Following celebrities or people you don't regularly see in person often doesn't add to our happiness. The best use of social media is to deepen existing close relationships or create new ones.

My big "double-aha" moment came while anchoring the national news at CBS News. It was at the height of the recession, and on top of the usual negative stories, my newscasts became full of especially heart wrenching stories of people losing their homes, jobs, and retirement savings. Starting the morning off like that could leave even the most optimistic person feeling helpless and hopeless. The lightning bolt came when we changed how we talked about the negative.

There is no greater prediction in the research of our levels of happiness than the breadth and depth of our relationships.

We are all constantly transmitting information to the people around us, and the messages we choose to communicate either create success or hold us all hold back.

Starting our day off with a dose of negativity can have lasting effects.

Being in touch with the problems in the world or our lives is important, but even more important is to focus the brain on what we can do about them.

We change people, but oftentimes we get so focused on the negative people and their influence on us, we forget how powerful we are as positive people to influence others.