Motivation requires that you fulfill three basic psychological needs:

- Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important

- Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do

- Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people

Notice, scientists did not find "matching work to pre-existing ability,... See more

In this new book, Han describes the deleterious effects of that degeneration on storytelling. Storytelling used to bind us communally over the campfire; it connected us to our pasts and helped us imagine hopeful futures. The digital screen has replaced that fire, making us individuals performing factitious versions of ourselves to unseen peers, tai... See more

I have been inadvertenly gathering people and putting on community events for about fifteen years. I say “inadvertently” because I've never sat down and thought “I want to be a community organiser.” What happens is I have a craving for certain kinds of experiences.

"Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things y... See more

I must pause to say a word about my statement "There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are." I first wrote the sentence some years ago and it has been widely quoted. One day I was looking through a mail order gift catalogue and it included some small ornamental bronze plaques with brief sayings on the... See more

I'm not talking about anything as narrow as ambition. After all, ambition eventually wears out and probably should. But you can keep your zest until the day you die. If I may offer you a simple maxim, "Be interesting," Everyone wants to be interesting -- but the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. C... See more

Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves. By potentialities I mean not just intellectual gifts but the full range of one's capacities for learning, sensing, wondering, understand... See more

You come to understand your impact on others. It's interesting that even in the first year of life you learn the impact that a variety of others have on you, but as late as middle age many people have a very imperfect understanding of the impact they themselves have on others. The hostile person keeps asking 'Why are people so hard to get along wit... See more

The things you learn in maturity aren't simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You leant not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions, if you have any, which you do. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find... See more