Every success that I've had in my life has been very hard-fought and has been a process of a lot of behind-the-scenes work undertaken consistently, aggressively, and anonymously. You move these mountains over a very slow period of time.

What happens is people want the success; they want the result; they don't appreciate the hard work that goes into it; and they're not patient enough to undertake the long journey required and the learning that gets packed into all of that to mature and grow over time.

In one study, they just measured people's positivity in general—are you a positive person or not so much? And then they shot people's nostrils up with rhinoviruses. Rhinoviruses are the viruses that cause the common cold ... Three times the number of people get sick in the, kind of, not-so-positive mood category as in the positive mood category.

Are you living your life intentionally, or are you living your life reactively? And I think a lot of people are living vast aspects of their life in reaction to the world around them rather than intentionally in accordance with a plan or a rubric or a set of personal guideposts to help them make the proper decisions to lead them in the direction they want to go.

Research shows that if you just engage in practices of gratitude, just the simple act of, at night, scribbling down 3-5 things that you're grateful for, research shows that that can start significantly boosting your well-being in as little as 2 weeks.

Write a letter to somebody that you really should have thanked a long time ago but you haven't had a chance to, and then show up and read that letter to the person, like meet with them in person and read it ... You can see signatures of boosted well-being for over a month after people do this gratitude visit.

The one most dependable thing you can do to add years to your life is to curate a circle friends, four or five friends, who A) you can count on. But that also means you have to be willing to be counted on on their bad days. People whose idea of recreation is walking or golfing or playing tennis. People, quite honestly, who eat a plant-based diet. You should have one or two vegetarians in your immediate social network. And people who will keep your mind challenged.

The mistake we make with health in this country, in the United States, is we pursue health. The reality is health ensues. Longevity ensues from the right environment.

There's just no question that the longest-lived people, probably 15 meals out of 16 are 100% plant-based.

Social connection and feeling socially connected is a necessary condition for very high happiness. You just simply don't find highly happy people who don't also feel socially connected.

Most people overestimate what they can do in a short period of time, whether it's a month or six months or a year, and wildly underestimate what they're capable of accomplishing over a decade or a number of years.

Happy people tend to be more grateful, and grateful people tend to be happier. Happy people tend to spontaneously count their blessings. They tend to spontaneously notice all the good things, not the bad things in life.

If you live in a neighborhood where there are more than six fast food restaurants within a half-kilometer of your home, you're about 40% more likely to be obese than you are if you live in a neighborhood where there are fewer than three fast food restaurants.

Insulin resistance people have heard of ... It really impacts a huge number of conditions, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, which can cause then kidney disease, nerve problems, amputations, cancers related to insulin levels. So, there's just all of these chronic conditions that are really the main focus of today's medicine that are made worse by chronically elevated insulin levels.

The most important ingredient in the happiness recipe is where you live ... In other words, if you're unhappy, the most statistically powerful thing you can do is move.

If you take the same food at breakfast versus dinner, you're going to have a different insulin response to it. So, you're going to actually have a much higher insulin response at night time versus breakfast.

The quick fix kind of hack your life mentality is a close cousin to the clickbait soundbite media culture. We all want it now. We want it immediately. We want to be the best version of ourselves tomorrow. We want to read this book or do this one thing and fix everything overnight. And it just doesn't work that way.

What nutrients matter for depression? And we found there are 12 that had significant levels of scientific evidence—they could help prevent depression and could help treat depression. Things like zinc and magnesium and B12 and omega-3 fats and folate and iron.

The simple kinds of interactions we have with, you know, the grocery store teller or the person who works at the coffee shop, even those weak ties, the research show, matter for happiness. We need to build in a lot of that social connection that we've lost, and we need to do it more intentionally, because it's not happening as naturally as it used to.

The failure rate of counting calories for weight loss— The failure rate is somewhere around 95-99%. And yet, we think that this is the scientifically proven way to do things. It's actually proven to fail; it's guaranteed. This is practically guaranteed to fail if you don't adjust the foods that you're eating.