The Happiness Project: I Forgot St. Patrick's Day! Note to Self: Remember April Fools' Day.

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.”

One of my resolutions is to Invent a tradition (oxymoron acknowledged), and one of my favorite new traditions is the holiday breakfast.

On holidays, I try to make breakfast festive. This is a great tradition because it's fun, easy, and quick. It doesn't take much to dress up breakfast.

Yesterday, however, we were out the door and on the way to school when I caught sight of a man wearing a green shirt and a green tie. I realized I'd forgotten to do a holiday breakfast for St. Patrick's Day! It probably would have consisted of nothing more than dying the milk green, but still, that would have been fun.

To keep from making the same mistake, I made a special note in my calendar for April Fools' Day. We've had a lot of fun with that holiday in the past. What prank should I play this year? I have to figure that out. Your ideas welcome.

* Oh, how I love Discovery's site Puzzlemaker. If you want to create a homemade, personalized card or gift, it's a great resource.

* Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox. This free companion site pulls together eight fun tools that you can use to launch and track your own happiness project. You can also see what other people are doing for their happiness projects -- which is addictively fascinating.