Five Steps to a Happy Life

Today my wife told me I should be a life coach. As it happens, I have many ideas about how to live well, so I figured I would have an evening as a life coach and share my insights with you. Here are my five foolproof freebies for feeling felicitous:

1. Eat your vegetables.
This is self-explanatory.

2. Judge a book by its cover.
If it has the toothy grin of the author plastered all over it, it's not worth reading. Take Joel Osteen, for example. This tip alone may make you so much happier that you will produce your own five step plan to happiness!

3. Know thy car.
There is something strangely pleasant about avoiding obstacles in the road without disturbing your passengers. But this is only possible when you know the precise location of all of your tires on the road. It is a little known fact that the phrase rendered "Know thyself" was mistranslated from Greek.

4. Make a home video based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
I did this with a friend in high school for an English project. We actually combined Monty Python with Hamlet and The Catcher in the Rye, and the results were astounding. Whenever I'm down, I recall the scene where Holden Caulfield (my friend) chops off the hand of Hamlet's ghost (yours truly) and Hamlet's ghost, who has a squirt bottle hidden up his sleeve, squirts Holden with torrents of red water. Voilà! Instant joy. (The hand he chopped off was a latex glove filled with red water. The explosion was legendary.)

5. Play Boggle.
Excavating words from the tangled jumble of letters on the Boggle board produces a feeling akin to that felt when discovering a treasure amidst the junk at a garage sale. Finding hidden treasures is good for your health and your happiness.

I hope these tips make you happy. Maybe I'll write a book....with my face all over it.