The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.In this lively and compelling account of that year, Rubin carves out her place alongside the authors of bestselling memoirs such as Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically, and Eat, Pray, Love. With humor and insight, she chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier.Rubin didn't have the option to uproot herself, nor did she really want to; instead she focused on improving her life as it was. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results. She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her—and what didn't.Her conclusions are sometimes surprising—she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference—and they range from the practical to the profound.Written with charm and wit, The Happiness Project is illuminating yet entertaining, thought-provoking yet compulsively readable. Gretchen Rubin's passion for her subject jumps off the page, and reading just a few chapters of this book will inspire you to start your own happiness project.
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Community Reviews
I liked it a lot when I read it at the beginning of 2010. Then later that year, my husband and I decided to have a baby, and while I was pregnant my father died, I lost my job, and then my grandmother that partially raised me also died. I became very depressed for a long time. I know Rubin explicitly says that this book doesn't deal with "depression" and "depression" is a loaded word in the modern era, but the reality is that most people go through terrible things all the time.
While I'm sure Rubin has faced many challenges just like everyone else, she describes a happy marriage, a very good financial situation, professional freedom, healthy children, personal good health, and living parents. She could have written a book about happiness without personal information, I've read a number with very limited personal information, but that's not what she did. She also relies on a lot of scientific, historical, and philosophical information. But her particular angle on the book of trying the tips out herself left me a little cold on a reread. What happens when in your year of chasing happiness you're completely railroaded by life? Suddenly the question she skipped in the beginning, "What is happiness" (she says you know when you see it/feel it) takes on the central role. In a way, she's the opposite of Victor Frankl who having survived some of the worst things a human could survive, has full authority to lecture on the meaning of life from a personal perspective. It's not Rubin's fault of course, and she's brilliant and hardworking, but the book does suffer from some lack of spiritual depth.
While I'm sure Rubin has faced many challenges just like everyone else, she describes a happy marriage, a very good financial situation, professional freedom, healthy children, personal good health, and living parents. She could have written a book about happiness without personal information, I've read a number with very limited personal information, but that's not what she did. She also relies on a lot of scientific, historical, and philosophical information. But her particular angle on the book of trying the tips out herself left me a little cold on a reread. What happens when in your year of chasing happiness you're completely railroaded by life? Suddenly the question she skipped in the beginning, "What is happiness" (she says you know when you see it/feel it) takes on the central role. In a way, she's the opposite of Victor Frankl who having survived some of the worst things a human could survive, has full authority to lecture on the meaning of life from a personal perspective. It's not Rubin's fault of course, and she's brilliant and hardworking, but the book does suffer from some lack of spiritual depth.
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