This Book Will Make You Happy

There is so much in this that I highlighted that I could quote the entire book! A lot of this was information that I already have heard or knew but it is put in a different way. The entire cognitive behavioral therapy and negative automatic thoughts were my favorite.

Firstly, six years ago I suddenly realized that I didn’t have a positive thought in my skull! It was wearing me down. As I’m sure you can imagine. This goes into explain that negative thoughts, or what they call NAT’s are normal and everyone has them. The problem though is that some people have them ALL the time. See my sentence above. It took me a long time to learn how to deal with these thoughts. If I could have gone back in time I would just give myself this book!

Not only does it explain the NAT’s quite well but how to get rid of them! You know that annoying thought you keep going back to in times where you feel like you’re not really thinking about anything? Then WHAM it sinks into your skull and then you’re in a bad mood because you start spiraling! There’s an entire chapter just for how to, not only recognize those thoughts but how to make them go away!

Now, I’ve been working on that particular thing for about six years but the thoughts still pip in every once in a while. I do have a problem with spiraling once those thoughts hit though. This talks about how to negate that spiral and how to change your normal negative thinking into positive thinking.

There are also golden rules. Mostly things that I’ve heard before like how to never use the words “always and never” and how you can set yourself up for failure by not changing your thinking.

I do read a lot of self-help books for some reason. I think they are fun. I love to grow. Some I walk away knowing I didn’t take anything away but I didn’t lose anything but time. In this one, however, I am keeping it on my Kindle and may wind up getting it in paperback just so I have it handy. It’s good to have positive reinforcement to help ourselves with and to remind us that we are not as horrible as our inner thoughts say we are!

In short: Mired by your thoughts? Need a pick me up? This book is totally for you!

This book lives up to its title. It definitely offers insight into how to be happier. I plan to get a hard copy so that I can see what kid of space exists for notes, journaling, etc. I definitely like the conversational tone of this book and I think it has appeal for students. At the same, I question whether or not it minimizes aspects of depression. Having heard Andrew Solomon speak about his own experiences and his book, The Noonday Demon, I do find a huge contrast to the approach taken by Jo Usmar and Jessamy Hibberd. I hope that their work, This Book Will Make You Happy, finds a wide audience and prompts more discussion about medical research and statistics concerning depression.

Life's little cruelties sometimes makes me bitter and sarcastic, so when I saw the title of this book I, of course, laughed. My inner-cynic thought it was a huge joke. How can a book make anyone happy? Well, inner-cynic, lots of books have made us happy in the past, though most of them were fiction. Still, because I do have a soft spot for self-improvement, I wanted to give it a fair shake. If it was too hokey after the first twenty-five pages (about 1/6th of the book,) I could always decide not to finish reading it.

The thing is, it wasn't hokey. It had some moments that made me snort, but for the most part the authors strategies were sound. You're not going to get happy just from reading this book. The authors tell you right up front you're going to have to work at it. There is no magic wand, or some spell you can utter while waving your hands to make all the unhappiness go away. You have to do the work. You have to want to make the changes. And I do.

This is a book I will go back to more than once. There are exercises in each chapter, some of which include mind-mapping and journaling as you assess your emotional responses and general mood. I expected them to be silly, but they weren't. Taking time out to look at your life, your daily activities, the pleasure (or displeasure,) they bring you. Learning to incorporate things into your day that bring you pleasure. They talked about strategies for changing the way we react to situations by changing the way we think. Some of the examples they provided really hit home, reminding me of responses I'd had to similar situations. Because the thing is, once you've started a pattern of negative thought, it's really hard to break, but it can be broken.

It's worth it to me to work on improving the quality of my life, so if you're feeling unhappy I definitely recommend giving this book a try.