Lemondrop

Happy at Last: The Thinking Person's Guide to Finding Joy
by Richard O'Connor, MSW, PhD

The gist: The half-empty approach to happiness. A therapist who struggles with clinical depression (and who is the best-selling author of "Undoing Depression") teaches you mindfulness exercises that will make you slightly more happy than you were to begin with.

Idea worth pondering: "contemporary insanity." As in: "Much of the reality of contemporary life is enough all by itself to make us depressed, anxious, sick or dead, let alone unhappy."

Read the whole thing if: You really like reality shows based on Amish life. You work so much you routinely forget to take your vacation days. You don't mind the idea of doing happiness homework. Or you never met an impulse buy you didn't like. "Happy at Last"'s greatest strength is its insight into how bad habits that are a byproduct of modern living (consumerism, workaholism) contribute to our collective discontent.


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