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Neil Pasricha

Pass me a drink. Let's chill on the ripped couch at the back. I love this place. Book lovers are my favorite people. (And my favorite lovers.)

My name is Neil Pasricha (pass-REACH-ah) and I'm the New York Times / #1 int'l (blah blah blah!) bestselling author of ten books on living an intentional life including THE BOOK OF AWESOME (gratitude), THE HAPPINESS EQUATION (happiness), TWO-MINUTE MORNINGS (habits), and the poorly-titled YOU ARE AWESOME (resilience.) My books are published in a lot of languages I can't read and sold a couple million more copies than anyone was expecting.

My background? Well, trust me: Nobody expected me to be writer. Least of all me. My parents aren't jazz trumpet players and watercolorists who raised me in Manhattan. They're hardcore Indian immigrants from Punjab and Nairobi who arrived in Canada scraping to get by. I was supposed to be a doctor! That was the life plan. But after my wife left me and my best friend took his own life in my late 20s I started a blog to cheer myself up. That blog was called 1000awesomethings.com and basically turned into everything else I've done and am doing.

If you want to hang out without social media algorithms in between us (no offence, algorithms! please don't punish my search results!) then join the thousands and thousands of good-hearted kindred spirits globally who get my newsletters. I put a lot of work into my newsletters -- they're sort of my weird digital babies -- and they contain my book recommendations, my new articles, my podcasts, and, of course, my daily awesome things (which I've been writing for 15 years now!). Sign up at www.neil.blog/newsletters

Hit me up if you wanna be friends! I love this clunky old site because it feels like my old hometown library somehow.

Shall we both get back to reading now?

XOXOXO

Neil

[email protected]


“AWESOME!”
Neil Pasricha
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“Because, life's too short, my friends. Let's squeeze in as many laughs as we can get.”
Neil Pasricha
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“Life's too short not to sleep when you feel like it.”
Neil Pasricha
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“Our pals over at Wikipedia make hair sounds like the sun of fresh water, saying in their snooty tone that head hair has "gained an important significance in nearly all present societies as well as any given historical period throughout the world". But then again, those lovable eggheads can make anything sound pretty serious.”
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“And so whether you were six with the chicken pox, nine with the flu, twelve with a broken arm, or fifteen with menstrual cramps, you could count on sixty solid minutes with the company of that old seventies set, lots of one-dollar bets, and advice to neuter your pet, all crunched into the best sick-day game show yet!”
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“We're all going to get old one day. So let's just love the age we've got and let's not crave the age we're not. Amen, sing it to your mama.”
Neil Pasricha
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“Bakery air is that steaming hot front of thick, buttery fumes waiting for you just inside the door of a bakery. And I am just going to tell you straight up: That is some fine air!”
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“The point is it’s such a great feeling to scarf cookies with abandon like Cookie Monster.Truly, he is the role model for us all.AWESOME!”
Neil Pasricha
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“I will raise you like my own,” I promised the tiny basil pot that day. “I will give you sunlight, I will give you water, I will give you love.”“I will eat your limbs,” my girlfriend helpfully added rubbing her belly and licking her lips like a grizzly bear gazing up at a sticky beehive in a tall pine tree.”
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“Hit me up at [email protected]!”
Neil Pasricha
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“No ticket ripper should say anything, but if you do happen to get caught you can always pretend you’re diabetic. “Honestly, these are prescription Pop Rocks.”
Neil Pasricha
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“The Surprise Attack. This is when you think someone scaring you will frighten the hiccups away. Of course, popping a paper bag behind you or clapping in your ear isn’t going to cut it. No, this only works when somebody shoves you off a tall skyscraper ledge into a properly rigged-up safety net forty stories below.”
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“Pain. It’s there for a reason. Whether your’e shredding your legs on a raspberry bush, scalding your hand in hot water, or taking an arrow to the chest in the forest, I got bad news for you, brother: That’s gonna hurt. Yes, when our bodies take blows, those powerful jolts make us cry salty tears, run for the hills, or crashland in hospital beds with limbs hanging everywhere.”
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“I fart, you fart, he farts, she farts.Let’s not deny it, people. Farting is a regular, healthy, and hilarious part of life. Squeezing out big plumes of noxious gas doesn’t always smell good, but it generally feels might fine.”
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“I have always been paranoid about waking people up. When I was younger and would come home late, I would take about twenty minutes to get from the driveway into my bed. I tiptoed up the walk, slid my house key in the door very slowly, took my shoes off outside, and crept upstairs to the bathroom like a burglar. Often I wouldn’t even flush until morning, preferring to let my business simmer overnight rather than wake somebody up with the sound of it zooming through walls on its way out of the house.”
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“The fact that you can go to the bathroom on an airplane is pretty novel. I bet nobody expected that a hundred years ago. Can you imagine two sailors looking over the front rails of their massive ocean liner in the early 1900s, one of them pointing way up in the clouds and whispering to the other, “One day a man will take a crap up there.” No, me either.”
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“Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?”“I think it’s in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren’t fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon.”“Thanks, honey.”AWESOME!”
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“Life is so great that we only get a tiny moment to enjoy everything we see. And that moment is right now. And that moment is counting down. And that moment is always, always fleeting. You will never be as young as you are right now.”
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“Have you ever put finger, algea-filled lake-water, or shampoo in there? Yeah, that gets your eyes screaming in pain pretty quick, doesn't it? Unless you're using baby No More Tears shampoo, of course, in which case feel free to lather your eyeballs right on up, no worries.”
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“Gliding down the bike path on a Saturday morning, you whip by somebody peddling in the opposite direction and give each other a nod. For a moment it's like "Hey, we're both doing the same thing. Let's be friends for a second.”
Neil Pasricha
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“The [Five Second Rule] has many variations, including The Three Second Rule, The Seven Second Rule, and the extremely handy and versatile The However Long It Takes Me to Pick Up This Food Rule.”
Neil Pasricha
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