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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to achieve happiness in your life ... no matter what happens to you along the way!, August 29, 2009
Ever wonder why some people remain happy, even during times of great hardship, and yet others who have achieved great wealth and success are terribly unhappy, sometimes to the point of suicide? Happiness can be elusive until you master the three essential levels of self-understanding: integration, intimacy, and integrity.
Ever try to figure out what makes you (or someone close to you) tick? That's integration, a task which can take some of us a lifetime to achieve. In the sixties, we all tried to "get our act together," an expression popularized by the hippies. Three lessons teach us how to achieve integration: finding all facets of self; the importance of self reflection; and using stress for personal growth.
Intimacy is achieved through the quality of our relationships and our connections with the world. Since these can change at any point in time, given that we have no control over the people on the other side of the connection, we must learn to overcome grievances and learn how to move on.
Integrity is built upon our self-respect, and dependent on our ability to think through troubling emotional issues. During our life journey, many of us make mistakes, so we also must learn from our errors in order to regain our happiness.
The chapter, Surviving Hammer Blows, includes stories of people who have experienced the greatest personal tragedies imaginable, and yet were able to rebound from a despair I can only imagine (loss of a child due to a parent's faulty judgment, and a sudden onset of severe diabetes resulting in loss of both legs are just a couple of the real-life tragedies included).
Looking for specific activities to increase your happiness? Lesson 10 to the rescue! Simple pleasures can help us overcome those times of depression and sadness.
What help can this book give you? Through exercises, teaching points, and the real-life stories of Dr. Horowitz's patients, you will have all the tools you need to achieve and maintain happiness throughout your life.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Useful and thought provoking, December 29, 2008
This review is from: A Course in Happiness: Mastering the 3 Levels of Self-Understanding That Lead to True and Lasting Contentment (Hardcover)
I read this absorbing book in one sitting, and then spent another enjoyable afternoon reading it aloud with a friend while we talked about how it applies to ourselves. Dr. Horowitz has a gift for speaking with depth, simplicity and warmth about the pillars of a happy life, at times using his own experiences in addition to those of people who consult him in his professional practice. His guide for cultivating happiness combines essential truths with a practical, step-by-step approach to gaining greater self-knowledge. This book comes as a gift for the holiday season, and its message will continue to resonate throughout the year.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good advice that's hard to follow, September 20, 2009
The strength and the weakness of Horowitz's book is that he draws on his experience with real people in therapy. On the one hand, his ideas are sound; on the other, they can be hard to translate into do-it-yourself. Self-help books tend to be more, probably because people want to dive right in and do something.
The exercises were hard to implement. For instance, Horowitz (e.g., p. 62) sometimes suggests that we consider pros and cons when making a decision. That's harder than it looks and not always helpful. Sometimes a big "pro" will outweigh a small set of "cons" or vice versa. In my experience, we don't always know what to list; when people move to a new location, they're often surprised by what they like and dislike most.
Similarly, it's not intuitively obvious how to list "self-concepts.: Or (p 242), "An emotional theme may have different meanings in different mood states. By comparing such views you can progressively integrate ideas." Psychologists (including some pop-psych authors) have pointed out that mood influences memory and response to situations. But I got lost with this one
Horowitz's examples are interesting but sometimes problematic. I was intrigued by the man who was having trouble gaining enjoyment from his life. When Horowitz tells him therapy will be expensive, the man says, "I could buy a boat." The man does buy a boat but ends up selling it to pay for the therapy. We never do hear how he resolved the issue of enjoying life...just get a plug for therapy.
And that's where I have the greatest frustration with this book. Life decisions are difficult and setting priorities is more complex than Horowitz suggests. For instance, in one scenario, Horowitz describes a woman who wants a child as well as an artistic career. She decides she can go back for an MFA later and seek a teaching position. But careers and skill development have biological clocks too.
Additionally, most examples seemed to feature people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. The examples of "older" people were separated as part of "aging." I was horrified to read about a man who became seriously immobilized with diabetes in his 50s; that's young for "aging" issues. An example of a 68-year-old physician, forced to retire, offered options that would not be available to most people. Anyway, these days people in their 50s and 60s (even 70s!) face a lot of the same challenges as their younger counterparts, with a different outlook and a different set of limitations. One of the biggest challenges of being over 50 is coping with stereotypical responses of others.
Finally, Horowitz's book may be limited in appeal because his core message seems to be about managing expectations and settling for less. After paying money for a book (let alone for therapy), I think we want something more than, "Don't set your goals too high." I'd have liked to see more examples of people who changed through Horowitz's therapy or guidelines. Mary (pp 99-101) was a great example of someone who did work toward a happy ending, but she seemed to do it on her own, intuitively.
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