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I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in—no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
A few months ago, in a post about the resolution to Join or start a group, I threw out a suggestion: You might consider launching a group for people who were interested in pursuing their own happiness projects.
As I explained, I think this would be great. People could swap ideas, build enthusiasm, give each other accountability for doing happiness projects—and not only that—just the fact of joining a group, whatever the focus might be, would build happiness.
I promised that if people were interested, I’d create a starter kit to help get the ball rolling. To my shock and delight, more than a thousand people have written to request the starter kit. Zoikes! Sign up here to get your own kit.
It’s very exciting to see the first few local Happiness Project Groups begin to take shape. Who’s next?
—Michael has started a group in Los Angeles.
—Wendi has started a group in Gainesville, Fla.
—Elizabeth has started a group in Waterville, Maine.
Elizabeth reports: “I introduced the happiness toolbox, photocopied the weekly topics pages and have started to do the projects as an adjunct to our group support. At this point almost everyone in the Women's Group has signed up for the Happiness Project Group.”
—I’ve heard about groups forming in D.C., Chicago, and the SF Bay area. More on those soon.
If you have friends in those cities, please let them know that these groups that are forming.
Also, if you’ve started a happiness-project group yourself, please set up a Facebook Group for it and add yourself to the Group Directory. (This sounds like a pain, but it’s not as arduous as it sounds—but if you can’t deal with these logistics, don’t worry about it.)
Now, I realize that many (or perhaps even most) of the people starting happiness-project groups are forming them with friends. In that case, you don’t need help spreading the word. Please do go ahead and make a Facebook Group for yourself and add yourself to the Group Directory, anyway.
In the future, I’m hoping to be able to offer certain things to the Groups and the Group Leaders, so I need to be able to find you! Also, a directory will allow the groups to communicate among themselves.
One observation for those who are considering forming a group: It takes special energy to start something. The number of people who are willing to get something rolling is much smaller than the number of people who will join up. As Samuel Johnson noted, “The production of something, where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced.” But every time I’ve made the effort to start something (for example, my two children's-literature reading groups), I've ended up being very happy that I did.
Keep me posted about these groups! I can’t tell you how interested I am to hear about what everyone is doing.
* On Gimundo, I ran across a video that shows 500 years of female faces in Western art in less than three minutes. Mesmerizing.
* Again, if you're interested in forming a group for people who are working on their own happiness projects—to share ideas, provide accountability, and have fun—you can sign up for a starter kit here.
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During my study of happiness, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies. There’s something peculiarly compelling and instructive about hearing other people’s happiness stories.
Alex Fayle has a great blog, Someday Syndrome. There, he writes about the importance of not waiting until “someday” to pursue your dreams or make important changes but to put these ideas into action now.
He just released an e-book, Someday My Ship Will Come In, to help people make the transition from autopilot to conscious choices. It leads readers through a series of short lessons and exercises designed step-by-step to get people thinking and choosing.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Alex: Each day I choose to be happy. When I wake up in the morning, I think about my day and smile in anticipation. When I don't make this conscious choice, my day usually passes with low energy.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
When I was 18, I decided that it was too scary to follow my dreams, so I made a conscious choice not to pursue writing. I let fear put my dreams on hold for nearly 20 years, and I spent that entire time not feeling happy. Until I made the choice to follow my writing dreams, I never realized that I had the power to make myself happy. I always waited for it to come to me, saying, "Someday my ship will come in."
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
When I see all the work ahead of me and the all the details each task entails, I get paralyzed and depressed. However, when I focus on just the next step facing me, I'm intensely happy. I find the more I look to the future—the more I look for that Someday Ship—the less I act in the moment. Each day therefore I ask myself, What can I do right now to bring my dreams closer to fruition.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a happiness quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful?
I love this quote: “One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.“—Eleanor Roosevelt.
It leads me to my motto, which is: Life is a choice.
Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness or detracts a lot from their happiness?
Happiness is difficult to find when we live on autopilot and live without making conscious choices. The more aware we are our of choices and the more we decide to be happy, the happier we are. We tell ourselves, "Someday my ship will come in" and so put off making choices, believing that somehow happiness will come to us without having to act.
I wrote my e-book, Someday My Ship Will Come In, to help get readers thinking and choosing about their choices.
* I had a great time meeting Aidan Donnelley Rowley for coffee the other day—we were set up by Danielle LaPorte of White Hot Truth fame—and we could've talked all afternoon. She was nice enough to mention me and the Happiness Project in a post If You're Happy and You Know It ... on her excellent new blog, Ivy League Insecurities.
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: 13 tips for actually getting some writing accomplished.
One of the challenges of writing is ... writing. Here are some tips that I’ve found most useful for myself, for actually getting words onto the page:
1. Write something every workday and, preferably, every day. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Staying inside a project keeps you engaged, keeps your mind working, and keeps ideas flowing. Also, perhaps surprisingly, it’s often easier to do something almost every day than to do it three times a week. (This may be related to the abstainer/moderator split.)
2. Remember that if you have even just 15 minutes, you can get something done. Don’t mislead yourself, as I did for several years, with thoughts like, “If I don’t have three or four hours clear, there’s no point in starting.”
3. Don’t binge on writing. Staying up all night, not leaving your house for days, abandoning all other priorities in your life—these habits lead to burnout.
4. If you have trouble re-entering a project, stop working in midthought—even midsentence—so it’s easy to dive back in later.
5. Don’t get distracted by how much you are or aren’t getting done. I put myself in jail.
6. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that creativity descends on you at random. Creative thinking comes most easily when you’re writing regularly and frequently, when you’re constantly thinking about your project.
7. Remember that lots of good ideas and great writing come during the revision stage. I've found, for myself, that I need to get a beginning, middle, and an end in place, and then the more creative and complex ideas begin to form. So I try not to be discouraged by first drafts.
