How to Be Happy

How to Be Happy (Or At Least Less Sad) is a book of exercises for those of us who tend toward melancholia. It's a gentle book, it's a light book, and it urges us to lower our expectations, and those three qualities alone are enough of a reason to read it. The book shares lots of tricks for slightly nudging you out of a sad mood, including posting visual anchors that boost your mood; examining the common thinking distortions—-black and white thinking, catastrophizing, living by fixed rules, and more—-that plunge us into negative moods; ways to focus on the present instead of berating yourself for past mistakes or worrying about the future.