Short Cuts to Happiness: Life-Changing Lessons from My Barber

The twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott observed that children playing within a certain radius of their mothers display higher levels of creativity in their games than those who play farther away.

Believing that you’re lucky is likely to make you so; expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“But you know,” he added, “even if the product takes off, I’m not leaving my salon. This is my lighthouse.” “Your lighthouse?” I asked. “Yes, like for ships. No matter how chaotic or wild things get, this place is always there, lighting the way back to stable shore. We all need a lighthouse in our life.”

“I mean that if you reach out to others and contribute to their well-being, then given that you are connected to them, you are also contributing to yourself. If you just focus on yourself—me, me, me—then you’re touching only a small part of the whole, and even if you do a great job of it, you are attaining only a tiny part of your potential for ful

Professor Joseph Badaracco’s course at Harvard Business School, in which he talked about making tough “right versus right” decisions. These are the proverbial forks in the road, where following either path has merit. When faced with these decisions, we realize we cannot have it all—we must leave one path behind and forgo the potential value that wo

In the Bible we are commanded: “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Today, we have some scientific evidence that indirectly backs up the connection that the Bible makes between honoring our parents, or the elderly in general, and longevity.

when it comes to some of the decisions I have to make, I just don’t know. So I’m waiting, either to know and decide, or to know that I cannot afford to wait any longer and decide.”

Roy Baumeister, a world-renowned social psychologist, wrote similarly about the need to belong—about our fundamental and innate need to form interpersonal relationships, to maintain social bonds, to be part of a shared community.

We should learn to pick our battles better—sometimes it’s appropriate and right to get angry or upset, but sometimes, usually in fact, it’s just not worth it.”

he always focused on their effort and hard work rather than on how talented or successful they were: