If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you can pre-order the book on Amazon.com. Then check out all the great book recommendations here:

Big love,

My second book, Bright Side Up: 100 Ways to Be Happier Right Now, will be released on February 7—which is just two weeks from today! Which means that if you want to get the book as soon as possible, you can pre-order it today on Amazon.com or on BarnesandNoble.com! Or you can get it on iBooks or the Kindle or the Nook… Or, you can go old school and line up at your local bookstore to pick it up in person on launch day! Either way, we’re both happier.

Bright Side Up is like a guide for “emergency optimism.” When you get a flat tire, when your computer crashes, when your relationship ends, when you gain 10 pounds—these are 100 practical strategies for seeing those day-to-day negative experiences from a more positive place. Because it’s not what happens to us that matters for our happiness, but how we see, feel and experience what happens to us.

Which means you don’t have to re-invent your life to be happier! You don’t need a bigger house, a new car or expensive shoes, you just need to see what you have in front of you from a more positive perspective. Really, you don’t have to change your life itself to be happier—you just need to change how you look at the life you have.

I am so proud of this book, and I’m certain it will help change how you see your life for the better. Here’s to turning the bright on, one idea at a time.

—Amy

The Lululemon Life Manifesto

There are 10 sometimes-similar but also fantastically different ideas here, from The Holstee Manifesto you’ve probably seen, to Frank Lloyd Wright’s manifesto that The Happiness Project’s Gretchen Rubin wrote about—and speaking of, Gretchen’s a great manifesto inspiration, too!

So, scroll through, pick your favorite, and post it on your cork board or computer desktop to refer to everyday.

Here’s why: If you have a daily reminder to live life the way you want to—with the right To Dos on top—you’ll reach the end of the year really feeling like you’ve accomplished something. Because whether or not you’ve found a relationship, gotten a promotion, or saved the money you intended to, living as authentically, kindly, and generously as you can is the greatest achievement there is.

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The Jazz Effect: Take a Risk!

Big love,

A book from a girl who walks the walk.

I recently finished reading a super quirky book called Elf Girl: A Memoir by “Reverend Jen” Miller. She’s a Lower East Side artist, performer and author who calls herself “the patron saint of the uncool” and likes to refer to her friends and herself as “Art Stars.” The book is a lighthearted version of how she became one. Oh, and did I mention she wears elf ears every day?

I’ll tell you this: If you’re looking for a woman with strong self-esteem who refreshingly lives her life the way she wants to, thank you very much, you’ve found her.

In one section of the book, she makes a list called “How to Be an Art Star.” There, along with the tip “Develop a signature style” (in which she suggests, “A good rule of thumb is to take all of your favorite clothes and put them on all at once”) she also says this:

“Rejection is no big deal. It’s simply a person’s deeming worthless everything into which you’ve poured your mind, heart, and soul. Accept that he or she must be a bad person and move on.”

HA. And there you have it. Best rejection advice I’ve heard all year.

Yeah, rejection stinks. Because whether you’re being dumped from a date, job, project or relationship, it’s pretty personal. They’re either rejecting how you physically look, talk, walk, eat, laugh, dress or wear your hair; or, they’re rejecting how you think, execute, write, sing, create or work. Either way, ouch, right? And yet, it’s basic life math: Not everyone is going to like us or what we create—and that’s a good thing! Can you imagine if we all liked the same exact houses, cars, clothes or songs? We’d be a walking pod of Same People unable to find our cars, driveways or each other because we’d all be exactly alike. How dull.

Luckily, we are all different. We like different parts of town, different car interiors and work spaces, different art, clothes and music. Which means that sometimes, we’ll meet people who hate what we do or who we are. Pfft. Big deal.

As Rev. Jen justifies it, they’re bad people, so move on. Or you know, just plain move on. There are plenty of other people out there who’ll love who you are and what you have to give, exactly as you are.

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A Gleeful Reminder

Big love,

Take a look at the letter one person wrote to their younger self:

I stumbled across it on, oh yeah, StumbleUpon. (Um, hello, did you know they have an App now? It’s awesome.) This quote is from the site Dear Young Me that’s also on Twitter (@DearYoungMe). The gist? People submit notes they want to write to their younger selves, full of the advice they wish they’d known then.

I love this particular letter because it’s something I wish I told myself, too! When I graduated from college, some of my friends were already planning their weddings. Four years later, another batch of gals got married. And with every wedding, the “singles table” got smaller—but I was always sitting there, without fail, wondering when my time would come. I kept worrying: Why aren’t I getting married like everyone else? What’s taking my love so long to come?

