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

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).

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.

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.”

This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Pascal.

"All men seek happiness without exception. They all aim at this goal however different the means they use to attain it. . . .They will never make the smallest move but with this as its goal. This is the motive of all the actions of all men, even those who contemplate suicide." --Pascal

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Posted February 2, 2008

Comments

First of all, I want to say I'm a big fan of this blog, and I'm totally guilty of under-commenting. Yay happiness project!

Secondly, I want to take exception at that quote. If seeking happiness were so natural, we'd all be much better at it.

Posted by: Jul | February 02, 2008 at 05:21 PM

"If seeking happiness were so natural, we'd all be much better at it."

Seeking happiness -is- natural. Which is why we do get good at "it" -- we get good at seeking.

Now we just gotta make happiness natural =)

Posted by: Messenger | February 03, 2008 at 12:04 AM

Gretchen, have you seen the Newsweek article "Happiness: Enough Already"? If not, here:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/107569/

Wonder what you thought of it?

Posted by: Stephanie West Allen | February 03, 2008 at 12:59 PM

Lurking is always acceptable, but I love comments!

I haven't seen that Newsweek article, so thanks -- I'm off to follow the link right now. But hey, do we ever have "enough already" of happiness?

Posted by: Gretchen Rubin | February 03, 2008 at 01:55 PM

"But hey, do we ever have "enough already" of happiness?"

I would say so. After all not enough can water lead to drought and too much to drowning, while somewhere in the middle just enough can lead to, well...as folk wisdom has it there's nothing better for happiness than rain washed sunshine.

Posted by: JS | February 04, 2008 at 04:30 AM

Can I just say that that Newsweek article made me giggle with glee, if for no other reason than the lineup of historical "melancholy" figures at the top. Van Gogh, Lincoln, Emily Dickinson ... and Morrisey? Good day for the Smiths, being compared to world changing artists and political figures, eh?

Posted by: Jenny | February 05, 2008 at 09:40 AM

Some of us are happiest when we are unhappy. It can become life style! Go Eyore!

Posted by: Charlotte | February 06, 2008 at 01:10 PM

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Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On this blog, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.