Oops, did I say half a year ago no more “finding love” books? Tough noogies, because they are by far my most popular reviews.

I’m willing to go out on a limb and call Calling in “The One”: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life by Katherine Woodward Thomas the best book of its kind. I say that even though I did this entire workbook-style book cover to cover faithfully for seven weeks, three YEARS ago, and have still not called “The One” in close enough for me to actually kiss him hello. No matter, I believe he is merely delayed. Besides, I have gone through so much positive transformation in the last 3 years that back then I never would have attracted the sort of man I’d actually want to be with from here on out.

The author tells her journey-to-love story in the preface. She was a forty-one year old psychotherapist who was single but wanted to be married and have a child. It took a lot of inner work, but it happened for her, and in this book she guides us to make it happen for ourselves (sans child for me please).

The format of the book is that it is divided into seven weeks, each with a theme, and there is a lesson for each and every day consisting of a few pages to read, some practice, which can be a meditation or action, but most typically involves an exercise requiring thought and writing. Some weeks are fun, others more challenging (week three: healing core wounds). It is the type of book that would be ideal to do as a group with friends (or a meetup group) or with at least a buddy. Although at this point in my life it is not my main focus, and I believe I have done most of the work and “The One” will show up when the planets are better aligned for it, it is possible at some point I would revisit the book again, and next time I think it would be very rewarding to work with a buddy or a group.

Calling in The One is a spiritual book, and Woodward Thomas is inspiring. As it’s been a while since I read the book, I just reread the last lesson and loved her advice about focusing on our own development: “Contrary to popular opinion, all the good ones are not taken. They are, however, holding out for someone as fabulous as they are. So, I’d rather encourage you to spend your energy cultivating your own greatness. Instead of spending your time judging and assessing whether or not others are everything you think they should be, concern yourself with whether or not you yourself are everything you’ve ever dreamed of and hoped for.”

Even though I didn’t meet “The One”, I did meet and start seeing a very sweet guy around week 4(?) of doing this book. When I met him, I had been single for a long time, alone a lot, but occasionally dating some jerks that today I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. He was much younger than me and hadn’t dated since his girlfriend had died years earlier, and not at all before that either. He was a lovely caring guy (who was even into self-help!). We had a beautiful connection and even though ultimately I didn’t think he was the one for me, and he wanted to experience dating other women, it was nevertheless a positive experience I attribute to the work I did with this book.

Check it out – this book is the best!

The central lesson of The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life by Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally is a bit like the Golden Rule. Remember that one? Goes something like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Yes, it’s just like that, but then if the Golden Rule added, “because that is creating what will be done unto you”.

It sounds to me like the concept of karma explained in a different way, the Tibetan Buddhist way. It explains a mechanism for karma, that by doing the actions, especially with awareness of what you are doing, you plant seeds in your mind. The seeds grow and eventually ripen and bring you the fruits.

Geshe Michael Roach, author of the main part of the book, is a Buddhist monk who lived in a monastery in intensive training for 12 years after college until his teacher told him to go out into the “real world,” into business. So he continued to live in the monastery in New Jersey (who else finds the idea of a monastery in NJ hilarious?) and commuted to the diamond district in New York City, where he helped build a new diamond company into a hundred million dollar business using Buddhist principles.

Part of the book is like a memoir (my second-favorite book genre) and it is well written. I never thought I’d be interested in knowing how diamonds are cut or anything else about the diamond business, but I found it fascinating, and yet not detracting from the idea of the book, the practical principles by which we can become wealthy and improve our lives in other ways too.

This is a business book that explains convincingly that all success in business is a result of the kindness you have done to others. That means that all those mean bastards out there making a killing are simply reaping the seeds they have sown in the past, and that current seeds of their greed and selfishness will not bring them continued fortune.

The book explains how you can control it all due to the Buddhist principle of emptiness, the “hidden potential of things”. Objects and persons have this quality too. Nothing is either all good or all bad; instead it all depends how you look at it. And every problem can be an opportunity if you get in touch with its emptiness.

