This Saturday: a quotation from Thoreau.
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” --Henry David Thoreau
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.
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.”
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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.
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Key Posts About Happiness
- Secrets of adulthood
- Recommended happiness reading
- Ten myths about happiness
- The movie "Twilight" inspires me to do a better job with some of my resolutions.
- Six tips for good deeds that take less than five minutes
- Imitate a spiritual master – who is yours?
- Five happiness boosters that actually do more harm than good
- Do something every day
One Minute Movies
Wednesday Tips
- August 3: Looking for some reading suggestions in children'
- July 27: 7 books that changed the way I see the world.
- July 13: 7 tips for making happy decisions about how to spend your time, energy, and money.
- July 6: If I can't accomplish anything else today, I can do these 10 things.
- June 29: How to keep reality tv from ruining your life.
- June 22: Want to feel happier by the end of the day? Your menu of options.
- June 15: 10 widespread myths about happiness -- do you believe any of these?
- June 8: 7 tips for minding my own business.
- May 18: 6 tips for battling loneliness.
- May 11: Are you always late? 7 tips to arrive on time.
- May 4: 8 reasons why Twitter can boost your happiness.
- April 27: 7 tips for giving effective praise.
- April 20: 8 reasons why waiting in line drives us crazy.
- April 13: 9 Tips To Quit Nagging.
- April 6: Quiz: Are you a moderator or an abstainer, when trying to give something up.
- March 23: 11 happiness paradoxes to contemplate as you think about your happiness project.
- March 16: 7 ways I violate some standard happiness advice.
- March 9: Quiz: What's your personality type -- for play?
A quote which advises us to Resign ourselves somehow is not too happy! I hope that you will be joyous and excited by the coming holidays, so a cheerful quote might be more in tune.
Posted by: Lilly Evans | December 23, 2006 at 09:40 PM
This is an awesome quote, Gretchen. I would also like to take this opportunity to tell you that I'm an avid reader of your blog, and you are an awesome woman. :) Keep it up.
Posted by: Brenton Ellis | December 24, 2006 at 03:16 AM
It is worth acknowledging that not everyone is in the happiest frame of mind during the holidays (although it is still worth struggling to be!) Holidays can remind us of people who have departed or left and the good times before. I think any holiday can be extra hard on a bereaved person. Life comes in full spectrum no matter what time of year.
Posted by: Bebek McGhee | December 26, 2006 at 04:29 PM
Hello people95aa403c444afb6dd5c0e2e06a832b2b
Posted by: http://musicdownloads.tripod.com/music-downloads.html | December 10, 2007 at 04:02 PM