Live Happy Now

If you’ve ever wished there was a magic way to make anxiety disappear, this week’s guest has the next best thing! Brad Yates is an expert in emotional freedom tapping, also known as EFT or tapping. This practice combines the principles of acupuncture and positive psychology to help people overcome fears, relieve stress, and enjoy greater well-being. In this episode, Brad — author of the best-selli...

Ten years ago, the happiness movement was just beginning to gain a global presence – and that paved the way for the birth of a company called Live Happy. This week, host Paula Felps talks with Deborah Heisz, CEO and co-founder of Live Happy LLC, to look back on 10 years of sharing happiness. Deb explains how her work in personal development led to discovering positive psychology and how that opene...

Anxiety is so pervasive today that more than 40 million adults in the U.S. are living with it. This week’s guest, Dr. Jud Brewer, offers new insights into this growing problem and provides simple steps to help end the cycle of constant worrying.  As New York Times best-selling author and director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, Dr. Jud released the book Unwindi...

Creative arts such as painting, dancing, acting, and singing can play a powerful role in self-care and mental health, but they’re often overlooked – especially in rural communities. This week, host Paula Felps sits down Happy Activist Becca Finley, founder of This is Noteworthy, a nonprofit designed to help creatives explore their artistic gifts and discover what it can do for them and the communi...

Animals play an important role in our happiness, and with this new podcast from Live Happy, you’re going to learn why they’re so good for us and how to nurture our relationships with them. Each month, therapist and pet loss expert Brittany Derrenbacher will sit down with a new guest to explore some of the many ways we benefit from our relationships with animals. In this inaugural episode, she’s jo...

We’ve become more comfortable with talking openly about mental health, but we’re still reluctant to talk about mental illness. This week’s guest knows first-hand the challenges of mental illness and why it’s so important to talk about it. Gabe Howard is an author, speaker, and host of the Inside Mental Health podcast. After being committed to a psychiatric hospital in 2003, Gabe was diagnosed with...

It’s a common belief that we must live with ailments and declining well-being as we age. But this week’s guest, Dr. Ellen J. Langer, has decades of research that tells a different story. Known as the mother of mindfulness, Ellen is highly regarded as one of America’s most influential psychologists. Her new book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, shows how our thoughts and persp...

Why More Money Doesn’t Equal More Happiness With Tal Ben-Shahar We’ve all heard that money can’t buy happiness, and new research is telling us why. This week, host Paula Felps talks with author and lecturer Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, co-founder of The Happiness Studies Academy and creator of the Master’s Degree in Happiness Studies at Centenary University. Tal talks about recent findings that show how ou...

We are now back in school, and this week’s guest is going to be everyone’s favorite science teacher! In this episode, host Paula Felps talks with Marsha Goodman, a cognitive neuroscientist turned popular children’s singer, songwriter and recording artist who performs under the name Marsha and the Positrons. As the name implies, her music is imbued with positivity and teaches listeners about things...

Doing good for others is good for us! This week, we’re talking with Happy Activist Nancy Giammarco, a musician who rediscovered her love of art during the pandemic. She started enhancing children’s simple drawings for fun, which led to the creation of The Joanne Project , which she named after her late mother. Now, she focuses on bringing joy to children by turning simple drawings into works of ar...

The International Positive Psychology Association held its semi-annual World Congress in July. Over the next several weeks, Live Happy Now host Paula Felps is talking with thought leaders about some of the main themes that emerged during this year’s event and what takeaways we can borrow to improve our well-being. This week, Andrea Goeglein addresses some of the growing concerns about loneliness a...

Loneliness is a tremendous problem in today’s world, and solving it begins with understanding the root cause of it. In this episode, author and educator Dr. Randall Hansen sits down with host Paula Felps to talk about why loneliness has become an epidemic, what it’s doing to us, and what we can do about it.   In this episode, you’ll learn: Why it truly “takes a village” to combat loneliness. How t...

