The Happiness Project

Can You Summarize The Challenge of Happiness In A Single Sentence?

Partly as an intellectual discipline, partly for fun, I often push myself to answer tough, conclusory questions, such as "If you had to pick just one thing, what's the key to happiness?" or "What are the ten most common myths about happiness?"

The other day, I asked myself: If I had to state the central challenge of living a life of happiness, in a single sentence, what would it be? This sentence, I decided, would be a good candidate:

As Flannery O'Connor observed in a letter, "Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better."

How about you? What's your suggestion for a one-line summary?

* On the BMW Guggenheim Lab, Jon Cotner writes about the Spontaneous Society, a walk he leads through New York City neighborhoods, in which participants try to promote friendly exchanges among strangers. Interesting.

* 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.

Do You Have The "Quality Of Keeping People Together"?

Assay: Recently, when I was rereading Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I was very struck by this observation about the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire:

The death of Guillaume Apollinaire at this time made a very serious difference to all his friends apart from their sorrow at his death. It was the moment just after the war when many things had changed and people naturally fell apart. Guillaume would have been a bond of union, he always had a quality of keeping people together, and now that he was gone everybody ceased to be friends.

The "quality of keeping people together" seems an important and rare attribute, and although it doesn't come naturally to me, I'm trying to do a better job of it myself, and also to appreciate more the work of the Apollinaire-ish types whose efforts benefit me.

This quality has been on my mind since the sad occasion of a memorial service of a friend. I knew her in a work context, but at the service, I realized from the tributes of her college friends that, along with many other wonderful traits, she had the "quality of keeping people together" from that time.

My sister is this way, too, and from watching her in action, I know how much energy and time it takes to act like glue, to make the efforts that allow people to stay close.

Who coaxes people into showing up to the reunion? Who remembers everyone's birthdays, and insists that everyone get together to mark the occasion? Who plans the promotion celebration? Who organizes the group wedding gift? Who keeps track of everyone's addresses? Who sends out the group emails? It doesn't sound very hard—until you're the one doing it.

And although it's a lot of work, it's all too easy for people to take these efforts for granted, or not to realize how important one person is to the strength of a particular web of relationships. In fact, that person might well be teased for these efforts, and instead of people being appreciative and cooperative, they might act jaded and superior to such gung-ho antics.

Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree: one of the keys—perhaps the key—to happiness is strong relationships, and the often unsung work of such folks to keep up a "bond of union" makes a tremendous difference to everyone in their circles.

How about you? Do you have the "quality of keeping people together"? Do you feel that your efforts are appreciated? If you don't naturally play this role, have you found strategies to work at it?

* I love cruising around Parent Hacks—which "collects and shares parents' tips, recommendations, and bits of wisdom—their hacks—so we can all benefit."

* 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.

Self-Acceptance: Are You An "Alchemist" Or A "Leopard"?

As a student of human nature, one of my favorite exercises is to try to divide people into two camps. For instance, I've managed to identify splits like abstainers vs. moderators and under-buyers vs. over-buyers.

Walking to the gym today, I found myself thinking about a passage written by critic John Ruskin:

The little pig was so comforting to me because he was wholly content to be a little pig; and Mr. Leslie Stephen is in a certain degree exemplary and comforting to me, because he is wholly content to be Mr. Leslie Stephen; while I am miserable because I am always wanting to be something else than I am.

This passage made me reflect about a way that my sister and I differ, and I think I identified a new set of oppositions: alchemists vs. leopards. Ruskin and I are alchemists. My sister is a leopard.

Alchemists seek ways to change or re-direct our fundamental natures; we're dissatisfied with ourselves; we're often tempted to behave, and make choices, that don't comport with who we really are.

Leopards don't try to change their spots. They know who they are, and they don't worry about everything they aren't.

The first and most important of my Twelve Personal Commandments is to Be Gretchen. This commandment is important for everyone—though people should substitute their own names!— but I suspect alchemists have a much tougher time keeping the commandment than leopards do. (I wish I could think of a tidier pair of symbols, but I haven’t come up with anything better. Ideas?)

I wish I could be more like my sister. Look, there I go again! Wishing I could change my nature.

* Speaking of siblings, check out 2 Peas and a Pot, where my brother-in-law writes a blog. It's fun to read even if you're not a serious foodie. Inveterate alchemist though I am, I have admitted that I'm not, and never will be, a serious foodie.

