Happiness: "You Bring Your Own Weather To The Picnic."

Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens.

Happiness: "You Bring Your Own Weather To The Picnic."

There's a kind of magical thinking about these kinds of things. Throw away those bad photos before the "magic" attaches to them, so the good ones stand out.

Sometimes, counter-intuitively, it's easier to make a major change than a minor change. When a habit is changing very gradually, we may lose interest, give way under stress, or dismiss the change as insignificant. There's an excitement and an energy that comes from a big transformation, and that helps to create a habit.

Pouring out ideas is better for creativity than doling them out by the teaspoon.

In 'Before and After,' I identify the sixteen strategies that we can use to make or break our habits. Some are quite familiar, such as 'Monitoring,' 'Scheduling,' and 'Convenience.' Some took me a lot of effort to identify, such as 'Thinking,' 'Identity,' and 'Clarity.'