The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

  As a micro family—single mom of one kid—the little traditions are extra important to us because a lot of “normal” falls between the cracks. We have “adventures” regularly—it started off when my daughter was very small and it was to glamourize our errands. Now, we plan it out a bit—a map or agenda to pick the route, bring along the camera, “adventure” clothes (my daughter loves hats), and a snack or dish we haven’t had before.

  When my husband and I travel away from our children, we like to bring home little presents. But instead of just handing them over when we return, I make sure to pick the presents early in the trip, then allow my children to ask for clues. Each child gets one clue per day, and they have tremendous fun coming up with the questions, coordinating with each other about who will ask what, keeping a list of the clues that have been revealed, debating amongst themselves, etc. The gift itself brings them much less fun than the guessing game.

  My brother has a tradition with his family. Every once in a while, they have “Pirate Dinner.” They cover the table entirely in newspaper and eat with no plates, napkins, or utensils—just hands! He says that his kids have to follow rules and proper table etiquette all the time, so why not give them a break every now and then?

  * * *

  I couldn’t wait to suggest Pirate Dinner to my girls. What a great idea.

  TAKE TIME FOR PROJECTS.

  Traditions often involve projects. Celebrating every family birthday, sending out a family Valentine’s card, decorating an elaborate gingerbread house (actually, we make the houses out of graham crackers and tubs of Duncan Hines frosting)—these things are fun, but they take time, energy, planning, and patience. Inevitably, boomerang errands are involved. Out of the urge to simplify my life, I sometimes feel reluctant to undertake ambitious family projects, but at the same time, I know that these projects are a highlight of childhood—and adulthood.

  Once I’d resolved to “Take time for projects,” I made a purchase that I’d been considering for a long time: I ordered a laminator. The minute it arrived, I knew it had been worth the splurge. So many possible projects! First up: Mother’s Day presents for the grandmothers. Under my direction, Eliza made a list of “Ten Reasons I Love Bunny” (her nickname for my mother) and “Ten Reasons I Love Grandma.” As she dictated, I typed up her list; then she chose a different font for each item—playing with fonts on my computer is one of her favorite things to do. Then we printed the two lists out and let Eleanor scribble on them, to add her personal touch. And then to the laminator! Suddenly these modest pieces of paper were transformed into personalized place mats. What next? Book covers, bookmarks, cards of useful phone numbers.

  Inspired by the success of the laminator, I experimented with the glue gun that I’d had for years but never used. An opportunity presented itself one evening when, after Eleanor had gone to sleep, Eliza announced that she was supposed to make a “scrappy cap” to bring to school.

  “What’s a scrappy cap?” I asked.

  “It’s from Julie Andrews Edwards’s book, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles,” Eliza explained. “It’s a hat that reflects our imagination.”

  Now, in this situation, I knew perfectly well that as a parent, I should let my child take the lead while I merely helped gently and unobtrusively to guide her thinking.

  But instead of doing that, I leaped to my feet and said, “I know what to do! Quick, run and get a baseball cap.”

  While she ran to get a hat, I studied the glue gun directions and plugged it in. Then I pulled down the jars of little bitty toys that I’d collected in January.

  “Now what?” panted Eliza as she arrived with her cap.

  “Dump out the stuff in the jars and see what reflects your imagination. Then we’ll glue them onto this cap with a glue gun.”

  “Oh, I love glue guns,” she said. “My teacher uses them.”

  Eliza began combing through the mounds of toys to pick her favorites. One by one, we carefully glued them onto the hat.

  “I didn’t expect this to be so fun,” Eliza said happily at one point. It took hours because she wanted to debate the merits of every single gimcrack, but that was fine. Take time for projects.

  Sometimes family projects pop up unexpectedly. For example, I didn’t expect picking Eliza’s birthday cake to turn into a “project.” I figured that I’d ask, as I’d asked before, “Chocolate or vanilla? Flower decorations or princesses?” and Eliza would choose. Instead, as Eliza’s birthday approached, she became utterly preoccupied with her cake. The guest list, the decorations, the activities—all these considerations paled in comparison to the question of the composition and decoration of the cake. Before my happiness project, I would have pressed her to decide quickly, so I could get the item crossed off my to-do list. But my research revealed that a key to happiness is squeezing out as much happiness as possible from a happy event.

  We’ve all heard of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. By contrast, I realized, happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.

  Any single happy experience may be amplified or minimized, depending on how much attention you give it. For instance, if I call my parents to tell them about a funny thing that happened in the park that day, I relive the experience in my mind as I express it. Although it’s true that taking photographs sometimes makes it hard to savor a moment when it’s happening, in the future, having pictures will help me recall a happy time.