* My next book, Happier at Home, is inching its way toward completion. The cover is just about finished, which is an enormous step. If you'd like to be notified when the book is available, sign up here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com

What an Ethan Hawke Movie Reminded Me About Happiness.

Assay: It has been years since I saw the movie Before Sunrise, but I often find myself thinking about a snippet of conversation from the movie. I finally went back to look up the exact words.

The movie is about two twenty-somethings (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe and the one night they spend hanging out together.

Céline: "I always have this strange feeling that I am this very old woman laying down about to die. You know, that my life is just her memories, or something."

Jesse: "That's so wild. I mean, I always think that I'm still this thirteen-year-old boy, you know, who just doesn't really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I'll really have to do it. Kind of like I'm in a dress rehearsal for a junior high play."

I've never forgotten this scene, because I know exactly what both of them are talking about.

On the one hand, I often have a strange feeling of dress rehearsal, of make-believe—that I, and the people around me, are playing elaborate games of pretend. I find myself in an airport, and as I pull my wheelie bag behind me, I think, "Hey, I must look just like a person going to a conference." Because I am.

In a way, this feeling is comforting, because it makes life less serious; it gives everything a faint air of the ridiculous. But it also takes away from my appreciation of this moment, this time.

I also sometimes have the feeling that I'm far in the future, looking back on the present moment with deep nostalgia. A few weeks ago, when my younger daughter shouted with excitement when she saw that Santa Claus had eaten the gingerbread cookies we left for him, it seemed almost like...something that had happened long, long ago, even though it was happening right in front of me.

But I fight these attitudes. I am living my real life, this is it. That's the Eighth Splendid Truth: Now is now.

Does this ring true for you? Do you ever have these feelings?

* Patricia Cohen wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times about the happiness benefits of middle age: Get a Midlife.

* Want to get my free monthly newsletter? It highlights the best of the month’s material from the blog and the Facebook Page. Sign up here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.

Happiness Challenge: Saying the Right Thing.

Assay: I get a tremendous intellectual and emotional satisfaction when I hear someone give exactly the right answer to a difficult question. I was trying to remember some of my favorite examples of this kind of response, because just thinking about them makes me happy.

Here are four examples that sprang to mind.

1. My very favorite parenting book (its principles that apply equally to adults) is Faber and Mazlish’s How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, and I also love their book, Siblings Without Rivalry. It has a terrific section about dealing with a child who says, "You love Joe more than me!" The authors point out that the answer "I love you both equally" isn't satisfying, because we all crave to be loved uniquely. They tell a story to give an example from the adult context. When a wife turned to her husband and said, "Whom do you live more? Your mother or me?" she didn't want to hear him say, "I love you both the same." Instead he said, "My mother is my mother. You're the fascinating, sexy woman I want to spend the rest of my life with." Good answer!

2. A few days before my wedding, I was in high-anxiety mode about all the details and all the opportunities for disaster. (Among other things, I was very preoccupied with the fear that my veil would come off my head during the ceremony. Have you ever heard of this happening?). My mother listened patiently for a while, then observed, “The things that go wrong often make the best memories.” This instantly comforted me.

3. In Piers Anthony's fantasy novel, A Spell for Chameleon, Bink despairs because he doesn't know what kind of magic he possesses. To learn the answer, he goes to the Good Magician Humpfrey, who will answer a question in exchange for a year's servitude. While there, Bink meets a manticora who is almost at the end of its service.

"What question did you bring?" Brink asks.
"I asked whether I have a soul," the monster said seriously.
..."What did he tell you?"
"That only those who possess souls are concerned about them."
"But—but then you never needed to ask. You paid a year for nothing."
"No. I paid a year for everything...A simple yes or no answer would not have satisfied me; it could be a blind guess, or merely the Magician's off-hand opinion. A detailed technical treatise would merely have obfuscated the matter. Humfrey phrased it in such a way that its truth was self-evident. Now I need never doubt again."

4. My husband and I were working on a project with several other people. After we all received a certain email, one person meant to forward the group message just to my husband and me, with a critical comment about it. Alas, he made the classic mistake and hit “reply all.” He sent a nice note to the people who might’ve been annoyed, and then sent another note to us to lament what had happened. My husband sent back what seemed to me to be a simple and perfect response: “We’ve all done it.”

