Stumbling on Happiness – Daniel Gilbert

This has got to be one the most entertaining pysch books I’ve ever read. Think Douglas Adam writing about Nassim Taleb’s findings. Its smart, clever, and wickedly funny. It challenges the notions you’ve held your
entire life. It makes you think about your past decisions and then tells you what a delusional fool you are. It turns your brain into mush.
In short, the exact kind of book I’d wana read!

In fact this book will start blurring the lines between reality and perceptions. The further you go into this book, the more you start thinking of the story of the blind men describing the elephant. What is reality if not the world we build looking at it through the filters of our personal minds?
If anything this book has strengthened my view of the world as different shades of greys, instead of stark black and white.

The name of the book is slightly misleading though. This isn’t a self help book. This isn’t a manual on teaching you how to be happy. [Even if it WILL end up making you happy coz you will be laughing out loud so often!] The only thing it does is help you answer the very important question:
Why do we so often fail to know what will make us happy in the future?

We try and answer this question based on our limited past experience, use imagination to fill in details, and are far too accepting of its conclusions.
All errors.

I won’t ruin it for you, as I’d like you to read this yourself. In fact, highly recommend it as one of that rare breed of books that entertains you and yet makes you think about things differently. I promise you it will help you loosen up a little, question yourself a little more and make you a lot happier as you realise
some big errors you’ve been making.

Here are some gems strewn throughout the book. Spend a couple of minutes on each of the below thoughts and it will start giving you an idea of what to expect

• The general inability to think about absences is a potent source of error in our everyday lives.
[We think about all the joys of babysitting our nieces, but forget their
small annoyances, when asked to help out.]

• Stimulus can be interpreted by our brains based on preference.
[You might be confusing the thrill of going to a new restaurant, for attraction on your first date.]

• We regret foolish actions more than foolish inactions.

• We find positive experiences only when the psychological shock is intense enough. Intense suffering triggers the very process that eradicates it while mild suffering does not.
[Probably why we stick in really bad relationships but are unwilling to compromise a little in otherwise good partners.]

• We are happier when we don’t have a choice or cant escape a situation.
[As a Libran who has been tortured since 5 about things like which shoe to wear first – right or left, this was a significant find, may I add!]

• Imagination fills in (some details) and leaves out (others) without telling us coz we cannot forsee ever single detail. Imagination projects present into future. Hence, it fails to realise that things look different when they
happen.
[Which is why the best way to predict future is to look at somebody else’s present. We are all alike.]


And based on the last point, as you're clearly in no position to predict your future if you'd enjoy this book or not, you should look at someone else's present. [Me!] As I enjoyed it, I can pretty much guarantee you would too!