truly changed my life more than any business, entrepreneur book ever has.P.S. I always remove the dust cover on books so that it doesn’t get messed up. Check out the lovely confetti surprise that was underneath! People always ask me what I’m reading whenever I take it out to pass the time somewhere.
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Top reviews from the United States

skyebluepink
5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting read!
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book is well-written and full of information and interesting ideas with something new to learn on every page. But while it is written with the rigor of thoughtful research, it is as enjoyable and easy to read as a novel. It is a fascinating read! At least twice in every chapter I went to the internet to see and learn more about the people and places mentioned in the book. I started taking notes before realizing that key elements of the ideas in the book are summarized in the back, along with worksheets that can be downloaded as well. There is an excellent list of references in the back as well and a good index. The book has really surpassed my expectations and I am only halfway through. I had started several weeks ago trying to find some ideas about happiness and joy on the internet but these “joy lists” were predictable and not very inspiring. But this book has given me so many new ideas, and has also confirmed a few things that I had already known about making my home environment better, but had not consciously thought much about.

I have to update my review after reading the chapter on Magic. It was condescending and tone-deaf to nature-based spiritualities. For example the author assumes that people who ‘light a smudge stick to “cleanse” a new home’ as a ‘guilty pleasure...we admit only with reluctance.’ What? She obviously put “cleanse” in quotes because she doesn’t believe in the concept. She also states that ‘With few exceptions, magic in modern culture appears as either juvenile and primitive or dark and occultist.’ Naturally I found this to be offensive. Another quote from this chapter, ‘To this day, some Aboriginal groups view the appearance of rainbows as a sign that the rainbow serpent is moving from one waterhole to another.’ But she doesn’t mention that ‘even today, some’ Christians believe the rainbow is a sign that the Earth will never have a large flood again, even though that is the same thing. She emphasized things like stage magicians and mirror and op art illusions. To her, magic is only an illusion. She definitely misses the boat with respect to magic and this chapter made me cringe.

I am sure as I read the remaining chapters I will recover my enthusiasm for the book as I cannot fault the other chapters I have read.
30 people found this helpful
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John Zahl
5.0 out of 5 stars A joyful, fascinating read & a great blueprint for anyone who works in design!
Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2018
Verified Purchase
As a designer I am always interested not only WHAT works by WHY things work, aesthetically speaking. It's easy to know what you like, easy enough to find out what people are drawn to, but understanding conceptually why we like what we do and are drawn to what we are drawn is often mostly elusive knowledge - until now.

From smaller nuggets - that the word "gaudy" has Latin roots from which the word joy was also derived, to broader and more impactful observations - that our physical environment can also deeply effect our physical health and mental well being - Ingrid lays out a perfect blueprint for understanding, appreciating and creating joy.

She even examines the art (and explores the validity of) of Feng Shui, the larger ideas of both harmony and abundance and how even simple things like indoor plants can channel the direction and mood of our daily activities. These points seem obvious once stated, but is not something we often take the time to think about. Her examination of joy is far reaching - from landscape architecture to one of my favorite interior designers Dorthy Draper - to the more obscure and magical Icelandic elves, with each chapter coming at her topic from a new angle. Perhaps a side effect of her book, as I type this I am sitting in between flights in a drab, greyscale, commercial/industrial airport wishing someone would come in with a paintbrush and and splash the walls and floors with some pinks, blues and yellows. It would make waiting for my next flight a lot less tedious, even joyful!
35 people found this helpful
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Lee
4.0 out of 5 stars More "informative" than "self-help"
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2021
Verified Purchase
Full disclosure: self-help books aren't usually my cup of tea. Not that there is anything wrong with self-help books, it's just that I usually don't get much out of these types of books, for one, and two, non-fiction books of any kind generally take me much longer to read, so I prefer not to spend precious reading time on them when I could use that time to instead choose something from my mile-high, teetering TBR stack. Given this context, I very likely would not have picked up Ingrid Fettell Lee's Joyful on my own if it hadn't been chosen as a monthly read for one of my book clubs. While the subject matter (the aesthetics of joy and how to find it in our surroundings) is one that I'm definitely interested in reading about (which usually also plays a huge role in whether I choose to read a non-fiction book or not), I worried about the timing and the impact to my already tightly-packed reading schedule.

