Happiness Project
Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
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4.0 • 32 Ratings
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
What if you could change your life without really changing your life? On the outside, Gretchen had it all -- a good marriage, healthy children and a successful career -- but she knew something was missing. Determined to end that nagging feeling, Gretchen set out on a year-long quest, her own “happiness project,” to learn how to better enjoy the life she already had.
Each month, Gretchen pursued a different set of resolutions: go to sleep earlier, tackle a nagging task, bring people together, take time to be silly, along with dozens of other goals. She read everything from classical philosophy to cutting-edge scientific studies, from Winston Churchill to Oprah, developing her own definition of happiness and a plan for how to achieve it. She kept track of which resolutions worked and which didn’t, sharing her stories and collecting those of others through her blog (created to fulfill one of March’s resolutions). Bit by bit, she began to appreciate and amplify the happiness that already existed in her life. Written with humour and insight, Gretchen’s story will inspire readers to embrace the pleasure in their lives and remind them how to have fun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rubin is not an unhappy woman: she has a loving husband, two great kids and a writing career in New York City. Still, she could-and, arguably, should-be happier. Thus, her methodical (and bizarre) happiness project: spend one year achieving careful, measurable goals in different areas of life (marriage, work, parenting, self-fulfillment) and build on them cumulatively, using concrete steps (such as, in January, going to bed earlier, exercising better, getting organized, and "acting more energetic"). By December, she's striving bemusedly to keep increasing happiness in every aspect of her life. The outcome is good, not perfect (in accordance with one of her "Secrets of Adulthood": "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good"), but Rubin's funny, perceptive account is both inspirational and forgiving, and sprinkled with just enough wise tips, concrete advice and timely research (including all those other recent books on happiness) to qualify as self-help. Defying self-help expectations, however, Rubin writes with keen senses of self and narrative, balancing the personal and the universal with a light touch. Rubin's project makes curiously compulsive reading, which is enough to make any reader happy.
Customer Reviews
Fun and enlightening!
I enjoyed this book immensely. Although I do not find happiness in all the same ways as Gretchen, there are a lot of insights in this book that have made me examine my life. A fun, quirky and endearing read.