The Happiness Cure: How to Flourish in Your Family, Community and Personal Life

For most of us happiness is a primary life goal, yet it frequently eludes us. In this timely audio course, award-winning sociology professor Temple Smith examines the many elements that contribute to a happy life. Over the course of 12 compelling audio lectures, you’ll learn how various life factors—among them genetics, relationships, diet, location, and profession—affect your happiness. Along the way, you’ll gain the tools to write your own definition of happiness and develop a plan for achieving it.

While Americans are obsessed with being happy, studies suggest that we report being less happy than previous generations. Some scholars posit that the rise of digital media is to blame, whereas others point the finger at deteriorations in social capital and support. Still others see the relentless American pace as the key obstacle to our happiness. Prof. Smith adds a complementary explanation to the mix, positing that we are less happy due to both less discretionary time and an underdeveloped personal understanding of happiness. She asks, are we really clear about what makes us happy, and do we purposely employ that definition in our everyday lives?

Rather than offering a prescriptive set of recommendations, Prof. Smith consults both the works of great thinkers across fields and the survey responses of everyday Americans in her examination of sociological and interdisciplinary perspectives of happiness. As you soak in these definitions as well as those of contemporary Americans just like you and me, you’ll hone your own conception of what it means to be happy.

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