As I think about happiness, of course I think a lot about my sister and her recent diagnosis of diabetes.

My sister’s diagnosis came at an absolutely crazy time: in the space of ONE DAY (really, in the space of five hours), she got engaged, made an offer on a house with her fiancé, and was diagnosed with diabetes Type 1—and then had to go back to the set of The Shield, where they were shooting her script. In the same month, her book Bass-Ackwards and Belly Up came out, and my mother came for a visit.

Getting engaged was a tremendous source of happiness, of course—she’s marrying a terrific guy, who gets huge credit for being the one who pushed her to get to a doctor when she wasn’t feeling well, and who has been a tremendous source of support during this whole process.

But happy as it is, getting engaged is stressful. Immediately, the questions start: Where will the wedding be held? What’s the date? What kind of wedding do you want? My sister isn’t the type who’s been planning her wedding for her whole life, so she had a lot of decisions to make.

And making a bid on a house—the negotiations, the arguments about who will fix what, and of course, the enormous amount of money involved, make it very stressful. And then, they got the house! That means deciding on paint colors, options for wood floors, and all the rest.

I can’t tell whether getting the diabetes diagnosis in the midst of these happy (if stressful) distractions has made it harder or easier for my sister. It’s nice that she has happy things to think about. But I worry that the anxiety about the diabetes has clouded a joyous time.

So what can I do for her? I can’t help her with the diabetes, and I can’t help her fix up her new house, but I can help with her upcoming move. I think it’s fair to say that I got her share, as well as my share, of the clearing-clutter genes. She is…shall we say…a bit challenged in that area. So my plan now is to help her by going out to L.A. to help her get organized before she moves into the new house.

The last time she moved, I came out to help her pack, and in the process, we tossed or gave away about 30% of her possessions. (One example: I discovered a laundry bag in a closet that contained mostly unopened mail that she’d shipped from New York when she’d moved to L.A. six years before.) She’s likely due for another clearance.

I remember our conversation just before I left for the airport at the end of that visit. She was slumped on the couch, exhausted, a bottle of Diet Coke held limply in her hand.

“You’re glad to see me go!” I said.

“But I’m so glad you came,” she said sincerely.

Clearing clutter, I can do. So that’s what I’ll do.

A key purpose for the Happiness Project is to be able to cope well with difficult events when, inevitably, they happen.

Well, bad news has come. My sister has diabetes.

The news unfolded slowly. At first, the doctors thought she had Type 2, even though she doesn’t fit the usual profile—she’s young, thin, fit. That diagnosis was a blow, but two things cushioned it.

First, she’d been feeling lousy, and getting her blood sugar under control made her feel much better. So the diagnosis gave her an immediate boost. Also, we were all relieved she didn’t have Type 1, which requires daily insulin shots and can’t be remedied by diet and exercise (some Type 2 cases can be).

Well—she does have Type 1. And the times we’d said “Thank goodness it isn’t Type 1!” made the diagnosis seem all the worse.

So how to cope? She’s so far away—she’s in L.A., I’m in New York—I felt helpless. What to do? I bought a book to understand the issues (I admit that I got Diabetes for Dummies, but it was just the right thing for my level). I investigated the state of medical research, and that was encouraging.

It took me a while to grasp just how tough diabetes is. I thought you had to eat healthfully, exercise, and give yourself a daily shot; I assumed that taking the shot and never eating dessert were the toughest parts. But it turns out that, for my sister at least, those aren’t the real challenges.

What’s harder is the constant monitoring and adjustment—her blood sugar is up, or worse, it’s down. And even when she eats the same things, her body may react differently, so she can’t just settle on a routine. The response isn’t predictable.

With a writing partner, my sister writes for the TV cop drama The Shield and is writing the sequel to her new young-adult novel, Bass-Ackwards and Belly Up. So she’s typing for about 10 hours each day. Already her fingers are sore from being pricked for blood tests. Not a big deal when you think about complications like amputation and blindness, but it’s the kind of minor discomfort that can make you crazy.

And diabetes is relentless. There’s no respite. My sister’s getting married in May, and she can’t have a raucous, indulgent bachelorette party or eat a big piece of wedding cake. She can’t take a day off for her birthday or New Year’s.

Her doctor told her, “I can help you manage it, but I can’t get that monkey off your back.” My sister says she’s fine day-to-day, but thinking about the years stretching ahead makes her feel overwhelmed. And all the complications that can arise …

Daniel Gilbert’s new book Stumbling on Happiness explains that when we’re faced with serious setbacks, a mechanism which he calls the “psychological immune system” kicks in to help us make the best of it, to help us see ways in which a situation has positive aspects.

I could feel myself starting to do this. “Well, you’ll be eating well and exercising regularly,” I said to her. “Once you get this under control, you’ll do great.”

Also, people feel more fortunate and happier when they compare themselves to those who are worse off than those who are better off. My sister deployed this strategy.

“Yes,” she said. “And think about all the other things it could have been. It could be a lot worse.”

