People feel happier when they feel like they're progressing. When they feel like something in their life is growing or getting better.

Turns out that people who try new things, go new places, learn new skills, etc. are happier. This can be tough, because novelty and challenge also bring frustration and irritation - but if you can push through that, novelty and challenge can bring enormous happiness rewards.

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.

The 20-minute walk I take is better than the 3-mile run I never start. Having people over for take-out is better than never having people to an elegant dinner party.

Behind our unremarkable front door waits the little world of our making - our home.

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

Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self.