the happiness project

I just finished reading the happiness project by Gretchen Rubin. She basically spent a year trying to figure out what made her happy and why and figuring out how she could make little changes to increase the joy she got from each day and how to identify and eliminate the little annoyances that can take it away. 

There were a few things in the happiness project that I found very interesting. One of her happiness resolutions was to "be Gretchen", or to stop doing the things that were supposed to make her happy, or the things that other people enjoy and really figure out the things that made her happy. 

She talked about how we can feel pressure to like certain things because we wish we were people who enjoyed them or because we think they are more intellectual or cooler than the things we really like, but if those things don't actually make you happy, or worse, actually make you feel bad about yourself or guilty because you feel like you should do them and you don't want to, then that can drain your happiness.

If you really love listening to Top 40 music, but you are ashamed because you think you should enjoy listening to classical, or jazz because it's "cooler" or "more intellectual" so you try to force yourself to listen to it. There is something to be said for broadening your horizons and learning new things, but at the end of the day, why not embrace the things that truly make you happy in life?

And I've never really understood people that say they have "good" taste in music because they like jazz or underground rap. Isn't that point of music to make you feel connected and happy? Any music that makes you feel good, is good music. The end.

Another interesting point from The Happiness Project was about how things like bad habits or nagging tasks can steal moments of joy from your day because you feel bad about eating junk, not calling your grandmother or not making that doctor's appointment.

I am a bit of a procrastinator myself, and I can definitely see that I would save myself a lot of time feeling guilty about not doing something if I just did it, and that some of my bad habits, while they may feel great at the time (like eating an entire bag of chocolate chips) lead immediately to feeling guilty, weak, and in my case, sick.

I'd never really thought of things like this as taking away from your happiness, but I suppose if there are little tasks and bad habits that are constantly weighing on you, it could be a major source of unhappiness that might be eliminated fairly easily.

One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was when she was researching the link between companionship/friendship and happiness. She found that for both women and men, the most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women. Time spent with men doesn't make a difference.

There are several reasons for this, including women being generally more empathetic, and better listeners. This point really struck me, because I know the times in my life when I have felt the loneliest, those are the times when I didn't have a lot of female friendships, or at least contact with women.

So basically, girls night out is very important, it's science.

You can learn more about The Happiness Project here.