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The best non-fiction is as easy and rewarding to read as the best fiction, it holds your interest, it focuses on facts in a way that makes it all that much more real, a visual, and maybe emotional experience. This was, for the most part, not a book I ever felt fully engaged in, and while it had some parts that were more compelling, it felt mired down by the way it was told. The keys to surviving or "muddling through" this trough are to first and foremost, accept as "normal" what you are going through and resist the urge for comparison to others or to your own goals/expectations. Then, despite your inclination to become a hermit and hide out -- connect and reach out to others who are going through it or who have gone through it: connectedness is one of the keys to surviving. Finally, make changes in small steps, not giant leaps -- and build on your strengths, skills and experience. The nominees for the Swedish 2021 Storytel Awards have been announced. The Storytel Awards have been bestowed since 2007 in Sweden to highlight the best audio books of the year. The awards are granted within six categories: Suspense, Fiction, Non-fiction, Feelgood, YA, and Children’s books. he found the same result regardless of respondents’ economic status, generation, and even whether they lived in western or eastern Germany (two very different cultures): younger people consistently and markedly overestimated how satisfied they would be five years later, while older people underestimated future satisfaction. So youth is a period of perpetual disappointment, and older adulthood is a period of pleasant surprise. What’s more, Schwandt found that in between those two periods, during middle age, people experienced a sort of double whammy: satisfaction with life was declining (that’s the U-curve, which manifested itself clearly), but expectations were also by then declining (in fact, they were declining even faster than satisfaction itself). In other words, middle-aged people tend to feel both disappointed and pessimistic, a recipe for misery. Eventually, however, expectations stop declining. They settle at a lower level than in youth, and reality begins exceeding them. Surprises turn predominantly positive, and life satisfaction swings upward. And the crossover, in Schwandt’s sample, happened about where you would expect: in the 50s. This book is written by a journalist who had not so much a mid-life crisis but just more like a general slump feeling even when his life was going really well in mid-age (career accolades, happy marriage etc). Then miraculously at around late 40s early 50s he started feeling better, with nothing else really changing in his life. He wanted to investigate this phenomenon and it turns out that the research on happiness shows that cross culturally, even accounting for other factors such as income, gender, etc. there is a statistically significant "happiness curve" tied to age that has been demonstrated by big data sets of hundreds of thousands of people. On average, people will experience some level of "slump" feeling in mid-life though what constitutes mid-life in terms of age varies slightly from culture to culture. A similar phenomenon has been observed in apes as well. Basically there is evidence to suggest that this slump is to some degree biologically built into primates, but there are also cultural factors, and how each individual experiences it is going to vary considerably--some might have a full on 'mid life crisis,' some may feel a general feeling of malaise, and some may not feel it at all.
Quite a few of the men interviewed go through divorces in their 40s but then rebound in their 50s and make successful second marriages to (younger?) women, stating that this time it's great because they are relaxed, not so hung up on their careers, paying more attention to their relationships etc. Ok, that's cool that they have changed but couldn't they have kept their marriage going AND changed? Why throw out wife number one? I'm guessing she was a similar age and also going to a midlife slump. How did the divorce affect her life? Is she super happy now too & married again? Who knows! Rauch doesn't interview any of the wives. I do know that divorce has a huge negative impact on women's finances - how does that play into the happiness curve?An interesting take on how, in what should be the prime time of success in life, is also seen as the most unhappy time of life. People will joke about the "mid-life crisis" when people hit 40 and "Middle Age," but according to Rauch, there is something more than jokes about red sports cars. Through personal observation, personal accounts and scientific study, he documents that when surveyed, many people will experience times of less happiness in their 40s than either in their 30s or 50s. For many of those surveyed, they have everything going for them as far as professional and personal achievements, but yet, there is some sort of either discontentment or feeling in inadequacy that will impact people. Hence, on the many charts documenting levels of happiness vs. age, the numbers are lower in the 40s...but then seem to go up once a person hits the 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. His take is that the brain hasn't caught up to the rapid changes in human history and therefore responds as if we still lived as hunter-gatherers. There were certain aspects of this explanation that felt like a reach, but even leaving this out, the book makes for a very fascinating read. You know how people realize later in their life that it's their friendships and relationships with people that really matter and they're more relationship-driven than ambition-driven, and they're glad now that they "see the light" and realize what's truly important in life? And that now they feel so much wiser than those younger people who haven't figured that out yet? It's not that they never figured it out; it's that, biologically, we change so that those things become our priorities later in life. There's some definite psychology involved (younger people who think they don't have very long to live show this shift in priorities as well, and older people who feel like they still have plenty of time don't show it as much), but there's definitely a biological component. And people are not waking up to what's important as much as their bodies are changing what they consider important. The answer lies in understanding what the happiness curve is really saying, which is this: It is perfectly possible to be very satisfied with your life in middle age, but it is harder.”
