The Happiness Project

This Wednesday: Tips...to get good sleep.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Tips to get good sleep.

There’s a lot of advice out there about getting good sleep; here are tips that work for me:

Good habits for good sleep:
1. Exercise most days, even if it’s just to take a walk.
2. No caffeine after 7:00 p.m.
3. An hour before bedtime, avoid doing any kind of work that takes alert thinking. Addressing envelopes—okay. Analyzing an article—nope.
4. Adjust your bedroom temperature to be slightly chilly.
5. Keep your bedroom dark. Studies show that even the tiny light from a digital alarm clock can disrupt a sleep cycle. We have about six devices in our room that glow bright green; it’s like sleeping in a mad scientist’s lab. The Big Man's new pet, a Roomba (yes, he loves his robot vacuum), gives out so much light that I have to cover it with a pillow before bed.
6. Keep the bedroom as tidy as possible. It’s not restful to fight through chaos into bed.

If sleep won’t come:
1. Breathe deeply and slowly until you can’t stand it anymore.
2. If your mind is racing (you’re planning a trip, a move, Christmas shopping; you’re worried about a medical diagnosis), write down what’s on your mind. This technique really works for me.
3. Slather yourself with body lotion. It feels good and also, if you’re having trouble sleeping because you’re hot, it cools you down.
4. If your feet are cold, put on socks.
5. Stretch your whole body.
6. Have a warm drink. Some people claim that warm milk contains melatonin and trytophan and so helps induce sleep, but in fact, a glass of milk doesn’t contain enough to have any effect. But it’s still a soothing drink. My nighttime favorite: 1/3 mug of milk, add boiling water, one packet of Equal, and a dash of vanilla. A real nursery treat.
7. Yawn.
8. Stretch your toes up and down several times.
9. Tell yourself, “I have to get up now.” Imagine that you just hit the snooze alarm and in a minute, you’re going to be marching through the morning routine. Often this is an exhausting enough prospect to make me fall asleep.

Re-frame:
Re-frame your sleeplessness as a welcome opportunity to snatch some extra time out of your day. I get up and tackle mundane chores, like paying bills, organizing books, or tidying up. Then I start the day with a wonderful feeling of having accomplished something even before 6:45 am.

Happiness, Profane Waste, and pre-goal attainment positive affect.

Today is a big day for the Happiness Project: I just got back from the book party for Profane Waste, a book I did in collaboration with artist Dana Hoey.

While we were in college (Dana at Wesleyan and I at Yale), Dana came to New Haven for a semester to live with Megan, who was one of her best friends, and me. So we became friends. Afterward, Dana and I lost touch, but we reconnected years later in New York City.

In the intervening time, Dana had become a well-established artist, a photographer.

I’d gone to law school, and while there, I happened to see a friend (okay, it was the Big Man, while we were dating) throw a newly purchased, never-opened package of cheesecake into the garbage—an action that doesn’t sound particularly significant, yet it shocked me profoundly.

I was so struck by this episode that I decided to try to write a law paper to figure out why—contrary to conventional economic expectations—owners might choose to waste their own property, and why such actions are so disturbing and thrilling.

My curiosity deepened when, after I asked a prominent property professor to supervise a paper on the topic, I was told not to bother because “People don’t deliberately waste their own possessions.” Oh yes, they do. I gave this phenomenon a name, profane waste, to explain actions like:

o For decades, a concentration camp survivor carried a sandwich in his pocket each day, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to toss away the sandwich each night.
o Movie producer Don Simpson’s determination to wear each of his identical pairs of Levi’s only once required more effort than rotating the same few pairs of jeans.
o In the movie Titanic, Rose neither wears nor sells the diamond necklace she’s kept for decades, but casts it into the ocean in tribute to her long-dead lover.

I did write a law paper on this topic, and even wrote a long, bad novel about it, but neither satisfied me. I kept collecting examples of profane waste wherever I saw them.

Then Dana and I crossed paths again. Energized by visiting her studio, I hoped we could collaborate on a project. Then, over coffee one morning, after Dana had read my essay on profane waste, we decided to grapple with this subject together.

And so I wrote an essay, and Dana took a series of photographs. But we made the classic creative mistake: producing something we loved without a clear vision of what exactly to do with it. And so the profane waste project stayed on the shelf for some time.

Then—and here’s the crazy Oprah-like touch—I was talking to a friend from law school, a guy who is hugely knowledgeable about contemporary art. I knew he collected Dana’s work, and I mentioned that we’d done this project together. Well, it turned out he was starting an art publishing company, and he was interested in considering publishing our project.

We presented what we had done, he was interested, I re-wrote and expanded the essay, Dana took many more photographs, we went through editing, book design…and tonight was the book party.

