** spoiler alert ** Book on drawing lines how you can control your inmer 🐘 elephant. >Once you can control your interpretations, you can control your life . >To be able to control your life, you must first control the emotional sides of the Elephant >Reciprocity is when you expect equal treatment for something you shared with someone. Reciprocity serves as a reminder that actions need rewards >Lack of reciprocity can cause a conflict of interest, gossip, hatred, and defamation of another person's identity . >Humans believe that when you don't reciprocate, you're an ingrate that doesn't deserve help again. >Admitting to your faults can be very difficult because the Elephant is programmed to deny accusations. >Short term happiness can only bring short term satisfaction. >Virtue is made up of several traits like Morality, Altruism, Nobleness, and some other respected character traits. >Society has become a free world where anything can be discarded, including religion. >When you connect to something bigger and greater through religion, nature, or meditation, you are well on course to achieving a meaningful life. Don't pursue passion you're not good at

Man, I am a sucker for nonfictional books that are able to incorporate humor into serious discussions. This book changed how I operated in life -- at times, the change is only as subtle as my thoughts but sometimes I thoroughly approach happiness differently. My roommate recommended this during the summer of 2021. I can still remember the feeling of reading this book while lounging around my apartment room. This was before I purchased a bed when I was sleeping on a cot and when I was participating in my first research project. To no one's surprise, a book about happiness suited my emotional needs quite well.

Easily accessible read. Down to earth research on how to navigate yourself in search of meaning of life and happiness. This book doesn't provide one and only way into a happy and meaningful life. It's a rather concise approach to philosophies of ancient times and recent science on the topic.

Readable introduction to 'positive psychology'; not life-changing but certainly thought-provoking.

I took a long time to read this book. Being a philosophy nerd I was digging into all the references the author mentioned on his arguments and boy, that was fun. From revisiting religious books to Sartre, this book made me reflect again on a lot of truths I had set to myself. I just think at the end, the payoff on the book was not what I expected, too short and overly simplified. Maybe that’s the message the author was trying to convey. What is the meaning of your life?