Hi, this is Vanessa, your ENLIGHTENMENT salon host.

In these tough times with scary news headlines daily, how can one find joy? Some people I know swear by daily meditation, writing down their thoughts in gratitude journals and making wellness smoothies for breakfast, but is that enough to satisfy the soul?

I’ve been getting some ideas for how to do so after reading ‘The Great Joy Hunt,” a series of articles by Sacramento’s former poet laureate Andru Defye in KVIE’s Abridged daily newsletter. I was particularly struck by one article he wrote about a groundbreaking UC Davis study that shatters the multi-trillion-dollar industry myth of universal happiness. After tracking 40,000+ participants over 33 years, the study showed that joy is not a generic life hack but a highly individualized biological and psychological blueprint.

So I’ve invited Andru Defeye and the study’s author, UC Davis psychology professor Emorie Beck, to come talk with us about finding joy in our existing circumstances, maybe changing our actual physical conditions to do so, balancing both strategies, and tracking our own data to find our own style of joy.

Come to listen and then ask questions to Andru and Emorie — nothing is too dumb or too small to ask — and ideally you leave with a personalized joy-finding system engineered entirely for you.

Tickets are $10; $5 for students. There will be drinks and snacks, but please feel free to BYO.

To get your seat, register here on our Eventbrite page.