The Happiness Project

Happiness: Paddling a Canoe, Not Biting the Hook.

From time to time, I post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness. During my research, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies.

One of the most consistently fascinating and provocative writers – online and in print – is Seth Godin. I love his blog, Seth Godin’s Blog, and I’ve read several of his many books. Seth’s field is marketing, but marketing understood very broadly – he often discusses subjects like authenticity, communication, community, entrepreneurship, fulfillment, the future of media, and happiness.

He’s written many interesting books – my personal favorites are Tribes and Permission Marketing.

Because I’m such a fan of his thinking, I was very intrigued to hear what Seth Godin had to say on the subject of happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Seth: I honestly believe that external events are a poor predictor (or causer) of happiness. There are certainly things I can do to prompt some short-term happiness, but in general, it's a decision more than an act. For example, every time (every time!) that I go to visit Acumen Fund and my friend Jacqueline Novogratz, I leave happier than I came in.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
Don't try so hard.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
I used to be able to make myself unhappy by reading anonymous criticism of my work online. No middle ground to the attacks, no way to respond, no happiness. So I stopped.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
I think Pema Chodron's suggestion, "Don't bite the hook," is a really easy way to avoid the dead ends that can so easily get me caught up. One of the easiest mantras I have is flashing back to paddling a wooden and canvas canoe, solo, across Teepee Lake in Algonquin Park. The sun is setting, the water is calm and there's a loon on one side of my boat and a beaver on the other. That works every time.

As for books, the work of Zig Ziglar, Pema Chodron and Ben Zander never fail to work.

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
I write. I ride my bicycle or strap on my cross-country skis. Forward motion, no wallowing.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
I think it's possible to eat your way unhappy. I also believe that whining and complaining never (not once) increases someone's happiness level. On the other hand, sending someone a thank-you note or a small present benefits you far more than it does the recipient.

Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy – if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
I spent some unhappy years in my early 20s, and again when my mom died. On the other hand, I've been insanely, positively happy almost every single day for the last thirty years, mostly because I just decided I liked things better that way.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
"Working" is not as good a word as "choosing.” I don't think happiness is a project as much as it is a habit. [I would suggest: For many people, it takes a project to build a habit!]

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t – or vice versa?
Finishing projects almost never makes me happy. It creates a void. I don't much like milestones either. Any event where you're supposed to be a happy is a challenge!

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 23,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.

Jung, Buffy, Twilight, Virginia Woolf -- and Happiness.

I love Carl Jung (the bits of his work that I understand, which isn’t much), and one of my favorite Jung quotations is, “The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

This video clip is a perfect example – found on my friend Lev Grossman’s excellent blog, Nerd World. I love the fact that Jonathan McIntosh had the creative energy and interest to create this mash-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight:

I connected with this remix on several levels:
-- Take time for projects – clearly Jonathan McIntosh is following that very important resolution.

-- though I’m not a historic Buffy fan, my TV-writer sister has worked a lot with Joss Whedon, so I always take an interest in his work.

-- I love Twilight, books and movie alike. How much, you ask? I’ve read Midnight Sun. And The Host.

-- There was a split-second clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I recognized, of course. Huge raving Harry Potter fan. I’ve got a ticket to the very first showing, at midnight in a few weeks, of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

-- Even my former lawyerly self got engaged in considering the assertion at the end that “This transformative work constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright law.” Why didn’t a case like this come up when I was hanging around courthouses?

Perhaps I should make a new resolution, to “Play with the objects I love.” I’m already doing this with my passion for J.M. Barrie’s The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. A friend and I are doing an homage to Barrie’s brilliant skeletal picture book – ours is called “Four to Llewelyn’s Edge.” This has turned out to be an enormous undertaking, and so much fun.

