The Happiness Project: Trying to Make a Tough Decision? Try Asking the Five Fateful Questions.

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.”

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: the 5 fateful questions to ask yourself if you're trying to make a tough decision.

When I’m reluctant to take a risk or face something uncomfortable, I ask myself these five questions which, in melodramatic form, I call the "Five Fateful Questions." They help me think clearly about a situation.

What am I waiting for?
What would I do if I weren’t scared?
What steps would make things easier?
What would I do if I had all the time and money in the world?
What is the worst, and the best, that could happen?

For example, when I considered switching from law to writing, I thought, “I’m moving to New York, the publishing capitol of the country. I have friends who are agents and writers who can give me advice. I have an idea for a book that I’m dying to write, and in fact, I’ve already started writing it. I really want to be a writer. What am I waiting for?” Nothing. I made the switch.

What about you? Do you ask yourself these questions -- or do you have a question of your own? I suspect there are more than five fateful questions! Though that phrase does have a nice ring to it. Which ones have I overlooked?

* I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Unclutterer.

* It’s Word-of-Mouth Day, when I gently encourage (or, you might think, pester) you to spread the word about the Happiness Project. You might:
-- Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
-- Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @gretchenrubin)
-- Sign up for my free monthly newsletter (about 49,000 people get it)
-- Buy the book
-- Watch the one-minute book video
Thanks! I really appreciate any help. Word of mouth is the BEST.