One my mentors, the business coach Arnie Rintzler, wrote to me after reading one of my newsletters. Arnie often writes nice notes to me about my posts, and this time he had nice things to say, adding, “…there is a missing element. You focus on behavior when there is much…
One thing that bothers most people, is the experience of not remembering why you just walked from one place to another—for example, walking from one room to another in your house, or from one part of your workplace to another. As we get older, we begin to worry if that…
During the time of year when the weather cooperates, I love eating breakfast in my backyard. For many years, I did so while reading the morning newspaper. A couple of years ago, I decided to stop reading while I was eating. I wrote them about that here. But, I allowed…
My next door neighbor invited me over a few months ago to check out his "Alexa" (the electronic device from Amazon you can ask to do things for you). I had only heard a bit about Alexa at that point. He showed me the way he uses it to control…
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, lost her husband to a tragic accident. Sandberg, who is quite famous for her book, Lean In, is writing a book with Adam Grant, the author of two of my favorite recent books, Give and Take and Originals. In a commencement speech at…
I've always liked the designs of the "Life is Good" t-shirts. I was recently given Life is Good, the Book, written by Bert and John Jacobs, founders of the Life is Good company. It's a nice, happiness book, and an easy read. After explaining optimism as the philosophy behind their…
I write a lot about the importance of what I call Proactive Positivity. Because people have a natural ability to think about negative things, we need to work to offset that by being proactive about what's positive in our lives. There many good positivity exercises, for example, daily (or weekly)…
I've written a bunch of times about the value of experiences over things—about spending your money and time on experiences rather than stuff. My wife and were in a home goods store recently and she was looking for a birthday present for her sister. She was struggling to find something when…
One of my friends participates in a program as a mentor to moms. She gave me one of the handouts from the training sessions she attended prior to beginning her volunteering. Its author is unknown and it's easy to find on the Internet. It's about listening, something most of us…
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…
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,…
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…