A quarter of young Australians say they are unhappy with their lives and almost half of all Australians will experience mental illness at some time in their life. Mental illness is running rife; teen suicide rates are far too high; people are chronically unhappy; and, depression is just a part of life sitting nicely next to stress, anxiety, worry and fear.
Evan Sutter, a young man who hopes to reinvent how we look at happiness, launches his new book titled "Solitude: How Doing Nothing Can Change the World" on September 18. How will three months living in a hut in the forests of a Buddhist Monastery affect him? How will it feel to see his brother, who is now a monk, for the first time in two years? See how one email from his brother leads Sutter, a lost young man, to fly across the world to Plum Village in Southern France. Life at the Monastery is the opposite of the life Sutter had been leading, a life laden with alcohol, drugs, women, technology and constant distractions. Sutter uses his solitude in Plum Village to analyse his history with sex and desire, alcohol and drugs, happiness, ego, envy and success, all the way providing simple to read and entertaining insights. Sutter blends western world issues with mindfulness-based practices to highlight areas that have caused suffering on personal and societal levels.Videos