The Happiness Blog Tour and Giveaway

Bryan Cohen here, guest poster and author, promoting my new book The Post-College Guide to Happiness for The Happiness Blog Tour. I'm giving away free digital review copies of the book and doing a giveaway for paperback copies, audio copies and even a Kindle Fire! Read on and check out the info below the post.

Living by the Words

"The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised."

- H. C. Mattern

It's funny how most of us already know the secrets to happiness, we simply fail to act on them. I've been reading some of the great works of personal development and happiness for the last five years or so, but I'm really just coming into my own as far as putting them into practice. I'm a lot happier than I was back then because I've made these ideas a part of my life and as I make more progress, I suspect I'll be even happier. It just took some time for these words of wisdom to make it past the membrane that is my thick skull. Here's an example.

A few years back, my girlfriend and I were having a lot of troubles with fighting. We knew that we loved each other and we both wanted things to work, but we had come to the point where we were more likely to make each other cry than laugh. Months before the worst of it, I came upon some advice on love that would eventually change my life. Through reading Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I learned that to actively love someone means not expecting anything directly from the positive things you do. Obviously, if someone is treating you badly and never reciprocating at all over the course of years, there's a bad thing here, but it's almost as bad to expect love to come back to you immediately. Love is like a bank account. You deposit love whenever you do something wonderful and caring and you withdraw it when you do something stupid or mean. Even if you do something amazing, it probably won't make much of an impact until there's a bit of love saved up.

I thought that this advice sounded silly, though I didn't doubt it would work. After all, Covey's book has sold millions of copies and he'd been married for decades. What got me from reading the advice to putting it into practice? Simple. I decided that losing pride from taking the advice from a book was less important to me than the possibility of losing the relationship. I started giving love without expectation and within months, nearly all of the problems in the relationship began to go away.

Mattern's quote is pretty spot on. Hate and worry less. Give more than you expect. Be loving, spread love, follow the golden rule and live less extravagantly. I bet even a day of this formula would make you feel happier. Should you be willing to sacrifice your pride to take the advice you found on a blog post to improve your life? Yes. As I've learned from experience, it's certainly worth a shot.

Bryan Cohen is giving away 61 paperback and audio copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness and a Kindle Fire between now and May 7th, 2012 on The Happiness Blog Tour. All entrants receive a free digital review copy of The Post-College Guide to Happiness. Bryan hopes to give away at least 1,000 copies during the blog tour. To enter, post a comment with your e-mail address or send an e-mail to postcollegehappiness (at) gmail.com. Bryan will draw the names at the end of the tour. Entries will be counted through Sunday, May 6th.

Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor and comedian from Dresher, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art and a minor in Creative Writing. He has written nine books including 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade, Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job and his new book, 1,000 Character Writing Prompts: Villains, Heroes and Hams for Scripts, Stories and More. His website Build Creative Writing Ideas helps over 25,000 visitors a month to push past writer's block and stay motivated.

Feel free to follow along with the tour at The Happiness Blog Tour Hub Page or on the book's Facebook Page.