The Big Man threw that piece of cheesecake into the garbage in June 1992. Now it’s almost June 2006, and my long obsession has reached a gorgeous culmination.

I was thrilled tonight at the Profane Waste book party, of course. But not as thrilled as I might have expected. My happiness came along the way, while I was making progress toward the goal, not at the moment I reached it.

Hitting on the name “profane waste”…grasping its three variations (heedless waste, defying waste, defiant waste)…hearing that an Economics NOBEL LAUREATE was going to write a book blurb…meeting Dana for coffee to talk about the project…learning about book jacket design…these were the stages where I felt happiest.

Researcher Richard Davidson infelicitously calls this “pre-goal attainment positive affect"--the happiness that comes from progressing toward a goal. It’s much greater than the moment of hitting the mark.

Shakespeare was right: “Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.”

(The full text of Profane Waste, though alas, without Dana Hoey’s photographs, can be found here.)

Laugh out loud.

The chief goal for the month of May has been “Laugh out loud.” A typical young child laughs more than 400 times a day, a typical adult—fifteen times. Before I started making an effort to laugh more, I wonder how often I hit even fifteen.

Too often I was drifting around, feeling either distracted or aggrieved—neither state conducive to laughter. Doing more laughing has made a difference in my happiness, and it’s easy to understand why.

First, under the rule that we should act as we want to feel, I feel much happier when I’m laughing out loud.

Second, one of life’s most exquisite pleasures is to make people laugh, and so by laughing, it’s obvious that I’m making other people feel great, which in turn makes me feel good. It’s heartbreaking, in fact, to see the Big Girl and the Little Girl each gaze into my face to watch me laugh with them. Even the Big Man seems more pleased with himself.

Third, studies show that laughter is healthy—it lowers blood pressure and cortisol levels, boosts immunity, and may even help you lose weight.

But it’s not easy to do a lot of laughing out loud. “It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light,” wrote G. K. Chesterton.

On an airplane, they warn you to put on your own oxygen mask first, before trying to help those around you. I’ve realized I need to pay a lot of attention to my oxygen mask.

I’ve been taking much greater care to dress appropriately. I’m always, always cold, and I’ve gotten better at bringing a sweater, wearing a warmer coat than most people, putting on a hat even if no one else seems to need one. I made a major discovery this winter: wearing a body suit under a dress. (An excellent example of the rule to identify the problem. I hadn’t really thought about how I might be able to dress more warmly.)

I’m better about making sure I don’t get too hungry. I seem to need to eat far more often than most adults, and I certainly can’t wait until 8:00 pm for dinner.

I follow the wise admonition of the Duke of Wellington: “Always make water when you can.”

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to catch on, but over-the-counter medication is amazingly effective. These days, if I have a headache, I take something for it!

I try not to lose my temper. Nothing makes me crabbier than my own bad behavior. That’s another reason why laughing out loud is such a good thing to try to do. It’s hard to feel or act crabby when I’m laughing.
*
Reading this over, I sound so self-congratulatory. I shouldn't. Being light-hearted is a big struggle for me, every day. Nagging, snapping, complaining, ignoring...these come easily. It's easy to be heavy--hard to be light.

The happiness of the good deed.

I was walking with a friend when we spotted a set of keys right in the middle of the huge, hectic intersection at 86th and Lexington.

I scooped them up, but when we got to the sidewalk, we were at a loss. Given that the keys were in the middle of the street, the owner had probably just dropped them. What to do? Give them to the guy in the corner newsstand? Put them on the sidewalk and hope the owner would re-trace her steps? (The key chain was a preppy band of pink and blue ribbon; it obviously belonged to a woman.)

Even a few months ago, I don’t think I would have spent much time trying to figure out a solution, but one of my May goals is “Look for ways to help others.” Also, I must confess, my friend was very determined to solve the problem.

There was no conspicuous place to leave the keys to be found, so we looked back at the key-ring. It was strange; I felt guilty, like we were looking through her wallet.

What clues? A label from the store CK Bradley on the ribbon key-chain. An AAA key-chain card. And, ah-ha, a mini-membership card for Kidville, a place that offers little kids’ classes, with a bar code identifier stamped on one side. Kidville would be able to access the owner’s account and get her phone number. And Kidville was only two blocks away, at 84th.

I offered to drop off the keys; selfishly, I wanted the buzz of doing the good deed. The Kidville clerk promised to call the owner on her cell phone, and I left feeling great. Imagine the owner's relief! Maybe she hadn’t even noticed that her keys were missing.

Studies show that people who perform acts of kindness get a measurable boost in happiness. In fact, Jonathan Haidt points out in his terrific book, The Happiness Hypothesis, people are often made happier by giving help than by getting it.

Do good, feel good.

Asking yourself whether you're happy--good idea or not?

