Dick Van Dyke turned 100 on December 13, 2025. And he published a book with a series of stories titled 100 Rules for Living to 100: An optimist’s guide to a happy life. An article by Sarah Lemire at Today on November 18, 2025 is titled EXCLUSIVE: At Almost 100, Dick Van Dyke Won’t Sit Still – and Is Eyeing 1 More Big Role. She notes that he had a 75-year career. There is another article by Liz McNeil in People magazine on November 25, 2025 titled Dick Van Dyke ‘Feels Pretty Good for 100.’ Here’s Why He’s Optimistic About His Centennial Birthday (Exclusive).
On pages 105 to 113 there is a great story, titled Tell Your Hardest Story:
“In December 1973, I found a seat in a circle of chairs in a grim, fluorescent-lit meeting room at the Brentwood Veterans’ Hospital. Around me were military vets, young and old, all hospitalized for drug and alcohol addiction and gathered for regular group therapy. I was there as a visitor, doing research for my role as an alcoholic in The Morning After, a TV movie being shot elsewhere in the facility.
It was weird for these guys to have a Hollywood actor eavesdropping on their raw, real-life stories of struggle, I could tell. Right off the bat, I needed to assure them that I would be a sympathetic listener. ‘The subject of my movie is very personal to me,’ I began, ‘because I myself am an alcoholic.’
Their faces flickered with surprise. At the time, only my family and a handful of other people in my life knew about my drinking problem.
‘So, I understand some of what you’re going through. But really, I’m here to listen and learn.”
Then Dick decided to go public.
“The story got picked up across the country. As expected, when Mr. Goody Two-shoes admitted his addiction to the world, the public was shocked. Friends and colleagues from wherever I’d lived and worked called to offer sympathy and encouragement, reporting that they, and everyone they knew could barely believe the news. Within a week, I was getting letters by the thousand – people were moved and incredibly understanding. Many detailing how alcoholism had impacted them and their loved ones.
That reaction spurred me to go even more public. I appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, one of the best interviews I’ve ever done, and I told my story onstage in Washington, DC, for a press conference with other celebrity alcoholics. I am told that rehab facilities still show The Morning After to this day.
…. Each time I put a new layer of it into words, I feel a release of the power that alcoholism had over me. I was separating myself from the disease, seeing my experience as a battle with the disease. Telling my story was giving me power and freedom.
Each of us has our own hard stories of crisis and struggle. When we hold them in, out of fear or shame, they control us. But when we tell our stories, we’re in the driver’s seat. And when we share those stories, even just among our friends and family, we are literally helping one another to survive, just like that brotherhood of vets.”
Pages 9 and 10 have a story titled Make Your Own Rules. On page 10 Dick has the following weasel words about his rules and stories:
“I readily admit that you might find variations of the same rule emerging in multiple stories here. That’s because my life, like everyone else’s, has its personality-specific ongoing themes – questions that pop up, over and over again, in different contexts, old challenges that look different in each new light, wisdom learned and forgotten and learned again.
I might also add that, for some of these stories, there’s not exactly a rule or even a specific question. Sometimes that’s because I know there’s some nugget of meaning in the story, but I haven’t figured out what it is. Maybe you can! Other times, it’s just a funny story, plain and simple. Because don’t we all sometimes just need comic relief?
Finally, if you’re inclined to count up these rules to see if there are exactly one hundred, as advertised in the title, your math might disappoint you, just a little. Quality over quantity, as the saying goes, right? I can assure you that this book will deliver enough main rules, sub-rules, ancillary rules, and multipart rules to last you a lifetime, yes, all the way to one hundred!”
His book doesn’t bother to number those stories or even give us a Table of Contents. I got suspicious about whether there really were a hundred, and then wrote down the following list of all the story titles (grouped ten at a time):
Don’t Act Your Age
Make Your Own Rules
Examine Your Head
Learn to Fall
Find Your Passion in Your Past
Tolerate and Cherish Your Little Brother
Face Your Fear
Find “The New You” Inside “The Old You”
Find Your People – A Story in Several Parts
Figure Out Who You Aren’t
Don’t Litter: Tips for Safety and Hygiene on Family Road Trips in the 1950s
Don’t Count on “The Big Break”
Hone Your Bit (Every Job Is Training for the Next One)
Don’t Do Live Morning TV
Some Secrets You Shouldn’t Tell
Eggs Again? Some Failures Are Just That
Dance with Chita
Go Nuts (But Maybe Not That Nuts)
Suck Up to the Landlady
Speak Up for Your Family
It Doesn’t Take a Good Boss to Do Great Work
Accept Your Limitations
Win an Oscar
Stay on the Phone
Make Christmas with What You’ve Got
Don’t Trust Machines
Reconsider the Boogeyman
Tell Your Hardest Stories
Play Against Type
Retire on Your Own Terms
Remain Anonymous
Start a Band
Commit to Play
Save All That Artwork
Believe in Fate
Take Your Doubts to the Desert
Accept “Rescue” with Grace
See the Pattern to Get Past It
Help Someone Find Their Voice: Do’s and Don’ts
Reimagine Your Legacy
Read the Fine Print
Learn from Animals: 3 Species, 4 Rules
Get a Good DJ
Write It Down
Bond Through Crisis
Be Someone’s Baker
Get Frank: A Meditation on Old Rifts
Remember the Good Stuff, Leave the Rest Behind
Reminisce While You Can
Get a Great Sidekick
Clear the Air
Get a Second Opinion (and a Third and a Fourth…)
Learn from Teaching
Cross Off Regrets
Learn from Shame
Never Call “Cut”
Don’t Match Jimmy
Don’t Live in the Past
It Pays to Go to the Gym
Build a Slide and Grandkids Will Come
Transmogrify Halloween (On Family Traditions)
The Clothes Make the Gnome
Stay Tall Inside
Hand Over the Keys
Read While You Can
Do Get All Judgy (When You’re Watching TV)
Learn a New Way to Fall
Carpe Chita
Remember Honestly
Live with Regrets
Your Purpose Doesn’t Need to be Grand
You Will Not Be Alone
Save the Afterlife for After Life
You Can’t Protect Your Survivors
Find Your Arlene
As you can see, there are just seventy-five. The book could have more honestly been titled Seventy-Five Rules from My 75-Year Career: An optimist’s guide to a happy life.
The wreath was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.
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