Katie and I fancy ourselves the enlightened sort, who only occasionally let our egos get in the way of doing the right thing. When really, those egos get in the way constantly. Now what? Katie thinks I did a great job of answering that question in this encore edition of Doing What Works, but we’ll let you be the judge! Here are your show notes… We contain multitudes. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The capacity for joy directly related to capacity for pain.

Does telling yourself you live a charmed life work? Does feeling lucky bring on more of that? Katie doesn’t think it’s useful metric, and in this edition of Doing What Works she explains why.Here are your show notes…We got the idea for a show about luck from George Mack.There’s a podcast about Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”A What Color Is Your Parachute? workshop was a class on making a life transition.The Law of Attraction was the basis for The Secret.Is the Universe hostile or friendly? Albert Einstein thought that’s the most important question.Jordan Ellenberg is the author of How Not to Be Wrong.Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying the harder he works, the luckier he gets.Earl Nightingale is quoted as saying luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. Alex Lickerman talks about indestructible happiness in his book, The Undefeated Mind.

Sometimes it isn’t our job to be the star. Sometimes we’re in a supporting role, and in this edition of Doing What Works we’ll be your cheerleader as you learn how to…be a good cheerleader.Here are your show notes…“The bad stuff is easier to believe.”If you read What Color Is Your Parachute? you’ll learn that, for example, resumes are mostly used to screen you out.Barbara Sher was never a fan of self-help books or motivational speeches. Better, she said, to identify your obstacles as specifically as you can -- and find people to help you scale those hurdles.

Someone tries to shame Katie and me for stepping over her aisle seat in a movie theater to use the bathroom before the previews start. Someone else tries to shame Darrell after he checked for spare change from a coin-cashing machine. It didn’t work in either case, and in this edition of Doing What Works we tell you why we risked those confrontations. We also share many more times we let something go.Here are your show notes…The Good Place examines what it means to be a good person.A commencement address by David Foster Wallace will help you have compassion for strangers.

You don’t know what’s going to make you happy until you try it. The job or the relationship that looks good on paper may not feel so great at, say, ten o’clock on a Tuesday. That’s one reason to say yes to more things, so you can get a better feel for more things. Saying yes is a habit and a mindset. If you practice saying yes to smaller things with low stakes, you might find yourself more willing to take bigger risks. That’s what we hope to inspire in this edition of Doing What Works. Here are your show notes…Irresistible author Adam Alter [http://adamalterauthor.com/] was one of Katie’s professors at NYU Stern and “say yes” was his advice.“I wish I might go back and do the little things you asked me to” is from a poem by Alice E. Chase [https://www.scrapbook.com/poems/doc/860.html] entitled “To My Grown-Up Son.”Saying “yes” (and “yes, and”) is a rule of improv [https://medium.com/the-improv-blog/the-first-rule-of-improv-is-yes-and-30e5954240d6].“If you can’t imagine any other explanation for a set of facts, it might be because you are bad at imagining things.” That’s from Dilbert creator Scott Adams [https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays].“Marriage is a big bet. It’s the only bet of its kind, one in which you say, ‘This feels right; I think I’ll change everything.’” That’s from Jerry Seinfeld [https://www.today.com/popculture/seinfeld-turns-25-read-jerrys-best-real-life-lines-1D79884423].