Whenever I start a new book, I think, 'This is the most interesting subject of all time. It's sad, I'll never enjoy writing another book as much as I enjoy this one.' Every time, I'm convinced. And th...
Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act.
Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life---and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently g...
Just because we're doesn't mean we're being productive. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,
One study showed that children who got a reward for coloring with magic markers—an activity that children love—didn’t spend as much time with markers, later, as children who didn’t expect a reward. Th...
'Potato-chip news' is news that's repetitive, requires little effort to absorb, and is consumable in massive quantities: true crime, natural disasters, political punditry, celebrity gossip, sports gos...
I had everything I could possibly want -- yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehe...
Work done by other people sounds easy. How hard can it be to take care of a newborn who sleeps 20 hours a day? How hard can it be to keep track of your billable hours? To travel for one night for busi...
They say that people teach what they need to learn. By adopting the role of happiness teacher, if only for myself, I was trying to find the method to conquer my particular faults and limitations.
I’d asked myself, Why do habits make it possible for people to change? and now I knew the answer. Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.
We need to have intimate, enduring bonds; we need to be able to confide; we need to feel that we belong; we need to be able to get support, and just as important for happiness, to give support. We nee...
There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.
Maurice Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird.
Life is too short to save your good china or your good lingerie or your good ANYTHING for later because truly, later may never come.
Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they're big, flashing signs that something needs to change.
Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It's geometrically perfect. It's tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backya...
Sprinters call Marathoners plodding, and Marathoners call Sprinters irresponsible, but there’s no right way. Procrastinators, however, are happier when they change their work habits to work more stead...
Scheduling makes us far more likely to convert an activity into a habit (well, except for Rebels), so for that reason, I schedule even some slightly ridiculous habits, such as Kiss Jamie every morning...
For people who want to eat and drink more healthfully, keeping a food journal can be extremely effective. For instance, one study showed that dieters who kept a food journal six or seven days a week l...