Making Happiness a Conscious Choice and Lifelong Practice with Karen Guggenheim

Don't wait to be happy to be happy. What I mean by that is it's not going to come to you in a neat package. It's not going to be because you got a promotion. And it's not something that you wait to receive because it is already inside you. You already have the tools inside you at this very moment to construct your Happiness Squad.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspirations to to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode, we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives, and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Happiness isn't the opposite of pain. It can be born from it. In today's episode, I sit down with Karen Guggenheim, founder of the World Happiness Summit and author of Cultivating Happiness. Karen didn't set out to build a global happiness movement. It began in heartbreak when she lost her husband unexpectedly in the face of unimaginable grief, she made a radical choice not to numb the pain, but to walk through it with purpose. That purpose? Happiness, not as a fleeting emotion, but as a way of living. In our conversation, Karen shares the origin story of ohasu, the World Happiness Summit, and the ripple effect it has created across education, leadership and well being. She unpacks the six pillars of cultivating happiness and dives into the one that has challenged her and transformed her the most. Forgiveness. If you've ever wondered how to lead with compassion, how to heal through adversity, and how one small shift can change many lives, this episode is for you. Let's dive in. Karen, it is so lovely to have you on our Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here with you, Karen.

You have such an amazing and an inspiring story. You know, you and I had a chance to meet for the first time two and a half years ago. I was still at McKinsey. I think we got connected through Jackie Brassi and I heard about Wahasu and I mean, it's just an amazing movement you've started. Tell us a little bit about your own personal journey, you know, and what got you into the field of happiness. You talk a lot about it in your book. You've talked about it in your speech. But I would love to share your origin story into this massive movement that you've created.

Pain. Pain. Pain is a great catalyst for change. And so I made a radical choice for happiness. So about 12 years ago, my husband caught a flu and developed into a pneumonia. And in a short period of time, actually he passed away. And. And at first I didn't really want to live because I. I had been married half my life and he was my best friend. And my first inclination was to shut down from life. And then I remembered I had children and I couldn't have that luxury, as it were, of. At least I felt it would be a luxury, not the feel. And so I decided to live for my kids. And then in that choice, I thought, okay, big pain, it's gotta be great, so it's gotta be something magical, great. And I called it happiness. And I didn't know about the science and the, the frameworks, et cetera, but I just knew intuitively that that was going to be my choice. So I chose happiness. And the very next step was how to do that. And two things. One was I have to feel my feelings and those are gonna be painful and I don't know how long it'll last. And the other thing is, what do I control from this uncontrollable situation? And so I control making meaning and having a purpose. And so that's what I did. Four months after he died, I was getting an MBA at Georgetown University and moving forward, but the very first thing was walking into the pain. And still today is painful. It's not as painful as it was, but my goodness, it's sure disappointing, you know, and I wish he'd be here today. He'd get a kick out of all this. He was a physician, he was an executive in the medical industry. So he's very much about helping people. He's an incredibly kind person. He was a scientist. And so the work that I do is my homage to him, who he was as a person. He was incredibly pro social and kind of. And also valued science and evidence very, very much. So what I do with my work is really try to keep him alive in a sense, in my work and in my everyday.

Karen, thank you for sharing that. And you know, the way that you started, right, Pain. There is so much. The world is in pain right now. There is so much loss. And I think what you followed with that is key, right? Which is choice. You chose not to ignore the pain, not to numb the pain, not to pretend that it is going to go away, but actually choose happiness for. And the decision to move on, you know, for your kids, for others, in the love, in Your life, which is, I think, a really important central message. It's in your book, it's in what I write about so much that happiness is a choice, you know, and happiness is so much more than an emotion.

Exactly.

And happiness is not the opposite.

Yes. I want to, I want to really stress that, that even then I understood that it wasn't haha happiness or just joy or just I. I knew I had to architect my life under the framework of happiness. So knowing that life has ups and downs. For example, I think that first time we spoke, I was in Nicaragua. So I'm born in Nicaragua. I know, you know, complex childhood and situations. So I know that, you know, that life is really challenging. I've seen that. And so I didn't, I just want everybody listening to understand that I didn't choose to. Oh, I'm just going to experience positive emotions the rest of my life, which would be amazing. But I knew that that wasn't true, but that I had to find a framework. I had to find a framework that was gonna be hopeful, optimistic, understanding that this was a big, big trauma in our lives that most likely would have an impact forever. And it will have an impact forever, but that's just the way it is, you know?

