Happiness is You

In this book, motivational speaker and entrepreneurship educator Sid Gautam combines the ancient wisdom of his native India with the practical knowledge of his adopted American homeland to show how we can all live happier lives. The important concept to remember, he says, is that you hold the key to your own happiness. By removing the impediments to happiness in our daily lives, discovering the divinity within us all and cultivating new habits that bring us joy, we can experience lifelong bliss. Best of all, we can incorporate happiness into the lives we are living now, without having to become a hermit, take a pilgrimage, or spend all day in silent meditation.

Throughout the book, Gautam helps the reader "unlearn" some of the bad habits of the modern age: surrounding ourselves with noise and distractions, accumulating too many worldly possessions, and chasing after temporary pleasures instead of lasting happiness. Then he discusses the principles that will help the reader cultivate good habits: silence, simplicity, compassion, industriousness, generosity, and healthiness.

Each chapter ends with a short review designed to instill each concept into the reader's consciousness. The reader is asked to evaluate his or her happiness status, to meditate on a series of questions and then to resolve to take a particular action. By the end of the book, the reader will have a personalized daily checklist that will help ensure that happiness becomes a habit. And those who are able to weave this happiness habit into the fabric of their lives will never be subject to externally driven ups and downs again. By acknowledging that they are the problem, they discover that they are also the solution.