.
7. Self-Criticism Is Not Self-Improvement
8. We Are Never Victims When We Value Ourselves
24. People Can Love Us, but They Cannot Complete Us
25. We Don’t Find Fulfilment in Other People; We Find Fulfilment by Looking Inward
61. When We’re Not Driven by Our Egos, We Can Lose the Battle to Win the War
65. What Is It from Our Past That Weighs Us Down Today?
69. When You Have Been Hurt: Keep the Doors to Your Heart Open to Let In Amazing New Things
70. When Your Heart Is Broken: Take Your Happiness Back into Your Own Hands
Understanding
6. We Cannot Find Happiness, Because It Has Never Been Lost
10. Understand the Relationship You Have with Yourself
13. Our Expectations Are Our Standards Imposed Upon Someone Else
16. To Talk Instead of Argue, Be Curious Instead of Accusatory
18. There Are No Unspoken Rules in the Human Realm
19. Even If What Is Important to You Isn’t Important to Your Partner, It Does Not Mean That You Are Unimportant
20. It’s Not Personal, Even When It Feels Personal
22. Our Ability to Love Is Only as Good as Our Skills
27. When We Give (without Expectations), We Receive
34. It’s Not about Negative People, It’s about Not Being Negatively Affected
38. The Person Is Not Difficult, They Are Just Very Different from You
41. When You Care Whose Fault It Is, You Cannot Be Happy
42. Don’t Let the Concept of Fairness Make You Lose Sight of Your Objectives
44. To Be Understood, We Have to First Understand
45. We Don’t Need to Agree to Understand
46. Difficult Conversations Need to Be Non-Confrontational
48. Do You Recognize the Voices of Your Ego and Your Self-Esteem?
49. Put Out the Fire; Don’t Add More Fuel to It
50. Offense Can Certainly Be Given, but It Doesn’t Have to Be Taken
52. When People Take Advantage of Us, We Don’t Need Blame or Anger to Stand Up for Ourselves
53. People Don’t “Do” Things to Us, They Do Things to Themselves
56. Satisfaction Only Disguises Itself as Happiness
58. Righteous Anger Is Not Self-Preservation, It’s Self-Sabotage
59. Do We Seek to Empower Ourselves or to Control Others?
67. To Let Go of the Big Things, Practice Letting Go of the Small, Everyday Things
68. When You Want to Grow: Practice the Three Stages of Happiness—the Rehearsal, the Performance, and the Review
71. When You’re Having a Bad Day: Choose Happiness, Because Choosing Misery Is a Lot Harder
When I first started writing this book, my intention was to write about happiness. However, the more time I spent on developing the chapters and titles, the more I realized that perhaps the book is about unhappiness, for it is when we know how to navigate through the unhappy moments in life that we can truly be happy. This is why all five chapters in this book delve deep into heartache, pain, hurt, depression, communication problems, and relationship difficulties. These are all challenges that every single one of us is likely to experience at one time or another, and it’s hard to not feel frustrated and upset when life isn’t going the way we hope it will.
The objective of this book is to help you build the skills and strength to work through the challenging, difficult, and uncomfortable times in life, because it is only then that you can find peace.
Even when we have a great career and a wonderful relationship, we might feel like something is missing or that our life isn’t fulfilled. Sometimes, we can start off incredibly happy with our lives, and then after some time goes by, the problems that creep in make our life feel incredibly exhausting. We all understand that perfection doesn’t exist, yet often we can’t help but despair when life is far from perfect. This is why it’s so important for us to understand how to take responsibility for our happiness even in the toughest of times, because we don’t want our happiness to always be at the mercy of “what happens to us.” This is why many cannot find fulfilment—we will only learn how to be fulfilled through the ups and downs of life.
Throughout the different chapters of this book, you’ll find that I define happiness as much more than just a feeling. You’ll read stories of how it is possible to still be happy even when life throws us a curveball because there are practices that we can embrace to build an incredibly solid foundation to help us weather the storms. It is when we understand how to not suffer and how to be at peace that we can cultivate the loving relationships we want, as well as genuinely enjoying going to work and interacting with people without negativity, stress, or anxiety.
I’ve written this book so that it can be experienced in four different ways, and I highly recommend that you read its sections in this order for the most rewarding experience:
1.For your first read, experience the book in sequence from beginning to end, so that it provides a holistic understanding of how to overcome challenges in life to be happy.
2.Each section is also a self-contained lesson, so after your first read, you can flip to the individual piece that you feel compelled to read again.
3.Every title also serves as a quote. Once you’ve read the entire book, you can flip to the quotes that serve as a quick reminder of the philosophies you’d like to embrace in life.
4.There are two tables of content in this book, the first arranged by chapter and title, and the second by subject. This is so that if you’d like to actively practice happiness after you’ve finished the book, you can pick up the book again and refer to “Contents by Subject” for techniques relating to acceptance, understanding, awareness, perspective, and self-love.
So many of the lessons I’ve shared in this book come from my mother, who grew up poor yet happy. She is divorced yet lives each day with joy, and she experiences anxiety and depression yet does not suffer. My mother is my best teacher, and her guidance comes neither from books nor education but from the way she lives her own life. Not only does she show that it is entirely possible to be happy, always, her approach to happiness has always been practical and extremely applicable. It is with this same approach that I’ve written this book, and I hope that you enjoy reading in a way that uplifts you and empowers you to live each day with joy and no regrets, no matter what comes your way. Be happy, always!
Lots of love,
Xandria
Understanding Happiness and Unhappiness
Life Is Either a Celebration or a Lesson
<Perspective>
My husband, Yuri, likes to say that life is either a celebration or a lesson. I think that this is one of the best philosophies, because then we can truly see life as the gift that it is.
Yuri and I have been married since 2010, and we used to argue so much in those first few years. At the time, we didn’t know that it was possible to disagree without arguing. We knew that it was common for couples to argue, so we honestly thought that having arguments in a relationship