'There's a big difference between being happy and being selfish. Choose to be happy. Fire Truck the rest."
922729
Ms. McLean's best book yet! Oh what a journey this book took me on! It gave me the laughs, the tears, the angst, the inspiration. Oh so much of the inspiration.. This book has so many parts where the emotions overwhelmed me.. How do you come up with words to describe such a book?!? You don't! Trust me, just read it! You need to!
3362248
According to Gabrielle Bernstein, author of "Spirit Junkie", we live our lives either full of love or full of fear. Most of us fall into the latter category even though we were born into the former. To avoid getting bogged down by semantics, she calls her inner guide, or Internal Teacher, "~ing," which can also mean God, Holy Spirit, the Universe, or whatever you want to call it, but it means love.

  The opposite of "~ing" is the ego (not the Freudian ego) which controls us with fear. The ego forces us to feel separate from everyone and everything and can have us believing we are better than others while at the same time having us believe that we are less-than or not good enough. We can only know true happiness and peace when we stop comparing ourselves to and competing with others.

  Bernstein says that each time we gossip, feel jealous, or think nasty thoughts of others, we deepen our faith in fear. "If you choose to see a person's darkness, you strengthen your darkness within. If you choose to see their light, you shine from the inside out." Her solution to our problem of separateness is nothing new: pray, meditate, and write. She even offers her own version of AA's promises: "...you'll know a new way of being and a life beyond your wildest dreams. Fear will lift; anxiety, resentment, and attachment will slip away. You'll feel a presence greater than yourself leading you on a path toward true serenity and peace. You'll know that all your obstacles are opportunities, and you'll learn to lean on a power greater than yourself. Most important, you'll no longer feel the need to figure life out. You'll just be."

  When you discover that success and status, the perfect romantic partner, or a hefty bank account won't make you happy, you can learn from "Spirit Junkie" that you already have everything you need to be content and at peace, and it's not outside of you. It's already in you. All you have to do is look.

David Allan Reeves
Author of  "Running Away From Me"
2361421
I've bought several books on choosing to be child free. This one feels like a big hug when you read of the accounts of people choosing not to have children and being happy because of their choice. My spouse and I are those people! It definitely lets you know you're not alone, a lot of people are choosing a child free life and they can/do live happy and fulfilling lives. I love the candid and honest replies of the ones who were interviewed and their matter-of-fact "you don't need kids to be happy" attitudes. They really have paved the way for my spouse and I.

Additionally, the author said she specifically came up with questions to throw the couples off and reveal some big, selfish reason for why they didn't want children. She said she was the one who was thrown in the end, she found nothing but happiness and contentment as well as a great deal of thought put into why the couples did not want children. And that's the truth for those of us who deliberately choose not to have children.
1561869
That it's a Womyn's responsibility to be good to Herself 1st. Then happiness will follow :-)
4552875
Interesting and very thought provoking.  Concise and clear.  Prager points out what isn't obvious to many: yes, you work at becoming a happy person.  It may take effort to temper some natural "lesser" tendencies and elevate better ones, and for some folks, alas, it is just easier to be unhappy. But the discipline to train your thinking and habits that will make you enjoy life more is also a labor of love, and respect, for those around us.  The book is worth it for the chapter on expectations alone.
4638303
This book will possibly change your life. For me it made me care more about my happiness and less about what I THINK will make me happy.  Most of us spend a lot of time thinking about things like job security, money and stuff, what's the point if we are not happy? We are free when we realize that life is very very short and we should make the most of it by having amazing experiences and taking risk and just having fun and being happy no matter what. The irony is that once we start living that way the other things that we thought we needed to be happy are no longer important and they just tend to appear in your life on their own. Being is the opposite of thinking; thinking is what gets us in trouble. That's something that the book explains very clearly, that thinking is what brings all our suffering. In most cases it is never what is actually happening in the moment that we feel bad about, it is what we are thinking about that is causing us to feel pain. It is a socially acceptable level of dementia. I'm sure you could remember a million times in your life when thinking about something gave you a lot of pain and suffering and at the end it was all a waste of time and energy since nothing even happened. This happens everyday to most of us!
I believe it is one of our main purposes in this life to become so aware of what our brain is doing that it will no longer be able to affect us in any negative way. The world will be a complete different way once more of us start living that way. In the end we all just want to be happy!
926779
I love children but the older the get the more I realize that one has to be very selfless if they are to become a parent. The child is your responsibility till you are gone .... because that is why you are a parent. Childfree is about being honest enough to see that you are too into yourself to be there and sacrifice for an offspring. That is very selfless and consider all the messed up people who are a direct result of selfish and narcisstic irresponsible incompetant parents. If you can't take a backseat to a child then don't have one at all. Childfree is not so much carefree but careful instead of careless breeding without proper judgment. Childful is an equally valid choice as childless .... and babies are wonderful humans .. not trophies that indicate your value because your DNA has reproduced itself. I have met women who treated their children as accessories and wonder why their kids are acting out. I have met mothers and fathers who put other people before their own children and can't understand why the kids don't like them. I have met single parents who place sex with potential relationship partners as a top priority before loving their own youngster unconditionally. And these people have the audacity to call childless yuppies selfish? They are the ones who had children for selfish reasons! A child needs all the emotionally care it can get until adulthood NOT reckless parenting from overgrown children themselves! Childfree is one of the most wisest choices anyone can make ... and the benefits are fabulous!

