and that is exactly what it was. Awfully. Convenient. In this impeccable order of things everything happened on a schedule. Serendipity, for instance got the 2 pm slot on Tuesday afternoons (which meant of course that humanity invariably snoozed through it). Everything under the sun was reliable and remarkably tedious. People soon began to devise little games for themselves to make things more interesting. To this end, they banished love to the rainforests and perched happiness high on a craggy mountain top. They left contentment in the middle of the sea and buried fulfillment somewhere in the desert. They also devised elaborate disguises of masks upon masks, until... posted on Jul 12 2013 (31,883 reads)

is destiny, declared Sigmund Freud. But if Freud were around today, he might say “design is destiny”—especially after taking a stroll through most modern cities. The way we design our communities plays a huge role in how we experience our lives. Neighborhoods built without sidewalks, for instance, mean that people walk less and therefore enjoy fewer spontaneous encounters, which is what instills a spirit of community to a place. A neighborly sense of the commons is missing. You don’t have to be a therapist to realize that this creates lasting psychological effects. It thwarts the connections between people that encourage us to congregate, cooper... posted on Oct 15 2013 (74,171 reads)

The single most personally rewarding facet of my involvement with the Grant Study has been the chance to interview these men over four decades. I’ve found that no single interview, no single questionnaire is ever adequate to reveal the complete man, but the mosaic of interviews produced over many years can be most revealing. This was certainly the case with Camille, whose life illuminates two of the most important lessons from the 75-year, 20-million-dollar Grant Study. One is that happiness is love. Virgil, of course, needed only three words to say the same thing, and he said it a very long time ago—Omnia vincit amor, or “love conquers all”—but unfortuna... posted on Oct 23 2013 (66,464 reads)

is undergoing a contemporary revival, in part due to the ongoing recession forcing so many families to tighten their belts, but also because working hours are on the rise and job dissatisfaction has hit record levels, prompting a search for less cluttered, less stressful, and more time-abundant living. At the same time, an avalanche of studies, including ones by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, have shown that as our income and consumption rises, our levels of happiness don't keep pace. Buying expensive new clothes or a fancy car might give us a short-term pleasure boost, but just doesn't add much to most people's happiness in the long term. It&... posted on Mar 14 2014 (42,919 reads)

step that will abstract you from the necessary physical presence and courage for you to get into the fierce center of the conversation. And there are great parts of us that are rightly afraid of that confrontation and that presence, partly because as soon as that presence has made itself known, then enormous parts of you are going to disappear and they’re not going to be wanted anymore. As my wife, a very insightful psychiatrist says, “Why is it so difficult to claim your own happiness in life?” That’s a great question in itself. She asks it as a rhetorical question because she answers it in the next sentence and she says, “Because if you did claim your h... posted on Jul 7 2014 (40,158 reads)

“I wouldn’t choose anyone whose side I didn’t want to be on. It isn’t like we hire 12 and figure six will work. We don’t bring in anybody we’re not rooting for. Sometimes they succeed in week five, but for most people it’s two, three, four years before they become who they’re going to be. You have to allow for that growth.” Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons on meditating twice a day: “Every creative idea, every second of happiness, is from stillness…. But the way you move around the world has nothing to do with the stillness in your heart. Moving meditation—that’s what we have to practice. It doesn&... posted on Apr 23 2014 (25,319 reads)

importance of what might be called “body thinking”: tacit, fast, and semiautomatic behavior that flows from the unconscious with little or no conscious interference. The result is that we too often devote ourselves to pushing harder or moving faster in areas of our life where effort and striving are, in fact, profoundly counterproductive. Art by Austin Kleon from 'Show Your Work.' Some of the most elusive objects of our incessant pursuits are happiness and spontaneity, both of which are strikingly resistant to conscious pursuit. Two ancient Chinese concepts might be our most powerful tools for resolving this paradox — wu-wei (pronoun... posted on Jun 3 2014 (13,879 reads)

lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.” Perhaps counterintuitively, the diaries of celebrated artists, writers, and scientists, private as they are, are often reminders not only of their humanity but of our own, brimming with deeply and widely resonant insights on our shared struggles and yearnings. Such is the case of The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (public library) — a chronicle of Oates’scharacteristically self-reflexive, sometimes self-conscious, but always intensely intelligent and perceptive meditations on literature and life. One of her most beautiful reflections, penned on a cold December morning in 1977 — a pivotal time in Oat... posted on Jun 19 2014 (9,848 reads)

beautiful meditation on how we learn to stand at the gates of hope in troubled times. “How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say OK?”Maira Kalman asked in pondering happiness and existence. What is it that propels us to get up after loss, after heartbreak, after failure? What is that immutable rope that pulls us out of our own depths — depths we hardly knowuntil that moment when the light of the surface vanishes completely and unreachably? That’s precisely what the Reverend Victoria Safford explores in a gorgeous essay titled“The Small Work in the Great Work” fromThe Impossible Will Take a Little Whil... posted on Dec 15 2014 (22,987 reads)

