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The Magic of Groundhog Day: Transform Your Life Day by Day
The movie Groundhog Day has touched millions with its hilarious and profound tale of personal transformation. The day does not change, the location does not change, and the townspeople do not change. It is the main character, Phil Connors, who changes. His extraordinary journey involves no travel, only a change in his mind and heart. He turns the worst day into the best day of his life, simply by thinking and acting differently.
Now The Magic of Groundhog Day reveals how you can transfer the magic of the movie into your own life at home and work. You too can break free from repetitive thoughts and behaviors that keep you stuck in a rut, and transform a mundane day into a magical day by simply changing your attitudes. You too can wake up to the ever-present magic and discover the extraordinary in the ordinary. You too can create the Life you want to live, not the one you were conditioned to live.
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First published January 8, 2008
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February 2, 2024
The Magic of Self-Help Books: A Contemplation in 10 Steps.
So, you would like to write a self-help book? That’s understandable – as self-help books continue to be an important, and often profitable, part of the publishing field. What follows is my informal, anecdotal sense of what a good self-help book might contain – using, as my template, the only self-help book that I have ever read from cover to cover: the 2008 book The Magic of Groundhog Day, by British-born entrepreneur and author Paul Hannam.
Step 1: Find a “hook,” a distinctive feature – perhaps a trope from cinema or music or some other element of popular culture – that will help your self-help book to stand out from the many, many other self-help books that are out there on the market.
In the case of The Magic of Groundhog Day, the “hook” is, of course, Groundhog Day (1993), the Harold Ramis film about a self-obsessed Pittsburgh meteorologist who travels to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to report on the town’s annual Groundhog Day festival, and then finds that he is trapped in a sort of time loop in which he must re-live the same February 2nd, Groundhog Day, in Punxsutawney – over and over and over.
The film’s comically inflected presentation of its Twilight Zone-esque premise, treating as it does a thematically important idea – a flawed human being’s tentative journey toward personal redemption – struck a chord with moviegoers who made Groundhog Day one of the biggest box office hits of the year. Long after other hit movies of that year – The Firm, Indecent Proposal, Cliffhanger – have lapsed into relative obscurity, Groundhog Day remains a film that people continue to seek out, particularly though not exclusively around each February 2nd. For readers seeking to begin their own journey toward personal renewal, it makes sense that the Groundhog Day reference in the book’s title might help it to stand out.
Step 2: Develop your own easy-to-follow terminology through which you can lead the reader through a sequence of ideas that will (hopefully) help the reader to benefit from your self-help book.
In The Magic of Groundhog Day, Hannam puts considerable evidence on the concept of one’s “personal reality.” Hannam suggests that “Your personal reality is your map of the world, how you make sense of your experience” (p. 150), and that one’s personal reality can be deeply infused with unhealthy habits of thought and behavior developed over the course of a lifetime. Remaining in the grip of an unhealthy personal reality can in turn lead to what Hannam calls “the Groundhog Day Effect” – becoming “entrenched in self-limiting patterns” that can in turn lead to “anxiety, stress, dissatisfaction, lack of meaning, and loneliness” among people who “feel trapped in an unrelenting cycle of commuting, working, paying the bills, collapsing in front of the T.V., and sleeping” (p. 2).
Step 3: Once you’ve selected a central conceit for your self-help book, stick with it.
It makes sense that Groundhog Day, as a tale of personal redemption, stood out for author Hannam as the subject for a self-help book. After all, the film’s main character, Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray), goes through a complex and difficult set of steps in the process of changing from a rude, dismissive, selfish man (Hannam calls him “the old Phil”) to a kind and humanistic one (“the new Phil”). When he first realizes that he has no choice but to repeat the same Groundhog Day, every day, for the foreseeable future, Phil initially makes selfish and negative choices: seducing women he doesn’t love, robbing a bank, driving while intoxicated. When those selfish pleasures no longer provide gratification, he tries repeatedly – and unsuccessfully – to take his own life. Only when Phil stops seeking either self-gratification or self-destruction does he come to realize that the only joy he will find is through living empathetically, reaching out to do good for others.
Step 4: Help your reader see something new in something with which they are already familiar.
