Happy Ever After cover art

Happy Ever After

Escaping the Myth of the Perfect Life

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Happy Ever After

By: Paul Dolan
Narrated by: Paul Dolan
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About this listen

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.

©2019 Paul Dolan (P)2019 Penguin Audio Personal Development Personal Success Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Happiness Health Discrimination Mental Health Wisdom

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this really smashes down the walls of social narratives like kids, marriage and altruism. If you're sick of living your life to societies standards or just want a fresh perspective on life's journey, this is for you.

Great read!

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Really enjoyable narrative on why and how to find happiness in our individual situations. Highly recommended read for both introspection and light listening/reading.

Once upon a time

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Clear, incisive, entertaining and accessible. Really enjoyed this, and pretty much got through it in one sitting. Plenty to think about, and plenty to act on.

A brilliant read

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Very interesting, well researched and very good to listen to.

Really gives understanding to a lot of unconscious processes.

I wish I had a lecturer like this author when I was at university as I would have loved classes!

Wonderful book

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I really enjoyed this book. As someone who doesn’t currently live at least one social narrative, this was a wonderful in-depth look at how we judge, and are judged by society. Happiness is definitely living the life you align with and we can all do with reflecting on the drive behind our life decisions. Great read!

Wonderful book!

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Loved the book, some refreshing thoughts and ideas. Although the quality of the recording didn't seem as good as other books I have listened to for some reason? Still well worth a listen

Interesting thoughts

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“Happy ever after” is a great sequel to Paul Dolan’s book “Happiness by design”. In this book, Paul Dolan takes a macroscopic approach to the studying of various fundamental social narratives such as success,wealth,marriage, and responsibility. Albeit not agreeing with everything mentioned in the book, I still do believe that the book is very tangible and relatable to a wide audience, who in turn can learn a lot about social narratives and their effects on our daily lives. Paul Dolan is also a very straightforward and engaging author, and whose insights are in many cases substantiated by research that he carried out or was a part of. All of this makes reading the book a truly enjoyable experience.

A very tangible and relatable book that gives many insight into social narratives

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First of all I enjoyed it very much, it was fresh, open minded and genuine in general. We clearly need more books about social narratives because so many of us are simply not aware of it and accepting some of the "Truth" as absolute, which is war from the reality of life. However I couldn't help myself but feel that the author was pushing his audience into one social narrative of happiness and that is one and most important goal everyone should inspire to reach. Simply talking the message was that all of social narratives should be replaced with one - choose happiness because we all want to be happy! Yes, it sounds nice, I want to be happy and not miserable but I also know that it's impossible to stay happy all the time, I'd rather seek for fulfillment, peace of mind, purpose instead of smiling 24/7. Also swearing most of the times was completely unnecessary, I'm from working class too but that doesn't mean I have to use F**k as something obligatory...

Generally good and mind opening but...

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