Good news for Rabbi Zelig Pliskin’s thousands of devoted readers: his newest book, Life is Now, has just been released. One of the book’s chapters is titled “Joy Made Easy.” During a recent conversation with Rabbi Pliskin I saw how true those words are. It’s easy to be joyful when you’re talking to this warm, effervescent and ultra-positive personality, author of many bestselling ArtScroll books. Some highlights of the conversation:
On happiness: “People think it’s so hard to be happy. I lead a ‘Joy Club’ in Jerusalem. We meet once a month to talk about happiness, gratitude, kindness. At one of the meetings, someone asked: what happens, a person just lost his job – how can he be happy? The idea is — we’re always in the present moment, and in this moment we can create a moment of joy, whatever the circumstances. In other words, focus on the present – and find the happiness that is in the here and now.”
On his new book, Life is Now: “This is a very important book. It’s teaching the skill of learning joy: to live in the present. Most distress comes from excessive and unnecessary focusing on the past and/or unnecessary and unproductive focusing on what might go wrong in the future. What we’re looking for is a wise balance between past, present, and future.”
On how to be happy: “Life is Now takes the reader through a ‘self-creation workshop.’ We examine the key elements that create us: our self-talk, our self-image, our goals, and our ‘traits & states.’ We see the ten biochemical changes that take place when we feel happy. One chapter is devoted to how to start your own ‘happiness club,’ giving the 9 principles a ‘happiness coach’ must learn to follow. The book gives us practical strategies to help us create a moment of joy right now, things like taking a ‘joy walk’ or even baking ‘joy cookies.’ They sound like small things, but that moment of joy can change our lives.”
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