The Happiness Project

Some Counter-Intuitive Facts about Loneliness.

Sometimes people ask, “If you had to pick just one thing, what would be the one secret to a happy life?” The answer is clear: strong bonds with other people. If I had to pick one thing, that’s it. The wisdom of the ages and the current scientific studies agree on this point.

On that subject, I just finished a fascinating book by John Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. The book underscores the conclusion that few things will challenge your happiness more than loneliness.

Without thinking it through, I’d assumed that being lonely would make people warmer, more eager for connection, and more accepting of differences in others. If you’re lonely, you’re going to be open to making friends and therefore more easy-going, right?

To the contrary! It turns out that being lonely has just the opposite effect:

--Loneliness “sets us apart by making us more fragile, negative, and self-critical.” (174)

--“When people feel lonely they are actually far less accepting of potential new friends than when they are socially contented.” (180)

--“Lonely students have been shown to be less responsive to their classmates during class discussions, and to provide less appropriate and less effective feedback than non-lonely students.” (181)

--“When people feel rejected or excluded they tend to become more aggressive, more self-defeating or self-destructive, less cooperative and helpful, and less prone simply to do the hard work of thinking clearly.”(217)

--Bonus loneliness tidbit: “People with insecure, anxious attachment styles are more likely…to form perceived social bonds with television characters.” (258)

Loneliness makes us so anxious and worried about rejection that it distorts our thinking and our behavior.

This argument supports the arguments against the two most pernicious happiness myths: Happiness Myth #1—Happy people are annoying and stupid and Happiness Myth #10—It’s selfish to try to be happier. Cacioppo and Patrick make the convincing case that socially contented people (a/k/a happy people) tend to be kinder.

The obvious next question is, “Well, I’m lonely, and I’m not happy. What do I do now?” Loneliness didn’t address that question, alas.

The book includes a quiz so you can score yourself on the UCLA Loneliness Scale. I scored a 31, where a score lower than 28 is low-loneliness; above 44 is high-loneliness; and 33-39 is the middle of the spectrum.

* A thoughtful reader pointed me to the wonderful My Big Walk -- "One woman. One year. One thousand miles." Laura Lico Albanese decided to celebrate a milestone birthday by walking one hour, every day, for 365 days -- and to blog about it. A fabulous happiness project! I love it!

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 28,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.

Who's in a Starring Role, Who's in a Walk-On Role? All of Us.

Years ago, my husband and I fixed up a very close friend with another friend. They fell in love, it was great. But within a few years, he got sick. She stood by him through it all. Then he died. It was awful. And it was very, very hard on our friend.

It was a sad situation for many reasons. As the years passed, one thing continued to bother me: I felt we had put a beloved friend in the path to sorrow. It had been inadvertent, and well-intentioned, but still, we had brought all this pain into our good friend’s life.

I mentioned this to my husband, and he said something that completely changed my thinking. He said, “Yes, it was very hard on her. But think how much better it was for him.”

This thought, obvious as it is, had never occurred to me. I realized – how often I make this error. I was acting as though my friend were the main character of this story! That she was the one who really mattered. And I saw that I make this mistake all the time. I’m the MOST main character of course, and then the people close to me, and so on…with some people just appearing as extras or in walk-on roles.

But that’s not true. Everyone is a main character. And everyone is a minor character. And as I started thinking about this, I realized that many of my favorite happiness passages concerned exactly this shift: someone re-interpreting a situation, by understanding how different circumstance would seem if someone else were placed in the starring role.

Each has haunted me, but only now do I see what theme links them together.

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Reading Flannery O’Connor’s letters led me to the extraordinary book, A Memoir of Mary Ann, a memoir about a little girl, Mary Ann, who lived with a gruesome tumor on her face before dying of cancer, written by the nuns with whom she lived for several years in a free cancer-treatment home.

Near the end of Mary Ann’s life, a five-month-old baby, Stephanie, was brought to the cancer home. Stephanie’s parents were crushed at the thought of leaving their baby there.

The nuns relate that for years, Mary Ann had longed for a baby to take care of. When Stephanie arrived, she said shyly to the baby’s mother, “I didn’t pray for a baby to be sick, but I prayed that if a baby was sick, it would come here.”

Later, the mother wrote the nuns, “I had accepted the hurt [my child’s affliction] brought me, but I had not accepted the fact that I had to give her up. My husband was suffering too and my attitude…was not helping much. Mary Ann’s words opened my understanding. Stephanie was needed…this child [Mary Ann] with the bandaged face and a heart full of love needed her…God had given me a good husband, six beautiful children. This last child was probably the most special of them all, destined for something I knew nothing about.”

