I once had a bad day that lasted all of 1995. Admittedly, I was not diagnosed with a terminal disease, and no one died, but many other things just seemed to go wrong. There was the problem of men not calling me when they were supposed to. Then, I had to adjust to a hostile, foreign environment: I had moved from Michigan, where the automobile is worshiped as a semi-divine entity, to Virginia, which outlaws radar detectors and prohibits driving on certain highways unless you have a preordained number of occupants in your vehicle. Finally, much to my dismay, I found that my Notre Dame degree and my service as a foot soldier in the Republican Revolution of 1994 qualified me only to answer telephones in the nation's capital.

What did I do in the face of such insurmountable obstacles to my happiness? I cried a lot, consumed twice my weight in chocolate, and listened to Alanis Morissette 24 hours a day. That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right?

Wrong. Thanks to the wonders of modern science, it is now possible to Become Happy in Eight Minutes. That's right, six easy steps, eight minutes. Siimon Reynolds explains it all in his cheery new book.

Reynolds, we learn in the introduction, had money, fame, power, looks, and love, yet was still not happy. I mistakenly believed I could do without the power and fame if I had looks, love, and tons of cash. No, the reader soon learns, happiness is not composed of material possessions like BMWs and condos in Vail, or immaterial, spiritual bonds like marriage and children with the elusive Mr. Right. Rather, happiness is a technique, and you too can master it for only $ 9.95. All it takes is a little practice.

Step One is to Stimulate the Thymus Gland by smiling a big happy smile, tapping the upper portion of your breastbone, and placing your tongue behind your front teeth on the roof of your mouth. This procedure will activate your happy hormones. Step Two takes two minutes and involves changing your breathing, because, as modern science tells us, "if you breathe the wrong way, melancholic moods will be your constant companion." Step Three requires you to drink some fruit juice and then take advantage of the temporary sugar high to think happy thoughts.

Step Four seems a bit complicated, but never fear, it's really quite simple to Reprogram Your Brain. Indeed, it only takes two minutes. From his exhaustive research, Mr. Reynolds concludes that "your brain can't tell the difference between what's true or false, but just acts on whatever information you give it." Therefore, "you can program your brain to make you think and feel whatever you want." After all, "it wasn't necessarily a bad event or bad person that made you feel unhappy, it was how you told your brain to react to this bad event or bad person." Makes sense. On those few tragic occasions when I awoke in the middle of the night from the pain of what felt like burning shrapnel embedded in my chest, it was really all in my head. If I had only known then what I know now! There is a cure for a broken heart! It's called denial.

Step Five takes this denial to a new level. Just as you can Reprogram Your Brain, you can Change Your Body Movements, because "happy thoughts create happy movements, and happy movements create happy thoughts."

This so-called cybernetic loop can even make you stop crying. I suffered with puffy eyes for much of 1995, but had Siimon Reynolds gotten to me sooner, I would have learned that to stop a body convulsed with sobs, all you have to do is "smile and look up at something on the ceiling! It's almost impossible to cry when you do that." There is a disclaimer, however. "You must," Reynolds says solemnly, "give it 100 percent."

Finally we come to my personal favorite, Step Six, where you learn to Change Your Focus. That is, always look on the bright side "no matter how bad the event may first appear." It's true. I thought it was a grave injustice that I went from discussing the finer points of the Communist Manifesto with clueless undergrads to answering phones and faxing things. But as Reynolds points out, the fact that my parents squandered tens of thousands of dollars on my college education should be negated by the fact that, hey, I could be unemployed, and worse yet, I could be a vegan working in a slaughterhouse.

Become Happy in Eight Minutes has changed my life. Now that I have stumbled upon the cure for a broken heart and underemployment, the second half of 1996 will be my best ever. For a time, my motto was: "If anything can go wrong, it will." Now I have new words to live by: "Smile! This can't be happening."

JOSEPHINE DELORENZO