10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story

by Dan Harris

More than that, she hated seeing me gloomy; she had a doctor’s urge to cure and a sense of sadness and frustration that she couldn’t.

“So, you’re not saying sit around, let everything wash over you, let people cut you off in your car. You’re saying understand that it is what it is right now—” “And then do what you need to do,”

Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment.

always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one.

spontaneous right action, which is intuitive, which is creative, which is visionary, which eavesdrops on the mind of the universe.”

judging ourselves harshly for feelings that we had no role in summoning.

create space between stimulus and response

Thoughts calcify into opinions, little seeds of discontent blossom into bad moods, unnoticed back pain makes me inexplicably irritable with anyone who happens to cross my path.

you train yourself to have compassion rather than aversion as your “default setting.”

Even if we were handed everything we wanted, would it really make us sustainably happy? How many times have we heard from people who got rich or famous and it wasn’t enough? Rock stars with drug problems. Lottery winners who kill themselves. There’s actually a term for this—“hedonic adaptation.” When good things happen, we bake them very quickly into our baseline expectations, and yet the primordial void goes unfilled.

actions have immediate consequences in your mind—which cannot be fooled.