The Science of Happiness

Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
Author: Daniel Nettle
Genre: Popular Science

Happiness is an interesting concept - we spend much of our lives chasing it, yet very few people define themselves as being 100 percent happy, no matter the level of their material wealth.

Actually, there is a reason for that, and the idea has been labeled the hedonic threadmill. No matter how much we get in life, we adjust to it very rapidly, so even the biggest lottery win will bring us happiness for a few months only.

This is one of the many interesting findings about happiness that Daniel Nettle write about in his book. (Despite the title, it is not at all a new age self-help kind of book - although it actually explains why these books sell so well.) Instead, Happiness presents a well-written summary of the latest knowledge about happiness as a scientific subject

The books ends with an informative review of how people can work on increasing their happiness. Amusingly, one of these pieces of advice is simply to do more of the things that make you happy. This may sound completely self-evident - and it is - but the troubling thing is that many people actually spend their lives doing anything but the things that would make them happy. Read it to get an explanation as to why this is.