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In Viktor Frankl’s masterpiece, Man’s Search for Meaning, he relates a story from his psychiatric practice, when an elderly man, distraught with grief over the death of his wife two years before, came to him.

Frankl asked, “What would have happened…if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?”

The man answered, “Oh, for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!”

Frankl responded, “You see…such a suffering has been spared to her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering—to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.”

The man left the office, comforted. Frankl observed, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

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Here’s an example from children’s literature. In Rick Riordan’s novel, The Sea of Monsters, the hero of the story, thirteen-year-old Percy Jackson (who happens to be the son of the sea god Poseidon and a mortal woman), has taken Tyson, a huge, awkward boy who seems to be learning-disabled, with a misshapen face, under his wing. They go to high school together, but Percy isn’t exactly sure why he’s bothering to protect Tyson and drag him along on his Olympian adventures.

He keeps Tyson with him, though, and at the end of the book, Percy learns that Tyson is also a son of Poseidon, and he’s a Cyclops, which is why his face looks wrong (he only has one eye).

Tyson says to Percy, “Poseidon did take care for me after all…I prayed to Daddy for help…He sent me a brother.”

Ah! we see. Percy thought that Tyson was tagging along with him, but in fact, he was a supporting character in Tyson's adventure.

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It’s a very unsettling and interesting exercise to think about the people in my life and to imagine myself in a minor, supporting role. How do I fit into their fates? Am I helping?

* I always find interesting things at LifeDev, "empowering creative people." Good stuff.

* I'm trying to figure out the level of interest for a book tour. If I did a book event in your town, and you'd come, it would be very helpful if you'd either post a comment below or drop me an email at grubin[at]gretchenrubin[dot com]. (Sorry about the weird format – trying to thwart spammers). Just write "tour" in the subject line, and be sure to include the name of your city! Thanks very much to all the people who already answered; the information is enormously helpful.

Twenty-Three Phrases to Help You Fight Right.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: twenty-three phrases to help you fight right.

Almost all couples fight; the secret is to fight right. I’ve posted about what not to say during a fight. Here are some phrases that actually help.

I review this list from time to time, so that when I’m arguing with my husband, I remember the phrases that help me fight right. Recently, for instance, I was angry at my husband for showing – I thought – a lack of respect for my priorities. So I waited until a good moment (this itself is tough for me), and said, “I need you to listen. This is important to me.” From his startled expression, he clearly thought I was starting a fight; but by warning him that I needed him to respond carefully, we managed to avoid a fight altogether.

When my husband and I do argue, I find that the single best technique to apply is humor. If one of us can laugh and joke around, the angry mood lifts instantly. But during an argument, my sense of humor is the first thing to go.

Failing that strategy, here are twenty-three phrases that help turn down the heat of anger:

Please try to understand my point of view.
Wait, can I take that back?
You don’t have to solve this—it helps me just to talk to you.
This is important to me. Please listen.
I overreacted.
I see you’re in a tough position.
I can see my part in this.
I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
I could be wrong.
Let’s agree to disagree on that.
This isn’t just your problem, it’s our problem.
I’m feeling unappreciated. [Always, my craving for gold stars!]
We’re getting off the subject.
You’ve convinced me.
Let’s take a break for a few minutes. [If you can remember to do this, it’s extremely effective – especially if you’re having a big fight. After a break, it’s almost impossible to go back to yelling.]
Please keep talking to me.
I realize it's not your fault.
That came out all wrong.
I see how I contributed to the problem.
What are we really fighting about?
How can I make things better?
I’m sorry.
I love you.

I actually get tears in my eyes when I read this list. Such is the uplifting power of fighting right.

Also, to fight right, it’s very important to respond well if your sweetheart makes a repair attempt – the technical term for a gesture of reconciliation and love. Don’t rebuff a repair attempt!

What other strategies or phrases have helped you fight right?

* A thoughtful reader sent me the link to an excellent blog Half Full, about "the science of raising happy kids."

* If you like the blog, you'll love the book! It's not just a collection of touched-up blog posts, I promise. Pre-order The Happiness Project now!

How Do You Remember to Count to Ten?

I'm quick-tempered, and one of my greatest happiness-project challenges is to bite my tongue; an excellent way to boost my happiness is to keep my resolution to "Leave things unsaid." In the end, I'm always happier when I don't make some angry or snarky comment. But easier said than done.

This is particularly difficult with my husband. Even when I manage to leave some comment unsaid three times, four times, five times, often a version of that comment pops out of my mouth in a weak moment.

I've made big strides in this area since I started my happiness project, but I still have a long way to go.

