Chapter 1 from ​'You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life'​

Hey everyone,

How’s your April going?

Feels like every day there’s a new challenge out there.

I’m getting notes from you telling me about feeling overwhelmed by the news, relationship frictions, battling addictions, and feeling generally overwhelmed.

I hear you!

I feel it, too.

I’m right there with you.

A couple weeks ago I wrote ​a letter to the Prime Minister ​protesting our Premier’s autocratic takeover of our lake, ​posted it on Twitter​ (lots of hate!), ​posted it on Instagram ​(mostly love!), and then turned it into a ​Change.org petition ​(please sign!).

Of course, then people started saying it needs to be a ‘federal petition’ and that I should to have got MP support first, etc, etc.

Argh!

Sometimes when we work so hard ... we just hit new walls.

But what do we do then?

Well, that’s why I thought I’d share a chapter from ​my book on resilience​ today. It’s the story of my mum along with a few mental models I’ve learned from her. When life tries to give you a period ... add a dot-dot-dot. When you catch yourself saying you can’t do something add a ... yet.

Forward this email to a friend who’s going through a tough time.

Remind them they aren’t alone!

And neither are you.

As always, you can invite others to join our tribe ​right here​.

Neil

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Chapter 1 from ​'You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life'​

Add A Dot-Dot-Dot

My mum was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950.

Growing up the youngest of eight kids in a small house off the downtown core, she was quiet, shy, and always the baby.

Back when my mum was born, Kenya had a black majority, a brown minority, and a white cream on top. Kenyan natives, the East Indian class imported to get the economy chugging, and the British colonialists who ran the whole show.

That East Indian class included my mum’s dad who moved from Lahore, India, to Nairobi in the 1930s to help build the railroad.

The Brits took over Kenya in the late 1800s and the country didn’t gain independence until the mid-1960s so it was very much a British-ruled country when my mum was born. White people running the show. White people running the government. White people running the best schools.

My mum wasn’t born a white person.

So she wasn’t born the right person.

And she wasn’t born the right gender, either.

What do I mean?

I mean my grandparents had seven kids before my mum was born. Four girls and three boys. As my mum and her sisters tell it, my grandparents were desperately hoping for a final boy to even their numbers out and give them a solid four-four split.

Boys were the prized possession in the culture. All everybody wanted.

For generations there was more money for male education and training, which meant men were financially self-sufficient. Women, on the other hand, were dependent on husbands opening wallets every Sunday to dole out shillings to buy groceries and clothes for the family. Women also traditionally “married out” and joined their husbands’ families, taking care of their in-laws instead of their own parents. So having a son provided a cultural pension long before real pensions existed. No old-age checks once a month! Just your daughter-in-law cooking you curried lentils and serving you chai.

Even worse, the culture compensated men further by providing a dowry. What’s a dowry? I didn’t understand it growing up but a dowry is an ancient and archaic gift given by the bride’s parents to the groom’s parents as if to say “Thank you for taking our daughter off our hands.”

By the way, I really do mean ancient. Even one of the world’s oldest texts, the Code of Hammurabi, dating from almost four thousand years ago, discusses dowries in this way, as gifts for the groom’s family. And I do mean gift. A dowry often includes jewelry, property, and big piles of cash, resulting in a massive financial burden for anyone with a daughter to marry off.

When my grandparents had my mum, all those additional costs and burdens sank in. It breaks my heart to think about my mum opening her newborn eyes, slowly soaking in the sea of faces in front of her, and what was the first thing she probably saw?

Everyone’s disappointment.

How was that family burden, that sense of not being wanted, communicated to my mother? The way deep cultural norms are often communicated—like a heavy, invisible blanket pushing down on her, a force she couldn’t see but felt in her bones.

When a boy was born, friends and neighbors would say “Badhaee ho!” It meant “Wonderful, great, congratulations!” And when a girl was born? “Chalo koi nahi.” What’s the translation? “Keep going. Soldier on. Oh well—you have to keep moving.”

As my mum described it, there was a fatalist feeling of closure and finality over everything. “My life was set out,” she told me. “It was decided.” Gender, culture, and traditions all pointed to a well-worn finish line she could see in her future. Her life seemed like a sentence. Something preordained and punishing.

No sense of possibility, no options . . . no dot-dot-dot.

Just the end. A full stop.

As she got older, my mum watched her older sisters finishing the same sentence ahead of her, plucked from the family home one by one, married off to a man chosen by her parents, to provide him with children and home cooking while taking care of him and his parents. In the face of a life sentence ending in a full stop, my mum had a choice to make: Would she ever see past the period?

What about you?

Do you ever feel like you don’t have options?

Do you ever feel like you don’t have a choice?

Do you ever see the period at the end of your sentence?

We all have this feeling sometimes.

We all sometimes feel a fatalist feeling of closure and finality in the sentence of our lives. Maybe it’s growing up in a male-dominated culture without any visible options. Maybe it’s taking care of a sick family member and always putting yourself last. Maybe it’s feeling trapped in your job after twenty years of education and a suffocating pile of debt. Maybe your family is living in a country where your visa application to join them keeps getting rejected. Maybe they won’t promote you. Maybe they won’t release you.

What do you do when you can see the future on the path you’re walking on but you don’t like where it’s leading?

Well, there’s a crucial mindset to adopt. It’s not about giving up. And it’s not about turning around and running away. Because we both know life isn’t that simple. Commencement speech advice doesn’t always work. Follow your heart! Do what you love!

“My heart said follow him. And he dumped me.”

“I want to do what I love. But I have bills, responsibilities, and other people.”

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply making the decision to keep going.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply making the decision to continue to breathe, continue to move, continue to function, continue to operate.

A period means giving in to life’s circumstances, relenting in the face of things that look immovable, things that look impossible, things that look too painful.

A period is giving in.

What we need to hold on to in our hearts is the quiet courage to change the punctuation. What we need to hold on to is the idea that resilience means seeing the free will that exists just past the period.

We need to hold on to a desire to see past that full stop.

To see past the period.

And add a dot-dot-dot.

A 500-year-old invention we can use today

In grammatical terms, that dot-dot-dot is called an ellipsis.

Dr. Anne Toner is a Cambridge University academic who spent years studying the history of the ellipsis. No, I’m not joking. But there is good news. She found it! Yes, the first time the famous dot-dot-dot appears is in the 1588 English translation of Roman dramatist Terence’s play Andria.

Let’s pause for a moment to stare at a bit of blurry calligraphy from half a millennium ago. The first-ever ellipsis. Fellow history and trivia nerds, let’s all pause to look in wonder upon this amber-encapsulated marvel ...

Look like small potatoes? Well, let’s see if we can come up with a new punctuation mark the whole world will use in five hundred years. It’s not easy. But there was help. Ben Jonson began using it in his plays soon after and then that old bard Bill Shakespeare joined in the fray. Boom! That was the Middle Ages equivalent of getting retweeted by Oprah. The ellipsis then moved from there all the way up to Virginia Woolf and Joseph Conrad. Today, even Adele uses the dot-dot-dot when teasing the first few chords of her new album in TV ads.

No joke, Dr. Toner even wrote a whole book about the ellipsis called Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission and in it she wrote that the ellipsis was “a brilliant innovation. There is no play printed before . . . that marks unfinished sentences this way.”

Unfinished sentences?

What else is an unfinished sentence?

The answer is everything.

Everything you do, every path you take, every diagnosis you get, every wall you hit, every setback, every failure, every rejection. All of these experiences are part of the unfinished sentence of your life story.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is learn to add that dot-dot-dot . . . and keep going.

What happens when you see past the period?

Let’s get back to Kenya.

In my mum’s case, there were massive political, cultural, and family pressures all around her, so she kept her mouth shut and her head down rather than rail against cultural norms. She added a dot-dot-dot by finding a way to keep going. She didn’t shave her head and start smoking by the train tracks. No, while her three older brothers received the bulk of the family’s praise, attention, and money for education, she joined her sisters sweeping floors, working the stove, and scrubbing the work clothes clean.

To keep her mind challenged, she sat on her front porch and memorized the license plates of cars driving by. She was craving a mental challenge. So she found a safe space where she could satisfy it silently.

Why license plates? “There was nothing else to memorize,” she told me later. “It was a game for myself. Just to see if I could do it.” She’d see a familiar car and guess the numbers from a distance, quietly congratulating herself when she got one right. At night, in the corner of the clattery kitchen, she’d study math under dim lights and curious gazes. None of her sisters worked so hard on schoolwork. Who needed to study so much just to cook curried lentils and serve chai?

Given she had seven older siblings all growing up and out of the house, the majority of her education was self-taught. Her parents didn’t have time for picture books before bed or late nights patching together a volcano for the school science fair. That would have been laughable. No, it was pile of textbooks, pile of paper, pile of pencils. Fend for yourself. Rinse and repeat.

All of her studying came to a head in 1963 when she took the government’s standard National Exam with every other thirteen-year-old in the country.

And what happened?

She got the highest mark.

In the country!

Suddenly a fat scholarship dropped into her lap and she was whisked away from her family home to a preppy English boarding school in the countryside with all the white British kids of the colonialists. She was the youngest of eight kids and the first one to leave home for boarding school. Nevermind on a scholarship.

She added a dot-dot-dot to her story throughout her upbringing. Memorizing license plates. Extra homework. Always after cooking and cleaning.

And then?

She got past the period. Her story continued . . .

But there are always more periods up ahead.

There always are.

“I couldn’t believe it,” my mum told me. “The school was a heaven on Earth. The grounds were so beautiful. We knew there were schools just for white people. For the rulers. But when I got there, everybody was so rich, coming in the best cars with chauffeurs. I was overwhelmed. I was scared. I never imagined I would be allowed to go in. I didn’t feel like I was equal to the other students. I just wanted to go home.”

How many times have you gotten past a period and then just wanted to go home?

“I never imagined I would be allowed to go in. I didn’t feel like I was equal to the other students.”

How many times have you felt this way? I feel this way all the time. Finally get the promotion? Now it’s new job, new boss, new way of doing things—and here comes that feeling of wanting to run for the hills. Sick family member gets better? Now you really have to confront the future you said you didn’t have time for. Visa gets approved? Great! Now how do you really feel about leaving your culture and aging parents behind to start all over again?

When we get past the period, the struggle starts all over again. You may dream of tapping out, stopping before you start, sticking a big period on the end of the new sentence so you don’t have to keep moving, fighting, working, trying. But it’s back to doing the same thing we’re talking about here.

What if you add a dot-dot-dot and keep your options open instead?

There is power in moving slowly through the motions.

There is power in letting the story continue.

“I don’t waltz . . . yet”

For the next few years, my mum’s life was full of reciting the Lord’s Prayer, memorizing Shakespeare passages, and eating soft-boiled eggs in the corner of the school cafeteria. After hitting the books away from friends and family, she graduated at seventeen and started to feel like her life was back on the rails, like she had made it, like everything was slowly coming together.

And then the phone rang.

And it was her father.

And he asked her to come home right away.

“I’m dying,” he told her. “Go make something of yourself.”

He passed away within days, just as violence and political instability were growing in East Africa. The dictator Idi Amin was ordering all East Asians out of neighboring Uganda and fears were growing that Kenya would be next.

My mum had added the dot-dot-dot as a kid but was now given new tests as a teen: her father suddenly dying, her home country unsafe, and those same heavy cultural pressures now falling onto my grandmother to scrape together a dowry and find her a husband.

“It’s great you managed to get an education . . . but now we really need to marry you off.”

So my mum fled to England with her mother and lived with her in London as her older siblings scattered and settled into their own married lives. And then my dad visited from Canada on summer vacation, the families introduced them, they had one date (one!) and then an arranged marriage a couple weeks (weeks!) later. Then? He moved my mum back to his home in a small, dusty suburb an hour east of Toronto, Canada.

And it suddenly felt like another period.

My mum’s global migration happened so quickly. She landed with a thud in that dusty suburb, with no Indian people around, suddenly married to a guy she’d met twice—including at their wedding—with her parents, siblings, and friends all an ocean away.

I can’t imagine how scary that must have been.

Another challenge, another wrench, another kink in the garden hose, another place where it felt like the end of a sentence.

But she kept moving, kept going, kept adding a dot-dot-dot.

When she came to Canada my mum had eaten meat only a handful of times. My dad was a teacher and started bringing her to after-school barbecues and roast beef dinners at the Rotary Club, where they’d hang out with a couple dozen white people.

Indian food wasn’t widely available so it was meat, meat, and more meat. And this was the suburbs in the 70s. Saying you were a vegetarian meant picking bacon bits off your Caesar salad and going home hungry. What did my mum do? She went along with the crowd.

When she came to Canada, my mum had never been ballroom dancing in her life. She’d never heard of ballroom dancing. But my dad’s idea of fun was going to Club Loreley, the local German club, and waltzing her around the room. So she let herself be waltzed. I remember hearing this story growing up and jumping in.

“But you don’t waltz!” I said.

And she said, “I didn’t do anything Dad did. But what was I supposed to do? Sit at home? I just told myself I don’t waltz . . . yet.”

I would ask her how she had navigated so many hairpin turns: new country, new husband, new job, new friends, new foods, new pastimes. She always seemed to keep moving. But how could she change everything so quickly?

Was it survival?

She told me she was just keeping her options open. Adding a dot-dot-dot to the end of the sentence. Letting things happen so she could navigate forward from a position of strength rather than feeling like all her doors had closed.

