Books that Make You Re-Think Happiness

I love the pictures and simple message that happiness is about participating in life. It’s not about our stuff, titles or sitting on the sidelines… it’s appreciating the view.

This book is short, funny and full of witty thoughts that make you think about life in a new light. You can read one page and you have your thoughts for the day.

This is a self-help book that actually helps you develop happy habits in a realistic way. It doesn’t have you pretending to be happy about unhappy things. And it teaches you to expand your ideas about where you find happiness. It’s where happiness meets reality.

This is a book of happy color pictures and happy saying attached about everyday life—including family, friends, work, and spirituality. Just flipping through it makes you happy.

This book has an uncanny insight into our emotional cycles and it helps you navigate then a little easier. Think about when it rains, if you’re prepared you don’t get drench, and you know a rainbow is coming. Life cycles helps you find more happiness because it eerily confirms what you are feeling.

Life is a game (like it or not), and this book describes the game in a humorous way. You can’t avoid it, you usually can’t change it, but you can change the way you react to it if you understand it. And if you understand it, you’ll know when to play and when to sit on the sidelines and just have a laugh.

This book opens our eyes to the fact that different cultures think of happiness in entirely different ways. And we can learn about happiness from everyone. It’s about Eric’s travel adventures in some unlikely places and his personal insights. He’s a self-proclaimed cynic to boot.

This is a favorite because Morrie teaches us with his own attitude that happiness is relative to our current circumstances. That we really have a choice, allowing anger from changing circumstances to consume us or choosing to value what we actually have. Happiness really is about perspective.

In our all too busy world, it’s really hard to live in the moment. In this book, the titular Dave talks about his quest to do just that in a world that's full-busy. It’s funny, honest and truthful. It makes me want to take some of Dave’s yoga classes… if only in my heart.