5 Books About Happiness
English
Română
Before my family visited us in Sweden to see Albert for the first time, I made a list of books that I would love to read in Romanian, so they ended up adding another troller full of books to their luggages. Most of them were parenting books, but there were also some other titles that sounded interesting, which in fact have actually materialised around the theme of happiness. In the meantime I have added a few English titles to the collection, so the ones presented below are a mix.
At some point Philippe and I have had a discussion about our perception of books, and for him to read meant to be insecure regarding a certain area and to feel the need to make it more clear, but somehow having a negative connotation, while for me reading meant that I feel good about myself but at the same time I wanted to learn more, seeing it as a growing process within a certain domain. With this premise in mind, happiness for me does exist and I work on it every day. I am not sad that I’m not a spirituality great master but I find it easy to read other people’s stories who have gone through various processes, more or less spiritual, or have done research in this field, and have concrete things to say about how one can be happier.
I empathise with many of the theories and stories presented in this kind of books, so I choose to share here 5 of the most relevant ones I have read recently. Going threw them helped me think about the things that really matter for me and the people around me, especially in the new context of the pandemic. Let's see the bright side: we can take advantage of the current state of social isolation to use our time to discover new things about what life aspects matter most for us (reading can be a way to do it).
1. Ice Cream for Breakfast: How Rediscovering Your Inner Child Can Make You Calmer, Happier, and Solve Your Bullsh*t Adult Problems (by Laura Jane Williams, 2019)
This is the book which I began with in my reading process towards understanding happiness, after a long time I read most (I could even say exclusively) books about parenting. What I liked about it is the fact that it helped me in the transition between the two topics (parenting and happiness) through the 30 lessons learned by Laura from the period she was a nanny for three kids. It is an easy and enjoyable book to read when you need instant inspiration and motivation. Each paragraph gave me the feeling that I was reading a motivational quote. And yes, it's okay to allow yourself to eat ice cream for breakfast from time to time, or to be surprised by the new places you might discover one day when you don't want to “follow the path” and take another bus instead, or to don't feel bad when you tell a friend your honest opinion about her hairstyle in this morning. The children are honest, they love the routine but they also enjoy the little moments when they do things differently.
2. The Minimalist Home (by Joshua Becker, 2020)
Over time I have come across various kind of information related to minimalism, about people adhering to a simplified style of interior design and living or about Marie Kondo and her decluttering methods. However, I liked this book because of it simply propose a reassessment of our personal and family’s needs, and at the same time to be aware of all the objects we surround ourselves with and which of them we really want around us. Before this book I thought about us that we are good enough at selecting the things we surround ourselves with, but apparently after 3 weeks of getting rid of stuff and decluttering our 24 square meter home, we managed to get rid of almost half of our things. It’s nice that in Sweden there are many donation centers, so most of the things ended up there, and others were offered to friends and family or even sold, and what was left without any purpose was going to the recycling place. The book helped us figure out how much energy all the things consume and how frustrated we actually were in the daily life because not having enough space. Before doing this decluttering project, we always tended to make the space more efficient and to look for new furniture solutions in order to store all the things in smart ways, when in fact we no longer needed to store them. In the end we took out from our studio, among other things, a closet, a fridge, Albert's crib, the stroller, and other shelves. All these big furniture elements hosted many other small things without even realising it, which we used neither physically nor spiritually or emotionally.
Each chapter of this book discusses a major room within a house and its meaning for people living who live in, and at the end there is a list of a few check up questions to figure out if the newly cleared space has the purpose it supposes to have. And yes, I have kept enough sentimental objects that are now displayed on the shelves or the walls, because the whole point isn’t to live frugally within four white walls, but to feel good in your own space. I included this book in the happiness category because I saw its effects on us, after we finished the decluttering process. Now we can enjoy the things that really matter to us, and the main benefit of this book is that we have created space on the floor where we spend most of our time with Albert (shortly after the process was over, he started to crawl, so it was perfect time for us to no longer have objects hanging around every single tiny corner he is now exploring).
3. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead (by Brene Brown, 2019)
This book is part of Brene's research work and presents many studies about what does it mean to live a fruitful life. I was very excited to read it and each time I went for a walk (I read most of this book out while walking with Albert asleep in the wrap) I would return home with a new revelation. I was able to be conscious regarding my actions, and also to accept my fears, to understand how they affect my relationships with myself and the people around me, and how to not feel ashamed for the decisions I make, in a culture of unpleased we live in. The book also touches upon parenting, of which stayed with me the importance of hope that you can foster in your child, who is nothing but “a combination between setting the goals, having tenacity and perseverance in pursuing them and trusting your own abilities. Hope is "the Plan B", in fact.”. And perhaps the most important lesson learned from this book is that we are important as we are, and our personal value should not depend on our actions, whether they are successes or failures.
4. The Little Book of Lycke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People (by Meik Wiking, 2019)
Some time ago I read "The little book of hygge: Danish secrets to happy living", the first book in the series, being interested in any kind of information about the life of Scandinavians. In the meantime I discovered that there are two more books from the same series (which are so well done in terms of visuals), and because I already knew I was happy to read the first one, I wanted to read more about how Danes see happiness, but also what are the elements which defined it, and how to undertand this concept from perspective of one culture to another. In this book I was impressed by the importance of the community people are part of and the contract actions one can take to make connections with the neighbours in order to make your living in that neighbourhood more meaningful. Also, to feel that you belong to a group, and in at the same time enjoying the fact that you can give something back, or offer help in your own way. I discovered the concept of "bofaellesskab" which represents a co-housing scheme in Denmark where people living there eat dinner together four days a week. It offers an opportunity to spend time with their neighbours and to not worry about cooking dinner, paying for the meal at a very low price (each family has the task of cooking for the common dinner every 6 months for a week). In addition to the fact that they only have to cook once half a year, families with children have never hired a nanny because they always had neighbours where they could leave their children if the parents wanted to go out to see a movie or had something else to do. I remember when I was little, on the building, all the neighbours knew each other and visited each other. At our home there were parties at least once a month, and even though the living room was small, everyone had a great time together until late night, and we as kids have had always partners to play with. Now it seems to me that this collective energy has been lost somewhere over the time and it is great to find in this happiness books something that is so familiar to me, but somehow forgotten.
5. 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, 2009)
Gretchen Rubin is the book I just finished reading yesterday which helped me have an overview of all the topics I found in the other books on how to live a happy life. For a year, Gretchen dedicates each month to a new theme, such as decluttering the outer and inner spaces (the house and the body), appreciating and reframing her reactions in relation to the close ones, but also the making new connections, discovering her own passions, reorganising the relationship with work, or meditating on eternity by reading biographies of catastrophes and imitating some spiritual masters. I like this book for the simple reason that although Gretchen has a simple life, she tries to improve it incremental, through actions she can do every day, at home, with her family and at her job, without the need run to the end of the earth, to reinvent herself. The ordinary becomes the new extraordinary. And she also gives you her resolution chart. Somehow I felt overwhelmed when I finished the book because I realised how many things one can do for a year, simple things that are easy to implement at the first side, but which can change the whole lie experience being make over such a long time.
What I think this 5 books have in common is that each of them presents happiness from the perspective of everyday life awareness, and what I find even more valuable is that they try to understand an abstract concept by dividing it into small, concrete actions that the reader can follow. I guess all of us have read at leat ones quotes as "live in the present moment” or "happiness comes from the inside" or "less is more", but I always found it very difficult to empathise with them if I don’t know how I can apply them in my own context. And the fact that the authors also tell fragments of their life that they analyse from this perspective of happiness, is a very good way to connect yourself with their own stories.
I'm probably not the only one who happened to chose unconsciously the order of the books I’m reading, so that it becomes extremely relevant for the moment I’m reading it. In this case, the order I wrote about the books above is also the order I read them. The first book created a smooth transition, the second one made me work to free myself from the energy of all the things I didn't need, the third one proposed me constant thinking, the fourth one delighted my eyes every time I opened it and the last one motivated me to write more on this blog. And now I'm completely grateful for all the information I've gathered. If you get to read any of this books, I’m very curious to find out what you think and whether they helped you in one way or another, or not at all.
Have a Happy Easter and sunny days, even from the balcony.
