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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.
One of the most consistently fascinating and provocative writers—online and in print—is Seth Godin. I love his blog, Seth Godin’s Blog, and I’ve read several of his many books. Seth’s field is marketing, but marketing understood very broadly—he often discusses subjects like authenticity, communication, community, entrepreneurship, fulfillment, the future of media, and happiness.
He’s written many interesting books—my personal favorites are Tribes
and Permission Marketing
.
Because I’m such a fan of his thinking, I was very intrigued to hear what Seth Godin had to say on the subject of happiness.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Seth: I honestly believe that external events are a poor predictor (or causer) of happiness. There are certainly things I can do to prompt some short-term happiness, but in general, it's a decision more than an act. For example, every time (every time!) that I go to visit Acumen Fund and my friend Jacqueline Novogratz, I leave happier than I came in.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
Don't try so hard.
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
I used to be able to make myself unhappy by reading anonymous criticism of my work online. No middle ground to the attacks, no way to respond, no happiness. So I stopped.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you find very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
I think Pema Chodron's suggestion, "Don't bite the hook," is a really easy way to avoid the dead ends that can so easily get me caught up. One of the easiest mantras I have is flashing back to paddling a wooden and canvas canoe, solo, across Teepee Lake in Algonquin Park. The sun is setting, the water is calm and there's a loon on one side of my boat and a beaver on the other. That works every time.
As for books, the work of Zig Ziglar, Pema Chodron and Ben Zander never fail to work.
If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
I write. I ride my bicycle or strap on my cross-country skis. Forward motion, no wallowing.
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?
I think it's possible to eat your way unhappy. I also believe that whining and complaining never (not once) increases someone's happiness level. On the other hand, sending someone a thank-you note or a small present benefits you far more than it does the recipient.
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?
I spent some unhappy years in my early 20s, and again when my mom died. On the other hand, I've been insanely, positively happy almost every single day for the last thirty years, mostly because I just decided I liked things better that way.
Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
"Working" is not as good a word as "choosing.” I don't think happiness is a project as much as it is a habit. [I would suggest: For many people, it takes a project to build a habit!]
Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t – or vice versa?
Finishing projects almost never makes me happy. It creates a void. I don't much like milestones either. Any event where you're supposed to be a happy is a challenge!
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 23,000 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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I love Carl Jung (the bits of his work that I understand, which isn’t much), and one of my favorite Jung quotations is “The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
This video clip is a perfect example—found on my friend Lev Grossman’s excellent blog, Nerd World. I love the fact that Jonathan McIntosh had the creative energy and interest to create this mash-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight:
[If you can't see the video, the URL for "Buffy vs Edward (Twilight Remixed)--OFFICIAL" is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM]
I connected with this remix on several levels:
— Take time for projects. Clearly Jonathan McIntosh is following that very important resolution.
— Though I’m not a historic Buffy fan, my TV-writer sister has worked a lot with Joss Whedon, so I always take an interest in his work.
— I love Twilight
, books and movie alike. How much, you ask? I’ve read Midnight Sun. And The Host
.
— There was a split-second clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
, which I recognized, of course. Huge, raving Harry Potter fan. I’ve got a ticket to the very first showing, at midnight in a few weeks, of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
.
— Even my former lawyerly self got engaged in considering the assertion at the end that “This transformative work constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright law.” Why didn’t a case like this come up when I was hanging around courthouses?
Perhaps I should make a new resolution, to “Play with the objects I love.” I’m already doing this with my passion for J.M. Barrie’s The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. A friend and I are doing an homage to Barrie’s brilliant skeletal picture book—ours is called “Four to Llewelyn’s Edge.” This has turned out to be an enormous undertaking, and so much fun.
Along those lines, I wonder if I could use popular new tools (YouTube, as in the example above, or Twitter, or Facebook, as well as my blog) to shine a spotlight on my more obscure and more demanding passions. I want to highlight the things I love, and to try to entice others to follow me—just as this video made me want to watch old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
.
One idea: I’m considering sending out daily Tweets that are quotations from one of my favorite books, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (bizarre: this book doesn't seem to be for sale on Amazon). I would love doing this. I wonder if the book would be interesting to anyone else in that form—if the beautiful writing would be engaging out of context like that—or if it would be too reductive. Perhaps, as in the video mash-up above, new pleasures could be revealed in a work that is usually read in a different way.
Hmmmm.
* Very apt for this subject: Bricolage Life. Looking at this blog made me want to sit down and MAKE something.
* Follow me on Twitter. I may or may not be sending out Woolf quotations in the near future.
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"At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: 'Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it.' My advice is: 'Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.'
I don't think Mother's advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You'd be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person's who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!"
-- Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank
, March 6, 1944
*
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.
Two of my happiness-project resolutions are Enjoy the fun of failure and Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I’m a perfectionist. I hate to be criticized. I’m defensive. I’m thin-skinned. As a result, I really, really, hate to make a mistake or to be connected with things that aren’t perfect.
The problem is, failure and imperfection are quite common (maybe you’ve observed this yourself), and if you aren’t willing to make mistakes or to accept flaws or failure, you can’t achieve much.
Novelty and challenge bring happiness, but they also bring frustration, anxiety, flaws, and failure – in fact, the more challenging the undertaking, the more likely it is to fail or to be flawed.
I often feel myself shrinking away from opportunities or ideas, because I’m worried about doing a less-than-perfect job – even though I know that I’m happier when I create, when I push myself, when I try new things. That’s why these two resolutions are important for me.
Enjoy the fun of failure reminds me to lighten up – to accept failure or mistakes as an important part of a process. It’s okay if something fails. In fact, that’s part of the fun!
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good reminds me that it’s more important to do something at all than to do something perfectly. Many things worth doing are worth doing badly. Doing something badly is often a necessary stage toward doing it well.
For the past two days, since I announced the link to the Happiness Project Toolbox, I’ve been reminding myself of both these resolutions.
I worked so hard and so long to create the Toolbox, and the site has been tested up and down, both by the designers and also by the wonderful Super-Fans, who were hugely helpful in highlighting problems. We thought the site was working perfectly.
But guess what? It wasn’t. Within fifteen minutes of announcing the link on Wednesday morning, I got a message from a friend telling me that he’d gotten an error message. And so it went.
