The Happiness Project: If I Can't Accomplish Anything Else Today, I Can Do These 10 Things.

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: Ten things I can do every day -- even when I can't do anything else.

We've all had days where it seems as though nothing gets done. For those times when I seem to be spinning my wheels, I keep a list of things that I can do every day, even when I have no extra time, money, or energy to spare. I sometimes forget to write in my one-sentence journal and I don’t always make it to the gym, but I do try to make sure I hit all these items.

That way, even if I feel like I had a day when I got nothing accomplished, I can comfort myself, as I climb into my smooth, tidy bed, “Well, at least I went for a walk. I ate an apple. I hugged my daughters.”

Every day, I…

1. Make my bed.

2. Wear sunscreen (well, most days).

3. Wear my seat belt.

4. Jump up and down a few times.

5. Pick up one object that’s in the wrong place and put it away.

6. Go for a ten-minute walk outside.

7. Eat a fruit or vegetable.

8. Put my keys away in the same place.

9. Touch everyone in my apartment with affection.

10. Pause to enjoy a lovely smell.

Bonus: 11. Go to sleep as soon as I'm sleepy, if I possibly can.

How about you? Are there things that you try to do every day, even when it seems impossible to get anything done?

* I spent a lot of time exploring Mumsnet (a British site, in case you couldn't guess), especially the Books section. * Have I ever mentioned that The Happiness Project is a #1 New York Times bestseller? Really, I did? Oh, right, maybe so.
Order your copy.
Read sample chapters.
Watch the one-minute book video.
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