The past couple of weeks I’ve been co-teaching a course with a friend of mine. The course is called, “Ready, Set, Go: Tools for Positive Life Change,” and one of her contributions to the “Ready” part was teaching about feng shui, with the idea that clearing the crap out of our space gives us room to make positive change in our lives. Perfect. Two areas of my bedroom have really been bugging me in their stubborn tendency to accumulate, er, stuff. And now that I’m un(der)employed and have both the time to tackle it as well as the slight desperation of wanting to get things going in the prosperity and career departments, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. Even better that she lent me the book, “Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life: How to Use Feng Shui to Get Love, Money, Respect and Happiness” by Karen Rauch Carter.

What a fun book. I was hooked right away. Even though last week I was waking up in the middle of the night with PMS insomnia (been slacking on my acupressure – see Woman Heal Thyself) I hardly cared because there was nothing more enjoyable for me to do than read about the nine areas of your living space/life and how to activate them. And so it happened that in the middle of the night, I’d be compelled to rise out of my bed to do some seemingly trivial act like grabbing my plum colored journal from across the room and bringing it to my nightstand, all because I needed some purple in my prosperity corner. I diligently took notes in my little “goals” book, creating effectively nine “to-do” lists.

As I make changes prescribed in my “to-do” lists, I write the date beside the item, so I can “scientifically” keep records and be able to notice a) when my life changes and b) what changes in my environment may be responsible. It is not exactly a controlled experiment as I am really changing many things at once, so all my scientific note-taking may well be in vain! Just now while writing this review, I took a five-minute break to tie red ribbon around the apartment’s outgoing drainpipes so as to prevent chi from leaking out.

As your space (and your life) is divided into nine areas, so is the book divided, and this makes it easy, after you read the introductory chapter, to hone in on the areas you are giving top priority. I didn’t do it this way; because I so enjoyed the book I just read it cover to cover. I made some improvements in almost every area, every area if you include the deep cleaning, with the vacuum cleaner edging attachment and everything (oh yeah!). I have to say the chi is flowing a lot better now. I’m really enjoying my bedroom, and every time I step in there I marvel at how nice and neat everything looks. And I love my “love and relationships” corner, all nicely pinked out (see pic).

Love and relationship corner, nicely pinked, paired, and hearted up.

In each of the nine sections Rauch provides a list of “power tools” and “hazardous materials”, the sort of “do’s” and “don’ts” of stuff to have and not have in that area of your space, and each section ends with a short list of “immediate action items” for that area. These make the book very easy to read and to use to make changes. I also really enjoyed the stories of clients’ issues, how they were caused by the space, and how their lives changed, sometimes dramatically, when Rauch helped them make changes. Hey, this would make a great reality TV show! (Perhaps it already is one?)

Humor, as well as helpfulness, makes a great self-help book in my opinion, and that is one of this book’s strengths. She pops in the funny when you’re least expecting it, which makes it all the funnier. In the section for Creativity and Children, when discussing that fire is a hazardous material, and triangular objects because they resemble fire, she says, “Eat your bowl of Doritos somewhere else.” In the section on things that can impact your sleep, the last paragraph says only, “If you have mirrors on the ceiling, get out of the seventies.”

Feng shui does all seem a bit like magic, I have to admit. But I can understand the power of intention and putting positive focus on something you want to improve in your life. Also I can understand the utility of changing something physically to anchor that intention, to bring it into physical reality. Further, it is fun moving your stuff, and I know from my background in educational kinesiology that playful positive emotions helps focus our attention in a positive way.

So I haven’t seen definitive results yet, although perhaps a little patience would be appropriate – I made most changes in the past last week and a half. I have gotten a few promising work calls, and one new steady client. The scientist in me knows that it’s very possible this would have happened anyway, and that it’s impossible to determine if the feng shui helped. But I have some belief that it’s working, and anyway it was a fun process and motivated me to deep clean (just before Chinese New Year too, which my Chinese friend informs me is very good).

Over the years I’ve read a few other feng shui books; this one is by far the most fun to read, the least overwhelming, and the easiest to use to make practical changes.

I haven’t read most of these yet, but they all sound pretty good.

This one sounds amazing. Everyone on Amazon is raving about how inspiring it it – this guy has no limbs and he has a super positive attitude! How can we not learn from this book:

These days, as a newly licensed Brain Gym instructor and consultant, the topic of neuroplasticity is definitely on my mind!:

Another science-based book that shows us how to “turn back the clock”:

One of my readers’ favorite topics (finding love), this one nevertheless puts a positive spin on being single:

We might have to label this one a guilty pleasure, but it’s supposed to be good!:

Another sorta-celebrity one that got some good customer reviews on Amazon:

One of the authors of this one has a previously reviewed book on my site.

