The Happiness Project: Frank Lloyd Wright's 10-Point Manifesto for His Apprentices.

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 -- or List Day.
This Wednesday: Frank Lloyd Wright's Manifesto for His Apprentices.

I love personal manifestos -- for instance, on the home pages of their blogs, Bob Sutton includes his 17 Things I Believe about work and Madame X lists My Rules about money.

I recently read Frank Lloyd Wright's Autobiography -- a very thought-provoking work. In it, he includes a list of the "Fellowship Assets" that he outlined for the architecture apprentices he worked with at Taliesin, his summer home, studio, and school.

1. An honest ego in a healthy body.
2. An eye to see nature
3. A heart to feel nature
4. Courage to follow nature
5. The sense of proportion (humor)
6. Appreciation of work as idea and idea as work
7. Fertility of imagination
8. Capacity for faith and rebellion
9. Disregard for commonplace (inorganic) elegance
10. Instinctive cooperation

This list was interesting to me, because although it's quite short, it packs in a lot of big ideas and strongly held views. It really started me thinking -- to ask, "What does Wright mean by 'inorganic' or even 'nature'?" "What's an 'honest ego'?" I particularly loved #5 -- the inclusion of humor on this list, and the tying of humor to a sense of proportion. I'd never thought of humor as an expression of a sense of proportion, but I think that's one reason that humor can be so helpful at difficult moments.

Writing a personal manifesto is a very interesting exercise; it really forces you to articulate your values. Have you ever written a manifesto for yourself? Was it a useful exercise? I wrote my manifesto, though I should probably update it.

* I love checking out my friend Liz Gumbinner's blog, Mom 101 -- "I don't know what I'm doing either."

* If you've been waiting to buy the paperback of The Happiness Project, it's coming out next week. If you're inclined to buy it, for yourself or a friend, you'd really help me out by pre-ordering it now. Pre-orders give a BIG boost to a book. (Can't resist mentioning: #1 New York Times bestseller.) If you do pre-order, as a thank-you, I'll send you my page of Happiness Paradoxes. Just drop me an email at gretchenrubin1 at gmail dot com, with the note "I pre-ordered."

If you want a signed, personalized bookplate, email me at gretchenrubin1 at gmail dot com (they're free; I'll mail anywhere, be sure to include your mailing address!)
Order your copy.
Read sample chapters.
Listen to a sample of the audiobook.