Can you tell us a little bit about your app HappierMe?
HappierMe is an emotional intelligence app, with separate sections that offer tailored support for teenagers and adults.
The goal of the app is to help users feel better now by not only dealing with current challenges, but also inviting them to go deeper, understand the root causes of their problems, and create lasting change. It’s similar to going to the doctor with a fever. There are doctors who might just give you a paracetamol to help bring the fever down. A good doctor, though, will try to find out what’s causing the fever – an infection, for example – so they can treat the root cause of it.
When we are stressed, HappierMe can provide relief through breathing exercises and meditations. Then, by also encouraging us to look deeper, we can understand whether our current problems are caused by our own conditioning, our expectations for lasting change, or something else.
What was the inspiration behind creating the app?
I was a spine surgeon for 30 years. And, just as I joined medicine to ease suffering, I then left it to start the HappierMe project, because I felt it could help reduce suffering at scale.
Sadly, the inspiration behind the app was a tragedy. A children’s hospital in the Middle East got bombed and I heard their screams on the radio as I was driving home from work one day. I felt incredibly moved and thought that, as humans, we need to do better. We are capable of doing better and we have the wisdom in the world to do better, so why aren’t we?
After this experience, I transitioned out of medicine to start working with children. It made me realise that they already have this deeper intelligence or wisdom that just needs to be drawn out of them. In fact, it’s an inner intelligence that is present in all human beings, and it just needs to be awakened. That’s something we can do through self knowledge.
You previously worked as a spine surgeon, how did you find the transition from that, to working in mental health awareness, and was this something you’d always been interested in?
All changes in our lives can be difficult, and this was no different. I found it hard to leave behind the world of spine surgery, where I had a very successful, stable career, to embark on something which didn’t really have a roadmap.
But, as I started walking down my new path, I became more and more certain that I was going in the right direction. I feel that the HappierMe project has the potential to ease suffering for a lot of people and help them lead much happier lives.
How does HappierMe help people to make positive changes in their lives?
HappierMe is a project that recognises that many of us are distressed. The app helps people to better understand themselves and how their minds work, to help them awaken their emotional intelligence. They can then learn to apply this inner intelligence to avoid and overcome their own mental health problems.
This can help us have happier relationships, deal with addiction, make better decisions, live in peace with ourselves, and develop soft skills that are key to success, like communication, leadership, resilience, and empathy.
What challenges did you face during the initial launch?
We were lucky early on to have a couple of angel investors support the app’s development, as well as a team of experts that we put together from around the world. Together, we worked with designers and software engineers to create the app.
The app went through a lot of iterations – it was even called HumanWisdom at first! But, because we felt that this name wouldn’t be easily understood by people, we changed it to HappierMe.
In the end, the development of the app took much longer than we had anticipated. It was four years before we were able to go live!
Do you think technology and apps such as HappierMe will play a large role in mental health care in the future?
Yes, I do. At the moment, almost 70% of people with a mental health problem never seek help for various reasons, including stigma, cost, or inaccessibility. But mental health apps are always in your pocket and there when you need support.
They may not be suitable for those with more severe mental health problems. But, certainly, if you have a mild to moderate problem then this app can really help.
Plus, by helping us foster a deeper sense of self-understanding – which can also be called emotional intelligence – we can also start to prevent problems before they ever arise. We’re all going to face the storms of life. Living with emotional intelligence can prepare us for these storms and ensure we don’t go under when they arrive.
Is there anything you would do differently if you could start your business again?
Probably not – my business was driven by a passion to reduce suffering and help people lead happier lives, and that passion is undimmed.
Still, if I had known how long it would take, or how challenging it would be, I may not have started! The fact that the team and I kept going, despite these challenges, is testament to just how passionate we are about the HappierMe project.
You can find HappierMe at https://www.happierme.app/
