In How We Choose to be Happy, authors Rick Foster and Greg Hicks identify 9 choices that extremely happy people make. What are those choices? The happiest people:
1. Consciously choose happiness over unhappiness
2. Choose to accept full responsibility for their thoughts, actions, and feelings
3. Choose to look deeply inside of themselves to determine what makes them uniquely happy vs. looking to others to learn what should make them happy
4.Choose to keep what makes them happy cenral in their lives
5.Choose to convert problems into opportunities and find meaning in even the most painful times
6. Choose to be open to new opportunities and remain flexible and ready to adapt when the unexpected occurs
7. Choose to possess a deep and ongoing appreciation for all that is good in their lives and to stay present focussed
8. Choose to give of themselves generously and without expectation of being rewaded
9. Choose to be honest with themselves and others
I’m going to spend some time reflecting on the exceptionally happy people that I know and consider how closely this criteria fits them. Does it fit the extremely happy people you know? First of all, who are those people in your life? Have you identified them yet? What do you think makes them so genuinely happy?
Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life 
This is an amazing book. It is not a self-help book in the usual manner, more of a study than a how-to manual. I read it some time after being hospitalized, for the first time in my life, at the age of 47, for severe anxiety and depression. It changed my life and put my health back in my hands like nothing else was able to. I highly recommend it to anyone who is unhappy with their life and has the desire for not only happiness but peace and joy.