It's so easy to wish that we'd made an effort in the past, so that we'd happily be enjoying the benefit now, but when now is the time when that effort must be made, as it always is, that prospect is much less inviting.

I'm a person who's fine saying 'No.' I like saying to myself, "no gossiping," "no nagging."

[S]tudies show that one of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success, such as tackling a long-delayed chore.

There's also something about your bed; it's sort of a symbol of yourself and of your marriage, if you're married. Making your bed doesn't seem to be an important thing in a happy life, and yet it can be that tiny foothold into a more orderly life that sometimes people need.

We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, were free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower.

Some kind of clutter is difficult - letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers - but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I'm always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter.

I enjoy the fun of failure. It's fun to fail, I kept repeating. It's part of being ambitious; it's part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly