-
sponsorship
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 written before about my resolution to Get more sleep, and I’m bringing it up again, because I’m truly convinced that this is one of the first aspects of life to tackle when you start a happiness project.
It’s easy to become accustomed to being sleep-deprived, but it’s not good for you. Many researchers argue that not getting enough sleep has broad health consequences, such as raising your risk for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and even obesity, but in addition to those, it has a profound effect on your happiness.
One study showed that a bad night’s sleep was one of the top two reasons for being in a bad mood at work. (The other? Tight work deadlines.) Another study suggested that getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for your daily happiness than getting a $60,000 raise.
But here’s another reason why I think sleep matters so much for happiness: exhaustion makes the mornings tougher.
The morning is a hard time for many people.
First, a lot of people try to exercise early in the morning. This is a great idea—you check it off your list and get the mood boost all day long. My weight-training instructor told me, “I’ve noticed that people who exercise first thing are much more likely to stick to an exercise program. If you roll out of bed and exercise, you get it out of the way. If you try to do it later, you come up with excuses for yourself, or other things interfere.”
Second, a lot of people face a gruesome commute. A bad commute is a real happiness challenge and one to which people don’t adapt. If you’re sleepy, you’re going to be crabby and inattentive, and that’s a bad combination in a driver.
Third, a lot of people have to get their kids off to school. This is why I need a lot of sleep. Every single morning tries my patience to the utmost. If my big one isn’t complaining, my little one is whining. Remembering to put everything in the backpacks, picking out clothes, finding the right mittens, leaving on time … it’s hard, every day. A lot of my resolutions, such as Sing in the morning and Observe the evening tidy-up, are aimed at improving the morning experience. (Here are some tips for keeping school-day mornings cheery.)
I’ve also resolved to “Get up at 6 a.m.,” so I have an hour to get myself organized before the rest of my family wakes up. And what does this mean? It means I have to go to sleep earlier.
I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of my friend Erin Doland’s excellent new book, Unclutter Your Life in One Week. It has lots of great information and tips, and I was quite struck by her observation:
“Experience has taught me that to get out of bed just fifteen minutes earlier each morning, most people need to go to bed thirty minutes earlier. To wake up and feel refreshed thirty minutes earlier in the morning requires going to bed a full hour earlier.”
I’d assumed this had just been my idiosyncratic experience, so I was surprised to see that someone else had found the same thing. Alas, I think this is absolutely true.
The fact is, I resent having to go to bed so early, just at the beginning of one of the most enjoyable parts of my day. I finally have an opportunity to read for fun, call my sister in Los Angeles, cruise the internet, or watch TV. Instead, I have to turn out the light.
It’s strange that turning off the light is so hard. You’d think, “What could take less effort than going to sleep?” and yet I find that it sometimes takes a lot of effort to put myself to bed, even when I’m actually feeling sleepy. It’s just so much fun to stay up—or sometimes I feel too tired to take out my contacts.
Getting enough sleep really pays off, though. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, or listless, or irritable, try getting more sleep for a week. That might help more than you expect.
What do you think? How much is your happiness affected by the amount of sleep you get?
* On Gimundo, I read about a fascinating study that suggests that being in a clean-smelling environment makes people behave in a more fair and generous way.
* If you’re in a book group and think you might choose The Happiness Project as a reading selection, please let me know. I’ll send you a discussion guide, plus I plan to give away some free advance copies of the book, and I’ll choose addresses from these emails.
● E-mail me at gretchenrubin1[at]gmail.com (don’t forget the “1”) with the message “book group"
● include your name and address if you’d like to be eligible for a free book
● if you’re willing, I’d love to know a little about your group: how many members, what you read, etc. No particular reason, I’m just curious about book groups!
-
sponsorship
Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Five great “don’ts” of a happiness project.
Several people have said to me, “When you’re making a resolution, it’s better not to say ‘No’ or ‘Don’t’ to yourself. You should keep it positive. Find ways to say 'yes'!”
I think there’s some merit to thinking about resolutions this way—but I don’t agree completely. First of all, sometimes it feels good to say no to yourself. For instance, I resolved No more drinking (mostly), and that resolution has made me much happier. (If you're giving something up, you might want to take the "Are you a moderator or an abstainer?" quiz.)
Also, sometimes following a “don’t” can make you very happy. Here are the five great don’ts of my happiness project—admittedly, some of them are fairly controversial:
1. Don’t get organized.
2. Don’t use my self-control.
3. Don’t treat myself.
4. Don’t practice random acts of kindness.
5. Don’t try to keep that resolution.
My personal favorite is "Don't get organized." What do you think? Have you made a “don’t” resolution that has made you happier?
* A reader sent me the link to a very interesting post on the great blog the Simple Dollar: 15 things more important than money.
* It’s Word-of-Mouth Wednesday! This is when I gently encourage (or, you might think, pester) you to spread the word about the Happiness Project. You might:
● Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
● Link to a post on Twitter
● Pre-order the book for a friend
● Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks! I really appreciate any help. Word of mouth is the best.
-
sponsorship
One of my surprisingly difficult happiness-project resolutions is to ask for help—and now I’m asking.
The Internet has changed a lot about publishing. There are many new ways to reach readers—and that means a lot of new tasks for writers. This can be daunting, at times, and I often remind myself of one of my most important happiness realizations: Novelty and challenge bring happiness.
One of the novel challenges facing me right now is the creation of a book trailer, which has been on my to-do list for, well, about 18 months. By a crazy lucky chance (or another instance of the uncannily true Zen saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears"), my friend Maria Giacchino, of Little Jacket Video Productions, has just started making book trailers, and she’s done two great ones for two great books: for Abigail Pogrebin’s One and the Same and Deborah Copaken Kogan’s Hell Is Other Parents.
So now I'm working on my book trailer. In it, I’d love to include clips of readers talking about what happiness-project resolutions have worked in their own lives.
So I’m asking for your help.
If this is the kind of task that appeals to you (and for many of you, it won’t appeal one bit, I know, so read no further), and you’ve used a happiness-project resolution to happy result, please consider …
● shooting a quick video of yourself naming a resolution that has boosted your happiness, or some important realization you gained, from The Happiness Project. Remember, the entire trailer will be about one minute long, and we want to include many people, so say something very quick and soundbite-y. "The resolution to 'Make your bed' changed my life!" etc.
● posting the video to the Facebook Page so everyone can see it. In the middle of the page, you'll see the "Wall" box that says, "What's on your mind?" Below it are icons, one of which is a video camera. Click on that, and you'll get a prompt to upload or record a video. I THINK. Facebook seems different for everyone who uses it, so I THINK this is what you'll see. I THINK you should be able to do this without joining the Page, but if you don't see a likely way to do this, join the Page and maybe that will help. (I promise, this is not meant to be a sneaky way of getting you to join the Page! Sorry about that!) There should also be a "Video" tab across the top; you can use that, too.
● if I end up taking a clip from your video, I’ll be in touch with you to get a permission form. And I'll be ecstatically grateful.
Please do consider doing this! I would so appreciate it!
My happiness project has taught me “novelty and challenge bring happiness.” Following that precept prompted me to add another happiness-project resolution, “Enjoy the fun of failure.” I’m worried that no one will post a single video, and I’ll feel like a loser. That’s the problem with novelty and challenge—they often come with anxiety, frustration, and … feeling like a loser. So I remind myself, “This is fun! Enjoy the FUN of failure.” If no one posts, that’s okay.
Happiness doesn’t always make me feel happy. A mystery.
* I've spent a lot of time over the past few days reading the blog To the Max—"Take that, cerebral palsy!" "This blog is about parenting, extreme honesty, chocolate ice-cream and life with my little boy, Max, who had a stroke at birth and kicks butts." There was a great post yesterday: Is it wrong to make your child wear a Bed, Bath & Beyond shopping bag for Halloween?
* Gold star for people who shoot a video of themselves naming their favorite resolution!
-
sponsorship
Two of my happiness-project resolutions are Take time for projects and Enjoy the seasons and this time of life. These are family-directed resolutions, meant to make sure that I put the time and effort into holidays, family projects, and fun outings.
I came up with these resolutions because the year before my happiness project, Halloween came and went without us carving a pumpkin, and I was utterly appalled at myself. To my mind, that’s Mommy malpractice, even though my daughters didn’t seem to mind much. (Lesson learned: We bought and carved a pumpkin yesterday.)
Because of these resolutions, I’m always looking for fun and also manageable ways to do family projects or celebrate family traditions. For example, I love holiday breakfasts—an idea I lifted from a friend.
I just got a new idea from an unexpected source. I’m a raving Chuck Palahniuk fan, but I don’t turn to his novels for inspiration on lovely ways to celebrate traditions with my children. No, there’s a lot you can get from Fight Club and Choke and Survivor, but sweet family traditions aren’t there.
On the suggestion of a thoughtful reader, however, I picked up a copy of Palahniuk’s nonfiction essays, Stranger Than Fiction, and I was captivated by an idea I read about in “The People Can.” Palahniuk describes the lives of the crew of the Naval submarine the Louisiana, and he explains the tradition of Halfway Night.
“Before departure, the family of each man on board gives Chief of Boat Ken Biller a shoe-box-sized package, and on the night that marks the halfway point in the patrol, called Halfway Night, Biller distributes the boxes. Smith’s wife sends photos and beef jerky and a toy motorcycle to remind him of his own bike on shore. Greg Stone gets a pillowcase printed with a photograph of his wife, Kelley.”
I’m enchanted by the idea of “Halfway Night.” It seems like a great idea to adapt to any arduous situation, to something truly awful like chemotherapy or just extremely tiresome, like studying for the bar exam.
I can’t think of something in my life right now that would lend itself to a Halfway Night, but I’m squirreling the idea away for the proper occasion.
Have you hit upon a tradition to ease a difficult situation? Have you tried something like Halfway Night?
* I spent a lot of time cruising around Parents Connect—"We're not perfect, we're parents."
* If you're interested in launching a group for people who meet to do their happiness projects together, sign up for the starter kit. More than 3,000 people have requested it. You might also like to check out the Facebook conversation for group leaders—that's a good resource if you're trying to get started.
-
sponsorship
“We must, therefore, pursue the things that make for happiness, seeing that when happiness is present, we have everything; but when it is absent, we do everything to possess it.”—Epicurus
This statement is much more challenging and mysterious than it appears at first glance. What things really bring happiness? How do we pursue those things?
* My friend Abigail Pogrebin's book, One and the Same: My Life as an Identical Twin and What I've Learned About Everyone's Struggle To Be Singular, just came out. Her book trailer is terrific; the book sounds fascinating, even to a person like me who is not a twin, let alone an identical twin, and I've ordered my copy—but also, I must admit that I could look at photos of identical twins for hours.
* 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.
-
sponsorship
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.
One of my Secrets of Adulthood (cribbed from Niels Bohr) is “The opposite of a great truth is also true.” So whenever I’m very convinced that something is true, I ask myself, “Is the opposite also true?”
The main strategy for my happiness project is to make and keep resolutions. I’ve made dozens, maybe hundreds of resolutions, and I have a Resolutions Chart on which I score myself on the most important resolutions. I constantly remind myself, “It’s important to keep that resolution! It will make me happier!” and usually it does.
But I have at least one resolution that I just can’t seem to keep, and I’ve decided to resolve to do just the opposite, to “give up that resolution.”
I’m giving up my longstanding, often-repeated resolution to “entertain more.” Fact is, I’ve never really committed to that resolution: I never broke the goal down into steps that I could follow and pushed myself to keep them. Well, why not? Why was I able to keep resolutions like Stop gossiping and Read more and Don’t expect praise or appreciation, but not this one?
I want to entertain more, but clearly, I also do NOT want to entertain more. Finally I realized—I need to give up this resolution for a while.
If I’m honest with myself, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. The Happiness Project book is finally about to hit the shelves, and that means a lot of work—not just writing work, which I’m used to, but other kinds of work. My children need a lot of attention. My husband has been traveling a fair amount. When I have some spare time, I want to just hang around the apartment and read; I don’t want another to-do list, even for something fun. Some people like party errands (flowers, food, fixing up the house, figuring out whom to invite), but I don’t.
So I’ve decided to abandon that resolution for a while.