When I thought about why I found these answers so deeply satisfying, I realized they shared certain qualities.

First, they acknowledge the reality of other people's feelings. "Don't be silly" or "It's all going to be fine" denies that a person is feeling worried. Whether or not they should be worried, they are.

Along the same line, they don't argue that a person's concern is unfounded. Hearing "Oh, it doesn't matter" isn't very comforting when you're feeling anxious. These responses put the issue in a helpful perspective.

Importantly, the answers also have the ring of deep truth. A comforting truth is truly comforting, while a flip "Why are you worried about it?" often just makes a person feel worse.

Have you ever heard someone make just the right response? Even better, have you ever felt that you had exactly the right words to offer?

* If you haven't visited Neil Pasricha's 1000 Awesome Things, check it out. An instant happiness booster.

* My next book, Happier at Home, is at the copy-editing stage now—which is both exciting and terrifying. If you'd like to be notified when the book becomes available, sign up here. It's thrilling to have a new book coming out.

Which 'Love Language' Suits You? And Your Partner?

Over the weekend, I read Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages, and I found it fascinating. (I have to confess: the book caught my attention because it's always clustered near, and above, The Happiness Project on the New York Times bestseller list.)

One of the tensions within happiness, for me, is that I’m both more like other people than I suppose, and less like other people than I suppose. For instance, I thought I was the only person who struggled to spend out, but now I realize that many people feel this, too. Same with drift. I’d suffered from drift in my life, but I didn’t realize how many others had also found themselves drifting.

On the other hand, it’s easy to assume that other people are like me, when they really aren’t. Until I understood the abstainer/moderator split, I couldn’t understand why moderators didn’t just give up their temptations cold turkey. Or why Eeyores clung so tightly to their worldview.

The Five Love Languages argues that people express love in different ways, and people feel loved in different ways. These five types of expression and perception are the five “love languages.” According to Chapman, people feel loved when a partner expresses love in the language that is natural to the recipient. If love is expressed in a different language, that message of love isn’t received.

The five “languages” are:
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch (not the same as sex)

If one partner expresses love as “Acts of Service,"” but the other needs “Quality Time” to feel loved, they’ll both feel frustrated. Or if a partner expresses love with “Gifts” to a partner who needs "Words of Affirmation," that expression of love won't be understood.

Chapman argues that in a relationship, we should figure out what language makes our partner feel loved, and provide that; even if we’re acting very lovingly according to our own standards, if it’s not what a partner needs, it won’t make that partner feel loved.

How do you figure out your partner’s mode? Ask yourself: what does my partner complain about? What does he or she value? “We never spend any time together” and “We never talk” signal “Quality Time.” A partner who treasures every gift that’s made, large and small, and is very hurt when a gift isn’t given, speaks the language of “Receiving Gifts.”

What’s most interesting to me is the reverse thinking that this argument requires. You ask yourself not, “How do I like to express love?” but “What makes my partner feel loved?” You must shape your expression to suit someone else.

A person might argue that a partner’s “language” doesn’t come naturally to them—“I’m not the touchy-feely type” or “I’m too frugal to spend a lot of money on presents.” Chapman’s view is: find a way. Unless you speak the proper language, your message of love won’t be heard.

Under this framework, I think I’m “Quality Time," but I'm a bit unsettled by the fact that I can't identify my husband's. “Acts of Service”? "Words of Affirmation"? I need to figure that out. Of course, to be on the safe side, probably best to use all five, as often as humanly possible.

Self-knowledge is crucial to happiness, and I think this way of looking at love within relationships is very useful—both to understand ourselves better, and our partners. And even outside a romantic relationship, it’s an interesting way to view differences among people’s thinking.

* Bob Sutton's blog Work Matters is consistently interesting, and I was particularly intrigued by a recent post Bad is stronger than good: why eliminating the negative is more important than accentuating the positive. Many implications for happiness.

* If you'd like a copy of my Resolution Chart, for inspiration, email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.

7 Happiness Theories I Reject.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day, or List Day.

As audacious as it may seem to contradict venerable figures such as John Stuart Mill, Flaubert, or Sartre, I disagree with some of their views about the nature of happiness.

