Happiness Book Suggestions

Many times self-help books are the first stop for up to an estimated 80% of the American population when experiencing sadness, stress, anxiety, or just plain discontentment with life. People tend to turn, first, to a book instead of stepping in a therapist’s office to save time, money, and some times- perceived social stigma.

Although research has found therapy to be the best course of treatment for most clinical mental health issues- self help books can often be very helpful in giving the reader at least a step in the right direction. Here are my top ten recommendations to get you started:

1)  Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar
He started by teaching Psychology 101 to a class of 100 Harvard students, which immediately began to grow to thousands, including members of the press and media wanting to know the secrets to happiness. His book is a practical, no-frills guide to what makes us happy, and one of my greatest inspirations to study happiness while in grad school.

2)   Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin E. P. Seligman- Martin Seligman is pretty much the father of the positive psychology movement, and he pretty much sets the foundation for why what we do makes us happy…Coming from a strong academic background, his books due tend to be a bit more research laced, but nonetheless an important read.

3) The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness

Mark Williams (Author), John Teasdale (Author), Zindel Segal (Author), Jon Kabat-Zinn (Author)- This books sets the foundation for why it is so important to engage in daily meditation, and why it is so important to be present in our emotions vs. avoiding them.

4) Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness by James Baraz andShoshana Alexander – although a bit higher on the cheese factor/chicken soup for the soul-esque, this book is chock full of brilliant quotes about what makes us truly happy, and intertwined with real life experience to apply the concepts.

5) A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose  by Eckhart Tolle– Tolle has an amazing ability to convey his sense of peace and calm through his writing. This book solidifies his ideas in The power of now, about staying in the present moment, and how we default to thinking about the past or future which is usually unnecessary

6) Happiness in B.A.L.A.N.C.E: What We Know Now, About Happiness (Volume 1) – Paperback (Apr. 20, 2011) by Dr. Colleen Long- Of course I would be remiss if I did not include my own book on happiness, which is the culmination of what I’ve learned from the proceeding books, as well as what I observed during graduate training, about the techniques that seemed to change my patients’ lives the most

7) The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin (Mar 1, 2011)- The thing I love about her book is that she is a real person. She just wanted to feel happier and began to be more pro-active about putting happiness back into her life. She is a beautiful demonstration of how one can have all the “things,” we think we want, but nothing we actually need.

8) Kabbalah: The Power to Change Everything by Yehuda Berg– This book was one of the first spiritually based books I read, that got me thinking about radically changing the way I approach life. Instead of always focusing on how to get ahead, and focusing on how to help others get ahead- your life spiritually transforms in a way it could never do before. Some of the mysticism and mathematics get a little off track and lose the reader, but it is a great spiritual foundation for happiness.

9) The Spiritual Rules of Engagement: How Kabbalah Can Help Your Soul Mate Find You by Yehuda Berg (Apr 28, 2008)- If you read this book, you’ll never have to read anything else about how to find, and maintain a successful relationship with your partner. It completely sums up the role of the ego and how it can deter us from reaching lasting fulfillment and love.

10) Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Wayne W. Dyer (Jan 1, 2009) – Yes also a bit higher on the cheese factor, Wayne Dyer gives me the “motivational speaker” heebie jeebies sometimes, but this book is phenomenal. The Tao was laid down long ago, and it’s wisdom still applies today. I would recommend getting the audio version of this, and listening to a little bit each day on your ride in to work.

 

 

Dr. Colleen Long (PSY23911) is the author of “Happiness in B.A.L.A.N.C.E,” and “Meditation Medication.”  Dr. Long works mainly from a positive psychology framework as it applies to addiction, depression, relationships,  body image and weight loss. Her website can be found at www.DrColleenLong.com. For a free consultation please contact her at 1-800-593-2560

 

Bored at the Beach? There’s a Reason

One of the most frequent observations made of  patients, during my stint in a psychiatric inpatient unit, was their lack of novelty or change throughout their day. If you asked a person suffering from depression what they did that day, they often struggled to remember. This is because depressed people usually maintain a very repetitive existence (recall Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog’s Day).

