As a book title, Do One Thing Every Day That Makes You Happy is a mouthful. As an outlook on life, it's a really good one. I have bipolar disorder, which mostly manifests as depressive episodes. I understand a lot about not feeling happy. I've had bipolar disorder for long enough to recognize that I have a good life - a great life, a blessed life - even when I can't feel it. And I have learned to feel grateful even through the depression for the blessings. And to enjoy moments of happiness wherever and whenever I can get them. Even though no one can have a great day every day, or even all day for one day for every second of that day, there can be happy moments even on the saddest days.
Do One Thing Every Day That Makes You Happy focuses on small moments of gifts of happiness, drawing our attention to those times and helping us see the good. I like this book right from it's cheerful yellow color. The format of the book is fairly simple; there are quotes about happiness, or things that bring people happiness, or even just pithy in general, and then there are writing prompts. This is a small book (I'm guessing 6" tall,1"ish deep - the picture is almost actual size), there's not a lot of room to write. The benefit of this is to make us sum up a happiness, and focus more deeply. It helps us be mindful and intentional. We have to deliberately think of happiness and recognize it in our lives.
An example page from the journal reads:
A joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful.
Bible, Psalm 147
What made me thankful today:
(unpaginated)
Only in the book it's written in orange, and a more fun font, and it's clear that their graphic designers care about their work, it's beautifully done. My response was:
My mom helping me clean my house and take care of my kids and God getting the van sorted out.
There should be a comma in there, but it's a journal, so I'm not going to beat myself up. My point is: In one sentence, grammatically correct or not, I just summed up blessings so huge just seeing it in small print made me see their enormity.
I don't write in this book every day, or most days, but I've had moments that I was in a terrible mood, saw the book and picked it up and chose an entry. This book is kind of buffet style, you just pick and choose whichever entry you want - I've skipped all over the place.
I can't say that I'm a fan of the come-back-later entries. One page prompted me to make up my mind to be (fill in the blank), and provided a list of attitudes (e.g. glad, jubilant, gleeful, content) to choose from. I usually journal at night, so this one required forethought - not that planning ahead is a bad thing, but I don't usually feel up to the extra step. Lazy, but true.
I like this book, and I think it's important, because we need to do our part to be happy, and not expect life to do all the work for us.
I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my review. This is my honest opinion about the book.
more info:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545009/do-one-thing-every-day-that-makes-you-happy-by-robie-rogge-and-dian-g-smith/
author bio:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/170809/robie-rogge/