Starting an exercise routine. Learning Italian. Cleaning the basement. We all have longstanding resolutions hanging over our heads—resolutions that we want to keep, but we don’t really make much progress toward and which can therefore give us a feeling of powerlessness or failure. As important as it is to try to keep resolutions, sometimes you need to give up a resolution.
Sometimes, too, I think a resolution can block you. You don’t have any nice clothes because you want to lose weight. You don’t read any novels because you’ve promised yourself to read War and Peace. Letting go of one resolution might make it easier to keep other resolutions.
The thing is, I know if I’d keep the resolution to entertain more, it would make me happier. But I’m going to admit to myself how happy it will make me not to keep that resolution.
How about you? Have you ever boosted your happiness when you gave up a resolution?
* I loved watching this video of starlings' flight patterns.
* Zoikes! More than a week has gone by since I mentioned the fact that The Happiness Project is available for pre-order! Act now! If you need any convincing, look here and here.
-
sponsorship
One of the most exciting things about working on my happiness project is seeing other people start their own happiness projects.
I get a real kick from seeing these happiness-project blogs, where people have taken my basic idea and run with it themselves -- taking the concept in so many different directions. Every happiness project is different; every one is fascinating. Check these blogs out yourself:
Positively Present
Starfish Envy
Our Happiness Project
Happiness
Habit BlogOne Woman’s Search for Happiness
Wake Up LaughingInsideOutHappy
Abby’s World
Take a Walk on the Happy Side
My Own Personal Happiness Project
Lena’s Notebook for the Modern Mom
Wonderful World of Make Believe
Gleeful
PHATMommy
Michael Faulkner’s Blog
The Happiness Project
Better Me
Amy Williams/My Happiness Project
Shimmer And Shake
Egg Day--The Brunch Project
Hollis Adoption- Columbia South America
The Beautification Project
Happiness Project
Mind Over Matter
Holy Happiness Project
The Rose Happiness Project
Blessed Lessons
If you have a blog that's not on this list, please add yours to this simple form. I'm keeping a running list and want to be able to highlight what you're doing. (Over on my own home blog, The Happiness Project, I have a chart that updates automatically each time a new entry is added to the form, but I can't get the chart to appear on Slate, for some reason.)
If you'd like to start a happiness project, but don't want to do it using a blog, here are some ideas for getting started. Happiness projects for everyone!
* How can I resist a column on Money & Happiness? I can't, so I'm a big fan of Laura Rowley's writing Yahoo! Finance.
* For more discussion about happiness, join the Facebook Page. Lots of people, lots of fascinating insights and conversation.
-
sponsorship
Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Eight excellent tips for living my parents gave me.
My mother:
● “Stay calm.” My mother probably reminds of this three or four times each time I see her. I really need this advice. Every day.
● “The things that go wrong often make the best memories.” My mother told me this when we were getting ready for my wedding. It's a very good thing to keep in mind, because it's absolutely true, and it can also help you laugh at a bad situation while it's happening.
● "You like to have a few things that you really like, instead of lots of choices." Okay, this advice might not be widely applicable, but it was a huge revelation to me about my own nature. My mother made this comment in the context of clothes, but it's true in many areas of my life.
● “That's so wonderful! Be grateful, because you worked hard for what you got, and you deserved it, but others also worked hard, and people don’t always get what they deserve.” My mother made this observation when I called home to report that I'd been elected the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. I repeated her remark to a friend, who thought it sounded like a little unenthusiastic, but in fact, it was reassuring, especially in the long run. Because it's TRUE. You don't always get what you deserve, even when you work hard, and my mother's observation has been very comforting to me in other circumstances, when things didn't go my way.
My father:
● “If you’re willing to take the blame, people will give you the responsibility.” This was perhaps the best advice for the workplace I ever got.
● “Energy.” Very true. The first chapter of The Happiness Project is devoted to energy. (Here are nine tips for giving yourself an energy boost in the next 10 minutes.)
● “Enjoy the process.” If you can enjoy the process, you are less concerned about outcomes. That's a big help in the world.
● “All you have to do is put on your running shoes and let the front door shut behind you.” Good advice for all couch potatoes trying to pick up an exercise habit. Just do that much! That counts!
My parents never gave me relationship advice or weighed in on my boyfriends (true, I only had two real boyfriends, one of whom I married, but I'm sure it was hard to resist nevertheless).
However, once when I was home for vacation, both of my parents remarked on the requirements of a happy relationship. Maybe they'd had a conversation between themselves, which was why it was on their minds. Anyway, it was so unusual for them to make this kind of remark that both statements made a big impression on me:
● My mother said: “In a relationship, it’s important that a person is kind, because eventually, if he’s not kind to other people, he won’t be kind to you.”
● My father said: “In a relationship, it’s important that a person be able to have fun, because you’re not going to have a happy life with someone who can’t have fun.”
Have you received any great advice from your parents?
* A thoughtful reader sent me the link to a great Boston Globe article she wrote: Will He Hold Your Purse? "As a breast cancer doctor, I've learned how to spot a devoted husband—a skill I try to share with my single and searching girlfriends."
* It’s Word-of-mouth Wednesday, the day when I gently encourage (or, you might think, pester) you to spread the word about the Happiness Project. You might:
● Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
● Link to a post on Twitter
● Pre-order the book for a friend
● Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks! I really appreciate any help. Word of mouth is the best.
-
sponsorship
For years, I’ve done a lot of my writing at the wonderful New York Society Library (though lately I’ve been tethered to the Internet and my three monitors at home). Because the rule of silence in the study room there is so strictly enforced, for a long time I saw but never spoke to one of my fellow writers—but finally, I actually did meet Maggie Jackson.
She’s the author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, which comes out in paperback today. It’s a fascinating examination of the consequences of all the technology we use—on learning, relationships, and our inner lives. Maggie Jackson emphasizes the importance of the ability to pay attention.
Because the issues she discusses have such clear consequences for happiness, I was curious to hear her answers to these questions.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Maggie: Being alone with my books and thoughts. Pursuing the trail of a thorny research question. Being with my family and friends: sharing a meal, swimming or walking at the ocean, exploring a new place. Many, many simple things make me content—tea time, museum-hopping, bicycling, reading in an old library, playing in the snow.
