The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha is a compilation of little events and things in life that are positive but we often take for granted, forget, or ignore. Taking a moment to focus on an instant of awesomeness helps us to shift our mindset and we start to see more awesome things around us. Neil started this as a blog where he made a goal to write one awesome thing per day for 1000 days as a way to help him get out of his depression. His blog ended up winning blog of the year award and was then turned into this book. Neil also wrote The Happiness Equation which focuses more on creating the happiness in your life rather than waiting for it to happen.

Positive Psychology has been recommending this approach to mental wellbeing and positive shift in thinking for ages. Many therapies will recommend that you write out 3 things you are grateful for each day, or one thing you’re looking forward to each day, or do 2 nice things for yourself or someone else daily. Regardless of your approach, focusing on one positive thing each day helps you shift your thinking; and shifting your thinking helps you shift your mood!

When we are depressed or anxious it is common to focus on the negative, discount the positive, or assume the worst (mental filter, exaggerating, minimizing, jumping to conclusions, these are all unhelpful patterns of thinking that keep us stuck in depression or anxiety). What Neil did was …read more