Customer Reviews

What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've read so many self help books over the years, and I can't say any of them have been very helpful. Interesting, definitely - but nothing that got me closer to feeling the way I've dreamed about for so long: happy, confident, & relaxed. I've gotten so skeptical. Thank God there was still enough of a spark of desperate hope buried in me to get me to pick up this wonderful book.

A thousand "Thank You!"'s to Dan Baker who has shown me the light and allowed me to embark upon a whole new journey as I actually begin to enjoy my life and succeed at everything I try the way I never thought I could. Everything in this book now seems so obvious to me, now that I have worked many of Mr. Baker's brilliantly simple ideas into my thinking and my daily life and things are becoming 2nd nature. I wonder why so many of us drag ourselves through our miserable lives for so long, never coming to the conclusions represented in this book.

Some of the key ideas in this book include understanding the relationship between fear and appreciation, taking power over our emotions, finding good in everything, and seeing the pitfalls of money and possesions. The terrible VERB's (victimization, Entitlement, Rescue, and Blame). Dan Baker spits liquor in the face of traditional psychotherapy with all its failings. (Ever been to a shrink who said, "How does that make you feel?," "and how does that make you feel?," "and how does that make you feel?...." - all a bunch of crap, just as you probably suspected.

There's no way for me to explain the content of this book, and there's no need to. This book is an easy and enjoyable read. Get this book! I wish I had found it 20 years ago. I have wasted so much time and energy wandering through life miserable, exhausted, moody, anxious, fearful, angry, irritable, overwhelmed, and sometimes very depressed - with my eyes and my heart closed. When I think about this, for just a second I feel sadness and loss about all that wasted time, but I am so excited about the future that it doesn't even matter. The future is all that matters now. This book holds enormous implications for parents. Worried your kids are picking up your negativity, your worry, your moods - they are - do something about it - read this book.

Some quotes from Dan Baker:

"When you focus on problems...you become bogged down in you own negativity and fear. It's much smarter to focus on possibilities."

"Life hurts. If it doesn't hurt some of the time, it's not life. But you can't allow yourself to get wrapped up in this hurt, constantly reliving it, fearing the futre and grieving the past. That's victimization."

"I often see this [entitlement] happen to rich kids. They grow up in the condition that I call "enriched deprivation." They have so much that everything becomes meaningless. There's nothing left to yearn for, so they lose their power to grow and grasp. They feel entitled to luxury and come to expect it - but expectations, as you may recall, are one of the worst enemies of happiness. These kids become weak, jaded, and ungrateful... They not only lack of self esteem, they lack a sense of self."

Dan Baker provides a guide to creating a meaningful life through tools for fulfillment, self-awareness, gratitude, and finding joy. Happiness, according to Baker, encompases a healthy outlook on life, physical and mental wellness, a sense of spirituality, and personal fulfillment through acts of altruism and kindness.

The book addressses the "new" psychology which, contrary to the standard medical model of emotional health - in which healing is based on "curing" one's past - instead focuses on building on individual strengths to help sustain people not only in times of crisis and but in making their lives meaningful overall. The book is not a sophistcated academic text and should not be approached as such. Rather, the book is written in the first person, in a very conversational style that is accessible to all readers. Although the title might lead some potential readers to think the book is the standard psychobabble self-help text that is ubiquitous today, the book is not psychobabble at all - it is clear guidance and tools that anyone can use to build a foundation of happiness on which to live one's life.

Dan Baker has a wealth of personal experience and vignettes drawn from his experience at Canyon Ranch and in other settings. These stories and the lessons drawn from them provide helpful guideposts for all of us as we continue our life journeys.

I have been in and out of counseling for 18 years and have read many self-help books. I have spent countless hours trying to figure out what was "wrong" with me, so that I could fix it.

Until about four years ago, my life was a story of three steps forward, two steps back, one forward, two or three steps back.

I then finally found the courage to make some difficult decisions that allowed the movement to be three steps forward, two back... three forward, one back. At least it was finally, consistently moving forward.

But, I still wasn't happy and was convinced it was because something was "wrong" with me that I needed to "fix."

About a year after my father passed away (an event that completely rocked my world) my mother entered grief therapy. After about a year of therapy, she was introduced to this book by her counselor.

My mother has NEVER been the self-help book type of person. She always lovingly said that I've always read more than enough for us both. So, I was stunned when I saw that she was not only reading this book, but was taking notes and I could see a noticible, positive difference. She finally was becoming happy!

I, of course said that I was grateful she finally realized what I had been trying to explain to her all these years and was glad that she had found a book that worded my "lessons" in a way that she could relate to and understand. I believed that my years of counseling, self-help books, introspection, and research had taught me everything I could know on the subject of how to be happy.

About a year later, through a variety of circumstances I realized that I still was not as happy as I pretended to be and decided that I needed to try therapy again - that I still didn't know what was "wrong" with me.

Long story short, my mother ordered this book for me and all I can say is Thank you, Dr. Baker. Thank you for having the courage to go against traditional psychological approaches to therapy and working to develop an approach that actually works! Thank you for writing about it in such effective language that helped me to understnand the clinical basis for fear and for unhappiness. Thank you for providing the tools, in every-day language to help me defeat the fear of not being enough and to learn to live a happy, fulfilling life. Thank you "Christopher Conner" for providing Dr. Baker the inspiration to write this book.

Some may read this book and cynically choose to believe that because Dr. Baker's Canyon Ranch is expensive, he is just a money-hungry doctor who offers no real guidance. I choose to focus on the results of this book and am not concerned with what his motives may or may not be. What I know is that this book have provided guidance into the root cause of my 20+ years of unhappiness and has provided practical tools that I have seen work with my mother.

