At the age of eighteen, a horrific accident burned seventy percent of Dan Ariely’s body, leading to a three-year stint in an Israeli hospital, inhuman pain, and treatment more excruciating than any person should ever know. Nobody would’ve blamed him for giving up. But he didn’t. Instead, he got curious.

Ariely became fascinated with how people experience pain and how your mind can create astonishing changes in perception based on nothing more than placebo. This fascination, in fact the entire experience, set in motion a lifelong quest to understand how we behave in the world, why we make seemingly irrational decisions, why we tell ourselves stories, and how we talk ourselves into believing things that simply aren’t so.

Ariely is now one of the foremost behavioral economists and psychology researchers in the world, a widely sought-after speaker, a New York Times bestselling author, and a beloved and award-winning professor at Duke University.

In this week’s episode of Good Life Project™, we explore his extraordinary journey, his eye-opening research, and his continued quest to understand and reveal the stories and illusions we all build our lives upon.

Love & gratitude!

Jonathan

Jonathan Fields is a dad, husband, author, speaker, lifestyle innovator, and entrepreneur who produces the acclaimed Good Life Project web show, blogs at JonathanFields.com, and runs book marketing educational venture TribalAuthor.com. His latest book Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel For Brilliance was named #1 personal development book of 2011 by 800-CEO-READ. He has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, FastCompany, Inc., Entrepreneur, USA Today, People, CNBC, CNN.com, PBS Nightly Report, O Magazine, Elle, Vogue, Self, Fitness, Yoga Journal, and thousands of other places that sound cool, but don’t impress his daughter all that much. You can also check him out on Facebook and Twitter. 

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