Guest Author and Giveaway: Bryan Cohen

Bryan Cohen here, guest poster and author, promoting my new book The Post-College Guide to Happiness for The Happiness Blog Tour. I'm giving away free digital review copies of the book and doing a giveaway for paperback copies, audio copies and even a Kindle Fire! Read on and check out the info below the post.


“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

― Jonathan Safran Foer


I haven’t had it as rough as some people I know. Yes, I’ve had my heart broken and I’ve lost people I love, but I know many people who have doubled me in both respects. One of the common wishes for those who have been hurt so often is to try to shut down emotionally. They try to deaden themselves inside so that the painful things don’t feel quite as painful. The problem with this is that quieting the pain also quiets the potential joy as well.


I’m a very emotional guy and I always have been. For many years I was a fool who rushed in emotionally, which led me to many disappointments and I considered trying to shut myself down emotionally so I could lessen the frequent pain I felt. Sure, I was a little melodramatic and hormonal in my youth, which contributed to my limbic craziness, but I can’t even imagine what I’d be like today if I was able to create an emotional wall that nobody could penetrate.


I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much satisfaction from finding true love and I wouldn’t be able to express myself with such a wonderful partner. Finding my true life’s work in writing might have passed me by because I wouldn’t have been able to recognize how important the feelings of fulfillment were to me. I might not have felt fulfilled at all if I was as closed off as I wanted to be. In addition, the love I feel from helping someone to improve their writing or to create something of their own might have been cut in half. This is a feeling that keeps me going and productive and without it I might have given up on these pursuits long before I found success in them.


If I had crushed my ability to feel sadness, I might have never felt the large dose of happiness I feel today. I’m extremely fortunate to be able to feel these emotions so richly. If you have closed yourself off from pain, I realize that it’s very hard to open yourself back up again. If you don’t allow yourself to feel these emotions, however, you may never be able to experience true and complete happiness.

Bryan Cohen is giving away 61 paperback and audio copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness and a Kindle Fire between now and May 7th, 2012 on The Happiness Blog Tour. All entrants receive a free digital review copy of The Post-College Guide to Happiness. Bryan hopes to give away at least 1,000 copies during the blog tour. To enter, post a comment with your e-mail address or send an e-mail to postcollegehappiness (at) gmail.com. Bryan will draw the names at the end of the tour. Entries will be counted through Sunday, May 6th.


Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor and comedian from Dresher, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art and a minor in Creative Writing. He has written nine books including 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade, Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job and his new book, 1,000 Character Writing Prompts: Villains, Heroes and Hams for Scripts, Stories and More. His website Build Creative Writing Ideas helps over 25,000 visitors a month to push past writer's block and stay motivated.

Feel free to follow along with the tour at The Happiness Blog Tour Hub Page or on the book's Facebook Page.