Review: Finding Happy Ground: A Practical Guide to Hope and Happiness

by Cathy

Dr. Ivan Zwart presents his refreshingly honest way taking control of your life, your surroundings, and, most importantly, your happiness. His guide on how to be happy is just what we need right now.

Finding Happy Ground will help you figure out how to be happy within yourself.

When I started reading Dr. Ivan Zwart‘s Finding Happy Ground, I was slightly sceptical about whether it would provide me with any new and ground-breaking ideas for releasing my inner happiness. There are an infinite number of books out there that claim to help you find your inner peace. However, by the end of the book, I was pleasantly surprised by the range and depth of helpful information and tips that are provided in his book.

At the beginning, and throughout, Dr. Zwart is startingly honest and open about his own struggles with mental health, which is refreshing and inspiring. He is the prime example of how the practices contained in this book can radically change your life. Dr. Zwart describes the hardships that he’s been through and how he was able to overcome these challenges once he had reflected on and engaged with himself. This book doesn’t tell you how to be happy, rather it encourages you to reflect on yourself and the way you live your life and discover for yourself what is making you happy and what isn’t.

There are short excercises throughout the book that help you to analyse and reflect on yourself and your behaviour. These exercises follow an explanation from Dr. Zwart about how this particular point, e.g. friendships and relationships, impacts our happiness and why it needs to be reflected on. Dr. Zwart’s explanations are concise and easy to understand which I think helps a great deal when you’re doing the exercises as you fully understand why doing this exercise will be of benefit to you.

We have the power to make ourselves happy.

I think the main purpose of this book is helping you to realise that true happiness comes from within and only you have the power to control your own happiness. The bite-sized exercises scattered throughout are prompts that will help you to change your perspective from “I don’t know how to change my situation because no one will help me” to “I am in control of my own situation and I have the power within me to change how I feel”.

Dr. Zwart’s writing is a gentle reminder of all of the good things in life. So, even if you don’t do the exercises, you’ll still feel the benefit of thinking about the postitive things in your life.

I originally reviewed this book for Reedsy Discovery. You can find out more here: https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/finding-happy-ground-a-practical-guide-to-hope-and-happiness-ivan-zwart

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