A. J. Jacobs Quotes

Letting an emotion move through you is healthy. Letting an emotion define you is not.

One of the findings that really interests me is that, although we think we ACT because of the way we FEEL, we often FEEL because of the way we ACT. So an almost uncanny way to change your feelings is to act the way you WISH you felt.

Look closer at the stress in your own life and you can identify that negative emotions are always built on counterfactual statements.

I react emotionally to everything!

When you experience the emotion of sadness, there will be changes in facial expression, and your body will be closed in, withdrawn. There are also changes in your heart, your guts: they slow down. And there are hormonal changes.

I'm very sensitive and I'm quite a soft person, and I cry a lot when things upset me.

If I'm laughing, you know I'm either very happy or very sad. I cope with things with jokes.

Sometimes, I cry because I'm sad, and sometimes, I cry just because it's just emotional and it's super awesome.

If you force yourself to smile, within a couple minutes, you feel happy.

I feel differently immediately when I start to put weight on. I don't like that sluggish, blunted disposition that I have when that happens.

I got interested in the emotions after studying patients who had lost the ability to emote and feel under certain circumstances. Many of those patients also had major impairments in their ability to make decisions.

I'm really, really emotional.

I think anger is a good thing.

Angry or not. It's a human emotion. But you can't walk around being angry all the time. What a dull person you'd have to be!

I think that idea that sort of our emotional self and our emotional life is a faucet that you turn on and off, and that we are in control of it entirely, that's a really appealing idea for a lot of people. But there are certainly the times where it's appealing to me, but it never quite works the way I hoped it would.

The way you think influences the way you feel, and the way you feel determines how you act.

Emotions matter. They influence all aspects of our lives - how we live, work, and play - from the decisions we make and how we communicate. Emotions also influence our overall health and well being.

Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.

You feel the way you do right now because of the thoughts you are thinking at this moment.

Nerves are normal. You can't be cured from them unless you're a machine.

Anger is a valid emotion. It's only bad when it takes control and makes you do things you don't want to do.

Don’t panic, I thought. But already my breathing was faster, shallower. “You mean you can feel happy or sad or—” “Desire.” A barely-there smile.

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

To be angry once in a while is really good fun, because it makes others so miserable. But to be angry morning, noon and night, as I am, grows monotonous and prevents my gaining any other pleasure in life.

Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.