Think yourself happy: your

ANY hardworking optimist can spin discontent into good content. Don’t believe it? Ask Kanwer Singh, better known (of course?) as Humble the Poet, the Canadian-born rapper, YouTuber and poet, whose new book Things No One Else Can Teach Us is a how-to guide to making lemonade when there aren’t any lemons around to begin with.

In the book, Singh draws on his own extraordinary personal history of near bankruptcy, becoming a rapper, and being the victim of racial prejudice to assert how a tweak in mindset can turn negatives into positives (really). Here are some of Singh’s most cheerful mantras, designed to browbeat even the most resolute cynic.

Waste not

Look after the pennies and the pounds still have a mind of their own. Singh recounts the time he was scammed into handing over $1,000 by a woman who claimed his car had collided with hers and caused $2,000 of damage (it hadn’t). “Looking back at it now, I see that $1,000 as the tuition fee to the school of life,” he says. “It paid for the realisation that I, as much as I hate to admit it, am a bit of a romantic and I want to see the best in people ... I learned it’s better