When Solitaire Townsend first reached out through my web site to make me aware of her new nonfiction book, The Happy Hero: How to change your life by changing the world, I confess I cringed a bit at the title. I was instinctively afraid that the book might be a tad Pollyannaish, exhorting readers to just "think positive" in order to achieve positive results. I was wrong. This book is far more nuanced than that. Ms. Townsend acknowledges early on that this kind of happy heroism is devilishly difficult to master in one's own life. She spends the remainder of this instructive book advising readers on how to approach the intimidating challenge of overcoming our natural inclination for pessimism and self-doubt to exert a positive influence on ourselves and those around us.

One of the aspects of this book that impressed me the most is this fundamental insight: she cautions readers against the traditional new-age advice to "turn inward" in order to find their happiness / heroism. That doesn't work. She cites numerous scientific studies that echo this, and ultimately exhorts us to turn our attention outward instead of inward; that "doing good deeds" will lead to finding the righteous center of ourselves. This rings true to me. She asks each of us to work "outside-in" rather than "inside-out" to find our best selves. This, to me, conveys great wisdom. More than that, her book is relentlessly optimistic and positive about the good each of us can do -- on a grand or less grandiose scale -- by simply doing basic things in our daily lives. "Paying it forward" seems like very sound advice to me. Incremental change is more likely to take root in our complicated lives than drastic, transformative change. This book spells out the recipe for achieving this, one step at a time.

We're all inundated with negative stories and depressing news, from conventional sources and social media. It's increasingly difficult to hold on to a positive outlook. This book, and Ms. Townsend's infectious optimism, are an antidote to that. And she doesn't just talk the talk: with Futerra, the sustainable development consultancy she co-founded more than two decades ago, she walks the walk every day.

If you're a "denier" or a "doomer," you may be predisposed to doubt the message Ms. Townsend conveys in this book... but, in that case, you may need that message even more desperately. I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling to find a path toward positive change in a complex and polarized world.

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