The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability, it turns out, because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.

If you do new things—visit a museum for the first time, learn a new game, travel to a new place, meet new people—you’re more apt to feel happy than people who stick to more familiar activities.

By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.

One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self-definition. You become larger. Suddenly you can do yoga or make homemade beer or speak a decent amount of Spanish. Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened.

Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.

risking failure gave me the opportunity to score some successes.

take pleasure in the “atmosphere of growth,” in the gradual progress made toward a goal, in the present.

If you’re doing something that you don’t enjoy and you don’t have the gratification of success, failure is particularly painful. But doing what you love is itself the reward.