Mindfulness is the key, but my challenge is to find a way to be mindful in an angry, annoyed, or hurt moment. When I remember to "Count to ten," I can usually manage to do it, but often I say something I regret before it even occurs to me to count to ten. One of the reasons that St. Therese of Lisieux is my spiritual master is that she writes so well about the struggle to leave things unsaid.

The best way to leave things unsaid is to leave them unthought, or if I've thought them, not to dwell on them. I've noticed -- no surprise -- that the more clearly, and the more often, I've articulated some grudge or criticism in my mind, the more likely I'll give voice to it.

Have you found any good ways to count to ten, to leave things unsaid, to keep yourself from ruminating?

Self-mastery. As Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself."

* Yet another happiness-project group is forming! I’m especially thrilled to see this one starting, because it’s in my own neighborhood of Manhattan. Check out the Facebook Group or email NYCHappiness@live.com for more information, and if you know someone who might be interested, please pass along the link.

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 26,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.

Happiness: Taking Tourist Photos of My Own Romance.

On Saturday, I took the train up to New Haven for my college reunion. I went to Yale both for college and law school, so returning there is always a very intense experience. Mostly pleasant.

Even though I spent most of the day in undergrad nostalgia mode, I also took an hour to walk through the law school. (I also considered visiting the sole copy of J. M. Barrie’s The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, at its home in the Beinecke Library, but I ran out of time.)

A few weeks ago, I posted one of my all-time favorite posts: about how seeing the movie Twilight had reminded me of the time when my husband and I were falling in love, and had inspired me to do a better job with some of my resolutions.

Many of my resolutions are aimed at helping me keep happy memories vivid (e.g., Be a treasure house of happy memories) and also at helping me stay tender and romantic. As a way to keep both sets of resolutions, I decided to take photos of some of the most important sites in our falling-in-love story:
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We met because our carrels were back-to-back in the law library. This is the carrel I used.

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Here’s the staircase where we ran into each other that time.

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This is the Anchor Bar. A big group went there one night, and on the way out, he casually asked if I wanted to have breakfast at the Copper Kitchen diner the next morning, before our Corporations class. I didn’t sleep all night.

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Here’s the Copper Kitchen.

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Here’s the picnic table where he was sitting with a bunch of people when I came down from my dorm room to announce that I’d broken up with my boyfriend.

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Here’s the bench where we held hands for the first time.

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I'm so glad I took these pictures. Everything changes, and one day the Copper Kitchen and the picnic bench and even that marble staircase will be gone, but now I have my record.

I'm reminded of a postcard I kept above my desk during college, of a work by Duane Michals: This photograph is my proof. The photograph shows a couple sitting cozily on a bed, and underneath is written, "This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon when things were still good between us, and she embraced me. And we were so happy. It did happen. She did love me. Look, see for yourself!"

Ah, I have my photograph and my proof.

* The always interesting Marci Alboher sent me the link to a great post, Can Cooking Make You Happier? at My Kitchen Nutrition. It reminds me that everyone's happiness project is different. Cooking isn't a source of happiness for me, but it is for a lot of other people.

* 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.

A Strategy to Alleviate Anger.

One of my personal major, constant happiness challenges is trying to deal constructively with feelings of anger and irritability. Yesterday morning, my father-in-law mentioned a strategy that he recommends: when a person does something that annoys him (or whatever the negative emotion might be) he recalls a situation in which he made the same mistake, himself. That makes him less angry, more understanding.

This strategy doesn’t work well for everyone, however. Some people, my father-in-law observed, are able to do this effectively, but for others, the recognition that they’ve behaved similarly doesn’t translate into greater understanding or forgiveness. And a third category isn’t able to see any parallels at all -- to these folks, they must have had a good reason to have acted the way they did, and the mistakes others make are inexcusable.

I tried to apply this strategy myself. Here’s a small thing, but a recurrent source of anger in my life: my husband’s failure to answer my emails dealing with logistics. “Can we have dinner with so-and-so on June 22?” “Do you leave for London on the 3rd or the 4th?” “Did you reschedule the orthodontist’s appointment?” These emails just don’t get answered. It drives me nuts.

I’ve tackled this problem in lots of ways. I’ve tried working on the logistical side, and I’ve tried working on my mental-attitude side. But I had never thought to try to put myself in my husband’s place, and ask myself, “Do I fail to answer people’s logistical emails?” The answer to that question is a resounding YES. I often procrastinate on doing exactly this kind of work. I just can’t face the kind of systematic thinking, checking, and replying that it takes.

Ok. I think I do understand better now. Does it makes me less angry? Actually, I think it does. It also reminds me that I should do a better job of answering other people's logistical emails.

