Those in search of healthy lifestyles to increase their personal comfort and ease with their sense of well being and happiness have found comfort that it has now been measured. And can be lived so easily as it is the truth as was taught to us in kindergarten or Sunday school.

University of California researchers, as we have mentioned, found after extensive research that there were eight common factors between those who reported the highest degree of personal satisfaction with their lives, lived longest and had least times in hospital or under medical care through their lives.

These life winners also generally reported a belief in an after life, were most positive in their outlooks and active in volunteer work, and more inclined to put effort into making right a wrong than complain about it. These common factors were:

1. Count Your Blessings.

2. Practice Acts of Kindness.

3. Savor the Joys of Life.

4. Thank a Mentor.

5. Learn to Forgive.

6. Invest Time and Energy with Family and Friends.

7. Take care of Your Body.

8. Develop Strategies to Cope With Stress and Hardships.

This wisdom is that of which we all innately know and knew when we were told to share in kindergarten. And yet by the time we have fought our way up and down the ladders of life we do toughen up by the blows by the moment, even if we are still ill prepared for one more disaster if it comes at us now, or at any time while we try to struggle with the events of the day. So here is what we do.

We need to imprint each of these into our now thick skulls, which do not do well at incorporating these eight great ways to joy into your brain so it “sticks”. That is when an event so unforgettable occurs, we also memorize what we were doing. All of an age remember what they were doing the moment they heard of Pearl Harbor, or in my case where I was(at a gas station) when news came of the shooting of President Kennedy.

So, if you make each of these eight great ways one great day in your working and personal life,, you will find it difficult to ever forget. Your brilliance may earn you a raise, promotion, dunce cap but with a gold star on it. Remember, Cary Grant so often played the elegant clown. So, here we go, and you of course adapt as it tweaks to you. You want to impress with your acting out, it would be good to get permission from the boss and suggest it will be good for moral. It will.

Day One: You are “Count, or Countess Your Blessings” as from the popular children’s show. You arrive elegantly dressed, a scarf and borrowed fancy hat for the Count, and great adornment for the Countess. A rose in your label, men, a deep bow and How Do You Do to all, You are “Count Your Blessings” for the day, in a psychological study you will explain later. Every now and then, you announce one of your blessings. Make sure the name of each in earshot gets a mention, to the amusement of all.

Day Two, this gets a bit icky for the gents, Great Fun for the ladies: you need to be dressed and happy about it to represent “Acts of Kindness”. Cary Grant and you ladies would have the cahones to wear a sparkling skirt and tiara and carry a wand and magic umbrella while he or she serves tea, but I do not.

So you gents could still dress like the Count and just do these things all eight days of this foolishness. So do acts of kindness till they say Cary I can pull my own chair in, thank you. Make it through the day with your angelic smile with each kind act.

But for you ladies this is your moment, Mary Poppins. The gentlemen might lose status if they tried to be Dick Van Dyke as the dustman; best to be Count Your Blessings instead.

Thank a Mentor. Careful about this, spread it around, think about it. You popping into the bosses office every half hour is going to earn you a Brown Nose Award with your fellows. But thank all in your family, your friends, associates, even children and grand children who have taught you how to love more deeply.

Learn to forgive. And you can do that sometimes with one you have been in a dispute with for so long that the more you recall, before it came to shouts he had a point from the way he saw it. I had such a case and about a year ago I walked up to him and said I owed him an apology and I had given him the impression he had the job until a closer friend did it better for less.

But I also had not handled it well, and I did not want to go to my grave with he and I, both decent men, with an understanding. He then apologized to me and we shook hands and parted much warmer friends than we had ever been. Since then, when he and I pass each other I receive such a friendly wave and deep smile and the crinkly eyes of a friend. So learn to forgive that way too.

How do you dress to show you invest time and energy with friends and family should be easy. Slippers under your desk? Teddy bear and good night stories as your homework for lunch? The more quizzical looks you receive, the more you will remember. Carry a fuzzy bear in the passenger seat if you drive alone to work. The more we age the more true it can become. I belong to a dart team, who also dance, go on hikes, and I do it some times when I do not feel like it, but always end up having fun. With family, and grand children, it is always a joy and more a question, when can we get all together with busy lives, so some days adjust as part time jobs but those should always be mutual admiration meetings, private issues worked out between social gatherings.

How to be attired to show you take care of your body is something you know, how close to tennis gear and your tennis racket in the corner of your executive suite, or cubicle, would help the mood. We need to keep re learning as so much has been learned in the last half century, or decade even. But the old maxims still hold true. Healthy lifestyles, diet, thoughts, actions, respect to keep ingesting natural nutrients every few hours during morning and afternoon daylight. Organic has recently tested as 40 percent more healthy than those sprayed with insecticides.

Develop strategies to cope with stress and hardship. OK, Mr Count and Mary Poppins, this is a challenge. Do you fall and say just practicing my tumble roll? If you have survived imprinting these other seven elements to happiness, you can end with a bang. As long as you care for your body while you enrich your joy. Enjoy!