People in religions that teach that believers in other faiths are condemned, for example, tend to have lower life satisfaction. People who believe in heaven and hell tend to be less happy than those believe only in heaven.

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.

Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.

One of the things that surprised me the most is how often we assume that because something's fun for someone else, it makes somebody else happy, it will make us happy.

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.

Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.

Creativity arises from a constant churn of ideas, and one of the easiest ways to encourage that fertile froth is to keep your mind engaged with your project. When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.