After my first few years in practice I began to notice that, although clients would initially come to see me for help with a physical ailment, once I had taken the history and nature of their health complaint, whether it was a skin condition, stomach complaint, hormonal imbalance or sleep problem, we would then move on to talk about how they felt in themselves and their current life situation.

This is when an interesting common theme began to emerge. This theme usually seemed to involve some sort of stress or personal unhappiness that they were experiencing. I noticed that the more we worked on addressing their emotional state and improving their sense of personal happiness, the better they felt, and as a result their physical problems would clear up too.

I wanted to understand more about how to help my clients feel better and also wanted to understand how to learn to feel better for myself.

I asked myself questions about life and happiness. Was happiness just a random stroke of luck, or was it determined by factors such as family, upbringing, success, earnings, job, status and having friends or a partner? How was it that some days I could wake up happy and ready to enjoy myself, and then the next I would find it a struggle? What was going on?

As with everyone, my life had been a journey of ups and downs, stresses and strains, good and bad times. From my parents divorcing during my childhood, family upsets, bereavements, stressful relationships and a bout of ill health, I had had my fair share of challenges to face. Despite this I didn’t want to just sit back and let life happen to me, I wanted to go looking for answers, in fact I felt driven to find answers. I began going on courses, visiting therapists and listening to psychologists. Some of it worked and was relevant, and some didn’t, but gradually I began to gather the tools I needed to find my way through life. It was a process of trial and error.

I wondered, is anyone ever taught how to be happy? No one had ever shown me the ropes and It certainly wasn’t taught at school.

Alongside my homeopathic treatments I wanted to create a book that could be used as a helpful guide to life. I’m not a fan of complicated ideas or analysis and prefer a much simpler, easier to understand approach which produces real life results.

So as a culmination of everything I’d learnt over the last 20 years, I wrote the book I wished that I had had many years ago to help me through the tough times and give me the tools to create a happier more fulfilled life.

My aim was to create an easy to use and insightful manual with dozens of small and effective tools, to raise our own happiness levels.

Every chapter offers useful nuggets and quirky illustrations to help us to improve our mind-sets and overcome personal unhappiness, whatever its cause, and enable us to start enjoying life again.

The 7 Ways to Life-Changing Happiness:

WAY 1. Fire up your own happiness

How you can take charge of how happy you are. See how life improves dramatically by learning to feel good in yourself first. Say goodbye to believing that circumstances have to dictate how you feel. You have the power to change how you are feeling.

WAY 2. Expose your Ta-Daa!

How you can be the ‘real you’ again and be the person you were born to be. Placing this crucial piece of the happiness puzzle in place by living life as your brilliant self, expressing your uniqueness, being able to ‘dump any fronts’ which you thought you needed to function. You can learn to be happy in your own shoes.

WAY 3. Tend your emotional garden

How you can nurture and grow your own positive emotions, doing what it takes to feel your best, and weeding out any unwanted negative emotions. You have the power to improve how you feel. You might feel bad or even get low, but this chapter helps you see how you can improve things emotionally for yourself and quickly fire up your own good mood.

WAY 4. Jump on The Groovy Train of Thought

You can fill your mind with good-feeling happy thoughts and stop allowing it to get clogged up with negative ones. Learning to “think great” is a game changer. You can change both the way you think and what you think, so you become in charge of your own better thoughts. Let’s get you learning to enjoy and feel empowered by your own thoughts.

WAY 5. Listen to your wise old gut

Let’s get you tuning in and really listening to what your wise old gut is telling you, because it always knows what is best. This way your best life possible will unfold naturally.

WAY 6. Turn your ‘muck’ to luck’

Learn to bounce back from the worst of times and create your own best of times. We look at the keys to self-empowerment and how you can achieve an empowered state of mind to take you over life’s hurdles and move your life forwards. Let’s get you creating a clear calm perspective on what your life is all about and seeing the best in people, situations and your future.

WAY 7. Pimp up your purpose

The final way looks at how you can point your life in the right direction and get to where you want to be. By doing what makes you feel good and discovering your passions, you will be inspired to jump out of bed each day to follow your dreams.

Happiness The Inside Job – 7 Ways to Life-Changing Happiness is available on Amazon or can be ordered from bookshops.

Material published in this section of the website does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Society of Homeopaths.