(NOTE: This is an excerpt from “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently”.)

She rarely makes eye contact. Instead, she looks down at the ground. Because the ground is safer. Because unlike people, it expects nothing in return. The ground just accepts her for who she is.

As she sits at the bar next to me, she stares down at her vodka tonic, and then the ground, and then her vodka tonic. “Most people don’t get me,” she says. “They ask me questions like, ‘What’s your problem?’ or ‘Were you mistreated as a child?’ But I never respond. Because I don’t feel like explaining myself. And I don’t think they really care anyway.”

The music is getting loud and I can see that she needs to talk. I ask, “Want to get some fresh air?”

In the chilly night air, she tells me her story. [Read more…]

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
—Mae West

This morning a close neighborhood friend, Alison, passed away far too early. While Angel and I have spent most of the day grieving, I’ve also spent this past hour thinking about the fact that our lives are often much shorter than we expect, and that we need to do some pretty darn hard things to maximize our very limited time. Alison strongly believed in doing the hard yet necessary things in life—we talked about this topic on several occasions, and she never backed down from a challenge. So today, I want to reflect on this with you.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you absolutely need to do hard things to be happy in the long run. Because the hard things ultimately build you up and change your life. They make the difference between [Read more…]

Oftentimes the hardest part of the journey is simply believing you’re worthy of the trip.

This short article was inspired by an email we received last night from a new course student:

Dear Marc and Angel,

Life hasn’t been the easiest on me over this past decade.  I won’t get into all the details now, but these hard times have left me with many cracks.  And although I’ve still managed to be a reasonably successful person, I often struggle desperately with my self-confidence.  I just don’t feel good enough most of the time.  I feel flawed.  I feel like my cracks make me undesirable.  It’s all in my head – I know it is!  But I really need help shifting my mindset.  I need a new outlook.  Do you have any insight that might assist me?

Sincerely,
A Shy Student

Our reply (an open reply to all who don’t feel “good enough”):

Dear Shy Student,

It’s time for a quick story about life…

Once upon a time there was an elderly woman who needed to walk down to the [Read more…]

“If only…”  These two words paired together create one of the saddest phrases in the English language.

Here are ten choices that ultimately lead to that phrase of regret, and how to elude them on the average day: [Read more…]

The reason for our suffering, in all walks of life, is our resistance to the truth.

Sometimes it’s brutally hard to accept life’s greatest lessons. And yet we must!

Because it’s lessons like these that ultimately make our lives beautiful, by showing us how to thrive even through the toughest of times…

1. Happiness doesn’t start with a relationship, a vacation, a job, or money. It starts with your thinking and what you tell yourself every day.

Typically, when I ask someone “How are you?” they reply, “I’m OK.” But this morning the attendant at the gas station replied, “Oh, I am absolutely marvelous!” Her enthusiastic response made me smile, so I asked her what was making her feel so marvelous. She continued, “I’m healthy, my son and daughter are both healthy, and we all have access to clean water and food and shelter and so much more. So I don’t have any good reason not to be positive.” The difference was simply her attitude and her choice of words. She wasn’t necessarily better off than anyone else I spoke to this morning, but she sure seemed a lot happier.

For many of us, I suspect that sometime between the innocent delight that we start out with in life and the grim acceptance of grown-up responsibility, we slip into [Read more…]