The Happiness Project: A happier version of schadenfreude.

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT is the memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier – happily, it was a #1 New York Times bestseller. As one of the hundreds of experiments I've conducted, I started this blog. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of happiness. –

Gretchen Rubin

Twelve Personal Commandments

Four Splendid Truths

First: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
Second: One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Third: The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)
Fourth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

30-Second
TV Commercial

What Started Me Thinking

"The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." Mark Twain
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

A happier version of schadenfreude.

What a happy day! I went to Barnes & Noble to see Bass Ackwards and Belly Up, the fabulous new young adult novel written by my sister and her writing partner.

There it was, in all its glory, sitting face out on the shelf. Of course I had to take several copies and drop them on various display tables, to catch the eyes of browsing shoppers.

Yes, I’m prejudiced, but what a good book! It shifts among the lives of four best friends, and is so engaging, with such sympathetic characters—and because I know how much work went into it, seeing it in final form is very exciting.

Schadenfreude is the enjoyment of other people’s misfortunes, but is there a special term for the happiness you feel for other people’s successes? There should be. It’s a much nicer emotion.

Posted April 18, 2006

Comments

I believe one of the true measures of a person is whether they can be genuinely and sincerely happy for the good fortune of others, even when things are not going well for themselves. Congrats to your sister and to you for sharing in her joy!

Posted by: Monica Ricci | January 06, 2007 at 01:53 PM

A term that I've heard used as the opposite of scadenfreude is "mudita" which can be translated as rejoicing in others' good fortune.

Posted by: Russell | June 17, 2007 at 10:41 PM

The opposite of schadenfreude should actually be sadness at other people's good fortune.

Posted by: wylie.conlon | January 06, 2008 at 10:24 PM

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Gretchen Rubin is the best-selling writer whose book, The Happiness Project, is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. Here, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.