The Happiness Project

Surprise! Surprise parties don’t always make people feel happy.

I was talking with some friends the other night, and we got in a very interesting conversation about the fall-out from various surprise parties. Turns out that surprise parties are more perilous than I’d thought.

One friend threw a lavish party for her husband. “He loved it, but for months after,” she recalled, “he was very suspicious. He kept asking me what I was doing, whom I was calling. I think it truly unnerved him to realize that I could organize something that big without him knowing. What else was I up to?”

“I went to a party where the wife was absolutely flabbergasted that her husband could pull off the surprise party,” observed another friend. “It really shook her concept of her marriage. She thought of herself as the organized, logistically-minded one who had to take care of everyone. But it turned out her husband could do that stuff, too. So maybe she wasn’t so essential.”

“Yes,” added someone else, who had been at the same party, “plus I think she was a bit annoyed to find out that he COULD do that kind of thing. After all, for all these years, she’d been doing all the organizational work because she was convinced that he just didn’t have the capacity. But it turns out, he did.”

“Another problem is the resentment,” a friend chimed in. “When I was planning the surprise party for my boyfriend, I kept thinking, ‘He’d really better appreciate this!’ He did appreciate it, but still, I don’t think he realizes just how much work it was. I still feel a bit annoyed about it, actually.”

After talking about it, we concluded that surprise parties work best when children throw them for parents.

I have some experience with that. A few years ago, my mother, sister, and I threw a surprise party for my father’s birthday. Thinking back on that party — choosing the invitations with my mother, planning the toasts with my sister, conspiring my in-laws about what time they should bring my father over to our apartment from their apartment (my in-laws live right around the corner from us) for the reveal, and most of all, seeing the look on my father’s face when he realized that the party was for him — made that surprise party one of the highlights of my life.

But, this conversation showed, surprise parties aren’t always the unmitigated delight that I would have thought. Hmmmm.

What do you think? Any experiences with surprise parties, good or bad?

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Two very useful personal finance blogs that I enjoy reading are The Simple Dollar and Get Rich Slowly. There's a lot of great content on both of them -- not just about saving and investing, but generally about how to live more wisely. They're both very entertaining, too.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

This Saturday: a happiness quotation from J. M. Barrie.

"John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents; but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood in a row you could say of them that they have each other’s nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more." -- J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

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A thoughtful reader sent me the link to her post on her great blog A Little of This, That, and the Other, in which she talks about applying the First Splendid Truth: that to be happier, we need to think about FEELING GOOD, FEELING BAD, and FEELING RIGHT, in an ATMOSPHERE OF GROWTH. It was so encouraging to see someone really understand what I was trying to express. She focused on "feeling bad," which is also the prong that I spend the most time working on.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

It’s Friday: time to think about YOUR Happiness Project. This week: Sing in the morning.

It’s Friday: time to think about YOUR Happiness Project. This week: Sing in the morning.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you should have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

One of my resolutions is to “Sing in the morning.” It’s hard both to sing and to maintain a grouchy mood, and it sets a happy tone for everyone in my family — particularly in my case, because I’m tone deaf and my audience finds my singing a source of great hilarity.

The idea to “Sing in the morning” came from the Big Girl, a few years ago.

“What did you do at school today?” I asked the Big Girl.

“Well, we all talked about how our parents wake us up in the morning.”

“What did you say?” I prodded, with curiosity and trepidation.

“With a good-morning song.”

Why she said this, I don’t know, because I’d only done that a few times. After hearing her comment, though, I began singing a good-morning song every day.

What a nice habit, to start the day with a good-morning song!

One of the most powerful happiness-project lessons, and the Third of my Twelve Commandments, is to “Act the way I want to feel.” We think that actions follow feelings, but often, feelings follow actions. By deliberately starting the day by singing – that is, by acting cheerful, light-hearted, and energetic – I can help generate those feelings.

Also, because of the psychological phenomenon of “emotional contagion,” we “catch” the emotions of other people. If I can manage to act light-hearted and energetic, I can infect the other members of my family with good cheer.

The morning sets the tone for the whole day, so I’ve found that it’s worth making a special effort to make mornings run smoothly – whether that means organizing everyone’s stuff the night before, doing the “evening tidy-up” before going to bed so the apartment isn’t too messy when we emerge in the morning, or singing a garbled version of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” as I get the Little Girl up from her crib.

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One of the greatest challenges to happiness is pain. It's very, very hard to be happy when you're in pain, and managing pain is very difficult. I was fascinated to read this story on Gimundo, about a virtual reality game called SnowWorld that's used to help burn victims manage their pain. It turns out that just as pain affects happiness, happiness (which can take the form of an engaging distraction) also affects pain.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

East or west...

