This is a book by an engineering-minded father to solve this mystery of achieving happiness in life.

– The author went to bat directly stating the what happiness is: an absence of unhappiness, the default state when we were a child. I like the exercise of writing down, “I feel happy when ______.” (Fill in the blanks.)
– It’s our own thought of unhappy events, not the actual unhappy events, that causes our own unhappiness. The trick is not to think about it. Don’t let it linger, which turns into a self-generated pain.
– The authors offers the 6-7-5 formula: bust the 6 illusions, fix the 7 blind spots and hang on to the 5 ultimate truths.

– The six illusions are:
1) thought: the little voice in your head.
2) self: you’re not the star of the movie.
3) knowledge: we don’t know that much after all. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
4) time: live in the here and now. Life is now and now is amazing.
5) control: you can only choose your attitude. “It’s going to be fine in the end. If its not yet fine, then it is not yet the end.”
6) fear: learn to die before you die. It is time to face your fears.

– The 7 blind spots are
1) filters: our brain tells incomplete pictures due to its limitation.
2) assumptions: brain-generated story – not truth.
3) predictions: brain-generated future possibilities – not truth.
4) memories: a record of what you think happened – often not the truth.
5) labels: covers the truth in the absence of context.
6) emotions: our perception of truth is often distracted by our irrational emotions.
7) exaggeration: what’s more than the truth is less than true.

– The 5 ultimate truths:
1) now: Being fully aware of the present moment considerably increases your chance of being happy. Be aware means stop doing and just be. Be aware of your world outside, inside your body, your thoughts and emotions and your connection to the rest of being. Be aware of the journey where all of life happens.
2) change: when everything you do feels effortless, you’ll have found your path. Don’t just keep looking up for better material things. Look down and feel how fortunate we are. Gratitude is a sure path to happiness.
3) love: joy of true love is giving it. The more love you give, the more you get back. Choose to be kind instead of being right. Love is all you need.
4) death: accepting death will set you free. Surrender! Live before you die.
5) design: the author attempts to argue the “grand” design based on probability of our existence. It’s small, very small. But he believes that God does not intervene or run the show.

– It’s heartbreaking to have your son die on the operating table at his young age of 21. The author took it as his mission to define and seek happiness.
– The author really turned his son, Ali, into a saint the way he described his son. It’s only human to commemorate your lost loved one all the positives except there’s one time his son tattooed himself without telling him. Maybe Ali was a saint.
– The chapter on evolution vs. intelligent design was his attempt to “prove” or “disprove” the existence of God. He made an gallant effort to show how unlikely the randomness or probability can allow all the living things on this earth or universe. I think it’s well researched and argued for his case. However, the probability for a God to exist could be even more daunting. But his belief was more toward this non-intrusive God which/who just tilted the odd one way for things to happened as it has. I can probably live with that, but still find it hard to comprehend anyone/anything could have such a power.

Overall, it’s a great book for someone seeking happiness. If you’re depressed, experiencing personal or family tragedy and/or lacking life directions, this may be a good book for you. Highly recommended.

This is one of the great books written by Michael Lewis, one of my favorite authors. This book covers the friendship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics on the theory of the mind. To truly appreciate the book, you probably wanted to first read their theory, which you can read a summary from my book review of “Thinking Fast and Slow” here.

In the first chapter of the book, the author tried to bridge the Moneyball book to this book using an NBA analogy and the story of Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets. The objective was to emphasize the work of human judgement biases studied by the two Nobel Prize winners, the two central characters of the book. I was a little confused in the beginning, thinking the book was a sequel to “Moneyball.” But it wasn’t. The book went into great details of how the two men met each other in Israel and how to two men collaborate so well and the fallout of the relationship due to jealousy. But just before the death of Amos to cancer, they reconciled and all was good.

My takeaways are:
– You should be so blessed to find a true soulmate who can challenge your thinking and make you better than you could be without.
– Jealousy always plays a big role in relationships especially in the always-connected world because of Internet and Facebook. Try to avoid falling into the trap. Look farther in your horizon and rise above it to the best of your ability.
– On the other hand, if you’re the more successful one of your team, try to appreciate those who support you. It’s important to acknowledge them when you’ve succeeded.
– “Undoing,” the phrase, is a throwback to the last of the theories the two men worked together, which refers to the peeling back what you could have done or not done and whether that’s logical or not. Almost in all cases, we humans are not logical. There will always time and temptation to “undo” your past actions knowing what you know today. I suggest to not dwell in the past but live in the presence to the best you can. Life is too short.
– The author tries to put the two men’s work in a much plainer terms than all the technical jargon in their research work. For most people, he has succeeded and I thank him for reinforcing their ideas and work.

I enjoy this book because it highlights the “human-ness” on the two men who have somewhat succeeded in explaining human faults and biases.

The book is about the science of aging. It started out with some science how aging process can be measured and go into great details on how to reduce the aging progress and live a healthy life. I recommend this book if you’re interested in living a long, healthy life.

A quick summary:
– Our life can be separated into two stages: “Health Span” and “Disease Span.” The trick is to keep the Disease Span short. If you want to live longer, keep the telomeres long.
– On the cell level, the lengths of the telomeres at the tip of our chromosomes shorten at each level of our cell divisions determine how fast we age and when they die. The telomeres can actually lengthens. Cells reaches a Hayflick limit around 50 times before they stop dividing and die. The longer the telomeres the more times your cells can divide.
– You can think of telomeres as the aglets (as at the tops of the shoe laces) of our chromosomes. The longer they are the less fraying/healthy the chromosomes get. They are the leading indicator of our health Span, hence total life span.
– Short telomeres correlates to heart diseases and lung diseases, cognitive slowing/Alzheimer, and inflammation.
– Increase Telomerase can keep Telomere long or lengthen them. Too much of it would cause cancer though.
– The rest of book is about doing things to keep the telomere healthy:
1) stress management,
2) resilient/positive thinking,
3) anxiety/depression management,
4) right amount of exercises,
5) sufficient sleep,
6) healthy weight (level of belly protrusion and insulin sensitivity),
7) good diets (omega-3s, leafy vegetables, flax oil and flaxseeds), reduce consumption of red meat and processed food, sugary foods and drinks,
8) maintain healthy relationship with our environment, especially our neighborhood,
9) maintain healthy relationship with our loved ones: be appreciative, be present and hug them.
10) for our young ones, support them and practice warm, nurturing environment

In summary, to live a long life we need to pay attentions to all aspects our life, from mental health, the physical health and our living environment. It’s no differenc5 than we already know except now we have a way to measure how well we’re doing – Telomere lengths.