"I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me.” --Oscar Wilde
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If you're starting your own happiness project, you might like to join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy, it's free.
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Join the Super-Fans!
- Volunteer as a super-fan, and from time to time, I'll ask for your help.
My Twelve Commandments
- 1. Be Gretchen.
- 2. Let it go.
- 4. Do it now.
- 7. Spend out.
- 9. Lighten up.
- 11. No calculation.
If you'd like a copy of my resolutions chart
- Just drop me an email. The first part is grubin (then that familiar symbol). The second part is gretchenrubin (then a period, then a com). Sorry to be convoluted--because of spam.
Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
Secrets of Adulthood.
- The best reading is re-reading.
- Outer order contributes to inner calm.
- The opposite of a great truth is also true.
- You manage what you measure.
- By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.
- People don’t notice your mistakes and flaws as much as you think.
- It's nice to have plenty of money.
- Most decisions don't require extensive research.
- Try not to let yourself get too hungry.
- Even if you think they're fake, it's nice to celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day.
- If you can't find something, clean up.
- The days are long, but the years are short.
- Someplace, keep an empty shelf.
- Turning the computer on and off a few times often fixes a glitch.
- It's okay to ask for help.
- You can choose what you do; you can't choose what you LIKE to do.
- Happiness doesn't always make you feel happy.
- What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE.
- You don't have to be good at everything.
- Soap and water removes most stains.
- It's important to be nice to EVERYONE.
- You know as much as most people.
- Over-the-counter medicines are very effective.
- Eat better, eat less, exercise more.
- What's fun for other people may not be fun for you--and vice versa.
- People actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts off their registry.
- Houseplants and photo albums are a lot of trouble.
- If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.
- No deposit, no return.
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.”
- G.K. Chesterton: “Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.”
- Solon: “Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.”
Links
« One easy key to happiness: get more sleep. That means turning off the light! | Main | What a visit to Google taught me about happiness (a lesson I’m just understanding now). »
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Recent Posts
- How To Be Happier – in Four Easy Lessons.
- "Persistence Is Its Own Reward," or, Water That Flower.
- Is Being Materialistic As Prevalent as People Say?
- "To Have Management of the Mind Is a Great Art."
- The Secret Is Not To Care.
- Join or Start a Group -- a Happiness-Project Group.
- Nine Tips for Giving Memorable Praise--and Why To Bother.
- Happiness: Deadlines, Running, H&M, and Novel-Writing.
- A Problem in Happiness: Drift.
- Forgive an Accident. Which Is Harder Than It Sounds.
My earth-shattering happiness formula.
- To be happier, you need to think about FEELING GOOD, FEELING BAD, and FEELING RIGHT, in an atmosphere of growth. Clunky, but it works.
My second ground-breaking insight into happiness.
- 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.
9Rules
Best of The Happiness Project
LifeRemix
What started me thinking.
- "Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." 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
- “For the love of God and my Sisters (so charitable toward me) I take care to appear happy and especially to be so.” St. Therese
- “Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
- “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.” Samuel Johnson
- “I must do the work that I am best suited for…” Edward Weston daybook
- “Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope
- “How slight and insignificant is the thing which casts down or restores a mind greedy for praise.” Horace
My books
Gretchen Craft Rubin: Profane Waste: Essay by Gretchen Rubin And Photographs by Dana Hoey
A collaboration with artist Dana Hoey that examines the question: why do people destroy their own possessions?Gretchen Rubin: Forty Ways to Look at JFK
A biography that grapples with the enduring puzzle: what made Kennedy such a dazzling, unforgettable figure?Gretchen Rubin: Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill : A Brief Account of a Long Life
A concise biography of Winston Churchill.Gretchen Craft Rubin: Power Money Fame Sex : A User's Guide
Social criticism in the form of a user's guide.
Hi Gretchen! I love your blog and cannot wait to read your book! I just added your blog link to my site - I'm also writing about self-improvement, but not so much happiness :)
(www.creatingmsperfect.blogspot.com)
Posted by: Kim | September 29, 2007 at 01:22 PM
Gretchen,
Great quote.
It is often said that we can increase our happiness simply by having a better attitude. This may be true, but it isn't so easy to do when our thoughts are consumed with regrets and guilt about things we did and happened to us in the past.
We can't change our past, but we can change our perceptions of it - we can change our own realities.
Success and happiness don't happen overnight. Change is incremental, but we'll contunue to expand so long as we learn from our mistakes, put the past behind us, and continually work to learn and grow.
Posted by: David B. Bohl at SlowDownFAST.com/blog | September 30, 2007 at 12:04 AM
Oscar, truly, was the man. Have to love when we're doing, in order to be successful.
Posted by: Modern Worker | October 01, 2007 at 02:29 PM
"Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix
anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher
place. Start right where you are." -- Julia Cameron
Posted by: Me | October 03, 2007 at 09:15 PM