What Happy Women Know: How New Findings in Positive Psychology Can Change Women's Lives for the Better
Happiness is in many ways gender specific, says Baker (What Happy People Know), because women's brains are wired to allow them to feel more, and more frequent, positive feelings than men. Baker, founding director of Canyon Ranch's Life Enhancement program, and Greenberg (What Happy Companies Know) draw on positive psychology to show women how to find happiness. Negative traps prevent women from achieving happiness, they say. These traps are easily recognizable: perfectionism, thinking you'll never be happy without a lot of money or a man, focusing on work as opposed to relationships. Happy women, on the other hand, have a sense of personal responsibility, the ability to find opportunity in adversity, a sense of purpose and courage. Writer Yalof helps make all this accessible, but many of these ideas are truisms, and the authors sometimes characterize women with facile generalizations, for example: Most women don't know themselves well enough to determine what their special qualities are. Still, women who find themselves in one of the negative traps may find help here in learning how to look on the bright side.(July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.