our life satisfaction in the face of inevitable worries, regrets and sad experiences depends not so much on how many of these things we experience, or even their intensity, but on the way we deal with them.

4. Make us more polite and attentive.

Recognizing you had to play

self-acceptance was the one most strongly associated with overall satisfaction.

Shame casts one not as a human being who did a bad thing, but as a human being who is bad.

But when I hold the books tight to my body, hugging them as if to crush them, my arm muscles will also begin to shake.

example, sadness differs from boredom, or pity, or loneliness, or nervousness – do much, much better at managing the ups and downs of ordinary existence than those who see everything in black and white.

Compassion gives us the freedom to redefine ourselves, as well as the all-important freedom to fail, which contains within it the freedom to take the risks that allow us to be truly creative.

Whatever we may think we’re accomplishing by bottling or brooding, neither strategy serves our health or our happiness.