Stumbling on Happiness

Ev Williams Co-Founder/Twitter, CEO/MediumRecommends this book

Jonathan Haidt He’s one of the funniest people, certainly in psychology – he’s just endlessly witty, and reading it is like strapping yourself into a roller coaster. (Source)

Derek Sivers My recommendation is to do little tests. Try a few months of living the life you think you want, but leave yourself an exit plan, being open to the big chance that you might not like it after actually trying it... The best book about this subject is Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. His recommendation is to talk to a few people wo are currently where you think you want to be and ask them for the pros and cons. Then trust their opinion since they're right in it, not just remembering or imagining. (Source)

Nicholas Epley Dan Gilbert, a dear friend of mine at Harvard, is the best writer in our field and one of our greatest thinkers. He is extremely creative and insightful. (Source)

Matthew Taylor It shows that human beings are very bad at predicting what will make them happy, and, in fact, are even bad at describing what has made them happy in the past. (Source)

Chelsea Frank I read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. (Source)

Lisa Feldman Barrett One of the ideas in this book is that minds are predictive, not reactive. It feels to us like we just react to the things that are happening to us, but in fact our brains are constantly guessing what’s going to happen in the next moment. Dan’s book was one of the first books that really took on this idea of prediction – which is, I would say, one of the great innovations in the last decade or two of neuroscience research. (Source)

Jessica Pryce-Jones Essentially, he writes that we’re prisoners of our minds and brains – and we think we’re so different from everyone else, but we’re not. (Source)

Maria Popova Dan Gilbert "Stumbling Unhappiness" should be required reading for every human being. (Source)