“Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know—that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts. You are a very fine person, I’m sure. But you are a very bad wizard.”

“The fact that the least likely experience is often the most likely memory can wreak havoc with our ability to predict future experiences.”

“Imagination’s failure to recognize that things will look different once they happen—in particular, that bad things will look a whole lot better.”<ul><li>When we imagine losing a job, for instance, we imagine the painful experience (“The boss will march into my office, shut the door behind him . . .”) without also imagining how our psychological immune systems will transform its meaning (“I’ll come to realize that this was an opportunity to quit retail sales and follow my true calling as a sculptor”).</li></ul>

Third Shortcoming Of Imagination 

<ul><li>Researchers have discovered that when people find it easy to imagine an event, they overestimate the likelihood that it will actually occur.</li><li>Because most of us get so much more practice imagining good than bad events, we tend to overestimate the likelihood that good events will actually happen to us, which leads us to be unrealistically optimistic about our futures.</li><li>The key to happiness, fulfillment, and enlightenment, is to stop thinking so much about the future.</li></ul>

Twisting Fate

"Every man is happy until happiness is suddenly a goal"

“ One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance. “

“If we were to experience the world exactly as it is, we’d be too depressed to get out of bed in the morning, but if we were to experience the world exactly as we want it to be, we’d be too deluded to find our slippers. We may see the world through rose-colored glasses, but rose-colored glasses are neither opaque nor clear.”

“Imagination’s tendency to project the present onto the future.”<ul><li>When imagination paints a picture of the future, many of the details are necessarily missing, and imagination solves this problem by filling in the gaps with details that it borrows from the present.</li></ul>

Second Shortcoming Of Imagination

Among life’s cruelest truths is this one: “Wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition.”<ol><li>One way to beat habituation is to increase the variety of one’s experiences (“Hey, honey, I have a kinky idea—let’s watch the sun set from the kitchen this time”).</li><li>Another way to beat habituation is to increase the amount of time that separates repetitions of the experience. </li></ol>

Next To Nothing

“Imagination’s tendency to fill in and leave out without telling us.”<ul><li>No one can imagine every feature and consequence of a future event, hence we must consider some and fail to consider others. The problem is that the features and consequences we fail to consider are often quite important.</li><li>Our experience is compressed as a summary phrase (“Dinner was disappointing”) or a small set of key features (tough steak, corked wine, snotty waiter) in memory.</li></ul>

First Shortcoming Of Imagination 

“The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either.

“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“Instead of remembering our past experience in order to simulate our future experience, perhaps we should simply ask other people to introspect on their inner states. Perhaps we should give up on remembering and imagining entirely and use other people as surrogates for our future selves.”

<ul><li>People tend to see what they want to see.</li><li>By controlling the sample of information to which they were exposed, these people indirectly controlled the conclusions they would draw.</li><li>To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion.</li></ul>

Challenging Facts

<ul><li>The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future.</li><li>Our brains were made for nexting, and that’s just what they’ll do.</li><li>Happiness is a word that we use to indicate an experience and not the actions that give rise to it.</li></ul>

The Joy Of Next 

“Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed.”

Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you
anything useful about how to be happy. Instead, this is a book that describes what science has to tell us about how and how well the human brain can imagine its own future, and about how and how well it can predict which of those futures it will most enjoy….

In this fascinating and often hilarious work – winner of the Royal Society of Science Prize 2007 – pre-eminent psychologist Daniel Gilbert shows how – and why – the majority of us have no idea how to make ourselves happy. We all want to be happy, but do we know how? When it comes to improving tomorrow at the expense of today, we're terrible at predicting how to please our future selves. In ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ Professor Daniel Gilbert combines psychology, neuroscience, economics and philosophy with irrepressible wit to describe how the human brain imagines its future – and how well (or badly) it predicts what it will enjoy. Revealing some of the amazing secrets of human motivation, he also answers thought-provoking questions – why do dining companions order different meals instead of getting what they want? Why are shoppers happier when they can't get refunds? And why are couples less satisfied after having children while insisting that their kids are a source of joy?

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

education

Learning & Education

books

Books

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.

Daniel Gilbert is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Daniel Gilbert has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Daniel Gilbert's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

DANIEL GILBERT

Similar ideas

Hedonic adaptation

Struggling To Build Healthy Habits

"Good" or "Bad"