The Happiness Project: How To Be Happier

You've Forgotten Someone's Name. Here's What To Do.

If you’re like me, you sometimes have trouble remembering people’s names or even how you know them. A few years ago, while at a chaotic birthday party for a 3-year-old, I was on the brink of going over to some little kid’s father to say, “I think we went to college together.” Turns out it was Dylan McDermott!

In ancient Rome, the job of the "nomenclator" was to whisper or announce the names of people as they approached a politician. My husband serves this function for me; he has an uncanny ability to recall names and faces—people he has met once, years ago, and also famous people. I'll insist I've never met someone before, and he'll say, "Wasn't he in your class in college?" I have no idea how he does it, but I really suffer when I go to social events without him.

So I’ve developed some strategies for coping with the fact that I’m not able to pull up a person’s name right away. Of course, you can always just say politely, "I'm sorry, I don't recall your name," but if you'd rather try to disguise your forgetfulness a bit, give these a try:

1. The “I know your name, but I’m blocked” dodge:
“I keep wanting to call you 'David,' but I know that’s not right.”

2. The “Of course I know you—in fact, I want all your information” dodge:
“Hey, I’d love to get your card.”

3. The “The tip of my tongue” dodge:
“I know I know your name, but I’m blanking right now.”

4. The “You’re brilliant!” dodge:
“Wow, you have a terrific memory. I can’t believe you remember my name from that meeting six months ago. I can’t remember the names of people I met yesterday! So of course I have to ask you your name.”

5. The “Sure, I remember you” dodge:
“Remind me—what’s your last name?” If you ask a person for his last name, he’s likely to repeat both names. “Doe, John Doe.”

6. The “One-sided introduction” dodge:
“Hey,” you say to the person whose name you can’t remember, “let me introduce you to Pat Smith.” You introduce the two and say the name of the person whose name you remember. Almost always, the nameless person will volunteer his or her name.

Also, remember that others might have trouble remembering your name. When you’re saying hello to someone, err on the side of reintroducing yourself. “Hi, John, it’s Gretchen Rubin.” Say your name slowly and clearly. And don’t get offended if someone doesn’t remember your name! And while you're at it, remember to smile. It really does make a difference in how friendly you're perceived to be.

* The brilliant Leo Babauta of Zen Habits fame has started a site, Mnmlist.com, about minimalism, "How less is the answer." Lots of wonderful material there.

* As I posted the other day, I'm trying to figure out the level of interest for a book tour. If you'd come to a book event I was doing in your town, it would be very helpful if you'd 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.

Why Shopping at H&M Is Better Than at Bergdorf's

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 recently read a terrific new novel by Sally Koslow, The Late, Lamented Molly Marx. It has a very interesting premise, which I don’t want to give away, but I will say that it explores an important aspect of happiness.

I raced through the book because I was enjoying it so much (it’s packed with sharp social observation, plus it paints a wonderful picture of New York City), so only after I’d finished it did I realize that the book is a great examination of drift.

In the novel, Molly has a life with her husband and young daughter, and she's also having an affair. She loves and hates her life with her husband; same with the affair. She can’t decide whether to divorce her husband and marry her lover or to end the affair, and she begins to drift in this state. Both fates have their appeal, and their cost.

Molly’s situation is resolved in a surprising way, which I won’t reveal, but it got me thinking about drift. I was interested to see what Sally Koslow would have to say about happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Sally: Besides reading novels, which I love so much I decided to try and write one? Dancing, at which I most certainly do not excel, makes me giddy-happy if I’m hearing the right music, even if I’m alone in my kitchen alternating the same two moves my kids mock. So does escaping into a movie trussed-up with corsets and English accents or a well-written contemporary rom-com. Every time I watch Diane Keaton grin to herself while she’s pounding away on her computer in Something's Gotta Give, a movie I can probably lip synch, I want to do the same.

