The Happiness Project: It's Thanksgiving -- here are four questions to ask yourself, to help boost your feelings of gratitude.

The Happiness Project

I’m working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, a memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happy--from Aristotle to Martin Seligman to Thoreau to Oprah. On this daily blog, I recount my adventures as I grapple with the challenge of being happier. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will hit the shelves in December 2009 (Harper).

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
“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.”

Today is Thanksgiving. Here are four questions to ask yourself, to help you feel grateful for your ordinary life.

1. Do you suffer chronic or intense physical pain?

2. Have you recently received heart-breaking news?

3. Have you done anything that makes you burn with remorse?

4. Is every member of your family safe?

It’s easy to forget to be grateful for the most important foundations of daily life.

On a less transcendant note, if you're worried about overindulging at the dinner table today, check out thirteen tips for staying in control of holiday eating.

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If you’re coming via today’s New York Times, welcome!

I’m very GRATEFUL to Henry Fountain, who wrote about the Happiness Project in his article, Let Us Give Thanks. In Writing. The importance of the emotion of gratitude to happiness is a fascinating subject.

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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.

Comments

So true!!! Happy Thanksgiving :D

Posted by: Dr. Nicole | November 22, 2007 at 02:01 PM

I find this entry kind of thoughtless. Sure it's easy if your answers to the 4 questions are no, no, no, yes. In my case (and I'm sure many others are worse off) the answers are yes, somewhat, "am I over it?", no.

Posted by: Reese | November 26, 2007 at 05:16 PM

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