Transcript - The Power of Connection With Deborah K. Heisz and Karen Guggenheim

Written by : Transcript – The Power of Connection With Deborah K. Heisz and Karen Guggenheim • February 25, 2025

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: The Power of Connection With Deborah K. Heisz and Karen Guggenheim

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 508 of Live Happy Now. This week, as we move toward our happiness month, we’re bringing you what you might call a happiness double-header. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and today I’m joined by two influencers of the Global Happiness Movement. First up, I’m talking with Deborah Heisz, co-founder of Live Happy, as she tells us what to expect from this year’s celebration leading up to the International Day of Happiness on March 20th.

Then you’ll meet Karen Guggenheim, founder of the World Happiness Summit, and hear how her journey to happiness is rooted in unhappiness and loss, and how that led her to launch an initiative that is changing lives around the globe. And we’ll tell you how you can join her in Miami in March to further your own happiness journey. Let’s have a listen.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:50] PF: Well, Deb, welcome back to Live Happy Now.

[0:00:54] DH: I’m excited to be here, Paula, and we get to talk about really my favorite time of the year on this episode.

[0:01:00] PF: I know. We talk about it, it’s like our Christmas. But it is our happiness month. I know we talk about this every year. But, heck, people talk about Christmas and Halloween every year too. And this is way more important in my mind. Remind our listeners what the Happiness Month is and how we celebrate it.

[0:01:17] DH: Certainly. We had this day, which is March 20th, which is called the International Day of Happiness, and that was established in 2012 by the United Nations. And ever since we started, coincidentally, also in 2012, we have been celebrating happy acts in the month of March. And the reason that we do that is because we want to remind everybody that they personally can do things to make the world a happier place. They can take personal responsibility. They can do very small things to make their own home life, and community, workplace, whatever it is happier, simply by putting a lot of what we call happy acts, that’s happy A-C-T-S, that kind of acts into practice.

They can do things like remind themselves to say thank you to people, right? A thank you note. The old standby, buy the person behind you a cup of coffee in line. There’s all sorts of things that we can do that we don’t always realize make a difference. And that’s what Happiness Month is about. It’s about getting people to recognize that they personally can make a difference in world happiness by making a difference in their own little universe.

[0:02:29] PF: That’s an awesome way of summing it up. And there’s also a publication that gets dropped on March 20th every year that closely aligns with us. Can you talk about the World Happiness Report?

[0:02:40] DH: Yeah, the World Happiness Report, coincidentally, started about the same time we did. It’s a report that takes a look at well-being. We’re talking about happiness. What we really mean is personal well-being. How do people feel about themselves and the world around them? It’s not happiness per se, it’s actually the well-being of individuals. But the World Happiness Report actually translates that and provides a lot of research and data and information about how we’re doing as a community in happiness. But the World Happiness Report really is taking a look at what research, what data, the commissioned studies to look at what interactions make people happier, where people’s happiness level is, their evaluation of their own personal well-being. And it’s a really interesting piece of data that we get every March 20th. And I’m looking forward to it this year as well.

[0:03:35] PF: Yeah, one thing that is so interesting most people, most media outlets take away, here’s the ranking of the happiest countries. And that’s really what they focus on. And we do too. We write a story about that and talk about it. But there’s so much more to this report in terms of rich research about different facets of happiness and well-being and how we’re doing globally. And there’s so much to take away from it that I really encourage people to explore that and download it. And it’s not a sciency as you might think. It’s science-based, but it’s written very excessively so that people can dig in. I think it can really make a difference if people would take a look at that.

[0:04:13] DH: I do too. And I see all of the information and I’ve done enough interviews that right after it comes out, everybody always asks me the same question, “Well, why do you think the United States is where it is?” Well, the ranking is really not as important as the what. What is driving well-being in our countries? What is driving well-being in our communities? What is hurting well-being in our communities? And the report contains a lot of information on that.

Paula, as you said, it is not only overly-scientific. An absolute layman can read this and understand it, but it is filled with rich data and information about how they came to the conclusions that they came to. Interestingly, it kind of guides the research that’s being done on how to create a more satisfying, a more happy society.

[0:05:02] PF: And we were very fortunate this year. We chose connection as our theme for our Happiness Month. And as it turns out, some of the discoveries being made and that are going to be released with the World Happiness Report are also about connection. Can you talk about why, from our standpoint, we decided that Live Happy should have that theme of connection?

