Happy Ever After
  • Published: 3 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241284452
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Happy Ever After

Escaping The Myth of The Perfect Life

Formats & editions
EBook
3 Jan 2019
Audiobook
17 Jan 2019
Paperback
31 Mar 2020
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What if the path to happiness meant abandoning our most dearly held beliefs?

Be ambitious; find everlasting love; look after your health ... There are countless stories about how we ought to live our lives. These narratives can make our lives easier, and they might sometimes make us happier too. But they can also trap us and those around us.

In Happy Ever After, bestselling happiness expert Professor Paul Dolan draws on a wealth of evidence to bust the common myths about our sources of happiness and shows that there can be many unexpected paths to lasting happiness. Some of these might involve not going into higher education, choosing not to marry, rewarding acts rooted in self-interest and caring a little less about living forever.

By freeing ourselves from the myth of the perfect life, we might each find a life worth living.
  • Published: 3 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241284452
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256
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About the author

Paul Dolan

Paul Dolan is an internationally renowned expert on happiness, behaviour, and public policy. He is currently a Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. He has been a visiting research scholar at Princeton University, where he worked closely with Daniel Kahneman. Among various other roles, he is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences Panel on measuring national well-being, a member of the National Wellbeing Advisory Forum for the Office for National Statistics in the UK, and is Chief Academic Advisor to the UK Government on how policymakers should value the impact of goods that are hard to measure, like health.

Also by Paul Dolan

Happiness by Design
See all

Praise for Happy Ever After

A star

Daniel Kahneman

[Praise for Happiness by Design] Few books change one's life; in 48 hours this has improved mine

Jenni Russell, Sunday Times

[Praise for Happiness by Design] Dolan is especially illuminating when it comes to bigger life-choices . . . His book is a powerful reminder not to get caught up in overthinking things, but to focus instead on maximising what actually delivers joy . . . and most of us would benefit from listening to him

Oliver Burkeman, Guardian

[Praise for Happiness by Design] The book that will make you quit your job

New Statesman

[Praise for Happiness by Design] Outstanding, cutting-edge, and profound

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan and Skin in the Game

Discover more

Article
Occupation vs happiness

In Happy Ever After Paul Dolan re-evaluates our measures of ‘success’.

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