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Social scientists have found that the fastest way to feel happiness is to practice gratitude.

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.

What I've learned is there's a scientifically proven phenomenon that's attached to gratitude, and that if you consciously take note of what is good in your life, quantifiable benefits happen.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

I relate to happiness as an ecstatic moment - something you don't create, you encounter.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

I find happiness comes from numerous sources in my life. Most often, the happy moments I cherish most are quiet moments with my wife and family back home in Nova Scotia.

Through a long and painful process, I've learned that happiness is an inside job - not based on anything or anyone in the outer material world. I've become a different and better person - not perfect, but still a work in progress.

When I'm grateful for all the blessings, it puts away all the stress about things not in my control. Things like long hours, aging, pollution, scandals... it helps me create perspective by just focusing on being grateful. Take that moment twice a day with yourself.

I have discovered the secret of happiness. It is work.