Now that I've finished, I'm actually glad I decided to pick this one up, as I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. I think this was due to the fact that I didn't approach this book from a "self-help" perspective in terms of how I could apply the author's advice to bring more joy into my own life, but rather, I went into it from the perspective of a "fascinating learning experience" about the aesthetics of joy and examples of how each element manifests itself in the real world. Prior to this, I had never read a book that broke down the elements of joy in such detail and I definitely learned a lot, even though some of the examples that the author provided didn't have much practical application for me personally. My favorite chapter was the one about "play", probably because I could relate most to what was described in there, but I also liked the later chapters where the author brought all the concepts together and showed us how to recognize the different aesthetics in a single environment.

Another aspect I liked about this book was the writing, which flowed seamlessly and, perhaps most importantly, was accessible. For me, the way a non-fiction book is written has a huge impact on whether that particular book will be a "hit" or a "miss" for me (even if he subject matter is one that I'm interested in). What I appreciated about Joyful is that it didn't feel overly scientific when I was reading it, even though some parts of it did cite statistics and results of scientific research. While the book did take me longer to read than usual, tit wasn't because the concepts were hard to understand or anything — rather, I tend to take longer to read non-fiction books overall because of my own obsession with absorbing every single detail so as to make it worth my while, which of course requires additional focus and concentration on my part.

I'm definitely glad I read this one and would definitely recommend it, especially to those who like reading non-fiction. While each person's reaction to the concepts that Ingrid Fettell Lee presents here will undoubtedly vary (especially depending on whether you've read other works on the same subject in the past or not), I liked this one more than some of the other "self-help" books I've read. Also, given the year I've had, I feel it's quite appropriate that I got the chance to incorporate a book about joy into my reading journey, regardless of whether the concepts covered in the book "helped" me or not. A worthwhile read overall!
35 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Patricia Matiella
3.0 out of 5 stars Llegó muy sucio
Reviewed in Mexico on August 2, 2023
Verified Purchase
Muy bonito libro, aún no lo leo pero llegó muy sucio, creo que son detalles que tienen que cuidar al vender un producto
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Patricia Matiella
3.0 out of 5 stars Llegó muy sucio
Reviewed in Mexico on August 2, 2023
Muy bonito libro, aún no lo leo pero llegó muy sucio, creo que son detalles que tienen que cuidar al vender un producto
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Kaly
5.0 out of 5 stars Ótimo para designers e curiosos
Reviewed in Brazil on August 16, 2019
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Ótima leitura para todos que acreditam nessa coisinha mágica chamada "alegria" relacionada ao cotidiano e aos espaços que frequentamos, os objetos que compramos e tudo mais que nos influencia.
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Mary Lynn
5.0 out of 5 stars Joy-coloured glasses
Reviewed in Canada on November 1, 2018
Verified Purchase
It started out innocently enough. My husband asked me to do a bit of research around JOY, as a possible pivot theme for their holiday campaign. Thanks to Google, I landed on Ingrid's website - and, down the joy-filled, magnificent, madly inspiring rabbit hole I went. Hours and hours and hours were spent reading all things JOY. I was so inspired by her work, that I had to read her book. And, because I have a hard time waiting, I ordered it on Amazon and it came the next day - small miracles! I read cover to cover so quickly, I was deeply saddened when I turned the last page. There is SO MUCH GOODNESS in this book. Ingrid is an exquisite human for bringing us all of this work. Her book is loaded with words you are going to highlight and underline to come back to again and again and again. THIS book was the MUSE to our holiday campaign; but, I think most importantly it invited me into a new world of colour. Of joy. It helped clear my monochromatic lens on life. And, I now tell every single human I know that they MUST READ THIS BOOK. So buy it. Read it. And, go buy a pair of bright yellow rain boots to slosh around in during our gray winter days. I did. Thanks Ingrid. Your soul has to be one of the most colourful I know. xo
7 people found this helpful
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Elena
5.0 out of 5 stars Read it and you’ll be finding joy everywhere!
Reviewed in France on July 8, 2019
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Best book I read in the last 10 years!
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AMIANTI MAURIZIO
4.0 out of 5 stars Joyful: The surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness
Reviewed in Italy on March 1, 2019
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Libro molto interessante. Molto valido per l'arricchimento della cultura personale
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