People are powerfully moved by imagination, belief, and knowledge. They can consider the past and future. They can make changes in their behavior out of reason in a way that animals can't do.
Like most people, I have several pet subjects - that may or may not be interesting to other people. Don't get me started on happiness, or habits, or children's literature, or Winston Churchill, unless...
If I can do something in less than one minute, I don't let myself procrastinate. I hang up my coat, put newspapers in the recycling, scan and toss a letter. Ever since I wrote about this rule in 'The...
We set out to be wrecked.
Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath describe
It’s a Secret of Adulthood: Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.
It's easy to make the mistake of thinking that if you have something you love or there's something you want, you'll be happier with more.
In an interview in the Paris Review, novelist and Rebel John Gardner made an observation that I’ve never forgotten: Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay.
Any single happy experience may be amplified or minimized, depending on how much attention you give it.
Accept myself, and expect more of myself. Give myself limits to give myself freedom. Make people happier by acknowledging that they’re not feeling happy. Plan ahead to be spontaneous; only with carefu...
One of my key realizations about happiness, and a point oddly under-emphasized by positive psychologists, given its emphasis in popular culture, is that outer order contributes to inner calm. More tha...
In the scope of a happy life, a messy desk or an overstuffed coat closet is a trivial thing, yet I find - and I hear from other people that they agree - that getting rid of clutter gives a disproporti...
Do once in a while.
Upholder, I see its dark side, too
This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.
The single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice
The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.
The harder it is to do something, the harder it is to do it impulsively, so inconvenience helps us stick to good habits. There are six obvious ways to make an activity less convenient:· Increase the...
Research suggests that about 40 percent of our behavior is repeated almost daily, and mostly in the same context.
I’ve been haunted for years by a public service poster I saw just one time, in the subway. It was a photo of a Chinese food take-out container sitting on top of two videos. The caption read, If this i...