Book Review: 15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy
15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy. By Luminita D. Saviuc. First published in 2016.
Summary
Sharing stories from her own life — some of them tragic and horrifying — Saviuc talks about each of the 15 things we need to give up and provides a path to achieving happiness by ridding ourselves of each one.
What you need to know
Saviuc is the creator of the PurposeFairy blog and this book is based on her most successful blog post. You can read the post here.
The parts of the book where Saviuc is talking about her own life are the most compelling. These real examples do the best job of illustrating her 15 points. The sections where she provides the “path to” are a little more abstract.
Key Takeaway
Here’s Saviuc’s complete list of things we must give up to be happy.
Give up the past
Give up your fears
Give up your limiting beliefs
Give up your excuses
Give up your resistance to change
Give up blaming
Give up complaining
Give up the luxury of criticism
Give up living your life according to other people’s expectations
Give up your self defeating self-talk
Give up control
Give up the need to always be right
Give up the need to impress others
Give up labels
Give up attachment
Personal Impact
This book is crammed with terrific quotes on various self-improvement / personal development topics. I’ve started compiling quotes from this book and elsewhere and I’m planning to launch a “quotes” page soon on My Instruction Manual. She also includes quotes from Lao Tzu, one of the Chinese philosophers behind Taoism. I studied his writing in university and it is beautiful and profound. This book reminded me that I need to read it again as part of my journey to live better.
Worth Reading?
Mostly. I imagine it could be a huge challenge to turn a 1,000 word blog post into a 200-page book. And while the post is definitely worth of being expanded upon, I sometimes felt that book could have been a little shorter. Pick up the book, but feel free to skim the “path to” sections if it feels repetitive.