This upset me a lot more than it should have. In the last two days, every time I heard about a problem with the site, I felt terrible. I hate knowing that it's less than perfect. The negativity bias aggravates this feeling; lots of people have said very nice things, and when I go to the Toolbox I can see that lots of people are using the site and posting great stuff there, and yet the few criticisms – which were more like gentle, friendly notices about problems, rather than criticisms – hit me far harder. Negative is much sticker than positive.
“Enjoy the fun of failure,” I keep reminding myself. It’s a great site, a lot of people love it, I love it, it’s getting fixed. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
It's doesn't always work, but it helps. Have you found any good strategies for helping yourself be calmer about accepting mistakes or failure?
* Gimundo has a great time-lapse video that shows beautiful settings across the world. Lots of dramatic movement by clouds and light.
* Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox. Probably it will work for you, but it's not perfect yet. If you have a problem, you can post it here. But I really, really hope that it will be practically perfect in every way within a very short time.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day or List Day.
This Wednesday: 8 tools to help you boost your happiness.
This is an exciting week for me! First, my book became available for pre-order
. For the first time, the book feels real.
Second, and even more thrilling, the Happiness Project Toolbox is finally ready for prime time. Yes, it’s ready! I’ve been working on this companion site for so long; it’s hard to believe it’s actually going out in the world at last.
What is the Happiness Project Toolbox? As I was working on my happiness project, I invented several methods that helped me to boost my happiness. My One-Sentence Journal, my Personal Commandments, my Secrets of Adulthood, and of course—most important of all—my Resolutions Chart.
I remember exactly where I was when I got the idea for the Toolbox. I was walking up Lexington Avenue, between 77th and 78th streets, when I thought, “Wow, it would be great to have a site where people could chart their resolutions.” About 10 steps later, I thought, “But a site like that should also allow people to keep their one-sentence journals, or post their happiness hacks.” Then it hit me. A Happiness Project Toolbox! I was so struck by the idea that I literally stopped in my tracks—I remember that the woman behind me ran into me and shot me a very annoyed look as she passed.
It was easy to have the idea; hard to turn it into reality. As with so many things in life, if I’d known how challenging it would be, I might not have attempted it. But now that it’s ready, I’m so happy I did it.
Novelty and challenge bring happiness; they also bring frustration and anxiety. In this case, despite periods of frustration and anxiety, I also had a tremendous amount of fun—in large part because of the brilliant, creative people at the Chopping Block, the web-design firm that built the site. They love the project, too—they wrote, “The Happiness Project Toolbox is easily among the best projects in our twelve-year history. We're excited about the potential for building of a large community audience.”
They had a lot of good ideas to add, and also helped me figure out if some of my ideas were possible. For example, I’ve always been mesmerized by PostSecret, and I’m fascinated whenever people post on my blog with their own Personal Commandments, etc. (for example, I think often of one commenter's Personal Commandment, "Choose the bigger life"), so one of my favorite Toolbox features is the ability to see other people's posts—unless they choose to keep entries private, of course. It’s superaddictive to read other people’s Personal Commandments, browse through their Inspiration Boards, learn from their Happiness Hacks … utterly absorbing. (Use the bar across the top to see other people’s entries.)
The Happiness Project Toolbox offers eight free Tools:
• Resolutions: record and track your resolutions.
• Group Resolutions: challenge several people to a group resolution.
• One-Sentence Journal: keep a journal on any subject you like (my online one-sentence journal is “What I’m reading today”).
• Personal Commandments: identify principles to guide your life.
• Secrets of Adulthood: record what you’ve learned so far.
• Happiness Hacks: share your hacks about clutter, exercise, mindfulness, etc.
• Lists Tool: keep any list: to-do, favorite things, things-to-do-before-I-die, etc.
• Inspiration Board: pull together your favorite books, quotations, images, and Web sites.
The amazing Super-Fans group got the first look at the Toolbox. Thanks again, Super-Fans, for your enthusiasm and your efforts! The Super-Fans were great about alerting me to problems. When I sent out the link, I thought the site was perfect, but of course, when hundreds of people tested it, they discovered a lot of bugs. Now it should be working very well indeed.
However, there still may be some issues to iron out. I’d really appreciate it if you let me know if you have a problem (or praise). It would be a huge help, though, if instead of e-mailing me directly, you post to this discussion on the Facebook Page. That way, the Web designers can see your comment and address it, without me needing to act as a go-between. It’s helpful to know what browser (and version) you use and whether you’re on PC or Mac.
I had a great time designing the Happiness Project Toolbox. Check it out! I hope it will help you reflect on your values, keep your resolutions, and pull together material that inspires you. And I hope it’s fun! Please pass the link on to anyone else who would enjoy it.
* If you'd like to work on your happiness project, but are more drawn to the idea of doing it with other people instead of using the Toolbox, sign up here for a starter kit for launching a group for people doing happiness projects. Groups have started from L.A. to Enid, Oklahoma, to Boston.
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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 was very happy to get the chance to meet Jacqueline Novogratz, the founder/CEO of the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture fund that uses philanthropic capital to build businesses that serve the poor in the developing world. It’s a very interesting strategy for making a difference in the world—“Patient Capital,” which means -- rather than giving money to worthy causes or focusing on markets only -- strategically investing in building enterprises (e.g., providing water, housing, energy) that make poor people's lives better. So far, Acumen has invested about $40 million in forty enterprises in South Asia and East Africa, which has meant more than 25,000 jobs and services delivered to tens of millions low-income people.
She recently wrote a terrific book, The Blue Sweater
, that tells the story of how she left banking to start work as a “social investor.”
The Second Splendid Truth holds that:
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy;
One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Jacqueline struck me as a very happy person—and partly, she says, that happiness comes from knowing that she’s doing work that is meant to boost other people’s happiness, by giving them lives of greater health, security, and opportunity.
I was very interested to hear more of her thoughts about happiness.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Jacqueline: I love to run in the early mornings, especially with a friend or sibling. I love watching places wake up. I love experiencing nature (even a small part when I’m in the city). I love starting the day with stories and laughter. I love sitting on the floor with women in low-income communities and listening to their stories.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
That life is never perfect, and that it is often in its imperfection that we discover life’s greatest beauty.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”)
Commit to something bigger than yourself. For commitment will set you free.
