The Happiness Project (37 page)

He’d absorbed more of my happiness talk than I’d realized, too. One day when we were out doing errands, I overheard him say to Eliza, “When we get to the Container Store, you’re going to see something very interesting. Mommy is going to buy something for $5 that’s going to make her extremely happy. Very little things can make a person happy, it doesn’t matter how expensive something is.” The item in question? A sponge holder that fastens to the side of the sink with suction cups. I’d coveted one ever since I spotted this device in my brother-and sister-in-law’s apartment. And Jamie was right, I was made extremely happy by that purchase—but he would never have made an observation like that last year. But of all the happiness-boosting things he did, my favorite was the e-mail he sent me after I was angry that he hadn’t made a phone call that he’d promised to make:

I confess that when I started the happiness project, I feared that if I stopped nagging and complaining, Jamie would leave all the work to me. That didn’t happen. Now, correlation is not causation, so maybe my happiness project had nothing to do with the ways in which he changed—but for whatever reason, the atmosphere in our house was happier. That’s not a very scientific standard of measurement. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. Maybe, but who cares?

If I think I’m happier, I
am
happier. That’s the Fourth Splendid Truth. The Fourth Splendid Truth may have been the last Splendid Truth I identified, but in fact I’d understood it on some level from that first moment on the bus, when I had the idea for my happiness project. I’m not happy unless I think I’m happy—and by pushing myself to be mindful of my happiness, I can truly experience it.

Although the First Splendid Truth was extremely valuable in showing me how to change my life to be happier, the Second Splendid Truth was more important to my understanding of the nature of happiness.

The Second Splendid Truth made clear to me why working to be happy isn’t a selfish goal and why, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” When I was feeling unhappy, I felt dispirited, lethargic, defensive, and uninterested in other people; even worse, when I felt angry or resentful, I searched for excuses to feel even more angry and resentful. On the other hand, when I felt happy, I was more likely to be lighthearted, generous, creative, kind, encouraging, and helpful.

December was a crazy time for my sister, Elizabeth. She and her writing partner were writing a pilot for a network TV show (one of the most im
portant work opportunities she’d ever had), she and her fiancé, Adam, had just bought a house, she was planning their wedding, and she was dealing with her recent diagnosis of diabetes. I really wished that I could do something for Elizabeth—then I thought of something I
could
do.

I called her up. “Hey, guess what?”

“What?” she said, sounding harried.

“I’ve been feeling bad about all the stress you have right now, so I’ve decided”—I paused for effect—“to do your holiday shopping for you!”

“Gretch, would you really?” she said. “That would be
so great.
” Elizabeth’s stress must have been as bad as I’d thought; she didn’t even pretend to resist the offer.

“I’m happy to do it!” I told her. And I
was.
Hearing the relief and happiness in her voice made me very happy. Would I have offered to do her shopping, as well as mine, if I’d been feeling unhappy? No. Would it have even occurred to me to try to help her out? Probably not.

The Third Splendid Truth was a different kind of truth. “The days are long, but the years are short” reminded me to stay in the moment, to appreciate the seasons, and to revel in this time of life—December’s yuletide atmosphere, the girls’ little matching cherry nightgowns, the elaborate bath-time routine.

Most nights, I spent the time before bed racing around, trying to get organized for the morning, or crashed in bed with a book. But Jamie has a lovely habit. We call it “gazing lovingly.” Every few weeks, he’ll say to me, “Come on, let’s gaze lovingly,” and we go look at Eliza and Eleanor as they sleep.

The other night he pulled me away from the computer. “No, I’ve got too much to do,” I told him. “I need to finish a few things before tomorrow. You go ahead.”

But he wouldn’t listen, so finally I went with him to stand in Eleanor’s doorway. We “gazed lovingly” at her small figure flung across the huge pile of books that she insisted on keeping in her crib.

I said to him, “Someday we’ll look back and it will be hard to re
member that we ever had such little kids. We’ll say, ‘Remember when Eleanor still used her purple sippy cup or when Eliza wore ruby slippers all the time?’”

He squeezed my hand. “We’ll say, ‘That was such a happy time.’”

The days are long, but the years are short
.

During the year, when people had asked me, “So what’s the secret to happiness?,” at different times I’d answer “Exercise” or “Sleep” or “Do good, feel good” or “Strengthen your connections to other people.” But by the end of December, I’d realized that the most helpful aspect of my happiness project hadn’t been these resolutions, or the Four Splendid Truths I’d identified, or the science I’d learned, or all the high-minded books I’d read. The single most effective step for me had been to keep my Resolutions Chart.

When I’d started, I’d viewed my chart as just another fun thing to experiment with, like the gratitude notebook. But it had turned out to be tremendously important. Making the resolutions wasn’t the hardest part of the happiness project (though it was harder than I expected, in some cases, to identify the appropriate resolution);
following through
was the hardest part. The desire to change was meaningless if I couldn’t find a way to make the change happen.

By providing an opportunity for constant review and accountability, the Resolutions Chart kept me plugging away. The phrases “Lighten up,” “Give proofs of love,” and “Cut people slack” flashed through my consciousness constantly, and I often changed my actions in consequence. When I was annoyed when the woman working next to me at the library kept sighing noisily, I tried to “Imitate a spiritual master” Saint Thérèse tells the story of how she once broke into a sweat at the effort to conquer her annoyance when a fellow nun made maddening clicking noises during evening prayers. Even if I didn’t do a perfect job with my resolutions, I did do
better,
and the more I kept my resolutions, the happier I was.

