As I’ve written, and as I say at every one of my speaking engagements, smiling helps your happiness. The act of smiling releases chemicals to your brain that make you think you are happy. And that feels good. Similarly, I strongly recommend saying, “Great” when people ask how you are.…
I was listening to a happiness episode on one of my favorite podcasts, the TED Radio Hour. One of the speakers, Matt Killingsworth, talked about a study done to track happiness in real time. An app was given to 35,000 people who received survey questions on their smartphones, on a…
A bunch of times, when I've mentioned the name of my book to people I've gotten this response: "Sounds easy. Six rules. I love it." I accept their positive feedback, but I don't feel entirely comfortable with their comment. I feel like I need to explain, "The rules are simple,…
As many people have done, I have written about the importance of gratitude as a happiness habit, or as I also like to say, as an act of proactive positivity. I was listening to an episode of one of my favorite, weekly podcasts, The TED Radio Hour. During the episode,…
For several years, I’ve been wanting to read “Thinking, Fast and Slow," by Daniel Kahneman. When the book came out, the reviews made me feel I would love it. I finally read and found it an incredibly interesting read. It wasn’t a fast read, which is part of why it…
Since 2011, when I published my book and began blogging, I have also been a regular reader of other blogs. My favorite, Becoming Minimalist, has countless useful posts to help you have a simpler, better life. Reading Becoming Minimalist, and other minimalism blogs, led to several changes in my life.…
I’ve written a lot about gratitude as a happiness strategy. When you spend time thinking about ways you are grateful, and things and relationships in your life about which you are grateful, it’s hard to be unhappy at the same time. Gratitude is a proven activity of proactive positivity. But in a…
During a trip to Nashville for a speaking engagement, I was in a gym where each piece of aerobic exercise equipment had its own TV and there were no large screen TVs. Usually those big-screen TVs are blaring, and half the time they are on a channel I find unappealing…
Not long after I published Six Simple Rules for a Better Life, I read a book called Willpower, by Roy Baumeister & John Tierney, which had come out the same month. In my book’s introduction, I talk about how to make changes that stick. I knew my method worked, but…
In the spring of 2015, my daughter Julie had the good fortune of spending a college semester in Prague, in the Czech Republic. A year later, reflecting on the experience, she shared the following lessons from her experience. I'm sharing them here because her learning is applicable to many other…
It’s a new year and resolutions are being made once again. And once again, many will be broken. Here are a ways to help make changes that stick: Be realistic when setting goals. If your goals are too big (and the goals most of us make tend to be too…
As I have done for each of the past three years, here are the many ways I enjoyed the experiences of my year, including places I visited, books I read, and even what I watched on TV. Books I love reading and I love learning. I read quite a bit…