Mindfully Happy: Waking up to Life

by Diane Lang

As a Therapist, Educator, and Positive Living Expert, Diane has dedicated her career to helping people turn their lives around. She is now on a mission to help people develop a sustainable positive attitude that can actually turn one into an optimist, literally. Through her two books, “Creating Balance & Finding Happiness” and “Baby the Path from Motherhood to Career,” Diane has been speaking and empowering people nationwide. She is also an Adjunct in Psychology at Montclair State University, where her college work includes mentoring students for personal issue advisement. As an expert in her fields of therapy, Lang has been featured in the Daily Record, Family Circle, Family Magazine, Working Mother Magazine, and Cookie Magazine, and seen on NJ 12 TV, Good day CT, Style CT, The Veira Network, CBS TV, and “Fox & Friends.” She has also participated in a reality based Internet show, ourprisoner.com, hosted Generation X-tinet. In addition, Lang writes a blog for Pazoo.com.

118 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 6, 2017

About the author

An effervescent speaker and impassioned naturalist, Diane Lang began working as a docent at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek, California in 2001. Over the next decade, she presented public programs about the various wild animals that reside at the museum, led class tours, visited schools, and worked directly with the museum’s non-releasable hawks, owls, falcons, and yes, vultures. Before long Diane was also docenting at Sulphur Creek Nature Center in Hayward and at Eaton Canyon Nature Center back in her hometown of Pasadena where she helped to create innovative nature-focused curricula for student groups.

She’d already served as a reader in the public schools via the Pleasanton Public Library and had read countless books to her son Peter. And before that, she’d honed her writing skills in the publications department at the California Institute of Technology. She holds a B.A. from Cal State Los Angeles.

Diane has written verses for fun all her life, but she started spending more time at it just a few years ago, when she wondered if putting some of the animal information into rhyme would help children remember it. During some programs, she would say to the children that even though we don’t send birthday cards or valentines to spiders and insects, we probably should, because they are some of our best friends! As she wondered what such valentines might sound like, she started having fun with the idea, and Vulture Verses: Love Poems for the Unloved was born.

After sharing her fascination with the natural world and its more exotic animals with children at these three nature centers, Diane goes home to her husband, the acclaimed origami artist and physicist Robert Lang, and her menagerie (which includes the tarantula she travels with), and writes poems about her favorite critters.

Reviews

[Kathleen Garber · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first the book seems to be talking about things that are common sense like taking care of your basic needs, being grateful, or remembering what we can and can’t control.

The more I read though the more I realized that just because I “know” most of those things, I’m not actually DOING them. Sometimes we all need a reminder about taking care of ourselves. We look for special tricks to happiness when we’ve known what to do all along.

I enjoyed the book more as I went through it. I appreciated all the little nuggets of information and reminders. The information is broken up into little sections which is nice if you find you have trouble concentrating while reading longer books.

The book isn’t just about happiness but also about mindfulness and specifically how the complement each other. I’ve read about mindfulness before and I thought I was pretty good at it in general till I read the following and realized I could say yes to all of them:

One way to become more mindful is to notice when we are mindless. Another way to think of mindlessness is when we are on autopilot, when we are zoned out […] Some examples of mindlessness:
In the middle of a conversation, we zone out.[…]
When we multitask and try listening to someone, we usually don’t remember the conversation. […]
When we drive to a place frequently, we end up zoned out while driving. How many times have you made it home and not remembered stopping at the stop sign or passing the local store […]
We walk into a room and don’t remember what we were coming in for […]
We forget where we put things.[…]

Oops. I guess I need to work on my mindfulness more than I thought. I’m mindless about my mindlessness.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The book covers lots of topics that are related the main topics and I think we all could use the reminder or direction on how to improve in those areas.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met the author, Diane Lang when she gave a presentation at or local Community College on being Mindfully Happy. This book gives you everything you need to effectively walk your own path. Diane has done extensive research on human happiness, and shares her knowledge with an easy to understand plan. Try it, you'll be HAPPY that you did. :)

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short work packed with practical wisdom. A guide to move toward a better self, a more mindful spirit. Combining theoretical knowledge with pertinent suggestions, this book gently speaks to a part of me that wants to grow.