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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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

This Wednesday: My ten very idiosyncratic tips for having fun on a family vacation.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: My ten very idiosyncratic tips for having fun on a family vacation.

Was it Jerry Seinfeld who said, “There’s no such thing as fun for the whole family?”

I disagree—but I’ve hit on certain tips that do help keep things fun. I’m not sure they’re universally helpful, but they’ve helped me.

As always, the first step is to follow the Eighth Commandment, “Identify the problem.” I didn’t understand why I was so crabby until I zeroed in on my gnawing hunger. If you’re feeling crabby instead of playful, push yourself to put your finger on what’s bugging you. Just because you’re on “vacation” doesn’t mean that everything is automatically fun. Pay attention to when you’re having fun, or not, and adjust accordingly.

Everyone will have more fun when everyone is having fun, so this isn’t selfish!

1. I posted Monday about my epiphany about making sure that I don't allow myself to get too hungry. Never again will I travel without a bag of almonds, dried cherries, etc. I anticipate my next challenge will be: how do I stop myself from eating the entire bag the first day?

2. Although kids and grandparents beg, “Just this once,” “They don’t seem tired,” or “Everyone can sleep late in the morning,” I do everything humanly possible to make sure my kids get the usual amount of sleep. Also, myself. Along the same lines…

3. I recognize my kids’ limits. They are cheerful and cooperative – until we keep them at the table too long, mess with their schedules too much, let them skip putting on sunscreen, make them walk too far, let them get too hot or too cold, or make them anxious or uncomfortable. In the midst of fun, it can be hard to say, “Enough!” but it’s a key to keeping things pleasant.

4. Some people view vacation as an escape from daily burdens—in particular, exercising. No! Exercise is energizing, cheering, and promotes sleep and relaxation. Vacation is an opportunity to do more exercising, not cut it out. Recently, when I had jet lag, I noticed that exercise helped me adjust both coming and going.

5. Make time for something that’s fun for ME. The more people who are vacationing together, the more everyone needs to be accommodating. That’s as it should be—to a point. I make sure that I have time to do what I truly enjoy (i.e., lying around reading—right now, I’m reading Karen Armstrong’s Buddha.) All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and all sandcastles and tales of Harry Potter adventures, as nice as they are, makes Gretchen a dull girl.

6. At home, we go for months without opening the medicine cabinet, but in four days of vacation, we’ve used Lanacane, Neosporin, Kank-A, Advil, and Band-Aids (both regular and Hello Kitty style). I used to have long debates with myself about what we’d actually use – now I throw a tube of everything into a plastic bag, just in case.

7. I allow myself to overpack. This wouldn’t work if we were hiking or doing lots of moving around, but I finally realized that, for a short trip to one place, it’s faster and easier to overpack than to try to plan out carefully what to take. It’s a luxury just to toss in a bunch of stuff, but when I can, I do.

8. I’ve come up with a speed rule: for every person beyond the first two people, add ten minutes to the time it takes to accomplish any action; for every child, add twenty. Even just with four adults and two children, it can take forever for us to get from Point A to Point B. But that’s okay, I remind myself, this is vacation, there’s no rush! This tip takes me back to Tip 1 – I realized that one reason I was often impatient and annoyed was that I was so hungry that any delay in getting to lunch or dinner made me frantic.

9. Make peace with technology. Fact is, I have much more fun when my email and internet service are working, otherwise, I brood about it. So I made getting service a priority. Other people want to disconnect. That’s fine, too. Just know what will make for the best vcation experience for YOU.

10. Be grateful! Because of the “negativity bias,” we’re all more sensitive to negative events and thoughts than to positive ones. By mindfully focusing on feelings of gratitude, pleasure, enjoyment, and all the rest, I make sure that I have fun.

Home tomorrow!

Why am I feeling crabby on my lovely vacation?

I’m away with my family and my in-laws on vacation. We do this every spring, and each time we do it, despite the fact that this place is lovely, I seem to end up feeling a bit crabby.

One year I blamed it on this, one year I blamed it on that. Whatever the reason, it’s a drag to have a nice vacation shadowed by a bad mood. I should be thrilled and thankful to have the chance to have such a nice holiday -- and I AM thrilled and thankful -- but also a bit crabby.

Well, this year, I think I figured it out. I think it’s the food situation.

Usually, at home. I eat something about every three hours. Whenever possible, I eat “breakfast” at 7:30, “lunch” at 11:30, a “snack” at 2:30, “dinner” at 6:00, and a “snack” around 8:00.

