I’m happy, I’m thrilled! I just found out that Happier at Home is #2 on the New York Times bestseller list, in its first week out in the world. This is one of the happiest moment of my professional career.

To make it even sweeter, The Happiness Project is still on the paperback bestseller list, at #8. So that means I now have a hardback and a paperback which are both top 10 bestsellers. Zoikes.

Thank you, my dear readers, for your enthusiasm everything you’ve done to support Happier at Home and all my work. Thank you!

Now I’m off to celebrate with my family!

Every Wednesday is Tip Day, or List Day.

This Wednesday: 5 mistakes I continue to make in my marriage, and how I try to address them.

A friend told me that of everything I’ve written on this blog, this post was his favorite. So I decided to re-post it today, updated and expanded.

One of the main themes of my happier-at-home project is marriage. For me, as with many people, my marriage is one of the most central elements in my life, my home, and my happiness.

When I reflected about the changes I wanted to make, I realized I had five particular problem areas in my marriage. Here they are, along with the strategies I try to use to address them, though they remain challenging:

1. Demanding gold stars. Oh, how I crave appreciation and recognition! I always want that gold star stuck to my homework. But my husband just isn’t very good at handing out gold stars, and that makes me feel angry and unappreciated. “Words of affirmation” are definitely my love language.

In response, I now think more about doing things for myself. I used to tell myself I was doing nice things for him – “He’ll be so happy to see that I put all the books away,” “He’ll be so pleased that I finally got the schedule figure out” etc. – then I’d be mad when he wasn’t appreciative. Now I tell myself that I’m doing these things because I want to do them. “Wow, the kitchen cabinets look great!” “I’m so organized to have bought all the supplies in advance!” Because I do things for myself, I don’t expect him to respond in any particular way.

2. Using a snappish tone. I have a very short fuse and become irritable extremely easily – but my husband really doesn’t like it when I snap at him. He’s funny that way.  Many of my resolutions are meant to help me keep my temper in check. I don’t let myself get too hungry or too cold (I fall into these states very easily); I try to keep our apartment in reasonable order, because a mess makes me crabby; I try to control my voice to keep it light and cheery instead of accusatory and impatient. Confession: I’ve worked on this issue relentlessly for years, and I flew into a ten-second rage just last night.

3. Not showing enough consideration.  Studies show that married people treat each other with less civility than they show to other people — and I do this with my husband, I know. I’m working hard on basic consideration, such as not reading my emails while talking to him on the phone, emailing photos of our daughters etc. Very basic, I know.

4. Score-keeping. I’m a score-keeper, always calculating who has done what. “I cleaned up the kitchen, so you have to run to the store” — that sort of thing. I’ve found two ways to try to deal with this tendency.

First, I remind myself of the phenomenon of unconscious over-claiming; i.e., we unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people’s. This makes sense, because of course we’re far more aware of what we do than what other people do. According to Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, “when husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent.” I complain about the time I spend paying bills, but I overlook the time my husband spends dealing with our our car.

Second, I remind myself of the words of my spiritual master, St. Therese of Lisieux: “When one loves, one does not calculate.”

5. Taking my husband for granted. Just as I find it easily to overlook the chores done by my husband (see #4), it’s easy for me to forget to appreciate his many virtues and instead focus on his flaws. For example, although I find it hard to resist using an irritable tone, my husband almost never speaks harshly, and that’s really a wonderful trait. I’m trying to stay alert to all the things I love about him, and let go of my petty annoyances. This is easier said than done.

I have Eight Splendid Truths of Happiness, and the Sixth Truth is: “The only person I can change is myself.” I can’t assign resolutions for my husband to follow (as tempting as that sounds; it wouldn’t work). Nevertheless, I’ve found that when I change, a relationship changes, and the atmosphere of my home changes.

What are some mistakes you make in your marriage or long-term relationship? Have you found any useful strategies for addressing them?

Each week, I post a video about some Pigeon of Discontent raised by a reader. Because, as much as we try to find the Bluebird of Happiness, we’re also plagued by those small but pesky Pigeons of Discontent.