[0:05:22] DH: One of the reasons we chose connection really came out of last year’s World Happiness Report. There’s a lot on loneliness and loneliness being a driver in, frankly, life dissatisfaction, leading to depression. We see a lot about this, about how our digital age has created almost a silo where people can communicate without building connection. In other words, they’re talking to people all day long on their – whether it’s Snapchat, or Facebook, or their computer screen at work, but they aren’t truly connecting with people. And this is something that is becoming endemic in the world. Looking at loneliness, the natural outcropping of that was, “How do we combat loneliness?” Well, we combat loneliness with connection. And so that became the theme for this year’s Happy Acts.

[0:06:16] PF: And we have so many new happy acts that we have built around that theme. And what is it that you hope that people get by taking these simple steps that connect them with other people? Because in one sense, you can say, “Well, how does just a month of doing that change the world?” But it can make these incremental changes. What is your vision as people participate in this and what do you hope they take away from it?

[0:06:39] DH: I think one of the important things to remember is that all the happiness research, early happiness, later happiness research, all of it comes down to the number one thing that when they talk to people at the end of their life, when they evaluate people in the middle of their life, the number one thing that you can generally look at as a barometer for how happy an individual is, is how much connection. How valuable are their relationships with other people? It always comes down to other people help us – connecting to other people helps us live a more fulfilling, a more satisfying, a more cohesive life. Connection, really, when it comes down to it is everything.

One of the studies that Shawn Achor quotes in his book, The Happiness Advantage, which I’ve always referred to in the back of my mind is they took a survey of people that were near the end of their life and they evaluated their happiness. And the one thing they found about how healthy you were, how rich you were, what accomplishments or achievements you had in life, people evaluated their happiness by the richness and the fulfillment of their relationships. The stronger relationships people had, the happier they were. None of the rest of it really made a difference if you didn’t have those connections in life.

What we’re hoping for in our happy acts this year is that everyone who participates with us does those happy acts and does those little outreaches and takes effort to improve the connection in their own life. Because even though it’s only 30 days, if you think about this, it’s 30 days to create a habit. Creating that habit of connecting, creating that outreach, making those small connections can lead to bigger, more significant relationships. Because there’s so many people sitting at home wondering why their phone doesn’t ring and not picking up their phone and calling somebody else, right?

When you do those happy acts, when you take the initiative to bring that connection into your own life, you’re helping your overall well-being and you’re helping the people you’re connecting with their overall well-being. I think that’s step one. But step two is part of connecting is understanding that people are different and understanding that that’s okay.

We have so much going on in the world right now that people are isolating themselves and not associating with people who think differently than they do. I think by reaching out and building connection with people regardless of whether they think exactly like you do or not will benefit the world overall. Because the first thing to getting over divisiveness is understanding. Not agreeing, but understanding. And I think that there’s a lot of connections that need to be made right now in the world to bring the world to a place where we can move forward to connectedness. But first, we have to get through that understanding step. And there’s a big part of connection that drives that. I know that’s a lot for a month. I’m not expecting to change the entire world in a month, but I think we can all work towards changing our own little universe that that will go a long way towards driving happiness in the world.

[0:09:46] PF: That’s great. And now this year, we started this last year with the digital wall. We’ve always had these fantastic live physical walls that people post their happy acts on, and now we’ve gone digital. And so do you want to talk a little bit about – that’s going to be on our website and people can find it there and participate. But do you want to talk a little bit about how having that digital wall is going to help with that connection?

[0:10:10] DH: Yes. First of all, I want to make sure that everybody understands, to get on the digital wall, to have your happy acts on the digital wall, what you want to have on the digital wall, just #happyacts and @LiveHappy or #happyacts and your post will appear on that digital wall at no cost to you. But then come to our website and take a look at what everybody else in the world is doing.

I think that by sharing, any time you can look at people that are trying to build a community – I mean, why did Facebook take off bigger than other things before? It’s because it was self-generated community involvement, right? People were getting on, and there were some other people going in, and they were getting excited and they were creating dialogue. By having the happiness wall online, it broadens our reach and it broadens our community to include a much larger group than we would putting up a wall on the beach. Although, if you wanna put up a happiness wall to celebrate Happiness Day, I encourage you to do so in your home, your school, your work. Get people to start thinking about what they wanna do for the International Day of Happiness. Get them thinking about connection. All great. Our website also has information on how to post your own happiness wall. I want to encourage everybody to do that.

