I agree with all the other one star reviews. Can't figure out how he got so many positive reviews. One or two interesting tidbits like the information about the Siamese twins, Lora and Reba Schappel who are happy with their lives even though conjoined, and the card trick on pp. 44 & 49 but one has to plow through so many pages of verbiage and unfunny "humor" to get to the few goodies that it's not worth it - life is too short. Malcolm Gladwell's books in a similar vein are more interesting.

Gilbert notes that the frontal lobe evolved in order to control the environment in our quest for safety and pleasure (avoid/approach reactions). It does so largely by trying to predict the future. Unfortunately, we often stumble because our predictions are so often based on poor information gleaned from our past and present experiences through the filter of our inaccurate memories. In other words, we tend to repeat false assumptions and often poor decisions when predicting our futures so that when we do actually find happiness, it is often stumbled upon rather than planned.

As Gilbert says, "In order to have a smooth rational-seeming reality, we fill in what we don't know with details that are often wrong and leaving out details that are actually important if we realize them. And we do this seamlessly and largely unconsciously." "We tend to accept the brain's products uncritically and expect the future to unfold with the details- and only with the details- that the brain has imagined" He further states, "What we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what's happening in the present and we predictably underestimate how different we will feel in the future."

Inaccurate predictions begets poor decision-making which often leads to an unhappy state. We then tend to rationalize our unhappy outcomes to make them more acceptable to ourselves which means we are likely to make the same choices in the future.


Any resultant feelings of inadequacy and lower self-worth can lead to even further repetition of poor choices. When in the discontented state, the mind seeks more stability and control. But what does it do? It rationalizes and continues to base its predictions on information from an often inaccurate and unstable past and present and fails to learn from experience.

For example, if you feel inadequate and odd in the sense you don't feel you fit in, you may seek out and depend on others that you see as being similarly inadequate or odd- the very people, if you do depend on them, that are most apt to reinforce your feelings of inadequacy rather than help give you the stability and centeredness that you seek.

Thus, the vicious circle continues as one clings to ones old ways...

So, in the search for stability one may cling to the tottering present in order to seek peace and happiness, but the result is most often a repetition of the past. The myth of Sisyphis comes to mind as one pictures the endless attempts to perform an impossible task such as rolling a boulder part way up a hill that is too heavy to reach the top and doing it over and over again...

But is it impossible to overcome the tendency to embrace failed thoughts and actions so that at least we stumble less and are happier with our lives?

Of course and careful observation of others who have found happiness is one recommendation.

.

This book is fabulous. As much as the content informs on the human condition, the frolicking experience of reading it reinforces it. Makes me glad to be human. Highly recommended!
- kara

I bought this book because I wanted to know how I could become happy. However, this book turned out to be a long list of psychological experiments that proved how badly human imagination and memories are flawed and follible. Yet the author concludes that nothing is better than our imagination and memories to depend on to predict our future happiness.

Daniel Gilbert takes us through the elusive study of happiness in three phases.

1) He convinces the reader how nearly impossible it is to measure happiness, along with all the falicies of attempts to measure it. He concludes "The best you can do is ask someone how they're feeling at any given moment"

2) He shows many problems with individuals predicting happiness. We tend to overestimate how much we enjoy things, and how long the happiness lasts, as well as overestimating pain from negative occurances. He shows why this happens (one reason is too much focus on recent events) as well as how our memory fails us similar to imagination.

3) He closes with a tentative recommendation on what to do - in general it is not good to ask for advice, but it is relatively reliable to ask people how they are feeling at any given point in time.

The subject is soft and squishy, but Daniel Ong manages to create a book that is readable, enjoyable, and even useful. Well done, and well worth the time!

Excellent book!good quality!absolutely no difference with a new one.shipped on time to my house.its just so wonderful

This is a brilliant book by a writer who also happens to have an exceptional wit. For those few negative reviews (and for everyone else) I strongly recommend the unabridged audio book. Listening to Professor Gilbert read his own work is a "happy" experience. It's the best college lecture you'll ever hear.

This is a great fun book, and a thorough study on human behavior. Among many of the wonderful discoveries of the author regarding how we experience happiness, I was particularly taken by his remarks on emotional experiences (feelings) based on present information and emotional experiences originated in memory (pre-feelings) and how the mind without awareness is able to mix them up and is not able to differentiate them and bring them to the present. What an eye-opener, and that is only 1 example, the book is filled with great insights.

