I really wanted to like this book. In fact, I tried to keep reading long after it was obvious that I did not like this book. Basically, the entire book boils down to "When you're miserable, stop being miserable": advice which is both aggravating and unhelpful. I'm not saying that Wakeman has had a lot of challenges in her life and that she didn't overcome them, but I do think that her approach has more to do with her make-up than any helpful advice. If you're a glass half-full kind of person, you may enjoy this. Otherwise, it will probably give you anxiety because, according to Wakeman, you're not doing the right things to be happy.

I liked this book and found myself drawn into the author's autobiographical stories sprinkled throughout this self-help book. Her main theme is about reframing thoughts and she gives many examples, including changing the words you choose to use ("and" instead of "or" to expand options and feel less stuck). I was moved by her chapters on death - and the stories she told about her best friend who recently died after a long battle with cancer - and about her divorces. If I had one wish, I would love the author to write a full memoir of her marriages - there was so much good stuff there - stories to tell, lessons learned.

In Life’s Messy, Live Happy, Cy Wakeman teaches readers how to find happiness and learning to be content no matter what we face in life. She explained how she had a messy life. She made some bad choices when she was in her 20s. She was dating the wrong type of guy. She got involved in drugs, alcohol, and wanted him to love her. In school, she was determined to get straight A’s and being the teacher’s pet and wanted to be perfect. He ended up cheating on her with her best friend and she struggled with leaving him. Each time he would become more demanding. A counselor ended up helping her on the road to recovery and she found healing.


She shared how her best friend died from stage four breast cancer. She met her at a Behavioral Health center and they became fast friends for over 30 years. She explained how they relied on gratitude and tried to focus on being present in the moment. She revealed key principles she used to create a gratitude practice. Some these included, “acknowledge impermanence, if not grateful for, then grateful while, develop mental flexibility, stay curious, just to name a few. She teaches readers how to learn to breathe, learning to feel your emotions, become generous, and asking questions.


One of the most powerful lessons in the book was the key word, “given”. This can assist us in reframe our thinking and our obstacles. It helped us to see the potential and to witness how it could be. We can stop focusing on why something can’t happen. This provide people a way to rethink about what they are thinking about and to see the possibilities. This will become a powerful tool for us to use to happily enjoy the moment.



In the book, she opened up about how she struggled in her marriage. She faced money problems when her consulting company went out of business. She lost lucrative contracts and should have written up cancellation policies. Her husband felt betrayed and her also invested in her dream. It led to conflicts in their marriage. After 23 years of marriage, he wanted to get a divorce. He almost died 5 years before that when he fell into a pool and hit his head and she saved him. He chose to leave her and his four sons. She explained her experiences with her two marriages. She also shared how her husband was also having multiple affairs. She revealed in the book how she dealt with the changes and how she found clarity.


I would recommend this impactful book to anyone who is seeking happiness and contentment and they are tired of feeling stressed out. I immensely loved how principles she enclosed in this book and how she was very open in sharing how she had to learn to happy going through difficult life changes. I liked how she explained how we can all learn to recover from self-abandonment and to give ourselves compassion and not be too hard on ourselves. She covered a wide range of topics and how she discovered her own happiness. Her story is a very relatable story for readers to connect with.





"I received this book free from the publisher, St. Martin’s Press for my honest review.”

Book received for free through NetGalley

Couldn't get into the book. That said it was written well from what I did read.

I am very up and down when it comes to personal development books, and unfortunately, this was a down. I don't think the book itself was bad. I think a lot of people will enjoy this one. The author does a great job taking us through her life and showing us why she is qualified to help us. The issue was that I couldn't get into the book. I couldn't stay interested and therefore ended up not finishing it. I would still recommend this book to readers who love personal development/self-help books.

Cy Wakeman takes us through various times in her life - how she got through, and what worked for her. Our lives are very different, and I found several nuggets that will be helpful references to me in the future. She has experienced highs and lows, and the extremes may not resonate with everyone as realistic - as a reader I took it mores as ideas we can apply as we see fit.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the ARC. #LifesMessyLiveHappy

DNF. Unfortunately, this was a book I started multiple times but could just not get into. I do read a lot of personal development books in general, and this one just felt a bit lacking in the nuances of daily life. I appreciate having the opportunity to read this book, it was just not a good fit for me as a reader. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my gifted review copy.