Without going into a neuroanatomy lesson, think of the right brain as being depression’s ally, while the left brain is its nemesis. Our right brain contains structures that are associated with telling us, “if we just keep doing the same thing that we are used to, we will feel comfortable, and will feel better (also similar to when we have the flu or a cold).”

Yet, our left brain contains structures that are associated with novelty and challenge. If you recall from the meditation blog, our left brain also contains structures that are associated with our feelings of well-being and contentment. Therefore, you can begin to see how challenge and novelty are associated with well-being and contentment. By learning new things and spicing up our routine, we stimulate the area in our brain that makes us feel hopeful, optimistic, and joyful.

“Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.”   – Sophocles

Many times, I would ask the patients in our group what a typical day in their life looked like. Usually it would look like this:

Wake up + Cigarette + Television + Lunch + Cigarette + Television + Cigarette + Dinner  + Cigarette + Sleep –> Repeat

Astoundingly, this type of day for them would repeat itself for months and months until they found themselves depressed, anxious, addicted, and/or suicidal and in our hospital.

These people were simply doing what “felt” right. They did not go out, they isolated without any peer interaction, their interpersonal relationships deteriorated, and they hadn’t done anything “out of the box,” in a significantly long time. Yet, there condition worsened until they were no longer able to cope on their own.

Oftentimes, patients would show a significant improvement within the first couple of days of treatment. My theory was that this was largely in part due to a novel environment combined with social interaction (vs. psychotropic medication, which they also received) and structure (often lacking throughout their lives and also found to contribute to mental illness).

“We squander our free time by freeing it of effort.”   – Tal Ben Shahar

Many humans believe that by “turning off” we are somehow rejuvenating ourselves. Can you remember the last time you felt invigorated after watching hours of television? Can you recall the feeling of boredom after spending three days by the beach on holiday intended to “relax” you? Think back to the happiest moments of your life. What were you doing? It is likely that you were working towards some self-directed goal or purpose.

“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”  – Pearl S. Buck

The “L” in my B.A.L.A.N.C.E model stands for “learning.” Learning includes both challenge and purpose. It is the behavior of the lifelong learner. We are hardwired as humans with the drive and desire to continuously learn and challenge ourselves. Yet, in day to day life, we set aside little time devoted to actually learning something new or purposely challenging ourselves. It is our job to restore challenge and learning back in our lives because that is what our minds are designed to do and desire to do. Think about where we would be today if we never challenged ourselves.

Recall a period in your life when you were being challenged to do something outside of your normal routine. Maybe you were doing work related training and were learning a new sales approach or computer software system. Maybe you were trying out a new pilates class, or training for a marathon. Whatever it was, I have a hunch that if you think back to how you were feeling, you were likely upbeat, positive, and content. Maybe you even questioned, “why don’t I do this more often?”

To the depressed person, this can seem like a monumental task. The idea of challenging themselves to learn something new is akin to asking someone with the stomach virus to get up and play a game of Twister. Yet the rewards of doing this for someone with depression can be immeasurable. Unlike other illnesses, often times doing the opposite of what you feel like doing, is usually the best medicine. This has also been referred to as opposite action, and is often used in DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) for emotional regulation. I simply refer to it as the “just do it,” approach.

So as you are going through your day today- try something new. Maybe ask a friend to go to a mid-afternoon movie. Maybe take an online learning class about something you’ve always wanted to know more about, or just take a different route home than you usually do. Observe your feelings after doing so, and start to look for other opportunities in your week where you can sprinkle in some novelty. Go on… just do it.

Dr. Colleen Long is the author of “Happiness in B.A.L.A.N.C.E,” and practices in the Los Angeles area. Dr. Long works mainly from a positive psychology framework as it applies to addiction, depression, relationships,  and weight loss. Her website can be found at www.DrColleenLong.com. All public speaking/media event requests handled through FreudTV (info@FreudTV.com).