Well, now that I’ve found my half-orange, I know the answers. I know why I wasn’t getting married back then: Nothing was as good then as it is with Gus! And I know what took my love so long: He and I both had to grow into the people we are today, who could appreciate and love one another for who we were, fully formed, confident and happy.

Don’t worry about everyone else’s timeline! Suck it up, shell out money for their wedding presents, and sit back with confidence. Know that your love will come when it’s good and ready, so you may as well enjoy the singles table at their weddings. Make the most of it! Live up these weeks and years, because you won’t be single forever. And when you’re finally hitched, you’ll want to write a letter to your younger self begging that you appreciate what you have right now.

Browse through Dear Young Me for more inspiration. My advice:

1. Write your own letter to your dearest younger you so you can see how far you’ve come in life and love. I mean, really, look what you’ve learned! Look at the people you know well enough not to date anymore. Look at the lessons you’ve learned about yourself, about what you like, appreciate, can tolerate. And…

2. Really listen to those who have lessons to pass on from an older, wiser place. Sometimes it’s best to learn our own lessons in life. But sometimes, hearing what someone who’s been through it has to say can really help.

Think of what you’d tell your younger self. Then, listen to the older, wiser you. And take your own advice!

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Letters to Your Future Husband

Big love,

But one of the best ways to get past the fear of opening yourself up for love with your half-orange is to face your fears in life. And that’s just what one author, Noelle Hancock did, which she writes about in her new book My Year with Eleanor.

Now, I haven’t actually gotten the book yet, but I will. Because the book is a stirring example of dating and life optimism: For whether or not you reach a goal or find love as quickly as you want, when you embrace the now, face your fears, and become the best you, you’ll enjoy the journey of life more along the way. And that’s the best part.

As you’ll see in her book video, down and out after being laid off two years ago, Noelle came across the famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt—”Do one thing every day that scares you”—and took it literally. In her one “year of fear,” Noelle learned to fly on a trapeze, jumped out of an airplane, hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro and did stand-up comedy (which nearly makes my palms sweat as much as they did when I watched this guy climb to the top of the Sears transmission tower to fix it). And whether it was a physical fear or an emotional one, she was all the better for it:
 

Love and life are scary. But go ahead, call them on it: Grab the microphone or the trapeze bar or the second date with the person who could potentially be a perfect life partner for you and see what happens. I think Eleanor Roosevelt would be proud. But more important, you’ll be damn proud of yourself.

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How I faced my fear in: Get Blue Crush Brave

Big love,

It’s a great month for The Dating Optimist. Why? Pick up the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Health magazine, and you’ll see that my blog was named a “Blog We Adore” for the issue, and featured a quote from this site’s archives!

Hilariously, the quote was pulled from a posting called “Dexter and You: Take Your Leap of Faith.” Nothing like finding comfort in life from the character of a serial killer!

But you know what? That’s precisely the point of The Dating Optimist: Positive messages can be found in the craziest places, sometimes. And if you focus on seeking them out, you’ll find them all around you. Joy and optimism can be ours in life and love if we each make the choice to use it.

So thanks Health magazine, I adore you right back. And to all of you who’ve written to me, commented on the blog, or just enjoyed a post or more every now and then, thank you for inspiring me to keep finding messages of hope—since I have you to pass them along to!

And if you find a positive message in a surprising place, or you’ve gotten better at looking for the good in even the biggest, bummer-est situations, tell me about it!

Big love and healthy living,

Nicole, a former coworker of mine, is one of those girls who’s always wearing the cutest thing while her hair falls in just the most naturally enviable way, with a creative talent you wish you could bottle. So I wasn’t surprised to love her latest post called Hopes that Reach the Sky. The post is about another cool blog she stumbled upon called The Beginning, which is full of sharp, inspiring or spot-on quotes presented in delectably artful ways.

Nicole posted her favorites on Truth + Fairytales, and I adore her choices. So my suggestion today is to check both blogs out and skim them for a few minutes to see if you find something that speaks personally to you. Sometimes when you’re feeling lost or buried under or mildly hopeless in life or love, just seeing that someone else has felt something you’re feeling can make all the difference.