If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
Running, of course, or a long conversation with a good friend or family member.
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?
People who live in the future rather than the present often seem to find happiness elusive. I remember a story my mother told me about being a young mother visiting my father who was on a furlough from Viet Nam in Hawaii. She met four older women who were sitting around a table by the pool, sipping cocktails. The women had each made big plans with their husbands to go on Hawaiian vacations “when they retired.” All of the husbands had died before the vacations were taken and so the four women decided to go together anyway, though all regretted having put their dreams off to a day that never happened.
At Acumen, I’m often approached by young people who want to express dissatisfaction in their careers and dream of changing the world. At the same time, they feel they can’t do it until they’ve “repaid their debt, earned enough money to have real freedom, gained all the skills they need.” People, of course, can’t make change until they are ready to do so. But the happiest people on earth are following their true passions, and that always entails taking risks, being uncomfortable and making sacrifices. And those risks and sacrifices only become more difficult as we get older….
Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
I work on being all I can be and surrounding myself with people who also feel that way, who want to live out loud and give back somehow to the world; and that makes me happy.
* How fabulous! I just discovered Future Me, a site that allows you to send an email to yourself in the future. One of my favorite ways of making decisions is to think about what, in five years, I'll have wished that I'd done. One fascinating feature of the site is the ability to eavesdrop on what other people have emailed to themselves -- and that reminds me of the fabulous site...Wait! Can't say until tomorrow. Stay tuned.
* 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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For a long time, my book felt very … imaginary. Yes, I had a draft in my laptop. Yes, I sent long documents to my editor. But was anything really going to be published as a book? I’ve felt this way with all my books—it always seems like a miracle when a real, actual book is in my hands.
Well, now I’m experiencing the next-best thing to grabbing hold of my physical book. The Happiness Project exists on Amazon! There’s a link, you can pre-order it now (and please do). I’m taking a minute to Embrace a milestone moment.
Now, this link doesn’t boast anything fancy. You can’t see the cover, because I don’t have cover art yet. You can’t see any fun facts—like "statistically improbable phrases" or "number of words" or "fog index"—because the book doesn’t actually exist in the system anywhere. But that link, primitive as it is, is there. The book feels real.
Also, if you’ve been awake nights wondering what my subtitle should be—I know I’ve laid awake nights, thinking about the subtitle—now all is revealed.
Blatant self-promotion alert: If you’re thinking about buying my book, please consider pre-ordering it. A book gets a big boost from pre-orders, because that early support shows that people really are enthusiastic. It’s early, I know, because the book won’t actually be available for several months. But I’ve ordered my copy! And that made me very happy.
* In the news this weekend, I saw that Steve Jobs received a liver transplant—and someone told me that Natasha Richardson's family donated her organs. Have you signed up to be an organ donor? Or told your family that you'd like to be a donor, if that situation arose? If you support the idea of donation, live your values. Putting your values in action is always a happiness booster.
* 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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“In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried … nothing is so warming and companionable.”—Elizabeth Goudge
It's one of my Secrets of Adulthood: the best reading is rereading.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 23,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or e-mail 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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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.
For my children’s-literature reading group, I just reread The Diary of Anne Frank. Goodness. I was 14 the last time I read it, and it’s very different reading it as an adult. If you haven’t read it recently, or ever, you really should.
The Diary of Anne Frank got me thinking about many things, most of them too huge to fit into a blog post.
But I was also very struck by one particular point, one small happiness-related aspect of their experience: how the eight people in hiding were so affected by each other’s moods. This isn’t surprising, but the diary powerfully captures this emotional contagion phenomenon.
Despite some difficulties, Anne mostly comes across as a cheery, energetic person with a ready sense of humor, and it seems that the others drew on that cheerful energy, even while they often criticized and nagged her. I was reminded of a resolution I’ve written about before, the resolution to “Shield my joyous ones.”
A prayer attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo includes the line, Shield your joyous ones:
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ;
rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones;
soothe your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones;
shield your joyous ones.
And all for your love’s sake.
At first, it struck me as odd that among prayers for the “dying” and “suffering” is a prayer for the “joyous.” Why worry about the joyous ones?
Once I started to reflect about my “joyous ones,” I began to appreciate the people I know who are joyous. As part of my happiness project, I try to keep resolutions like Give positive reviews, Leave things unsaid, Let it go, and Sing in the morning—and trying to keep those resolutions has made me understand much better how much effort it takes to be consistently good-tempered and positive.
For example, I remember that one day when we were visiting Kansas City, my father came home from work, and my mother told him, “We’re having pizza for dinner.” As she knew he would, my father answered, “Wonderful! Wonderful! Do you want me to go pick it up?”
We all knew that my father would have answered that way even if he didn’t want pizza for dinner, and even if the last thing he felt like doing was heading back out the door—and that kind of consistent enthusiasm contributes a lot to everyone’s happiness.
And if that kind of behavior makes a difference under the conditions of ordinary life, and is challenging to maintain in ordinary life, it’s hard to imagine both how difficult it would be, and how elevating it would be, to behave that way in the extreme fear and privation of the Secret Annex.
We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones. We rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety.
At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we’re sometimes provoked to try to shake the joyous ones out of their fog of illusion. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. For example, it’s easy to make fun of joyous ones’ enthusiasms. Why is this? I have no idea. But that impulse is there.
In his outstanding biography, Samuel Johnson
, W. Jackson Bate describes how upset the temperamental Samuel Johnson became when his joyous, enthusiastic supporter, Hester Thrale, turned her attention away from him.
It is a common mistake on the part of cooler, self-contained natures to assume that those who have a giving and ebullient character are what they are only because they cannot help it—that they are fed from a spring that will never stop rather than a reservoir that can be exhausted. Hence the feeling of stark disbelief or unpleasant shock on the part of others when the reservoir of effort and energy—for it turns out to be a reservoir—is almost gone … the principal reward for those who give lavishly rather than meagerly is the expectation that they remain true to form and continue to give.
