The Happiness Project: Constantly checking the stock market does not bring happiness.

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.”

Stockmarket Today, I found myself unable to resist the urge constantly to check the stock market. I’m no finance whiz, so it’s not as if the Dow Jones Industrial Average number is terribly meaningful to me, other than to know that up is good, down is bad, and very down is very bad.

When I was writing in a coffee shop, I kept checking my laptop. When I was working out at the gym, I kept looking at the screens of people watching CNBC. When I got home, I kept checking.

I realized that this wasn’t productive or helpful. In many cases, it’s important to read bad news, because it’s necessary to being an informed citizen. But in this case, I was a rubbernecker on the economic highway, unable to stop myself from slowing down to watch the wreck.

As a consequence, I was making myself unhappy. Each time I saw the bad numbers, I got hit by a wave of anxiety – what did this mean? At the same time, I was frittering away my valuable time, and to no purpose; this kind of constant monitoring wasn’t telling me anything that I couldn’t find out at the end of the day. I’m not working in the market myself.

Nevertheless, even though I could see that this behavior wasn’t helpful, especially from a happiness-project perspective, I just couldn’t resist. On a brighter note: as I write this, the news has gotten better than it was several hours ago. I know that because I just checked. Again.

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If you're in the mood to read about personal finance, check out Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar, and Wise Bread. All members of the fabulous LifeRemix network, too.

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Interested in starting your own Happiness Project? If you’d like to take a look at my Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

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