Happiness Through Hardship

Does your diagnosis have you desperate as to what to do next? Shocked, scared and practically paralyzed with your next steps? Help is here in this brilliant, quick and simplified book backed with the best advice from a two-time cancer survivor who walked in similar shoes. Like a good friend holding your hand, Caryn Sullivan’s Happiness through Hardship is written in support of cancer patients, their caregivers and/or friends who need direction during the first few weeks after diagnosis. This cancer-surviving guide book empowers readers to take immediate steps for being prepared, less-stressed and able to find a little joy within the journey. Happiness through Hardship directs those facing an initial cancer diagnosis with positivity and hope. Structured with thoughtful tips and anecdotes, this short book provides gentle guidance from the first few days to the thickness of treatments, and includes a journal and note-taking pages to be used as a reference during doctor appointments and meetings. After her own cancer diagnosis, Caryn understands the importance of a book that’s easily digestible and not overwhelmingly long. Her insight provides a little light during the darker days. The first few weeks after diagnosis are often most challenging. Caryn was blessed to have three angels, Ellen Cavaiuolo, Mary Ann Wasil and Meghan Zucker guide her throughout the early days. This book is dedicated to them and half the proceeds will be donated to metastatic breast cancer research through The Cancer Couch Foundation.

Essays from the Stoic philosopher instructing how to find happiness in a world full of adversity. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and advisor to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection helps restore Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities. Hardship and Happiness collects a range of essays intended to instruct, from consolations—works that offer comfort to someone who has suffered a personal loss—to pieces on how to achieve happiness or tranquility in the face of a difficult world. Expertly translated, the essays will be read and used by undergraduate philosophy students and experienced scholars alike. Praise for Hardship and Happiness “[The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca] brings together many preeminent anglophone scholars of Seneca as editors and translators and succeeds in its aim to reach a wider audience through readable, modern English translations. . . . The overall high quality of the translations and notes make this volume (and its respective series) highly desirable for scholars and libraries alike.” —Classical Journal “A significant improvement over what has been available in English of the previous century. . . . The translations presented here admirably achieve the aim set out by the series’ editors: ‘to be faithful to the Latin while reading idiomatically in English.’ . . . Hardship and Happiness is a handsome volume, beautifully conceived and executed.” —Review of Metaphysics “We owe a debt of gratitude to Chicago for this one-volume selection of essays from long ago, which still have the power to stimulate our minds today.” —Classics for All

Subjective well being, or happiness, has been analyzed in detail by psychologists for decades. Yet only recently has it become the subject of economic analysis. In Happiness and Hardship, Carol Graham and Stefano Pettinato provide a new conceptual framework for analyzing the relationship between subjective well being and the political sustainability of market-oriented economic growth in 17 Latin American countries and Russia. Several variables—such as marital status, employment, and inflation—are known to influence happiness. Graham and Pettinato have identified other variables that have important effects on how individuals perceive their well being: macroeconomic volatility, globalization of information, increasing income mobility, and inequality driven by technology-led growth. The authors begin by explaining data and measurement problems involved in studying mobility, and they summarize general trends in developing countries. Second, they provide new data on subjective well being for Latin America and Russia. They find that the socio-demographic determinants of "happiness"—such as the effects of age and unemployment—are very similar to those in the U.S. and Europe. They also find that relative income differences have important effects on how individuals assess their well being. Those in the middle or lower middle of the income distribution are more likely to be dissatisfied than are the very poorest groups. Third, the authors find that volatility in income flows can have negative effects on perceived well being, even among upwardly mobile individuals. Finally, the authors explore the relationship between social capital and mobility. They distinguish between participation driven by economic necessity—such as soup kitchens—and voluntary participation in civic organizations. They find that different objectives underlying civic participation can result in different effects on individual mobility rates, on perceived well being, and on aggregate growth. An age-old puzzle is why some societies seem to tolerate significant degrees of economic hardship and yet retain political and social stability, while others break out into violent protest as a result of much smaller economic declines or shocks. Happiness and Hardship sheds new light on factors that can increase mobility and provide new opportunities for low-income people in developing economies, and possibly improve perceived, as well as actual, well being.

