Reddit reviews Stumbling on Happiness
We found 36 Reddit comments about Stumbling on Happiness. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Vintage Books
Reddit reviews Stumbling on HappinessWe found 36 Reddit comments about Stumbling on Happiness. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
A few books on personal relations don't hurt either. My younger self needed to stand up for herself more, and in better ways.
Edit: Several people are asking for recommendations. These are some I have found extremely helpful:
I have a few I really recommend:
Thanks for the Feedback is one of the best I have read that incorporates info I have heard from other books all in one place with practical examples. If I could give a copy of this book to every person on earth I would. (The same people wrote a book called Difficult Conversations, but I have yet to read that.)
Edit to add Consious Business. This is the one I meant to add as the second recommendation; it is mostly about working with others in business but really applies to working with anyone in all relationships.
Emotional Intelligence is another I recommend, giving guidance on how to understand emotions. (Read this, then go re-watch Inside Out.)
10% Happier is an exploration into meditation as a non-spiritual thing. See Dan's video.
59 Seconds is about little things we can do to make our lives better (all science study based).
And Stumbling on Happiness is about understanding our own motivations better (also research study based).
Some of these books are clearly about "self help" but understanding ourselves is a key to understanding our interactions with others. And I try to only recommend books that are based in science and research.
I also like Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, Incognito by David Eagleman, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, How Children Succeed by Paul Tough, The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam, Nudge by Richard Thaler, and Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnerman. Oh, and anything by Malcom Gladwell; I may not always agree with him, but he is thought provoking and well researched. (I have an Audible account and have found that a good way to get through books while doing other things like exercise, long car trips, or cleaning the house.)
More Adds; Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, Nurture Shock by Po Bronson, My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel, Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon, The Charisma Myth by Olivia Cabane, How We Learn by Benedict Carey, and I generally like anything by the Freakanomics guys.
Edit: And thank you kind stranger for the gold!
If anyone would like to make recommendations to me based on the above list, please do so! I always have a growing reading queue :-)
People adapt to both positive and negative events, and their happiness levels are not affected as much by circumstances as one would expect. This was famously shown in "Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?" . This is known as "Hedonic Adaptation". The popular psychology book Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert goes into this and many other surprising findings in happiness research.
I noticed a lot of don't-buy-a-Mini,-it-will-cost-too-much posts. While I wouldn't get one personally, you should also realize that money is ultimately about enjoyment -- either immediately or deferred. Buying a movie ticket gives you (near-)immediate pleasure in the form of experiencing a movie. Paying your electric bill gives you the enjoyment of being able to run a refrigerator, which in-turn lets you enjoy a cold beer later on. Paying student loans are repayment for education/official recognition of achievement which will let you get a job which will ... and so on. You get the picture. All that being said: if you want to get a Mini Cooper, do it. Enjoy the things your money can buy you.
However, as someone who is in a somewhat similar position -- there's no car I want more than a Subaru WRX -- I know that getting that car won't be all it's cracked up to be. (Thank you, Daniel Gilbert and Jonathan Haidt.) You'll likely enjoy the car for a few weeks, then reality will smack you in the face: a car really provides little more than a way to get from Point A to Point B. You're paying quite a premium for relatively minor creature comforts and aesthetics.
I bought my latest car (2005 Subaru Outback) just under two years ago. I got a five year loan through the credit union, but we paid the hell out of that thing and it's now mine outright. We're still putting away about $400/mo into our car fund, and when it's time to upgrade my wife's vehicle, we're going to buy it with cash. If I could do it over again, I'd have kept my 1995 Corolla and kept the $8000 I've paid over the last two years.
This is something of an incoherent reply -- and my apologies for that. I guess my philosophy is that you should really weigh how important a new car truly is to you. Your expectations of how happy you will be with the Mini versus how much financial pressure you can expect from the payments and maintenance should be realistically analyzed to the greatest extent reasonable. There's a middle way here between the extremes of wanton indulgence and of penny pinching. Where on the continuum you choose to be will have pros and cons. Good luck!
According to Daniel Gilbert's exemplary book stumbling on happiness humans are the only animal that have any conscious thought as to what the future may hold.
Sure a squirrel may save some food for the winter, but (I assume) it does not consciously think that it will soon be cold and food will become more scarce.