Before my family visited us in Sweden to see Albert for the first time, I made a list of books that I would love to read in Romanian, so they ended up adding another troller full of books to their luggages. Most of them were parenting books, but there were also some other titles that sounded interesting, which in fact have actually materialised around the theme of happiness. In the meantime I have added a few English titles to the collection, so the ones presented below are a mix.
At some point Philippe and I have had a discussion about our perception of books, and for him to read meant to be insecure regarding a certain area and to feel the need to make it more clear, but somehow having a negative connotation, while for me reading meant that I feel good about myself but at the same time I wanted to learn more, seeing it as a growing process within a certain domain. With this premise in mind, happiness for me does exist and I work on it every day. I am not sad that I’m not a spirituality great master but I find it easy to read other people’s stories who have gone through various processes, more or less spiritual, or have done research in this field, and have concrete things to say about how one can be happier.
I empathise with many of the theories and stories presented in this kind of books, so I choose to share here 5 of the most relevant ones I have read recently. Going threw them helped me think about the things that really matter for me and the people around me, especially in the new context of the pandemic. Let's see the bright side: we can take advantage of the current state of social isolation to use our time to discover new things about what life aspects matter most for us (reading can be a way to do it).
1. Ice Cream for Breakfast: How Rediscovering Your Inner Child Can Make You Calmer, Happier, and Solve Your Bullsh*t Adult Problems (by Laura Jane Williams, 2019)
This is the book which I began with in my reading process towards understanding happiness, after a long time I read most (I could even say exclusively) books about parenting. What I liked about it is the fact that it helped me in the transition between the two topics (parenting and happiness) through the 30 lessons learned by Laura from the period she was a nanny for three kids. It is an easy and enjoyable book to read when you need instant inspiration and motivation. Each paragraph gave me the feeling that I was reading a motivational quote. And yes, it's okay to allow yourself to eat ice cream for breakfast from time to time, or to be surprised by the new places you might discover one day when you don't want to “follow the path” and take another bus instead, or to don't feel bad when you tell a friend your honest opinion about her hairstyle in this morning. The children are honest, they love the routine but they also enjoy the little moments when they do things differently.
2. The Minimalist Home (by Joshua Becker, 2020)
Over time I have come across various kind of information related to minimalism, about people adhering to a simplified style of interior design and living or about Marie Kondo and her decluttering methods. However, I liked this book because of it simply propose a reassessment of our personal and family’s needs, and at the same time to be aware of all the objects we surround ourselves with and which of them we really want around us. Before this book I thought about us that we are good enough at selecting the things we surround ourselves with, but apparently after 3 weeks of getting rid of stuff and decluttering our 24 square meter home, we managed to get rid of almost half of our things. It’s nice that in Sweden there are many donation centers, so most of the things ended up there, and others were offered to friends and family or even sold, and what was left without any purpose was going to the recycling place. The book helped us figure out how much energy all the things consume and how frustrated we actually were in the daily life because not having enough space. Before doing this decluttering project, we always tended to make the space more efficient and to look for new furniture solutions in order to store all the things in smart ways, when in fact we no longer needed to store them. In the end we took out from our studio, among other things, a closet, a fridge, Albert's crib, the stroller, and other shelves. All these big furniture elements hosted many other small things without even realising it, which we used neither physically nor spiritually or emotionally.
Each chapter of this book discusses a major room within a house and its meaning for people living who live in, and at the end there is a list of a few check up questions to figure out if the newly cleared space has the purpose it supposes to have. And yes, I have kept enough sentimental objects that are now displayed on the shelves or the walls, because the whole point isn’t to live frugally within four white walls, but to feel good in your own space. I included this book in the happiness category because I saw its effects on us, after we finished the decluttering process. Now we can enjoy the things that really matter to us, and the main benefit of this book is that we have created space on the floor where we spend most of our time with Albert (shortly after the process was over, he started to crawl, so it was perfect time for us to no longer have objects hanging around every single tiny corner he is now exploring).
3. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead (by Brene Brown, 2019)
This book is part of Brene's research work and presents many studies about what does it mean to live a fruitful life. I was very excited to read it and each time I went for a walk (I read most of this book out while walking with Albert asleep in the wrap) I would return home with a new revelation. I was able to be conscious regarding my actions, and also to accept my fears, to understand how they affect my relationships with myself and the people around me, and how to not feel ashamed for the decisions I make, in a culture of unpleased we live in. The book also touches upon parenting, of which stayed with me the importance of hope that you can foster in your child, who is nothing but “a combination between setting the goals, having tenacity and perseverance in pursuing them and trusting your own abilities. Hope is "the Plan B", in fact.”. And perhaps the most important lesson learned from this book is that we are important as we are, and our personal value should not depend on our actions, whether they are successes or failures.
4. The Little Book of Lycke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People (by Meik Wiking, 2019)
Some time ago I read "The little book of hygge: Danish secrets to happy living", the first book in the series, being interested in any kind of information about the life of Scandinavians. In the meantime I discovered that there are two more books from the same series (which are so well done in terms of visuals), and because I already knew I was happy to read the first one, I wanted to read more about how Danes see happiness, but also what are the elements which defined it, and how to undertand this concept from perspective of one culture to another. In this book I was impressed by the importance of the community people are part of and the contract actions one can take to make connections with the neighbours in order to make your living in that neighbourhood more meaningful. Also, to feel that you belong to a group, and in at the same time enjoying the fact that you can give something back, or offer help in your own way. I discovered the concept of "bofaellesskab" which represents a co-housing scheme in Denmark where people living there eat dinner together four days a week. It offers an opportunity to spend time with their neighbours and to not worry about cooking dinner, paying for the meal at a very low price (each family has the task of cooking for the common dinner every 6 months for a week). In addition to the fact that they only have to cook once half a year, families with children have never hired a nanny because they always had neighbours where they could leave their children if the parents wanted to go out to see a movie or had something else to do. I remember when I was little, on the building, all the neighbours knew each other and visited each other. At our home there were parties at least once a month, and even though the living room was small, everyone had a great time together until late night, and we as kids have had always partners to play with. Now it seems to me that this collective energy has been lost somewhere over the time and it is great to find in this happiness books something that is so familiar to me, but somehow forgotten.
5. 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, 2009)
Gretchen Rubin is the book I just finished reading yesterday which helped me have an overview of all the topics I found in the other books on how to live a happy life. For a year, Gretchen dedicates each month to a new theme, such as decluttering the outer and inner spaces (the house and the body), appreciating and reframing her reactions in relation to the close ones, but also the making new connections, discovering her own passions, reorganising the relationship with work, or meditating on eternity by reading biographies of catastrophes and imitating some spiritual masters. I like this book for the simple reason that although Gretchen has a simple life, she tries to improve it incremental, through actions she can do every day, at home, with her family and at her job, without the need run to the end of the earth, to reinvent herself. The ordinary becomes the new extraordinary. And she also gives you her resolution chart. Somehow I felt overwhelmed when I finished the book because I realised how many things one can do for a year, simple things that are easy to implement at the first side, but which can change the whole lie experience being make over such a long time.
What I think this 5 books have in common is that each of them presents happiness from the perspective of everyday life awareness, and what I find even more valuable is that they try to understand an abstract concept by dividing it into small, concrete actions that the reader can follow. I guess all of us have read at leat ones quotes as "live in the present moment” or "happiness comes from the inside" or "less is more", but I always found it very difficult to empathise with them if I don’t know how I can apply them in my own context. And the fact that the authors also tell fragments of their life that they analyse from this perspective of happiness, is a very good way to connect yourself with their own stories.
I'm probably not the only one who happened to chose unconsciously the order of the books I’m reading, so that it becomes extremely relevant for the moment I’m reading it. In this case, the order I wrote about the books above is also the order I read them. The first book created a smooth transition, the second one made me work to free myself from the energy of all the things I didn't need, the third one proposed me constant thinking, the fourth one delighted my eyes every time I opened it and the last one motivated me to write more on this blog. And now I'm completely grateful for all the information I've gathered. If you get to read any of this books, I’m very curious to find out what you think and whether they helped you in one way or another, or not at all.
Have a Happy Easter and sunny days, even from the balcony.