LIFE'S MESSY, LIVE HAPPY is the latest by Cy Wakeman, a leadership speaker and consultant who founded Reality-Based Leadership. As the subtitle notes, her key message is "Things Don't Have to Be Perfect for You to Be Content." She reflects on her experiences over the past several decades and in part one (Be Happy), emphasizes practicing gratitude and other steps like the power of "And." Part two is titled Evolve Yourself and stresses "more focus on self-care instead of constant attempts at self-soothing," with additional sections on "Feel All Your Feels" and Generosity. Love Wins is the title for part three where she shares thoughts about a Higher Power in a letter to her son, about death, and about loss. Sections of this book are very moving, but not really new ideas. Instead, Wakeman's text serves as a good reminder that "Every loss, every letting go, opened me up to something amazing. ... Happiness isn't about what's happening in your external life. It's about how you cultivate your internal life."

An Autobiographical Self Help Book

The title of this book says it all. Life isn’t perfect. If you focus on how terrible things are they won’t get better, and you will be miserable. In addition to giving ideas for how to move from focusing on the past and future and how your life is going wrong, the author offers suggestions on how to frame your thinking to move on and accept that things are not going to be perfect, but you can enjoy life anyway.

The first half of the book gives suggestions for how to reorient your thinking like keeping a gratitude journal and the power of ‘and’ rather than ‘or.’ I found the latter concept particularly helpful. When we see things only one way, using ‘or’, we see ourselves as victims of our circumstances. Using ‘and’ is more inclusive. Sure things seem terrible, but that’s not all that’s happening.

The second half of the book is based on the author’s personal experiences. Clearly she has had some difficult problems to deal with and has come out as a successful business person, mother, and author. I thought it was helpful to include autobiographical material to illustrate her philosophy, but I came away feeling that she wasn’t as happy as the title led me to expect.

This is a useful book. If you’re suffering with life’s issues you may find it helpful.

I received this book from St. Martin’s Press for this review.

This is half self-help and half autobiography. Cy Wakeman opens up to the reader about her life to show she knows how messy life is.

 Life’s Messy, Live Happy Cy Wakeman is about dramatically changing the level of happiness you feel in your daily life, by learning to disconnect happiness from external forces and stop worrying about the future. a business owner, mother, and community member Wakeman has lived her philosophy and achieved happiness in her messy life. Including daily practices and true stories, Wakeman is open about her life and shares it with the readers. This helps the reader understand how her philosophy came about and how it works.

I liked that there is no ignoring of pain and magical getting over trauma. Wakeman tells us how she slowly got through things in her life and shares those methods so we can do the same. She also reminds us trauma, pain, and sadness are a natural part of life, and you can not get rid of them completely. Instead, she deals with how one copes and builds on their experiences to be stronger and happier.

There are many helpful practices but the book is also an autobiography and I feel like it was more therapeutic for the author. Readers understand that she isn't some rich woman in a high rise looking down at them. Instead, they see that she had experienced the same things they have. Plus, it's nice to feel a part of Wakeman's healing.

This is a more “jolly” self-help. Wakeman takes darkness into light and encourages readers to do the same.

Wow! Y'all, I highly recommend this book. There were a ton of great insights and ways to help you out when times get tough. Excellent writing style and I really did enjoy how easy it was to understand and relate to what Cy was writing about. Definitely recommend for anyone!

This is a bit different self-help book and I like it. Rather than trying to make life less messy, Wakeman offers strategies to help us walk through the messiness of life more skillfully. She shares ideas and strategies she has developed through her own deeply personal work and her work with clients. She says the most important life lesson she has discovered is that you can be happy even when your life is a mess. (119/2702)

Some of Wakeman's ideas will be familiar to those who have read other self-help books. Keeping a gratitude journal, for example, is a well known beneficial habit. But Wakeman adds her unconventional wisdom to the practice. She writes about transcending duality, refusing to label experiences good or bad. She suggests rejoicing in all of each day and she provides thought provoking questions to go deep into reflection on daily events and actions.

I like her teaching on the philosophy of “and” rather than “or.” I really appreciate her teaching on fear (false events appear real) and reality. Her distinction between self-soothing and self-care is insightful. She gives us questions to ask about our motives for forgiveness, taking us through her own process. And that is just some of the wisdom she shares.

The second half of the book is more personal reflection, exploring thoughts and sharing her experiences on forgiveness, apology, making amends, death, self advocacy, wading into a mess deeply enough to get answers, and more.