Some activities make me happy once they’re over. I can’t say I adore running, but several times a week I take myself to the park for a long jog and invariably, when the rubber hits the road, my brain manufactures dialogue, plot points, and metaphors, and as e.e. cummings wrote, the world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Procrastination screws with my happiness, even though I know I get a contact high from accomplishment. For me, productivity demands infrastructure. I’d never have been able to complete three novels in the last five years if I hadn’t joined a writing workshop. It gives me feedback, but most important, the group harnesses me to deadlines, without which I’d still be muttering, “Maybe I’ll write a novel!” Being a magazine editor taught me that everyone, for almost everything, requires deadlines. I’m kind of an evangelist about this. Now if only someone would give me a deadline for organizing my photographs.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you find very helpful? Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is my all-time favorite play, and it inspired my current book, The Late, Lamented Molly Marx.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing that detracts a lot from their happiness?
Envy is the buzz-kill of happiness. This is a theme I’m exploring in my next novel, where four women’s friendships wig out when they start tripping over their envy. (The original title was The Schadenfreude Club—we just changed it to With Friends Like These, since not everyone knows the snarky German word, schadenfreude, which means taking pleasure in someone else’s misery.)

I know I’ve wasted too much time on envying people with more money or success. I wish I could say I’ve learned to short-circuit envy, but the best I do is try to minimize contact with happiness-suckers in favor of being with people I appreciate and who appreciate me. I got happier, for example, when my son switched from private to public school, where the parents took fewer vacations to Tuscany. I try to remind myself that while other women may look like they have it all, they may secretly covet X. For all I know, maybe every woman I envy secretly wants to be a novelist.

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 was a cliche high-school and college kid who no doubt looked happy enough but wrote yearning poetry and was often the girl at the party ready to cry. I was shy and didn’t instinctively understand how to make friends. My early role model was Lois Lane, and it helped to cast myself as a reporter for school newspapers, where I was forced to ask people questions. This practice helped, but took me only so far—when I, a North Dakota hayseed, moved to Manhattan to work on Mademoiselle magazine, the culture shock rendered me practically mute. I forced myself to observe women who had a knack for making friends and tried to model their behavior, down to noticing that it’s ordinary good manners to be friendly

During the last eight years, because of dumb luck I’ve lost two editor-in-chief jobs. This crashed my happiness, since I adored my work and believed I was put on earth to edit magazines. To keep my sanity, I started dabbling with writing fiction, which turned into novels—one lost job was running McCall’s, which got turned over to Rosie O’Donnell to start an eponymous magazine. That “you can’t make this stuff up” experience inspired my first novel, Little Pink Slips. I never expected novel-writing to become my new life’s work, and it has made me as happy as I’ve ever been.

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy and didn’t?
One of my jobs came with—woo-hoo!—a clothing allowance. Although I’d been devoted to cheap-chic, when I got this perk I threw myself at the mercy of a personal shopper at Bergdorf’s and let her talk me into suits that made me looked like a lady senator, not Sally. I’ll never say money can’t buy a certain peace of mind, but this experience taught me that scoring bargains at H&M makes me happier than posh shopping, which leaves me feeling not pampered, but phony and rip-offed, a sure recipe for unhappiness.

* I'm a big fan of Alexandra Levit's blog Water Cooler Wisdom, which is a terrific resource for "up-to-the-minute career advice from one who has survived the trenches," so I was very pleased to see that she posted about the Happiness Project Toolbox.

* I send out short, free 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.

Be Happier: Control Your Exit

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

This weekend, when I was home in Kansas City to go to my high-school reunion, I ran into an old family friend. “Let me tell you one of my personal secrets for happiness,” he said. “Control your exit.”

“’Control your exit?’” I asked. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It means, always be able to leave when you want. Drive yourself to a party instead of getting a ride, so you can leave when you’re ready. Try to go to someone else’s house, or a public place, instead of having people over to your house, because there’s nothing worse than seeing someone lean back and cross their legs when you’re ready to go to bed. Or else have people over to your house before some event—before a dinner reservation or a movie—so you have to leave by a certain time.”

