You can love someone but not want to keep a gift from that person. It's okay to pass an item along to someone who will appreciate it more.
Work harder to appreciate your ordinary day.
I collect axioms paradoxes maxims teaching stories proverbs and aphorisms of all sorts because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words.
Accept yourself and expect more from yourself.
Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.
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.
One thing I wish I could tell my younger self: take photos of everyday life not special occasions; later that's what will be interesting to you.
To eke out the most happiness from an experience we must anticipate it savor it as it unfolds express happiness and recall a happy memory.
Never label anything 'Miscellaneous.'
I can DO ANYTHING I want but I can't DO EVERYTHING I want.
For one person organized files might be a crucial tool for creativity; another person finds inspiration in random juxtapositions.
Getting paperwork under control makes me feel more in control of my life generally.
I have a lucky perfume. I love beautiful smells but I save one of my favorite perfumes to wear only when I feel like I need some extra luck.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Lower the bar. Actually spending ten minutes clearing off one shelf is better than fantasizing about spending a weekend cleaning out the basement.
Audiences = expectations. If he thinks you're not watching he won't need to rebel against your expectations.
Pay close attention to any flame of enthusiasm.
In general religious people seem to be happier than non-religious people - under various definitions of "religiosity " such as church attendance or professed spiritual beliefs.
I'm a creature of routine and I hate feeling incompetent so I avoided novelty and challenge. Making an effort to push myself in that way has brought me surprising boost.
Self-awareness is a key to self-mastery
Experts say that denying bad feelings intensifies them acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return.
Keep in mind that to avoid loneliness many people need both a social circle and an intimate attachment. Having just one of two may still leave you feeling lonely.
In 'Happier at Home ' I write a lot about my struggle to create an unhurried atmosphere at home.
Give warm greetings and farewells. I was surprised by how much this resolution changed the atmosphere of my home.
The First Splendid Truth: To be happy I need to think about feeling good feeling bad and feeling right in an atmosphere of growth.
It's true that people do assume that people who are critical are smarter than people who are uncritical.
I used to be very disciplined about only buying three books ahead of what I was reading but my husband corrupted me and now I'm dozens ahead of myself!
I have a passion for children's literature. Young adult literature. I love it. I've always loved it.
One of my Secrets of Adulthood is: Most decisions don't require extensive research.
One of my 'Secrets of Adulthood' is: Somewhere keep an empty shelf. I know where my empty shelf is and I treasure it.
Act the way you WANT to feel.
Act the way that you want to feel.
Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel in fact we often feel because of the way we act.
Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability.
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.
Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest as yet unborn self.
Remember that although the distinction can be difficult to draw loneliness and solitude are different.
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.
Don't let yourself fall into 'empty.' Keep cash in the house. Keep gas in your tank. Keep an extra roll of toilet paper squirreled away. Keep your phone charged.
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
The absence of feeling bad isn't enough to make you happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling good
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.
I love cunning containers as much as anyone but I've found that if I get rid of everything I don't need I often don't need a container at all.
The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.
[S]tudies show that one of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success such as tackling a long-delayed chore.
The things that go wrong often make the best memories.
Having a messy coat closet should not be a big deal in a full life and yet there's something about getting control of that coat closet that's surprisingly satisfying.
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.
I can build a happy life only on the foundation of my own nature.
I think self-knowledge is a key to happiness.We can build happy lives only on the foundation of our own natures our own values and our own interests.
While television is a good servant it's a bad master. It can swallow up huge quantities of our lives without much happiness bang for the buck.
I get such a buzz out of cleaning closets.
Take care of difficult calls or emails as quickly as possible. Procrastinating just makes it harder; getting them done gives a big boost of relieved energy.
Volunteering to help others is the right thing to do and it also boosts personal happiness
Reading makes me want to write my own books and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.
Happiness: "You Bring Your Own Weather To The Picnic.
Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
You really have to begin by figuring out what kind of person you are. The tip is to really take a look at yourself.
Now is now. Here is my treasure.
Focus Not on Having Less or Having More But on Wanting What You Have.
Focus not on doing less or doing more but on doing what you value.
I'm much calmer when there's no TV or music playing in the background.
We are happy when we are growing.
Writing makes me happy.
Self-knowledge makes me happy.
Relationships make me happy.
Reading makes me happy.
Be a storehouse of happy memories.
Being taken for granted is an unpleasant but sincere form of praise. Ironically the more reliable you are and the less you complain the more likely you are to be taken for granted.
Money. It's a good servant but a bad master.
Nothing ' wrote Tolstoy 'can make our life or the lives of other people more beautiful than perpetual kindness.
The most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women. Time spent with men doesn't make a difference.
I love taxonomies categories ways of dividing people into groups.
I love finding - or inventing - ways to categorize people.
I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be and my life wasnt going to change unless I made it change.
I needed to change the lens through which I viewed everything familiar.
Outer order contributes to inner calm.
