The Happiness Project

Bluebird of Happiness, Pigeon of Discontent...and the Chicken of Depression.

My father is a huge fan of Gary Larson's brilliant The Far Side cartoons, and for years, each Christmas, we'd give him the Page-a-Day Far Side calendar. He kept the calendar on his desk at work, and when one cartoon was especially good, he'd bring it home to show us.

So when a thoughtful reader sent me this very appropriate Far Side, it not only made me laugh but also brought back many happy memories from childhood.

* I love exploring Melanie Blodgett's blog, You Are My Fave. So much to see.

* 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.

Want To Feel Happier? Enjoy Childish Pleasures.

My children make me happy for many reasons, of course. But it strikes me that one reason that they make me happy is that they encourage me to engage more deeply with the physical world.

Left to my own instincts, I’d drift absent-mindedly through the apartment, reading, writing, and eating cereal for dinner every night. Through my daughters, I become much more alive to ordinary pleasures—the comfort of our weirdly soft fleece blanket, the vanishing sweetness of cotton candy, the textures and colors of the Play-Doh, scented markers, and velvety pipe cleaners left scattered around the kitchen.

I'm trying to push myself to enter more deeply into childish pleasures. I love blowing bubbles, but I haven't blown bubbles in a long time. I delight in looking at new boxes of Crayons and magic markers, but I almost never do any coloring myself. I've never used our cunning set of animal stamps.

I do make good use of food dye and sprinkles, however. I use any excuse to pull out our food dye! We have a giant box of sprinkles, colored markers that work on food, sugar crystals, rainbow nonpareils, and the like.

I get so much pleasure from turning vanilla yoghurt into a rainbow confection that I'm trying to be more aware of other opportunities to enjoy childish pleasures.

How about you? What childish pleasures do you enjoy, or wish you took the time to enjoy? Skate-boarding, jump-roping, shooting hoops, playing jacks? A forty-something friend told me that whenever she and her three sisters get together, they play Four-Square. It made me so happy just to hear that.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in—no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

* A thoughtful reader sent me the link to this one-minute YouTube video for Google's "Search plus Your World." If you watch like a hawk, you can see the URL for The Happiness Project make a cameo in the search results displayed. Note: you will have to watch very closely.

* If you're looking for a good book, please consider The Happiness Project. Blatant self-promotion: New York Times bestseller for 44 straight weeks now.
Order your copy.
Read sample chapters.
Watch the one-minute book video.

Have Fun That's Actually Fun—For You.

One of my favorite Secrets of Adulthood is "Just because something is fun for other people doesn't mean it's fun for me, and vice versa." This sounds simple, but it actually was a huge breakthrough for me. So many things that other people consider “fun” are not fun for me, and it took me an astonishingly long time to realize that. Drinking wine, shopping, doing crossword puzzles, cooking, most games…I just don’t enjoy those activities. But reading! Ah, reading is fun for me.

Even now, I have to remind myself that people go skiing because they honestly want to go skiing, not because they are made from a sterner moral fiber than I.

I’ve realized, too, that it’s important to think about this in the context of my family. If I want to have fun with my family, I need to make sure that we’re doing activities that—at least some of the time—are honestly fun for me. Otherwise, I just get bored and try to end things, or even sneak away. Was it Jerry Seinfeld who said, "There's no such thing as fun for the whole family?" Well, I'm trying.

For instance, each night I read aloud to my six-year-old, and I'm very careful to choose books that we both like. She loves some books that I just don't enjoy at all, but if those books are the choice, that reading time becomes a drag instead of a pleasure for me. There are so many books we can both enjoy, so why not make sure that it's fun for me as well as fun for her?

Obviously, as a parent, I can’t follow this rule all the time. My children enjoy things that aren’t much fun for me, so I get my fun vicariously, by watching their fun. But I’ve decided to try to steer our activities more to things that we all find fun, because then I’m so much more enthusiastic.

We've all heard the saying, "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." But play, to be play, must truly be fun; the fact that other people find it fun, or I wish I found it fun, or I think I ought to find it fun, doesn't make it fun for me.

One of the great mysteries of happiness is—why is it so hard to “Be Gretchen”? Why is it so hard to know my own likes and dislikes? It seems that nothing should be more obvious than the question of what I find fun, yet I have to think hard about this, all the time. (On the subject of fun, here are the three types of fun.) In The Luminous Ground, Christopher Alexander remarks, “It is hard, so terribly hard, to please yourself. Far from being the easy thing that it sounds like, it is almost the hardest thing in the world, because we are not always comfortable with that true self that lies deep within us.”

