scary, always fulfilling experiences.
Bronnie Ware, a former palliative-care nurse in Australia who worked
with patients nearing death, wrote an
article on regrets that is quietly circulating on the Web. It discusses the
most common regrets she heard from
dying patients. At the top of their list:
They wished they’d lived a life that
was true to themselves and that they’d
realized more of their dreams.
While volunteering at a climate-change research project in Ecuador,
I met an over- 40 British college student named Ellen. She’d been romping
through rain forests for nearly a month
with students half her age, assisting
a scientist studying global warming’s
effect on Andes vegetation. Ellen
previously worked for a government
contractor, until she read a line in Bill
Bryson’s A Short History of ;Nearly Everything, which notes that an average
human life lasts just 650,000 hours.
“I remember reading that sen-
tence,” said Ellen, “and attending
a meeting at work and thinking,
‘Why am I giving you lot one of
my hours?’;”
Because of that, she left her
job, left her comfort zone,
went to school—and
changed her life. No regrets.
TRY A ONE-SONG WORKOUT
Whatever change you’re
trying, shrink it. I have a friend
who forces herself to exercise
for one song on her iPod when
she doesn’t feel like working
out. But with that one small
step, she usually works out
longer. —Chip Heath, coauthor (with
Dan Heath) of Switch: How to Change
Things When Change Is Hard
2
#
Discomfort
Leads to
Happiness
Even bad experiences
can have good results.
Here’s some of what I endured as a
global volunteer: I was kicked by a
horse, scratched by children, I lost
half a thumbnail after slipping on a
slope in the Andes (which felt a bit
like an interrogation technique
used by secret police), I
nearly stepped on a taran-
tula, I was forced to drop
my pants by Israeli
security, I suffered
FIND THAT OTHER THING YOU LOVE
In their 50s, people often look at their careers and ask, “Do I want to
do this until I die?” The most fulfilled people think about what they’ll
do in the second part of life. You don’t have to do something radically
different, but instead of asking, “What will make me happy?,” the
better question is, “What will offer more fulfillment?” —David DiSalvo,
author of What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
stomach viruses in China and Kenya,
I slept on the floor for two weeks in an
unfurnished apartment with 18 guys
and one bathroom, I had a spider bite
on my arm the size of a golf ;ball…you
get the idea. And yet thinking about
these incidents makes me smile.
“A lot of people see anxiety, fear, and
nervousness as a warning that says,
‘Danger! Danger!’ but it’s actually a
sign you’re moving forward,” says Susan Biali, M.D., a Canada-based wellness expert and life coach. In a study
published by the; Journal of ;Personality
and Social Psychology, 57 percent of
participants were happier after spending money on an experience instead
of on stu!, compared with 34 percent
who chose material goods. That’s
because we truly own our experiences,
a Cornell University study theorized,
and unlike, say, an iPhone, they don’t
become outdated. And as experiences
turn into memories, we tend to appreciate them more, even the lousy ones.
As the Cornell researchers noted, we
typically define our happiness by comparing ourselves with others—which
means if you have a 24-inch flat-screen
TV and your neighbor buys a 30-inch,
you feel like a jerk. Experiences, however, evoke less envy because they’re
more unique, so they make us happier.
And happiness helps us live longer:
A study published in 2011 found that
happy people were 35 percent less
likely to die a premature death than
their less content counterparts.
