Peter Jones - How to Do Everything and Be Happy - Your step-by-step, straight-talking guide to creating happiness in your life

How to Do Everything and Be Happy

Your Step-by-step, Straight-talking Guide to Creating Happiness in Your Life

Peter Jones

Praise for How to Do Everything and Be Happy Praise for How to Do Everything and Be Happy Dedication To Begin With … Why the Long Face? Making Time to Be Happy Doing Those Things You Always Wanted to Do Pointing Your Life in a Better Direction Making Life What You Want Putting It All Together You Still Here? Footnotes Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright About the Publisher

What a great book

A very accessible, practical guide to getting the most out of your life. It covers lots of ideas that I will be trying out over the next few months. However, the book offers these ideas without being in any way preachy or condescending, remembering that people are all different – and offering advice on how you can adapt the ideas to make them work for you. Highly recommended. I really enjoyed it!

Sarah (Chatham, UK), 17 June 2012

No-nonsense practical and friendly advice

This is a great book. It contains helpful methods to make you live a happier and more fulfilling life. The tone of the book is chatty, as if it is your best friend sitting next to you giving advice. I found the diary part and the setting of goals very useful. I am now implementing the ‘now’ list and ‘wish’ list. What truly stands out with this book is that whilst chronological in your development, it also takes time out to advise if something has gone wrong. It doesn’t steam-roller on to the end, leaving those behind who maybe haven’t achieved a goal or stage of the process. Peter dusts you down in a non-judgemental fashion and then continues his journey with you.

D.K. (UK), 2 July 2012

Very do-able

I love this book – it’s down to earth, practical, no-nonsense and, best of all, English. Unlike many American-style self-help books, it doesn’t promise miracles, just an eminently sensible way to make order out of chaos and make life enjoyable again, with lots of little (and big) bonuses along the way to treat yourself, love yourself and take control of your own life. Thank you, Peter, very much indeed.

S. Capes (UK), 7 July 2012

Absolutely love this book

I love this book so much. Like a lot of people, I often felt a bit ‘meh’ about my life. I wasn’t miserable, but I certainly wasn’t overwhelmed with joy. I didn’t want to emigrate, I didn’t want to change careers … I just wanted to feel a bit happier with my lot, really. Before I read the book, I’d started to make a few changes. Not massive leaps, just tweaks here and there. By the time I’d finished it, I’d taken a lot of the author’s advice and I’d tweaked a bit more. I can honestly now say that I have never been happier. Yes, I sometimes still feel ‘meh’, but these are fleeting moments, not general discontent. Thanks ever so much for writing it. I work in a library and intend to recommend your book to everyone. Even if they’ve only come in to use the photocopier.

Annie Latter (Essex, UK), 20 July 2012

Good, fun, easy read

Just finished the book! It was a great, easy read and I really enjoyed it. It was absolutely perfect for me in simply helping me to realise just how disorganized my life was. Two of my friends are on the ‘Happy’ bandwagon now, too : ) Great job on your book, Peter, and many wishes for your future success!

Heather (Texas, USA), 27 July 2012

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Dedication Dedication To Begin With … Why the Long Face? Making Time to Be Happy Doing Those Things You Always Wanted to Do Pointing Your Life in a Better Direction Making Life What You Want Putting It All Together You Still Here? Footnotes Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright About the Publisher

In memory of Kate,

her Big Theory of Everything,

and all the amazing things she taught me.

Love, as always,

Peter

Contents

Cover

Title Page How to Do Everything and Be Happy Your Step-by-step, Straight-talking Guide to Creating Happiness in Your Life Peter Jones

Praise for How to Do Everything and Be Happy

Dedication

To Begin With …

Why the Long Face?

Making Time to Be Happy

Doing Those Things You Always Wanted to Do

Pointing Your Life in a Better Direction

Making Life What You Want

Putting It All Together

You Still Here?

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

To Begin With …

Once upon a time I got sold a dream: I would grow up big and strong, marry a blonde (my mother was convinced of this), have children, and live happily ever after in a big house, whilst I held down a job as an astronaut. Or a train driver. Or a fireman. And this wasn’t a ‘maybe’ – something to aspire to – this was my God-given right. This is what was going to happen. All I had to do was wait.

Not that I was very good at waiting. I’m still not very good at waiting! I wanted this idyllic life now. I didn’t want to wait until next week or some other distant point in the future.

I must have told my parents this because they would smile and tell me not to be in such a rush. ‘Peter,’ they would say, ‘schooldays are the best days of your life.’

Obviously they were mistaken. They had to be. When my parents’ eyes glazed over and they talked fondly of ‘schooldays’, they must have been recalling the days of their own distant childhood, days sitting around camp fires outside the school mud hut, marking bits of slate with chalk whilst village elders told stories of dragons. Their schooldays were clearly a far cry from the mixture of humiliation, bullying and boredom that I endured. They had to be. Because if they weren’t, for schooldays to be the ‘best’ days they would logically have to be followed by ‘something worse’.

Then I got older, and things got worse.

Actually, that’s not quite true. They didn’t get any worse – not really – but they certainly didn’t get much better, and they definitely got more complex.

‘Work’ turned out to be very similar to ‘school’ – different bullies, same rules, just as boring. And whereas I was given money in return for surrendering five days out of seven – more money than I’d ever dreamed possible – now there was a slew of people queuing up to take it away from me.

And then there were relationships. Just when I’d got classroom note passing down to a fine art, the game changed completely, and note passing wasn’t going to cut it.

I could go on, but suffice it to say, the initial ‘dream’ seemed less and less likely. It was clear that I was never going to be an astronaut. Or a train driver. Or a fireman. It also seemed unlikely that I would ever live in a big house. Big houses needed big money. I was on small to medium money. Two bedroom flat money.

Finally, on my thirty-second birthday, I realised there was a distinct possibility that I might never ever find ‘the blonde’.

This was a serious blow. Without the blonde I might never be married, I might never have children – and whilst I could probably cope without being married or having kids, or my blonde actually being a blonde, I couldn’t imagine being single for the rest of my days. That was unacceptable. Something had to be done.

So, for the first time in my life, I started to plan – to make lists, and take control of my own destiny. Many of the techniques in this book are nothing more than the skills I had to develop to avoid a life of bachelorhood. But it worked. Eventually I found the blonde. Took me a few more years, considerable effort on my part, and a somewhat unorthodox approach to dating, but I found her.