The First Splendid Truth: To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

Reading makes me want to write my own books, and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.

Getting paperwork under control makes me feel more in control of my life generally.

Step by step, you make your way forward. That’s why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future.

What I found is, really, you always have to begin by nailing what is true about you, because something that works very well for someone else might not work for you at all.

According to current research, in the determination of a person's level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts.

I've noticed that a lot of people do much better when all their resolutions are framed as 'Yes.' Not something like, "I'm going to give up French Fries," but something like "I'm going to eat three vegetables every day." "I'm going to hug more, kiss more, touch more." "I'm going to listen to more music." They do better when they frame things in the positive. And I think this is just part of human nature.