What do you know now about happiness that you didn’t when you were 18?
My dad was the king of simple pleasures. He was not a tormented soul. I, on the other hand, was a moody, impatient kid who tried to do too much and move too fast. I could see but not really appreciate my dad’s view of the world when I was young. But he must have left his mark on me, because I’ve come to realize that life isn’t all about the tallest peaks or fastest races, and it’s certainly not about our possessions, titles, or money. Life’s meaning unfolds in both the “big moments” and the detours and pauses and tiny moments of serendipity. Being in the present, along with being present for others, is crucial. I used to have one gear: high. But now I realize that happiness comes from complicated rhythms. And it comes and goes. It’s not a state of being that once reached, sticks.
Is there a link between attention and happiness?
Yes. Being able to focus is something that most people value instinctively. I can’t recall a great thinker or creator or leader—from Marie Curie to Picasso to Barack Obama—who doesn’t have enormous powers of concentration. As a young adult, I understood unthinkingly that attention is the key to getting things done. But until I began researching the fate of attention in our distracted society, I didn’t really realize the complexity or importance of this human faculty. Attention is a key to learning, memory, problem-solving, engagement, intimacy and creativity—all that we strive for today. Attention is now considered a tripartite capacity made up of focus, or the spotlight of the mind; alerting or wakefulness; and executive attention, or the ability to plan, envision, judge. Without attention—which derives from the Latin for ‘stretch toward’ – we cannot go deeply in thought and relations. As a result, attention is our most essential stepping stone to happiness. And controlling our powers of attention is crucial to steering our fate.
Is there anything that people often do or say that adds or detracts from their happiness?
Throughout history, humans have been programmed to take the easy way out, as a means of conserving energy and lowering risks. Take the short-cut to the fishing hole. Sow the plants that need less care. Set a trap rather than track an animal. Our ability to plan ahead and use technology allows us to survive, with less physical effort. But this instinct does us a disservice in a digital, cognitive age. Television, fast food, quick transport and even instant social connectivity give us a world built on the quick and the instant. The pendulum begins to swing too far in the direction of ease and passivity. The result is all too often anxiety, depression, poor health. The trick is not to forget our physicality, our limitations and the beauty of effort, both in the biological and cognitive realms. A life too easy or escapable quickly becomes meaningless.
Do you work at being happy?
No, I work on pursuing my dreams and battling my demons. Happiness follows.
* Lisa Takeuchi Cullen's Wasabi Mama is a "sinus-clearing rant on parenting, work, media, and entertainment" -- many of my favorite subjects, so I love a visit there.
* If you’re in a book group and think you might choose The Happiness Project as a reading selection, please let me know. I’ll send you a discussion guide, plus I plan to give away some free advance copies of the book, and I’ll choose addreses from these emails.
--Email me at gretchenrubin1[at]gmail.com (don’t forget the “1”) with the message “book group"
--include your name and address if you’d like to be eligible for a free book
--if you’re willing, I’d love to know a little about your group: how many members, what you read, etc. No particular reason, I’m just curious about book groups!
-
sponsorship
Years ago, my husband and I fixed up a very close friend with another friend. They fell in love; it was great. But within a few years, he got sick. She stood by him through it all. Then he died. It was awful. And it was very, very hard on our friend.
It was a sad situation for many reasons. As the years passed, one thing continued to bother me: I felt we had put a beloved friend in the path to sorrow. It had been inadvertent, and well-intentioned, but still, we had brought all this pain into our good friend’s life.
I mentioned this to my husband, and he said something that completely changed my thinking. He said, “Yes, it was very hard on her. But think how much better it was for him.”
This thought, obvious as it is, had never occurred to me. I realized how often I make this error. I was acting as though my friend were the main character of this story! That she was the one who really mattered. And I saw that I make this mistake all the time. I’m the most main character, of course, and then the people close to me, and so on … with some people just appearing as extras or in walk-on roles.
But that’s not true. Everyone is a main character. And everyone is a minor character. And as I started thinking about this, I realized that many of my favorite happiness passages concerned exactly this shift: someone re-interpreting a situation, by understanding how different circumstances would seem if someone else were placed in the starring role.
Each has haunted me, but only now do I see what theme links them together.
*
Reading Flannery O’Connor’s letters led me to the extraordinary book, A Memoir of Mary Ann, a memoir about a little girl, Mary Ann, who lived with a gruesome tumor on her face before dying of cancer, written by the nuns with whom she lived for several years in a free cancer-treatment home.
Near the end of Mary Ann’s life, a 5-month-old baby, Stephanie, was brought to the cancer home. Stephanie’s parents were crushed at the thought of leaving their baby there.
The nuns relate that for years, Mary Ann had longed for a baby to take care of. When Stephanie arrived, she said shyly to the baby’s mother, “I didn’t pray for a baby to be sick, but I prayed that if a baby was sick, it would come here.”
Later, the mother wrote the nuns, “I had accepted the hurt [my child’s affliction] brought me, but I had not accepted the fact that I had to give her up. My husband was suffering too and my attitude … was not helping much. Mary Ann’s words opened my understanding. Stephanie was needed … this child [Mary Ann] with the bandaged face and a heart full of love needed her. … God had given me a good husband, six beautiful children. This last child was probably the most special of them all, destined for something I knew nothing about.”
*
In Viktor Frankl’s masterpiece, Man’s Search for Meaning, he relates a story from his psychiatric practice, when an elderly man, distraught with grief over the death of his wife two years earlier, came to him.
Frankl asked, “What would have happened … if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?”
The man answered, “Oh, for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!”
Frankl responded, “You see … such a suffering has been spared to her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering—to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.”
The man left the office, comforted. Frankl observed, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
*
Here’s an example from children’s literature. In Rick Riordan’s novel, The Sea of Monsters, the hero of the story, 13-year-old Percy Jackson (who happens to be the son of the sea god Poseidon and a mortal woman), has taken Tyson, a huge, awkward boy who seems to be learning-disabled, with a misshapen face, under his wing. They go to high school together, but Percy isn’t exactly sure why he’s bothering to protect Tyson and drag him along on his Olympian adventures.
