What I liked: the entire concept, that happiness is something you can choose to work on, not just some magical state that may or may not happen to you. The advice is practical enough, and broken down into easy to manage chunks.

What I’m still struggling with: putting any of it into practice! The idea – that you build a ‘happiness habit’ over the course of 21 days – is both great and appealing, but I just can’t suss what my habits should be, despite the workbook questions at the end of each chapter. I mean, I vaguely kind of know some of the things in my life that would make me happier (I think), such as just getting on with things instead of wasting so much time, but however much advice you offer me I’m still not getting over that one – yet!

I did quite like the ‘stairs’ (surroundings, behaviour, skills and capabilities, values and beliefs, identity and purpose), although fitting my own ideas into this wasn’t very easy. I wasn’t so keen on the way everything came down to relationships, money, work and health – although, maybe that’s not so far from the truth!

Of course, I didn’t expect this book to work miracles, and certainly not after a quick read through and a few half-hearted attempts at setting up habits! This is one to reread, and put some actual effort into following the advice. Happiness is, after all, a lifestyle choice (or several of ‘em!), not just a quick fix!

For some reason, I feel that it’s my (new) ‘thing’ to cash in my iPoints for self-help-type books – well, The Four Day Win, and now this.

It’s a title I stumbled upon somewhat randomly on Amazon – a recommendation based on something else I was looking at, I think. It has seven 5-star reviews, I believe, and no negatives. So when it came time to cash in those points, this joined the possibilities, along with Michael Neill’s You Can Have What You Want, Paul McKenna’s Change Your Life in Seven Days, and Mind Gym’s Give Me Time (incidently, I’m going to a Mind Gym presentation on Monday – woooo!).

So why this one? I was just back from a blissfully contented weekend break – and pushing myself to be productive seemed a lot less appealing than holding on to and recapturing those happy feelings from the break. If I can feel like that far more often, I can see me getting things done anyway :)

That, and the huge smily sunflower on the front. Far more appealing than Michael Neill’s face on his happiness book, imo!

Of course, one shouldn’t judge on the cover. I’ll report back on how I get on with the book, naturally, but in the meantime you can join me in the first step as the initial questionnaire is on the website. Apparently I’m neither happy nor unhappy in most of the areas, which – blah as it sounds – does rather sum up how i feel. The one unhappiness is ‘sense of purpose’ – I am so in the middle of everything, that the drifting sensation is there. Give it a go!