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Happiness is not how many things you do, but how well you do them.
Happiness is not how many things you do, but how well you do them.
More is not better. Happiness is not experiencing something else; it’s continually experiencing what you already have in new and different ways. Unfortunately
More is not better. Happiness is not experiencing something else; it’s continually experiencing what you already have in new and different ways. Unfortunately
As children, routine gives us a feeling of safety. As adults, it gives us a feeling of purpose. Interestingly enough,
As children, routine gives us a feeling of safety. As adults, it gives us a feeling of purpose. Interestingly enough,
You feel content because routine consistently reaffirms a decision you already made. If said decision is that you want to write a book—and you commit to doing three pages each night for however long it takes to complete it—you affirm not only your choice to begin, but your ability to do it. It’s honestly the healthiest way to feel validated.
You feel content because routine consistently reaffirms a decision you already made. If said decision is that you want to write a book—and you commit to doing three pages each night for however long it takes to complete it—you affirm not only your choice to begin, but your ability to do it. It’s honestly the healthiest way to feel validated.
Their emotional base points are not external.
They don’t think that being fearful is a sign they are on the wrong path.
The presence of indifference is a sign you’re on the wrong path. Fear means you’re trying to move toward something you love, but your old beliefs, or unhealed experiences, are getting in the way.
They know that happiness is a choice, but they don’t feel the need to make it all the time. They are not stuck in the illusion that “happiness” is a sustained state of joy. They allow themselves time to process everything they are experiencing. They allow themselves to exist in their natural state. In that non-resistance, they find contentment.
They don’t allow their thoughts to be chosen for them. They recognize that through social conditioning and the eternal human monkey-mind, they can often be swayed by thoughts, beliefs, and mindsets that were never theirs in the first place. To combat this, they take inventory of their beliefs, reflect on their origins, and decide whether or not that frame of reference truly serves them.
They recognize that infallible composure is not emotional intelligence. They don’t withhold their feelings or try to tem...
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almost gone. They do, however, have the capacity to withhold their emotional response until they are in an environment wherein it would be appropriate to express how they are feeling. T...
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They don’t confuse a bad feeling for a bad life.
We all start as strangers. The choices we make in terms of love are usually ones that seem inevitable anyway. We find people irrationally compelling. We find souls made of the same stuff ours are. We find classmates
and partners and neighbors and family friends and cousins and sisters and our lives intersect in a way that makes them feel like they couldn’t have ever been separate. And this is lovely.
The fastest way to sound unintelligent is to say, “This idea is wrong.” (That idea may be wrong for you, but it exists because it is right to someone else.) Intelligent people say, “I don’t personally understand this idea or agree with it.” To speak definitively about any one person or idea is to be blind to the multitude of perspectives that exist on it. It is the definition of closed-minded and short-sightedness.
do not confuse their opinion of someone for being a fact about them.
choosing language that feels unthreatening to someone is the best way to get them to open up to your perspective and actually create the dialogue that will lead to the change you desire.
speak calmly, simply, concisely, and mindfully.
To validate someone else’s feelings is to accept that they feel the way they do without trying to use logic to dismiss or deny or change their minds.
validating feelings is not the same thing as validating ideas. There are many ideas that do not need or deserve to be validated, but everyone’s feelings deserve to be seen and acknowledged and respected. Validating someone’s emotions is validating who they really are, even if you would respond differently. So in other words, it is validating who someone is, even if they are different than you.
there. If you genuinely disliked something, you would simply disengage with it.
do not argue with people who only want to win, not learn.
While listening to other people speak, they focus on what is being said, not how they are going to respond. This is also known as the meta practice of “holding space.”
The main thing socially intelligent people understand is that your relationship to everyone else is an extension of your relationship to yourself.
Emotional intelligence is not how infrequently you feel anything “bad” because you’ve developed the discipline and wisdom “not to.” It’s not how easily you choose what you think, how you let it affect you, or how placidly you react to any given situation.
Real emotional maturity is how thoroughly you let yourself feel anything. Everything. Whatever comes. It is simply the knowing that the worst thing that could ever happen…is just a feeling at the end of the day.
What you have to know is that suffering is just the refusal to accept what is.
So healing is really just letting yourself feel.
Every feeling is worthwhile. You miss so much by trying to change every one of them away, or thinking there are some that are right or wrong or good or bad or that you should have or shouldn’t, all because you’re afraid that you’ll tell yourself something you don’t want to hear.
When you choose to value having other people’s acceptance over your own, you accept a fate of battling your instincts to assimilate to the needs of other people’s egos. In the meantime, a world and lifetime of listening, leaning, allowing, following, perceiving, feeling, and experiencing…constantly eludes you.
Sadness will not kill you. Depression won’t, either. But fighting it will. Ignoring it will. Trying to escape it rather than confront it will. Denying it will. Suffocating it will. Allowing it no place to go other than your deep subconscious to embed and control you will.
Life did not get easier; you got smarter.
Most people don’t want to be happy, which is why they aren’t. They just don’t realize this is the case.
People are programmed to chase their foremost desire at almost any cost.
Nobody wants to believe happiness is a choice, because that puts responsibility in their hands. It’s the same reason people self-pity: to delay action, to make an outcry to the universe, as though the more they state how bad things are, the more likely it is that someone else will change them.
Everybody has a happiness tolerance—an upper limit—as Gay Hendricks coins it4. It is the capacity for which we allow ourselves to feel good.
Most prefer the comfort of what they’ve known to the vulnerability of what they don’t.
Happiness is, in an essential form, acceptance. It’s arriving at the end goal, passing the finish line, letting the wave of accomplishment wash over you. Deciding
The path to a greater life is not “suffering until you achieve something,” but letting bits and pieces of joy and gratitude and meaning and purpose gradually build, bit by bit.
People think happiness is an emotional response facilitated by a set of circumstances, as opposed to a choice and shift of perception/awareness.
The commonality is a sense of purpose, belonging, and love: things you can choose to feel and cultivate, regardless of physical/material circumstance.
The thing is that nothing has to be an essential part of you unless you decide it is—least of all anxiety and fear. In fact, those things are never essentially part of who someone is; they are learned behaviors. They are ego-reactions that go unchecked. They are flashing lights and waving flags from our innermost selves that something is not right, but we’re avoiding making the shift (mostly by deflecting on the circumstance being out of our control). People
there are three primary forms of happiness: the happiness of pleasure, the happiness of grace, and the happiness of excellence5.
The happiness of pleasure is largely sensory. It’s a good meal when you’re hungry, the smell of air after it rains, waking up warm and cozy in your bed. The happiness of grace is gratitude. It’s looking over to see the love of your life sleeping next to you and whispering, “thank you.” It’s taking inventory of what you do have. It’s when you speak to something greater than yourself, expressing humility and awe. And then there is the happiness of excellence.
The kind of happiness that comes from the pursuit of something great. Not the moment you arrive at the top of the mountain and raise your fists in victory, but the process of falling in love with the hike. It is meaningful work. It is flow. It is the purpose that sears identity and builds character and channels our energy toward something greater than the insatiable, daily pursuit of our fleeting desires.
The happiness of excellence is the work of emotional resilience.