8. Develop a method of keeping track of thoughts, ideas, articles, or anything that catches your attention. That keeps you from forgetting ideas that might turn out to be important. Also, combing through these materials helps stimulate your creativity. My catch-all document, where I store everything related to happiness that I don’t have another place for, is more than 500 pages. Some people use inspiration boards; others keep scrapbooks. Whatever works for you.
9. Pay attention to your physical comfort. Do you have a decent desk and chair? Are you cramped? Is the light too dim or too bright? Put your hand in a salute-style position—if you feel relief with your eyes shaded, your desk is too brightly lit. Check your body, too: Lower your shoulders, make sure your tongue isn’t pressed against the top of your mouth, don’t sit in a contorted way. Being physically uncomfortable tires you out and makes work seem harder.
10. Try to eliminate interruptions—by other people, e-mail, your phone, or poking around the Internet—but don’t tell yourself that you can only work with complete peace and quiet.
11. Over his writing desk, Franz Kafka had one word: “Wait.” My brilliantly creative friend Tad Low, however, keeps a different word on his desk: “Now.” Both pieces of advice are good.
12. If you’re stuck, try going for a walk and reading a really good book. Virginia Woolf noted to herself: “The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw.”
13. At least in my experience, the most important tip for getting writing done? Have something to say! This sounds obvious, but it’s a lot easier to write when you’re trying to tell a story, explain an idea, convey an impression, give a review, or whatever. If you're having trouble writing, forget about the writing and focus on what you want to communicate. For example, I remember flailing desperately as I tried to write my college and law-school application essays. It was horrible—until in both cases I realized I had something I really wanted to say. Then the writing came easily, and those two essays are among my favorites of things I’ve ever written.
Teaser for The Happiness Project book (due out in January)—there I write about my experience when I wrote a novel in a month, inspired by Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! Yes, you can write a real novel in one month. It was a lot of fun.
* I always find something great on Dumb Little Man.
* If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Page on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.
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One of my personal major, constant happiness challenges is trying to deal constructively with feelings of anger and irritability. Yesterday morning, my father-in-law mentioned a strategy that he recommends: When a person does something that annoys him (or whatever the negative emotion might be), he recalls a situation in which he made the same mistake himself. That makes him less angry, more understanding.
This strategy doesn’t work well for everyone, however. Some people, my father-in-law observed, are able to do this effectively, but for others, the recognition that they’ve behaved similarly doesn’t translate into greater understanding or forgiveness. And a third category isn’t able to see any parallels at all—to these folks, they must have had a good reason to have acted the way they did, and the mistakes others make are inexcusable.
I tried to apply this strategy myself. Here’s a small thing, but a recurrent source of anger in my life: My husband’s failure to answer my e-mails dealing with logistics. “Can we have dinner with so-and-so on June 22?” “Do you leave for London on the 3rd or the 4th?” “Did you reschedule the orthodontist’s appointment?” These e-mails just don’t get answered. It drives me nuts.
I’ve tackled this problem in lots of ways. I’ve tried working on the logistical side, and I’ve tried working on my mental-attitude side. But I had never thought to try to put myself in my husband’s place and ask myself, “Do I fail to answer people’s logistical e-mails?” The answer to that question is a resounding yes. I often procrastinate on doing exactly this kind of work. I just can’t face the kind of systematic thinking, checking, and replying that it takes.
OK. I think I do understand better now. Does it makes me less angry? Actually, I think it does. It also reminds me that I should do a better job of answering other people's logistical e-mails.
* Penelope Trunk has a fascinating post about how to decide where to live. This is a complicated, difficult, and extremely important decision that has a lot of significance for your happiness.
* Considering doing your own happiness project or have some ideas to share? Join the discussions on the Facebook Page to swap insights, strategies, and experiences.
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“Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists and makes it a little less difficult to practice those minor virtues of self-control and self-restraint, patience, discipline, and tolerance, which are the passive and not very exhilarating elements of goodness. Goodness is the only value that seems in this world of appearances to have any claim to be an end in itself. Virtue is its own reward. I am ashamed to have reached so commonplace a conclusion. ... I have gone a long way round to discover what everyone knew already.”—W. Somerset Maugham
* If you haven't seen my one-minute movie, The Years Are Short, you might enjoy seeing that.
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I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
This weekend, when I was home in Kansas City to go to my high-school reunion, I ran into an old family friend. “Let me tell you one of my personal secrets for happiness,” he said. “Control your exit.”
“’Control your exit?’” I asked. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It means, always be able to leave when you want. Drive yourself to a party instead of getting a ride, so you can leave when you’re ready. Try to go to someone else’s house, or a public place, instead of having people over to your house, because there’s nothing worse than seeing someone lean back and cross their legs when you’re ready to go to bed. Or else have people over to your house before some event—before a dinner reservation or a movie—so you have to leave by a certain time.”
My husband would certainly agree with this advice. He never agrees to go to a party on a boat, or to go on a bus tour, or to put himself in any situation that would prevent him from leaving whenever he wants. He feels trapped and unhappy if he knows he’s stuck.
It occurs to me that “Control your exit” is advice that’s figuratively true, too. For me, one of the most memorable pieces of advice from Stephen Covey's classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
is “Begin with the end in mind.” That is (if I remember correctly), know where you want to go. When you start or do something, maintain a vision of where you’re headed—especially important for people who are considering law school! Friends, don’t go unless you know where you want to end up!
Speaking of my husband and law, he applied this rule when he was considering post-law-school jobs. He thought that working as an assistant U.S. attorney sounded great, but he wasn’t sure what he’d do after that. What was the exit strategy? He knew he didn’t want to work in a law firm, and he wasn’t sure what other jobs would follow from a stint in the U.S. attorney's office; he was worried about taking a job that didn’t seem to lead to any other opportunities that interested him.