We depend on the joyous ones, and we need to remember that their joy isn’t inexhaustible or unconquerable. Now I’m making a real effort to use my own good cheer to support and protect the enthusiasts I know.
Now, obviously, this isn’t the most important lesson from The Diary of Anne Frank. But it’s one lesson.
Do you know joyous ones—or are you one? Do you find that people often feed off that energy, yet also try to squash it?
* One of my most hilarious friends has started a blog, which is now one of my favorites: RealDelia, about "finding yourself in adulthood."
* To join the discussion about happiness on Facebook, join the Facebook Page.
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Every Wednesday is Tip Day, or List or Quiz Day.
This Wednesday: Five big mistakes I make in my marriage, and how I try to address them.
One of the main 12 themes of my happiness project is marriage. For me, as with many people, my marriage is one of the most central elements in my life and my happiness.
When I started my happiness project, and I reflected about the changes I wanted to make—as well as the resolutions I wanted to keep in order to bring about those changes—I realized I had five particular problem areas in my marriage. Here they are, along with the strategies I try to use to address them:
1. My demand for gold stars. Oh, how I crave appreciation and recognition! I always want that gold star stuck to my homework. But my husband just isn’t very good at handing out gold stars, and that makes me feel angry and unappreciated.
I figured out a good strategy. I used to tell myself I was doing nice things for him—“He’ll be so happy to see that I put all the books away,” “He’ll be so pleased that I finally got the trunk packed for camp,” etc.—then I’d be mad when he wasn’t appreciative. Now I tell myself that I’m doing these things because I want to do them. “Wow, the kitchen cabinets look great!” “I’m so organized to have bought all the supplies in advance!” Because I do things for myself, he doesn’t have to notice. This sounds like a more self-centered approach, but it’s really much better.
2. Using a snappish tone. I have a very short fuse and become irritable extremely easily—but my husband really doesn’t like it when I snap at him (big surprise). I’ve done a lot to try to keep my temper in check. I don’t let myself get too hungry or too cold (I fall into these states very easily); I try to keep our apartment in reasonable order, because a mess makes me crabby; when he tries to make a joke out of my temper, I try to laugh along; I try to control my voice to keep it light and cheery instead of accusatory and impatient. Confession: I haven’t made much headway here.
3. Getting angry about a fixed trait. This is very, very tough. One of the things I’ve learned from my happiness project is that you can’t change anyone but yourself, and while there are some things I’d love to change about my husband, those things aren’t going to change. He isn’t going to get better about answering my e-mails. He is going to keep making rich desserts that tempt me. Etc. Instead of getting all worked up, as I often do, I’m trying to remind myself of how small his flaws are, in the scheme of things.
4. Score-keeping. I’m a score-keeper, always calculating who has done what. “I cleaned up the kitchen, so you have to run to the store”—that sort of thing. I’ve found two ways to try to deal with this tendency.
First, I remind myself of the phenomenon of unconscious overclaiming; i.e., we unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people’s. This makes sense, because of course we’re far more aware of what we do than what other people do. According to Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis
, “When husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent.”
I complain about the time I spend organizing babysitting or paying bills, but I overlook the time my husband spends dealing with our car or grocery shopping. It’s easy to see that overclaiming leads to resentment and an inflated sense of entitlement. So now when I find myself thinking, “I’m the only one around here who bothers to …” or “Why do I always have to be the one who …?” I remind myself of all the tasks I don’t do.
Second, I remind myself of the words of my spiritual master, St. Therese of Lisieux: “When one loves, one does not calculate.” That precept is the basis for my 11th Personal Commandment: No calculation.
5. Taking my husband for granted. Just as I find it easily to overlook the chores done by my husband (see no. 4), it’s easy for me to forget to appreciate his many virtues and instead focus on his flaws (see no. 3). For example, although I find it hard to resist using an irritable tone, my husband almost never speaks harshly, and that's really a wonderful trait. I’m trying to stay alert to all the things I love about him, and let go of my petty annoyances. This is easier said than done.
I’ve found that working to keep my resolution to Kiss more, hug more, touch more is an effective way to help me stay in loving, appreciative frame of mind.
What are some mistakes you make in your marriage or long-term relationship? Have you found any great strategies for addressing them?
* I had a great time doing an interview with the very funny Rob Sachs of NPR's What Would Rob Do? about how to make conversation with strangers (he'd seen my post on that topic).
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 24,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or e-mail 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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One habit of mind that I do not have—and which I think does not contribute much to happiness—is the tendency to regret the passing of "the good old days.”
This way of thinking is partly related to age, but not completely. I know many people, quite young, who say things like “People are so much more materialistic than they used to be” or so much more narcissistic, or so much more self-indulgent, or so much less engaged with other people, etc.
Well, maybe so, could be. But I’m skeptical of generalizations like that. For thousands of years, people have been decrying the present and pointing to a more noble past.
For example, take this sentiment: “It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.” Sounds very current, right? I read someone express exactly this sentiment on Twitter about 30 minutes ago.
So when was it said? In 1783. Richard Burke, to Samuel Johnson.
* The New York Times now has its own happiness blog: Happy Days: The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times. Happy minds think alike.
* There's a lot of interesting debate on the Facebook Page. Join the discussion!
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Part of the challenge of mindfulness—which is one of the top 12 themes of my happiness project—is to keep myself from falling into mechanical thoughts and actions. Instead of walking through life on autopilot, I want to question the assumptions I make without noticing.
My research into cognitive science led me to the concept of heuristics. Heuristics are mental rules of thumb, the quick, common-sense principles you apply to solve a problem or make a decision. For example, the recognition heuristic holds that if you’re faced with two objects, and you recognize one and don’t recognize the other, you assume that the recognized one is of higher value. So if you’ve heard of Munich but you haven’t heard of Minden, you assume that Munich is the larger German city.
Usually heuristics are helpful, but in some situations, our cognitive instincts mislead us. Take the availability heuristic: People predict the likelihood of an event based on how easily they can come up with an example. This is often useful (is a tornado likely to hit Manhattan?), but sometimes people’s judgment is skewed because the vividness of examples makes an event seem more likely than it actually is. Child abduction, say.
