Today, happiness is the new marker of success, while hardships are viewed as personal weaknesses, or problems to be fixed. We try to eradicate pain through medication and by insulation ourselves from risk. Yet in his research, renowned social psychologist Brock Bastian has found that suffering and sadness are neither antithetical to happiness nor incidental to it: they are a necessary ingredient for emotional well-being, making us stronger, more resilient, more connected to other people and more attuned to what truly matters. The most thrilling moments of our lives are often balanced on a knife edge between pleasure and pain, whether it is holding your new-born for the first time or finishing a marathon. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience and internationally acclaimed findings from Bastian’s own lab, The Other Side of Happiness encourages us to take a more fearless approach to living.