Along those lines, I wonder if I could use popular new tools (YouTube, as in the example above, or Twitter, or Facebook, as well as my blog) to shine a spotlight on my more obscure and more demanding passions. I want to highlight the things I love, and to try to entice others to follow me – just as this video made me want to watch old episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

One idea: I’m considering sending out daily Tweets that are quotations from one of my favorite books, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (bizarre: this book doesn't seem to be for sale on Amazon). I would love doing this. I wonder if the book would be interesting to anyone else in that form – if the beautiful writing would be engaging out of context like that – or if it would be too reductive. Perhaps, as in the video mash-up above, new pleasures could be revealed in a work that is usually read in a different way.

Hmmmmmmm.

* Very apt for this subject -- Bricolage Life. Looking at this blog made me want to sit down and MAKE something.

* Follow me on Twitter. I may or may not be sending out Woolf quotations in the near future.

"Go Outside; Enjoy the Sun and All Nature."

"At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: 'Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it.' My advice is: 'Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.'

I don't think Mother's advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering? You'd be completely lost. On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune. If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person's who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!"

-- Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank, March 6, 1944

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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. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

Enjoy the Fun of Failure. At Least Try.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

Two of my happiness-project resolutions are Enjoy the fun of failure and Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I’m a perfectionist. I hate to be criticized. I’m defensive. I’m thin-skinned. As a result, I really, really, hate to make a mistake or to be connected with things that aren’t perfect.

The problem is, failure and imperfection are quite common (maybe you’ve observed this yourself), and if you aren’t willing to make mistakes or to accept flaws or failure, you can’t achieve much.

Novelty and challenge bring happiness, but they also bring frustration, anxiety, flaws, and failure – in fact, the more challenging the undertaking, the more likely it is to fail or to be flawed.

I often feel myself shrinking away from opportunities or ideas, because I’m worried about doing a less-than-perfect job – even though I know that I’m happier when I create, when I push myself, when I try new things. That’s why these two resolutions are important for me.

Enjoy the fun of failure reminds me to lighten up – to accept failure or mistakes as an important part of a process. It’s okay if something fails. In fact, that’s part of the fun!

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good reminds me that it’s more important to do something at all than to do something perfectly. Many things worth doing are worth doing badly. Doing something badly is often a necessary stage toward doing it well.

For the past two days, since I announced the link to the Happiness Project Toolbox, I’ve been reminding myself of both these resolutions.

I worked so hard and so long to create the Toolbox, and the site has been tested up and down, both by the designers and also by the wonderful Super-Fans, who were hugely helpful in highlighting problems. We thought the site was working perfectly.

But guess what? It wasn’t. Within fifteen minutes of announcing the link on Wednesday morning, I got a message from a friend telling me that he’d gotten an error message. And so it went.

This upset me a lot more than it should have. In the last two days, every time I heard about a problem with the site, I felt terrible. I hate knowing that it's less than perfect. The negativity bias aggravates this feeling; lots of people have said very nice things, and when I go to the Toolbox I can see that lots of people are using the site and posting great stuff there, and yet the few criticisms – which were more like gentle, friendly notices about problems, rather than criticisms – hit me far harder. Negative is much sticker than positive.

“Enjoy the fun of failure,” I keep reminding myself. It’s a great site, a lot of people love it, I love it, it’s getting fixed. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

It's doesn't always work, but it helps. Have you found any good strategies for helping yourself be calmer about accepting mistakes or failure?

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Gimundo has a great time-lapse video that shows beautiful settings across the world. Lots of dramatic movement by clouds and light.

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Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox. Probably it will work for you, but it's not perfect yet. If you have a problem, you can post it here. But I really, really hope that it will be practically perfect in every way within a very short time.

Eight Strategies to Boost Your Happiness.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day or List Day.
This Wednesday: 8 strategies to help you boost your happiness.

This is an exciting week for me! First, my book became available for pre-order. For the first time, the book feels real.

Second, and even more thrilling, the Happiness Project Toolbox is finally ready for prime time. Yes, it’s ready! I’ve been working on this companion site for so long; it’s hard to believe it’s actually going out in the world at last.