Yeah. I mean, I always equate our life to trees, you know, like the inner rings to the outer rings. Life has rings. And that ring, that tragic moment, never, never really grows away. We don't, you know, we can grow around it, we can grow, but it's, it's not something that that just leaves you. And it's our choice to make something of it. And you made such a beautiful choice, not just for yourself, but for the millions you're actually touching through the movement that you sparked.

Yeah. So thank you, thank you for that. So what happened is that when I became happy again accidentally. Right. And so when I found out that there was a science, a framework, you know, methods to teach this. Right. Because it's teachable and.

Absolutely.

You just have to do it all the time. It's not a one off. That's the thing that people do. There's no five quick, you know, tips or tools to happiness. It's a whole cocktail that you have to put together, you know, that the individual has to put together. Now there's some general components that apply to everyone, like relationships, like your physical body, like a sense of spirituality, a sense of community, having a purpose. I mean, it's very, very difficult to be happy if you don't have purpose and meaning in your life. Very hard Engaging in pro social behaviors. So all these different things that, that make up a life that it was very basic, almost like a child. The way that I saw it, you know, like what kind of life do you. Do you want to have? How do you want to feel in your life? I think that's something that we don't talk about. How do you want your life to feel to you? You know, do you want to be a victim in your life? Do you want to be an aggressor? Do you want to be a victimizer? Do you want to be angry, feeling just anger all the time? Again, I want to say that anger, when appropriate, super helpful, super important. But I'm just saying to be in this state of anger, that your natural reaction is anger. Right. Or aggression. So those things are things that didn't feel good to me. So I started to like, really look at how does this life, you know, the only life I have. And so how do I want to feel in this life? And I feel like that how we are brought up, particularly in the western world is what are you going to do in your life? Right. But not how you're going to feel in your life and so on how.

You'Re going to be.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So one of the things that I say is we all have to do lists, but what's your to be list? How do you want to be today? Do you want to be kind? You want to be grateful? Do you want to be empathetic? You want to be forgiving? And so I think those things are really important in building the kind of life you want to have and for your family, community, workplaces, et cetera.

Yeah, and we had such similar mind, you know, because it is about practices. It's what we practice and it's something that you never. It's not like one and done like I took a course or I had an event or I bought a car or I got married. That, you know, it ends. It's a practice. It's a practice to really rewire our brains away from this fear and negativity and the scarcity that we find ourselves.

Yes. And also, you know, we're living in a world that we want instant gratification and things to happen very, very quickly. And you know, we communicate very quickly, we travel very fast, all these different things. But you know, being human requires a kind of chiseling from the, from the marble, you know, like a Michelangelo. Like it takes that level of fine tuning of who you want to be as a person. And it's just, it doesn't happen overnight, but it's worth cultivating. And those are the things, you know, when I found out that, that this was a science, et cetera, I dedicated my life to Wahasu and the World Happiness Summit. So, and, and we've been very honored since then to impact so many different organizations and foundations and services and trainings and masters and all these other things that people are doing around the world in this beautiful community. And it's just, it's just amazing because it's, it's, it was built on authenticity and the reality of life. It wasn't built on rose colored glasses or toxic positivity. It was, it was built on very real life circumstances.

Yeah. So let's go there for a moment, like share a little bit about, for those who don't know what Wahasu is and how the idea came to life and the journey that you've been on. I think you had the seventh one this year. Yes, right, so, so now we're so.

