README: A 60-second summary of all this…

Neil Pasricha

Hey everyone,

My name is Neil Pasricha and here’s a quick summary of this blog 1000 Awesome Things and my life since then:

  • 1979 – I was born in Oshawa, Canada (a suburb of Toronto) to parents from Nairobi, Kenya and Tarn Taran, India.
  • 2008 – This blog became a therapy after my marriage fell apart and best friend took his own life. I lived alone for the first time, lived downtown for the first time. A lot of things were happening all at once. I was 28. 
  • 2008 – 2012 – I wrote and published a short essay extolling the virtues of 1 awesome thing every weekday for 1000 straight weekdays. It was the most rewarding and demanding creative thing I’d done at that time. This blog went viral and got over 100 million visitors and won “Best Blog in the World” two years in a row from a somewhat dubious organization called the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
  • 2010 – I gave a TED Talk at TEDxToronto called “The 3 A’s of Awesome” which now has millions of views and is ranked one of the 10 “Most Inspiring” TED Talks of all time. 
  • 2010 – today – I signed a series of book deals after the blog got popular. Today I am very lucky to be the New York Times bestselling author of 12 books and journals including The Book of Awesome (2010 / gratitude), The Happiness Equation (2016 / happiness), Two Minute Mornings (2017 / morning routine), You Are Awesome (2019 / resilience), Our Book of Awesome (2022 / community) and many more. The books have been on bestseller lists for over 200 weeks and sold over 2 million copies. I feel most grateful for the incredible people I’ve met through this experience.  
  • 2014 – I got remarried. (This requires a lot more than a bullet point or even a whole blog post. I talk a lot about Leslie on my podcast… below!)    
  • 2016 – I quit my job at Walmart after a decade in order to focus on writing and speaking full-time. I had written 5 books and given 200 keynote speeches by this time which is testament to both how little I believed in myself and how generous and supportive Walmart was for the eight years I did both. I worked in many jobs there including Leadership Development Manager, Learning Manager, Project Manager to the President and CEO, and Director of Leadership Development.    
  • 2016 – I gave the world’s first ever TED Listen, which was a TED Talk composed entirely out of questions. Some YouTube commenters rate it one of the 10 “Least Inspiring” TED Talks of all time. 
  • 2016 – today – I try to read 50-75 books a year and send out a free monthly Book Club email with my book recommendations on the last Saturday of every month (over 100 months in a row.)  I put a lot of reading systems in place to do this and the piece I wrote explaining this in Harvard Business Review was called “8 Ways To Read (A Lot) More Books This Year.” and was the top result on Google for years for “how to read more” (until HBR suddenly paywalled it). 
  • 2016 – today – I launched GlobalHappiness.org as place to centralize my thoughts around living a happier life and share video clips and details on the talks I give as a motivational keynote speaker. All my talks explore the intersection of leadership and happiness. I talk about personal mindset, happiness as a practice, and how small habits can meaningfully change your life. I give 40-50 keynote speeches a year to places as diverse as Shopify, Disney, and The Cleveland Clinic. (Mel Robbins says really nice things about my speeches.)
  • 2018 – I gave the most attended SXSW Featured Keynote called “Building Trust in Distrustful Times”
  • 2018 – 2040 – I run the Apple “Best Of” podcast 3 Books where I am counting down the 1000 most formative books in the world … 3 books at a time. Every ‘chapter’ of my longform show drops on the exact minute of the full moon for 333 full moons in a row. It’s a slow-paced show with no ads or commercials and it’s made for people aspiring to read more or read better. We comprise a community of “3 bookers” with many book lovers, writers, makers, sellers, and librarians. Past guests include Brené Brown, Malcolm Gladwell, Nikki Giovanni, Cheryl Strayed, George Saunders, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Quentin Tarantino, Jonathan Franzen, Judy Blume, and David Sedaris.
  • 2019 – today – I run Neil.blog as a new personal blog. I write about happiness at a high level — mixing in excerpts, longform quotes, bits of poetry, and, of course, birdwatching. (Here’s the full archive. I add a new post every couple weeks and offer them as an email newsletter, too.) Many pieces here are pulled from my book on happiness ‘The Happiness Equation‘ or my book on resilience. Here’s my full bio on the site. Most of my latest writing is published there and comes out via a series of newsletters. (I also sometimes write for HBR and Fast Company and MSNBC)
  • 2008 – today – I still write 1 awesome thing every single day and release them over email every night at midnight (and on Instagram / Facebook). 