But the digital wall brings it all together. So you can kind of see what everybody in every market that is participating, and it is a worldwide market, is doing. And it kind of brings that connection and that reach out to somebody and really feel something when we can go online and say, “Wow, everybody is doing this all at once.” It’s a great connection moment when you look at that wall. And you can see that everybody out there is doing good in the world.

Because one of the things that I find most interesting is while our brains gravitate towards the negative when we watch the news, that’s why we have the line, “If it bleeds, it leads.” People want the most salacious – our brains want to see the most salacious things going on so we can say, “Well, at least that’s not happening to me.” But the reality is when we fill our minds with good stuff, you go to our wall and you see all the good stuff that’s happening in the world, we know that that frames our mindset, build better connections with people in our own lives.

If we walk around with a framework of everything’s a threat, it’s hard to build connection. But by going and seeing what other people in the world are doing, it’s gonna make you more comfortable to do and things that you need to do to build connections in your own life. And here’s the deal, guys. All we want you to do is be part of making the world a happier place. And the more people we have doing that, the bigger it is for everybody. I’m really excited about it.

[0:12:43] PF: And we’ll be publishing a lot of content in our newsletter that comes out every week, reminding people how they can participate, giving them hints for that week’s happy acts. And there’s all kinds of bonus material that we’ll be releasing through the newsletter. And as we gear up and we’re getting ready to start this month, what do you most hope that people take away from participating this year?

[0:13:05] DH: I hope that people take away that they personally can do something. I also hope that they really take away the idea that building community and building connection is something that doesn’t just happen. Something that we actually have to take action to make it happen. And I think that if we can do these happy acts that lead to better community, it’s just going to make you feel better. I don’t mean you, Paula. I mean the person who’s doing it feel better. And it’s really going to help people get out of their funk. It really does. When you’re doing something positive in the world, it really does help you feel like you can make a difference. I hope people get out of this that they personally can make a difference.

[0:13:51] PF: That was Deborah Heisz talking about Happiness Month. We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now right after this.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:14:03] PF: And now we’re going to hear from Karen Guggenheim, founder of the World Happiness Summit, also known as WOHASU. Karen, welcome back to Live Happy Now.

[0:14:13] KG: I am so happy to be with you today. It’s a joy knowing that we were going to speak. It’s the highlight of my day. Thank you.

[0:14:19] PF: That’s awesome. And tell us what the World Happiness Summit, or as we know it, WOHASU. Tell us what it is.

[0:14:26] KG: The World Happiness Summit is many things. I can describe to you what they are because it’s very hard to capture the energy that goes on into an event like this. But the gist is that we gather the world’s leading experts behind the science of happiness and well-being and practitioners who are doing it in education, in policy, in workplaces. We put them all together and we bring in a global audience from over 65 countries and 45 US states to come and learn about the science and the practice of creating a happier, healthier, more resilient life for yourself and for the collective.

Now, the secret sauce is the community. It’s the magic. I’ve heard that for many people that say that the summit is magical. And the most recent description was from Dr. Arthur Brooks. He said it was the Super Bowl of Happiness.

[0:15:26] PF: I love that. That is fantastic. And it does sum it up. Because I remember going to it when you first had it in Miami and it was unlike – it’s not like a conference. It’s unlike any event that I’ve attended. And so talk about how and why you started this. We will get into what all you offer, but you have such an interesting story about how and why you started this.

[0:15:53] KG: Well, my happiness journey starts in unhappiness. It’s not maybe on traditional. But then again, a lot of us have to work on our happiness. So maybe there’s something in that. And pain is a great catalyst for change. 11 years ago, my husband caught a cold, which developed into a flu. And just took him to the hospital to get a nebulizer or something like that and they decided to keep him overnight. And over five days, he was gone. In five days, he was gone.

And when that happened, I had been married half my life. He was not only my spouse but he was my best friend. And that’s really hard because there is a spouse component, but the best friend, the person who knew you, the person who valued your idiosyncrasies and your imperfections. And when that person was gone, at first, I didn’t want to live. I wanted to shut down to life. But then I remembered I had children. And because of my children, I chose to live.

And in that moment, I said, “How do I eat that elephant? Right? How do I do it.” And then I thought, “Okay, I have to live happy. I have to find happiness. Because, otherwise, I’m not going to make it.” And that was before I knew about the science of happiness and well-being and all the research. My undergraduate degree is in traditional psychology, and it was before Seligman made his famous speech when he was president of the American Psychological Association in 1998 to challenge psychologists to study what happens to the brain and everything else when you’re thriving and when you’re flourishing.

