I’m stepping aside for today and leaving the spotlight to Margaret Curley Sanborn, the author of non-fiction book “The Practical Guide to Happiness”. She’s written a guest post for my blog about happiness.
”I’ll Be Happy When . . .”
If you have thought this, you know that “when” rarely seems to come; and when it does it doesn’t last very long and is seldom as wonderful as you anticipated. When you think of happiness as something outside of you, a commodity that comes and goes, as something attached to events and people, it is a very elusive and precarious thing.
So many of us chase happiness, or lament our lack of it, feeling the events of the world and our life either reward or rob of us this precious commodity. When we realize that real happiness is always within our grasp, we can become empowered to change our lives.
After that first lung-clearing cry, most of us come into this world happy. Babies smile for no good reason. They are pleased with the smallest things and are delighted by the sights and sounds around them. “That’s easy”, you think. They have no responsibilities, no bills to pay, no one else to care for. All true. However, what they can teach us is that real happiness is there, inside us, from the moment we are born. It’s not lost; it’s not given away. It’s COVERED by the events and responsibilities of this world. That happiness, that joy, you see in a very young child is still inside of you. It is an essential part of the truth of who you are. What we need to do is uncover it.
We begin that process by remembering that real happiness springs from within and is not ‘given’ to us by outside events. If you can stop looking for happiness outside of yourself and believe that there is a core of happiness inside you, you have made a start. When you perceive and interact with the world from that place of positive energy, you see everyone and everything differently. Your interactions with the world become easier and more enjoyable and new options appear.
The challenge is in changing our mind about what happiness is and where it comes from. If you have a view of happiness that is not serving you, you need to learn how to look at your life circumstance and Think Again.
About The Practical Guide to Happiness
Title: The Practical Guide to Happiness: If You Don’t Like How You’re Feeling, Think Again
Author: Margaret Curley Sanborn
Genre: Creative non-fiction, self help
The Practical Guide to Happiness: If You Don’t Like How You’re Feeling, Think Again
Can You Learn to be Happy, with Who You Are, Where You Are and What You Have, Now?
If you are willing, YOU CAN, regardless of the cards you have been dealt.
The “pursuit of happiness” is a human right so basic that it’s named in the US Constitution. Unfortunately for most, it is little more than a pursuit, as happiness is elusive to many. The Practical Guide to Happiness: If you don’t like how you’re feeling, Think Again delineates, in a concrete way, the direct link between perception, thinking and feeling.
By using highly relatable stories, readers of the book are able to form a concrete link between abstract ideas regarding how they perceive and think, and how they feel. Realistic characters deal with real-life circumstances to demonstrate how the same situation and events, perceived and thought about differently, can yield different levels of happiness.
The Practical Guide to Happiness educates the reader on the number one challenge to their happiness, the human ego. The reader learns about the power of the human ego to provide a continuous negative diatribe that makes constantly holding positive beliefs about the future, in the face of the challenges of ordinary life, almost impossible. It explains how the ego will impede and thwart most people who chart a course to manifest the type of results that experts, in leading positive thinking books, cite. It then teaches the reader how to curb the ego, and to Think Again.
By using the Think Again strategies, the user learns to create happiness now, regardless of less than ideal life circumstances.
The first half of the book contains engaging stories that directly address the greatest illusions to American happiness, including: personal weight, beauty, wealth, relationships, work, retirement, and child-bearing.
Through these realistic stories, the reader is shown how even small shifts in perception and thinking create happiness and/or misery for the stories’ characters. The stories do not all have a happy ending as shifts in perception may impact the ultimate outcome, but the point of the book is to show the reader that lasting happiness is not tied to people, events or circumstances.
After drawing the reader through interesting examples of how perception and thinking create feelings, the book shifts to a practical guide the reader can use to identify, analyze and change their own negative thinking. The second half of this book is a detailed guide for changing perception and thinking to increase happiness. This section includes 8 practical actions the reader can take every day to curb their negative thinking, as well as the 6 steps required to Think Again(or change their mind).
Unlike many good books on this subject, The Practical Guide to Happiness does not have a religious bent. Although it acknowledges spirituality and God, it expressly gives readers the ability to proceed from their own beliefs, including atheism.
This book is exclusively focused on empowering the reader to become happier today, regardless of their current life challenges.
Author Bio
Margaret Curley Sanborn has been a spiritual seeker since childhood. Raised in a staunch Catholic family, at the age of 5, she announced her plan to be the first female priest. That began her lifelong quest for answers to the ”hows and whys” of life; never finding answers that made sense until she discovered A Course in Miracles.
Margaret spent years as a corporate marketing executive, knowing that her passion for writing and spiritual truth would someday wind up in a book.
Regardless of your personal faith, Margaret has been able to translate some of the spiritual answers she has found, into practical guidance on how to live a happier life.
You can find out more about Margaret at www.ifuthink.com.
Links
Twitter: @ifuthink
Website: http://www.ifuthink.com
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