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." I argue that this is Happiness Myth No. 1: Happy people are annoying and stupid.

Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.” Heartily disagree. My Fourth Splendid Truth is "I'm not happy unless I think I'm happy." Or as Eugene Delacroix wrote, "He was like a man owning a piece of ground in which, unknown to himself, a treasure lay buried. You would not call such a man rich, neither would I call happy the man who is so without realizing it."

Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”

Sartre: "Hell is other people." [Actually, hell is other people, but heaven is other people, too.]

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.” My Eighth Splendid Truth is "Now is now"; it means many things, but among other things, it reminds to remember the happiness that is here and now.

John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.” [I reject this statement, but I would agree "Ask yourself whether you are happy on a scale from 1 to 5, and you cease to be so." For me, at least, trying to make those kinds of tricky judgments diminishes happiness—I find it very difficult to answer a question like that—while the simple question, "Am I happy?" contributes to happiness.]

How about you? Do you agree or disagree with these theories?

* I found a lot of great material on Greatist.

* The holidays are coming. For your consideration: The Happiness Project (#1 New York Times bestseller). Buy early and often! Order your copy.
Read sample chapters.

Why "Twilight" Inspired Me To Do Better With My Resolutions.

Assay: I'm a huge fan of Twilight (books and movies)—a fact about myself that continues to fascinate and puzzle me. Last night, I went to see the fourth movie in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, which inspired me to look back at a post I wrote two years ago. I really love that post, so here it is again.

*
Following my resolution to Enter into other people’s interests, last week I watched the movie Twilight with my older daughter. This wasn’t a sacrifice for me; I love Stephenie Meyer's books (oh, how I love children’s and young-adult literature), so I was curious to see the movie.

I found the movie interesting for many reasons not relevant here (other than to say I’m thinking about Jung generally, Frazier’s The Golden Bough, and George Orwell’s discussion of “good bad poetry” in his essay, “Rudyard Kipling”), but in particular, I loved the depiction of wordless, instantaneous, passionate love.

Many of my happiness-project resolutions are meant to help me be more tender, more loving, more-lighthearted, more appreciative…more romantic.

My husband and I met when we were in law school. I still remember the first time I saw him walk into the library—a shock ran through me, and I could practically feel my pupils dilate. He was wearing jeans and a rose-colored Patagonia pull-over (which I still keep in my closet). I walked over to a friend and whispered casually, “Who is that guy?”

Our law school is small, and our social circles magically started to overlap, so I met him, and my crush deepened. One important night, we sat next to each other at a dinner party. There was that afternoon when we ran into each other on the law-school staircase in front of the stained-glass windows.

But he had a girlfriend, and I had a boyfriend. Then he broke up with his girlfriend. A week later, on May 1 (I just looked up the exact date in my calendar), I broke up with my boyfriend. It happened in the morning, and I went out into the courtyard and made a general announcement of the break-up to a bunch of friends—to see what his reaction would be.

No reaction. “Hmmmm,” I thought. “Maybe I misread this situation.” Had I imagined what I thought was between us? After all, the two of us had never talked about anything of importance, certainly not about “us”; we’d never spent any time alone, only in chaperoned groups (except that once he’d asked me to breakfast at the Copper Kitchen before our Corporations class, an occasion so thrilling to me in prospect that I slept only a few hours the night before); and neither of us had ever made even the smallest romantic overture toward each other.

But that same afternoon after my break-up, he told me he was going to walk to Wawa’s (the New Haven version of QuikTrip) to get a Coke, and did I want to come? I did. We walked to Wawa’s, then back to the law school, and sat on a bench beneath some blooming magnolia trees. He said something completely incoherent, then took my hand; this was the first time we ever touched. At that moment, if he’d asked me to marry him, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised, and I might well have said “Yes.” (We did get engaged several months later.)

Now, so many years later, is it the same? Yes and no. Yes, because I still love him passionately, and more deeply, because I know him so much better. No, because he pervades my entire life, so now sometimes it’s hard to see him. Married people are so intertwined, so interdependent, so symbiotic, that it’s hard to maintain that sense of wonder and excitement.

If I’ve learned one thing from my happiness project, it’s that if I want my life to be a certain way, I must be that way myself. If I want my marriage to be tender and romantic, I must be tender and romantic.

