30-Second Changes That Create Long Lasting Happiness

Saying that you like paper clips or love a website or hate leggings without long shirts is a fast and instinctual way to make a point. But it also doesn't require much thought. In his new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Wharton professor Adam Grant writes that to create new ideas, we need new ways of looking at old ones. Nancy Lublin, former CEO of DoSomething.org, forbids her employees from using words such as "like," "love" and "hate," he writes, because she thinks "they make it too easy to give a visceral response to a suggestion without analyzing it." She wants them instead to verbalize their feelings about what moves them about an idea: What do they like about it, specifically? What don't they like? How could they change what they don't like? Try this at the office...or in your personal life, where, in our opinion, this technique may work just as well. Refusing to "hate" anyone and instead having to explain three reasons why you don't want to spend time with a person may just surface three issues you two could discuss—and resolve.