This is not so much a self-help book as it is a book about how the brain works. The brain is selective in what it chooses to remember, and we more often than not are blind to the biases of our memories when we make decisions that affect how we imagine our futures to unfold. We are also very quick to come to conclusions without considering all memories that might have a bearing on our decisions. As time passes, even some of those snippets are forgotten. Things get fuzzier when we imagine future emotions, or more apropos to the book's title, make decisions to affect change so as to achieve certain emotions - e.g. happiness - in the future. Because we remember primarily by way of images, our ability to remember feelings is limited by the extent to which tiny, often biased snippets of visual images (memories) accurately convey those feelings. So basically, it is very difficult to predict what will cause us to have certain emotions in the future, and we don't stop to carefully reflect, hence our "stumbling on happiness."

There's lot of interesting, entertaining stuff in this book. For instance, we have an actual blind spot - something I didn't know before reading this book - where the retina is detached from the back of our eye. Our brain "fills" in the blindness based on our surroundings - e.g. white, if we are looking at a white wall - without us knowing it. We are also overly influenced by current circumstances - hence why it's not very reassuring to say to someone who is depressed that things will get better. He talks about the ambiguity of experiences, that a given experience can be interpreted in myriad ways, which makes the concept of fact kind of fleeting. I like this quote: "the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves the needs of a stable society, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth. Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being."

This too is a great quote from Will Durant who summarized Immanuel Kant's theory of idealism: "The world as we know it is a construction, a finished product, almost - one might say - a manufactured article, to which the mind contributes as much by its moulding forms as the thing contributes by its stimuli."

An interesting premise, but a very boring book. There's so much psycho-babble in it, it doesn't matter what actually happened, all that matters is how people feel about what they believe happened. There's so much personal insight from all of the characters that there's no actual story. The characters are either awful- like her sisters and mother- or so vague, like Mary and "the Man" that none are believable.
It just wasn't interesting, and was way too self-absorbed.

I thought the book was very informative. I thought Jesus' love only represented only one sort of love- acts of service. I think this book is over-based on psychology, made me feel I needed to be love. It is best to read it if you are married and want to love your spouse. It really impacted my relationship with my mom as I discovered her love languages and was more keen on listening to cues and observing others and myself on how I love others. There is no formula to love but this book does layout some interesting facts and data about love and marriage.