Live Happy Now

Giving our kids positive messages is important, but sometimes it’s difficult to do in a tumultuous world. The guests on this episode are not only giving kids a new way to look at the world, but putting it to a great beat that parents love, too.

After becoming parents themselves, long-time friends Anne Montone and Jennifer Cook used music as a way to teach and explain things to their children. The two musically inclined friends then created the singing duo Again Again, and their debut full-length album, “Listen. Love. Repeat.” is filled with positive, family-friendly messages for our time.

• Why music is so effective as a way to learn.

Habits: We’ve all got ‘em … and we all wonder why we aren’t better at changing them. This week’s guest has the answer to that question.  Wendy Wood has spent 30 years researching human behavior and is the leading expert on habits and change. Her new book, Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick, helps explain how we form habits, what habits really are and why so much of what we’ve believed about changing habits is wrong.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What is a habit?

If you think that conflict is always bad for your relationship, think again. This episode’s guests are CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke, authors of the book, “The Beauty of Conflict for Couples.” As therapists, they’ve helped hundreds of couples reconcile their differences and get their relationships back on track—but they say it’s not about romance. They teach couples that the things we argue about often have the potential to pave the way to greater intimacy…if we learn how to use it properly.

In this podcast, you’ll learn:

• Why conflict can be the secret ingredient to reaching relationship goals.

Tiffany Shlain founded Character Day in 2013 as a way to recognize and celebrate the importance of character strengths. This year, she’s combining the celebration of Character Day on September 27-28 with the release of her new book, 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week. For Character Day, she is encouraging everyone to take the day off from their screens, following the Jewish tradition of Shabbat and using it to find more time, connection and well-being.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to get your family to participate in a weekly Tech Shabbat.

We all have something we’d like to improve about ourselves, and this is the month to do it! September is Self-Improvement Month and that inspired Live Happy Now host Paula Felps and Live Happy editor Chris Libby to dig into the Live Happy Now archives and find their seven favorite podcasts for improving your life. Their seven tips are:

1. Embrace something you’re not good at.

We’ve all heard that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But today’s guest actually wrote the book on how to make that lemonade.

Zack Friedman is the CEO and founder of Make Lemonade, a personal finance company that empowers individuals to live a better financial life. His new book, The Lemonade Life: How to Fuel Success, Create Happiness and Conquer Anything, looks at the five internal switches that we can learn to flip to find our purpose, maximize our potential, and—you got it—be happier.

He talks with us about those switches, how we can flip them and what it will do for us.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The difference between The Lemon Life and the Lemonade Life.

You’ve heard the old saying, “Kill them with kindness” – but what if the opposite was true? Kelli Harding, MD, MPH, is assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and author of the new book, The Rabbit Effect: Live Longer, Happier and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness. Her book provides fascinating evidence of how kindness, compassion and human connection affect the body in profound ways—and how they can improve both our physical and mental health.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Our day-to-day social environment is key to our health and extends far beyond the doctor’s visits.

While we don’t think much about them, our brainwaves are always busy—and they play a huge role in our well-being. When brainwaves get out of balance, it affects our sleep, our health and our relationships. Dr. Patrick Porter joins us this week to talk about how brainwaves influence our happiness and tells us some of the ways we can help keep them balanced.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How connecting with nature (grounding) can help you find balance.

It’s a brand-new season of Live Happy Now, and what better way to kick it off than to sit down with Live Happy CEO Deborah Heisz and talk about what’s new in the world of positive psychology? Deborah recently returned from the International Positive Psychology Association’s Sixth World Congress in Australia. In this episode, she talks with host Paula Felps about how positive psychology is changing – and how the way the world embraces it is changing, too.

If you’re a regular listener of Live Happy Now, you already know that we’re big fans of nature. While we talk a lot about the value of getting out in nature, this week’s guest is all about bringing nature inside.

Summer Rayne Oakes is an environmental scientist and sustainability expert who focuses on health and wellness. Her YouTube channel and website are is designed to help people who live in the city become more attuned to nature, and her new book, How to Make Your Plant Love You, looks at how to bring nature inside for greater happiness and well-being. This week, Summer talks about what houseplants do for our well-being and how we can live in nature…even when we’re indoors. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The physical, emotional and mental benefits of taking care of plants indoors.