The Happiness Project

Imagine That Something Good Never Happened.

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.

I read a fascinating article by Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness, about a study showing that people who wrote about how they might never have met and fallen in love with their sweethearts had a bigger jump in happiness than those who wrote about how they did meet and fall in love.

Apparently, contemplating the fact that a key event might never have happened, at all, makes it more surprising and mysterious. Just think how close you came to having a different fate – your life could have gone in another direction, so easily! The absolutely brilliant, enthralling novel The Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver, explores this notion at length in an utterly gripping way, as does the movie Sliding Doors.

Lyubomirsky points out that surprise, novelty, challenge, and variety are associated with intense emotion and vivid experience.

I’ve certainly been convinced of that, myself. One thing that surprised me in my own happiness project is the truth of the proposition that Novelty and challenge bring happiness. When I started my project, I expected that this wouldn’t hold true for me, because I love mastery and routine. Well, I was wrong. To test the idea that with novelty and challenge bring happiness, I started this blog, and it has brought me immeasurable happiness.

After reading about this study, I thought for a few minutes about how my life would be different, now, if I didn’t have my blog. I did get a major happiness boost from realizing that phew, I do have my blog. Then I thought about what would have happened if I hadn’t met my husband. What an unhappy prospect! I got a surge of happiness and relief from knowing that we did meet each other. (We met because our library carrels were back-to-back; what if we’d been assigned to opposite ends of the room?)

Imagining life without your sweetheart (or your blog, or your cat, or whatever) also inspires gratitude. It’s challenging to feel grateful for the familiar elements of everyday life, but imagining their absence inspires thankfulness and awe.

So take a moment to imagine that something good never happened. Do you feel happier?

* Zoikes, check out this video of someone drawing two portraits, simultaneously, one with each hand. Coincidentally, the artist dedicates the video to the movie The Shawshank Redemption, which I've never seen -- despite the fact that many people have told me that it's in the Top Ten of happiness movies. I just read Stephen King's short story, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," so am now ready to watch the movie.

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 26,000 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.

Nine Tips for Having a Good Bad Day.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Nine tips for having a good bad day.

A few days ago, I was extremely upset. It’s too complicated to explain the whole situation, but an encounter left me feeling anxious, agitated, under attack, and sad. I did what I could to resolve the situation, but I still felt terrible.

When I have a day like this, I try to make it a Good Bad Day. I take the steps that tend to make me feel better or, if they don’t make me feel better, at least give me the kind of day on which I can look back with satisfaction.

To have a Good Bad Day, I made sure to:

1. Exercise. For me, exercise is a key element to managing my moods. It calms me and energizes me at the same time. Its rituals are comforting. It’s productive but not intellectually or socially demanding. Also, exercise is so obviously a key to good health that if I manage to exercise, I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile in my day, no matter what else happens.

2. Do something nice for someone else. The first part of the Second Splendid Truth is “One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy” (also known as the “Do good, feel good” provision). I sent out some emails that I knew would be useful for other people. Doesn’t sound like much, but it took a lot out of me.

3. Stop ruminating. My inclination was to go over and over the details of the upsetting episode and to conduct imaginary arguments. Instead, I tried to keep my resolution to Find an area of refuge. Studies show that dwelling on negative thoughts amplifies their power in your mind. In fact, some researchers suggest that a reason that more women suffer depression than men is that women are more likely to “overthink,” while men are better at distracting themselves from negative thoughts.

4. Connect with someone important to me. I called my sister.

5. Tackle a nagging task. Crossing things off a to-do list is energizing and cheering. I took the time to clear my desk – not just physically removing piles of papers, but also doing the tasks that the papers represented. Copying research notes from various sources, making a dentist’s appointment, and making progress on my blog re-design gave me a feeling of control and accomplishment.

6. Do something silly and lighthearted with my children. I videotaped my four-year-old as she danced and sang in her mermaid costume with her new mermaid doll, and we had a family bubble-blowing extravaganza. And throughout all these steps, I tried to…

7. Act the way I want to feel. Research shows that although we think that we act because of the way we feel, in fact, we often feel because of the way we act. I get worked up very easily, but I tried to act cheerful instead of allowing myself to get agitated, wring my hands, etc. My mother often reminds me, “Stay calm,” and I need that advice frequently.

8. Ask for help. I said to my husband, "I really need to talk to you. I'm really upset, I want to tell you what happened today and talk to you about it, okay?" Being a sympathetic listener isn't my husband's strongest point, and truth be told, he wasn't very comforting -- but I think that by explaining that I needed him to try to do his best to help, I did help him do the best he could.

