The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

by Neil Pasricha

7 ways to be happy right now

Three Walks

The 20-Minute Replay Writing for twenty minutes about a positive experience dramatically improves happiness.

Random Acts of Kindness Carrying out five random acts of kindness a week dramatically improves your happiness.

A Complete Unplug

Hit Flow Get into a groove. Be in the zone. Find your flow.

2-Minute Meditations

Five Gratitudes

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.

as Buddha said, let others keep their criticism for you.

Everywhere we look, we are reminded of what else we need. You can move to a shack in the woods to get away from it all! But we’d miss you too much there. Please don’t do that.

remember the one thing most billionaires want but cannot have.

“The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Researchers from National Geographic were so fascinated by Okinawans that they studied what helped them live so long. What did they find out? They eat off smaller plates, they stop eating when they’re 80% full, and they have a beautiful setup where they’re put into social groups as babies to slowly grow old together.

they have the word ikigai (pronounced like “icky guy”), which roughly means “the reason you wake up in the morning.”

“To remind myself and others how lucky we are to be alive.”

She was suddenly home alone without social structure, planned activities, or a group of friends. She was in a great thinking phase for a while, but eventually she noticed her weekdays and weekends blurring together, personal problems becoming unproductive, and simply not having enough to do or think about. This continued until she joined a bridge club and a professional network and had a granddaughter to care for one day a week. Space without an end date—or an ikigai—can lead to swirling and swirling.

fewer choices means faster decisions.

The Saturday Morning Test What do you do on a Saturday morning when you have nothing to do? Your authentic self should go toward that . . . The Bench Test How do you feel when you put yourself in a new situation? Your authentic self will lead you toward that . . . The Five People Test Who are the five people closest to you in the things you love most? Your authentic self is an average of those people . . .

Remember this: You are the average of the five people around you! You’re the average of their intelligence, you’re the average of their looks, you’re the average of their positivity, you’re the average of their creativity, you’re the average of their ambition.

Chris Rock said, “When you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them. You’re meeting their representative!”

there’s so much value in sharing your whole self right away. I say share your deeply authentic self far and wide. Be weird and be random. Be you and be cool with it.

But happy people know when it’s important to stop taking advice and start listening to yourself. Any cliché, quote, or piece of advice that resonates with you only confirms to your mind something you already know.