The author of the New York Times best-seller How Starbucks Saved My Life perks up America with inspiring lessons on finding true happiness at any age and any stage of life.

In response to overwhelming requests from readers who wanted to know how they, too, could weather downturns, Michael Gill has distilled his experiences into fifteen meaningful lessons. Some of these include: leap with faith (Gill accepted his Starbucks job immediately on a whim), let yourself be helped (pride is even more paralyzing than fear), look with respect at every individual you see (realize the potential in all who cross your path), and lose your watch (and cell phone and PDA) (our obsession with productivity produces madness, not gladness). True fortune, Gill discovered, lies not in fate but in discovering the innate capacity we all possess to rescue ourselves.