And so I just intuitively thought I have to be happy. And I know that for me to get there, I have to experience a lot of pain and a lot of unhappiness. And what do I control from this uncontrollable event? Well, I control meaning. I control meaning and I can create purpose. And that’s what I did four months after he died. I was getting an MBA at Georgetown University. And throughout the year and a half of my MBA, I accidentally became happy again.

And then I learned that there was a science, and frameworks, and evidence about these principles that I was strong in or that I invested my time and energy in relationships. I took care of my physical body. I was listening to music every day. And not waiting to want to listen to music, but listening to music. So that also elevated my mood. I was saying yes to people who, if it was like, “Let’s go to lunch or let’s go to dinner.” Didn’t want to go. Did not want to go, but went.

And this is really important because I’m not talking about toxic positivity, but I am talking about what Paul Dolan talks about, which is designing happiness, Happiness by Design. He has a book on that as a matter of fact. And so I thought that you’re not born a marathon runner. You’re born whoever you are. And you got to buy those shoes, and those sneakers, and those shorts. And you’ll have to run four steps. And first, you have to make the decision that you want to run that marathon, right? Then you have a whole program.

And so when I found out about the science and equated the different things that I had done in my life, including my spirituality as well, I thought that there are probably a lot of people that don’t know about this. And we created WOHASU in 2016. And the World Happiness Summit happened in March, 2017, very quickly. And from there, I’ve been very diligent to keep it very close to the science, the science and practice, because we need scientists and we need practitioners.

[0:19:46] PF: That’s so incredibly important, because we as humans think, “Well, I want to be happy. And why am I not happy?” And not understanding that there is a science. As you said, there is a framework that can get us to there because we think it’s something either we have or we don’t have. Or something is going to make us happy and then we get surprised when, down the road, it doesn’t make us happy. I love the fact that you’ve just stuck so close to the science and really giving people these different practices. Because it’s like going to a buffet table, not everything is going to appeal to you.

[0:20:21] KG: Exactly.

[0:20:22] PF: But when you find out one thing, it’s like, “Okay, this is what works for me.”

[0:20:26] KG: Exactly. You nailed it. We make sure that the chefs are the best. The food is fresh. And then if you want to eat tofu, you eat tofu. If you want to go for chocolate cake. It depends on where you are in your life and what’s going to serve you. What is really interesting is that the people who come to the summit, many will be happiness seekers, some enthusiasts, other people will be depressed. We’ve had suicidal, et cetera. There’s a range.

And whether you go to find out or to explore your individual happiness, everybody leaves with wanting to share it with other people, everyone. Everybody wants to teach it, talk about it, different languages, courses. They create foundations, certifications, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that’s something that’s really exciting because the summit is also a place of innovation. The speakers will launch a new book or a new program. Tal Ben-Shahar launched his master’s in happiness studies at the summit. And this year, we’re having new launches as well in the 2025 summit.

And so it’s really a place where you learn these skills that you’re upskilling for your life, whether it’s personal, professional. Because, newsflash, you carry the same person with you at work, you know? It’s not like you say, “Okay, emotions, okay, worries, just wait in the parking lot.” And I think that that’s really important. And COVID has really kind of shortened that space because many of us work from home and all of us work for a period of time from home. But so many people have had that experience. And I think that it helped make the connection that we’re the same people in both places, which is exciting because we can talk about integration. We can talk about things that will help us flourish not only as individual, but as systems, which is very important for the communities and the challenges that we’re facing today.

[0:22:30] PF: And I know the conference is looking at how well-being is shaping the future of work. But you’ve got a couple of other themes that you have. Can you talk about those?

[0:22:39] KG: The overarching theme is hope and community. Hope because we’re feeling really hopeless. A lot of us are. And so the wonderful thing about hope is that you can learn it. We’re going to have Dr. Dan Tomasulo talk about learn hopefulness. He’s out of Columbia University. And he’s gonna teach us how to do that. We’re gonna have Dr. Sue Varma who wrote a book Practical Optimism. She’s gonna be in conversation on the live recording with Laurie Lori Santos of her podcast, The Happiness Lab. So she did that last year in the summit. She’s gonna do it again this year.

And so we’re going to give you tools so that you can increase hope in your life, right? Again, not toxic positivity, but largely most of us in the world, or at least in the Western world, are mostly okay. And we are feeling under fire and we’re feeling like the future, especially our young people, right? They’re very, very, very hurt and negative about the future, whether it’s environmental angst, whether it’s social media, whether it’s purpose. I think we have a purpose problem actually with our kids and we have a connection problem with their kids.

