The 24/7 Happy Hour. Be positive, upbeat and perky at all times. Once, the job of corporate functionaries was to make things happen. Today, their mission is apparently to keep their colleagues company in the office. As "How Full Is Your Bucket?" asserts, "Ninety-nine out of every 100 people report that they want to be around more positive people." Every book in the genre enjoins a relentless positivity of outlook. In the "Tuesdays With Morrie"-like fable of "The Present," the anonymous "young man" chirps to the wise "old man," "So, if what I believe and do today is positive, I help create a better tomorrow!"

In fact, negative thoughts -- as toward the boss who laid you off or passed you over for a promotion -- will not only be visible to your comrades, they "can be harmful to your health and might even shorten your life span." If you happen to be downsized, right-sized or outsourced again, just grin and bear your smiley face to the next potential employer, as the happy folks in "We Got Fired! . . . And It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us" advise.

Avoid Victimism and Anyone Who Indulges in It. People who fail at being positive -- and dwell morbidly on their last demotion or downsizing, for example -- easily fall into what "The 8th Habit" diagnoses as "the mind-set of victimism and culture of blame." Avoid them, even though "it's very easy to hang out and share suffering with people who are committed to lose." Poor people, we discover in "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind," are that way because they "choose to play the role of the victim." Avoid them too.

Masters of the Universe. Being positive and upbeat not only improves your health and popularity, it actually changes the world. Yes, your thoughts can alter the physical universe, which, according to "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind," "is akin to a big mail-order department," in which you " 'order' what you get by sending energetic messages out to the universe." The author ascribes this wisdom to the "Law of Attraction," which was explained scientifically in the 2001 book "The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want." Thoughts exert a gravitational-type force on the world, so that "whenever you think something, the thought immediately attracts its physical equivalent." If you think money -- in a totally urgent, focused and positive way, of course -- it will come flying into your pockets.

The Mice Come Out Ahead. Although the plot of "Who Moved My Cheese?" centers on two tiny, maze-dwelling, cheese-dependent people named Hem and Haw, there are also two subsidiary characters, both mice. When the cheese is moved, the tiny people waste time ranting and raving "at the injustice of it all," as the book's title suggests. But the mice just scurry off to locate an alternative cheese source. They prevail, we learn, because they "kept life simple. They didn't overanalyze or overcomplicate things." In the mysteriously titled "QBQ! The Question Behind the Question," we are told that questions beginning with "who" or "why" are symptoms of "victim thinking." Happily, rodents are less prone to it than humans. That may be why we never learn the identity of the Cheese Mover; the who-question reveals a dangerous human tendency to "overanalyze," which could lead you to look upward, resentfully, toward the C-suites where the true Masters of the Universe dwell.