Short Cuts to Happiness: Life-Changing Lessons from My Barber

Taking one’s time is no foolproof prescription for revealing the path that is “more right” than the other, but sometimes greater clarity comes with time.

Life changes, and when life changes the rules change, and when the rules change we need to write a new rule book. Today, be mindful: Maybe your life has changed, and only you haven’t?

We so often try to fit reality into our predetermined models, forgetting that our models need to be shaped by reality rather than the other way around. I thought back to all those business school case studies where managers failed because they refused to accept that the market had changed and a new approach was needed.

Montessori’s idea is a variation of a famous philosophical principle called Occam’s razor. William of Occam, a fourteenth-century English philosopher, argued that in coming up with a theory, we have to make things as simple as possible and as complex as necessary.

English poet John Donne pointed out, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” We want to, often need to, join in, belong. When we share something with another—a cup of coffee, our time, our advice, our ear—it means that we’re in it together. We remind those we’re with, as well as ourselves,

Psychology follows physiology; the external and the internal are intimately related.

“Moving fast is important, but so is knowing when to sit on the fence and wait.” He then added, “It’s not always easy to wait, and there is often a cost to it, but it’s necessary.”

Believing that you’re lucky is likely to make you so; expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“The best way to gain trust is to give trust.”