What is the Happiness Project Toolbox? As I was working on my happiness project, I invented several methods that helped me to boost my happiness. My One-Sentence Journal, my Personal Commandments, my Secrets of Adulthood, and of course – most important of all – my Resolutions Chart.

I remember exactly where I was when I got the idea for the Toolbox. I was walking up Lexington Avenue, between 77th Street and 78th Street, when I thought, “Wow, it would be great to have a site where people could chart their resolutions.” About ten steps later, I thought, “But a site like that should also allow people to keep their one-sentence journals, or post their happiness hacks.” Then it hit me. A Happiness Project Toolbox! I was so struck by the idea that I literally stopped in my tracks – I remember that the woman behind me ran into me and shot me a very annoyed look as she passed.

It was easy to have the idea; hard to turn it into reality. As with so many things in life, if I’d known how challenging it would be, I might not have attempted it. But now that it’s ready, I’m so happy I did it.

Novelty and challenge bring happiness; they also bring frustration and anxiety. In this case, despite periods of frustration and anxiety, I also had a tremendous amount of fun – in large part because of the brilliant, creative people at The Chopping Block, the web design firm who built the site. They love the project, too – they wrote, “The Happiness Project Toolbox is easily among the best projects in our twelve-year history. We're excited about the potential for building of a large community audience.”

They had a lot of good ideas to add, and also helped me figure out if some of my ideas were possible. For example, I’ve always been mesmerized by PostSecret, and I’m fascinated whenever people post on my blog with their own Personal Commandments, etc. (for example, I think often of one commenter's Personal Commandment, "Choose the bigger life"), so one of my favorite Toolbox features is the ability to see other people's posts -- unless they choose to keep entries private, of course. It’s super-addictive to read other people’s Personal Commandments, browse through their Inspiration Boards, learn from their Happiness Hacks…utterly absorbing. (Use the bar across the top to see other people’s entries.)

The Happiness Project Toolbox offers eight free Tools:
-- Resolutions: record and track your resolutions.
-- Group Resolutions: challenge several people to a group resolution.
-- One-Sentence Journal: keep a journal on any subject you like (my online one-sentence journal is “What I’m reading today”).
-- Personal Commandments: identify principles to guide your life.
-- Secrets of Adulthood: record what you’ve learned so far.
-- Happiness Hacks: share your hacks about clutter, exercise, mindfulness, etc.
-- Lists Tool: keep any list -- to-do, favorite things, things-to-do-before-I-die, etc.
-- Inspiration Board: pull together your favorite books, quotations, images, and websites.

The amazing Super-Fans group got the first look at the Toolbox. Thanks again, Super-Fans, for your enthusiasm and your efforts! The Super-Fans were great about alerting me to problems. When I sent out the link, I thought the site was perfect, but of course, when hundreds of people tested it, they discovered a lot of bugs. Now it should be working very well indeed.

However, there still may be some issues to iron out. I’d really appreciate it if you let me know if you have a problem (or praise). It would be a huge help, though, if instead of emailing me directly, you post to this discussion on the Facebook Page. That way, the web designers can see your comment and address it, without me needing to act as a go-between. It’s helpful to know what browser (and version) you use, and whether you’re on PC or Mac.

I had a great time designing the Happiness Project Toolbox. Check it out! I hope it will help you reflect on your values, keep your resolutions, and pull together material that inspires you. And I hope it’s fun! Please pass the link on to anyone else you think would enjoy it.

* If you'd like to work on your happiness project, but are more drawn to the idea of doing it with other people instead of using the Toolbox, sign up here for a starter kit for launching a group for people doing happiness projects. Groups have started from L.A. to Enid, Oklahoma, to Boston.

Running, Conversation, Commitment, and a Blue Sweater.

From time to time, I post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness. During my research, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies.