My newest Secret of Adulthood is that “the opposite of a great truth is also true.” It occurs to me that in some situations, not controlling your exit would lead to happiness. There’s a lot of happiness to be gained from spontaneity, impulse adventures, and unpredictable undertakings. Even in those cases, however, I imagine it’s better mindfully to embrace this idea of uncertainty—to know that you’re deliberately choosing to give up control of your exit—rather than to have it take you unawares. For instance, people often ask me, “Where is all this happiness project stuff going?” I’m not really sure, and I’m trying to embrace that uncertainty as exciting and fun, instead of letting my control-freak side become obsessed with certainty and control.
What do you think? Is a resolution to “Control your exit” more or less likely to lead to happiness? Maybe, as Bill Murray explained in Ghostbusters
, of “never getting involved with possessed people,” “Actually, it’s more of a guideline than a rule.”
* Gimundo had an interesting post about Happy News From the Recession: 5 Good Things about Hard Times. Encouraging information there!
* If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Page on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.
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There are certain images, phrases, songs, and memories that always make me happy.
For some reason, this line from Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson
strikes me as one of the funniest things I’ve ever read (and it's not even a quotation from Johnson):
"Lord Chesterfield being mentioned, Johnson remarked, that almost all of the celebrated nobleman's witty saying were puns. He, however, allowed the merit of good wit to his Lordship's saying of Lord Tyrawley and himself, when both were very old and infirm: 'Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years; but we don't choose to have it known.'"
An image that always makes me happy: the famous opening hat toss from The Mary Tyler Moore Show
. Mary Richards’s feeling of sudden exhilaration is familiar, but rare and precious.
A memory that always makes me happy: Early in our marriage, my husband walked into our bedroom in his boxers and announced, “I am LORD of the DANCE!” and started doing that Celtic dancing. I still laugh out loud every time I think of it. He’s never done it again, though I’ve often begged him for a repeat performance.
I like keeping a mental list of these kinds of things. It’s a way of cultivating an area of refuge.
Do you have any ways to give yourself a quick fix of happiness when you need one?
* Want to talk more about happiness? Join the Facebook Page.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Seven tips for making good conversation with a stranger.
I posted before about tips for knowing if you're boring someone and tips to avoid being a bore. But while it might be fairly easy to avoid topics that are likely to bore someone, it's much harder to figure out what to say if you want to be interesting. Making polite conversation can be tough.
“So where do you live?”
“Chelsea.”
“Really. I live on the upper east side.”
“Great …”
Painful silence.
Here are some strategies to try when your mind is a blank:
1. Comment on a topic common to both of you at the moment: the food, the room, the occasion, the weather. “How do you know our host?” “What brings you to this event?” But keep it on the positive side! Unless you can be hilariously funny, the first time you come in contact with a person isn’t a good time to complain.
2. Comment on a topic of general interest. A friend scans Google News right before he goes anywhere where he needs to make small talk, so he can say, “Did you hear that Justice Souter is stepping down from the bench?” or whatever might be happening.
3. Ask open questions that can’t be answered with a single word. “What’s keeping you busy these days?” This is a good question if you’re talking to a person who doesn’t have an office job. It’s also helpful because it allows people to choose their focus (work, volunteer, family, hobby) — preferable to the inevitable question (well, inevitable at least in New York City): “What do you do?”
A variant: “What are you working on these days?” This is a useful dodge if you ought to know what the person does for a living, but can’t remember.
4. If you do ask a question that can be answered in a single word, instead of just supplying your own information in response, ask a follow-up question. For example, if you ask, “Where are you from?” an interesting follow-up question might be, “What would your life be like if you still lived there?” If you ask, “Do you have children?” you might ask, “How are you a different kind of parent from your own parents?” or “Have you decided to do anything very differently from the way you were raised?”
5. Ask getting-to-know-you questions. “What newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to? What internet sites do you visit regularly?” These questions often reveal a hidden passion, which can make for great conversation.
6. React to what a person says in the spirit in which that that comment was offered. If he makes a joke, even if it’s not very funny, try to laugh. If she offers some surprising information (“Did you know that one out of every seven books sold last year was written by Stephanie Meyer?”), react with surprise. Recently, I’ve had a few conversations where the person I was talking to just never reacted to what I said. I was trying to be all insightful and interesting, and these two people reacted as though everything I said was completely obvious and dull. It was unsatisfying.
Now, what to do if a conversation is just not working, and there’s no way to use the “Excuse me, I need to go get something to drink” line? Recently, at a dinner party, the guy sitting on my right side was clearly very bored by me. He explained to me at length about how happiness didn’t really exist, but after setting me straight on that question didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and after a few failed attempts at other topics, after an awkward pause in the conversation (my fault as much as his), he said, “Um, so where are you from?” It was such a listless, uninspired effort that I leaned over, put my hand on his arm, and said meanly, “Now, Paul, surely we can do better than that!” and changed the conversation. (It is moments like that that make me happy that I basically gave up drinking.)
So what can you do when the conversation is such a struggle?
7. A friend argues that you should admit it! “We’re really working hard, aren’t we?” or “It’s frustrating—I’m sure we have interests in common, but we’re having a difficult time finding them.” Clearly this is a desperate measure, but my friend insists that it works. I’ve never had the gumption to try it, I have to admit.
What are some other strategies for starting an interesting conversation with a stranger? What have I overlooked? On a related note, here are some tips if you can't remember someone's name.
* I’m a huge fan of Twitter, in part because it has helped me find so many great writers and great information, and one person –- and blog -- that I discovered on Twitter is Gwen Bell. She writes about branding, social media, and creativity, and always has fresh, interesting things to say.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 20,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.
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From time to time, I post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness. During my research, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies.
I just finished a fascinating biography: Olivia Gentile’s Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds
, the story of Phoebe Snetsinger. In the 1950s, Snetsinger was a brainy, shy housewife with four children, and she was feeling depressed and trapped. A neighbor showed her a bird through binoculars (it happened to be a Blackburnian Warbler), and she saw a “blinding white light"—“Here was something that had been happening all my life, and I’d never paid any attention to it.” She became an ardent birder in a flash.
