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The author of Happy Ever After is Paul Dolan.

Mindfulness & Happiness

Happy Ever After Book Summary - Happy Ever After Book explained in key points

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Happy Ever After summary

Name: Happy Ever After
Rating: 3.8 (116 reviews)
Author: Paul Dolan

Paul Dolan

Escaping The Myth of The Perfect Life

3.8 (116 ratings)

20 mins

Brief summary

Happy Ever After by Paul Dolan challenges the traditional definition of happiness and encourages readers to prioritize what truly matters in life, such as meaningful relationships and purposeful experiences, over market-driven goals.

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Table of Contents

Happy Ever After
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Skip societal expectations and find happiness.

We are all influenced by social narratives – widely accepted expectations about how we ought to lead our lives. We are expected to want to be successful, wealthy and well-educated. Getting married and having children is regarded as a basic and required achievement in life. Choosing to remain childless, or worse still, committing adultery, are viewed as strange or shameful choices.

Social narratives can be helpful, making a confusing world easier to navigate. But equally, they can lead us away from happiness by encouraging us to meet certain expectations rather than following our feelings and experiences. Many people have ticked all the boxes of societal expectations – holding senior positions in successful enterprises, working hard, getting married and having children – and yet are profoundly unhappy.

So maybe it’s time we thought a little more critically about the social narratives that influence our life decisions. In these blinks, you’ll learn how often the things we feel we ought to do are, in fact, a recipe for misery. You’ll understand how happier lives can emerge when we follow our experiences and intuition instead of societal expectations.

You’ll learn

why married people are no happier than divorced people;
why secretaries have more life satisfaction than the rich CEOs they serve; and
why you have less free will than you think you do.

Getting richer is not necessarily a good way to be happy, especially if you compare yourself with others.

Money makes the world go round, as the popular saying goes. Certainly, the pursuit of riches is deeply ingrained in contemporary society. A 2008 poll from the Pew Research Center found that "being wealthy" was important to over half of Americans. Furthermore, a 2014 American Heartland Monitor survey found that half of Americans agreed with the view that being wealthy is not just important, but an actual precondition to living a good life. And in the United Kingdom, the Sunday Times publishes an annual Rich List celebrating those with the highest earnings.

But in reality, acquiring more and more money is not necessarily a guarantee of a happy life.

We have good data on this point, thanks to the American Time of Use Survey. This survey asks around 20,000 people questions about the happiness, sense of meaning, stress and tiredness associated with each of their daily activities. It shows that happiness rises in correlation with income up to a point but then actually falls as people get richer. Happiness peaks among Americans earning between $50,000 and $75,000. People earning $100,000 are no happier than those earning $25,000, and both are less happy than those earning in the sweet spot of $50,000 to $75,000.

So perhaps, rather than striving to earn even more, we should be aiming for the "just-enough" band of $50-75,000. That, for most people, would represent an increase in earnings. But it also shows that great riches won’t make you happier.

That’s particularly the case given that the relationship between wealth and happiness is heavily influenced by comparison. A 2007 study by Bob Frank, an expert on status and consumption, showed that the majority of people would be happier to live in a 3,000-square-foot house surrounded by 2,000-square-foot houses than to live in a 4,000-square-foot house surrounded by 6,000-square-foot houses. Most of us can relate to that. Perhaps you’ve been pleased with your $500 bonus at work. Then you discover that a colleague received $1,000, and suddenly your joy turns to anger.

Being rich is not a route to happiness, particularly if you are surrounded by others who are as rich or richer than you. And as we’ll see now, the same goes for success as it does for money.

Often people in highly successful roles are not particularly happy and would be better off settling for less.

Is success important to you? At the start of our careers, the answer is usually "yes." Around two-thirds of all 18- to 34-year-olds in the United States say that being successful and highly paid is either "very important" or "one of the most important things" in life.

Few of us daydream about mediocrity or thirst for a life coasting along. But plenty of people overly value success and the recognition and status that comes with it, at the expense of their actual experiences and daily life at work.

We regard marriage as a basic achievement in life, but there is little evidence that it makes us happy.

Are you in a relationship? If so, you might want to be realistic about its future. According to a Stanford University study, any given relationship is much more likely to end in a split than to result in living happily ever after.

