To be happier, you have to learn to find happiness inside of yourself and bring it into your life. This book shows you how to start to do that.
In the end, isn't happiness the purpose of all of our hard work? Of course it is. We want to be happy. We want to be fulfilled. We want to live with purpose. However, working hard, acquiring a lot of stuff, and being "successful" does not guarantee happiness.
The truth is, we all have the natural ability to be happy right now. At this moment, as you are reading this, you can be happy. Nothing needs to change in your life. You can be happy just the way you are.
And here is a bonus. Psychologists tell us that happy people have better relationships, better health, are more successful and live longer lives. They are not happier because of these things; instead they have these things because they are already happy. It is not success that makes you happy. It is happiness that makes you successful.
The way to approach life is to learn to be happy first. That's right. Just learn to be happy. By doing so, chances are all of the good things in life that you want will come to you. And, all of the time you are waiting for them you will be happy. If they never come, you will still be happy.
So, this book is about being happier. It is about changing your approach to life so that the natural happiness that is already inside of you can come into your life.
It takes about an hour to read this book. During this hour, you will read about different ways of being happier, and each one includes something you can do right now to make yourself immediately happier. Anyone who reads this book and tries the exercises can be happier in one hour.
Excerpt:
Human beings are really kind of dumb. We have the natural ability to be happy any time we want. Yet, we don’t learn to use it. Instead, we spend our time trying to acquire things and do things to make ourselves happy. We try to gather people around us who will make us happy. “Things” do not have the power to make us happy. Other people do not have the power to make us happy. To be happier, you have to learn to find happiness inside of yourself and bring it into your life.
People try to do things to accumulate lots of stuff, find better relationships, feel better, become more successful and live longer. A lot of this effort is aimed at making themselves happier. But, much of the time this effort is not effective. In reality, there is nothing we have to do to be happy. We make ourselves happy naturally. All of this running around trying to be happy just gets in the way.
You are probably saying to yourself that I’m crazy and that all of these things do make us happy. People who are not happy just don’t try hard enough, or are not lucky enough to get what they want to make themselves happy.
I don’t believe it. I look around and see people working like demons, acquiring things, gathering lots of people around them, and being successful. But, they are not happy. They are not healthy. Their relationships are toxic. Still, they keep working hard to get more of whatever they have.
The simple fact is, human beings evolved to survive and have babies who survive. That’s it! To thrive as a species on a hostile planet, where everything was trying to kill us and eat us, our mind-bodies* evolved to do what it takes to survive. We did not evolve to be happy.
Because of the way we evolved, we approach everything we do as if it were a survival course. We sweat and strain, and pursue all kinds of things in order to be happy – money, looks, relationships, health, knowledge, entertainment. This activity is more of what we did 100,000 years ago, stumbling through jungles or across plains, looking for something to eat. We still refer to our environment as a jungle -- urban jungle, business jungle, dating jungle.
We are willing to spend a lot of time, and we are willing to suffer to get what we want – hoping that in the end what we get will bring happiness. People who are unwilling to make the effort are called lazy or losers.
What do we want though? In the end, don’t we all just want to be happy? Isn’t happiness the purpose of all of this hard work? Of course it is. We want to do more than just survive. We want to be happy. We want to be fulfilled. We want to live with purpose. Working hard, acquiring a lot of stuff, and being “successful” does not guarantee happiness.
