• 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.