The Diamond Cutter is the kind of book to read again and again. I know I have not absorbed or even remembered most of the advice in here, so I plan to come back to it at some point, and also read the sequel, Karmic Management. There is much advice to work on, like refraining from gossip with the result that people take your input seriously. Like helping others succeed in their jobs, which plants seeds for success in your own career. And like supporting others in their love relationships, which plants seeds for growing your own. Sometimes the work can be a challenge, like when you’re sitting across from the lovey-dovey couple in the coffee shop and trying to find them adorable rather than annoying. But practice makes perfect or, until then at least, better.

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!

You can tell the two women (or shall I say skinny bitches) who wrote Skinny Bitch: A no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous! had a ton of fun doing it. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin can be rude and obnoxious, opinionated and sometimes too crass for my tastes, but the book is, first of all, laugh-out-loud funny. I started only a few pages in. Though the writing style is informal, you forget when they talk technical, only to be surprised at reading something like, “Whenever you see the words ‘fat-free’ or ‘low-fat’, think of the words, ‘chemical shit-storm’”. Unexpected, to say the least.

Another unexpected thing about this book is its hard-line on veganism. That’s right. If you want to be a skinny bitch, they say, you better not only cut out the stuff you know is junk food (bad fats and sugars, for example), but stop eating meat and cheese and in fact, animal products of all sorts. Probably half the book deals with the nutritional and ethical problems of eating industrially farmed animal products. It quotes extensively from a gruesome book called “Slaughterhouse” and contains appalling descriptions from slaughterhouse workers regarding their abusive treatment of animals. I never thought too badly of milk, especially since I drink low-fat and the cows don’t die from it, but this book has made me cut down and begin drinking more almond milk instead. But give up cheese? (Or switch to soy-cheese, as the bitches recommend?) That will require baby steps. And to think of my kitcheree without cumin seeds fried in ghee and a dallop of yogurt on top? Or to never again enjoy the simple delights of bread and butter? They’re pulling me away kicking and screaming now. Smart Balance just wouldn’t be the same.

The first topic the skinny bitches get into is the truth about carbs, that carbs are good for you if you eat the right ones; whole grains and potatoes are no problem. It’s only the highly refined sugar and flour products that you should avoid. And also artificial sweeteners; they present some damning research on aspartame. I like how they point out that even certain fats are good for you, that you should eat certain plant based oils and foods like avocados and nuts (just not to excess).

Speaking of aspartame and the fact that it is still FDA approved as an acceptable sweetener, the skinny bitches excel at explaining why you cannot trust the government when it comes to healthy eating. In a chapter titled, “Have No Faith: Governmental Agencies Don’t Give a Shit About Your Health,” they explain, among other things, how we are deceived by the USDA Dietary Guidelines. More than half of the members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee were affiliated with food industries including, “the American Meat Institute, National Livestock and Beef Board, the American Egg Board, the National Dairy Promotion and Research Program, the National Dairy Council, Dannon Company (yogurt), Mead Johnson Nutritionals (milk-based infant formulas), Nestle (milk-based formulas, ice cream, condensed milk), and Slim-Fast (milk-based diet products).” And the group of physicians who sued the government over the guidelines further pointed out that they are racist, because most non-whites are lactose-intolerant.

A sampling of other chapter titles: The Myths and Lies about Protein (like that most of us, even vegetarians, eat too much), Pooping (“Basic math girls, how much are you putting in your mouth, and how much is coming out your ass?”), and Don’t Be a Pussy (herein they psych you up to overhaul your diet in the coming month).

Well who knows really, when it comes to diet. Different specialists will tell you different things. Macrobiotic adherents will tell you not to eat much fruit. The skinny bitches say go crazy on it. Ayurvedic specialists say what you should eat depends on your constitution; what’s healthy for one person may not be healthy for another. You hear bad things about soy sometimes, but the skinny bitches are all about the soy products. The best most protective behavior would seem to be to eat a variety of healthy plant based foods, and in case any of them are of questionable goodness, at least you’ll only be eating them in small amounts.