The moments of awareness I had while reading his book reminded me of two of my favorite authors Ariel and Shya Kane whose books on living in the present Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: A Book About Instantaneous Transformation Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment are excellent guides to experience well-being now regardless of the past and therefore transform an ordinary life into a full vibrant life with awareness. They masterfully support people into staying with what is moment to moment, which in turn eliminates stress and opens a universe of possibilities.

I highly recommend both Gilbert and the Kanes!

Reading this book was like listening in on a rhetorical conversation that started with 'Isn't it weird how we always think....blah'
I decided that this book has the knowledge equivalent of a conversation you would have with good friends over a bottle of wine, except you have to read this one.
Sorry, but I found myself wanting to hurry through this book looking for some gripping anecdotes or new insights. I think this book marks the official end of the whole 'Tipping Point', 'Blink' and 'Freakonomics' movement. It's all been done to death and now this book is giving the academic treatment to things that we all realize ourselves, but still do.
I appreciate the author's effort but I was underwhelmed.

The book wasn't exactly what I thought it would be like but I still enjoyed it. There were a lot of examples of human behavior studies which I found very interesting . . . but I am not sure exactly how it all applied to happiness.

Ever said to yourself that if something happened you'd be devastated? Whether its you or a loved one getting cancer, or becoming paralyzed or going bankrupt or anything else that you think would strip you of your happiness you might want to think again.

Gilbert, a Harvard professor, examines how unable we are to predict our emotions, and presents a book that will surely help you control your happiness levels and maybe even have a better outlook on life, even when the bad happens.

Dan Gilbert provides a fun, informative, and intriguing read in "Stumbling on Happiness." He uses anecdotes, research studies, visuals, charts, analysis, and humor to enlighten and entertain the reader about this common yet misunderstood phenomenon called....happiness. Most of us want it, strive to attain it, compare our current state of happiness with the past, and hope for it in the future.

Happiness: so....what is it? What IS happiness? How do we define it? Achieve it? And perhaps more importantly, perceive it? We humans often fool ourselves into thinking some "thing" or set of "circumstances" will passively allow us to achieve this state, that we label as happiness. But what makes this book so worthy is that it's not a "how to find happiness" book.


Part I: Prospection.

"The act of looking forward in time or considering the future."

Alas, this seems to be the foundation of this thing called "Happiness," and more significantly what we *think* will make us happy in the *future.*

Which leads to ---> THE CONCEPT OF "THE LATER:"

One significant thing that differentiates humans from the animal world is the concept of the future. The "Later." Part of this evolutionary concept in how it related to happiness is that we expect the next car, next house, next girlfriend/boyfriend or next promotion to make us happy, even though the last time we got these things we didn't didn't get "happy" for more than a very brief period of time. Studies conclude this. And this, according to Gilbert, is why there are "plenty of mistakes that we highly experienced folks, seem to make over and over again" (p. 217, Chapter 10).

The biological aspect of the future, or the "later," is a very recent concept in human evolution. Human brains appeared on Earth 500 million years ago, but the ability to think of "later" came approximately 3 million years ago. This is when the frontal lobe of the proto-humans expanded and grew in size and the entire brain got bigger and heavier.

Many things elucidated in this book are concepts we implicitly know, but Gilbert provides more details and empirical numbers for us. Wonderful things are especially wonderful at first when they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. Psychologists call this "habituation." Economists call it "Marginal Utility" (p. 143-144).


OUR RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PAST:

Our Recollections of the Past: "The tendency to recall and rely on unusual instances is one of the reasons we so often repeat mistakes" (p. 221). It reminds me of Pavlov's dogs: We try to repeat those experiences that we remember with pleasure and pride, and we try to avoid repeating those that we remember with embarrassment and regret. The trouble is that we often don't remember these past experiences correctly. Our "feelings" about some event in the past is one of the brain's most sophisticated illusions (p. 217).

Gilbert states that there are three related concepts: emotional happiness, moral happiness, and judgmental happiness. Emotional happiness is the most basic.

I focused on Prospection, part one, the "future" part, but the rest of the book is also equally fun and informative.

