A Man With a Mission: Global Happiness

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life. What you do with it is entirely up to you. Make it a happy day."

That’s the first thing you hear when you call Edwin Edebiri’s phone. If you ran into the Davis man on the street, you’d likely get a similar greeting: “How happy are you, on a scale of 1-10?"

To best understand his non-profit I Am Happy Project, which has chapters around the country including in Elk Grove, it’s best to start with Edebiri’s childhood in Africa. 

"Believe"

As a nine-year-old boy growing up in Nigeria, Edebiri says he came upon a copy of the book, “The Power of Positive Thinking,” by Norman Vincent Peale. He carried that book with him until he found someone who could read it. That was a profound moment in his life, he says. 

“The first word was, ‘Believe,’” he said. It stuck with him. 

In the years that followed, he moved to America, became a pilot, got an MBA, bought a Jaguar and moved into a home with a picket fence. All of those goals started with a list he wrote when he was just nine years old.

112 Goals

“Some were really crazy,” he said of the long list. “To say you were going to be a pilot (growing up poor in Nigeria) was unlikely. People thought it was just a joke, but it didn’t bother me.”

He got an MBA from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach and, before he finished his 20s, accomplished all 112 goals on that long list. He’s quick to point out, however, that the riches he accumulated are not the important part of the story. 

“It’s about the ability to accomplish,” he said. “The transformation from the inside.”  

You don’t need a Jaguar, an MBA or a picket fence in order to be happy, Edebiri says. What you need is a mindset that says you can get those things if you want them, but that you can also be happy without them. First and foremost, you must decide to be happy, he says. The rest comes later.

And Then the Economy Collapsed…

The I Am Happy Project was born shortly after the financial meltdown of late 2008.

“I needed to find out why people were so caught up in this recession stuff,” Edebiri said. “People were losing their homes and spirits were dampening. I did a lot of meditations and thought, what can I do to shift people’s minds?”

The entirety of the situation, he realized, was too massive to tackle. So he decided to focus on one important piece of the puzzle: Happiness.

He felt that fear was the main obstacle of the recession, and he wanted to help people jump that hurdle. Beyond that, he wanted to help people cope with stress and anger and jealousy in general.

By the end of 2009, he and his publisher (he’s written three books) printed the first batch of I Am Happy Project cards, with pithy tips for staying cheerful.

I Am Happy Project

The non-profit organization now has chapters in 59 cities in 15 countries, including Elk Grove. Goal number-one, Edebiri says, is the happiness of the members. Goal number-two is to spread happiness to the community. It requires a lot of work, but Edebiri believes the project is headed in the direction of self-sufficiency. More than 2,000 people have joined the Facebook group. 

The group's 10 Days of Happiness speaker series will begin Wednesday and will culminate in a large celebration on Feb. 11 at Royer Park in Roseville.

Members of the Elk Grove Meetup group will gather Feb. 18 for a health and wellness fair.

Edebiri, who also blogs for Davis Patch, wants to make clear that he does not have a degree in psychology and that he is not a counselor. While he sees the value of the work being done in those fields, he feels there is an underlying simplicity to life that should not be forgotten along the way.

“If you wake up from your bed and you smile, there’s a good chance you’re going to have a good day,” he said. “If you wake up and hit your leg on the bed and start cussing, your day might not go so well. Unless you decide to change it.”

For more information about the I Am Happy Project, visit iamhappyproject.org.