Stumbling on Happiness

Author: Daniel Gilbert
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307371360
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

Author: Fumio Sasaki
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393609049
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
The best-selling phenomenon from Japan that shows us a minimalist life is a happy life. Fumio Sasaki is not an enlightened minimalism expert or organizing guru like Marie Kondo—he’s just a regular guy who was stressed out and constantly comparing himself to others, until one day he decided to change his life by saying goodbye to everything he didn’t absolutely need. The effects were remarkable: Sasaki gained true freedom, new focus, and a real sense of gratitude for everything around him. In Goodbye, Things Sasaki modestly shares his personal minimalist experience, offering specific tips on the minimizing process and revealing how the new minimalist movement can not only transform your space but truly enrich your life. The benefits of a minimalist life can be realized by anyone, and Sasaki’s humble vision of true happiness will open your eyes to minimalism’s potential.

Happy Money

Author: Elizabeth Dunn
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476740704
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
If you think money can’t buy happiness, you’re not spending it right. Two rising stars in behavioral science explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow five core principles of smarter spending. If you think money can’t buy happiness, you’re not spending it right. Two rising stars in behavioral science explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow five core principles of smarter spending. Happy Money offers a tour of new research on the science of spending. Most people recognize that they need professional advice on how to earn, save, and invest their money. When it comes to spending that money, most people just follow their intuitions. But scientific research shows that those intuitions are often wrong. Happy Money explains why you can get more happiness for your money by following five principles, from choosing experiences over stuff to spending money on others. And the five principles can be used not only by individuals but by companies seeking to create happier employees and provide “happier products” to their customers. Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton show how companies from Google to Pepsi to Crate & Barrel have put these ideas into action. Along the way, the authors describe new research that reveals that luxury cars often provide no more pleasure than economy models, that commercials can actually enhance the enjoyment of watching television, and that residents of many cities frequently miss out on inexpensive pleasures in their hometowns. By the end of this book, readers will ask themselves one simple question whenever they reach for their wallets: Am I getting the biggest happiness bang for my buck?

Stumbling on Happiness

Author: Daniel Gilbert
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307265307
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Bringing to life scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, this witty, accessible book reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. • Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? • Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? • Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? • Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it? In this brilliant book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.

Stumbling on Happiness

Author: Daniel Todd Gilbert
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 9780676978575
Category : Happiness
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? Why do patients remember long medical procedures as less painful than short ones? Why do home sellers demand prices they wouldn't dream of paying if they were home buyers? Why does the line at the grocery store always slow down when we join it? In this book, Harvard psychologist Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. Using the latest research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what we have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there, and why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.--From publisher description.

On Happiness

Author: Camilla Nelson
Publisher: Apollo Books
ISBN: 9781742586076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
What is happiness, and how does the pursuit of happiness shape our lives? Happiness appears to be a simple emotion, individual and pleasurable, yet the problems associated with happiness in politics, economics, and philosophy suggest that it is perhaps more complex and paradoxical than we first thought. This eclectic collection of essays interrogates the 'common sense' understanding of happiness in the West and examines the strategies devised to obtain it. Without disposing of the concept altogether, the book rediscovers the latent aspects of this pervasive (and elusive) phenomenon. Ultimately, it concludes that our current notions of happiness may in fact be the very cause of our discontent. On Happiness offers readers a spectrum of critical reflections and 'rethinks' of this ubiquitous cultural obsession. *** Librarians: ebook available on ProQuest and EBSCO [Subject: Philosophy, Sociology, Popular Culture]

Self-Help That Works

Author: John C. Norcross Ph.D.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199333645
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 611

Book Description
Self-help is big business, but alas, not always a scientific one. Self-help books, websites, and movies abound and are important sources of psychological advice for millions of Americans. But how can you sift through them to find the ones that work? Self-Help That Works is an indispensable guide that enables readers to identify effective self-help materials and distinguish them from those that are potentially misleading or even harmful. Six scientist-practitioners bring careful research, expertise, and a dozen national studies to the task of choosing and recommending self-help resources. Designed for both laypersons and mental-health professionals, this book critically reviews multiple types of self-help resources, from books and autobiographies to films, online programs, support groups, and websites, for 41 different behavioral disorders and life challenges. The revised edition of this award-winning book now features online self-help resources, expanded content, and new chapters focusing on autism, bullying, chronic pain, GLB issues, happiness, and nonchemical addictions. Each chapter updates the self-help resources launched since the previous edition and expands the material. The final chapters provide key strategies for consumers evaluating self-help as well as for professionals integrating self-help into treatment. All told, this updated edition of Self-Help that Works evaluates more than 2,000 self-help resources and brings together the collective wisdom of nearly 5,000 mental health professionals. Whether seeking self-help for yourself, loved ones, or patients, this is the go-to, research-based guide with the best advice on what works.

The Illusion of Well-Being

Author: Mark D. White
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137361158
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
The use of measures of economic output to guide policymaking has been criticized for decades because of their weak ties to human well-being. Recently, many scholars and politicians have called for measures of happiness or subjective well-being to be used to guide policy in people's true interests. In The Illusion of Well-Being, Mark D. White explains why using happiness as a tool for policymaking is misguided and unethical. Happiness is too vague a term to define, and too general a concept, to measure in a way that captures people's true feelings. He extends this critique to well-being in general and concludes that no measure of well-being can do justice to people's true interests, which are complex, multifaceted, and subjective. White suggests instead that policymaking be conducted according to respect and responsiveness, promoting the true interests of citizens while addressing their real needs, and devoting government resources to where they can do the most good.

Daydreams at Work

Author: Amy Fries
Publisher: Capital Books
ISBN: 9781933102696
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
*** Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards Self-Help Category for 2010! ***

J.M. Coetzee and Neoliberal Culture

Author: Andrew Gibson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192599798
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
This book presents J. M. Coetzee's work as a complex, nuanced counterblast to contemporary, global, neoliberal economics and its societies. Not surprisingly, given his many years in South Africa and Australia, Coetzee writes from a `global-Southern' perspective. Drawing on a wealth of literature, philosophy, and theory, the book reads Coetzee's writings as a discreet, oblique but devastating engagement with neoliberal presumptions. It identifies and focuses on various key features of neoliberal culture: its obsession with self-enrichment, mastery, growth; its belief in plenitude, endless resources; its hubris and obsession with (self)-promotion; its desire for ease and easiness, `well-being', euphoria; its fetishization of managerial reason and the culture of security; its unrelenting positivity, its belief in illusory goods and trivial progressivisms. By contrast, Coetzee's writings explore the virtues of irony and self-reduction. He commits himself to difficulty, discomfort, patient and austere, if bleak, inquiry, rigorous questioning, and radical doubt. Destitution and failure come to look like a serious, dignified form of life and thought. The very tones of Coetzee's books run counter to those of our neoliberal democracies. They point in a different direction to an age that has gone astray.