Skinny Bitch is a practical how-to book. The bitches don’t give you all the reasons to change your diet and then leave you hanging. They include all sorts of product recommendations for things like natural sweeteners and fake meats and healthier “junk” food, for websites and cookbooks, as well as four weeks of breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. They list vitamins and minerals, what each does and what foods you can find them in. And also food additives to stay away from, what they really are and where they come from.

In summary, Skinny Bitch is a fun and informative book on having a healthy diet. As they say in red-letter caps on the back cover, “Stop being a moron and start getting skinny!”

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.

Recently, two members of my family got into a fight and it’s unclear if they will ever make up. Although it was practically a fight about nothing, they each got so triggered by the other person that it escalated to the point where they may never talk to each other again.

After reading The Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming your Power, Creativity, Brilliance and Dreams, by Debbie Ford, it seems even sadder to me because I see that these two individuals are so similar. Each is so quick to anger and so unwilling to take any responsibility for the fight. To each of them, it is all the other person’s fault. The simple truth is that whatever difficult interactions you have with others, it is not about them and what they did to you; it is all about you, for your learning. Another person will only bother you when they display qualities that you cannot accept or acknowledge in yourself.

At first, the title of the book sounded a bit creepy to me. I probably would not have picked it up myself if it had not come highly recommended by a friend. I had heard of shadow work before, having had an acquaintance who had spoken of “owning his shadow side” (a phrase that no less creeped me out). However, I didn’t know what shadow work was until I read this book.

It is simply that, in order to become a happier, more powerful, more whole person, we must recognize and accept qualities of which we are unconscious. If we are unconscious of these qualities, how are we supposed to recognize them? Again, they are the qualities we project onto other people. So anything that drives you crazy about another person is a quality that you yourself possess, but are unaware of and will probably deny. The book contains many examples of people Ford has helped in her workshops (who sometimes have needed persistent confrontation to bump them out of denial and into remembering a time when they experienced this quality within themselves). The process of realizing you do have a quality within you frees you from its grip on you. After all, getting irritated with people and denying that you have a quality you can’t tolerate takes energy.

Within ourselves, we are like a hologram of the outside world. The whole world is within us, and we need to become conscious of our hidden parts; we are powerless if we see them only in others and not ourselves. This includes positive traits that we admire in others. These are our “light” shadow; we project upon others positive traits that we feel we are lacking, but they are truly within us and we must find them consciously. As Ford says, “whatever inspires you is an aspect of yourself. Be precise about what you admire in someone and find that part in yourself. If you have the aspiration to be something, it’s because you have the potential to manifest what you are seeing.”

Sometimes a negative shadow for you can be a positive quality. There was a story in the book of a tough woman who wouldn’t have minded if you called her a bitch. She owned tough and mean, but not a soft side. So Ford called her a mushpie, and the woman’s eventual acknowledging this hidden part of her led to profound healing. I related to this story on a lesser magnitude. I’ll admit I am somewhat less comfortable with the idea of soft and feminine than I am with toughness. For that reason certain people bother me, and in reading this book, I have finally figured out why. One person I’ve encountered recently is a woman who has always come across as exceptionally sweet and nice. But for some reason, something in me didn’t like her, and I felt like an ogre for disliking such an obviously good person. I wasn’t sure if I distrusted her or was jealous of her, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I realized she displayed qualities I had hidden deep inside, a kind of softer feminine niceness that I rejected as a child and that stayed hidden until now, manifesting only as a dislike of perfectly lovely people! So now I have to learn to acknowledge that it is there, and that I am that.

The book is full of exercises to help you uncover and integrate your shadow qualities, formal exercises at the end of each chapter as well as others within the chapters. I did some of the exercises and skipped others. Simply reflecting on the reading was helpful to me, as was making it a practice to recognize qualities that annoy me or inspire me in other people, and to think about in what instance I am those qualities. Some of the exercises I liked the idea of, but probably could use a more formal supportive setting like one of Ford’s workshops in order to actually make myself do them.