Obviously everyone has their favourites. My primary areas of research are cognitive bias and relational psychology, so I'd recommend starting with:
Cognitive Bias
Relational Psychology
Rationality
For maximum enjoyment, I'd suggest Stumbling on Happiness or Methods of Rationality, they're both very well written and entertaining reads.
Finally, if you start looking up references and papers (and if you're interested in this, you will), then grab a copy of zotero. A good citation manager is an absolute joy.
Disclosure: I'm a member of the International Association for Relationship Research, which is responsible for the Science of Relationships. I'm the primary author for Not A Jerk. Links to Amazon include my affiliate ID.
"If I had a dollar (well, maybe $2) for every time I hear “I am not depressed, I am just realistic”, “Anyone who isn’t depressed isn’t paying attention”, "
Waiiit a minute... I thought this was true. There was a reference in Stumbling on Happiness, that happy people had less realistic and mroe of a fantasy ideas about the future.
Any thoughts? I have actually been trying to be less realistic!
Edit:
http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427/ref=cm_lmf_tit_2
> I've noticed the dotalikes(let's call the genre that for the sake of neutrality) get a lot of hate outside this sub.
I have three theories.
The first theory is that the opinion of the majority is not the same as the opinion of the overly visible gaming literati. I know that this is a fact based on smaller gaming genres, like tabletop roleplaying games, where recently a relatively popular thread indicated that too many people were talking about games like Fate and Dungeon World. Many people agreed.
However, looking at large community surveys and statistics released by the most popular online place to play tabletop roleplaying games we see that Fate only represents 1.65% of games and only 4.30% of all players are in those games, while Dungeon World only represents 1.84% of games with 4.55% of all players in Dungeon World games in the latter source (more comprehensive) and 4% of respondents playing Dungeon World and 5% of non-fantasy setting players and 4% of fantasy setting players playing Fate in the former source.
In other words, a lot of people really thought everyone was devoting way too much time to two games whose market shares are each less than 5%. Meanwhile, the two largest games - D&D and Pathfinder - combined are well over 50% market share.
This leads us to a probable analogous conclusion: the MOBA-haters are much louder online than simple demographics would suggest. This gels with most of what we know about online product reviews generally: only those who really hate or really love a product are likely to take the time out of their day to write up how much they love/hate the product, which leads to a polarization of online viewpoints.
Theory two is an extension, in some respects, of theory one: because MOBAs are so incredibly popular, while their proportion of haters remains about the same as most games (except for the addition of some hipsters who always hate popular things), their absolute number of haters is astronomically high.
Let's imagine for a minute that 1% of all people who play or hear about a game are driven to hate it online. A game with few players, like /r/totalwar of the Total War series, has persistent but relatively isolated griping as a result. If 1% of their subs complain about the game regularly, that would make for ~350 people: a significant portion in the Total War subreddit, where you would notice complaining on account of our earlier-established "haters are loud" theory above, but not a significant enough number to seriously bleed across to other more general subreddits.
In contrast, if 1% of /r/leagueoflegends, the League of Legends subreddit, complained about League, then that makes for 6,500 people. If "the 1% of League subscribers that complain about League" was a subreddit, it would be in the top 3200.
Other extremely popular games, like Call of Duty, seem to act in evidence of this theory: they receive a huge absolute degree of hate.
Theory three is that there is something about MOBAs that leads to direct competition and animosity. MOBAs are notoriously hardcore competitive games, being not just the most popular video games on earth, but also the ones with the largest tournaments. The two largest ones are also notoriously nearly identical.
We know that the brain tends to cook facts to retrospectively justify its choices, focusing on the benefits of your choice while downplaying the detriments, especially when that choice is largely irreversible and largely important (for more about how people react to making choices see Daniel Gilbert Stumbling on Happiness and Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice). MOBAs, by being so competitive, are naturally time intensive, especially among the gaming literati who tend to discuss games online and be part of the core gamer demographic. This makes the decision to play, say, League of Legends rather than DotA 2 subject to a host of natural heuristics that lead us to become "stuck" with our choice: the sunken cost heuristic, for instance. (For more about decision making heuristics see Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow).
