The Happiness Project: East or west...

The Happiness Project

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

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.”

Newyorkcity One of the great joys of going away is -- coming home again. Every time we come back home, I realize anew how much I love New York City, and also, being home.

Some of the lessons of happiness include: novelty brings happiness; deprivation of a pleasure sharpens it; and sharing happy memories is an important source of happiness. All served by going on, and returning from, a family vacation.

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Via Shifting Careers, I discovered Alltop, which is a fantastic new site that organizes blogs by category and displays large numbers of stories in dashboard format -- makes taking in a lot of information very easy. It was created by the same folks who have the great site Truemors, about unusual news stories.

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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

I sure would like to get some of those happiness lessons. ;) I haven't been on vacation since 2005!

Posted by: Michelle Potter | March 27, 2008 at 08:17 PM

It's funny. I hear a lot of people say that they love coming back home from vacation. My husband and I never want to come back home. It's not that we don't love our life, we just enjoy the time away.

Posted by: Jennifer | March 27, 2008 at 09:00 PM

As a child I traveled a lot with my parents. My mother, then and now, says after an enjoyable trip, "It was good to get away ... and it sure is good to get home to my own bed!" Daddy echoes her sentiment, and I admit their mindset rubbed off on me too. I love to explore other places -- and I always return with a renewed sense of value and appreciation for home.

Posted by: Emily-Sarah | March 28, 2008 at 06:39 AM

Posted by: Emily-Sarah | March 28, 2008 at 06:41 AM

Serendipitously I happened on "House Lust" while browsing my local library shelves. (you mentioned it in an earlier great post) Did you catch this near the end? "While I do enjoy a couple of days at the beach, over the years I've enjoyed vacations that don't involve leaving my house, taking a respite from work and visiting close-to-home amenities--the neighborhood pool, the local ice-cream stand, our backyard--that I visit rarely during the workweek. I'm hardly alone in this: Someone even coined a name for these stay-at-home getaways: "staycations." I've done that maybe once or twice
in my life & right now it sounds fabulous. Two weeks on vacation at home! And not for doing house projects!

Posted by: Healthy Librarian | March 28, 2008 at 09:56 AM

Welcome back!

Just in case you missed it while you were gone: an article about runner's high and the connection between exercise and happiness:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/health/nutrition/27best.html?em&ex=1206849600&en=5fb492c4111bf0c6&ei=5087%0A

Posted by: Ella | March 28, 2008 at 04:47 PM

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