I know it may seem weird to do a book review on happiness on an affiliate marketing website. But to me, not only is it the most natural thing ever, I also think it’s a necessity.
The absolute #1 factor in creating a successful online business is your mindset. Yes, it’s important to build your skills and learn how to create a website that can help people solve their problems. But if your mind isn’t in the right order, then all the skills in the world aren’t going to matter.
That’s why I was extremely happy (See? The book is already working!) when I was contacted by someone from TCK Publishing to take a look at The Happy Mind: A Simple Guide to Living a Happier Life Starting Today and provide a review.
This book doesn’t just teach you about happiness, but it’s a manual to get yourself on a happy road. A road that you can travel down for the rest of your life.
If you’re already a happy person, this book will help you understand why and how to keep up with your happy thoughts. If you’re generally an unhappy person, this book will give you the right perspective on how to shift your focus so that you can become a happier person.
Being happy is our right, and a necessity to make our own worlds a better place. Not only will your world become better, but you’ll start to see the ENTIRE world and the people within it as good and fun and vibrant. Isn’t that a much better (and happier) way to live?
Let’s take a look at The Happy Mind by Kevin Horsley and Louis Fourie and see how it can help YOU have a happy mind and a better life..
Where Do You Find Happiness?
The first part of the book has us think about what happiness is and how we become happy. Is it an external something that makes us happy? Is it a certain place, person or event that causes the happiness within us?
It explains a few different types of people and how they seek their happiness:
1. The treasure seekers. These are the people who are fascinated with wealth and who think happiness comes in the form of being rich. While money is great to have and very useful, we all know people who have plenty of money and who are unhappy.
2. The past and future thinkers. These people live in the past and think about “the good old days”. Or, they are the ones thinking about the future and what’s to come. This is especially true for certain religions. These are the people who are just trying to make it into heaven.
3. The dependent-on-others group. These are the people who think happiness comes from other people. Maybe you’re looking for your perfect soulmate. You imagine your life will be so much happier when they come. I love this quote from the book regarding this group:
“When two people don’t ‘discover’ happiness in their life partnership, one or both may bargain on a child to instill happiness in their lives.
So often, people place their responsibility to be happy on an innocent infant. ‘A baby will solve our relationship’s inability to bring us happiness’, they believe. They in effect transfer the responsibility of two adults to create their own happiness to a baby. Eventually this effort only creates a third unhappy person – the child.”
Isn’t that the truth?
Thig group is also dependent on their kids, their bosses, their friends, the government and other people they interact with to make them happy. This group expect others to change so that THEY can be happy. It’s a little backward, if you think about it.
I think what the book is getting at here by identifying these groups is that happiness is not something that happens TO you, it’s something that you get to choose to be, regardless of what’s going on all around you.
What is Happiness?
This part of the book is especially interesting and really gets to the heart of the matter. Why are happy people happy? What are their common characteristics?
This chapter speaks to me because happiness isn’t just about pleasure, although pleasure in life is important. Again, that’s looking at outside circumstances to fill your happiness meter.
Do happy people always have good circumstances in their lives?
Or, maybe…
They just think differently.
How do you think? Do you find the things in life that are nice and pleasing? Or do you see the world as a bad place with bad people everywhere? The way you think, and the perspective you have on life, can dramatically shift your focus.
These observations and the nine common characteristics that happy people have is worth the entire price of the book.
Why?
Because then you’ll begin to understand the mentality that happy people have. It’s not the outside world that matters, it’s your internal world that matters.
Take Full Responsibility for Your Life
I read this in another book, and it’s also mentioned in The Happy Mind. You have to take full responsibility for your life and all the events surrounding your life.
What this means is that good or bad, you have the choice to see your world the way you WANT to see it. The book says that happy people fully embrace their successes and their challenges because they can view either in an optimistic manner.
How do you look at the events that have surrounded your life? Do you say “Nothing good ever happens to me?” Or can you take something from even the most challenging parts of life? (Hint: if you can, you will be much, much happier. And by the way, you CAN.)
What About Unhappiness?
The book goes into great detail about what unhappiness is too. This is great because you want to know what you look out for and the difference between your unhappy emotions and your happy emotions.
When you know which emotions make you feel unhappy, you can work toward changing your thoughts to better thoughts, which will change your emotions to better emotions.
I love how the book lays out the different types of unhappiness in people, such as being generally dissatisfied with everything in life, disregarding or neglecting themselves, or just being cynical and negative.
As you read through this chapter, I’m sure that some people that you know will come to mind. And if it’s you? Then you really need to completely take this book in. Because life is WAY more fun than you’re allowing yourself to see.
Practical Ways to Become a Happier Person
In the later part of The Happy Mind, there are practical tips on how to become a happier person. This is the real meat of the book and the part that you definitely do not want to miss. Once you know how to feel your happiness and unhappiness, you can use his advice to either stay on the happy path, or change your unhappy path to something better.
Sometimes when you’re unhappy, it’s hard to get out of that rut. Using the book’s advice, I would recommend tackling one issue at a time, and do it little by little.
For instance:
Maybe you have problems at work? Check out the part about making your work environment better so that you can focus on the good things about work. When you focus on the good aspects of work, work begins to take on a whole new look, and you can begin to feel happier when in that environment. And then you can learn how to do that in any environment and in any circumstance.
The biggest lesson in these lessons is…
YOU can take control and LEARN how to be happy.
Being Happy Takes Work
Believe it or not, being happy actually takes a lot of mental work. I know that this is something that I personally work on on a daily basis. The thing is, if you can get yourself into a happy state, everything else around you becomes easier. Therefore, being and staying happy is actually the most work that you need to do on a day-to-day basis.
For me, the biggest things that help me get and stay happy are:
- Get outside in nature every day
- Move my body every day (usually outside in nature)
- Meditate to quiet my resistant thoughts
- Do something fun every day
- STUDY
i actually study how to feel good every single day. And that’s why this book is really important. It’s a manual that you will want to keep with you and reference at all points of your life. Study happiness every day, and you will see how your entire life will be shifted.
<img alt=”The Happy Mind book” width=”231″ height=”348″ title=”The_Happy_Mind_Book” data-id=”5398″ src=”https://christinapiccoli.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The_Happy_Mind_Book.jpg” style=”width: 100%;”>Grab The Happy Mind on Amazon
Important Links for The Happy Mind
Do you want to keep in touch with The Happy Mind and Kevin Horsley? Here are some links for you to check out:
- TCK Publishing Website
- TCK Publishing Facebook page
- Kevin Horsley’s Website
- Follow up with Kevin on Twitter
Do you have any questions or comments about The Happy Life review? What are your tips to staying happy? If you have a home-based business, how does being happy help your business? Leave me your thoughts down below!