As the book perfectly explains itself “Making Sense Of Life” it’s a powerful and though provocative Mayer piece on how to deal with life and understanding the world and how certain consequences have certain actions which will leave us either feeling happy, overwhelmed, depressed or confused with life.

This book will help to challenge you, perfectly written by the super talented and highly knowledgeable Simi Cai.

This is a self development book which everyone single person needs regardless of age and gender.

Highly recommended to all 5/5.

First, I'd like to thank NetGalley and Forbes Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you're anything like me, you'll end up with a heavily highlighted and annotated copy of Making Sense of Life, a nonfiction book about figuring out what can make you, the reader, happiest within your own life.

You won't find any empty platitudes or mantras here, nor will you see a lot of biographical-heavy information dumps from the author. Instead, you'll find well-researched and thought-out theories and suggestions coming from a wide range of many reliable, documented sources.

If you're looking for ideas to help you make your life better, theories that have a strong basis in history and science, this might be the book for you.

I'm no newcomer to self-help books. In fact, I have at least one shelf of books near my desk dedicated to that topic, along with a wide selection of digital books. This book was different than most of those, which often feel more like the authors are telling you how easily or with difficulty their own lives fell into place, what they did to fix it, and how just a dash of positive thinking will help you succeed just as much as it did them, or you know, just spend thousands of dollars and head to an ashram to have a spiritual experience and appropriate a different culture. None of that is good advice or even remotely possible for the majority of people reading these books.

Making Sense of Life really does try to do just that, make sense of life, but I feel as though it helps teach a person to do that for themself, rather than being a prescription to follow someone else's beliefs and life story.

This is not a religious book, but it does make a few off-handed references to God and "finding religion" that I was not prepared for. I found them light and inoffensive, despite my usual knee-jerk response to surprise religiosity.

In my opinion, this book won't be for everyone, and it won't be what everyone is looking for in a self-help book, but where I am in my personal journey, and with all the empty platitudes and "just do what I did with my large inheritance!" nonsense that I've read, this book has earned its place among the self-help keepers on my shelf. 5/5