Product Description
From the Author
We don't believe you can achieve happiness, or anything else, by simply wishing for, thinking about or visualising it. If you've tried that and found that the universe hasn't delivered everything you ever wanted, we're here to help.
From the Back Cover
Simple, Sensible, Scientifically Supported Self Help
by Lucy McCarraher & Annabel Shaw
You can't get rich and happy just by sending out positive vibes, but you can:
Learn Happiness Habits from Positive Psychology
Tame your Fear with Cutting Edge Neuroscience
Control your Time and Money like an Entrepreneur
Build Better Relationships through one Tested Technique
About the Author
Lucy's expertise in Work-Life Balance grew out of research and writing about family, parenting and children's issues for organisations such as the NSPCC, National Parenting Forum, Thomas Coram Foundation and Working Families. Before this she was part of the media team that produced the first self-help videos - childcare with Penelope Leach, cookery with Prue Leith, gardening with Alan Titchmarsh; and the successful Lovers Guide video series and books. Lucy also developed the videos and wrote the book for The Y-Plan fitness series, worked with Desmond Morris on Babywatching and Keith Floyd's cooking programmes.
Lucy McCarraher has written three novels: "Blood and Water" and its sequel, "Kindred Spirits", as well as "Mr Mikey's Ladies". Lucy has worked in the UK and Australia as a magazine and book editor, print and screen journalist and television presenter. She is a qualified teacher and teaches Creative Writing.
Annabel Shaw is the inventor of the Lifescape method of visualising life history, which enables people to literally picture their whole life as a basis for analysing and changing it. Annabel developed Lifescape when working as a research psychologist researching the lives of homeless women.
Annabel was born in South Africa and came to England with her family in the late 1960s. She studied African history at Sussex University and settled in Brighton. In between trips to Africa and South East Asia, she worked as a teacher, ran an art gallery and brought up two children.
In the late 1980s Annabel returned to Sussex University to train as a social psychologist and she later taught psychology there and at the Open University. In the 1990s she began the research that led to Lifescape. Her article on "The Experience of Homeless Women" was published in Housing Studies in 1995 and excerpted in the Open University textbook, Social Science in Question, in 1998. The interview schedule has been used by researchers working with and recording the lives of cared-for children. During this period Annabel also worked for Brighton and Hove Social Services, providing a safe house for abused children and teenagers.
More recently Annabel retrained as a radiotherapist and has worked with cancer patients at the Sussex Cancer Centre.
Together, Lucy and Annabel wrote the audio book, "A Simpler Life", for Creative Content Digital.
Lucy McCarraher is a leading expert on work-life balance. "The Book of Balanced Living" was published in 2002, and for the corporate market she has written the Industrial Society's "Work Life Manual" and "Get the Balance Right", a video-based training package. She has been a consultant, trainer, speaker and coach in work-life balance and stress management.
Lucy's expertise in Work-Life Balance grew out of research and writing about family, parenting and children's issues for organisations such as the NSPCC, National Parenting Forum, Thomas Coram Foundation and Working Families. Before this she was part of the media team that produced the first self-help videos - childcare with Penelope Leach, cookery with Prue Leith, gardening with Alan Titchmarsh; and the successful Lovers Guide video series and books. Lucy also developed the videos and wrote the book for The Y-Plan fitness series, worked with Desmond Morris on Babywatching and Keith Floyd's cooking programmes.
Lucy McCarraher has written three novels: "Blood and Water" and its sequel, "Kindred Spirits", as well as "Mr Mikey's Ladies". Lucy has worked in the UK and Australia as a magazine and book editor, print and screen journalist and television presenter. She is a qualified teacher and teaches Creative Writing.
Annabel Shaw is the inventor of the Lifescape method of visualising life history, which enables people to literally picture their whole life as a basis for analysing and changing it. Annabel developed Lifescape when working as a research psychologist researching the lives of homeless women.
Annabel was born in South Africa and came to England with her family in the late 1960s. She studied African history at Sussex University and settled in Brighton. In between trips to Africa and South East Asia, she worked as a teacher, ran an art gallery and brought up two children.
