Dance like it hurts. Love like you need money. Work when people are watching. -- Dogbert's Motto
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
The first time you see something that you have never seen before, you almost always know right away if you should eat it or run away from it.
Ask a deeply religious Christian if he’d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don’t seem so bad lately.
It’s tempting to imagine happiness as a state of mind caused by whatever is happening in your life. By that way of thinking, we’re largely victims of the cold, cold world that sometimes rewards our good work and sometimes punishes us for no reason. That’s a helpless worldview and it can blind you to a simple system for being happier. Science has done a good job in recent years of demonstrating that happiness isn’t as dependent on your circumstances as you might think. For example, amputees often return to whatever level of happiness they enjoyed before losing a limb. And you know from your own experience that some people seem to be happy no matter what is going on in their lives, while others can’t find happiness no matter how many things are going right. We’re all born with a limited range of happiness, and the circumstances of life can only jiggle us around within the range. The good news is that anyone who has experienced happiness probably has the capacity to spend more time at the top of his or her personal range and less time near the bottom.
You probably think the majority of your crabbiness is caused by the idiots and sociopaths in your life plus your inexplicable bad luck on any given day. Based on a lifetime of observation, my best estimate is that 80 percent of your mood is based on how your body feels and only 20 percent is based on your genes and your circumstances, particularly your health.
Of the big five factors in happiness—flexible schedule, imagination, diet, exercise, and sleep—my pick for the most important is exercise.
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