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Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out (Hardcover)
by Marci Shimoff
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Personal transformation, Motivation, Personal improvement |
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Author: Marci Shimoff
Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition
Pub. in: January, 2008
ISBN: 141654772X
Pages: 336
Measurements: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01197
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-1416547723
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- MSL Picks -
This is the best self help book I have ever read. I have a history of depression and have searched over the years for solutions and found many techniques that were helpful - including the Sedona Method and Heartmath which Marcia recommends in this book.
This book was recommended to me by two of the best self development companies I know of - when one of them recommended it I though "that sounds nice but I cant afford it right now" but when the second recommendation came through I thought "Hell it must be good". I bought it immediately and it is probably the best value for money of any book I have ever bought.
The information in it is really special - its a collection of techniques that are really the cream of the crop and they are explained fully and clearly so you end up with a raft of techniques which can lead to a happier life.
Its about being happy for no reason - This is as opposed to being unhappy, or happy for a reason, which implies you are dependent on circumstances and will end up unhappy for a reason later on. Do you get my drift - if you can cultivate happiness whatever your circumstances you will always be happy no matter what happens to you good or bad - this is a genuine non-dependent kind of happiness that really serves you.
I am already happier for no reason after reading the book through half way.
It is a stunner of a book and if you buy it you wont regret doing so ever!
(From quoting Ms. K. J. Nixon, USA)
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Marci Shimoff is a professional speaker and trainer who has inspired thousands of people around the world with her message of personal and professional growth. Over the last 16 years she has delivered seminars and keynote addresses on self esteem, stress management, communication skills and peak performance.
Marci Shimoff is co author of the New York Times bestsellers Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul 1 & 2, Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul, and Chicken Soup for the Single's Soul. Her fifth book, Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul 2, was released in March, 2001.
Marci Shimoff is president of The Esteem Group, a company that specializes in self esteem and inspirational programs. As a top rated trainer for Fortune 500 companies, Marci's clients have included AT&T, General Motors, Sears, Amoco, Western Union, and Bristol Myers Squibb. She has also been a featured speaker for numerous professional organizations, universities, and women's associations, where she is known for her lively humor and dynamic delivery.
Marci Shimoff combines her energetic style with a strong knowledge base. She earned her MBA from UCLA she also studied for one year in the U.S. and Europe to earn an advanced certificate as a stress management consultant. In 1983, Marci co authored a highly acclaimed study of the 50 top business women in America. Marci is a member of the National Council for Self Esteem (NCSE) and the National Speakers Association (NSA).
Since 1989, Marci has studied self esteem with Jack Canfield, and has assisted in his annual Training of Trainers program for professionals. Over the last four years, she has been delivering keynote addresses based on the Chicken Soup for the Soul message, in association with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen.
Of all the projects Marci has worked on in her career, none have been as fulfilling as delivering the Chicken Soup for the Soul message through her books and speaking engagements. She is thrilled at the opportunity to help touch the hearts and rekindle the spirits of millions of people throughout the world.
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From Publisher
What would it take to make you happy? A fulfilling career, a big bank account, or the perfect mate? What if it didn't take anything to make you happy? What if you could experience happiness from the inside out - no matter what's going on in your life?
In Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out, transformational expert Marci Shimoff offers a breakthrough approach to being happy, one that doesn't depend on achievements, goals, money, relationships, or anything else "out there." Most books on happiness tell you to find the things that make you happy and do more of them. Although there's nothing wrong with that, it won't bring you the kind of deep and lasting happiness most people long for - the kind you'll never lose, no matter what happens in your life. Based on cutting-edge research and knowledge from the world's leading experts in the fields of positive psychology and neurophysiology, plus interviews with 100 truly happy people, this life-changing book provides a powerful, proven 7-step program that will enable you to be happier right now - no matter where you start.
Studies show that each of us has a "happiness setpoint" - a fixed range of happiness we tend to return to throughout our life - that's approximately 50 percent genetic and 50 percent learned. In the same way you'd crank up the thermostat to get comfortable on a chilly day, you can actually raise your happiness set-point! The holistic 7-step program at the heart of Happy for No Reason encompasses Happiness Habits for all areas of life: personal power, mind, heart, body, soul, purpose, and relationships.
In these pages you'll discover moving and remarkable first-person stories of people who have applied these steps to their own lives and have become Happy for No Reason. You'll read phenomenal tales from a former drug dealer turned minister, a hit filmmaker, and a famous actress who escaped a "family curse," as well as stories from doctors, mothers, teachers, and business executives. You'll learn practical strategies that will help you experience happiness from the inside out.
You don't have to have happy genes, win the lottery, or lose twenty pounds. By the time you finish this book, you will know how to experience sustained happiness for the rest of your life.
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1
Happy for No Reason...Really?
