The Happiness Project: Today is the Most Depressing Day of the Year -- Not.

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.”

Apparently, according to a mathematical formula devised by Cliff Arnall, today is the most depressing day of 2009. Arnall’s formula considers factors like people’s failure to keep up their new year’s resolutions, the weather, post-holidays blues (no more fun, lots of bills), and the date falling on a Monday.

Paradoxically, I got a happiness boost from someone’s claim that today is the year’s most depressing day. First of all, I got a kick out of the idea of trying to identify the most depressing day with a formula. Silly, but fun. What factors would you use to identify your own personal “most depressing day” formula? You’d probably come up with a very different day, based on the end of basketball season, the opening of bathing-suit season, etc.

In any event, in the United States, this formula is certainly not accurate this year (Arnall is from the UK). Today is a Monday, but it’s a holiday, and that raises people’s spirits. Also, it’s the day before President-elect Obama’s inauguration. While most Inauguration Days probably don’t do much to lift people’s moods, this one is different.

But second, even aside from considering the accuracy of the claim, just hearing the announcement that today is “the year’s most depressing day” makes the day seem better. Even if I have a bad day today, I’m not likely to think, “Gosh, this is going to turn out to have been the most depressing day of the year.” Things aren’t likely to be that bad.

There’s a psychological term for this: downward comparison. Comparing my January 19th to the most depressing day I can imagine makes today seem bright. Downward comparisons tend to boost happiness, because they remind us to be grateful for what we have. In one study, people’s sense of life satisfaction changed dramatically depending on whether they completed sentences starting “I’m glad I’m not…” (downward comparison) or instead, “I wish I was…” (upward comparison).

So, today, if you’re feeling blue, you’re not alone -- and if you’re not feeling blue, you can appreciate that.

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I was thrilled to be included in this list of 5 Web Folk I Admire--Something I Don't Do Easily on Dan Perlman's blog, Enquiring Mimes.

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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. Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

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