Happiness as a Second Language: A Guidebook to Achieving Lasting, Permanent Happiness (The Speak Happiness! personal growth and development series)

My Short Essay on why to read Happiness as a Second Language
I am a massive self-help consumer. I’ve always liked the genre, and not because I need a lot of help(or so I tell myself) but more because I think humanity could use a lot of help, as it stands.The problem with self-help addiction is that you get to know all the approaches and the original works get fewer and farther between, as the years go by. Being a writer myself, I can tell when I’m being sold something, within the first few lines–I know all the tricks and I can spot them. A lot of writers recycle the old messages, often without even realizing it, and I have to put their work down, before I get past the first chapter, just because it’s telling me nothing new.I like to keep my recommendations simple. So, in simple language, Happiness as a Second Language is worth buying and worth reading for two simple reasons. 1. You will not be sold anything. 2. It is completely original. These are two things you will not find in roughly 90% of self-help books. As a genre-addict, you can trust me on that.To elaborate:1. There is NOTHING more annoying to the self-help reader than to suddenly get the creeping sensation that some slick con artist is setting you up for the sales pitch! Either they’re selling themselves as the new messiah of positive thinking and are after a few disciples or they’re selling their line of ab-firming topical salves, but one way or another, it kills the reading experience to know you’re more of a mark than a reader. This is where most self-help publishers get it wrong(and don’t seem to know it). Valerie Alexander’s writing style is written more from the attitude of an experienced student, sharing what she’s learned to friends and colleagues than the usual messianical self-help figure, dispensing the holy writ from the mountaintop. And her style is that way, because that’s exactly what she is. A student of the topic with a real need to share what she’s learned. And that down to earth approach is incredibly rare and refreshing. It helps make this book very easy to read, knowing that you can keep the guard down and just absorb the message. It skips all those annoying pitfalls and gets right down to the task of giving you practical advice about happiness.2. And speaking of the message, that’s the best part. I won’t give away too much of the content here, but suffice to say “Happiness as a Second Language” is not just a buzz phrase. She is literally giving you a practical path towards re-learning your outlook in such a way that happiness comes easily, rather than with difficulty. In exactly the way you would learn a new language. That is practicality itself. No metaphysical references, no “pull your pants up” shaming sessions or condescending pats on the head from a narcissistic guru. It is completely practical. It is an entirely practical remedial effort to correct the fact we none of us are taught how to be happy. It is not taught in schools(not even the high priced privates). It is informally taught by some parents and mentors, and for most of us, that is pretty much all we have to guide us. Apart from that, a few authors contribute something besides the usual fluff. Bertrand Russell, Conrad Baars, and a few others come to mind. Valerie Alexander and her Speak Happiness deserve to be in this select group. If you can imagine for a minute, that you live in some future time, where Happiness IS taught in school, in it’s most practical and easy to digest form, and you’re sitting in the classroom, waiting for your lesson… I could thoroughly imagine Speak Happiness as the lesson you’re about to be taught. It brings up so much that seems like it should be intuitive and yet you marvel at how you have never thought of it before, never been taught it before. Profoundly insightful stuff.Throw into the mix that Alexander is a great writer who can really make you want to read(she is a pro screen-writer, after all) and the fact she is available in the blogosphere([…]) to anyone who wants to know more and you’ll end up getting a pretty massive amount of benefit for a very low price. And so, to conclude, this one definitely goes high on my list of recommendations. I’d go so far to call it the highlight of my year, as far as self-help literature goes! So, if you’re planning on buying a self-help book this year, I humbly suggest you make it this one.Alexei M. Russell

Happiness is achievable!
I have always thought of myself as a happy person, and did not actually feel I needed this book to become happy. However, when a friend recommended it to me, it was actually the title that compelled me to make the purchase. Kudos to Ms. Alexander for such a great title! I was intrigued, and I am glad I was. I completely enjoyed this book from cover to cover. Not only did it provide a good deal of insight into how to find more happiness in day to day life, it made me happy just reading it! It was a very pleasant read all around. The layout was helpful in the sense that one could easily go back to any section of the book for review and find what they were looking for quickly (I did this more than once). The stories told by the author in connection with the points she made were fun to read as well as pertinent. I truly believe that Ms. Alexander ‘s happiness is something she has cultivated over time using the tips she prescribes in this book, and I believe that these same points will help me to become even happier than I already am! I recommend this book to anyone who values happiness, and who doesn’t?

Helpful and simple
On the advice of a friend, I read this as they know I don’t like self-help books that are overly long and filled with fluffer. This one was concise to the point, and personable. I appreciated the author’s sincerity and honesty in her own struggles. A lot of this is common sense, but organized in a fashion I found I could use. Overall, impressed with the content.