Life is a sequence of highs and lows, ups and downs, but we would all like to experience more happiness,

and this bite-sized episode is about doing that consciously, choosing experiences that make us

happier that give us either pleasure or purpose.

My guest is Professor Paul Dolan, author of the excellent happiness by design.

And he talks about paying attention to what actually makes us feel happy rather than believing

the stories we tell ourselves about what should make us happy.

I wanted to start, Paul, if I may, with a subject that I really love, which is the stories

we tell ourselves generally. And I know this is something you talk about a lot. Could you start by

just sharing that classic anecdote about your mate who worked in

Media Land, please? I can. So just, if you don't mind, I'll just give a few seconds of

context to that, because that is a story that's in happiness by design that became quite a

prominent tale, as it were, that actually then acted in many ways as a catalyst for the work I did in

happy ever after about the stories that we tell ourselves and are told about the things that

should make us happy. And the story is as follows. It's a true story based on my wife's best friend.

We went for dinner and she spent the whole of the evening variously complaining

about her job. Her colleagues, her boss, her commute, everything about her daily experiences,

categorically suggested that she was miserable in her job. And then at the end of dinner,

we stood up and she said, you know, I love working in a media land.

And she wasn't lying in the sense that her experiences were miserable.

But the story that she told about working there was that she was happy at somewhere she'd always wanted to work.

Her parents were proud.

Her friends were jealous. How could she not be happy when she she'd always wanted to work her parents were proud her friends were jealous

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