Some of the best passages in The Magic of Groundhog Day occur when Hannam takes sequences from the movie and applies them to his own experience:
One of my favorite moments in Groundhog Day is when Phil recites the following lines of poetry to inspire his fellow hotel guest, the same guest he had previously ignored and later pushed up against a wall in anger: “Winter slumbering in the open air wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.”
When I watch this scene, I think of the hundreds of hotel guests and staff I have avoided making eye contact with, or engaging in conversation with, over the years. Always in a rush to meals or meetings, I shun all human contact. Yet once in a while I chat with someone in the elevator, or at the next table in a restaurant, and feel better. (p. 102)
I also appreciated Hannam’s suggestion that Phil Connors’s Groundhog Day repetitions work like a video game that always reverts to its introductory default settings, giving the player the chance to play the game once again and try a different approach. Hannam has talked with Groundhog Day screenwriter Danny Rubin (who helpfully provided a foreword for this book), and his commentaries regarding the film seem sensible and well-grounded.
Step 5: Pursue he central conceit or metaphor of your book with energy, but don’t push your luck too far.
We all know that at the actual Groundhog Day celebration, Punxsutawney Phil either sees his shadow (in which case we will supposedly have six more weeks of winter) or doesn’t (in which case we will supposedly have an early spring). Yet I do think that Hannam takes the groundhog-shadow metaphor a burrow too far when he writes that “You are confronting your shadow. The shadow is not only important to the groundhog; it is important to you. Your personal reality casts a shadow that you carry with you. Once you pay attention to your shadow, you can begin to see your authentic self rather than your imagined one” (p. 51) The sentiment is fine; the metaphor doesn’t work for me.
Step 6: Keep your advice to the reader general, easily applicable, and positive.
Hannam suggests that the reader of The Magic of Groundhog Day cultivate mindfulness; learn to be grateful for the good things of everyday life; be self-aware; identify what is really important in life; slow down and enjoy life; seek out opportunities to be creative, and to be loving toward others. All of these examples of advice are certainly positive, and worth following. Indeed, I would venture a hunch that such advice is to be found in many other self-help books. I wouldn’t know, as this is the only self-help book that I have ever read.
Step 7: Acknowledge the limitations of the genre.
Some readers will pick up a self-help book, read it with care, take to heart the advice that it provides, apply that research in their own lives, and benefit as a result. Good. But not everyone will benefit in the same way. As Hannam elsewhere in the book quite rightly urges his readers to avoid addictive behaviors as a particularly harmful form of negative repetition, so he mentions to the reader, toward the end of The Magic of Groundhog Day, that “You may know people who are addicted to self-help books. I do, and these folks bounce around from one uncompleted program to another. Nothing alters as they stay trapped in their new loop” (p. 180).
Some people who are looking for help dealing with the troubles they face in their lives will need other forms of help than a self-help book – working with a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, or joining a support group. It is to Hannam’s credit that he doesn’t pretend that a self-help book will solve all of one’s problems.
Step 8: Focus on the business world, and the readership in the business field – potentially a key audience for a book of this kind.
The business field, focused as it is on the making of money, can leave participants in the field particularly stuck in their own Groundhog Day moment. For every dynamic entrepreneur who feels totally committed to their idea, there are a great many low-level workers who feel trapped in a cycle of repetitive tasks that they find tedious. A good bit of the later part of The Magic of Groundhog Day is specifically geared toward businesspeople and business organizations. It may be good advice. But as I haven’t worked full-time in the business world since 1986, or even part-time since 1992, I’m not the person to ask.
Step 9: Go big or go home.
I thought it was good that Hannam, toward the end of The Magic of Groundhog Day, pointed out elements of unhealthy repetition within Western society generally, particularly with regard to consumerism, and in terms of unhealthy environmental practices that exacerbate climate change. What he wrote regarding these issues was valid in 2008, and is even more urgent now.
Step 10: Don’t be surprised if the ideas in your self-help book take on a life of their own, with the passage of time.
As mentioned above, Hannam originally wrote this book in 2008; an updated version, The Wisdom of Groundhog Day, was published in 2016. Four years later, a novel coronavirus spread across the world, changing life in every country on Earth, and providing a daunting reminder of humankind’s vulnerability. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world, schools and workplaces shut down, streets emptied, and people began either working from home or not working at all; and the “Groundhog Day Effect” took hold in people’s lives with particular force, one Zoom meeting or home-school session or virtual cocktail party after another.
