The unexpected joy of the ordinary : in celebration of being average / Catherine Gray.

Ordinary. Average. Normal. The everyday is the wall-to-wall humdrum we seek to upgrade, like a fifties carpet we long to replace. More money. A bigger house. A better body. An upgraded career. The ultimate relationship. A highly inconvenient psychological phenomenon called 'the hedonic treadmill' has us eternally questing for more. Catherine Gray was a grandmaster in eye-rolling the ordinary, and the art of everlasting reaching. Until the daemon of depression made her re-think everything. Knitting together personal storytelling and illuminating science, this book probes great minds in neuroscience and psychology.It explodes 'extraordinary-seeking' myths such as big bucks means big happiness, expensive weddings predict future happiness, high intensity exercise is the best kind, and the workaday is less important than the showreel. This soulful, hilarious and life-affirming book is a manifesto on how to outwit the hedonic treadmill and retrain our negatively-biased brains. But most of all, it's a love letter to an average life beautifully lived. Because maybe, just maybe, an ordinary life is the most satisfying one of all.