This book summarizes and analyzes the results of scientific studies on various topics that are related to happiness and health. The author herself is not full of unicorns and rainbows, and clearly states so. Coming from a more pessimistic personality, she provides concrete advice and useful evidence for ways to work on shifting your perspective to be more positive. Recently having been through some negative times, I found this book to be very helpful. The only thing that detracted from my enjoyment of the book at times was that sometimes I thought there were too many summaries of scientific studies used to illustrate a point. But perhaps that is helpful for others.

I received this book as an ARC from BenBella Books in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

Another popular topic that is in high demand at our library is self-help and happiness. Those fly off our shelves like crazy. The positive shift really took a powerful concept and presented it in a way that was unique and different. Catherine Sanderson talks a lot about optimism in seeing the goodness of every situation and the good in every environment including online on Facebook and Instagram. Your mind is a very powerful asset if you let it be and Catherine Sanderson displayed very insightful and helpful research that really painted the whole picture on focusing your mindset on the positive side.

We will consider adding this title to our Self-Help Non-Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

The Positive Shift is an easy read full of wonderful reminders and enforcing anecdotes on the power of positivity. Unlike many books in this genre, much of the book’s discussion centers around positivity and aging. Yes, this has been done before, but not quite in the same manner. Many of us are aware that a positive mindset affects both base-levels of happiness and longevity. But did you know that it also affects our hormones? There are a lot of great reminders that context matters, as do perception and our ability to reframe stress and the labels that we use. A solid four stars.

Some of this is cliches we’ve all heard before. However, I’m trying hard to be really present in all of my books, so I looked beyond the cliches and really took to heart what was being said in this book and it’s good to reaffirm things you may have already heard and put them into practice in your life to better yourself. This book helped to remind me of that:

I can’t download this file type on any of my devices, as soon as there is another format, I will review it.

Sorry but the only copy I am able to download is unreadable (adobe editions). Please can you make it available in kindle format and I will read and review it. Thank You