In Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out, transformational expert Marci Shimoff offers a breakthrough approach to being happy, one that doesn’t depend on achievements, goals, money, relationships, or anything else “out there.” Most books on happiness tell you to find the things that make you happy and do more of them. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, it won’t bring you the kind of deep and lasting happiness most people long for — the kind you’ll never lose, no matter what happens in your life. Based on cutting-edge research and knowledge from the world’s leading experts in the fields of positive psychology and neurophysiology, plus interviews with 100 truly happy people, this life-changing book provides a powerful, proven 7-step program that will enable you to be happier right now — no matter where you start.
Studies show that each of us has a “happiness setpoint” — a fixed range of happiness we tend to return to throughout our life — that’s approximately 50 percent genetic and 50 percent learned. In the same way you’d crank up the thermostat to get comfortable on a chilly day, you can actually raise your happiness set-point! The holistic 7-step program at the heart of Happy for No Reason encompasses Happiness Habits for all areas of life: personal power, mind, heart, body, soul, purpose, and relationships.
In these pages you’ll discover moving and remarkable first-person stories of people who have applied these steps to their own lives and have become Happy for No Reason. You’ll read phenomenal tales from a former drug dealer turned minister, a hit filmmaker, and a famous actress who escaped a “family curse,” as well as stories from doctors, mothers, teachers, and business executives. You’ll learn practical strategies that will help you experience happiness from the inside out.
Many reasons to read this book When I first saw the title, “Happy for No Reason,” I’ll have to admit that my initial reaction was that this would be just one more new age, touch-feely, full-of-fluff feel-good book. So I was very pleasantly surprised to see how thoroughly-researched, well-written, and down-to-earth practical this book is. “Happy for No Reason” is a groundbreaking philosophy that belongs in the same category as the work of David Burns (cognitive mood therapy), Martin Seligman (learned optimism), Daniel Goleman (emotional intelligence) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (flow). It is a brilliant blend of scientific research summarized in language that anyone can understand plus stories from people Marci calls the Happy 100, people who are role models of happiness for the sake of happiness, not because of love or money or other exogenous factors.I was so impressed with this book that I gave copies to each of my children as Christmas gifts this year. I’m hoping they will read it with a pen or highlighter in hand, which is what I found myself doing – and would recommend to you as well. It’s easy to be unhappy, which might be why so many people are. Watch TV for an hour and you’ll have a hundred reasons to not be happy; it’s nice to know that you can choose to be happy for no reason at all.
Good, Yes…But Not the Best in Getting and Staying Happier I have read more of the happiness literature than most people because of a work assignment. Granted, by the time I got to this one, much of the information was not new anymore. But when evaluating a book or manuscript, it’s helpful to look at it as if it were the first of its type you have picked up.Happy for No Reason is good, but there are better “happy” books out there. Good promotion is taking this one far. Better by a long shot are STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS (Daniel Gilbert), HAPPY AT LAST: THE THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO FINDING JOY (Richard O’Connor), and AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS (Martin Seligman).
I was surprised by the book… I thought it would be namby-pamby or filled with fluff until I read this paragraph in the introduction:”My first major discovery was that scientists have found that we each have a `happiness set-point,’ the genetic and learned tendency to remain at a certain level of happiness, similar to a thermostat setting on a furnace. Fortunately for those of us not born on the sunny side of the street, it’s been shown that we can change our happiness set-points. I’ll discuss this more in the next chapter and offer you specific exercises throughout the book to raise your happiness set-point.”As I read the book I was surprised at most every turn. I was delighted that she included Mark McKergow’s Solution Focus Technique–a longtime favorite of mine that keeps you focused on what’s working in your life instead of on what’s not working….And that she actually tells how to do one of Chunyi Lin’s Spring Forest Qigong techniques that energizes the body and literally brings you feelings of happiness and joy.Part of her process in studying happiness was to interview 100 truly happy people. Another surprise was finding a link where I could actually listen to highlights of the interviews online.So…I’d get the book.