One of my favorite quotes, for instance, is presented on the image of a little girl hiding behind a balloon. It says:  “I’ve finally discovered that my greatest fear is not being alone; it’s being vulnerable.” Amazing, right? Because when you figure out something big like that, it can change how open you feel with others every step of the day.

Find yourself an insight that resonates with you like that, and here’s to your hopes reaching the sky.

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How Do You Feel? No, Really…

Big love,

The new novel by Darin Strauss (McSweeney's Books). It's up to us to find hope through the pain.

This all came to mind last night during an event at Skylight Books in L.A. where my friend Darin Strauss read from his new book Half a Life.

I’ve known Darin for over twenty years (we lived just a few miles from each other growing up) and if you don’t know his work yet, you’d be wise to check it out. He’s published some very successful novels (Chang & Eng,The Real McCoy, More Than It Hurts You) and this, his first memoir, is getting rave reviews. (He read from the book on This American Life, GQ magazine excerpted it, and here’s the review from The New York Times.) In a word, it’s incredible.

Half a Life is the true story of a painful incident in Darin’s teenage life when his car hit a girl on her bike and killed her. It wasn’t his fault, but he spent the next half of his life dealing with the guilt and judging his life through the glasses of the tragedy. In the book, Darin writes:

“The accident taught me this. Things don’t go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future. But we keep making our way, as we have to.”

It makes me think of all the hurts that happen to us in love and relationships that we also have to keep making our way with—for weeks, months or decades. Maybe it’s a partner who cheated or lied and you wonder what you did wrong to deserve it. Maybe it’s a love that unraveled over time and you keep replaying what you could have done differently to stop it. Maybe it’s emotional or physical abuse that scars your heart like a gash can scar a face for good. Or maybe it’s a death or a loss that makes you question if it’s worth loving at all if things hurt this much when it ends.

As Darin’s book reminds us, the painful, terrible scars on our bodies and in our hearts will always be there. But it’s up to us to learn how to live without blaming the people or things that have hurt us, and without blaming ourselves for how long it’s taken to get over it. Life is not about denying the scars from our past, but about weaving them into our present lives and making what good we can of it.

Bad things happen to good people all the time. It’s not fair. But if you can learn to see it from the right angle, those injuries, over time, can become vehicles for something greater for you. Let your scars make you stronger, wiser and more empathetic. Let them deepen who you are as a human, not shield you from wanting to feel things in your future. And let them build you a better life not confine you to a ruined one. We’re stronger than we think, and as our scars heal, so should we.

If you like Half a Life, Darin is blogging about his book tour on Powells.com—and today he gives a shout-out to Meeting Your Half-Orange and how optimism can help.

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Wise Words from an Undone She

Big love,

I wanted to share this story I just came across from writer Abigail Pickus, who writes a column for The Jewish Week about her dating life called “Abigail in Love (maybe).” In this column called “Am I Still a Dating Optimist if I Throw Away All of My Dating Books?” as she talks about reading my book as well as others, I think you’ll appreciate her frustration with not just dating, but dating books that tell you how to do dating right.

In the end, Abigail says she’s decided that because even Meeting Your Half-Orange, which she liked, doesn’t have the formula for love, she’s going to live her single life without dating books from now on. As she writes:

“In other words, people, I am done with all the dating books. Even the nice ones. From now on I am only reading books that are going to engage my mind and imagination – not give me another formula for finding love. That I will just have to leave to fate.”

What do I love so much about a cool woman who isn’t saying, “Run and buy this book”? That, inadverently, she’s come to the conclusion to live her life in the way I want all of you to. She’s not going to obsess over her dates and her single status. She’s not going to scan online for advice on how to flirt her way to marriage. And she’s not going to buy a book a week on how to change herself for the right guy. Instead, she’s going to read and do things that engage her mind—in other words, she’s going to engage in what Meeting Your Half-Orange readers know are “gratifications,” those activities that make you feel smart and strong and fulfilled. Follow Abigail’s lead and make those same day to day choices for yourself that lead to eudaimonia, the gratifying happiness of being satisfied as your true self.

If you’re feeling like this writer and want to just toss your books into the trash, go ahead and do it! (Be gentle with mine, though, would you?) Then start fresh by living your day to day the way you want to. Read the books you want. Watch the movies on your Netflix list. Make the vacation plan you’ve been putting off until you met “the right person.” The more you live life as your true self and the more truly, eudaimonically happy you are, the better the energy you’re putting out there, and the easier it will be for your half-orange to recognize you as the happy, kick-ass person you are.

Big love,

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