  Eliza’s birthday cake gave us plenty of opportunities to enjoy the “anticipation” stage. She asked me to bring home a Baskin-Robbins brochure, and we went over every word. We visited the Baskin-Robbins Web site, where Eliza pondered the list of ice cream flavors. We made a pilgrimage to the Baskin-Robbins store, so Eliza could sample the flavors and pore over the book of possible cake decorations. At last, I thought, she’d made her decisions. Nope.

  “Mom,” she asked a few days later, “can we go back to Baskin-Robbins to look at the cake book again?”

  “Eliza, we spent an hour in there already. Plus your birthday is still a month away.”

  “But I want to look at the book!”

  Before the happiness project, I would have resisted, but now I understand now that this errand isn’t birthday party inefficiency but the very fun itself. It’s my Sixth Commandment: Enjoy the process. Eliza will enjoy eating the cake for only five minutes, but she can have hours of enjoyment from planning the cake. In fact, in what’s known as “rosy prospection,” anticipation of happiness is sometimes greater than the happiness actually experienced. All the more reason to revel in anticipation.

  “Okay,” I relented, “if you want, we can stop off after school on Friday.”

  Doing these kinds of projects showed me another way that children boost happiness: they reconnect us with sources of “feeling good” that we’ve outgrown. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t work on homemade Mother’s Day gifts, pore over Baskin-Robbins cake designs, memorize Is Your Mama a Llama?, or go to the Central Park boat pond on Saturday afternoons. I wouldn’t watch Shrek over and over or listen to Laurie Berkner’s music. I wouldn’t visit amusement parks or the Museum of Natural History. I wouldn’t use food coloring to make Rainbow Yogurt Surprise in a shot glass. Nevertheless, I honestly do enjoy these activities with my children. I don’t just enjoy their pleasure—which I do, and that also makes me happy—I also experience my own sincere enjoyment of activities that I would otherwise never have considered.

  On the last day of April, as I did at the end of every month, I paused to evaluate my progress before gearing up for the next month’s resolutions. Soul-searching seems like an activity that should be undertaken by a woodland stream or at least in a quiet room, but this particular session of self-evaluation took place as I was riding the subway downtown. As we slowly lurched through the local stops, I asked myself, “
Well, am I feeling any happier? Am I really?”

  I happened to be in a blue mood that morning. “If I’m honest with myself,” I thought dejectedly, “the fact is, I’m no different. Same old Gretchen, no better and no worse, nothing new and improved. I’ve been telling myself I’m happier, but I haven’t really changed.” Studies show that people who go to psychotherapy or to programs to lose weight, stop smoking, start exercising, or whatever usually believe they’ve changed a lot but in fact show only a modest benefit; apparently, after spending so much money, time, and effort, people think, “Wow, I must have changed for the better,” even if they haven’t changed that much. “That’s probably why I’ve been telling myself that I’m happier,” I thought, “when in fact my project hasn’t been working at all.” As I got off the subway, I couldn’t shake my feelings of futility and gloom.

  After a two-hour meeting, I was back on the subway and headed home in a more cheerful mood (thus confirming happiness research that shows that people get a mood boost from contact with others). I resumed my argument with myself. “Am I happier?” This time my answer was a little different: “No, but also yes.” True, my fundamental nature hadn’t changed. It wasn’t realistic to think that I could bring about that kind of change in just four months or even by the end of the year. Yet something had changed. What?

  Finally I put my finger on it. In moments when I was in “neutral,” as when riding the subway, I was the same familiar Gretchen. The difference was that, although my nature was unchanged, I had more happiness in my life each day; my resolutions had added more sources of fun, engagement, and satisfaction and had also eliminated some significant sources of bad feelings, such as guilt and anger. Through my actions, I was successfully pushing myself to the high end of my inborn happiness range.

  I could tell that my happier mood affected the household atmosphere. It’s true that “if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” and it’s also true that “if Daddy ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” and that “you’re only as happy as your least happy child.” Each member of a family picks up and reflects everyone else’s emotions—but of course I could change no one’s actions except my own.

  On a less sublime note, after evaluating my progress I decided to give up wearing the pedometer. It had been a useful exercise, but I was getting tired of strapping it to my waistband every morning, and I’d almost dropped it in the toilet several times. The pedometer had served its purpose of helping me to evaluate and improve my walking habits, and it was time to put it into retirement.

  5

  MAY

  Be Serious About Play

  LEISURE

  Find more fun.

  Take time to be silly.

  Go off the path.

  Start a collection.

  May, the beginning of springtime, seemed like the right time to work on my play—that is, the activities I did in my free time because I wanted to do them, for their own sake, for my own reasons, and not for money or ambition. In an irony that didn’t escape me, I prepared to work doggedly at fun and to be serious about joking around.

  The writer Jean Stafford scoffed, “Happy people don’t need to have fun,” but in fact, studies show that the absence of feeling bad isn’t enough to make you happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling good. One way to feel good is to make time for play—which researchers define as an activity that’s very satisfying, has no economic significance, doesn’t create social harm, and doesn’t necessarily lead to praise or recognition. Research shows that regularly having fun is a key factor in having a happy life; people who have fun are twenty times as likely to feel happy.

