The Happiness Trap (26 page)

Frankl, Viktor, 2000,
Man’s Search for Meaning,
Beacon Press, Boston.

Hayes, Steven, & Smith, Spencer, 2005,
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide,
New Harbinger Publications, Oakland CA.

Kabat-Zinn, Jon, 1994,
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life,
Hyperion, New York.

Russ Harris has recorded a number of CDs that can be used in conjunction with this book to help you develop mindfulness skills. You can purchase these from:
www.mindfulnessresources.com

Russ also runs a variety of workshops based on ACT, for health professionals, life coaches, the general public, and the corporate world. If you are a health professional, therapist, or life coach wishing to train in ACT, please visit:
www.actmindfully.com.au

If you are member of the general public, wanting to attend a workshop for personal growth and self-development, please visit:
www.mindfulnessresources.com

ACT has been proven to be very effective in the workplace for stress reduction and improving emotional intelligence. If your company or business is interested in coaching or training based on this approach, please visit:
www.mindfulnessatwork.net

To learn more about ACT, visit the main website:

www.contextualpsychology.org/act.
Here you’ll find a wealth of information about ACT, including details of therapists who have trained in it.

Words cannot adequately express the enormous gratitude I feel towards Steven Hayes, the originator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). He has given a great gift to me, my family, my clients, and to the world at large. I am also indebted to the wider ACT community, for all the useful advice, experience and information that is so freely shared among them at workshops, conferences, and via the Internet. I am especially grateful to Kelly Wilson and Hank Robb, whose insights and interventions I have frequently drawn upon throughout these pages, and likewise to all those colleagues in the ACT community who have given me feedback and advice during various stages of writing: Jim Marchman, Joe Ciarrochi, Joe Parsons, Sonja Batten, Julian McNally, and Graham Taylor.

I would particularly like to acknowledge my brother, Genghis, who has (as always) been an inexhaustible source of advice, strength and encouragement, especially during those dark times when I felt like giving up on the book altogether. I’d also like to thank all the friends and family who helped out by reading the book (or parts of it) and giving me feedback: Johnny Watson, Margaret Denman, Paul Dawson, Fred Wallace, and Kath Koning. And major thanks to my mother and my wife, who both helped out by typing up major chunks of the book: no easy task when working from my spidery handwritten scrawls.

Heartfelt thanks to the three editors who worked with me at various stages: Xavier Waterkeyn, who helped enormously with the early chapters, and also came up with the book’s title; Michael Carr, who did the major ‘grunt work’, and taught me a lot in the process; and Monica Berton who helped wonderfully in trimming the fat and pulling the book into its final shape. And of course I am especially grateful to all the good folks at Exisle Publishing, who have worked so hard to bring this book together: Gareth St John Thomas, Benny St John Thomas, Anouska Jones, Penny Capp, and Sandra Noakes. And on that note, many thanks to my agent, Sammie Justesen, for bringing myself and the Exisle team together.

Last, but not least, a big thank you to columnist and author, Martha Beck. Her article on ACT in
O Magazine
acted as a major source of inspiration, because it showed me how the complex concepts of ACT could be put into plain, simple English.

Russ Harris

Melbourne, Australia

Do you ever feel stressed, worried, miserable or unfulfilled-yet you put on a happy face and pretend everything’s fine? If so, you are not alone. Stress, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem are everywhere. In one way or another, it seems that almost everyone is struggling. But why should this be, when our standard of living is the highest it’s ever been?

New scientific research suggests that we are all caught in a hidden psychological trap: a vicious cycle, whereby the more we strive for happiness, the more we suffer in the long term. Fortunately we can all escape from the ‘Happiness Trap’ via a groundbreaking new approach based on mindfulness skills.

Mindfulness is a mental state of awareness, openness, and focus. Mindfulness skills are easy to learn and will rapidly and effectively help you to reduce stress, enhance performance, manage emotions, improve health, increase vitality, and generally change your life for the better. The concept of mindfulness has been around in the East for thousands of years-but until recently, we in the West could only develop these skills if we embarked on long, slow, arduous Eastern practices, such as meditation, yoga, Tai-Chi, Zen, or the martial arts. However, thanks to cutting-edge developments in western psychology, you can now learn these powerful life-changing techniques in a matter of minutes. So if you’d like to make life rich and full and meaningful, then this is a book you definitely have to read!

Dr Russ Harris is a medical practitioner with a passion for life, health and healing. A leading authority on stress management, Russ regularly travels all over Australia, and internationally, training coaches, psychologists, doctors, and other health professionals in the use of ‘mindfulness’. (Mindfulness is a key theme in this book: a mental state of awareness, openness, and focus which helps you to reduce stress, transcend fear, enhance performance, and increase life satisfaction.)

Russ was born in Liverpool, England, and qualified as a doctor in 1989, at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK. He migrated to Australia in 1991, and set up practice as a GP. He became increasingly interested in the psychological aspects of medical illness, and when he started teaching mindfulness skills to his patients, he was astonished at the dramatic results-especially in stress-related conditions. Russ’s interest eventually led to a career change, and he now works as a speaker, trainer, therapist, and executive coach.

Russ wrote this book because there is a huge need for it: depression, anxiety, worry and stress are epidemic-and most popular approaches are ineffective. In his own life, Russ has used mindfulness to effectively transcend his own deep-seated insecurity, low self-confidence, and chronic anxiety. Over the years, he has also used this approach with many hundreds of clients, from lawyers and shopkeepers to policemen and housewives-obtaining equally outstanding results. Russ lives in Melbourne with his wife, a dog, a cat, and one child (so far).

Popular ideas about happiness are misleading, inaccurate, and are directly contributing to our current epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression. And unfortunately, popular psychological approaches are making it even worse!

In this controversial but
empowering
self-help book, Dr Russ Harris, M.D., reveals how millions of people are unwittingly caught in
‘The Happiness Trap’!
He then provides an
effective means to escape,
through
a revolutionary new approach
which is shaking the very foundations of western psychology.

This book is for everyone,
from CEOs to sales staff, and astronauts to housewives. Whether you’re lacking confidence, facing illness, coping with loss, working in a high-stress lob, suffering from anxiety or depression, or preparing for the performance of your life-within these pages you will learn scientifically proven techniques to: