If You're so Smart, Why Aren't You Happy?

By: Raj Raghunathan

Narrated by: Raj Raghunathan

Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

The first book by the creator of COURSERA®'s most popular online course in 2015, "A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment".

Could the same traits that drive your career success also be keeping you from being happier?

Fifteen years after getting his MBA, Raj Raghunathan spent some time with his old classmates. He noticed that though they’d all done well, there didn’t appear to be much correlation between their academic success and career success. What Raj found even more curious was the even smaller correlation between career success and what he calls life success. The greater the career success, the more unhappy, out of shape, harried, and distracted his friends were.

If intelligence helps with decision-making, smart people should naturally make better life choices. So why are so many of the smartest, brightest, most successful people profoundly unhappy?

Raj set out to find an answer to this problem, and extensively researched happiness not just of students and business people, but also stay-at-home-parents, lawyers, and artists, among others.

If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? takes listeners on a fun and meaningful tour of the best research available on how some of the very determinants of success may also come to deflate happiness. Raghunathan explores the seven most common inclinations that successful people need to overcome, and the seven habits they should adopt instead. Among his surprising findings:

• The correlation between wealth and happiness is much smaller than you'd expect it to be
• Generosity is not only a key to happiness, but a determining factor of long term success
• Appreciating uncertainty, rather than seeking full control of outcomes, is necessary for happiness

If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? will give you a powerful new perspective on your work, personal goals, and relationships, whether you’re already successful or just starting out.

©2016 Raj Raghunathan (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“This book highlights how some of the very things that make us smart and successful can also undermine our happiness. It’s a practical, engaging read on how to lead a fulfilling life.” (Adam Grant, author of Give and Take and Originals)

“Raj’s book presents a clear perspective on what it takes to lead a life of happiness and fulfillment. What I like most about the book is that it proves, using rigourous science, something that I have long held: the recipe for a happy life is also one for a life of service and success. This is a book that everyone, and particularly the smart-and-successful, should read and assimilate.” (John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market)

"This book is a landmark contribution to the burgeoning literature on leading fuller, happier, more fulfilling lives. With a scholar’s sensibility, Raj brilliantly marshalls extensive research evidence that supports his simple yet profound prescriptions for better living. I have no doubt that this book will come to be regarded as a classic in the field; it will help change countless lives for the better, as Raj’s online course is already doing." (Raj Sisodia, coauthor of Everybody Matters and Conscious Capitalism)

Palatable mindfulness and introspection

If you could sum up If You're so Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? in three words, what would they be?

Sharp, witty, and accessible

Any additional comments?

The best non-fiction book I have completed to date. If there is only one book I can convince my four best friends to read, this is hands-down the book. And shrinks, take note!

But before I write this review ...

What made the experience of listening to If You're so Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? the most enjoyable?

The book's content is fantastic but the organization is horrible. Raj drifts into tangents every few minutes. He must have said, "but before I talk about X, let me ..." about 75 times in the book. This would be such a better book if someone could re-write it in a straight-forward, organized manner! I want to recommend it for the content, but hesitate to do so because I know most people won't enjoy the frustrating narrative.Raj self-narrated this audio book. Usually I love when authors self-narrate but his accent is very strong and required my absolute focus just to interpret (even at 1.0x speed).

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Best parts, great content on understanding happiness. Worst parts, trying to understand Raj's accent and follow his narrative.

What about Raj Raghunathan’s performance did you like?

Actually did not like it.

Stretched out

I feel this book could have been shorter, and the performance quicker paced. good content that was hard to ingest due to the slowness and repetition.

Awesome!

I loved this book and the way it uses scientific material to supports its ideas.

Thought provoking and well researched

Overall, a great book that has in-depth coverage of the various aspects and detract or contribute to happiness. I'd never thought about my "logical" rationalization dominating my gut-instinct emotions, so that was an interesting revelation.

My main criticism would be that Raj is very calculated in his content and delivery vs feeling like a natural conversation. But I wouldn't let that get in the way from anyone enjoying this book. Thanks, Raj.

Good, off-the-beaten-path advice for happiness

Overall, I enjoyed Ragunathan’s spin on finding happiness and the strategies he spells out in this book. Some of those strategies are a bit less mainstream than those you might find in other works, and that’s one of the main reasons I enjoyed this read; it’s not every day you get a relatively fresh take on the subject.

