I have found that the best antidote for the overwhelmed and stressful states we encounter this time of year is inspiration. The article below offers you multiple resources to help you build reserves of resilience and inspiration that can help carry you through the rest of the year.

Helen Keller reminds us that, "Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within." The extent to which she actualized this in a life filled with challenges is a story that is both poignant and a model of inspiration. The Huffington Post offers important truths about happiness that illustrate Keller's approach to life: "You can absolutely change your internal setting to one that idles regularly on happiness and joy, but it does take effort. Be willing. Make it a project. Start with small changes."

One of my favorite authorities on happiness, Brother David Steindl-Rast offers this insight on happiness:

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always want to have something else or something more.

Recently, Brother David was joined by research pioneers including Jon Kabat-Zinn and Marsha Linehan, as well as by other groundbreaking contemplative teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Roshi Joan Halifax at the first International Symposia on Contemplative Studies held this past April in Denver, Colorado.

This event explored groundbreaking research based on mindfulness and compassion and other aspects of contemplative science, fulfilling a spiritual challenge from the Dalai Lama, "What the world needs most in our global age is new brain science that clarifies the causal basis and beneficial aspects of compassion."

Throughout the conference, a huge body of clinical research was presented that confirms that mindfulness helps reduce stress and promotes healing, learning and neuroplasticity.  A parallel pathway of study demonstrated that the related practice of loving-kindness has begun to converge with exciting new research on positive emotions and the brain.

What does this new frontier mean for our everyday lives? One of the most powerful moments at the Denver conference came in a panel that brought together neuroscientist Tania Singer with lifelong advocates of compassion Sharon Salzberg and Brother David. Although the two contemplative speakers used contrasting language from the Buddhist and Christian traditions, they were both able to explain in human terms the shift Singer and her team found on fMRI scans of subjects' brains.

Brother David used the metaphor of Michelangelo's statue of David, who stands firmly on one leg and "plays" with the other. Our normal, stressful life in the world, he said, reflects a stance where we rely strongly on our disconnected identities and social roles, and only "play" with fleeting glimpses of deeper attunement and connection to others. Instead, he suggested, a proactive life of social engagement involves a stance where we rely mainly on a deep sense of caring interconnection, and flexibly play with the identities and social roles that seem to separate us from others. Integrating these two "legs" can provide us a solid platform for happy living.  

For more on this conference and related topics, visit this article by Dr. Joseph Loizzo here.

Another powerful perspective on happiness is offered by Angeles Arrien in an article on "Living in Gratitude: A Journey That Will Change Your Life", click here for article. She points out that the chief obstacles to gratitude and happiness are envy, greed, pride, and narcissism, which are fueled by comparing ourselves to others and the seeds of self-importance. She proposes that we cultivate a practice of  "grateful seeing"-noticing first what is working in our lives before dwelling on what we lack or desire but have not yet attained, or on our challenges or burdens. "When we look first to the blessings, learnings, mercies, and protections that remain ever present in our lives no matter what our difficulties," she writes, " it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain a state of ingratitude." When we focus instead on what endures in our lives, our appreciation can open us to the freedom of lasting happiness and expansive connection to the greater world.

Feel free to read this entire article and others in the series here.

Finally, if you enjoy laughter as a pathway to happiness, you might appreciate these somewhat whacky rules for finding spontaneous happiness in daily life drawn from Oprah Winfrey's "Life Class: The Tour": 

1. After all clumsy, embarrassing moments, you must curtsy.
2. Call up your best friend once a month -- and play her favorite song, anonymously without one word -- making sure that you hear her rustle, sit-dancing in her office chair.
3. Close your eyes when you drink orange juice. It makes it taste better.
4. Make up a lovable name for your least favorite body part. Like Irene. Nobody hates a thigh named Irene.
5. While you're driving behind a school bus with kids at the windows waving to everyone in cars, you must wave back -- and honk three times.
6. When in doubt, add extra garlic, extra butter or extra bubble bath.
7. Always scan your dimes for the date. Dimes, unlike pennies and quarters, do not tarnish. One that's three times your age gives you a whole new perspective on how to get older -- without losing your shine.
8. To-do lists and angry letters to the phone or electric company must be written in silver glitter ink.
9. You may not leave the house without smelling the top of the head of your child, partner or pet. Inhale their scent (even if it's unwashed) for at least two breaths.
10. Once a year, take yourself out for a mandatory lunch at a restaurant with fancy waiters. Sit at a table for four. Order three courses, including wine and a dish that must be set on fire.
11. If you're watching a comedy, laugh. If you're watching a tearjerker, cry. If you're watching a ballroom dance show, dance -- preferably in some kind of spangled, neon, rhinestone-bedazzled, midriff-baring outfit.
12. Keep your cat, childhood teddy bear or even one of those microfiber cleaning cloths (which, by the way, do work better than plain old rags) in reach at all times. Studies have proven that soft, fuzzy objects defeat the blues.
13. Prior to visiting your parents, you are required to watch Bruce and Esther Huffman from McMinnville, Oregon, test out their new webcam.
14. All stickers offered to you by someone under the age of 13 must be accepted, slapped on and worn for at least one hour. Preferably on your cheek.
15. Never delete accidentally dialed voice messages from family. Listening to your nieces and nephews sing "Jingle Bells" as they walk to school, for example -- complete with thumps and breathing and indecipherable muttering about haircuts -- turns a boring afternoon at work into a visit home.
16. Saying no to cotton candy is strictly forbidden.
17. If you hear a person crying in the bathroom, pass them a wad of tissue under the stall -- without a word.
18. Each time you pass a street musician playing the instrument that you quit as a child, place one crisp, full dollar in the cup and wait until the absolute end of the song to applaud.
19. Always note how the foam on a cappuccino magically parts when you add sugar, then closes right back up.
20. At least once in your life, pour a bottle of dish soap into a bubbling outdoor public fountain.
21. Never go to bed without looking up at the ceiling and thanking it for keeping out the rain. 

These tips are offered by Leigh Newman in the Huffington Post and derived from "Oprah's Life Class: The Tour" (click here). If any one of them makes you smile, this is a good sign for your happiness quotient, and if you giggle at more than one, it is likely that you are headed steadily toward the pursuit of happiness.