Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life

by Gretchen Rubin

  I don’t know if I have been able to write ten lines without being disturbed … however, for the love of God and my Sisters (so charitable toward me) I take care to appear happy and especially to be so. For example, here is a hay worker who is just leaving me after having said very compassionately: “Poor little Sister, it must tire you out writing like that all day long.” “Don’t worry,” I answer, “I appear to be writing very much, but really I am writing almost nothing.” “Very good!” she says, “but just the same, I am very happy we are doing the haying since this always distracts you a little.” In fact, it is such a great distraction for me … that I am not telling any lies when I say that I am writing practically nothing.

  Saint Thérèse emphasizes the importance of accepting gifts in the spirit in which they’re offered, instead of responding to the gift itself. She doesn’t want to be distracted with chitchat; she wants to write. She doesn’t want a bouquet in her lap; she wants to see wildflowers growing in the fields. But she takes “care to appear happy and especially to be so.”

  One memory that makes me squirm is that once, several years ago, Jamie brought home a big gardenia plant. I love gardenias.

  “Thanks,” I said weakly. “It’s so … big.” Inside, my thoughts were about my own limitations: “Where will I put it to display it properly? Can I take care of it? I’m sure to kill it in just a few days, as I always do, and that will be so upsetting. What a waste.”

  Gifts often strike strange chords in us. Andy Warhol observed, “You can never predict what little things in the way somebody looks or talks or acts will set off peculiar emotional reactions in other people.” Jamie’s gift set off a reaction of self-doubt, so I didn’t respond with the enthusiasm that such a thoughtful gift should have provoked. My husband knew I loved gardenias, so he bought me the biggest one he could find! I should’ve taken care to appear happy and especially to be so. Now I think of that gift every time I see a gardenia.

  (Reacting to the spirit of a well-intentioned gift wasn’t the same as reacting to a passive-aggressive gift. My friend’s mother thinks she needs to lose weight, so she’s given her running clothes, a certificate for ten spinning classes, and an electronic calories tracker—none of which were appreciated.)

  Reading Story of a Soul had me thinking about the importance of responding to the spirit of a gift, and I soon had a chance to put this resolution into action. I’m not very interested in jewelry—especially nice jewelry, which is too much responsibility—but uncharacteristically I’d decided I wanted a ring for my birthday.

  I don’t like choices. Almost every day, I wear running shoes, jeans or yoga pants, and a hoodie; I wear the same watch and earrings every day; I never carry a purse or nice bag, but always rely on my black North Face computer backpack; I don’t wear makeup unless I have a particular reason to bother. Every once in a while, however, I’m seized by the (admittedly, always temporary) desire to upgrade my look, and I liked the idea of looking slightly more accessorized without additional prinking.

  “I’d like a ring,” I told Jamie.

  “What kind of ring?” Jamie asked.

  “Something pretty. I don’t know.” Jamie has excellent taste in picking out gifts, and I figured he’d pick out a better ring than I would.

  About a week before my birthday, I picked up a voice mail message from a store clerk who had called to tell Jamie that his bracelet was ready.

  A bracelet? I hadn’t asked for a bracelet. A bracelet would interfere with my typing. A bracelet would have to match my outfit. I felt a rush of irritation. Why hadn’t Jamie just bought me what I’d asked for?

  Then I realized: Respond to the spirit of a gift! My loving, thoughtful husband had made a big effort, and probably spent a lot of money, to buy me a gift for my birthday. I imagined him going to the jewelry counter by himself, to pick something out. I was complaining because he’d bought a bracelet instead of a ring? How ridiculous!

  After Jamie brought home the package, he wanted me to open it right away instead of waiting for my actual birthday. I saw the long, slender shape of a bracelet box.

  “I know you said you wanted a ring, and I tried, but I just couldn’t figure it out,” Jamie said as I opened it. “That’s not something I can buy for you, without you being involved. So I got this instead.”