Keep your options infinite

An ​MIT study​ confirmed the value of adding a dot-dot-dot.

Researchers Dan Ariely and Jiwoong Shin showed that the mere possibility of losing an option in the future increases its attractiveness to the point that people will invest money to maintain that option. As they put it in their study: “The threat of unavailability does make the heart grow fonder.”

What’s the point?

The point is that although it may be hard to admit it and hard to see it and certainly hard to do it, we really do subconsciously crave adding that dot-dot-dot.

Life is a journey from infinite possibilities when you’re born—you can be anything, do anything, go anywhere—to zero possibilities when you die. So I’m proposing that the real game is trying to keep those options open as long as you can.

Like the farmer, we need to add a “We’ll see” when life blasts us into the stratosphere or sends us screeching wildly into the ravine beside an icy road.

We need to remember and constantly work on developing the muscle of continuing to move forward and always adding a dot-dot-dot . . .

The single word that makes it happen

Add a dot-dot-dot.

Sounds snappy.

But how? How can we really do that? Right as we’re falling, as we’re feeling it, as we’re looking up at the light disappearing above us, how? What is the tool we can use to try to put this theory into practice?

Well, it comes down to adding one word to our vocabularies.

It’s the word I heard my mum use over and over growing up.

And the word is “yet.”

“Yet” is the magic word to add to any sentence that we begin with “I can’t,” “I’m not,” or “I don’t.”

Wait! Yuck! Who talks like this? Who is that negative? Well, we all do this. We do! We declare things about ourselves to ourselves. We issue proclamations!

Pitch gets rejected? “I’m not creative.”

Cut from the team? “I’m not good at sports.”

Bad blood test from the lab? “I don’t take care of myself.”

And it’s not only when we’re falling, either.

Our negative talk is even more insidious when we’re just moving through the motions. Just walking down the path. Painting in the paint-by-numbers. Hopscotching the chalky boxes.

Why get married if you’re not in love?

“I can’t meet new people.”

Why put yourself last as you take care of someone you love?

“I don’t have any better options.”

Why go to law school if you don’t want to?

“I’m no good at anything else.”

We talk like this. And every time we do, we’re inserting periods at the ends of sentences that we might have kept going.

I use my mum’s story to show how easy it would have been for her to just stop and give up, to shut off the taps. It’s much harder to keep the taps on. It’s harder to add a “yet” to the end of a self-judgment.

How does the magic word look in practice?

“I can’t meet new people . . . yet.”

“I don’t have any better options . . . yet.”

“I’m not good at anything else . . . yet.”

“I don’t waltz . . . yet.”

When we gain the courage to add a “yet” to statements about ourselves, we leave our options open. Adding the word “yet” is empowering. It wedges a little question mark into the negative certainty we hold on to so fiercely in our minds. It lets us hold both ideas. The idea that we can’t. And! The idea that we can.

It leaves the door open.

It adds a “To be continued . . .”

Growing up, my mum never let her story finish.

And over the years ahead she continued to face many challenges. Sudden onset mental illness. The shocking death of her closest sister. Many moments where she could have closed things off with a period. But she always added a dot-dot-dot instead.

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This is the first step to building resilience as you’re falling.

Resilience is being able to see that tiny little sliver of light between the door and the frame just after you hear the latch click.

Prom invite shot down? I haven’t got a date . . . yet.

Passed over for promotion? I’m not a manager . . . yet.

Cholesterol way out of whack? I don’t exercise . . . yet.

My mum never added a period in the brand new continent she found herself living in in her midtwenties.

“This doesn’t feel like home . . . yet.”

She never added a period in the arranged marriage her family ushered her into.

“I don’t know this man . . . yet.”

She never added a period at the boarding school where she was asked to pray to a new God in a new religion in a new language.

“I’m not confident at this school . . . yet.”

She never added a period when she was born the fifth girl in a family praying for a fourth boy.

“I don’t know what I’ll do . . . yet.”

Setbacks didn’t kill her spirit.

She just saw that sliver of light.

So when you feel like you’re falling, don’t just end the sentence.

Add a dot-dot-dot instead . . .

Thank you so much for reading. This was Chapter 1 from my book on resilience ​'You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life​'. I honestly think it’s the best book I’ve written! If you liked this chapter, ​check out the book​.

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An Open Letter to Mark Carney: Please don't pave Lake Ontario to expand Billy Bishop Airport

April 4, 2026

Dear Prime Minister Mark Carney,

I was on the Toronto Ferry last year staring at our majestic waterfront.

I saw paddlers, kayakers, dragon boaters, sailors, windsurfers, fishers, paddleboarders, water taxis, and cruisers all sharing the space in harmony.

When we docked at Hanlan’s Point on the Toronto Islands I was surrounded by hikers, joggers, cyclists, birders, picnickers, swimmers, photographers, beachgoers, frisbee golfers, naturalists, and thousands of tourists and locals enjoying this lush ecological paradise surrounded by our sparkling freshwater lake.

Please don’t destroy this by paving Lake Ontario.

Three weeks ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced he will “seize” Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport (YTZ) in order to expand runways into Lake Ontario (1), bring in jets against the legal contracts governing the airport (2), and nix 14,000 mixed-use homes slated to go up on the shore (which taxpayers have already spent $1.4B developing). (3,4)

Although this decision is not his to make—Billy Bishop is governed by the City of Toronto and the federal government (5)— Premier Ford says he will overrule the City to “bring in jets one way or another.” (6,7)

Premier Ford says he has the “full support” of your federal government to do this. (8)

Prime Minister Carney:

It is not too late.

Please say no to expanding Billy Bishop airport into the lake.

We don’t need this, we don’t want this, and we can’t afford this.

We don’t need this.

We can already go anywhere we want to go.

I live right in downtown Toronto.

I can be anywhere I want in the world, tomorrow.

I can walk to bus, subway, streetcar, and UP express stations from my house and I fly 40x per year.

In the past year I have been to over 35 airports on 3 continents and YYZ is one of the absolute best. In fact, in the past month it has won “Best Airport Staff in North America” (9), been ranked 4th in all of the Americas in efficiency (out of 50 airports) (10), and won Best Large Airport on the entire continent (an award it’s won eight times in nine years.) (11)

Right this second, checking Uber, I can get from my house by car to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport (YYZ) in 21 mins and to Toronto’s Billy Bishop Island Airport (YTZ) in 14 mins.

Right this second, if someone at Union Station wanted to get to YYZ on public transit it would take 28 minutes (UP Express) and to YTZ would take 22 minutes (TTC streetcar).

We are talking about a 6 minute time savings here.

If we want to serve southwestern Ontario’s population with expanded jet service we simply need to use the 7000m of existing, high-capacity, under-utilized jet runways within 2 hours of Toronto at Hamilton, Waterloo, and London versus entertaining a “special economic zone” to force a jet-strip into the most environmentally sensitive and densely populated waterfront in the country.

We don’t want this.

This tiny speck of ecological paradise provides critical respite from our dense and urban concrete jungle and is vital for mental health, community, and happiness.

Over 400 peer-reviewed studies show urban forests and parks mitigate depression and anxiety and enhance overall mental well-being. (12)

I know you agree because four days ago on March 31, 2026 you announced your “Force of Nature” strategy with the vision of “protecting, restoring, and valuing nature.” This wonderful program declares a federal investment of $3.8 billion dollars into “protecting critical habitats and aligning industrial strategies with biodiversity conservation.” (13, 14, 15)

Also, I looked into the runway expansion into the lake that Premier Ford has promised.

Right now the shortest jet runway in Canada is 1832m (YHM Hamilton, ON) and the shortest jet runway in the world is 1508m (LCY London City Airport, UK). There are also new Canadian Aviation Regulations (RESA) stating all runways need to add 150m on each end for safety. (16, 17, 18)

Today the Billy Bishop runway is 1216m. (19)

Even the most conservative assumption—building the shortest jet runway in the entire world!—still requires a minimum of 600m more runway to land jets.

Here is a current aerial view of Billy Bishop Airport.

Here is an aerial view of Billy Bishop Airport with the smallest possible runway extension of 600m added.

(Of course this photo doesn’t include additional parking, hangers, gates, aprons, tarmacs, fueling stations, de-icing stations, blast fences, control towers, baggage carousels, taxi pickups … )

We can’t afford this.

Premier Ford was first elected in 2018 as the right wing candidate (PC) with 40.5% of the vote (left wing side of NDP and Liberal was 53.2%) and campaigned as a fiscal conservative. He attacked the Liberals for their $6.7B deficit and vowed a “return to balanced budgets” that would “begin in 2019.” (20, 21)

Since then, Premier Ford has won two more elections—with a nearly identical right / left vote split and record lows in voter turnout—and has now presided over 8 budgets. (22, 23)

In order from 2019 to 2026 those eight budgets have been for *deficits* of $8.7B, $16.4B, $13.5B, $5.9B, $5.6, $1.1B, $12.3B, and, most recently, just announced last week on March 26, 2026, coming in at a 77% increase on his own 2025 forecasts, $13.8B. (24, 25)

Since Premier Ford was elected he has *increased* Ontario’s debt from $338B to $485B. Ontario now pays $17.2B a year … just in interest payments. (26, 27, 28)

Notably, Premier Ford’s most recent $13.8B deficit budget does not include any money for the projected $1-2B cost of expanding Billy Bishop airport.

(Prime Minister, you and Premier Ford are both 61 and have a seemingly warm relationship despite wildly different education and business paths. (29, 30, 31, 32) Might you have time for some evening finance tutorials?)

Prime Minister Carney:

We don’t need this, we don’t want this, we can’t afford this.

Please say no to this expansion plan.

Please allow the legal agreements governing the airport to remain in the hands of those who legally own it—the City of Toronto and the federal government—and not with Premier Ford’s provincial government who is attempting to autocratically rule something in which it has no stake.

At the Junos six days ago on March 29, 2026 you praised 82-year-old Joni Mitchell and justifiably called her “one of the greatest artists of all time.” (33)

Joni warned us about “paving paradise to put up a parking lot” and now that’s exactly what Premier Ford is proposing we do.

The Toronto Harbour, Toronto Harbourfront, and Toronto Islands are a crown jewel for the functioning of our great city, our great province, and our great country.

Would New York City pave over Central Park?

Would Paris put runways on the Seine?

We absolutely should not pave the paradise of Lake Ontario to put up runways and parking lots we don’t need, don’t want, and can’t afford.

It’s not too late.

Please say no.

Thank you,

Neil Pasricha

//

(1) https://theglobeandmail.com/gift/08407f44d908aed2eadc6d​
(2) https://portstoronto.com/wp-content/uploads/RESA-Tripartite-Amending-Agreement-January-28-2025.pdf
(3) https://environmentaldefence.ca/2026/03/24/​
(4) https://thestar.com/news/gta/tens-of-thousands-are-expected​
(5) https://billybishopairport.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/​
(6) https://theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ford-mulls-taking-over-torontos-stake-in-billy-bishop-airport-as-he/
(7) https://cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ford-billy-bishop-takeover-9.7138456 https://theglobeandmail.com/​
(8) https://theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-ford-billy-bishop-airport-special-economic-zone/
(9) https://torontopearson.com/en/corporate/media/press-releases/2026-03-19
(10) https://britishaviationgroup.co.uk/knowledge/toronto-pearson-ranked​
(11) https://nowtoronto.com/news/pearson-billy-bishop-awards/
(12) https://nature.com/articles/s44284-025-00286-y
(13) https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/03/31/prime-minister-carney-launches-new-nature-strategy-protect-canadas
(14) https://canada.ca/en/services/environment/nature/nature-strategy.html
(15) https://audubon.org/news/audubon-applauds-canadas-commitment-protect-nature
(16) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Munro_Hamilton​
(17) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport
(18) https://toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ex/bgrd/​
(19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bishop_Toronto​
(20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Ontario_general_election
(21) https://occ.ca/rapidpolicy/ontario-pc-party-platform-2018/​
(22) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Ontario_general_election
(23) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Ontario_general_election
(24) https://globalnews.ca/news/11746458/ontario-budget-2026/
(25) https://budget.ontario.ca/2026/brief.html
(26) https://ofina.on.ca/borrowing_debt/debt.htm
(27) https://budget.ontario.ca/2026/chapter-4.html
(28) https://ontario.ca/page/public-accounts-ontario-past-editions
(29) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney​
(30) https://proquest.com/docview/301464456/
(31) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Ford#Early​
(32) https://theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/globe-investigation-the-ford-familys-history-with-drug-dealing/article12153014/
(33) https://youtube.com/watch?v=6pbVWyjlgRg

//

If you support this blog post please:

1) Send an email to your Member of Parliament (MP). Find your MP here:

https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en

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3) Send a letter in the mail to Mark Carney and/or your MP (no postage is necessary if mailed in Canada):

(Name of Member of Parliament)
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10 Inspirational Email Newsletters To Help You Live A Better Life (2.0)

Hey everyone,

Sloppy AI spam is turning my inbox into a travesty.

I am spending more time deleting, blocking, and filtering than ever before—

You too?

I honestly wondered about abandoning email completely!

Do I run away from the spammer monsters and retreat back into my Cave of Texts?

But then again ... they’re there, too!

No.

I need to stay.

I need to fight!

