The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

the arrival fallacy doesn’t mean that pursuing goals isn’t a route to happiness. To the contrary. The goal is necessary, just as is the process toward the goal. Friedrich Nietzsche explained it well: “The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.”

nietsche end of melody is not its goal

Too much concern about whether I was getting praise or blame, too much anticipatory anxiety about what my detractors would say—those kinds of fears spoiled my pleasure in my work and, what’s more, probably weakened my work.

Nevertheless, even while I was writing about happiness and focused precisely on the issue of handling criticism, I never did manage entirely to “Enjoy now” with no anxiety about the future. I spent a lot of time arguing with imaginary critics of my happiness project. “You have it easy,” one whispered in my ear. “No cocaine, no abuse, no cancer, no divorce, no three-hundred-pound weight loss…you didn’t even have to quit smoking!” “What about the millions of people who go to bed hungry?” another added. “What about people who suffer from real depression?” “You don’t care about plumbing the depths of your psyche.” “You’re not spiritual enough.” “The idea of a one-year experiment is stale.” “You just talk about yourself.” Oh, well, I told myself, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. If I do my project my way, I’m unspiritual and gimmicky; if I tried to do it a different way, I’d be inauthentic and fake. Might as well “Be Gretchen.”

There’s a common belief that happiness and ambition are incompatible. Many ambitious people I’ve known seem eager to claim that they aren’t happy, almost as a way to emphasize their zeal, in echo of Andrew Carnegie’s observation “Show me a contented man, and I’ll show you a failure.” Perhaps the happiness-thwarting feelings of dissatisfaction, competitiveness, and jealousy are necessary goads for ambition. If I remained ambitious, was it impossible to be happy? If my project made me happier, would I become complacent? Was the arrival fallacy an important mechanism to keep me striving? Studies show that many creative, influential people in the arts and public life score above average in “neuroticism” (i.e., they have a greater propensity to experience negative emotions); this discontent arguably urges them to higher achievement. Other studies, however, show that people tend to think more flexibly and with more complexity when they’re feeling happy. But whatever a wide-ranging study might show about the connection between ambition and happiness generally, I realized that for my own part, I was much more likely to take risks, reach out to others, and expose myself to rejection and failure when I felt happy. When I felt unhappy, I felt defensive, touchy, and self-conscious.

In many ways, the happiness of having children falls into the kind of happiness that could be called fog happiness. Fog is elusive. Fog surrounds you and transforms the atmosphere, but when you try to examine it, it vanishes. Fog happiness is the kind of happiness you get from activities that, closely examined, don’t really seem to bring much happiness at all—yet somehow they do.

I wanted to stop my quick bursts of temper—I indulged in that behavior all too often, and then, because it made me feel bad, I behaved even worse. I wanted to be more lighthearted.

The days are long, but the years are short.

time flies

Write it down. For some reason, the simple act of writing something down makes a big impression on my children, even the preliterate Eleanor. To restore peace, it can be enough to whip out pen and paper and announce, “I’m going to write that down. ‘Eleanor does not like to wear snow boots!’”

Don’t feel as if I have to say anything.

Studies show that 85 percent of adult messages to children are negative—“no,” “stop,” “don’t”—so it’s worth trying to keep that to a minimum. Instead of saying, “No, not until after lunch,” I try to say, “Yes, as soon as we’ve finished lunch.”

Wave my magic wand. “If I had a magic wand, I’d make it warm outside so we didn’t have to wear coats.” “If I were Ozma, I’d make a box of Cheerios appear right now.” This shows that I understand what my kids want and would accommodate them if I could.

Admit that a task is difficult. Studies show that people tend to persevere longer with problems they’ve been told are difficult as opposed to easy.

Experts say that denying bad feelings intensifies them; acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return.

BE A TREASURE HOUSE OF HAPPY MEMORIES. Sometimes

One piece of wisdom that didn’t resonate with me initially was the importance of keeping happy memories vivid. But as I mulled over this principle, I realized the tremendous value of mementos that help prompt positive memories. Studies show that recalling happy times helps boost happiness in the present. When people reminisce, they focus on positive memories, with the result that recalling the past amplifies the positive and minimizes the negative. However, because people remember events better when they fit with their present mood, happy people remember happy events better, and depressed people remember sad events better. Depressed people have as many nice experiences as other people—they just don’t recall them as well.

Family traditions make occasions feel special and exciting. They mark the passage of time in a happy way. They provide a sense of anticipation, security, and continuity. Studies show that family traditions support children’s social development and strengthen family cohesiveness. They provide connection and predictability, which people—especially children—crave. I know that I enjoy a holiday more when I know exactly what we’re going to do and when we’re going to do it.

TAKE TIME FOR PROJECTS. Traditions often involve projects. Celebrating every family birthday, sending out a family Valentine’s card, decorating an elaborate gingerbread house (actually, we make the houses out of graham crackers and tubs of Duncan Hines frosting)—these things are fun, but they take time, energy, planning, and patience. Inevitably, boomerang errands are involved.

