Cultivate Your Life Like a Garden Simple-living advocate Ruth Stout, author of Gardening Without Work and How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, believed that life just doesn't have to be so hard! In If You Would Be Happy, she once again helps you find the sense amid all the nonsense that life offers, and find simplicity amid the rough and tumble of life. She says: ¿It is happiness, not perfection, we¿re concerned with here, and they¿re not necessarily even related. . . Our activities are successful insofar as they are giving us real satisfaction.¿ ¿Interestingly enough, if you do work for your own happiness and achieve it, everyone who comes in contact with you will enjoy you more and therefore be better off because you are happy. If you are busy building your own pleasant life, you have no time to criticize others. You are more relaxed, more fun to be with; your sense of humor is in good working order, and you are a do-gooder in the best sense without even trying.¿ ¿Being annoyed will keep a person awake more effectively than Benzedrine. If you need pepping up, just think of someone you¿re furious with.¿ ¿Any experience, trivial or important, is likely to give us more pleasure if we are interested, unhurried, and are looking for the best the situation has to offer. It also helps if we expect something good, for in that case we don¿t overlook it if it¿s there in front of us.¿ ¿We must forever keep in mind that it is our inside feelings we are aiming to change; we are really going to become a serene and pleasant person, not merely give the appearance of one.¿