Am I tender and romantic? Am I appreciative, thoughtful, forbearing, fun-loving? Or do I march around the apartment snapping out reminders and orders? Am I quick to feel annoyed or aggrieved? When we first met, I honestly wondered whether it would ever be possible for me to read when we were sitting in a room together; I found it so hard to concentrate that I couldn’t make sense of anything more complicated than the newspaper. Now, I find it hard to tear myself away from my work and my email to hold up my end of a marital conversation.

So, inspired by the springtime, and the memories of early love brought back to me by Twilight, I’m going to redouble my usual efforts to keep my resolutions related to love. Think of small treats or courtesies. Leave things unsaid. Give proofs of love. Don’t expect praise. Take time to be silly. Fight right.

Have you found any good ways to stay tender and romantic in a long relationship?

Here, to me, is the great mystery: we’re perfectly suited to each other—but how did we fall in love before we knew each other at all? How is that possible?

* The movie also reminded me to Be Gretchen and accept my taste in music. I loved the song from the Twilight piano scene, "Bella's Lullaby," and instead of dismissing that pleasure, I let myself enjoy it—and in the process, came across this engaging post by the composer Carter Burwell. (To listen to the song, listen to the clip on his post, or this preview.)

It reminds me of another soundtrack song I love, The Promise, from the mind-blowing movie The Piano. The pairing of the two songs/movies is interesting, because The Piano is about wordless passion between adults, with their complications, instead of teenagers.

* Join the happiness discussion on Facebook.

Do You Dread To Go Home?

Assay: In a novel, a mark of greatness is that a reader can return, over and over, and find something new. I've read Anna Karenina four times, and each time, it has been a different experience. As I am able to bring more to the novel, I take more from it.

This is a mark of greatness even in children's books. You might think that a book written for children would be so simple that it couldn't provide that depth of experience, but that's not true at all.

For instance, over the weekend, I re-read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie. And although I've read that book dozens of times, I loved it just as much as ever, and appreciated it in new ways, yet again.

For instance, I was struck by a line that I'd never particularly noticed before. The awful Miss Wilder has just sent Laura and Carrie home from school -- a terrible disgrace. As they're walking home to tell their parents what happened, Laura tells Carrie that she's not sorry for the way she behaved, because it was all Miss Wilder's fault. The narrative continues:

"Carrie did not care whose fault it was. There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home."

I've been thinking so much about home lately -- the idea of home, the reality of home -- that this one line hit me with particular force. People's idea of "home" may be very different, but home is one of the keys to happiness.

That's why it seems to me that the effort to make home more homey is so worthwhile. Have you found any good strategies to help ensure that your home is welcoming, so you don't dread going home, but look forward to going home?

* I loved cruising around Inchmark. I wish my daughters' school had "Crazy Hair Day." Maybe we'll do a home version.

* Yes, my next book is about happiness and home, with the surprising title of...Happier at Home. If you'd like to be notified when it's available, sign up here.

My Home: Exciting and Peaceful.

Assay: The first line in Gertrude Stein's Paris France is “Paris, France is exciting and peaceful.” For a moment, I was surprised by this pairing of words -- but then I realized, it's not really surprising. Paris is exciting and peaceful.

I'd been thinking along these lines about my home (no surprise, I spend a lot of time thinking about home these days, while I'm working on my next book, Happier at Home). I have what seem to be, at first, paradoxical desires for my home.

My home should calm me, and energize me. It should be a comforting, quiet refuge and a place of excitement and possibility. It should call to my mind the past, the present, and the future. It should be a snuggery of privacy and reflection, but also a gathering place that strengthens my engagement with other people. By making me feel safe, it should embolden me to take risks. I want a feeling of home so strong that no matter where I go, I take that feeling with me; at the same time, I want to find adventure without leaving my apartment. My home should suit me, and also suit my husband and daughters. But as I considered this list, I saw that these weren’t, in fact, contradictory desires. I want my home to be exciting and peaceful.

To think that a home must be either exciting or peaceful is a false choice. (It's surprisingly easy to fall into false choices, I've realized.)

How about you? If you had to sum it up in a few adjectives, what kind of home do you want to create?

* There's all sorts of great material on My Life Scoop -- "tips for a connected lifestyle." And some of my favorite bloggers post there, too.

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