The Happiness Project

• Be Gretchen.
• Let it go.
• Act the way I want to feel.
• Do it now.
• Be polite and be fair.
• Enjoy the process.
• Spend out.
• Identify the problem.
• Lighten up.
• Do what ought to be done.
• No calculation.
• There is only love.

• First: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
• Second: One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
• Third: The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)
• Fourth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

• "Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." 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

• 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.”

Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On this blog, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.

Buy the book

• Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox.
• Want to launch a group for people doing happiness projects?
• Spread the word about the Happiness Project.
• Email Gretchen Rubin

• Secrets of adulthood
• Recommended happiness reading
• Ten myths about happiness
• The movie "Twilight" inspires me to do a better job with some of my resolutions.
• Six tips for good deeds that take less than five minutes
• Imitate a spiritual master – who is yours?
• Five happiness boosters that actually do more harm than good
• Do something every day

• The Years Are Short
• Secrets of Adulthood

• October 28: 5 great "don'ts" of a happiness project.
• October 21: 8 excellent tips for living that my parents gave me.
• October 14: 7 tips if you're chronically late.
• October 7: 6 tips to hold yourself accountable for your resolutions.
• September 30: 18 tips that aren't, it turns out, from a churchyard.
• September 23: 6 tips for coping with the fact that you've forgotten someone's name.
• September 16: 10 tips for getting along with your mother-in-law.
• September 9: 10 (more) tips for fighting right with your sweetheart.
• September 2: 12 tips to create a happier (and more productive) workplace.
• August 26: 8 tips for items to carry when traveling with kids.
• August 19: 5 tips for happiness reinforced by my family vacation.
• August 5: 23 phrases to help you fight right.
• July 29: 9 tips for having a good bad day.
• July 22: Quiz--Are you drifting?
• July 16: How to be happier in 4 easy lessons.
• July 9: 9 tips for giving memorable praise--and why to bother.
• July 1: 14 tips for running a good meeting.
• June 24: 8 fun tools to boost your happiness.
• June 17: 5 mistakes I make in my marriage.
• June 10: 8 tips for working more happily with your colleagues.
• June 3: 16 tips for feeling happier at work.
• May 27: 13 tips for actually getting some writing done.
• May 20: 7 tips for making good conversation with a stranger.

more tips »

• How mindful are you?
• How well do you know yourself?
• How fun is your workplace?
• Do you make other people happy?
• Are you an Over-buyer or an Under-buyer?
• Are you a Moderator or an Abstainer when you try to give something up?