The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a quotation from L. Rust Hills.

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 L. Rust Hills.

“It is one of Life’s most unfair Cruel Truths that happiness is some kind of more or less major component of virtue. It even seems to me sometimes…that happiness may be almost the ultimate virtue – in that it’s the hardest one to attain and (especially) to maintain.” --L. Rust Hills

Posted December 30, 2006

Comments

lovely quote to ponder. i was wondering what you think about cycles of depression or things like seasonal affect disorder? Do you believe that there are chemical reactions in the body that "affect/effect" the ability to be happy?

Posted by: funchilde | December 30, 2006 at 10:37 PM

Absolutely, happiness is very rooted in the body. Temperament is about 50% genetically determined. Lack of sleep and lack of exercise have a big influence on how happy you feel. Depression is a terrible condition that can often be treated with astounding effectiveness with medication. Nevertheless, I do think that we make choices that can dramatically affect our happiness.

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | January 01, 2007 at 04:56 PM

Happiness is not a virtue, happiness may be "activity in accordance with virtue" (Aristotle NE X.VII.117a)

Posted by: Mal | July 22, 2007 at 10:28 AM

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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.