I stumbled upon the The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin when I was on maternity leave with my second baby. The cocktail of a challenging baby, scrambled hormones and months on end of broken sleep made me look twice at the title. It’s fair to say I wasn’t feeling particularly happy at the time. I thought it would be a light, fun, American book about self-helpy stuff and positive thoughts. I wasn’t expecting to love it, but love it I did.
The book is about the author’s year long project to make changes to her life to make her feel happier. Some people are put off by this premise and wonder how an educated, comfortably off woman living in New York City can have any relevance to their lives. I don’t take that view. This is really a book about how your actions and attitudes affect your overall enjoyment of life, and surely that’s relevant to everyone.
Some of my favourite things from the book are stuck on post-its on my fridge.
Her opening theory boils down to this, her "First Splendid Truth":
"To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth"
Which means – do more things you like, sort out the things that make you feel bad (bogged down, short of time, under pressure), live an authentic life that feels right for you (e.g. change your job if you think your calling is to do something else) and grow as a person (by learning something new, or trying new things). Rubin believes if you tackle all of those elements you’ll feel happier. As she goes through the book she works through what these things are for her and what she does about them.
"Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Or, in other words, "done is better than perfect". This was a big one for me. I am a perfectionist in a bad way. I realised that we were continually missing out on going on holiday because we couldn’t find the perfect thing (too far away, too expensive, not enough there for the kids…). After reading this book and realising what was happening I thought how crazy that was so just went ahead and booked the best thing we could come up with. It wasn’t the greatest holiday but we felt good about the fact that we were going on holiday at all.
This is closely related to:
“Most decisions don’t require extensive research”
Again, something I still find myself defaulting to no matter how seemingly insignificant the decision may be. I think it’s my perfectionist streak that makes me a “maximiser” rather than a “satisficer”. I knew about these descriptors from my economics degree and rationality of economic agents, but hadn’t thought before about what category I fit into. Too often I find myself acting like a maximiser in pursuit of the “best” particular thing, rather than being a satisficer, happy with something being “good enough”. It’s fine to be a maximiser when something really matters, but when it’s not that important it’s time wasting and exhausting. Big note to self there.
“Tackle a nagging task” and “By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished”
A source of “feeling bad” for many of us is the list we keep in our heads of all the things we’ve been meaning to do but haven’t got round to yet. Make a list and work through them all. Throw some money at the problem, just get them done. The other classic avoidance strategy stems from tasks that look overwhelming – like filing the enormous accumulated pile of paperwork on the shelf - so you don’t do it at all. If you spend 10 minutes a day tackling it, it’ll get done and you won’t have to spend a whole afternoon doing it all at once.
Another source of feeling bad is how we affect those around us. Very few of us wake up smiling and cheerful every single day, and on the days we’re in a bad mood the people we live with or sit with at work cop the brunt of it. Not something I’ve ever really thought about to be honest – but Rubin points out how selfish it is to dump your small worries and grumpiness on your family or friends… something exists called "emotional contagion" and it means that bad moods and miserable faces are catching!
I could go on…but I want you to read the book for yourself. Finally, I also need to credit The Happiness Project with being a big influence on the direction of my reading, and the inspiration for starting this blog. I always used to reach for a good novel to escape and unwind but since reading this book it’s made me think much more about my life, how I approach it, how I think, and how much we can learn from the lives and experiences of others. This has led me to lots of interesting non fiction books and memoirs, which I'll talk about more on this blog.
In the meantime I recommend checking out the Happiness Project blog. Enjoy!
I love The Happiness Project. It made me think about the small things in life.
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