I have certain rules for living that I apply—they aren’t really heuristics, in the true sense of the word, but they’re rules I use to set priorities and decide how to spend my time.
Sometimes they’re happiness-boosting, but I’ve started to realize that sometimes they aren’t. In particular, I’ve been thinking about my application of two of my most often-invoked rules:
I’m in a hurry.
Keep it simple.
“I’m in a hurry” is often useful. It keeps me from wasting time. It helps me stay focused on my top priorities. However, I see, it’s part of the reason that I have trouble keeping several of my happiness-project resolutions: Take time for projects; Force myself to wander; Schedule time for play (yes, I see the irony in these resolutions). I want to allow myself time to mess around and to do things that aren’t necessarily productive; constantly telling myself “I’m in a hurry” makes me feel like there’s no time for those activities in my schedule.
Likewise, “Keep it simple” is often useful. What item should I bring to my daughter’s end-of-school party? “Keep it simple” -- so I volunteer to bring paper plates and napkins, not home-baked muffins. Should I have house plants? No, keep it simple. Should we get a fish? No, keep it simple.
But a lot of the things that boost my happiness the most also add complexity to my life. Having children. Writing this blog. My children’s literature reading groups (yes, now I belong to two of these groups). These activities add complications, but they also add happiness. Applied too broadly, “Keep it simple” would impoverish my life.
One good rule I’ve found: if I find myself repeatedly making a resolution without making any headway, I should stop and Identify the problem.
One resolution I’ve made for YEARS is to entertain more. I love people, I love bringing people together, why do I never want to have people over? I realize that every time I start thinking about planning some kind of get-together, my two rules start flashing in my brain: “I’m in a hurry!” “Keep it simple!” These rules tell me that I don’t have time to shop, to clean, to spruce up our apartment, to deal with food and drink; they tell that I don’t have the mental energy to plan a guest-list, send invitations, worry about all the odds-and-ends.
As of today, I’m going to try to replace those two rules with a different rule: I have plenty of time for the things that are important to me. Maybe that will combine the usefulness of the two rules, without the drawbacks.
Do you find yourself repeating your own personal directives – like “Keep it simple” – to yourself? Do they boost your happiness -- or not?
* Sonya Lyubormirsky -- author of one of my favorite happiness books, The How of Happiness
-- has just launched a fascinating, useful iPhone application, Live Happy. It combines her research and the functionality of the iPhone to help you engage in a lot of practices that will boost your happiness. Click here to learn more or to unload the free trial version.
* 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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“Practical experience has now convinced me of this: the concept of holiness which I had formed and applied to myself was mistaken. In every one of my actions, and in the little failings of which I was immediately aware, I used to call to mind the image of some saint whom I had set myself to imitate down to the smallest particular, as a painter makes an exact copy of a picture by Raphael. I used to say to myself: in this case St. Aloysius would have done so and so, or: he would not do this or that. However, it turned out that I was never able to achieve that I thought I could do, and this worried me. The method was wrong. From the saints I must take the substance, not the accidents of their virtues. I am not St. Aloysuis, nor must I seek holiness in his particular way, but according to the requirements of my own nature, my own character, and the different conditions of my life. I must not be the dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, however perfect…If St. Aloysius had been as I am, he would have become holy in a different way.”—Pope John XXIII, Journal of a Soul: The Autobiography of Pope John XXIII
, January 16, 1903
A good reminder to keep my the first of my 12 Personal Commandments: Be Gretchen.
* If you haven't watched 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.
A while back, I posted about Happiness Myth #7: Doing “random acts of kindness” brings happiness. I wasn’t arguing that acts of kindness wouldn’t make you happy, but only that those acts shouldn’t be random. Random, unpredictable kindness makes people puzzled and suspicious, but purposeful kindness is exhilarating. Non-random doesn't mean that you have to know the people involved; it just means that they have to understand the context of your behavior.
For example, I was talking about this myth on a radio show, and the host recounted that he’d once been stopped on the street by a large man who announced, “I’m giving away free hugs!” and hugged him. This hug, though free and a quite random act of kindness, was not appreciated.
On the other hand, a friend told me a wonderful story about a non-random act of kindness she’d performed. On April 15 a few years ago, she was standing in a post office crowded with people who needed to mail their tax returns. There was a huge line in front of the one machine that dispensed stamps.
When my friend’s turn finally came, instead of buying the minimum number of stamps, she bought $20 worth. Then she went along the line of people behind her, handing each person as many stamps as needed, until she ran out.
The people who got the free stamps were ecstatic – and even the people who didn’t get the free stamps were ecstatic, because the long, slow line got so much shorter so quickly. Everyone was surprised, excited, and laughing.
It makes me so happy to think about this moment! For $20, my friend transformed a miserable taxpaying visit to the post office into a moment of elevation – not just for herself, but for the strangers in line with her. And for me, too.
It reminds me of Henri-Frederic Amiel’s exhortation: “Life’s short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.”
As the Second Splendid Truth sets out:
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy;
One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
A non-random act of kindness is a great way to put Splendid Truth 2A into practice. Have you ever done (or received) a non-random act of kindness that made you very happy?
* For people who do a lot of work at home, like me, there's a great guest post by Wisebread's Lynn Truong on Jonathan Fields's Awake at the Wheel about Cues to create a work/life balance.
* Join the Facebook Page to swap ideas and insights about happiness. Lots of fascinating comments there.
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Zoikes, yesterday I had breakfast with Deepak Chopra. It was a fascinating conversation – the two of us, along with two other people interested in the same issues. Like an idiot, I didn’t ask if I could discuss our conversation on my blog, so I don’t feel comfortable relating what he said – not that our discussion covered anything potentially scandalous. Mindfulness, love…that sort of thing.
People keep asking me what he had to eat. I was concentrating so hard on the conversation that I wasn’t being very observant. I think he had an omelette, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
Yes, I realize that this isn’t a very satisfying report. Alas!
* I really enjoyed coming across a blog of photographs, By Henry Sene Yee Photography. Lots of humor and acute perception, in addition to engaging photographs.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 22,000 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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Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: 8 tips for working more happily with your colleagues.
