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 therapy after my marriage fell apart and best friend took his own life. I was 28.
  • 2008 – 2012 – I wrote and published one awesome thing here every single weekday for 1000 straight weekdays. It was the most rewarding and demanding creative project I have ever done. This blog went viral and scored over one hundred million visits 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 called “The 3 A’s of Awesome” which has over three million 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, very lucky to be the New York Times bestselling author of nine 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),  and many more. The books have been on bestseller lists for over 200 weeks and sold over two million copies. I know how crazy rare and lucky this is. 
  • 2014 – I got remarried. This requires a lot more than a bullet point or even a whole blog post.  
  • 2016 – I quit my job at Walmart to focus on writing and speaking full-time. I had written five books and given 200 speeches by 2016 which is testament to how little I believed I was having anything beyond ’15 minutes of fame’ and how kind, generous, and supportive the organization was for eight years I did both. 
  • 2016 – I gave the world’s first ever TED Listen, which was a TED Talk composed entirely out of questions. YouTube commenters rate it one of the 10 “Least Inspiring” TED Talks of all time. 
  • 2016 – today – I try to read 100 books a year and send out a monthly Book Club with my book recommendations each month. I sort of tangentially ended up writing the most popular article on HBR for 2017 called “8 Ways To Read (A Lot) More Books This Year.” 
  • 2016 – today – I launched The Institute for Global Happiness. While I am proud of it I have not done a good job growing or maintaining it. I started hiring people and looking at office space and realized I prefer spending time with my family and writing on picnic tables in the park. 
  • 2016 – today – I give around 50 keynote speeches a year on topics like resilience, happiness, and cultivating positive mindset in times of uncertainty. 
  • 2018 – I gave a SXSW Featured Keynote called “Building Trust in Distrustful Times”
  • 2018 – 2031 – I run an award-winning podcast called 3 Books where I am counting down the 1000 most formative books over 333 straight lunar cycles. Guests include Brené Brown, Malcolm Gladwell, Roxane Gay, Cheryl Strayed, George Saunders, Quentin Tarantino, and David Sedaris.
  • 2019 – today – I launched Neil.blog as a new personal home. Here is my latest bio. Most of my latest writing in published there and comes out via a series of newsletters. (I also sometimes write for HBR and Fast Company)
  • 2020 – today – For the first time since 2012, I began posting 1000 more awesome things for my own mental health during the pandemic. The awesome things are published at 12:01am every day on this email list and @neilpasricha on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  (I don’t love social media but didn’t want to mess with this antique site which lives in a very specific corner of my brain and also didn’t want to run a fifth site after this site, globalhappiness.org, 3books.co, and neil.blog.)
  • December, 2022 – I wrote a brand new booked called OUR BOOK OF AWESOME

#324 Laughing at a stranger with another stranger

Neil Pasricha
They’re everywhere.
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They’re on every bus we ride, sitting in every doctor’s office, and standing behind every take-out counter. They’re beside us on the sidewalk, in front of us at the ballgame, and behind us at the movies.
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Yes, you all know who I’m talking about.
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Weirdos.
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Weirdos are holding kittens on leashes on the bus wearing giant fur hats, weirdos are talking gossip on their cell phone in the library, weirdos are wearing headphones and singing the Perfect Strangers theme song.
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And you know how I know weirdos are everywhere? Because we’re weirdos too, my friend. I’m a weirdo, you’re a weirdo, so let’s just accept it and move on.
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Now, nothing’s more fun than spotting a weirdo and trading the classic “Do you see what I see?” look with another stranger. Yes, when that connection snaps it’s like you’re suddenly surrounded by a close friend and chuckling at a little absurdity in the middle of the big absurdity of it all. Yes, laughing at a stranger with another stranger makes your sighting a little more real, a little more funny, and a lot more
.
AWESOME!
.
Photos from: here

#325 Jumping through the sprinkler in your bathing suit

Neil Pasricha

Snap on the spandex, turn on the hose, and let’s get down to business.

Jumping through the sprinkler in your bathing suit is one of the greatest joys of childhood. Your backyard turns into a Waterpark as you pull off one of these classic moves:

1.The Original. Get the sprinkler sprinkling and motor at it full throttle before jumping as high as you can right through that wall of water. No fear. 

2. The Gymnast. Flipping over the sprinkler with wobbly cartwheels or high-flying somersaults is an advanced move which may result in accidental wetface, separated shoulders, or spontaneous applause from the gallery.

3. The Leapfrog. Here’s where you convince your little brother or sister to stand beside the sprinkler and then run and jump over them. Careful, though — nobody likes a wet crotch to the back of the head. 

4. The Spray Gun. Also known as having your big brother pick up the sprinkler and chase you around the yard while singing the Contra theme song.

5. The Slow Shower. This is when you stand still in one place with your eyes closed and let the water calmly hit your face. Also known as your Backyard Zen moment.

