Happier Learn the secrets to daily joy and lasting fulfillment

Tal Ben-Shahar

eAudio - 2007

Can we really learn to be happy? Yes, we can. Each semester, nearly 1,400 students sign up for Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar's life-changing class, How to Get Happy. Currently it's the hottest course at Harvard, taken by 20 percent of its graduates. In Happier, Professor Ben-Shahar brings the ideas of the Ivory Tower to Main Street, distilling the lessons and exercises from his course into a slim volume of practical wisdom. Grounded in the Positive Psychology movement, based on years of researching the works of scientists, academics, and philosophers, Happier emphasizes the importance of pursuing a life of both pleasure and meaning. Lessons, exercises, and Happiness Boosters cover self-esteem, empathy, friendship, love, achieve...ment, creativity, spirituality, and humor. Questions help us identify activities that will make us happier immediately, then apply what we've learned to school, work, and personal relationships. We discover that happiness, not money, is the ultimate currency, that we can't be happy unless we first give ourselves permission to be human, and that happiness isn't so elusive after all.

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Subjects
Published
[United States] : HighBridge 2007.
Language
English
Corporate Author
hoopla digital
Main Author
Tal Ben-Shahar (-)
Corporate Author
hoopla digital (-)
Other Authors
Jeff Woodman (-)
Edition
Unabridged
Online Access
Instantly available on hoopla.
Cover image
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 audio file (4hr., 30 min.)) : digital
Format
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
ISBN
9781598875188
Access
AVAILABLE FOR USE ONLY BY IOWA CITY AND RESIDENTS OF THE CONTRACTING GOVERNMENTS OF JOHNSON COUNTY, UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, HILLS, AND LONE TREE (IA).
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Though everyone wants to be happier, how many of us can actually define what that means? In his class, "Positive Psychology," one of the most popular courses at Harvard University, Ben-Shahar teaches that happiness isn?t as elusive a concept as people think, and can actually be learned; he commits the fundamentals of his course to paper in this primer on getting happy, which he defines as a combination of pleasure (short-term happiness) and meaning (long-term). Divided into three parts, "What is Happiness?", "Happiness Applied" and "Meditations on Happiness," Ben-Shahar provides insight and exercises, prodding reflection in readers ("Do you accept negative emotions as natural?" "Do you see your work as a job, a career, or a calling?") while explicating the relationships among happiness, motivation and goals. Though it sounds simple, Ben-Shahar insists on keen self-awareness and purposeful action to overcome entrenched patterns of despondency and/or disbelief. For answer-seekers, this is definitely a good start. (June) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.