52 Small Changes: One Year to a Happier, Healthier You

Yes, it's almost the end of the year, Christmas is over, the New Year is fast approaching and for many people, resolutions are being planned. We can make changes anytime in our lives, but for some reason, we see the new year as a clean page to start.

"Many of us yearn for instant gratification, and when something takes too long, we give up or move on. Unfortunately, the instant gratification we crave is the exact thing that hinders us from achieving success in our quest for change. The secret to making change that lasts is to acknowledge and accept that change takes time and that patience during the process is essential."

I agree with Blumenthal that 'small changes feed our need to succeed." To that end Brett Blumenthal's book 52 Small Changes actually spans the entire year. She has come up with one change per week that we can incorporate on our way to becoming a "happier, healthier you." The book has four target areas: Diet and Nutrition, Fitness and Prevention, Mental Well - Being and Green Living.

Week One's topic is water - drinking more of it. A basic tenet that we're all aware of and recognize the importance of, but really don't carry out. By just having the one goal for an entire week and following through, one could achieve a feeling of success and the desire to continue on with other small but beneficial changes.

Blumenthal targets a lot of other 'known' issues such as adequate sleep, food choices, additives, vitamins etc. Some of the suggestions such as breathing right, taking at least a half hour a day for yourself, cleaning products and identifying additives provided lots of food for thought. Each topic is explored and the benefits explained. If you're already following that week's suggestions there are ideas for taking it up a notch.

I think the idea of one small change a week is great. However I think some of the ideas would require greater introspection and thought, such as Participate in Your Life (mindful thinking), Find Your Own Spirituality and Living with Purpose. However, that being said, 52 Small Changes does introduce the ideas for consideration.

The book is cleanly laid out, easy to read and includes pictures, graphs and blurb boxes. I think a reader could pick and choose ideas from the book that are pertinent to the changes they would like to see in their lives. I don't think every idea would work for everyone. Do I think I could make 52 changes this year? No, but I will be making some and 52 Small Changes has given me some ideas.

Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century

Farewell is an interesting book loaded with detail and informed speculation about the activities of a disgruntled KGB officer who was determined to do damage to the organization and officials who, in his view, shunted him aside and prevented him from attaining a positiion of prominence and deserved affluence. During the first two years of the 1980's, Lt.Col. Vladimir Vetrov copied, photographed, and passed on to the West truly massive amounts of evidence that Farewell's authors, Kostin and Raynaud, present as demonstrating the near-total reliance of the Soviet Union on espionage rather than its own research and development to maintain parity in the arms race that characterized the long Cold War from the end of WW II until the collapse of Eastern Europe's multi-state edifice of communism in 1989.

Contrary to what a casual observer unfamiliar with the case might imagine, Vetrov did not work through the American CIA, the British MI6, or any other well developed western intelligence organization. Instead, Vetrov cleverly contacted the French, who at the time had no intelligence operatives in the Soviet Uniion. With an added touch of irony, while working as a KGB officer in France, Vetrov made his initial overtures to the French DST (Directorate of Territorial Surveillance), an internal counter-intelligence organization roughly comparable to the FBI. The DST had neither the experience nor the legally mandated authority to handle foreign agents in intelligence gathering. However, when the first documents provided by Vetrov were brought to the attention of the newly elected French President, Francois Mitterand, he supported the DST in its efforts to continue with Operation Farewell.

One consequence of Vetrov's use of the French DST was that he was able to rely on his years of experience and training as a KGB intelligence officer to direct his own activities, including his first contacts with an ordinary French businessman rather than a government official, and subsequently with the DST personnel to whom he passed on information. According to the authors, and based on interviews with former KGB officers and others with expert knowledge of intelligence and counter-intelligence, had Vetrov followed the initial proposals of the DST or operated according to any other set of established intelligence agency protocols, his operation would have been uncovered almost immediately, rather than continuing over a period of two productive years.

Vetrov's dissatisfaction with his circumstances as a KGB officer may, at first glance, seem unwarranted, inconsistent with the comfortable circumstances in which he and his family lived. Their Moscow apartment, by Soviet standards, was spacious and luxuriously furnished, even containing art work of substantial monetary value and attesting to the good taste of Vetrov and his wife Svetlana. Vetrov had his own car, a fairly unusual convenience, and his son's education at a university or university-level technical institute was sure to be paid for by the state. In addition, Vetrov had a rustic home in the country where he and his family went for weekends and vacations, escaping the crowds, traffic, and Stalinist drabness of Moscow.

Nevertheless, Vetrov was convinced, I think with good reason, that over the course of his life, his originality, his pertinent scientific and technical knowledge, and his hard work had been discounted, leaving him in the position of a bureaucratic mediocrity to be retired without promotion to the coveted rank of full Colonel. The legitimate means Vetrov used in seeking advancement, such as preparing on his own initiative thoroughly informed analyses and detailed forecasts of the Soviet systems scientific and technological capabilities and limitations, were routinely ignored.