Additional parts of the book that are relevant, but won't be noted because there isn't enough space:

Part II: Subjectivity
Part III: Realism
Part IV: Presentism
Part V: Rationalization

Dan Gilbert has a knack for entertaining and enjoyable writing. This book is not about what it takes to be "happy" but is about human concept of happiness. It's not a "how to be happy" book, thankfully. But the principles can be applied to you, individually. Enjoy the book - and your life.

The book is witty, interesting, and an overall fun read. It takes a more-or-less scientific approach towards how the brain perceives its current reality, how and of what it constructs memories, and how it attempts to construct possible futures. Throughout the book, Gilbert references scientific studies that appear to support his hypotheses.

The book gave many opportunities for introspection, was easy to make relevant to my own life, and gave me some useful ideas for dealing with other people. It's less prescriptive, as other reviewers note, but it does a good job of being descriptive: why is a person happy or unhappy? Just knowing the answer to that question opens a lot of good doors when dealing with a spouse, child, parent, colleague, or friend. Know why they are sad, why they are happy, with different events.

You see? It's not my fault I can't remember our first dance...I just remember that I LIKED it!

I'd recommend the book. Best if you can share the anecdotes with someone!

I was not very impressed.
I had to force myself to read the second part since I lost much of interest.
Author's inclination to try to be funny and insert lame jokes everywhere became a turn-off.
This book is overrated.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert opens a view of happiness that is not in the normal range. Anticipation, imagination and rationalization are each responsible for much of our happiness. Mr. Gilbert disects the reasons we are happy, the times we are happy, and how we visualize our happiness. Great book - makes a person think about what they really have, want to have or don't really need.
Prudent Pam

Of the many books that I have on my shelves, this one is in heavy rotation. I have read it twice in the past 18 months and referred to it countless times in between. Dan Gilbert's writing style keeps you engaged with humor and relevant stories without skimping on too much substance. Put it this way, you'll laugh but still will respect yourself when you're done!

Gave it a 3 as it seems to have good ideas. Can't get through it though. Every damn sentence has a joke or parenthetical cute remark. Blech.

Although peppered with a few interesting points, the author never draws a conclusion or tells us anything truly useful. He seems more interesting in demonstrating his wit to the reader than writing a useful book.

I bought the book after glancing through a few random pages. Any given part of the book makes for an interesting read, but the book in its entirety leaves an empty feeling.

It is with great pleasure that I offer my highest recommendation for Stumbling on Happiness. I was impressed with the engaging style and humor with which Dan Gilbert explores the topic of happiness. Though most people spend their lives in blind pursuit of it, very few ever come to fully understand what happiness truly is and even fewer are fortunate enough to recognize and appreciate the experience of happiness as it occurs.

This book will not make you very happy. As a matter of fact, it will systematically challenge beliefs about the concept of happiness that you may not have ever known you even had in the first place.

What this book may do for you is what it did for me, which was to provide me with an opportunity to look at happiness through a more enlightened set of eyes. It was this very process that allowed me to gain a better idea of what happiness isn't and in turn, to develop a more solid understanding of what happiness means to me.

I particularly enjoyed Daniel Gilbert's use of hypothetical scenarios to illustrate his points. There were many of these theoretical situations that I could easily relate to and which helped to shed light on things I had never really understood, like why I always seem to feel more enthusiastic about going to a social event when I make the commitment to attend than I do when the time to fulfill that commitment actually arrives.

Readers who approach Stumbling on Happiness with an open mind will likely stumble upon a more realistic understanding of what it means to be truly happy but will ultimately have to define happiness on their own terms.

This is an awesome book written with no little wit and incredible insight. It's like Blink but with humor.

If you want to know why you make bad decisions, why you think like you do and why having kids isn't what it's cracked up to be, you need to check this out.

I have to admit I've really struggled to finish this book...in fact after many attempts, I've barely made it through half. The book is a bit trite and was not intriguing enough to hold my attention!

When you're deciding about what will make you happy in the future, do you think about things you enjoyed in the past? Do you imagine yourself in the future to imagine how you would feel? If you answer yes to these types of questions, Gilbert's book presents some interesting perspectives that will probably make you think twice about doing it again. For example, he discusses how (from a very scientific point of view) our imaginations fool us by doing things like imposing how we feel today on how we think we'll feel in the future. While he makes great points about how the way people predict what will make them happy is inherently flawed, I thought he fell a bit short in suggesting alternative ways to make predictions. While it's helpful to know that people who take risks are happier in the long run, I'm still not willing to risk jumping off a cliff in the hope I can actually fly.