When you combine these effects, you get a set of people who are:
Combined, I believe these three theories lead to this demographic, described above, displaying what appears to be a larger-than-normal degree of hate online.
Stumbling on Happiness nonfiction that changes the way you look at life
Great reply. I recommend the book Stumbling on Happiness. It goes into the science (not too overwhelming) of how our brains predict the future. And often how the brain is wrong. The brain tries to make you safe, and often runs scenarios of the future that just wouldn't happen. Anyways, it's a good read, and connected to this talk about thinking about the future.
GREAT book recommendation for you... Stumbling On Happiness. Explains this very thing and is a VERY good read. Essentially...
Our minds are wired to project what's happening today on to tomorrow, and so on. When your today is sad and depressing, you automatically want to think tomorrow will be as well. It's a thought process that everyone does automatically.
Some people lack the ability to be able to project positive things on to tomorrow and they stay in their depression. Others are able to think positively and overcome the sad thought in various ways and not get stuck in depression. Those who cannot, suffer from it longer. There are many mental illnesses that come into play for all sorts of reasons (chemical imbalances, brain damage, disorders, etc. etc.) that can affect the strength of the depression.
Here's an excerpt from the book:
>Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow machinery that is owned by perception. The fact that these two processes must run on the same platform means that we are sometimes confused about which one is running. We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we’ll feel when we get there, but in fact, what we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what’s happening in the present.
Stumbling on happiness did some good things for me. It focuses on how happiness is portrayed in our society versus how it occurs in reality.
Very cool stuff, and let me know that I wasn't actually unhappy. I was just believing a lie perpetrated by our society.
Some popular psychology books that are very well done:
Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Chialdini
I think you might like the book "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. It addresses both your complaints about methodological issues with determining people's happiness levels, and discusses issues with people having difficulty determining what will and won't make them happy.
> I do notice that people with more money tend to value it more highly.
I would completely disagree with this, myself. I have noticed that poor people are much more driven by money than wealthy people, and spend much more time concerning themselves with it.
Also I'm not sure that your objection has anything to do with whether or not money has decreased utility for someone who is rich than someone who is poor. It is to some extent unimportant whether Bill Gates values $100 more or less than someone starving to death, what matters is how much utility each would see with that additional $100. The individuals subjective opinion is not the question, the direct utility of the money for that individual is.
Stumbling on Happiness is a remarkable book that mirrors Predictably Irrational in a lot of ways. Can't recommend it enough.
There's a great book called "Stumbling on Happiness" that describes well this problem with human brains. Even non-alcoholics have this problem. For example, people buy more Girl Scout cookies on-the-spot than through mail order, because your "future self" is on a diet, but your present self is not.
Stumbling on Happiness
> Oh yeah, a rich soccer mom really struggles in life compared to a homeless man... what a load of shit, clearly some people have a worse live than others.
I'm certainly not denying that some people have better life circumstances than others. However, depression and hopelessness are by no means confined to people with crappy life circumstances. People can be happy even in bad times; happiness is actually at least partially a choice and a cultivated skill.
A rich soccer mom can still feel depressed and hopeless. These feelings are subjective.
>Incels have it far worse than normies that a fact.
Subjectively, yes, but not objectively. I'm not denying you FEEL isolated and depressed. But consider that the incels on here by and large have pretty wonderful life circumstances compared to a good chunk of the current world's population. Impoverished beggars, ditch diggers, and female sex slaves in the third world have it way rougher than the incels, if you want to compare miserable life circumstances. All of those girls kidnapped by Boko Haram would probably give an arm to trade places with a lot of the incels on here.
Botany of Desire. The title turned me off, but it's actually really interesting and my whole family has read and enjoyed it.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary lives in North Korea Serious stuff, but so fascinating.
Stumbling on Happiness. Fun read on human nature and happiness.
Optimists may seem unrealistic to someone in the pits of depression, but there have been studies that have showed that optimists are far more successful and effective.
You can choose how to see things. When I react to something, my mind goes right to the negative. Let's say my boss criticizes me. My mind goes right to: I'm going to lose my job... I'm going to be homeless... I never get anything right... etc. This is assuming a lot of things that might not be anywhere near the reality of a situation.