#614 When you tune the radio station perfectly so there’s absolutely no static

Neil Pasricha

I’m a terrible tuner.

Yeah, I’m the guy twiddling clock radio dials before bed every night with scrunched up eyebrows. Usually I end up on a crystal-clear station that I quickly realize isn’t the one I was aiming for or I end up accidentally using my body as an antenna so the sound gets fuzzy the second I move my hand away.

People, if you’re like me, you’d definitely find these moments over on 1000 Annoying Things, that non-existent netherlist we’ve mentioned before that features entries like #992 Someone shaking your hand with freshly wet hands from the bathroom, #991 Bendy straws that crack at the bendy part, or #990 When a chocolate chip in a cookie turns out to be a raisin.

Brother, that’s why nothing’s as nice as landing perfectly on your radio station of choice after twiddling that little orange dial for a few quick moments. When you nail it just right, slowly move your hand away, pause for station identification, and then quickly click the switch over to Alarm, you’re loving it lots.

See, radio waves float and fly through our lives sending highway traffic reports, wacky morning DJs, and bumping bass beats bouncing around the air like magic. It’s up to us to catch them like butterflies with our thin antennas, dusty clock radios, and determined little fingers driven to get that job done.

AWESOME!

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#615 When your friend makes sure you got into the house safe after dropping you off at the end of the night

Neil Pasricha

When your friend drops you off after a lazy hazy night it’s always nice when they sit with their engine quietly revving till you get in the door. And when you pop it open make sure to wave back so they can bee-beep or flash their headlights to say goodnight before quietly drifting away down into the dark suburban night.

AWESOME!

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#617 When you win a point in tennis with the ball hitting the net and then dying on the other side

Neil Pasricha

I’m terrible at sports.

Yes, when I was a kid I retired from soccer after just one season. In my final game I took a booted ball right to the face which snapped my glasses in two and caused me to crash to the field in a wet, goobery mess. Unfortunately, since we were low on players and couldn’t forfeit the big playoff game, I was forced to hang out on the field, blind and drippy, until the whistle blew.

And it wasn’t just soccer, either. I hung up the cleats after a season of baseball, too. Somehow I managed to bat fourteenth in the lineup and lead my team in hit-by-pitches. This was less because I crowded the plate with gritty teeth and steely determination and more because most twelve-year-olds can’t pitch straight and I have very slow reflexes.

Since I’m so bad at sports, I tend to over celebrate any type of tiny sports victory I can get. I’m not talking about shooting a buzzer-beating three pointer or catching a winning touchdown, either. No, I’m talking about any teeny-weeny play during the game where I get to feel like I actually did something right for a second.

My five faves are:

1.The Air Hockey Self Score. This is where your opponent fires the plastic puck so hard it bounces off your end and scores on their own net. Fist pumps all around.

2. The Accidental Pool Shot. Here’s where you aim for the six-ball in the corner pocket, but miss completely and send the cue ball spinning wildly around the table until it accidentally bumps another ball into a completely different pocket. We’ll take it.

3. Rim Rollers. Okay, over to basketball. This is when your shot bounces off the side of the backboard and clangs around for ten seconds, bouncing in every direction, before eventually, reluctantly, spinning around the rim and slowly falling into the basket.

4. The Slow Strike.  Do you ever go bowling? If you’re as bad as I am you love that moment where your ball barely nudges a corner pin and causes a slow-motion domino effect that eventually gives you a strike. Booyeah, time for a little celebration.

5. The Tennis Dropoff. Here’s my favorite one of all. Yes, when you win a point in tennis by hitting the ball into the net and having it immediately fall over and die on the other side, that’s just perfect. Now you get to relax and enjoy a brief moment of success.

Now I know what you’re thinking: These are all terrible cheap shots no athlete would be proud to score. But I’m no athlete, people. I’ll take my cheap shots when I get ’em if I get ’em. I’m not too proud to admit it, either.

