The Happiness Project: Are You in a Book Group? Want a Reading Group Guide?

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.”

Happiness is a great book group meeting! I'm in three book groups -- one in which we read books aimed at adults, two in which we read book aimed at children and young adults. Being part of these books groups is among the joys of my life.

So I'm a big fan of book groups. In general, I've heard, book groups don't choose books that are only available in hardback, so I've been surprised to hear from a lot of people that their groups have read The Happiness Project.

It's thrilling to imagine a book group reading my book. Zoikes!

If you do choose The Happiness Project, if you'd be interested, you can email me for a short reading group guide that suggests topics for discussion.

If you want a copy, just email me at grubin [at] gretchenrubin [.com]. (Sorry to write in that odd way; trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “reading group guide” in the subject line. I’ll send it right off.

* 2010 Happiness Challenge: For those of you following the 2010 Happiness Project Challenge, to make 2010 a happier year, this month’s focus is Love. Last week’s resolution was to Give proofs of love. Did you try to follow that resolution? Did it help to boost your happiness?

This week’s resolution is to Fight right.

If you want to read more about this resolution, check out…
23 phrases to help you fight right with your sweetheart.
Five tips for how to fight right with your sweetheart.
Six tips for how to fight right in front of children.

If you're new, here’s information on the 2010 Happiness Challenge (or watch the intro video). It’s never too late to start! You’re not behind, jump in right now, sign up here. For more ideas, check out the Happiness Project site on Woman’s Day.

* I spent a lot of time reading CP and Me, "living with cerebral palsy" -- a blog by a twenty-year-old writing about his life in Israel, with cerebral palsy, playing the baritone.