At the airport this past weekend, I found a terrific little paperback that
had lots of wisdom tucked inside it. It was Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project: Or, Why I
Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right,
Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun (Harper Collins, 2009). It's
written by Rubin, a former attorney, and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor. She realized she'd rather be a writer. I'm glad she did.
Rubin does a thorough and intelligent review of the psychological research
on happiness as well as the thoughts of philosophers and writers on
this topic. Her engaging style is fun and easy to follow. She takes us inside
her life, relationships with her husband, children, parents and friends as she
sets a course to make herself an even happier person in a year. She shares with
the reader her path to create happiness resolutions, and keep herself accountable
for doing so with a chart--gold stars and all.
Each month, Rubin takes on a part of building a bigger, bolder, healthier, more
organized, aware, and connected life. A month at a time she tackles life tasks
like:
Boosting Energy
Simplifying/Decluttering (cute insights on varieties of clutter here)
Exercising Differently
Making Your Relationship a Priority
Showing Proof of Love
Giving Up Nagging
Launching a New Career Venture
Asking for Help
Working Smarter
Lightening Up as a Parent
Acknowledging Other People's Feelings
More Leisure
More Silliness
Connecting More with Friends
Giving Up Gossip
Increasing Generosity to Others
Cutting People (And Your Partner) Some Slack
Making 3 New Friends
Splurging a Little
Mastering a New Technology
Not Expecting Praise or Appreciation
Giving Something Up
Cultivating Gratefulness
Reading Memoirs of Catastrophes
Studying a Spiritual Master
Making Others Happy
Pursuing a Passion
Being Present
Being Mindful
Trying Something New
Finding a Personal Refuge
Laughing and Singing More
Using Good Manners
Giving Good Reviews about Others
What were her results? It wasn't quantifiable, but Rubin's sense was
that the happiness project worked nicely. She shares her progress and also
weaves in the insights of her blog readers, who also detailed shifts in their
own perceptions and feelings as they created their own personal happiness
projects. They speak to striving for happiness despite different circumstances
than Rubin's.
I liked that Rubin completely understands the individual nature of
happiness, and invites readers to tailor their happiness project accordingly. She's
honest about things that don't work for her (gratefulness journal), things that
seem to border on annoying or offending others (offers to declutter friends' homes),
and her concerns that focusing on happiness could be too self-focused if you
aren't careful to share it.
We each have happiness set points. The active pursuit of happiness and
growing our happiness frontiers appears to move us further along our range of
happiness. It takes energy to build a happy life, rather than passively
complain. Happiness is also fairly contagious, and Rubin describes how her
pursuit of happiness trickles out increases in the happiness quotient of her
husband and children.
The Happiness Project is a fun
read, soulful and real, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm tempted to hunt down
one of her happiness communities online to join in the discussion. Building
communities of people who are firmly committed to building happiness and sharing
it with others is a magnetic concept. Perhaps Robert Louis Stevenson
was right, (as quoted by Rubin) that there is no duty we so much
underrate as the duty of being happy.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Do You Need A Happiness Project?
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