We’ve all heard of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. By contrast, I realized, happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.

children boost happiness: they reconnect us with sources of “feeling good” that we’ve outgrown. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t work on homemade Mother’s Day gifts, pore over Baskin-Robbins cake designs, memorize Is Your Mama a Llama?, or go to the Central Park boat pond on Saturday afternoons. I wouldn’t watch Shrek over and over or listen to Laurie Berkner’s music. I wouldn’t visit amusement parks or the Museum of Natural History. I wouldn’t use food coloring to make Rainbow Yogurt Surprise in a shot glass. Nevertheless, I honestly do enjoy these activities with my children. I don’t just enjoy their pleasure—which I do, and that also makes me happy—I also experience my own sincere enjoyment of activities that I would otherwise never have considered.

May, the beginning of springtime, seemed like the right time to work on my play—that is, the activities I did in my free time because I wanted to do them, for their own sake, for my own reasons, and not for money or ambition. In an irony that didn’t escape me, I prepared to work doggedly at fun and to be serious about joking around.

writer Jean Stafford scoffed, “Happy people don’t need to have fun,” but in fact, studies show that the absence of feeling bad isn’t enough to make you happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling good. One way to feel good is to make time for play—which researchers define as an activity that’s very satisfying, has no economic significance, doesn’t create social harm, and doesn’t necessarily lead to praise or recognition. Research shows that regularly having fun is a key factor in having a happy life; people who have fun are twenty times as likely to feel happy.

Making things is something that I get fun out of. I’m a great fan of crafts, but I find the fun is far increased when I am making a present for someone. This Christmas, I have a pretty ambitious project in mind for the boyfriend, but I know he’ll love it and the challenge is giving me so much fun, as well as the anticipation that he’ll appreciate it. Coming up with ideas myself is an intellectual challenge, followed by the mechanically creative challenge of realising them, and this is a combination which I find very fulfilling and fun.

But what I find fun most is to find a person who has a similar taste, way of thinking, etc., in a different culture.

Here’s a tough one: I do not find it particularly fun to sit on the floor and play with my children with their toys. I love cooking with them, reading to them, talking to them, watching movies with them, going on walks with them, and taking them to age-appropriate places. My idea of a really good time is to pick my five-year-old up from school and go out for a snack. But I don’t find playing with Polly Pockets (with the older one) or Little People (with the younger one) particularly fun. And I feel very guilty about that at times.

I love the idea of playing chess, going to a lecture on international markets, doing crossword puzzles, getting a pedicure, eating dinner at a hot new restaurant, or having a subscription to the opera or season tickets to the Knicks. I can see exactly why other people enjoy these activities. I wish I enjoyed them. But I don’t.

I needed to acknowledge to myself what I enjoyed, not what I wished I enjoyed. If something was really fun for me, it would pass this test: I looked forward to it; I found it energizing, not draining; and I didn’t feel guilty about it later.

fun criteria

E. L. Konigsberg, and Elizabeth Enright.

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction. This group gave me a bunch of new friends and a lift in life satisfaction that felt much higher than 2 percent. Also, it was fun just being part of a new group. Group membership makes people feel closer and brings a significant boost in personal confidence and happiness.

One thing that’s both good and bad about living in New York City is the sense that I could be doing so much—going to the ballet, going to an off-off-Broadway play, taking a graphic design class, shopping in Williamsburg, eating in Astoria. But I almost never do those things, so the possibilities are exciting, but also a reproach. I’ve been haunted for years by a public ser vice poster I saw just one time, in the subway. It was a photo of a Chinese food take-out container sitting on top of two videos. The caption read, “If this is how you spend your time, why are you living in New York?”

I’d noticed that many of the most creative people are inveterate keepers of scrapbooks, inspiration boards, or other magpie creations. Twyla Tharp, for example, dedicates a file box to every project she begins, and as she works on the dance, she fills the box with the material that inspired her. Having some kind of physical way of preserving information keeps good ideas vivid and creates unexpected juxtapositions.

I can DO ANYTHING I want, but I can’t DO EVERYTHING I want. Life-changing.

Isaiah Berlin’s “We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail an irreparable loss” and Borges’s Garden of Forking Paths, where every choice produces a quantum explosion of alternate futures.