This one sounds funny and inspiring. She’s apparently a very popular Christian bible study author that I had not even heard of:

This one sounds great too:

Enjoy!

Guest-reviewed by David King

Fearless Living, by Rhonda Britten, changed my life. Although I am a voracious reader (I like to say a ‘ferocious reader’), I don’t usually trend towards the self-help section of a bookstore. However, by chance, at a really low point in my life, I heard Rhonda Britten speak. I hated the dramatics in how she told her story, yet I found a bit of truth in what I heard; I saw she knew something about fear and how it could control a person’s life. I bought the book, read it, and it changed my life.

“Read it” probably doesn’t convey the relationship necessary to make effective changes with this book. Just reading it might give you some hope or inspiration, which is all right if that’s all you want. But I worked the exercises to get my results, even calling on outside help (phone consultations with a life coach) once or twice when I got stuck.

One last “finding love” book and I promise any following reviews will abandon the subject indefinitely because I. Give. Up. Give up, you hear. I have had enough of the hot and cold, and especially enough of the lukewarm. Recently, in despair at failing again at finding a suitable partner in love, I was told by a wise spiritual counselor to “focus on something else”. I instantly felt great relief. Off the hook! I don’t have to look for anything. So, while officially not looking for a relationship, I picked The Spiritual Rules of Engagement: How Kabbalah Can Help Your Soul Mate Find You by Yehuda Berg (director of the Kabbalah Center of Los Angeles) anyway for my July review because 1) the book is short, 2) it came highly recommended by a friend who swore it worked for her, and 3) the cover quote is by Ashton Kutcher. (Just kidding. No, it really is by him, but I’m kidding that it’s why I picked the book.)

I love this book, and not only for teaching me that, supposedly, if I maintain this not giving a sh*t feeling, I am now in the perfect frame of mind to attract my soulmate. Or not. According to the book it may take a few lifetimes. Who cares, right? The important thing is to maintain and increase our connection to the Light inside. Berg makes it sound much easier in Kabbalah than it is in yoga, which has many restrictions and practices and disciplines to help us connect with the Light. The only advice given in this book to connect with the Light is to do the things that you really like to do. Pursue your interests and give them real priority, rather than doing what other people would like you to do or what you feel you “should” do.

The first chapter of the book is fascinating. It tells the Kabbalist history of time, with the explanation of the Big Bang, the Garden of Eden, and the differences between men and women at the soul level all wrapped into one. It also tells the biblical story of the Golden Calf, at which time women actually completed their spiritual work on the physical plane, and we are ever since merely waiting for the men to catch up. The trick is, we women need to be helping men, guiding them, and we can only do that when our souls (in the shape of vessels) are used for Light. We often lose our connection to the Light, even though our Vessel is made of it, because it is the nature of the Vessel to fear being empty (of Light). And so we mistakenly look outside ourselves for happiness (Light). Women can only effectively guide men (and therefore have a successful relationship with a soul mate) when we maintain our connection to the Light and become successful managers of the Light that men channel.

The rest of the book explains the rules, which include those that are practiced on the 1% level, the lower purely physical plane, and on the 99% level, the consciousness that lies beyond. Some seem ridiculous on the 1% level, but I can usually understand their importance on the 99% (soul) level. For example, Berg advises that women change the day or time that the man suggests for a date. It sounds like a silly game, like the woman is being needlessly manipulative on the 1% level. But the importance is that on the 99% level, it is the woman that is in charge of managing the Light, and she must assert this management from the beginning. What is nice for us women is that, according to Kabbalah, we truly have the power in a relationship; we only need to know how to effectively exercise it.

There are many similarities between Kabbalah and yoga philosophy, with which I am more familiar. However, according to Kabbalah, men and women have gendered soul anatomies, while in yoga and Vedanta, genders are only associated with the different bodies that we take on to work out our karmas; in some lifetimes they are male, in others female. It bothers me that there is a discrepancy; I prefer to think there is one absolute Truth to things and that different religions and philosophies only represent the Truth slightly differently. Also, Kabbalah seems to give no basis for understanding homosexual relationships.

My favorite rule in the book is the “hire slow, fire fast” rule. Women tend to make the same mistake as companies. When a company needs to hire someone to do a job, the interview process is usually quick. Then if it is revealed in time that the person is not right for the job, the company is slow to let them go. We women need to be more careful, slow and deliberate in deciding whether to choose a particular man to share our life with.

