30 | March | 2012 | Debbi Mack: My Life on the Mid-List

It makes incredibly happy to have as my guest today Bryan Cohen, who’s promoting a book I wish I’d read after I graduated college. Believe me.

But enough from me. Bryan has a whole post, plus a happiness blog tour and giveaway to ~~talk~~ write about. So … take it away, Bryan!

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.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

Mohandas Gandhi

Practice What You Preach

I’ve always talked a good game when it comes to giving people advice about life. Even in high school when I felt woeful and lacking in love from the girls I had crushes on, I had no problem telling other people how they could improve their levels of happiness. As it goes with the best advice you give, it wasn’t until years after I started giving it that I took it myself.

I’ve known for over a decade that one of the keys to happiness is finding something joyful in everything you have to do and making time for things that you’re excited about doing. I did that in college without much issue but when I came into the real world I forgot that to a certain extent. I was still talking about keeping up a healthy and positive philosophy but my thoughts and actions weren’t syncing up.

I figured I’d give it a shot. After all, the process comes with Gandhi’s seal of approval.

To get myself back on the right track, I began thinking long and hard about what I wanted to do and the kind of person I wanted to be. I’ve talked in some of my other blog tour posts about the importance of thinking. If you don’t use your brain all that often, it gets a bit soggy, so it’s best to keep it working. Thinking about my happiness was a great way to keep me mentally fit. I was thinking about what I was saying and as Meatloaf said, “Two out of three ain’t bad,” and my levels of happiness started to improve.

The action part is always the hardest. It’s easy to talk about doing something healthy for yourself. It’s tougher to convince yourself that you believe in things like self-help and mantras and other things I learned about through personal development books and audio tracks. The most difficult part is actually doing it. It took years for everything I’d learned about to sink in but it all has paid off generously.

I began writing down my goals, saying mantras out loud, doing kind things for people when they were in need, exercising more often and even smiling more. Thoughts are great. Actions are better. If you want to have a stronger life that you enjoy and appreciate more, sync up your thoughts and beliefs, the things you say and what you do and you’ll have no problem improving your life over time.

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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.