Oh, is is an acronym for World Happiness Summit. And like you've said, we've had seven of them. We've had, I think, yeah, five in, in Miami, one in Lake Como and one in London. And last year was London. It was great. The theme was purpose. And we had the Surgeon General of the United States coming to that. I had a lovely fireside chat. He's done so much work, Dr. Vivek Murthy, on this, you know, and the impact of loneliness and the kids. Our youth is suffering around the world. And that's something that is really present in my mind on how we need to do more for the youth in our world and especially in the United States, suffering so much in the uk, et cetera. But just across the board we talk a lot about employee well being, which is very important. You know, 12 million work days are lost, billion work days are lost around the world every year because of depression and anxiety. And when I've been reflecting on that number and I just wonder how many education days are lost for kids and how many play dates are lost, you know, and I'm very just like really hyper aware of that. We say that, you know, children are our future, but they're also here now. It's not when they become utilities to us as leaders, whether that's a, a civic leader, government leader or a business leader. As children, I think that, you know, our youth deserves to be happy and deserves to be healthy and deserves to be well. And I feel like we're not calling enough attention to that. So those are the some of the things that I'm really looking and to see how we do that and in some of the ways that we're doing that actually is our well being leadership certification training that we have. We just launched it in Miami Dade County's public school district. It's the third largest school district in the United States with over 400,000 students and 34,000 employees. And we're in a process of certifying all 350 school principals in well being leadership for a happier and more resilient school community. We've trained the cabinet and also the superintendent. And it's an amazing superintendent in Miami who has said yes to such a innovative and long overdue program for our kids. But we do that. We also have a World well being policy forum. We're going to have it again in London in October. And we're looking at how to place well being first in decision making for governments and businesses, society and education. Because we know cognitively and from evidence that it's the right thing to do. But there's a disconnect into why we're not doing it. So those are some of the things that are really present in my mind to drive this forward.

Yeah. Isn't it crazy, Karen? No, I love those. Isn't it crazy in particular when it comes to our younger population? You know, I always reflected on this. When children are born until a certain age, right? Unlike adults, children don't need something to be happy. They are just happy. They're giggling, they're smiling, you know, something needs to happen to make them cry or unhappy. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty. I fell down, right? I heard a loud noise and I got startled. Children don't need to be present in what they're doing. You can find somebody playing. I'm reflecting on my son when he was 2 or 3, you know, with his train tracks, right? And he would play with Thomas for like the next hour, just completely immersed.

But that's because they're. I think that's because they are present.

That's because they are present, right? And just, you know, somewhere along the way, as we grow up, we stop, we lose that I am happy. We start pursuing happiness. If this happens, then I'm happy. And we get into that game. And what I find, really? Really. So I think I always used to think about that, right? And I always highlight that in my talks to think about what happened. You were the same. Why are you now? The standard, if I ask you, how are you? Why Is the most common answer, like, for example, at McKinsey was, I'm busy. It wasn't, I'm happy, I'm awesome, I'm busy. Right. And now that's happening younger and younger. Right. So, like, if you look for the, you know, for now, almost last five, seven years, the mental health of young kids is much worse than the mental health of adults. Right. That curve has gotten inverted in this country.

Definitely. Yes. In the United States. Yes.

And so much of it is. Is driven by the environment. So I love that you're starting with schools because, you know, somewhere along the way, at homes, in schools and things around, we can talk about devices, but our kids earlier and earlier are falling into not a state of flourishing. Instead, they're getting into depression, sadness, anxiety, all these emotions, you know, And I.

Think as a society, we're accepting that.

Yeah.

And I think that's a big, big problem. I think that's a big problem.

And I love what you said. Collectively, it's a massive problem. Right. I mean, and I love what you said, which is, we talk about children as the future, but, man, what future are we creating if the present is telling us what's happening to them?

Totally. But not. I agree with that. But also what they're living now. It's not. Not only like, well, you know, what is it gonna be like in the future for kind of for us, but how is it feeling to be a child or to be an adolescent right now? And apparently it's not feeling very well.

Yeah. You know, what it's triggering for me and what it is kind of an idea is, you know, while I was at McKinsey, and I think you're familiar with this work, you know, that Jackie and Barbara and others led. We know, like, I do a lot of my work is around basically transforming workplaces from one of human suffering to one of human flourishing. Because, you know, if you want people to live happier, healthier lives, I don't think the individual happiness, I think, is an important element. Right. Those skills, all the positive psychology work, accounts for 27% of well being. Right. And will result in maybe 3% of people not burning out. But if I think about the 72% of well being, it's because of the way work is done. Yes. And what I get curious about this is an idea that you just sparked for me with the focus on the education is what is the equivalent of that research for the teenage years and even the years from, like, elementary to middle school, both in schools and outside. What are the factors and how are they contributing? Because I think that's where I think there is richness. Because if we can start to affect those factors, we'll make progress.

No, I agree with you totally. Looking at the workplace, you know, I don't think that as well that we're doing much there. We're not doing much of a dent. I mean, everybody had placed lip service to it. The data, I mean, we don't need more data.

You know, we don't need more data.

