Welcome to episode 213 of Live Happy Now.

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

What would you do if you had spent your entire life building the career of your dreams,

but suddenly realized you'd forgotten to build the life of your dreams?

That's exactly what happened to Sherry Salada, executive producer of the Oprah Winfrey

show and co-president of Harpo Studios and the Oprah Winfrey Network. In her new book, The Beautiful

Know and Other Tales of Trial, Transcendence, and Transformation, Sherry explains how she left that

high-power career and used what she'd learned there as a springboard to personal

reinvention. She sat down and talked with us about how she found the courage to make this

incredible transformation and how every one of us has the power to reinvent ourselves.

Well, Sherry, welcome to live happy now. We're really excited to have you on the show.

I'm thrilled to be here. This is my favorite thing to talk

about happiness. Well, see, and that's great because that's pretty much all we talk about. So

it's a good fit. So I was really, I loved when I first found out about your book in this fabulous

Wall Street Journal article. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've got to read this book. And I was not wrong

in my instincts on that one. This book is so inspirational and it really combines humor and wisdom

and it delivers it with such warmth. And I wanted to know, first of all, what made you decide to go

ahead and write all this? Yeah. Is it ever really like a decision in a moment?

You know, that is such an interesting thing, and it feels like forever long ago. I was having a

conversation with a woman who ended up becoming my publisher, Karen Rinaldi, at Harper Wave.

And she was just like, she was just simpatico. Like we were talking about women in the

middle of life and that concept of reinvention and reimagination and like kind of redefining

...