You Can Be Happy No Matter What : Five Principles for Keeping Life in Perspective

Great bathroom or nightstand book. Helps understand and improve relationships, interactions, and self-awareness. It's a nice book to pick up every now and again and remind yourself of how your "thought habits" affect your mood and outlook.

This book helped me a lot during my hard time of panic attacks. If you suffer from panic attacks, anxiety or depression, this is the book for you.

My bookshelf is full of self-help books, but when I lose perspective this is the book I reach for first. Unfortunately it is also the first book I lend out or give away, so I didn't really come here to write a review -- I'm buying another copy or two. This will probably be my 12th copy or so. The principles are simple, but simple in a way that time and again makes me say, "Oh yeah!" because out of habit I have slipped into very complicated ways of thinking that leave me feeling trapped and depressed and resisting my feelings themselves. My favorite principle (and most easily remembered in time of need) is the principle of moods, which reminds me that fighting my feelings will never work. I find this principle very freeing, because something cool happens when I give up that particular fight. The only problem is that I don't remember the other principles very well right now cause I haven't read it in a while, and I just lent my copy out last weekend to a friend who's going through a breakup. So here I am.

I can only add a few words to the mostly positive reviews already posted. The reader from Chicago unfortunately missed the point. Life does not have to be a self-improvement course. We _do_ have the tools we need to live a happy life, but so often deny ourselves, out of a notion that life is only meaningful if we "struggle for clarity", and earn our well-being. Over the years I've taken myself to task for mistakes,choices,relationships, in order to consider myself "worthy' of a happy existence. The concepts in this book _are_ simple, but not stupid. Carlson's metaphor for living in the moment; the image of a motor boat, and it's wake, couldn't be easier to understand. We stand at the back of the boat, studying the wake, but it's the engine that moves us forward! As it is with our past, we can examine it, but like the wake, it's not going to get us anywhere.

This was the first of several books I read from Dr. Carlson, and I know it was a very instrumental part of my recovery process overcoming depression. I can't remember when I was so excited to read a book (except perhaps, when I read his book, "Shortcut Through Therapy"). I've read it three times, and bought four copies for other people who were also amazed at how much control they actually had over their own happiness! The beauty of this book is it's simplicity. It combines principles and applications that are not difficult to understand and, with practice, almost effortless to implement. This book benefited me because I believed, that I had little or no control over my thoughts, feelings, moods, circumstances or happiness. As I reflect after reading the book, I find that I have been feeling better longer. I still have low moods, but I don't sink as low, stay as long or hurt as bad as I used to. I'm still in therapy, and an end is in sight. My shrinks have substantially lenthened the time between visits, and reduced my meds considerably. Thank you Dr. Carlson, for your helping hand when it was needed most.