Highway to Your Happy Place: A Roadmap to Less Stress

by Gary Sprouse MD

If you want to have less stress and spend more time in your Happy Place, Read This Book. I guarantee you will be less stressed after reading just one chapter. Highway to Your Happy Place is based on a premise that has never been employed before. The majority of human stress is a side effect of our amazing skills. Such as, your skill to envision the future and the side effect of worrying about it. Worry, Guilt, Regret, Boredom, Low Self-Esteem and Overwhelmed are addressed in an easy-to-read format. Each chapter will give you a better understanding of the problem and easy to use tools so you can have less stress. The last chapter is about change. I will show you how you can make a change in your life permanently. I have had a 55-gallon drum of stress and this book helped me navigate my potholes. I have shared the insights in this book with my patients for decades and now I want to share this map with you. Please don’t resign yourself to living a stressed-out life. This book will show you that you have the skills to change and spend the rest of your life in Your Happy Place.

258 pages, Paperback

Published September 2, 2023

Reviews

[READER VIEWS · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Highway to Your Happy Place: A Roadmap to Less Stress” is a practical self-help book for lowering personal stress, by Gary Sprouse, MD. A doctor with almost four decades of experience, the author offers a handy paradigm for feeling contentment more easily, more often. He explains that the things that cause stress (worry, guilt, regret, low self-esteem, boredom, and being overwhelmed) started off as crucial human signals for survival, but ones that have negative side effects.

He confidently promises to dispense with these stress builders by using his techniques to get on the road to a peaceful existence but also guides us with his “Happy Place” components. These are baseline contentment, spokes of happiness from real events, anticipation of pleasurable events in the future, gratitude for what you have, and feeling fulfilled through growth and giving. Using the wisdom of psychologists, philosophers, and self-help gurus such as Tony Robbins and Scott Peck, among others, he whittles these categories down to succinct definitions and bolds them for quick review. Then he illustrates each one by vulnerably using his own life for fodder (his divorce, a patient whose outcome he felt worsened with his guidance, a bad business decision, and a series of hand slaps by the medical board).

He also gives patients’ stories of healing, letting us watch them improve step by step. These stories are essential to truly absorbing the key ideas. In my opinion, the only difficulty is the wordiness of the book. Dr. Sprouse begins each chapter by telling us what he will cover, discusses it extensively, and then repeats the points at the end. That said, his tone is familiar and casual and can sometimes feel more like a blog than a book. As a reference guide, “Highway to Your Happiness: A Roadmap to Less Stress” by Gary Sprouse MD, could prove indispensable. Ultimately this reframes an overwhelming amount of psychology and neuroscience with originality and accessibility.

[Renée L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are great self help books and there are not so great self help books. But, every self help book may help someone out there. This one, I'm sure has a place on someone's bookshelf, but it isn't mine.

This was sent into the book club I belong to for a possible author event. So I read it and although I don't like making the decision lightly, this book and author is not for my book club for many reasons.

The book itself is about identifying and managing stress. It is the author's interpretation of many other sources. There are a lot of stories and analogies that clog up the purpose of the book.

Again this may help someone, and I hope that someone finds this book. But I wouldn't personally recommend it.