This week’s Pigeon of Discontent, suggested by a reader, is: “My commute.” I realize that my suggested resolution is very, perhaps oddly, specific.

 

Note the moon mosaic artwork by my daughter in the background.

Have you tried listening to audio-books? Do you enjoy them? I would never have expected to like them as much as I do. (Moment of self-promotion: here’s a clip of the audio-book of Happier at Home.)

And do you agree with the bonus resolution that I suggest? It’s funny to me how many people have raised this issue as a Pigeon of Discontent.

If you want to read more about this resolution, check out…

Are you always late? 7 tips to arrive on time.

Identify the problem. (This sounds so obvious, but it’s surprisingly hard to do, and extremely effective.)

Think about your routines–daily, weekly, yearly.

You can post your own Pigeon of Discontent at any time; also, from time to time, I’ll make a special call for suggestions.

You can check out the archives of videos here. It’s crazy–my YouTube channel has passed the mark for one million viewers!

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Happier at Home came out last week. Want to win a free copy? I’m giving away one book each day until publication.

Enter your name and email in the sign-up form here, and every day, a name will be picked at random. U.S., Canada, and U.K. only–sorry about that restriction on the give-away.

Assay: My spiritual master is St. Therese of Lisieux, so when a thoughtful reader emailed me about Heather King’s 2011 memoir, Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux, I was thrilled—and astounded that I hadn’t heard about it yet. I’m always trying to get my hands on more St. Therese material, plus I can never resist a good “year-of” memoir.

I couldn’t wait to read Shirt of Flame, and I found it fascinating, for many reasons. One passage struck me in particular.

In the study of happiness, I’m always fascinated and moved when I see a person choose to react in a way that boosts happiness or love or forgiveness, when circumstances made that choice difficult.

In her spiritual memoir Story of a Soul (which was one of the book-club choices for this month, by the way), St. Therese gives many examples about this from her own life—for instance, the moment of her “complete conversion,”  where she acted selflessly by showing a greedy joy in her Christmas presents. In her circumstances, that was the loving way to act. Sometimes we can be generous by taking.

Often, to allow himself or herself to respond in a different frame of mind, a person re-frames a situation.

Heather King recounts an interesting example of this. She writes, “I’m mortified to admit that I was still miffed because [my mother had] never told me as a child (or an adult, for that matter) that I was pretty.”

Then she recounts how St. Therese has interpreted the same situation with her own upbringing. St. Therese’s mother died when she was four, and her older sisters, particularly her sister Pauline, helped to raise her.

St. Therese writes, “You gave a lot of attention, dear Mother [meaning Pauline], not to let me near anything that might tarnish my innocence, especially not to let me hear a single word that might be capable of letting vanity slip into my heart.”

As King points out, St. Therese chose to understand a lack of compliments to be a sign of loving care. That’s not the only interpretation, but that’s the one she chose to have.

I see that this is an area where I fall very short. Too often, I respond to a choice by feeling aggrieved or resentful. Sometimes, perversely, I almost enjoy feeling aggrieved or resentful! –and don’t even try to put a different cast on it, or look for other explanations.

I’m reminded by an observation by Flannery O’Connor, from a letter she wrote in 1959. “From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don’t look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.”

“Finding explanations in charity” is another way of putting it — the aim of choosing to interpret actions in a loving way.

I feel like I just came across another great example of this, in some book or movie, but I’m blanking. Stay tuned, maybe I’ll think of it.  Have you seen examples of this kind of choice, yourself?

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Want to win a free copy of Happier at Home ? I’m giving away one book each day this month.

Enter your name and email in the sign-up form here, and every day, a name will be picked at random. U.S., Canada, and U.K. only–sorry about that restriction on the give-away.

“When one does not find one’s repose in oneself, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.”

–La Rochefoucauld

This reminds me of one of my very favorite quotations, Samuel Johnson’s remark, “As the Spanish proverb says, ‘He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.’”

Agree, disagree?

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Want to win a free copy of Happier at Home? I’m giving away one book each day until publication.

Enter your name and email in the sign-up form here, and every day, a name will be picked at random. U.S., Canada, and U.K. only–sorry about that restriction on the give-away.