Are you a tremulous bride on your wedding day? You have been looking forward to this day as the 'best day of your life' but are now a nervous wreck.

Have you just gotten the long-awaited promotion and are now overwhelmed with stress and maybe even regret?

Are you a new parent, stressed out by the burden of responsibility and lack of sleep and feeling guilty for not being ecstatically happy all the time?

Then, Daniel Gilbert's book is for you. In finely crafted and precise prose, the author describes the pitfals of 'Great Expectations'. Things that we most look forward to are often not quite as attractive when we get to experience them first-hand.

So, is there a way to predict our satisfaction with something that is touted as end-all and be-all? Yes, carefully watch the ones already there.

Maybe death is so scary to us because the first hand 'experiencers' are a bit hard to get a hold of...

The author is very straightforward ". . . this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy." Rather, he attempts to explain how our minds function. He shows us how we could do a better job of predicting future happiness and explains why we don't use that ability. All in all it is an excellent work, well written and easy to read, and will leave you with a better understanding of yourself and the people around you. If this subject interests you I strongly recommendThe Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom and best of all Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

I was expecting a Malcolmn Gladwell type of book where interesting ideas are backed with solid evidence but more importantly narrated in an engaging way. Unfortunately, this book did not have anything I didn't know and the author's style was repetitive and boring, definitely not like Gladwell's. If you want an easy read with somewhat interesting topics, go for it but otherwise it's quite forgettable.

I loved Dan Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness. With a great sense of humor, Gilbert presents interesting studies and tests to explain why humans have difficulty determining what will make them happy. Gilbert's writing style kept me engaged throughout the entire book. His work brought clarity to my prior views on happiness, and provided me with keen insight into the function of the human mind. I especially enjoyed Gilbert confronting the reader with seemingly impossible scenarios, which challenge preconceived notions on happiness. For example, how can lottery winners and paraplegics have the same level of happiness one year after winning the lottery, or one year after the loss of one's legs?

While reading Stumbling on Happiness, I was reminded of two of my favorite books by Ariel and Shya Kane: Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment and Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: A Book About Instantaneous Transformation. In Working on Yourself Doesn't Work, the Kanes assert that satisfaction, or well-being, is not dependent on the circumstances of one's life. Gilbert, in Stumbling on Happiness, lends support for the Kanes's view, by demonstrating that people are often very inaccurate when predicting their levels of happiness if certain circumstances were to occur. I recommend Stumbling on Happiness, Being Here, and Working on Yourself Doesn't Work, to anyone who is interested in discovering the human condition and how it relates to happiness, satisfaction and well-being.

I listened to this audiobook during my daily commute. Daniel Gilbert's main idea in Stumbling on Happiness is that we're very bad at predicting what will make us happy. This meshed very well with the ideas in The Black Swan, which postulates that we're bad at predicting everything.

Gilbert makes a good and thorough argument for his idea, and he manages to be fairly funny in the process. I particularly liked a section in the beginning of the book where he compares our future selves to our children looking back and resenting the old-fashioned choices we're making for them for their own good.

The book fizzles toward the end, as many books built around a single, interesting idea tend to do. I very much liked that this was not a self-help book. Gilbert explores what happiness really means and why we fail to find it, but leaves it up to us to figure out how to be happier.

Recommended, especially as an audiobook.

My psych degree condensed into the interesting parts.

Must read for all.

you will not be disappointed

It's rare that I have time to read non-text books and I'm glad I prioritized this one. It "dumbs" down years of science and makes it easy for laypeople to understand but gives a lot of insight into human behavior. Very entertaining and well-written-- a great "plane" book. I highly recommend Stumbling on Happiness.

What a delightful read! The title didn't endear much but on glancing into the book in the bookshop it seemed a) readable and b) well-informed. The investment paid off and this is one I'll be offering to others to read. This Harvard professor of psychology writes well and has written about the nature of the human mind and social practices that flows easily for the non-expert. There were laugh out loud moments on several occasions - it isn't dry and dusty academic-speak by any stretch.