The data's there. You know, we don't need another case study on this one. You know, we're case studied out. What I was thinking, I had an earlier call today and you know, I was thinking that what we're asking of well being, not us that know about it, but from an external client, as it were, who's saying, okay, let's see if you're going to bring this to schools or you're going to bring this to a workplace. Show me how it works. Show me that it works more than the data, more than this. And so I was like, this is almost like telling somebody, okay, you want to have your body look a certain way, you need to eat a certain, you need to, you know, make sure you low fat, low carbs, etc. You need to exercise about 30 minutes a day, blah, blah, blah. Okay, but the client is saying, yeah, I want to have the body now and then I'll go to the gym because you want to have the results today. And guess what? It doesn't work that way because largely this training, whichever person or entity is going to give it to an organization will only work if you work it. So if you don't implement that and change culture, it won't work.

Yeah, and what you didn't mention, Karen, what you did mention is and oh, by the way, not only do I want it now, by the way, I only have five minutes to spend on it.

Right?

Right. So I don't have a lot of time. So what's the quick one thing? Make it simple. It's too complex. I'm not going to do it. And we get into these.

Well, you're going to get into these, right? There will be, you know, as we know, with burnout, there will be a time where that lemon will not give you more juice. Doesn't matter what you want to do, doesn't matter if you tell them it's the most important thing. We're going to lose the client, the business is going to go under, we're going to go bankrupt. You can say whatever, you can threaten, you can do whatever you want, but it Gets to a point where we're human beings and that humanity and that biology is going to give out, you know, and so that's where I think it's. It's really interesting because for some reason we think that we're creating tough people. We're really creating fragile people, right? Because we're overburdening constantly. Plus, with technology, you have so much information and your brain doesn't like all that information. Information, it's too much. It's overwhelming. Even if it's all good, right? And it's not. But just so much to process that then it's just when you're in the moment, you're like, okay, it's too much. Even if I just give you chocolate cake all day long, it's too much, it's too much, it's too much. And I think that we are in a little bit of a dangerous moment because we, with the whole tech situation coming, right, we're forgetting our humanity. And I think that our competitive advantage in the future is more human. Okay, yes, technology is great. Technology is going to take care of itself. I mean, either right now or next month or next year. Technology that has Pandora's box has been open and technology is going to be great and fine. We need to be more human. Okay, what are we going to do to be able to make good decisions with technology? What are we going to be able to do to make stronger social connections? I mean, as a side note, you hear all of this also, tech in longevity, right? Great. Guess what? You're missing one element that is super impactful to longevity and anti aging people. If you don't invest in relationships, I don't care what ultralight you have or what colon cleansing or where you're going to be doing any of these wellness practices. If you don't focus on people and build these relationships, which are the greatest buffer to problems and the greatest enhancer to life's sparkles, you're not going to live very long. Most likely foreign.

We hope you're enjoying this episode and would love your help in spreading awareness and furthering our mission to help a billion people Rewire for happiness. Please consider leaving us a review and sharing this podcast with others in your personal and professional life who you feel could benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend and spread positivity. Also, check out Rewire, our proprietary offering to move you from knowing to doing. On the Happiness Squad website, www.happinesssquad.com Rewire uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to help you build happier habits in five minutes or less daily. Now back to the episode. Not only that, and you know, frankly, you lose the journey. You know, I was at this summit yesterday, at the conscious entrepreneur summit, one that we have here in Boulder, there were 250 people, you know, mostly startup founders and CEOs and they were there and I was like, listen friends, the mortality rate of startups, you know, especially over, if you think about a seven, eight year horizon, is like 5% survive, right? 5% survive, 95% are not going to make it. And here we are, you're all committing to these crazy seven years of like taking away from relationships, taking away from your mental health, not sleeping enough, not eating enough, constantly running on adrenaline and cortisol for a 5% chance that maybe you'll make it. And then you're going to hopefully have the life you want. I'm like, it's the worst way you can live. Instead, if you actually think about living with more joy, more connection, more meaning behind why you started this in the first place, you know, enjoy the journey because that's invest in the relationships, do the things rather than spend more time being, rather than just doing well.

The other thing is that even if you're in that 5% as a startup, who you become in that time, right, Is maybe challenging. So if you have unaddressed issues that maybe come up with your highly, highly stressed, no sleep, eating poorly, not exercising, not taking care of relationships, again. And so it's really. And then as an investor is also costly because your founders, how many stories do we see that the founders end up making mistakes 100% either ethically or just, you know, because they have lost their way.

So it's just overwhelmed, right?

