Reading that book is a waste of time if you are a good person and you love yourself in a healthy way. People will recognize if your a good person and naturally gravitate toward you if you are a good person. I've been meditating recently again after battling sever depression and suicidal thoughts and really bad and intrusive thoughts in the past 8 months ever since I lost my last job but recently I discovered true happiness and self love for the first time ever. What helped me was this video ill post a link too below and basically looking at Buddahs quotes and really just meditating on his profound insights and truths. I basically realized that true happiness has some prerequisites that must be met along with understandings of some truth statements that literally is just that; they're true. The most important ones to understand is that we can be happy unless we truly love others and forgive everyone and everything for the things we've ever felt wronged about. How can you be happy if you wish another person pain or suffering out of resentment? You cant. It's impossible. Forgive everyone including yourself. Once you've done that and your sure you hold no ill will toward anyone or anything you begin to love yourself knowing that you wont allow yourself to feel pain again through hating others. You begin to trust yourself and feel good about yourself knowing you can be confident your a good person even if others don't recognize or see it. Next step to happiness is realizing what we've all heard before over and over again yet refuse to understand for some reason, and that's that happiness is internal and when we rely on external things to make us happy we wont ever be happy for long because you must keep seeking it. Be content and GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU DO HAVE and happiness is already in your possession. Buddah said there is no path to happiness because happiness is the path. The journey is the destination; meaning that the striving towards wanting to learn the lessons happiness brings and realizing the lessons were the endgoal the whole time are what happiness/destination is composed of. Stay aware of your thoughts constantly as bad thoughts or grey area thoughts creep up so subtly you hardly even realize it until just don't feel good anymore. Constant observation of your mind and what your thinking, is necessary to guiding your thoughts in a positive way and banishing your demons/ bad thoughts when they do creep up on you; and trust me they will its a constant grind. You are now in control with this knowledge and are able to observe and make the choice to no longer feel anger or hatred toward another person or situation because you now realize that by doing this your hurting only yourself. You begin to be on your own side now and root for yourself like a friend would which is what self love feels like in a healthy manner. If you truly love yourself you could never hurt another person or thing unless it's out of pure self defense or your protecting a loved one. Next is more on contentment: Don't rely on anything outside of you for happiness such as others approval, or drugs, or even alcohol (both of which I was heavily addicted too) because you might be happy but its fleeting and you feel like crap afterwards. So in short remember that all of us is family (literally because we all originated on earth) so love others and forgive them and never have the desire to harm; this brings peace, forgive and love yourself too knowing that with this love you wont ever put yourself in harms way again or feel anger again by always choosing to forgive, and finally be grateful you now understand these things and be content with what you already have (family, health, shelter, eyesight, mobility, food, our amazing planet which is miracle). Our fears and unhappiness all stem from desire, so meditate with the mindset that you don't want anything then you have nothing to lose. Once you've done these things you can feel truly happy as you wont care about needing to make friends or influence others because you are your own best friend. Others will see this and you'll make friends whether you like it or not because they know your not toxic but truly loving through the small details you'll now exude effortlessly. You cannot love yourself until you love others, and you cannot love others until you love yourself. These are simple truths that when understood bring sustainable happiness and you will feel so much gratitude and happiness you will maybe even cry, because it's what we've all been searching for all along we just couldn't put out finger on it and go about attaining it in the right way. I hope this helps some of you. I know this is long but honestly I tried to keep it short. Don't over complicate it and just know that if you truly wish good upon others you can find friends and happiness in conjunction with contentment and gratitude. I would say that 99% of Buddahs teachings are absolutely true, and that the enlightenment is knowing that the path is the grind and the grind and the lessons you get from the grind/effort is the destination from the valuable insights you understand. Check out the video I post below and while listening with headphones in lookup his quotes on happiness, beauty, and love. I love you all, like for reals.