Groundhog Day, my foot. When COVID arrived, and the societal shutdowns took place, it became Groundhog Year – and therefore Hannam’s reflections might resound, for some readers nowadays, with particular force.
As I close The Magic of Groundhog Day, and prepare to move on to February 3rd, I reflect that our cynical era cannot be an easy time in which to write a self-help book. The positive-psychology ideas underlying this book get a tough time of it in contemporary culture, given the satirical portrayals of positive-psychology practitioners that one sees in movies like Anchorman 2 or the Santa Clause films.
With that in mind, how would Phil Connors respond to The Magic of Groundhog Day? My hunch is that the old Phil would respond to being told to have an amazing, magical day, or life, by looking around at Punxsutawney, sneering, and saying, “Not in this town.” The new Phil, by contrast, might smile tolerantly – his sense of irony still intact, but kept in check – and say, “Maybe we can all have one. But can I take a rain check? I’ve got some errands to run…”
So, you would like to write a self-help book? That’s understandable – as self-help books continue to be an important, and often profitable, part of the publishing field. What follows is my informal, anecdotal sense of what a good self-help book might contain – using, as my template, the only self-help book that I have ever read from cover to cover: the 2008 book The Magic of Groundhog Day, by British-born entrepreneur and author Paul Hannam.
Step 1: Find a “hook,” a distinctive feature – perhaps a trope from cinema or music or some other element of popular culture – that will help your self-help book to stand out from the many, many other self-help books that are out there on the market.
In the case of The Magic of Groundhog Day, the “hook” is, of course, Groundhog Day (1993), the Harold Ramis film about a self-obsessed Pittsburgh meteorologist who travels to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to report on the town’s annual Groundhog Day festival, and then finds that he is trapped in a sort of time loop in which he must re-live the same February 2nd, Groundhog Day, in Punxsutawney – over and over and over.
The film’s comically inflected presentation of its Twilight Zone-esque premise, treating as it does a thematically important idea – a flawed human being’s tentative journey toward personal redemption – struck a chord with moviegoers who made Groundhog Day one of the biggest box office hits of the year. Long after other hit movies of that year – The Firm, Indecent Proposal, Cliffhanger – have lapsed into relative obscurity, Groundhog Day remains a film that people continue to seek out, particularly though not exclusively around each February 2nd. For readers seeking to begin their own journey toward personal renewal, it makes sense that the Groundhog Day reference in the book’s title might help it to stand out.
Step 2: Develop your own easy-to-follow terminology through which you can lead the reader through a sequence of ideas that will (hopefully) help the reader to benefit from your self-help book.
In The Magic of Groundhog Day, Hannam puts considerable evidence on the concept of one’s “personal reality.” Hannam suggests that “Your personal reality is your map of the world, how you make sense of your experience” (p. 150), and that one’s personal reality can be deeply infused with unhealthy habits of thought and behavior developed over the course of a lifetime. Remaining in the grip of an unhealthy personal reality can in turn lead to what Hannam calls “the Groundhog Day Effect” – becoming “entrenched in self-limiting patterns” that can in turn lead to “anxiety, stress, dissatisfaction, lack of meaning, and loneliness” among people who “feel trapped in an unrelenting cycle of commuting, working, paying the bills, collapsing in front of the T.V., and sleeping” (p. 2).
Step 3: Once you’ve selected a central conceit for your self-help book, stick with it.
It makes sense that Groundhog Day, as a tale of personal redemption, stood out for author Hannam as the subject for a self-help book. After all, the film’s main character, Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray), goes through a complex and difficult set of steps in the process of changing from a rude, dismissive, selfish man (Hannam calls him “the old Phil”) to a kind and humanistic one (“the new Phil”). When he first realizes that he has no choice but to repeat the same Groundhog Day, every day, for the foreseeable future, Phil initially makes selfish and negative choices: seducing women he doesn’t love, robbing a bank, driving while intoxicated. When those selfish pleasures no longer provide gratification, he tries repeatedly – and unsuccessfully – to take his own life. Only when Phil stops seeking either self-gratification or self-destruction does he come to realize that the only joy he will find is through living empathetically, reaching out to do good for others.
Step 4: Help your reader see something new in something with which they are already familiar.