It's overwhelmed right Now I know that you talk about this as well. I think about, you know, we have to change the way that we work. And I don't mean like from home or from, you know, in the workplace. The way that work is structured, you know, we define work like what 70 years ago or 60 years ago or something like that. And that's a completely different workforce. It's completely work for different workforce that today it has nothing to do with how we were 70 years ago. And similarly, we need to redefine leadership because how we're defining leaders and what we expect the leaders to sacrifice to get those jobs are self selecting for people who are low. Empathy, okay, I don't care if I'm home, I don't care. I don't care if I'M there in the week, I can, you know, I'm, I'm missing a birthday, I'm missing a graduation, I'm missing dinner with my spouse or my partner, whatever. Not one off, not two off, but like continuously. So then who are the people that are going to be okay doing that over a decade, two decades. Right. Those are people who have low empathy. So if we change the way that we define leadership in understanding, like, okay, you're not 24, 7, because the CEO. You're the CEO. Okay. It has to have a tempo of how you live a life and what you invest in, and you need to have downtime. Right. How do we do that? And I think there, you know, we're going to have more applicants who want to strive to be leaders, better leadership, because then we're welcoming other kinds of people. Right. Whether it's a neurodivergent or some kind of other in more empathy, more compassion. For some reason, we've thought that compassion and empathy are weak. No idea why that is, but of course it's not true. And, and I just think that we are, we should use our creativity beyond creating machines and technology, but creating a new way on systems thinking and design thinking to redefine how we educate kids, how we work in workplaces, how we lead 100. We need to invest time in that.

Yeah. And if we do that, you know, I'm. I can speak from my own personal, you know, personal story. Right. My last 10 years, especially my last seven years at McKinsey, as I integrated some of these practices into my life and redesigned how I got work done and how my teams worked. Karen. I was getting more done exactly between nine to six than it took me earlier, working from six to nine. Right. Literally. I mean, I upped 40, 50% my productivity, my creativity, my relationships, the impact I was having with my clients, how my teams were growing. I was 70%. I was working three and a half days a week. I, I went part time because I wanted to force. I was writing a book and I was like, I want to go do that and this is what I'm going to be. And you know, when you make those shifts, by the way, three and a half days wasn't that far off from four days, which today's Wall Street Journal article talked a little bit about that research around how most companies. Yeah. Who have tried it actually want to stick with it because we're letting people figure out how to get what they need to get done in the context of four days.

Exactly, exactly. And also the way you Lead. So then you have, you know, teammates in a workforce who's also happier, healthier. So guess what? They're not going to only do more, but with clients. And you mentioned McKinsey. It's a service, right? It's people.

100%. 100%.

Very soon a machine can do it better than we can, but it's the relationships is the nuance and those. And the clients, you know, the client servicing, of course, is better when you have an, an employee or a person who is not short with you or not overwhelmed or doesn't have the time or can't think creatively, but is bringing you solutions outside the box and having that better engagement, you know, with the client. And those are all human skills that we are losing.

Absolutely. And look, you talk about so many of these. I want to pivot a little bit and dig into cultivating happiness. I read your book. It is so beautiful.

Thank you.

You lay out six key pillars in that book. Karen, talk to us a little bit about those pillars and which of those was actually the hardest for you?

So I talk about, you know, gratitude and kindness and narratives, stories we tell about ourselves and, and, and also growth, because I modeled it actually about post traumatic growth. But in my time studying and working on happiness, the hardest thing is forgiveness. The hardest thing is forgiveness. And people don't understand, or some people don't understand, that forgiveness doesn't mean that what another person did is okay. Some things will never be okay, ever. Right?

Yeah.

And for example, I had to forgive the doctors that made the mistakes that caused my husband's death. It wasn't immediate. It took me like three years, three or four years. But then when I was able to do that and other forgiveness of other people, it creates such fertile ground for you to seed things in your life that you want to have. And so instead of like having this negative rumination and like, why, why, why, why? Sometimes some things, you'll never know why, why people do things that hurt you, you know, never. And sometimes it's unintentional and sometimes that's the way people are, and sometimes it is intentional. But to, to have that live inside you, if you drive it to a certain level, it can be. You can make you better and toxic and. But when you let that go, you know, and that doesn't mean many times you even have to see the person. Right. It's like so much energy for you, for you then to be able to be well and to be happy and to have energy and to see into, invested in your family or in Yourself or in exercise or in seeing problems under a new lens, you know, and that's been. That's the hardest thing is forgiveness, especially when somebody has hurt you deeply. That's a very difficult thing. But the work of Dr. Fred Luskin out of Stanford University, and Fred speaks at every summit, by the way, we have the talks on our YouTube channel, the World Happiness Summit. YouTube channel. His work is game changer.