Time went on, and Snetsinger received a terrible diagnosis: She had cancer and just one year to live. Instead of giving up birding, she pursued birds for her “life list” with ever-increasing zeal. The cancer never caught up with her, and she traveled the world, had astonishing adventures, saw more than 8,000 bird species, and became one of the world’s leading birders, until she was killed at age 68 in Madagascar on a birding trip.
On the one hand, Life List is a beautiful story of intellectual passion, love of nature, self-education, self-reinvention, and high adventure. On the other hand, Snetsinger’s family paid a high price for her devotion to birding, and she seemed, many times, to abandon the proper instinct for self-preservation.
I’m fascinated by happiness projects of all sorts, and Phoebe Snetsinger’s happiness project enthralled me. There’s practically no overlap between the things that made Snetsinger happy and the things that make me happy, and I certainly have no interest in birds, and yet I learned a lot about happiness from reading about her life.
I asked the book’s author, Olivia Gentile, to do a happiness interview, because she’s obviously done a lot of thinking about happiness and the elements of a happy life. (For more info, check out her author Web site, which is much more interesting than the average site and well worth a visit!)
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Olivia: Spending time in nature! This might mean a walk in Central Park, a morning of watching the birdfeeder, a swim in a pond, or a hike up a mountain. I even get a little burst of happiness from flipping through my National Geographic.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
Well, I certainly didn’t know how soothing nature could be—I don’t think I gave the natural world a moment’s attention until I was in my 20s. And I didn’t really start appreciating nature until I began learning about Phoebe.
Also, when I was 18 I thought success (which to me meant getting good grades, winning a tennis match, getting into college, etc.) would bring me happiness. Since then I’ve realized that while those kinds of things might bring me satisfaction, they don’t have a lot to do with my happiness. Happiness is more about how we experience something than about whether we’re successful at it—i.e., I might be made happy by the feeling of the sun on my face during a tennis match, but I probably won’t be made happy by winning the match (at least not for more than a second, and not in a very deep way). Look at what happened with Phoebe: Birding made her ecstatic year after year, until she began focusing more on becoming the No. 1 birder than on the inherent pleasures of being in the field.
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Yes! I spend too much time on the Internet and watch too much cable news. And I worry too much about what people think of me.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
I still get shivers whenever I pick up Walden
—I’m a real sucker for all those exhortations to be true to yourself and make the most of every day.
Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness or detracts a lot from their happiness?
Some of my friends have gotten into meditation, and it has helped them get and stay happy. (I keep vowing to meditate regularly, but never seem to be able to do it.)
Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy—if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
My happiness has gone up and down a lot. My unhappiest time was during college, because I suffered from a lot of anxiety, and also because I was ashamed of my anxiety. After a few years of this, I finally got some good therapy and did some deep thinking about what kind of life I wanted for myself—this was how I started to realize that happiness is more about the way we experience things than what we accomplish. (By the way, I don’t claim to have mastered this lesson. I still get caught up in overachieving, but at least I know it’s bad for me.)
My happiest period began a couple of years ago, when my husband asked me to marry him. I was happy before he proposed, because I was in love with him, but it was hard for me to trust my happiness—to really relax into it—until I knew we were going to get married. This happiness was interrupted (to put it mildly) last fall, about eight months after we got married, when he became gravely ill with a twisted and perforated colon. He nearly died, and he was sick for three months. Now, he’s as good as new, but we’re both still recovering emotionally. We’re trying to use the experience as a reminder that you have to seize the moment and live each year as if it might be your last, because it might be. Phoebe’s story had taught me that, too, but I learned the lesson more vividly last fall.
* Want to talk more about happiness? Join the Facebook Group.
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One of my happiness-project resolutions is to Meditate on koans. In Buddhist tradition, a Zen koan (rhymes with Ken Cohen) is a question or a statement that can’t be understood logically. Monks meditate on koans as a way to abandon dependence on reason in their pursuit of enlightenment. The most famous koan is probably: “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?”
I'm haunted by my own koans – lines that flicker through my mind and evade logical thinking. One of my koans is from the Bible, Mark 4:25: “For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.”
This doesn’t really sound fair, on first reading! I think the meaning of Jesus’ words is something like, “Those who have sought to understand divine truth will learn more, and those who haven’t tried won’t even remember the little they’ve learned.”
But whatever Jesus meant in the context of that verse, I find myself thinking about it in the happiness context, and I’ve often reflected that this statement sums up one of the cruel truths about happiness, and about human nature generally: you get more of what you have.
When you feel friendly, people want to be your friend. When you feel sexy, people are attracted to you. When you feel confident, others have confidence in you.
This truth is cruel because so often, you want others to give you what you feel you’re lacking. It’s when you’re feeling isolated and awkward that you want people to be friendly. When you’re feeling ugly, you want someone to tell you how sexy you are. When you’re feeling insecure, you wish someone would express confidence in you.
During my happiness project, I’ve been startled to discover the efficacy of the third of my Personal Commandments: Act the way I want to feel.
This commandment is important for two reasons. First, although we think we act because of the way we feel, often we feel because of the way we act. So by acting the way we wish we felt, we can change our emotions – a strategy that is uncannily effective.
Second, the world’s reaction to us is quite influenced by the way we act toward the world. For example, in situation evocation, we spark a response from people that reinforces a tendency we already have — for example, if I act irritable all the time, the people around me are going to treat me with less patience and helpfulness, which will, in turn, stoke my irritability. If I can manage to joke around, I’ll evoke a situation in which the people around me were more likely to joke around, too.
Life isn’t fair. People with a propensity to good cheer will find themselves in a friendly, cheerful environment, while people who are already angry or crabby will find themselves surrounded by uncooperative, suspicious people. “For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.”
Which leads, as always, to the same conclusion: that even though it’s tempting sometimes to think that I’d be much happier if other people would behave differently toward me, the only person whose behavior I can change is myself. If I want people to be friendlier to me, I must be friendlier. If I want my husband to be tender and romantic, I must be tender and romantic. If I want our household atmosphere to be light-hearted, I must be light-hearted.
