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Happiness Is Built, Not Found
Welcome to Effective Habits, a weekly newsletter where I share evidence-based strategies and tools to help you live a happy, healthy, and productive life.
Today at a Glance:
Five Steps to a Happy Life
When Does Performance Peak and Decline throughout Life?
How to Avoid Choking
“Work is endless. Exercise is endless. Parenting is endless. Same with marriage, writing, investing, creating, and more. You get to choose the parts of your life, but many of the important things in life cannot be "finished."
Do not approach an endless game with a finite mindset. The objective is not to be done, but to settle into a daily lifestyle you can sustain and that allows you to make daily progress on the areas that matter.
Embrace the fact that life is continual and look for ways to enjoy the daily practice.”
Five Steps to a Happy Life
Dr. Arthur Brooks
🔦Lights, Camera, ...
Happiness rarely arrives by accident; for most people, it’s the result of deliberate changes made over time. Many who struggle with anxiety, restlessness, or a persistent sense that joy is just out of reach eventually turn to the science of well-being not out of curiosity, but necessity. What they often discover is that happiness can be measurably improved through consistent practice. The transformation doesn’t come from a single breakthrough or a fleeting burst of motivation, but from a handful of high-leverage shifts that steadily increase positive emotions while reducing unnecessary sources of distress. These changes tend to compound: what begins as a small adjustment in habits, perspective, relationships, or priorities gradually reshapes daily experience in a durable way. Life doesn’t become perfect, as temperament doesn’t disappear and stress still visits, but well-being rises in a way that is continuous rather than episodic. The encouraging lesson is that happiness is not a fixed trait reserved for the naturally cheerful; it is a skill set that can be studied, tested, and strengthened, and the most powerful gains often come from a few intentional practices applied consistently over time.
🎬Action!
Build routines that protect your well-being. Treat your health and happiness with the same seriousness you give to work or other responsibilities. Create predictable daily or weekly structures, for sleep, movement, focused personal work, and recovery, that reduce decision fatigue and make good choices automatic rather than dependent on motivation.
Move your body every day. Use exercise as a tool for managing stress and negative emotions. Aim for consistent, sustainable movement that combines strength, cardiovascular fitness, and recovery. The goal isn’t intensity for its own sake, but a routine you can maintain year-round because consistency delivers the greatest emotional and physical benefits.
Create a daily practice for reflection or meaning. Set aside time each day for something that connects you to purpose beyond productivity, whether through faith, meditation, journaling, prayer, or quiet reflection. A regular contemplative practice helps regulate stress, sharpen perspective, and anchor your day before outside demands take over.
Stop doing things you secretly resent. Audit recurring commitments that feel obligatory but drain your energy. Question traditions, social expectations, or professional habits that no longer align with your values or lifestyle. Replace low-return obligations with activities that support rest, relationships, or meaningful work.
Design your life around connection, not convenience. Invest intentionally in close relationships by shaping your environment and routines to make connection easier and more frequent. This might mean living closer to loved ones, creating standing rituals with friends or family, choosing proximity over prestige, or simply prioritizing regular shared time. Happiness often grows less from occasional visits and more from everyday togetherness.
🔦Lights, Camera, ...
When does physical performance really peak and how fast does it fall? A 50-year Swedish study tracking the same 427 people from age 16 to 63 found that most physical capacities peak before age 36 and begin declining before 40, with losses accelerating over time to roughly 1–2% per year and totaling around 30–40% by the early 60s. But the most striking insight isn’t that decline is inevitable—it’s that the gap between people widens dramatically with age, meaning that while teenagers tend to perform similarly, by later life the gap between individuals’ “functional age” can widen as much as 25-fold. Physical activity didn’t change when people peaked, but it meaningfully slowed the slope of decline and raised overall capacity, with active individuals maintaining far more of their peak than the general population. Exercise isn’t a miracle cure reversing time; it’s maintenance for a machine designed to decay, and the real tragedy may not be getting older, but mistaking preventable disuse for unavoidable aging.
🎬Action!
Treat exercise as non-negotiable maintenance. Aging is unavoidable, but how quickly physical capacity declines is highly modifiable. Commit to a consistent weekly routine that combines aerobic training, strength work, and power or mobility movements—then treat it like brushing your teeth: non-negotiable and lifelong. Something to think about: By your early 60s, the average person has lost nearly 40% of their peak aerobic capacity and up to half of their muscular power, yet athletic adults maintain about 80% of theirs.
How to Avoid Choking
David Epstein
🔦Lights, Camera, ...
Even the best performers can choke under pressure. American figure skater Ilia Malinin — known as the “quad god” for landing jumps few others attempt — entered the Olympics undefeated for two years, only to unravel mid-performance as intrusive memories and negative thoughts flooded his mind. Psychologist Sian Beilock has spent years studying why this happens, and her research points to a paradox: pressure can “de-automate” skills that normally run on autopilot. Actions that once required conscious effort, like riding a bike, driving a car, or executing a practiced athletic movement, eventually become automatic through repetition, but stress can drag those movements back into conscious control, forcing performers to overthink what their bodies already know how to do. Under scrutiny, attention turns inward, movements stiffen, and performance fractures. Yet patterns emerge in how performers understand and respond to these moments—patterns that shed light on why choking happens and what shapes whether it spirals or stabilizes.
🎬Action!
Occupy Your Mind During High-Pressure Moments. Prevent overthinking by giving your conscious attention system something simple to do in the moment. Use small mental anchors such as quietly singing to yourself, counting backward, or repeating a short external mantra. Some performers even write a cue word or phrase on their hand or equipment to repeatedly refocus attention and keep automatic skills running smoothly.
Build a Diversified Identity. Develop multiple roles and interests beyond a single defining identity. Invest time in hobbies, relationships, or pursuits that exist outside your primary performance arena. A diversified identity creates psychological distance from any single success or failure, helping pressure feel less overwhelming when stakes rise.
Assume Things Will Go Wrong and Prepare Accordingly. Expect disruptions instead of being surprised by them. Mentally rehearse realistic worst-case scenarios, like missed warmups, broken equipment, technical failures, or unexpected changes, and decide in advance how you would continue anyway. When setbacks occur, they feel familiar rather than catastrophic, allowing you to adapt quickly and keep moving forward.
TOOL TIP
What Are The Odds?: An interactive experience exploring increasingly small probabilities. Discover the rarest events you’ve experienced.
FUN FACT
Octopuses have three hearts and the “systemic” heart can stop beating when they swim, which helps explain why they often prefer crawling.
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Disclaimer: The information provided in this newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult a medical professional for advice, diagnosis, or treatment. We are not liable for any risks or issues that may arise from using this information.
