About the Book
In Deliberately Happy, author and mental health accredited social worker Marina Collins, explains a fail-proof method for improving mental health that can be applied at any time by anyone. The method revealed allows you to take control of your mental health and become Deliberately Happy in under 10 minutes a day. Also provided are tips and tricks on habits and time management written for those who are time-poor and need a mental health boost. The strategies in this book are evidence-based and straightforward. Marina has written this book for individuals but also with GPs, teachers, social workers, and psychologists in mind, making worksheets available to teach the method to patients, students and clients alike as a great tool to allow everyone the opportunity to have a solid foundational baseline of positive mental health and to become Deliberately Happy.
About the Book
In Deliberately Happy, author and mental health accredited social worker Marina Collins, explains a fail-proof method for improving mental health that can be applied at any time by anyone. The method revealed allows you to take control of your mental health and become Deliberately Happy in under 10 minutes a day. Also provided are tips and tricks on habits and time management written for those who are time-poor and need a mental health boost. The strategies in this book are evidence-based and straightforward. Marina has written this book for individuals but also with GPs, teachers, social workers, and psychologists in mind, making worksheets available to teach the method to patients, students and clients alike as a great tool to allow everyone the opportunity to have a solid foundational baseline of positive mental health and to become Deliberately Happy.
Back in 2019, my life changed drastically. Married with two boys, I found myself desperately unhappy in my marriage. The details are complicated, but it left me forty, single, and alone. Our family had just relocated to the Sunshine Coast of Australia when the split occurred; I had no family, no friends, and had only just started a new job at a major hospital. Life, at this time, was hard. Having always been someone who feels most secure surrounded by other people, I was now constantly alone in a big house, having what most would describe as some mid-life crisis. I started distracting myself through alcohol, dating (a largely disastrous experience), and having new friends over all the time, filling my social life with constant âthings to doâ to stall my fear about the future. The best thing I did, however, was buy a book by Gabby Bernstein called The Super Attractor. This book was somewhat life-changing for me and was the start of a long line of self-help books on everything and anything that belonged to the self-improvement genre.
A work opportunity arose with a private psychiatric hospital to write some mindfulness and mental health skills programs for outpatients. I took this very seriously and did a complete and utter deep dive into what makes us happy, what things lead to positive mental health, and how we achieve this realistically. I was working three differentÂ
jobs at the time, attempting to date, building a friendship with my ex-partner, single parenting two young children (one with severe ADHD), building and trying to maintain new friendships, prioritis- ing health and fitness, going through some health issues, and trying to get some kind of social life. I was time-poor, my self-esteem was in shreds, my negative self-talk was at its peak, and my anxiety kept me in the stress response almost constantly. All the self-help books were overloaded with information on how to improve mental health or happiness: there was information on how to be limitless, how to make new habits and practice gratitude and mindfulness, and reminders on exercise, nutrition, and meditation.
I asked myself how could I accomplish all those things while still earning a living and caring for my children. I also wanted to know the research behind all of these âthingsâ, and what made them necessary for happiness . . . because on a good day, I could do a yoga class med- itate for an hour, and finish the day with a healthy meal, but those good days happened once a month at best. The rest of the month I felt guilty that I didnât have the time nor the energy to do much more. I didnât know what to focus on, either: eat well and exercise, or meditation and yoga? Where was I supposed to start?
I began to notice that patients at the hospital experienced the same concerns. By the end of their stay (average admission is approximately three weeks), they would feel amazing; they had three hours of groups a day, a gym, healthy food, and the opportunity to do all the ârightâ things, but they fell apart upon discharge. I started asking them when they re-admitted what went wrong, and they would explain that, to begin with, they would do all the âthingsâ, but then something would happen â a bad day, a life event, sickness, alcohol relapse, etc. â and then they would have so much guilt and shame they were unable to manage the hours and hours a day they had previously dedicated to their mental health . . . so they stopped altogether. I wanted to figure out a realistic way to get the good things in con- sistently, even on the bad days, the busy days, and the sick days. I wanted to know if this would work and be accumulative to positive mental health. I wanted a simple method that anyone could do, and that would have lasting effects. I wanted research to support it, and I wanted it to have room for growth. And when Covid came to rock our worlds, I wanted something you could do when the support or presence of others was not available. And so, I developed the â3 for 3â method and spent over three years testing it on myself, my friends, and my patients. Iâm happy to say it has worked a treat.
Fast forward to the present day, and Iâm happy to say that I have managed to gain incredible skills, have the self-worth to take a chance and write this book. I now use my brain as my servant, aware that I can choose to be deliberately happy by applying the principles of neuroplasticity with the method. I know that even on a bad day I can keep my head above water and work towards accumulative positive mental health.
I am best friends with the father of my children who is an amaz- ing dad and we co-parent beautifully; although perplexing to most people we have a respectful and grateful relationship that is incredibly beautiful and respectful. I learned to become deliberately happy and Iâm so proud of that.
Not a day goes by when I donât practice the method and there will not be a day in the future because I can engage in the method easily on any day under any circumstance.
A note on worthiness before we begin. Author and researcher BreneĚ Brown talks about worthiness in her famous 2010 âPower of Vulnerabilityâ Ted Talk.1 Brown explains that when she researched the difference between those who felt loved and connected and those who felt lonely and disconnected the only difference was that those who felt loved and connected felt worthy of love and connection.
Worthiness is that important when it comes to what we receive and experience (and of course what we perceive). I explain throughout the book that this is a journey of self discovery and you can individualise the method to create the life that you want. I encourage you to have a check in on your worthiness and if this is an area that you struggle with then keep this in mind as you go though the book and choose those strategies that will help you with increasing your worthiness. Deliberately Happy will teach you just that, how to choose your own journey using the method that will allow you to keep your head above water on the bad days and allow you to soar on your good days.
There is a simple worksheet available by emailing marinalouise@live. com.au that you can access and use with your clients, students, and patients, or yourself. The development of an app is currently being explored. Just write âworksheetâ in the subject box for your own copy.Â
Deliberately Happy is a realistic and digestible look at how to incorporate healthy habits into your life to increase your happiness and well-being. The author provides scientific research and personal examples to illustrate how being intentional and building sustainable habits into your daily routine can lead to more fulfillment and satisfaction in your daily life.
I appreciated the author's realistic approach to self-help. Collins doesn't give us a laundry list of ten million things we must do immediately in order to change our lives. Rather, she intentionally suggests we start small and keep it manageable so that we can actually sustain and build upon the happy habits she suggests. This approach makes the advice in the book feel achievable, as do the types of habits she suggests like three minutes of deep breathing or expressing gratitude.
The book also makes space in its pages for you to jot down notes and plan out your own deliberately happy habits. I appreciated this interactiveness and the prompts to help us reflect on how we might apply the principles of the book to our daily lives and start our own practice.
Throughout the early portion of the book, Collins frequently references "the method," which we will eventually learn. I wish that the core tenants of the method had been introduced earlier in the book, as it felt a bit odd at times to keep referring to something that hadn't been explained yet. While it makes sense to provide context for why this method works, I would have liked at least a brief overview of what it is before we dove into proving why it works. Once the method is explained, it's explained clearly and effectively, but I found myself feeling I needed to go back and revisit the early chapters to best understand those prior references to the method.
Overall, this was a quick and satisfying read that breaks down concepts of happiness and wellbeing to make them easy to understand - and achieve. I walked away from Deliberately Happy feeling empowered to practice the guidance in the book, something not all self-help titles achieve.