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Happiness: The Science behind Your Smile
| Title | Happiness: The Science behind Your Smile |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2025-01-23 18:34:38 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
Bringing together the latest insights from psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy, Daniel Nettle sheds light on happiness, the most basic of human desires. Nettle examines whether people are basically happy or unhappy, whether success can make us happy, what sort of remedies to unhappiness work, why some people are happier than others, and much more. The book is packed with fascinating observations. We discover the evolutionary reason why negative thoughts are more powerful than positive ones. We read that happiness varies from country to country, for example, the Swiss are much more happy than Bulgarians. And we learn that, in a poll among people aged 42 years old--peak mid-life crisis time--more than half rated their happiness an 8, 9, or 10 out of 10, and 90% rated it above 5. Nettle, a psychologist, is particularly insightful in discussing the brain systems underlying emotions and moods, ranging from serotonin, to mood enhancing drugs such as D-fenfluramine, which reduces negative thinking in less than an hour; to the part of the brain that, when electrically stimulated, provides feelings of benevolent calm and even euphoria. In the end, Nettle suggests that we would all probably be happier by trading income or material goods for time with people or hobbies, though most people do not do so. Happiness offers a remarkable portrait of the feeling that poets, politicians, and philosophers all agree truly makes the world go round. Read more
Review
I call this the perfect happiness sandwich because Nettle's work can be either the perfect Introduction to the incredibly magnetic discussion of happiness or the erudite summary of a lifetime's work evaluating happiness. In the middle of the two pieces of bread (introduction or summary) is all the work from the authors that form the meat.. Be it Kahneman, Seligman, Brene Brown, and dozens more.Three things amazed me about this book.1. It Was Written nearly 15 years ago with a 2005 copyright. Still it comes across as fresh as anything you can read today2. The breadth and clarity of the work or in some cases astonishing. It's written with humor and incredible insight3. It's just been under the radar. Nettle may not have done much of his own original work. But this introduction and summary deserves to be on everyone's bookshelfRead it at the beginning of a happiness exploration or read it at the end. Either way it's a wonderful approach to the happiness sandwich.
