I recently watched the HBO documentary, Risky Drinking. It delivers a powerful, disturbing, and important message about dangers to our health and happiness from what are now called alcohol use disorders. The documentary had four segments. All of them were meaningful. The first segment focused on binge drinking. The filmmakers…
I was listening to a TED Radio Hour podcast about memory, and Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow (a book I loved), was saying we get confused between our experiences and our memory of experiences. As an example, he talked about how people can have a great day,…
As I have done for each of the past few years, here are the many ways I enjoyed the experiences of my year: places I visited, books I read, what I watched on TV, and more. Books I love reading and I love learning. I read quite a bit every…
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 was fortunate to have the opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Michelle Gielan this week. I loved our conversation. Michelle is the author of Broadcasting Happiness and, along with Shawn Achor, author The Happiness Advantage (one of the great books I read during the last few…
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…
This is a guest post by Frank Lavine. We’ve all been there – I know I have. The majority of my friends and family have, too. The “all-time low” that we can find ourselves dealing with is a stressful, challenging part of life. There is no shame in hitting a…
I was listening to a TED Radio Hour podcast called “Crisis and Response,” about how various people dealt with crises in their lives. One was a doctor on Mt. Everest during a deadly storm memorialized in Jon Krakauer’s amazing book, Into Thin Air. Another was a story about 741741, the…
I've been saying for a while: helping others is one of the greatest happiness strategies. So, I was pleased with an episode I heard on the TED Radio Hour. Michael Norton, one of the authors of Happy Money, the Science of Happier Spending described an experiment proving the point: helping…
This is a guest post by Austin Farewell. Many companies value productivity over employee satisfaction. This type of thinking is understandable—the companies are doing what they think will help them maximize profits. But what if there was a way to achieve both? Because the satisfaction and general happiness of employees has…
As has happened to me many times before, this week I found myself inspired by a eulogy. Every funeral I attend leaves me a better person because of something I learn about the deceased, and their life well lived. Jay was a friend of mine. We didn't have a deep relationship,…
A quick google search on “choosing happiness books” yields hits such as Choosing Happiness, Just Choose Happiness, I Choose Happiness, and many more. I haven’t read those particular books, but I’ve read countless books on, or related to, happiness, and I work hard to choose happiness for myself. When I…