Book Review: The Happiness Project

I just finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.   It is kind of a self-help book in that it gets you thinking about your own happiness and how to improve it.  It is also kind of written as a journal in which you get to follow Rubin’s quest for happiness during a one-year period.  

For a happiness project, you start out by identifying what brings you joy and satisfaction; and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse.   From there you make resolutions, where you identify concrete actions that will boost your happiness.  Then you try to keep your resolutions.   In the book the 12 chapters are broken into 12 months in which Rubin picks a different “resolution” for each month.  The chapters (i.e. resolutions she chose to focus on are as follows:

1)      January – Boost Energy; Vitality

2)      February – Remember Love; Marriage

3)      March – Aim Higher; Work

4)      April – Lighten Up; Parenthood

5)      May – Be Serious About Play; Leisure

6)      June – Make Time for Friends; Friendship

7)      July – Buy Some Happiness; Money

8)      August – Contemplate the Heavens; Eternity

9)      September – Pursue a Passion; Books

10)   October – Pay Attention; Mindfulness

11)  November – Keep a Contented Heart; Attitude

12)  December – Boot Camp Perfect; Happiness

There is a little more that goes into it, such as coming up with your own 12 Commandments and Secrets of Adulthood that to are designed to help you keep your resolutions.   An example of a Commandment would be: lighten up.   An example of a Secret of Adulthood would be: people don’t notice your mistakes as much as you do, or if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.

The book is really well written and interesting as it kept me interested in reading about her one-year experience and the research that went into it, and had me consciously thinking about my own happiness.   Most people aren’t as happy as they could/should be.  I’m sure most people would probably say they are happy but, hey, couldn’t we all be happier?  Working on your happiness not only makes you happier, it boosts the happiness of the people around you.  Happiness is contagious.  

Here are some thoughts and thought-provoking ideas from the book that I thought were helpful to put things in perspective:

• Implement a one-minute rule; don’t postpone anything that can be done in less than one minute.  
• What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
• Whatever love you feel in your heart, others will only see in actions.
• Advice from her grandparents (married 72 years): Married couples should have an outdoor game (golf, tennis, etc..) and an indoor game (Scrabble, gin, etc..) that they play together.
• A sense of purpose is very important to happiness.
• Happiness has four stages.  To eke the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.  
• Create a positive mood.   Don’t focus on the negative.   In a long line that is not moving?  Don’t focus on the negative, create a positive spin.   For example, you now have some time to check up on emails on your phone.   
• The days are long, but the years are short.
• One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy.  Conversely, one of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself. 
• Nonjoyous types of people suck energy and cheers from the joyous ones; they rely on the joyous types to buoy them with their good spirit and to cushion their agitation and anxiety.   At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, nonjoyous types are 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, etc.   Instead of shielding their joy, they blast it.  
• You can usually make your point, even if it is negative, in a positive way.  
• Within a marriage, it takes at least five good acts to repair the damage of one critical or destructive act.
• There is a significant difference between a resolution and a goal.   You hit a goal, you keep a resolution.  Goals are specific and easy to measure, and once you’ve done it, you’ve done it (for example running a marathon).   Resolutions (such as singing in the morning or exercise better) are something you resolve to do every day; resolutions continue.

Rubin’s research taught her many things that I found interesting.  Here are some of the highlights of her research:

• The most important element to happiness is having strong social bonds.    
• Happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier.
• Hug for at least six seconds; which is the minimum time necessary to promote the flow of mood-boosting chemicals that promote bonding.
• One of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success, such as tackling a long-delayed chore.
• A good marriage is one of the factors most strongly associated with happiness.
• It isn’t the goal attainment but the process of striving after goals – that is growth – that brings happiness.
• Both men and women prefer to gossip to women because women are more satisfying listeners. 
• Gratitude is important to happiness.  Grateful people are happier and more satisfied with their lives; they even feel more physically healthy and exercise more.
• Mindfulness (the cultivation of conscious, nonjudgemental awareness) brings many benefits.   It calms the mind and elevates brain function, it gives clarity and vividness to present experience, it may help people break unhealthy habits, and it can soothe troubled spirits and lift people’s moods.  It reduces stress and chronic pain.  It makes people happier, less defensive, and more engaged with others.  
• A typical child typically laughs more than 400 times each day, and adult – 17 times.

Although I’m not a parent, I thought her parenting chapter was great.  She also highly recommends two books for parents: 1) Siblings without Rivalry, and 2) How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk.

Rubin addresses the age-old question: can money buy happiness?   The answer she comes up with is: no.  Money alone can’t buy happiness.   But money, if used wisely, can help buy happiness.   She states that it’s a mistake to assume that money will affect everyone the same way and identifies three factors that she feels shapes the significance of money to individuals: 1) it depends on what kind of person you are, 2) it depends on how you spend your money, and 3) it depends on how much money you have relative to the people around you and relative to your own experience.    Makes sense to me.    She takes it a step further in saying, “when money or health is a problem, you think of little else; when it’s not a problem, you don’t think much about it.”  I thought her comparing it to health was a great way to put it into perspective.   “Being healthy doesn’t guarantee happiness; lots of healthy people are very unhappy.”

At the back of the book, she has a couple of different tips for different things (how to stick to a schedule of regular exercise, how to be a more light-hearted parent, how to get an energy boost in the next 10 minutes, etc…)   Here are her seven tips for making someone like you: 1) smile; 2) be easily impressed; entertained and interested; 3) have a friendly, open, engaged demeanor, 4) remember trait transfer (whatever you say about other people shapes the way people see you); 5) laugh at yourself; 6) radiate energy and good humor; and 7) show your liking for another person. 

While, I haven’t written out a plan for a happiness project for myself yet, I have tried to incorporate some of the principals and ideas I learned into my own in life.

I highly recommend this book, it is an easy read that keeps you coming back.  And it is a really good motivator to get you thinking about your own happiness.  Most people wait for a crisis to hit before they decide to make some major changes.  I like that this book takes a proactive approach.   It is important to stop going through the motions of life and really embrace it and make it what you want to be.  I can’t think of a better state of mind than happy.

Cheers!

 

FYI – Rubin also has a website and blog to tips to get started with your own happiness project.  Check it out here: http://www.happiness-project.com/