How to Save Your Own Life

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

Michael Gill's lemons-to-lemonade memoir chronicled his transformative year working at Starbucks after losing his high-powered job, his marriage, and his health (he developed a brain tumor). In response to overwhelming requests from readers who wanted to know how they, too, could weather downturns, he has distilled his wisdom into fifteen meaningful lessons, including:

? Leap...With faith: Sometimes it pays to leap without looking and say "yes" without thinking (Gill accepted the Starbucks job immediately, on a whim).

? Let . . .Yourself be Helped: pride is even more paralyzing than fear.

? Lose . . .Your Watch (and Cell phone and PDA!): Our obsession with productivity produces madness, not gladness.

Offering living proof that extraordinary happiness is found in ordinary moments, How to Save Your Own Life provides empowering words and hope for anyone facing a reversal of fortune. True fortune, Gill discovered, lies not in fate but in discovering the innate capacity we all possess to rescue ourselves.

The son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, Michael Gates Gill was a creative director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising, where he was employed for over twenty-five years. He lives in New York within walking distance of the Starbucks store where he works, and has no plans to retire from what he calls the best job he’s ever had.