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What Happy Women Know: How New Findings in Positive Psychology Can Change Women's Lives for the Better | 
 enlarge | Authors: Dan Baker, Cathy Greenberg
Creator: Ina Yalof
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 59696
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0312380593
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
EAN: 9780312380595
ASIN: 0312380593
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
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Product Description
If your job or relationships are bringing you down, and you are feeling a little blue, WHAT HAPPY WOMEN KNOW can teach you the secret to recapturing joy.
If you are like most women, you are great at making sure everyone around you is happy and your own happiness is an afterthought – if thought about at all. Now, it’s time to seize the satisfaction that is waiting for you. This book will show you how.
By providing tools and information that work specifically for women, WHAT HAPPY WOMEN KNOW will give you the skills to:
develop a greater sense of purpose
recapture a sense of adventure
re-connect with love and appreciation
achieve emotional well-being
Learn to look on the bright side and enjoy a richer, healthier, more fulfilling life!
Dan Baker, PhD, author of What Happy People Know and What Happy Companies Know, is a medical psychologist dedicated to the study of human behavior within an organizational setting. For the last 20 years, he has carried out his research in the perfect laboratory – the world-renowned Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona – where he was the founding director of the award winning Life Enhancement Program. Cathy Greenberg, PhD, co-author of What Happy Companies Know is an organizational consultant and executive coach. Ina Yalof is the author or co-author of 11 books and teaches writing for Dartmouth College’s ILEAD program.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Positive Psychology for women June 28, 2008
This book is an easy read. It lays out the premise of positive psychology and relates it squarely to women. Dan Baker weaves research and theory with concrete case studies from his work with women. There are enough important topics covered in the book that I believe all women will find something that appeals. You might find yourself skimming some chapters but being totally riveted by others. In my book club, everyone had a different perspective on what appealed to her the most. And each of us found something worthwhile to take away.
To give you a taste for the topics coveredin the book's ten chapters, I'll list a selection:. perfectionism, always saying yes, the revenge rut, feeling nothing without a man, transcending loss, the career track and much more.
When I thought about writing this review, I decided that rather than focusing on the topic covered in the chapters, I'd focus on the overall impressions I was left with and some enduring concepts I took away.
Personally, I just LOVED the evolutionary explanations put forward to explain some of women's most self-defeating tendencies, such as perfectionism, needing to please others, and even obsessive shopping! You have to read it to believe it. But once I read these evolutionary explanations, things did completely make sense.
Take obsessive shopping as an example; our ancestors lived in a place and time of great danger. Food was always scarce and getting it cost men's lives. When the men were hunting, the women where frantically gathering plants to ensure there was enough food if the men returned empty-handed. Our foremother who was never happy with what she had and who consequently gathered more and more, was the one with the most food, who was also more likely to be successful in ensuring her offspring survived the harsh winters. According to Baker, as far as the more primitive parts of our brains are concerned, we're still gatherers needing more and more... so how do women gather today? They shop!
You get the gist, reading these evolutionary explanations felt great to me. So it's not just me who suffers from it (take your pick, perfectionism, trying to please, working too hard), and it is not all my own personal upbringing and childhood experiences that are to blame. For some reason it felt like a great release. Perhaps it's because these evolutionary explanations make all our shortcoming and self-defeating behaviours less personal. Also, in my work as a coach, consultant and workshop facilitator, I now use these explanations to help people understand and relate more to the dangers of all these traps women fall into.
Perfectionism being one of the most enduring traps I have to battle with, I found this little gem most alluring. Kaizen, according to Baker, is "the Japanese word for continual improvement through small, incremental and sometimes insignificant steps." You want to lose weight, get fit and look younger? Rather than embarking on a `no holds bar' hell regime, cut one chocolate bar a day to start off with. Make a point of parking your car two streets away from your destination every time you go somewhere so you walk a little more throughout your day. That kind of thing...
I think we can alldo with a little Kaizen in our lives, realising that good enough is quite often just that - good enough - and that each step we take towards whatever it is, counts.
The third concept I really enjoyed and that stayed with me is the idea of treating one's life as an investment portfolio. The premise here is that just as it wouldn't be wise to invest all your money in one stock, the same is true of our lives. Happy women run their lives as a mosaic of their strengths and interests. Happy women have multi dimensional lives and don't invest in just one thing.