Imagination (with regard to retrospection and future estimation) certainly plays some funny tricks on the mind, as does comparative decision-making. Near the end the discussion finishes on how humans are best positioned to adjudge their futures (and discern how to make themselves happy). Gilbert concludes with these observations:

"Most of us make at least three important decisions in our lives: where to live, what to do and with who to do it. We choose our towns and our neighbourhoods, we choose our jobs and our hobbies, we choose our spouses and our friends. Making these decisions is such a natural part of adulthood that it is easy to forget that we are among the first human beings to make them. For most of recorded history, people lived where they were born, did what their parents had done and associated with those who were doing the same. Millers milled, Smiths smithed, and little Smiths and little Millers married whom and when they were told. Social structures (such as religions and castes) and physical structures (such as mountains and oceans) were the great dictators that determined how, where and with whom people would spend their lives, which left most people with little to decide for themselves. But the agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions changed all that, and the resulting explosion of personal liberty has created a bewildering array of options, alternatives, choices and decisions that our ancestors never faced. For the very first time, our happiness is in our hands." (p235)

It would be interesting to have Gilbert extend this discussion past where the book ends and learn more about how these seemingly counter-intuitive means to guide lives in satisfying directions can be demonstrated. He makes references to evolutionary, economic and social theories. It would be interesting if he reached further into these subject areas to permit reflection upon about what is happening with all this choice. Are people really that bewildered with choice? Do people now expect choice? What happens when choices (previously enjoyed) are taken away? Is there a difference in the way different generations approach all this choice?

I absolutely LOVED this book and intend read it a second and perhaps even a third time.

I literally stumbled on this book since a friend had received it as a gift but was turned off by the title and passed it on to me without giving it a chance. That was her loss and my gain. I found reading this book to be a real treat. My hectic schedule was the only thing that kept me from finishing it in one sitting.

Having read some of the reviews, I must disagree with the nay sayers. I enjoyed the references to psychological experiments and found that they supported the author's position well. Also, I found his humor to be very entertaining. It kept me giggling if not laughing out loud throughout the book.

If you are looking for a self-help book that will lead you right to happiness and provide you with all of the answers to life's most mysterious questions then this is NOT the book for you.

But if you are looking for an extremely well-written, engaging, humorous and thought-provoking compilation of insights about how our minds work then this book should be at the top of your wish list.

Had I known that the author would make vague presumptions about topics that I have experience with, I really wouldn't have bothered. Malcolm Gladwell must have received a nice sized check for his promotion of this book because it doesn't rise to his level of understanding. Poorly written which makes for a difficult read. The author probably thought we could read his thoughts and figure out what he was trying to say. This book needed a full-blown revision before it went to print, an editor who checked his facts, and real research. The author takes his research from others and makes it his own. [..] So, here we go.... The human being is the only animal that thinks it can write a book without an editor, with the research of others, and can scam the public with a high profile review. If you absolutely have to waste your time, buy a used one and read it only at night. It'll help you fall asleep.

Psychology experiments have a problem with the general public. The choices thrust upon the subjects are oddly specific and usually sealed from what passes as "normal life". Nevertheless, psychologists' great ambition are to draw conclusions about the mental operations of species. But, by the time you've plowed through those sterile explanations of how people have been lied to and endlessly polled, you wonder how many of the experimenters require body guards to get home.

I read Daniel Gilbert's book because of the blurb by Malcolm Gladwell on the cover. Gladwell has a knack for writing about human motivation in a compelling fashion. (The Tipping Point is a master work.) I wish I could say Stumbling on Happiness was in the same vein. Daniel Gilbert deconstructs humanity with considerable wit and grace. I enjoyed reading the narrative, but was pretty much underwhelmed by its significance. It's not that I expected a self-help book, but I hoped for more than the modest collection of proclivities and ill-advised assumptions that inhabit our condition. Psych majors will relish it. I was hoping for a little more.

This is my first review, motivated by my disappointment and irritation with the reviewers who led me to waste my time and money on this book! The other Amazon "one star" reviewers have covered the problems.

First off, as has been stated, this is not a self help book, or a book that will show you how to be happy, or become happier with your life. Rather, it looks at how we predict we will be happy, and how bad we are at it. Mr. Gilbert does a great job of making his points, and helps to show how bad the human mind is in predicting what will make us happy. In doing this, he also speaks of imagination, memory, and how both of those work. This is a great book, full of info not only about the main subject of predicting the future, but memory and imagination as well.