One weapon in the ongoing battle are the beautiful email newsletters sent to me from actual human beings with faces who seem to continuously send me little nuggets of inbox gold.

Seven years ago I wrote an article for Fast Company called ​“10 Inspirational Email Newsletters That Will Help You Live A Better Life.”​

Well now it’s time for Version 2.0!

Btw, I just checked ​that article​ and only 1 of my 10 below was on my original list...

So now: I proudly present the antithesis of AI spam.

The drops of dish soap that help the inbox grease scatter!

Here are 10 inspirational email newsletters that help me live a better life.

I open these emails every single time I see them and I highly recommend them all.

Team human forever,

Neil

PS. Invite others to join us ​​here​​.

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1. ​FIX THE NEWS​ BY ANGUS HERVEY

Political economist ​Angus Hervey​ believes “progress is something woven into the fabric of human experience, and not just a collection of statistics.” Fix The News is an actual good news newspaper with an ‘​Enlightenment Now​’ (​BO 2018​) / ​Our World In Data​-style zoom out on what’s going well in the world today.

Frequency: Weekly on Thursdays
Perfect for: Anyone interested in stories of human progress and those looking for an antidote to bad news...

2. ​THE RED HAND FILES ​BY NICK CAVE

I was really taken by ​‘Faith, Hope, and Carnage’​ (​06/23​) by Nick Cave. I knew so little about him other than I loved the song ​“Into My Arms”​. This email picks up where the book leaves up by simply answering 1 question from fans with the most giant-hearted, giant-minded replies. My friend ​Susan Cain​ told me she wants to “curl up inside every one of these emails” she loves them so much.

Frequency: Intermittent
Perfect for: Deep souls looking for inspiration, advice, and a unique form of global community...

3. ​THE 3-2-1 NEWSLETTER​ BY JAMES CLEAR

Every Thursday ​James Clear​, author of ​Atomic Habits​ (​10/18​) shares 3 ideas, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question for you. A 30-second snack of entrepreneurial wisdom.

Frequency: Weekly on Thursdays
Perfect for: Anyone looking for quick motivation for growth, productivity, and self-improvement...

4. ​AUSTIN KLEON’S NEWSLETTER

One of my all-time favorite humans on the Internet, Austin is a former reference librarian turned bestselling author (​Steal Like an Artist​, ​Don’t Call It Art​) who points my brain at all kinds of fascinating articles, visual art, “ear candy”, quotes, and fun ideas every Friday morning. From a wise and ​dreaming doodler​, this email always helps me challenge my own ideas and helps me explore endless cerebral squiggles.

Frequency: Weekly on Friday mornings
Perfect for: Anyone who likes getting their brain poked with art, and those who feel a bit uncultured (like me) in big broad areas of music, painting, and film...

5. ​RICH ROLL’S NEWSLETTER

I was first introduced to ​Rich Roll ​by ​Jonathan Fields​, and ​his story​ of addiction, empowerment, sobriety, veganism, and athletic endurance marries so well with the wonderful psychological feast that is ​his podcast​ and newsletters. I love his mind, his words, his outlook, and, of course, his ​pod​, but if you can’t listen to 4-6 hours of Rich per week (I wish I was a trucker sometimes!), then ​his newsletter​ is a kind of flyover of what’s happening in the world through his uniquely articulate lens of upper echelon self-improvement.

Frequency: Weekly on Monday mornings with occasional Thursday supplements
Perfect for: Anybody who wants to grow...

6. ​THE MARGINALIAN​ BY MARIA POPOVA

I love Maria Popova. Love! I was so chuffed when ​she joined me on 3 Books​ because she’s done like 3 ... ever. (Similar to ​Dave Eggers​, ​Jenny Lawson​, and ​Bryan Stevenson.​) Why so few? Maybe because she’s crafting like FIVE GIANT MIND EXPANDING ESSAYS A WEEK and publishing them on her grandaddy-of-them-all blog ​The Marginalian​. She is the most prolific writer I know. Her Sunday morning newsletter is an expansive summary—like doesn’t even fit in the email sometimes!—of the blog posts she’s published the previous week. They explore everything bibliophilic, creative, and meaning-of-life. Popova’s intentional and expressive words are “an act of resistance to the tyranny of algorithms,” making this newsletter a thought-provoking and much needed addition to your inbox.

Frequency: Weekly, Sunday mornings
Perfect for: Thinkers leading an examined life and fans of out of print literature, poetry, outer space, children’s books, and intellectual exploration...

7. ​THE LINDY NEWSLETTER​ BY PAUL SKALLAS

An intriguing, challenging, counterintuitive feed of blog posts by writer Paul Skallas, who goes by the moniker “LindyMan”, and who leads a life centered on the ​Lindy Effect​—a concept refined by ​Nassim Nicholas Taleb​ (​The Black Swan​, ​04/21​)—which suggests the longer something has endured ... the longer it will endure. So the newsletter examines current trends through the lens of what’s worked since ancient times. Here’s an ​NYT profile on Paul ​and ​our 3 Books chat​, too.

Frequency: Intermittent
Perfect for: Fans of Stoicism, philosophy, and viral TikTok videos...

8. ​MORE TO THAT​ BY LAWRENCE YEO

Lawrence Yeo is an illustrator and writer who creates cartoon-based stories reflecting on the human experience. ​Morgan Housel​ calls him ​one of his favorite writers​. Yeo’s newsletter ​More To That​ offers a unique exploration of our existence and challenges through cartoon drawings, clear prose, and wonderful storytelling.
Frequency: Intermittent
Perfect for: Curious thinkers who grew up on ​Wait But Why​...

9. ​DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF’S NEWSLETTER

Lecturer, journalist, podcaster, media analyst, and author of ​‘Team Human’​ (​05/24​), ​Douglas Rushkoff​ never sugarcoats his step-ahead observations on the state of the world. His newsletter shares strong-voiced thoughts on how technology is steering us today. Steer or be steered! Rushkoff helps.

Frequency: Intermittent
Perfect for: People who think of themselves on “Team Human” and who those who want to counterbalance views from tech optimists and pessimists...

10. ​THE ED’S UP​ BY ED YONG

Ed Yong steered me through the pandemic! His ​science writing in The Atlantic​ won a Pulitzer for a reason. He went on to write ​‘An Immense World’​, ​‘I Contain Multitudes’​, and has a new book coming called ​‘The Infinite Extent’​. These days his emails are mostly bird photos WHICH IS JUST FINE TO ME since it seems like me and Ed are falling into (rising up to?) birding at ​exactly the same time​. (His pics are a zillion times better than mine, though!). A science genius, activist, and photographer extraordinaire, his emails provide deep beauty to my inbox.

Frequency: Intermittent
Perfect for: Bird nerds, nature lovers, and anyone wanting to view the world through an erudite-but-accessible science lens...

Annnnnnnnd that’s it for now!

I subscribe to a ton more that I love so maybe I’ll do a 3.0 if you guys loved this one.

Most importantly:

I believe we can wrestle our inboxes back from the beast.

I hope you enjoyed or will enjoy a few of my 10 favorite newsletters currently filling me with joy.

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Sign Up for a Dose of Inspiration:

Every other week, I send an email out with an article I’ve written, or one of my favorite speeches, essays or poems. No ads, no sponsors, no spam, and nothing for sale. Just a dose of inspiration or beauty!

How messy your face is after eating shawarma

Pitas aren’t waterproof.

Crusty bread sacs are not built for vast swirling ponds of garlic, tahini, hummus, and hot sauce pooling at the bottom of your heavy two-handed shawarma.

You know this. I know this. The guy sawing the moist crunchy chicken off the spit knows this. Everybody knows this! So what do we do? Assemble armors of twisted wax and tissue papers, tight aluminum foils, and skinny paper bags so we might briefly delay . . . the gushing.

It happens slowly at first.

A little white drop with an orange oil spot inside it lands on the tray. And just as you notice it . . . there is another. Suddenly you’re Malcolm in Jurassic Park staring at the plastic cup of water on the dash. Thump, thump, now a drip, now a stream. The wax paper overflow compartments are filling up and you know your shawarma is sinking.

What do you do?

For the love of all that is holy you frantically bite, bite, and bite some more. Close your eyes and stab that shawarma like a frenzied shark. Bite that pink pickled turnip, bite that vinegary tabouli, bite those hot crispy fries. Garlic sauce drips down your chin, hummus mascaras your eyelashes, and two tiny cubes ofchopped tomato briefly clog your nostrils till you lurch back and gasp at the ceiling for air.

Gushing liquids coat your hands and slide down your arms but you keep going and going and going—turning your head sideways for air like you’re doing a front crawl—until yes, yes, yes, yes, you are biting bits of wet pita because you successfully made it to the final folds.

Congratulations!

You made it to the end of the shawarma without the whole thing falling into a pathetic wet pile of slop.

Now look up and smile slowly at me as I smile slowly at you. Let’s lean back and twirl on our plastic bolted chairs and laugh because our faces look like they’re coated in cake batter and blood.

Let’s stare into the dark, past the glass, past the flashing neon sign, past the barren parking lot, up and over the empty main drag in this quiet town and the dark, dark forests beyond.

It’s late, late, late on a Tuesday and everyone is quiet and sleeping but we’re out and we’re moving and we’re wild and we’re grooving and we both know this is totally

AWESOME!

A reflection on becoming: Kurt Vonnegut's final piece of advice to students

Hey everyone,

Years ago I stumbled upon a wonderful collection of commencement speeches given by ​Kurt Vonnegut ​called ‘​If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?​’ Although Vonnegut’s fiction never really hit me—I’ve only read ‘​Slaughterhouse-Five​’ and ‘​Breakfast of Champions​’ at the behest of ​Elan Mastai​ and ​Daniels​—this collection of speeches really did.

Vonnegut was clearly a master of distilling bits of pithy wisdom into actionable advice for youngsters. That’s what made it quite profound, at least to me, when I came across the very last piece of advice he left behind. Written at age 84, this little letter might be titled ‘How to Become’ or ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Trying Really Hard at Something for Nobody’s Sake But Your Own.’

Either way, I liked this letter.

I hope you do, too.

Neil

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

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Are you a sucker for commencement speeches like me? Pair this one with ‘​What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness​’ by ​George Saunders​ and ‘​Invent your own life’s meaning​’ by ​Bill Watterson​.

5 ways you can be happier (in 2 minutes or less!)

Hey everyone,

I think happiness is a skill. I think there really are simple things we can do to help cultivate more positivity in our brains. Here are five of my favorite practices!

Neil

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We can choose our own happiness by engaging with habits proven to promote greater feelings of well-being and positivity.

Studies show these "happiness habits" do slowly shift our brain to being more positive. Over the years I’ve collected these habits and today I want to share five with you that each take only 2 minutes or less to do!

1.Two-Minute Mornings

Let's start right when we open our eyes.

What's the first thing you do? Grab your phone? Check the time?

My argument is that you need to move the phone out of the bedroom and nurture this sacred liminal state between your subconscious and conscious by doing the simple "two-minute morning" practice of writing out your answer to three science-backed prompts:

1. I will let go of…

2. I am grateful for…

3. I will focus on…

I wrote a paper ​for Harvard Business Review​ about the story and research behind the practice and even put out a ​Two-Minute Mornings journal​ around the method that's become a big bestseller. These simple 3 prompts provide a two minute push to help you win the morning ... and get rolling for the day.

2. Commit An Act Of Kindness

Carrying out a conscious act of kindness dramatically improves happiness.

Sure, it might not be natural to hold a door open as a meeting exits, buy a coffee for a stranger, or shovel your neighbor's sidewalk—but it's powerful.

Professor ​Sonja Lyubomirsky​, author of '​The How of Happiness'​ and (her new book!) '​How To Feel Loved​', did a study asking Stanford students to perform five acts of kindness over a week. Not surprisingly, they reported much higher happiness levels than the test group. Why? They felt good about themselves! People appreciated them.

In his book '​Flourish​', Professor ​Martin Seligman​, co-founder of positive psychology, says “we scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested.”

When a generous impulse strikes—act!

Send homemade chili to your friend with a kid in the hospital, a romantic thank you text to your spouse, or a little 3-line email expressing gratitude to your kid's teacher. You'll make their day ... and yours!

3. Two Pages Of Fiction

Next up!

Reading 2 pages of fiction.

There’s a George R.R. Martin quote I love that says:

“The man who reads lives a thousand lives before he dies … the man who never reads lives only one.”

We need to read books—real books on real paper—more than ever. We spend over five hours a day on our phone right now. In a world of endless dings and pings we need to get back to single-tasking and give our eyes a break from screens.

A 2011 study published in the ​Annual Review of Psychology​ showed that reading triggers our mirror neurons and opens up the parts of our brain responsible for developing empathy, compassion and understanding.

Also known as EQ!

And what does EQ help with?

Becoming a better leader, teacher, parent, sibling, husband, wife, mother, father...

Another study from ​Science​ in 2013 showed ​reading literary fiction​ helps improve empathy and social functioning.

Recently, investor Paul Graham shared the image below with the tweet: "This bodes ill. Readers used to outnumber non-readers 2 to 1. Now non-readers outnumber readers 3 to 1. It's hard to imagine a change of that magnitude not having significant effects."

Reading books is under threat!

Yet the researched benefits remain.

Pick up a book!

(And sign up for my ​completely free Book Club email​ if you'd like my suggestions on what to read...)

