True happiness fact: challenge brings happiness (after it brings frustration and anxiety).

One of the least pleasant conclusions I’ve reached is that, darn it, the experts are right when they say that novelty and challenge lead to happiness.

I dislike not knowing what I’m doing, I resist change and learning new things, I love routine – but I’ve seen, over and over, that novelty and challenge do indeed make me happier, once I suffer through the anxiety and frustration of trying something new.

This blog is a good example. It’s a huge source of happiness, but also a fairly major source of frustration. But the more I do, the easier it gets, plus I have the satisfaction of seeing my accomplishments along the way. I remember when I couldn’t even post an image. This progress gives me the “atmosphere of growth” that’s the fourth, and critical, prong of my First Splendid Truth.

Now I have a new, exciting opportunity for novelty and challenge! (Translation: I’m spending a lot of time feeling frustrated and dumb, but I’m making progress.) I’m going to start sending out a short monthly newsletter.

Sending a newsletter is one of those tasks that will become fairly easy after I send out the first three – when everything has been set up, and I’ve got the kinks worked out. But until then, novelty and challenge abound.

All my happiness-project lessons have come into play, in a way that seems almost comical.

Example: I couldn’t figure out what newletter vendor to use, and couldn’t budge past that initial question, but as the Zen masters say, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” and last week I met an extremely knowledgeable person who had just researched this question. This guy picked MailChimp, so I did the same.

I signed up with MailChimp. More challenge, more frustration. Aargh, I don’t have a logo; I don’t know how to use PhotoShop to create a banner image; I can’t decide how big the top image should be; I can’t quite figure out how to put the sign-up-for-this-newsletter box on my blog; etc., etc.

I remind myself: “Embrace novelty and challenge!” “Enjoy the fun of failure!” “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!” “If the student is ready, the teacher will appear!” “Take time to wander!” “Put myself in jail!” “Start simple, start now!” These help.

The happiness won’t hit for a while. Now is the frustrating part. But when I send out my first email newsletter, then it will come.

So, if you’d like to sign up for my monthly newsletter, please shoot an email to grubin AT SYMBOL gretchenrubin DOT com. No need to write anything more than “newsletter” in the subject line. I’ll add your name to the list.

Once a month, I’ll send you a round-up of the month’s ever-popular Wednesday Tips lists, the Friday suggestions for Your Happiness Project, and a note about what happiness topic generated the most buzz on my site.

I foresee a lot of frustration before I get to the happy day when I mail out my first newsletter. But I’ll get there eventually. So sign up!

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I'd heard about the blog Escape from Cubicle Nation before, and I finally got around to checking it out myself. It's terrific. The main subject is entreneurship, but there's a lot of great material there that's widely applicable, no matter what your work situation.

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I’m going to start sending out a short monthly newsletter. I hope to have a handy opt-in box up soon, but in the meantime, if you’d like to sign up to get the newsletter, just shoot me an email at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com.

Comments

[Ann]

Hi Gretchen -- I feel your pain! I just posted about a major (for me) victory achieved last night. I felt like a cybergenius when I accomplished my goal.

I'm brand-new to blogging and find there is so much to learn, I'm often overwhelmed, but I just keep plodding along, and this old dog has indeed learned a few new tricks!

Ann

[Ed]

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry

[Karen]

Reminds me of the lyrics of the Alanis Morrisette song, "You Learn". I leave it as an exercise for the student to look up the whole song online (do it), but the chorus is:
You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

[Ben Casnocha]

I use MailerMailer. aWeber is also supposed to be good. You definitely want to have an online sign-up possible -- few will ever email in saying "newsletter."

[Asha {Parent Hacks}]

[beaming empathy vibes]

Yep, all true all true. I'm in the process of resigning my site, and all those roadblocks sure look big sometimes. But then I realize they are (mostly) figments of my imagination and it makes me feel a little better.

I'm all signed up! Good for you for pushing thru!