THE HARDCORE HAPPINESS BLOG
Never Miss a Post!
We'll let you know when a new article is out. Plus, subscribers get goodies :) And it's Freeeee!
Only bad people sell your info. We're not bad people.
________________
Existential Excavation
________________
Life is full of questions, all day every day: what to eat, where to go, what to watch, who to listen to, what to buy, what to believe.
In my ex...
What’s really underneath everything.
This essay is different from my usual writing. I’m a couple of weeks away from the end of my 67th year and not feeling inclined to waste time. I’m showing up to do ...
The What-If Mindshift: Why your brain defaults to fear—and how to train it to imagine opportunity.
“You can ‘what-if’ yourself to death,” she said.
She was right, of course. I’m an INFP, a first-born, a...
You are on a long journey and you finally reach your destination. Now what, now that you have arrived? Should you continue?
You’ve planned this adventure for a long time. Weeks or months; maybe most of...
It was my first job, when I was 14.
I had reached a plateau in my playing and knew I needed some formal lessons. There was no YouTube back then, and the guitar teacher I had for six months when I was e...
You are. Miraculous, that is.
If you are reading or hearing this, you are here, alive and conscious. And that, my friends, is truly a miracle, because there is no rational explanation for it—for you.
I ...
The lack of meaning in life is a soul-sickness whose full extent and import our age has not yet begun to comprehend. - C.G. Jung
Ask people to list the most important things in life, and you will typic...
There is no shortage of important discussion topics in the personal transformation/self-improvement/positive psychology world in which I work. My current focus is on helping people who are facing majo...
Everybody wants something; we are hardwired that way. It is human biology; you have powerful dopaminergic reward systems that make you want to progress, to discover, to become; to get what you want.
So...
Ask people what they really want, and you will find that there are two main principles that underlie their initial list of material stuff: love and freedom. Both are important for long-term, sustainab...
I recently got some raised eyebrows from my musical accomplices when I told them I was taking guitar lessons. They know me as a long-time professional guitarist, musician and composer, and a music tea...
NOTE: This article is longer than my usual Mindset Monday posts, but there are a lot of new people coming to the Hardcore Happiness community, and I just (August, 2025, as I write this) launched a Har...
“Tide‘s coming in,” she said.
Looks like it.
He was a bit startled to hear the voice.
As usual, when he looked up, no one was there.
He was still alone here, at the End of All Things.
It had taken a long...
What would increase your well-being and satisfaction? More health? More wealth? Better relationships? Whether you want fame and fortune or just peace and quiet, it all starts with one question: Are yo...
The epistemological debate regarding free will is out of my philosophical wheelhouse; I will leave it to the theologians. But I do know this:
While we don’t choose our genetics or the circumstances of ...
