Happy Even After

We expect that getting what we want will finally make us happy, but what we find is that it mostly just leads to wanting more or wanting something different. Our desires toss us to and fro until we tire of this and begin to question the value of following our desires. Being Happy (Even When You Don't Get What You Want) will help you understand desire and its purpose in your life. It will also help you discriminate between your Heart's desires and the ego's and to relate to the ego's desires in a way that reduces suffering and increases joy. By pointing out the myths about desire that keep us tied to our ego's desires and the suffering they cause, Being Happy (Even When You Don't Get What You Want) will help you be happy regardless of your desires and whether you are attaining them. So it is also about spiritual freedom, or liberation, which comes from following the Heart, our deepest desires, instead of the ego's desires. It is about becoming a lover of life rather than a desirer. A review from Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God: "Conversations with God says that happiness is not getting what you want, it is wanting what you get. Others have made the same observation, and in fact, this thought seems to be as old as time. Still, it is good to hear it again, to visit it once more, to connect with the wisdom yet one more time. And few books do as good a job, as quickly, of reconnecting us with that wisdom than this one by Gina Lake. This book had a lasting impact on me. I highly recommend it.... It offers a simple, accessible, articulate, and interesting take on the very human experience of desire and gives us the tools to make clear choices about how we want to live our lives. An excellent read." This book was formerly titled Anatomy of Desire.

A personal story of trauma, hope and tackling problems God's way. Pat Edmiston married her husband when they were young and penniless. But together they discovered the secret of giving to God's work and subsequently their own fortune grew into hundreds of millions. Then suddenly, after 30 years of marriage, Bob left, leaving Pat confused and desolate. She could find strength in God alone.

Your children may not understand what the word divorce means, but they understand how it makes them feel. Their little worlds are turned upside down. Percy the perky penguin feels the exact same way when he learns that his parents are no longer going to live together. Even though he has lots of friends and does well in school, he suddenly doesnt feel so perky anymore. But he explores his concerns about what life will be like, and he learns that talking about his fears helps him work through his feelings. Change is hard, but he decides to adjust and find his perkiness again. Percys fears and those of other children stuck in the middle of a divorce may sometimes seem trivial to adults, but theyre very real. While you cant promise them things wont change, you can work as hard as you can to make sure theyre happy. It will take listening to them and talking with themand starting a conversation becomes much easier with Percys Imperfectly Perfect Family.

A New York Times bestseller: The “magnificent” memoir by one of the bravest and most original writers of our time—“A tour de force of literature and love” (Vogue). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” Jeanette Winterson’s bold and revelatory novels have established her as a major figure in world literature. Her internationally best-selling debut, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents, and has become a staple of required reading in contemporary fiction classes. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a “singular and electric” memoir about a life’s work to find happiness (The New York Times). It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the universe as a cosmic dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past, rose to haunt the author later in life, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It is also a book about the power of literature, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, or a life raft that supports us when we are sinking. Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded story of the search for belonging—for love, identity, home, and a mother.

If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...

Learn to find the happiness that is natural to you, and enjoy better relationships, better health, more success and a longer life. The peculiar thing about us humans is, we spend a lot of time working to find people and things that will make us happy. In fact, we seem to spend the majority of our time doing this. However, there is no guarantee that any of this effort will work. There are lots of people who have hordes of people around them, and who have lots of things, but have been unable to make themselves happy. The truth is, happiness can be had with little effort. Have you ever been happy for no reason at all? Of course you have. Without anything changing in life, happiness just appears. We see it in young children all the time. In fact, we expect to see it in children. If you happen to ask a smiling child why he or she is so happy, at best the answer may be, “Because.” For an adult this may be an unsatisfying answer, but for the child it is the truth -- happiness exists “just because.” As we age we seem to lose touch with happiness-for-no-reason-at-all. We see a world where everyone is striving for stuff, striving for popularity, striving, striving, striving. The natural fount of happiness we once enjoyed disappears as we join them. However, that happiness is not gone. All that happened is we lost our connection to it. This book is about recovering that connection. We all grow up believing that if we work hard, and if we are good people, we will enjoy good relationships with others, good health, success and a long life. Obviously this is not true. There are a lot of rich old people who are not happy. What we have, what we do, and the other circumstances of our lives do not provide authentic happiness. Instead, happiness comes from inside of us, and all by itself enables us to have secure relationships, good health, more success and longer lives. So, what is the secret of being happy? Being happy is a little like flipping a switch. When it’s on you are happy and when it’s off you are not. It’s so easy. How else can you explain being happy for no reason. What you need to do is learn to turn it on, and keep it turned on. This book discusses seven practices that help you do that. There is a lot of wisdom available about how to be happy. Most of it is thousands of years old, but some is quite new. The seven practices we will look at incorporate this wisdom to help you learn how to turn on happiness in your life. This kind of happiness does not require changing anything in your life. All you have to do is learn to turn it on.

NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (People) from the author of Conversations with Friends, “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan). ONE OF THE TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE—Entertainment Weekly TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—People, Slate, The New York Public Library, Harvard Crimson AND BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t. Praise for Normal People “[A] novel that demands to be read compulsively, in one sitting.”—The Washington Post “Arguably the buzziest novel of the season, Sally Rooney’s elegant sophomore effort . . . is a worthy successor to Conversations with Friends. Here, again, she unflinchingly explores class dynamics and young love with wit and nuance.”—The Wall Street Journal “[Rooney] has been hailed as the first great millennial novelist for her stories of love and late capitalism. . . . [She writes] some of the best dialogue I’ve read.”—The New Yorker