The Happiness Project

What Made a Genius Painter Happy? The Zoo.

“The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus; extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvelously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place and the further I went the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life. What an immense variety of animals and species of different shapes and functions!”— Diary of Eugène Delacroix

* If you’re looking for a way to prod yourself to keep your resolutions, check out Pledgehammer . The site allows you to commit publicly to a resolution—and makes you donate to charity if you don’t keep it.

* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts. To sign up, click here . Or just e-mail me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) No need to write anything more than “newsletter” in the subject line.