* Penelope Trunk has a fascinating post about how to decide where to live. This is a complicated, difficult, and extremely important decision that has a lot of significance for your happiness.

* Considering doing your own happiness project or have some ideas to share? Join the discussions on the Facebook Page to swap insights, strategies, and experiences.

Taken for Granted? 5 Tips for Dealing with Feeling Unappreciated.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: 5 tips for dealing with feeling unappreciated.

Oh, how I crave gold stars. One of my worst qualities is my insatiable need for credit; I always want the recognition, the praise, the gold star stuck on my homework. I struggle to master my need for gold stars, because it makes me a resentful score-keeper.

Several of my resolutions are aimed at this desire, like Don’t expect praise or appreciation and "Do it for myself." One of my Twelve Commandments is "No calculation" – it comes from a quotation from St. Therese of Lisieux, who observed, “When one loves, one does not calculate.”

Nevertheless, for all my efforts, I have to admit that I still crave gold stars. Whether or not I should want them, I do. Here are the strategies I use to try to curb my craving:

1. Do it for yourself. For a long time, I self-righteously told myself that I made certain efforts “for the team.” While this sounded generous, it led to a bad result, because I sulked when my husband or whoever didn’t appreciate my efforts. Now, I tell myself, “I’m doing this for myself. This is what I want.” I want to send out Valentine’s cards. I want to organize the cabinets. This sounds selfish, but in fact, it’s less selfish, because it means I’m not waiting for a gold star. No one else even has to notice what I’ve done.

2. Find ways to reward yourself. Maybe other people aren’t giving you credit, but you can give yourself credit. One reason I love my Resolutions Chart is that I get a little jolt of satisfaction when I reward myself with check-mark next to a resolution. I give myself my own gold stars! (True confession: my need for gold stars is so raw that when I started keeping my Resolutions Chart, I considered buying actual gold-star stickers and literally sticking them on. I didn’t go that far.)

3. Tell people you’d like to get a gold star. Once I acknowledged to myself how much I crave gold stars, I was able to explain that to my family – and sometimes even joke about it. Since then, they’ve all been better about doling them out, because they know how important it is to me. Also, it’s easy for people innocently to overlook contributions you’ve made, and if you give a gentle reminder, they might happily load you with gold stars.

4. Express your appreciation for what other people do. One good rule for happiness is that if you wish people would act a certain way toward you, act that way yourself toward others. If you wish people would be freer with praise and appreciation, make sure you’re ladling it out yourself. Also, when you push yourself to feel grateful for what others are doing, you remind yourself of how much they do for you -- and that eases resentment.

5. Remember that being taken for granted is a form of praise. It’s ironic: the more reliable you are, and the less you complain, the more likely you are to be taken for granted. If you always meet deadlines, if you never lose your temper, if you’re always prepared, people overlook your efforts. Really, that’s a compliment.

* I really enjoy the blog The Fluent Self -- all about "destuckification" in all its forms.

* So many people have written to ask for a starter kit for launching their own Happiness-Project Groups!

I'm working away on creating something to send out -- I want the materials to be terrific. I'll keep you posted.

If you'd like to add your name to the list, email me at gretchenrubin [at] gmail [dot com]. (Sorry to write in that weird way -- trying to thwart spammers.) Just write "Happiness-Project Group" in the subject line.

Want to be Able to Predict If Someone Will Be Happy In the Future?

I recently finished a terrific novel, Sarah Dunn’s Secrets to Happiness. (How could I resist that title?) One scene caught my happiness-project attention. Betsy is on a blind date with Alan, and they’re both in the mode of sizing up marriagability on the first date.

Alan asks Betsy, “Do you consider yourself a happy person?” In response to her vague answer, he says, “My uncle always said…the secret to being happy in a marriage is to marry someone who was already happy...[And] the older I get, the more I see that my friends who married happy women are happy, and the ones who didn’t have all sorts of problems.”

“You can’t blame that on the wives,” Betsy answers.

“Yeah, but I think what he meant was, it’s hard to make an unhappy woman happy…a house can only be as happy as the least person in it.” (His rationale would apply to husbands, too.) Alan never asks Betsy on a second date, and the clear implication is that he decided that she seems unhappy, and so would likely be unhappy in marriage.

Now, this reminded of studies – as discussed in Daniel Nettle’s Happiness -- that show, as Nettle sums up, “that the best predictor of how happy people are at the end of the study is how happy they were at the beginning. It is as if happiness or unhappiness stem in large part from how we address what happens in the world, not what actually happens.” (p. 92)

This tidbit has always struck me as singularly unhelpful for someone working on being happier – like telling someone that the best way to avoid being overweight was to have always been thin.

