Book Club Meets: Choose to be happy, with David Larbi

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is happiness to you? And do you think you deserve to be happy? Our Happy Place Book Club pick for January was Frequently Happy, by author and poet David Larbi. In his book, he combines poetry and journal prompts to help you find the glimmers in your lovely, ordinary life.

We’ll have objectively terrible days, and days that are clearly the best ever, but most days fall somewhere in between... In this chat with Fearne, David explains that while not every day is good, there’s something good in every day if you choose to look for it.

They also chat about how to stop falling back into negative thought patterns, and why the journal prompts in Frequently Happy could be helpful if you’re not sure where to start with acknowledging and getting clarity on how you feel.

Plus, there’s advice on how to move past your fear of criticism so you can share your creativity with the world, because ultimately you’ll never be able to please everyone anyway!

Listen to Book Club Meets: Dame Harriet Walter

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Listen to Book Club Meets: Gillian Anderson

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You used to hate the skin you're in and now you think it suits you.
0:06.5	Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me Fern Cotton.
0:09.7	The pain you thought you'd hold for life, replaced by things you're used to.
0:13.0	Today, frequently happy by David Larby.
0:16.0	Love, acceptance.
0:18.0	All those changes for the better they show in your eyes and the things you thought you'd hide for life, the people you have around you, they like.
0:24.6	They love you, the way you needed, and you hold it and you keep it close to heart.
0:29.6	The validation they provide is nothing next to what you now have inside.
0:33.6	It feels so precious you could weep. You almost pray before you sleep it doesn't disappear.
0:39.6	All your fears come crashing back, but I promise it's here to stay. Progress doesn't just go away.
0:45.8	You don't start from scratch, you start from more than you have ever known before. Now you've
0:50.3	turned your heart to song and you know the sky is exactly where you belong.
0:55.3	I believe in you.
1:00.1	What is happiness to you?
1:01.5	It's a huge question.
1:05.9	And it's when I obviously try to get closer to the answer to every week on this podcast.
1:12.4	For poet David Larby, it's about those small moments, the little glimmers in the day to day that when put together, build a whole beautiful life. His book, Frequently Happy, was our Happy Place
1:18.2	Book Club pick for January. Oh, this book is a ray of sunshine. There's poems in there. There's
1:24.4	just beautiful little thoughts. There's journal prompts in there. All with a
1:28.2	sprinkling of David's sunshiny personality, we love him. And I really enjoyed chatting to David.
1:35.3	He's just got the most peaceful energy, lovely calming voice. He could just sort of read me stories
1:42.0	at night and I would fall asleep in the kindest possible way. And it was really interesting to hear that he reckons we have more choice over how
	...

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