But nothing really worked. I still felt lousy. So I made sure to…

8. Go to sleep early. It’s true, everything does look better in the morning. Also, the longer I work on my happiness project, the more importance I give to sleep. Getting enough sleep just makes a tremendous difference to happiness.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt better. The situation still upsets me, but not as much as it did. When I have a bad day, it helps to have a good bad day.

Have you found any strategies for making a bad day better? What works for you?

* This post from Pamela Slim on Escape From Cubicle Nation really got me thinking: "Scrappy content can juice up your brand". Once again, I'm reminded of the wisdom of Voltaire's admonishment, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Plus I loved spotting the brilliant Communicatrix there, too.

* Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox. It's fun, it's addictive, it's free, and it will boost your happiness.

"Sing, Talk on the Phone, Cook Something New."

My fellow Huffington Post contributor, Karen Leland, is an expert on increasing efficiency and happiness at work, so she spends a lot of time thinking about how people can manage their time to get the most satisfaction and productivity out of their workweek.

She has a new book out, Time Management In an Instant. I love this approach -- thinking about how accomplishing manageable, concrete tasks can make a difference in your daily life. It seems to me that feeling out of control of time is a major happiness challenge for many people.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Karen: Keeping my home, office and email relatively organized. While it might sound trivial, when I know where things are and can find them easily - I stay out of overwhelm. For me, overwhelm is a definite happiness stressor.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
That it's not a constant condition, and it's not supposed to be. The amount of happiness I experience ebbs and flows and that's ok. Sometimes I'm super-joyful, sometimes content and sometimes down. It's a cycle, and it all changes.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
I'm embarrassed to say that I still have a tendency to compare myself to others to some degree. It's not as bad as it was in my youth, but it's one of the patterns I need to continually fight.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”)
Yes, my happiness mantra is "Follow my own path and truth, and trust that the right people and results will appear. Be grateful when they do."

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
Three things are guaranteed to give me a happiness boost:
1. Singing along to any musical
2. Talking to my girlfriends on the phone
3. Doing something new, creative and fun in the kitchen

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?
The people I know who are happiest seem to protect their time and space. In other words, they don't spend a lot of time doing things that they don't want to do, or being with people they don't want to be with. They also say what they mean, and mean what they say. The unhappiest are those who are blaming others for their woes, and can't seem to shake off being bitter about a wrong that was done to them.

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?
When I got divorced from my first husband 25 years ago, I went through the unhappiest period in my life. The grief and unhappiness were profound, but that experience really taught me a lot. Since then, I would say my level of happiness goes up and down, but always seems to settle in the same place. Whenever I'm in what I consider to be a less happier place, I do things to fill the tank of my happiness. For me that is art, cooking, being with friends, spending time with my husband (#2 for 17 years), singing, and being in nature. All of those things fill me up in a way that can shake me out of my unhappiness - usually.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
I would say that I work on being more content. In other words, I try and take things as they come and not get too caught up in how it is on any given day. Recently, I've been working on being more serene - which to me is a form of happiness. I do this by simply stopping, and taking a breather, when I start to feel anxious or stressed. I find that if I let something upsetting sit a bit, its unhappy quality diminishes – at least somewhat.

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t – or vice versa?
You know that expression, "Be careful what you ask for, young lady, for you shall surely get it"? Yes, I have often thought something was going to make me very happy, and it made me crazy! Then again, there are things I have gone into that I had no expectation about, and they have turned out to be among the happiest experiences of my life. I think in many ways having a expectation about how happy something will make me is a set-up for failure. For me I think it's better to bring my best self to something, which includes my enthusiasm, but stay away for expecting it to bring me a certain level of happiness, and just be open to the whatever the experience delivers.

* Zoikes, this is happy news: I just found out that the blog search engine Technorati ranks this blog among the Top 2,000 blogs. Given that as of December 2007, Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs, that sounds pretty good.

* If you haven't watched my one-minute movie, The Years Are Short, you might enjoy seeing that.

How Do You Remember to Count to Ten?

I'm quick-tempered, and one of my greatest happiness-project challenges is to bite my tongue; an excellent way to boost my happiness is to keep my resolution to "Leave things unsaid." In the end, I'm always happier when I don't make some angry or snarky comment. But easier said than done.

This is particularly difficult with my husband. Even when I manage to leave some comment unsaid three times, four times, five times, often a version of that comment pops out of my mouth in a weak moment.

I've made big strides in this area since I started my happiness project, but I still have a long way to go.