We can be happy in spite of hardship, heartbreak, or a job we hate. Pie-in-the-sky? This down-to-earth guy shows us how. When personal tragedy struck, Howard Cushnir already knew the Zen practice of staying in the moment. But he wasn't prepared for the gift of grace he received. One day, all but lost, he was suddenly suffused with a complete sense of well-being---not a passing experience, but one available from then on. Paying close attention to the changes in his own inner states, Howard soon realized that feeling blissful is a choice we can always make, regardless of our circumstances.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • An engaging, deeply researched guide to flourishing in a world of increasing stress and negativity—the inspiration for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time “Powerful [and] charming . . . A book for just about anyone . . . The philosophies in this book are easily the best wire frames to build a happy and successful life.”—Medium Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it is the realization that we can. Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we’ll be happy; that once we get that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But the science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. Research shows that happy employees are more productive, more creative, and better problem solvers than their unhappy peers. And positive people are significantly healthier and less stressed and enjoy deeper social interaction than the less positive people around them. Drawing on original research—including one of the largest studies of happiness ever conducted—and work in boardrooms and classrooms across forty-two countries, Shawn Achor shows us how to rewire our brains for positivity and optimism to reap the happiness advantage in our lives, our careers, and even our health. His strategies include: • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility so we can see and seize opportunities all around us • Social Investment: how to earn the dividends of a strong social support network • The Ripple Effect: how to spread positive change within our teams, companies, and families By turns fascinating, hopeful, and timely, The Happiness Advantage reveals how small shifts in our mind-set and habits can produce big gains at work, at home, and elsewhere.

Meltdown is an instruction manual to turn your hardship into happiness by measuring and managing the things that are broken in your body, brain and business.

This book is about: • surviving when you’re broke • how happy people think – and how you can be like them • liking yourself before you lose that extra weight • persevering after you get the sack • being happy before you meet your dream partner – and when they become a ‘learning experience!’ Filled with Andrew’s charming cartoons, and inspiring stories of people who have lost everything they had or almost been beaten by alcohol, illness, abuse or outrageous misfortune, Happiness in Hard Times shows us how we too can find our way through the pain to the contentment that seems out of reach.

“This book will challenge you to rethink your vision of a good life. With sharp insights and lucid prose, Paul Bloom makes a captivating case that pain and suffering are essential to happiness. It’s an exhilarating antidote to toxic positivity.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife One of Behavioral Scientist's "Notable Books of 2021" From the author of Against Empathy, a different kind of happiness book, one that shows us how suffering is an essential source of both pleasure and meaning in our lives Why do we so often seek out physical pain and emotional turmoil? We go to movies that make us cry, or scream, or gag. We poke at sores, eat spicy foods, immerse ourselves in hot baths, run marathons. Some of us even seek out pain and humiliation in sexual role-play. Where do these seemingly perverse appetites come from? Drawing on groundbreaking findings from psychology and brain science, The Sweet Spot shows how the right kind of suffering sets the stage for enhanced pleasure. Pain can distract us from our anxieties and help us transcend the self. Choosing to suffer can serve social goals; it can display how tough we are or, conversely, can function as a cry for help. Feelings of fear and sadness are part of the pleasure of immersing ourselves in play and fantasy and can provide certain moral satisfactions. And effort, struggle, and difficulty can, in the right contexts, lead to the joys of mastery and flow. But suffering plays a deeper role as well. We are not natural hedonists—a good life involves more than pleasure. People seek lives of meaning and significance; we aspire to rich relationships and satisfying pursuits, and this requires some amount of struggle, anxiety, and loss. Brilliantly argued, witty, and humane, Paul Bloom shows how a life without chosen suffering would be empty—and worse than that, boring.