He keeps Tyson with him, though, and at the end of the book, Percy learns that Tyson is also a son of Poseidon, and he’s a Cyclops, which is why his face looks wrong. (He has only one eye.)
Tyson says to Percy, “Poseidon did take care for me after all. …I prayed to Daddy for help. …He sent me a brother.”
Ah! Percy thought that Tyson was tagging along with him, but in fact, he was a supporting character in Tyson's adventure.
*
It’s a very unsettling and interesting exercise to think about the people in my life and to imagine myself in a minor, supporting role. How do I fit into their fates? Am I helping?
* I always find interesting things at LifeDev, "empowering creative people." Good stuff.
* I'm trying to figure out the level of interest for a book tour. If I did a book event in your town, and you'd come, it would be very helpful if you'd either post a comment below or drop me an e-mail at grubin[at]gretchenrubin[dot com]. (Sorry about the weird format—trying to thwart spammers). Just write "tour" in the subject line and be sure to include the name of your city. Thanks very much to all the people who already answered; the information is enormously helpful.
-
sponsorship
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."—Leo Tolstoy
* I love checking out Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog—"adventures in parenting." I always come away with a lot to think about.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 29,000 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.
-
sponsorship
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.
In my research on happiness, I keep running into the assertion that it takes 21 days to develop a new habit—but I’ve always had my doubts about the validity that number.
First, when it comes to developing a bad habit, two repetitions is probably enough. Order a doughnut with your coffee on Monday morning and Tuesday morning, and you’ll probably find it very hard to resist ordering a doughnut on Wednesday.
Second, at least for me, 21 days isn't nearly long enough to form a good habit. For my happiness project, I tried for many weeks to get in the habit of keeping a food journal, and I failed and gave up, and then tried again, and I never could get in the habit. Flossing is a challenge—though all the suggestions from these commenters has improved my flossing rate, I must say. Even writing in my one-sentence journal, which I enjoy doing, isn't really quite habitual yet.
Because I’ve always questioned that often-repeated statistic, I was very interested to read Oliver Burkeman’s article, "How Long Does It Really Take To Change a Habit?"
According to a recent study, a daily action like eating fruit at lunch or running for 15 minutes took an average of 66 days to become as much of a habit as it would ever become.
However, there was a lot of variation, both among people and among habits—some people are more habit-resistant than others, and some habits are harder to pick up than others.
I found this study reassuring. My difficulty in picking up certain habits wasn't unusual. Fact is, habits are hard to alter, and that’s why developing a good habit is really worth the struggle; once you’re used to making your bed each morning or going for an evening walk or flossing, you don’t have to exert much self-control to keep it up.
The study also showed that if you miss a day here or there when you’re trying to develop a habit, it doesn’t derail the process, so don’t get discouraged if you can’t keep a perfect track record. But the first days seem to make the biggest difference, so it’s worth trying to be particularly diligent at the beginning of the attempted-habit-acquisition process.
What do you think? What has been your experience in developing habits? How long has it taken, and what tricks have you found to help yourself acquire—or kick—a habit?
* I've always been fascinated by bees and ants (also slightly terrified of ants, having read The Once and Future King at an impressionable age) and was amazed by this video of fire ants forming a raft to float down a river.
* 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.
-
sponsorship
Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Seven tips if you’re chronically late.
Feeling as though you’re always running 20 minutes behind schedule is an unhappy feeling. Having to rush, forgetting things in your haste, dealing with annoyed people when you arrive … it’s no fun.
If you find yourself chronically late, what steps can you take to be more prompt? That depends on why you’re late. As my Eighth Commandment holds, the first step is to Identify the problem—then you can see more easily what you need to change.
There are many reasons you might be late, but some are particularly common. Are you late because …
1.You sleep too late? If you’re so exhausted in the morning that you sleep until the last possible moment, it’s time to think about going to sleep earlier. Many people don’t get enough sleep, and sleep deprivation is a real drag on your happiness and health. Try to turn off the light sooner each night.
2.You try to get one last thing done? Apparently, this is a common cause of tardiness. If you always try to answer one more e-mail or put away one more load of laundry before you leave, here’s a way to outwit yourself: Take a task that you can do when you reach your destination and leave early. Tell yourself that you need that 10 minutes on the other end to read those brochures or check those figures.
3. You undestimate the commute time? You may tell yourself it takes 20 minutes to get to work, but if it actually takes 40 minutes, you’re going to be chronically late. Have you exactly identified the time by which you need to leave? That’s what worked for me for getting my kids to school on time. We have a precise time that we’re supposed to leave, so I know if we’re running late, and by how much. Before I identified that exact time, I had only a vague sense of how the morning was running, and I usually thought we had more time than we actually did. My daughter goes into near-hysterics if we're late, so that motivated me to get very clear on this issue.
4. You can’t find your keys/wallet/phone/sunglasses? Nothing is more annoying than searching for lost objects when you’re running late. Designate a place in your house for your vital items and put those things in that spot, every time. I keep everything important in my (extremely unfashionable) backpack, and fortunately a backpack is big enough that it’s always easy to find. My husband keeps his vital items in the chest of drawers opposite our front door.
5. Other people in your house are disorganized? Your wife can’t find her phone, your son can’t find his Spanish book, so you’re late. As hard as it is to get yourself organized, it’s even harder to help other people get organized. Try setting up the “vital things” place in your house. Prod your children to get their school stuff organized the night before—and coax the outfit-changing types to pick their outfits the night before, too. Get lunches ready. Etc.
6.You hate your destination so much you want to postpone showing up for as long as possible? If you dread going to work that much, or you hate school so deeply, or wherever your destination might be, you’re giving yourself a clear signal that you need think about making a change in your life.
7. Your co-workers won’t end meetings on time? This is an exasperating problem. You’re supposed to be someplace else, but you’re trapped in a meeting that’s going long. Sometimes this is inevitable, but if you find it happening over and over, identify the problem. Is too little time allotted to meetings that deserve more time? Is the weekly staff meeting 60 minutes of work crammed into 20 minutes? Does one person hold things up? If you face this issue repeatedly, there’s probably an identifiable problem—and once you identify it, you can develop strategies to solve it—e.g., sticking to an agenda; circulating information by e-mail; not permitting discussions about contentious philosophical questions not relevant to the tasks at hand, etc. (This last problem is surprisingly widespread, in my experience.)
