The Happiness Project

How to Make Yourself Happier.

My First Splendid Truth is: To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. Although this sounds like a simple and rather obvious formula, it took me a huge amount of time and thinking to work it out.

Even once I’d come up with it, however, I didn’t understand the true importance of the fourth element, the atmosphere of growth. But the more I think about the elements of a happy life, the more convinced I’ve become of its importance.

How do you cultivate an atmosphere of growth? You can fix something broken; clean something up; help someone who’s in trouble; make something; help someone move forward; learn something new; start something; plan and execute something. Having a place in your life where you are “growing” will make you feel much happier – plus these kinds of activities tend to foster other happiness-boosting actions, like spending time with people, making new friends, anticipating something fun, trying something new and challenging, etc.

One of my favorite ways to “grow” is to read something that changes the way I view the world. Suddenly, everything comes into focus more clearly, and my understanding deepens.

I felt this way when I read McCloud’s Understanding Comics, Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Bataille’s The Accursed Share: Consumption (I thought my head would explode when I read that, still have never been able to re-read it), Woolf's The Waves, Canetti’s Crowds and Power, Koestenbaum’s Jackie Under My Skin…

I have a special fondness for analysis that’s heavy on lists, categories, and schemes. That’s how I think myself – whether about power, money, fame and sex, or the life of Winston Churchill, or a happiness project, I always impose a very strict explicit order on my subject.

I’m enjoying this experience of intellectual revelation right now, because I’m halfway through the extraordinary book, Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order: Book One: The Phenomenon of Life. I already had this experience reading Alexander before, because I still haven’t recovered from the ecstasy of reading A Pattern Language. I’m slowly working my way through everything Alexander wrote, and The Nature of Order is not disappointing me.

In a nutshell, Alexander is outlining the qualities that give “life” to design – in the man-made world and in the natural world. Since I began this book, I find myself looking at buildings, fabrics, shells, everything, in a new way. One of the great, fundamental interests of my life is the relationship between people and objects (why, I have no idea, but this subject fascinates me) – plus I have an obsession that I call “symbols beyond words” which incorporates some of Alexander’s ideas.

Alexander identifies “fifteen structural [and also, he argues, objective] features which appear again and again in things which do have life”:
1. levels of scale
2. strong centers
3. boundaries
4. alternating repetition
5. positive space
6. good shape
7. local symmetries
8. deep interlock and ambiguity
9. contrast
10. gradients
11. roughness
12. echoes
13. the void
14. simplicity and inner calm
15. non-separateness

Considering his arguments is giving me tremendous intellectual pleasure -- in particular, because I’m not a visually oriented person, they're giving me a very satisfying tool for looking at the world and understanding what I find pleasing. (Though I have to admit, I just don’t appreciate a good Turkish carpet design the way Alexander does.)

The atmosphere of growth can be particularly useful to consider when you’re feeling unhappy, because it’s an area that’s directly under your control, right away. You can do something now to create an atmosphere of growth.

True, when you're feeling blue, it can be tough to push yourself to learn something new, or get something started, or whatever. So start small. Search for an area where you can foster a bit of growth.

* I always find a lot of interesting, and funny, material on RealDelia -- "finding yourself in adulthood."

* Volunteer as a Super-Fan, and from time to time, I'll ask for your help. Nothing onerous, I promise! But a big help to me.

A Resolution I Bet You've Never Tried: Tweeting "The Waves."

I have a new (highly specific and quite idiosyncratic) happiness-project resolution, “Use Twitter to send out a daily quotation from Virginia Woolf’s brilliant novel, The Waves.”

I’m haunted by a line from Carl Jung, “The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” I often feel this way when I read or see a work of art that I love – I want to enter into it, play with it, make something with it, myself. But that’s often a frustrating impulse, because I can’t think of a way to enter into it on my own terms.

