Live Happy Now

This has been the most unusual and, for many, the most difficult year in recent memory. So what’s gratitude got to do with it? As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, it’s the perfect time to talk about how important gratitude is – not only at Thanksgiving, but as a daily practice. Live Happy CEO and co-founder Deborah K. Heisz joins us to talk about gratitude and other practices to make this unusual Thanksgiving more meaningful.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why gratitude is more important than ever right now.

As we get older, it’s common to start thinking about what kind of legacy we’re leaving behind. But what if we started thinking about living our legacy instead of leaving it?

This week’s guest is Codi Shewan, author of Everyday Legacy: Living Your Life with Purpose, Right Now. Codi’s career in the funeral industry gave him unique insight into death and the realization that every day matters. Now, he explains how each of us can discover our own legacy and live it to the fullest.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What it means to live a legacy.

Intuition is something we’re all born with, but somewhere along the way, the noise of the outside world can drown out our inner voice. Or we forget to stop “listening to our gut.” But learning to listen to our intuition can improve virtually every aspect of our lives and help take mindfulness to the next level. This week’s guest, Kim Chestney, is an expert on intuition and author of the new book, Radical Intuition: A Revolutionary Guide to Using Your Inner Power. She explains how tapping into our intuition can change our lives — and what we can do to start. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why it’s important to learn to listen to your intuition.

Grief is a difficult subject, and it can be even more difficult when trying to manage it with children. After the sudden death of her husband, Ashley Bugge found herself not only raising two children and planning for the birth of her third child, but also trying to help them live in a world suddenly consumed by grief. Unable to find books that spoke to children about grief in real terms, together she and her children wrote a remarkable book titled, A Hui Hou: Until We Meet Again.

This week, Ashley discusses how to talk to children about grief and loss to help them understand their feelings and live a happier life. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why it’s important to have honest conversations about grief with children.

If you’ve been feeling a bit more stressed or anxious lately, you aren’t alone. A new study by the American Psychological Association finds that this election is a “significant source of stress” for some 70% of Americans.

The term Election Stress Disorder was coined in 2016 by psychologist and author Steven Stosny to describe the anxiety and distress people were feeling. Now, the intensity of the current election has led to even greater levels of stress, which are amplified by social media and concerns about the pandemic.

This week’s guest is Erin Wiley, a clinical psychotherapist and executive director of The Willow Center in Toledo, Ohio. Erin’s here to explain how Election Stress Disorder affects us and how we can avoid it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why regulating exposure to the news and social media is so important.

In today’s busy world, it is often easy to overlook the value of those friendships. After a cancer diagnosis, lawyer-turned-life coach Shari Leid realized that she wanted her friends to know how much they meant to her. So she made a list of 50 women and sat down with each one, face to face, to tell them what they had done for her. Not only did it change her life and the lives of her friends, but it led to the book The 50/50 Friendship Flow: Life Lessons From and For My Girlfriends.

This week, Shari joins us to talk about how this mission changed her life and how you can use the same process to deepen your own friendships and discover greater gratitude in your life.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why everyone in your life is either a student or a teacher.

We make decisions every day, but how often do you really think about the process that goes into making those choices? This episode’s guest has built her life on making the right decisions: As a former professional poker player, Annie Duke who won more than $4 million in tournament poker before retiring in 2012. But she also studied cognitive psychology, is a bestselling author and a consultant on decision-making. Her new book, How to Decide, picks up where her last book, Thinking in Bets, left off.

This week, Annie’s here to talk about how to find better outcomes by changing the way we make our decisions.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What the Happiness Test is and how it can change the way you make decisions.

We’ve all told little white lies, but have you thought about how honest you really are in your day to day life? When Judi Ketteler started thinking about it, she realized that maybe she wasn’t as honest as she thought. So she delved into the research on honesty and began looking at her own habits. The result of that work is her new book, Would I Lie to You? The Amazing Power of Being Honest in a World That Lies. This week, Judi’s here to talk about why we lie, how it affects our happiness and how we can all live our lives with more honesty.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why honesty affects our happiness.

There’s no question that our world needs more kindness right now, which is why this week, we are talking to Houston Kraft, author of the new book Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness. He’s here to talk about the gap between our belief in kindness and our ability to practice it. He’ll also tell us what new skills we need to acquire to better practice kindness and what we can do to turn our intentions into actions.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What it means to practice “deep kindness”.

Whether you’re an educator or a parent, the concept of positive education is something that can change your life … as well as the life of your student or child. In these times, it’s more important than ever to understand the role that well-being plays in the lives of students, teachers, administrators and parents. This week, Live Happy CEO and co-founder Deborah K. Heisz joins us to talk about the upcoming International Positive Education Network’s 2020 Well-being in Education Virtual Conference. This event is being offered entirely online for the first time and it’s also free for anyone who wants to attend. Tune in to learn more!

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What positive education is and why it matters.