Carter explains how "doing nothing" could be a key to happiness... and productivity.  Although I think I spent most of my childhood daydreaming, I seldom do it anymore. Occasionally, I’ll catch myself spacing out in the shower, just standing there, and I’ll try to hustle myself back on track, lest I waste any more time or water. Rarely do we just let ourselves stare into space these days. Like many people, I feel uncomfortable when I’m not doing something—uncomfortable “wasting time.” We humans have become multi-tasking productivity machines. We can work from anywhere, to great effect. We can do... posted on Jan 19 2015 (35,934 reads)

in to help me create this art. And then, at the end because Big Man’s descent was so low, so deep, when he found art, when he heard positive feedback, when he saw beauty and he saw hope, then he started to dedicate his life to making mosaics and putting his life together. And because he had suffered so much, he had such immense understanding and sympathy for other people who were struggling or who were in the dark. That’s when I understood about compassion.   We all want happiness, but I think with happiness, we need to understand passion—you know, the passion of Christ, the suffering of Christ. Compassion in Chinese Buddhist translation is “great sorrow a... posted on Feb 22 2015 (25,076 reads)

and fun! Learning about the parts of the brain helps students understand how they learn, and why they may feel a certain way. Students feel empowered when they are able to make these connections. More importantly, it helps to create and build positive feelings with each other. Simultaneously, our community embraces the important seven precepts known as the 7 Habits of Happy Kids, created by Sean Covey. I bring in a lot of research and current news that justify why and how we can pursue happiness. In addition, we evaluate and analyze different models of happiness and compassion. Last year, we read the article, “I am Malala”. This courageous and inspiring story of a... posted on Feb 27 2015 (19,138 reads)

deal life's challenges, we need resources. Rick Hanson explains how to find the ones that lie inside yourself. We're pleased to bring you another installment of Rick Hanson's Just One Thing (JOT) newsletter, which each week offers a simple practice designed to bring you more joy and more fulfilling relationships. We all have issues—including demands upon us, stresses, illnesses, losses, vulnerabilities, and pain. (As Alan Watts put it: “Life is wiggly.”) Of course, many of our issues—in the broad sense I’m using the word here—are related to important sources of fulfillment, such as starting a business or raising a f... posted on May 20 2015 (16,253 reads)

it takes to live wide rather than long. Over the two millennia between his age and ours — one in which, caught in the cult of productivity, we continually forget that “how we spend our days is … how we spend our lives” — we’ve continued to tussle with the eternal question of how to fill life with more aliveness. And in a world awash with information but increasingly vacant of wisdom, navigating the maze of the human experience in the hope of arriving at happiness is proving more and more disorienting. How to orient ourselves toward buoyant aliveness is what Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803–April 27, 1882) examines in a beautiful essay title... posted on Aug 3 2015 (1,554 reads)

it takes to live wide rather than long. Over the two millennia between his age and ours — one in which, caught in the cult of productivity, we continually forget that “how we spend our days is … how we spend our lives” — we’ve continued to tussle with the eternal question of how to fill life with more aliveness. And in a world awash with information but increasingly vacant of wisdom, navigating the maze of the human experience in the hope of arriving at happiness is proving more and more disorienting. How to orient ourselves toward buoyant aliveness is what Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803–April 27, 1882) examines in a beautiful essay title... posted on Aug 3 2015 (12,356 reads)

The single most personally rewarding facet of my involvement with the Grant Study has been the chance to interview these men over four decades. I’ve found that no single interview, no single questionnaire is ever adequate to reveal the complete man, but the mosaic of interviews produced over many years can be most revealing. This was certainly the case with Camille, whose life illuminates two of the most important lessons from the 75-year, 20-million-dollar Grant Study. One is that happiness is love. Virgil, of course, needed only three words to say the same thing, and he said it a very long time ago—Omnia vincit amor, or “love conquers all”—but unfortuna... posted on Oct 25 2015 (29,264 reads)

to the present moment, because that would be something automatic. But it is a chosen... MS. TIPPETT: It’s a choice, yes. BR. STEINDL-RAST: ...response. It’s a real response to every moment. MS. TIPPETT: And I love — I think when you say, not just to what’s happened, but to the opportunity that you can discern, that has been presented. BR. STEINDL-RAST: And that is why it really secures the kind of joy that us human beings look for. I always say joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens. And, usually, we have the idea, well, when something nice happens, then I’m happy, and when something bad happens, of course I’m unhapp... posted on Feb 9 2016 (20,419 reads)

have the confidence to say that I wanted to follow them, to support their work. I was so afraid that I was not good enough to help them, I feared that if I took on their work I might accidentally crush everything that they had given their lives to create. That was a really scary thought for me Then I lost my grandfather to cancer when I was 15 years old. I witnessed the pain and suffering that he had to go through, and I struggled with it. The birth of a child is associated with such happiness and joy. In my heart I felt that the process of death should be similar to that birthing process. It shouldn't be filled with such fear and dark associations. I didn't want my parent... posted on Apr 23 2016 (17,548 reads)

making it a commodity of class, status, or taste. He writes: Objects that were in the past valid and significant because of their place in the life of a community now function in isolation from the conditions of their origin. By that fact they are also set apart from common experience, and serve as insignia of taste and certificates of special culture. […] [This is] deeply affecting the practice of living, driving away esthetic preconceptions that are necessary ingredients of happiness, or reducing them to the level of compensating transient pleasurable excitations. Art by Shaun Tan for a special edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales Art in its proper ... posted on Jun 26 2016 (11,978 reads)

It is very difficult. If I say yes to one family I am saying no to 10 others. At present we don’t have enough accommodation or resources to take any new kids. Finally, what is your practice? My main practice is always based on my training to generate more compassion, stabilize myself, remain focused, and practice on patience and perseverance. Human beings—rich or poor, East or West, educated or uneducated, man or woman—all have one thing in common: we all want joy and happiness in our life. I feel lucky that I found something in my life where there’s so much happiness and joy doing something useful and meaningful. That is what I feel. I am so lucky. I pray... posted on Oct 18 2018 (122,613 reads)