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4689204
I loved this book. In a way, the character reminded me of myself. I find that I do things that I don't want to do (most of time), but do it anyway because it seems like the right thing to do and I don't want to let anybody down. However, in the book the main character, Megan finally "gets it". It's definitely okay to help others, but don't neglect yourself by not doing what you want to do and put yourself on the back burner. I began to analyze myself with this book and have found ways to do what I want to do, but still help others and not let them take advantage of my kindness. There IS a happy medium (pace) and once you find it, everyone will be happier, especially YOU!
4050595
Crazy busy is a life without peace.  Its marked by decisions made for the approval of the world, not the approval of God.  Its filled with what we think we should do, what we think will make others happy, and what we think being a good person looks like.  All this busyness, in the end, keeps us just out of reach of the life we were created to live.

Breaking busy is about more than identifying the things in our life that suck the life out of us.  We must also identify what gives us life, what recharges us and restores our capacity.

If we are going to start breaking busy, we start with focusing in on the relationships that fill our souls.

Our lives have gotten so cluttered up with things we think we should do, we cant figure out what we were meant to do.  Let your life be about what you are meant to do, not full of what you think you should do.  This starts with your daily decisions about how you spend your time.

These are three of the many many quotes Ive underlined in Alli Worthingtons Breaking Busy.  This is a book that I have found college students, moms of littles, moms with teens and empty nesters all gravitate to.  It should come as no surprise that any stage of life has seasons of feeling overwhelmed and above capacity within it.

Breaking Busy addresses extensively the different areas of our lives we tend to fill up with busyness.  Relationships, Traditions, Calling, Thoughts and many other subjects are written about in matter of fact statements that had me nodding my head, tearing up with gratitude and feeling energized to edit, adjust and say no!

Alli uses her own life journey to show ways that God has directed her journey in pursuing her life calling.  She writes about the beginning and end of BlissDom.  Within the journey Alli reveals that obedience doesnt always look like we think it should.  Heres the thing about Breaking Busy, sometimes it calls for tough choices, for making drastic choices even in the place where youve been highly successful.  Reading these words lifted a huge weight off my chest that I didn't realize I was still carrying.  The weight from guilt of walking away from a season of life that was filled with success.  Learning to balance obedience and calling is challenging and as I read Breaking Busy is affirmed many areas in both my life and Ordells where things are on track.

I deeply appreciated the balance of tender and honesty that Alli writes with, her heart to help women love their lives more fully shines through.  I realized while reading this book that checked off to do lists and boundary establishing may patch up our stress for awhile, but piling bandaid upon bandaid won't stop the wounds from coming.  We must figure out how to find balance and correctly prioritize by breaking busy in order to live the lives God calls us to.
1869141
It is very usual for the people to consider the fact that being alone won't make them happy anyway. However, when one goes through this book he or she may realize that happiness is never matched with having someone in life. You may also stay happy by being on your own and you just need to understand how important you should consider yourself.
413252
"Splitting the difference" between the good and the bad is what Tre Miller Rodriguez chose to do with her life after her husband passed. This book gave me new insight into what my mother experienced when she also became a widow at a young age. This book should come with a warning label - "not to be read in public, but in the privacy of your home" as I cried through about 80% of the book; even so, reading about Tre's heartfelt journey was a true pleasure.  --Cesar
1572565
"The rich are different from you and me" F. Scott Fitzgerald once told his friends. "Yes, they have more money" famously answered Ernest Hemingway.

