I knew Karen Salmansohn before I met her. After countless recommendations, I began friending, following, and finding out all I could about this creative New Yorker. Finally meeting her in person was even more of a treat, as I was able to experience and revel in firsthand what it means to ‘walk the talk’ and ‘practice what you preach’.

Karen’s words speak for themselves. Prepare yourself for one very inspiring ride!

How would you describe what it is you do?

I joke, but I am serious, that I write self-help for smart, cool, busy people who wouldn’t normally be caught dead reading self- help. I’m a big believer that a spoonful of eye candy helps the self-help medicine go down, and I love teaming up my inspirational words with attention-getting images. This combo seems to have appeal to others, as many of my books have become best sellers. (Karen’s HOW TO BE HAPPY DAMMIT was Urban Outfitter’s bestselling book two years in a row and THE BOUNCE BACK BOOK is gearing up for its 7th printing, garnering praise from the likes of Tony Robbins, Gretchen Rubin, and Deepak Chopra.)

How did you first come to and recognize your art and passion?

I started my career in advertising and rose up quickly, getting a CLIO in my first 6 months and becoming a Senior VP creative director at 27. Still, I kept threatening to quit to become an author. My parents would say, “How can you quit when you’re doing so well?” My answer: If I were doing lousy, I’d want to stay, to prove something to myself. But I figured if I could do well at something I didn’t like so much, I could do even better at something I was passionate about.

So I quit... to my parents’ horror. I then maintained what I call the “Mr. Magoo Syndrome.” When Mr. Magoo went to cross the street, he didn’t notice all the cars honking. He just focused on ‘must get to other side of street.’ When I left advertising to be an author, I didn’t focus on obstacles, fears or naysayers naysaying. I focused on ‘must get published’. I’d regularly go to bookstores to envision where my first book (a novel) would be on the shelf. I noticed my last name Salmansohn would make me a neighbor to Salinger. I kept envisioning this happening as I wrote.

My novel was eventually published and sold to Miramax to be a movie starring Marisa Tomei, although it was never greenlit. After this success, I was asked to do seminars for women’s organizations about how to pursue and snag your passions. I was then asked to write a business book on this subject, which I gave the feisty title HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT A PENIS. It’s catchy and true: a woman doesn’t need a penis to succeed, just balls. The book went on to become a national best seller and loved by some very cool powerful women, including Madonna, Arianna Huffington, and Geraldine Laybourne. I then began writing all kinds of books to help people live their highest potential lives, incorporating the creative director skills I learned in advertising.

When and how did you and your work grow into the wider realm of contribution?

I’ve always wanted to contribute with my passions for writing and designing... to do something which would make a difference. One of the reasons I was unhappy in advertising was that I didn’t find it fulfilling to inspire people to buy toothpaste. I wanted to create what I jokingly called ‘positive propaganda’ where I instead inspired people to buy into creating more positive mental, spiritual, and physical habits so they could live their happiest and highest potential lives.

I’ve had a lot of challenges in my own life, which I’ve thankfully learned how to overcome... times that I call ‘being in the vortex.’ We’ve all had our vortexes; times when we’ve felt ourselves tested in seemingly insurmountable ways and pulled seemingly uncontrollably downward. I’m a research geek and love researching and sharing everything I can find about resiliency psychology. This research became the basis of THE BOUNCE BACK BOOK as well as many articles (Karen writes for, among others, Oprah.com, Psychologytoday.com, and Huffingtonpost.com).

How has this contribution impacted your life and your art?

I’m a big believer that much of one’s happiness in life comes from having meaning and purpose. I appreciate getting to have this thanks to what I do for a living. Whenever something challenging happens to me, I feel like I have extra meaning and purpose in staying strong and aiming myself towards growth and happiness because I’m meant to share whatever research I gather and whatever personal lessons I learn to help others stay strong and live a happy life.

Plus I love connecting with people who write to me about what I’ve shared- expressing how specific ideas have helped them to stay strong and keep growing- or by sharing their own personal tips and lessons learned. Even though Facebook and Twitter seem at first glance like mere technology, I have developed some very warm and intimate friendships with people there after hearing back from them about my work. I truly love the conversations I get to have with people, which then re-inspire to me write and create more!

What are you currently up to, and taking on next?

I love creating my daily posters- what I call ‘Inspirational Flashcards’- because they quickly remind people, in a powerful, pithy zap of provocative image merged with inspiring headlines, what people need to know to live their happiest, highest potential life. Basically, we live in a super-busy world, and these daily posters/Inspirational Flashcards are self help for super-busy people! I plan to continue creating these on a daily basis, plus I'm now morphing all of this internet posted artwork into actual artwork for the home and office and exploring licensing deals. As well, I’m in the midst of creating a new fun website, with new books on the horizon.

I’m also teaching myself iMovie, (check out Karen's 8 WAYS TO FORGIVE + FORGET) so I can create graphically stylish motivational and educational movies with ideas and tips for living your happiest, highest potential life... presented in a highly entertaining format! I was a film major in college, and so I’m especially excited to bring my ideas to this medium of film. Plus film feels natural for me, as my books are already a combo of informational words merged with attention getting images, presented on a static page. Now I’ll get to create this dynamic combo in the moving image world of movies! My new website will offer all of this, and some surprises too, which I don’t want to reveal just yet!

Is there something else that you’d like to share with readers?

I named my son Ari not only because I love that name, but also as a wink to my favorite philosopher buddy Aristotle who I write a lot about. Aristotle says that the reason why so many people are unhappy is because they confuse pleasure with happiness. Pleasure is simply about immediate gratification: stimulating your body or your ego with things like shopping, eating, drinking, casual sex, etc. Happiness, in contrast, is about seeking long term growth for yourself as a thriving individual. It's about nourishing your soul/core self by surrounding yourself with people, habits, experiences, and insights which stimulate you, challenge you, and inspire you to become your highest potential. I love this definition of happiness.

With this in mind, whenever life throws us a surprise challenge, it's up to us to choose to view it as an opportunity to grow into our strongest, wisest self, and thereby find true happiness through life's challenges. Happiness is very much a choice we need to choose daily. We need to choose to add insight to injury. We need to choose to forgive others and ourselves by viewing everything that happens to us in our lives as an assignment, with lessons to learn to grow us into our strongest, wisest self. I believe this deeply.

You can learn more about Karen at her website: www.notsalmon.com.