The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
One day as Gretchen Rubin was riding the bus, she realized that she hadn’t spent much time thinking about her happiness and how she might be happier. It was then that she decided to embark on her happiness project, a year spent working on various resolutions that she believed would make her happier. Each month she focused on a different area in her life that she felt could benefit from the extra scrutiny and set out some resolutions that would help her improve in that area. She created a list of Twelve Commandments for herself. She also came up with a “goofier” list of her Secrets of Adulthood – lessons she had learned as she grew up. Armed with her resolutions, commandments and secrets, she set out to make herself happier. Along the way she also discovered four Splendid Truths about the nature of happiness.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It has really made me look at my life and wonder about the ways that I could be happier. I’m not about to begin my own happiness project but I certainly like the idea of some simple resolutions to make my life smoother and my family happier. I loved her Second Splendid Truth – “One of the best ways to make myself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy myself.” I agree with that statement 100%. I have seen it in action and I love the reminder that my attitude has a huge influence on the people around me. I remember in university we had a TA who was notoriously grumpy and unhelpful. I decided that I was only ever going to be nice to her no matter how she treated me. Pretty soon she was pleasant with me and would actually help me out with my assignments. It got so that the other students in my class would send me to ask her for help because they had noticed that she was pleasant and helpful to me as well. And all it took was a little bit of extra effort on my part. For me, this is one of the most important ideas in her book. One of her resolutions was to cut people some slack. This is something I think I really need to work on. I think I’m very quick to judge people’s actions without really considering why they might have acted that way and giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Another thing I really enjoyed about the book was Rubin’s willingness to share her successes and her failures. She didn’t come across as preachy or superior. She was just sharing her ideas of what made her happier. And she tried things that she thought might work for her and when they didn’t she had no problem just giving them up. One of her Secrets of Adulthood is “What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you – and vice versa.” Occasionally she’s try something that worked for others but did nothing for her and instead of ploughing through she’s just give it up. I, too often, see that as a failure, or as quitting. I’ve learned just recently that sometimes there are certain things that just aren’t worth finishing. (And I’m not saying that if something isn’t FUN it isn’t worth doing, just that there are things that aren’t worth finishing for many different reasons.) I have a compulsion to read every last word of every book I pick up and I’ve just realized that life is too short to read something that I don’t find worthwhile or interesting. I still have a very hard time with this and occasionally will find myself slogging through a book I’m just not enjoying and I just have to give myself permission to move onto the next book. And that is something that’s made me happier!
I really could just keep on and on with the self-analysis but this is supposed to be a book review! I loved this book and although I hate re-reading books, I’m sure that I will re-read parts of this book over again several times. Some of her ideas are things that I know I could work and and they would make me happier but some just aren’t for me. But never once does Rubin say that they should be. She’s very careful to say that these are the things that worked for her and that people interested in a happiness project should write their own resolutions, commandments and secrets. Overall, reading this book made me happy and I think that’s probably the best endorsement for this type of book, right?











