Happiness Power
How to Unleash Your Power and Live a More Joyful Life
Happiness Power is a welcoming self-help guide that asserts that happiness is necessary when it comes to building a better world.
Robert Gill Jr.’s accessible self-help text Happiness Power concerns the intersecting pathways to a positive lifestyle.
Happiness, the book says, leads to better physical health, increased productivity, confidence, and stronger relationships; fifty benefits are teased in all. And when it comes to achieving happiness, the book emphasizes personal responsibility—because getting there depends not on what a person has, but on how they feel about what they have. Combatting common discontentment with success, the text claims, relies on “taming … chaos to bring peace and quietness back to the mind. Effectively, what matters the most is being able to master your mind rather than trying to change the world around you.”
To get there, the book tackles methods including exercise, nutrition, and mindfulness; it also promotes values like gratitude, self-kindness, and community. Its basic suggestions include tracking progress, eating fruits and vegetables, and meditation—life lessons that can help struggling people get a grasp on daily living. The information is approachable and presented in bite-sized steps, though many of its topics have already been colonized in the genre.
The book’s topical chapters all follow the same format: they begin with a quote and a parable to capture and keep the audience’s attention. Concepts are then defined and explained in terms of their connection to happiness, and are supported with references to the fields of psychology, sociology, and neurology. The chapters conclude with summary points, helping the whole work to feel cohesive. Each one ends on the same sentiment: an encouragement that the audience continue on to learn more.
The book’s tips, tricks, and suggestions for implementing happiness-increasing habits include “think small, act smaller” and an accountability buddy system. Their presentation is undemanding, and their concepts are for beginners. A few interactive takeaways play in, including a list of synonyms for happiness and expired links to an online happiness checklist.
The book’s light approach includes jocular banter, including the idea that “the good news about being unhappy is that things can only go up from here!” Calling for introspection through self-awareness, the conversational book is respectful in acknowledging its audience’s humanity. Its familiarity-building tactics—like a comparison of optimists and pessimists to Tigger and Eeyore—bolster its relatability. The text is impeded, though, by its repetitions of quotations and concepts. Two near identical chapter-leading quotes compare happiness to a butterfly, for example; though these references are from Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne, respectively, they feel redundant.
Happiness Power is a welcoming self-help guide that asserts that happiness is necessary when it comes to building a better world.
Reviewed by
Samantha Ann Ehle
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
