Happiness Is Overrated begins with an historical overview of the development of the concept of 'happiness' from Plato to contemporary writers, highlighting the best scholarship emerging from philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Belliotti includes practical advice on how to attain happiness and addresses issues centered on the meaning of life. Happiness, he argues, is not the greatest personal good, or even a great good in itself. In fact, sometimes happiness isn't a good at all. If we pursue worthwhile, exemplary lives and find happiness along the way, then we are lucky. If we don't, then we can take pride and derive satisfaction from a life well lived. Ultimately, the greatest personal good is realized in leading a robustly meaningful, valuable life.
How Thinking is Overrated Find the happiness of emptiness. Few things scare us more than inner emptiness. The presumed emptiness of dementia or a coma scares us so much that we even sign living wills to avoid these states. Yet as Zen masters have long known, inner emptiness can also be productive and useful. We can reach this state through meditation, concentration, music, or even during sex. In fact, our brain loves emptiness—it makes us happy. Leading brain researcher Niels Birbaumer investigates the pleasure in emptiness and how we can take advantage of it. He explains how to overcome the evolutionary attentiveness of your brain and take a break from thinking—a skill that’s more important than ever in an increasingly frantic world. NIELS BIRBAUMER is a psychologist and neurobiologist. He is a leading figure in the development of brain–computer interfaces, a field he has researched for 40 years, with a focus on treating brain disturbances. He has been awarded numerous international honours and prizes, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science. JÖRG ZITTLAU is a freelance journalist and writes about science, psychology and philosophy, among other topics. He is also the author of several bestsellers.
Utilizing sophisticated methodology and three decades of research by the world's leading expert on happiness, Happiness challenges the present thinking of the causes and consequences of happiness and redefines our modern notions of happiness. shares the results of three decades of research on our notions of happiness covers the most important advances in our understanding of happiness offers readers unparalleled access to the world's leading experts on happiness provides "real world" examples that will resonate with general readers as well as scholars Winner of the 2008 PSP Prose Award for Excellence in Psychology, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers
An Introduction to Modern CBT provides an easily accessible introduction to modern theoretical cognitive behavioral therapy models. The text outlines the different techniques, their success in improving specific psychiatric disorders, and important new developments in the field. • Provides an easy-to-read introduction into modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approaches with specific case examples and hands-on treatment techniques • Discusses the theoretical models of CBT, outlines the different techniques that have been shown to be successful in improving specific psychiatric disorders, and describes important new developments in the field • Offers useful guidance for therapists in training and is an invaluable reference tool for experienced clinicians
This stunning collection of stories demonstrates once again why Alice Munro is celebrated as a pre-eminent master of the short story. While some of the stories are traditional, set in “Alice Munro Country” in Ontario or in B.C., dealing with ordinary women’s lives, others have a new, sharper edge. They involve child murders, strange sex, and a terrifying home invasion. By way of astonishing variety, the title story, set in Victorian Europe, follows the last journey from France to Sweden of a famous Russian mathematician. This daring, superb collection proves that Alice Munro will always surprise you.
Don’t worry, be happy....find out how! What is happiness? And how can we achieve it? The Rough Guide to Happiness is the ultimate ‘how to be happy’ handbook. Discover how to effectively improve your work/life balance, increase self-esteem, and nourish your mind and body while nurturing relationships with the ones you love. The Rough Guide to Happiness will help you navigate your way through all parts of modern day life, offering a practical and effective range of happiness-building techniques. Rely on realistic suggestions from Dr Nick Baylis, a practising therapist and former Dr Feelgood for The Times Saturday Magazine, who has worked with everyone from young offenders to stressed airline pilots! Are some people genetically predisposed to be happier than others? Can money or technology make us happy? The Rough Guide to Happiness explores all these questions and more, going beyond facile tips to offer a deeper understanding of what happiness is with easy solutions for you to implement in your daily life. Drawing on the best ideas from every field, from Hypnosis and Energy Therapy to Positive Psychology and Buddhism, The Rough Guide to Happiness provides a wealth of inspiring insights on how to relieve stress and achieve lasting contentment. Make the Most of Your Time on Earth with The Rough Guide to Happiness.
Fortune magazine editor Geoff Colvin offers new evidence that top performers in any field are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness, he argues, does not come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades. The key to this is how successful people practice, how the results of practice are analysed and how they learn from their mistakes. This new mindset will change the way reader's think about their jobs and careers, and will inspire them to achieve more in all they do.
A landmark book about how we form habits, and what we can do with this knowledge to make positive change We spend a shocking 43 percent of our day doing things without thinking about them. That means that almost half of our actions aren’t conscious choices but the result of our non-conscious mind nudging our body to act along learned behaviors. How we respond to the people around us; the way we conduct ourselves in a meeting; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat, and drink—a truly remarkable number of things we do every day, regardless of their complexity, operate outside of our awareness. We do them automatically. We do them by habit. And yet, whenever we want to change something about ourselves, we rely on willpower. We keep turning to our conscious selves, hoping that our determination and intention will be enough to effect positive change. And that is why almost all of us fail. But what if you could harness the extraordinary power of your unconscious mind, which already determines so much of what you do, to truly reach your goals? Wendy Wood draws on three decades of original research to explain the fascinating science of how we form habits, and offers the key to unlocking our habitual mind in order to make the changes we seek. A potent mix of neuroscience, case studies, and experiments conducted in her lab, Good Habits, Bad Habits is a comprehensive, accessible, and above all deeply practical book that will change the way you think about almost every aspect of your life. By explaining how our brains are wired to respond to rewards, receive cues from our surroundings, and shut down when faced with too much friction, Wood skillfully dissects habit formation, demonstrating how we can take advantage of this knowledge to form better habits. Her clear and incisive work shows why willpower alone is woefully inadequate when we’re working toward building the life we truly want, and offers real hope for those who want to make positive change.
If you think money can’t buy happiness, you’re not spending it right. Two rising stars in behavioral science explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow five core principles of smarter spending. If you think money can’t buy happiness, you’re not spending it right. Two rising stars in behavioral science explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow five core principles of smarter spending. Happy Money offers a tour of new research on the science of spending. Most people recognize that they need professional advice on how to earn, save, and invest their money. When it comes to spending that money, most people just follow their intuitions. But scientific research shows that those intuitions are often wrong. Happy Money explains why you can get more happiness for your money by following five principles, from choosing experiences over stuff to spending money on others. And the five principles can be used not only by individuals but by companies seeking to create happier employees and provide “happier products” to their customers. Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton show how companies from Google to Pepsi to Crate & Barrel have put these ideas into action. Along the way, the authors describe new research that reveals that luxury cars often provide no more pleasure than economy models, that commercials can actually enhance the enjoyment of watching television, and that residents of many cities frequently miss out on inexpensive pleasures in their hometowns. By the end of this book, readers will ask themselves one simple question whenever they reach for their wallets: Am I getting the biggest happiness bang for my buck?