I feel that way about paintings. I love some paintings, but I don’t have anyplace to go with that love. It’s not enough just to look – but what else can I do? I tried going to a "Drawing on the Right-Side of the Brain" class (you can read all about it in my book), because I thought that sketching a painting might be a way to play with it, but I just don’t have that skill, or the interest to develop the skill.

With reading, it’s easier. I can copy my favorite quotations into one of my gigantic commonplace books. I have hundreds of passages copied in these books, dating back to fifth grade. I used to fight my note-taking impulse as a time-waster, but now I embrace it; how did I not realize the tremendous happiness it gives me?

And one of the things I love most about writing is playing with others’ work. In fact, it’s safe to say that each of my books has been, at bottom, an excuse to quote from my favorite books. Take Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill -- nothing give me more joy than quoting Churchill. One of my favorite things about my blog is that I can quote from, or comment on, my favorite books.

But some writers’ work eludes my grasp. I love it, and I want to play with it, but I haven’t figured out how to do that.

For example, Virginia Woolf. I love Woolf’s work, but it’s almost unbearable for me to read it, because I can’t do anything with it, except copy it into my gigantic collections of favorite quotations. I want to play with it, to build on it, to discuss it – but how? I can build Samuel Johnson into a blog post easily, but Virginia Woolf is on a different plane.

Those sentences! So extraordinary, so powerful.

Then I thought: why not use Twitter to engage with The Waves? I posted about this idea a few months ago (note: I love this post because it's not often a person can allude to Robert Pattinson and Virginia Woolf in the same breath). To send out a tweet once a day with a quotation from The Waves…I’d read the book in a new way, and I’d appreciate its beauty in a new way. Would other people find this obscure or boring? Maybe, but it’s very difficult to know what will resonate with other people. I’m going to do it -- at the very least, it will make me happy.

Here’s my first one, one of my favorite lines in all of literature and one of my personal koans: “Rhoda has rocked her ships to shore. Whether they have anchored, whether they have foundered, she cares no longer.”

At first, I hesitated. Should I quote from the book in order? How long should I continue? Is it disrespectful to Woolf’s masterpiece to cut it up and dole it out in this way? I decided not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good: I will quote out of order, I’ll do it for as long as it’s engaging. There are so many astonishing lines in The Waves. They will have a new power, taken in isolation and out of context this way.

Such is the nature of my homage to Virginia Woolf.

Also, after I posted about wanting to use Twitter this way, someone else was eager to join in. She’s not usually a Twitter user, so she started a Twitter account @TheWaves2009. So you can get two ways of getting a twitter-fix of The Waves now! Follow her and follow me at @gretchenrubin.

* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

On reading a new memoir of catastrophe: TO LOVE WHAT IS.

One of my happiness-project resolutions is to Read memoirs of catastrophe.

I just finished Alix Kates Shulman’s To Love What Is. When Shulman's 75-year-old husband fell from a nine-foot sleeping loft in July 2004, he suffered a brain injury that keeps him from having a short-term memory. Her memoir covers the accident and the aftermath, and in flashbacks, the period during which they met, went separate ways, and years later, married.

Her husband’s condition is unusual, because certain parts of his mind and personality are almost untouched, but in other ways, he has changed tremendously. And, of course, he is utterly incapable of taking care of himself, even for short periods.

It is a fascinating, haunting book – all about the nature of love. Shulman doesn’t sugar-coat her emotions or her reactions to what’s happening, and her honesty, and her greatness of spirit, make the book a compulsive read. I read it in one day. Her story had special resonance for me, because so much of it takes places in areas of New York City that I know well.

To Love What Is gave me a lot to think about. Gratitude, and the importance of appreciating the ordinary day. Accepting the changes that time brings. Sacrifice. Loyalty. Patience. Marriage. Taking pleasure in little things.

On a more mundane level, as usually happens when I read memoirs of catastrophe, I found myself making mental notes to myself, to learn from someone else’s disaster. In this case: don’t let yourself get overtired. Always know what medications a person is taking. Always know how to call for emergency help. I know I’m making my own mistakes, and that it’s a delusion to think that covering every base will prevent catastrophe, but I can’t help it.

