Review: Improve Your Happiness
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 3, 2013
There are a couple of different approaches to improving your level of happiness.  One is to study all the research that has been conducted on happiness and try to understand the different things that makes us happy or detract from our happiness.  The theory is that if you understand what makes you happy, you can shift your focus to those things and therefore increase your level of happiness.  You can think of this as the intellectual approach or change your attitude about happiness.The other approach is more practical, direct approach.  It is simply doing small things that will improve your happiness.  This approach does not get bogged down in the psychological reasons behind the practices.  The premise of this approach is that attitude follows behavior.  Change your behavior and your attitude or level of happiness will change.Happy Every Day by Bryan Hutchinson, takes the approach that it is not necessary to understand all the  psychology involved.  What is necessary are some simple, easy to do exercises that you can and will do on a daily basis.  If you do these exercises, you will improve your level of happiness.There are 25 separate exercises you can do that are designed to improve your level of happiness.  These exercises require that you get a journal and record the results in the journal.I believe this book has a lot in common with the idea expressed by Abraham Lincoln, when he said, "You are as happy as you make up your mind to be".  If you decide you want to improve your happiness, if you make up your mind to be happier and do these exercises, I believe you will see a marked improvement in your level of happiness.Some of the exercises include: Learn something new; Act happy; take a News fast; develop a Can Do attitude; be Grateful; Love yourself and pay attention to your Self-talk.There is very little psychology or theory provided with these exercises.  But simply doing the exercises consistently and writing about them in your journal will dramatically improve your level of happiness.I like the book because it offers very simple, easy to do exercises.  I would have liked to see more information about the research and reasons these exercises work, but that would have resulted in a much longer book that would have been more difficult to read.  The real value of this book is in doing the exercises.  This is a rather short book, you can read it in less than an hour.  But my suggestion would be that you read one exercise per day and do the exercises.  The exercises are all stand-alone. They do not build on each other.  Reading the book from "cover to cover" will not results in an improved happiness level.  Doing just a few of the exercises consistently, will show significant results.I was provided a review copy of this book.