The First Splendid Truth: To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity…When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.
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.
Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but everyday is a clean state and a fresh opportunity.
Nothing,’ wrote Tolstoy, ‘can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.
I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal practices or cite up-to-date studies.
Never start a sentence with the words ‘No offense.
I should pursue only those habits that would make me feel freer and stronger.
When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure – but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.
I enjoy the fun of failure. 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
I’d always vaguely expected to outgrown my limitations.
Studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn’t relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces.
Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act.
Experts say that denying bad feelings intensifies them, acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return.
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.
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.
I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if I wasn’t sitting in front of a computer typing, I was wasting my time–but I pushed myself to take a wider view of what was “productive.” Time spend with my family and friends was never wasted.
What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you- and vice versa.
When possible, the brain makes a behavior into a habit, which saves effort and therefore gives us more capacity to deal with complex, novel, or urgent matters.
Audiences = expectations. If he thinks you’re not watching, he won’t need to rebel against your expectations.
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 comprehend the splendor of what I had.
Growing up in Kansas City, I was always neat, the teacher’s pet, know-it-all type.
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.
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 disproportionate boost to happiness.
Each week, I post a video about some ‘Pigeon of Discontent’ raised by a reader. Because, as much as we try to find the ‘Bluebird of Happiness,’ we’re also plagued by those small but pesky ‘Pigeons of Discontent.’
It was my interest in happiness that led me to the subject of habits, and of course, the study of habits is really the study of happiness. Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life, and a significant element of happiness.
One of the best ways to make yourself happy in the present is to recall happy times from the past. Photos are a great memory-prompt, and because we tend to take photos of happy occasions, they weight our memories to the good.
Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant but a bad master.
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 you really want to talk about it.
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 than it should.
Skillful conversationalists can explore disagreements and make points in ways that feel constructive and positive rather than combative or corrective.
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.
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.