I must admit, I was SO HAPPY when I was reading this book! It was a nice refresher to dip into every day. Shimoff's advice and ideologoy isn't earth shattering or revolutionary in any way, but it was so NICE...it was the perfect antidote to all of the crap we hear day in and day out on the news.

The majority of Shimoff's advice is common sense, but it's organized very neatly, and is easy to follow. It's also nice to have someone validating your desire to be happy/optimistic. I recommend this to anyone looking to break out of a funk, who needs a little lift on a daily basis, or is looking for an alternative to the major bummer we know as CNN. ( )

Everyone wants to be happy, right? I know I sure do. So, why not a book that tells you how to be happy? That’s the idea behind a book I recently read titled Happy for No Reason, written by Marci Shimoff, an established self-help author & speaker.

For a book written by someone who does not follow Jesus, she admirably gets some things right. She rightly understands that trying to be happy just by doing or having things that make you happy is a dead end street. Instead, she realizes that true lasting happiness is an internal state of the soul not connected to any external circumstance. That’s a Biblical truth that even many Christians have yet to live day by day.

She also gives out some very practical & valuable wisdom in the book. Some that I particularly agreed with included looking for the lesson and the gift in any trial you are experiencing, realizing that you must question your thoughts and reject the ones that aren’t true, focusing on gratitude & forgiveness, & understanding that a properly nourished body helps our brain to function properly.

However, this good advice is immersed in a heavily new age philosophy & practice, from “going beyond your mind and letting go” to “listening to your inner voice” & “tuning in to your body’s wisdom.”

In her world there is no need for the death of Christ to establish a connection with God, no need to realize that I’m born spiritually dead until Jesus gives me life, & no need to take up a cross & die to my desires as I follow Him. I’m quite sure she wouldn’t realize that much of what she practices and advocates as a path of happiness is actually a path away from the one true God, & not toward Him.

Her “breakthrough approach to happiness” is indeed a much better path than what most people take in this life, but ultimately still falls short of the simple path of following Christ above all. Not recommended reading. ( )

General Background and Overview
Happy for No Reason is... well, pretty much what it says it is on the label. Subtitled "7 Steps to being happy from the inside out", the book is a journey through the aspects and characteristics of life that Ms Schimoff believes are necessary for someone to be 'happy for no reason', based on common responses from the interviews with the 'happy 100' - 100 people she believes are 'truly happy'.

Good Stuff
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. While much of it wasn't new ground, a lot of it was worthwhile to revisit - if only to remind myself that I did actually already know it.

Granted, much of what the author talks about feels like common sense to me, but that might well be because I've been reading in the self-help/self-improvement genre for going on a decade now, so I've probably internalised many of the concepts and principles (at least intellectually - I'm not always so good at putting them into action). But I know there are people out there for whom trying solution-focussed thinking rather than complaining or blaming, taking responsibility for moving forward, searching for the lessons in the tough stuff, questioning your own assumptions, looking at what's going right and giving some attention to that as well, and trying to get some mind-body-spirit balance into your life are all new concepts.

I also found the life stories of the 21 people whose tales actually appear in this book interesting - often moving - and generally inspiring. And I like the fact that there's a recognition that while some of the answers might be simple, that doesn't make them easy - that it's OK to move forward with lots of little small steps that are basically in the right direction: rather than the expectation that the book should be used as some kind of 7-step program that will absolutely turn the reader's life around if they just do it right.

Bad Stuff
That being said, I do find myself wanting to apologise for the book in places as well. It's by one of the authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and by one of the contributors to the movie "The Secret"; with the same kind of underpinning self-help industry/Law of Attraction foundation as they have... so if that sort of newaginess raises your hackles or just leaves you cold or bewildered, I'm going to take a punt and say this book will too.

There's also a lot of what I'll call 'fringe science' (and what others might less charitably call 'pseudo-science') cited throughout the book that will likely make anyone with a scientific background either froth, squirm or both - things like Dr Masaru Emoto's water crystallisation experiments, or like the Institute of HeartMath's studies. I'm pretty much willing to just go with these things on the basis that, like the bard said, "There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy" - but I fully understand that not everyone's quite so easy going around the scientific method, and that it will probably be a turnoff for more scientifically-oriented minds than mine.

Ratings and Recommendations
Overall, I definitely enjoyed Happy for No Reason, and I will be adding many of the books in its extremely wide-ranging bibliography to my To-Be-Read (TBR) list, and possibly even buying myself a copy of the book to work through some of the exercises within it. In terms of recommendations though... I have this sneaking suspicion that many of the people who would most benefit from putting a few of the practices within it into action are going to be the ones who are most turned off by the fringe science and newaginess within it - which is a shame, because even if you don't take the underlying principles within it as gospel, there are still some damned useful exercises and practices in there.

I'm going to give the book an 8/10, with a note that other people who read it might well have a very different response to mine; and that's perfectly OK too. ( )

Exceptional. Marci's book is easy to read and contains a plethora of activities to help make you "happy for no reason". I enjoyed this book tremendously, and felt it was a great follow up to The Secret and Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting. ( )