cover image Living Your Joy: A Practical Guide to Happiness

Living Your Joy: A Practical Guide to Happiness

Suzanne Falter-Barns. Ballantine Books, $12.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-345-43917-8

Falter-Burns strikes an encouraging but realistic tone in this down-to-earth self-help manual aimed at people struggling with doubts about pursuing their dream, whether it's writing a screenplay or creating kiln-fired glass jewelry. Instead of new-agey cheerleading, the author, who lived""the hand-to-mouth existence of a happy, impoverished artist"" until her late 30s, offers instructive tools for dealing with the time, money and energy deficits that interfere with achieving big goals. She insists that people have more time than they think they do, and provides advice on structuring and protecting that time as well as ways to avoid wasting precious minutes that can otherwise be devoted to working towards the dream. Her list of""Thirty Guaranteed Time-savers,"" for example, includes tips like primping less, screening calls and holding breakfast instead of lunch meetings. She advises on how to create a workspace, choose the right""day gig"" and avoid habits that suck energy (e.g. compulsive shopping, drinking and even perfectionism). In chapters entitled""When to Leap...and When Not to Leap,""""How to Keep Your Job and Live Your Dream at the Same Time"" and""How to Live with Financial Insecurity,"" Falter-Burns weighs the pros and cons of the slow, safe transition towards a dream versus a more impetuous plunge into the freelance life. Aspiring artists, writers and entrepreneurs will find basic and creative tips in this succinct motivational guide.