This principle doesn't only apply to children; fun with your sweetheart, fun with your family, fun with your friends, fun with your co-workers. Have you found any good ways to have fun with others that's also fun for you? What do you find fun?

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

* There was an interesting post by Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times about the importance of generosity in marriage, with a quiz to determine, "Do you have a generous relationship?" I love a quiz.

* 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.

How to Keep Reality TV from Ruining Your Life.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: How to keep reality TV from ruining your life, or, 9 tips to make TV-watching a source of happiness.

At lunch today, I was part of a spirited conversation on the pros and cons of reality TV. That's a broad category, of course, covering a wide range of shows from The Real Housewives to American Idol to Jersey Shore to Project Runway. My older daughter loves that show where they do fancy cake decorations -- what's it called?

TV is significant for happiness -- if for no other reason, because of the time involved. In terms of hours, watching TV is probably the world’s most popular pastime. Among Americans, it’s the most common free-time activity – for an average of about five hours a day. It’s a source of relaxing fun.

But while television is a good servant, it’s a bad master. It can swallow up huge quantities of our lives, without much happiness bang for the buck.

Here are nine tips for keeping TV-watching a source of happiness:

1. Watch TV with someone else. We enjoy all activities more when we’re with other people, and we tend to find things funnier when we’re with other people. Use TV as an excuse to get together. Sports TV, awards TV, and competition TV, in particular, are a lot more fun to watch with other people. In fact, you can even…

2. Use TV as a bridge. If you’re having trouble connecting with someone – your sweetheart or your teenager, say -- try joining that person when he or she is watching TV (even if football or Top Chef isn’t necessarily your favorite). Watching TV is companionable, you share an experience, you can comment on the action here and there for a bit of conversation…it’s a way of showing someone that you want his or her company and engaging in a low-key, pleasant, undemanding way. One of my resolutions is to Enter into the interests of other people, and lately I've been trying to show a greater interest in SpongeBob.

3. Record shows. Recording shows allows you to use your time more efficiently. You can skip the commercials and watch a particular show according to your own schedule and mood. Also, interaction with actual real live people is the most important element to happiness, so you don’t want to leave your friend’s house early because you need to get home to catch a show.

4. Don’t record shows. Anticipation is an important aspect of happiness. Looking forward to a certain day and time so will heighten the pleasure you’ll take in your favorite show. And it’s fun to think that you’re sitting down at the same time with people across the country to see what’s next for those crazy kids on Vampire Diaries. Also, you’ll be able to enjoy reading about it right away (see #5), without worrying about spoilers.

5. Enjoy the commercials. This is particularly easy if you rarely watch TV. An enormous amount of ingenuity and creativity goes into commercials, and they can be fascinating if you pay attention.

6. Learn about TV. The more you know about anything, the more interesting it becomes. Read some TV criticism, read some interviews with the creative people involved in the show, become more knowledgeable.

7. Don’t surf. Especially if you’re feeling frazzled and overwhelmed with multi-tasking, sit down, start watching, sink into the experience, and stay on one channel. Let the show unfold in its time slot, don’t keep switching around to catch bits and pieces of other shows. Be a satisficer, not a maximizer.

8. Do surf. One of the joys of watching cable TV is the cornucopia of shows on display. As is oft remarked, “So many channels, yet so little to watch” -- but nevertheless I love seeing the variety of sports, music, pop culture, dance, movies of all sorts, old TV shows, religious programs, history…it’s fascinating. (Btw, surfing is so addictive because of the phenomenon of “intermittent reinforcement”: activities that sometimes, unpredictably, do yield a big, juicy reward – “Look, Tootsie is on! -- and sometimes don’t – “Is this infomercial really the best thing on TV right now?” -- tend to have an addictive quality.)

9. Choose to watch TV. This sounds obvious, but often, we don’t really choose TV, it’s just the easy default activity. Make the effort to ask yourself, “What would I like to do for the next hour?” before you plop down with the remote control.

Bottom line: if you watch TV mindfully and purposefully, it can be a source of happiness, especially if you use it to connect with other people. If you watch it passively, automatically, and for want of anything better to do, it can be a drain on happiness.

Special bonus tip: I've found my resolution to Abandon my self-control to be very helpful. In other words, I try to find external props to direct my actions, instead of relying on my all-too-undependable will-power. If you'd like to watch less television, try putting the remote away in a very inconvenient place, and making yourself put it away every time you use it. If it's a big pain to turn on the TV and to change channels, you might find yourself drifting to other activities that will be more satisfying in the long run.

