#638 - Kevin Kelly - 22 Habits To Follow For A Happy Life

Whatever you do, try your hardest not to have a billion dollars, because it's gonna ruin your life. A couple million, fine; but not a billion.

Nobody talks about the achievements of the departed; they talk about what they were like, how they made them feel, whether they were kind or funny or helpful. And so those are the qualities that we remember.

They have total control of their time ... The scarcest thing is our own time, and having control of that is my definition of true wealth.

I think pain is outside. Suffering is internal. Pain is an external thing, and suffering is more of an identity—and you don't want that pain to become your identity.

It's the optimists who actually are creating all the cool things that we need and that are making our lives better ... The really good things that we want are so complicated; they're not going to happen accidentally.

If you read any history at all... and look at the evidence and the actual science, you have to conclude that progress is real and that the conditions that generated that progress are still... at work in the world, and that this will statistically... continue for a while.

When you're defining your success, it should certainly include other things than money—because that's simply not the most important thing.

We're opaque to ourselves. We're kind of like the last to know about ourselves in many ways ... We're blocked in some ways from accessing our true understanding of ourselves, or even our memories or motivations. And we need a lot of discipline as well as outside help to understand ourselves.

You can get more respect for your opinions if you are able to be able to state the other side as well as the other side could.

You may not have an additional year, so why not celebrate this as the best year of your life?