Review: Great ideas that make you think
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 12, 2013
What I liked about this book is that it offers a variety of strategies to improving your mood. You can't really teach someone how to be happy, but you can show them how to change their mindset which can greatly help. There is a lot of very good advice here, particularly about self-talk. While it may be perfectly normal to be disappointed about something you did, prolonged negative self-talk isn't going to improve the situation and can actually make it a lot worse. I feel a lot of this advice is meant to get people away from dwelling too much on the negative. This is dangerously close to just repressing things, but at the same time it makes sense. If what you're upset about is something relatively minor, spending your day thinking about won't get you anywhere. Instead, putting on a smile and inviting people to share positive news will help you shrug off whatever minor bad thing happened. This advice shouldn't be applied to big traumas or problems, and the author agrees with that. This book is meant to help with your mindset on the day-to-day matters, not how to deal with the loss of a loved one. It's about letting go of all the little things along the way that keep a lot of people from feeling positive. It shouldn't be read as a substitute for therapy or for tackling big issues (again, mentioned in the book), but it can definitely help if you find yourself regularly dragged down by the little bumps in the road.