Some of the best passages in The Magic of Groundhog Day occur when Hannam takes sequences from the movie and applies them to his own experience:
One of my favorite moments in Groundhog Day is when Phil recites the following lines of poetry to inspire his fellow hotel guest, the same guest he had previously ignored and later pushed up against a wall in anger: “Winter slumbering in the open air wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.”
When I watch this scene, I think of the hundreds of hotel guests and staff I have avoided making eye contact with, or engaging in conversation with, over the years. Always in a rush to meals or meetings, I shun all human contact. Yet once in a while I chat with someone in the elevator, or at the next table in a restaurant, and feel better. (p. 102)
I also appreciated Hannam’s suggestion that Phil Connors’s Groundhog Day repetitions work like a video game that always reverts to its introductory default settings, giving the player the chance to play the game once again and try a different approach. Hannam has talked with Groundhog Day screenwriter Danny Rubin (who helpfully provided a foreword for this book), and his commentaries regarding the film seem sensible and well-grounded.
Step 5: Pursue he central conceit or metaphor of your book with energy, but don’t push your luck too far.
We all know that at the actual Groundhog Day celebration, Punxsutawney Phil either sees his shadow (in which case we will supposedly have six more weeks of winter) or doesn’t (in which case we will supposedly have an early spring). Yet I do think that Hannam takes the groundhog-shadow metaphor a burrow too far when he writes that “You are confronting your shadow. The shadow is not only important to the groundhog; it is important to you. Your personal reality casts a shadow that you carry with you. Once you pay attention to your shadow, you can begin to see your authentic self rather than your imagined one” (p. 51) The sentiment is fine; the metaphor doesn’t work for me.
Step 6: Keep your advice to the reader general, easily applicable, and positive.
Hannam suggests that the reader of The Magic of Groundhog Day cultivate mindfulness; learn to be grateful for the good things of everyday life; be self-aware; identify what is really important in life; slow down and enjoy life; seek out opportunities to be creative, and to be loving toward others. All of these examples of advice are certainly positive, and worth following. Indeed, I would venture a hunch that such advice is to be found in many other self-help books. I wouldn’t know, as this is the only self-help book that I have ever read.
Step 7: Acknowledge the limitations of the genre.
Some readers will pick up a self-help book, read it with care, take to heart the advice that it provides, apply that research in their own lives, and benefit as a result. Good. But not everyone will benefit in the same way. As Hannam elsewhere in the book quite rightly urges his readers to avoid addictive behaviors as a particularly harmful form of negative repetition, so he mentions to the reader, toward the end of The Magic of Groundhog Day, that “You may know people who are addicted to self-help books. I do, and these folks bounce around from one uncompleted program to another. Nothing alters as they stay trapped in their new loop” (p. 180).
Some people who are looking for help dealing with the troubles they face in their lives will need other forms of help than a self-help book – working with a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, or joining a support group. It is to Hannam’s credit that he doesn’t pretend that a self-help book will solve all of one’s problems.
Step 8: Focus on the business world, and the readership in the business field – potentially a key audience for a book of this kind.
The business field, focused as it is on the making of money, can leave participants in the field particularly stuck in their own Groundhog Day moment. For every dynamic entrepreneur who feels totally committed to their idea, there are a great many low-level workers who feel trapped in a cycle of repetitive tasks that they find tedious. A good bit of the later part of The Magic of Groundhog Day is specifically geared toward businesspeople and business organizations. It may be good advice. But as I haven’t worked full-time in the business world since 1986, or even part-time since 1992, I’m not the person to ask.
Step 9: Go big or go home.
I thought it was good that Hannam, toward the end of The Magic of Groundhog Day, pointed out elements of unhealthy repetition within Western society generally, particularly with regard to consumerism, and in terms of unhealthy environmental practices that exacerbate climate change. What he wrote regarding these issues was valid in 2008, and is even more urgent now.
Step 10: Don’t be surprised if the ideas in your self-help book take on a life of their own, with the passage of time.
As mentioned above, Hannam originally wrote this book in 2008; an updated version, The Wisdom of Groundhog Day, was published in 2016. Four years later, a novel coronavirus spread across the world, changing life in every country on Earth, and providing a daunting reminder of humankind’s vulnerability. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world, schools and workplaces shut down, streets emptied, and people began either working from home or not working at all; and the “Groundhog Day Effect” took hold in people’s lives with particular force, one Zoom meeting or home-school session or virtual cocktail party after another.
