The Happiness Project Quotes

“Happiness," wrote Yeats, "is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing." Contemporary researchers make the same argument: that it isn't goal attainment but the process of striving after goals-that is, growth-that brings happiness.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“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.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Studies show that in a phenomenon called "emotional contagion," we unconsciously catch emotions from other people--whether good moods or bad ones. Taking the time to be silly means that we're infecting one another with good cheer, and people who enjoy silliness are one third more likely to be happy.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“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.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“you have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and to be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don't expect other people to react in a particular way.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“According to current research, in the determination of a person's level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“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.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“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.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“What's fun for other people may not be fun for you- and vice versa.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Enthusiasm is a form of social courage.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“There is no love; there are only proofs of love.” Whatever love I might feel in my heart, others will see only my actions.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“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.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Life is too short to save your good china or your good lingerie or your good ANYTHING for later because truly, later may never come.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Happy people generally are more forgiving, helpful, and charitable, have better self-control, and are more tolerant of frustration than unhappy people, while unhappy people are more often withdrawn, defensive, antagonistic, and self-absorbed. Oscar Wilde observed, “One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Of course it's not enough to sit around wanting to be happy; you must make the effort to take steps toward happiness by acting with more love, finding work you enjoy, and all the rest. But for me, asking myself whether I was happy had been a crucial step toward cultivating my happiness more wisely through my actions. Also, only through recognizing my happiness did I really appreciate it. Happiness depends partly on external circumstances, and it also depends on how you view those circumstances.

-Gretchen Rubin”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“However, if you want to know how people would like to be treated, it's more helpful to look at how they themselves act than what they say.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Because money permits a constant stream of luxuries and indulgences, it can take away their savor, and by permitting instant gratification, money shortcuts the happiness of anticipation. Scrimping, saving, imagining, planning, hoping--these stages enlarge the happiness we feel.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“For work: I bought some pens. Normally, I used makeshift pens, the kind of unsatisfactory implements that somehow materialized in my bag or in a drawer. But one day, when I was standing in line to buy envelopes, I caught sight of a box of my favorite kind of pen: the Deluxe Uniball Micro. “Two ninety-nine for one pen!” I thought. “That’s ridiculous.” But after a fairly lengthy internal debate, I bought four. It’s such a joy to write with a good pen instead of making do with an underinked pharmaceutical promotional pen picked up from a doctor’s office. My new pens weren’t cheap, but when I think of all the time I spend using pens and how much I appreciate a good pen, I realize it was money well spent. Finely made tools help make work a pleasure.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“I had everything I could possibly want -- yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“I have an idea of who I wish I were, and that obscures my understanding of who I actually am. Sometimes I pretend even to myself to enjoy activities that I don't really enjoy, such as shopping, or to be interested in subjects that don't much interest me, such as foreign policy.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Another study suggested that getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person's happiness than getting a $60,000 raise.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“I have an idea of who I wish I were, and that obscures my understanding of who I actually am.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life---and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion---to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“Both money and health contribute to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of them brings much more unhappiness than possessing them brings happiness.
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― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“I needed to change the lens through which I viewed everything familiar.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“When it comes to fake food, I’m like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” In other words, I can give something up altogether, but I can’t indulge occasionally.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

“There are times in the lives of most of us,” observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, “when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.”
― Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project