The Happiness Project (38 page)

A
lthough one of the most important principles I learned during my happiness project is the importance of giving thanks, I can’t thank everyone who helped me with my project, because practically every person I know has given me some insight into happiness. I couldn’t possibly list them all by name.

Certain people, however, played particularly important roles during the year of my happiness project. Freda Richardson and Ashley Wilson, of course. Lori Jackson and everyone at Inform Fitness. The members of my first children’s literature book group: Anamaria Allessi, Julia Bator, Ann Brashares, Sarah Burnes, Jonathan Burnham, Dan Ehrenhaft, Amanda Foreman, Bob Hughes, Susan Kamil, Pamela Paul, David Saylor, Elizabeth Schwarz, Jenny Smith, Rebecca Todd, Stephanie Wilchfort, Jessica Wollman, Amy Zilliax, and especially Jennifer Joel; and also my second children’s literature book group: Chase Bodine, Betsy Bradley, Sophie Gee, Betsy Gleick, Lev Grossman, Caitlin Macy, Suzanne Myers, Jesse Scheidlower, and especially Amy Wilensky. My working writers’ strategy groups: Marci Alboher, Jonathan Fields, A. J. Jacobs, Michael Melcher, and Carrie Weber. My book group for adult literature predates the official start of my happiness project but was an unusually helpful source of ideas and happiness: Ann Brashares, Betsy Cohen, Cheryl Effron, Patricia
Farman-Farmaian, Sharon Greenberger, Samhita Jayanti, Alisa Kohn, Bethany Millard, Jennifer Newstead, Claudia Rader, Elizabeth Schwarz, Jennifer Scully, Paula Zakaria, and particularly Julia Bator.

Thanks to the readers who commented on drafts: Delia Boylan, Susan Devenyi, Elizabeth Craft Fierro, Reed Hundt, A. J. Jacobs, Michael Melcher, Kim Malone Scott, Kamy Wicoff, and most of all, Melanie Rehak.

Thanks to all the people who worked with me on various offshoots of the Happiness Project: the far-flung Jayme Stevens; the graphic designer Charlotte Strick; the cartoonist Chari Pere; Tom Romer, Lauren Ribando and the folks at the Chopping Block Web design firm; Melissa Parrish and Tanya Singer at RealSimple.com; Verena Von Pfetten and Anya Strzemien at The Huffington Post; and Michael Newman at
Slate
.

Thanks very much to all my friends from blogland, who have given me so much advice, help, and link love—just to mention a few, people such as Leo Babauta, Therese Borchard, Chris Brogan, Ben Casnocha, Tyler Cowen, Jackie Danicki, Dory Devlin, Erin Doland, Asha Dornfest, Kathy Hawkins, Tony Hsieh, Guy Kawasaki, Danielle LaPorte, Brett McKay, Daniel Pink, J. D. Roth, Glen Stansberry, Bob Sutton, Colleen Wainwright, everyone in the LifeRemix network…I could keep going for pages. I only hope I get to meet them all in real life one day.

I can’t say enough to thank my blog readers, particularly those whose words I quote. Being able to exchange ideas about happiness with so many thoughtful readers has been extraordinarily helpful—and fun.

A huge thanks to Christy Fletcher, my agent, and to Gail Winston, my editor—working on this book was a very
happy
experience.

Most of all, thanks to my family. You are my weather.

E
ach person’s happiness project will be unique, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit from starting one. My own happiness project started in January and lasted a year—and, I hope, will last for the rest of my life—but your happiness project can start any time and last as long as you choose. You can start small (putting your keys away in the same place every night) or big (repairing your relationships with your family). It’s up to you.

First, to decide what resolutions to make, consider the First Splendid Truth and answer the following questions:

• What makes you
  feel good
  ? What activities do you find fun, satisfying, or energizing?
  
• What makes you
  feel bad
  ? What are sources of anger, irritation, boredom, frustration, or anxiety in your life?
  
• Is there any way in which you don’t
  feel right
  about your life? Do you wish you could change your job, city, family situation, or other circumstances? Are you living up to your expectations for yourself? Does your life reflect your values?
  
• Do you have sources of an
  atmosphere of growth
  ? In what elements of your life do you find progress, learning, challenge, improvement, and increased mastery?
  

