The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a quotation from Diane Arbus

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.”

This Saturday: a quotation from Diane Arbus

“Everything is so superb and breathtaking. I am creeping forward on my belly like they do in war movies.” --Diane Arbus

Posted December 16, 2006

Comments

Hi Gretchen and thanks for visiting my blog. I love your 12 commandments!! This is a great project. Good luck
Talia

Posted by: Talia Mana, Centre for Emotional Well-Being | December 16, 2006 at 07:07 PM

Thanks Gretchen! I was forwarded this page by a mutual, and I thought I would just peruse it before turning in, and ended up spending far more time than I should have (I suppose there's a lesson to be learned in that...) It's just up my alley. Always looking for tips on upping my happiness quotient, and lowering my stress levels. I will be checking in frequently, as well as passing this on to friends. Good luck!
Molly Arbogast

Posted by: Molly Arbogast | December 16, 2006 at 10:16 PM

Thanks so much! Your kind words have made me very happy.

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | December 17, 2006 at 12:31 PM

very nice. i will be back. love the one minute rule. i had one similar a few years ago and it was a great help. i am not sure how i let it get away from me. but no more. I will be using it.

now that i am thinking about it, what i would do is once an hour, i would roust my boys and we would do a three minute maintance. For three minutes, we would pick up and put away. the kids liked it because we would use the timer and it became a contest of who could get the most done in three minutes. Kept the house from getting away from me and allowed the kids to gett involved and 'own' some of the responsibility.

thanks again for all you do.
miriam

Posted by: miriam | December 18, 2006 at 10:39 AM

just began browsing...so much to find, but i wasmoved by the beginning of this one..:) thnks for sharing your work!

Posted by: jenny vorwaller | December 20, 2006 at 07:05 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.