The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a quote from Adam Smith.

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
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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.”

This Saturday: a quote from Adam Smith.

""Every man…is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly…fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person.” --Adam Smith.

Posted October 7, 2006

Comments

I'd wary about this.

It's easier to help others than it is to help yourself and introspection can sometimes be misleading.

Posted by: Jason Yip | October 07, 2006 at 07:57 PM

Hi Gretchen-- Friend of J's from college... met at the last reunion. Very glad to see you've joined the blogosphere! Will check back... --aka Maria

Posted by: PL | October 08, 2006 at 12:04 AM

This isn't a favorite quote for me, either. On the one hand, I agree with Smith that you need to take care of yourself in order to be able to take care of others. However, Smith seems to be calling on us to care only for ourselves, and I don't subscribe to that view. In my experience, the more I help others get what they want, the more I seem to get what I need.

Posted by: Kent Blumberg | October 08, 2006 at 10:33 AM

I could be flippant and say that he's saying, "Watch out for #1." But let me give you 3 examples of what he could mean. The dedicated co-worker who has the flu (and knows it) but shows up for work anyway, thereby infecting other co-workers.

The parent who fails as a role model because it's "do as I say, not as I do." (My mom counseling me not to smoke cigarettes as she does.)

Finally, the addict who can't be helped until he helps himself.

Great blog. I'll be reading.

Regards,

Glenn

Posted by: Glenn (Customer Service Experience) Ross | October 08, 2006 at 02:48 PM

My perspective is as a married woman. I read the quote as saying that it is best to use your own talents to take care of yourself rather than depending on another to know what your needs are and to adequately meet them. When I first read the quote I wrote it down so I could put it on my bulletin board.
Great site, I look forward to reading it.

Posted by: ML | October 09, 2006 at 02:45 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.