Welcome to episode 238 of Live Happy Now.

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, thanking you for joining us today.

Like many people, today's guest was concerned by the growing anxiety and restlessness that we're experiencing as a society.

And what he's done about it truly has the power to change lives around the world.

After leaving a successful career in the finance industry, Peter Montoya founded Thrive Union,

an organization whose mission is to help people go from loneliness and isolation to purposeful

belonging. His free online videos provide a live school to teach the things we need to know

to have a thriving, happier life.

Let's hear what Peter has to say about how this all came about and how each of us can benefit from it.

Peter, welcome to this episode of Live Happy Now.

Thank you, Paula.

I'm thrilled to be here.

Well, I think our listeners are going to love hearing what you have to talk about because it's something that is very necessary and it's something we're not seeing a lot of.

And I guess to, now we've built that up, you know, you talk about Thrive Union as being this real world community and it's a life school.

So to set this all up, can you tell us what that means?

First of all, I think that it's pretty widely known that we are suffering from epidemic

levels of both anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

And loneliness may be the underlying cause for much of our anxiety and depression.

This loneliness is not only affecting us individually where we're feeling lives of less fulfillment

and meaning of less connection, but also I think it's hurting us at a macro level as well,

whereas we as a country are having more and more difficulty connecting with one another,

talking about problems, and most importantly, solving problems that affect us both locally

...