'Heartwarming and uplifting... I was singing along from the very first page' Heidi Swain. Poignant, heart-warming and gorgeously romantic, this is a love-story with pure, unadulterated happiness at its heart. A Year of Finding Happiness shows you that the little things in life can make you smile, even when you think you might never laugh again... Happiness doesn't factor on the deliciously rugged but utterly heartbroken Greg's radar much these days. Only his beloved Labrador Angus seems to understand his search for a way to make sense of tragedy, until he meets new neighbour Mallory Westerman... Instantly they know that the other understands how they feel, and over time, as romance blossoms, they dare to wonder if they might, one day, be truly happy again... There are two sides to every story, and A Year of Finding Happiness is Greg's journey back from the darkest depths to happiness... A Year of Finding Happiness was previously published as Bridge of Hope.

The key to happiness is being rich, successful, and beautiful…right? Martin Thielen, best-selling author of What's the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?, insists that this is far from the truth. Happiness, Thielen argues, does not come from external factors like getting a job promotion or finally reaching your goal weight. Rather, happiness is an inside job. In brief, easy-to-read chapters, Thielen offers ten traits of happy and fulfilled people. Using psychological research, personal anecdotes, and Scripture, Thielen begins the path to contentment by showing how life circumstances—including income, health, physical appearance, and marital status—only account for about 10 percent of a person's overall life satisfaction. From there, he offers alternatives to the frequent methods we use to make ourselves happy. Instead of aiming to make more money, Thielen contends that expressing gratitude and cultivating optimism are surer paths to joy. Rather than focusing on constant advancement in our careers, let's practice our ability to forgive, to be generous, and to use trials as growth opportunities. These lessons, and much more, help readers who may be dissatisfied in their lives see that authentic contentment is closer than they ever imagined. The book features a guide for group or individual study, which includes questions for reflection and a challenge for each individual to reflect on during the week.

This book opens a window into their world of tranquility--a stark contrast to today's times, a kind of visual chicken soup for the soul.

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today. Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of the most popular at Harvard? Because it challenges all our modern assumptions about what it takes to flourish. Astonishing teachings emerged two thousand years ago through the work of a succession of Chinese scholars exploring how humans can improve themselves and their society. And what are these counterintuitive ideas? Transformation comes not from looking within for a true self, but from creating conditions that produce new possibilities. Good relationships come not from being sincere and authentic, but from the rituals we perform within them. A good life emerges not from planning it out, but through training ourselves to respond well to small moments. Influence comes not from wielding power but from holding back. Excellence comes from what we choose to do, not our natural abilities. In other words, The Path “opens the mind” (Huffington Post) and upends everything we are told about how to lead a good life. Its most radical idea is that there is no path to follow in the first place—just a journey we create anew at every moment by seeing and doing things differently. “With its…spirited, convincing vision, revolutionary new insights can be gleaned from this book on how to approach life’s multifarious situations with both heart and head” (Kirkus Reviews). A note from the publisher: To read relevant passages from the original works of Chinese philosophy, see our ebook Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi: Selected Passages, available wherever books are sold.

What if you could change your life--without changing your life? Gretchen had a good marriage, two healthy daughters, and work she loved--but one day, stuck on a city bus, she realized that time was flashing by, and she wasn’t thinking enough about the things that really mattered. “I should have a happiness project,” she decided. She spent the next year test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Each month, she pursued a different set of resolutions: go to sleep earlier, quit nagging, forget about results, or take time to be silly. Bit by bit, she began to appreciate and amplify the happiness that already existed in her life. Written with humour and insight, Gretchen’s story will inspire you to start your own happiness project. Now in a beautiful, expanded edition, Gretchen offers a wealth of new material including happiness paradoxes and practical tips on many daily matters: being a more light-hearted parent, sticking to a fitness routine, getting your sweetheart to do chores without nagging, coping when you forget someone’s name and more.

A comic and heartwarming memoir about childhood's second act from Real Simple journalist Catherine Newman. Much is written about a child's infancy and toddler years, which is good since children will never remember it themselves. It is ages 4-14 that make up the second act, as Catherine Newman puts it in this delightfully candid, outlandishly funny new memoir about the years that "your children will remember as childhood." Following Newman's son and daughter as they blossom from preschoolers into teenagers, Catastrophic Happiness is about the bittersweet joy of raising children -- and the ever-evolving landscape of issues parents traverse. In a laugh out-loud, heart-wrenching, relatable voice, Newman narrates events as momentous as grief and as quietly moving as the moonlit face of a sleeping child. From tantrums and friendship to fear and even sex, Newman's fresh take will appeal to any parent riding this same roller coaster of laughter and heartbreak.

A New York Times Bestseller! An extraordinary look at what it means to grow old and a heartening guide to well-being, Happiness Is a Choice You Make weaves together the stories and wisdom of six New Yorkers who number among the “oldest old”— those eighty-five and up. In 2015, when the award-winning journalist John Leland set out on behalf of The New York Times to meet members of America’s fastest-growing age group, he anticipated learning of challenges, of loneliness, and of the deterioration of body, mind, and quality of life. But the elders he met took him in an entirely different direction. Despite disparate backgrounds and circumstances, they each lived with a surprising lightness and contentment. The reality Leland encountered upended contemporary notions of aging, revealing the late stages of life as unexpectedly rich and the elderly as incomparably wise. Happiness Is a Choice You Make is an enduring collection of lessons that emphasizes, above all, the extraordinary influence we wield over the quality of our lives. With humility, heart, and wit, Leland has crafted a sophisticated and necessary reflection on how to “live better”—informed by those who have mastered the art.