Gretchen Rubin
When we don't get any treats, we feel depleted, resentful, and angry, and we feel justified in self-indulgence. We start to crave comfort - and grab that comfort wherever we can, even if it means breaking good habits.Collection: Mean
Sometimes, counter-intuitively, it's easier to make a major change than a minor change. When a habit is changing very gradually, we may lose interest, give way under stress, or dismiss the change as insignificant. There's an excitement and an energy that comes from a big transformation, and that helps to create a habit.Collection: Stress
Guard your children's free time - from you.Collection: Children
One of the great joys of falling in love is the feeling that the most extraordinary person in the entire world has chosen you.Collection: Falling In Love
Get enough exercise and sleep: Sounds trivial, but it's not. You may have the urge to work 24/7, to skip the gym and to stay up late to get a few more things done. That's short-sighted. Exercise and sleep are critical to having the physical and mental energy necessary to meet a challenge.Collection: Sleep
It's easy to be heavy; hard to be light.Collection: Light
Pouring out ideas is better for creativity than doling them out by the teaspoon.Collection: Creativity
Behind our unremarkable front door waits the little world of our making - our home.Collection: Home
There are no do overs and some things just aren't going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what isCollection: Littles
Outer order contributes to inner calm.Collection: Order
I can build a happy life only on the foundation of my own nature.Collection: Happy Life
A 'treat' is different from a 'reward', which must be justified or earned. A treat is a small pleasure or indulgence that we give to ourselves just because we want it. Treats give us greater vitality, which boosts self-control, which helps us maintain our healthy habits.Collection: Self
Your unhappiness doesn't help anyone else - and in fact, as I mentioned in another answer, happy people are more altruistically inclined. So happiness is not a selfish goal.Collection: Selfish
I spend a lot of time saying to myself, "Well, is that really what I like to do? Is that really something that makes me happy?" and letting go of the things that don't make me happy.Collection: Letting Go
If you're a night person you can barely get out of bed in time to get to work or get your kids off to school. You're at your most productive and creative much later in the day, and for you, something like getting up early to go for a run is not going to set you up for success because you're not a morning person.Collection: Running
I realize that in a happy life, making your bed should play a very small part, I don't know why this is so helpful to people getting started on a happiness project, but for some reason, making your bed - it's concrete, it's manageable. There's a big difference between having a bed that's unmade and a bed that's made. That little bit of outer order in people's lives seem to help them get started. So, that's a very small thing that you can do.Collection: Happy Life
[Benjamin Franklin]identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate--temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility--and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.Collection: Humility
In general, religious people seem to be happier than non-religious people - under various definitions of "religiosity," such as church attendance or professed spiritual beliefs.Collection: Spiritual
I always say you can self-medicate through closet cleaning. Everyone knows that feeling of a clear surface, and how it makes you feel you can really focus and start your work.Collection: Self
One of the findings that really interests me is that, although we think we ACT because of the way we FEEL, we often FEEL because of the way we ACT. So an almost uncanny way to change your feelings is to act the way you WISH you felt.Collection: Thinking
It's true that people do assume that people who are critical are smarter than people who are uncritical.Collection: People
Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.Collection: Perfect
One of my Secrets of Adulthood is: Most decisions don't require extensive research.Collection: Decision
One of the things that surprised me the most is how often we assume that because something's fun for someone else, it makes somebody else happy, it will make us happy.Collection: Fun
We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period.Collection: Long
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.Collection: Perfect
I think the big myth about habits, and happiness too, is that there's somehow a magic "one size fits all" solution. That, "If it works for you it's going to work for me," and it's just a matter of figuring out what that habit would be, whether that's do it first thing in the morning, or start small, or do it for thirty days, or give yourself a cheat day.Collection: Morning
Some kind of clutter is difficult - letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers - but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I'm always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter.Collection: Letting Go
He is my fate. He's my soul mate. He pervades my whole existence. So, of course, I often ignore him.Collection: Fate
The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted.Collection: Selfish
Reading makes me want to write my own books, and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.Collection: Book
People feel happier when they feel like they're progressing. When they feel like something in their life is growing or getting better.Collection: People
I'm doing a lot of speaking and talking about habits, which is this subject that obsesses me. That's a lot of fun.Collection: Fun
What I found is, really, you always have to begin by nailing what is true about you, because something that works very well for someone else might not work for you at all.Collection: Might
I used to be very disciplined about only buying three books ahead of what I was reading, but my husband corrupted me, and now I'm dozens ahead of myself!Collection: Husband
The number one resolution that people mention to me as something that's made them happier is - to my surprise - making the bed.Collection: Numbers
There's also something about your bed; it's sort of a symbol of yourself and of your marriage, if you're married. Making your bed doesn't seem to be an important thing in a happy life, and yet it can be that tiny foothold into a more orderly life that sometimes people need.Collection: Happy Life
Getting control of stuff makes people feel like they have more control over their lives - maybe irrationally, but it's one of these psychological truths.Collection: People
Writing makes me happy.Collection: Writing
Reading makes me happy.Collection: Reading
Having a messy coat closet should not be a big deal in a full life, and yet there's something about getting control of that coat closet that's surprisingly satisfying.Collection: Coats
Work harder to appreciate your ordinary day.Collection: Ordinary Days
The absence of feeling bad isn't enough to make you happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling goodCollection: Feel Good
There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.Collection: Nice
No leader did more for his country than Winston Churchill. Brave, magnanimous, traditional, he was like a king-general from Britain's heroic past. His gigantic qualities set him apart from ordinary humanity; there seemed no danger he feared, no effort too great for his limitless energies.Collection: Country
Superstition is the irrational belief that an object or behavior has the power to influence an outcome, when there's no logical connection between them. Most of us aren't superstitious - but most of us are a 'littlestitious.'Collection: Connections
Time waits for no ovary.Collection: Waiting
Happy people make people happy, but I can’t make someone be happy, and no one else can make me happy.Collection: People
Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.Collection: Practice