I realize that in a happy life, making your bed should play a very small part, I don't know why this is so helpful to people getting started on a happiness project, but for some reason, making your bed - it's concrete, it's manageable. There's a big difference between having a bed that's unmade and a bed that's made. That little bit of outer order in people's lives seem to help them get started. So, that's a very small thing that you can do.

[Benjamin Franklin]identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate--temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility--and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.

Reading makes me want to write my own books, and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.

Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity.

A book is a better way to develop a complicated idea, or to tell a big story and to show how ideas weave in and out of each other, which is something that comes up a lot in happiness because all these ideas are interconnected.

Get enough exercise and sleep: Sounds trivial, but it's not. You may have the urge to work 24/7, to skip the gym and to stay up late to get a few more things done. That's short-sighted. Exercise and sleep are critical to having the physical and mental energy necessary to meet a challenge.

I can build a happy life only on the foundation of my own nature.