I was very happy to get the chance to meet Jacqueline Novogratz, the founder/CEO of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit venture fund that uses philanthropic capital to build businesses that serve the poor in the developing world. It’s a very interesting strategy for making a difference in the world – “Patient Capital,” which means -- rather than giving money to worthy causes or focusing on markets only -- strategically investing in building enterprises (e.g., providing water, housing, energy) that make poor people's lives better. So far, Acumen has invested about $40 million in forty enterprises in South Asia and East Africa, which has meant more than 25,000 jobs and services delivered to tens of millions low-income people.

She recently wrote a terrific book, The Blue Sweater, that tells the story of how she left banking to start work as a “social investor.”

The Second Splendid Truth holds that:
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.

Jacqueline struck me as a very happy person – and partly, she says, that happiness comes from knowing that she’s doing work that is meant to boost other people’s happiness, by giving them lives of greater health, security, and opportunity.

I was very interested to hear more of her thoughts about happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Jacqueline: I love to run in the early mornings, especially with a friend or sibling. I love watching places wake up. I love experiencing nature (even a small part when I’m in the city). I love starting the day with stories and laughter. I love sitting on the floor with women in low-income communities and listening to their stories.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
That life is never perfect, and that it is often in its imperfection that we discover life’s greatest beauty.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”)
Commit to something bigger than yourself. For commitment will set you free.

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
Running, of course, or a long conversation with a good friend or family member.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
People who live in the future rather than the present often seem to find happiness elusive. I remember a story my mother told me about being a young mother visiting my father who was on a furlough from Viet Nam in Hawaii. She met four older women who were sitting around a table by the pool, sipping cocktails. The women had each made big plans with their husbands to go on Hawaiian vacations “when they retired.” All of the husbands had died before the vacations were taken and so the four women decided to go together anyway, though all regretted having put their dreams off to a day that never happened.

At Acumen, I’m often approached by young people who want to express dissatisfaction in their careers and dream of changing the world. At the same time, they feel they can’t do it until they’ve “repaid their debt, earned enough money to have real freedom, gained all the skills they need.” People, of course, can’t make change until they are ready to do so. But the happiest people on earth are following their true passions, and that always entails taking risks, being uncomfortable and making sacrifices. And those risks and sacrifices only become more difficult as we get older….

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
I work on being all I can be and surrounding myself with people who also feel that way, who want to live out loud and give back somehow to the world; and that makes me happy.

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How fabulous! I just discovered Future Me, a site that allows you to send an email to yourself in the future. One of my favorite ways of making decisions is to think about what, in five years, I'll have wished that I'd done. One fascinating feature of the site is the ability to eavesdrop on what other people have emailed to themselves -- and that reminds me of the fabulous site...Wait! Can't say until tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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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. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

Is My Book Just a Figment of My Imagination?

For a long time, my book felt very…imaginary. Yes, I had a draft in my laptop. Yes, I sent long documents to my editor. But was anything really going to be published as a book? I’ve felt this way with all my books -- it always seems like a miracle when a real, actual book is in my hands.

Well, now I’m experiencing the next-best thing to grabbing hold of my physical book. The Happiness Project exists on Amazon! There’s a link, you can pre-order it now (and please do). I’m taking a minute to Embrace a milestone moment.

Now, this link doesn’t boast anything fancy. You can’t see the cover, because I don’t have cover art yet. You can’t see any fun facts – like "statistically improbable phrases" or "number of words" or "fog index" – because the book doesn’t actually exist in the system anywhere. But that link, primitive as it is, is there. The book feels real.

Also, if you’ve been awake nights wondering what my subtitle should be – I know I’ve laid awake nights, thinking about the subtitle – now all is revealed.

Blatant self-promotion alert: If you’re thinking about buying my book, please consider pre-ordering it. A book gets a big boost from pre-orders, because that early support shows that people really are enthusiastic. It’s early, I know, because the book won’t actually be available for several months. But I’ve ordered my copy! And that made me very happy.