He teaches that "There is no resolution to an unspeakable experience... Your worst memories don't go away, and they don't get better." But, he further teaches how focusing on your strengths, rather than what's "wrong" with you - along with other tools he outlines will result in true happiness.

I will take notes and will read, reread, and then read again.

I also used the books to supplement "The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People" by Stephen Covey; in that it provided many ideas in selecting my personal values that matter most to me.

dr. dan baker has written a book that everyone can read and understand with ease.. we've been taught that happiness is elusive when in fact it's a learned response to lifes experiences. Without any airy fairy explanations, dr. baker leads the way for us to find happiness when life perhaps has other plans for us. The examples given in this book are worth the price of the book alone.. We sometimes think there is a magic bullet that will make us happy.... lots of money will buy us happiness.. things will make us happy... when in fact, the only thing that can make us happy is how we respond to what happens in our life and dr. baker has captured the words for our feelings.. Bravo, dr. dan.

This is a book whose time has come, and not a minute too soon... If you're a skeptic or a cynic you will miss out on its value, because you will look for reasons NOT to believe it. And it will be YOUR loss. You may not believe it, but happiness IS a choice. If you look for reasons to be happy you can always find them, if you look for reasons to be unhappy you can always find them, too. It comes down to what you want to look for. For those who already know the value of gratitude and positive thinking, this book will help reinforce what you already know to be true. For those who might need something between a nudge and a 2 X 4 smacking you squarely between the eyes, here's my suggestion. Suspend your disbelief to listen to and hear Dan Baker speaking WITH you about how you can change your life for the better. You don't even have to tell any of your skeptical friends until you yourself try what he advises long enough to make it your own.

I've read and own dozens of self help books. This book is a gem and has changed my life. The entire scientific explanation by the author on how parts of our brains have not evolved (brain stem, amygdala and endocrine system) is well explained and in turn, a huge revelation. He continues to explain that we emit stress hormones to abstract threats (as opposed to physical threats) such as money issues, potential meetings . . .etc.

This in turn made me realize that these are my cluttering ABSTRACT thoughts and carrying those stressing thoughts is very detrimental to my health. Upon pondering upon all this, I am now relatively stress free because I now understand that it just isn't my own personality weaknesses that stress me, but how my brain has not finished evolving.

Of course there are a few chapters that don't really apply to me, but I still enjoyed the authors way of interspersing real case studies with theory.

I love this paragraph

"In every life, there are defining moments - moments that set the course of fate. When they are happening, you're not always aware that they will change you forever. At the time, these moments usually just seem like one more mountain to climb in an endless series of peaks.

And that's all those moments are - if you back off."

Buy it, now.

I have read many self help books and they all help in some way but this is the first book that I went out and bought five more to give to people I really care about just because I wanted to share this gem of a book with others. This is also the first time I have written a review about anything. I feel this strongly about it.
Dan has discovered through years of practice that many of the things we think would make us happy tend to do the exact opposite.
An interesting twist of the book is that most of the cases Dan talks about come from the lives of people who already have what most people think would make them happy; money, prestige, status, loving families ect, and yet these people were just as miserable as your average person if not more.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is willing to open themselves up to the possibility that happiness is already near and waiting for them.

WHAT HAPPY PEOPLE KNOW is a real wake-up call -- an invaluable treatise on graciously accepting the best parts of who we are and building on them in order to gain a true appreciation of how wonderful life can -- and should -- be. I've been in a bit of a funk lately and Dr. Baker's book seems to have launched me right out of it. A "must read" for anyone looking to fall back in love with life.

Reading through the reviews already written on this book, it's clear that many people found the book to be very helpful, but others (like me) really didn't care for it. This divergence is probably a result of two factors: (a) readers come to the book from widely varying perspectives and circumstances and (b) the book is written in a somewhat idiosyncratic way that simply can't work for everyone. I therefore suggest that potential readers browse the book themselves to decide whether to invest the time to read it, rather than relying too much on reviews by others.

On the positive side, I think the author is sincere in his desire to help the reader and did his best to communicate ideas to achieve that. In that regard, there are a few potentially useful ideas which most readers may not be familiar with, and which might make a genuinely positive difference in people's lives.

On the negative side, I found most of the best ideas to be rather obvious, and the overall framework of ideas seems simplistic, gimmicky, and lacking intellectual depth. I also found the writing style to be rather clunky, making the book a tedious chore to finish. Overall, in my opinion, there are many other books on the subject of happiness which offer deeper, more powerful insights, and which are much better written.

For me, the negatives outweighed the positives, so reading the book was mostly a waste of time. However, as I've noted above, I recognize that other readers may find the book to be quite helpful, so I really recommend that you preview the book for yourself before deciding. Good luck!

I am astounded that this book is getting five-star reviews because I found it incredibly derivative and poorly written. Baker takes a few ideas from the 12-step programs, a few ideas from zen philosophy, and a little New Age thinking and comes up with something that is neither new nor Earth-shattering. He even contradicts himself many times. Over and over he counsels readers that it takes pain to make the good times feel good, which is wise advice. Then he quotes Nietzsche's "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger," and calls it stupid! Old Friedrich said the same thing as Baker does, only in stronger language.

Baker also goes on and on about the joy of possibilities, which is also good advice. Then he slams the "create your own reality" theory, which is about...choosing possiblities. Once again, same concept, different wording.

I don't know. I'm sure to get slammed on this review, because it seems that Baker is writing what people want to hear. But I can think of ten different books that give the same advice better and in more readable formats. I tossed the book on my "give away" pile.