  “It doesn’t matter! I love my bracelet!” I held it up admiringly. It was a gold charm bracelet, with five charms on it. My favorite charm looked like a little book, with “The Happiness Project” written on the outside, and on the inside, the dates of our wedding anniversary and Eliza’s and Eleanor’s birthdays. “It’s gorgeous, I can’t wait to wear it! I love it!” And I did.

  “Respond to the spirit of a gift” is a resolution that’s so obviously right that I shouldn’t have to remind myself of it—but I do.

  ABANDON MY SELF-CONTROL

  The week before Christmas, we headed to Kansas City. In New York, we’d festooned our apartment with decorations, gone to The Nutcracker matinee, and accomplished some shopping, but it never really feels like the holidays to me until we see my parents, smiling and waving, at the Kansas City airport’s arrival gate.

  I’m so happy that my children have these regular visits, because relationships with grandparents are so important—and even relationships to the grandparents’ place. Both my parents come from the same little Nebraska town, North Platte, and Elizabeth and I visited my grandparents there every summer. I remember so well the things we did, what we ate, the way each room smelled. A key childhood memory for Eliza and Eleanor, I knew, would be Christmas in Kansas City.

  My parents had saved many of Elizabeth’s and my favorite playthings, and rediscovering these old toys is one of the traditions that Eliza and Eleanor (and I) enjoy most about Kansas City. At every visit, the girls drag out the worn stuffed animals, the wicker basket packed with the scratch-’n’-sniff stickers that Elizabeth had amassed over the years, the set of toy pots and pans. One afternoon, as we raced around a department store to finish some last shopping errands, I spotted an enchanting Christmas ornament miniature of my ancient Fisher-Price “Play Family House” that Eleanor had just set up on the bedroom floor. The tiny house even had a working doorbell. I had to buy it; even we under-buyers make the occasional impulse purchase. Added to the Shrine to Fun and Games, it would make a perfect memento for this Christmas of my happier-at-home project.

  But while I love the fun of Christmas, I dread its sugary temptations: gingerbread cookies, candy, my father’s Swedish pancakes. If I overindulge, I feel guilty and irritable; my holiday would be happier if I could keep this aspect of festivity in check. Resisting these treats, however, would strain my resources of self-regulation.

  Researcher Roy Baumeister has shown that we start each day with a limited amount of self-control, and as we use it—when we resist saying something inappropriate, wrench our thoughts away from a topic (to forget a pie in the pantry or an annoying exchange with a neighbor), or make tough decisions—we gradually deplete it. As our self-control gets used up, we find it harder to resist new temptations. If I use self-control to respond nicely to a nasty email, it’s harder for me to refrain from speaking sharply to my daughters. If I resist eating from the restaurant’s bread basket, I may end up eating half of Jamie’s dessert. If I force myself to finish writing up the weekly family calendar or push myself to drink water constantly, I may skip going to the gym.

  But for December, instead of working to strengthen my self-control, I decided to abandon my self-control.

  The opposite of a profound truth is also true, and oddly, I’ve noticed that many of my happiness-project resolutions are just as useful when framed in the opposite. Often, the search for happiness means embracing both sides of a contradiction. “Now” and “Wait.” “Get organized” and “Don’t get organized.” “Keep an empty shelf” and “Keep a junk drawer.” This month, at the same time that I would rely on my inner resources instead of the outer world to boost my happiness, I would rely on the
outer world instead of my inner resources to boost my happiness.

  Because self-control is a precious resource, I looked for ways to “Abandon self-control” and to exploit, instead, cues from the outside world. I tried two strategies that particularly helped me during December: abstinence and convenience.

  Abstinence

  Perhaps surprisingly, I’d found that one of the easiest ways to abandon my self-control was to give something up altogether.

  One morning in December, I’d woken up with a start. I’d forgotten about the graham cracker houses! Every year, instead of traditional gingerbread houses, we build graham cracker houses, which are easier to make and more fun to decorate. “We need to make the graham cracker houses this weekend!” I’d announced at breakfast. “Otherwise we won’t have time to enjoy them before we go to Bunny and Grandpa Jack’s house.”