Other good advice from the book is to choose a man whom you can support the way he channels Light into the world. For example if you don’t like the field of work he is in, you might not be able to support him and so you should let him go and choose another man that you can support. Another way to say this is, do not be with someone and then try to change them. It is also important that you share common values and a common purpose in life.

While women have the real power, the book’s rules seem old-fashioned. The man always makes the moves, etc. (You are only “choosing” a man from among the ones who ask to spend time with you.) But I am willing to entertain the possibility that that may simply be the way it works. Any breaking of these rules on our part is out of fear of being empty vessels, but really all we need to do in order to be fulfilled is to connect with the Light, and to trust that that is all we need, that we are never empty at all.

Gretchen Rubin, the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Happiness Project, already was happy. Generally satisfied with the overall structure of her life, her marriage, children, career and residence were all exactly as she would have chosen. Still, she was frequently impatient and irritable with her husband and children, and it often felt like life was just passing by, and that maybe she wasn’t making the absolute most out of it. Knowing she could be happier, Rubin decided to embark on a “happiness project” that was, as she puts it, a quest to “change my life without changing my life”. The resulting book, The Happiness Project, is a memoir of self-help detailing the year she systematically tested a variety of resolutions designed to increase her happiness.

While there are more dramatic quest-for-happiness memoirs such as the blockbuster Eat Pray Love, The Happiness Project stands out for its relatability. Most of us, like Rubin, are working within the confines of our ordinary lives. No matter how little your life resembles Gretchen Rubin’s or how likely that you’ll actually undertake a happiness project in as comprehensive and dogged a manner as she, you will probably find it easy to relate as she shares her shortcomings and attempts to improve herself.

For the one-year project, each month Rubin chose an area of her life to work on and made four or five resolutions. She kept track on a calendar, at the end of each day giving herself a check or an X for each resolution, depending on her success that day. Each month she took on a new set of resolutions, adding them to the others, and so by December she was grading herself daily on eleven months of resolutions!

Her first month, January, was about boosting energy, an excellent place to start because it definitely takes energy to improve yourself. To increase her energy, Rubin decided to go to sleep earlier, exercise, clear out clutter and organize, and take on tasks that had been nagging her in the back of her mind. At this point I was hooked and already inspired to join in. Although February’s topic of marriage wouldn’t seem to apply to me (being unmarried myself), the specificity of her resolutions (quit nagging, don’t expect praise, fight right, etc.) and the effects of her actions held universal truths applicable to roommate situations and in relating to people in general. I enjoyed reading about “the week of extreme nice”, in which Rubin did her best to go above and beyond in the nice department and found it excruciating but with positive effects. March, “work month”, was when Rubin launched her blog, www.happiness-project.com, that became popular almost overnight.

Rubin’s book is not merely her experiences in a bubble. She did copious amounts of research on happiness, and the book is peppered with results of scientific studies that we can apply to our own lives. Some examples: People who have fun are twenty times as likely to feel happy. Even introverts are happier in the company of others. Hugs increase happiness. Faking a smile or acting energetic when you don’t feel either happy or energetic leads to feeling happier and more energetic. It is also full of other random tidbits. Did you know that Benjamin Franklin and twelve friends met weekly for 40 years with the goal of mutual improvement? I ended up making notes of books I wanted to read, a pen she insisted was the smoothest, most enjoyable write (got some and I agree), and even jotted down the particular name and scent of a candle she loves. Why did I do this? Is she my self-help hero? Am I going to follow everything she does?

Well, not everything. Some of Rubin’s resolutions I dismiss immediately as things that are not going to work for me. For example – start a collection of something. I don’t see that happening. She also discarded possibilities for her own happiness project (including my favorite mood-enhancer, meditation), continually reminding herself to “be Gretchen”. In other words, just because others prefer museum-going to staying home reading doesn’t mean that she should too. Along these lines, Rubin emphasizes that, while we can all have a happiness project, each of our happiness projects will be different.

As a person who both loves to read and tends to be hard on myself, I related to Rubin squashing her interest in children’s literature and then, during her happiness project, realizing she shouldn’t feel guilty for indulging it. One of the most inspiring lessons of the book is that, whatever your passion(s), making them a real priority in your life contributes greatly to happiness.

Reading this book really boosted my motivation. Last year I sat in my writer’s group listening to people talk about writing a novel in a month and thinking I couldn’t possibly. But something clicked when I was reading Rubin’s book. She did the same challenge on top of everything else in her life and, even though she is a way more experienced and successful writer than I, it still inspired me to do it too.

“The Happiness Project” offers plenty of inspiration and the reminder that “it is not goal attainment but the process of striving after the goals that brings happiness”.