I mean, like, I'd love to take a look at his work.

Incredible work.

You know, I always. Forgiveness is. We talk about forgiveness and hardwired for happiness also. And. And I always, you know, there are three quotes that I want to just leave. Right. Because I do agree. I think this is such an important one. It is also the hardest for so many people that I always go to. I always remind myself, they're always my three quick go to Karen, which is. The first one was from Julio Olala, who I studied with when I did my new field coaching, where he said, you know, forgiveness is not forgetfulness. Forgiveness is not forget. It's not like I forget or I accept what you did is okay. But forgiveness is beyond that. Which comes to the second point, that when you forgive, you know, I remind myself, I forgive for myself. Forgiveness is an act we do for ourselves. It's not something you do for the other. Of course you do it for the other, but really it's about you. It's about you choosing to move on. Which brings me to the third quote, which is. It is. I think it's a Buddhist quote from the Dalai Lama where he said, you know, resentment, which is often when we hold against somebody, or anger, is like drinking poison, expecting the other person to die. They're not even aware. But within us, it's corroding us. It's corroding us internally.

I want to highlight also that you don't. You can forgive in your heart or in a letter and then burn it, or you don't have to tell the person you're forgiving them. Know, some people, I. I never did. I just forgave in my heart. And so that's really important because sometimes it's very difficult to be with a person who's wrong, who's done something that is just very, very wrong. Right. And so just letting that. That go is so powerful.

Yeah. And it shows up everywhere. You know, I. I love that you chose this one. I take, you know, I. If I go all the way into the spiritual text, I think about Jesus and I think about his last words being, God, forgive these who sin against Me, because they don't know they're taking his life. And here we leave churches, and if somebody crosses us, we are raising our middle finger and swearing, right? This notion of living the practice is so present. And then the other one on forgiveness, that for me is just in today's world, right? Like, really, can we really forgive? You know, I'm reminded of the massive movement that Desmond Tutu started, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, around how, you know, bringing people together who had been wronged and those who might have wronged them and just together liberating and choosing to create, you know, a different future together. And if all of those can do that, why do we hold on? If that colleague went behind my back, they did something, they raised my voice. They didn't. I couldn't say what I say or I felt. You know, we hold on to small, all these little things, and we carry all that baggage in our lives, but.

We can let it go.

But we can let it go. So what are some practices. What are some practices, Karen, that you talk about in your book around forgiveness, that if somebody asks you, like, hey, how do I forgive? What do you suggest?

The very first thing is if it's something that is very hard just to have a willingness, once you have the willingness or even to ask the question, then you've already kind of made the decision. When you're like, I want to, but I don't know how that reframe has already. You're like, you know, almost there, like, virtually there. Because it's a shift. It's a shift that you've decided that you want to let go of that energy going there, and you want to reposition that energy somewhere else. And so is that acceptance. The situation occurred. There's nothing I can do about the situation. It was horrible, and the impact is horrible and will always be horrible. But I want to live. And I've also, for me, that's tied also very closely with purpose, right? So since I had a purpose and that purpose was happiness, then I analyzed that if I wanted to have more happiness in my life, then forgiveness was going to have to be one of the tools, right? And so you don't have to forgive, but if you've decided that you want to have a happier life, it's sure a big tool to get there. Like, it's. It's hard, but it's a huge one to help you get there. It's like, yeah, it's jet fuel to happiness and to feeling well and to feeling okay in your world because it gives you. You Know what it gives you? It gives you a sense of agency. It's incredibly empowering. It doesn't seem so, but it really, really is.

Yeah, I love both of those. Right. Number one is choosing to make the chef right. Just even before you do an act out there, it's choosing that. And I think second anchoring what you're highlighting is know your why. Why are you choosing what do you want instead?

Exactly.

Right.

I always feel commit, you know, if you're committing to having a life, a certain life that you want to have, make a build it.

You know, I think the gravitational pulls of the why are so critical in escaping the gravitational pull of stick staying stuck. And, you know, because we feel. We are. We should feel what we are feeling. And they did wrong. And unless there is something else that says, yeah, but I want that.