It’s the start of a brand-new season for Live Happy Now and we’ve added some things to make your life happier! In this episode, Live Happy CEO and co-founder Deborah Heisz and host Paula Felps share some of the new ways we’re working to deliver happiness to you every day.  In this episode, you'll learn: What to expect from our new pet podcast, Happiness Unleashed with Brittany Derrenbacher. How to...

It’s time to go back to school, and for some kids — and their parents — that means a whole lot of stress. This week, host Paula Felps talks with Dr Laura Phillips, the Senior Director and a Senior Neuropsychologist in the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Institute. Laura specializes in working with children who have learning disorders, mood disorders and anxiety, among other thing...

Doing good for others is good for us! With our new Happy Activist series, we’re spotlighting ordinary people who are changing the world around them just by doing good. Every few weeks we’ll introduce you to a new Happy Activist, and for this episode, host Paula Felps talks with Dawn McMullan, who found her calling when she met a woman who had fled the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Dawn learned...

Can picking up a pen change your life? This week’s guest says it can! Beth Kempton has been writing nearly her entire life, and she’s learned the value of a daily writing practice. Her latest book, The Way of the Fearless Writer , looks at the many ways writing can help clarify our goals, reconnect us with our dreams, and teach us to listen to our inner voice. In this episode, she explains how bec...

We are now officially in the middle of summer, and that means it’s time to take it a little bit easier and take time for ourselves. So this week, host Paula Felps sits down with Live Happy brand marketing manager Casey Johnson to look at some of their favorite episodes offering great advice on how to have a happier summer. They revisit a few of their faves and tell us why these episodes are perfec...

We know that the mind and body are connected, but how do we use that knowledge to create our best life? This week, host Paula Felps is talking with Dr Greg Hammer, a Stanford University School of Medicine professor, physician, and a mindfulness expert who developed the four-step GAIN method of mindfulness. As he explains in his book, GAIN without Pain, this is an acronym for Gratitude, Acceptance,...

We know that listening to music can help heal our hearts, but what can it do for the songwriter? In this episode, host Paula Felps talks with Morgan James, a singer and songwriter who has appeared on Broadway stages and with symphony orchestras in addition to writing and recording her own music. While working on her latest album, she and Doug Wamble — her husband and cowriter —were grappling with...

As commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, Captain Brett Crozier made a choice during the pandemic to take a stand to protect his crew. His actions quickly led to his dismissal, but also were effective in providing the protection he was looking for. In this episode, he talks about his new book, Surf When You Can: Lessons in Life, Loyalty, and Leadership from a Maverick N...

June is filled with holidays encouraging us to celebrate our pets. In addition to being Adopt a Cat Month and National Microchip Month, it is National Foster a Pet Month. To learn more about how fostering pets can improve your physical and mental well-being, host Paula Felps sits down with Brittany Derrenbacher, a clinical mental health counselor and founder of Luna Bells Moonbows Special Needs Re...

It’s National Garden Week, so it is the perfect time to talk about what plants and digging in the dirt can do for you. This week’s guest is Joeleen David, a master gardener and owner of Wine Cottage Gardens near Nashville, and she’s here to talk about how gardening is much more than growing food or flowers; it’s also a natural way to improve mental health. In this episode, you’ll learn: How garden...

We all know vacations are fun, but did you know how good they are for you? This week’s guest is Dr. Andrew Stevenson, a social anthropologist, filmmaker and senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Andrew’s new book, The Psychology of Travel, looks at what travel can do for us and how we can approach it differently to get the most out of it.   In this episode, you’ll le...

All of us procrastinate once in a while, but chronic procrastination creates stress — for ourselves and those around us — and damages our well-being. This week, host Paula Felps sits down with coach, author, and speaker Sherri Fisher to learn more about how procrastination affects us and what we can do about it. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why procrastination isn’t just a time management proble...

Recording artist gnash has made mental health a central part of his music, delivering messages through music that might be difficult to talk about in conversation. As we observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May, it’s the perfect time to talk to gnash about his latest album, The Art of Letting Go, which is a journey through the tumultuous emotions brought on by the pandemic. In this episode, yo...