Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship. You
One of the biggest wastes of time is doing something well that didn’t need to be done at all.
It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously—and als...
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...
How about this, I suggested. Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, ‘I’ll get back on track tomorrow,’ try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoo...
Getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person’s daily happiness than getting a $60,000 raise.
By mindfully choosing our habits, we harness the power of mindlessness as a sweeping force for serenity, energy, and growth.
By mindfully deciding how to act in line with my values instead of mindlessly applying my rules, I was better able to make the decisions that supported my happiness.
To achieve greater clarity in my actions, I often invoke a bright-line rule, a useful concept from law. A bright-line rule is a clearly defined rule or standard that eliminates any need for interpreta...
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld advised aspiring comedian Brad Isaac that, because daily writing was the key to writing better jokes, Isaac should buy a calendar with a box for every day of the year, and ever...
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...
Jamie has a transition habit when he comes home from work. He gives everyone a hello kiss, then disappears for twenty minutes or so. He changes out of his suit, sends one last round of emails, glances...
Don't grieve limitations
It’s fun to fail, I kept repeating. It’s part of being ambitious; it’s part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.
Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control.
Severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.
Epicurus agreed, albeit in slightly more poetic phraseology: Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.
Epicurus wrote, We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it....
Habits eliminate the need for self-control.
Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.
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