Andre Agassi’s autobiography, appropriately and cleverly titled Open, is about much more than his historic tennis career. In fact, it’s more about his search for meaning than anything else. Whether you’re into tennis or not, there’s plenty of inspiration and deep insight to take from Andre’s story and apply to your own.

I was looking forward to reading Andre’s autobiography because he slowly won me over as a fan towards the end of his career, and of course, because I love tennis. I greatly respect how he reinvented both his attitude and career, but what I really wanted to learn more about was how he trained and developed his game. Although the book didn’t offer much in this regard, I was still glued to it because of Andre’s fascinating story and his inspiring perspective on life in general. As such, this isn’t only a great book for tennis fans, but also for athletes or anyone else looking to find more meaning in their lives.

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Change is often difficult, and in regard to health, it can be overwhelming and discouraging to the point of giving up. However, by focusing on simplicity, it might be easier to start living a healthier life than you realize.

I recently read a book called The Power of Less, and although it’s about productivity, it’s principles are very much related to the discipline needed to implement and follow a healthy lifestyle. The author, Leo Babauta, is a minimalist by nature and is passionate about the topic of simple productivity. In contrast to the typical productivity philosophies that aim to help you cram even more work into your already busy day, the idea of simple productivity is to be more efficient, practical, and logical with your time so that you have more opportunity to simply be happy and experience the joy of living.

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Like most people, you’re probably stuck in the endless cycle of eagerly anticipating Friday, and just a few days after it passes, dreading Monday and the rest of the workweek that follows. It doesn’t have to be this way.

A full time employee dedicates nearly half of their wakeful hours to their job each week, and in many cases, it’s even more than that. With the typical retirement age being 65, most people spend more than 40 years of their lives doing this! When you spend this much time doing something, it will undoubtedly have a significant impact on your mood, energy level, quality of life, and overall sense of wellbeing. It can even influence your health, especially if there’s a lot of stress involved.

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If I told you that you aren’t worth the air that you breathe, that you’re dumber than a rock, or that you’re the ugliest I’ve ever seen, would you be offended? If so, you may want to give this some thought.

Allowing yourself to be affected by an offensive action results in anger or sadness and often leads to a series of additional negative emotions and even regrettable behavior. This is certainly not conducive to happiness or good health and can have an undesirable impact on your life. Furthermore, the initial event that causes all of this is often trivial and not worth a fraction of the emotion that’s wasted on it.

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