The Happiness Project: This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Miyamoto Musashi.

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 Miyamoto Musashi.

Fiverings "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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Posted March 22, 2008

Comments

How true this is.

When I am calm & clear about what I am doing & why - nothing can rush me, yet I work with speed.

Or as old Martin Versfeld said: "Sometimes speed is necessary, but never hurry".

Albert (http://thoughtsintime.co.za)

Posted by: Albert (http://thoughtsintime.co.za) | March 22, 2008 at 09:58 AM

Great, but how does one do that? (have plenty of time to be deliberate and polite)

Posted by: Delirious | March 23, 2008 at 12:44 AM

Focus is a challenge for me. My February new habit was to focus. I let in distractions. How do you gain such a wonderful clearness in you moment?

Posted by: Patricia | March 23, 2008 at 12:57 PM

This post really resonated with me Gretchen.

When I was struggling with busyness years ago (and still do) I thought up this line as a guide:
Go slow to go fast.

Posted by: Kare Anderson | March 23, 2008 at 04:31 PM

It makes me think of Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Mr. Busy," who was always busy, but never got anything done.

Posted by: Alex | March 23, 2008 at 07:59 PM

Some advice that my grandfather would tell my dad, and now my dad tells me... "If you want to be happy, make someone else happy."

Posted by: Peter | March 26, 2008 at 01:29 PM

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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.