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.
"How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe." - Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
About four years ago, on a $20,000 per year salary, I spent approximately $30,000 on a risky, creative project in a hope to make my dreams of being a television writer and producer come true. I did this despite the fact that I'd made a verbal commitment to my father that I would some day pay back one half of the $100,000 that was spent on my college education. You might say I was financially reckless. You might just say that I was a bit naive and stupid. Regardless, the project was not successful and I was sent into a spiral of debt and despair.
I had a huge amount of debt with little qualification to pay if off; after all, I only had an English and Dramatic Art degree, not exactly six-figure salary material. For a little while I felt like I was completely sunk. It felt awful to think of myself as a failure so I began to look for a different point-of-view. I read some of the greatest business success stories of all time. It turned out that plenty of people had failed like me and even more gloriously than I had. How did they turn their fortunes about? While there was a lot of luck and hard work involved, there was something that truly stuck out for me. They didn't blame their circumstances for a tough life. They didn't assume that their lives were over due to their bad decisions or unfortunate situations.
They made their failures into learning experiences. Instead of feeling they had screwed up, they decided to instead paint the circumstances as an opportunity.
If these people could come back from greater odds than me with this attitude, I felt almost obliged to adopt it. Not surprisingly, it began to affect the other parts of my life as well. When little things happened to me such as missing the right bus or spilling something in the kitchen, it didn't feel nearly as bad. I just had to learn my lesson of leaving for work earlier or to pay more attention when cooking. These were lessons that weren't meant to ruin my day. They weren't a sign that a higher power had it in for me.
All of the hardships in my life were meant to teach me something. It was up to me to learn those lessons. If you can take on a similar attitude, you will not only be more successful but you will also be much happier in the long run.
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.
Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor and comedian from Dresher, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art and a minor in Creative Writing. He has written nine books including
1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More,
500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade,
Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job and his new book,
1,000 Character Writing Prompts: Villains, Heroes and Hams for Scripts, Stories and More. His website
Build Creative Writing Ideas helps over 25,000 visitors a month to push past writer's block and stay motivated.
Feel free to follow along with the tour at
The Happiness Blog Tour Hub Page or on the book's
Facebook Page
