The Happiness Project and Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin

I finally read The Happiness Project after having it on my shelves for about three years, and I loved it so much that I immediately ordered Happier at Home into the library. I pretty much read them back to back, while listening to Gretchen Rubin's podcast, Happier on the way to and from work. I feel like they've impacted my life in a big way, so much so that I actually emailed Gretchen Rubin earlier this week to thank her for writing them. This is something I pretty much never do (she did email back and was very nice).

A lot of people have accused both books of being very self-involved and have been annoyed by them because Rubin's standard of living is pretty high. Her family is not badly off at all and it is obvious throughout both books, however I don't really see the problem because they are both her personal projects; her personal experience. There was a huge amount in both books which inspired me and a lot of things that I've actually tried myself. I'm thinking of embarking on a full blown happiness project next year, we'll see.

The basic idea behind both books is that she took a different aspect of life each month for a year (The Happiness Project) and nine months (Happier at Home) and worked on three or four goals to improve her happiness in that area each month. Each months' goals would be added onto the previous months goals so that at the beginning she only had to do one months' goals but by the end she was doing all the goals for all the months which I think is a really good way to make habits.

Personally I really liked the idea of setting goals around certain aspects of life; my One Little Word project this year is very much geared up that way. I'm trying to give myself small manageable tasks to tick off to work towards my goal of generally being more grateful and I found that both these books tied in really well with that. I also think that I found a lot of affinity particularly in Happier at Home because Gretchen Rubin struggles with being a nervous driver and, having just passed my test a few months ago, so do I. I liked that she didn't overcome all of her barriers and that she never presented her project as being a total success all the time. Because it's all small steps it not only makes it more manageable but also less horrible if you fail a few (hundred) times.

Speaking of habits, I'm off to place a hold for her new book about forming good habits, Better than Before. And if you're not listening to the podcast, you're missing out.

Why Gratitude? A Personal Post

I wrote a while back about my One Little Word project. Each month in the class we are given prompts and I've been doing a bit of scrapbooking, a bit of journaling and some other activities as well, but one of the prompts was to think about the reason why we chose our word. When it came down to it I knew I wanted to write more about it than I could fit into my tiny little notebook and so I sat down and wrote and I thought I would share it with those of you who are interested. If you're just here for the bookish stuff, feel free to check in in a few days!

Why Gratitude?

Because my most common gripe is ‘they never say thank you’. If somebody thanks me for something it immediately makes my day that little bit better, regardless of how small the thing I’m being thanked for. I would like to be the kind of person who makes people’s days better rather than people dreading it when they see me coming because they see me as a whinging time suck who will just bring them down. I know people like this – I don’t want to be them.

As a teenager I suffered from depression, and I still suffer with social anxiety, although it’s a lot less acute than it used to be. I struggle to believe that I am the kind of person people want to have around, and there are days when I know I’m not the kind of person I’d want to be around, let alone anyone who didn’t have to be around me! Some days I can hear myself and all I can hear is complaining and I have to catch myself and play the ‘just being glad’ game. If this wasn’t proof of the relevance of books in my life, I don’t know what is! (For those who don’t know, the game is from Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter and basically involves turning every negative situation into a positive one. It’s awesome). 

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My word is gratitude and I feel like it’s the most important word I could have chosen this year. Yes there are many other contenders: simplify, love, calm, adventure being just a few, but in the end gratitude is so much bigger than all of those (except maybe love), because it encompasses them all. If I am grateful for what I have and grateful for my skills I think it will help me to be more responsible with my spending and purchasing. If I am actively grateful (meaning I show my gratitude effectively) to those I love it means they will feel that I love them rather than just hearing the words. If I am grateful for the things I have, I will waste less time worrying about what I don’t have or the things which could possibly go wrong in the future. One of the things I’ve already thought a lot about is the importance of being grateful for the present moment and actually being present in it rather than wasting it thinking about all the things which may or may not happen at vaguely unspecified times in the future. If I am grateful for the opportunities presented to me, I am much more likely to say yes to the promise of adventures. My word chose me I think, because whenever I think about it and what it means I literally feel like everything inside me relaxes and all the stress drains away. This is what I need. How many beautiful things in my life do I not see because I’m too busy complaining about something else?

When I act on my word and think about it during the day, when I bite my tongue to keep my instant (usually not very nice) response back and think about the situation before responding to it, I already feel calmer and more peaceful. I won’t say I feel like  a different person because that would require some actual evidence of change and I think 23 days in is a bit early for that, but I feel positive about the direction that this project is taking me in. I feel like it’s empowering me and giving me the tools to actually enact change in myself and I’m hopeful that by the end of the year I will have made the beginnings of a real change and taken the first steps on the road towards a more grateful and less bitter self.