Happy As

Why the quest for happiness is making us miserable

Lisa Portolan

• Publisher: Echo
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781760681128
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

In a world where data is the new currency, social media is turning us all into walking, talking billboards and brands and we're meant to be mindful, manifesting and present, isn't it a bit rich to be expected to be happy too?

After a lifetime spent actively searching for happiness as well as studying it, communications executive and yogi Lisa Portolan shares valuable insights into how we made happiness a science and an industry, created products around it and supported it with a whole heap of advertising to ensure that works, but is 'brand me' just a recipe for unhappiness?

'Lisa points the way to an alternative approach where instead of performing or pursuing an artificial construction of happiness, we can discover our authentic, holistic selves, and learn that this is enough.' - Tom Dawkins

'A big call, but coming from a practitioner of the dark arts of advertising and persuasion Lisa's insights are f*cking surprising and enlightening.' - Paul Bongiorno AM

'Lisa Portolan's fascinating exploration of happiness reveals fresh insights into this much-lauded but little-examined condition. Startling in its insight and surprising in its scale, Happy As sheds light into the darker corners of people's search for joy. And, oddly enough, it is an unbridled joy to read.' - Tim Ferguson

Table of contents

• Happy As
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part one: #happiness
• 1 The Betty Crocker happiness mud cake
• 2 What does this bloody happiness business actually mean?
• 3 When the f*ck did happiness become king?
• 4 Spinning happiness
• 5 Shooing the bird
• 6 What if I have no idea who I am?
• 7 We’d all like to be the hero of our story – but most of the time we’re the villain
• 8 But what do you mean?
• 9 You’re part of the school of fish
• 10 How unhappiness became the deadliest of sins
• 11 ’Brand me’
• 12 You’re about to be voted off the island
• 13 God is dead. Social media is God
• 14 Millenials and the iGen – are they truly f*cked up?
• 15 Could you get on with it and be perfect already?
• 16 The wellness vortex
• Part two: The f*cking solution
• 17 Communicating the solution
• 18 Art will make you f*cking happy. Everything is f*cking art
• 19 Calm the f*ck down
• 20 Don’t just settle for what’s okay, or even what you like, or even what you love – find what you f*cking love
• 21 Now is a con
• 22 You’re not f*cking no one, you’ll always be, inherently, someone
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• About the author
• Imprint
• Echo