No one regrets having changed a lightbulb.
Embrace good smells. No cost no calories no energy no time - a quick hit of pleasure.
One of the most important lessons of childhood is discovering what you like to do.
Guard your children's free time - from you.
Children's literature is one of my joys and it's also my mental comfort food.
One of the great joys of falling in love is the feeling that the most extraordinary person in the entire world has chosen you.
Sometimes I succeed sometimes I fail but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity
I always say you can self-medicate through closet cleaning. Everyone knows that feeling of a clear surface and how it makes you feel you can really focus and start your work.
I really work on paying attention to the clues my self is giving myself. For instance I think of myself in the third person. That allows me to manage myself better.
If you've had something for more than six months and it's still not repaired it's clutter.
The more I examine the issue of clutter the more effort I put into combating it because it really does act as a weight.
Skillful conversationalists can explore disagreements and make points in ways that feel constructive and positive rather than combative or corrective.
I'm constantly on the hunt for insights about happiness or ideas about how to be happier - which probably makes me a somewhat tiresome companion at times.
You can choose what you do you cant choose what you like to do.
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.
Do I need fifty finger-painted pictures by my toddler or is one enough to capture this time of life? Mementos work best when they're carefully chosen - and when they don't take up much room!
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.
When life was taking its ordinary course it was hard to remember what really mattered.
My writing tends to become very dense so I have to keep some cushion. Sometimes words that seem superfluous are actually essential for the overall effect.
For quotes I have one document for general quotes; the other for happiness-related quotes which I use for the 'Moment of Happiness ' my daily emails of happiness quotes.
Do good feel good; feel good do good.
If you want someone else to do a task don't do it yourself.
I'm doing a lot of speaking and talking about habits which is this subject that obsesses me. That's a lot of fun.
The days are long but the years are short.
I do better with routines and predictability. I don't react well when there's a sudden change in the schedule.
Most decisions don't require extensive research.
If I pretend to myself that I'm different from the way I truly am I'm going to make choices that won't make me happy.
The 20-minute walk I take is better than the 3-mile run I never start. Having people over for take-out is better than never having people to an elegant dinner party.
Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.
Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability it turns out because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.
It's easy to be heavy; hard to be light.
Enthusiasm is a form of social courage.
Forbearance is a form of generosity.
What's fun for other people may not be fun for you- and vice versa.
Behind our unremarkable front door waits the little world of our making - our home.
People feel happier when they feel like they're progressing. When they feel like something in their life is growing or getting better.
Now that I've relinquished my fantasies of all the people I wish I could be and stopped feeling guilty about [them] I have more time for the things that I truly enjoy.
There's a kind of magical thinking about these kinds of things. Throw away those bad photos before the "magic" attaches to them so the good ones stand out.
The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy generosity and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted.
Getting control of stuff makes people feel like they have more control over their lives - maybe irrationally but it's one of these psychological truths.
The number one resolution that people mention to me as something that's made them happier is - to my surprise - making the bed.
Happiness is hard because it's very subjective. I know the people that seem happiest to me but whether they are actually - what they're really like inside is really hard to say.
Happy people make people happy but I can't make someone be happy and no one else can make me happy.
Although we often assume that feelings inspire actions in fact actions also inspire feelings. By pushing myself to act happier I make myself feel happier.
Your unhappiness doesn't help anyone else - and in fact as I mentioned in another answer happy people are more altruistically inclined. So happiness is not a selfish goal.
Look for happiness under your own roof.
Happiness comes not from having more not from having less but from wanting what you have.
The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.
When you work regularly inspiration strikes regularly.
I read a lot all the time but often I read books for research or because they're interesting to me in some way even if they aren't exactly 'pleasurable.'
He is my fate. He's my soul mate. He pervades my whole existence. So of course I often ignore him.
Pouring out ideas is better for creativity than doling them out by the teaspoon.
Think about what kind of person you are and shape your habits and your happiness to show what's true about you instead of thinking that you can just import the right answer from the outside.
September is the other January.
Keeping a habit in the smallest way protects and strengthens it. I write every day even if it's just a sentence to keep my habit of daily writing strong.
Never start a sentence with the words 'No offense.
We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period and underestimate what we can do over a long period.
I'm a person who's fine saying 'No.' I like saying to myself "no gossiping " "no nagging.
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
If you always use your stapler in one place keep it there instead of thinking that all the office supplies should go in one place. I've moved a lot of things around in my house because of that.
What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
Time waits for no ovary.
If I give more to myself I can ask more from myself. Self-regard isn't selfish.
Often the more reliably you perform a task the less likely it is for someone to notice that you're doing it and to feel grateful and to feel any impulse to help or to take a turn.
There are no do overs and some things just aren't going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is
It's the task that's never started that's more tiresome.
Sometimes I think it's easier to think about being happier for what ever that means to you then worrying about what is happiness and what would life be if I finally achieved this ultimate happiness?