What have I missed? Do you have other strategies for making sure that TV remains a source of happiness, not a drag on happiness?

* It seems as though there's an app for everything, and I was particularly delighted to see the app Ben's Virtues, based on Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues Chart -- the chart that inspired my own Resolutions Chart.

* Speaking of my Resolutions Chart, if you'd like to see a copy, as inspiration for your own happiness project, email me at gretchenrubin1 at gmail dot com.

Cultivate Your Passions.

Many of my happiness-project resolutions are meant to help me keep my vision wide. To counteract my impulse to work all the time, I push myself, with moderate success, to follow resolutions like Force myself to wander, Take time for projects, Read at whim, and Take notes without a purpose.

And my most important resolution, of course, is to Be Gretchen.

These resolutions have dramatically changed the way I react when I develop – as I sometimes do -- unusual interest in a new subject. Nowadays, I allow myself to follow a new passion as far as I want.

Sometimes, it’s true, I'm lucky enough to have been able to turn these passions into my work. When I became obsessed with Winston Churchill, I wrote a book about Churchill. What a joy it was to write that book! My preoccupation with St. Therese ended up playing an important role in The Happiness Project.

In fact, quite often, my inexplicable passions end up having a profound effect on my work. But I no longer worry about whether they’ll be useful in that way, or not. I just let myself go.

That's because, a few years ago, it finally dawned on that I didn’t have so many passions that I could drop one without losing an important source of happiness. Children’s literature, for example. When I cultivated my passion for children/young adult literature, I added a huge engine of happiness to my life.

I’ve just been hit by a new passion: a passion for scent. It came on me slowly. First came my resolution to Cultivate good smells, which led me to the wonderful Demeter Fragrance Library. Then came my resolution to Take a field trip, which led me to the incomparable CB I Hate Perfume.

Yesterday, I developed the classic symptoms of a full-blown passion:

• a return from the library, with a huge stack of books on a single subject
• purchase of more books that my library didn’t have
• purchase of other learning tools (in my case, from the amazing Aftelier site)
• the desire to talk about this subject with every single person I encounter
• the taking of notes without a purpose
• a list of places I want to visit
• a dramatic new appreciation of the influence of the subject in my life

In the past, I wouldn’t have indulged this passion. I would have thought, “Gretchen, you’ve already said enough about smell. Move on. Don’t let yourself get distracted from your main work. Don’t make purchases. Don’t waste time.” Now I remind myself, “How lucky I am to have a new passion. Time, money, and energy spent on things I love isn't wasted.”

I love the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, of "flow" fame. In his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, he wrote, “When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.” Cultivate your passions.

How about you? Have you allowed yourself to cultivate a passion? What was it? Did you have to push yourself to do so?

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

* Sign up for the Moment of Happiness, and every weekday morning, you’ll get a happiness quotation in your email inbox. Sign up here, or email me at gretchenrubin1 at gmail dot com.

Take a Field Trip. In My Case, To Cultivate Good Smells.

One of my very favorite new resolutions is to Cultivate good smells. It's astonishing to me how much pleasure my sense of smell gives me, now that I've tuned into it more forcefully.

In the course of my research, along with Demeter Fragrance Library (I love the idea of a "fragrance library"), I discovered a site called CB I Hate Perfume -- and learned that an actual store exists in Brooklyn. Fortunately, I have a good friend who is also a smell enthusiast, and together we made a field trip to the store.

I got the idea for the resolution to Take a field trip from my six-year-old, who gets extremely excited at the prospect of a kindergarten field trip. To her, it's such an adventure, such a treat. Sometimes, I get to go on field trips with her class, and I always enjoy them tremendously, and finally, it occurred to me to look for occasions to assign myself my own field trips.

Visiting the store with my friend was a deeply pleasurable experience. She handed me the wonderful bottle of "Hay," I handed her "Burning Leaves." She found "At the Beach 1966," I found "To See a Flower." She found "Black March," I found "Mr. Hulot's Holiday."

The resolution to "Take a field trip" yielded so much fun; it was a real adventure to make a special trip to visit this quirky store (which, for the record, we'd been planning to visit long before Geoffrey Gray's recent New York magazine story about the store's founder, Christopher Brosius.) But before my happiness project, I would never have dreamed of taking this kind of field trip. First, it involved making a modest splurge, which I almost never did. Second, it meant forcing myself to wander, which I almost never did. Third, it involved an interest in perfume and smell, which I never thought about at all, so I never would have heard about CB I Hate Perfume.