Groundhog Day, my foot. When COVID arrived, and the societal shutdowns took place, it became Groundhog Year – and therefore Hannam’s reflections might resound, for some readers nowadays, with particular force.
As I close The Magic of Groundhog Day, and prepare to move on to February 3rd, I reflect that our cynical era cannot be an easy time in which to write a self-help book. The positive-psychology ideas underlying this book get a tough time of it in contemporary culture, given the satirical portrayals of positive-psychology practitioners that one sees in movies like Anchorman 2 or the Santa Clause films.
With that in mind, how would Phil Connors respond to The Magic of Groundhog Day? My hunch is that the old Phil would respond to being told to have an amazing, magical day, or life, by looking around at Punxsutawney, sneering, and saying, “Not in this town.” The new Phil, by contrast, might smile tolerantly – his sense of irony still intact, but kept in check – and say, “Maybe we can all have one. But can I take a rain check? I’ve got some errands to run…”
March 15, 2010
This is the first self-help book I have ever read that was based on a movie. There is nothing like taking a romantic comedy and taking it seriously, very very seriously. I will never watch the movie the same way again but luckily I still feel like it is just a movie and not the oracle of all knowledge like the author seemed to think. Rating this book was one of the hardest things for me to do because I absolutely love the premise and the thesis of the book, but it was impossible to read cover to cover. I learned a lot, but yet I cannot recommend this book to anyone. I took many, many notes (probably more than any other book) yet there is probably not a pearl of wisdom left in the book that I did not write down. There were many great, inspirational quotes inserted throughout the book that I also included in my notes. Therefore, my recommendations are just read all my notes from the book which is all the good parts and then you do not have to read the book. So without further ado . . .
What I learned . . .
-Phil Conners has gone from the worst day of his life to the best, not by changing his outer world but by changing his inner life, his personal reality. He has to live in the present; he has no future, and past becomes more and more irrelevant. His initial reaction was self-gratification but he soon learned that exclusively seeking one’s own pleasure eventually brings diminishing returns. The Phil Conners that enters Punxsutawney February 1 is not the same Phil Conners that finally makes it to February 3. He changed his personal reality or perspective from an arrogant self-serving prima donna to an optimistic, artistic server of others. Phil changed his personal reality by (1) paying attention (2) Repetition (3) Acceptance (4) Creativity and then finally (5) genuine Love for fellow man. We do not directly experience the world around us; we experience a personal reality through our senses. Personal reality is a reflection of reality. Personal reality determines quality of life.
Sometimes we can all suffer through something similar to Phil Conners. We do not get stuck in a time-loop but we can suffer through the Groundhog Day effect. The Groundhog Day Effect: a phenomenon that affects individuals, groups, etc. to feel stuck, and powerless to change within the daily grind of endlessly repetitive tasks, mind-numbing encounters with the same people, and meaningless activities and conversations.
Three symptoms of Groundhog Day Effect
1. The sense that your thoughts are compulsive (same thinking patterns)
2. A sense of living on automatic pilot (going through the motions)
3. A sense of being stuck
“At the most basic level of existence, humans are comprised by the need for repetition. Our bodies depend on repetitive, respiratory, circulatory, rest, and digestive systems . . . We are part of a larger repetitive system. The moon, earth, sun, and stars have regular repetition.” No wonder habits are so hard to break. Routine dictates how we live, and the routine suppresses our ability to be aware. We need to live the life we choose to live, not the life we are conditioned to lead. We need to replace negative loops and bad habits with positive ones.
In the ‘land of the free’ how free are you? How many of your activities do you choose to do, and how many are determined by the demands of others? Are you so immersed in activity that routine has taken charge of your life? “Underneath the superficial variety of my life was an inescapable sameness. This routine was also very seductive, almost addictive. I did not need to think too much; simply go through the motions.” “ I exchanged freedom for the golden handcuffs of corporate imprisonment.” Life continues to be amazing and we stopped noticing.