Goethe wrote: “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.” And he that brings a sunny day will find a sunny day waiting for him.
* The folks from the terrific site Wise Bread have done a great new book, 10,0001 Ways to Life Large on a Small Budget. It's an excellent resource, and the information is presented in an attractive, accessible, and even funny way. I got a lot of great ideas from the book.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 20,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.
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“The more I work, the more I see things differently, that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is.”—Giacometti
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
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I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in—no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a little stale. My routine, which I usually love so much, is starting to feel like a run on a hamster’s wheel.
Perfect timing—I can keep my resolution to “Make a break in my routine” and also to Stay connected to my past by going to Kansas City this weekend for my high-school reunion.
Kansas City is beautiful in the springtime. I can’t wait to see my old high-school pals; one of my best friends is taking the same flight from New York City to K.C., so we'll have three hours to talk. And—huge bonus—my sister was five years behind me in school, so she’ll be home from Los Angeles to go to her reunion at the same time (my parents are out of town, unfortunately).
I know that having a short break from my usual habits will re-invigorate my appreciation for my everyday life.
I’m off!
* I was so pleased to hear that one of my favorite sites, Gimundo, is up and running again. It went dark for a while, but now it's active again and better than ever, providing "good news ... served daily."
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day ... or Quiz Day.
This Wednesday: Quiz: Do you make other people happy?
As put forth by the Second Splendid Truth:
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy;
one of the best ways to make other people is to be happy yourself.
Everyone accepts the Second Splendid Truth, Part A; however, Part B often isn’t as clear to people. But to focus on Part A here—how do you know if you’re making other people happy? What are some signs?
Are the following statements true for you:
- Do people seem to feel comfortable confiding in you?
- Do people follow your recommendations?
- Are you a source of material comfort or security for someone else?
- Do people whom you’ve introduced often go on to have a continuing relationship?
- Do people seem to drift toward you? Join a conversation that you’re having or sit down next to you at a meeting?
- Are you providing opportunities for other people—job leads, blind dates, contacts in a new city?
- Do people whom you hardly remember go out of their way to greet you warmly? Say, an intern who worked in your office three years ago or a former student?
- Do people seem to want to connect with you—by making plans or by e-mailing, calling, or texting?
- Do people seem energized by you? Do they smile and laugh in your presence?
Notice some items that are not on the list:
- Do people remember your birthday?
- Do people give you presents (say, for Mother's Day, or in recognition of an important milestone)?
- Do people express appreciation and gratitude for your efforts?
Even if you’re making people happy, they don’t always respond by making these gestures (which can be annoying).
A while back, I posted a quiz, "Are You the Person Whom Everyone Else Finds Difficult?" It was a lot easier to think of signs that you make people unhappy than you make people happy—perhaps because of the negativity bias. What am I missing? I feel like I've overlooked some obvious indicators. What are some other good signs that you make people happy?
* Many thoughtful readers have sent me the link to a fascinating article from The Atlantic, "What Makes Us Happy?" It's a great piece, plus I know the writer, Joshua Wolf Shenk, a little bit, which made it even more fun to read it.
* Yes, superfans, the Web site is ready! You should have received an e-mail from me with the link to my new site. Thanks for helping with this prelaunch phase—I'm so grateful. Soon I hope the site will be ready to be made public.
Superfans, let me ask you an additional favor. Unbelievable as this sounds, there are more than 2,400 superfans, so it would be an enormous help if, instead of e-mailing me directly with your suggestions or comments, you'd post to the Discussion Page on Facebook. That way, the Web developers can read what you've said without me having to act as an intermediary, and it's much quicker for me to read everyone's comments. Also, other users might be interested to see your response. Again, thanks. Have fun with the site!
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A friend who knows about my passionate interest in organ donation sent me a terrific new book, Larry's Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant—and Save His Life
. Part memoir, part travelogue, it’s the story of writer Daniel Asa Rose’s trip to China to help his ne'er-do-well cousin, Larry, get a kidney. Larry was on the U.S. waiting list, but it seemed clear that he might not live long enough for his turn to come, so the two headed to China. At that point in China, it was illegal for a Westerner to get a transplant (still true, I think), so they have a lot of strange adventures in trying to score an organ.
I really enjoyed the book just as a story—the difficult relationship between the cousins, the observations about Chinese culture, the unpredictable twists and turns in their quest. Also, it’s quite funny.
Larry's Kidney also got me all worked up, yet again, about the issue of organ donation. The shortage of organs in the United States is a dire problem, and we could do so much to alleviate it if we’d all just commit to donation.
Sign up with the online registry, sign a donor card, check the box at the DMV—or just tell your family that you want to donate. If the issue should arise, they’ll be consulted, and if they know your wishes, they can speak for you.
There are two reasons that it’s important to commit to donation. The first is obvious, but the second just occurred to me. First, one donor can save and improve the lives of dozens of other people, so we should all donate, if we can—it’s a rare privilege, actually, to die in a way that permits you to be a donor.
Second, because so few people do die in a way that allows their organs to be used, it’s critical to have an enormous base of potential donors. By committing to donation, and by telling other people that you’ve done so, you help create a culture in which it’s expected that people donate their organs. These cultural expectations make a big difference. Littering, wearing seat belts, driving after drinking, smoking in restaurants … just in my lifetime, I’ve seen huge shifts in the expectations for behavior. If “everyone” signs up to be an organ donor, everyone will sign up to be an organ donor.
Now, if you have a principled reason not to donate, fine. You get a pass. But ask yourself this: If you needed a kidney, would you accept one from a donor? If your child or sweetheart needed a kidney, would you put that name on the list? If you answer yes, then do your part. Sign up yourself.
Also, if you’re concerned about the exploitation of people in other countries for their organs, you undermine the demand for those organs by committing to donation.
It’s not a principled or religious belief that prevents many people from signing up—nope, we neglect to sign up from sheer laziness or from a vague desire to avoid thinking about death. Are those good reasons to neglect to do something so easy and so important?
