In Discovering Happiness Again, Edward Zajac has written a book about finding genuine from inside and allowing it to freely flow out of you. We are constantly bombard with bad news and we struggle with anxiety. He shared in the book how when his mother, Marie was seventeen years old she was living in Bircza. They were devoted Christians and they lived near Jews. There was a spirit of anxiety and fear in the air. The Polish army was mobilized by Hitler and there was no place they could escape. The war was already around them. She also shared how her faith helped her and how Jesus’s love would drive away all of his fears. She would need her faith when the Nazi overtook their village. She witnessed the mayor being shot in the head because he refused to bow to the Germans. The army eventually took her away from her family. He shared his mother’s experience in working in the hard labor and living in the camp. She felt alone and depressed and God spoke to her during this time. He told her that she would live and this wouldn’t be the ending of her life. Sunrise is coming and His love will conquer the darkness. She shared how she was able to renew her mind with the word of God. The book walked readers through how to release their suppressed emotions with around 20 questions.


One of my favorite chapters was about unlocking your true value and overcoming self-doubt and low self-esteem. She explained the ways the Nazis would try and dehumanize them. They would treat them like animals and they wanted them to feel like they had no worth or value. She shared how maybe they did it because they would feel less guilty if they killed them if they treated them like an insect. The train ride began with no heat, no food, and they were overcrowded. If someone died on the ride to the camp, they would just dump them out in the snow. They would kill people in front of them and make them bury them. She explained how the ones who knew their value was harder to break down. They held on to peace even when faced with trauma. She also opened up tools and tips from her grandmother and our deepest needs and our self-worth. I really liked how this chapter discussed why people are judgmental and how they can choose to be mean to us and treat us poorly. Sometimes it can nothing to do with you at all. We can instead focus on only on having God’s approval.


I would recommend this awesome book to anyone who is wanting to discover true happiness. I liked how he chose to share a lot of his own mother’s story and her experience with surviving in a camp during Hillier’s rule. Her story was breathtaking and it was extremely touching to read how she survived depression and re-found her hope again. I loved how she explained how we can accept that we are wonderful just the way we are. She helped readers to learn to agree with what God says about us. It was inspiring to read about her whole story. The book also included questions at the end of each chapter.

The self help gurus tell us often enough that happiness is an inside job. But most of us have been raised to think that it is external circumstances that will determine how happy we are - or can be - with our circumstances.

In this book, by drawing on the experiences of a concentration camp survivor alongside more recent developments in science and psychology, the writer offers several strategies with which to change one's outlook - thereby also increasing one's chances of happiness.

The strategies outlined in this book come with a faith element that may not appeal to everyone, but for those open minded enough to approach it with curiosity rather than judgement, the book does have some useful tools to offer.

Putting the strategies into practice will require work, and changing the habits of a lifetime in some cases, but I am inclined to think that it will also produced results in terms of greater happiness. So if you are looking to become happier, I would suggest that you check this one out. It gets 3.5 stars.