In the late 1980s Annabel returned to Sussex University to train as a social psychologist and she later taught psychology there and at the Open University. In the 1990s she began the research that led to Lifescape. Her article on "The Experience of Homeless Women" was published in Housing Studies in 1995 and excerpted in the Open University textbook, Social Science in Question, in 1998. The interview schedule has been used by researchers working with and recording the lives of cared-for children. During this period Annabel also worked for Brighton and Hove Social Services, providing a safe house for abused children and teenagers.
More recently Annabel retrained as a radiotherapist and has worked with cancer patients at the Sussex Cancer Centre.
Together, Lucy and Annabel wrote the audio book, "A Simpler Life", for Creative Content Digital.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Have you ever wondered why people who are already contented and confident seem to get all the best breaks, have the most satisfying relationships, seem to enjoy more fun and exciting lives? It seems so unfair when they're not necessarily better at their jobs, nicer people or more deserving than you. Yet they get what they want out of life, achieve their goals and feel at ease with themselves in a way that often manages to escape you.
It's not that they're happy and fulfilled because they have all those things. Long term research has shown that it's entirely the other way round: happy people have better relationships, more successful careers, earn more money, maintain closer links with friends and family and savour life more. So the best way to join the ranks of the successful and satisfied is simply to get happy. These days we're all discovering that sustainable satisfaction and success is not simply about earning and spending loads of money; it's about reaching for the real sources of human happiness and ensuring that we keep in touch with those things that bring us true joy and fulfilment.
Some of us are born with a higher happiness "set point" than others, but we can all improve on the hand we were born with and the cards life has dealt us so far. Some of us have to deal with more knock backs and difficulties than others, but these are not an obstacle to leading a happy life - indeed, they can actually help us achieve it. So if you are feeling a little defeated at the moment, take heart; we're here to help.
If you manage to cope with repeated failure and go on to achieve success, you have what psychologists call "self-efficacy". People with high levels of self-efficacy do not give up easily; they believe they have it in themselves to achieve their goals. When you believe in your own power to exercise control over your life, you are healthier, more effective and more successful. People who believe they are capable approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered, rather than as threats to be avoided. They are invariably successful - and you will be too.
So happy people are successful and successful people have high levels of self-efficacy.
The suggestions and exercises in The Real Secret are devised to help you adopt new ways of thinking about things and new ways of doing things. Recent developments in psychology and neuroscience have shown that by doing this you can raise your individual happiness set-point, learn to become more optimistic, increase your self-efficacy and overcome anxieties and personal stumbling blocks.
The human brain is more complex, more powerful and has more potential than any machine yet invented. Like the PC on your desk or the car in your garage, you don't have to know exactly how it works as long as you know how to use it to get the results you want. The intricate workings of your mind can be guided by a surprisingly straightforward set of actions and instructions.
We have organised The Real Secret into twelve Steps dealing with vital aspects of your happiness. We have ordered them so they cumulatively build your new life from the roots up and provide a framework for growing happiness. Each Step has between three and six Habits for you to learn, which together will help you transform one key aspect of your life.
Research has shown that it takes at least three weeks to establish a new habit, longer if the new habit is designed to replace an old bad habit, so we suggest that you take a month to work on each Step. Once the changes have become habits, you will no longer need to think about or work on them - they will simply have become the underlying structure of your happier life.
It does take time to change the habits of a lifetime - and motivation. Don't beat yourself up if you lapse, just keep trying. Be strict with yourself, but also be forgiving. Wake up each morning and remind yourself of the exciting project you have embarked upon, a project which will bring you the happiness you long for. As you accomplish each new Step, you will feel proud of what you have achieved. You will have shown yourself that you are capable of change and therefore capable of meeting head-on any challenges that creating your own happiness will demand of you. You will be in control.
As you work through our simple - some of them very simple, but all scientifically supported - strategies, you will learn to change your physical and mental responses to stress, distress, fear and frustration. You can clarify and define what it will really take for you to feel that you are living a happy life. You will discover how to access joy, contentment, creativity and fun - the positive emotions that make life worth living - on a permanent basis. And you could shed the long term load of grief, trauma and anxiety which can build up over years and sabotage your best efforts at happiness.
The Real Secret will show you that your happiness is not dependent on unmanageable outside forces, or projecting unrealistic wishes into the cosmos, but a controllable state of mind which draws together people, ideas, energy and action.