Maybe you’re feeling frantically busy, so you can’t volunteer at that soup kitchen, or maybe you’re feeling strapped for cash, so you can’t donate to support your local library. Here’s a good deed of enormous significance that you can do in less than a minute. Sign up now! Tell your family! Remember, you'll get a big rush of happiness from the knowledge that you've done something to help other people. Do good, feel good.
And never forget, one day you might be the person waiting for that call from the hospital. Someone reading this post right now may be inspired to sign up to donate the kidney that will save your life next year. So sign up yourself.
* A terrific online resource is Alltop. The plethora of information on the Internet can be overwhelming, and this site can help you quickly find the sites that most interest you. Dangerously addictive, however.
* Superfans, I swear, I REALLY think today is going to be the day! I know I've said that before, but this time I really think it's true. Keep your fingers crossed that today (or tomorrow) the site will be ready for prelaunch. If you want to sign up to be a superfan, to help with the prelaunch my fabulous new site or to help me out in some other ways, sign up here.
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There’s a question in the subject of happiness that puzzles me. Are artistic folk—or people of other kinds of genius—less happy than other people, and if so, why?
On the one hand, studies suggest that people who are happier are more creative, more resilient, more engaged, and more persistent in the face of difficulty and frustration. This would suggest that happier people would tend to be better artists (or whatever) than less happy people.
On the other hand, as discussed in Daniel Nettle’s Happiness
, studies suggest that creative and influential people in the arts and public life tend to be more “neurotic”—meaning that they’re inclined to have more frequent and deeper experiences of negative emotions like anger, guilt, sadness, and fear than less-neurotic people.
Certainly popular culture teaches that artists and geniuses tend to be tormented, brooding, angry, etc.
Which is true?
I’m not sure. I do believe that the association of unhappiness with great ability goes along with Happiness Myth NO. 1: Happy people are annoying and stupid. Because unhappiness is associated with discernment, sophistication, and depth, it seems right that artists and other extraordinary types would be less happy. Plus it seems cooler. What’s more, given that association, people who want to demonstrate their soulfulness or intellect may be choose to emphasize their negative emotions.
It’s also true that unhappy people tend to have more colorful lives than happy people, so their biographies are juicier, and we tend to know more about their lives.
I don’t know what’s true as a general matter, but I know that for myself, I’m more creative and productive when I’m happier. I’m more willing to take risks; to spend energy in ways that may not be directly useful; to shrug off criticism, rejection, failure, and scorn; to open myself to new experiences, ideas, and people.
As for art in particular: a deep love of art, whether creating it or appreciating it, does bring a kind of melancholy – the yearning for perfection, the desire to swallow it up, the despair of achieving your vision, the painful beauty of masterworks. But that melancholy is also set in a context of beauty, discernment, and joy.
I remember one afternoon a few years ago, when I needed to pick something up from a friend who is a brilliant artist. He has a painting school which meets in the first floor of his house, so when I stopped by to see him, I walked through a room full of students who were busily drawing a model, while music played and light poured in from a skylight. I walked back to my friend’s private studio, which looked exactly the way you’d imagine – cans full of paintbrushes, canvases stacked against the walls, odd casts and stretchers and other artistic apparatus lying around.
He was painting when I came in, and to my surprise, he could paint while we talked. (I can’t imagine being able to do work and talk at the same time – utterly impossible for me.) Anyway, as we were talking, he was working on a beautiful, beautiful painting.
He stopped for moment to step back and consider his handiwork, and I said to him, with more than a touch of envy in my voice, “Jacob, you are lucky.” I gestured broadly around the room.
“I know,” he nodded, and he sat back on his stool and smiled at me. “Yes, I know.”
Now I’m asking every artist I meet about this question. Are artists less happy? Are geniuses less happy? What do you think?
* I get a big kick out of the blog Living Oprah—a woman spent the year of 2008 "living her life completely according to the advice of Oprah Winfrey." The year has run, and she's working on a book right now, but she still posts. Hmmm...does her project remind you of anyone else's? Just goes to show that everyone's happiness project is different—I find every one fascinating.
* Excellent! A reader has started an online group for discussing reading related to happiness. If you're interested, join up!
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From Walter Murch, an Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer:
“As I’ve gone through life, I’ve found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old. … At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you’re not old enough yet to be overly influenced by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you think you ‘should’ be doing. If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself. It’s certainly been true in my case. I’m doing now, at fifty-eight, almost exactly what most excited me when I was eleven.
“But I went through a whole late-adolescent phase when I thought: Splicing sounds together can’t be a real occupation, maybe I should be a geologist or teach art history.”
—from The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
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I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
A few days ago, I posted about how watching the movie Twilight made me more determined to keep my resolutions to be tender and romantic. After I looked at my list, however, I realized that I’d never made a specific resolution to “kiss more, hug more, touch more.” So I’ve added that to my ever-growing list of resolutions.
It’s easy to see that kissing, hugging, and touching would boost the tenderness in your romantic relationship. However, physical expressions of affection can strengthen all sorts of connections.
In her fascinating book The How of Happiness
, Sonja Lyubomirsky discusses a study in which students were assigned to two groups. One group was the control; one group was assigned to give or receive at least five hugs each day for a month—a front-to-front, nonsexual hug, with both arms of both participants involved and with the aim of hugging as many different people as possible. The huggers were happier.
Another study showed that women who got hugs several times a day from their husbands had lower blood pressure than those who didn’t get hugged as often.
Interesting fact: To be most effective at optimizing the flow of the chemicals oxytocin and serotonin—which boost mood and promote bonding—hold a hug for at least six seconds.
Along with hugging, playful and affectionate touching makes you feel closer to the people important to you. And touch is important even with strangers—studies show that subliminal touching (touching so subtle that it’s not consciously perceived) dramatically increases a person’s sense of well-being and positive feelings toward you, the toucher. For example, research shows that when restaurant servers touch their customers, they increase their tips by more than 3 percent.
