Tag Archives: "character"

Happiness interview: Heidi Grant Halvorson. For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by Heidi Grant Halvorson’s work: she studies the science of motivation. She has a new book out: Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence. It’s about how to understand yourself and others better, so you can use that information to motivate yourself and … →

“It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.”  — Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter Agree, disagree?

Are you a tortoise or a hare? I love paradoxes, parables, koans, aphorisms, fables, and teaching stories of all kinds. Lately I’ve been thinking of the Fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. In the familiar fable by Aesop, the tortoise and the hare run a race. The hare is so confident that he’ll win that he takes a nap, … →

In the introduction to his book Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It, Geoff Dyer writes, For several years now I’ve been puzzled by some lines of Auden’s–actually, I’ve been puzzled by many of Auden’s lines, but the ones I have in mind are from “Detective Story” (1936), where he talks about home, the centre where the … →

One of the things that surprises me most about happiness is the degree to which, for most people, outer order contributes to inner calm. More, really, than it should. In the context of life of a happy life, something like a crowded coat closet or an overflowing in-box seems trivial—and it is trivial—and yet I find that I get a … →