Happiness Month day 31 – Positive acceptance

When a book promises to teach you a new way of thinking that will transform your life, it’s hard to resist.

So many problems in our lives are caused by fear and regret: We’re fearful of the future, we regret the past and we’re rarely taking any notice of the Now or appreciating the beauty and perfection of the moment.

One of my favourite books, albeit a challenging one, is Erkhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”. It teaches us that living in the now is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment.

This week I’ve been reading “What is, is!” by Graham W Price and it’s one of the best self help books I’ve read in a long time.

To me, it works well alongside the Erkhart Tolle book. Tolle’s book is a wonderful prescription for living yet didn’t always feel practical to me. Parts of it are very advanced and although I could feel sense in what I was reading, I could grasp it and ground it in reality.[amazon-product align=”right” small=”1″] 1906316414[/amazon-product]

“What is, is!” has lots of tips and exercises for you to try throughout the book – simple techniques like remembering something you were fearful about and asking yourself if the fears were realised. We all know the answer to that one don’t we?

Price explains in some detail how we are only ever doing the best we can in any moment, given our awareness at the time. This brings a huge swathe of relief and helps you to stop blaming yourself for being a bad parent / lousy colleague / less-than-loving friend …

But it’s a book that demands action. I doh’t know about you, but after many self help books I spend lots of time thinking, planning, writing lists. There is no getting away with that with this book! Towards the end it’s all about goal setting and taking step by step action to work through your fears and become the best you can be.

Much of the book reminds me of some of the CBT techniques I’ve learned combined with NLP, but it also speaks to the heart and shows you how to be kinder to yourself. We find it easy to blame ourselves or be hard on ourselves, but by accepting “What is, is!” we can accept life how it is, and take action to ensure our future life is just as we want it.

If you can accept every situation in your life, regardless of whether you like it or not and realise you have the power to choose how to respond to that situation in order to change the outcome in the future, you’ll soon be living an empowered, joyful and authentic life.

If you’re struggling with regret, blame, anxiety or lack of confidence or are aware of falling into negative automatic emotional responses then you might just want to add this book to your reading list.

What about you – what book have you read recently that has changed your life in some way?