We all know what we'd do if we had an extra hundred thousand dollars. We'd go out to one really nice dinner, we'd pay off a big chunk of our mortgage, we'd go on a nice vacation, we'd buy a new car, new shoes, a new leather jacket and so on.

But how would ten million dollars affect us? What about one hundred million? We'd have to change, we could not live the same way. If we are that rich, then each hour we spend cooking or cleaning for ourselves means an hour we aren't managing our business. So even if a billionaire lives a simple life (e.g. Warren Buffet) he still needs someone to manage his life. And at a billion dollars, we'd need a security detail too.

But what is the point of being a billionaire if you don't indulge yourself? Apart from the Bentleys and Porches, the rich often choose to live on estates. Expansive gardens require gardeners, fountains require maintenance, wild game roaming the ranch require tracking. And all these people need to be managed. One result having a growing number of millionaires is that butlers are once again in demand. A school in Colorado offers a full training course and will help place you. The job pays well too, with six digit salaries being common.

But sometimes wealth backfires, even if you don't lose it. Billionaires keep trying to one-up each other by buying ever bigger yachts. The winner in this game turned out to be the loser. The world's largest yacht is too big to dock at most of the fashionable marinas so it must make do with commercial ports. It isn't gratifying to spend hundreds of millions on a floating Xanadu only to find youself neighbours with oil tankers and cargo ships.

My heart bleeds.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
918984
I doubt that there's a normal, rational person who doesn't want to be happy. There is certainly no shortage of books by self-styled gurus telling us how to be happy, successful, rich, you name it. The problem with most of these books is, THEY DON'T REALLY WORK.
If you think I'm skeptical about books that offer the secret to (fill in the blanks), you'd be right on the money. It was, therefore, with just that skeptical, `I'm from Missouri, so show me' mindset that I began reading Bryan Hutchinson's Happy Every Day: Simple, Effective Ways to Better Days, a book that I received a free copy of for review. From page one I challenged Hutchinson to `show me.'
Well, guess what folks, he did. This is not one of those, `here's the great secret to happiness, and if you'll only follow these 5 simple steps, you'll never be unhappy again' books. This is a practical, no-nonsense book that dissects happiness and, using the author's own experience, shows that true happiness is within the reach of each of us, but that it is up to us to chart the path to achieve it.
Hutchinson makes no grandiose claims. He just outlines in simple language how an individual can have a life that is, on balance, more happy than unhappy - and moreover, more fulfilling. There are no real surprises here - just plain old common sense. But, it's pulled together in an easy-to-read, easy-to-comprehend format, complete with end of chapter exercises to help chart your path to happiness.
I'm still not a fan of most how-to books, but Hutchinson has me hooked on his brand of `you can.' Maybe he's started a new category here, and we just have find a name for it.
Four and a half stars. I took a half star off for a few grammatical missteps. Can't have him thinking he's one of the best motivational authors around, now can we?
553202
In a conversation I had with my son, he mentioned that he no longer wants to be selfish and think about just himself.  When I asked hime what made him finally start to feel this way, he said he'd read about a man in this book and that story made him want to change his ways.
1769798
Life takes many twist and turns and it takes age, maturity, and wisdom to admit that we are individually responsible for any unhappiness
that we may feel at any given moment. When God gives us a second chance to learn from our selfishness, we must seize the time to allow the "universe" to let the good and positive t o flow through our veins to be an l e to love unconditionally. Peace
4390915
In our set obsessed society we are miserable. The key to happiness is being others focused because the gospel is real.
2846503
Written by a professional organizer, benefit from this book requires an acceptance that change may be good. It's all about attitude. What can you change that will make your life easier? Habits are formed and ingrained young. If whatever you are doing is not working, will you change? Many people will not. Most of us should.

This author recommends a balance between work and play with both being equally important. If you are all about work, change is needed. Multi-tasking does not work. If you do this, nothing gets done well and only causes stress.

Is everything around you arranged to make your life easier? We collect stuff and tend to keep items long after any usefulness has vanished. She likes setting goals and working toward them and feels there's really no other way to live. She says that "when the pain to stay the same becomes greater than the fear of the unknown, change occurs."

Getting rid of unused things and old ways releases the past and frees us for new ideas and better ways in the future. If you are willing to think through what you are doing and why, this is the book for you.