Mark Wilson wrote his book after his very own search for happiness. Through many trials and errors, he found his secret and he is eager to share it with the rest of us.
Mark posits that happiness can be reached through the law of attraction and all you need to do is to learn how to use it. Mark provides many insights into this, that even got me thinking “Of course! How didn’t I realize this before?”. Some things are as simple as that, we just tend to over look them, for that same reason, I suppose.
It is written in a way that feels like Mark is a friend telling you his story and it makes for a very pleasant reading.
It is not promised that all your dreams will come true just by reading the book, there are no miracles! But it will help you become aware and build your inner tools that you need to achieve your inner happiness goals.
A very important point that resonated with me quite strongly (and I’ve mentioned this quite a few times on here) is that happiness is not attainable by accumulating material goods. So we better stop hoping that amazing pair of Louboutins that costs almost a month’s salary will finally make you happy because it won’t. Save your pennies and your credit card and get Mark’s book instead. A much smaller investment but with much higher dividends!
I asked Mark a few questions about his book and his ideas. Enjoy!
1 -what prompted you to write this book?
Haha, desperation! A couple of years ago my life wasn’t in a great place and I certainly wasn’t happy. I’d just moved to a new town on my own, my social life wasn’t satisfying, my career seemed to have stalled, and I’d been single for ages. Plus, to make matters worse, I had anxiety issues and low self-esteem and over the years I’d come to almost expect that ‘things’ weren’t ever going to go right for me.
I’d really tried to help myself, too!
I’d read so many books about the law of attraction and employed all the techniques authors such as Rhonda Byrne advise their readers to try to attract positivity into my life but it just wasn’t working for me. The funny thing was, I always kind of intuitively felt that the law of attraction was a very real thing and that it was the key to my happiness. The concept of the law of attraction certainly resonated on some level with me, I just couldn’t get it to work for me.
Then one day I had a genuine epiphany moment.
I realised that I’d been trying very hard to consciously attract nice things to me, whereas what I (or anyone else) actually needed to do was subconsciously change the way I was thinking and feeling. Once you can subconsciously think and feel positive, that’s when the law of attraction actually kicks in automatically and amazing things start to happen naturally to change your life for the better.
Of course, the trick is to train your subconscious thoughts and feelings into being more positive. None of the books I read told me this, and it was only when I’d figured out how to change my subconscious feelings for the better that I knew I had a great self-help book that would help others to improve their lives.
2- Besides reading your book, what else would you recommend to anyone trying to improve their wellbeing?
Well, my book contains all the information you need to attract more happiness into your life, but I think the most important single mindset is to take responsibility of your own wellbeing and then regard it as an ongoing longer term issue rather than a quick fix. That’s why I’ve set my readers’ expectations at a 28-day happiness programme, although in reality I’ve found that most people will start to noticeably feel happier after only a few days.
But naturally there are other things that anyone can do to improve their wellbeing.
Years ago I suffered from occasional bouts of mild depression, and during these phases I discovered that consciously setting myself just one small attainable goal each day helped my state of mind immeasurably, so I’d recommend doing this every day if possible whether you’re depressed or not.
A typical goal would be different for everyone, but the key is to make it significant but simple; so for example it may be to go to the gym, or to clean the house. Or give some old unwanted clothes to charity, Sara?! Or it may be as simple as going for a five-minute walk, or phoning a friend to see how they are.
The important thing is to consciously set yourself one small attainable goal each day…and then do it. What happens when you do this is that at the end of each day you’ll naturally and subconsciously feel a small amount of satisfaction for achieving your target, even if your target was something simple.
After a few days you’ll find that you’ll almost magically feel better, and more motivated to set higher targets for yourself too, which is a great start to any kind of self-improvement journey.
I say ‘magically’ there, but of course this is the law of attraction in action! For every day you achieve your target, your subconscious mind feels more and more satisfied…and that attracts more and more satisfaction into your life, which then improves your wellbeing even more!
3 – How do you think we sabotage ourselves in the pursuit of happiness?
This really puzzled me early on in my own personal journey, because feeling happy is such a beneficial state of mind, and yet almost everyone these days finds it difficult to ‘be happy’.
Clearly we do sabotage our own pursuit of happiness, and this seems to be a really counter-intuitive self-destructive thing to do…until you accept that we have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind, and then understand how the two function (and dysfunction!) together.
You see, while our conscious mind enables us to be self-aware (that is, make decisions, plan ahead and enjoy creative thoughts), our subconscious mind controls all our automatic functions (our breathing, heartbeat, blinking, blushing, sweating and much more) for as long as we’re alive whether we’re awake or asleep.
But it’s very difficult to change the way our subconscious mind performs its job; we can’t just consciously decide to be happy because being happy is a function of our subconscious mind, and our conscious mind can’t override what our subconscious mind is doing – as people who blush or sweat too much will understand.
So our subconscious mind – that part of us that interacts so powerfully with the law of attraction – is actually more concerned with just keeping us alive rather than attracting a gold-plated sports car and a 50-room mansion into our lives. And because, by our subconscious mind’s standards, it’s done a pretty good job for us so far (well, we’re all still alive aren’t we?) then it actually resists you when you try to do something it deems as being ‘new’ or ‘different’.
This is why it’s so hard to stick to a New Year’s resolution. Even if it’s good for you, your subconscious mind is suspicious of anything that threatens that comfortable status quo it has over-cautiously nurtured for you since you were born, and it will therefore resist unless you consciously persevere until your resolution eventually becomes a subconscious habit.
Thankfully, I’ve found that there are easy ways to create very beneficial subconscious habits that will attract happiness into your life!
4- What are you currently working on? Can you lift the veil a little?
I’ve mentioned the subject of my next book a few times to you today, and it’s a result of the amazing research I’ve continued since writing ‘Happy’.
My next book is called (at the moment) ‘The Power of the Subconscious Mind’, and I really think this book will help people to fulfil their potential and enjoy a quality of life that they could previously only have dreamed of.
The more I learn about the subconscious mind, the more I’m in complete awe about what a supreme asset we all have, and yet we all take it for granted.
But if we learned how to use our brain properly, we could revolutionise our lives. At the moment, for most people, it’s like having an Aston Martin Vantage and then never getting it out of first gear.
What a waste! I want to show people how to hit fourth or fifth gear! Or higher!
Thank you Mark for your time and for sharing your experiences with us. “The Secret of How to be Happy”is available on Amazon for Kindle.