My husband would certainly agree with this advice. He never agrees to go to a party on a boat, or to go on a bus tour, or to put himself in any situation that would prevent him from leaving whenever he wants. He feels trapped and unhappy if he knows he’s stuck.

It occurs to me that “Control your exit” is advice that’s figuratively true, too. For me, one of the most memorable pieces of advice from Stephen Covey's classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Begin with the end in mind.” That is (if I remember correctly), know where you want to go. When you start or do something, maintain a vision of where you’re headed—especially important for people who are considering law school! Friends, don’t go unless you know where you want to end up!

Speaking of my husband and law, he applied this rule when he was considering post-law-school jobs. He thought that working as an assistant U.S. attorney sounded great, but he wasn’t sure what he’d do after that. What was the exit strategy? He knew he didn’t want to work in a law firm, and he wasn’t sure what other jobs would follow from a stint in the U.S. attorney's office; he was worried about taking a job that didn’t seem to lead to any other opportunities that interested him.

My newest Secret of Adulthood is that “the opposite of a great truth is also true.” It occurs to me that in some situations, not controlling your exit would lead to happiness. There’s a lot of happiness to be gained from spontaneity, impulse adventures, and unpredictable undertakings. Even in those cases, however, I imagine it’s better mindfully to embrace this idea of uncertainty—to know that you’re deliberately choosing to give up control of your exit—rather than to have it take you unawares. For instance, people often ask me, “Where is all this happiness project stuff going?” I’m not really sure, and I’m trying to embrace that uncertainty as exciting and fun, instead of letting my control-freak side become obsessed with certainty and control.

What do you think? Is a resolution to “Control your exit” more or less likely to lead to happiness? Maybe, as Bill Murray explained in Ghostbusters, of “never getting involved with possessed people,” “Actually, it’s more of a guideline than a rule.”

* Gimundo had an interesting post about Happy News From the Recession: 5 Good Things about Hard Times. Encouraging information there!

* If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Page on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

Reading in the Tub, Escaping From the Cubicle

By far the best part of the SXSW conference was meeting other bloggers whom I’ve read but never seen face-to-face—such as Pamela Slim, who has a terrific blog, Escape From Cubicle Nation (one of the top career blogs), and whose book, Escape From Cubicle Nation, is just about to hit the shelves.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of her book early, and the thing I most love about it is that it's very specific. It is packed with useful information and suggestions for actions you could take right now to work on your career. I don't need to escape from a cubicle, and nevertheless I found it hugely helpful.

Because of the strong relationship between happiness and work, Pam has done a lot of thinking about happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Pam: I love to read books in the bathtub. If I am tired or grumpy or stressed, climbing into a hot bath with a good book is an instant mood shifter. The type of book is important if I am feeling really low. It needs to be exceptionally well-written, creative and uplifting. Favorite bathside reads are The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
I am stronger than I thought I was at 18. And I don't have to change myself to please anyone. That was a lesson that took about 10 painful years to learn. But once I did, I got really clear that the only way to be truly happy was to be very clear with my boundaries.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
I sometimes let stressful thoughts swirl around in my head for too long, which causes anxiety and makes me feel grumpy. When I notice that I am making myself unhappy, I step back, examine the thought (like "Things are never going to change" or "This situation is hopeless") and turn it around to something more true and useful (like "Things are always changing, and for the better" or "No situation is hopeless—there is always a way out.") When I change the thought, the feeling changes, and my mood lifts.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”)
I adore the Buddhist Loving Kindness Meditation and use it all the time if I am feeling stressed:
May you be happy.
May you be well.
May you be free from suffering.
May you be safe.

I also love a particular part of a Navajo prayer, which I learned from my husband:
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.

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 that many people, including myself sometimes, look for happiness in the future. They think they will be happy once they have a certain level of financial success or their blog traffic doubles or they get lots of clients or they find a man (or woman) and get married. In reality, wherever you go, there you are. So by finding joy in the present, in its beautiful imperfection, any future goal that you accomplish will just be a cherry on top.

