Yves-Alexandre Thalmann is professor of psychology and the author of more than a dozen books intended for a general audience, including La psychologie positive pour aller bien, also published by Odile Jacob. Happiness and positive psychology are constant themes in his work.
There are two ways to be happy! The first consists of knowing how to appreciate what we are experiencing in the present moment. And the second? It comes out of our ability to remember pleasant memories stored in our unconscious, which, in addition, has the surprising ability to rework memories to make them more pleasant. Positive psychology has shown that events we come to experience carry less weight for attaining happiness than does the way in which we experience them, and how we bring them back to life. In this way, even if we have allowed the present moment to escape, we have a second chance at happiness thanks to the capacity of our memories to filter positively those experienced moments.

Presenting rigorous scientific evidence, this book written by a great specialist in positive psychology, uses pedagogy to introduce the mental mechanisms involved in a quest for happiness, and proposes practical advice to develop the ability to think positively about one’s life.