Happiness Project

I have been pouring over books this Christmas break, and have been lucky enough to find some REALLY interesting ones! One of which is pictured on the side of my page (every member should read that one, it's fascinating). A few weeks ago I started reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, about a mom that spent the year trying to optimize her happiness by focusing each month on an overall goal, ie. January's focus is on Energy or Health so you spend the month trying to exercise more, eat healthier, get more sleep, and organizing. Then the next month you add your next goal and so on. I really love her approach and thought it seemed practical and appropriate for my new years resolutions. I decided to try to focus my reading on whatever goal I'm working on that month, and I decided to follow Gretchen's lead and focus on feeling better this month. The first book I picked to coincide with that goal is Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel Amen. I'm so invested! I even kind of want a CAT scan haha, but I found it interesting that a lot of what Daniel says concerning the brain functions really coincides with what Gretchen experimented with in her life. In a sense it's kind of filling in the blanks for me and helping me realize why this and why that! It's extremely exciting to learn about! Not at all implying that Daniel Amen has the perfect diet solution or any information concerning dieting that we probably don't know already. However, he does a fantastic job of explaining the various parts of the brain and what they control and what habits I've developed that are harmful or restrictive to my overall brain function. I'm bordering on nerdy, but I was really excited that by jump starting my new years resolutions I'm actually learning a lot and feeling like I'm on to something that will be very good for me!