This book was engagingly and wittily written and presented a thesis on how bad we are at predicting how happy we will be and remembering how happy we once were. The author presents lots of studies (and anecdotes, too) to back up this thesis, providing lots of food for thought. I learned a lot about how our brain processes things, from perception to memory to imagination. I was also amazed at how much research is done in this area!

As others have pointed out, this is not a self-help book, but I do think it is helpful. I'm not sure I agree fully with the one piece of advice given (namely, that the only way to predict how happy you'll be in a given situation is to ask someone else how he feels as he's going through the situation). It does make sense (and as another reviewer pointed out, that's what you're doing right now in reading my review), but doesn't it also make sense that if you know how your brain misrepresents your future and past emotions, you can reason your way past some of the mistakes your brain makes? Also, if we remember past things as being nicer than they were and imagine the future as rosier than it will be, what's wrong with that? Doesn't that still contribute to present happiness? And what about trying to experience the present moment more fully? I've found my happiness grow when I am able to savor a pleasant experience as it's happening, rather than get distracted by future and past experiences.

These are all questions that this book caused me to raise in my own little faulty imagination machine, so even though this book wasn't quite what I thought, I did enjoy reading it and did get a lot out of it (though maybe not what the author intended).

Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert provides us with a witty and engaging new book, which, in its way, is a self-help book. Anything that is witty and engaging and humorous IS of help. Add that this book illustrates how the innate tendencies or our mind (to postulate continuity and order, among others, plus to exaggerate "to our liking") and this book provides insight on why the limitations of our imaginations may be getting in the way of our ability to know what happiness is.

This book is about human imagination: according to the author, that is the one thing that separates humans from other animals. Our power to imagine makes it possible for us to come up with all these possibilities and futures. And perhaps some happiness, too? Yet so very often we make bad decisions, misestimate, choose the wrong option. Why?

It turns out our marvelous brains are a shoddy tool. According to research - and Gilbert quotes plenty of that - humans are really bad at knowing how we feel: we might know how we feel now, but both estimating how we will feel in the future and remembering how we felt about something in the past are surprisingly hard tasks. Our brains come up with all these details - all fake, because we can't remember everything. Yet our brains are so good at what they do that we don't even realize we're remembering stuff our brains just made up. No wonder we make bad decisions.

Stumbling upon happiness isn't as inspiring as the best popular science books are, but nevertheless, it's a fine look at what modern psychology has to offer. It gives some rather delicious anecdotes, has some rather good insight and is certainly entertaining enough. Stumbling on happiness is worth reading, if you're interested in figuring out how you think the way you do.

The author makes some interesting observations, but mostly he demonstrates that scientists are little help with solving the big questions. For example, he claims that more options and choices lead to less happiness because most happiness involves rationalizing what you have as good. He calls this "synthetic" happiness and asserts that it is as real as "natural" happiness--"getting what you want." He makes some other simplistic claims that he also treats as if they are fixed laws of human nature. But, in the end, there is little here that one can apply to improve the happiness of one's life. Real happiness is certainly an inside job--but not likely to stem from rationalization and "sour grapes" (the grapes are out of reach so they must be sour) as the author asserts.

The book really points to the failure of "technocratic" science to be of much help in the area of human happiness. A big part of the problem is spurious measurement of the phenomenon under investigation: the self-reported "data" on happiness are not real data in an objective sense. Surveying average people on their happiness is misleading--lots of people claim to be happy, but it is pretty obvious when you look at their lives they are not.

So in the end you don't learn much here of practical utility. If you want to be happy, find someone who models real joy and find out how they produce their happiness. (I think the first step involves becoming your own best friend: self acceptance.) But don't go looking to the apathetic masses who "lead lives of quiet desperation" for the secrets to happiness.

This is a terrific book. An interesting study of a topic that should be important to all of us -- our happiness -- taught by a funny and engaging teacher. A compelling and often surprising look at why we do what we do.