* The fabulous Sister Project is an enthralling collection of material having to do with sisters and sisterhood, very broadly imagined. Fascinating.

* Want to volunteer as a superfan—to help with the prelaunch of my soon-to-be-unveiled fabulous new happiness-related Web site, and/or other various things? I'd be thrilled to hear from you. You can click here or e-mail me at gretchenrubin1 [at] gmail [dot] com. Just write “superfan” in the subject line.

"Maybe Happiness Isn't the Most Important Part of a Well-Lived Life"

Penelope Trunk is one of the most interesting and provocative writers about career happiness—and happiness in general. (I think it’s almost impossible to untangle these two issues, but Penelope might disagree with me on that.) She wrote a terrific book, Brazen Careerist; she writes a very popular blog also called Brazen Careerist; and she’s the CEO of BrazenCareerist.com, an online community and consulting firm.

The thing about Penelope is that, yes, she is brazen. She's unusually honest about her views and her experiences (for example, she wrote a lot about going into marriage counseling), and unlike many highly opinionated people, she packs her writing with solid information and backs up her perspective. I always get a lot out of reading her material—I don’t always agree, but I’m always fascinated.

Gretchen: What's a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Penelope: There is nothing simple that I can rely on to make me happier. Yoga always makes me happy, but getting myself to do it is difficult even though I'm always happy I did it. Kissing someone I have a crush on always makes me happy, but finding the crush and orchestrating the kiss is tricky.

I want to tell you that expressing gratitude always makes me happier. I know that research says this is true. But I think we could debate forever how much increase in happiness is so small it's not even worth talking about. I'm not sure. But a kiss with a crush is always worth talking about.

What's something you know now about happiness that you didn't know when you were 18?
My happiness levels in life don't particularly change depending on where I am in life. I have sort of a setpoint. I veer from it in the same way I veer from my regular weight the day after Thanksgiving—I always go back to that setpoint.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Eating bread is what I’m working on right now. I've been off gluten enough to know that it makes a difference in my anxiety levels. I am calmer with no gluten. But bread is so yummy, and also it's the food I turn to if I want to do emotional eating. Over the course of a day I am happier if I don't eat bread, but over the course of a minute—when the bread is in front of me—it's hard to make the right decisions.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you've find very helpful?
I tell myself that happiness is not about making good choices or having success; it's about being resilient when we mess up.

If you're feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
I eat bread. And then I have the problem above. If I am really, unhappy I go to bed. Severe unhappiness generally goes away with time.

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 see a lot of bullshit around me. So I am sort of cynical about the discussion of happiness. I am not sure that I think the discussion of "Am I happy?" is productive. I think life is extremely difficult, for everyone, and that in order to get through life we have tricks for ourselves to continue the journey, and happiness is sort of a trick. I don't think there is a lot of happiness in life. There is a lot of hopefulness and interest in how things unfold, and there are spurts of happiness. Sometimes I think that happiness is maybe not the most important part of a well-lived life. But I'm not sure.

Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy? And why?
Always the same. I have earned $300,000/year in NYC, and I have earned $45,000 a year. And there was no change. I have been married and divorced, and there was no change. I have had lots of friends and very few friends, and no change. I am generally upbeat and optimistic, and I am an optimizer. And nearly none of those things ever changes.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
Yes. By reading the research and watching how it applies to my life. Right now I am consumed with the idea that one of the biggest impacts you can have on happiness levels is going from no sex to having regular sex with a regular partner. Working on that one. Forget daily gratitudes. Those don't impact happiness nearly as much.

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy didn't—or vice versa?
I thought money would make me happy. It didn't. I still think money would make me happy. There is cognitive dissonance, and I think it might be part of our DNA. Here's an irony: That in order to spend days implementing the happiness research, you'd do best to have someone else supporting you financially, so you can focus on happiness. I get stuck on thinking like this. I'm not sure how right it is; I just know that people—most people—are stuck on the money issue, even if they won't admit it.

