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Title details for The Happiness Curve by Jonathan Rauch - Available

The Happiness Curve

Why Life Gets Better After 50

by Jonathan Rauch
Robert Fass
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

"Robert Fass proves the perfect guide to exploring these concepts of age and happiness. Presenting the author's personal journey, and his research and interviews, Robert keeps listeners engaged and tuned in to this fascinating study." — AudioFile Magazine
This audiobook will change your life by showing you how life changes.
Why does happiness tend to get harder in your 40s? Why do you feel in a slump when you're successful? Where does this malaise come from? And, most importantly, will it ever end?
Drawing on cutting-edge research, award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch answers all these questions. He shows that from our 20s into our 40s, happiness follows a U-shaped trajectory, a "happiness curve," declining from the optimism of youth into what's often a long, low slump in middle age, before starting to rise again in our 50s.
This isn't a midlife crisis, though. Rauch reveals that this slump is instead a natural stage of life—and an essential one. By shifting priorities away from competition and toward compassion, it equips you with new tools for wisdom and gratitude to win the third period of life.
And Rauch can testify to this personally because it was his own slump, despite acclaim as a journalist and commentator that compelled him to investigate the happiness curve. His own story and the stories of many others from all walks of life—from a steelworker and a limo driver to a telecoms executive and a philanthropist—show how the ordeal of midlife malaise reboots our values and even our brains for a rebirth of gratitude.
Full of insights and data and featuring many ways to endure the slump and avoid its perils and traps, The Happiness Curve doesn't just show listeners the dark forest of midlife, it helps them find a path through the trees. It also shows how we can—and why we must—do more to help each other through the woods.
Praise for The Happiness Curve:
"The Happiness Curve delivers on the promise of its title, with wise insights and practices to help you become the best you can be. Leave the midlife slump. Enter into an encore adulthood of powerful purpose." — Richard Leider, international bestselling author of The Power of Purpose, Repacking your Bags, and Life Reimagined
"Do you wish to understand the arc of your life? And why you are likely to end up happier than you are right now? If so, The Happiness Curve is the best place to start. And I write this as someone who can vouch that the upper part of the happiness life curve is very glorious indeed." — Tyler Cowan, New York Times bestselling author of The Complacent Class and The Great Stagnation

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 1, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781427292988
      • File size: 240484 KB
      • Duration: 08:21:00

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This important and often personal summary of how age affects happiness is served well by the equanimity and grace of Robert Fass's narration. Whether it's author Rauch's personal journey, his fascinating data, or his sensitive portraits of the experts he interviews, Fass captures all of this author's intensity and colorful writing. In our later years, after the inevitable midlife malaise evident in all cultures, Rauch says, evolution wires us to become more optimistic and content. As we move past midlife, accumulated experience lowers expectations and drive, thus making room for our younger successors to procreate and agitate progress for themselves and their tribes. The audiobook is a most satisfying guide to the hills and valleys of life, and a satisfying roadmap for achieving greater happiness with whatever roads we have taken in life. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 12, 2018
      Journalist Rauch (Political Realism) argues for a “happiness curve” to life—a common, U-shaped path from youthful idealism, through middle-aged disappointment, to eventual happiness—in this inspired take on midlife crises. In researching the topic, Rauch gave interviewees a questionnaire about their satisfaction level at the present and at earlier ages, finding that those in their 40s often describe feeling profoundly dissatisfied, even when there seemed no compelling reason to be so. Older subjects reported feeling the same demoralization during their 40s, but also increased satisfaction at their present age and even a “rebirth of gratitude.” What’s the reason for that return to contentment? It can be multilayered, Rauch says; it may surface as “a sense of mastery.” Or it may be that “settling increases our contentment.” While Rauch provides a few suggestions for getting through the low times—a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables, for instance—it’s the many interviews with survey participants that will provide the most reassurance to readers. They will also take comfort from Rauch’s personal investment in the subject—he has moved through the bottom of his own happiness curve and concludes his heartening self-help book by writing that it was “worth the wait.”

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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