  “Can I eat some of the candy?” Eleanor asked unhesitatingly. We buy lots of different kinds of candy to decorate the houses.

  “A little, within reason,” I answered automatically.

  For me, the one drawback of the graham cracker houses was the large assortment of candy that we’d have on hand to use for decoration. I love candy, and I knew I’d be very tempted to take a little candy here, a little candy there—one piece every twenty minutes or so, for a week.

  My active—well, yes, often hyperactive—desire to feel in control of my life encompasses a desire to feel in control of my eating, and I keep a tight limit on my indulgences. To some people, this restrictive approach might seem cramped or joyless, but I’m happier when I observe the odd rules I’ve worked out for myself, such as never to eat hors d’oeuvres, never to eat at a children’s party, and never to eat crackers (a rule I often did break).

  As I thought about the candy we’d buy, a thought struck me: “Maybe I should just decide to eat not one more sweet thing until January. Not here in New York, and not in Kansas City.” And the minute I decided to do that, I felt a huge sense of relief. It would be much easier for me to eat no sweets than to eat a few sweets.

  Samuel Johnson had supplied me with this insight into my own nature. When offered wine, Johnson declined, explaining, “Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.” That’s me! I’d realized. Johnson and I were “abstainers” who found it much easier to abstain than to indulge moderately. I’m not tempted by things I’ve decided are off-limits, but once I’ve started something, I have trouble stopping. If I never do something, it requires no self-control for me; if I do something sometimes, it requires enormous self-control.

  “Moderators,” by contrast, do better when they act with moderation, because they feel trapped and rebellious at the thought of “never” getting or doing something. Occasional indulgence heightens their pleasure and strengthens their resolve.

  Abstainers and moderators scold each other. As an abstainer, I often got disapproving comments such as “It’s not healthy to take such a severe approach” or “It’s fine to indulge from time to time.” On the other hand, as an abstainer, I wanted to tell moderators “You can’t keep cheating and expect to make progress” or “Why don’t you just go cold turkey?” But there’s no one right way; different approaches work for different people. (Exception: With an actual addiction, such as to alcohol or cigarettes, abstaining is generally the only solution. And in general, abstaining from alcohol helps people maintain their self-control, whether about diet, anger, spending, or anything else.)

  A well-meaning friend once admonished me, “Life is too short to miss the chance to eat a brownie.” Spoken like a true moderator.

  “No,” I shook my head. “For me, life is too short to let something like a brownie weigh on my mind. It makes me happier not to eat it.”

  “I really don’t think that attitude is healthy,” she said. “You’re too extreme!”

  “Very likely,” I said with a laugh, “but it works for me.” She might disapprove, but I knew myself.

  And so I skipped all the holiday treats. I didn’t eat a single piece of the candy we bought to decorate the graham cracker houses. I didn’t have even one bite of the freshly baked gingerbread cookies (or the raw cookie dough, which I found even more tempting), or the gorgeous towering croquembouche that my mother bought for Christmas Eve dinner, or the chocolate chip biscotti that Jamie baked, or the family-sized Skyscraper ice cream soda at Winstead’s. I ate anything else I wanted, but not sweets. And it was such a tremendous relief. This approach wouldn’t work for everyone, but it suited my nature. By giving myself limits, I give myself freedom.

  Convenience

  I also employed the weapon of convenience by making it easy to behave the way I wanted to behave.

  The startling research discussed in Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating demonstrates the degree to which convenience influences what we eat; we’re far more likely to indulge in a tempting food when we can easily see and reach it. In one study, when chocolates on a secretary’s desk became more visible after they were moved from an opaque to a clear bowl, consumption rose by 46 percent; on the other hand, ice cream consumption dropped in half after a cafeteria merely closed the lid of the cooler. To help me abstain, I wrapped holiday goodies in tinfoil and stowed them on a high shelf. Once they were out of sight, I forgot they were there. (Jamie retrieved desserts for Eliza and Eleanor.) Along the same lines, at a holiday party, I stood far away from the desserts-laden table. Inconvenience as a replacement for self-control works outside the context of food, too. Some people freeze their credit cards in a pan of water, to make it very tough to use them.

