This year I’m really focusing on my mental health and being more calm and positive, so to start of the year i decided to read ‘calm’ which is about mindfulness and staying calm in hectic and stressful modern environments. I read the entire book in one go and i found it very interesting.
Each chapter of the book focuses on a different aspect of life, these include sleep, food, nature and many more and have a huge variety of solutions for just about every stress you can have, meaning that there is, in my opinion, something for everyone.
This book definitely helped me to change my mindset a little, though i did find parts very pretentious. I think it would be a very useful addition to the library of anyone who struggles with stress or anxiety, which in this day and age is really just about everyone. It holds a lot of suggestions for how to live a happier, more stress free day to day and even if you don’t follow any of the advice once you’ve put it down, its a good read to relax with for a couple of hours.
There are many guided meditations and talk of meditation throughout the book which i can imagine a lot of people would find really relaxing but as some one with anxiety and a noisy upstairs neighbour its more or less impossible for me to try to meditate without becoming some what paranoid. I’m not much of a meditation kind of person but when i tried a few they did calm me down and make me feel more grounded, i think i probably will give them another go sometime in the future.
If you’re the kind of person who is easily bothered by something that, in my opinion, is quite pretentious and, i suppose ‘hipster0 this is not the book for you. My boyfriend is that kind of person and he only made it about four pages in before he started laughing uncontrollably and had to put it down. I think if you read it with an open mind and just skip anything you don’t like the sound of it could be a really helpful thing to read and if you are that kind of person, i would definitely recommend.
-Dana
Carry on Beautiful! 