The Happiness Project: A quotation from Montaigne.

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.”

A quotation from Montaigne.

“Excess is the bane of pleasure, and temperance is not its scourge but its seasoning.” --Montaigne

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Ben Casnocha's blog is definitely worth a visit. He writes about "entrepreneurship, current affairs, books, education, and intellectual life" as seen by an 18-year-old. (An old soul, though.) He's taking a "gap year" between high school and college--I was very pleased to learn the new lingo.

Posted January 27, 2007

Comments

Hi Gretchen!

Although I do appreciate your effort to try out different methods to find happiness, I must question your conclusions. Most methods to find happiness is all about cultivating yourself over many years, even decades. Your claim to have tried every "principle, tip, theory, and scientific study" in just one year is therefore highly questionable. It is impossible to try them all properly in a lifetime, and thus even more so in just one year. If it is to be done properly, you could probably try out two or three methods (at most) during your lifetime.

Posted by: Niklas | January 29, 2007 at 04:14 AM

I'm a fan of Ben's blog too. I've found a few good nuggets in his posting to hang on to. Thanks for sharing

Posted by: Mike S | January 29, 2007 at 01:11 PM

Hi Niklas, you're absolutely right that being happy is the work of a lifetime. Of course I can't actually boast that I've tried EVERYTHING. And most of the things that boost happiness must be practiced for a lifetime. But if the question is--"can a person makes changes in a year that will result in more happiness?"--my answer is YES.

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | January 29, 2007 at 05:21 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.