The two men waiting outside my apartment were an unlikely duo. Ishmael, the leader of the two, was a former cop, while his side-kick, Ventura, had the look and laugh of a seasoned criminal. “Come on up,” I yelled through the intercom. “The front door’s open.” Then, as if I was preparing for a first date, I gave myself one last look in the mirror before making sure the coffee I’d made and the chocolate croissants I’d bought were arranged perfectly on my kitchen table.

“Oh, Michael, it’s so disappointing! I’d guestimate that eight percent of the guys I’ve chatted with — after offering an extremely low-hanging piece of fruit — have responded with the words I’m looking to hear.” My friend Marta recently began dating again after a bit of a hiatus and decided to give the online world a shot. Like most people, she’s got a lot going on and the last thing she wanted to do was play a numbers game.

“Is that a mouse?” In an instant, the normally well-behaved children went bananas. Some jumped on their desks. Others yelled at the top of their lungs. Others were too scared to do anything at all. Quick on her feet, the teacher set up a plan to catch the mouse. But between all the commotion and the mouse’s uncanny ability to move quickly and quietly, no matter how hard she tried, she came up empty-handed.

That can’t be right. There was a notification on my phone saying that a meeting I’d begged to get was starting in 10 minutes. There was only one problem: I was sitting uncomfortably on my couch an hour away from where I needed to be. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I said to myself, desperately scanning the messages in the vain hope it’d be his fault, not mine. But sure enough, it wasn’t.

I remember the exact moment my life went on the offensive. I was in my apartment in Barcelona complaining to my dad about my first world problems. But before I could really get going he stopped me and said, “Michael, shut up and go buy that beautiful wife of yours some flowers.” I had heard a million times the key to happiness was getting out of our own heads and doing what we could to place ourselves in the hearts of others.

“Why did we break up?” In a moment of bravery, relationship expert Matthew Hussey gritted his teeth and asked the question above to his ex-girlfriend. He was expecting to hear the standard spiel that the timing wasn’t right or the woman wasn’t sure what she really wanted. But instead, she said something much worse: “You were boring!” After swallowing his initial urge to argue, Matthew shifted in his seat, took a deep breath, and asked her to explain:

The night my wife told me she was pregnant with our first child I was one misplaced heartbeat away from having another panic attack. Throughout the better part of her pregnancy, my anxiety didn’t subside. I’d convinced myself that my career would stall once the baby arrived, and instead of being there for my wife, I threw myself into my work. As her due date approached, I realized how short-sided and selfish my thinking had been.

I live in a very diverse town. The school my kids go to houses children from 28 countries and no matter the hour I can walk downstairs to the bar in our building and hang out with people from all over the globe. As a little social experiment, over the last week, I’ve been asking women from a bunch of different countries what qualities they find attractive in men. Going up to groups of women and asking them about their preferences was a bit embarrassing at first.

Today is my birthday. I’m officially 42 years young. The biggest lesson I’ve learned thus far in life is the key to misery is found in constantly thinking about yourself. If you want to be happy, you have to build the habit of making other people a priority and doing what you can to make their day a little bit better. So instead of racking my brain for 42 lessons the world has taught me as I’d normally do on my birthday.

If I’ve learned anything over the last decade of being in a committed relationship, it’s that love isn’t a feeling. Love is a choice. Each day we wake up and we are presented with countless opportunities to show the people we care about some love. It is up to us whether we choose to do it or not. Most people miss the signs, or even worse, they stop looking. So here’s a list of 42 proven strategies to choose from that show big love.

Every Monday, for three years now, I sit down and reach out to someone who is doing something I admire requesting a chance to speak with them. I try not to prepare too many talking points and prefer to see where the conversation takes us. One question, however, I do try to ask each person is their definition of the word “cool,” as it provides insights as to what they value.

As a shy kid, I was in awe of confident people. The way they moved. The way they spoke. This admiration continued with me well into my thirties. I wanted to be like them. Today, however, at the age of 41, I don’t really care if someone exudes great confidence or not. Nor do I look up to people because society deems them successful. The people I admire most are kind.

“Can you hear me?” screamed Darcy as she tried one last time to breathe life into her friend. Startled, she felt a body rub up against her, followed by a familiar whisper: “It’s no use. She’s gone.” After wiping the last icy tear from her cheek, Darcy stood up next to her friend, shivering, as the two little hedgehogs leaned into a howling winter wind. “How many does that make this year?

There’s no shortage of advice out there for how to be more likable. Type the question into search and you can get lost in the pages upon pages of studies, lists, and essays full of tips on what to say and how to act. But according to behavioral researcher investigator Vanessa Van Edwards, the author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, the key to being a person that others gravitate toward is simply this: You must like more people.

I was at a wedding and throughout the day the groom walked around with a little pad of paper asking everyone in attendance for their best piece of relationship advice. I thought this was cool and it led to some interesting and fun conversations. I can’t remember exactly what I said when it was my turn. It probably wasn’t something very clever — hence why I write: I get time to think.

When I began writing in earnest, I was petrified to share my work with others. What would people say about it? Would my friends make fun of me? I was so riddled with self-doubt that I didn’t tell anyone about my blog until a year after I first created it. However, one day I crossed paths with a man who in our shared town of Barcelona had the reputation for being as kind as he was clever.

“Most people don’t get what they want out of life because they’re too self-absorbed to lift up their heads and take notice of the people around them.” A buddy of mine who runs a very successful venture capital firm in the US said the words above to me when I asked him for career advice. He went on to add, “If you can reserve just twenty minutes a day to sit down and think about how you can improve the lives of the people around you, not only will all of your professional problems disappear, but so will your personal ones.

I haven’t always been an A-grade citizen. From cheating and stealing to wheeling and dealing, I’m ashamed to say I’ve done plenty of less-than-admirable things. Some of them were on a small scale, while others seriously hurt the people I care about. My past actions weighed on me heavily for years, especially after my wife and I had decided to start a family. I was overwhelmed by the thought that I might be a bad influence on my children.

Some people write because they want to help others. I don’t. I write to help myself. If whatever comes out also helps someone else, great. But if not? That’s okay. Today’s exercise for helping myself is writing out reminders of 25 behaviours that always blow up in my face. Behaviours I should stop doing. Right Now. They aren’t doing me an ounce of good. They are robbing me of the meaningful relationships I have with others.

I was walking the rainy streets of Barcelona with a girl I had just met. It was a Wednesday, and little did I know, I was 45 seconds away from seeing my future. As we crossed the street, the clouds parted, and the first ray of sunshine kissed the face of this comfortable stranger. When it did, in one fluid motion, she stopped, closed her eyes, titled up her head and smiled — and I was finally present to see all the beauty that existed in the world.