We all know the secret of dieting...it's the application that's challenging. p 7
Upholders respond readily to both outer expectations and inner expectations. Questioners question all expectations, and will meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified. Obligers respond r...
Unlike a reward, which must be earned or justified, a treat is a small pleasure or indulgence that we give to ourselves just because we want it.
UPHOLDER/Obligers must be sure to articulate inner expectations and to create boundaries to protect inner expectations from outer interference.
Two kinds of clarity support habit formation: clarity of values and clarity of action. The clearer I am about what I value, and what action I expect from myself—not what other people value, or expect...
To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right.
To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
They’re perceived to be more friendly, warmer, and even more physically attractive. A study showed that students who were happy as college freshmen were earning more money in their midthirties—without...
There’s no magic formula—not for ourselves, and not for the people around us. We won’t make ourselves more creative and productive by copying other people’s habits, even the habits of geniuses; we mus...
There are times in the lives of most of us, observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unap...
The habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself. For this reason, it can be helpful to keep a habit symbolically, even if we can’t keep it literally, to keep a habit in place. Someone w...
The conduct of our lives is the true reflection of our thoughts. —Michel de Montaigne, Of the Education of Children
The Strategy of Safeguards requires us to take a very realistic—perhaps even fatalistic—look at ourselves. But while acknowledging the likelihood of temptation and failure may seem like a defeatist ap...
Studies show that if you have five or more friends with whom to discuss an important matter, you’re far more likely to describe yourself as very happy.
Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction.
See the child you have, as the saying goes, not the child you wish you had. In the end, I agreed with Michel de Montaigne: The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful;...
Research—and my own experience—suggests that the less we indulge in something, the less we want it. When we believe that a craving will remain unsatisfied, it may diminish; cravings are more provoked...
Rather than striving for a particular level of possessions—minimal or otherwise—it’s helpful to think about getting rid of what’s superfluous. Even people who prefer to own many possessions enjoy thei...
Pushing myself, I knew, would cause me serious discomfort. It's a Secret of Adulthood: Happiness doesn't always make you feel happy. When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself,...
Plainness was not necessarily simplicity, Frank Lloyd Wright cautioned. Elimination, therefore, may be just as meaningless as elaboration, perhaps more often is so. To know what to leave out and what...