It's just a co-incidence (or is it?) that I attended a workshop on building happiness and reducing stress the same week I got this book for review. But whatever the case, both the book and the workshop have inspired me to take some baby steps to reduce the pressure building up juggling home, career, and kids.
About the book
Today, we are leading our lives in mindless pursuit, unable even to articulate what we are pursuing. We are unhappy even after achieving what we desire. Happiness is all we want! suggests that the source of peace and happiness is within us, if we know the secret. The book's objective is to help us unlock that secret and attain a high level of overall well-being in order to lead a happy and fulfilling life and be the healthiest we can be, mentally and physically. A wide variety of tools and techniques are explained in simple language. Many real life experiences of the author as well as other people are interspersed through the book.
Demystifying the spiritual aspect of wellbeing, this book integrates it with your life objectives. You can immensely improve not only the peace and happiness in your life but your beauty and appearance as well.
~ Synopsis from goodreads
Happiness is all we want is a personal enhancement book that talks about how you can tweak your lifestyle to put your happiness first. In general, we learn from a young age to reach for sky-high goals (engineering! medicine!) and go after achieving these goals with relentless pursuit. Then, when we achieve the goal, we can relax at the summit and be happy.
His book is here to tell us that life doesn't actually work that way.
In our quest for success, we lose out on the smaller joys of life, and at the end of it are disillusioned by the fact that the satisfaction and happiness we hoped to get just isn't there in life.
Thankfully, Mishra has easy, simple, and doable solutions in his book. He simplifies the vast concept of happiness and well-being into three distinct parts, and offers us solutions for those.
- Mental Well-being
- Physical Well-being
- Spiritual Well-being
I really liked how he simplified the book and made me think that happiness and well-being is something in my control - not an external dependency. His tips were simple and easy to follow, and his anecdotes very interesting.
I also love that the author is a corporate honcho. He really understands the kind of problems and pressures a regular worker bee faces, and I found myself relating to most of the points in the book.
It is also pretty inspirational. So inspirational that I have started tackling some of my mental and physical well-being issues using some of the tips in the book. At the least, I have become mindful of my tendency to stress-eat on simple carbs when I am swamped with work. I now know about the sugar crashes and highs that develop. For the past one week, there has been no sugar in any form in my life. I can't believe it. I've never gone even a single day without sugar, so this is a record!
Some other things I mean to practice:
- Take some time out for meditation
- Pause to capture and value small moments of happiness every day
- Realize the moments I am getting stressed and try to take a step back from it, and control it
The last thing is probably going to be the toughest thing for me.
Huge thanks to the author for sending me this book for review consideration.
You can also buy a copy of this book from Amazon.