Mindfulness is the key, but my challenge is to find a way to be mindful in an angry, annoyed, or hurt moment. When I remember to "Count to ten," I can usually manage to do it, but often I say something I regret before it even occurs to me to count to ten. One of the reasons that St. Therese of Lisieux is my spiritual master is that she writes so well about the struggle to leave things unsaid.

The best way to leave things unsaid is to leave them unthought, or if I've thought them, not to dwell on them. I've noticed -- no surprise -- that the more clearly, and the more often, I've articulated some grudge or criticism in my mind, the more likely I'll give voice to it.

Have you found any good ways to count to ten, to leave things unsaid, to keep yourself from ruminating?

Self-mastery. As Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."

* Yet another happiness-project group is forming! I’m especially thrilled to see this one starting, because it’s in my own neighborhood of Manhattan. Check out the Facebook Group or email NYCHappiness@live.com for more information, and if you know someone who might be interested, please pass along the link.

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 26,000 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.

"Dare To Be Wise! Begin Now."

“Dare to be wise! Begin now. The man who puts off the day when he will live rightly is like the peasant who waits for the river to drain away. But it flows on, and will flow on for ever.”
--Horace, Epistles

* I always find a huge amount of thought-provoking material on Seth Godin's blog.

* If you haven't watched my one-minute movie, The Years Are Short, you might enjoy seeing that.

Ask for Help.

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.

One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “It’s okay to ask for help,” and one of my resolutions is to “Ask for help.” Why I find this simple act so difficult, I don’t know. But I know that other people do, too -- for example, the excellent Marci Alboher just wrote about how to ask for help.

I don’t like to admit I don’t know something or understand how to do something, and feel even more uncomfortable and sheepish when I ask for help promoting my work. I was comforted when I read this confession in Samuel Butler’s Note-Books: “I was nearly forty before I felt how stupid it was to pretend to know things that I did not know and I still often catch myself doing so.”

The thing is, asking for help really – helps. It makes my life a lot easier and more pleasant. And that makes me happier.

So now I’m going to ask for help getting the word out about The Happiness Project.

If you’re so inclined, it would be a huge help if you’d forward the link to this blog to three people who might be interested. Do you know someone facing a happiness challenge? Someone very interested in the subject of happiness? Word of mouth is the best recommendation; people really respect their friends’ suggestions.

Also, if you’re inclined to buy the book The Happiness Project, it would a huge help if you’d pre-order it. The book hasn’t hit the shelves yet, but early interest brings all sorts of benefits for a book. Buzz at the beginning really matters.

So, phew, I did it. I asked for help. Not just one kind of help, but two!

Asking for help boosts happiness, because not only does it make your life easier, it demonstrates that you have a social network that supports you. What’s more, asking for help is a sign of relationship and trust. As Benjamin Franklin recommended, “If you want to make a friend, let someone do you a favor.” I remember someone at work telling me, “I never liked that guy until he asked to borrow $50. Then I realized he must consider me a friend, and presto! I started liking him.”

Also, by asking for help, you’re boosting other people’s happiness. Studies show that for happiness, providing support is just as important as getting support. Often, people like to help. I know I like to help. That’s part A of the Second Splendid Truth, also known as “Do good, feel good.”

Do you find it difficult to ask for help? When you do ask for help, does it make you happier?

* On Gimundo I found this happy video of fun with sticky notes -- by EepyBird, the same people who did the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment.

* 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.

Quiz: Are You Drifting?

Every Wednesday is Tip Day -- or Quiz Day.
This Wednesday: Are you drifting?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the problem of “drift” – the decision you make by not deciding, or by making a decision that unleashes consequences for which you don’t take responsibility.

The responses I got – comments on my blog, in my email, and on the Facebook Page – showed me that a lot of people have also suffered from drift.

One of the problems of drift is that we try to deny we’re drifting. Take this quiz: how many of these statements apply to you, in your current situation? The more checks you make, the greater your risk for being adrift.

