Our Story

It began with a question.

Sitting across the kitchen table, my teenager whispered, "I want to be happy, but I don't know how." As the struggles at school and at home intensified, signs of depression became more evident. I didn't know what to do. It rocked me to the core; I ached for a way to help.

I asked myself, "Where were the resources? How many more families were suffering? And why weren't we talking about this?"

I began searching and discovered a growing body of research showing that many of the qualities and capacities that support wellbeing can be cultivated through practice.

But this information wasn't always easy to find, understand, or apply to daily life. What if we could make these insights easier to understand, accessible to more people, and genuinely useful in everyday life?

That question led me to found Project Happiness in 2007.

What began as a deeply personal search for answers grew into a documentary, books, educational programs, and practical resources shared with young people, families, educators, and communities.

The work has evolved, but the belief at its heart remains the same:

Happiness can be learned, practiced, and shared.

Then, years later, the questions grew deeper.

As I sat beside my mother near the end of her life, I was troubled by the painful feeling that she had not known as much happiness or peace as I had wished for her.

Was that inevitable as we get older? I wondered whether the same might one day be true for me, or for others I loved.

Her death brought a deeper set of questions into focus:

How do we live and love fully?

How do we make the most of the time we have?

How do we become more fully alive?

Those questions changed how I thought about happiness.

It’s clearly not about feeling positive all the time or escaping the difficult parts of life. There had to be room for uncertainty, grief, and the difficult parts of being human. I became more interested in how we might meet life as it comes, with the resilience to face hard things, the compassion to stay connected, and the openness to recognize what still brings us alive.

And I began to wonder about something else. What capacities might we have within us that we've barely begun to explore?

What could happen if more of us discovered what lights us up, and found ways to put that energy into the world?

Because what we strengthen within ourselves doesn't stop with us. It shows up in the way we listen, love, encourage, and respond. Sometimes, in the smallest moments, we have a chance to make someone else's day, or life, a little better.

And imagine what becomes possible when more of us bring that same care and courage into our families, classrooms, workplaces, and communities. This is part of the larger intention behind Project Happiness: to strengthen ourselves, strengthen one another, and together help create a better world.

Today, Project Happiness continues to turn the science of wellbeing into practical tools for everyday life. Through the Seven Pathways, the Daily Vitamin for the Soul, Discover Your Archetype, and our growing resources for Groups and Communities, we offer different ways to explore what strengthens us, what enlivens us, and what we might bring into the world.

Looking back, I never could have imagined where that first question at the kitchen table would lead.

The questions have changed over the years, and so have I.

But my hope remains much the same: that more of us can discover the resources within ourselves to meet life's challenges, create a meaningful life, and leave room for wondrous possibilities we cannot yet even imagine.

I'm grateful you're here, and I hope you'll find something in this work that speaks to your own adventure of being human.