What she didn’t say, and I didn’t say, was that it could have been a lot worse – but it could have been nothing at all.

After college, my roommate was in a bad car accident, and I flew out to Hawaii to see her. She was wearing a halo brace with bolts drilled into her skull.

“Do you feel lucky to be alive?” I asked.

“Well, actually,” she said, “I feel like I really wish I hadn’t been in a damn car crash.”

It’s not easy always to stay focused on the positive. Psychological immune system–do your stuff.

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides…”
– Goethe

Yesterday’s New York Times pointed out that many former jocks have trouble staying in shape once they’re no longer active in their sports.

One reason given is that people who participated on teams and in competition are used to extrinsic motivation—that is, they do it to win external rewards or avoid external punishments. When the outside force disappears, they stop exercising.

On the other hand, people who exercise as part of a commitment to health are intrinsically motivated—they do it for their own satisfaction, without outside incentives.

And today, the Wall Street Journal reported on “Pathways to Rewards,” an anti-poverty program that rewards people for actions like getting a job or updating prescriptions with “points” to cash in for DVD players, school supplies, etc. This program means to change people’s habits by giving them extrinsic rewards.

It’s better that people be intrinsically motivated to do things like pay their rent or exercise. So the question is: does giving people extrinsic motivation help them develop intrinsic motivation?

This is a tough issue. Getting rewarded for doing something changes people’s attitudes. If you pay people to do something, they often stop doing it for fun or on their own; being paid turns it into “work.” Parents, for example, are warned not to pay or reward children for reading—that teaches kids only to do it for pay.

On the other hand, a tangible reward can be a big boost, though maybe it only works to develop intrinsic motivation if the motive is already lurking there.

In high school, I wanted to redecorate my bedroom. I wrote a long proposal to my parents to lay out my case. My father answered, “Ok. But in return you have to do something—for twenty minutes at a time, four days a week.” Suspicious, I asked what I’d have to do, but he wouldn’t tell me. I had to take the deal or leave it. How bad could twenty minutes, four times a week, be? So I took the deal.

My father’s deal was that I had to spend that time running. He’d been a college tennis player who’d gone out of shape until he took up running—so he was a real believer.

I played sports in high school, but was such a terrible athlete that sports were boring and humiliating. Mostly I liked to lie around and read. I’d already half-heartedly tried to convince myself to start running, but just couldn’t work up the motivation. My father’s deal got me to commit to a regimen—and had an enormous impact. I realized that I liked exercising, I just didn’t like sports.

So in my case, extrinsic motivation did unleash intrinsic motivation.

Money is an extremely effective extrinsic motivator. I suspect that’s why the children of rich parents sometimes suffer from a lack of direction. Without the extrinsic motivation of needing to earn, they must rely on intrinsic motivation—and that’s much trickier.

In reading about Warren Buffett’s $31 billion gift, I was dumbstruck by the astonishing fact that NONE of Buffett’s three children graduated from COLLEGE. This would be a quite extraordinary…failure…for any ordinary middle-class family in Omaha.

I have to believe this was because their father was Warren Buffett. All that money, even before it added up to $44 billion, even with their father’s insistence that they shouldn’t count on getting his fortune, could be enough to mess up anyone’s motivation.

Last week, an acquaintance explained to me at some length how he’d managed to give up coffee. I’m a deeply committed coffee-drinker, so I must confess I wasn’t very interested hearing his tactics.

But what did interest me was the fact that he didn’t have any particular reason to give up coffee. No, it didn’t make him jittery, and it didn’t hurt his stomach, and as long as he stopped drinking it after dinner, it didn’t mess with his sleep.

“So why give it up?” I asked.

He didn’t really have a good explanation. I got the impression that he felt that he just ought to give it up, because he enjoyed it too much; there had to be something “wrong” or addictive or unhealthy about liking his morning coffee to such a degree.

Some people give up coffee for health reasons. True, coffee does have some bad health effects. But it also has some good health effects. So it’s hard to know exactly how that cuts. And the increased alertness that coffee brings! Can’t underestimate the importance of that.

And from a happiness perspective, the tiny joys that we can experience every day are extraordinarily important. Samuel Johnson wrote, “It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.” The small but real gratification of daily coffee helps build our happiness.

Samuel Johnson also said, “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.” I think that’s true of child-rearing, or workplace rules, or coffee-drinking. Why be so severe with yourself, to no obvious purpose? It’s important to keep a little cushion of small pleasures as part of daily life.

(Given the topic, it’s very appropriate that I’ve twice quoted Johnson; he was a compulsive tea-drinker.)

Of course, I’m justifying my own habits of drinking as much coffee—and tea and Diet Coke—as I can get my hands on every day. Until 7:00 p.m.

Now I know some people will say, “I gave up coffee, and it was tough, but now I feel much better.” I’m skeptical. Do they really feel better, or do they tell themselves they feel better, to justify having given up the coffee? But I suppose from a happiness-project perspective, it doesn’t matter how they “really” feel—if they think they feel better, they do feel better.

But as for me, drinking coffee makes me happy.