This 3-Word Formula for Living a Truly Joyful Life Will Stop You in Your Tracks
A 200-year-old philosopher's three-part formula for joy is the only life advice you'll ever need—and bestselling author Kate Bowler explains how to bring it into the 21st century
Key Takeaways
- Kate Bowler shares philosopher Immanuel Kant's three-part formula for living with more joy.
- The formula is simple: find something to do, someone to love and something to hope for
- Bowler says there is a "weird magic" between giving to others and finding joy for yourself.
In a world overflowing with productivity hacks, wellness trends and apps promising happiness in 30 days, sometimes the wisest advice comes from a philosopher who lived more than 200 years ago. No subscription required, no checklist to download — just three simple ideas that fit on a sticky note and might change how you move through your days.
Author Kate Bowler, whose New York Times bestseller Joyful Anyway explores how to find joy even in life’s hardest seasons, has been sharing a piece of wisdom that’s resonating deeply with readers. It’s a three-part framework attributed to 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, and it speaks plainly to something every woman has wrestled with at one point or another: how do you actually live a joyful life?
The formula is beautifully brief:
Woman's World Answers
- Find something to do
- Find someone to love
- Find something to hope for
That’s it.
Watch Episode 11 right here! ‘What Matters with Kate Bowler: Aching, Hoping & Finding Joy Anyway’
The wisdom worth passing along
Bowler framed the advice as guidance she received and now offers to others — the kind you share with a friend over coffee.
“I thought was really good advice, because there’s some correlations, I think,” Bowler said. “So he said, ‘look, you want to live a joyful life find something you do, because there’s a weird magic between service and joy. The more you give, somehow you just don’t lose. You somehow get more back. That doesn’t make any sense. So find something to do, find someone to love and find something to hope for.'”
What makes the message land isn’t novelty. It’s the quiet truth that joy isn’t engineered — it’s cultivated. And it’s cultivated through the things human beings have been doing for centuries: working, loving and hoping.
Why ‘find something to do’ matters
The first principle pushes back against a culture that treats rest as the ultimate reward and busyness as a burden. Bowler points to something she calls a “weird magic between service and joy.”
“The more you give, somehow you just don’t lose,” she said. “You somehow get more back. That doesn’t make any sense.”
That paradox — that giving doesn’t deplete you but replenishes you — sits at the heart of this first idea. “Finding something to do” isn’t about cramming your calendar. It’s about discovering meaningful work, paid or unpaid, that connects you to something beyond yourself. A purpose. A craft. A neighbor who needs help.
If you’ve ever felt strangely fulfilled after volunteering for something you almost skipped, you already know how this works. Activity that serves others has a way of returning energy rather than draining it.
Why ‘find someone to love’ matters
The second principle is deceptively simple. Love, in this framework, isn’t limited to romantic partnership. The instruction is broader: someone. A child. A parent. A friend. A neighbor. A pet. A community.
Joy requires connection. We are not built to thrive in isolation. Love asks something of us — attention, patience, presence — and in giving those things, we find ourselves bound to other people in ways that make life feel less lonely and more meaningful.
In a time when loneliness is rising across every age group, the reminder to deliberately seek out someone to love, and to keep loving them, feels especially urgent.
Why ‘find something to hope for’ matters
The third principle may be the hardest, especially for anyone moving through grief, illness, financial strain or uncertainty. Hope isn’t a feeling that simply arrives. It’s something you find — something you actively look for and choose to hold onto.
Hope can be small. A trip planned for next spring. A garden that will bloom in May. A grandchild’s graduation. A book you want to finish reading. A goal that gets you out of bed on a difficult Tuesday.
The instruction isn’t to manufacture optimism. It’s to identify something — anything — pulling you forward. That forward motion, however slight, is what keeps joy possible even when life feels heavy.
Why this message lands now
Part of what makes this formula so compelling is what it isn’t.
It isn’t a five-step plan. It isn’t a life hack. It doesn’t promise transformation in 21 days or guarantee results if you follow specific rituals. There’s no product at the end of it.
Instead, it offers a framework old enough to have outlasted countless trends and simple enough to fit on a sticky note. The three commands work in harmony: doing gives life structure, loving gives it warmth and hoping gives it direction.
Bowler’s gift is in the sharing — in taking wisdom most of us last encountered in a long-ago classroom and translating it into something we can carry into Monday morning. It’s the kind of advice worth taping to your bathroom mirror.
Find something to do. Find someone to love. Find something to hope for.
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