The Happiness Project: Novelty And Challenge Bring Happiness

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.”

It's very true that novelty and challenge bring happiness. It's also very true that novelty and challenge often bring feelings of anxiety, frustration, anger, boredom, and insecurity. Learning to do new things, or to face new situations, isn't always fun.

It's one of my favorite paradoxes of happiness: Happiness doesn't always make me feel happy.

For the past week, I've been trying to learn to do something new and challenging. I want to make some of my favorite one-sentence aphorisms, Secrets of Adulthood, paradoxes, and the like into nicely designed jpegs. It's harder than I expected! But I've learned a lot.

Here's one of my experiments.

A question for you, readers. My handwriting isn't very attractive; is it a nice, homey touch, or would this kind of image be more pleasing if it had a less DIY look? Be honest.

Of all the things I've written about happiness, I think this line—"The days are long, but the years are short"—and the one-minute video I did with the accompanying story, has resonated most with people.

* If you enjoy reading about the latest research, check out Science Daily. Lots of interesting information, well organized.

* Want a happiness quotation in your email inbox every morning? Sign up for the Moment of Happiness. Subscribe here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.