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Stop looking for ‘the one’: how to escape the myth of a perfect life

Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life

Happiness by Design

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
How can we make it easier to be happy? Using the latest cutting-edge research, Professor Paul Dolan reveals that wellbeing isn't about how we think - it's about what we do. By making deliberate choices that bring us both pleasure and meaning, we can redesign our lives for maximum happiness - without thinking too hard about it. 
 
'Outstanding, cutting-edge, and profound. If you're going to read one book on happiness, this is the one' Nassim Nicholas Taleb 
 
'Bold and original ... what I wish for my grandchildren: a life that is rich in activities both pleasurable and meaningful' Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow

For Dolan, purpose and pleasure are both basic constituents of happiness. This is a bold and original move ... Among the imperfect definitions of happiness, the pleasure-purpose concept that Dolan offers is, I believe, a strong contender. It is a good description of what I wish for my grandchildren: a life that is rich in activities that are both pleasurable and meaningful. 
 
Paul Dolan is an inveterate optimist who has overcome many obstacles on his way to becoming an internationally recognized expert on well-being. The optimism shows on every page of this book. In particular, Paul is optimistic about you, his reader. He believes that you can make your life both pleasurable and meaningful with deliberate choices, about the environment you create for yourself and about the aspects of life that deserve your attention. He offers a great deal of sound advice on how to make these choices and how to follow through with them

It tells us what matters to us. Few books change one's life; in 48 hours this has improved mine . . . Anyone who wonders if they are living their lives as fully as they might will find ideas worth thinking about in this engaging, persuasive book

Dolan is especially illuminating when it comes to bigger life-choices . . . Dolan makes a persuasive case that happiness might really be simple. 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

[Dolan's] discoveries at once confound your expectations and provide an appreciable way of acting on that knowledge . . . full of facts that make you go: "Huh."

Dolan's book is aimed at the lay reader who wants to be more cheerful without recourse to airy-fairy notions of spirituality or philosophy

Outstanding, cutting-edge, and profound.  If you're going to read one book on happiness, this is the one

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan and Antifragile

Happiness by Design is the best kind of psychology book: the ideas are fascinating, understanding them will make your life happier and more meaningful, and Dolan expresses them beautifully. Whether you're a novice or a voracious consumer of happiness research, Happiness by Design hits all the right notes

Adam Alter, bestselling author of Drunk Tank Pink

Dolan gives a comprehensive overview of the science of happiness and useful tips to achieve it. In his quest to explain what makes us happy, Dolan touches on a powerful idea: happiness need not be pursued, simply rediscovered. In other words, sources of pleasure and purpose are all around us, if only one knows where to look

Dolan wants...to make us think about life in terms of a balance of pleasure and purpose. Some of us are 'pleasure machines', seeking out short-term gratification without paying close enough attention to our lifelong goals; some of us are 'purpose engines', so determined to get to the destination that we miss the view along the way. Whichever we are, we need to find a bit more of the other.

Paul Dolan is Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE. During his time as a visiting scholar at Princeton, he worked closely with Daniel Kahneman who calls him 'a star'. Dolan focuses on developing measures of happiness and subjective wellbeing that can be used by policymakers and by individuals looking to be happier. 
 
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 and education. His debut, Happiness by Design, was a Sunday Times bestseller and Waterstones non-fiction book of the month.

As a Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, Dolan conducts original research into the measurement of happiness and its causes and consequences, including the effects of our behaviour. Here he creates a new outlook on the pursuit of happiness - it's not just how you feel, it's how you act. Happiness by Design shows that being happier requires us to actively re-design our immediate environment. Enough has been written on how to think happy. Happiness by Design is about how to behave happy and how to incorporate the most recent research findings into our everyday lives.

Paul Dolan

Smart, engaging and funny. . . will make you question everything you think you know about what you want

Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women

Passionate, provocative. . . a manifesto for a better society

One of the most rigorous articulations of the new mood of acceptance. . . a persuasive demolition of many of our cultural stories about how we ought to live

A very useful antidote to the pressures of modern living. Very few books change the way you think about yourself, but this is one of them. I would particularly recommend it to young adults with all these life choices ahead of them

Paul Dolan knows what makes people happy - and what doesn't. Happy Ever After is illuminating, wise, profound. A magnificent achievement

A smart and irreverent look at the bad advice, lame instructions, and missing ingredients in society's recipe for a happy life

Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness

A splendid demonstration of how conventional aspirations can make us miserable

A timely warning that we need to question standard assumptions about what is good for individuals and society. Dolan makes a compelling case for putting people's own perceptions of their wellbeing at the heart of policy making

Lord Gus O’Donnell, former Cabinet Secretary

A Radical New Approach to Living Well

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.

Paul Dolan

Books by Paul Dolan

Articles featuring Paul Dolan

Stop looking for ‘the one’: how to escape the myth of a perfect life

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