Every journey to happiness begins and ends a little differently, but how does a tragic loss turn into a mission for happiness?

Courage is so important. You have to be courageous to do what people don't expect you to do in these situations.

You know, to disrupt in a positive way, even in the face of aggression or in the face of pain, that you

decide to do something that is positive.

Hello, this is Jeff Sanders, and welcome back to another episode of the Live Happy Now podcast.

The World Happiness Summit, or Wahasu, returns to Miami for its second year, March 16th to the 18th,

bringing three days of films, meditation, music, dance, and live guest speakers to deliver

its message of how to build sustainable happiness. As founder and chief operating officer,

Karen Guggenheim is committed to helping others choose happiness.

While her mission is one of building a more joyous, enlightened world, her journey to happiness

actually was born from a very tragic event.

Live Happy Science Editor Paula Phelps talked with Karen about how her life-shattering tragedy

led to creating an event designed to change

the lives of others for the better.

I love the summit and what you're doing, but what I also find interesting is that you have

a very interesting background that I think our listeners would love to hear about.

Can you kind of tell us what path it was that you followed that led you to creating the World Happiness Summit?

Well, interestingly enough, my path to happiness was really through personal hardship and in a family tragedy.

About four and a half years ago, I lost my husband quite suddenly from the

flu. And we had been married for 21 years, and he was gone in 10 days. And so that was, as you can

imagine, an incredibly traumatic experience for my family and, you know, my children, our friends, our community, particularly because he was such an engaging, charismatic, kind, brilliant man.

And so it was one of these forces that just when they come into a room or a situation or a conversation, it's just very dynamic.

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