Choosing The Life You Want Book Report

Choose the Life You Want: The Mindful Way to Happiness is a self-help type of book written by writer and teacher of positive psychology, Tal Ben-Shahar. He is also a consultant, expert on organizational behavior, and teaches an extremely popular course on “happiness” at Harvard University. In Choosing the Life You Want, Ben-Shahar wants to help you do exactly that—choose the life that you want to live. It is important to note that the book is comprised of about 102 chapters, although each is extremely short. They each comprise of some sort of quote, anecdote, explanation, and maybe a brief research study or two. The book begins with Ben-Shahar telling the reader that research findings show that at least 40 percent of happiness is based on the personal choice to be happy or not. He goes on to say that life is all about choices, and that everyone needs to realize that they almost always …show more content…
On one hand, due to the length of each chapter and the numerous numbers of them, the book as a whole seems very glib, like it’s a collection of a bunch of thoughts that could each be made into another book itself and nothing more. On the other hand, it can be a fun read as the chapters go fast, and any chapter can be skipped, as they are not intertwined. Ben-Shahar also utilizes many clichés, such as “make lemons out of lemonade,” “find the silver lining in a dark cloud,” and “see the glass as half full,” which I found to be become quite tedious to read time after time. My harshest criticism of this book would be that he took one broad life tip, “make your own happiness,” and then added 101 chapters of examples to it. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I like how blunt Ben-Shahar was in some scenarios, such as giving telling others not to stay in a relationship just because they’re afraid of being