One example of such newness is his “fundamental happiness paradox,” or the idea that, deep down, we all wish to be happy, but are often distracted by other goals, such as earning a lot of money, getting promoted at work, keeping up with the Joneses, and so on. This paradox is the inspiration behind the title — so many well-educated folks find themselves unhappy. Why is that? Ragunathan explores that idea throughout this one.

That paradox is also the starting point for his “seven deadly sins of happiness,” through which he describes the most costly mistakes people make when it comes to experiencing joy and fulfillment. These mistakes, he prescribes, can be rectified by following his “seven habits of the highly happy” — antidotes to his aforementioned “sins.”

I can’t guarantee this book will change your life, but I’m fairly confident it’ll point you to one or two things you can do right now to start feeling happier. My only word of caution is that you might want to check out a print version of the book rather than the audio version, as the author has an accent that makes understanding everything he says slightly challenging at times.

-Brian Sachetta
Author of “Get Out of Your Head”

Lives Up to Its Title

"If You're So Smart" is a professional spin on the time-honored question of finding happiness. Dr. Raj comes from a business background and asked this question of himself and his students several years ago, leading him to write this book.

IYSS does excellent justice to this question, with material largely from mindfulness practice and academic psychology. Dr. Raj outlines seven happiness "sins" and the complementary remediating "habits" (detailed notes below). My most beneficial takeaway is the concept of passionate processes but dispassionate end results, which has had an immediate positive impact on some of the stresses I face in my career and personal life.

Clearly a lot of effort went into this title, from the academic research to the online Coursera curriculum to the happysmarts.com website with numerous reference materials for the reader. Dr. Raj narrates his own title--indeed he has a subcontinent accent and the written work could use further editing, but for the majority of the read I found this unobtrusive. I find self-narration adds a level of sincerity to a title like this. Dr. Raj's effort yielded an engaging read that leaves the reader with plenty of food for thought. IYSS is worth the credit--enjoy.

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- Sin 1: Devaluing happiness (for example: trading it away for frugality).
- Habit 1: Prioritize--but do not pursue--happiness. Don't chase happiness the way insomniacs chase sleep. Be happy with what you have ("harmony/abundance"), and you can deal with whatever comes your way.
- Sin 2: Chasing superiority. Human adaptation diminishes happiness via superiority over time.
- Habit 2: Pursue flow. Identify your talents and what you enjoy doing. Sacrifice short-term happiness when probability of long-term flow goes up.
- Sin 3: Desperation for love.
- Habit 3: The need to love and give.
- Sin 4: The need to be overly controlling. It's why driving feels safer than flying (though statistics clearly state that it's not) It's why we can't book the post-bar vacation until we know the bar results. When obsessed with goals, the goals control you. Time abundance is a perception: for example, stress as a function of hourly wage.
- Habit 4: Gaining internal control. Never blame someone else for your own unhappiness. It's okay to let your emotions run free, so long as you're consciously doing so. You can still keep others accountable for your actions. External control is often a projection of the lack of internal control. Labeling feelings lowers their intensity.
- Sin 5: distrusting others.
- Habit 5: Exercise smart trust. Practice forgiveness and keeping in mind the perspective of other people. Builds trust with others over time.
- Sin 6: Passionate to indifferent pursuit of passions. Worrying about the goal more than the process (or worse, not caring about the work at all.)
- Habit 6. Focus on processes, not results. Do everything it takes to pursue a goal, but care not if the the final result is not as desired (understanding that sometimes you cannot control everything).
- Sin 7: Allowing your focus to be pulled and distracted in all directions, worrying about the past and future, something which modern technologies enable.
- Habit 7: Maintaining presence. There's nothing better you can do than focus on the here and now.

Interventionist, Therapist, Coach

Raj does a fabulous job in finding the best elements that can make someone happy that are internal instead of external. I encourage you to listen and even read the book if possible “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy? at least five times and then implement times 10 to earn your MBA - Mastery-Belonging-Autonomy

RJ García
[e-mail]

impossible to understand speaker

don't get this book. im going to ask for a refund. i gave up after a chapter... i kept giving the speaker a chance to become something i could understand, but his accent got worse over time.

Unlistenable

What would have made If You're so Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? better?

The narrator has such a heavy accent that I couldn't get past the first 20 minutes and I usually have a really good ear for thick accents. Completely unlistenable.