Crappy to Happy: Nourish Your Soul

By Julie Schooler

Feel better without drastically changing your life.

• Do you have everything you have always dreamed of—healthy children, a nice home, a loving partner… and still feel crappy?
• Do you bicker with your significant other, snap at the kids and reach for the wine more than you would like?
• Do you feel anxious, rushed and overwhelmed every single day?

This book is full of wisdom from top personal development gurus, positive psychology researchers and families who use these tools. It shows how a few simple tweaks to your mindset, language and physiology have the power to take your daily life from crappy to happy.

 

It also cuts through the confusion around meditation, provides compelling reasons why a gratitude practice is a game changer and explains the three tiers to ultimate happiness and fulfilment.

 

This is a clear, gimmick-free guide especially for mamas and other busy people who should be feeling on the top of the world but are not.

In less than a couple of hours this book gives you dozens of no- or low-cost, easy and practical tips for feeling less stressed, less irritated and less worried. You may not believe it now, but you WILL start to feel more calm, positive and full of joy.

 

I am a wife, a mama of two young kids and a lifelong learner of personal development. And I am sick of feeling crappy! So I distilled an avalanche of advice from books, articles and seminars into simple and practical tips to help mamas just like you and me rediscover our inner wisdom and remember how to love our lives.

Follow the short, chunked down chapters in Crappy to Happy to:

• find out how to control your thoughts so they work for you, not against you
• learn a simple three-step process for handling your emotions better
• discover how breathing the right way can change your life (yes, really!)
• bust myths around meditation and learn how to do it easily every day
• grab some great gratitude practice ideas, suitable for the whole family
• create happiness in day-to-day life without changing a thing on the outside
• upgrade your joy to a level that most people cannot fathom

Read this book and you won't need to spend hours searching for information all over the Internet. If you use even a couple of the tools in this book, you will feel better, family times will be enjoyable again, and you will give your children the best gift of all—a happy mama.

 

What's stopping you from feeling more relaxed and cheerful today?

 

Buy this book and you WILL transform from crappy to happy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julie Schooler
• Release date: Jan 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780473407414

Book preview

1

Where Has The Happy Gone?

‘Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.’ – Neale Donald Walsch

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Comfort Zone of Crappiness

You have everything you have always dreamed of—healthy kids, a nice home, a loving partner… and you still feel crappy. You bicker with your significant other, snap at the kids (and immediately regret it), and you feel anxious, rushed and overwhelmed every single day.

Life should be amazing, but it is just tolerably mediocre. You feel guilty for wanting it to be awesome, especially when there are millions of people in the world much less fortunate than you. So you reach for the wine, chocolate or television and continue living in your comfort zone of crappiness.

Why do you feel so stressed, worried and angry about your full, busy life when this is what you have always wanted? These constant negative feelings need to stop, but nothing you have tried so far has worked.

This book is full of wisdom from top personal development gurus, positive psychology researchers and families who use these tools every day. It shows how a few simple tweaks to your mindset, language and physiology have the power to take your daily life from crappy to happy.

It also cuts through the confusion around meditation, provides compelling reasons why a gratitude practice is a game changer and explains the three tiers to ultimate happiness and fulfillment.

In less than a couple of hours this book gives you dozens of no- or low-cost, easy and practical tips for feeling less stressed, less angry and less worried. It stops your mindless habits that create negative outcomes. You may not believe it now, but you WILL start to feel more calm, positive and full of joy.

You won’t need to spend hours searching for information all over the Internet. You will have a clear direction and won’t be confused by conflicting advice.

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Why This Book Was Written

I am a wife, a mama of two young kids and a lifelong learner of self-help and personal development. And I was sick of feeling stressed, worried and rushed every single day. There just had to be a better way to live. Just because everyone seems to feel the same way doesn’t make it right.

So I did what I always do. I read. A lot. After all, I have studied this stuff for years. I have a shelf-help library at home. I read books, articles, searched the Internet and even went to motivation and self-improvement seminars.

I have distilled the avalanche of advice into simple and practical tips to help mamas just like you and me find our inner wisdom and remember how to love our lives.

Why have I done this? Because I had to. Surprisingly, I could not find one short, easy, clear, gimmick-free guide just for mamas who should be feeling on the top of the world but are not. We are not that unhappy, certainly not bad enough to seek professional help, but goodness knows we have felt a lot better.

I have written the book that I wanted to read.

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Benefits

Just think how great it will be when you look at life with a different perspective and with new positive habits in place. There are benefits in so many areas:

You have more positive interactions with your children.

Your kids are happier as you are less irritated and stressed out.

Your relationship with your partner improves as you become more calm, cheerful and fun.

You spend less time worrying and more time focusing on life’s little everyday miracles.

The whole world gains from your positive and kind attitude.

Other mamas are happy to recommend this one short, easy-to-read guide. Most say it is refreshing that there is no judgment or criticism of where they are. Instead, it offers simple ways to feel better, even great.

Mamas are excited that there is finally a short book that gives them options to go from crappy to happy in an easy and extremely low-cost manner.

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My Promise to You

My promise is that if you use even a couple of the tips in this book, you will feel better, family times will be fun again, and you will give your children the best gift of all—a happy mama.

If you can’t have a bit of fun and enjoyment during a time when, yet again, you are tearing your hair out just to get your little ones to put their shoes on each morning, then it is really a sad life indeed. So my promise to you is that not only will this be easy, but also you will also have a bit of a laugh along the way.

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What Have You Got to Lose?

Don’t let that low level anxiety, that negative emotional state, that underlying crappy feeling continue to be the norm. It is a cruel and unnecessary way to live.

Do not wait another restless night to read this book.

Be the happy mama you want to be—not when the kids are older, but right now. Read this book today, and you will immediately start to feel more relaxed and happy.

Change your focus and change your life.

When do you make time for yourself anymore? Think of reading this book as a low-cost luxury, an easy way to rediscover that sparkle you once had. And know that with this tiny luxury comes a bonus: the wisdom in these pages will help you and your family for the rest of your lives.

2

A Little Bit Crappy

‘Don’t believe everything you think.’– Allan Lokos

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A Typical Morning

Rushing out the door, late for kindergarten yet again, I had to ask my four-year-old son, Dylan, three times to put his shoes on. When there was no attempt to do as requested, I raised my voice, PUT YOUR SHOES ON NOW! Earlier, my husband and I had already had a mumbled but heated conversation over packing the same lunch for Dylan: He should eat something better than honey sandwiches every day; Well at least he eats it—and if you don’t like it, you make his lunch. As I was strapping our almost two-year-old daughter, Eloise, into the car seat, my mind was turning over the long list of things I wanted to get done. I didn’t even realize until later that she had said the word hand for the first time.

This is my lovely suburban, first world life, day after day.

And it is not that great.

Actually if I am honest, it is a little bit crappy.

Not enough to really complain about. Certainly not enough to consider seeking professional or medical advice. But every single day does not live up to my expectations.

Like many of you, I have been striving all my life to get to this point. I have the home, the husband, the kids. I have it all! I live beyond the ‘happily ever after’ of romance novels or fairy tales. I live in the space that no one shows realistically on TV, in movies, in books or on social media. I thought after years of striving to get here, I would be automatically enveloped with a contentedness and happiness I had