Last week's tips offered sixteen suggestions for feeling happier at work by tackling aspects of your work space and your day. But actually, your relationships with your co-workers likely has more influence on your happiness.
Maybe you have lots of co-workers -- or maybe, like me, you work by yourself so you have to fashion your own "colleagues." Here are nine strategies that I've used at various point in my work life:
1. Although some people believe it’s best to keep work life and personal life separate, and therefore avoid making friends with colleagues, for most people, having strong friendships makes work more fun. Science supports this: having close relationships is essential to happiness, strengthens the immune system, and reduces anxiety. However…
2. If you’re in a long-term relationship, avoid creating situations that might put you in the path of temptation. (Here are five tips to avoid having an office affair.)
3. If you work alone, take time to mix with other people. Socializing boosts the moods of introverts, as well as extroverts. I love having long stretches when I work by myself in silence, but I’ve realized that I need to make several appointments each week to put me in contact with other people.
4. Each week, walk around your office and talk to a few people you don’t know well. You’ll feel more comfortable socially, plus knowing more people facilitates work flow. Remember the mere exposure effect, as well: repeated exposure makes people like music, faces, even nonsense syllables, better. That means that the more often you see someone, the more intelligent and attractive that person will seem.
5. Apply the Eighth Commandment: Identify the problem. If a colleague gets under your skin, figure out why. I used to work with a guy who enraged me at every meeting. When I started analyzing his techniques, to understand why he was having that effect on me, I became fascinated with the brilliance of his subtle put-downs. (For a list of his strategies, see my book Power Money Fame Sex
, chapter 3.)
6. Apply the Twelfth Commandment, There is only love. This commandment was inspired by a friend who took a job where she knew she’d have a difficult boss. From the beginning, she told herself, “There is only love.” She doesn’t allow herself to criticize her boss, even in her own mind, and won’t listen to anyone else’s criticism. She says it’s tough to do, but it has made her job far easier.
7. Say “Good morning” to everyone. This is polite, and it will also help you feel like you have a small connection to everyone you see. That makes your workplace seem more friendly and warm.
8. Cut people slack. You never know what's going on in people's lives, and it's always better to err on the side of being forgiving, not taking things personally, and trying to see the funny side of circumstances.
What am I missing? What are some strategies that you've used to work more happily with your colleagues?
* Zoikes! There's a group for people doing happiness projects forming in Enid, Oklahoma that already has 26 members! Fantastic! If you'd like to start a group, yourself, click here for the starter kit. If you want to connect with other leaders starting groups, check out this discussion. If you want to see if a group is forming in your area, check here (this list looks pretty clunky; we'll make it more visually appealing at some point but just wanted to get the list going at this point).
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My post yesterday—about unhappiness—has been bothering me. I feel like I missed some important points, but I’m not exactly sure what they are. The people who commented on the post brought out some important elements, but I still feel like there's more here to wrestle with.
One consideration I forgot to take into account is a Secrets of Adulthood: Happiness doesn’t always make me feel happy. That is, the things that bring happiness also bring frustration, anxiety, boredom, fear, etc. Raising children, starting a blog, going to the gym, traveling in a foreign country … these are some things that bring me a huge amount of happiness, but also a lot of frustration, anxiety, boredom, fear, etc. But although I have bad feelings, I don’t think that’s quite the same thing as feeling unhappy.
The First Splendid Truth holds that to be happy, you need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. Sometimes people equate “unhappiness” with “feeling bad.” But bad feelings have a different ... flavor ... depending on whether they're accompanying an activity that's fundamentally making me happy or making me unhappy.
For example, I have a low threshold for irritation. I get annoyed very, very easily. My children annoy me, and not owning enough socks annoys me. I willingly (more or less) accept the annoyance caused by the demands of little kids, but why suffer the annoyance of a lack of socks? Just buy some socks! As an under-buyer, this is a real challenge for me—but having enough socks does, in a small way, contribute to my happiness.
On a higher note, my work often causes me to feel anxious, stressed, frustrated—but I love my work, so it’s not hard for me to tolerate these feelings. It’s part of the process of accomplishing what I’m trying to do. But if I had a job I disliked, those emotions might overwhelm me with unhappiness.
So all bad feelings aren’t created equal. A bad feeling can accompany something that will, in the end, lead to happiness—or not.
When people talk about the foolishness of trying to eliminate unhappiness, I think they’re envisioning a life from which all bad feelings had been banished. That kind of life wouldn’t make anyone happy, and it’s not possible anyway. (Even the great St. Therese of Lisieux, with her tremendous spiritual gifts, felt despair and even petty annoyance in her cloistered convent.) The trick, I guess, is to figure out where bad feelings will turn to the good, and where they won’t—i.e., where they’re a necessary accompaniment to an activity that makes you happy or when they’re a sign that you need to think about making some changes.
* I was thrilled when Barbara Arredondo of Mexico's Indigo Brainmedia wanted to interview me about the "proyecto felicidad." I don't speak Spanish, but this site is amazingly fun to visit anyway, because it's so dynamic. And check out the company I was placed in here! Sheesh.
* 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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Because I write every day about happiness, and how to be happier, many people assume that I’m on an anti-unhappiness crusade—that I think that life, lived right, would be a stream of nonstop blissful moments.
As a consequence, I frequently hear arguments in defense of unhappiness—that without unhappiness, you can’t have a rich, complete, moral and aesthetic life; that it’s a necessary corollary to love and attachment; that it’s an important goad to working for meaningful changes; that it’s not possible to have an “up” without a “down”; etc. (Some people, I suspect, argue on behalf of unhappiness because they ascribe to Happiness Myth No. 1: Happy people are annoying and stupid.)
But I’m not on a wipe-out-every-sad-moment-from-your-life campaign; I don’t think that striving to have a happier life means that you should be striving to wipe out all unhappiness from your life or to ignore any cause for unhappiness to live in a cheery stupor. I agree with all those arguments about the significance of unhappiness.
In fact, because of my happiness project, I try to pay a lot more attention to unhappy feelings. It’s tempting to try to tune them out, because they’re unpleasant, but unhappiness is an important cue. (As always, I consider depression to be a grave condition, separate from the happiness/unhappiness distinction.)