He added: “This feeling of pleasure is something that should be short-term, but we are fooled by advertising that we should experience it all the time. If you think that happiness is feeling good all the time, then you will be disappointed because we've not built that way. Rauch also supplies plenty of studies that demonstrate the universal principles of underlying wisdom and where people usually end up on the other side of the trough: 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. Meanwhile, Anders Hansen’s Brain Blues and Måns Mosesson’s Tim – The Official Biography of Avicii features on the Non-fiction list, and David Sundin’s audiobook The Audiobook That Did Not Want To End – Part 2, from the same universe as The Book That Did Not Want To Be Read, is in the running for the Children’s books’ award. Just before that section of the book -- the author gets into the wisdom studies and some very pragmatic and clear information on what it is and why it is important to thoseThis book presents a captivating journey through the complexities of mental well-being, unveiling the intricate workings of our minds in relation to emotions, anxiety, depression, and the pursuit of happiness. Despite a somewhat misleading title, suggesting a direct route to perpetual joy, the book offers a nuanced exploration of factors influencing our mental states. Would we do the same thing with respect to adolescents? There may be many satires and jokes about adolescence but we are all very aware of the real changes and challenges faced by humans in this phase of their development. It exists and it's not a joke. Anders Hansen is our foremost and most accomplished public educator. With his crystal-clear, straightforward prose that never shies away from the difficult questions, he writes about evolution and the brain, and why many of us are left feeling so bad. Brilliant, I think. And very informative David Lagercrantz Depression takes center stage, with Hansen linking inflammation to milder symptoms. His unique perspective on inflammation as a thermostat for our feelings adds a fresh layer to the discussion. The book also emphasizes the importance of physical activity in maintaining mental health, positioning exercise as a potent antidote to depression and anxiety. The book was a little slim on 'what-to-do-about-its' because, I think, most people don't quite know what to do about it. I would have enjoyed a little more info on how to make the best marriage/family life throughout your forties. I would have enjoyed examples that weren't mostly wealthier career people. It left out anyone without a traditional career trajectory. Additionally, the end petered out a little bit for me--I could have easily skipped it.
Well, the same can be said of midlife, as it turns out. Jonathan Rauch's book, "The Happiness Curve" starts off by diving into a huge pile of research: dozens of research teams have seen this u-shaped curve in self-reported life satisfaction scores. We start off VERY happy in life and our satisfaction gradually decreases at mid-life, and then begins to increase again after this midlife trough. It's not just cultural -- it's found across multiple cultures and samples across decades. And, it's not just humans -- researchers working with primates around the world, in various settings, have found the same curve in our nearest non-human primate relatives and may be biological. Among the nominees for suspense are Kristina Ohlsson’s Icebreaker, Hjorth & Rosenfeldt’s As You Sow, Jens Lapidus’ The No-Go Zone, Anders de la Motte & Måns Nilsson’s A House to Die For, Liza Marklund’s The Polar Circle, and Anders Roslund’s Trust Me.I enjoyed all the data he used in the book from across the world, as well as most of the personal examples he used. Are you an upper-middle class/wealthy white male who lives in an urban setting and is successful in your career? If so, then this is the book for you! It reminds me a lot of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In - focusing on a narrow, highly successful group of people and then acting like their situation is applicable to all. It's not. Dr Anders explained: “What you have to understand about the brain is that its primary goal is not to make us smart or to make us creative, it’s to take us to tomorrow alive! This is a tedious book. Jonathan Rauch is a competent journalist, and does well summarizing the work of scientist and other thinkers about happiness. However, he attempts to make his own contribution to the field by conducting a survey and using the experience of his correspondents and his own life story to illustrate the scientific findings. There are dome nuggets of interesting material here, but the reader is mining low-grade ore.
It is about the dawn of 'encore adulthood,' a whole new stage of adult development which is already starting to reshape the way we think about retirement,education, and human potential." Knowing the independent effect of age on happiness tells us no more about our actual lives than knowing the independent effect of pitching on baseball tells us about who actually wins the game. A fascinating exploration of the ways in which our ancient neurologic wiring is mismatched for the modern ecosystem. By understanding depression and anxiety through the lens of evolution, we can make sense of the growing despair in the world today and do something about it. This is a must read for anyone hoping to understand the human brain. Dr. Anna Lembke, New York Times bestselling author of Dopamine NationA must read for anyone hoping to understand the human brain' - Dr Anna Lembke, New York Times bestselling author of Dopamine Nation As I set off for a sort of short term midlife retirement / sabbatical, I suppose this book hit me at just the right time. I found the chapters on origins and possible causes fascinating, particularly the work of Hannes Schwandt, who ran a longitudinal survey between 1991 to 2004 on the subject of life satisfaction predictions vs outcomes. Schwandt's work suggests expectations play a key role in our overall life satisfaction: The last two chapters were a bit more self-helpy, and I found they dragged a little bit, but I think this was because the things he suggests to get through the slump seemed pretty obvious to me, probably because I've already looked into/been implementing a lot of those things because I have a lifelong battle with waxing and waning depression & anxiety (don't go it alone - share how you are feeling with friends/counsellor, try something new, use meditation and mindfulness techniques etc.) The last two chapters also talked about the beginnings of a movement to redefine what older age looks like (the 50s and 60s) similar to how adolescence as a distinct life phase had to be defined with the rise of the industrial revolution. That was somewhat interesting.
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