4. Phone A Friend

​Robert Waldinger​ is the Director of the ​1938 Harvard Adult Development Study​, the longest study ever on happiness, and he says:

"... it’s not career achievement, money, exercise, or a healthy diet. The most consistent finding we’ve learned through 85 years of study is: Positive relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer. Period."

Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, who I already quoted above, says: "Perhaps most critical to improving and maintaining happiness is the ability to connect with other people and to create meaningful connecting moments and even chemistry..."

Professor ​Daniel Gilbert​, author of '​Stumbling on Happiness​,' says: "We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends."

And yet: ​we are reporting fewer friends and fewer best friends than ever before​.

Friendship is the number one driver to happiness!

But we have less of it in our lives than we used to.

Why?

Online too much? Not connecting IRL? Upwardly mobile and geographically separating?

Could be all of those things.

What’s one solution?

Phone a friend!

Take 2 minutes in the middle of your day to send a quick voice note to a friend, cousin, or old roommate … doing 3 simple things:

State: State the value of the relationship. "I was thinking about your mentorship at our last job and how much it meant to me", "I was remembering our road trip after graduating", "I'm reaching out to all my dear cousins", etc.

Share: Share something going on with you. Something you're thinking about, wrestling with, struggling with. A relationship that's taken a turn, a tough situation at work, or a challenge you're having with a child. We all have lots and vulnerability breeds connection.

Seek: Seek something. Ask a question! Basically, give them something to respond to—so they have a reason to reply with a 2-minute voice note of their own.

Okay, that's four.

And now finally:

5. Play Rose, Rose, Thorn, Bud

A perfect game for the dinner table or before you turn out the lights.

Because one truth from our brains is that: If you can be happy with simple things it will be simpler to be happy.

​Researchers Emmons and McCullough​ asked groups of students to write down five gratitudes, five hassles or five events that happened over the past week for 10 straight weeks. What happened? The students who wrote five gratitudes were happier and physically healthier than the other two test groups.

I’ve ​given keynote speeches​ sharing this research for years but was always left with a nagging question: What if you just don’t have the willpower to write down five gratitudes? I mean, when was honestly the last time you did that?

Well, today I want to share a game my wife Leslie and I play most nights that completely solves this problem.

It’s called ​Rose, Rose, Thorn, Bud​.

A Rose: A highlight, a gratitude, something that went well.

A Second Rose: Another highlight, little win, or small pleasure from the day.

A Thorn: Something that didn’t go well. A chance to vent, process, and be heard.

A Bud: Something you’re looking forward to—small or big, soon or in a long time.

What does Rose, Rose, Thorn, Bud do in practice?

Well, as long as the Thorn doesn’t become a 45-minute argument about who didn’t do the dishes (LOL) it’s a perfect 2-minute exercise to swap four gratitudes right before bed. I wrote a ​blog post​ and ​Toronto Star article​ about the concept and also put it into ​a little journal​, too.

As Charles Dickens said: “Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many, not your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

So we did it!

Those are The Big 5.

Five of the most powerful studies distilled into 2-minute habits you can do any time you need a positive nudge.

Now the goal with all of these practices is not to be perfect.

Nobody is perfectly happy!

It's just to be a little better than before.

Which one will you do today?

Leadership Lessons: Chrystia Freeland’s Goodbye Letter

Hey everyone,

The news is currently dominated by expansionism. Russia wants Ukraine, U.S. wants Greenland. I try to focus my attention on books, books, books—"Read not the Times, read the Eternities", said Thoreau—but I do inevitably put my head up and periscope around, too. I’ve been thinking a lot about our shared humanity. The community and connection between all of us. "Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives", says the ​longest-running study​ ever on human happiness. One thing I’m always trying to do with these newsletters and ​the podcast​ is create community in a more analog way. Last year Elon Musk tweeted that:

It irked me so much I wrote and self-published a ​10,000 word essay about Canada​.

Then last year I travelled to Ottawa to interview 91-year-old​ Jean Chrétien​, the highest-approval-rating-after-leaving-office Prime Minister in Canadian history who my wife calls "the grandfather of Canada."

And now I thought I'd share the wonderfully-penned goodbye letter from Chrystia Freeland—Canada's deputy prime minister between 2019 and 2024—who officially resigned January 9th 2026 in order to act as an unpaid economic adviser to Ukraine and to become CEO of the ​Rhodes Trust​, which underwrites the famous ​Rhodes Scholarships​. To me this letter is a short and sweet lesson in leadership. Honest, vulnerable, real, and yet also leaves you with hope.

I hope you enjoy,

Neil

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Thank You from Chrystia Freeland

Dear Neighbours,

Today is my last day as your Member of Parliament.

Thank you for the privilege of serving you over the past twelve years, and therefore for the privilege of serving all Canadians and of raising Canada’s voice in the world.

These are dark and difficult days, at home and abroad. Thanks to the sacrifices of Canada’s greatest generation, we Canadians have helped to build, and been sheltered by, the rules-based international order. It is now broken, and has given way to an era of jungle rules, where might makes right.

In this new chapter in my life, I will be dedicated to lighting candles in this darkness, and to fighting for a world in which our True North Strong and Free can prosper. I will do so rooted in the certainty that our wonderful Canada is the best country in the world, and that we will continue, as we have at every testing moment in our history, to rise to today’s challenges.

Thank you to every friend who has knocked on doors with me, to every dedicated staffer I have worked with, and to every Canadian who has taken the time to vote in the past five elections when my name was on the ballot.

There is no higher honour in the world than being freely and fairly elected by your neighbours to serve them. I hope my experience will encourage a new generation of Canadians - especially women and girls - to stand up for our country at this critical time.

One of the great strengths of Canada’s representative democracy is that we live next door to people we elect. On runs in the ravine, in coffee shops, and at the grocery store, you have stopped me to offer critiques and compliments, and I have been guided and inspired by both. I have loved being your MP, and I am so lucky to be your neighbour.

With gratitude,

Chrystia

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Want to engage more deeply with Canada's role in today's world? Listen to my conversation with ​Jean Chrétien​ (​YouTube​ / ​Spotify​ / ​Apple​), listen to my audiobook '​Canada Is Awesome​' (​YouTube​ / ​Spotify​ / ​Apple​) or download it for free as a ​PDF​...

Why Gratitude is a Leadership Superpower: My Interview with the Smith School of Business

Hey everyone,

Happy new year!

I was ​recently interviewed​ by the ​Smith School of Business​ (my alma mater!) about my thoughts on gratitude. I thought I'd share it with you below as a way to refresh some thoughts as we get into the new year.

Neil

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Why Gratitude is a Leadership Superpower

Interview by Deborah Aarts

Neil Pasricha, BCom ’02, knows he has plenty to be thankful for. Yes, there’s the highlight-reel career stuff. He has ​11 wildly popular books​, including 2010’s smash ​The Book of Awesome​, last year’s ​Our Book of Awesome​ and, most recently, ​Canada is Awesome​—which have collectively sold more than two million copies and spent more than 200 weeks on bestseller lists. He also has a ​thriving speaking business​ that takes him around the world, firing up audiences to live happier, more fulfilling and more resilient professional and personal lives. And then there’s his podcast, which gets him talking to fascinating people (ranging from ​Seth Godin​ and ​Brené Brown​ to ​Temple Grandin​ and ​Quentin Tarantino​) about the books that formed their sense of self.

Pasricha appreciates all of it. But in a phone interview on a sunny fall day, work accomplishments are not what first come to mind when asked what he’s grateful for. Instead, he shares a laundry list of tiny, beautiful wins that have lit up his day: That his seven-year-old woke him up with snuggles. That his wife is finally recovering from a concussion. That he has a square of dark chocolate waiting for him in his backpack. That he is able to have the conversation while going for a walk, which doubles his daily step count, and that the weather is fine enough to allow him to go jacket-free.

Taking note of little things like these might seem frivolous, but in Pasricha’s view, it’s anything but. That’s because he’s studied the science and therefore knows that people who make gratitude a regular, everyday practice are proven to be happier and healthier individuals. They’re also better leaders, prone to building more engaged, resilient and innovative teams.

Indeed, gratitude can be a competitive advantage, even in the cutthroat realm of commerce. That’s why—as Pasricha explains to Smith Business Insight contributor Deborah Aarts—it’s a practice leaders should actively cultivate.

Deborah Aarts: Let’s start by going back in time. What first got you into gratitude?

Neil Pasricha: It was 2008. I was going through the end of my first marriage, around the same time that my best friend—who had attempted suicide once before—ended up taking his own life. I was living in Mississauga, managing leadership development in Walmart’s HR department, and I remember driving home from work one day and thinking, “I need a way to focus on something positive.”

I had always liked to write, and I thought that might be a way in. So I got home, Googled 'how to start a blog' and, about 10 minutes later, set up a little website called ​1000awesomethings.com​ and set a goal to writing about one awesome thing every weekday for 1,000 days.

In the beginning it wasn’t overly positive. I was writing about things like when the ​cashier opens a new checkout lane for you at the grocery store​. But I tapped into something: How great it feels when a little moment of victory happens, even amidst a negative situation. That’s how I started. It’s been nearly 18 years and I still make a point to write one new awesome thing every single day.

Deborah Aarts: How has your understanding of gratitude changed since, as you’ve amassed more and more success?

Neil Pasricha: When the blog finished in 2012, I’d been doing it every day for four years. It had become far more popular than I ever expected and had led to three ​books​. I kind of thought, “mission accomplished.”

But it turns out that you can’t really turn off gratitude once it’s a practice.

The reason is biological. We each have an amygdala in our brains—it’s the oldest part of the brain, preceding our species. It’s about the size of a walnut, and it secretes fight-or-flight hormones all day. The amygdala is a vital part of species survival: It’s why we look at the questions we got wrong when we get a math test back, why we seek out one-star reviews of the item we want to buy on Amazon. Instinctively, we are wired to seek out the negative.

I’ve learned that we really do have to battle this biological, root part of our psyche all the time. It really does have to be a daily practice. You can’t stop. You don’t ever get to a place of being “done” with gratitude.

Deborah Aarts: How does the practice of gratitude square with the world of business and the tendency to constantly seek new, better and bigger ways of doing things? Is gratitude always at odds with modern capitalism? Or can it be complementary?

Neil Pasricha: I don’t disagree that late-stage capitalism can have all kinds of negative externalities. We’re seeing wealth becoming extremely concentrated. We’re seeing so much of our ability to enjoy things become contingent on 10 different sign-ups, 12 different accounts and endless subscription fees. We’re seeing our streets filled with delivery vans. We’re seeing a lot of people whose default mode is “Go, go, go.”

We’re also all exposed to extremely sophisticated, billion-dollar research algorithms that are far smarter than we all are. It’s hard to scroll anything online without coming across anger-producing drips meant to make us upset. It’s happening at a rate that’s faster than what we can process and at a level that is beyond our understanding.

So yes, many parts of modern life make gratitude harder to practice than ever before, but I’d argue that we also have a greater need for it. Furthermore, gratitude is not something that slows you down or gets in the way of accomplishment. In my experience, it can only help you. Even in business.

Deborah Aarts: How so?

Neil Pasricha: Leaders right now have a very challenging set of circumstances. Markets are uncertain, which makes employment feel uncertain for a lot of people. Yet as a leader, your role is to inspire and motivate a team by setting a direction and helping support people towards their goals. You need a workforce that is engaged in their work, and trusting of one another, and that can be hard to create when things feel so uncertain.

But there are real benefits to be reaped if you can show up with positivity at work, even when things feel stressful and overwhelming.

We know from research that when you can help your employees feel grateful for both the work that they’re doing and for the team that they’re part of, the benefits are myriad. Engagement improves. Productivity goes up. People are more likely to feel that what they do is important. Trust goes up among teams, absenteeism goes down, and fewer people look for other jobs. This is all exactly what you want as a leader.

Deborah Aarts: So, is it the job of the leader to model appreciative behaviour?

Neil Pasricha: I think so. I worked at Walmart for 10 years and one of the projects I led was trying to understand how two similarly sized, structured and situated stores had such varying degrees of standards. One store had a completely clean parking lot. The floors were spotless. Everything on the shelves was tidy. The standards were really high. The other store often had garbage in the parking lot, gum on the carpet, shelves that were askew. We did an analysis. Guess what? At the first store, the store manager would often put the carts away, pick up garbage and straighten shelves as they walked by, so everybody else did too. At the other, the manager wouldn’t do those things, so no one else did.

Your work as a leader is observed, mimicked and reflected in the workforce at all times. So if you can be brave and say, “I want to start or finish a meeting with a gratitude exercise,” that behaviour gets reflected throughout the organization. And when people recognize and see one another and show gratitude towards each other, everything gets easier and better for the person leading them.

Deborah Aarts: What are some practices leaders can employ to stoke gratitude in their teams?

Neil Pasricha: One practice I like is to create a “Wall of Awesomes” in the office. You just leave a pile of cards or sticky notes and pens or markers beside it. Encourage people to write down something that they appreciate whenever they feel like it. Maybe they love it when there’s still hot water left in the kettle in the office kitchen. Or when they’re late to a meeting, but their boss is even later. It can and should be organic. But when people start writing things like that down, you end up having this physical manifestation of gratitude in the office atmosphere. It becomes impossible to walk by without seeing some positivity reflected at you.