Late or not, if you find yourself rushing around every morning, consider waking up earlier (see no. 1 above). Yes, it’s tough to give up those last precious moments of sleep, and it’s even tougher to go to bed earlier and cut into what, for many people, is their leisure time. But it helps.
I've started getting up at 6 a.m. so I have an hour to myself before I have to rustle everyone out of bed. This has made a huge improvement in our mornings. Because I’m organized and ready by 7 a.m., I can be focused on getting all of us out the door. (On a related note, here are more tips for keeping school mornings calm and cheery.)
What are some other strategies that work if you suffer from chronic lateness?
* A great blog, Get Rich Slowly, is about “personal finance that makes cents.” It covers a very broad range of topics related to finance, so there’s much there of interest to just about anyone.
* Introducing something new: Word-of-Mouth Wednesday! Now, not only is Wednesday the weekly Tip Day, it’s also the day when I gently encourage (or, you might think, pester) you to spread the word about the Happiness Project. You might:
● Forward the link to someone you think would be interested.
● Link to a post on Twitter.
● Pre-order the book for a friend.
● Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update.
Thanks! I really appreciate any help. Word of mouth is the best.
-
sponsorship
Studies show that when people find meaning in their experiences, even painful experiences, they are more apt to find happiness and fulfillment. In fact, a happiness-boosting exercise sometimes assigned is to ask people to write their life stories. When people are asked to do this, and when they reflect on their lives in a constructive way, they feel happier.
I know this is true for myself. When I’ve been able to take painful past experiences and feel as if I’ve learned something important from them, they lose some of their negative charge. For example, my biography of John Kennedy, Forty Ways to Look at JFK, didn’t sell well at all. How I love that book! And yet it didn’t sell. This was very disappointing to me, and had potential serious consequences for my career. But I kept asking myself, “What have I learned? About myself, my writing, the reading audience, the publishing industry? Am I myself satisfied with the book I wrote?” Et cetera. I learned a lot from that disappointment, and that was a comfort. My former boss Reed Hundt often quoted Benjamin Franklin: “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”
I never watch the insanely popular TV show American Idol—I can’t stand to watch people lose—so I know almost nothing about Simon Cowell. But a friend told me to take a look at his "Letter to My Shallow, Reckless, Cocky Younger Self," written on the occasion of his 50th birthday, and I was fascinated by it.
Simon Cowell’s letter to himself is a great example of writing a life story to find meaning in painful past experiences. As he writes to his younger self, Cowell expresses gratitude to the people he loves, he shows how he’s learned from his mistakes, he reflects on how he was responsible for some of the problems he faced, he emphasizes how he’s learned to trust his own judgment and taste, he considers his choices and why some were right for him and some wrong, he emphasizes his values, and he shows a sense of perspective and even humility.
I've never sat down to do something like this, but I'm sure it would be a very useful exercise. I loved reading this letter.
* I spent waaaay too long poking around Fresh Living on Belief.net this afternoon—"health and whole with two women who (usually) practice what we preach." Great material there.
* More happiness-project groups are forming! Excellent! One has started in Toronto, and another in Chicago. I can’t wait to hear more about what they’re doing. If you’re interested in launching a happiness-project group of your own, click here for the starter kit.
-
sponsorship
I’m a huge fan of book groups, and I’m in three, myself. In two of my book groups, we read children’s literature—the first group got so large that we had to close it, so I started another one. I’m also in a group in which we read adult fiction or nonfiction. I think joining or starting a group is an excellent engine of happiness, and a book group is one of the most popular organizing principles for a group.
If I do say so myself, I think The Happiness Project would make a good choice for book groups. There’s a lot to talk about, whether or not you agree with my approach; in fact, if you disagree with my approach, you have even more to talk about.
If you’re in a book group and think that you’d encourage your group to choose The Happiness Project, I’d love to hear from you. You can’t know for sure, of course, until you actually see the book, and reading the book is very different from reading the blog, but if you’re a blog reader who wants to suggest the book for your book group, please drop me a note.
Why? I’m working on a reading-group guide, and I want to be able to send it to you. Also, I'll give away a certain number of free early copies of the book, when it’s ready, and I’ll choose randomly from these e-mails to send out what supplies I get.
This is on the honor system. If you're a member of a book group, and you sincerely believe you might be inclined to recommend the book to your group ...
- E-mail me at gretchenrubin1 [at] gmail.com (don't forget the "1") with the message "book group."
- Include your name and address if you'd like to be eligible for a free book.
- If you're willing, I'd love to get a brief description of your group: how many members, what kind of books you read, etc. No particular reason, I'm just curious about book groups.
I feel a little sheepish about this post, because I don't want to seem to be doing too much self-promotion, but—there it is!
* Yes, Delia is a good friend of mine, but I'd read her blog RealDelia—"finding yourself in adulthood"—even if I didn't know her.
* If you're interested in starting your own happiness project, check out the Happiness Project Toolbox. Lots of great tools there—plus, you can see what other people are doing, which is addictive.
-
sponsorship
“Is life so wretched? Isn’t it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up.”
—Dag Hammarskjöld
* Vast amounts of interesting material to explore at Big Think.
* Join the happiness discussion on the Facebook Page.
-
sponsorship
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.
One thing my happiness project has taught me is to follow my instincts when reading. I’m a voracious reader, and I used to spend a lot more time worrying about what I “should” be reading. Instead of just reading the book that appealed most to me at a particular time, I’d ask myself—should I do more research for my book? Should I read something for the first time, instead of rereading, as I love to do? Should I squelch my love for children’s literature? And while I’m reading, should I spend so much precious time taking notes?
But now I worry more about my First Commandment, to Be Gretchen. I read what I want to read. This makes me very happy, and funnily enough, even when I’m reading something that seems completely unrelated to my research, it often does end up being useful.
For example, recently I’ve been plowing through a lot of books about acting and directing. Why? I like movies, but I’m not passionate about them, yet I love reading about directing. I’m enthralled by any description of the creative process, in any medium, and right now, I’m particularly attracted to how the people in this arena talk about what they do.
That’s why I found myself reading Michael Shurtleff’s Audition. (I think it was recommended to me by the incomparable Colleen Wainwright after I asked her for a list of good books about acting.)