Alan was using that information not as a guide to thinking about his own happiness, however, but to evaluate the likelihood that someone else would be happy – someone whose happiness would matter a lot to him, if they married.

This got me thinking. Betsy was unhappy, in large part, because she was worried about getting married and having children. Presumably, then, she’d be happier once she was married with a family, so it seems unfair for Alan to presume she was permanently unhappy.

But in real life, how does this work? Are some people basically happy or unhappy, and don't try to change, so that something like finally getting married wouldn’t make such a difference? Or would it? The arrival fallacy holds that we generally aren’t made as happy by that kind of “arrival” as we expect. On the other hand, the First Splendid Truth holds that feeling right is very important to happiness, and if your life doesn’t reflect your dreams and values, it’s hard to be happy.

That question aside, Alan’s way of thinking struck me as both helpful and harsh.

Helpful, because sometimes it might well be worth considering someone’s happiness level. If you’re interviewing for a job with a boss who seems very dissatisfied and angry, you might decide that he wouldn’t be happy with you (or you with him). If you’re thinking of sharing an apartment with someone who lives under a dark cloud, you might want to choose a different roommate.

Harsh, because it prompted Alan to turn away from Betsy, who was a nice person, and because this kind of analysis would push people away from less-happy people, who need friendship and consideration. (Spoiler alert: in the end, Betsy gets married to a terrific guy.)

What do you think? Have you ever made a similar analysis about someone else's happiness?

* Special message for the Super-Fans:

Hey Super-Fans!
Thanks SO MUCH for volunteering as a super-fan. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. The designers report that the website will be ready to test on April 6. We’ll see – such dates often slide – but it shouldn’t be too long. I’ll send you an email with all the information. (If it turns out you don’t want to participate in the test, don’t worry about it, of course.)

If anyone else is interested in volunteering as a super-fan, to help me out with various tasks such as the early testing of my super-fabulous new website, you can click here or email me at gretchenrubin1 [at] gmail [dot com]. Just write “super-fan” in the subject line.

Happiness Myth No. 9: Spending Some Time Alone Will Make You Feel Better.

As I’ve studied happiness over the past few years, I’ve learned many things that surprised me. Each day for two weeks, I’m debunking one “happiness myth” that I believed before I started my happiness project. Yesterday I wrote about Happiness Myth No. 8: You'll Be Happy As Soon As You...

Happiness Myth No. 9: Spending Some Time Alone Will Make You Feel Better.

Wrong. Although it can be tempting to take a “personal day” when you’re feeling blue, or to isolate yourself until you feel better, you’re better off doing just the opposite.

Connecting with other people, even if you don’t feel like it, is more likely to improve your mood – and this is true even for introverts.

In fact, researchers reported that out of fifteen daily activities, such as exercising, commuting, or doing housework, everything is more fun with company. They found only one activity during which people were happier alone rather than with other people — and that was praying. To my mind, that’s no exception; the point of praying is that you’re not talking to yourself!

I’ve certainly found this to be true in my own life. I spend most of my days by myself, reading and writing, and I’ve noticed that I always get a big burst of energy and cheer when I have a chance to be with other people. Even if I leave my desk feeling enraged, annoyed, or insecure, I feel better after talking to someone else – not talking about what’s bothering me, but just talking about anything at all. In fact, I usually feel better if I’m distracted from my concerns, rather than try to discuss them.

So if you just went through a painful break-up so are tempted to not meet your friends after work but instead stay home on the sofa with the remote control, or if you just lost your job so don’t want to deal with going to the the neighborhood BBQ, make the effort to push yourself out the door. Most likely, you’ll feel better if you do.

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Yes, It Really Does Make a Difference.

You know those unpleasant marital tasks that one of you has to do – and the question is, who’s going to do it? Yesterday, my husband and I had one of those chores, and he had agreed to do it. Then at the last minute, he backed out, because he had a work conflict – a legitimate conflict, but one he would’ve known about, if he’d been paying attention.

I was very annoyed.

But instead of following his usual instincts, my husband deployed some of the strategies that get recommended for such situations. He said, “I really screwed up here.” He said, “I know it would be a huge pain for you to have to deal with this now.” He said, “What would happen if we just bailed? Can we do it another time? Can I show up late?” After some discussion, I said I’d do it, and later he sent me an email that said, “Thank you, honey.”

And you know what? It really did help.

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I talked to Kimberly Palmer at U.S. News & World Report about 5 Ways to Be Happy in a Recession. Interesting topic!

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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.