You can also start a meeting with “​Rose, Thorn, Bud​,” which is a classic gratitude practice in which people share a success, a challenge and something with potential. As the person leading the meeting, you can stress that there’s no pressure to play, and then start by doing it yourself. It’s not easy. In fact, it can be a bit awkward at first. But if you do that at the beginning, the tenor and the tone of a meeting changes. People become more naturally open, more willing to share, more likely to trust and lean into each other.

Another way is to end a meeting with a round of appreciation. Encourage anybody who feels comfortable doing so to say a thank you to anyone else on the team for something they’ve done. Again, as a leader, you can start, or you can sit in a nice 30-second pause and let it kind of bubble up. The combination of gratitude and recognition can reduce a lot of workplace challenges and open up peoples’ ability to feel more seen and human at work.

Again, it’s not always easy. These little games and activities take courage to initiate. But they do make people feel seen, and they do help our brains to be more positive when it’s not our natural default position.

Deborah Aarts: Can you share a tip to help leaders integrate more gratitude into their own busy lives?

Neil Pasricha: Here’s a simple one: Try to write down tiny and specific things you’re thankful for every day. Not the big things that come to mind first, like your husband, or your kid, or your dog. Instead, something like, for example, that your husband, Antonio, put the toilet seat down, or that your daughter rode her bike without training wheels. Noticing small and specific things lights up area 17 of your visual cortex and creates a specific memory. When you write it down, it lights up area 17 again. And when you read it later, it lights up a third time. Simply writing down small, specific things you appreciate can have a doubling and tripling effect on the positive moments of your day.

Deborah Aarts: As someone who’s now been practicing gratitude for the better part of two decades: Does it get easier with time?

Neil Pasricha: In my experience, yes. Gratitude becomes a bit like a large sun in your mental solar system. I have days that I’m unhappy, that’s for sure. But if you actively seek out things to be grateful for, it becomes easier to find them. And the more you look, the more you see.

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I talk about gratitude a lot! Here is some ​more detail on gratitude​ and a ​few 1000 things to be grateful for​.

The Very Best Books I Read in 2025

Hey everyone,

Here are The Very Best Books I Read In 2025.

(And here are my Best Of ​2024​, ​2023​, ​2022​, ​2021​, ​2020​, ​2019​, ​2018​, and ​2017​, too.)

I don’t collect kickbacks on any links. Buy from your local indie (​US​/​CAN​/​UK​) or wherever you like!

Sending you energy, empathy, and some loving reading friendship in the run-up to the holidays...

Neil

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20. ​Small Things Like These​ by Claire Keegan (b.1968). Crisp, poetic 119-page 2022 Booker shortlisted book following Keegan's 2010 stunner ‘​Foster​’ (​​​​BO2023​) which takes a slow pan of a couple wintry months in New Ross, Ireland in 1985 through the eyes of local upstanding businessman, Bill Furlong, as he wrestles with what he discovers up on the hill.

First sentence: “In October there were yellow trees.”

Perfect for: book clubs who need a break from thick books, people looking for a gift for the English teacher, and historically oriented folks seeking to learn about the ​Magdalene laundries​...

19. ​Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures​​ by Merlin Sheldrake (b. 1987). Do you ... take statins? Drink alcohol? Eat truffles? Take antibiotics? Just a few of the hundreds of ways our lives revolve around fungi—and seemingly always have. This book shrinks our lives into the wider and vaster world. Big in scope, endlessly stimulating, and arranged in an organic, haphazard, expanding-underground-network type of way this is a weird, wonderful, impossible-to-forget look at the much bigger things outside ourselves.

First sentence: "Fungi are everywhere but they are easy to miss."

Perfect for: science nerds, people curious about psilocybin/magic mushrooms, fans of the podcast ​Ologies​ by ​Alie Ward​...

18. ​Useful Not True​​ by Derek Sivers (b.1969). Slim self-published 88-page hardcover which says: We make stuff up! That’s how we live. We adopt beliefs, tell ourselves stories, create realities that aren’t true—but ... they help us navigate. So in conclusion we may as well make up things that help us.

First sentence: “This book is about reframing—changing how you think about something—and choosing a perspective that's useful to you right now, whether or not it's universally true."

Perfect for: people who feel stuck chasing a dream, fans of ​Paul Graham's essays​, entrepreneur-minded types…

17. ​Ghost​​ by Jason Reynolds (b.1983). A 180-page, 14-point-font book you will feel, love, learn from, and fly through. Confusing title! Ghost? That's the self-anointed nom-de-plume of Castle Cranshaw, a poor seventh grade kid who accidentally joins a local track team, then finds himself addressing his own trauma and anger on a new emotional plane. Jason Reynolds is a magician. Perfect storytelling, memorable characters—it'll have you feeling like you can run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds by the end.

First sentence: "Check this out."

Perfect for: anyone needing a Young Adult (YA) speed booster, people looking to read a book out loud with their 10-year-old, or fans of running or track and field… ​​​

16. ​The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life​​ by Morgan Housel (b.1988). The majority of lessons here aren't income-specific. And Morgan reminds us in general that if you’re reading a book about money there’s a chance you have the bug. So this is for people who have the bug—or at least some of it. But this isn't clean advice, clear to-dos, or a bulleted list of 7 habits. It's a powerful Wisdom book—slipping into that non-existent bookstore category somewhere between Self-Help and Business. Wonderful collection of stories and insights to provoke, shift, and expand your thinking about how to maximize the quality of your life through the quality of your financial decisions. A truly incredible book.

First sentence: "Dr. Dan Goodman once performed LASIK eye surgery on a woman looking to ditch her glasses."

Perfect for: anyone who wants to get more intentional about their spending, people who like business storytelling, and fans of ​Warren Buffet's shareholders letters​...

15. ​On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century​​ by Timothy Snyder (b. 1969). A thin 126-page manifesto-as-listicle from professor Timothy Snyder (​​formerly of Yale​​ and now at ​The University of Toronto​​) which distills twentieth-century history into simple lessons to help navigate today’s era. In #2 “Defend Institutions” he writes, “The mistake is to assume that rules who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.” In #7 “Be reflective if you must be armed” he writes, “If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.” From #12 “Make eye contact and small talk” to #14 “Establish a private life” to #15 “Contribute to good causes” to #20 “Be as courageous as you can” he shines light through a dark vision of today’s world.

First sentence: "History does not repeat, but it does instruct."

Perfect for: fans of ‘​1984​’ by George Orwell, those looking to lead peaceful lives amidst great churn, community leaders, local builders, and politicians...

14. ​The World’s Cheapest Destination: 26 Countries Where Your Travel Money Is Worth A Fortune​ by Tim Leffel (b. 1964). Tim writes the 22-year-running (!) ‘​Cheapest Destinations​’ blog and in this book we have his well-written travel guides to 26 countries you maybe haven’t thought about visiting. Kyrgyzstan, Albania, Laos, oh my! He shows how to avoid the cultural homogenization amidst Starbucks-overrun hotspots and how to do so safely and cheaply. Each 8-10 page country writeup has an overview that feels like you’re talking to a friend over a beer and then splits into sub-categories like “Transportation”, “Accommodation”, “Food&Drink”, and “What Else.” This book pays for itself again and again.

First sentence: "It's not how you go, but where!"

Perfect for: people who feel like traveling is expensive, people who want to get out of dodge without breaking the bank, anybody needing support before going to places they have heard are "dangerous"...

13. ​​In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed​ by Carl Honoré (b. 1976). Endless scrolling was invented twenty years ago, TikTok ten years ago, and AI images of anything you can think of ... now. We are experiencing a grand quickening. The danger is that ​Milan Kundera​’s prophecy may come true: “When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself.” Step one in steadying yourself in the tidal wave? This wonderful 20-year-old book by sagacious soul ​Carl Honoré​. Benefits of meditation, resurgence of tantra sex, how garden views reduce pain—this and dozens of other paths are explored in this masterful tour de force.

First sentence: "What is the very first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?"

Perfect for: anyone curious about our relationship with time, people who liked ‘​Quiet​’ by Susan Cain or ‘​Solitude​’ by Michael Harris, people who agree with David Foster Wallace in ​this viral clip​, and anyone who wants to find their own pace in the machine or just shift gears back down to “human"...

​​​12. ​Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI​​ by Karen Hao. Engrossing, propulsive, illuminating portrait tracing the many tentacles of this emerging giant squid. AI is a new "empire" says Hao who rejects "the dangerous notion that broad benefit from AI can only be derived from—indeed, will ever emerge from—a vision for the technology that requires the complete capitulation of our privacy, our agency, and our worth, including the value of our labor and art, toward and ultimately imperial centralization project.” What won't change about AI? The origin story. This book goes from Elon's 2013 Napa birthday party where Larry Page called him a “speciesist” to a 2015 dinner party at Sam Altman’s house where he and Elon hatch OpenAI, to “The Divorce” where a number of OpenAI employees revolted after OpenAI started taking private money. Proclamations! Ramifications! A vast, sweeping how-of-history book to help us understand and step back as the full largesse of AI begins to emerge, hulking, dripping.

First sentence: "On Friday, November 17, 2023, around noon Pacific Time, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Silicon Valley's golden boy, avatar of the generative AI revolution, logged on to a Google Meet to see four of his five board members staring at him."

Perfect for: people who liked ‘​The Age of Surveillance Capitalism​’ by Shoshana Zuboff (​BO2023​), business history fans, and those wanting to make sense of the moment…

11. ​The Monster At The End Of This Book​​ written by Jon Stone (1931-1997), illustrated by Mike Smollin (1925-2010). I have loved this book longer than any book I have ever loved. Published in 1971 to me this is the OG interactive picture book with Grover breaking the fourth wall as he constantly begs you not to flip the page for fear of the monster who awaits at the end.

The monster is, of course, him, and the cymbal-crashing emotional cliff drop is exquisite. Delightfully popping images, escalating tension, and the violent smashing of brick walls just never gets old…

First sentence: "WHAT DID THAT SAY?"

Perfect for: 5-year-olds who watch Paw Patrol, animated adult storytellers who read to kids, and grandparents…

10. ​Carbon: The Book of Life​​ by Paul Hawken (b.1946). First up, ignore the title. I think the book could easily have been called “One Of The Wisest Elders On Planet Earth Tells Us Everything He Knows About This Place And Our Relationship With It.” This is an “enormously hopeful book”, according to ​​Elizabeth Kolbert​​ (‘​​The Sixth Extinction​​’). And, I guess yeahhhhh, if you can see it that way—which is really, really hard—then I guess you could say it's hopeful? But that’s a tough place to land when every single living system on earth is declining. Birds? Declining! Clean water? Declining! Clean air? Healthy soil? You know the answers. We all do. That’s why it’s hard. But I believe a big part of things is understanding. We don’t know what’s going on so we don’t know how to talk about it so we don’t know what to do. Enter P-Hawk, master illuminator, epic distiller. This book just rolls around my head like a marble. The wisdom of our species speaks to us through this book—translated to us from a sage of sages.

First sentence: "Carbon moves ceaselessly through the four realms—the biosphere, oceans, land, and atmosphere."

Perfect for: Erudite environmentalists, big picture thinkers, people who like electric and motivational writing in the vein of a ​Tim Ferriss​ or ​Mel Robbins​…

9. ​​Life According to Vincent: 150 Inspiring Quotes​​ by Vincent Van Gogh (1853—1890). I was thrilled to discover in Amsterdam last month at the ​​Van Gogh Museum​​ this shorter collection of literary gems culled thoughtfully from his (much, much longer) ​Penguin Classics book of letters​. Van Gogh (or "Vun KHOKH" in Dutch) had skill with words equal to skill with brush. He knew it was just as tough! From Page 32: “There are so many people […] who imagine that words are nothing. On the contrary, don’t you think, it’s as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint a thing. There’s the art of lines and colours, but there’s the art of words that will last just the same.” From Page 56: “How much good it does a person if one is in a gloomy mood to walk on the empty beach and look into the grey-green sea with the long white lines of the waves.” You feel his genius through a different valance, one with equal depth, nuance, and complexity, rendered down to simple and striking lines.

First sentence: "Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance, and that means that even though isolated I don't have time to think or to feel. I'm going like a painting-locomotive."

Perfect for: anyone looking for illumination into the art of Van Gogh, those looking for suggestions on living an intentional life full of artistic temerity and strength, and people who "heart" quotes on Instagram...

8. ​The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring ​​by J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973). I watched Peter Jackson’s movies in my 20s but only read my first one this year. The black riders grew from terrifying to … mythological, ethereal, ominous. The mines of Moria expanded from thrilling to … dark, dismal, distressing. And the songs! So many songs. So loud, so clear. (Is it unsurprising Tolkien once worked ​on the letter “W” for the Oxford English Dictionary​—apparently near ​waggle-warlock​?) Sure, there are too many characters, lots of endlessly rolling scenes, but … it’s a vibe. A place to live that feels unlike any other place. I got a used copy at ​Balfour Books​ in Toronto but there is also a ​fancy new linen version​ I have my eye on next.

First sentence: "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

Perfect for: people who loved the movies but haven’t read the books, anyone who wants to disappear completely, self-identifying nerds who somehow do not seem whole…

7. ​Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want To Run The World​​ by Anne Applebaum (b. 1964). The zone is officially flooded and the overwhelming quantity of cheap misinformation along with a proliferation of bots, trolls, and AI-backed spammers manipulating algorithms threaten to destabilize reality and obscure what’s really happening. This tiny, powerful book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum zooms up and above the daily “whats” to offer the more illuminating and horrifying “whys” and “hows.” From Page 27: “Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states. Nobody imagined that autocracy and illiberalism would spread to the democratic world instead.”

