Birds of a Feather, Part I: Small Moments of Contagious Happiness

The July Project: Day 8

Someone once told me, “Happy and successful people tend to be surrounded by other happy and successful people.” If we assume for a moment that it’s true, what are the implications? If you don’t find yourself in the company of people who are thriving, how are you supposed to get ahead?

  1. Trade in your friends for new, better ones.
  2. Keep your friends, but add a few higher-quality ones to raise the average.
  3. Concentrate on what you can do to improve your own life.
  4. Leverage your happiness and success by focusing on the well-being of the people around you.

It seems that answers C and D might be two sides of the same coin …[MORE]

You Could Be Here a While

Last weekend I told some friends about the work of Aubrey de Grey, gerontologist and chief science officer of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Foundation. Dr. de Grey speculates that we’re eventually going to cure the causes of aging and that some day humans will live to be a thousand years old. That notion always gets me thinking about a question I find intriguing: How would you live your life differently if you knew you had another thousand years to live?

Let me put it another way: How would you treat your body if you knew it had to last another thousand years? Would you quit smoking? Would you be more careful about what you eat? …[MORE]