For a quick preview: Shulman also wrote a piece, Help Wanted: Other Woman, about her experiences with her husband for last Sunday’s "Modern Love" column in the New York Times.

I've read lots of memoirs of catastrophe, and this one is one of the best. Especially if you’re struggling to find happiness in a situation where something very bad has happened, you’ll find this account enormously interesting and helpful.

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A thoughtful reader send me the link to a fascinating post on the blog Why Does Everything Suck?, in which one of my happiness gurus, Nancy Schulman, author with Ellen Birnbaum of the fantastic parenting book, Practical Wisdom for Parents, is quoted saying, “Kindergarten is becoming more like regular school, but I think regular school and life should become more like kindergarten.” I think this is absolutely true, and I spend a lot of time, as a parent, trying to figure out how to make that happen in my own apartment. The push to "enrich" children is so strong -- and so well-intended -- to what degree should parents step back and let their kids do what they feel like (within the bounds of good health, schoolwork, manners, etc)?

A major theme in my Happiness Project is to try to push myself to do more playing, more wandering, more experimenting. This is harder than it sounds.

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Interested in starting your own Happiness Project? If you’d like to take a look at my Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

The happiness of reading whatever I like – like the work of George Orwell.

Last night, for no particular reason, I was seized with the desire to re-read one of the most memorable paragraphs I’ve ever read, which appears in George Orwell’s essay “Reflections on Gandhi,” in A Collection of Essays.

I got out the book and read the paragraph. Then I read the essay, “Charles Dickens.” Then I read the essay, “Raffles and Miss Blandish.”

And all at once, all I wnted to do was to re-read everything that George Orwell ever wrote. (With the exception of Burmese Days – I’ve never read that, because it’s about unjust accusation.)

Now, before my Happiness Project, I would have rejected this impulse. I would have told myself, “It’s good to re-read, of course, but it’s a waste of reading opportunity to re-read so much by one person, at the same time,” or “I have too much work-related reading to do, and those books should take priority.”

One of the main subjects of my Happiness Project is “Books,” and I devoted the month of September to reading, writing, and making books. My resolutions included “Read at whim,” “Re-read,” and “Find more time to read.”

So instead of fighting the impulse to read Orwell, I’m giving in to it. First up, The Road to Wigan Pier. I’ve read it twice before, now can’t wait to start it again.

Similarly, not too long ago, I followed the same approach with St. Therese. There was a period when the only books I wanted to read were about St. Therese, and I allowed myself to read one after another, even though it didn’t seem to make much sense.

It would be nice to have a justification – to believe that my subconscious mind realizes that I should immerse myself in Orwell or St. Therese for some writerly or happiness-related reason. Maybe that’s true. But maybe not. And I’m not requiring myself to have a justification, it’s just enough that I want to read Orwell right now.

Just thinking about it makes me happy.

If you’re wondering what Orwell wrote about Gandhi that started me down this path, here is the paragraph that I looked up:

Nor did he [Gandhi], like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: "What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way.

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At a reader's suggestion, I went over to check out First30Days. There's great information there related to happiness, especially on the issue of how to bring about a change in your life. HOW and WHY people are sometimes able to start exercising, start saving, stop eating potato chips, quit smoking, etc., but sometimes not able to stick to change although they wish to, is a very important question.

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I’ve started sending out short monthly newsletters that will highlight the best of the previous month’s posts. If you’d like to sign up, click on the link in the upper-right-hand corner of my blog. Or just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than “newsletter” in the subject line. I’ll add your name to the list.

More true than you can possibly imagine.

My sister is always dropping memorable apercus about what life is like when you write for TV and live in Los Angeles.

Some of my favorites:

"'Yes' comes right away; 'no' never comes."
"People succeed in groups."
"You don't call, you PUT IN a call."

But my favorite may be "Everything you've heard about L.A. is more true than you can possibly imagine."

