Stumbling on Happiness

By: Daniel Gilbert

Narrated by: Daniel Gilbert

Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy–and what we can do about it.

Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was.

Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off?

Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.

©2006 Daniel Gilbert (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Stumbling on Happiness is an absolutely fantastic book that will shatter your most deeply held convictions about how your own mind works. Ceaselessly entertaining, Gilbert is the perfect guide to some of the most interesting psychological research ever performed. Think you know what makes you happy? You won’t know for sure until you have read this book.”–Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics

“Everyone will enjoy reading this book, and some of us will wish we could have written it. You will rarely have a chance to learn so much about so important a topic while having so much fun.”–Professor Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, Winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics

“This is a brilliant book, a useful book, and a book that could quite possibly change the way you look at just about everything. And as a bonus, Gilbert writes like a cross between Malcolm Gladwell and David Sedaris.” –Seth Godin, author All Marketers Are Liars

Understanding life, our brains and happiness

Great book, brilliant psychology of life and interpretation of happiness. beautifully narrated and full of everyday life examples and metaphors rich with humor and deep wisdom.

A must read (listen)

I had my expectations before reading (well, listening to) this book. And not only it met them, it exceeded them by far. It's a well written and well narrated book by the author himself. The book is scientific by nature, but it's put together in simple terms, full of examples and spiced up with a delicate sense of humor. The book gives a great insight of how human mind works, and it doesn't require the reader to have any prior knowledge of psychology whatsoever. I can responsibly say that this book is a real eye-opener. Definitely a must read for anyone who is at least remotely interested in how that meatloaf we call brain works.

A pleasant surprise

It was an entertaining read. A little long with a lot of detailed explainations but overall quite informative and thought provoking. worth a read

Stumbling into happiness

An interesting book that goes into the science behind what we interpret as happiness and several inaccuracies that can lead us into misinterpreting what we're remembering as happiness and/or what we expect from the future.

A very comical and entertaining journey that won't necessarily give you the "ah-ha" that's what I need to do to stumble into happiness, but instead will give you insight into how our emotions work and how we interpret our emotions aka happiness.

The author is well spoken, well read, and very knowledgeable as you would expect from a Harvard professor.

Brilliant humor and story!

I really loved the humor and how scientifically based the facts were presented. Totally recommended!

Analytical & Thought Provoking

This is an excellent audiobook. It has a lot of examples where you are yourself the subject. You will be amazed to see how the human brain and memory actually works. Highly recommended.

informative but unnecessarily complex

this book was informative and had good points however it was very unnecessary complex it could have been written and a much simpler way and it would have made it a pleasure to read however the complex language stop the flow of the book and just made it unnecessarily hard to understand .

An entertaining & enlightening book on happiness

A great way to learn about human behaviour. What does and doesn't bring happiness into our lives.

An intellectual exercise of psychology, by no means a self-improvement book

I liked that Gilbert engaged the minds of his listeners with the experiments and applicable personal asides (which occasionally were omitted from the audiobook recording, so no need to buy the paperback to follow along). Yet (and Gilbert admits this in the book), he provides many problems with the mind being unable to predict the future, yet he offers few solutions on how to better live our lives. The book is an intellectual experience, but offers few applicable ways to pursue happiness.

Entertaining, but...

I think the guy is brilliant. He identifies many aspects of the human personality that I had never considered. I also found his writing very witty. But one of the bigger premises at the end of his book something like, "We don't really know how we will feel in the future after making a certain choices, so we do better asking someone who has already made that choice how they feel." Gilbert cites a study about people with full stomachs predicting how they will feel the next day after eating potato chips (when they are again hungry). The finding is that those that asked others who ate the chips (when they were hungry) were better at predicting how they would feel (rather than to rely on their own perspective, while living in full-stomach land). Okay, to me, potato chips are one thing, but big life decisions are quite another. We are all so unique that we can't really rely on someone else's feelings about how they like, say, their move to a particular city, or a change to a particular occupation. People love and hate Cleveland, Ohio; love and hate the military; adore and abhor selling real estate; prefer and not prefer blonds, etc. I think he is right about potato chips, but to me, his theory doesn't hold water when it comes to big life decisions. I'm sorry, wanted to rate it higher as it was an enjoyable listen, but I can't buy his main premise.