The Happiness Project: Happiness is a fresh clean SLATE--now I'm blogging for Slate!

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.”

Crayons Today is a very HAPPY day for me, because I’m starting to blog for Slate. Check it out! Here's what I posted there today, as an introduction:

Welcome to my blog about how to be happier.

My name is Gretchen Rubin, and I’m working on a book, The Happiness Project, an account of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and tips from popular culture about how to be happy – from Aristotle to Martin Seligman to Oprah.

I started this project because one April morning, looking out the rain-spattered window of a bus, I asked myself, “What do I want from life, anyway?” and I thought, “Well, I want to be happy.”

I realized with a jolt that I never thought about happiness, or whether I was happy, or what I could do to be happier. “I should have a happiness project!” I thought. So I started one.

A “happiness project” is an approach to changing your life. First is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy, satisfaction, and engagement, and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse. Second is the making of resolutions, when you identify the concrete actions that will boost your happiness. Then comes the interesting part: keeping your resolutions.

This blog, which I’ve been writing since 2006, recounts my adventures as I pursue my happiness project—what I try, what I learn. Your project would look different from mine, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit.

“But,” you might think, “if everyone’s happiness project is different, why should I bother to read about yours?” Here’s why: During my study of happiness, I’ve been surprised by how often I learn more from one person’s idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies. I’ve learned more from Ben Franklin’s happiness project (yes, he had one) than from any other kind of argument.

Some people think that wanting to be happier is a selfish, self-absorbed goal – but I disagree. Robert Louis Stevenson got it right: “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy,” he wrote. Research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likeable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in the problems of others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens. And maybe betters bloggers, too.

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Interested in starting your own Happiness Project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal 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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