Member-only story
Five Ways to Be Happier
“Happiness is a mood, not a destination.”
— One Tree Hill
In high school, I had a sense of deficiency; not happy enough, not good enough, not energetic enough. I wanted maintenance, a sense of consistency. As a writer, I thought I might find the solution to my problem in books, so I turned to the Barnes N Noble self-help section where I discovered What Happy Women Know: How New Findings in Positive Psychology Can Change Women’s Lives for the Better by Dan Baker and Cathy Greenberg.
What Happy Women Know is a sequel to What Happy People Know, but anyone can benefit from the lessons below. Here are a sample of major knowledge points of What Happy Women Know and exercises inspired by them. Note: my extrapolations may not be exact to what the knowledge point means. It’s been many years since I’ve read the book, so you should definitely pick up your own copy for further reading.
Lessons from What Happy Women Know:
- You can have a meaningful, fulfilling, and happy life regardless of life’s circumstances.
In a page of accompanying notes, I wrote about one of the principles the book mentions called a Happiness Trap. A happiness trap is something that appears to offer the key to happiness but does just the opposite: It promises happiness but doesn’t deliver. These traps could otherwise be referred to as “If…
