Stumbling on Happiness

"Not a 'how to be' book at all, but a popular treatment of issues in cognitive psychology which uses happiness as something of a test bed. And despite its lack of aspiration to tell us how to be happy, it still has some very useful insights into how to avoid regrets and disappointments."
~ Written on 2008-04-22

"This is a well researched book that is both witty and engaging and makes the rather dry subject of psychology fun to dip into.

Unfortunately, if you're currently feeling depressed or in search of meaning in your life or in your quest for happiness then you're very unlikely to find it within the pages of this book.

The authors compulsion to be continually amusing becomes tiresome after reading only a few chapters of the book so by the time I reached the Q & A section at the end of the book where the interviwer asks Gilbert if he is an optimist and is told " No sorry, I don't know the first thing about making eyeglasses", I realised that I had wasted my time reading this book.

Instead of reading 'Stumbling on Happiness' I should have picked up my copy of 'Learned Optimism' by Martin Seligman and re-read that instead - a book by an eminent psychologist that knows how to write with warmth and humour and really does teach a thing or two about happiness in the process."
~ Written on 2008-01-20

"Gilbert mentions more than once that his friends are frustrated by his continual identifying of problems without providing solutions. Stumbling on Happiness is definitely not a self-help book but it may make you look askance at some of your most engrained truths about what you want from life.

The section on the personal satisfactions of parenthood(p220-2 in my copy) is particularly unnerving. The graph showing how parents' happiness changes with the age of their children is brutal and more than a little bit scary if you don't have children yet.

The plea for us to base more of our decisions about the future based on evidence from people experiencing the consequences of those decisions right now is likely to fall on deaf ears. We all like to believe that we are beautiful unique snowflakes."
~ Written on 2008-01-13

"The book puts forward a very convincing and persuading argument. The problem is though, I don't think it applies to everyone. And since it speaks about what you would want for your future and how you'll really feel about it - the generalizations are a bit harsh. For me, it was an eye-opener. I feel like I might actually fit into the group of people who the book touches upon, but I doubt everyone - from every culture would follow this schema. If you take that into account, and do not gulp down every persuasive argument therein, it does hold alot of useful information that will help you make the right choices. It reminds me of the tipping point and the paradox of choice in writing style."
~ Written on 2007-12-30

"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."
~ Written on 2007-12-26