I’d noticed idly that a lot of people use the term “goal” instead of “resolution,” and one day in December, it struck me that this difference was in fact significant. You
hit
a goal, you
keep
a resolution. “Run a marathon” makes a good goal. It’s specific, it’s easy to measure success, and once you’ve done it, you’ve done it. “Sing in the morning” and “Exercise better” are better cast as resolutions. You won’t wake up one day and find that you’ve achieved it. It’s something that you have to resolve to do every day, forever. Striving toward a goal provides the atmosphere of growth so important to happiness, but it can be easy to get discouraged if reaching the goal is more difficult than you expected. Also, what happens once you’ve reached your goal? Say you’ve run the marathon. What now—do you stop exercising? Do you set a new goal? With resolutions, the expectations are different. Each day I try to live up to my resolutions. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity. I never expect to be done with my resolutions, so I don’t get discouraged when they stay challenging. Which they do.

With each passing month, too, I realized the importance of my First Commandment, “Be Gretchen.” As great minds throughout the ages have pointed out, one of our most pressing concerns should be to discover the laws of our own nature. I had to build my happiness on the foundation of my character; I had to acknowledge what really made me happy, not what I
wished
made me happy. One of the biggest surprises of the happiness project was just how hard it was to know myself. I’d always been slightly exasperated by philosophers’ constant emphasis on what seemed to me to be a fairly obvious question, but in the end I realized that I would spend my whole life grappling with the question of how to “Be Gretchen.”

It’s funny; only once it was December and my happiness project was drawing to a close did it occur to me to wonder
why
I’d had the urge to do my happiness project in the first place. Sure, I’d had a bus-ride epiphany about wanting to be happier, and it had been a relief and a thrill to step out
of my ordinary life to contemplate transcendent matters—but what had motivated me to stick with it for the whole year?

Jamie told me what he thought. “I think this happiness project is all about you trying to get more control over your life,” he said.

Was that true?

Perhaps. The feeling of control is an essential element of happiness—a better predictor of happiness than, say, income. Having a feeling of autonomy, of being able to choose what happens in your life or how you spend your time, is crucial. Identifying and following my resolutions had made me feel far more in control of my time, my body, my actions, my surroundings, and even my thoughts. Getting control of my life was definitely an aspect of my happiness project, and a greater feeling of control gave me a major boost in happiness.

But something deeper was going on as well. I’d begun to understand that, although I hadn’t quite recognized it when I started, I was girding myself for some awesome, dreadful challenge, or working to meet some Judgment Day deadline for virtue. My Resolutions Chart is really my conscience. I wonder if one day I’ll look back on this year of my happiness project with wonder at my…innocence. “How easy it was to be happy,
then,
” I might think on some dark, distant morning. How glad I’ll be that I did everything within my power to appreciate the life I have now, just as it is.

The year is over, and I really am happier. After all my research, I found out what I knew all along: I could change my life without changing my life. When I made the effort to reach out for them, I found that the ruby slippers had been on my feet all along; the bluebird was singing outside my kitchen window.

J
amie joined the clinical trial for the hepatitis C drug VX-950. The bad news: the treatment proved ineffective for him. The good news: his liver continues to hold steady.

My sister’s diabetes is under control.

On the anniversary of my blog, I made a book of the year’s blog posts on Lulu.com.

When my children’s literature reading group hit twenty members, we had to close the group to newcomers, and I started a second children’s literature group with more enthusiasts.

I did two one-minute Internet movies:
The Years Are Short
(www.theyearsareshort.com) and
Secrets of Adulthood
(www.secretsofadulthood.com).

In addition to Jamie and my mother-in-law, I also convinced my father-in-law and eight friends to join my weight-training gym.

To “Show up,” “Make three new friends,” and “Be a treasure house of happy memories,” I volunteered to be one of two house parents for Eliza’s class at school.

I contacted several people active in the field of organ donation and, after a long period of self-education, joined the board of the New York Organ Donor Network. Remember to join the organ donor registry yourself: www.donatelife.net.

Inspired to emulate J. M. Barrie’s brilliant, strange book
The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island
(in the collection of the Beinecke Library at Yale), which tells a story through photographs of the Llewelyn Davies boys, a friend and I did an elaborate project in which we wrote a skeleton story, gathered costumes, and took photographs of our children in Central Park. Now we’re working on publishing this project in some form.

After successfully giving up fake food, I eventually also gave up Tasti D-Lite, the delicious and very fake frozen yogurt sold by the ubiquitous chain in New York.

I started getting up at 6:15
A.M
. instead of 6:30 in order to make the morning go more smoothly.

Working with the cartoonist Chari Pere, I created a short comic, “Gretchen Rubin and the Quest for a Passion.” Drop me a note through www.happiness-project.com if you’d like a copy.

To help other people to do a happiness project, I created the Happiness Project Toolbox, www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com, to pull together on one site all the tools that I found most helpful for my happiness project.

I also created a “starter kit” for those who would like to form a group for people doing happiness projects. Sign up through my blog if you would like to receive a kit.

My blog was picked up by the online magazine
Slate
(www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/happinessproject).

I did indeed meet book reviewer David Greenberg at a cocktail party, and we had a very nice converstation.

The blind date I set up in June culminated in a wedding.

I sold the proposal for a book about my happiness project.

And now I’m off to live happily ever after.