__ I often have the peculiar feeling that I’m living someone else’s life.
__ I often think, “This situation can’t go on,” but then it does go on.
__ I spend a lot of time daydreaming about a completely different life as an escape from what I’m doing now.
__ I find myself getting very angry if someone challenges the values that I think I’m working toward. (E.g., working like crazy as a fifth-year associate at a law firm, and furious if someone argues that money and security aren’t important.)
__ I complain about my situation, but I don’t spend much time trying to figure out ways to make it better. In fact…
__ I fantasize that some catastrophe or upheaval will blow up my situation. I’ll break my leg or get transferred to another city.
__ I find myself having disproportionate reactions. (For example, I have a friend who wasn't admitting to herself that she wanted to be an actor, and she decided to give it a shot after she started crying when someone started talking about acting.)
__ I feel like other people or processes are moving events forward, and I’m just passively carried along.
__ I find myself doing or getting something because the people around me are doing it or want it.
__ There is something in my life about which I used to be passionate, but now I never allow myself to indulge in it. In fact, it makes me uncomfortable even thinking about it.
__ I’ve justified certain actions on my part by assuring myself, “I might as well,” “It can’t hurt,” “This might be useful,” “This will keep my options open,” “I can always decide later,” “I can always change my mind,” “Nothing is forever,” “How bad can it be?”

According to the First Splendid Truth, to be happier, you need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

Of these four elements, “feeling right” is the hardest to explain. “Feeling right” is feeling like you’re leading the life you’re meant to live; that you’re living up to your expectations for yourself; that you feel comfortable with the life you’ve chosen.

Feeling right might mean being in the right career. One reason I left law was that I was haunted by the feeling that I was…on a tangent, off-center. I can’t describe it any other way. There I was, clerking for Justice O’Connor, and I was haunted by a feeling that it was all a digression. From what, to what? That’s what I had to figure out.

Some people don’t “feel right” because they don’t have the family situation they want, or the financial situation they expected. Or they’re not spending their time on something that’s important to them. My Manhattan-raised college roommate didn’t “feel right” about living in the Midwest; she tried and tried, but her life there just didn’t feel right.

I think “feeling right” is especially susceptible to outside pressures. We drift into certain decisions because other people approve of them. Your sense of what is right for you becomes clouded by what other people think is right. You drift into medical school because your parents will be pleased. You drift into marriage because all your friends are getting married. You drift into a job because someone offers you that job. You want the respect of the people around you, or you want to avoid a fight or a bout of insecurity, so you take the path of least resistance. That’s drift.

The word "drift" has overtones of laziness or ease. Not true! Drift is often disguised by a huge amount of effort and perseverance. Just because you're working hard is no guarantee that you're not drifting. For me, law school was drift, and it was hard every step of the way, from the LSAT to the New York Bar exam. In the end, I'm happy I did go to law school -- and that's another tricky thing about drift. Sometimes drift does make you happy. But don't count on it.

One of my drift-related Secrets of Adulthood is "You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you like to do." And here's a new one: "Approval from the people we admire is sweet, but it’s not enough to be the foundation of a happy life."

It comes back, as always, to a fundamental truth about happiness, and my First Commandment: Be Gretchen. (Feel free to substitute your own name.) In order to be happy, I have to know myself and build my life around my own nature.

Have you found yourself drifting? How did you start, how did you end it -- or not?

* Another happiness-project group is starting up! This one is in the San Francisco Bay area. If you’re interested, go to the Facebook Group for more information – and please forward the link to anyone in San Francisco who might want to join.

* 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.

"Loud, Angry Music; Conferences; and a New Baby."

One of the things I enjoy most about blogging for RealSimple.com is all the great people I’ve met – both the folks who work at RealSimple.com and the other bloggers who write for Simply Stated.

At a lunch at Real Simple, I was very excited to get to meet Tamar Weinberg, an expert in social media and viral marketing who is a ubiquitous on-line figure. As always, when I meet someone whom I know from blogland, it was a bit of a shock to see her in person. There she was, a real live human being! And she looked so much like her photo! Plus she was pregnant, which was such a real-life thing to do.

Tamar has a book that is just hitting the shelves, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. It’s an outstanding resource for anyone who wants to make sense of the potential of the “social web” – blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Flickr, Facebook, etc. These worlds are changing so fast; it’s hard to keep up, even when you’re very engaged.

I was interested to see what Tamar had to say about happiness: how would an intense workaholic handle having a new baby, and not only that, having that baby just two months before her first book is coming out? A challenging situation.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Tamar: I can't say there's anything specific that makes me happier. I just gave birth to a baby boy 8 weeks ago -- he's my first -- and I'm totally enjoying being with him and bonding with him. But besides just being with my baby, I love the work I do in the social media marketing and community management realm. I've had these late night revelations that keep me up all night writing my thoughts down on paper and getting totally excited to kick-start my day.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
Even if something really gets you down, you can pull through it and be stronger than ever.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
I find myself believing that I could do more than what's allowable and physically doable in a 24-hour period. I wish that days were fifty hours long.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful? Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
Not in particular. But I'm reading blogs every day and always find inspiration in others' words.

