The Book I wish Was Written Ten Years Ago – The Book of Knowing – Gwendoline Smith

Battling with mental health issues and depression can be a daunting and sometimes insurmountable task. People haphazardly throw around the words “I know how you’re feeling”, when really, they don’t have a clue. Those words, whilst coming from a good place, can often make you feel inadequate and frustrated. Because, lets be real, nobody really knows what you are battling in your own self depreciating brain. Well, that’s what I thought until I read this book.

The Book of Knowing, by Gwendoline Smith, offers you your own personal tour of that complex and often unforgiving entity that is the human brain. With its content built on the premise of CBT (Cognitive behavioural Therapy), The Book of Knowing explores strategies and ideas to help individuals take control of their own emotions and thought patterns in day to day life. Whilst targeted at teens and adolescents, the book offers insights that are valuable to any individual or demographic who struggle to keep on top of their emotions and thoughts. Furthermore, the book is littered with helpful diagrams that illustrate more complex ideas in comfortable and humorous ways.

The book’s real value lies in it’s propensity or ability to empower the reader. Personally, It’s helped me to realise the true power I have regarding my own wellbeing. To be completely honest, it has been a saving grace. I have actually found it more valuable than any counselling or therapy session I’ve taken part in.

So please, if you are in need of some help in navigating your way through troubling times, read this book. You really won’t regret it.

Arohanui

Novel Thoughts

5 Minute Poetry – Fighting

Fighting


Squandered and bleak, pillaged and plundered.

It is a feeling of being desolate and barren, 

glimmered with a touch of hope and wonder 

that holds you this side of the soil



You don’t want to be so acrimonious but your lenses are more maroon than rose-tinted

But why?

Why does it have to be this way?

Always an ache to follow an ache,

And what feels like nothing in between

To soften the blow


Who can dare do this to you

But yourself

With all your gifts and curses,

Nightmares and dreams


How does one fight that?

A Book That You Can’t Afford Not to Read – The Happiness Equation – Neil Pasricha

I don’t know about you, but every day I find myself perpetually reminded of how busy and complicated our world has become. Televised news is often a herald of dread, and social media feeds saturate us with messages of social injustice and apocalyptic imaginings of our future. Sometimes, It’s all just a bit too much. Sometimes, the world can become just a bit too heavy for you to carry on your shoulders alone. Recently, I found myself feeling just that. The future looked bleak, and I marred my mind with thoughts of the past. I was stuck in a mental hole, and I needed some help. After wallowing in my pity, for what was more days than I’d like to admit, I mustered the effort to start clawing my way back out of the whole. I went to the Library. That was where I found Neil Pasricha’s The Happiness Equation, and I’m telling you, you can’t afford not to read it.

In his book, Neil Pasricha tries to break down the complexity of our modern world, and give the reader a practical equation to answering that age-old question: How to be happy? Broken down into nine simple rules, The Happiness Equation evokes the reader to confront their thinking and perception of the world around them, offering simple ways to change and understand your mindset and outlook on life. And that’s the secret: It’s simple. Using helpful diagrams, carefully chosen pop culture references, and wisdom from some of the most revered masters of mindfulness, The book works at being extremely accessible and implementable for people from all walks of life.

It’s been about two weeks since I read the book, and while I can’t say I have mastered the art of being happy, I certainly feel a newfound vigour and confidence in my effort to be happy. Like one of Pasricha’s mantra’s in the book, just do it! Go out there and give it a read!

Check it out here!