The Happiness Project

 

At the beginning of this year I made a goal to read BETTER.  Now, I am an excellent reader, so by better I mean the content that I read.  I will still read YA, Romance, Science Fiction, Cookbooks, etc, but I wanted to make sure that I was expanding my knowledge and thoughts.  A few people I know were re-reading this book so I decided to pick it up and give it a try.  I am so glad that I did.  It provided a lot of food for thought.

Many of the reviews I read made it seem like the author, Gretchen Rubin, had no right to write about happiness when she hadn't experienced real sadness in her life.  I couldn't disagree more.  She starts out her book my saying that she had everything she needed to be happy, but was having a hard time being grateful for those things.  Isn't that where happiness should start?  At home, being happy with what we have no matter what life hands us.?  So maybe she has never lost a loved one, or been jobless, homeless, loveless, etc.  I don't think that means that she can't be unhappy.  She makes the statement that if you can't be happy when you have all that you need, how are you going to be happy when life hands you some thing awful?

She spent a whole year trying to make her life happier.  Each month she focused on a different aspect of her life with some mini goals to go along.  Some examples are, Marriage, Parenthood, Energy, Work, etc.  She read tons and tons of books and studies to try and help her understand what happiness truly is.  I found what she was doing fascinating and thought provoking.  It made me reevaluate my attitude about and towards people and the things around me.  It is easy to blame others and situations on your attitude and happiness, but it really it a decision.  I won't get into all the details, you'll have to read the book for that, but I want to talk about her 12 Commandments.

Before she started her project she made a list of commandments.  Things that would remind and help her along the way.  When she failed or things got tough, she would look at her list and breathe and start fresh.  If nothing else, write these down and keep them somewhere that you will frequently see them.  They do help.

1.  Be Gretchen (Don't pretend to be someone else.  If you don't like sushi, don't pretend to just   because it is the hot new thing, etc.)

2.  Let it go

3.  Act the way you want to feel

4.  Do it now  (If a task will take you less than 5 minutes, just do it)

5.  Be polite and be fair

6.  Enjoy the process

7.  Spend out (Serve others)

8.  Identify the problem

9.  Lighten up

10.  Do what ought to be done

11.  No calculation (Just because you do something nice for someone, don't expect them to turn around and do something nice for you.  Do it because it is the nice thing to do)

12.  There is only love

There are a few things that I am really working on and I find that the days go smoother and less stressful.  I am working on being just K and not someone I think that I should be.  Any way, I really liked this book and it made some great points about what happiness actually is.  It is different for everyone, BUT everyone can be happy.