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the problem of drift, and Shurtleff made a point that has many implications for happiness:
Negatives are always written in a play and it is the actor’s job to provide the positive.
This means that the no is strongly and literally written:
No, I don’t want that
I want to leave
Leave me alone
I won’t do what you want
It is the actor’s job to see through the negative to the other side … to find the yes that is also in the scene:
What do you want?
Why are you still here, if you say you want to leave?
If you want to be left alone, why are you still having this relationship?
What do you want to do?
…
Actors must learn to remember an important thing: you [the character] always have a choice. If you really want to leave, then why are you still there having this scene with this other person? Answer that question and you [the actor] will be able to do the scene.
This strikes me as a good happiness-project approach. When you feel trapped in a negative, ask yourself the positive question, and maybe that will shed light on how to change it or at least change your mind. The reason for “no” is easy to identify and express; the answer to “yes” can be elusive and upsetting. Why aren’t you trying to leave a job you hate? Why are you staying in a relationship that’s making you crazy? If you don’t want to do this, what do you want to do? In my own case, I can think of plenty of cases in which I saw the "no" very clearly and even enjoyed proclaiming the "no," but the "yes" proved much more of a struggle to discern.
What do you think? Can you think of an example where you found it easier to find the "no" than the "yes"? Somehow seeing this question raised in the issue of acting a scene and portraying a conflict in a play makes it clearer to understand.
* I can never get enough time-lapse photography of nature—here are clouds moving above the San Francisco Bay Area.
* Interested in launching a group for people doing happiness projects? More and more of these groups are forming—recent additions include Atlanta; Toronto, Canada; Oklahoma City; Williamsburg; and, yes, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The leader of the Inspiration Club of West Midlands, U.K., has integrated the Happiness Project into their daily activities—photos from their first anniversary here.
-
sponsorship
Every Wednesday Is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Six tips to hold yourself accountable for keeping your resolutions.
One thing I’ve discovered from doing my happiness project is—no surprise—it’s easy to make a resolution, but it’s not always easy to keep a resolution.
I’m fascinated by the question: What allows people to keep resolutions? Why does a couch potato suddenly decide to start going to the gym and then goes regularly for years while another similar couch potato just can’t stick with a program? Why does my sister keep resolving to learn to cook, but never follows up? Why can’t I make myself floss regularly? And yet I've been able to keep my one-sentence journal.
The first step is to make a concrete, well-directed resolution. Samuel Johnson wrote a prayer that includes the line, “O GOD, grant me to resolve aright, and to keep my resolutions.” At first, this puzzled me. I understood praying for the strength to keep resolutions, but why make the special request to be able to “resolve aright”? Now I understand that resolving aright is very important. (See No. 1 below.)
The second step is to hold yourself accountable. This is enormously important. The constant review of resolutions, and the knowledge that you are being held accountable for sticking to them, makes a huge difference.
I found this myself, doing my own happiness project, and I know that it’s true for other people. Last night, I was talking to some of the leaders of happiness-project groups around the country, and they all agreed that accountability was essential—this point was stressed particularly by the leader of the Washington, D.C., group, the indefatigably positive Dani.
So how do you hold yourself accountable? Here are some strategies that have worked for me:
- Frame your resolution in concrete actions. If you resolve to “Get more joy out of life” or “Embrace the present,” it’s hard to hold yourself accountable. It’s easier to be answerable for a specific action like “Spend at least one hour a week hiking” or “Sit in a chair for fifteen minutes every day, with no distractions.”
- Keep a chart. Having made a resolution, you have to check yourself in some way. I print out a new copy of my Resolutions Chart each month and carry it around with me. At least once each day, I review and score my resolutions. (See below if you'd like to take a look at my chart.)
- Use the Happiness Project Toolbox. If you want to keep your Resolutions Chart online, use the Toolbox—the Resolutions Tool and the Group Resolutions Tool are two very helpful tools. While you’re there, you can also add things to your Inspiration Board, share ideas to the Happiness Hacks—and look to see what other people are doing!
- Join a group. Even more useful than keep a chart is meeting with real-live people who will press you to keep your resolutions. Mutual accountability is extraordinarily effective, as demonstrated by groups like Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous. Each leader of a happiness-project group agreed that it as a key motivator for keeping resolutions. That’s why I think that launching or joining a happiness-project group is a great way to boost happiness. You have the happiness of meeting with friends, whether new or old, plus the happiness of keeping your resolutions. If you want a starter kit for launching your own happiness-project group, click here.
- Tell people what you’re doing. At the very least, tell your family about the resolutions that you’re trying to keep. Studies showed that people trying to make life changes, such as losing weight, were more likely to succeed if they told their families what they were doing.
- Consider combining these strategies. Resolve with a friend to use the Happiness Project Toolbox. Start a group to discuss resolutions. Use the Group Resolutions Tool to challenge friends, colleagues, relative to keep a resolution with you. (It occurs to me that I'm pushing the Happiness Project Toolbox hard here, but the thing is, I designed it to help people keep their resolutions, so it really is supposed to help.)
Here are more tips on sticking to your resolutions, if you're interested.
I’ve had great success with dozens of my resolutions, and yet I still don’t floss regularly. Any advice on another strategy to try?
* Speaking of the D.C. Happiness Project Group, here's an account by one of its members of why he joined and how it has helped him keep his resolution (to eat better—a resolution familiar to many of us!).
* 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.
-
sponsorship
I’m intrigued by Facebook’s new “sentiment engine,” the United States Gross National Happiness application that tracks the happiness of Facebook users based on the words used in their updates—words like “happy” or “awesome” or “sad” or “tragic.”
CNET reports that it covers only English-using, United States-based members, but that is likely to change.
Fascinating.
I think I remember reading elsewhere that people tend to emphasize the positive in status updates, which is quite interesting, if true.
The larger question of how social media—like e-mail, texting, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.—plays into our happiness is one of the big new questions in happiness. On the one hand, it’s a tremendous boon and connector of people. On the other hand, it can be a crushing weight that feels inescapable. I’m firmly in the social-media-makes-us-happier camp myself, but I understand the counterarguments.