*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.

A Lawyer's Guide to Happiness: Give Subway Directions, Cook Healthy Food

One of my favorite people with whom to discuss happiness is Michael Melcher. Michael is a career coach who has an incredible breadth of personal experience from which to draw: While in college, under the name Jane Harvard, he wrote a novel with three friends, The Student Body; he has a JD/MBA from Stanford and has worked as a lawyer; he served in Calcutta, India, and Taipei, Taiwan, in the Foreign Service; he has a blog with a lot of great material, at the Creative Lawyer.

One of his most recent accomplishments is the publication of the book The Creative Lawyer. It's described as "a practical guide to authentic professional satisfaction" and is aimed at helping lawyers be happier in their work. For my happiness project, I’ve read a lot of books about career satisfaction, and this is absolutely one of the best (and I’m not just saying that because Michael is a friend!). In fact, I think that the book isn’t helpful for lawyers only but for anyone who is thinking about ways to be happier at work.

Michael has not only done a lot of thinking about happiness, he's also done a lot of thinking about what practical changes actually can help boost career happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Michael: Giving someone directions on the subway or helping them carry a bag up a flight of subterranean stairs makes me almost bizarrely happy.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18?
Whatever issues you have at 18 related to self-acceptance, moodiness, need for validation, and desire to be special (to name a few) will most likely still be present when you are 30, 40, or 50. They probably will never go away. But you can learn ways to manage them. So I guess I would say that a big part of happiness is recognizing who you actually are and finding ways to bring out the best in that person and manage the less wonderful parts.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Comparing myself with others is something that I do consistently, and it is always an impediment to happiness. See my answer to question no. 2 above.

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
Every single time I exercise, I feel better. Even though I know this, it does take some effort to get myself out the door. I have also discovered over the years that eating quality, healthful food has a huge impact on my overall happiness, especially if I cook it myself. One happiness learning is that the physical and emotional components of happiness are completely intertwined.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to or detracts a lot from their happiness?
People confuse “I can’t” with “I won’t.” I see this especially in my line of work, which involves working with people to take action to improve their careers and lives. It’s so automatic for people to say they can’t do things: They can’t move, they can’t get by on less money, they can’t send their kids to public schools, they can’t find a good partner, they can’t pursue their passions. In most cases the truth is that they can, but don’t want to accept the consequences of those choices. It’s fine to choose to do or not to do things, so long as we acknowledge that we are choosing. But when people speak in a way that eliminates agency over their lives, they end up frustrating, angering, and depressing themselves. And they seem inauthentic to others. This is why we never want to listen to someone complain about all the things they can’t do in life.

Aside from raising children, our careers are usually the most direct creative expression we have. Yet most people I know live in a state of uncertainty and anxiety about their careers. The old paradigms don’t work, but we don’t have any new ones to replace them. There’s a kind of pressure to stand for finer things, but one’s own creative expression in the world is one of life’s important things. Bright, conscientious people today are incredibly frustrated because they aren’t sure how to go along this unknown path, feel embarrassed that they’re making a big deal about it, and are also terrified that they’ll get things wrong.

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?
At my current point in life, I feel closer to who I was as a little boy than I felt for much of my life. I was a creative, positive, curious kid, but at a certain point I fell into a preprofessional kind of track that was not very satisfying to me. It took me a long time to unlearn that.

I think that I have always had a rich range of feelings—I have a lot of zest for life but at the same time have a lot of feelings that can go negative. For instance, I can’t watch nature shows or anything that shows animals or fish or birds being hurt or killed. Nature actually kind of freaks me out. I love it, but it is so Hobbesian. So I guess for me a full life includes both happy and dark moments, feelings of great satisfaction along with unquenchable yearnings.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
All the time. I am like that character in Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections who is constantly monitoring his serotonin level and wondering which factors are leading to which results.