Well, via Trish's Dishes and GalleyCat, this hilarious YouTube video about book promotion is more true than you can possibly imagine. I laughed out loud, then I set off immediately to order Dennis Cass's book, whatever it was. Fortunately, Head Case: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain looks like the kind of thing I love.

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I’m going to start sending out a short monthly newsletter. If you’d like to sign up, click on the link in the upper-right-hand corner of my blog. Or just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than “newsletter” in the subject line. I’ll add your name to the list.

What happiness books have been recommended to you -- or do you recommend?

I love getting suggestions for reading. I’ve found some of my favorite books on happiness through reader recommendations.

So here’s a question: if you’ve ever been in therapy, or marriage or family counseling, or met with a minister, priest, or other kind of spiritual adviser, or gone to a career coach or life coach, or hired a professional organizer, or anything else along those lines – what books were recommended to you?

I’d be interested just to know what books were recommended, whether or not you did read them. And if did you read them – were any books particularly helpful? Non-fiction or fiction, any kind of book.

Or if you are a therapist, minister, coach, and the like, what do you recommend?

I’d love to know what happiness professionals (of all stripes) suggest for people to read.

The right book, at the right time, can make a tremendous difference – for example, Beth Lisick suggesting 1-2-3 Magic to me. My fantasy, of course, would be that one day, people might recommend THE HAPPINESS PROJECT. One of the reader emails that has made me happiest was the email from a therapist who said that he told his patients to read my blog every day.

Part of giving great counsel (in whatever role) is seeing what book would suit a particular person’s character and situation. For example, I LOVE Story of a Soul, but I have to admit that it’s not a book for everyone.

Or is there a book that you’ve found on your own, that you want to recommend to other people?

For some of my happiness-related reading suggestions, see the lower right-hand column of this blog.

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When I was at the MediaBistro conference, I saw a presentation by the founder of the site Divine Caroline, so I went to check it out. Lots of interesting material, in several happiness-related categories.

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I’m going to start sending out a short monthly newsletter. If you’d like to sign up, click on the link in the upper-right-hand corner of my blog. Or just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than “newsletter” in the subject line. I’ll add your name to the list.

Happiness is reading a good memoir.

I love reading spiritual memoirs, and memoirs of catastrophe, and memoirs of other people’s Happiness Projects (though they don’t call them “happiness projects,” that’s what they are).

So I was very interested to read Trish Ryan’s memoir, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After. It’s a combo of all three kinds of memoir.

From college on, Ryan was very eager to get married. She lurched through some bad relationships, then made a disastrous marriage to a man with a vicious temper. His temper was so vicious, in fact, that when she decided to leave him, she just walked out of the house one morning. She didn’t bring anything with her, and she kept her whereabouts hidden, until she managed to get a divorce by relinquishing any claim to their marital property. Throughout this time, she was also on a spiritual quest.

When she left her marriage, she moved to Boston, and she ended up joining the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Greater Boston. My favorite part of the memoir recounts how she embraced the church and Jesus, turned her life around, and married the perfect guy.

This memoir is fascinating, because Ryan is so honest (and a bit kooky). She talks about her longtime belief in astrology; her repeated, classic He’s Just Not That Into You relationship mistakes; her initial reservations about some aspects of the religion she slowly adopted. It’s also very funny.

Also, she accomplishes something very difficult: she writes about her faith, religion, and Jesus in a way that will resonate, I bet, not only with people of the same faith but also with a wide audience.

I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever failed to be enthralled with the story of someone’s Happiness Project. I can’t think of an example. There’s just something so engaging about reading about how people decide to change their lives, and how they go about doing it. People have such wildly different challenges, and undertake such wildly different resolutions to try to turn their lives around.

This is a very, very happy story. I have to say, I got a little teary in the wedding scene. Then I immediately went online to see if there were any pictures of Trish Ryan and her husband Steve on her author website (there are).

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I like checking out the LifeTwo site. They do great round-ups of lots of interesting studies, plus there's other fun material there.

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