- Most misery is self-made.
- For the affluent, the most common addictions are stress, a salary, and a pro-doing compulsion.
- Depression arrives when growth is hindered.
- A tip that someone is depressed: they continue to complain, but do nothing to change.
- The key symptoms of a technologically hijacked mind: greater anxiety, stridency and distraction; less self-awareness, fewer friends and worse company.
- Pagers used to be seem as annoyances, an intrusion into private life - people are now pinged dozens of time a day and wonder why their anxiety is up.
- People return to their baseline happiness.
- Productivity - perpetual work - becomes its own addiction.
- What people want is to feel good; a positive mood changes everything.
- Want mood improvements? Anonymously buy coffee for the person behind you, or pick up the dinner tab when out with friends.
- For a clear mind, fast.
- The most abused substance is alcohol.
- Sleep is nature’s doctor.
- Shocking the body - with temporary, extreme heat or cold - is nature’s anti-depressant and mental enhancer.
- Focus, a long attention span, un-distractibility, and a non-ideological worldview are the new mental superpowers.
- Treat food like medicine.
- The worst emotional pain is from breakups, like a death, whose meaning is not appreciated until gone. And avoiding necessary breakups is a primary source of human misery - its symptoms revealed by resentment, chronic annoyance, and, to those who have known the individual, a dimming of their inner brightness.
- Most men have no real confidants because they fear facing the truth of their pain.
- Indignant? Ask: is your object of scorn, or the reality of life, to blame?
- Who’s nervous, anxious or uncomfortable? Look for the shaking foot.
- Poor mental health is the ultimate foe.
- Love makes fear disappear.