I haven’t come across any research that examines the effects of kissing, but I think it’s safe to venture that lots of kisses will make you happier.
Expressing affection (in whatever way you express it) makes a big difference in relationships. For instance, people are 47 percent more likely to feel close to family members who frequently express affection than to those who rarely do so.
But there’s another reason to express affection. One of my most important Personal Commandments is to act the way I want to feel. We think we act because of the way we feel, but often, we feel because of the way we act. By acting in a loving way, you prompt loving feelings in yourself. It’s much harder to be angry or annoyed with someone when you’re kissing or hugging or touching.
Be careful, however, to keep those physical expressions of affection appropriate. During a radio interview after I posted about Happiness Myth No. 7: Doing "random acts of kindness" brings happiness, the host mentioned that he’d been walking down the street when a guy announced, “Free hugs!” and gave him a big bear hug—a random act of kindness that did not result in happiness in that case. And the nonsexual nature of your full-frontal, two-armed hug might be misinterpreted, if you’re not careful.
Do you find that touching, hugging, and kissing boosts your happiness? Have you found any strategies to make sure you don’t forget this aspect of relationships?
* Speaking of being more loving, over on the Facebook page, a lot of people have posted about their strategies for keeping romance strong in a long relationship. Good ideas.
* Superfans, I'm waiting to get the e-mail telling me that I can send you the link to the superfabulous, soon-to-be-unveiled Web site, for prelaunch. I know I keep saying that, but I really am hoping that it will be today. Or maybe Monday. Want to be a superfan? Sign up here.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day (or Quiz Day).
This Wednesday: Quiz—How well do you know yourself? It's surprisingly difficult.
In doing my happiness project, I’ve been repeatedly struck by how hard it is to follow the first of my Personal Commandments, to “be Gretchen.” Why is it so difficult just to accept my own nature?
Two of my favorite Secrets of Adulthood remind me to be Gretchen: “Just because something is fun for someone else doesn’t mean it’s fun for you—and vice versa” and “You can choose what you do, but you can’t choose what you like to do.”
I’ve noticed that people often assume that everyone enjoys the same activities that they enjoy, because they believe those activities are inherently enjoyable. For example, when I commented on how well a friend had arranged some flowers, she explained, “I needed a part-time job during college, so of course I tried to get a job at a flower shop.”
“Why did you try to work at a flower shop?” I asked, puzzled.
“Well, everyone loves working with flowers,” she answered matter-of-factly.
Well, actually, nope. I would never try to get a job in a flower shop. In college, I always got temping jobs, because I could work on my own writing projects while looking productive. (Speaking of not recognizing your true nature, I missed this obvious clue that I wanted to be a writer.)
People also assume that they in fact do enjoy what they think they should enjoy—e.g., they enjoy going to the theater, because going to the theater is a fun thing to do. Nope! Not true. There are so many “fun” things that I don’t enjoy one bit, like skiing, drinking wine, going to concerts, eating pasta, shopping. And I love to do many things that other people dread doing—cleaning out closets, for example. I beg my friends to let me help them clean out their closets.
My friend Michael Melcher wrote an outstanding (and quite funny) book called The Creative Lawyer
; he also has a terrific blog. The book is aimed at helping lawyers find more job satisfaction—whether within law or outside of law—but it’s also a valuable resource for anyone trying to understand himself or herself better.
Here’s a quiz, lightly adapted from The Creative Lawyer, to help you figure out your interests. Not what you wish interested you, but what actually interests you.
1. What part of the newspaper do you read first?
2. What are three books you’ve read in the past year?
3. As a child, what did you do in your free time?
4. What’s a goal that has been on your list for a few years?
5. What do you actually do with your free time? [This is perhaps the most helpful question. I finally switched careers from law to writing when it dawned on me that I was always writing books in my free time.]
6. What types of activities energize you?
7. What famous people intrigue you?
You need to pay close attention to yourself. The better you understand your true likes and dislikes, the better able you are to make decisions—in work and leisure—that will make you happy. It’s not possible to build a happy life, filled with enthusiasm and engagement, based on the way that you wish you were. For better or worse, we’re all stuck with ourselves.
As Thomas Merton noted in his diary, “Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.”
Have you found any good ways to understand yourself better?
* Superfans, if the date holds, you'll get an e-mail from me tomorrow with the link to my fabulous new as-yet-unveiled Web site, so you can participate in the prelaunch! Keep your fingers crossed that tomorrow is the day. I can't wait to see what people will do with the site.
If you'd like to join as a superfan (to participate in the prelaunch or to volunteer to help in other ways), click here or email me at gretchenrubin1 [at] gmail [dot com], and I'll add your name. (Use the usual e-mail format—that weirdness is to thwart spammers.) Just write "superfan" in the subject line.
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One thing I've noticed in my study of happiness is that the positive-psychology literature on happiness largely ignores issues related to clutter and disorder, but pop culture is bursting with advice about mastering your stuff.
I've found that for myself, having an orderly, uncluttered environment greatly influences my sense of serenity -- so I have resolutions like Make my bed, Follow the one-minute rule, etc.
I wonder whether this characteristic is widely shared. Is having a well-ordered desk, office, and home is important to your happiness – or not?
Is outer order important to your happiness, or not?(online surveys)
* I sent out my April newsletter a few days ago, but only today did I notice that I'd passed the 20,000-subscriber mark. Zoikes! Thanks, everyone, for your enthusiasm. If you want to sign up, click here, or send me an email at gretchenrubin1 [at] gmail [dot com], and I'll add your name. (Use the usual email format -- that weirdness is to thwart spammers.) Just write "newsletter" in the subject line.
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Following my resolution to enter into other people’s interests, last week I watched the movie Twilight
with my older daughter. This wasn’t a sacrifice for me; I love Stephanie Meyer's books (oh, how I love children’s literature), so I was curious to see the movie.
I found the movie interesting for many reasons not relevant here (other than to say I’m thinking about Jung generally, Frazier’s The Golden Bough
, and George Orwell’s discussion of “good bad poetry” in his essay, “Rudyard Kipling”), but in particular, I loved the depiction of wordless, instantaneous, passionate love.