  I had two goals for the month: I wanted to have more fun, and I wanted to use my leisure to cultivate my creativity. Play wasn’t merely idle time but an opportunity to experiment with new interests and to draw closer to other people.

  I was very fortunate that the activities that I did for work were, for the most part, versions of the same activities that I did for fun. There were many persuasive arguments against taking busman’s holidays, but I always wanted to do the same things on the weekend that I did during the week. I knew exactly what the photographer Edward Weston meant when he noted in his daybook that he’d spent the day in “a holiday of work, but work which was play.”

  As I saw in March, novelty is an important source of happiness; it’s also an important element in creativity. I tend to stick to the familiar, so I wanted to push myself toward new experiences and new ideas that attracted me.

  I needed to take my leisure more seriously. I’d always assumed that having fun was something in my life that would flow naturally, so I didn’t think about shaping it or getting the most out of it—but although having fun sounded simple, it wasn’t. When I asked my blog readers about their ideas about fun, several readers responded.

  * * *

  Making things is something that I get fun out of. I’m a great fan of crafts, but I find the fun is far increased when I am making a present for someone. This Christmas, I have a pretty ambitious project in mind for the boyfriend, but I know he’ll love it and the challenge is giving me so much fun, as well as the anticipation that he’ll appreciate it. Coming up with ideas myself is an intellectual challenge, followed by the mechanically creative challenge of realising them, and this is a combination which I find very fulfilling and fun.

  Reading overseas blogs, including yours of course, is fun to me. Every weekday morning I read them over coffee (since I live in the Far East, they are updated while I’m asleep). Needless to say, it helps to learn foreign language (in my case, English). But what I find fun most is to find a person who has a similar taste, way of thinking, etc., in a different culture.

  Books are a great source of joy and fun for me—collecting them, reading them, looking them up on the internet. It gives me great pleasure to open a “new” book whether it was previously used or fresh off the press.

  My weekly Latin class is a whole lot of fun for me. I have been meeting for four years now with a few other individuals to sight-read Latin, review grammar, and talk about whatever comes up in conversation. I fell in love with the Latin language in high school and never had the opportunity to pursue further study until now. And that has made me very, very happy.

  What’s fun for me? ANYTHING creative…anything! The BEST fun is the kind of coloring book that has a very complex picture on only one side of the page…and a new box of beautifully sharpened colored pencils. Next best…a piece of stamped material and the colored cotton floss required to complete the embroidery.

  Here’s a tough one: I do not find it particularly fun to sit on the floor and play with my children with their toys. I love cooking with them, reading to them, talking to them, watching movies with them, going on walks with them, and taking them to age-appropriate places. My idea of a really good time is to pick my five-year-old up from school and go out for a snack. But I don’t find playing with Polly Pockets (with the older one) or Little People (with the younger one) particularly fun. And I feel very guilty about that at times.

  For me fun is…debating, tinkering (e.g., inside the guts of hardware or software), building (hardware/software), reading blogs (all kinds), telling my kids stories of my youth.

  Seriously, I have come to the realisation that I don’t have fun anymore. I have got to do something about this before I become a glum, boring, sad person!

  * * *

  Like that last commenter, I wanted to bring more fun into my life.

  FIND MORE FUN.

  When I thought about fun, I realized to my surprise that I didn’t have a good sense of what I found fun. Only recently had I grasped one of my most important Secrets of Adulthood: just because something was fun for someone else didn’t mean it was fun for me—and vice versa. There are many things that other people enjoy that I don’t.

  I love the idea of playing chess, going to a lecture on international markets, doing crossword puzzles, getting a pedicure, eating dinner at a hot new restaurant, or havi
ng a subscription to the opera or season tickets to the Knicks. I can see exactly why other people enjoy these activities. I wish I enjoyed them. But I don’t. Some blog readers experienced the same tension:

  * * *

  Over the last few years, I’ve started figuring out what I really find fun. I realized I had a lot of stuff and activities in my life that I didn’t enjoy. These were things that others find fun, but they just weren’t to me. Accepting that what others find fun won’t necessarily be fun for me felt like a huge breakthrough. It’s hard enough to stay in touch with what’s fun for you without thinking that you should like something that others find fun. For instance, I enjoy movies, but there are cheaper activities that I enjoy much more. So, I have gradually cut them out of my life. I will go occasionally with a friend, but I don’t watch nearly as many as I used to and I used to watch a couple a week.

  My husband posed this question to me a year or so ago—“What do you find fun?” and I had to think long and hard about it. Most of my pleasures are quiet and solitary. I love to be absorbed in a good book; I love to do needlework; I love to make jewelry. I’ve given myself permission to say that that’s okay. I do love to play board games, though, especially with my children.