It wasn’t long ago that researchers believed that every human being was born with a set “happiness point,” a fixed and unavoidable baseline level of happiness. On its face, the idea appears to have merit: Tsunami victims, amputees, and lottery winners alike eventually return to their previous emotional baselines. In other words, no matter […]
You, my readers, have been flooding my inbox with questions about money, happiness, and career satisfaction. Here’s a small sample of the questions you’ve sent me within the last 4 days:
–How much money does a person need to be happy?
–Should I concentrate on following my dreams or getting rich?
–Will I enjoy a job even […]
As a culture, we have a lot of silly ideas about what it means to live a fabulous life.
How could a woman struggling with substance abuse, rehab, divorce, custody issues, allegations of parental neglect, career implosion, and other happiness-crushing problems have been featured on a show called The Fabulous Life? The woman I’m talking about […]
We all know that money can’t buy happiness; everybody says so. And as it so happens, everybody is right; tons of research proves it. But did you realize that a highly materialistic lifestyle could actually damage your mind and body?
Yes, I realize this sounds like a load of leftist propaganda (despite […]
Our culture has a prejudice against work that dates back thousands of years. We view work as a troublesome sacrifice instead of an opportunity for joy and meaning.
This prejudice is so ingrained in Western culture that many of us have given up hope of ever finding a job that makes us happy. So let’s talk […]
Being a typical Generation X male, it’s no wonder I’ve always loved the movie Fight Club. Here we have Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, all lean muscle and crazy blue eyes, smiling like a shark, raging against the great dark plagues of his generation:
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so […]
Our lives are like clay on a potter’s wheel. Each day, the wheel turns anew, and with our decisions, we shape our lives; we are sculptures formed by choices, vessels crafted by free will. Your life: your masterpiece, your unique creation.
While it’s true that we all must decide for ourselves what shape our lives should […]
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 […]
If someone doesn’t take us aside and teach us a few things (assuming we’d listen) before we graduate high school, we are doomed to learn life’s hardest lessons in the real world beyond the classroom.
With that in mind, here are 21 non-academic lessons every person should know before he or she graduates high school; if you graduated long […]
Ask any child what he wants to be when he grows up, and he’ll give you an answer from the heart. The child’s answer may be silly, unreasonable, or hopelessly cliché; it will certainly be ill informed, with little hope of realization. But the answer will be serious to the child, and he’ll expect you to take […]
