View source for Feel Happy Now by Michael Neill

{{infobox1
|title=Feel Happy Now
|author=Michael Neill
|reviewer=Zoe Morris
|genre=Lifestyle
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=978-1848504943
|pages=208
|publisher=Hayhouse
|date=January 2012
|summary=In pursuit of happiness? This book can set you on the right path complete with useful activities to try, tips to follow, and stories to learn from.
|cover=1848504942
|aznuk=1848504942
|aznus=1848504942
}}
''Feel Happy Now'' is a dummy’s guide to happiness written by an NLP expert who Paul McKenna has dubbed ''The finest success coach in the world''. What makes this book stand out, perhaps, is the way the complexity is done away with, and everything is broken down to an accessible level without being too patronizing. Its expert concepts presented in layman speak and the result is a highly readable and accessible book regardless of your belief in the subject.

I went into this book thinking it was a topic I was interested in learning about, but not one I necessarily needed for myself. I’m a pretty happy person most of the time thanks to a daily regimen of exercise (endorphins), chocolate (more endorphins) and a glass-half-full approach to day to day life. The cynic in me believed that you couldn’t be taught happiness from the pages of a book, that it was both too simple and too complex a feeling to ‘learn’ like that but I was willing to be proved wrong.

Happiness makes you feel good. It makes you healthier, makes you look younger, makes you smarter. It has a lot going for it, but for some people it proves just too elusive, an unattainable goal…until now. This book is a step by step guide which the author walks you through the process of upping the happiness in your life. The pages offer up various tests and experiments for the reader and despite my skepticism I found myself playing along, humouring the author so to speak. As with a lot of these kinds of things, I wasn’t totally bowled over by every one but there were a few that did make me smile or nod my head in appreciation, and that’s more than I was expecting.

The book focuses on inner happiness, and the ability we have to influence how we feel and our responses to certain situations. Centering around the power of the mind, it offers clear and practical ways to improve your life and outlook without the need for pharmaceutical intervention or therapy. It’s about perspective, self-belief and simple things you just have to realize and embrace, like the fact it’s ok to feel down sometimes. 

Packed with anecdotes, tips and tricks it is quite an entertaining book that just about stays on the right side of over-familiarity. It covers a range of topics with very little repetition which is impressive given the fairly narrow subject matter. 

I can see why people would find a lot of value in this book. What the author says makes sense and while it wasn’t chocker with light-bulb moments for me, the common sense explanations of things I’d never really thought about were enough to start winning me over.

This book is extremely easy to read which I think is important. Even if you’re lacking motivation, or convinced reading cover to cover will do no good at all, it’s not a struggle to get through or pick up key points from. In some ways I found it a little simplistic but if you’re really starting from a grey nothingness then it might prompt the first baby steps needed to lift your mood. 

It didn’t change my life but it gave me some ideas to chew over and if you’re a self-help junkie you’ll devour this in one sitting. I’m not sure of the impact it would have in the long term, but in the here and now it undeniably has a positive, uplifting and empowering message that puts you in control of your own happiness.

Thanks go to the publishers for supplying this book.

Like this vein of thinking but want a different take on it? Check out [[The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World by David Malouf]].  We hope that you don't need it, but we do have a review of [[No More Bingo Dresses: Using NLP to cope with breast cancer and other people by Rosie O'Hara]].

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