Vetrov attributed his keenly felt lack of recognition to a totalistic state that, in all its manifestations, had become thoroughly corrupt. Granting of promotions and awards for exemplary service were based on nepotism or were outcomes of bureaucratic in-fighting, rather than demonstrated merit. A mid-career officer without connections could expcet little more than to be routinely compensated and left alone, denied the opportunity to serve at higher institutional levels working on the most prestigious projects and being acknowledged accordingly.

Given the relative ease and comfort of his position, however, it seems reasonable to wonder why Vetrov didn't just ride it out and retire to a quiet life in the country. Yes, he was ambitious, intelligent, hard-working, and under-valued, but was this sufficient reason to risk his future and the future of his family simply to avenge being overlooked and unappreciated?

The authors gave a good deal of thought to this question and even consulted psychologists, criminologists, and others with the kind of expertise and insight that might provide a plausible answer. They offer a fairly lengthy and, I think, unconvincing account of Vetrov's self-destruction. My reading of Farewell is that, yes, Vetrov was motivated by revenge, but he was also arrogant, self-centered, mercurial, and impulsive, an impatient, even action-seeking man who drank excessively and indulged in numerous extra-marital affairs. His conflicting accounts of his lengthy sexual relationship with a KGB translator named Ludmilla Ochinka betrayed the fact that he was torn between his family and a life with his mistress. Wracked with ambivalence, he vacillated endlessly in what must have been an estraordinarily stressful set of circumstances, and may or may not have been exacerbated by threats Ludmilla made to expose him.

Vetrov, clearly, was not the sort who was able to say "Oh, what the Hell?" and let it go at that. His frustration with his career in the KGB, exacerbated by the stress and uncertainty of his personal life, generated rebellion that eventually proved self-destructive.

Interestingly, Vetrov received little in the way of material compensation for documents that NATO countries considered invaluable. Greed was not his motive, nor was he consistently inclined to leave the Sovite Union. Vetrov was convinced that he was a good deal smarter than the colleagues who might find him out, and he maintained his conviction that he could provide for his material needs and personal safety without gifts or extrication to France or elsewhere. He needed the French only as a mail-pouch contact with the outside world. Otherwise, he could take care of himself.

Kostin and Rayanud, in the final chapter of their book, make an effort to assess the geo-political importance of Operation Farewell, including its role in ending the Cold War. Certainly, the more than three thousand documents that Vetrov was able to send to the West gave ample evidence that Soviet intelligence was remarkably effective in at least one important way: stealing top secret, highly technical, weapons-grade information from the U.S., France, and most of the West. Vetrov, thus, provided nations on the capitaist side of the Iron Curtain with information they needed to bring an end to the sieve-like seepage of precious informaton that had enabled the Soviets to maintain military parity with the West. Furthermore, by not publicly acknowledging what they knew to be serious breaches of security, Western nations could provide misinformation, thereby slowing Soviet scientific and technological progress even more than if they had simply plugged the innumerable leaks.

Finally, and this is a point emphasized by Kostin and Raynaud, when Ronald Reagan decided to escalate the Cold War, he forced the Soviet Union to invest more of its scarce resources in weapons development. By shutting off the supply of stolen scientific and technological information of military importance, Operation Farewell contributed to convincing the Soviet Union that it could not compete without driving itself into bankruptcy.

All this happened at a very interesting, even precarious, time: The U.S. had just elected a hawkish president, Ronald Reagan, who rejected detente and had quickly installed Pershiing missiles in Western Europe. The French had just elected a socialist president, Francois Mitterand, who had appointed several communists to his cabinet, and who favored elimination of secret services of all kinds. And Vladimir Vetrov had had enough of being taken for granted and ignored.

The real impact of Operation Farewell on the fall of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War is difficult to assess. The story, however, is a good one, well told and well worth reading, even though its protagonist, at the end, is executed by the KGB he had sought to discredit.

Happy This Year!: The Secret to Getting Happy Once and for All

A practical, yet inspirational work that proposes it’s the inner world of our psyches that determines happiness, not outside forces. We have control over our own happiness and this powerful book offers concrete advice on how to tap into it and nourish it all year round. The author focuses explicitly on the positive ways we can establish a higher set-point in our thoughts, speech, and actions, resulting in greater sustainable levels of happiness. Regardless of what the year and your life may bring, we can become measurably and sustainably happier.

I've read several books on happiness, and this one is just delightful! Weaving personal stories, international culture, and do-able suggestions together, Will Bowen constructs an upbeat and engaging experience for the reader.

The thing I like best about "Happy This Year" is that the approach is so practical. The book presents down-to-earth, effective ways to (well, let's face it) change one's thinking habits and belief in oneself. Because, basically, that's what it takes to feel lasting happiness.

I did most of the work Bowen suggests, and raised my happiness "set-point" to a level I never knew existed. Even though I recently encountered some difficult life challenges, I've realized that my happiness level returns to its new high set-point as long as I keep practicing what I learned from this book.