When I did the research for my book, Tough Transitions, I enjoyed learning about all the investigations that are going on to try to determine how people can increase their experience of happiness.

There’s a lot of information to read on this subject, and all of it is fascinating.

One thing that some researchers have suggested is that each of us has an individual “happiness thermostat” and that each person’s thermostat is stuck at that person’s basic setting. What this means is that when both good or bad things happen in an individual’s life, the individual will eventually adapt to both kinds of events and return to the same basic happiness thermostat setting that the person is accustomed to.

But some studies disagree with this assertion. These studies suggest that we can get our personal happiness thermostat unstuck by thinking particular ways and doing specific things. We can increase our experience of happiness by the thoughts we focus on and the actions we take. (more…)

This photograph brought back wonderful memories to me of my trip to Xinjiang a few years ago where I first learned about and met the beautiful Uighur people. (Uighur was pronounced “Wigger” by the Uighurs I met.) As you can see from the photo of me by the lake, this part of Central Asia is beautiful. Even the dusty city of Kashgar, where I was privileged to eat in a Uighur home and talk with Uighurs about their culture, religion, and history, has a beauty that is haunting in my memory. In the picture of the Uighur father and son, you can see the lovely meal my friends and I were served in this family’s home. (more…)

It was in the early 80s that I happened upon my first tailgating. At the time I was a professor in the English Department at Texas A&M University. That particular year I was also serving as Assistant to the President of the university, representing the faculty in the President’s office. One of my duties—if you can call it a “duty”—was to attend the A&M home football games, helping the president and his wife extend hospitality to visitors in the president’s box, high above the stadium. The day of the game, however, always began with a walkabout in the parking lot where fans were tailgating. You could find all kinds of food being served from the backdoor panel of the fans’ pickup trucks and SUVs: bar-b-que, fried chicken, hotdogs and hamburgers, poppy seed kolaches, pecan pie. It was fun to roam from group to group, saying hello and trying to say “no” graciously to all the offers of food. (more…)

Aren’t we sometimes our own worse enemy? I could have missed one of the most fun experiences I have had in a long time if I had listened to my “yea, but’s…I don’t wanna’s.”

It happened like this. (more…)

Don’t you love those short, pithy statements that make you laugh or that start you because they are so spot on?

I remember seeing a bumper sticker on a car in the Walmart parking lot in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Inside the car were two adults and more children than you could imagine finding a seat in the vehicle. On the back bumper was this message: If 10% is good enough for Jesus, it ought to be enough for the IRS.

A simple message on a sticker on the back window of a car I saw here in Austin a couple of weeks ago read merely: I Miss Bill.

Courtesy opens more than doors… these words were on a sign in front of an elementary school down near Atlanta. (more…)