But I did take this field trip -- which gave me a wonderful outing with a friend, a memorable New York City adventure, and the continuing pleasure of spraying myself with "To See a Flower."

Do you take your own field trips? Where?

* I was thrilled to be included in this list of 7 must-read books on the art and science of happiness. I've read them all.

* Want to launch a group for people doing Happiness Projects together? Email me at gretchenrubin1 at gmail dot com for the starter kit. Want to see if a group exists in your area? Look here. Want to talk to people about starting a new group? Start a discussion here.

Why Reading a Boring Article Every Day Actually Made My Vacation More Fun.

I just got back from a very nice week’s vacation. While I was away, I tried an experiment on myself, which turned out very successfully.

I’d been intrigued by studies suggesting that interrupting a pleasant experience with something less pleasant can intensify a person’s overall pleasure. For example, surprisingly, commercials actually make TV-watching more fun. Interrupting a massage heightens the pleasure it gives.

I decided to adapt this finding for my holiday. Along with pleasure reading—I spent most of my reading time on two excellent books, E.O. Wilson's Naturalist and Virginia Woolf's A Moment's Liberty: The Shorter Diary, though there’s only so much reading I can do on a family vacation—I took several long articles that I’d been meaning to read. They’d been sitting on my shelf, cluttering up my precious surface space, weighing on my mind, for months. I knew that if I sat down with them, I could probably read the entire stack in an hour or so, but I never felt like doing that.

So I brought the papers on vacation, and every day, I read one. And, in fact, as those studies would predict, I found that including this small irksome task in my day made my vacation more fun.

First, perhaps counter-intuitively, having a little task to do amplified my general feeling of leisure. Because I did do a little work, when I was reading for fun, it felt more fun.

Second, tackling this work made me feel virtuous and productive. My sense of accomplishment far outweighed the actual work I was doing. (Nothing like a good dose of self-congratulation!)

Third, it gave me enormous satisfaction to throw out that big stack of papers—not to mention the pleasure of gloating over my clear shelf when I returned home.

Have you found that interrupting a pleasurable activity can intensify it?

* I was enjoying this video in which Felice Cohen explains how she has organized her life to fit into a 90-square-foot apartment, because she wanted to live in a certain neighborhood in New York City but not saddle herself with a high rent -- and then got a thrill at the end, when she sits down to read -- The Happiness Project!

* Sign up for the Moment of Happiness, and every weekday morning, you’ll get a happiness quotation in your email inbox. Sign up here, or email me at gretchenrubin1 at gmail dot com.

Start A Vacation.

It's Friday afternoon, and I just said to myself, "Zoikes, I'd better write my post for today! The day is further along than I thought. And I won't be posting for the next week, because of vacation, so today's post had better be good."

Then I had a thought: "Wait, what if I decided to declare that my vacation begins now, today?"

And I must admit, I found the thought irresistible. Spring break starts now! Back in a week!

* Are you thinking, "But, oh, Gretchen, what will I do without reading a daily post about happiness?" Fear not! To read more about happiness over the next week, you can...
Read the paperback!
Sign up for the Moment of Happiness, the daily email of a happiness quotation (you'll get them even though I'm on vacation)
Sign up for the free monthly newsletter (it will come out at the end of the month, as usual).

"Doing Things That Scare Me Can Make Me Both Happy and Unhappy, and the Line is Often Surprising."

Happiness interview: Janine DiTullio.

Last week, I went to the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. On the flight down, although I usually never talk to my rowmate, I eventually struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me.

It turned out she was a TV comedy writer who was headed down to SXSW to introduce Chirpbug, a technology that connects performers and fans over the internet. She helped found this company in her free time, along with writing for the heavy-metal cartoon Metalocalypse on Adult Swim. (She didn't mention it, but I found out later that she's written for Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, and Jimmy Fallon, and been nominated for multiple Emmy awards.)

But here's the crazy thing. We were talking away, and suddenly I remembered a panel about comedy-writing that I'd attended at the New York Public Library. "You know what," I said to her, "I may have seen you speak about eight years ago."

"Really?"

"If that was you, I've been quoting you ever since. Do you remember saying this? A guy in the audience asked, 'How do you get a job as a comedy writer?' And you, or whomever it was, said, 'You do what you love, and then your friends hire you.' Meaning, if you spend your time doing what you love with people who love it, too, eventually it turns into work opportunities."

"Oh, yes, I said that," said Janine.

I was floored by this! I'd been quoting her for years, and here she was! And it was such good advice. I thought about it a lot with my resolution to Do what you do.