Looking around the happy women I know, I observed that they really do that, some are mothers and wives but they all have other interests they value. They all choose things where they can really draw on their strengths, be it designing kitchens, gardens, going back to study or doing fulfilling paid work. What all of them also have in common is having great relationships in which they invest and which they nurture.
Just as having a diversified investment portfolio should cushion an economic downturn, so does a diversified life cushions women who are faced with adversity.
A little niggle
Dan Baker works mainly with women who come to the Canyon Ranch is Arizona where he founded the Life-Enhancing programme. Perhaps because of that, many of the women described in the case studies are very wealthy and that might make the more cynical of you raise an eyebrow. I missed that fact, but one of my book club members pointed it out. So beware, but rest assured that with all the other research and other case studies presented, I personally believe that he was able to strike a good balance with good lessons for us all.
What Happy Women Know is an easy to read and a great introduction to the concepts of positive psychology for all women. It would make a great holiday present, and a wonderfully affirming read for a break!
Who Wouldn't Want More Happiness? June 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Focusing on the positive has the power to change your life for the happier. It sounds simple enough but for many, it takes desire, practice and a certain amount of discipline. What Happy Women Know by Dan Baker and Cathy Greenberg, shares the why's and how's for focusing on a happier life.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! After all, who wouldn't want more happiness? What Happy Women Know by Dan Baker and co-author Cathy Greenberg is an interesting, insightful and hopeful book to read. It's a good mix of information, inspiration and practical how-to advice.
Honestly, I was a little skeptical to read a book about women's happiness written by a man. The author, Dan Baker, Ph.D., earned my respect with his insightful research and twenty years of day-to-day work with the women who visited the famous health/spa facility, Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Baker is the founder of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch.
This well thought out paperback book is filled with real life examples for using positive psychology to change your life for the better.
What if you could learn from other women who've come before and found ways to be happier and more self-satisfied? Wouldn't you want to tap into their wisdom? If the answer is "yes," then you'll want to read this book.
Here's an example of a couple of the lessons from What Happy Women Know:
Happy women understand the three steps to self-forgiveness:
*Acknowledge the lesson you learned.
*Recognize that you're now in a different place.
*Know that you may make a new mistake tomorrow.
Here's another one: Men and women experience happiness differently. For men happiness is the pursuit of power and for women, happiness is the pursuit of relationships.
Powerful and thought-provoking pearls of wisdom are prevalent throughout the book. By reading them you can't help but feel the power of taking positive action. As I read What Happy Women Know, I knew what I was reading could make a "happy" difference in my life.
Here's a look at some the chapter titles:
~ Perfectionism: You Can't Get There From Here
~ The Revenge Rut
~ I'm Nothing Without Him
~ Transcending Loss
~ Happiness and Health
~Ten Qualities of Happy Women
These few chapter titles should give you a clue to the overall approach that Dr Baker takes in this book - you control your level of happiness and happiness begins inside.
This is a book you'll want to read, think about and take notes. Self-help is simply that - helping yourself live a fuller and happier life. Reading, absorbing and applying the practical wisdom found in this book could change your life for the happier.
Dr. Baker helps the reader discover and embrace this often-elusive emotion called "happiness." Happiness is very personal and because of this, I'm sure this book will affect each of us in a uniquely personal way.
I definitely recommend What Happy Women Know.
Empowering! July 13, 2007
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
I'm halfway through this book and wanted to write a review now because of the one negative review which might dissuade someone from getting this book. If you have the opportunity to peruse it in a bookstore, you'll see for yourself that there is a lot of sharp insight. I get the feeling from reading that Dan Baker really likes women and wants for them the happiness they (we) say we desire. He really cares. The authors address many typical behaviors and beliefs women have about themselves and who they think they're suppose to be/how they're expected to behave that are counterproductive to happiness. It doesn't matter that there is discussion of things most of us have heard/read/thought about before. This book takes those things and expands on them and, personally, I have an even clearer understanding...or more passion about changing those things/concepts/beliefs/self-expectations that are still, sometimes subtly, a part of me. Highly recommended book.
Great Book July 11, 2007
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
I have not completed reading this book; however, I was going to suggest it to a friend and I read the above review, which was horrible. I had to comment. I have read many self-help books and this one is very good. It is well written, positive and gives you some insight to some things that I had never really thought of before. Most books that I have read about self-help seem to me as common sense. This book does have some things that to me are common sense; however, there is so much more. I am very pleased as to what I have read thus far! Definitely a reading that should not be rushed!! I have a few more chapters to complete before I am actually done reading this book but thus far, it has been a real pleasure!
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