The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a quotation from Adam Smith.

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 Adam Smith.

"Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness, which is always founded upon a peculiar relish for all the little pleasures which common occurrences afford. We readily sympathize with it: it inspires us with the same joy." --Adam Smith.

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Several readers have been kind enough to write to let me know that my text appears underlined if they read it using Firefox or Safari. I'm working on it! Please don't give up on reading; I'll get it fixed asap.

Posted May 12, 2007

Comments

My best friend in the world is one of the habitually cheerful and it does inspire me. I strive everyday of my life to be more like her. Surrounding yourself with people like that can only help you to achieve something like what they have.

Posted by: Janna | May 12, 2007 at 12:19 PM

Hi,

The underline in Safari seems to be related to a badly closed link tag at line 93 in the "Every Wednesday is tip day" section in this page.

Change the malformed closing tag "(a/)" with "(/a)", and the global underline should disappear.

Posted by: choocroot | May 13, 2007 at 06:18 AM

Ok, thanks so much! I think I've fixed it. Will someone please let me know?

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | May 13, 2007 at 09:21 PM

I haven't noticed anything in Firefox. Then again, maybe I'm just being to habitually cheerful to let the little things get to me..

Posted by: MS | May 14, 2007 at 11:09 AM

Wonderful thoughts. Instead of sweating the small stuff, I could enjoy the small, simple, common pleasures that come my way daily.

Posted by: MoreTimeAndMoney | May 14, 2007 at 02:09 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.