This is a good self-help book, born out of Wakeman's experiences. She provides good teaching and practical suggestions for carrying out that teaching. This is a good book to read when life is a mess. You won't be given any promises that this book will cure the mess. Rather, you'll receive teaching born from experience on how to live best in that mess.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

I wanted to love this book, but I found it just ok. The author shares some useful tips for improving your mindset, but given the title of the book, I was disappointed that I didn’t sense much happiness from her. The book comes across as more memoir than self-help, and I didn’t resonate with the author as much as I would have liked. I do think she has learned from her mistakes, at least somewhat, but her assurances of how much she has learned and how peaceful, loving, and content she is now didn’t quite ring true. Perhaps it was just her writing style, but it seemed like she still has a lot of bitterness and resentment.

The author shared some instructive stories about gratitude, worthiness, and forgiveness, and I loved her story about making snow angels with her brother. While I didn’t love the book, I didn’t feel like I’d wasted time reading it.

I was provided an ARC through NetGalley that I volunteered to review.

I struggled to get through this book and ended up skimming towards the end. The book felt disorganized to me, and the author spent a lot of time going in depth on stories from her personal life that were just upsetting. Lots of mention of Covid and her divorce. A big section almost felt like bashing her siblings, and lots of time spent on a near-death experience that I couldn't see how it related to the rest of that chapter.
The book was not as straightforward and the personal stories were not "hilarious" as the description said. The little snippets of advice got buried and/or lost in the rest of this.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

First off I'm a speed reader but with this book I took my time to read - almost a month. It was worth the time to absorb her message and it came at the right time. Living in the present is hard to do and we all find ourselves beating ourselves up over the mistakes - large and small - that we have made. Cy Wakeman is no different and she shares her mistakes with the reader instead of tossing out sound bites. Because everyone's life is messy and we are able to change our perception - live in the moment and know that you are enough. After reading Life's Messy, Live Happy I came away with a lighter spirit and hope.
My thanks to the publisher, St. Martin's Press and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

The author of Life’s Messy Live Happy uses her own life experiences to show how reframing our self-talk will make us healthier and happier.

The book reads more like a memoir with some common pop psychology thrown in than a true step-by-step self-help guide. The author has gone through some stuff. I get it. Hasn’t everyone?

I’m not sure if blaming everything bad on someone else, as the author does, is necessarily the heathiest perspective. What if something you are doing is to blame? Wouldn’t it be better to recognize it and correct it than continuing to face pain again and again?

Overall, Life’s Messy Live Happy didn’t seem as well organized or useful as other self-help books I’ve read. 2 stars.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Eloquent and powerful, Cy Wakeman's LIFE'S MESSY, LIVE HAPPY floored me. From the first lines of her book, I was totally captivated by her frank words. I felt like I was talking with my own best friends, sharing the honest, scary, and exhilarating conversation that shifts my perspective in expansive, deepening ways. I am grateful that I read this book now and plan on asking the questions and adopting the philosophy of a happy life being that messy, wondrous chaos that is my everyday. I received an early copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

Life's Messy, Live Happy is about taking life in stride. Author Cy Wakeman shares many anecdotes from her life that have helped her face hardships and come out on the other side. I liked the focus on gratitude and generosity as well as identifying the simple things in life to be grounded in the moment and recognizing that nothing can change those facts.

I read a lot of non-fiction and, personally, the writing style did not resonate with me so much. Content wise, books like Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking by Jon Acuff and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson are powerful reads that cover some similar topics as this book, and align better with my personal taste, However, Life's Messy, Live Happy definitely has a place and time. It just wasn't for me.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

I almost put this book down soon after I started it. The author spends a lot of time in the beginning of the book telling the reader of her accomplishments and successes; it came across as very self-aggrandizing. and really got under my skin.

After deciding to give the author the benefit of the doubt (perhaps this was her way of saying even hugely successful people have messy lives), I read further. The more I read, I came to appreciate that she was showing herself in a very open and vulnerable way, detailing her failures and mistakes and sharing what she learned from them. This was true even when the story portrayed her in a very negative light. There's something about that "here I am, warts and all" honesty that must be admired.

Is this ground-breaking material? No. But I still found it to be worth the read.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press for allowing me access to an e-ARC of this book (scheduled for publication 3/29/22) via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

Learn how to view life differently to boost daily happiness, says author Cy Wakeman -- mother, business owner -- with examples from her own life. Let go of focusing on the past and the future and focus on today, she adds, while sharing helpful practices and real stories from others learning to be happy in their messy lives. I found this book to be incredibly helpful in my own efforts to life a more contented life, with gratitude underpinning it all. Out March 29.

Thanks to the author, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for the ARC. Opinions are mine.

#lifesmessylivehappy #cywakeman #stmartinspress #netgalley