The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Publilius Syrus.

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 Publilius Syrus.

“We are interested in others when they are interested in us.” -- Publilius Syrus.

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Posted July 28, 2007

Comments

I just read that funny. I read it so that I thought I should be interesting to others. I guess in a way it works, too. I have been working on showing interest in others to get to know them, rather than waiting for them to start all the questions and sit back and talk. How full of myself. Now, I try to stay aware of the balance of a conversation. Too much work, you think?

Posted by: Leila | July 28, 2007 at 02:07 PM

Choosing Happiness
“ Ilchi Lee that any people feel that they can only be happy and peaceful when they are given the right circumstances and conditions. However, we can be at peace and be content in this moment now, at this place now. This is our choice. There is nothing that is blocking this choice. Only our thoughts are obscuring this choice. Why can’t we be content and happy without conditions? Enlightenment is a choice that continues from instant to instant, from moment to moment.” - SRV

Posted by: Michael | July 28, 2007 at 03:17 PM

This is such a cool blog. I just subscribed and I'm nominating it for the Bloggers Choice Awards. www.bloggerschoiceawards.com

Posted by: Jonathan Trenn | July 28, 2007 at 04:37 PM

Gosh, Jonathan, thanks! You've made me VERY HAPPY! is there anything I'm supposed to do now? it would be a thrill to get the award. I really appreciate it.

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | July 29, 2007 at 08:45 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.