Stumbling on Happiness Audiobook (Free)

A good and funny publication by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking study and (frequently hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re therefore lousy at predicting exactly what will make us happy – and what we are able to do about any of it.

Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of most possible futures, and then come across that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people make an effort to imagine what the near future will hold, they make about Stumbling on Pleasure some fundamental and consistent errors. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to appear backward with time, so does creativity play tricks when we try to appear forward.

Using cutting-edge study, a lot of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into taking the actual fact that happiness is not really what or where we believed it was. Among the unforeseen questions he poses: What makes conjoined twins believe it or not happy than the general population? When you go out to consume, is it easier to purchase your preferred dish every time, or even to try something fresh? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t obtained on the airplane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off?

Wise, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Joy brilliantly describes everything that science must tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to take pleasure from it when we get there.