The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Anne Lamott.

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 happiness quotation from Anne Lamott.

“But about a month before my friend Pammy died, she said something that may have permanently changed me.
"We had gone shopping for a dress for me to wear that night to a nightclub with the man I was seeing at the time. Pammy was in a wheelchair, wearing her Queen Mum wig, the Easy Rider look in her eyes. I tried on a lavender minidress, which is not my usual style. I tend to wear big, baggy clothes. People used to tell me I dressed like John Goodman. Anyway, the dress fit perfectly, and I came out to model it for her. I stood there feeling very shy and self-conscious and pleased. Then I said, 'Do you think it makes my hips look too big?' and she said to me slowly, 'Annie? I really don’t think you have that kind of time.'

--Anne Lamott

Posted June 30, 2007

Comments

Oh, this is one of my favorite quotes of Anne lamott's: thanks so much for reminding me about it.

Your Kurt Vonnegut quote a few months ago was another fantastic one. My husband and I walk around all the time now saying "It doesn't get nicer than this!"

Posted by: Amy | June 30, 2007 at 10:03 PM

She's just the greatest, isn't she? I read "Operating Instructions" when my daughter was about 7 months old, and laughed until my stomach hurt.

Posted by: Sarah | July 01, 2007 at 12:13 AM

I happened upon your blog...and I am so glad that I did!

Happiness is such a wonderful goal!

: )

Posted by: Grammie | July 01, 2007 at 03:43 PM

Just had a bad day then read your blog - thank you!

Here is my wee blog on happiness

http://mcarthursrant.blogspot.com/2007/05/happiness-is-answer.html

Posted by: Scott McArthur | July 01, 2007 at 07:38 PM

I remember how you counsel gratitude for even the smallest things. Today I tried a new flavor of Crystal Light -- grapefruit sunrise, or something like that. It was fantastic! I remembered your advice, and took a moment to be grateful and happy. (And refreshed!)

Hope you have a good day today.

Posted by: Jessica | July 02, 2007 at 12:16 PM

You've already posted this quote(July 2006), are you aware of that? Oh well, it is such a good one it deserves to be posted again.
P.S.Love your blog!

Posted by: Maria | July 03, 2007 at 07:35 AM

I love Anne Lamott! Thanks for quoting her.

Posted by: A-Dub | July 12, 2007 at 02:41 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.