10 Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness
by James Baraz
Recommended by Bill Gates and Melinda Gates
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See customer reviews on Amazon →Awakening Joy reads like a calm, teacherly meditation guide that hands you short, repeatable contemplative practices and gentle prompts rather than quick fixes. Most useful are the everyday exercises and steady encouragement that nudge attention and mood toward small, cumulative changes drawn from Buddhist framings. Limits: the voice is mildly didactic and examples repeat; readers seeking concise secular troubleshooting or brisk, varied hacks will find the pace plodding. Best absorbed slowly, with practice between chapters rather than as a single skim.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated June 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
Awakening Joy is more than just another book about happiness. More than simply offering suggested strategies to change our behavior, it uses timetested practices to train the mind to learn new ways of thinking. The principles of the course are universal, although much of the material includes Buddhist philosophy drawn from the author’s thirty year...
Difficulty:hard
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View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 3 sources and appears in Buddhism, Most Recommended Books, and Spirituality.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Bill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft; co-chair of the Gates Foundation
“Even if you don’t read many inspirational books, try this is one.”
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Consider Meditation in Action by Chogyam Trungpa. Recommended by 3 sources.
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