First sentence: "In the summer of 1967, Austrian and West German capitalists from the gas and steel industries met a group of Soviet communists in the quiet confines of an old Habsburg hunting lodge near Vienna."

Perfect for: activists, politicians, and people hoping to get up and above the news to see the larger shifting plates…

6. ​Crooked Plow: A Novel​​ by Itamar Vieira Junior (b. 1979). The Atlantic slave trade lasted nearly 400 years from the early 1500s to the late 1800s with over 12 million Africans shipped to toil in plantations across the Americas. Brazil is where the first slave ships went, most slaves went, and last slave ships went—with slavery abolished in 1888. But what is abolished? This is a transporting 276-page novel taking place almost entirely on a plantation in Northeastern Brazil from early to late twentieth century, told in three sweeping chunks by three different narrators. It famously won all three of Brazil’s top literary prizes.

First sentence: "When I opened the suitcase and took out the knife, wrapped in a grimy old rag tied with a knot and covered in dark stains, I was just over seven years old."

Perfect for: magic realism fans, people looking to read more South American fiction, fans of ‘​Their Eyes Were Watching God​’ by Zora Neale Hurston (​BO2018​)…

5. ​The 101 Dalmatians​​ by Dodie Smith (1896-1990). This book is a gem! Everybody knows ‘101 Dalmatians’ was a ​​Disney movie​​ but not many know it was originally serialized in ​​Woman’s Day​ magazine in the mid-1950s as ‘The Great Dog Robbery’ from English playwright ​​Dodie Smith​​. I didn't! The story is fun, fast-paced, literary, and sure, the ending goes on a bit long—got to satisfy that Women's Day contract!—but, doesn't matter. Absolutely wonderful and somewhat lost 70-year-old treasure to read to your kids or enjoy yourself.

First sentence: "Not long ago, there lived in London a young married couple of Dalmatian dogs named Pongo and Missis Pongo."

Perfect for: people who feel stressed and want a quick mental palette cleanser, people who loved the movie, and, of course, dog people...

4. ​H is for Hawk​​ by Helen Macdonald (b.1970). This book has been spying me from bookshelves since it came out in 2015.

I had seen that cover endlessly but hadn’t talon-snared it till this year. I completely fell into Macdonald’s first-person memoir of mastering the ​4000-year-old art​ of raising, taming, and training, not just a hawk, but a ​​Eurasian Goshawk​​— “bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier.” Ominous, even spooky, but always somehow light enough to be death-examining without being a downer.

First sentence: "Forty-five minutes north-east of Cambridge is a landscape I've come to love very much indeed."

Perfect for: outsiders, people who enjoy hanging out in forests, those willing to examine or metabolize bits of grief or doubt or sadness they have stuck deep inside…

3. ​Go Tell It On The Mountain​​ by James Baldwin (1927-1987). This book will crawl and sniff out the pains in your heart, the ones you forgot were there, and shake them and soften them, so you may briefly see yourself in others—in their tortures, in their truths—and then forgive yourself, and forgive them, and be grateful for where you are and what you have. This is ​​James Baldwin​​'s first novel, published in 1952, and it's a trauma-filled family soap opera stretching across generations from the South up to Harlem “…where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it seemed, the unchanging clouds, but huddled, flat, ignoble, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the rooms were dark, and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and homemade gin.” (Page 28). Bit of a tricky plot (read the ​​Wiki plot summary​​ first!) and then, once you see the layers, it's gorgeous prose, popping characters, and a serving of that uniquely brutal heart-scalding beauty we might only get from great novels.

First sentence: "Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, like his father."

Perfect for: anybody who hasn’t read a James Baldwin book and wants a good place to start, fans of family dramas, and people who love poetic and even abstract literature...

​​​2. ​For God, Country & Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It​​ by Mark Pendergrast (b. 1948). Coca-Cola is the world’s most widely distributed product and “coke” is the second “most universally recognized word on earth” (#1 is “ok”). Coca-Cola's history is this unexpected reflection of American history and capitalism’s history with the drink helping to “alter not only consumption patterns but attitudes toward leisure, work, advertising, sex, family, life, and patriotism.” It’s important. And big! There is no “older-bigger” food or drink company … ever. Exquisitely researched, endlessly engaging case study on one of the most astounding organizations of all time. Opens with the compelling '​New Coke​' story, and just never stops.

First sentence: "The boss was a very old man, near death."

Perfect for: Coca-Cola aficionados, biography readers since it’s basically a biography of a company, and corporate leaders looking to learn from the lessons of business history…

​​​1. ​Dune​​ by Frank Herbert (1920—1986). Monstrous, mind-expanding, faraway fantasy novel from 1965 told in a series of tight sequences that are simultaneously fast and slow, sharp and soft, detailed and abstract. This book has everything: cutting dialogue, twisting turns, visceral characters, bloody action, seismic myth. An endless conversation starter and when you're lugging it around it acts like a kind of nerd magnet. A simple action story but really a window into duality, ecology, philosophy, morality, and so much more. Unless you include YA (i.e., ‘​​The Hunger Games​​’), ‘Dune’ is the ​​single best selling science fiction book of all-time​​ with over 20 million copies sold. There’s a reason! A timeless epic serving as a mirror to reflect in and upon our big, small, complex, simple, chaotic, predictable world.

First sentence: "In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."

Perfect for: people who loved the '​Dune​' movies, fans of 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars', and people who would enjoy relaxing at the thought that everything happening now has happened again and again...

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You made it to the bottom! My monthly book club is my oldest and most popular newsletter. Back issues ​here​!

First time here? Join over 33,333 leaders and readers who get my handwritten, ad-free, algorithm-free book recommendations each month ​here​.

Starlings in Winter (a poem by Mary Oliver)

Hey everyone,

I love December. I love the sound of the word! I love looking forward to the ​first snowfall​. I love the streets getting one then two then seven then twenty houses with ​Christmas lights glowing​. I love ​getting buried under piles of heavy blankets on a cold night​. I love ​wishing strangers happy holidays​.

And since I became a birder five years ago I certainly love the December birds. Many birds leave Toronto but many stay, too: ​Northern Cardinals​, ​Blue Jays​, ​Black-capped Chickadees​, ​Cooper's Hawks​, and, of course, ​European Starlings​.

Starlings are one of those birds that when you first start noticing them you suddenly start seeing everywhere. Puddles. Telephone wires. Brick holes in buildings. In dazzling murmurations over the highway.

European Starling via ​Birdfact​

I found this beautiful poem about Starlings from (who else!) Mary Oliver. Pair it with ​'Why Birds Matter' by Jonathan Franzen​ or ​'The Sun' by Mary Oliver​ or my article ​8 reasons why it's time to become a birdwatcher​.

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Starlings in Winter

By ​Mary Oliver​

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly

they are acrobats in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch

and you try

but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause,

only the silent confirmation

that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.

A gift guide to my books

Hey everyone,

Anyone else been mainlining ​Phil Spector's Christmas​?

I have it in a cracked jewel case on CD and it's been splitting time in our van lately with some ​Blue Jays talk radio​ and the very occasional moment of ​absolute, perfect silence​.

For those interested in which of my books I recommend here's a quick gift guide.

My books and journals focus on happiness, gratitude, resilience, habits, and community, and they've sold over two million copies and been on bestseller lists for over 200 weeks. Don't take my word! There are over 35,000 reviews on ​Amazon​ and ​GoodReads​.

Here they are from newest to oldest with a Perfect for under each one...

Neil

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A Gift Guide to Neil Pasricha's Books

1. ​CANADA IS AWESOME​ (2025, KDP)

My home country has been big news this year since Trump said he was gonna annex us, after he said he would annex Greenland, before he said he would annex Panama. It felt like a good time to expand my little 5000-word 2017 ​'Canada Is Awesome' audiobook​ into a fresh 10,000 word essay. I posted it online for free (​HTML​, ​PDF​, ​Audiobook​, ​YT​) and decided to ​Amazon self-publish​ it into stocking stuffers, sold at cost. It's a small book! 78 pages. Takes maybe an hour to read. Paperback is on Prime for $7.99 USD/$8.67 CAD but I do recommend the full-colour hardcover if you can swing it for $19.99 USD or $28.04 CAD. Full ​book details here​ and you can buy it on ​Amazon.ca​, ​Amazon.com​, or your ​local Amazon​. (Books are at cost so if you'd like ​your local indie​ to carry it—just ask them!). Hardcover pics below, just click to zoom in.

Perfect for: Canadians, Canadian friends, Canadian neighbours, Canadian allies, & anybody who loves ​poutine​...

2. ​TWO-MINUTE EVENINGS​ (2024, Chronicle)

The best gratitude game ever is Rose, Rose, Thorn, Bud. Simple! Short. Easy. At least a few days a week we play it with the kids around the kitchen table, sometimes Leslie and I play while brushing our teeth or before turning off the light. And when I'm traveling I do the practice solo in this journal. What is it? Simple. What was your Rose of the day? A highlight, gratitude, just one good thing that happened. "It was pizza day.", "I climbed the baseball fence to got the tennis ball.", "I got permission to take the Grade 8's to a play." Then: What's your second Rose? What's one more good thing that happened? "Max can come to my birthday.", "I got to interview someone whose books I've loved for a long time.", “I had time between kid drop off and getting to work to stop and get a warm tea.”, “Neil filled the car with gas for me.” Then a Thorn! What's one thing that didn't go well? A chance to vent, receive empathy. "I had 10 things to do today and I only did 1.", "I didn't make the volleyball team.", "I got into a fight with my dad." Share anything. No judgment. And no telling people what to do. Just listen! Finally, a Bud! What's one thing you're looking forward to? Great place to end because research shows looking forward to anything ... makes you happier. ​"Anticipation for future confers great benefits to human well-being and mental health."​ Leslie and I made 'Two Minute Evenings' to put this gratitude game into physical being—which helps us practice it. Like I said, I've got one in my suitcase and we have one at our bedside table, too. Buy it from ​Chronicle​, ​Indigo​, ​Amazon.ca​, ​Amazon.com​ or your ​local Amazon​. (Or if you're buying 25+ copies ​get a bulk discount here​.)

Perfect for: anyone who gets into bed still thinking about their to-do list, people who want a calm nighttime ritual but don’t have time for a long routine, and anyone who loves ending the day with a pen and paper instead of a screen...

3. ​OUR BOOK OF AWESOME​ (2022, Simon & Schuster)

This book is a celebration of this community. I started putting it together in 2020 exactly ten years after 'The Book of Awesome'—the first one!—came out. This is the fourth and final one. Hundreds of new awesome things, 80% are written by me, 20% written by the community, with 100s of more comments, letters, and one-offs stitched in for a "back of the bus bumping through town" type of cacophony. The book speeds up and then finishes in a triumphant awesome climax. Buy it on ​Amazon​, ​B&N​, ​Bookshop​, ​Indigo​, or, if you're buying 25+ copies for a team or group, ​get a bulk discount here​.

Perfect for: elementary school teachers, managers who want to open or close team meetings by flipping to a gratitude, bathroom readers, and, of course, hardcore fans of 'The Book of Awesome' who want the newest one....

Here are a few sample pages:

4. ​THE RESILIENCE EQUATION​: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle With Failure, and Live an Intentional Life (2019, Simon & Schuster)

I wish this book was called 'The Resilience Equation' so that's what I'm calling it! I realize the cover still says 'You Are Awesome', but what are you going to do? Full disclosure: I did ask the good folks at Simon & Schuster if we could change it and they politely said ... no. I get it! That would be confusing. But it's confusing already because this is not at all a book of awesome things and despite what Amazon says this is not at all "book 4 of 4 in the AWESOME series." Let me set the record straight: This is my book on resilience. How to develop resilience as a skill—as a muscle. The book is 9 longform chapters combining research, memoir, self-talk, and habits like "Add A Dot-Dot-Dot", "Tell Yourself A Different Story", and "Untouchable Days." It's the book I wrote after 'The Happiness Equation' and has a similar 9-step guidebook structure. It's my favourite book I've written and the one I'm proudest of. Buy it on ​Amazon​, ​B&N​, ​Bookshop​, ​Indigo​, or ​Walmart​. (Or if you're buying 25+ copies ​get a bulk discount here​.)

Perfect for: anyone going through personal change or a recent flop or just having a rough go, corporate folks looking for a new shape or direction in their careers, people who read 'The Happiness Equation' and want "the follow up"...

5. ​TWO-MINUTE MORNINGS​ (2017, Chronicle Books)

This is the most popular journal I've ever written and every single page is just 3 simple science-backed prompts:

I will let go of...

I am grateful for...

I will focus on...

I wrote ​this Harvard Business Review article​ about the journal's origin and then HBR made it into ​this YouTube video ​with a hilarious graphic of me where my beard is gigantic and I got into a car accident? LOL.

Anyway, the journal has sold a lot because it works. It's a quick and easy therapeutic morning intervention to prime the brain to look for the positive throughout the day. What's the benefit? A positive mindset results in 31% higher productivity, 37% higher sales, 3x more creativity, 48% closer relationships, stronger marriages, and even a longer lifespan. I say: Move the phone off your bedside table or (better yet) out of the bedroom completely and when you first open your eyes—when you're in that precious liminal state migrating from your subconscious to your conscious—start your day by centering and grounding yourself before jumping into the onslaught. Click here to buy on ​Chronicle​, ​Amazon.ca​, ​Amazon.com​ or your ​local Amazon​. (Or if you're buying 25+ copies ​get a bulk discount here​.)

