Introduction to the Book
Make Room for Happiness
The pursuit of happiness involves three things. You have to identify what makes you unhappy, let it go, and learn the things that make you happy. This book will help you with all three steps.
The main idea of the book is that tension is an obstacle to each step in the pursuit of happiness. Tension is an obstacle because when you're tense it's hard to let go of your old habits to make room for change. Have you ever read a self-help book and then repeated the same mistakes? When you're tense you tend to repeat what's familiar and wrong instead of doing what's new and right.
You will learn three important lessons in this book. One – you'll learn how tension causes unhappiness and how it is an obstacle to change. Two – you’ll learn a simple but powerful technique to reduce your tension. Three – you’ll learn how to apply that technique to improve specific areas of your life quickly.
You will learn how to improve your self-esteem, have better relationships, improve your health, reduce anxiety, and get more out of life by letting go of your tension.
This book takes the opposite approach of most self-help books. You don't have to work harder to find happiness – instead you will improve your life by letting go of the tension that’s getting in your way. It's that one simple idea that can transform your life.
I'd like to tell you a little about the motivation behind this book before we get started. I'm a doctor who has been practicing medicine for over twenty years. Many of my patients are doctors, lawyers, and nurses who have been referred to me by their professional associations, usually because they've run into trouble with substance abuse or depression. I also give a weekly lecture at a local hospital, and I've discovered that most people's problems are the same no matter what their job or how much money they make.
Every day I see how tension ruins people's lives. People want better relationships, but can't let go of the resentments and fears that are getting in their way. People want to improve their self-esteem, but can't let go of the doubts that are defeating them. People are dying of heart attacks at ever younger ages. This is a wake-up call to the destructive effects of tension and a strategy for overcoming them.
After hearing enough stories from my patients, I began to see a pattern. Everybody wanted to improve their life, but most people kept on repeating the same mistakes. The question was why. These people were intelligent, hardworking self-starters. They were successful in every other aspect of their life. But when it came to changing their life, they were stuck. Most of them had read self-help books or had gone to therapy. They knew their issues. But they kept on repeating the same mistakes.
My experience led me to what I call my "laws of happiness." My first law is the inescapable conclusion that knowledge alone does not help people change or find happiness. Knowledge doesn't prevent people from repeating the same mistakes. The standard approach to self-help is to give people more information. Show them what they're doing wrong, and tell them what they should do instead, believing that will help them change. But that's usually the easy part. Most people already know what they're doing wrong.
My second law took a little longer to figure out. But eventually I realized that tension was the main negative factor in my patients' lives. When they were tense, their relationships suffered. When they were tense, their depression deepened. When they were tense, their self-esteem was more vulnerable. Tension affects almost every aspect of life. Many of my patients didn't know how to reduce their tension, and the few who did know how to relax were too busy to relax. Therefore my second law of happiness is that tension is the biggest preventable cause of unhappiness.
Once I realized the importance of tension, I came to my third law. Tension is the main obstacle to change. Tension not only makes people unhappy, it keeps them stuck in their unhappiness by making it hard to change. When people are tense, they tend to do what's familiar and wrong instead of what's new and right. When they're tense, they find it hard to let go of their egos and fears to make room for change.
My final law is that reducing tension will improve your life and help you change your life. Letting go of tension is the missing piece of how you change your life. Think of it this way. There are many coping skills that you need to be happy in life. If you learn them all but don’t learn how to let go of tension, you still won’t be happy, because when you’re tense you’ll continue to repeat what’s familiar and wrong. On the other hand, if you don’t learn any new coping skills, but learn only one new skill – how to relax – you’ll still be happier, because everything is easier when you’re relaxed. If there is anything else you need to change in order to be happier, you'll see it more easily and deal with it more effectively when you're more relaxed.
If you follow the simple steps in this book, I'm confident that within a month you will begin to enjoy your life more. You'll be more relaxed and tolerant. Your relationships will improve and you'll be happier in life.
This book is based on my years of helping people improve their life. Most of them were initially skeptical about the importance of letting go of tension, but almost all of them eventually saw it as their most important coping skill. Sit back and enjoy yourself.
May this book bring you peace, happiness, and good health.
© 2007 Steven M. Melemis
