This book series helps to understand emotions and happiness correctly.

In her books "A Toolkit for Your Emotions" and "A Toolkit for Happiness," psychologist Emma Hepburn guides us on a journey to unlock our inner world – from how emotions form and function, to how to recognize happiness and navigate sadness without letting it overwhelm us.

Dr. Emma Hepburn is a clinical psychologist specializing in neuropsychology with over 15 years of experience working with and treating mental health issues. Her passion is to bring evidence-based psychology and mental health information beyond the clinic, to a wider audience, and to encourage people to proactively manage their mental health.

Interestingly, we have more words for negative emotions than for positive ones. But despite having many ways to describe them, we tend to talk less about negative emotions, even avoiding or pushing them away. But what if one day humans no longer experienced negative emotions?

Emma Hepburn argued that these unpleasant emotions are an essential part of the human survival mechanism. Without worry, we wouldn't consider risks. Without fear, we wouldn't avoid danger. Without fatigue or sorrow, we wouldn't know how to rest when illness strikes, or feel grief when someone leaves. A world without negative emotions would be one where people are indifferent to pain, lack empathy, and are incapable of love. And in that case, joy would become meaningless because there would be nothing to compare it to, making it difficult to recognize pleasant and satisfying feelings.

Understanding emotions is clearly a crucial part of living a happy life. But does simply opening up our emotions guarantee eternal happiness and the end of suffering? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Emma Hepburn herself admitted that she "wasn't always happy" right from the first pages of "Opening Up Happiness." She said: "It would be incredibly hypocritical to pretend to be happy all the time. Worse still, it would reinforce the misconceptions about happiness that surround us, deeply ingrained in our beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors."

Misconceptions about happiness are rampant in the messages we receive from society: from advertisements and media to stories and social media posts… And it is these things that influence how we think about happiness and how we strive to achieve it.

As author Emma points out in her book "Unlocking Happiness": "Society says: shop more, earn more money, get promoted, be busy, always be happy, achieve more, and never fail. If you're already doing all of that, then strive for more."

But ironically, striving to achieve these things often doesn't bring us happiness, and even when we do, we almost never feel truly happy. Yet these societal beliefs still drive our decisions, behaviors, and beliefs. They are the reason we often seek happiness in the wrong places.”

In "Unlocking Happiness," Emma Hepburn describes happiness as a sandwich we eat every day. The base consists of the basic things we often overlook, such as getting enough sleep, eating nutritious food, drinking enough water, and having a safe space to breathe. The filling is what brings joy, inspiration, and meaning to life. Each person will have a different filling. The top layer of the sandwich is our belief. This layer, though thin, governs the entire taste of the sandwich: if we believe that happiness must be complete and last forever, we will always feel inadequate; but if we understand that happiness is in small moments connecting with ourselves and others, we will no longer relentlessly search for it.

With her insightful perspective, Dr. Emma Hepburn not only helps us dispel misconceptions about happiness but also provides us with practical tools to improve and build happiness from within. Instead of painting a rosy picture of life, she argues that to fully understand happiness, we need to understand sadness and all the other complex emotions that life throws at us.

Minh Minh

Source: https://baophapluat.vn/bo-sach-giup-hieu-dung-ve-cam-xuc-va-hanh-phuc-post552481.html