Having followed your blog for some time (and having read your awesome manuscript) [thanks, Michael!], I think that you are really onto something: creating and following a set of specific habits is probably the best thing we can do to keep happiness alive in our lives.

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy didn’t—or vice versa?
I’m surprised that selling makes me happy.

* A thoughtful reader e-mailed me the link to a fabulous post, Abstract City, by Christoph Niemann. Anyone can enjoy these, but they are particularly charming when you live in New York City.

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts. If you’d like to sign up, click here. Or 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.) No need to write anything more than “newsletter” in the subject line.

Organic Chocolate and "God's Reset Button"

From time to time, I post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness. 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.

Jonathan Fields, of Awake at the Wheel blog fame, has a new book that just hit the shelves two days ago: Career Renegade. Remarkably, Amazon sold out on the first day it went on sale—but perhaps that’s not a surprise, because it’s a book that's meant to help you figure out how to make a living doing a job you love. That's obviously an issue of great interest to many people, especially these days. Turning a passion for video games into a career is a transformation that could make someone very happy.

Jonathan has done a lot of thinking about the relationship between happiness and work—one of the most fascinating subtopics within the subject of happiness and also an area that people find very challenging to change when it’s not working.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Jonathan: Coming up with new knock-knock jokes with my 7-year-old daughter. For me, it’s all about people and flow. So, activities that take me away, especially ones I can share with people I love to be around, are the activities I tend to be drawn to.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
That it’s not about what you have, it’s about who you bring to the party. Experiences and people are the holy grail, not money and stuff.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Planning. I tend to be very driven and, along with that comes a fair amount of thinking about and living in the future. It’s good to think about what’s coming next, to work to make it unfold the way you want it to.

But, life’s uncertain. That may be the only thing in life I’m certain about. And what you work so hard to make happen down the road may not happen. So, giving up too much of the juicy stuff that lies in front of you every day isn’t necessarily the most intelligent tradeoff in the world. Think about what you want …but love, cherish, nourish, and be grateful for what you’ve got.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?
Actually, it’s something that was shared with me by the soon-to-be former editor of Lifehacker, Gina Trapani. When I was interviewing her for my book, Career Renegade, at one point she said, “You do the thing you can’t not do.”

There’s so much in those seven simple words. A second one comes from the epic poem "The Bhagavad Gita," and it translates roughly as “It’s far better to follow your own path imperfectly than to follow another’s perfectly.”

Similar sentiment. Both speak to the critical importance of being authentic.

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
You mean, besides a honking hunk of Green & Black’s 70 percent dark organic chocolate?! For most of my life, movement or exercise has been my go-to pick me up. There’s just something about moving, breathing and sweating.

It’s like God’s reset button.

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?
On the “adds to” side of the equation, focusing on what is right and what can go right and being consciously grateful for what you have. Just flip that around and you end up on the “detracts from" side.

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’ve definitely run the gamut. Much of my unhappiness, when it’s been more present, has come from either an unwillingness to accept my lack of control over certain circumstances in life or seeing those close to me going through challenging times and being unable to make it OK.

I’m a solver. And, when I can’t solve … well, that bugs me. For the most part, though, I have to admit, I live a pretty blessed life.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
Yes, and this follows largely from my last answer. The more comfortable I get accepting some stuff’s just out of my control, the less anxiety and frustration I tend to carry. I don’t waste huge amounts of time or energy trying to fix things that can’t be fixed or make certain things that will never be certain.

I also check in on a pretty regular basis to make sure I’m allocating my time and energy in a way that’s consistent with what makes me come alive. From a career standpoint, that almost always involves the process of creation with great people. And, from a personal standpoint, it means making sure I am not only there, but present, as much as possible to play with my family and friends.

Oh, and one last thing. I try to laugh as often as possible (which isn’t too hard for me, since I’m genetically inclined toward dorkdom).

*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. No need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.