For Penny, home is where the happiness is
Stretching in a yoga pose as sunlight creeps through a blue-tinged eucalypt forest from a secluded country retreat brings great joy to Penny Locaso.
Stretching in a yoga pose while watching sunlight creep through a blue-tinged eucalypt forest from a secluded country retreat brings great joy to Penny Locaso.
The dynamic entrepreneur and educator, known as the world’s first Happiness Hacker, says it’s that “me-time” that’s so important in life.
“It’s a perfect start to the day and if I had one wish, it’s that others gift themselves permission to create the space once or twice a week for themselves. I am a firm believer in giving yourself the time to just be,” she says.
Home for Ms Locaso and son Saxon, 10, is a property close to the small Victorian town of Bullengarook, near Gisborne, a one-hour drive from Melbourne.
“As soon as I walked in, I felt everything was aligned — it is such a beautiful place here with great views to the nearby Wombat State Forest,” she says.
The popular TEDx speaker says she’s been in “monk mode” for months completing her new book Hacking Happiness, with a television series also planned. Ms Locaso describes the five-bedroom house, set on 10ha, as an ideal retreat where she practises her mantra of hacking happiness in “a world where we’ve never been more technologically connected yet humanly disconnected”.
Her favourite place is the living room where she lights the open fire at 5am daily then rolls out her yoga mat. She loves views of the rolling hills and often spots kangaroos and wombats out exploring.
A quirky tin cockatoo on a chain swings from the archway near the TV room and makes her smile every time she passes.
The open-plan kitchen is the hub of the house and Ms Locaso loves to cook using the bounty from the thriving vegetable garden and busy chooks.
“I cook a mean pizza — I start from scratch and make the base and we enjoy a traditional roast on Sunday,” she says.
A country girl at heart, she grew up on a farm at Pakenham in Melbourne’s outskirts, where her mother bred cattle and thoroughbred horses.
“I know how lucky I am to live here especially during COVID and my day is structured with work, home schooling, meditation, bushwalks and exercise,” she says.
Ms Locaso shares the property with six sheep, four cows, eight chooks, an alpaca, Waldo the wombat, and two dogs — Tilly, a black labrador, and Max, a labradoodle.
She says country life is never dull — the local SES unit recently rescued Tilly, after she chased a wombat 10 metres underground.
In 2014 she turned her life upside down in pursuit of happiness — within seven months she left a 16-year career at Shell, relocated her family from Perth back to Melbourne, left an 18-year relationship and started her own company — hackinghappy.co.
“My mission is to teach 10 million humans how to intentionally adapt by 2025 in order to future-proof happiness,” says Ms Locaso.
She now works with individuals and organisations around the world helping them define happiness on their terms and building the confidence to experiment to bring more of it into the everyday.
A faculty member of the esteemed Singularity University at NASA Research Centre Silicon Valley, Ms Locaso works alongside some of the world’s best artificial intelligence and technology leaders teaching the practice of happiness.
“Happiness for me isn’t about skipping down the street painting rainbows, it’s about being able to ride the wave of every emotion that life throws at you, knowing you have the skills, resources and support to come out the other side just a little better than what you were before,” she says.