An extremely minor example of this: how I gave up fake food. For a long time, I ate a lot of fake food—things like granola bars, fat-free cookies, single-servings packages of sugary cereals, etc. I’d get hungry when I was running around, and instead of getting some real food to eat, I’d get fake food. Fake food was easy, cheap, and fast, and it felt like a treat.
I did this for years. Because of my happiness project, however, I started looking for places in my life where I felt bad (that’s one prong of the First Splendid Truth), and I realized that eating fake food was a source of bad feeling for me. Eating so much junk food instead of healthy food made me feel guilty and out of control.
So I gave it up—cold turkey, because I’m an abstainer not a moderator. And it makes me very happy to be free from that small, but relentless, shot of twice-daily guilt.
Feeling bad is a sign that it’s time for action. Change is often painful; unpleasant, disruptive; exhausting; scary. Unhappiness can act as the goad to get you to push through those barriers. It can push you to switch jobs, get out of a relationship, move, change your habits, change your behavior, change the world. You can start meditating, start running, start a nonprofit, start a garden. Everyone’s happiness project is unique, and the approach that you take to address your unhappiness is unique.
I’m saying that unhappiness is a clue to a way to be happier; does that mean that I believe that the goal of life is to eliminate all unhappiness? No. But it is a goal to give up needless unhappiness, or foolish unhappiness, or lazy unhappiness? Yup.
Some people describe a pleasure, or a sense of purposefulness, in feeling sad. I guess I just don’t get that.
What do you think? Have you experienced a situation in which feeling unhappy was an important catalyst to help you change? And is there a redeeming quality for unhappiness that I’m not appreciating?
* Groups for people doing their own happiness projects are forming! I saw this link to the one in Gainesville, Fla., and I heard that the Greater L.A. group already has 31 members—zoikes. I can't wait to hear more about these groups.
* If you'd like to start a group yourself, for people doing happiness projects, click here for a starter kit.
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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’m a big believer in using milestone moments as cues for evaluation, action, and reflection. Even though it’s a bit of a cliché, I’ve seen many examples—including in my own life—when people were prompted to make positive changes because they’d hit a milestone like a major birthday, marriage, the death of a parent, the birth of a child, loss of a job, or the accomplishment of a career marker like getting tenure or making partner (or not). For example, our wedding anniversary is our yearly Be Prepared Day.
Major milestones don’t happen very often; minor milestones are more frequent, but it’s easy to let them go almost unnoticed.
I’m trying to pay more attention to milestones—including one I just passed.
My book, The Happiness Project, is due out in January, and about 10 minutes ago, I completed my work on the stage called “second pass pages” (why it’s called this, I have no idea). After this, NO MORE EDITS. This is it. When I send this stack of pages back to my editor, my book is out of my hands. We still have to decide the cover art and the jacket copy and a million other details, but my work on the book itself will be finished.
In my rush to go through the book this last time, and to take care of all my other daily duties, I almost didn’t appreciate this milestone. In fact, as a relentless editor of my work, I was more inclined to view this stage as the terrifying point at which I lost control.
But thanks to my resolution, I paused to give myself a moment to reflect. For better or worse, I’ve achieved the vision that I had that April morning, several years ago now, when I was riding on a bus as it passed through the intersection of 79th and Park and asked myself, “What do I want from life, anyway? I want to be happy. But I never think about what it means to be happy, or whether I am happy. I should have a happiness project!” I didn’t have the idea to write a book about my happiness project for a long time after that, of course. But I had an idea for what my happiness project should be, and in my book, I’ve explained as best I can how I’m doing it.
This is a happy moment! I’m just going to sit here and drink it in. I feel so grateful for everyone who has helped me, and I feel so lucky that I do for work exactly what I do for fun. I wonder what the last word of the book is? Ah, it’s “window.” I love my book!
Transitions of any kind can be a helpful prompt to a more thoughtful and grateful frame of mind. Have you had an experience when passing a milestone spurred you to greater reflection or action?
* I'm sure there's a study that explains why nothing makes you smile faster than watching babies smile, coo, and laugh. (Evolutionary reasons, right?) Check out this video on Gimundo of four laughing babies.
* 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: Sixteen tips for being happier at work.
Being happy at work is, of course, quite related to how much you like your job, but there are small steps you can take to boost your mood. Maintaining the comfort of your body, sprinkling a few small pleasures throughout your day, using your time wisely—a little thought can mean a lot more happiness at work.
As Samuel Johnson observed, “It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.”
Your work space:
1. Check for eyestrain: Put your hand to your forehead in a salute. If your eyes feel relieved, your space is too bright. When I got my three monitors (an investment that makes me ecstatically happy, by the way), I had to turn down their brightness levels because the glare was terrible.
2. Get a good desk chair and take the time to adjust it properly.
3. Sit up straight—everytime I do, I instantly feel more energetic and cheerier.
4. Indulge in a modest splurge, i.e., consider whether there are ways to spend money that would make a big difference. Could you invest in some desk accessories to help you stay organized? Could you replace an inconvenient lamp with something that works better?
5. Get a phone headset. I resisted for a long time, but it’s really much more comfortable. The phone headset is like the rolling suitcase: Yes, you look a little silly, but it makes life a lot easier.
6. Don’t keep treats around. A handful of M&M's each day might mean a weight gain of five pounds by year’s end. My husband used to work at an office that kept a kitchen fully stocked with treats. When he switched jobs, he dropped about 10 pounds, which actually had me a little worried until we figured out the reason.
7. Periodically, take time to deep-clean the loose papers that have piled up. I never do this until I specifically schedule a time, but I am always amazed at the wonderful calm it brings.
Your day:
8. Never say yes on the phone; instead, say, “I’ll get back to you.” When you’re actually speaking to someone, the desire to be accommodating is very strong and can lead you to say yes without enough consideration.
9. Take care of difficult calls or e-mails as quickly as possible. Procrastinating just makes it harder; getting them done gives a big boost of relieved energy.
10. When accepting a responsibility, imagine that it’s something that you’ll have to do next week. That way you don’t agree to a task just because it seems so far off that it doesn’t seem onerous.