* If you're interested in the creative process for writers, check out novelist Christina Baker Kline's blog, A Writing Life. Lots of fascinating material there from many different writers. Kline's great new novel, Bird in Hand, just came out.
* 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.
-
sponsorship
Yesterday, I got my feeling of split-second-aging.
While I was riding on the subway, for no particular reason, I felt some odometer click over, and I became older. I felt it happen. I crossed some invisible border, and now some things seem closer and clearer and more important, and other things, further away.
I’ve had this feeling of unexpected split-second-aging before, and I’ve also failed to feel it, when I expected to feel it. The night I got married, for example, I remember saying to my husband of a few hours, “I thought I’d feel different, but I feel the same. Do you feel different?” He didn’t feel any different, either.
Having a baby, too. I felt a huge range of new emotions and concerns, but I didn’t feel any older or more mature. Same old me.
But I remember feeling split-second-aging when my husband had knee surgery. I was sitting in the waiting room with my mother-in-law and father-in-law, waiting for him to regain consciousness, when the doctor came in to give us the update. (Never have I felt such love for my father-in-law as when he said, nicely but sternly, “Doctor, we want to manage this situation for no pain.”) It wasn’t a dangerous operation, but suddenly I knew that I’d leave that hospital a lot older than I’d come in.
But sometimes split-second-aging feels good. Several years ago, my mother, sister, and I organized a surprise party for my father in my apartment, and the oversized flower arrangement made a big impression on my four-year-old. When a babysitter arrived to watch her while the party was going on, I overheard my daughter explain in a soft voice, “My mommy is having a flower party.”
Suddenly, I felt like the the omnipotent Mommy of my own childhood, or Mrs. Dalloway. I felt grown-up in a way I never had before -- in a pleasing way.
The passage of time is one of the great currents of life that affect happiness. Split-second-aging isn’t a happy feeling or an unhappy feeling, but it is a weighty feeling.
Do you know what I’m talking about? Am I the only one who has experienced split-second- aging?
* I can’t get over how nice people are being about my forthcoming book – Karl over at the great blog Work Happy Now! wrote an incredibly generous post.
* Speaking of people being helpful and nice, if you’d like to volunteer to help me from time to time with The Happiness Project, you can sign up here. Super-Fans, THANKS again for all your help.
-
sponsorship
In 1920, after marrying Zelda and publishing This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald wrote,
“Riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.”
* I always find interesting things to read on the excellent blog LifeDev -- "empowering creative people."
* If you're interested in starting your own happiness project, check out the Happiness Project Toolbox. Lots of great tools there -- plus you can see what other people are doing, which is addictive.
-
sponsorship
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.
One of my favorite things to do is to help my friends clear their clutter. It’s less emotionally taxing than clearing my own clutter, plus I don’t have any delicious, horrible piles left to tackle (OK, maybe I do have one messy pile of shirts in my closet). As a consequence, I’ve seen a lot of clutter and heard lots of people talk about their thoughts about clutter. And I’ve reached an important conclusion:
Don’t get organized.
When you’re facing a desk swamped in papers, or a closet bursting with clothes, or countertops littered with piles of random objects, don’t say to yourself, “I need to get organized.” Your first instinct should be to get rid of stuff. If you don’t keep it, you don’t have to organize it.
A huge amount of clutter is the result of keeping things you don’t use. “Well, I don’t have that problem,” you might think. “Why would I bother to keep something I don’t use?” But it’s easier than you think for this stuff to accumulate.
In fact, there are a surprising number of reasons to hang on to something you don’t use. Maybe you used this object in the past, and it has sentimental value—your 10-year-old’s old sippy cup. Maybe you wish you used this object, even though you never do—a set of hand weights. Maybe you want to pretend you live a life where this object would be useful—linen cocktail napkins. Maybe you’ve never used this thing, and you feel guilty about having wasted the money buying it—a bottle of decoupage glue. (All items that I held onto for years, without using, by the way.)
It can be painful to admit that you aren’t going to use certain possessions, but all that junk just gets in your way. Be honest with yourself.
When I’m helping people clear clutter, they often say, “I refuse to give that up! It’s got too much sentimental value to throw away.” I’m a big believer in keeping things for sentimental reasons, but it helps to admit that that’s what you’re doing and to act accordingly.
For example, a friend was keeping a huge pile of T-shirts she loved in college but no longer wore. She wanted to buy a special set of plastic shelves to put in her closet to organize them.
Instead, I asked her, “Do you need to keep all these T-shirts, or can you pick a few to jog your memory?” With some coaxing, she got rid of most of them. Once she was down to two T-shirts, I asked her, “Do you actually wear these T-shirts?” She didn’t, so we moved them out of the precious real estate of her closet and stuck them on the top shelf of a little-used closet.
People also say, “No, I’ve never used that, but maybe I will! It might come in handy!” Maybe it will—or maybe it won’t. Ask yourself: How easy would it be to replace this item? Have I ever used it? What else in my life would have to change for me to use this?
For example, my sister had huge amounts of paper clutter, and when we started going through it, I saw that she was hanging on to all sorts of statements and receipts. She wanted to buy a file box to file it all away neatly, but I disagreed. “You should just throw these papers away,” I said “Why do you them at all?” “Maybe I’ll need them,” she objected. But she’d never needed them in the past, and it wouldn’t have been hard to get copies, if she would ever need them. So we tossed all of it. Much easier than organizing it!
No surprise, I’ve noticed that it’s the people with the worst clutter problems who have the instinct to run to a store and buy complicated hangers, drawer compartments, etc. I love and use that stuff, too, but now I never let myself buy an item until it’s absolutely clear that it will help me put objects in order that are truly necessary—rather than act as a crutch to move clutter around or to jam more clutter into place.
So the next time you have the urge to get organized, and especially if you feel tempted to buy organizing doodads, first push yourself to throw away or give away the things you don’t actually use. (Here are 27 bonus tips for keeping your house in order.) You may find yourself left with nothing to organize.
Have you ever realized that you’ve been hanging on to something that you didn’t use? Why were you keeping it?
* Tonight I saw Marci Alboher, which reminded me how much I love to read her Working the New Economy blog. And oh, how I love stop-motion video—I watched this funny video on Gimundo.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 28,000 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.