PASSIONABILITY

A debut guide to health and happiness prescribes thought systems and practices to improve readers’ quality of life.

El Zein knows a lot about the journey to fulfillment. Drawing from her experiences of silent retreats, meditation, reading, learning events, and online research, she delivers a conversational and helpful strategy for removing some of life’s major obstacles to fulfillment. Discussing empathy, human connection, and the inner self, the author pushes readers to challenge negative beliefs and adopt positive practices that will enrich personal relationships and themselves. Commitment to healthy habits is emphasized as one of the most important ways to tackle anxiety. Pain and worry, El Zein explains, are often more comfortable to deal with than the change and work required to alleviate them permanently by digging deep into the soul for the foundation of the torments creating stress. The author references other thinkers and motivators, like Tony Robbins, and posits important principles, such as keeping the self in its “peak state” to achieve the best results. Commitment and fortification of goals are two mantras that ripple throughout the manual. In the later parts of the book, El Zein writes about confronting fear. She uses many famous figures as examples of people who overcame impairments and self-doubts in order to achieve their goals. From Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) to Tom Cruise, the author employs anecdotes about well-known celebrities to show that sometimes setbacks can become springboards to success. El Zein ends with healthy nutrition tips and thoughts about hydration, exercise, and body image. Cleverly describing her cerebral program as a “mental diet,” the author handles thought processes and beliefs in the same way that she deals with beneficial foods. By feeding themselves constructive, affirming thoughts rather than criticisms and qualms, readers will alter their present states, according to the author. Overall, the book is lucid, full of effective ideas, and refreshing in its approach to positive steps toward self-reinforcement and change.

A successful and readable wellness and self-improvement manual.