The Happiness Project: How To Be Happier

In Which Holiday Decorating Reminds Me of Several Happiness Lessons

I recently put up our holiday decorations, and as I was doing it, I was reminded of several important happiness lessons.

1. I love my husband, just as he is. One of the challenges of a happiness project is accepting your own nature—and also your sweetheart’s nature. I wish my husband got a big kick out of holiday decorating, but he doesn’t. There it is. I can’t bully him into wanting to hang ornaments, and I’m happier (and he’s happier) if I don’t try. Relatedly …

2. Given that my husband doesn’t really care about holiday decorating, don’t nag him about helping me. I remind myself that I do holiday decorating because I like it. It’s not so much work that I can’t do it myself, with some help from my daughters, and I truly enjoy it more when I don’t expect or ask him to help. It’s just not worth nagging over it.

3. Spend out! This is my Seventh Personal Commandment, and one that’s always a challenge for me. “Spend out” reminds me to put things to use, not to save things to no purpose. Several years ago, my mother, who loves holiday decorating, gave me a big box of fun stuff. As I was decorating one of our table-top goose-feather trees, I saw two boxes of little shiny red balls—vintage, still in their old boxes. I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to open these boxes of balls from my mother, I want to save them.” Then I saw a box of mini-lights that would fit on the little tree. “Oh, I shouldn’t use those either.” Then I remembered – spend out! What am I saving these things for? Some special occasion—but what's more special than now? They’re meant to be used, so use them! Leaving them sealed in a box is wasteful.

4. One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “No deposit, no return.” The holidays are only as much fun as I allow them to be. If I don’t take the trouble to do fun things like keep traditions, take time for projects, and goof around, then I’m not going to find the holidays much fun. Or to put it another way...

5. Enjoy this season and this time of life. In the bustle of every day, and in my desire to get things crossed off my to-do list, sometimes activities like holiday decorating, wrapping presents, or making our special recipe for sweet potatoes can feel like chores. I constantly remind myself to enjoy this season and this time of life. This is a wonderful season of the year, and a wonderful season in the life of my family. One of my daughters still believes in Santa Claus, the other daughter is still ecstatic over a $6 pair of earrings. They’re both excited about spending a day decorating gingerbread houses. It’s my Third Splendid Truth: The days are long, but the years are short. (If you’ve never watched my one-minute video, The Years Are Short, you might enjoy it.)

Adding to my family's holiday spirit, I'm sure, was the fact that I restrained myself from lecturing them all about these little lessons as they occurred to me. Family members can happily stand only so much talk about happiness.

* I was thrilled to see that my blogland friend Pamela Slim's excellent book, Escape from Cubicle Nation (also a terrific blog—"from corporate prisoner to thriving entrepreneur") make it to two lists for Best Small Business Books for 2009. Great stuff, great to see it get recognized.

* The book The Happiness Project is coming out on December 29, so you can ...
Pre-order! (if you pre-order, here’s how to get your bonus materials)
Check out the book tour info!
Read sample chapters!
Watch the one-minute book trailer!
If you're inspired to start your own happiness project, join the 2010 Happiness Challenge, to make 2010 a happier year.
Pre-orders give a huge boost to a book, so if you're inclined to pre-order, I really do appreciate it very much.

Make Sure the “Fun” Is Fun for You

One of my Secrets of Adulthood is "What's fun for other people may not be fun for you—and vice versa." This sounds simple, but it actually was a huge breakthrough for me. So many things that other people consider “fun” are not fun for me, and it took me an astonishingly long time to realize that. Drinking alcohol, shopping, most games … I just don’t enjoy those activities.

Even now, I have to remind myself that people go skiing because they honestly want to go skiing, not because they are made from a sterner moral fiber than I.

I’ve realized, too, that it’s important to think about this in the context of my family. If I want to have fun with my family, I need to make sure that we’re doing activities that—at least some of the time—are honestly fun for me. Otherwise, I just get bored and try to end things—or even sneak away. Was it Jerry Seinfeld who said, "There's no such thing as fun for the whole family"? Well, I'm trying.

For example, my 4-year-old is constantly begging us to read to her. I was getting so bored with Frog and Toad and the like that I was making excuses.

Then it occurred to me—why not read something I like, too? I don’t have much appreciation for Little Bear anymore, not after the tenth reading, but I love children’s literature. Surely there’s something we can both enjoy.

She’s not ready for The Golden Compass, of course, and she’s not even ready for Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, but first we read the All-of-a-Kind Family books, and now we’re working our way through Mary Poppins. I love those books, and it has made a huge difference in my willingness to read to my daughter. It’s fun for me to read those books, too!

Obviously, as a parent, I can’t follow this rule all the time. My children enjoy things that aren’t much fun for me, so I get my fun vicariously, by watching their fun. But I’ve decided to try to steer our activities more to things that we all find fun, because then I’m so much more enthusiastic.

(Of course, it’s possible to run, then, into the opposite problem: something is so fun for me that being with my children ruins the fun. If I really want to see an exhibit, say, I can’t go with my two children. I just won’t be able to concentrate. But I could go myself, and then return with them.)

One of the great mysteries of happiness is why is it so hard to “Be Gretchen”? Why is it so hard to know my own likes and dislikes? It seems that nothing should be more obvious than the question of what I find fun, yet I have to think hard about this, all the time. (On the subject of fun, here are the three types of fun.)

This principle doesn't only apply to children; fun with your sweetheart, fun with your family, fun with your friends, fun with your co-workers. Have you found any good ways to have fun with others that's also fun for you?

* I loved Twyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life, and Jesse Kornbluth (also known as Head Butler) is a friend, so I can’t wait to read the book that they worked on together: The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together.

Take a Vacation

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too. Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in—no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

The biggest challenge of a happiness project isn’t figuring out what resolutions I should make but actually sticking to my resolutions.

Somewhat to my surprise, I've found that I have quite a lot of trouble keeping my resolutions related to play—that is, the activities I do in my free time, because I want to do them, for their own sake, for my own reasons, and not for money or ambition. To encourage myself to play more, I’ve made resolutions to be serious about play, take time to be silly, force myself to wander.

Believe me, I see the irony in the fact that I work doggedly at fun and am so serious about joking around, but given my nature, I have to measure what I want to manage, and if I don’t commit to having fun, it will get crowded out of my workaholic days. Even so, these resolutions remain a challenge for me.

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 feel good—you must strive to find sources of feeling good. Regularly having fun is a key factor in having a happy life; people who have fun are 20 times more likely to feel happy.

Starting today, for the next week, I’m going to keep another play-related resolution: Take a vacation. I haven’t stepped away from my blog very many times since I started it more than three years ago, but it’s time for a break.

I've started to feel overtapped—the feeling captured perfectly in Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, when Bilbo says to Gandalf, "I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can't be right. I need a change, or something."

Now I’m off to pack for the beach. I'll be back soon.

* This little video really made me want to learn CGI! Maybe that can be my "novelty and challenge" task for Happiness Project II.

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 26,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format—trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.