My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.

Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.

We don't believe other people's experiences can tell us all that much about our own. I think this is an illusion of uniqueness.

Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes us happy.

In short, we derive support for our preferred conclusions by listening to the words that we put in the mouths of people who have already been preselected for their willingness to say what we want to hear.

The word happiness is used to indicate at least three related things, which we might roughly call emotional happiness, moral happiness, and judgmental happiness.

Your emotions are meant to fluctuate, just like your blood pressure is meant to fluctuate. It's a system that's supposed to move back and forth, between happy and unhappy. That's how the system guides you through the world.