Now I like the title, Dark Side of the Light Chasers. It implies you can make only limited progress by trying to be all good qualities, by only going for the light. As Ford says so eloquently, speaking of affirmations in the absence of shadow work, “if we put ice cream on top of poop, after a few spoonfuls we will taste the poop again”. Best analogy ever.

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.

It’s time to talk about money.  This month’s book, The Wealthy Spirit:  Daily Affirmations for Financial Stress Reduction by Chellie Campbell, is a delightful, inspiring and practical read.  After a short introduction, the book follows a page-a-day format – one page for every day of the year.  The top of each page starts out with a quote, followed by the day’s lesson (often a little story or anecdote) and then an affirmation, meant to be repeated mentally many times throughout the day.  I never page-a-dayed it, though, because like a potato chip, I couldn’t stop at one!

The affirmation idea is based on the Law of Attraction, essentially “like attracts like”.  In other words, you attract what you’re thinking about.  But wait, you might say, I think about money plenty, but can barely make ends meet!  Well, if your thoughts are constant worries about how you are going to pay your bills, then they are more about NOT having money than having it, and they only perpetuate your state of lacking funds. To paraphrase a quote from the book (off a sign at the Pig ‘N Whistle Coffee Shop), “As you go through life, whatever your goal, keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole”.  Positive thinking.

Chellie Campbell started out as an actress, then ran a book keeping business, and then in 1990 married her financial experience with her performance abilities, creating a workshop for financial stress-reduction.  The once-a-week eight-session workshop became so successful it became her full-time business.  It was so popular that her students’ word-of-mouth created demand for the program all over the country, which led her to write The Wealthy Spirit to help those who couldn’t come to LA for the workshop.  (Or those, like me, who’d be reluctant to fork over the big bucks for it!)

Campbell excels at teaching with a story, and many of the day’s lessons illustrate points by telling stories about what she does in her workshops, about amazing things that happen to clients using the affirmations, and stories from her own life experience.  It has helped Campbell’s knowledge and credibility that her life has not been one success after another.  She’s had to come back from addiction, abuse and bankruptcy, and shares with us the valuable lessons she learned.

I first read this book about 5 years ago, the first year that I was teaching only part-time and tutoring on the side.  I chose a few affirmations to say daily, a practice that absolutely helped me ask for and receive more money for tutoring.  Also, at the end of the year when I received a full-time job offer, it gave me the confidence to ask for more money (which I received, 10% more), though I did not have a full-time job at the time and was therefore seemingly not in a great place to negotiate.

The teachings are based on the law of attraction, but it’s not about saying affirmations and having money magically appear (though in some of her stories that happens too!)  You have to “send out ships”, in other words do the legwork to get you where you want to be financially, or career-wise, or anything-wise.  The metaphor refers to the days when English businessmen built big ships and loaded them up with goods to trade in the east.  The ships might not come back in with the money for months or even a year or two (or sometimes never), but what is sure is that ships only come in when you send them out!  The affirmations put you in the right frame of mind to attract the wealth; they raise your energy so you put it towards sending out ships.

The wisdom in “The Wealthy Spirit” goes beyond the financial.  For example, as Campell says, “We are only in charge of sending out ships.  God is in charge of which ones come in.”  In other words, let go of results.  Your focus must be on sending the ships out, which is exactly the main lesson of the Bhagavad Gita.  Just keep sending them out.  Another example I like is the “Glad Game”, taught to Campell by her mother.  When you’re feeling down, if you have a setback, you can allow a little time for self pity, but then turn it around by making a game of thinking up things about the situation to be glad and thankful about.  It will lift your mood!  The book also includes lessons for having a well-balanced life, and having fun.  Some are about taking time off, and how it makes you more, rather than less, productive.

Campbell also talks about budgeting (in a way that actually makes it appealing) and other practical strategies for managing your money, such as a plan for paying off credit cards.  Not everything in the book is applicable to everyone’s financial life.  For example, she talks a lot about drumming up business by phone, and there are obviously professions in which that sort of activity is unnecessary.  However, if you are in sales or in business for yourself (or would like to be), buying this book is money well spent.

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”.