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
- Aristotle
Years ago, I taught a success seminar in which I asked the participants to each take a big sheet of heavy paper and write across the top "100 things to be, do, have." Then they made three long columns and began listing their dreams, big and small. When they shared their goals afterward, they were invariably all fired up: people wanted to go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, own a Mercedes SL600 Roadster (cream white, with titanium silver alloy wheels), dance at the White House, fly a small plane around the world. They wanted to rise to the top of their field, end world hunger, create world peace, be on the cover of Time magazine.
Somewhere on the be list a few people wrote "Be happy," but I was surprised at how often most people overlooked that. That's what the whole page was about, wasn't it? Didn't being, doing, and having all these things equal happiness?
Over time, I've come to look back on those lists as a great example of taking the long way around. Big and wonderful as those things are, they aren't the ultimate thing we all want. If you cut to the chase, what we really want is to be happy.
The truth is that happiness is so compelling, so attractive - so irresistible - that whether you realize it or not, everything you do is aimed at making yourself happy. Happiness has been called the holy grail of human existence, the be-all and end-all of life. Aristotle called it the goal of all goals.
Studies around the world show that when people are asked to rank what they want from life, they put the desire to be happy at the top of the list, more important than wealth, status, a good job, fame, and sex. This is true for people of all cultures, races, religions, ages, and lifestyles. And research also shows how vital happiness is: happy people live longer, are healthier, and have better relationships. In fact, happiness leads to more success in every area of your life.
Unfortunately, many people are not experiencing much sustained, authentic happiness. Consider these sad statistics:
Less than 30 percent of people report being deeply happy.
Twenty-five percent of Americans and 27 percent of Europeans claim they are depressed.
The World Health Organization predicts that by 2020, depression will be second only to heart disease in terms of the global burden of illness.
Although our lifestyles are better than ever, we're unhappier than ever. It seems the more gadgets and goods we gather, the worse we feel.
In this book, I'm not going to show you directly how to make more money, be more successful, or have better relationships. I leave that to my friends and colleagues in the transformational world who do that all so well. What I am going to do is tell you what I would most want to know. This book answers the question I've spent the past thirty-five years studying and researching, the one that is most important to me -- and that I believe is also most important to you: How can I be truly happy?
Although this question absorbed me for most of my life, for years I didn't have much luck answering it. In fact, I spent most of that time barking up the wrong tree.
One Unhappy CamperI had imagined it all as a child: I would grow up, live in a beautiful house, have a wonderful husband and a great career. My body would be perfect and my social life fun and exciting. I would be happy!
To live that life of my dreams, I knew I'd have to work hard to get all my ducks in a row. And although I was clear about what I wanted, I wasn't sure how I'd get it. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wasn't happy. I came out of the womb filled with existential angst. I was the brooding five-year-old who was worrying about the condition of the world while everyone else was watching Romper Room. At age seven, I was grilling my wonderful, loving parents about God and spirituality and becoming frustrated that they couldn't answer my questions. When I look through family albums, I see my brother and sister beaming at the camera while I always look as though I've just lost my best friend.
Even though I wasn't a naturally happy person, something deep within me knew that I didn't have to accept that way of being. It was as if I had some kind of antenna tuned to whatever I needed to learn most. When I was eleven, I slathered myself in suntan oil and snuck into my sister's room to steal a book to read while sunbathing. I grabbed the skinniest one, since I'd always been a slow reader, and headed outside. By the time I was halfway through the book, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, the story of a young Indian man on a quest for enlightenment thousands of years ago, I was in tears. I recognized that I wasn't alone; someone else on the planet understood my search and shared my longing for connection and joy. That book put me on the path of seeking.
While other girls were perfecting their stag leap for cheerleading tryouts, I was taking self-development courses. When I was thirteen, I heard my first motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar. As I watched him walk back and forth across the stage, revealing the secrets of success and telling stories that gave me goosebumps, lightning struck. I realized that being a professional speaker was what I wanted to do. It was a strange career goal for a young teenage girl in the early 1970s. Even so, I pictured myself speaking in front of large audiences all over the world, inspiring people to change their lives for the better. My parents were supportive, even though my father was a dentist and they really wanted me to be a dental hygienist. Mom said, "You sure talk enough, so you might as well get paid for it."
I moved my Nancy Drew mysteries to the side to make room for every humanistic psychology book I could lay my hands on. I devoured them. At the age of sixteen, I began meditating every day, and by the time I turned twenty, I was a teacher of meditation. Though meditating had a profound impact on my life, I was still searching.
