Happier, No Matter What

Even when everything is going wrong, the science of happiness can help you!

Pioneering positive psychologist and New York Times–bestselling author Tal Ben-Shahar shows us how in Happier, No Matter What.

Ben-Shahar busts the all-too-common ideas that success brings happiness and that we can seek happiness itself. When hard times thwart our success and steal our joy, these ideas actually invite despair by leaving us with nothing to do.

But we can do something: We can climb the SPIRE—Ben-Shahar’s five-step staircase to hope and purpose.

• Spiritual: I am experiencing meaning.
• Physical: My body’s needs are met.
• Intellectual: I am learning.
• Relational: My friends support me.
• Emotional: I am allowed to feel.

By truly living these five elements of well-being, we build the resilience to carry us through anything—from a personal loss to a global pandemic. Ben-Shahar’s all-new SPIRE method shows us the way to becoming “whole again”—and when we’re whole, we invite happiness in.

Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD, has written eight books, including the New York Times bestseller Happier and his latest, Happier, No Matter What. He is the cofounder of the Happiness Studies Academy and Potentialife. Ben-Shahar taught the largest course at Harvard, “Positive Psychology,” and the third largest, “The Psychology of Leadership,” attracting 1,400 students per semester—approximately 20 percent of all Harvard undergraduates. He obtained his BA and PhD from Harvard, and for the last twenty years has been teaching leadership, happiness, and mindfulness to audiences all over the world.