The other night, the Big Man and I had dinner with a man we know slightly. He asked me what I was working on, so the conversation turned to happiness (the Big Man considers himself a bit of a martyr to this topic).

Our dinner companion listened politely while I described the Happiness Project, then ventured that he subscribed to John Stuart Mill’s view—and he gave a fair approximation of the Mill quote, I was impressed—“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

One of the problems of thinking about happiness all the time is that I’ve developed…shall we say…decided views. I wanted to pound the table and yell, “No, no, NO!” Instead, I managed to nod and say in a mild voice, “Yes, a lot of people take that view, it’s a large strand in thinking about happiness. I can’t say that I agree.” (Not hard to guess that I don’t agree; according to Mill’s view, a project about trying to be happier would inevitably be doomed to failure.)

I know, if it’s John Stuart Mill vs. Gretchen Rubin, why listen to me?

But in my experience at least, thinking about my happiness has made me far happier than I was before I gave it much consideration.

Now, Mill may have been referring to the state of “flow” identified by researcher Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi. In flow, it’s true, people are completely absorbed, so focused on their tasks that they forget themselves, at the perfect balance of challenge and skill. Cultivating “flow” is a key aspect of happiness.

But I think that Mill meant, or people generally believe, that thinking about your happiness keeps you self-centered; you’re not thinking about other people, work, or anything other than your own satisfaction. Or perhaps Mill meant that happiness comes as a consequence of pursuing other goals, like love and work, and shouldn’t be a goal in itself.

But being happy requires tremendous discipline and mindfulness, and those don’t happen accidentally. Of course, it’s not enough just to want to be happy; you must make the effort to take the next steps toward happiness, by acting with more love, finding work you enjoy, etc.

Despite what some people seem to think, happiness isn’t selfish. Although we’re happier if we’re happy, of course, we have a duty to others to be happy (I can’t even let myself get started here on the duty to be happy).

Also, we enhance happiness by articulating it: reminiscing about happy times, describing happy experiences to others, savoring pleasures, all increase happiness. Studies show that depressed people have as many pleasant experiences as other people, but they don’t remember them as well. By ignoring your happiness, you diminish it.

Plus, how often do you reach a goal by not thinking about it?

And in any event, are you happy if you don’t know it? “No man is happy who does not think himself so.” --Publilius Syrus

At best, I think people who go through life giving no thought to happiness will end up saying, with Colette, “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” At worst, they’ll realize that they could’ve done much to improve their lot—if only they’d asked themselves if they were happy.

The avian flu.

The avian flu…I keep hearing about it. This morning I came across an article about an Indonesian family that lost at least six members to avian flu.

Will the avian flu alarm die away, as with killer bees and Y2K? Or will the situation be as bad as some experts warn? I remember the first time I read an article about AIDS and my thought, “Zoikes, this sounds like it could really be a bad thing.”

Living in New York City heightens the natural fear of contagion. We’re packed tightly together, and we're very dependent on other people like bus-drivers and subway operators. Also, apartments are small, so a family doesn’t have natural stockpiles of supplies the way a family with a big basement who shops at Wal-Mart does. I haven’t even stashed away the recommended twelve gallons of emergency water (one gallon per person for three days).

Reading about the avian flu is a warning about the fragility of security and happiness. How trivial my happiness exercises would seem in the face of real catastrophe—a new Black Death or Influenza Epidemic of 1918. But then of course a bad diagnosis, a car crash, a moment’s distraction that somehow led to disaster, would do the same. The lesson? Be happy now.

This Wednesday: Tips...to stick to a schedule of regular exercise.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Tips...to stick to a schedule of regular exercise.

Exercise helps make you happy. People who exercise are healthier, more energetic, think more clearly, sleep better, and have delayed onset of dementia. They also get relief from anxiety and mild depression, comparable to medication and therapy.

But even when you acknowledge the tremendous benefits, if you’re not already exercising regularly, it can be hard to adopt the habit. I managed to change myself from a natural sloth to an enthusiastic exerciser by using all these tricks:

Always exercise on Monday. This sets the psychological pattern for the week.

Never skip exercising for two days in a row. You can skip a day, but the next day, you must exercise no matter how inconvenient.

DON’T link exercise to weight loss as a way to motivate yourself. Although it’s quite true that people who exercise regularly are far more likely to keep weight off, you’ll find yourself justifying missing your run by turning down two Saltines. And if you don’t lose weight easily (who does?), you’re likely to give up exercise as futile.

Give yourself credit for the smallest effort. My father always said that all he had to do was put on his running shoes and close the door behind him.

Think about context. I thought I hated weight-training, but in fact, I hated the weight-training area of my gym. Do you try to run in the mornings, but recoil from going out in the cold? Do you hate the loud music in your gym? Is your work-out so exhausting that you can’t face the rest of your day? Re-think your choices.

