MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from  How to Get Happy and Stay That Way: Practice Techniques for Putting Joy into Your Life ebook: Anazon Kindle paperback:  MSI Press webstore  (code FF25 gives 25% discount) Don't Let Guilt Block Your Happiness It’s odd to think that guilt can get in the way of happiness, but I know it can because it’s happened to me. There have been times I’ve been so happy that tears come to my eyes—and then I realize something else has gotten into my head, too. That something else is guilt—guilt because I’m happy and other people aren’t. There is no way to get around this reality: not everyone is happy. In fact, there are those who say we should never declare ourselves happy while there are people in the world who are suffering. Some individuals—writers, philosophers—proclaim that to be happy in the world as we know it is a sign of insanity. I don’t agree with either of these concepts. To me, we are most apt to go out of our way to help those less fortunate than ourselves when we ar

  excerpt from How to Get Happy and Stay That Way (Romer) - How Can We Tell When True Happiness Is Ours? Knowing when we are happy may seem like a no-brainer, but actually it can be trickier than it sounds. What seems to be true happiness may be deceptive and turn out to be just a passing phase or, worse, the opposite of happiness. For example, have you ever spent hours, even days, planning an event, and it turns out to be something that sounded much better on paper than it actually was? In this case, it may be that whatever happiness was derived from the situation came from the planning process, and not the event itself. Now there’s nothing wrong with achieving satisfaction from producing an event—event planners will vouch for that! However, it’s important to know whether it’s the process or the result itself that makes us happy, so that we’re not disappointed. But how about simple, everyday happiness, not associated with major projects—how can we accurately tell when happiness is up

  Excerpt from Clean Your Plate!  Be Nice to Your Friends [ILLUSTRATION 6, CHAPTER 6 WARNING GOES HERE] As anyone who has ever talked to a toddler can tell you, toddlers can be brutal. Like, soul-crushingly, life-ruiningly frank. There’s a lot of truth to the Internet meme that says “if a woman calls you ugly, she’s jealous; if a man calls you ugly, she’s flirting, but if a kid calls you ugly...you’re ugly.” Kids have absolutely no sense of social niceties. They also occasionally spaz out with small bursts of poorly-controlled demonic meanness of unknown origin. (No, it’s not just your kids. It’s all of them.) Why We Say It The fact that parents across the globe tell their kids to be nice to their friends is entirely unsurprising. We’re terrified our little monsters will alienate their peers and doom themselves to a life of social isolation and misery (sticking us with the therapy bills). However well-meaning this parental plea for our kids to exercise their still-developin