So who’s with me?

AWESOME!

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#619 When the person at the store tells you the thing you’re about to buy is going on sale tomorrow

Neil Pasricha

When your friendly neighborhood employee gives you the secret whisper tipoff that the heavy, cardboard something-or-other you’re carrying is about to go on sale, you know what to do.

Stop, drop, and come back tomorrow.

AWESOME!

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#620 Singing in the car on the way home from the concert

Neil Pasricha

Stamped hands and plastic wristbands cover the sweaty crowd as  lights flick on at the end of the show. Crowds bump and grind to the bathrooms as eyes adjust and ears pop. Minutes later you pile into the car with your friends and buckle up for a slow, traffic-jammy trip out of the lot, down the highway, and home to bed.

Killing an hour on your way home from a concert is a piece of cake, though. Just roll down those windows, pump those fists, honk that horn, and get ready to scrape that scratchy throat.

Because folks, it’s time for the loud, screechy sing-a-long version of Tonight’s Greatest Hits.

AWESOME!

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#621 Staying up past your bedtime when you were a kid

Neil Pasricha

Nobody likes bedtimes.

Nope, nothing’s worse than lying under the covers in hot, flannel PJs with wide, unblinking eyes while the late autumn sun slowly droops outside your window. As the sky fades to a burning orange the streetlights flicker on, the moon pops out, and eventually the thin crack of light under your door flicks to black.

And then you just lie there, staring at the ceiling, flipping your pillow, tossing and turning, aching and burning.

Nobody likes bedtimes.

Come on, whether it’s mom chasing a giggling, diaper-clad junior around the coffee table or dad forcibly finger-peeling Xbox remotes out of pre-teen paws, it’s all the same when you’re a kid. The fun stops when the head drops.

Yes, bedtime is the secret, locked gateway to a magical mystery tour of late night television, dark downtown scenes, and unknown journeys into all things strange, exotic, and sinful.

But it’s that buildup and curiosity that makes it great when you finally do break on through to the other side.

Do you remember birthday sleepovers where everybody drank Cokes after 9pm and watched R-rated movies? Did you have faraway little league tournaments where parents cracked beer coolers after the game while kids terrorized the hotel whirlpool and sauna? Did you celebrate New Year’s with cousins all shaking hips and eating chips as the next year hit?

Staying up past your bedtime when you’re a kid is like getting on a rickety roller-coaster and riding it down a dark tunnel heading somewhere you’ve never been and were always told not to go. But then you find sugar rushes, skinny dips, heart-to-hearts, and non-stop giggles all waiting for you deep in the blackness, just around the bend.

AWESOME!

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#622 When the dog’s really excited you’re back home

Neil Pasricha

Greasy forehead, sore ankles, and a dull headache cap your traffic-jammy ride home from a long day at work. Dragging yourself to the door your stomach rumbles and grumbles as you picture the bland frozen burrito you’re gonna nuke for dinner.

Yeah, the day got you down, the day knocked you out, but suddenly you unlock the door and your mood zooms sky-high as there’s a loving and waiting BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK.

Someone’s happy to see you.

AWESOME!

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#623 The sound of snow crunching under your boots

Neil Pasricha

Dim streetlights cast blurry shadows for your cold walk home.

Snow-packed mitts, floppy wool hat, and a drippy, sniffly nose cover your shuddery frame as you shuffle down empty side streets on your way to the cozy warmth of your waiting bed. Everything is an eerily pitch-perfect silence buried under a shadowy sheet of bright white. Pine trees sway softly, Christmas lights flicker, and the biting air ice-scrapes your frost-nipped nose.

Somehow the solid crunch of your winter boots against the packed road snow fills the night with a relaxing and familiar sound that marks tiny little progress towards cuddling up under warm blankets and falling deep asleep.

Like cracking frozen puddles, pushing soft drink lid buttons, or popping a spoon in a jar of peanut butter, the sound of snow crunching under your salty winter boots scratches a primal itch that just feels so satisfying.

So stuff your hands in your pockets, curl your head to your chest, and crunch loud and crunch proud deep into the dark, winter night.

AWESOME!

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