You must exercise frequently. If you think you’re staying in shape by joining games of pick-up basketball, you should be playing four or five times a week. Twice a month isn’t enough.

If you don’t have time both to exercise and take a shower, find exercise (weight-training, yoga, walking) where in many cases you don’t need to shower afterward.

Look for affordable ways to make exercising more pleasant or satisfying. Could you upgrade to a nicer gym? Buy yourself a new iPod? Work with a trainer? Get a pedometer? (they’re only $25). Exercise is a high life priority, so this is the place to spend some money if that helps.

Think of exercise as part of your essential preparation for times you want to be in especially fine form—whether in performance (to be sharp for an important presentation) or appearance (to look good for a wedding) or mood (to deal with a stressful situation). Studies show that exercise does help.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, i.e., don’t decide it’s only worth exercising if you can run five miles or bike for an hour. I have a friend who never exercises unless she’s training for a marathon.

Beware of magical thinking:
 Having a gym membership doesn’t mean that you go to the gym, and owning a yoga mat doesn’t mean you practice yoga.
 Just because you were in shape in high school or college doesn’t mean you’re in shape now.
 Saying that you don’t have time to exercise doesn’t make it true.

Pollyanna-ish advice that actually does work.

One piece of happiness wisdom that I initially rejected as impossibly Pollyanna-ish is that to make unpleasant activities seem pleasant, re-frame them—that is, change the way you think about them.

I thought this sounded ridiculous. How could I change something unpleasant into something pleasant, just by re-framing it? My attitude, after all, reflected the reality of the situation. But I looked for examples where I could decide that instead of not liking to do something, I did like to do it.

The crazy thing is that this approach works. Instead of saying to myself, “I hate it when…” or “I wish I didn’t have to…” I think, “I love it when…” or “I’m glad I get the chance to…” and my attitude changes dramatically.

For example, I'd considered it a pain to take the Little Girl along in her stroller to walk the Big Girl to school. It makes the walk take longer, it’s tough in bad weather, I need to worry about getting them both dressed, etc.

But then I realized—what a joy it is to walk to school with my two girls! I’d feel bereft if for some reason the Little Girl didn’t come with us each day. Soon the stroller era will be over forever, and I’ll remember with a pang all the mornings we three traveled to school together.

A tougher case to re-frame was the completion of the dreaded health forms for school and camp. This kind of multi-step task drains me: making the doctor’s appointments, filling out the same information over and over, keeping track of the various sheets, trying to meet the deadline.

But now I’m embracing the process: “How happy I am to complete these forms!” Re-framing became much easier after I heard that the annual school check-up had revealed a very serious health problem in a friend’s child, so instead of grousing at being set a pointless and annoying task, I remind myself that these check-ups are really something to be happy about. If the doctor discovers nothing but perfect health, be grateful; if the doctor discovers something, be even more grateful.

Re-framing is NOT about making myself enjoy something that I don’t really enjoy (one of my commandments, after all, is Be Gretchen), but rather, it’s about realizing that “with a sour face” I’d cheated myself out of an enjoyment I already possess.

“With sour faces we let a thousand bright and pleasant hours slip by unenjoyed and afterwards vainly sigh for their return when times are trying and depressing….we should cherish every present moment that is bearable, even the most ordinary, which with such indifference we now let slip by, and even with impatience push on.” —Schopenhauer

This Sunday: a quote from G. K. Chesterton

“The real pleasure-seeking is the combination of luxury and austerity in such a way that the luxury can really be felt.” --G. K. Chesterton

Do good, feel good.

When it comes to happiness, it’s very important to remember to ACT AS YOU WANT TO FEEL. People believe they act because of the way they feel, but in fact, we very often feel because of the way we act.

So to change your emotions, change your actions. If you want to feel like a caring person, act in a caring way. If you want to have more loving feelings toward someone, perform loving actions for that person's benefit. Doing good makes you feel good.

It really works.

The Big Man and I went away for the weekend, and to his great annoyance, he couldn’t find his iPod when we got home. He thought it wasn’t even worth the trouble to call the hotel and gym we used. Eager to earn a check in the “think of small treats and courtesies” box on my happiness-project self-scoring chart, I went ahead and called.

I had no real hope that the iPod would be found, but awarded myself a gold star just for calling (and I’ll do anything for a gold star).

Surprise—Brian from the gym called. Someone had turned in the iPod, and Brian was mailing it back right away.

The only thing interesting about the story is the question: who felt happier? He who got his beloved iPod back, or she who made the call that located it?

Answer: Of the two of us, I felt happier. It thrilled me to imagine how pleased he would be. Do good, feel good.