Pamela Gail Johnson - Practical Happiness: Four Principles to Improve Your Life

Practical Happiness

Four Principles to Improve Your Life

Pamela Gail Johnson

Founder, Society of Happy People

Practical Happiness is a valuable guide to help you raise your happiness set point. Pamela Gail Johnson offers four powerful principles along with transformational techniques you can easily apply in your life.

Marci Shimoff, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Happy for No Reason and Chicken Soup for the Womans Soul

As a tour guide on the journey to happiness, Pamela Gail Johnson is good company. And more importantly, she knows the way. Practical Happiness is warm and wise and worth your time

David Niven, Ph.D., bestselling author of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

If happiness is a habit, practicing Pamela Gail Johnsons principles are the roadmap to more fulfillment and well-being. Her book is full of real stories about real people putting her strategies into practice for a happier work and home life.

Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

I love the 4 principles of practical happiness in this book. Truly a fresh take on how to be happier. I cant recommend it highly enough!

MJ Ryan, bestselling author of The Happiness Makeover, Attitudes of Gratitude, and 365 Health and Happiness Boosters among other titles

Want to know why we find happy people annoying? Because they dont fully understand what happiness is. They think its about ALWAYS being happy, upbeat, cheerful, and chipper. So, they fake it. The faking is what annoys us. Pamela has given us a way to be happy and to mean it. Practically. Realistically. Authentically. And while we will not always be happy in every moment, at least we can be happy consistently and with meaning. Give this book to someone as a gift and you could be giving them the gift of real happiness. Who knows? Maybe that person is yourself.

Tim David, author of Magic Words, The Four Levels of Influencing People, and The 7-Day Digital Diet

Practical Happiness is a well-researched, yet applicable method to taking charge of your own happiness and bettering your life.

David Burkus, author of Leading from Anywhere, Friend of a Friend, and Myths of Creativity

Pamela Gail Johnsons Practical Happiness is a practically perfect resource for understanding, recognizing, and building happiness in your life. She includes demonstrations of how happiness can be personal and enables the reader to find their own personal happiness inducers. She explains how to manage happiness zappers and even create a personal zap map to navigate them. She explores how happiness changes as we change, and helps us know how to help our happiness grow with us. And she helps you explore how you experience thirty-one different types of happiness, and expand your experience of each of them. With her personal, easy-to-digest, highly readable tone, Johnson walks you through all the ways in which happiness is an inside job, and how you can get more happiness inside of yourself. This page-turner is packed with wisdom you can put to use right now.

Elizabeth Scott, PhD, author of 8 Keys to Stress Management and founder of TranquilityTools.com

Practical Happiness: Four Principles to Improve Your Life, is a wonderful book! It is filled with simple ways to increase your happiness. Read this book and be happier!

Mike Duffy, author of The Happiness Book: A Positive Guide To Happiness and Founder of The Happiness Hall Of Fame

The emotionally-charged stories Pamela shares from interviewing dozens of people who chose to be happy no matter what give all of us deeper understanding of real happiness in practical terms that can be easily applied to every-day life.

Dennis Yu, host of the Coach Yu Show

Pamela Johnson walks her talk. I did TV news stories on her two decades ago and since then, her mission to spread happiness and educate people on how to dial up the smile has gone around the planet. This book is packed with actionable items that anyone can easily implement. The stress of the pandemic has made this book more necessary now than ever.

Jeff Crilley, former Emmy Award winning reporter and CEO of Real News PR

A great read for anyone who is looking for practical tips and strategies to create more happiness in their lives. Pamela allows you to take a different approach to creating your happiness, and shares stories that are relatable and inspiring.

Michelle Wax, founder, American Happiness Project

The four principles taught in Practical Happiness are so simple to apply. I love that it has a fill-in-the blank workbook style so you can take action while you read. Read this with a pen if youre ready to smile again.

Jeff J. Hunter, founder of VAStaffer.com and creator of the CORE Branding Method

Pursuing happiness is the most basic of human objectives but yet one that can remain elusive. In a time where languishing seems more the norm than flourishing, what could be timelier than a pragmatic perspective on how to cultivate happiness! Pamela has created a practical guide to build a skill that is crucial to enhance our individual life experience and our collective energy of gratitude and optimism.

Susan Sobbott, board member, senior advisor, and former American Express President of OPEN, GCP, GCS

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available through the Library of Congress

2022 Pamela Gail Johnson

ISBN-13: 978-07573-2413-0 (Paperback)

ISBN-10: 07573-2413-4 (Paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-07573-2414-7 (ePub)

ISBN-10: 0-7573-2414-2 (ePub)

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.

1700 NW 2nd Avenue

Boca Raton, FL 33432-1653

Cover design by Larissa Hise Henoch

Interior design by Larissa Hise Henoch, formatting by Lawna Patterson Oldfield

Author photo credit Juli Santizo

For all of the souls whove crossed my path

Thank you for the happy moments weve shared, the difficult times youve helped me through, and the lessons youve taught me that have helped me become more compassionate, wiser, and even happier.

W hen I founded the Society of Happy People more than twenty years ago, it changed my life in ways that I could never have imagined.

I always wanted to make the world a better place. The Society has given me the opportunity to do that. It has been an honor to connect with so many others who are doing the same thing.

Its also impossible to thank everyone individually whos been part of the journey that has influenced this book. So, first, I want to thank the unnamed who have inspired my heart.

A very special thank-you goes to Sean Giggy, the television reporter at WFAA in DallasFort Worth who asked me in an interview, What have you learned about happiness in the past twenty years? That one question motivated me to reexamine and give even more life to