My colleague Chris King, Learning and Development Coordinator, handed out a book called “Beyond Happy: Women, Work, and Well-Being” by Beth Cabrera to me and the other female colleagues in our department last month. The first glance at the name of the book made me critical about the title only addressing “women”. I took the book home to read it after dinner, and meanwhile, my husband had glanced over the book. He said that he liked the book and that some of the suggestions made him think about some of the things that he should be doing to keep himself happy and motivated.
Here is a short video of Chris King describing why he shared this book with us:
“Beyond Happy” is a book that’s written by a woman, therefore, a lot of what the writer describes relates to women’s’ lives and their challenges as a daughter, wife, mom, and woman. However, those challenges and a lot of other challenges apply to any individual and especially those who live in the US and work full-time, have children or other priorities in life that need a lot of attention and time.
Everyone at some point in their life may have realized that they can not plan for their free time as their busy schedules guide them regarding what to do next. But that’s exactly when you have to slow down or pause for a minute and rethink!
The book reminds us to take care of our health and our good feelings that help us do good things, which brings more good feelings to ourselves and others. Being grateful for good things in our lives, knowing our strengths and being able to use them every day, positive interactions with people, and focusing on the growing process of what we do for our success will keep us motivated.
One of the tips to happiness in this book and some other books such as “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin is to be mindful and try to stay focused on what we do, not on anything else in the past or future. It takes practice, but it’s one of the bests habits that you can adopt that not only improves the quality of what you do, but it saves you a lot of time.
Being grateful and expressing our gratitude is another secret to happiness that is a common tip to happiness that is mentioned in this book. In order to be able to focus on what we do and avoid multitasking when we have a lot to do, one can plan and consider our values and priorities when we write our plan. Planning not only allows us to set our goals and purposes but also will help us understand our strengths and be mindful of them.
Some of the final tips that this book provides are related to our interactions with others, including positive impact, connecting with others, and strengthening our relationships within our families.
I would like to add that it’s great that when we think about our happiness, we realize how much our happiness can affect the happiness of those who interact with us, and how others’ happiness can improve our own. This book made me think about the importance of my family’s happiness, my friends’ happiness, my colleagues’ happiness and how we all impact each other as a chain.
Here is a short video of the author for the book Beyond Happy (Beth Cabrera).