Not this, but it's true. Okay, they did do wrong. And what do you want to. It's yes for. For always, it will be wrong. And now what? You have to get to the point of like after everything, you. Now what? Now. Now now what? Maybe you got an apology, maybe you didn't get an apology. Maybe something, you know, whatever it is, you get to a point where now it's like, okay, what about you? What about your life? What about what you want to have with the rest of your life? Your relationships, your work, your meaning, your art, the impact. And when you're stuck, remember, in nature, none of nature likes to be stuck. We are about moving movement. And in the book, I also talk about movement. So it's not only physical movement and movement of thought. You have to move to be able to process and to grow. Because attaching to a thought or attaching to a state or attaching to non movement, it's not natural. It's not good.

Yeah, yeah. Have you read this book? It's actually literally sitting on the table here. The Book of Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mefo. It's so beautiful, Karen. I think you'll love it. Yeah, you'll love it. It's. It's an absolutely beautiful book. And I will put it in the show notes for our. Both your book, that book, and a couple of other sources. I want to go into one more area which I find so inspiring. One of your favorite parts of your message is that even small changes in mindsets and behaviors can create these massive ripples, right? There's this butterfly effect of the changes. So I want you to share a little bit of a story, either from a wahasu attendant or a reader or somebody else, you know, whose life. You saw this in action and they showed up one way and they've started doing something and life changed.

So I think it was. I can't remember. Yeah, it was World. World Happiness Summit 2022. And. And we had been away since 19 because of the pandemic. Right. And this young, this woman came to me and she says, I know you're running around, but I swear I just need 40 seconds of your time. I want to tell you a story. And it's interesting because inside I'm like, I have no time. But it's. But then I'm like, okay, of course I have time. So. And she said, I just want to tell you how grateful I am because in 2019, when I came, I was suicidal and I came and I enrolled in this course from this speaker and I saw this and I do that. So it wasn't like I came to a conference and I'm cured. But she did all these different things, Right. This resonated with me. I found my community. I enrolled in this course. I did that. And I want to tell you that I haven't been depressed since then. And so that was incredible in and of itself. And then this person, this then ended up teaching happiness to students. So, you know, that's kind of a full circle moment. And that is beautiful for my work. It's just so gratifying to hear a story like that.

Yeah. Because not only did they get affected, but now all the students. Right. Going back to kind of the education system that we started with, It's a beautiful. It's a beautiful story because when we help somebody change, they change the whole group of people and the communities around them. Right. It's so, so important. So, Karen, just keeping an eye on the clock, I would love to ask, as we end, if there is one message that you could whisper into the ear of every leader, every parent, every teacher, you know, who's, you know, today there's a lot of overwhelm in life. There's a lot of kind of anxiety, anxiety and stress. What would you say? What would your message to them? Be?

So it would be different to a leader, it will be one thing, and I'll tell you that.

First, give me three messages.

Yes to a leader is to a challenge. To put this evidence that we know into practice and to make, well being a strategic pillar, whether it's in education, in business, in government. So I think that that is. It's an imperative right now to really place, well, being first in decision making. And then what I would whisper to anyone interested in hearing. What I have to whisper is don't wait to be happy. To be happy. Right. So what I mean by that is it's not going to come to you in a neat package. It's not going to be because you got a promotion. It'll be. You'll have joy, sure. But like what we're talking about here, about this kind of mature and nuanced sense of happiness is something you can construct and it's not something that you wait to receive because it is already inside you. You already have the tools inside you at this very moment to construct your happiness. And so that's what I would tell them. Instead of being, instead of seeing your life happen, become an active participant in your life.

Karen, thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. As I started, your story is unbelievably inspiring. Thank you. And it's inspiring because not only is it, not only did you make the changes in your life from something that was so traumatic and devastating and something that happened to you, it wasn't something you did to make it happen, but you actually took that suffering, you took that pain. The conversation we started with and you used that to grow into a bigger version of you that is serving and bringing these tools to so many others to help them. So thank you for the work you do. I know how hard it is.

Thank you.

And I appreciate you for being a leader in this space.

Thank you so much. And thank you for your leadership and for inviting me to this conversation. I hope that your community enjoys it and I'm very, very happy to have spent this time with you and everyone listening to this.

Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful weekend.

Thank you. You too.

That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, happiness, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.