Answering these questions provides a good road map to the kind of changes you might consider. Once you’ve decided what areas need work, identify specific, measurable resolutions that will allow you to evaluate whether you’re making progress. Resolutions work better when they’re concrete, not abstract: it’s harder to keep a resolution to “Be a more loving parent” than to “Get up fifteen minutes early so I’m dressed before the kids wake up.”

Once you’ve made your resolutions, find a strategy to assess your progress and to hold yourself accountable. I copied Benjamin Franklin’s Virtues Chart to devise my Resolutions Chart. Other approaches might be starting a goals group, keeping a one-sentence journal marking your progress, or starting a blog.

Another useful exercise is to identify your personal commandments—the principles that you want to guide your behavior. For example, my most important personal commandment is to “Be Gretchen.”

To help you with your happiness project, I created the Happiness Project Toolbox Web site, www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com. There, I’ve pulled together many of the tools that helped me with my happiness project. You can record and score your resolutions (individual or group), keep a one-sentence journal on any topic you like, identify your personal commandments, share your happiness hacks, share your Secrets of Adulthood, keep any kind of list, and create an inspiration board of your favorite books, quotations, movies, music, or images. Your entries can be kept private or made public, and you can also read other people’s public entries (which is fascinating).

If you’d like to start a group for people doing happiness projects, e-mail me through my blog for a starter kit. If you’d like to join an existing group visit the Gretchen Rubin page on Facebook to see if a group has formed in your city.

Many extraordinary books have been written about happiness. This list doesn’t attempt to cover all the most important works, but instead highlights some of my personal favorites.

SOME WORKS IN THE HISTORY OF HAPPINESS

Aristotle.
The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics,
ed. Hugh Tredennick, J. A. K. Thomson, and Jonathan Barnes. New York: Penguin, 1976.

Bacon, Francis.
The Essays.
New York: Penguin, 1986.

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus.
The Consolation of Philosophy.
Translated by Victor Watts. New York: Penguin, 2000.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius.
On the Good Life.
Translated by Michael Grant. New York: Penguin, 1971.

Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler.
The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
. New York: Riverhead, 1998.

Delacroix, Eugène.
The Journal of Eugène Delacroix
, 3rd ed. Translated by Hubert Wellington. London: Phaidon Press, 1951.

Epicurus.
The Essential Epicurus
. Translated by Eugene Michael O’Connor. New York: Prometheus Books, 1993.

Hazlitt, William.
Essays.
London: Coward-McCann, 1950. James, William.
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.
New York: New American Library, 1958.

La Rochefoucauld, François de.
Maxims of La Rochefoucauld.
Translated by Stuart Warner. South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de.
The Complete Essays of Montaigne
. Translated by Donald Frame. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958.

Plutarch.
Selected Lives and Essays.
Translated by Louise Ropes Loomis. New York: Walter J. Black, 1951.

Russell, Bertrand.
The Conquest of Happiness
. New York: Liveright, 1930.

Schopenhauer, Arthur.
Parerga and Paralipomena,
vols. 1 and 2. Translated by E. F. J. Payne. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1974

Seneca.
Letters from a Stoic.
Translated by Robin Campbell. New York: Penguin, 1969.

Smith, Adam.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Washington, D.C.: Gateway Editions, 2000.

SOME INTERESTING BOOKS ON THE SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF HAPPINESS

Argyle, Michael.
The Psychology of Happiness,
2nd ed. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2001.

Cowen, Tyler.
Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.
New York: Dutton, 2007.

Diener, Ed, and Robert Biswas-Diener.
Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008.

Easterbrook, Gregg.
The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.
New York: Random House, 2003.

Eid, Michael, and Randy J. Larsen, eds.
The Science of Subjective Well-Being.
New York: Guilford Press, 2008.

Frey, Bruno, and Alois Stutzer.
Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Gilbert, Daniel.
Stumbling on Happiness.
New York: Knopf, 2006.

Gladwell, Malcolm.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
New York: Little, Brown, 2005.

Haidt, Jonathan.
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.
New York: Basic Books, 2006.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja.
The How of Happiness.
New York: Penguin Press, 2008.