Of course, there are more, there are many more — after all, you could be jumping one of those rat-a-tat-tat sprinklers in the park or running along one of those misty green ones that look like a garden hose with pinholes in it. But no matter your style and no matter your taste, it’s always a beautiful moment of sparkly-eyed fun when you and your friends go outside under the sun to run around the sprinkler till the day is done.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, here, and here

#327 When you hit something with your car and there’s somehow no damage

Neil Pasricha

Bumping bumpers is a bummer.

Couple years ago my friend Allison was wheeling her rusty bucket into the library when she crashed into the parked car in front of her. When she got out to inspect the damage she noticed she’d put a big bruise on the other guy but came out clean herself. Worried, she went inside and found her victim before spending three weeks and almost a thousand bucks to finally straighten out his car and her conscience.

Now of course, wouldn’t you know it but a couple months later the same thing happened in reverse. Popping out of a grocery store holding a couple big bags of food, she noticed a big bump in her side door. Unfortunately, this time there was no note, no message, and no way to find out what happened so she unhappily shrugged and drove home in her classy new Dentmobile.

Allison’s sad tale is a reminder we’re always bumping things and we never really know which way they’ll turn out. Yes, whether you’re scraping side mirrors on the garage, knocking garbage cans over on Monday morning, or just kissing car doors in the parking lot, it’s always a heart-pounding moment until you scope the scene.

The moment just before you check out the damage is awful.

The moment just after you see there isn’t any is

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

#328 The smell of a library

Neil Pasricha

Come on in.

Pull open the wooden door with those giant oversized handles that are smooth and worn down to a light brown finish. Drag your boots over the dirty green carpeted floor that bubbles up in the corners and splashes tiny dust clouds into shimmery orange sunbeams with every step. Feel the calm and comforting library quiet settle like a blanket over your body and your brain as you shuffle past the counters and make your way inside…

Massive atlases, worn-out hardcovers, and crinkly plastiwrapped kid’s books fill rusty metal bookshelves and cover that overly-lacquered table at the front — dented from that time someone smacked it with their wheelchair in 1988.  Yellowed pages with pencil lines, cracked bindings and broken spines, cover every corner of the place…

Feel our shared histories softly swirl together through old books and stamped checkout cards as you smile and soak up all the little library smells of

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

#329 Twisting the lid off the jar after nobody else could

Neil Pasricha

I used to hang out at Jean’s place.

Yes, back when I was in second grade and my sister Nina was in Kindergarten we spent our lunchtimes and after schools at a do-it-yourself daycare run by a leathery old woman named Jean. Her home was a cold and dark playground of plastic toys and Thundercats reruns and we spent hours and hours there for years and years.

At lunchtime the seven or eight kids she looked after crowded around a wobbly plastic table to dive into her famously greasy lunches. Grilled Cheez Whiz on buttery white bread, mayo-drenched tuna casseroles, and bologna and processed cheese sandwiches were a few of her faves. And Jean always capped each meal by pouring a big jar of apple sauce, syrupy peach slices, or fruit salad into little bowls for each of us.

I remember watching Jean try to open those jars like it was yesterday. Honestly, she’d be huffing and puffing till we thought she’d fall over. Sometimes she’d hold the jar under hot water, other times she’d twist it with a dish cloth, and then there was my favorite — the spectacularly loud bang-and-clang-the-lid-with-a-knife move, which we always suspected would result in a serving of pear halves sprinkled with shattered glass, but fortunately never did.

Poor Jean was surrounded a weak and wide-eyed army of tiny hands, spaghetti noodle arms, and saggy biceps. We couldn’t help her much but after watching her suffer for years we took firm blood oaths to help others open those tough-to-open jars whenever we could.

Yes, twisting the lid of the jar after nobody else could fills you with a strong sense of Superman Pride. Suddenly you’re Popeye, Mr. Universe, or The Incredible Hulk, beaming like a flashlight in front of the kitchen counter as you hand back a freshly opened jar of

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

#333 The day your cafeteria serves the best food they got

Neil Pasricha

Have you ever had a panzarotti?

Well, if not then let me tell you that panzarottis are magical miniature pepperoni pizzas folded over into a giant doughy envelopes and baked to a golden brown crisp before being slathered with steaming tomato sauce. Sawing into them with a knife and fork gets the melted mozzarella oozing out like lava before swirling into a savory sea of puffy crust, salty pepperoni, and even more sauce that was baked inside to a tangy finish.

Our high school cafeteria served panzarottis every Tuesday and every Tuesday our high school cafeteria had raging lines out the door and down the hallway with sweaty backwards-cap wearing teens each holding five bucks for the most delicious lunch in our known universe. Lose the Lunchables and toss the tuna sandwiches because on Panzerotti Tuesday we’re a salivating room of equals buzzing over life, liberty, and the pursuit of giant, greasy folded-over pizza things.

Yes, it’s a beautiful moment when your cafeteria serves the best food they got.

Whether it’s Mac and Cheese Monday at the cubicle farm, Taco Thursday at the plastics plant, or Fajita Friday at the old folk’s home, it always tastes like fun … it always tastes like excitement … and sure does always taste like

AWESOME!


Photos from: here, here, and here