Tips for Living Happier
How can you live happier? In this episode of Your Superpowered Mind, host Kristin Maxwell and guest Amy Newmark give you tips for living happier. Amy is the editor-in-chief and publisher of Chicken Soup for the Soul. She is immersed in telling stories to encourage people to live their happiest lives with more purpose. The two discuss the 10 Keys to happiness, and mindset shifts to help you live to your fullest potential. Tune in today to learn more about tips for living happier!
Kristin Maxwell:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Your Superpowered Mind. I’m Kristin Maxwell. And in this show, we explore the process of transformation and give you tools and strategies that you can use to transform your own life. Today. I am excited to be talking to Amy Newmark about living happier.
Amy Newmark is a former Wall Street Analyst and Hedge Fund Manager turned bestselling author, editor-in-chief, and publisher of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. Since 2008, she’s published more than 170 of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series books. She’s also the host of the Chicken Soup for the Soul podcast and the author most recently of Your 10 Keys to Happiness: 101 Real-Life Stories that Will Show You How to Improve Your Life. Amy, welcome to Your Superpowered Mind.
Amy Newmark:
Well, thank you. I’m very excited about my superpowered mind.
Kristin Maxwell:
Yes, I know. Actually, which leads perfectly into my first question, which superpower did you uncover as the result of mastering your mind? And nobody’s mastered their mind, but you are learning more about yourself.
Amy Newmark:
I think my superpower might have partly come from being kind of oblivious because what I’ve realized as I’ve gone through many, many careers throughout my life and done all kinds of weird things is that I haven’t always known what the norm is and what you’re supposed to be able to do or not do. And so by accident, I take on challenges that I wasn’t supposed to do because I don’t realize, oh, it’s not supposed to work that way. So I just keep doing new things in new ways, but really not because I’m some kind of adventurous person but more because I was clueless as to what the norm was.
Kristin Maxwell:
That is so funny. I have never heard anybody describe anything like that. So, well, even as I mentioned in your intro, you were a finance, like in the big finance, and now you’re in this self-help area. How did that come about?
Amy Newmark:
I know it’s pretty funny because I spent my whole life being somebody who really used analytical skills and I was a consultant in the telecom industry. Then I was a Wall Street analyst covering telecommunication stocks. Then I ran a hedge fund that invested in telecom and technology stocks. Then I was on the management team of a telecom startup. Then I was on the board of directors of a bunch of telecom and technology companies. So everything was always all about finance and stock prices and Wall Street and business. But it’s kind of like you, I mean, you were an attorney and now you bring those analytical skills to the world of self-help. So what happened in my case was my husband and I were looking for something new to do and a friend of mine knew a guy who knew the founders of Chicken Soup for the Soul and knew that they wanted to sell, and this was back in 2007. So in 2008, we did one of the only leveraged buyouts done in the United States that year. Because remember that was that deep, deep, deep recession we were in.
Kristin Maxwell:
Oh yes, I do. Yes.
Amy Newmark:
And maybe not be the best idea to buy a book publishing company during a deep recession because it was a bit of a struggle for the first few years. Borders closed down, bookstores were shutting down, the amount of shelf space devoted to books was shrinking at stores. Plus people didn’t have a lot of disposable income to buy books, which are in my mind a necessity, but for some people might be considered more of a luxury. But anyway, that’s how I came to this. When we were doing the due diligence on buying Chicken Soup for the Soul, I sat down and read 100 of the old Chicken Soup for the Soul books and realized that behind my whole business, Wall Street finance persona, there was another persona which was destined to be the publisher and editor in chief of Chicken Soup for the Soul.
And now I have published, boy, about 180 books. What’s really cool is that I’ve read tens of thousands of Chicken Soup for the Soul stories. You know, these are all personal, true stories written by people about something momentous in their own lives that happen to them and they pass on their experiences, their best advice to our readers. So it’s almost like reading thousands of psychology case studies. By doing that, I now take go back to my analytical self and I say, I’ve read tens of thousands of stories where people talk about their innermost thoughts. I think I actually know what the 10 keys to happiness are because I’ve put them together over the 14 years I’ve been doing this job and that’s why I’ve published this book that has just come out Chicken Soup for the Soul: Your 10 Keys to Happiness because I wanted to share what I have learned from reading all those tens of thousands of stories.
Kristin Maxwell:
That’s so cool. That’s really fun. You would, you have probably now absorbed all of those principles. So you know what? We do have to go to a break and when we do go more deeply. What are those? What have you distilled those keys down to be? But where can people find you, in your book and the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and all of that?
Amy Newmark:
You can go to chickensoup.com you will learn about everything we’re doing and you’ll be able to learn a lot more about this particular book.
Kristin Maxwell:
Great. Hang on everyone. When we come back we’ll be going deeper into some of these 10 keys to living happier. Hang on.
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