Our last spiritual book review covered something you can do every day in order to make a difference in the world. Today I’d like to share another simple but meaningful edition that offers another daily dose of spirituality and simplicity.

365 Ways to Live a Simple and Spiritual Life by Madonna Gauding provides a daily dose of a broad range of spirituality. Gauding shares that this book depicts her own spiritual journey, and covers a wide range of topics, from spirituality to a healthy home environment, debt reduction to alternative gift-giving, preventative health care to free (or nearly so) entertainment. Gauding says of our hectic world, “Somewhere along the line we have confused standard of living with quality of life. And clearly they are not the same.”

The author admits that the path toward a spiritual and balanced existence is a unique one to each individual, yet the suggestions in the book can help each reader to start their own path, and perhaps begin to take a few steps down it.

Gauding suggests that the reader skip around, using the pages that call to you—though you absolutely could proceed in chronological order. She also recommends recording the actions taken in a journal to monitor your progress and see how far you’ve come. Particularly important, she says, are your overall well-being and sense of happiness, which can be assessed through the journal. Finally, she suggests taking part in a support group, and reminds us that we are all “works in progress.”

Gauding’s book is quite simple in and of itself—the illustrations are nice and the suggested actions are definitely valid ones that any person could undertake for the most part; however, most of them are pretty basic things that many people already do, or already know how to do; and for the people that don’t, few instructions are provided.

For example, “Turn off the TV” and “Eat in” are pretty self-explanatory, but things like “Be a good leader” and “Love the body you have” are pretty vague; there is simply not enough room in the book to allocate enough pages to fully give descriptions to these tasks, which could be expressed in numerous volumes on their own—as becoming a leader and learning to love your body can be lengthy processes for many people. This has the potential to complicate, rather than simplify, a person’s life—which was supposed to be the intention to begin with.

Overall it’s a very peaceful book with plenty of ideas to get started with, but by no means an exhaustive path toward spiritual enlightenment. As the author says, you can pick it up to begin the steps on your journey—then follow through with your own personal path after you begin.