For the last couple of weeks, I’ve told sad stories. So today, I’m going to mix it up and tell a good old-fashioned Tale of the Strange and Bizarre, 100% true (like all the stories on this site) and chock full of valuable life lessons for your enjoyment and edification.
Proving once again that […]
If you’re looking for a quick way to remember the basic principles of happiness without going blind reading the latest research, this article is for you.
Let’s start with some helpful symbolism, shall we?
I like to think of happiness as a cake. That’s right, a cake. Chocolate, Angel Food, or Black Forest […]
This post is for anyone who’s ever felt trapped.
Workers trapped in dead-end jobs
Spouses trapped in unfulfilling marriages
Depressives trapped in despair
Addicts trapped in a helpless cycle of substance abuse, cigarette smoking, or binge eating
Lonely people trapped in emotional isolation
Poor people shackled by poverty
Anyone old enough to read this article has […]
If you’ve ever lived to regret a big decision (a marriage, a big purchase, a job), you know how hard it can be to predict ahead of time how happy an event will make you. Thankfully, all is not lost.
Recently, while reading a book called Stumbling on Happiness by psychologist Daniel Gilbert, it occurred to me that, despite our difficulty knowing […]
When I was a small boy, my mother had a lot of crafty things hanging on the walls: pictures of geese, cross-stitches of farm animals; that sort of thing. She also had an inspirational quotation embroidered onto white canvas, hanging on the kitchen wall, near the pantry.
Little did I know that the tattered and frayed […]
Like it or not, we live in a media driven world. We spend 11 hours a day bombarded by television, radio, Internet, and other forms of media, a non-stop onslaught on the psyche, an ever-churning series of images, sound bites, opinions, and advertisements, but precious little substance.
The media provides shared experience, collective memory. Unfortunately, many […]
A good friend of mine once gave me a bit of advice I’d like to pass along to you.
We were sitting in his kitchen at two in the morning, knocking back beers and talking about women. I’d spent the previous half-hour telling him terrible secrets about my love life: I couldn’t trust the woman I […]
Need help making a decision? Try one of my proven heuristics for making decisions with confidence and clarity.
Put simply, a heuristic is a loosely organized plan based on rules of thumb, observations, and common sense. I developed these heuristics to help software teams navigate project decisions, but you can use them to make real-life decisions […]
Last year, I was attacked by a horsefly.
In my effort to turn a nightmare into a positive growth opportunity, I have compiled a list of the lessons one can learn from a bug attack. But before we talk about the lessons, allow me to help you visualize the event.