Five steps to happiness through paying attention
1. A sense of gratitude (Unfortunately, our buy-more, do-more culture keeps us locked in a continuous state of ingratitude. We often just consume rather than create. The magic of creativity takes us from a downward spiral of self-pity and isolation to an upward spiral of accomplishment.)
2. Self-Awareness (Only self-awareness can lead to genuine personal and organizational change.)
3. Identify what is important (We crave security, approval, and love. We shut down to avoid pain of not feeling those things.)
4. Be mindful
5. Slow down
What is your attitude toward time? Irritation, resource, burden, or gift. Winter means more time to think. Are we suffering from cabin fever or actively planning and looking forward to the nest stage of our lives? “Winter slumbering in the open air wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.” –Phil Conners. We always have the ability to change, yet only demonstrate it when we are forced to. Great stories are stories of struggle.
Quotable quotes
-“Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” –Albert Einstein
-“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.” -Francesco Petrarch
-“Repetition is the mother of learning.” – Anonymous
-“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
-“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” –Ranhold Niebuhr
-“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.” –William S. Burroughs
- “The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.” - Gothe
- “Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” – George Lois
- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou
- Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” -Susan Ertz
- “The problem is knowledge and intention on their own are insufficient.” – Paul Hannam
-“ I had to find out who I am without the structure and meaning of a career.” –Paul Hannam. This quote was especially meaningful to me because when I became a stay-at-home mom, I no longer had the structure and meaning of a career and I got myself stuck in a groundhog day effect. There is a line in the movie where Phil asked his drinking buddy, “What would you do if you were stuck somewhere, every day was the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” The drinking buddy replied, “That pretty much sums it up for me.” I felt that way so in the end I gave this book four stars because it really has helped me change my perspective and made me want to try harder to keep my personal reality a positive perspective. I want everyday to be the best day of my life. Just like Phil.
What I learned . . .
-Phil Conners has gone from the worst day of his life to the best, not by changing his outer world but by changing his inner life, his personal reality. He has to live in the present; he has no future, and past becomes more and more irrelevant. His initial reaction was self-gratification but he soon learned that exclusively seeking one’s own pleasure eventually brings diminishing returns. The Phil Conners that enters Punxsutawney February 1 is not the same Phil Conners that finally makes it to February 3. He changed his personal reality or perspective from an arrogant self-serving prima donna to an optimistic, artistic server of others. Phil changed his personal reality by (1) paying attention (2) Repetition (3) Acceptance (4) Creativity and then finally (5) genuine Love for fellow man. We do not directly experience the world around us; we experience a personal reality through our senses. Personal reality is a reflection of reality. Personal reality determines quality of life.
Sometimes we can all suffer through something similar to Phil Conners. We do not get stuck in a time-loop but we can suffer through the Groundhog Day effect. The Groundhog Day Effect: a phenomenon that affects individuals, groups, etc. to feel stuck, and powerless to change within the daily grind of endlessly repetitive tasks, mind-numbing encounters with the same people, and meaningless activities and conversations.
Three symptoms of Groundhog Day Effect
1. The sense that your thoughts are compulsive (same thinking patterns)
2. A sense of living on automatic pilot (going through the motions)
3. A sense of being stuck
“At the most basic level of existence, humans are comprised by the need for repetition. Our bodies depend on repetitive, respiratory, circulatory, rest, and digestive systems . . . We are part of a larger repetitive system. The moon, earth, sun, and stars have regular repetition.” No wonder habits are so hard to break. Routine dictates how we live, and the routine suppresses our ability to be aware. We need to live the life we choose to live, not the life we are conditioned to lead. We need to replace negative loops and bad habits with positive ones.
In the ‘land of the free’ how free are you? How many of your activities do you choose to do, and how many are determined by the demands of others? Are you so immersed in activity that routine has taken charge of your life? “Underneath the superficial variety of my life was an inescapable sameness. This routine was also very seductive, almost addictive. I did not need to think too much; simply go through the motions.” “ I exchanged freedom for the golden handcuffs of corporate imprisonment.” Life continues to be amazing and we stopped noticing.
Five steps to happiness through paying attention
1. A sense of gratitude (Unfortunately, our buy-more, do-more culture keeps us locked in a continuous state of ingratitude. We often just consume rather than create. The magic of creativity takes us from a downward spiral of self-pity and isolation to an upward spiral of accomplishment.)
