The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living

by Russ Harris

Genres: Psychology

320 pages, Spiral-bound

About the author

Dr Russ Harris is a medically-qualified doctor, stress consultant, executive coach, trainer, author, and a leading authority in the powerful new paradigm of Psychological Flexibility. (This is a revolutionary new development in human psychology that enhances performance, reduces stress, and improves health and wellbeing.) Dr Russ regularly presents workshops on Psychological Flexibility at both national and international psychology conferences, and has a thriving business traveling around Australia running training seminars for psychologists, coaches and a variety of health professionals.

Dr Russ's first book, 'The Happiness Trap', was published in Australia in March 2007, and is already well on the way to becoming a bestseller. (The title reflects a key theme in the book - that popular ideas about happiness are misleading, inaccurate, and actually make us miserable in the long term.) He is currently completing his second book 'From Fear To Fulfilment' - which is also the title of his most popular talk.

Back in the early nineties, when Russ was a GP in Melbourne, he moonlighted as a stand-up comedian, and as well as appearing regularly on the Melbourne comedy circuit, he featured on TV shows such as Tonight Live with Steve Vizard, and The Mid-Day Show with Ray Martin. As a result of this experience, his talks are fast-paced, engaging and humorous - as well as being action-packed with information, tools, and techniques for reducing stress, enhancing performance, and increasing vitality.

Reviews

[Johan Agstam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether you've read the first edition or not, you should give this a read, because it's been massively (over 50%) revised, which is kinda unbelievable - I've not heard of that happening before.

I decided to re-read as I needed to get back on the anxiety management and ACT by far is the most helpful programme for me - and this book is great at explaining it. There's nothing much more to say - this edition expands in numerous ways on the first book (which was already good) giving you all the tools of practicing ACT as well as looking at how to think about scenarios like long-term adherence, when life gets really difficult, etc.

[Courtney Rada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decided I should stop recommending it without reading it! Great overview of ACT therapy with helpful exercises. Still need a therapist to guide you through the exercises but a really good explanation of the exercises and why they work.

[Raffi Creech · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book in summer of 2020 after the world shut down. Good theories and interesting exercises.