Diana Vreeland said, “The eye must travel.” One

“fun” falls into three categories: challenging fun, accommodating fun, and relaxing fun. Challenging fun is the most rewarding but also the most demanding. It can create frustration, anxiety, and hard work. It often requires errands. It takes time and energy. In the end, however, it pays off with the most satisfying fun. Usually less challenging, but still requiring a fair bit of effort, is accommodating fun. A family trip to the playground is accommodating fun. Yes, it’s fun, but I’m really there because my children want to go. Was it Jerry Seinfeld who said, “There’s no such thing as ‘Fun for the whole family’”? Going to a family holiday dinner, even going to dinner and a movie with friends, requires accommodation. It strengthens relationships, it builds memories, it’s fun—but it takes a lot of effort, organization, coordination with other people, and, well, accommodation. Relaxing fun is easy. I don’t have to hone skills or take action. There’s very little coordination with other people or preparation involved. Watching TV—the largest consumer of the world’s time after sleeping and work—is relaxing fun. Research shows that challenging fun and accommodating fun, over the long term, bring more happiness, because they’re sources of the elements that make people happiest: strong personal bonds, mastery, an atmosphere of growth. Relaxing fun tends to be passive—by design. So if relaxing fun is the least fun kind of fun, why is watching TV so popular? Because although we get ...

relaxing fun challenging fun accomodating fun

Andy Warhol observed, “Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.”

Recognizing happy moments keeps me from being overwhelmed when the pain is too much.

I think you don’t understand what happiness is until you are forced, through adversity, to look for it.

I think adversity magnifies behavior. Tend to be a control freak? You’ll become more controlling. Eat for comfort? You’ll eat more. And on the positive, if you tend to focus on solutions and celebrate small successes, that’s what you’ll do in adversity. But with a correspondingly bigger success at the end.

I think a real life-shaking catastrophe can provide insights into happiness that you couldn’t have any other way, but the more you know about what happiness really means for you before you come to that point, the better equipped you’ll be to handle it. By all means, work on understanding happiness NOW.

On sunny days, I think “great,” a good day to be outdoors and on grey days I think “great,” a good day to be indoors. It’s all in your attitude. I choose to be happy, in spite of whatever drama that is going on in my life.

For me, when things are going well, and I am happy, I don’t think about happiness too much. It’s when I start to become unhappy or depressed that I concentrate on it more and try to think of ways to improve it.

I think you can “bank” happiness—that is to say, learn about yourself and what makes you happy while the sailing is smooth. When the waves swell up and get rough, you have the memories of the times you were happy. You’ve been there and done that so you know it’s possible to do it again. It’s a matter of weathering the storm and navigating to your happiness destination. It probably won’t be the same path but it is achievable.

Samuel Johnson said, “The business of the wise man is to be happy.” In whatever condition life happens to offer.

positive-psychology superstars Ed Diener and Martin Seligman cite studies demonstrating that “of 24 character strengths, those that best predict life satisfaction are the interpersonal ones.” Epicurus agreed, albeit in slightly more poetic phraseology: “Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.”

ed diener martin seligman epicurus

To do a better job of “Being generous,” I had to reflect on the nature of generosity. Giving presents is one way to be generous, but taking a box of chocolates to a dinner party wasn’t the answer for me. I don’t begrudge spending money on friends, but I dislike shopping. I didn’t want to create more errands for myself. So, okay. I don’t like to shop or do errands, but what could I do, within the confines of my own nature, to be generous? I needed to cultivate generosity of spirit.

One of the most generous acts, I’ve realized, is to help someone think big. Words of enthusiasm and confidence from a friend can inspire you to tackle an ambitious goal: “You should do that!” “You should start your own business!” “You should run for office!” “You should apply for that grant!”

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself. This was a major, major insight. Obvious, but major. The Second Splendid Truth clarified many things that had been mixed up in my mind. For example, what is the relationship between altruism and happiness? Some people argue that because doing good deeds brings happiness, no act can be truly altruistic, because when we act for the benefit of others, we please ourselves. The Second Splendid Truth (Part A) provides the answer: yes, of course, so what? All the better! That feeling of happiness doesn’t minimize the “goodness” of the act. The fact is, the sight of someone performing a generous or kind act always makes me feel happy. Especially if it’s me! The spectacle of virtue inspires the feeling of elevation—one of the most delicate pleasures that the world offers. As Simone Weil observed, “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” That’s true no matter who is performing that real good. Also, the Second Splendid Truth underscores the fact that striving to be happy isn’t a selfish act. After all, one of the main reasons that I set out to become happier in the first place was that I figured I’d have an easier time behaving myself properly if I felt less anxious, irritated, resentful, and angry; when I reflected...

simone weil imaginary vs real happiness/evil

another way to be generous was to “Bring people together.” Studies show that extroverts and introverts alike get a charge out of connecting with others; also, because people are sources of information and resources for one another, if you help bring people together, you provide them with new sources of support.

The way I bring people together is by connecting them via whatever may be of interest to them. I know I am gifted at connecting the dots, and I use that skill in the relationships I build with others. I also have a tendency to collect and store what may seem like mundane information about people in my head. Inevitably, I will run into somebody who needs something, and because of the information I’ve collected I will have just the right person to introduce to them to help them achieve whatever they need. Ironically, I am not a social butterfly at all, but I always seem to be able to connect people at the right time.