Achieve your personal goals thru competitions

Aside from my name, the phrase that most commonly brings readers to this site is, interestingly: "How to make a goalie stick". I can assure you, that each of them leave confused and doubting the power of google, which directs them to this post entitled: How do you make a goal stick. As you can imagine, it's about a completely different subject.

I'm not sure I ever followed up on that post though. I easily went a month without eating out. Oh, and I didn't have dessert either. Turning it into a competition with a friend made it much easier to achieve than just "telling myself" it's something I wanted to change.

That was over a year ago, but it's probably time for another similar competition. In fact, I have two good friends dueling right now with some very different habits they'd like to break. So, if anyone out there wants in on some good old fashioned betterment through competition, let me know.

A few things I need to get rid of: no solitaire on my phone, no wasting time surfing the web aimlessly, watching TV when I'm bored (probably only amounts to 45 min a day, but still...), and there are probably others...

Semi-vegetarian

This is not about happiness but...

Ever heard those crazy stats that go something like this: "Did you know there are more sheep than people in Scotland?"

"Not possible!" you say.
"How quaint!" you exclaim.

Well, according to this video "What's Wrong with the way we eat", the United States kills roughly 10,000,000 animals each year for food consumption. Ooops. I forgot 3 zeros. I meant: TEN BILLION. That's what, roughly 30 times our population?

A few other stats:

• "Between 1950 and 2000 the worlds population doubled, the meat consumption increased fivefold"
• "Experts who are serious about disease reduction recommend that we eat just over a half a pound of meat per week". Our actual consumption is over 1/2 pound per day...ie. more than 7 times more than that.

Since roughly 20% of all greenhouse gas is generated by livestock, or it's transportation.

The idea of eating less meat for the sake of the environment is an easier sell than "being mean to animals". At least for me anyway.

Old people are happier

So says CNN.

The first person I told about this said: "I've had that so far...although there may have been a happy bubble around age 4 or 5".

But basically, your odds of getting happier increase by roughly .01% each week. (This is why the article says 5% every 10 years...it sounds much more optimistic that way!)

Anyhoo...it looks like the key to happiness is: wait!