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a “comfort food,” do you have a comfort activity? (mine is reading children’s books).
Usually, loud angry music works for me (nope, happy music won't do!). I haven't felt blue since my son was born but I imagine that he'll be able to pull me out of it.

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 family adds to happiness and detracts from happiness. ;) (I mean that in the utmost serious but jovial way!)

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?
Being around people I care about always makes me happy. I also don't mind a change of scenery. In the business front, it's always been great to attend conferences where I can network with new people and spend time with old colleagues.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
I really should. As with everything, there's room for improvement. And having a new 24/7 role isn't entirely stress-free!

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t – or vice versa?
Honestly, I approached parenthood with incredible fear and anxiety. I am now so happy to be a mother.

* A new happiness-project group is launching in the Chicago area! If you live around there and are interested in joining, click here for more information. (I love the photo chosen to illustrate the intro page.)

* If you want to work on your happiness project by yourself (instead of, or in addition to, being part of a group), check out the Happiness Project Toolbox. Tons of fun, if I say so myself.

Bob Dylan Helps Me Recognize A Paradox of Happiness.

As I’ve thought about happiness, I’ve been struck by the many paradoxes of happiness. I want to Be Gretchen and accept myself, and I also want to perfect my nature. I want to think about myself, so I can forget myself. I want to lighten up, but also take myself more seriously.

I’ve discovered another paradox of happiness, and it’s one of the most important: I want to create my own independent happiness, apart from other people, so I can connect with other people.

This paradox started to become clear to me as I reflected on a haunting passage from Bob Dylan’s strange, brilliant memoir, Chronicles: Volume One. He wrote: “I looked at the menu, then I looked at my wife. The one thing about her that I always loved was that she was never one of those people who thinks that someone else is the answer to their happiness. Me or anybody else. She’s always had her own built-in happiness.”

This is what I’m striving for – to have my own “built-in happiness.” An emotional self-sufficiency. Not to depend on other people to boost me up, or to let them drag me down.

However, it’s true that ancient philosophers and modern scientists agree that a key – perhaps the key – to happiness is strong relationships. Other people matter to our happiness. If you have five or more friends with whom to discuss an important matter, you’re far more likely to describe yourself as “very happy.” Having strong relationships lengthens life (even more than quitting smoking!) and cuts the risk of depression. Even a brief interaction with another person tends to boost your mood – this is true for introverts as well as extroverts.

And when we’re with other people, we affect each other’s happiness. Emotional contagion describes the fact that we “catch” good moods and bad moods from each other (unfortunately, bad moods are more contagious than good moods). Married people are very affected by each other’s happiness; a thirty percent increase in one spouse’s happiness boosts the other spouse’s happiness, while a drop in one spouse’s happiness drags down the other.

But more and more, I’ve been trying to resist emotional contagion, and also the impulse to allow someone or something – most often, my husband, my children, or my work – to have a big impact on my happiness. I try to carry my own atmosphere of happiness with me. As Goethe said, "I am the decisive element...It is my daily mood that makes the weather."

This paradox leads me back, yet again, to the Second Splendid Truth:

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.

By working to maintain my own “built-in happiness,” I’ll be better able to help the people around me to be happy. My happiness will lift them up. Plus I won’t be a happiness vampire who sucks happy energy from other people or who craves a life-blood of praise, affirmation, or reassurance to support my happiness. (Ah, my struggle to rise above gold stars continues.)

But to have my own “built-in happiness” is a challenge. Have you found any good ways to keep yourself emotionally self-sufficient, without isolating yourself?

* This is FABULOUS: a reporter for the TucsonCitizen.com is launching a Tucscon happiness-project group on that website. I can't wait to see how it goes.

* Speaking of happiness-project groups, if you'd like to start a group, sign up here to get your starter-kit.

"I Am Sorry I Went to Paris. Or Am I Sorry?"

“I am not much given to playing ‘If I had’ of ‘If I hadn’t,’ much preferring to stay with ‘It would have happened anyway.’ But that last is usually a lie, and I am not one to kid myself. I am sorry I went to Paris, because when I returned I was full of myself and starved for more of me. Or am I sorry? I do not know. I am mixed up. But I do know that there have been many years when I wished I could have walked into that little group at the airport, never to emerge again. I see them – the husband who looked like Montgomery Clift in his Harrods’ raincoat, the nurse in her white uniform, the little girl dancing in her hair ribbons, and the baby bulwarked in her diapers – and they haunt me, still there, still waiting at Kennedy.”
-- Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I Was Young

* 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.