Lots of gratitude to my kindle, because I’ve managed to read a lot more than normally these past months. I’m definitely getting reading more into my normal day routine and perhaps one day I can get back to my teenaged years of devouring books by the dozen. For now, I’ve finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (affiliate link to Amazon) – I had started in October and posted about. Although you might think I’m probably the slowest reader in the world, I’m happy to have gotten through the book. How’s that for a happiness project?
I think of the book as a bit like The Artist’s Way that I’ve posted about before. It’s definitely a record of Gretchen’s year-long happiness project, but she shares her insights and experiences in hopes to inspire you to start your own happiness project. So you can definitely use it as a guide to go through a year of various happiness resolutions. I’ve definitely drawn out a lot of “food for thought” tid bits from the book. By no means a scientific approach to understanding the science of happiness – I had kind of hoped for more mentions of studies about happiness (listening to Radio Lab too much perhaps…) In reality, the book is more like a crafty DIY guide, documenting a year of happiness boosting attempts. I like it!
I don’t know if I can take on a project of that sort right now in my life, but just by reading the book I’ve gained insight. I think most of all, it’s about being more aware of what we do, how we do it and how we feel. I’ve certainly stopped more than once to think about what really makes me happy. What activities contribute to my happiness and how I can reduce crabbiness and grumpiness. I feel that I’m already more in tune and attentive to my own behavior. Even when it’s a bit too late to take back what I say, at least I can immediately say sorry and correct myself. Sometimes I feel like I missed all of this education and experience as a kid… maybe we should be teaching our kids these happiness ways of living, huh? It’s just a really interesting way to think about happiness and living.
Turns out there’s a whole website setup for people to start their happiness projects, according to how Gretchen approached it. If you are interested, definitely check out the book and the website for more info. Cheers!
