The Happiness & Contentment Workbook is a thoughtful and useful manual full of guided prompts and exercises for accessing and building up our natural happiness and contentment and improving our quality of life. Released 6th Oct 2020 by Quarto on their Leaping Hare Press imprint, it's 176 pages and available in paperback format.
This is a quietly contemplative and useful book. The text is easy to understand and accessible and not at all flakey or "woo-woo". I was struck how much common sense and logic the prompts contained and how do-able the exercises were. Obviously not all of them will be applicable for all readers but there are a surprisingly large number of thoughtful points made throughout the text.
The art and illustrations throughout (see cover) are simple line drawings in restful colors and provide a nice counterpoint for the text. Each of the chapters contains some explanatory text - how to examine ourselves and localize potential places for change, how to allow ourselves to let go of rigidly held expectations, understanding pain, finding ways to cherish those around us (and ourselves), and a lot more. The text is followed by guided exercises with fill-in-the-blanks pages to explore our reactions and feelings: How are you right now, how do you feel, what do you need, what do you REALLY need, and many more. I sat down and slowly worked through a selection of the exercises (they're arranged roughly thematically in chapters) and some of the answers surprised me. The author does seem to have a knack of allowing the reader to think about the subjects in a non-confrontational and accessible manner. I appreciated that the author *never* engaged in magical thinking (just *BE* happier, see how easy that is?!). Instead, there are actual constructive means to identify what is holding us away from being content and finding ways to ameliorate the hindrance(s).
This would make a superlative gift to oneself, maybe with some journaling supplies, pens, paper, etc. I'm not sure exactly how well it would work for gifting to others (possibly a very close friend or family member) since it's such a personal and introspective book. I could also see this being a good choice for group therapy work or classes in some instances.
Interesting and valuable insights to be had as well as an appealing and easy to read physical layout. I thought some of the answer areas on some of the pages lacked enough space to really be able to answer *in the book* so I suggest using it in conjunction with blank paper or a journal/notebook.
Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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