Nettle, Daniel.
Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

———.
Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Pink, Daniel.
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.
New York: Riverhead, 2005.

Schwartz, Barry.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
New York: HarperPerennial, 2004.

Seligman, Martin.
Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.
New York: Free Press, 2002.

———.
Learned Optimism
. New York: Knopf, 1991.

———.
The Optimistic Child: How Learned Optimism Protects Children from Depression.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

———.
What You Can Change and What You Can’t: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement.
New York: Knopf, 1993.

Thich Nhat Hanh.
The Miracle of Mindfulness.
Translated by Mobi Ho. Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.

Wilson, Timothy.
Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.

EXAMPLES OF OTHER PEOPLE’S HAPPINESS PROJECTS

Botton, Alain de.
How Proust Can Change Your Life.
New York: Vintage International, 1997.

Frankl, Victor E.
Man’s Search for Meaning
. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Gilbert, Elizabeth.
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia.
New York: Penguin, 2007.

Jacobs, A. J.
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

Jung, C. G.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
New York, Vintage Books, 1963.

Krakauer, Jon.
Into the Wild.
New York: Villard, 1996.

Kreamer, Anne.
Going Gray: What I Learned About Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters.
New York: Little, Brown, 2007.

Lamott, Anne.
Operating Instructions
. New York: Random House, 1997.

———.
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.
New York: Pantheon Books, 2005.

Maugham, W. Somerset.
The Summing Up.
New York: Doubleday, 1938.

O’Halloran, Maura.
Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind.
New York: Riverhead, 1994.

Shapiro, Susan.
Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex.
New York: Delacorte Press, 2004.

Thoreau, Henry David.
Walden: Or, Life in the Woods.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2004.

A FEW HELPFUL BOOKS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

Demaris, Ann, and Valerie White.
First Impressions: What You Don’t Know About How Others See You.
New York: Bantam Books, 2005.

Faber, Adele, and Elaine Mazlish.
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.
New York: Avon Books, 1980.

Fisher, Helen.
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.
New York: Henry Holt, 2004.

Gottman, John.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
. London: Orion, 2004.

Sutton, Robert I.
The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.
New York: Warner Business, 2007.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE MEMOIRS OF CATASTROPHE

Beck, Martha.
Expecting Adam.
New York: Penguin, 2000.

Broyard, Anatole.
Intoxicated by My Illness.
New York: Clarkson Potter, 1992.

Didion, Joan.
The Year of Magical Thinking.
New York: Knopf, 2005.

Mack, Stan.
Janet and Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

O’Kelly, Gene.
Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.

Shulman, Alix Kates.
To Love What Is.
New York: Farrar, Straus, 2008.

Weingarten, Violet.
Intimations of Mortality.
New York: Knopf, 1978.

SOME OF MY FAVORITE NOVELS ABOUT HAPPINESS

Colwin, Laurie.
Happy All the Time
. New York: HarperPerennial, 1978.

Frayn, Michael.
A Landing on the Sun.
New York: Viking, 1991.

Grunwald, Lisa.
Whatever Makes You Happy.
New York: Random House, 2005.

Hornby, Nick.
How to Be Good.
New York: Riverhead Trade, 2002.

McEwan, Ian.
Saturday
. New York: Doubleday, 2005.

Patchett, Ann.
Bel Canto.
New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Robinson, Marilynne.
Gilead
. New York: Farrar, Straus, 2004.

Stegner, Wallace.
Crossing to Safety.
New York: Random House, 1987.

Tolstoy, Leo.
Anna Karenina.
Translated by A. Maude. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1939.

———. “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” in
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories.
Translated by T. C. B. Cook. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2004.

———.
Resurrection
. New York: Oxford World Classics, 1994.

———.
War and Peace.
Translated by Rosemary Edmonds. New York: Penguin, 1957.

Von Arnim, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth and Her German Garden
. Chicago: W. B. Conkey Co., 1901.

THE BOOKS THAT MOST INFLUENCED MY OWN HAPPINESS PROJECT

Franklin, Benjamin.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964.

Thérèse of Lisieux.
Story of a Soul,
3rd ed. John Clarke, O.C.D. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996.

Everything written by Samuel Johnson.