* In the news this weekend, I saw that Steve Jobs received a liver transplant -- and someone told me that Natasha Richardson's family donated her organs. Have you signed up to be an organ donor? Or told your family that you'd like to be a donor, if that situation arose? If you support the idea of donation, live your values. Putting your values in action is always a happiness booster.

* 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. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

Where Do You Turn in a Time of Indecision and Desolation?

“In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried…nothing is so warming and companionable.” --Elizabeth Goudge

It's one of my Secrets of Adulthood: the best reading is re-reading.

* Over on Gimundo, I saw a little piece about miracle fruit -- I'd read before about this berry, which makes sour things taste sweet. I'm so curious to try it; something to put on my life to-do list.

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 23,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.

Do You Shield Your Joyous Ones?

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

For my children’s literature reading group, I just re-read The Diary of Anne Frank. Goodness. I was fourteen years old the last time I read it, and it’s very different reading it as an adult. If you haven’t read it recently, or ever, you really should read it.

The Diary of Anne Frank got me thinking about many things, most of them too huge to fit into a blog post.

But I was also very struck by one particular point, one small happiness-related aspect of their experience: how the eight people in hiding were so affected by each other’s moods. This isn’t surprising, but the diary powerfully captures this emotional contagion phenomenon.

Despite some difficulties, Anne mostly comes across as a cheery, energetic person with a ready sense of humor, and it seems that the others drew on that cheerful energy, even while they often criticized and nagged her. I was reminded of a resolution I’ve written about before, the resolution to “Shield my joyous ones.”

A prayer attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo includes the line, Shield your joyous ones:
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ;
rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones;
soothe your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones;
shield your joyous ones.
And all for your love’s sake.

At first, it struck me as odd that among prayers for the “dying” and “suffering” is a prayer for the “joyous.” Why worry about the joyous ones?

Once I started to reflect about my “joyous ones,” I began to appreciate the people I know who are joyous. As part of my happiness project, I try to keep resolutions like Give positive reviews, Leave things unsaid, Let it go, and Sing in the morning – and trying to keep those resolutions has made me understand much better how much effort it takes to be consistently good-tempered and positive.

For example, I remember that one day when we were visiting Kansas City, my father came home from work and my mother told him, “We’re having pizza for dinner.” As she knew he would, my father answered, “Wonderful! Wonderful! Do you want me to go pick it up?”

We all knew that my father would have answered that way even if he didn’t want pizza for dinner, and even if the last thing he felt like doing was heading back out the door -- and that kind of consistent enthusiasm contributes a lot to everyone’s happiness.

And if that kind of behavior makes a difference under the conditions of ordinary life, and is challenging to maintain in ordinary life, it’s hard to imagine both how difficult it would be, and how elevating it would be, to behave that way in the extreme fear and privation of the Secret Annex.

We non-joyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones. We rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety.

At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we’re sometimes provoked to try to shake the joyous ones out of their fog of illusion. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. For example, it’s easy to make fun of joyous ones’ enthusiasms. Why is this? I have no idea. But that impulse is there.

In his outstanding biography, Samuel Johnson, W. Jackson Bate describes how upset the temperamental Samuel Johnson became when his joyous, enthusiastic supporter, Hester Thrale, turned her attention away from him.

It is a common mistake on the part of cooler, self-contained natures to assume that those who have a giving and ebullient character are what they are only because they cannot help it—that they are fed from a spring that will never stop rather than a reservoir that can be exhausted. Hence the feeling of stark disbelief or unpleasant shock on the part of others when the reservoir of effort and energy—for it turns out to be a reservoir—is almost gone….the principal reward for those who give lavishly rather than meagerly is the expectation that they remain true to form and continue to give.

We depend on the joyous ones, and we need to remember that their joy isn’t inexhaustible or unconquerable. Now I’m making a real effort to use my own good cheer to support and protect the enthusiasts I know.

Now, obviously, this isn’t the most important lesson from The Diary of Anne Frank. But it’s one lesson.

Shield your joyous ones.

