Welcome to episode 273 of Live Happy Now. This is Paula Phelps thanking you for joining us again this week.

In recent years, we've learned a lot about the profound transformative effect that empathy can have on us.

This week's guest has been on a mission for more than a decade to help bring those powerful

skills to children.

Lisa Hezlov is founder of Children Mending Hearts, an organization that combats bullying and

intolerance by inspiring empathy in children.

She uses art and other programs to do this, and her Los Angeles-based organization has now grown into a national

movement. She's here to tell us a little more about it. Lisa, thank you for coming on, Live Happy Now.

Thank you so much for having me. What you're doing is really timely, and I know I've heard so much about the topic of empathy and how as adults were lacking it.

So I wonder what it is that made you interested in exploring the topic of empathy within children.

I could probably give you 100 answers, but I really truly, upon reflection, and if I'm being brutally honest, I was bullied very badly as a child.

And I think that those memories stuck with me. But as I started to grow up, I didn't want

them to stick with me in a negative way. I wanted them to stick with me in a way that I could exact change.

And I could teach other children how to be empathetic global citizens and how not to bully.

And there were other choices. And so it was a personal decision and born out of my own childhood.

That's real.

I love the fact that, yeah, you make that story come full circle for you.

But what is it that made you choose empathy as your path?

Because so oftentimes when we hear about bullying, we try to educate the children.

You know, we try to teach them what you can and can't say. So how did

empathy become the vehicle for all of this? Because if I felt like we taught children how to be

empathetic citizens, then they would be less likely to bully. They would have compassion for

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