  Conversely, convenience can also help push us to take positive action. A friend moved his stationary bike in front of the TV. Now when he’s watching TV, he just hops on the bike. Another friend found it easier to take long walks after she got a dog. (In fact, one study showed that dog owners get more exercise, and enjoy it more, than people who go to a gym; 70 percent of long-term gym memberships are mostly unused, but a dog needs walking every day.) When we were on vacation, I often put on my gym clothes as soon as I got up in the morning, to make it easier to get myself to the gym.

  By lessening my dependence on self-control, abstinence and convenience strengthened my self-mastery. Self-mastery! So many of my resolutions came from my desire to gain more self-knowledge and self-control. The hardest victory is over myself.

  On the last day of December, when we were back in New York City, I ran into an acquaintance on the street. We chatted for a few minutes, and I thought, “Wow, this guy’s a happiness leech, for sure! I’d forgotten what a grouch he is.” He was polite, but I could feel his negativity wash over me.

  Every time he said something downbeat, I found myself countering with something cheery—uncharacteristically cheery.

  “I’m just so relieved that the holidays are almost over,” he said.

  “Really? I love the holidays,” I said.

  “I hate the crowds and the commercialism,” he observed.

  “I love the festivity,” I countered.

  This went on for several minutes, and after we said good-bye, I asked myself, What was that chirpy, albeit combative, persona I’d suddenly adopted? I hardly recognized myself.

  Preoccupied with our conversation, I continued down the street, and suddenly I glimpsed a pattern that I’d never quite seen before. Once I recognized it, it seemed obvious, but as one of my Secrets of Adulthood holds: It’s enormously helpful, and surprisingly difficult, to grasp the obvious.

  This is the pattern: Tiggers emerge in contrast to Eeyores, and Eeyores emerge in contrast to Tiggers. (In A. A. Milne’s classic children’s story Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger is the stubbornly optimistic, energetic tiger, and Eeyore is the persistently gloomy, pessimistic donkey. The reference is decidedly twee, but no other pair of well-known literary characters embodies this tension so perfectly.) In other words, people of pronounced positivity or negativity may polarize each other.

  Our emotions don’t exist in isolation. And while it’s clear that hap
py people lift people’s spirits, and that unhappy people spread their downbeat moods, I now realized that people can also spread the opposite emotion. Why? Because the Tiggers and the Eeyores sometimes engage in an emotional tug-of-war—the kind that I’d just experienced on that street corner.

  When Tiggers and Eeyores meet, Tiggers become ever more insistently cheery, and Eeyores become more negative, to resist each other’s influence. In a frustrating cycle, they oppose and exhaust each other. As Tiggers insist, “Hey, it’s not that bad,” or “Look on the bright side!” Eeyores insist even more emphatically on the correctness of their gloomier attitudes. The more Eeyores say, “It’s best to be prepared for the worst,” and “You’re not facing reality,” the more frantically Tiggers act as cheerleaders.

  So how can Tiggers and Eeyores cope with each other, and how might I have responded more constructively to my Eeyore acquaintance? Acknowledging someone else’s point of view, without trying to correct or deny it, slackens the tension, and in any event, it’s rare for either side to make a convert. Tiggers and Eeyores alike are proud of their identities; they aren’t going to be talked out of their positions.

  I noticed something further. Eeyore types often criticize the “fakeness” of extreme Tiggers, and they’re exasperated by this Panglossian refusal to acknowledge the dark side of life (to mix literary metaphors). But when I reflected about people I’ve known who might be considered extreme Tiggers, I saw a common thread: Many of them were facing a major happiness challenge in their lives.

  I suspect that, just as Tiggers and Eeyores try to counterbalance each other, Tiggers who seem to be trying very hard to stay positive, no matter what, are resisting being dragged down completely by someone or something.