Over at the Happiness Project, Gretchen has a great list of online tools you can use to make yourself happier. It includes some a my favorites pastimes, like reading my favorite blogs and interacting with friends and family via social networking utilities.

There are also a number of cool sites that I hadn’t seen before like HappyBirthday.com, which automatically reminds you of your friends’ birthdays and other important occasions, and Joe’s Goals, which gives you an easy and convenient way to track your progress.

This got me thinking in a broader sense about the different things you can do (online and off) to help break out of a bad mood. Of course the biggest thing is living with hope and purpose, but everyone occasionally gets a case of the blues.

What do you do to set yourself straight?

These are the first things that come to my mind:

• Exercise, especially something outdoors like a run or walk
• Seeking out solitude to sort out my thoughts
• Reading an old book or watching an old movie that I love but haven’t seen in a long time
• Spending time with a friend without the television
• Doing something creative that’s just for fun (i.e. playing with my gadgets)

How many “training sessions” have you sat through where you’re eyes started to roll into the back of your head and you couldn’t stay focused no matter how hard you tried?

I’ve sat through too many sessions like this, and frankly, can’t stand it any longer. I don’t even fault the presenter. Many times people gain valuable experience in a topic or technique and are asked to put together a presentation and “train” a group of people. The problem is, the presenters are rarely trained in teaching techniques or learning theory.

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I’m a vegetarian. I also eat virtually no junk food, white bread, soft drinks or caffeine. For most people, living on such a diet seems like an act of self-torture. But this way of eating isn’t the result of extreme self-discipline. Once you know how to redesign your diet, eating healthy foods all the time is easy.

Why Redesign Your Diet?

Isn’t permanently redesigning your diet a little excessive? You’ll miss all the great foods like roast beef, candy and potato chips. Why bother going to all the work of overhauling your diet just so you can live a few extra years?

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It was a Tuesday morning in early April 2001. I watched the autumn rain as it trickled down the car window and disappeared into the street. Mr Gordon had chosen me to represent the school at the Free State HIV/AIDS Conference. I didn’t know what to expect but I hoped the experience would be a meaningful one. Fortunately it was.

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Leo Babauta of the excellent ZenHabits weblog and a personal friend of mine has recently launched a new blog named WriteToDone. Here is the purpose of the site in his words:

I’ve created Write To Done as a way to share some of what I’ve learned as a writer, with new (and experienced) writers looking to improve their craft and their art.

For those of you who’ve enjoyed popular PickTheBrain writing posts like George Orwell’s Rules for Effective Writing and How to Write Something Worth Reading, this site will be right up your alley.

Check it out!

Tejvan’s article earlier this week on happiness really got me thinking:

• What does it mean to be happy?
• Am I happy?
• Is happiness really everything we expect?

The word “happiness” is used so frequently, in so many different contexts, for so many different reasons, that it’s lost all definite meaning.

Everyone wants to be happy, and this desire has been exploited to promote everything from products to politics to religious beliefs. This is sort of sad, and more than a bit confusing. It’s no wonder most people have trouble deciding if they are happy or not.

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One our goals for 2008 is to increase the level of conversation on PickTheBrain. To help you keep track of all the discussions going on, we’ve added a couple new community features:

1. Recent Comments – The right sidebar now contains a section near the top for recent comments. This highlights the last 5 comments made on PickTheBrain and provides a link back to the thread so you can hop right in to the discussion.
2. Threaded Comments – If you want to reply directly to a specific comment, rather than posting all the way at the bottom of the thread, you can now post directly below it with the thread comments feature. Just click the “reply” link next to the commenter’s name that you’d like to reply to and your comment will automatically be nested below it.

Any other features or content ideas that you’d like to see on PickTheBrain? Shout em out in the comments.

No, you don’t need to rent a campus, hire professors and start charging tuition. Setting up a personal university means taking your self-education as seriously as any schooling you manage pay for. While regular university is expensive and stops when you get a degree, your personal university continues indefinitely and can be run for free.

I’ve always been educating myself. From learning basic programming languages in my pre-teens through to reading about quantum physics and world religions in my spare time today. But it has only been in the last few years that I’ve gotten serious about my self-education. In that short time I went from reading a handful of books each year to over seventy.

But forming your personal university isn’t just reading a lot of books, just like getting a degree isn’t the result of taking random classes. Taking a more well-thought approach to what you learn in your spare time can give you an edge over the haphazard learner.

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Many of us dream of a better life. Perhaps this dream involves being time affluent, having more money, pursuing a meaningful career or being free from health problems. But what would you be prepared to risk for this better life?

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What is the definition of happiness? Why do some people seem to have the secret to happiness, while others struggle to gain any satisfaction? These are some basic but effective ideas that you can use to cultivate inner happiness and build an incredible life.

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