I read this book because someone whose opinions I respect was going wild over it. It is worth reading, but I also found it really irritating at times. The style is glib, and while this polishes the rough edges and makes for an easier read, I couldn't help wondering if I was being sold a tub of snake oil. Essentially Gilbert points out that we have problems imagining the future because we can't fill in all the details, that our brains make up a lot of the stuff that is going on, and miss a lot of the things that are really happening, and because we underestimate the number of cruddy things we will likely end up doing when we reach Nirvana (like forgetting the unremitting grimness of the camping site on last years family holiday but remembering the wow factor of the fabulous landscape we saw on day one). Many of the examples are dubious. Gilbert takes up the old chestnut that we always imagine we are in the slowest line at the checkout and extrapolates some kind of conclusion from this. Well yes, everyone has said that at some point, but no, I don't think many really believe there is a cosmic conspiracy to make us stand in line for ever. And the book is full of similar `folksy' examples that don't really wash and undercut the strength of the arguments. At the end of it all, Gilbert concludes that the only way to really know how we will feel if we do something is to ask someone who is currently doing the same thing, (because we are all basically the same). An example he uses is, "what would it feel like to move to Cincinnati?" If you want to know, just ask someone who is currently moving to Cincinnati. Is this true? There are hundreds of reasons to move to Cincinnati and each will have a different emotional content. Moving for a fantastic new job, moving to be close to a dieing parent, moving to go to College, moving to escape the long arm of Law, moving because you are broke and it's cheaper than living in Malibu, etc. etc. The main source reference he uses to support this claim is a study involving ice cream and potato chips that (to my eyes) is very poorly designed, and hadn't at the time of his writing his book even been published. That is kind of weak.

DG has some great lines and on the whole this is an enjoyable read punctuated with comments contemporaries should enjoy. I feel certain I would like him if we met! He explains why. He gives mostly anecdotal evidence to support his conclusion that we select the evidence that best supports our desired conclusions and ignore what does not. His use of such evidence that describes how our brains work in ways we are blind to seem to make good use of a plethora of current studies each of which are interestingly explained and used to make their point.

One great metaphor he suggests is that we have "a psychological immune system similar to our immune system. It defends the mind against unhappiness in much the same way that the physical immune system defends the body against illness." (p. 162) Another interesting point he makes is that while people prefer certainty over uncertainty, uncertainty tends to prolong happiness. (p. 190) So the movies liked best are the ones that do not explain everything. Here is a great quote: "My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it." (p. 223) But the idea that we can do studies based on peoples' memories of emotional feelings to determine just how poorly their memories and imagination work and then use other peoples' memories of how they felt emotionally as a better guide to our own future happiness reminds me of something, but I don't know what. Another delicious quote is his description of a fact: "Although the word fact seems to suggest a sort of unquestionable irrefutability, facts are actually nothing more than conjectures that have met a certain standard of proof. If we set that standard high enough, then nothing can ever be proved, including the "fact" of our own existence. If we set the standard low enough, then all things are true and equally so. Because nihilism and postmodernism are both such unsatisfying philosophies, we tend to set our standard of proof somewhere in the middle." (p. 168)
This was a fun book. I also love oxygen.

DG has some great lines and on the whole this is an enjoyable read punctuated with comments contemporaries should enjoy. I feel certain I would like him if we met! He explains why. He gives mostly anecdotal evidence to support his conclusion that we select the evidence that best supports our desired conclusions and ignore what does not. His use of such evidence that describes how our brains work in ways we are blind to seem to make good use of a plethora of current studies each of which are interestingly explained and used to make their point.

One great metaphor he suggests is that we have "a psychological immune system similar to our immune system. It defends the mind against unhappiness in much the same way that the physical immune system defends the body against illness." (p. 162) Another interesting point he makes is that while people prefer certainty over uncertainty, uncertainty tends to prolong happiness. (p. 190) So the movies liked best are the ones that do not explain everything. Here is a great quote: "My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it." (p. 223) But the idea that we can do studies based on peoples' memories of emotional feelings to determine just how poorly their memories and imagination work and then use other peoples' memories of how they felt emotionally as a better guide to our own future happiness reminds me of something, but I don't know what. This was a fun book. I also love oxygen.

Daniel, I read your book with avid interest.
If I were to summarize (as you so eloquently pointed our brains compartmentalize all information) this book, I would do so in a following sentence
"Listen to what the other person states in a given moment about a particular question and his/ her emotional state when asked and don't think his or her opinion will be more off then your own imagination."

I did have an issue with us humans being the same...sure we all have arms, legs, breathe oxygen, BUT when it comes to morality, (some are more likely to help an old lady cross the street, and some over come by greed would strip an old lady of her last cent. How does that equate us humans on a large scale? Why some people are more prone to do random acts of kindness and some are more prone to violence? Where is the equality there if we are all just grapes on a vine?