My idea of what lunch etc. consists of is probably slight unconventional – but this schedule and intake works for me.

The problem? This isn’t how the world works. Some days I can stick to this schedule, but often, of course, I have to eat at different times, and it always throws me off. One thing that puzzles me is that most adults don’t seem to get hungry the way I do. They never seem to care about what time food is served.

Being on this vacation means I’m often starving before we eat. I can’t eat as often as I’d like. The food is richer than the food I usually eat, but somehow it doesn’t seem as filling. I have to gobble down my food, because at lunch the Little Girl is spiraling down toward her nap, and at dinner, toward her bedtime, so I have to be prepared to spirit her back to bed as soon as she’s eaten.

So my current prescription for my crabbiness is to start paying more attention to eating. I’m going to try to eat more protein at meals, to try to be fuller, longer. I’m going to make sure I have some filling snacks on hand (what, I’m not sure). I’m going to make sure I eat something every three hours or so, even if it’s not quite convenient.

When we get home, maybe I’ll even go to a nutritionist to see if there’s a better way for me to approach my eating, so that I’m not as susceptible to hunger and crankiness.

But other than that, we’re having a great time.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Miyamoto Musashi.

"Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast….Of course, slowness is bad. Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy." --Miyamoto Musashi

I have really found this to be true. The people who SHOULD be the most busy always seem to have plenty of time to be deliberate and polite, instead of constantly checking their cell phones or rushing around.

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Katy over at the "It's All About the Chatter" Constant Chatter site was nice enough to do an interview with me.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

It's Friday: time to think about YOUR Happiness Project. This week: Keep your cool.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you should have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

I have trouble keeping my cool. I get rattled, agitated, wring my hands, lose my temper, and generally add to the stress of a stressful situation with my actions.

I’ve always been like this. In fact, whenever I’m heading into a difficult situation, my mother admonishes me, “Now, just stay calm.” I know that getting worked up doesn’t help, but it’s hard for me to keep cool.

Last night, the Big Man got home before I did. I walked in the front door to see the Big Girl crying. “Oh, what’s wrong, honey?” I said, peeling off my backpack.

She started choking out something about the Little Girl.

“Is she okay? Is she okay?” I asked, frantic.

“She's okay,” she said, “but she’s locked in the bathroom! A locksmith is here.”

I raced to the bathroom. A locksmith was trying to break the lock, the Big Man was speaking comfortingly to the Little Girl, and the Little Girl was sobbing piteously, “I want Mommy! I want Mommy!”

I didn’t want to say anything to her, because I knew it would make her much more upset to hear me talking when I wasn’t opening the door.

We seemed to be in that hallway forever. The Big Man had a deliberately composed air, and he said to me, “Stay calm.” I started to pace around and wring my hands. When the door wasn’t opening, I said to the locksmith in a sharp voice, “Can't we just drill a hole in the door?”

The Big Man gave me a look, and I realized – my behavior wasn’t helping. Acting agitated would just make me feel more agitated, and that would make everyone else feel more agitated, and that would only make matters worse.

I couldn’t just stand there quietly, so I decided to try to be productive. I poured the Little Girl a glass of water, located a box of Kleenex, and found a blanket. I put a DVD of the The Muppet Show in the DVD player (the Little Girl only gets to watch TV when she’s sick or as a very great treat.)

Finally, the door banged open. I’d been afraid the Little Girl might be standing close to the door, but fortunately she was cowering in the far corner of the bathroom. I rushed in, scooped her up, cuddled her in a blanket, and plopped down in a chair to rock her—also the Big Girl, who needed a lot of reassurance.

Before long the Little Girl was happily introducing her Baby Peapod to the locksmith. Of everyone, the Big Man seemed the most traumatized by the episode.

One of the most useful things I’ve learned from the Happiness Project is my Third Commandment: I should act the way I want to feel. We think that we act because of the way we feel, but in fact, we often feel because of the way we act. If I want to feel calm, I need to act calm. This sounds like magical thinking, but hard science show that the “Fake it ‘till you feel it” strategy really works.

Staying cool helped me feel calm. Also, it helped the Big Man and the Big Girl stay cool — as well as the locksmith, who was clearly distressed at listening to those desperate cries as he struggled with the door. By staying cool, we were better able to respond clearly, better able to attend to each other, and less frazzled by the whole experience.

Once again, I remind myself to “Act the way I want to feel.” Also, to figure out a way to disable the locks in our bathrooms.

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The terrific site Gimundo had a great story about people with crazy abilities – one is super-flexible, one is able to control his body temperature through meditation, etc. Just the kind of thing that I love to read on a Friday afternoon!

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

The connection between one of my Secrets of Adulthood and the “maximum-use imperative.”

One of my Secrets of Adulthood is: What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE.

I’ve been surprised how often this “secret” comes in handy.

Exercising – I have a friend who thinks she’s a regular exerciser because every several weeks, she goes to the gym for two hours. Nope!

Eating – before I gave up fake food, I’d say to myself, “Sure, I eat fake food, but just here and there.” When I was really honest with myself, finally, I realized that I was eating fake food three or four times each day. It wasn’t a once-in-a-while habit.

In a fascinating book, Daniel McGinn's House Lust, I learned that market researchers use the term “maximum-use imperative” to describe the fact that people will often buy something to accommodate a use that they need only rarely.

So, for example, you might look for a house, or a dining room table, that’s big enough to seat your entire family when it’s your turn to host Christmas dinner – even though you have a family of four that’s dwarfed by that size.

Along the same lines, I’ve noticed that when making decisions, I tend to give too much thought to what I do ONCE IN A WHILE and not enough weight to what I do EVERY DAY.

Shoes, for example. I wear running shoes 29 days out of 30 days a month, yet I have three pairs of black flats and only one pair of running shoes.

Why does this matter for happiness? Because, I think, we’re happiest when our decisions most closely match our natures.

If I splurge on linen cocktail napkins, but never have cocktail parties, I'm not going to be pleased with my purchase. If I tell my doctor I eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but actually eat lots of pizza and subs, I'm not going to get sound advice. If I insist that I love skiing, when in fact, I love staying inside reading, I'm not going to enjoy the vacation.

It can be hard to be myself, to acknowledge what I really enjoy -- it can be easy to let lofty fantasies get in the way. Again, I ask, why is it so tough to "Be Gretchen"?

If I pretend to myself that I’m different from the way I truly am, I’m going to make choices that won’t make me happy.

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The New York Times blog Shifting Careers is a reliably great read. Even if you're not looking to "shift careers," it's worth checking out, because so much of the information there is interesting and useful for work life generally.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.

This Wednesday: 12 tips for acting like a true friend.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Twelve tips for acting like a true friend.

Everyone from Aristotle to Martin Seligman agrees that friendship is one of the keys to happiness.

No one would argue that they DON’T want strong friendships, but the trick is figuring out how, exactly, to keep your friendships strong.

Here twelve tips for how to act like a true friend:

1. Be supportive when your friend has bad news. This is perhaps the most critical duty of a friend.

2. Be supportive when your friend has good news. This is trickier; surprisingly, it’s sometimes harder to be supportive when someone gets a promotion, gets engaged, or enjoys other good fortune, than it is to be supportive when someone is going through a hard time.

3. Don’t gossip. It’s not nice. Also, although it may be fun to gossip about Pat with Jean, Jean is probably going to feel wary of being your friend—you’re not trustworthy. Along the same lines…

4. Keep a secret. One of the most satisfying aspects of friendship is that it allows two people to confide in each other. Spilling secrets will destroy that. Ah, it’s so delicious to disclose a secret—but you have to resist.

5. Exchange favors. Along with the feeling of intimacy, one of the best parts of friendship is the feeling of support it provides. And while getting support is important, giving support may be even more important for boosting happiness.

6. Don’t criticize a friend’s sweetheart or spouse—and, at the other extreme, don’t flirt with a friend’s sweetheart or spouse.

7. Be kind to a friend’s children.

8. Be friendly to a friend’s friends. In fact, in a phenomenon called “triadic closure,” people tend to befriend the friends of their friends – and this is very satisfying. Friendships thrive on inter-connection, and it’s both energizing and comforting to feel that you’re building not just friendships, but a social network.

9. Show up. Sometimes a friend wants you to show up someplace when you’d really rather not: a wedding in Topeka; a surprise party that falls on New Year’s Eve, when you’d rather be doing something else. Recognize a command performance, and don’t miss it.

Bonus activities:

10. Remember birthdays.

11. Be nice to their pets.

12. Help a friend think big. Nothing is more encouraging than a friend throwing out some huge goal and saying, “You should do that!” “You should write a book, you should start your own firm, you should run for office, you should join the Council on Foreign Relations.” You never know, sometimes one encouraging comment can have extraordinary effect on someone’s life.

Have I overlooked anything?

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A thoughtful reader sent me the link to an article she wrote about the many strategies she used to lift herself out of depression. Lots of sound, practical ideas about tackling recurrent depression.

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New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates in the box at the top righthand corner.
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.