You Can Feel Good Again: Common-Sense Strategies for Releasing Unhappiness and Changing Your Life [Paperback]

Richard Carlson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1994

Richard Carlson has one simple message: changing your thinking changes your life. With "You Can Feel Good Again", he often a common sense method that allows anyone to release unhappiness and negativity related to present circumstances or past events, and return to a natural state of well-being in the present. "You Can Feel Good Again" is full of Richard Carlson's humor, wisdom, and thoughtful guidance -- a genuine tool to foster the realization that happiness and contentment are truly "one thought away".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Carlson ( You Can Be Happy No Matter What: Good News About Depression ) doesn't encourage his clients to attend therapy weekly. Frequent sessions, he asserts, don't make people happy; they only make clients brood about how miserable their lives are. Instead, what we think about, he believes, actually determines how optimistic or unhappy we are. " Your thoughts always create your emotions ," the author argues. Thus, the key to happiness is to replace negative thoughts with postive ones. Negative thinking, according to Carlson, is a habit like smoking or drinking that can be broken. So in effect, depression is the result of faulty thinking habits. Carlson's technique is based on the Psychology of Mind, a new branch of psychotherapy. Included here are case studies of clients he has treated using these principles. While Carlson demonstrates some common sense, much of the book seems glib and patronizing, as if people were machines that could be reprogrammed by pressing a few buttons. First serial to Cosmopolitan.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Carlson, a psychologist and author of You Can Be Happy No Matter What (New World Lib., 1992), contends that there may be a faster, easier way to stop depression and obtain happiness than through the traditional therapeutic method. Using theories based on "a new branch of psychotherapy" dubbed the "Psychology of Mind," Carlson theorizes that problems, regardless of their source, are actually exacerbated by prolonged examination. Happiness and mental health can instead be achieved by "making a commitment to happiness" and by intercepting and halting negative thoughts immediately and replacing them with more positive, mood-lifting thoughts. Case studies are included. This upbeat, commonsense approach may be helpful to those seeking an alternative to traditional therapy. Recommended for most self-help collections.
- Linda S. Greene, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Plume; Second Edition edition (September 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452272424
• ISBN-13: 978-0452272422
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

During his life, Richard Carlson, Ph.D, was considered one of the foremost experts in happiness and stress reduction in the United States and around the world and was a frequent featured guest on such shows as Oprah, The Today Show, The View, NNC, CNN, Fox, PBS and over 2000 other shows.Don't Sweat the Small Stuff continued to be a publishing phenomenon with over 20 titles in the brand franchise, two of which were co-authored and authored with his beloved wife, Kris. He died of a pulmonary embolism in December 2006, at the age of forty-five.

The words "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" have become a part of American Culture thanks to Richard Carlson's book that became a runaway best-seller and made publishing history as the #1 best-selling book in the United States for two consecutive years.
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller list and is still considered one of the fastest selling books of all time and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Help for those who have tried everything else is here., March 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: You Can Feel Good Again: Common-Sense Strategies for Releasing Unhappiness and Changing Your Life (Paperback)

This book is easy to read and understand even if your too depressed to read anything. Richards' writing doesn't talk down to you or pretend that your supposed to get "it". He explains in common sense ways how you can change your life by changing your thinking. He also doesn't leave you with hanging questions. He intuitively knows what questions the reader may be asking and answers them. I felt satisfied with his thorough explanation of his proces and it has helped me immensely. I have given this book to many friends and their comments echo mine. This book puts you back in the drivers seat of your mind.

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book and keep on re-reading it, January 26, 2004

By 

Mr. S. Daffern (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: You Can Feel Good Again: Common-Sense Strategies for Releasing Unhappiness and Changing Your Life (Paperback)

Dr Carlson has written many self-help books aimed at helping us to find the stable state of happiness that naturally exists within us all. He has now written this book specifically for those of us who suffer from depression. The book contains practical truths that are so obvious that most of us miss them or at least bypass them in the rush of our everyday lives. If you are suffering from depression this book will help immensely. Richard Carlson will show you how your state of depression is as much perpetuated by your own thinking as it is by any chemical imbalance that may or may not exist. I have read this book at the same time as receiving treatment with an SSRI anti-depressant (Cipralex). While I am unsure if the SSRI has benefited me at all after 6 weeks, I am certain that this book has changed my outlook completely after two weeks and that it continues to do so more and more with each re-reading. If I allow myself to slip back into my old ways of thinking, the severity of my depression rapidly returns. The good news is that it just as rapidly alleviates when I get back on track with my thinking. The book is simple to read and may seem repetitious. However, if you are one of Dr Carlson's target audience of sufferers from depression you should read this book and keep on re-reading it. You will find that on each re-reading something will leap out at you with greater meaning than it did before. I have highlighted many sentences so that I can rapidly re-read them, and have noted down the keywords on the title page. This way I can pull myself back on track quickly. The approach takes some work to put into practice but there is nothing as hard work as being in a depressed state. The hard work, by the way, is only in terms of changing your habitual modes of thinking, it does not involve making lists and analysing things as do many cognitive (i.e. thinking) approaches such as that found in Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. I have found Dr Burns's book to be of some use also, mainly because it has helped me to identify particular types of cognitive distortion that help perpetuate depressive illness. This enables me to more accurately recognise when I should dismiss my thoughts, as Dr Carlson recommends in his approach. If you are depressed, low, angry, resentful, dissatisfied, unfulfilled, stressed, hurried, fearful or just not happy most of the time then read this book and keep re-reading it. I only wish this book had been available when I was aged twenty rather than forty.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book about thinking, October 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: You Can Feel Good Again: Common-Sense Strategies for Releasing Unhappiness and Changing Your Life (Paperback)

The only unfortunate thing about this book is the weepy title. - But the tone of the book is not weepy. It is a crystal clear explanation of how we get into self-defeating thought patterns and some practical, non-psychobabble insight on how not to get into these downward spirals. - This book is much, much better than the author's "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff..." series.