An optimist might choose to see the criticism as a good thing - a chance to grow and learn - and not extrapolate to predicting doom. This is a far more productive course.
You can do "all the right things" on paper, but that is no guarantee of happiness for many reasons.
There are lots of good books out there about this kind of thing. You can go to Amazon and look up books on happiness.
I liked ["The Happiness Hypothesis"]. (http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Modern-Ancient/dp/0465028020/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1317856948&sr=8-5). My husband liked ["Stumbling on Happiness."] (http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1317856948&sr=8-7) I am currently reading "The Happiness Project" and loving it... a friend recommended it.
All that said, the most effective way to treat depression is meds combined with therapy. Even with all the best books in the world, a wounded mind might not be able to do anything helpful with the information.
Hey, I'm 29 too and I have a book about the research on happiness that changed my total outlook on happiness. I want to stress that this book is not a "self help" book. When I was an undergrad psych major this book was recommended by an admired faculty of mine. Upon rereading it years later it influenced me to pursue a totally different career field that I was on the fence about (dentistry). One point from the book that I want to mention is that the best way to predict how happy you'll be when deciding, for example, a future career is ask those in the profession how happy they are when they are on the job. So if you google top ten professions dentist is up near the top and if you shadow a dentist you'll realized how fulfilling it can be (don't believe that increased chance of suicide that's very old data and the professions changed). You seem bright and I guess my commit is starting sound like I'm recruiting you to try dental school but I seem to be okay with that so yeah...you should be a dentist I suppose...maybe. I'm still in dental school and I can tell you it is very challenging at times but it is already obvious to me that it is so worth the struggle. ANYWAY the book is great an I could recommend more but this one gives really good insight into the "mechanisms" of happiness. What it is not is a "self help" book and the author describes it as the book you read after the "self help" book to figure out why you're still miserable. I think it will really answer your questions on your lack of felling satisfied with life. The book does tackle some really big questions and it is all based on research. I highly recommend it if you want a no nonsense yet humorously written explanation of how people cope with challenging events in there lives and why people who get what they want are often unsatisfied. Hope this helps and wish you the best friend.
His book [Stumbling on Happiness]
(http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427)
his TED [talk]
(http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy?language=en) is okay but is a little hard to follow.
TL;DR
Book about the research on happiness written by researcher/Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert told me to change careers and did.
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert totally changed the way I view "happiness" and the steps people take to become happy. Parts of it are dry, and hard to get through. But it is absolutely worth the read.
If you are looking for something exciting, try a new hobby.
Simply modeled, people have two parts of their brain: the thing they do cause they love it, and the thing they do to make money. The old adage "Find something you love and figure out how to make money at it" just ruins people's love for it, because it moves from the one brain bin to the other. Continue to play poker for the money if you are winning, but try racquetball or something fun for your hobby.
http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427
I heard about this book from this awesome Ted Talk: Let's talk parenting taboos: Rufus Griscom + Alisa Volkman.
And here is the link to the book: Stumbling on Happiness by
Daniel Gilbert
I'm reading A Short History of Nearly Everything now, and loving it! If you like psychological stuff, I would recommend anything by Malcolm Gladwell, and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
No that's not true. It actually does make you feel measurably happier. Read the book Stumbling on Happiness -- https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400077427/
Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!
Here are your smile-ified links:
Authentic Happiness
Stumbling On Happiness
---
^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot
>“the scientific study of what goes right in life [and] those things that make life most worth living,”
That is an odd way to define Positive Psychology but I guess it's a fairly accurate summation. Positive Psychology was a reaction to the large amount of attention that has been paid on abnormal psychology- essentially what is "wrong" with people and how to fix it. This leads an absence in what people can do to better themselves beyond the realm of mental illness. How can we improve and enrich our lives, starting from a neutral baseline.
I actually find it very funny that I'm reading an article on religion and positive psychology as I took issue with Martin Seligman's position on religion in his book Authentic Happiness which is the primer for studying this branch of psychology. I don't have anything against having religion in your life (obviously) but I also don't feel like it's necessary. I align more with Daniel Gilbert's approach that you can get the same results when you fill your life with the same things that religion provides you regardless of whether or not you ascribe to any religious practice. A strong passion in something shared by others, closeness with a community, etc are components of religious practice that can enrich your life with or without religion.
