Need a Happiness Workout? There's an App for That
Saks Fifth Avenue hosted a peaceful weekend at the beach right before the summer was meant to slip away. Called Saks by the Sea, the Upper East Side juggernaut’s event tapped into the brand’s mindful side on the shores of Montauk at Hero Beach Club. Retreat-goers reveled in candlelit meals, yoga with Hilaria Baldwin, surf lessons, and beach cleanups. There was fashion by way of a luncheon with a brand that Saks recently launched, Black Iris, and dinner on the sand with Bumble BFF, cohosted by Sara and Erin Foster. But it was another hour on the coast that really resonated: a mindfulness exercise with founder of Happy Not Perfect, Poppy Jamie, who launched her fresh take on a meditation app last year. Jamie is also the Poppy in handbag brand Pop & Suki.
Like so many things in life, Jamie’s journey into the psyche started with her mom. “I give credit to my mother,” Jamie tells BAZAAR.com over coffee. “She would say, ‘We’re all taught how to read and write, but yet we’re not taught how to be a human being. And what does it mean to be a human being? It’s to have very rich, emotional lives. We can go through things, we can change emotions in a split second. And also then how do we manage our emotions when we are in these high-intensity environments, which we are all in now?’” In case you missed the clues, Jamie’s mom is a mental health professional, and someone with truly stellar coping skills.
“I wanted to put my mom in an app,” Jamie says, smiling. And thus, a Happiness Workout was born. “The basis of it is essentially you’re programmed in a way, and how do we reprogram? I do think those deep meditations are really good, but again, being practical and knowing our lives are so full, I thought, Is there something we can do to quickly repattern?”
The Happy Not Perfect app was launched taking into consideration positive psychology, neuroscience by way of experts at UCLA, and meditation. “Mental health is just the same as physical health, it is a process. We are constant works in progress. Those yogis, or those people that we hear meditate every single day, they still have to consistently work on their mental health.”
Happy Not Perfect is an approachable method of getting the results of straightforward meditation for the many who either have difficulty meditating or simply can never find the time. And although it’s meant for everyone, Jamie keeps women in mind. “I think about the pressure that we, especially women, feel to strive for perfection—whether it’s at your job, to look great, and all at the same time, be supermom, have a great relationship. It’s like are you joking?”
The app’s eight-step daily practice is meant as insurance against all that mounting pressure and the ramifications of that pressure. “It’s ensuring that we have these rituals to look after our mind, to wake up to what our subconscious brain is telling us, being aware of our limiting beliefs because there’s a process to change. We’re not going wake up and suddenly we can all run marathons just because we want to. And that is, I think, something that we often forget. Self-work never ends.” Which is why the app aims to become part of its users’ everyday rituals.
“It’s really easy to fit into your life, because it’s on your phone, and you can either do it in the morning, you could do it in the evening, you could do it at work. I mean, I have to do it throughout the day, because that’s when things start building up. Mindfullness gives you the power to decide how you want to react. It’s the most powerful skill any of us have.”
Jamie’s dedication to living life thoughtfully stems from her childhood. “I had a really interesting upbringing,” she explains. “My father suffered from severe mental health problems since we were so young, and he suffered from severe stress, anxiety. We really noticed that emotions not only affected us, but affected everybody around them. Because we all knew that Dad would be struggling.”
“My mother was a physiotherapist, and then she turned to a psychotherapist. And as a physiotherapist, she realized when she would be treating her patients, she would always ask them, ‘When did his pain start?’ And it was mostly, 99 percent of the time, linked to a traumatic event. So suddenly, her focus on the body always came back to the mind. She retrained in psychotherapy.”
At 25, Jamie moved countries and started feeling the pressures of life that come with leaving young adulthood and entering actual adulthood, and wanting to take responsibility for all of it. “I didn’t want to blame everything on technology and social media, but we were not wired to be on stimulation 24/7, receiving messages, being connected, and also being bombarded with images of comparison. And even if we don’t think we compare, we can’t not. You look at your Instagram feed, and that is how we evaluate things.”
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So what does the phrase “happy not perfect” mean to Jamie exactly? “I love this quote I often go to, which is that, ‘Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.’ And I think to myself, God, that’s such a good quote, because it confirms that happiness is not this euphoric state, which is often projected. But actually it’s being able to manage your life in whatever shapes and sizes it comes in.”
She continues, “There’s another great quote Marianne Williamson said, ‘A miracle is just a shift in perspective.’ It’s so true. Doesn’t matter what situation you’re in, if you find a new perspective, suddenly that situation can turn from the worst into maybe being the best. That’s powerful. We can teach people those skills. Emotional resilience. Like, it doesn’t matter what happens to us, we can feel confident to wake up and say, ‘I’m good. Whatever comes my way. I know I have the tools and the skills to be able to turn it into something I can manage.’”
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