Do you know joyous ones – or are you one? Do you find that people often feed off that energy, yet also try to squash it?

* One of my most hilarious friends has started a blog, which is now one of my favorites: RealDelia, about "finding yourself in adulthood."

* To join the discussion about happiness on Facebook, join the Facebook Page.

Five Mistakes I Make in My Marriage.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day, or List or Quiz Day.
This Wednesday: 5 big mistakes I make in my marriage, and how I try to address them.

One of the main twelve themes of my happiness project is marriage. For me, as with many people, my marriage is one of the most central elements in my life and my happiness.

When I started my happiness project, and I reflected about the changes I wanted to make -- as well as the resolutions I wanted to keep in order to bring about those changes -- I realized I had five particular problem areas in my marriage. Here they are, along with the strategies I try to use to address them:

1. My demand for gold stars. Oh, how I crave appreciation and recognition! I always want that gold star stuck to my homework. But my husband just isn’t very good at handing out gold stars, and that makes me feel angry and unappreciated.

I figured out a good strategy. I used to tell myself I was doing nice things for him – “He’ll be so happy to see that I put all the books away,” “He’ll be so pleased that I finally got the trunk packed for camp” etc. – then I’d be mad when he wasn’t appreciative. Now I tell myself that I’m doing these things because I want to do them. “Wow, the kitchen cabinets look great!” “I’m so organized to have bought all the supplies in advance!” Because I do things for myself, he doesn’t have to notice. This sounds like a more self-centered approach, but it’s really much better.

2. Using a snappish tone. I have a very short fuse and become irritable extremely easily – but my husband really doesn’t like it when I snap at him (big surprise). I’ve done a lot to try to keep my temper in check. I don’t let myself get too hungry or too cold (I fall into these states very easily); I try to keep our apartment in reasonable order, because a mess makes me crabby; when he tries to make a joke out of my temper, I try to laugh along; I try to control my voice to keep it light and cheery instead of accusatory and impatient. Confession: I haven’t made much headway here.

3. Getting angry about a fixed trait. This is very, very tough. One of the things I’ve learned from my happiness project is that you can’t change anyone but yourself, and while there are some things I’d love to change about my husband, those things aren’t going to change. He isn’t going to get better about answering my emails. He is going to keep making rich desserts that tempt me. Etc. Instead of getting all worked up, as I often do, I’m trying to remind myself of HOW SMALL his flaws are, in the scheme of things.

4. Score-keeping. I’m a score-keeper, always calculating who has done what. “I cleaned up the kitchen, so you have to run to the store” -- that sort of thing. I’ve found two ways to try to deal with this tendency.

First, I remind myself of the phenomenon of unconscious over-claiming; i.e., we unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people’s. This makes sense, because of course we’re far more aware of what we do than what other people do. According to Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, “when husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent.”

I complain about the time I spend organizing babysitting or paying bills, but I overlook the time my husband spends dealing with our car or food-shopping. It’s easy to see that over-claiming leads to resentment and an inflated sense of entitlement. So now when I find myself thinking, “I’m the only one around here who bothers to…” or “Why do I always have to be the one who…?” I remind myself of all the tasks I don’t do.

Second, I remind myself of the words of my spiritual master, St. Therese of Lisieux: “When one loves, one does not calculate.” That precept is the basis for my 11th Personal Commandment: No calculation.

5. Taking my husband for granted. Just as I find it easily to overlook the chores done by my husband (see #4), it’s easy for me to forget to appreciate his many virtues and instead focus on his flaws (see #3). For example, although I find it hard to resist using an irritable tone, my husband almost never speaks harshly, and that's really a wonderful trait. I’m trying to stay alert to all the things I love about him, and let go of my petty annoyances. This is easier said than done.

I’ve found that working to keep my resolution to Kiss more, hug more, touch more is an effective way to help me stay in loving, appreciative frame of mind.

What are some mistakes you make in your marriage or long-term relationship? Have you found any great strategies for addressing them?

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