The Happiness Project: If you’re in the mood to read accounts of happiness projects...

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.”

If you’re in the mood to read accounts of happiness projects...

On the last day of each month, I include a happiness suggested-reading list (yesterday was Tip Day, so the list is appearing today).

Many people have undertaken their own versions of happiness projects. Reading about the changes they made in their lives, and why, is fascinating. Here are some accounts that I found fascinating:

Walden – Henry David Thoreau (solitude)
Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert (moving to Italy, India, and Bali)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin – Benjamin Franklin (self-discipline)
Zen in the Art of Archery -- Eugen Herrigel (Zen archery)
Not Buying It -- Judith Levine (not purchasing non-essentials)
Operating Instructions -- Anne Lamott (having a baby)
Drinking the Rain -- Alix Kates Shulman (solitude)
Julie & Julia -- Julie Powell (cooking every recipe in The Art of French Cooking)

And, of course, I can’t pass by an opportunity to include St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul (becoming a nun).

Posted March 1, 2007

Comments

I just finished Eat Pray Love and I hated putting it down. It was an amazing read, so thoughtful, spiritual, real, funny, engaging. I think I am going to buy ten copies and send them to my favorite friends. The more I think about it, the more I love it.

Posted by: Grrrlfriend Jess | March 06, 2007 at 12:49 PM

I read Not Buying It last year and really loved it. I haven't had the willpower to go for it, though. I heard of similar club in San Francisco, I think, although they still pay for entertainment and some other stuff. I like the group aspect, though, to have other people who are doing the same thing. I will have to check out some of these other books, too! Thanks for the suggestions.

Posted by: Susan | March 07, 2007 at 11:19 PM

Gretchen,
Do you have any recommendations for Emerson's works? I am attracted to his quotes.
For example,
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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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.