BECOME WHO YOU ARE

Bush conducts an unusual, society-oriented examination of the roots of happiness in this nonfiction work.

Although his book concerns “the opposite of depression,” the author, a motivational speaker, stresses from the outset that this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s about eliminating sadness. Bush’s subject is a positive state, not the absence of a negative one; as he asserts, “It’s about striving for greatness, not recovering from an illness.” In searching for what the author refers to as a “grand, unified theory of happiness,” he proposes a new model of happiness itself. After noting that the realization of some long-held wish for sudden good fortune (winning the lottery, for example) often does not bring long-term happiness, Bush imagines a “z-axis” of virtue that complicates the usual spectrum of pain and pleasure—the z-axis is firmly rooted in the social elements of human nature. “Your actions must,” he contends, “exemplify traits that you value in others.” The author posits that “a good life is an admirable life.” Bush draws from a wide range of self-help and psychology authors as well as ancient and modern philosophers, and his book is attractively arranged and illustrated with graphs and flowcharts, but its core message is surprisingly simple: When the self one presents to the world is favorably aligned with one’s own values, one’s happiness increases. While he’s elaborating on this idea, Bush’s prose is always bracingly direct (“You don’t need meaning,” he writes; “You need virtue”). Some of his ideas might be controversial—the author tends to take motivational rather than medical stances on issues such as depression and autism, and his “z-axis” may resonate with monsters (“You should only care about social approval insofar as it reflects your own approval” sounds good on paper, but it’s also the life philosophy of sociopaths). Still, the bulk of the text has an energy that self-help readers will find invigorating.

A paradigm-challenging new look at real happiness.