Ben Stein - 10 Ways Not To Go Crazy.

You know those conversations that have roughly 162 twists & turns - the kind where you started out talking about coffee and you ended up talking about the meaning of life? I've had a couple of those recently. One of them ended up focusing on people we really admire - and I shared my undying affection for Ben Stein.

Yes, he was in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", and was the star of "Win Ben Stein's Money" - and I loved them both - and they made him famous. But well before that, he was a speech writer for Presidents Nixon & Ford, a poverty lawyer & then a trial attorney, a professor at several universities, and he was then & is now a respected economist. We have none of those things in common - although I seriously considered being a speech writer, in part because of Ben Stein. Like me, he shoots straight, speaks his own personal truth, and considers Santa Cruz, CA a place of personal peace.

It's easy to find Stein's thoughts on taxes, government and economics - read the New York Times or Yahoo! Finance, or watch CBS Sunday Morning or Fox News. You'll have to dig a little deeper (but not much) to find his thoughts on God, peace, faith, and his often hilarious views on humanity.

I return to Stein's "10 Thoughts on How Not To Go Crazy" often, and I thought I'd share them with you:

1. Here’s a good way to wake up: in gratitude for just being alive.
2. Much of life is a gray area. Get used to it.
3. Not every day will be a great day. An ordinary day is good enough.
4. Harboring resentment against someone is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die.
5. A good relationship with God is like air-conditioning for the soul. It cools down the craziness.
6. Sometimes the only thing you get out of doing the right thing is . . . doing the right thing.
7. If you’re bored, it’s probably because you’re boring.
8. When in doubt about how to get there, ask those who are there.
9. If you really want to change your mood, do a random act of kindness and tell no one.
10. Love is a verb, not a noun.

Excerpted from The Eyes of Faith by Ben Stein. Copyright © 2009 (Hay House).