My Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life

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What is “The Only Payment That Can Never Fail”? Guess.

Montaigne

“These testimonies of a good conscience are pleasant; and such a natural pleasure is very beneficial to us; it is the only payment that can never fail.”
–Montaigne

Less poetically, I remind myself, “Do good, feel good.”

* Design Mom has a very specific focus (a quality I appreciate in a blog); if the intersection of parenthood and design interests you, you’ll love it.

* If you’re in a book group and think you might choose The Happiness Project as a reading selection, please let me know. I’ll send you a discussion guide when the book hits the shelves, plus I plan to give away some free advance copies of the book, and I’ll choose addresses from these emails.
–Email me at gretchenrubin1[at]gmail.com (don’t forget the “1”) with the message “book group”
–include your name and address if you’d like to be eligible for a free book
–if you’re willing, I’d love to know a little about your group: how many members, what you read, etc. No particular reason, I’m just curious about book groups!

  • http://positivelypresent.com Positively Present

    Do good, feel good — love it!

  • http://serenityhacker.com/ Miche – Serenity Hacker

    Looking forward to the book hitting the shelves! How about an online book group somehow? :)

    • gretchenrubin

      An online book group would be terrific! Maybe that could be organized
      through Facebook?

  • http://www.uncertainchange.com/blog/ Tomas Stonkus

    Doing good and feeling good is great. However, it is sometimes more difficult to discover what doing good really is. Is it something that feels good? In a sense the answer is yes.

    If it is, then it become a circular definition. So the question then becomes: “How do to discover what feels good?” It seems that the only real way of finding that out is to experience it.

    Experiencing things in life involves a ton of things:
    1)it means being proactive 2)taking risks 3)going outside of your comfort zone 4)facing the unknown 5) making unpopular decisions.

    It might be a flawed argument. Yet, I do not know of any other way to experience the feeling of good other than doing it. Unfortunate, but the really simple things in life turn out to be really complex.

    Thank for another thought of the day.

    Best,

    Tomas

  • allwomenstalker

    Do good, feel good –> sounds so simple yet incredibly true. Not many people realize it, too.

    -meream

  • Cathy

    I’d have to say the only payment that cannot fail is LOVE. That is the ultimate of everything.