Happy Ever After: Escaping The Myth of The Perfect Life

Paul Dolan

Jan 2019 · Penguin · Narrated by Paul Dolan

About this audiobook

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Happy Ever After written and read by Paul Dolan.

Get a good education, be successful, get married, have kids and look after your health. This is what we're told will make us happy. But what if these stories are doing more harm than good?

In Happy Ever After, bestselling happiness expert Professor Paul Dolan draws on groundbreaking research and data to bust the common myths about happiness and show that the path to fulfilment is actually far more unexpected than we thought. With straight-talking wisdom, he invites us to reappraise our values, free our minds from the 'narrative traps' of conventional wisdom and write our own version of the good life, based on maximising positive, meaningful experiences that can generate new social benefits - not least greater tolerance for different ways of life.

Happiness isn't what you're told. It's what you do.

About the author

Paul Dolan is Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE. He is an internationally renowned expert in human behaviour and happiness. Amongst various other roles, he wrote the questions that are being used to monitor national happiness in the UK and has advised many governments, charities and corporations on how to influence behaviour to improve wellbeing. His debut book, Happiness by Design, was a Sunday Times bestseller and dubbed 'the book that will make you quit your job'.