The seven principles are:

(1) Base your actions on truth, courage, honesty, and effort.

(2) Focus on providing value for others with urgency, rather than on entitlements for yourself.

(3) Make choices with civility, dignity, honesty, and humility. These approaches create the best reactions among others.

(4) Avoid those who drain your personal resources.

(5) Rid yourself of major encumbrances (like a lot of debt).

(6) Develop the self-discipline to act on intellect, rather than emotional impulse. This gives you the potential to look for your long-term best interest.

(7) Learn from bad breaks, and move on.

The book assumes that you know what makes you happy. "Each of us seeks happiness in our own way." So if you don't, you have some work to do before you can apply these lessons.

I was surprised and pleased to see the author emphasize getting what you want without "the use of force or fraud against anyone else." He was become more moral since his first books about intimidation.

The most interesting part of the book for me was the discussion of joy. He describes it beautifully as "extreme happiness identifiable by a higher than secular awareness." He thinks that joy has to be unplanned and comes at infrequent intervals. Leading the examined spiritual life, if you are like me, so that you know what conditions bring out the greatest happiness and joy can create predictable joy for you. I hope Mr. Ringer will have a chance to learn that lesson as he follows his own advice.

The book is full of relevant examples from Mr. Ringer's New Zealand health products company, and is enlivened with cartoons featuring his tortoise character from earlier books.

After you have finished reading and thinking about these principles, I suggest that you pick the area where you have the mostroom for improvement. Set goals for yourself for improvement, and keep a daily journal for examining how you did. This process should accelerate your development. If you are pleased with that progress, consider examining your spiritual life in the same way.

Be happy and joyful!