Finding Happy: A User's Guide to Your Life, with Lessons from Mine

A master class for anyone seeking to Find Happy in a dizzying world

Almost everyone looks back on their life and thinks, “I wish I knew then what I know now.…”

This is a book for those starting out on their life’s journey and for those well into it who have not yet sighted land, who want to know right now what it is so many wish they had known back then. What is happy, anyway? Where do you find it?

It is written by a master storyteller who learned to scale walls (or blow them up) rather than be stopped, about how to channel this glorious life we are privileged to enjoy and make it happy, and about how, in the end, happiness flows from leaving the world a better place than we found it.

Finding Happy is filled with gripping adventures and misadventures that demonstrate how possible the seemingly impossible often is, from daredevil filmmaking in foreign lands to making daunting rules actually work for you, to earning a college scholarship after being unable to answer the entrance exam essay question…to climbing down a hundred-foot pipe shaft at 3 a.m. to rescue a kitten, with no plan for how to climb back up.

It is about how best to seize the day, which risks are brave and which foolish, about roadblocks and solutions, learning from leaders and finding your own secret sauce. Peter Samuelson explains how to find your compass and persuade others to help you, how to live your passion, make a living, take off your mask, build your best place in the universe, and find your own unique and personal Happy.

Peter Samuelson was the kid in tenth grade who laughed at the English teacher who told him he should go to college. He is now a celebrated movie producer and serial pro-social entrepreneur. In 1982 he co-founded the Starlight Children’s Foundation, then in 1992 Starbright World, co-founded with Steven Spielberg. 1999 saw the formation of First Star; 2005, EDAR Everyone Deserves a Roof; and in 2013, he launched ASPIRE, the Academy for Social Purpose in Responsible Entertainment. In the midst of this Peter has produced twenty-seven films and raised four children. Educated at Cambridge University on scholarship and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, Peter lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Saryl, and continues to fight every day for those less fortunate, chief among them abused and neglected children. He really did nearly die trying to rescue a kitten. And the kitten got away.