I Want Her Job

How do you define success? It’s a question Courtney Martin asked herself and others while writing her book, The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream, which attempts to help all of us think about redefining our measures of success. She encourages us to “reject the tired narratives about success” because our motives and lives will change when we shift our focus, instead, to community. “The New Better Off most succinctly is realizing that our quality of life is more determined by the quality of our relationships than by our own individual achievements as we’ve historically thought about it,” Courtney says. “It’s more about meaning, relationships, community and fulfillment – as opposed to status and stuff.” The book asks questions many of us have asked ourselves, and it challenges what many of us have come to accept as the status quo. One of our favorite lines in Courtney’s book is: “I don’t want to get a good job, a house with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids and then just go to sleep.” Host Polina Sely