The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Horace.

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 Horace.

“Dare to be wise! Begin now. The man who puts off the day when he will live rightly is like the peasant who waits for the river to drain away. But it flows on, and will flow on for ever.” --Horace

Good advice. Start YOUR happiness project today.

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If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.

Posted October 20, 2007

Comments

Sometimes coincidences are too uncanny to ignore. As life has seemed extra overwhelming as of late, I thought last night about your blog and thought, "I should start my own happiness project, perhaps beginning in my private journal." So, now that I have a few free minutes, I came to catch up on your last few posts, put my train of thought on the right track, and, lo and behold, found this post right at the top of your list. Thank you.

Posted by: Sherri Leigh | October 20, 2007 at 06:54 PM

Oh eerie for me too! though I read almost daily, I came this morning (a quiet saturday one) to also gather tips and advice---and inspiration---to commence on my own personal project as well.

I turn 40 in Feb. and have been contemplating the changes I want to make for that milestone. I'm going to take this quote as a sign, and pin it up above my desk.

thanks so much for everything, always.

Posted by: emilie | October 21, 2007 at 04:28 AM

Hey, guess what ... your Atom feed seems to be fine at the time of my posting this comment. Problem solved?

Posted by: Zac | October 22, 2007 at 03:59 AM

Hi Gretchen. Nope, the link to the book took me to my personal "home page" on Amazon, not to the book's page.

Posted by: Cherie | October 23, 2007 at 10:49 AM

I really like this "Happiness" prject. It HELPS me to Cope Day-to-day, because just lost my spouse (of thirty-one yrs.) on March 31,2007. Thank you so much!!!

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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.