Thank you for your research and ideas!

I am not sure what is more impressive: Daniel's ability to distill mountains of clinical studies on the brain into such clear and entertaining prose, or our brain's ability to distill life's complexities into such (deceivingly) clear and (unintentionally) entertaining conclusions. Through a thoughtful mix of humorous anecdotes, digestible data, and real-time demonstrations, Daniel exposes the magic behind how the brain manipulates reality in its clumsy attempt to stumble on happiness.

Somewhere in the book the author fears that people won't take his advice, regardless of how well he presents his material. Well, the reason is simple...

We tend to give advice that a) we already know works for us, but only because it is tailored to our perceptions b) we already know isn't painful for us to perform c) or else, we won't have to be held accountable in a way that impedes what we refer to as "our sense of well being", and d) makes us feel better, not the listener.

In other words, the main reason it is so hard to follow others' advice, at the expense of our own, is that there is already a built in conflict of interest.

I can give you the advice that before you marry, you should see if you get along with your future in-laws, and then get married. I could give the advice that if you don't get along with your in-laws, you should get married if you really care about each other. I could give you all sorts of advice. What I really should be telling you is: follow you're own advice(gut). You're the one marrying this person, not me.

But, to be afraid you won't take my advice is really just, rather, selfish, and self-importance posing as newfound humility.

Having said that, the book does a good job of listing the things we do to trip ourselves up. There's a lot of inside/outside the looking glass case studies and factoids that are amusing and possibly useful if one is wondering about the utility of something that makes one happy or unhappy over time. Otherwise, the book could be cut in half and I'd still be happy.

I listened to the audiobook version read by the author, who does an excellent job narrating. This book is very well written and witty. I've taken several psych classes in college and I had only heard of a few of the interesting research studies mentioned here. It is also very relevant to everyone, because we all make bad decisions with good intentions, and understanding why this happens is what this book is all about. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in psychology (which should be everyone).

In Gilbert's view, our hike to happiness is ungainly because we use our powers of imagination as our compass - we imagine what will make us happy. Problem is, imagination lets us down in three important ways:

1. Imagination is a kind of simplification - it fills some bits in and leaves others out - and the omissions can be crucial to how we'll feel. As a result, we're poor at gauging how happy something will make us.

2. Imagination leads us to project the present, including feelings and current levels of satisfaction or longing, onto the future. We can't estimate how much we'll enjoy a food tomorrow if we're stuffed full now.

3. Imagination leads us to discount how different things will seem when they actually happen. A bad thing, like losing a job, will appear worse when pictured in the future than when experienced during the present, because in the present we tend to rationalize the loss.

According to Gilbert, his friends say he points out problems without suggesting solutions - but they never tell him what to do about it (boom-tish).

He does have a solution to the imagination problem, he says, it's just not one that people like. He says we'd do well to rely less on our own imagined futures and more on others' actual experiences in choosing what will make us happy. `It doesn't always make sense to heed what people tell us when they communicate their beliefs about happiness, but it does make sense to observe how happy they are in different circumstances' (page 233).

In short:
Gilbert's book describes itself as `not an instruction manual for how to be happy'. Instead, it surveys recent scientific findings about how people imagine their futures and how effective they are in predicting what will be most enjoyable.

Gilbert takes a long route to do this, with pretensions (chapter titles include Journey to Elsewhen and Paradise Glossed) that may frustrate get-to-the-point readers. And his ultimate recommendation to be guided more by what brings happiness to others than by our own imagined outcomes, may feel inadequate to justify the whole book.

But if you're happy to ramble long the research path, then this is a pleasant journey.

Great little book in the spirit of Blink and others. Intelligent comment from the scientific POV along with witty writing.

This would better be titled "Dissecting Happiness." Gilbert spends a lot of time and effort giving us scientific data to give us evidence of basic principals most of us already know. It is a tedious read trying to follow the details of one ridiculous study or experiment of human behavior after the next! I never realized the time and money psychologists and socioligists are spending (and wasting) to dissect human behovior! While there were some interesting findings to explain why we have a hard time finding happiness, this book lacks a grand perspective, as well as any magic or inspiration. I was disappointed.