A very informative book on whats and how's of the playful mind a.k.a the mind we inhibat as a child. Its quite interesting to read and has been presented in a matter of fact style which could be quite boring for some readers who do not like one sided narration.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. I picked this title because of the title and my interest in the subject. I’ve never read on this topic before so I was quite intrigued. I liked how the author spent time in the beginning of the book to discuss the order of the novel and what was going to be discussed in each chapter. The wording was easy to understand and very direct, each chapter building on the previous.

This certainly wasn't an entertaining read (ironically) but it was informative. A lot of it is common sense but some is eye opening and revealing. A great book for adults.

Judging from the title of the book, I was hoping this book would be playful. Great information, but almost like reading a textbook. I felt it was definitely more analytical than playful, but that will be perfect for some people. I appreciate the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review.

The author introduces us to the playful mind, which is the childhood state of mind.

The playful mind is the optimal mental state for extracting happiness and satisfaction from each moment. It is through the playful mind that we experience happiness and satisfaction. As we got older, our ability to generate this playful mind became interfered with.

Paul Daniel shows us the sources of interference and the tools how to remove them so that it will become much easier for us to generate this playful mentality, even as an adult. Following this, it will be much easier for us to be consistently happy and satisfied. With the interference gone, we automatically become mentally receptive to engaging with the present. We reset our mental state to "original factory settings" and bring the playful mind to almost everything we do, even so-called routine and mundane things.

Our goal is to make our model of reality as consistent with our observed experiences as possible and extend the playful mind towards as many activities as possible.
It does not matter how many external things we attain; it doesn’t matter how rich and successful we are if we do not have a mentality that allows us to enjoy them.
When we change our internal mental state, we will find that we can be very happy without many of these external things. inside our mind is a doorway to happiness and a much larger range of satisfying feelings.

A useful book on how to reach internal happiness and satisfaction, be more playful, and above all know that only ourselves can experience this journey to a more mindful and beautiful life.

The content of the book is as I already said, useful and interesting, but the writing style itself is (again in my opinion) just dry and "non-reader friendly".


2,5/5