As time passed, I never lost sight of my goal of becoming a speaker. I immersed myself in success principles and did my best to put every one into practice. I tithed a percentage of my income and visualized my goals. I made vision boards to help me picture those goals and discovered I had a gift for manifesting my desires. For example, after earning my MBA, I drew to myself a wonderful job that included many qualities I had always yearned for in a career. As vice president of marketing for a company that sold Austrian crystal, I was responsible for training and inspiring employees. I loved it! I taught them everything I'd studied in my own life: the principles of the Law of Attraction, being clear about what you want, and knowing how to harness your intuition, overcome obstacles, and achieve your goals.
From there, I moved on to teaching those same principles of success as a corporate trainer for Fortune 500 companies and then for a national seminar company speaking to large audiences of women all over the country. With every new position came a bigger paycheck and more kudos. But I wasn't exactly happy. I knew there was something still missing. I just couldn't tell you what it was.
Maybe it was my subject matter, I decided. So instead of teaching success seminars, I began to teach self-esteem seminars for women. Jack Canfield, the nation's top expert on self-esteem, became my amazing mentor -- years before he created the mega-best-selling book series Chicken Soup for the Soul -- and soon I was giving keynotes to two or three hundred women a day on self-esteem. I taught on my high heels from 7:00 in the morning until late afternoon, then jumped in a car and drove three hours to the next city, day after day after day. It was exhausting but exhilarating. I loved standing in front of my audiences and watching their faces light up. Yet I still felt it wasn't quite enough - I wanted to reach more people.
Then came my big break. It began with a decision to take care of myself. Burned out from all my traveling, I signed up for a seven-day silence retreat, a real challenge for a Chatty Cathy like me. On the fourth day, in the middle of meditation, the proverbial lightbulb clicked on. I flashed on a title: Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul. Up to this point, only the original Chicken Soup book had been published, and I knew this idea was a colossal winner. I was so excited; I'd just had the epiphany of my career. The only problem was I had to stay silent for three more days! The minute the retreat ended, I ran to the nearest payphone and called Jack. A year and a half later, Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul became a #1 New York Times best-seller and I went on to write five more Chicken Soup for the Soul books that have sold over 13 million copies.
There I was, on national TV and radio shows, giving speeches to huge audiences, being treated like a queen and living the whirlwind life of success. At one conference, I was picked up in a white stretch limo to speak to a crowd of 8,000. Throughout the three-day event, thousands of women stood in a line that stretched around the entire convention center waiting for me to sign their books. A massage therapist rubbed my hands every hour as I autographed copy after copy after copy - so many they had to be airlifted from every corner of the country to meet the demand. Many women in the autograph line told me my books had changed, or even saved, their lives. I was deeply moved by their stories and felt good that I had done something that made a difference. But when I went to my hotel room each night, I flopped on the bed, feeling drained and strangely flat.
You'd think I'd have been on top of the world. But I wasn't. Sure, my ego had gotten a boost, but I still had the same worries, tensions, complaints, and bad hair days as everyone else. At each step of the way, I was excited about the successes I'd achieved, but I noticed that the high nev...
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-03 00:00>
According to the World Health Organization, the year 2020 will see depression become second only to heart disease in terms of the global burden of illness, a sad state of affairs that motivational speaker Shimoff (co-author, Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul) believes can be changed by learning to cultivate "a happiness that’s beyond reasons and that’s here to stay." Inner happiness, she says, is within reach for anyone who can turn down the volume on their hectic lives and learn the 21 Happiness Habits that Shimoff has cultivated from 100 interviews with "deeply happy" people (including actress Goldie Hawn and author Elizabeth Gilbert). Emphasizing a holistic approach, Shimoff takes into account mind, heart, body and soul in seven chapters that cover three Happiness Habits each, as well as corresponding anecdotes that "define what it means to be Happy for No Reason." The personal stories of happy interviewees prove enlightening, and the princples they support are sound and commonsensical ("Focus on the solution," "Make peace with yourself," "Question your thoughts," "Practice forgiveness"), if not exactly groundbreaking. Exercises and quizzes give readers practical steps toward their goal, such as breathing exercises (Spring Forest Qigong) and writing assignments ("Write a letter to your Higher Power").
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Foreword by Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles , USA
<2008-03-03 00:00>
With Happy for No Reason, Marci Shimoff has hit a home run. This book presents a definitive, broad-based approach to becoming truly happy that combines great spiritual depth, top-notch research, and psychological practicality. I'm certain that if you follow the practices in her dazzling new book, you too will manifest a lifetime of happiness. |
Mehmet C. Oz, MD, coauthor of You: On a Diet and You: Staying Young, USA
<2008-03-03 00:00>
You can't depend on external circumstances for lasting happiness. It has to come from inside you. Based on scientific research and the experiences of truly happy people, Happy for No Reason shows you step-by-step how to raise your happiness set-point. |
Marianne Williamson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Return to Love, USA
<2008-03-03 00:00>
Marci Shimoff is one of the most compelling people I've ever known. I'm happy she's shared her wisdom with all of us in Happy for No Reason. |
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