Perfect for: anyone looking to mentally reset in 2025, people who want to begin a journaling practice but feel too busy, anyone who's always wanted to have a book with one of those ribbony-bookmark things hanging out of it...

Here are a few sample pages:

6. ​THE HAPPINESS EQUATION​ (2016, Penguin)

Leslie told me she was pregnant on the flight home from our honeymoon and I spent the majority of the next nine months writing a 300-page letter to my unborn son on how to live a happy life. Inside are big, practical ideas like be happy first (not after you hit the goal), do it for you (not for them), and ​never retire​ from what you love, plus tools to help with everything from making decisions to managing time and expectations. It’s part love letter, part playbook for building a life that actually feels good on the inside, not just impressive on the outside. Click here to buy on ​Indigo​, ​B&N​ or ​Amazon​. (Or if you're buying 25+ copies ​get a bulk discount here​.)

Perfect for: leaders and aspiring leaders of teams, college students dealing with anxiety or overwhelm, anyone working a corporate job as I was working a very corporate job when I wrote it...

7. ​AWESOME IS EVERYWHERE​ (2015, Penguin)

This is my picture book which is stated for ages 2-5 but really offers anyone a simple three-minute introduction to guided meditation. You start by looking at the earth from outer space and then 'tap' to keep zooming in ... until you're eventually staring at grains of sand, flipping the book over your head to dip under water, and zooming back out of again. I was inspired by my own children's love of books like 'Press Here'. Comes in a big (expensive) vivid picture-book format with a mirror in the back and a (cheaper) board-book format. You can watch the trailer ​here​. Click here to buy on ​Indigo​, ​B&N​ or​ Amazon​. (Or if you're buying 25+ copies ​get a bulk discount here​.)

Perfect for: new babies or grandbabies, elementary school teachers (Leslie wrote ​a teacher's guide!​), anybody looking for a simple introduction to gratitude and guided meditation...

8. ​THE BOOK OF (HOLIDAY) AWESOME​ (2011, Penguin)

Funny story: I'd say one in ten people tell me this is their favorite of my books. It was in print for five years and was on bestseller lists every week in December for each of those five years. But the other 11 months? Moth balls. The publisher said they couldn't keep a book in print that only sells one month a year so they remaindered it. Now this book floats through the universe like some kind of ivory-billed woodpecker. Click here to buy on ​Indigo​ or ​Amazon​.

Perfect for: holiday superfans, hosts and hostesses, families who love reading a page or two aloud together, teachers or coworkers you want to thank with something small but meaningful, and anyone who secretly loves the season…

9. ​THE BOOK OF (EVEN MORE) AWESOME​ (2011, Penguin)

This is the “you finished the first one and wanted another” book. The is the second 400-page pile of everyday delights. Pulling a weed and getting all the roots with it. When your windshield wipers match the beat of the song you're listening to. When the person you're meeting is even later than you are. Get it from your ​local indie​, ​Amazon​, ​B&N​, ​Bookshop​, or ​Indigo​. (Or if you're buying 25+ copies ​get a bulk discount here​.)

Perfect for: people who want a pile of awesome things around, hosts and coworkers impossible to shop for, teens who are “not really readers"...

10. ​THE BOOK OF AWESOME​ (2010, Penguin)

This is my first book: A 400-page collection of hundreds of awesome things. Old, dangerous playground equipment. Fixing electronics by smacking them. Peeling an orange in one shot. All expanded into 1-3 page essays. Backstory: In my late 20s I lost my marriage and best friend in quick succession and started a daily blog to try to focus on the positive over at ​1000 Awesome Things​. This book is basically the blog ... printed out and stapled together. With a bunch of new ones, too. Get it from ​Amazon​, ​Bookshop​, ​Indigo​, ​B&N​ or ​Walmart​. (Or if you're buying 25+ copies ​get a bulk discount here​.)

Perfect for: busy parents who only have a minute here or there, anybody looking to end the day with a daily affirmation before bed, and teachers looking to create their own book of awesome with their students...

---

If you'd like other suggestions on gifts check out my ​monthly book club​ (books are the best gift!) or my older ​unconventional gift guide​.

Why we let sports break our hearts

Hey everyone,

The Blue Jays were two outs away from winning their first World Series in 32 years on Saturday night.

I was 14 when the last one happened and I stood there, in the upper deck, now age 46, my face painted blue and white, screaming myself hoarse after every strike, hoping I wouldn't have to wait 32 more...

But it was not to be.

The Dodgers tied it up and despite loading the bases in the bottom of the ninth there was a combined minuscule base running gaffe (​"If IKF ran through!"​), a potentially-inconclusive video replay (​"Was the foot down?"​), a wild ​outfielder-clanging catch at the wall​ and ... a couple innings later it was gone.

I sat in that stadium ... frozen ... for an hour. I was so far away I couldn't hear anything happening on the field but I could see it. In mute. Confetti. Broadcaster scrums. Dodgers' kids running around and doing cartwheels. I've been in a mild depression since. I have been scrolling till the wee hours — watching ​this​ and ​this​ and ​this​ and ​this​ and ​this​ and ​this​ and a hundred others — and felt the echoing waves of all the emotions I felt through my childhood ... that 162-beat strum in the background with Tom and ​Jerry​ every summer.

I even got to the point where I printed out the only-a-couple-week-old on-the-field team photo and supersized it into four slides in Powerpoint and then printed and pasted it up on my kitchen wall.

That's how I want to remember it.

I want to feel the pains and the cracks and the tears and the squeezes but when I look back I hope I remember the good times.

And whether it's baseball or football or hockey or whatever we do it to ourselves, letting sports into our hearts, where we know we could get hurt, where we know we most likely will, and yet we do it again and again and again.

Why? So many reasons. There is a social form of Durkheim's 'collective effervescence' we likely feel—that vital communal glue Barbara Ehrenreich so eloquently wrote about in '​Dancing In The Streets​' (​6/2023​). I felt that. I mean, the mood in Toronto was just unbelievable for a month straight ... kids playing baseball in all the parks ... shouting 'Go Jays!' to everyone, everywhere, on the streets ... the buses and trains all flashing 'Go Jays!' ... the mood in the country ... with our shared joy and our shared pain. (​Cathal Kelly painted a portrait of it well...​)

This was a special team. A uniquely tight team. And we felt part of that tightness. Just ​listen to Ernie Clement in the aftermath​. ("I thought I was done with the tears but ... I just love these guys so much.") Or, if you're still feeling it days later like I am, listen to this "Deep Left Field" podcast with a heart-twisting collection of interviews put together by ​Mike Wilner​—here it is on ​Apple​ or ​Spotify​.

Ten years ago exactly I had finally let my heart open back up to the Blue Jays when, maybe inevitably, it got broken again. At the time I wrote this article for Macleans, our largest national magazine, and I called it ​"Love isn't about expectation: An ode to the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays."​

I still agree with that.

Love is layered, it is nuanced, it is big, it is whole. Baseball blooms when the weather warms and hibernates when it gets cold. And in that shared spirit of love I want to share another baseball essay with you today. 48 years ago 'The Green Fields of The Mind' appeared in the Yale Alumni Magazine and years later it was published in book of essays titled '​A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti​'.

Another wonderful emotional reflection of the sport ... of sports. If you get bogged down by the play by play in the middle just skip to the end for the emotional close.

Fellow Jays fans let's remember hearts can't break if we haven't fallen deeply in love. What a team, what a year, what a swirl of memories. Love is the masterpiece emotion. It's what we're playing for here.

It's the big one.

Thank you for the shared love for this team.

And thank you for the shared love in this special community.

I'll try very hard not to break your heart and I know you'll try hard not to break mine ... but if that eventually happens for either of us then we'll know the love was real.

Have a great week everyone ... and, yes indeed, go Jays,

Neil

---

"The Green Fields of the Mind"

Written by A. Bartlett Giamatti | Source

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come.

But out here, on Sunday, October 2, where it rains all day, Dame Mutability never loses. She was in the crowd at Fenway yesterday, a gray day full of bluster and contradiction, when the Red Sox came up in the last of the ninth trailing Baltimore 8-5, while the Yankees, rain-delayed against Detroit, only needing to win one or have Boston lose one to win it all, sat in New York washing down cold cuts with beer and watching the Boston game. Boston had won two, the Yankees had lost two, and suddenly it seemed as if the whole season might go to the last day, or beyond, except here was Boston losing 8-5, while New York sat in its family room and put its feet up. Lynn, both ankles hurting now as they had in July, hits a single down the right-field line. The crowd stirs. It is on its feet. Hobson, third baseman, former Bear Bryant quarterback, strong, quiet, over 100 RBIs, goes for three breaking balls and is out. The goddess smiles and encourages her agent, a canny journeyman named Nelson Briles.

Now comes a pinch hitter, Bernie Carbo, onetime Rookie of the Year, erratic, quick, a shade too handsome, so laid-back he is always, in his soul, stretched out in the tall grass, one arm under his head, watching the clouds and laughing; now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of him and then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over the center-field wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics as elegant as the arc the ball describes.

New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring, they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of the World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fifty years, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fisk would win. It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever. Now Bailey, picked up from the National League recently, big arms, heavy gut, experienced, new to the league and the club; he fouls off two and then, checking, tentative, a big man off balance, he pops a soft liner to the first baseman. It is suddenly darker and later, and the announcer doing the game coast to coast, a New Yorker who works for a New York television station, sounds relieved. His little world, well-lit, hot-combed, split-second-timed, had no capacity to absorb this much gritty, grainy, contrary reality.

Cox swings a bat, stretches his long arms, bends his back, the rookie from Pawtucket who broke in two weeks earlier with a record six straight hits, the kid drafted ahead of Fred Lynn, rangy, smooth, cool. The count runs two and two, Briles is cagey, nothing too good, and Cox swings, the ball beginning toward the mound and then, in a jaunty, wayward dance, skipping past Briles, feinting to the right, skimming the last of the grass, finding the dirt, moving now like some small, purposeful marine creature negotiating the green deep, easily avoiding the jagged rock of second base, traveling steady and straight now out into the dark, silent recesses of center field.

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he'd seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game--not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

---

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46 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 46

Hey everyone,

Today is my birthday!

As I’ve been doing for a few years now I’m sharing a list of completely unsolicited advice. You can read my three previous birthday lists ​here​, ​here​, and ​here​.

Remember: Lists like these are preachy by nature so just take what you like and ditch the rest!

Here we go:

1. Celebrate publicly. Criticize privately

2. When you drive past someone slow on the highway pretend it’s your parents.

3. Most things that create true happiness don’t advertise: Walking, reading, drawing, singing, stretching, writing, swimming, hiking…

4. The sooner you shovel the lighter the snow.

5. If parenting feels hard, you’re doing it right.

6. Read books for all ages … at all ages.

7. To improve any day: Change into fresh socks and underwear.

8. Positional power is close to top, relationship power is close to people, personal power is close to self.

9. Traveling Tip: Meals at airport > meals on plane.

10. Nobody ever says they would be happier if they read more news.

11. Quick prescription for bad breath, itchy skin, or dandruff: Three glasses of water.

12. Sign of a good book: “Bestseller.” Sign of a great book: “Translated.”

13. Optimism is complimenting the food when you're in the hospital.

14. Practice makes progress.

15. Be grateful when your kids argue, challenge, or disagree. The alternative is worse.

16. To get rid of hiccups: Suck in a huge breath and hold it … then a half breath more … then let it out very slowly.

17. Never go to a kid’s birthday party on an empty stomach.

18. There is more fiction in non-fiction and more non-fiction in fiction.

19. When handling complaints remember LAST: Listen, Apologize, Solve, Thank.

20. Fashion Tip: Dress for the mood you want to be in.

21. Teach your kids personal bests over family bests.

22. Stretching is always a good use of your time.

23. Simple allowance idea: Give your kids their age in dollars once a week and let them split it into Give, Save, and Spend jars. (Match Give and pay interest on Save.)

24. Most extremely successful people have lives you wouldn’t want.

25. For more forest friends: Learn half a dozen bird calls.

26. Calling a busy local shop a minute before it opens is often better than calling a minute after.

27. Best gift for friends who just had a baby: A card and homemade meal on their porch.

28. Aim for one thing a day that makes you sweat.

29. On your first day at work put an X on the calendar 6 months later. On that day ask yourself if you love your job. Look forward to that day. Save the question for then.

30. When choosing a vendor aim for two out of three: Price, Quality, Time.

31. To make the vacation memorable: Do something outside your comfort zone.

32. Learn how to go to bed angry once in a while. It’ll be a lot easier to sort out in the morning.

33. To stay connected with a great friend: Set an annually recurring dinner.

34. Do not fear grief. It lives next to love.

35. Have a weird hobby. (Remember: Your learning rate is the steepest when you know the least.)

36. Stock tip from my grandfather: If you get it wrong you’ll think you’re dumb … but you’re not … and if you get it right you’ll think you’re smart … but you’re not.

