New Harbinger Publications

“When you wake up in the morning, and you’re already miserable, what do you feel like doing?”

can choose what to eat, how to spend our time, how much exercise to get, and what to make priorities in our lives. All of these will influence—within the limits fate imposes upon us—how happy or miserable we become.

The bias seems to be stronger (and flipped to the negative), however, in the depressed. The attributions made by people in deepest misery tend to depend very much on whether the event is positive or negative. Positive events, like getting a promotion, scoring well on a test, or learning to water-ski, most often receive external attributions. The miserable will say that the task was just easy or that they were lucky. “Anyone could have passed that test,” they say. “Water-skiing is stupidly simple.”

Robots don’t have the sense of anxiety, desire, sadness, anger, excitement, or loneliness that you may feel on any given day.

If you are alive, then you have feelings. And if you are conscious, you also have sensations, pain, and awareness that something is going on.

But even locked inside, even just blinking one eye, even being fed through a tube in his stomach, Bauby was not a robot. He was alive. And we can imagine ourselves trapped inside, unable to move, but still aware, still having the emotions that make us alive, still yearning, and still feeling lost. We feel a sense of connection and obligation to any living creature that is capable of feeling pain.

When you have a feeling, your body is telling you the truth—unless you are consciously lying to yourself.

I notice that I am feeling anxious right now, and I accept that as an experience for this moment,”

s you become more skillfully self-aware and active on your own behalf, knowing what you really want, you will feel more competent and life will feel more manageable.

people in life as well who make you believe in yourself and feel emotionally safe. As you experience their positivity and unconditional acceptance, it nourishes your inner strength.