The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Franz Kafka.

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 Franz Kafka.

“You are the problem. No scholar to be found far and wide.” --Franz Kafka

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Posted March 8, 2008

Comments

I guess that is true. But I hope I never get quite as desparate as ol' Franz got :-)

More seriously, this quote articulates the beautiful adventure that we must ultimately discover our lives to be.

Just you and what you have in front of you. No off-the-shelf answers and no prophets.

I am quite sure that ultimately we must discover that we were alone all along. And that we were freer than we want to concede.

http://thoughtsintime.co.za

Posted by: Albert (http://thoughtsintime.co.za/) | March 08, 2008 at 03:08 PM

J. Krishnamurti spent many decades encouraging people to turn away from gurus, be they religious, political, charismatics; in ones quests for salvation, happiness,fulfillment, ad nauseum. Conversely, Krishnamurti implored us to find such answers within ourselves.

Posted by: RoyMurtishaw | March 09, 2008 at 12:08 PM

I'm happy when I'm shaking my hairy butt to the beat of a jungle rhythm.

Posted by: Gorilla Bananas | March 09, 2008 at 12:23 PM

Oh my gosh? I am the problem? I knew it...I mean in the back of my mind I knew it all along...ha ha ha...

Stop by my page and let me know if you have a "Happiness Project" banner that I can post for you like what you see on the right hand column that I have done for some of the other writers I am networking with.

~Dr. Nicole

Posted by: Dr. Nicole Sundene | March 09, 2008 at 03:55 PM

I've just come across your site and am really interested in what you are doing. Is it actually working? Are you actually getting happier? I am a counsellor and work alot with those suffering from depression and am always interested in what works and doesn't work where mood is concerned. Though I find that different things work for different people.

I also run a mind body spirit site and I'll be mentioning your blog in my next newsletter. I've just published a book on depression 'The Depression Trap: Ten Ways to Set Yourself Free', let me know if you'd like to receieve a review copy.

Posted by: Nancy Hine | March 10, 2008 at 09:11 AM

Nancy--wonderful what you are doing to help people! I have a wonderful tool that is really helping my clients have a "Happy childhood today". Look it up--she has a really great study course where therapists can learn this great work--Shirley Jean Schmidt from San Antonio Texas.--the website is dnmsInstitute.com

Best to you and your good work,
JEssica Bollinger lcsw
lexington, ky.

Posted by: Jessica Bollinger lcsw | March 12, 2008 at 10:08 AM

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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.