The majority of us regard meeting someone we love and getting married as core parts of a happy life. The author’s analysis of a survey of 7,000 Germans since 2013 found that over 90 percent said they regarded a long-lasting marriage as important to their lives. And there are benefits to being married. Married people tend to be healthier and better off than singles, and sociologists theorize that having a partner represents a source of support and encouragement and a buffer against negative life events.

Rigid opposition to infidelity does not help us lead happy lives.

Infidelity. It’s a sin so bad that the Ten Commandments mentioned it twice. Not only shalt thou not commit adultery, but thou shalt also not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

Infidelity has been regarded as immoral for centuries. In the United Kingdom, national statistics show that 70 percent of women and 63 percent of men believe that cheating is "always wrong." In the United States, research from the Pew Research Center shows that 84 percent of people see affairs as morally unacceptable. We have simply accepted the social narrative that says that infidelity is wrong in and of itself, rather than considering the question more deeply.

Society endorses parenthood despite it often leading to considerable strain, anxiety and unhappiness.

You’ve found a partner who – you think – makes you happy. You’ve ticked the marriage box. And you’ve stayed faithful. For now. The next step in life, if you are to follow social narratives, is clear: children.

We have come to view people who go against the grain and remain childless by choice are somehow self-interested, prioritizing nice holidays and lazy weekends over the selfless act of childrearing. Pope Francis has called societies with low birth rates "depressed." And just look at how Jennifer Aniston is treated as she regularly faces pity for her childlessness, despite all her achievements. And women suffer the most – in every country where data is available, women are stigmatized more than men for deciding to be child-free.

We can go too far in valuing a healthy lifestyle.

In a world of health-bloggers, clean-eating Instagram accounts and fad diets, we are constantly reminded to lead a healthy life. But, just as with money and success, going too far in our pursuit of health isn’t always a good route to happiness.

Today, we often judge those who do not meet our ideals. Consider obesity. Society does not, in general, like fat people. They are judged to have made poor decisions, resulting in concrete discrimination against people of greater weight. For example, in one Swedish study, researchers sent duplicate CVs to recruiters, changing only the photos so that in one version the candidate appeared to be fat. The obese applicants received an interview 8 percent less often.

Our belief in free will is misplaced and unhelpfully distorts our view of the world.

Much of our outlook in life is underpinned by a belief in free will. But the more we learn about the realities and science of human behavior, the more we see that our ability to determine our lives – our free will – is hugely exaggerated.

Who you are and the life you lead are heavily influenced by your upbringing and parents. The wealthiness of your parents has a major impact. For example, in the United States, for every 1 percent shift up the family income scale that your parents achieve, you become 0.7 percent more likely to go to college. Then consider how damaging it can be to have a difficult childhood. More than nine in ten juvenile offenders in the United States have experienced trauma in childhood. Not every child who experiences a traumatic upbringing will go on to offend, but it’s hard not to see a connection between the two.

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What is Happy Ever After about?

Happy Ever After (2018) asks us to question the powerful social narratives that influence our lives. It shows that many of the ideas that we hold unthinkingly, from feeling we should work hard and earn more money to a desire to be married with children, will not necessarily make us happy. And it offers a powerful argument that we should find our own path to a fulfilled life.

Happy Ever After Review

Happy Ever After (2019) explores the true source of happiness and challenges societal norms about what makes us truly content. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It provides fascinating insights into the science of happiness, backed by research and data, giving readers a deeper understanding of what truly brings joy.
Through compelling stories and thought-provoking examples, the book challenges conventional wisdom about happiness, encouraging readers to reassess their priorities and values.
With its refreshing honesty and straightforward approach, the book offers practical strategies to enhance happiness, making it a valuable resource for anyone seeking a more fulfilling life.

Best quote from Happy Ever After

To be happier we need to move from a culture of more please to one of just enough.

—Paul Dolan

Who should read Happy Ever After?

People looking to follow their own path in life
Anyone interested in social norms and group-think
People interested in behavioral science

About the Author

Paul Dolan is a professor of behavioral science at the London School of Economics. A globally renowned expert on human behavior, he is the bestselling author of Happiness by Design.

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