The city of Stockholm, Sweden consists of 14 islands that are spanned by more than 50 bridges. It's a beautiful, clean, culturally rich place that's ranked among the best urban centers in the world. I'm hoping that in the coming year you will develop a certain resemblance to it. With a little luck and a clear intention to forge strong new links, you will connect the many fragmented areas of your life, creating a unified network that ensures each part is humming in resonance with the whole. In fact, let's call 2011 your Bridge-Building Year.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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Conventional wisdom implies that the best problems are those that place you under duress. There's supposedly no gain without pain. Stress is allegedly an incomparable spur for calling on resources that have been previously unavailable or dormant. Nietzsche's aphorism, "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger," has achieved the status of a maxim.

We half-agree. But it's clear that stress also accompanies many mediocre problems that have little power to make us smarter. Pain frequently generates no gain. We're all prone to become habituated, even addicted, to nagging vexations that go on and on without rousing any of our sleeping genius.

There is, furthermore, another class of difficulty -- let's call it the delightful dilemma -- that neither feeds on angst nor generates it. On the contrary, it's fun and invigorating, and usually blooms when you're feeling a profound sense of being at home in the world. The problem of writing this book is a good example. I've had abundant fun handling the perplexing challenges with which it has confronted me.

Imagine a life in which at least half of your quandaries match this profile. Act as if you're most likely to attract useful problems when joy is your predominant mood. Consider the possibility that being in unsettling circumstances may shrink your capacity to dream up the riddles you need most; that maybe it's hard to ask the best questions when you're preoccupied fighting rearguard battles against boring or demeaning annoyances that have plagued you for many moons.

Prediction: As an aspiring lover of pronoia, you will have a growing knack for gravitating toward wilder, wetter, more interesting problems. More and more, you will be drawn to the kind of gain that doesn't require pain. You'll be so alive and awake that you'll cheerfully push yourself out of your comfort zone in the direction of your personal frontier well before you're forced to do so by fate's kicks in the ass.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.