Many of my happiness-project resolutions are meant to help me be more tender, more loving, more lighthearted, more appreciative … more romantic.
My husband and I met when we were in law school. I still remember the first time I saw him walk into the library—a shock ran through me, and I could practically feel my pupils dilate. He was wearing jeans and a rose-colored Patagonia pull-over (which I still keep in my closet). I walked over to a friend and whispered casually, “Who is that guy?”
Our law school is small, and our social circles magically started to overlap, so I met him, and my crush deepened. One important night, we sat next to each other at a dinner party. There was that afternoon when we ran into each other on the law-school staircase in front of the stained-glass windows.
But he had a girlfriend, and I had a boyfriend. Then he broke up with his girlfriend. A week later, on May 1 (I just looked up the exact date in my calendar), I broke up with my boyfriend. It happened in the morning, and I went out into the courtyard and made a general announcement of the breakup to a bunch of friends—to see what his reaction would be.
No reaction. “Hmmmm,” I thought. “Maybe I misread this situation.” Had I imagined what I thought was between us? After all, the two of us had never talked about anything of importance, certainly not about “us”; we’d never spent any time alone, only in chaperoned groups (except that once he’d asked me to breakfast at the Copper Kitchen before our Corporations class, an occasion so thrilling to me in prospect that I slept only a few hours the night before); and neither of us had ever made even the smallest romantic overture toward each other.
But that same afternoon after my breakup, he told me he was going to walk to Wawa’s (the New Haven version of QuikTrip) to get a Coke, and did I want to come? I did. We walked to Wawa’s, then back to the law school, and sat on a bench beneath some blooming magnolia trees. He said something completely incoherent, then took my hand; this was the first time we ever touched. At that moment, if he’d asked me to marry him, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised, and I might well have said yes. (We did get engaged several months later.)
Now, so many years later, is it the same? Yes and no. Yes, because I still love him passionately, and more deeply, because I know him so much better. No, because he’s passed through my heart and into my soul, and he pervades my entire life, so now sometimes it’s hard to see him. Married people are so intertwined, so interdependent, so symbiotic, that it’s hard to maintain that sense of wonder and excitement.
If I’ve learned one thing from my happiness project, it’s that if I want my life to be a certain way, I must be that way myself. If I want my marriage to be tender and romantic, I must be tender and romantic.
Am I tender and romantic? Am I appreciative, thoughtful, forbearing, fun-loving? Or do I march around the apartment snapping out reminders and orders? Am I quick to feel annoyed or aggrieved? When we first met, I honestly wondered whether it would ever be possible for me to read when we were sitting in a room together; I found it so hard to concentrate that I couldn’t make sense of anything more complicated than the newspaper. Now, I find it hard to tear myself away from my work and my email to hold up my end of a marital conversation.
So, inspired by the springtime, and the memories of early love brought back to me by Twilight, I’m going to redouble my usual efforts to keep my resolutions related to love. Think of small treats or courtesies. Leave things unsaid. Give proofs of love. Don’t expect praise. Take time to be silly. Admire. Fight right.
Have you found any good ways to stay tender and romantic in a long relationship?
Here, to me, is the great mystery: We’re perfectly suited to each other—but how did we fall in love before we knew each other at all? How is that possible?
* The movie also reminded me to Be Gretchen and accept my own taste in music, and not to wish that my taste is different from what it is. I loved the song from the Twilight piano scene, "Bella's Lullaby," and instead of dismissing that pleasure, I let myself enjoy it – and in the process, came across this engaging post by the composer Carter Burwell. (To listen to the song, listen to the clip on his post, or this preview
.)
It reminds me of another soundtrack song I love, The Promise
, from the mindblowing movie The Piano
. The pairing of the two songs/movies is interesting, because The Piano is about wordless passion between adults, with their complications, instead of teenagers.
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
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“It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.” --Bertrand Russell
That's why the first of my Twelve Commandments is to Be Gretchen.
* If you love the performing arts, my friend Bob Hughes, the polymath culture junkie, has started a blog Hughes Views on Classical TV, "the greatest performing arts online." Tons of great material to read there.
* Considering doing your own happiness project or just want to join as a fan? Join the discussions on the Facebook Page.
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I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in—no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
I’ve been very struck by an observation by physicist Niels Bohr: “There are trivial truths and great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
This is very true in the area of happiness, and in particular, I’ve noticed it with my resolutions. In many cases, my most important resolutions come paired with the opposite resolutions, and yet both are important to my happiness.
This tension was beautifully illustrated in a novel I love, Vikram Chandra’s mesmerizing Sacred Games
. “Sartaj was thinking about how uncanny an animal this life was, that you had to seize it and let go of it at the same time, that you had to enjoy but also plan, live every minute and die every moment.”
I want to Be Gretchen and accept myself, but I also want to perfect my nature (as this entire project demonstrates). I want to think about myself so I can forget myself. I want to work on my own happiness so I can make other people happier.
I want to lighten up and not take myself so seriously—but I also want to take myself more seriously.
I want to spend my time efficiently and not waste it, but I also want to wander, to play, to fail, to read at whim. I want to keep an empty shelf and also keep a junk drawer.
I want to be free from envy and fear of the future and live fully in the present moment—but not to lose my ambition.
Control and mastery are key elements of happiness; so are novelty and challenge.
Everything matters, and nothing matters. As Samuel Butler wrote in his Notebooks
, “Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.”
Happiness doesn’t always make me feel happier.
The days are long, but the years are short.
Have you found any paradoxes that have been important to your happiness? Contrary resolutions that you try to follow in both directions?
* I had fun talking about happiness with Maura Kelly, who is keeping a blog A Year of Living Flirtatiously for Marie Claire. We talked about How to be happy—even if you're single.
* Considering doing your own happiness project? Join the discussions on the Facebook Page to swap ideas, strategies, and experiences.