Happier

Learn the Secret to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment

by Tal Ben-Shahar

Number of pages: 192

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education

BBB Library: Psychology and Strengths, Personal Success

ISBN: 9780071492393



About the Author

Tal Ben-Shahar is an American and Israeli teacher, and writer in the areas of positive psychology and leadership. As a lecturer at Harvard University, Ben-Shahar created the most popular course in Harvard's history.

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Editorial Review

Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimless around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.

Book Reviews

"Happier is a very pick-up-able book. Featured on The Daily Show, CNN and CBS as well as interviewed for the New York Times and the Boston Globe, Ben-Shahar must have wanted to write this book for a long time. Textbooks are suddenly becoming fun." January Magazine

"The book feels like a college course and this has it’s pros and cons. The benefit is that it’s interesting to imagine yourself as a student at Harvard moving through the course as the semester progresses. The downside is that the book lacks a conversational feel." Pick the Brain

"According to Tal Ben-Shahar, happiness is a skill you can develop no matter how happy you currently are—a belief conveyed by the title of his new book, Happier." The Greater Good Science Center

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Wisdom to Share

The assumptions that hold us back are not only the ones we have internalized from our predecessors.

Many of us have limitations that are self-generated.

There is no limit to how much happiness we can attain.

No privilege in the world can protect us from experience emotional pain.

If we do not make the pursuit of our own happiness a priority, we are hurting ourselves.

Contributing to other people’s happiness provides us with meaning and pleasure, which is why helping others is one of the essential components of a happy life.

We may need to spend time reflecting, thinking deeply to recall those moments in our lives when we felt a sense of true purpose.

Because many students experience either boredom or anxiety in school, they neither enjoy it nor perform at their best.

How happy you are depends to a large degree on the ratio between want-to and have-to in your life.

Setting a goal is about making a commitment in words, and words have the power to create a better future.

Having explicit objectives that are challenging and specific leads to better performance.

People who set goals are more likely to succeed than people who do not.

As the rates of anxiety and depression rise, society heads toward emotional bankruptcy in the ultimate currency.

When our positive experiences outweigh our negative ones, we have made a profit in the ultimate currency.

While we are accumulating material wealth, we are nearing bankruptcy in the currency that truly matters.

The important thing is that we choose our purpose in accordance with our own values and passions rather than conforming to others’ expectations.

To be happy, we need the experience of positive emotion; pleasure is a prerequisite for a fulfilling life.

It is nearly impossible for us to imagine a life devoid of emotion.

Emotion, of course, plays a pivotal role in all our pursuits; including our pursuit of happiness.

Happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.

Pleasure is about the experience of positive emotions in the here and now, about present benefit.

A happy person enjoys positive emotions while perceiving his life as purposeful.

The research illustrates that the relationship between happiness and success is reciprocal.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.