The Architecture of Thriving: Love, Work, and the Energy Between Us

Last week, I wrote that the difference between surviving and thriving is who stands beside you.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about what happens between us once we’re standing there. Because connection isn’t a finish line, it’s a living exchange. The best relationships, like the best teams, don’t just hold us up when we stumble. They renew us. They turn endurance into growth, duty into curiosity, and work into something that feels like meaning.

Lately, I’ve been drawn back to two thinkers who have shaped how I understand that energy: Esther Perel and Marcus Buckingham.

Perel reminds us that “the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” Buckingham calls love “the source code of excellence.” Both have spent their careers reframing what it means to thrive, in marriage, in friendship, and increasingly, in the workplace.

What they’re each saying, in their own ways, is that love isn’t a luxury. It’s a system.

From Standing Beside to Growing Beyond

In her recent conversation with Simon Sinek, Perel reflected on how our culture trains us for mobility, not continuity. We’re taught to start over easily, to move on quickly, to prize adaptability over depth. That mindset shows up everywhere, from the way we change jobs to the way we navigate conflict. We leave instead of repair.

But thriving, she says, isn’t about constant reinvention. It’s about staying long enough to learn. The same holds true at work. When we build teams that value presence over performance, we create space for people to grow together, not just next to each other.

Surviving is when someone stands beside you in the storm.
Thriving is when both of you walk out of it stronger.

Love as an Operating System

Buckingham’s book Love + Work argues that love is not a feeling. It’s a data signal. It tells you where your energy flows freely, where time disappears, where learning feels effortless. Those “red threads” of joy and fascination are clues to your Wyrd—your unique pattern of loves and strengths.

He warns about the “Excellence Curse,” the trap of being good at something you don’t actually love. Many of us fall into it. We survive by delivering, but we stop thriving because the work no longer gives energy back.

Leaders, he suggests, should pay attention to where love lives in the details of someone’s work. What tasks light them up? What moments make them lose track of time? What activities drain them? Those details matter because they are the architecture of thriving. One person’s joy becomes another person’s momentum.

The Lost Practice of Play

Perel describes play as “when risk becomes fun.” It’s how mammals learn to hunt and how humans learn to trust.

Play doesn’t always mean laughter or games. It’s any moment where curiosity replaces control. It’s brainstorming without fear, disagreeing without judgment, taking emotional or creative risks together.

We’ve spent the past few years designing workplaces that optimize for comfort—quiet rooms, remote policies, asynchronous everything. But comfort alone doesn’t build trust. Risk does. Play does. It’s through the small acts of vulnerability—asking for help, floating a half-formed idea, admitting you don’t know—that real connection forms.

Thriving teams don’t just perform together. They play together.

Building a Love + Work Culture

Buckingham offers a deceptively simple ritual: a 15-minute weekly check-in where managers ask team members four questions.

• What did you love last week?
• What did you loathe last week?
• What are your priorities this week?
• What help do you need from me?

It’s not performance management. It’s relational management. It builds trust, not metrics.

Perel would call this a ritual of talking to strangers—of stepping into small, unplanned conversations that build connection. Her challenge to the next generation is simple: learn to talk to strangers. Because that act, improvised and uncertain, is where belonging begins.

The healthiest workplaces, like the healthiest relationships, are ones where we see each other not just as roles but as humans with energy that fluctuates. When leaders design for that energy—for love, play, and trust—they build organizations that can bend without breaking.

The New Definition of Thriving

Survival is about resilience, getting through.
Thriving is about resonance, coming alive.

Survival asks who stands beside you.
Thriving asks what energy flows between you.

When love becomes part of how we work, not just who we work with, we stop treating connection as an accident and start treating it as infrastructure. It’s the invisible architecture that supports every act of creativity, loyalty, and renewal.

Love isn’t soft. It’s structural. It’s the quiet force that keeps people coming back, not because they have to, but because they want to.

Because the difference between surviving and thriving isn’t just who stands beside you.
It’s how deeply you choose to connect.

Madam I’m Adam