37. The less the talking the better the massage.

38. Fitting in is easy. Standing out is hard.

39. When I asked a Buddhist Monk his age: “It's not how old are you. It's when were you born in this life.”

40. Anytime you see your partner in a bathing suit: Whistle.

41. When a generous impulse arises—do it right away.

42. To learn your priorities: Look at your calendar.

43. Peeves make lousy pets.

44. Travel tip: Before sleeping in a hotel lie on both sides of the bed, find the squishy side, then sleep on the other.

45. You’ve done a good job as a parent if your kids all end up different.

46. Nobody will remember you in a hundred years. Act accordingly.

I’m pretty sure I stole all of these but some specific credits: (13) Joan Wright, (22) Ron Lieber, (32) Leslie Richardson, (36) Bob Wright, (43) Seth Godin…

---

Read more of my birthday advice:

45 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 45

44 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 44

43 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 43

Sign Up for a Dose of Inspiration:

Every other week, I send an email out with an article I’ve written, or one of my favorite speeches, essays or poems. No ads, no sponsors, no spam, and nothing for sale. Just a dose of inspiration or beauty!

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65 surprising truths from the world’s most consistent blogger

Hey everyone,

I love Seth Godin. He's the GOAT, right? Before I even *had* a podcast he said yes to being on my podcast and let me fly down to Hastings-On-Hudson to ​pester him for a couple hours​. (​Apple​/​Spotify​/​YT​).

​His blog​? Legendary. My friend Agostino introduced it to me in around 2007. And he hasn't missed posting a blog post since and is now up to over ​10,000​ (!?) straight. (​You can sign up right here.​) My friend ​Tim Urban​ said "Seth Godin, to me, is like—if I have a 'wise man on a hill' in my life? Seth Godin is that guy ... anything that happens in the world I wanna hear what Seth thinks about it, what he says about it." Seth's a mensch. A helper.

Recently Seth turned 65 and on that day he dropped 65 bits of wisdom on his blog under a very humble Seth-like title of "Notes to myself." I reached out to Seth and he said I could share the whole thing with you.

(PS. On the topic of birthdays—mine is in two weeks! I am working on some birthday advice now as I've done the ​past​ ​few ​​years.​)

Hope you enjoy,

Neil

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Notes to myself

Written by Seth Godin

1. The system can be changed and normal is not permanent

2. Find the smallest viable audience

3. Pick your customers, pick your future

4. Outdated maps might be worth less than no map at all

5. Reliability is a superpower

6. There are no side effects, merely effects

7. There’s usually an opportunity to be of service

8. Silence is an option, and so is leadership

9. There is no perfect moment to begin

10. Shame is a dream killer

11. Everyone who disagrees with you believes they are correct

12. Ship the ​work​

13. Treat different people differently

14. I am not stuck in traffic, I am traffic

15. Invest in slow growth

16. The problem with the race to the bottom is you might win

17. Uncomfortable facts are often the most helpful ones

18. A good deal is better than a big deal

19. When in doubt look for the fear

20. Avoid arguments, embrace conversations

21. Easy to measure doesn’t make it important

22. Find clarity about who the customer is (and isn’t)

23. Genre is a platform, not a fence

24. Lowering expectations can increase satisfaction

25. Improve project hygiene

26. Ask what the system is for

27. We might not need more time, we simply need to decide

28. Consider the cost of keeping a promise before making it

29. Earn enrollment

30. Helping someone get what they want is easier than changing what they want

31. Not all criticism is equally valid

32. Write down the things you’re sure you’ll never forget

33. Focus on the hard part

34. Quitting one thing is the only way to find the focus to do the next thing

35. Perfectionism is not related to quality

36. Your competitors are actually your allies

37. Surfing is better than golf

38. Criticize ideas, not people

39. Cannibals rarely get a good night’s sleep

40. Status roles are the unseen force in almost every system

41. Embrace necessary discomfort

42. Gratitude is a more useful fuel than anger

43. Create tension and relieve stress

44. Imposter syndrome is real, and it arrives whenever we’re doing important work

45. Solve interesting problems

46. Offer dignity

47. Ignore sunk costs

48. Don’t try to fill an unfillable hole

49. This might not work

50. Consistency is more useful than authenticity

51. People like us do things like this

52. Simple hacks rarely fix long-term problems

53. Trade short-term wins for long-term impact

54. Today’s world is unpredictable, and this is as stable as it will ever be again

55. Generous doesn’t mean free

56. Make assertions

57. Invest in skills that compound with effort

58. Culture conceals systems, and systems construct our future

59. Peeves make lousy pets

60. Reassurance is futile

61. Take responsibility, demand freedom, don’t seek authority

62. Ideas that spread, win

63. Earn trust through action

64. Become the person your future thanks you for and forgive the past for the mistakes it made

65. Attitudes are skills

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John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter of Advice to His Lovesick Teenage Son

Hey everyone,

I have a little gem about love to share with you today.

Scroll down to read it or hang up here for the backstory!

I think I was assigned '​Of Mice and Men​' by ​John Steinbeck ​(1902-1968) in high school and it was good but didn't really ... hit me. Then something bizarre happened: I met two strangers on the same night (who also didn't know each other!) and both had elements of '​East of Eden​' by Steinbeck ... tattooed on their body!? (I recount the tale in my ​March 2017 book club.​) So I picked up that book and it did hit me — such a big and full and aware feeling of the world and I have recalled its emotional envelope many times since.

More recently, via bringer-of-good-things ​Maria Popova​, I stumbled across a letter that John Steinbeck wrote to his 14-year-old son Thom back in 1958. Thom had written to his dad telling him that he'd fallen desperately in love with Susan at boarding school and this is the note he got back from ol' pops. Pretty remarkable letter! For me, I felt both a higher level calling to the loves in my life and also learned quite a bit about how to write a good letter to my kids!

Hope you enjoy,

Neil

---

//

New York

November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

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Pair this letter with ​this one​ F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter.

Or want more wisdom from Steinbeck? Check out this ​blog post ​ I wrote about his novel ​The Log From the Sea of Cortez​.

Or if you'd like more parenting wisdom? Check out my ​3 Books podcast with Ginny Yurich​ (Homeschooling mother of five and founder of 1000 Hours Outside).

20 Bits of Wisdom From Susan Cain (Author of 'Quiet' and 'Bittersweet')

Hey everyone,

Hope you’re having a great summer. We just finished our annual week by the lake with my parents (80 and 75 suddenly!) and my sister's family.

I read ​Sahil Bloom​’s new book '​The 5 Types of Wealth​' recently and my two favourite pages in the book were the "mashup" Sahil did with Susan Cain called (somewhat unSusanny!) 'Mental Wealth Hacks I Wish I Knew at Twenty-Two.'

Susan is a wise and sagacious soul and I absolutely love her books '​Quiet​' and '​Bittersweet​'. She said I was welcome to share this list with you so I’m attaching the two pages and pasting them below.

See which jumps out to you!

Neil

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20 Bits of Advice from Sagacious Susan Cain

Written by Sahil Bloom and Susan Cain

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1. Your purpose in life does not have to be related to what you do for work. Your purpose in life does not have to be grand or ambitious. Your purpose in life simply has to be yours.

2. The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers of persistence, concentration, and insight to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

3. There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

4. Choose one creative project at a time and do it as well and as deeply as you possibly can.

5. We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a lightsaber, another a wizard’s education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of power but to use well the kind you’ve been granted.

6. Reflecting on the past is a good way to fuel your growth, but dwelling on the past is a good way to inhibit it. Most people are inclined to either reflection or action. But we all need some of both.

7. Neuroplasticity suggests that experiences can fundamentally alter the structure and function of your brain. Your actions and movements can shape your physical, mental, and spiritual reality. You have that power within you.

8. If you want to get better at anything, do it for thirty minutes per day for thirty straight days. It’s easy to over-engineer progress; a little dedicated effort each day is all you need. Nine hundred minutes of accumulated effort is enough for you to make dramatic improvements in literally anything.

9. Solitude matters, and for some people, it’s the air they breathe.

10. We put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.

11. When you’re trying to learn something new, attempt to teach it to a friend or family member. See what questions they ask and how those questions expose the gaps in your knowledge. Study more to fill in those gaps. The act of teaching is the most powerful form of learning.

12. At school you might have been prodded to come out of your shell, a noxious expression that fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go and some humans are just the same.

13. Take yourself out for a meal alone once each month. Carry a notebook and pen, bring your favorite book, and leave your phone in your bag. Let your mind run free.

14. The quest to transform pain into beauty is one of the great catalysts of artistic expression.

15. Stop trying to remember things and just write everything down. Use your phone notes app—or, better yet, carry a small pocket notebook and pen. The old-fashioned way still works wonders.

16. Write down three things you’re grateful for every single night before you go to bed. Say one of them out loud every single morning when you wake up.

17. Don’t consume the news unless you’re highly confident it will matter one month from now. Consuming more news has become a reliable way to understand less about the world. Focus on smaller doses of high-signal content, not the constant drip of Breaking news! that has become the standard of the industry.

18. Turn whatever pain you can’t get rid of into your creative offering.

19. Creativity has the power to look pain in the eye and turn it into something else.

20. You may read thousands of books in your life, but there will be only a few that deeply change you. Reread them every single year. Your experience with the book will change as you do—you’ll get new perspectives. And doing this will remind you of how you can fall in love with the same thing (or person) over and over again.

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For the quiet moments when you’re sorting through what matters, these poems might feel like good company: ​Sparrow Envy by J. Drew Lanham​, ​The Mind of Absolute Trust by Seng-ts'an​, and ​Do not ask your children to strive by William Martin​.

A poetic reminder to put down your phone and pause...

Hey everyone,

Leslie and I love a restaurant in Toronto called Rasa. They just celebrated being open for ten years—a huge restaurant feat!— and since day one they’ve always had this striking poster on the back wall of the cubicles in their bathrooms. There’s no mention of it anywhere! But I looked it up and it’s actually excerpted from Sherry Turkle’s NYT piece 'The Documented Life.' See if it makes you pause like it does me!

Neil

L II F E ON PAUSE

By Sherry Turkle

A selfie, like any photograph, interrupts experience to mark the moment. In this, it shares something with all the other ways we break up our day, when we text during class, in meetings, at the theatre, at dinners with friends. And yes, at funerals, but also more regularly at church and synagogue services. We text when we are in bed with our partners and spouses. We watch our political representatives text during sessions.

Technology doesn’t just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we do but who we are. The selfie makes us accustomed to putting ourselves and those around us "on pause" in order to document our lives. It is an extension of how we have learned to put our conversations "on pause". When you get accustomed to a life of stops and starts, you get less accustomed to reflecting on where you are and what you are thinking.

We don’t experience interruptions as disruptions anymore. But they make it hard to settle into serious conversations with ourselves and with other people because emotionally, we keep ourselves available to be taken away from everything.

These days, when people are alone, or feel a moment of boredom, they reach for a device. In a movie theatre, at a stop sign, at the checkout line at a supermarket and, yes, at a memorial service, reaching for a device becomes so natural that we start to forget that there is a reason, a good reason, to sit still with our thoughts.

A 14-year-old boy said to me: "Don’t people know that sometimes you can just look out the window of a car and see the world go by and it is wonderful. You can think. People don’t know that."

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This was about the beauty of pausing.
If it speaks to you, you might also like Canada Is Awesome—a book I wrote full of the things that make us pause, smile, and remember why we love this place. It’s available everywhere, and you can check it out here.

20 Things I Would Tell Myself At Age 20

Hey everyone,

A couple of months ago I wrote “ 19 Things I Would Tell Myself At Age 19 ” and I’m back with the follow up. Let me know what you might add!

Neil

PS. Invite others to join us here.

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20 Things I Would Tell Myself At Age 20

Neil is standing in front of his book shelf in a blue shirt. He is holding a white note card up to the camera, and handwritten in black sharpie marker are the words “20 THINGS I WOULD TELL MYSELF AT AGE 20”

1. Get lost.

2. Try your hair a bunch of different ways.

3. Learn how to swim, cycle, and drive. (In that order.)

4. Join a book club that meets in person.

5. Go to a restaurant where you can’t read the menu.

6. When you have the time you don’t have the money and when you have the money you don’t have the time. Borrow from your future self.

7. Two baseline rules for good sex: Everyone’s glad to be there. Everyone’s free to leave.

8. Spend a few hours in a big empty parking lot early on a Sunday with someone you trust learning how to drive stick.

9. Stay somewhere overnight just you and a backpack.

10. Good helmet, good brain. Cheap helmet, cheap brain. No helmet, no brain.

11. Learn how to change a diaper.

12. Skinny dip.

13. Take a local course on something your grandparents did but you don’t. Car fixing, quilt making, bread baking?

14. Buy sheet music for your favourite song and learn how to play it on a piano.

15. Download free apps Libby for audiobooks, eBird for birdwatching, and Strava for movement.

16. Don’t take something you’ve never taken before doing something you’ve never done.

17. Classes are good gifts and good dates.

18. If you’ve had a business summer job do a fun summer job and if you’ve had a fun summer job do a business summer job.

19. Get two hours of out-of-breath cardio a week.

20. Talk to yourself the way you talk to your best friend.

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A good list helps make sense of the mess. Reflect on the ​45 Things I've (Almost) Learned As I Turn 45​, get productive with ​10 Things I (Try To) Do Every Day To Get More Done​, and add to your summer reading from ​The Top 1000 Books from the 3 Books podcast.