11. Be honest about how you’re spending your time. You feel overwhelmed, but are you really working hard? How much time do you spend surfing the Internet, chatting on the phone, looking for things you’ve misplaced, or doing tasks that are really someone else’s job?
12. Go outside at least once a day, and, if possible, take a walk. The sunlight and activity are good for your focus, mood, and retention of information.
13. Even if you can’t go outside, take a 10-minute break each hour. Studies show that the break boosts your retention level.
14. Don’t let yourself get too hungry.
15. Try to make a lunch date with someone outside the office at least once a week.
16. Let yourself stay ignorant of things you don’t need to know.
* I’ve never heard of Manhattanhenge, and yesterday I missed this once-a-year sunset spectacle. How will I remember to figure out on what date it will fall next year?
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 21,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or e-mail 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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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.
Laura Rowley has written extensively on one of the most fascinating, complex issues within the large subject of happiness: the relationship between money and happiness. Her book, Money and Happiness
, examines the relationship between the two and how to spend money to reflect your values. On her popular, engaging Yahoo Finance column, Money and Happiness, she writes frequently about money and how you can use it to build a happier life—or not. Not only that, she has a Masters of Divinity from New York Theological Seminary and teaches a class on Contemporary Moral Values at Seton Hall University.
When a friend offered to introduce us, I couldn’t wait to meet Laura. I also asked her to do a happiness interview, because I was very curious to learn even more about her views.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Laura: Eavesdropping on my kids in the back of the car. You can’t be unhappy listening to a debate about how Santa actually circumnavigates the planet in 24 hours; whether, if you had a superpower, it would be better to be able to fly or turn invisible, or who has kissed who in the kindergarten class. Also, hitting the “send” key when I e-mail a column to my editor before the deadline does wonders for my well-being.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
That it’s both a marathon and a sprint—a long-term investment in your values and a daily discipline. That you may not have control over what happens to you, but you have complete control over your attitude about what happens to you and that can make or break your happiness.
Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Surfing realtor.com. Real estate voyeurism is the fast track to envy and misery.
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? Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
I read and reread a textbook called Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology
by Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norbert Schwarz. But then I am a total science geek. I also keep a couple mantras taped to my office wall:
"Nothing can stop a man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal. Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude."—Thomas Jefferson
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."—Viktor Frankl
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."—Dr. Seuss
If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a “comfort food,” do you have a comfort activity?
I try to create a diversion: Call my sisters, go running, read, go to Carvel with my husband and the kids and order a sundae (followed by more running). Or I’ll dive into a simple chore with a quick payoff—preparing for an interview, cleaning off my desk or even folding a basket of laundry gives me a minor sense of accomplishment, (I may not feel happy, but at least I feel productive.)
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?
I recommend not watching the money porn channels when the Dow is plummeting, although many people do the opposite. Ditto on selling stocks low and buying high.
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 junior year in college my doctor prescribed Accutane, the powerful medication for acne, which had just come on the market. I tumbled into a severe depression that finally lifted after I stopped taking the drug; years later the research came out linking Accutane to depression. In his book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
, the monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “When I have a toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened, to know that not having one is wonderful. My nontoothache is peace, is joy. But when I do not have a toothache, I do not seem to be happy. Therefore, I look deeply in the present moment and see that I have a nontoothache; that can make me very happy already.” That experience gave me a lot of empathy for people experiencing depression and helps realize how lucky I am—it’s my “nontoothache.”
Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
All the time; I’m lucky to have a job where I get to interview psychologists, behavioral economists, and authors about well-being (mainly in relation to money and work). I always experiment with what I learn. I am currently employing strategies from Winifred Gallagher’s new book, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
. Choosing what to pay attention to really can have a powerful effect on your well-being.
Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t—or vice versa?
When my oldest daughter, Anne, was 5, I promised she could have a dog when she turned 11 (assuming that pledge would be forgotten and float away in the parental-promise ether). She reminded me every year on her birthday. Having never owned a dog, I envisioned an onerous responsibility, an extra expense, a nuisance, a mess. When Anne turned 11, we adopted a year-old spaniel named Sammy from a family who had to give her up. I have never been more wrong about anything in my life. I am absolutely crazy about that dog. She makes us all better people.
* I'm on Twitter.
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On Saturday, I took the train up to New Haven for my college reunion. I went to Yale both for college and law school, so returning there is always a very intense experience. Mostly pleasant.
Even though I spent most of the day in undergrad nostalgia mode, I also took an hour to walk through the law school. (I also considered visiting the sole copy of J. M. Barrie’s The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, at its home in the Beinecke Library, but I ran out of time.)
A few weeks ago, I posted one of my all-time favorite posts: about how seeing the movie Twilight had reminded me of the time when my husband and I were falling in love and had inspired me to do a better job with some of my resolutions.
Many of my resolutions are aimed at helping me keep happy memories vivid (e.g., Be a treasure house of happy memories) and also at helping me stay tender and romantic. As a way to keep both sets of resolutions, I decided to take photos of some of the most important sites in our falling-in-love story:
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We met because our carrels were back-to-back in the law library. This is the carrel I used.
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Here’s the staircase where we ran into each other that time.
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This is the Anchor Bar. A big group went there one night, and on the way out, he casually asked if I wanted to have breakfast at the Copper Kitchen diner the next morning, before our Corporations class. I didn’t sleep all night.
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Here’s the Copper Kitchen.
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Here’s the picnic table where he was sitting with a bunch of people when I came down from my dorm room to announce that I’d broken up with my boyfriend.
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Here’s the bench where we held hands for the first time.
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I'm so glad I took these pictures. Everything changes, and one day the Copper Kitchen and the picnic table and even that marble staircase will be gone, but now I have my record.
I'm reminded of a postcard I kept above my desk during college, of a work by Duane Michals: This photograph is my proof. The photograph shows a couple sitting cozily on a bed, and underneath is written, "This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon when things were still good between us, and she embraced me. And we were so happy. It did happen. She did love me. Look, see for yourself!"
Ah, I have my photograph and my proof.
* The always interesting Marci Alboher sent me the link to a great post, Can Cooking Make You Happier? at My Kitchen Nutrition. It reminds me that everyone's happiness project is different. Cooking isn't a source of happiness for me, but it is for a lot of other people.
* 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.