Have a wonderful Labor Day (and end summer with a smile).

Quick links: Two new episodes to enjoy from The David Bach Show are here – one with ​Jean Chatzky​ and one with ​Brent Freeman​.

I spent this summer traveling around Europe – Spain, Slovenia, France, Portugal, Greece and Italy – and no matter how busy the day had been, seeing the sites and spending time with my family, I made sure to take my walk.

Those walks were free. The views were free. So is the fifteen minutes I spend journaling most mornings, and the meditation I don’t always want to do but always feel better for doing. I stack these things into my day without really thinking about it – and it wasn’t until I sat down with my friend Brent Freeman this summer that I realized what I’ve actually been doing this whole time is investing. Small, daily, unglamorous deposits into something Brent has a name for: joy.

Brent’s brand-new book, ​The Alchemy of Joy​, launches September 15th, and I sat down with him on The David Bach Show. It’s one of the most personal, most useful conversations I’ve had on the show all year.

NEW EPISODE: THE ALCHEMY OF JOY, WITH BRENT FREEMAN

Brent opened the show with a story I haven’t been able to shake. A few years ago he had the company, the marriage, the high-rise apartment with a Golden Gate Bridge view – on Instagram, he was crushing it. In reality, he was in the middle of a business partner lawsuit, his marriage was falling apart, and he was 40 pounds overweight and completely alone.

He calls it his “Dark Tuesday.” He woke up, walked to that window, and contemplated ending his life. What snapped him out of it was almost nothing: watching the fog roll in, he remembered a meditation technique called “noting” — your thoughts are just clouds passing in front of the sun. You are not your thoughts. He asked himself, “How did I get here?” – canceled every meeting on his calendar, and drove to Baker Beach to watch his first sunset in years.

Sitting on the rocks, he thought about the sunsets he used to watch with his dad and brother as a kid, after his mom died. He started crying – and realized they were tears of joy, not sadness. One question changed everything: If a simple, free sunset can bring me this much joy, what else am I missing?

That night he wrote his first “joy list.” Ten items. Today it’s over 250, and 99% of them are free. Item one: Italy. He booked a flight to Rome the next morning, ended up in a village outside the city learning to make pasta with an Italian grandmother — and that trip became a real business. He and that family now run the number one Airbnb Experience in the world.

Here’s the part that hit home for me: Brent calls it ROJ – return on joy. Same principle as compound interest, applied to your emotional wealth instead of your bank account. Small daily investments compound into a life well lived. Most of us do the opposite — we defer joy for some “one day” once we hit the number, sell the company, or retire. Brent’s argument: the math never works that way.

We also get into his tools – the “reset breath” (6 seconds in, hold 4, out 8 – calms your nervous system in under a minute), the “one-minute window” (stop, see, soften), and “participating in your own rescue,” the idea, borrowed from whitewater rafting, that someone throws you a rope, but you have to grab it.

If you’ve ever hit the goal and still felt empty – ​watch this one​.

WHERE TO GET THE BOOK

Brent’s new book, The Alchemy of Joy, is out September 15th – ​pre-order your copy now​!

LISTEN INSTEAD

Prefer audio? The full conversation is also wherever you get your podcasts, including ​Apple​ and ​Spotify​.

One last thing. Brent’s first joy list started with one word – Italy – and mine, apparently, starts with a hot, sweaty walk up to a lookout point in Florence that I almost talked myself out of taking. Neither one cost a thing.

Go invest in some joy this week. See what compounds.

PS: Did you catch last week’s podcast with Jean Chatzky: The Forever Paycheck? Catch it on ​YouTube​ and ​Apple​. This is a really important conversation we need to have. I think it’s time for many of you to enjoy your retirement even more…