The other theme is community. I had the honor of having Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former Surgeon General of the United States, at our summit last year. And I was on a fireside chat with him and he was sharing on how we have a loneliness pandemic. And so the social cost of that. I think he equated it that isolation is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That’s the physical impact of that. And it’s largely our youth. We’re 63rd in the world, according to the World Happiness Report in happiness when you look at the youth.

[0:24:34] PF: We’re the only country too that our youth are less happy than our older people. Usually, there’s the U-shape. It’s like your youth are happy.

[0:24:41] KG: Yes, it’s not natural. It’s not natural. Right.

[0:24:45] PF: And so it is a huge issue.

[0:24:48] KG: Yes. And that’s one of the reasons we came back to the United States this year, by the way. Because last year, we were in London. A year before, we were in Italy. And we came back because of that unnatural, okay, shape of the curve and that distribution. We thought, “We are US-based and our society is struggling, our kids are struggling.” And it’s so important to bring this science to as many people as possible around the world, but in particular to this specific country that is having a non-natural life happiness curve.

[0:25:24] PF: You’ve done this a few times. Everyone’s a success. What is it you most hope to see happen for the 2025 World Happiness Summit?

[0:25:32] KG: I would love to see a rebirth of hope, and personal empowerment, and community building for something that is positive, kind, heartful, good. And that it doesn’t matter what your differences are. That we can come together and celebrate our shared humanity and explore what are the answers that can create more win-win scenarios so that we can all thrive. And I think that’s really important.

[0:26:11] PF: That’s an incredible mission. And I know you released your book, Cultivating Happiness. Was it in November that that came out?

[0:26:17] KG: Yes, in the U.S. in November. In the U.K. was last March. And in Italy, it was in Italian in 2023. Spanish also in November, in the U.S. and also in Latin America. And this year will be in Portuguese and in Turkish. And it is about post-traumatic growth. That’s something that is also really important to have an awareness that that happens because we hear a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder but we don’t hear that much about post-traumatic growth. And that’s what happened with me. And I also talk about that on my TEDx Talk, The Bridge to Happiness. And it’s about the trauma is there. The pain is there. You don’t bypass it. You don’t get to go around that. But you do grow. You can grow from the trauma. And it is important to know that it happens. Because if you know that it happens, you are giving yourself a greater likelihood of growing from it.

And so it enhanced my relationships. It opened my eyes to new opportunities. It made me realize that I was stronger than I thought that I was. I would have never thought that I would be a social entrepreneur. It’s interesting the dualities of life. I never thought I’d be a widow. Like I’ve never thought that that would ever, ever – it’s like not in my vocabulary. And I’m an entrepreneur and I’m a movement builder. Never thought that would happen either. It didn’t even enter my psyche. But that was because of the growth.

[0:27:51] PF: That’s incredible. You’re so inspiring. You’ve got an amazing story that inspires other people, lets us know we can keep going. And what you’re doing with the conference is just absolutely life-changing. And I’m so excited to share it with our listeners. We’re going to tell them how they can find it, how they can sign up. I believe you’re generous enough to give us a discount code that we’re going to include for them. And I’m excited to be there and see you. And thank you again for coming on the show and for all the amazing things that you are doing.

[0:28:21] KG: Absolutely. And thank you to all your listeners. We hope that you will join us in Miami. Actually, we’re going to be in Miami Beach at the New World Center. It’s very, very beautiful. And we’re going to celebrate. We’re going to celebrate our shared humanity and our happiness. I hope to see you all there.

[0:28:41] PF: That was Karen Guggenheim talking about this year’s World Happiness Summit. If you’d like to learn more about Karen, follow her on social media, discover her book Cultivating Happiness, or learn more about WOHASU and snag a discount code to attend, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. And while you’re there, be sure to sign up for our all-new Live Happy newsletter. We’ve expanded to include more of the latest research on happiness, uplifting stories, our new “Look for the Good” word search puzzle, book recommendations from positive psychology experts and, of course, our happy song of the week.

That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

What to expect from Live Happy’s #HappyActs campaign this year.
How Karen’s journey to happiness is rooted in unhappiness and loss — and how that led her to launch an initiative that is changing lives around the globe.
How to be part of WOHASU this year.

Discover Karen’s book, Cultivating Happiness: Overcome trauma and positively transform your life

Discover Deborah’s book, Live Happy: Ten Practices for Choosing Joy

Follow along with the transcript.

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Instagram: @wohasu
Twitter: @livehappy

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