Jonathan Rauch on The Happiness Curve
The One You Feed | Personal Growth, Emotional Resilience & Purpose
Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, the author of 6 books (and many, many articles) and is a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His latest book is The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. See what you think about the trends of happiness in your life compared to the tendency he describes in his book and this interview. It may be that the emotional peak of life is different than when you’d expect.
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In This Interview, Jonathan Rauch and I Discuss…
- His book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50
- Connection to others
- Generosity
- The factors that most contribute to our happiness
- The U shape curve of happiness in life
- The emotional peak of life
- How our expectations change as life goes on
- That our values continue to change
- The fact that our brains change over the course of a lifetime
- How the effects of connectedness are cumulative and durable
- The hedonic treadmill
- What to do to be happier at the bottom of the curve
- The suffering that comes from social comparison
- Staying in the present moment
- Internal criticism
- Guilt vs Shame in mid-life
- The benefits of being other-directed, other-oriented
- How the voice of impulsiveness isn’t our friend
Jonathan Rauch Links
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