"This is just like that scene in When Harry Met Sally!" I said. "When the character Marie quotes Jess's magazine piece, 'Restaurants are to people in the eighties what theater was to people in the sixties,' and Jess says, 'I wrote that.'" What a crazy small world.

So naturally I asked her to do an interview about happiness.

Gretchen: What's a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Janine: Gambling.

What's something you know now about happiness that you didn't know when you were 18 years old?
Happiness does not equal complacency.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Drinking soda + not exercising.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you've found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to "Be Gretchen.") Or a particular book that has stayed with you?
No. But I might start reminding myself to "Be Gretchen."

If you're feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a "comfort food," do you have a comfort activity? (mine is reading children's books).
I take a bath every day at 5pm.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
People seem to do a lot for their future happiness at the expense of their current happiness.

Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy - if so,why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
I had a very unhappy period a few years ago precipitated by a break-up. I took some prozac and moved back home to help my Mom battle lung cancer.

Watching someone appreciate every drop of life and having the opportunity to help a parent deeply fortified my happiness even while adding sadness. Oh, and the prozac worked wonders, too.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
Luckily, my Dad brought us up to put happiness before almost everything, except maybe birth control. So, I had a head start at it, but it still takes work. I try to avoid things that make me feel a loss of personal freedom.

I find bad jobs can do that fast. I'd rather take financial risks than have a "stable job" any day. Of course, that might not be the case if it weren't for the birth control.

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn't - or vice versa?
Doing things that scare me can make me both happy and unhappy and the line is often surprising.

* Also at SXSWi, I also met Nathan Thornburgh of DadWagon. I spent a lot of time checking out the site -- "trying to make sense of the sometimes baffling, often excruciating, occasionally amusing world of fatherhood."

* Join the happiness discussion on the Facebook Page. Lots of interesting conversation there. And follow me on Twitter as @gretchenrubin.

Quiz: What's Your Personality Type -- for Play?

Every Wednesday is Tip Day -- or Quiz Day.
This Wednesday: Quiz: What's your personality -- for play?

As I've worked on my happiness project, the importance of play has becoming increasingly apparent to me. For a happy life, it's not enough to have an absence of bad feelings -- we also need sources of good feelings.

For many adults, however, it's surprisingly hard to know how to have more fun. If you don't know what to do for fun, a good question to consider is: What did you do for fun when you were ten years old? Because that's probably something you'd enjoy now, whether walking in the woods, playing with your dog, making things with your hands, taking pictures, playing basketball, or dancing around the living room. When I was ten years old, I spent hours copying my favorite quotations into "blank books" and illustrating the passages with pictures I cut from magazines. Exactly what I do on my blog!

Because of my interest in play, I couldn't resist picking up Stuart Brown's Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.

I was particularly struck by Brown's analysis of the question, "What is your play personality?" He makes clear that these categories aren't scientifically based, but a product of his years of observation.

Where do you fit in these eight personalities?

1. The Joker -- makes people laugh, plays practical jokes.

2. The Kinesthete -- loves to move, dance, swim, play sports.

3. The Explorer -- goes to new places, meets new people, seeks out new experiences (physically or mentally).

4. The Competitor -- loves all forms of competition, has fun keeping score.

5. The Director -- enjoys planning and executing events and experiences, like throwing parties, organizing outings, and leading.

6. The Collector -- loves the thrill of collecting, whether objects or experiences.

7. The Artist/Creator -- finds joy in making things, fixing things, decorating, working with his or her hands.

8. The Storyteller -- loves to use imagination to create and absorb stories, in novels, movies, plays, performances.

What do you think? Does this accurately capture the different worlds of play?

I found it extremely helpful to see these categories, because it made clear some questions that have long mystified me. How is it possible that some people seem positively to enjoy planning big events? Why don't I enjoy having a collection the way so many people do? Why don't I much like playing cards or board games?

I am #8 through and through, with only a bit of #7. How about you? I wonder if some people have strong appreciation for more than a few categories, or if I'm typical, with a strong inclination for a single category.

Do you see yourself in this scheme? What do you do for play, and where does it fit in here?

* I love every visit to Communicatrix -- great material, thought-provoking and funny. And I can't wait to see the Communicatrix herself at the SXSW Interactive conference this weekend.

* It's true, The Happiness Project is out in paperback! Yes, now you can read the #1 New York Times bestseller in paperback.
Order your copy.
Read sample chapters.
Watch the one-minute book video.
Listen to a sample of the audiobook.