All that being said, I do agree that Positive Psychology and Judaism go hand in hand very well together. I would say that as of the last time I really studied positive psych, the research was largely done on Buddhists. I'm very excited to hear about the merger of positive psych and Judaism which is another reason I'm excited to study Mussar.
If you would like to get acquainted with Positive Psychology, I will leave some recommendations below:
As I stated earlier, Authentic Happiness is the primer for learning about this branch. I do take issues with certain elements of the book but I still think it's an incredibly worthwhile read.
I would also recommend to you Stumbling On Happiness as it explores the more scientific approach to the study.
*I would also recommend you start studying it by studying yourself. Martin Seligman is still conducting research to this day. I would recommend taking a look at the Questionnaires section of his website. There's a ton of tests and surveys you can take but I recommend you start off with the Signature Strengths VIA Survey. Note, you do have to make an account but it's worth it. Once you've determined your top 5 character strengths, you can start trying to strengthen those traits and make them more prominent in your life.
http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427
I read this book a few years back but it talks about a lot of things like how anticipation of an event can be more exciting / pleasing than the event itself.
This one is great: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400077427/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_wTdVBbDJ0TKJF
He has some great Ted talks too.
Stop comparing yourself to "them".
Your self-worth is an internal measure, and you are right that happiness is illusive when you are defining it on external factors you have no control over.
You could use a book.
Can I recommend this book: stumbling on happiness
It talks about the science/psychology of happiness, and why people usually think the past was better than it was and why you almost always delay pleasure ("tomorrow I will be happy spending all of this money I am saving today").
Dan Gilbert has a great book that touches on this - Stumbling on Happiness
Watch this video the whole way though, and keep in mind that his guy is a Harvard professor of psychology and has devoted his life to studying this subject.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy
He also has a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/1400077427
Its actually interesting. The happiest marriages are arranged virgin marriages. Reminds me of this book.
Basically humans are happiest when they just have to deal with their situation; having choices and the ability to change your mind makes people really unhappy.
So, if we are talking about pure happiness it would make sense for some matchmaking system to be in place that took into account all the pros/cons (sexual compatibility, life choices, etc) and paired people accordingly. But, if that happens I will worry about the state of the world.
> justify a current behavior just for the sake of justifying it.
It wasn't just for the sake justifying it, as I explained in my earlier comment to you.
>someone finds this literally 18th century idea about men and women worth talking about today.
This is a well known bias that many intellectuals--historians in particular--try to dispel immediately. Just because an idea is "old" doesn't automatically mean it's wrong or has nothing of value to add to a discussion.
Sure modern science can test older claims, and if you are aware of evidence showing that Smith was wrong I'm more than happy to look at it; but to dismiss an idea solely because it's "old" is a fallacy.
I'm also not the only one who finds Smith's work still relevant, even in psychology. This recent book by a well respected Professor of Psychology at Harvard found much that is valuable in Smith's book--he cites Smith's work as valuable to his thinking and research and specifically references TMS for some of his ideas.
He is consistent in his approach, he isn't a stale zombie stuck on dead ideas. His ideas are part of a growing understanding of the failures of our current methods/conventions. Other thinkers are speaking/writing on relevant and related topics, such as Nassim Taleb - see The Black Swan and Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness".
We cannot turn back time. Any changes in current policy and procedure will have to work with the conditions of NOW. Your arguments/ideas are weak if you rely on false concepts such as someone can enact policies/theories in such a way that could re-create conditions of the past similarly or in some identical way. I do not believe a cutting of spending by the Federal-levels of government would revert us to some previous, less evolved political/social state.
I disagree with your estimation and interpretation of Ron Paul's 'strategies'. I do not think he is for 'burning down the house' as you say, but for serious appraisal and cutting back on a system that is out of control. I do not hear him talking about destroying anything but the false concepts and institutions that are in actuality and quite obviously disgracing and devaluing our country's society, values, and influence. Sometimes, when you leave your garden to be tended by others and forget to care for it yourself, you realize that it's been neglected and mis-used. It is at this time you either walk away or you get up and start clearing the weeds and the trash before you start re-planting and building anew.