Many people decide to improve their habits, they don’t begin by looking where their keys are; they begin by looking in an easy spot.
Happiness is not having less; happiness is not having more; happiness is wanting what I have.
Gave up Nutella in December 2011. A few years later I thought I would be able to handle the Nutella once more so I bought two jars on sale. I ate 4,000 calories of Nutella over 36 hours.
Discouraging as he’d been, hadn’t actually hit on my real worry about my project: Was it supremely self-centered to spend so much effort on my own happiness?
Another reason not to say critical things about other people: spontaneous trait transference. Studies show that because of this psychological phenomenon, people unintentionally transfer to me the trai...
A stumble may be helpful, because it shows me where I need to concentrate my efforts in order to do better next time.
William Butler Yeats. Happiness, wrote Yeats, is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.
When we do stumble, it’s important not to judge ourselves harshly. Although some people assume that strong feelings of guilt or shame act as safeguards to help people stick to good habits, the opposit...
When we distract ourselves, we purposefully redirect our thoughts, and by doing so, we change our experience. Distraction can help us resist temptation, minimize stress, feel refreshed, and tolerate p...
When the Schiphol Airport put the image of a housefly above the drains of urinals, men began to aim at it—a change that reduced spillage rates by 80 percent. Gamification is used in the design of devi...
When scheduling a new habit, it helps to tie it to an existing habit, such as after breakfast, or to an external cue, such as when my alarm rings, because without such a trigger, it’s easy to forget t...
When scheduling a new habit, it helps to tie it to an existing habit, such as after breakfast, or to an external cue, such as when my alarm rings,
When it comes to fake food, I’m like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while. You
We can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature.
We all know the secret of dieting - eat better, eat less, exercise more - it's the application that's challenging.
Walking had an added benefit: it helped me to think. Nietzsche wrote, All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking, and his observation is backed up by science; exercise-induced brain chemical...
Waldenlust. This longing takes several forms: fantasies of the freedom that dispossession would bring; nostalgia for earlier, supposedly simpler times; and reverence for the primitive, which is assume...
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.