2. Self-Awareness (Only self-awareness can lead to genuine personal and organizational change.)
3. Identify what is important (We crave security, approval, and love. We shut down to avoid pain of not feeling those things.)
4. Be mindful
5. Slow down
What is your attitude toward time? Irritation, resource, burden, or gift. Winter means more time to think. Are we suffering from cabin fever or actively planning and looking forward to the nest stage of our lives? “Winter slumbering in the open air wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.” –Phil Conners. We always have the ability to change, yet only demonstrate it when we are forced to. Great stories are stories of struggle.
Quotable quotes
-“Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” –Albert Einstein
-“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.” -Francesco Petrarch
-“Repetition is the mother of learning.” – Anonymous
-“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
-“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” –Ranhold Niebuhr
-“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.” –William S. Burroughs
- “The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.” - Gothe
- “Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” – George Lois
- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou
- Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” -Susan Ertz
- “The problem is knowledge and intention on their own are insufficient.” – Paul Hannam
-“ I had to find out who I am without the structure and meaning of a career.” –Paul Hannam. This quote was especially meaningful to me because when I became a stay-at-home mom, I no longer had the structure and meaning of a career and I got myself stuck in a groundhog day effect. There is a line in the movie where Phil asked his drinking buddy, “What would you do if you were stuck somewhere, every day was the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” The drinking buddy replied, “That pretty much sums it up for me.” I felt that way so in the end I gave this book four stars because it really has helped me change my perspective and made me want to try harder to keep my personal reality a positive perspective. I want everyday to be the best day of my life. Just like Phil.
October 7, 2025
I have watched "Groundhog day" twice now. It is a fascinating movie that teaches you a lot of things about living a "good life" without being overly prescriptive or preachy. On the contrary, it is a hilarious comedy! This book is a nice, detailed analysis of the deeper psychological lessons of this movie. The author has done a great job of distilling the message of the movie and analyzing the storyline and events in minute detail. Highly recommend this book after you have watched the movie.
March 22, 2018
As I love the movie Groundhog Day, I did like the way Hannam applied it to everyday life, and how we can break out of repeating cycles and become better people. However, the final chapter turned into a plea for environmental conscientiousness which seemed very out of place in this book despite the fact that I agree with his passion.
February 12, 2012
The book offers some compelling ideas. It analyzes the a great movie and shows us how we are living a "Groundhog Day". It has helped me find ways which I was caught in destructive cycles, and ways out.
The book, is very repetitive, however. (and not in a good "Groundhog day" way. It just seems to go over the same ideas over and over again. And the last chapter focuses on our earth, environment, etc. I am not quite sure how that relates to the film. As a matter of fact, sometimes I wonder if the author thinks Phil Connors is a real person, and not a character in a early 90' comedy played by Bill Murray.
Overall, a decent read.
The book, is very repetitive, however. (and not in a good "Groundhog day" way. It just seems to go over the same ideas over and over again. And the last chapter focuses on our earth, environment, etc. I am not quite sure how that relates to the film. As a matter of fact, sometimes I wonder if the author thinks Phil Connors is a real person, and not a character in a early 90' comedy played by Bill Murray.
Overall, a decent read.
April 21, 2010
This was an original and profound thesis.Author Paul Hannam posits that we are all stuck in a time warp: we have a high likelihood of seeing the same people we saw yesterday, and being in the same places we were last week. He challenges the reader to ask, "How will my interactions be different than they were last time?" "How will my attitude and perceptions and expectations change in order to have a fresh, new outcome?" This concept has the potential to be life-changing.
June 24, 2008
From page 46: "[M]any of us are so exhausted from chasing the shadows of our cravings that we cannot see the light around us. We are so fixated on the clouds passing by that we do not see that the sun is always there just behind."
This is a wise book. Both the book and the movie deal with looking for, dealing with, and understanding Phil's shadow.
Bit preachy towards the end.
This is a wise book. Both the book and the movie deal with looking for, dealing with, and understanding Phil's shadow.
Bit preachy towards the end.
September 13, 2008
Couldn't resist the title and picked this up on a whim. Not a cover-to-cover read but fun and insightful for anyone stuck in a rut. Author actually takes the movie seriously and finds real lessons.
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January 17, 2009Funny. Good philosophy that meshes well with my drinking.
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