Persevere

To be happy, you need to pay attention to who you are, what you want, and how you feel, versus staying busy just doing ’stuff,’ or doing what other people want or expect you to do. This requires both self awareness and introspection: if you pay attention to how you feel, what you like and what yo...

Change happens whether you like it or not, both in our personal lives and in our world more broadly. With technology and globalization, the rate of change in society is accelerating. Being able to accept and manage change is an essential skill.

You can’t both create space to let your mind wander and intensely focus at the same time. You need to use your judgment to figure out what’s right for you at a given time in your life.

It’s incredibly hard to have a dispassionate view of the world, even if you try your hardest. Humans are emotional animals, and we all come at the world with our own point of view based on our experience. It’s impossible in many ways to get outside that frame of reference, although with diverse e...

Simply understanding how you feel and what you want is vital, but insufficient. Progress depends on action. If your goal is to help other people, but you never do anything about it, you’ll be unsatisfied. The same is true if you want to start a business, write a book, invent some new device, lear...

If you don’t take good care of yourself physically and psychologically, you won’t be able to enjoy your life. And if you don’t care about others, you at least will be missing one of the great joys of being alive.

We’re all going to be dead anyway some day. So while you should try your hardest to make the most of your life, when something funny happens, when you make a mistake, or even (and perhaps especially) when bad things happen, it’s easier if you can laugh about yourself and the world.

Focus is important because time is limited and you can’t do everything, let alone do everything well.

Without true friends, most of us wouldn’t enjoy our lives. To be happy, it’s vitally important to be connected to other human beings whom you care about and who, in turn, care about you.