Okay, call me a modern day Pollyanna but if I was going to adopt a religion, I think it would be "The Happiness Project." I came across it in a magazine and downloaded the sample on my Kindle just before Christmas because I thought it would be nice to start the new year off on a happy note - I was thinking it would be primarily a beach read. Instead, I found a whole new way to look at life EVERYDAY!
Gretchen Rubin is a writer who lives in the UES of New York and decided one day that while she was not fundamentally unhappy, she could stand to have more happiness in her day-to-day life. She set a goal to make herself happier over the course of a year and broke each month down into overall goals with specific strategies applied to each month (e.g.: March: Work on Marriage - Do a week of "Extreme Nice", etc). It was a very formulaic approach, which I appreciated because sometime when people say "I'm going to get happier" they go about it by "learning to see the beauty in things," or "stopping to smell the roses," yack. Gretchen takes a real life approach to this concept and God love her, she has her short-comings but she is very candid when sharing them - this girl has a temper and I must say I totally identified with her on most of her self-professed faults.
What I really loved were some of the conclusions she came to - she realized that by making herself happier she was really making others around her happier/calmer and their happiness made her happy (see where the Pollyanna thing comes in).
Having a good attitude / being nice are such fundamental, basic things that I've noticed so often gets overlooked or pushed to the side (especially in NYC). Sometimes you don't have the time to think of others or you dislike them and you don't have the inclination or sometimes it really doesn't occur to you. Taking a step back and thinking of how your actions affect those around is an absolutely fascinating project that I have been doing these past few weeks. Just looking at my attitude and how when I put on a happy face, others do too and we all have a better day - WOW, BREAKTHROUGH.
I can't wait to read this book again and if it wouldn't make me feel like a missionary, I would probably send gift wrapped copies to everyone I know so they can join the bandwagon.
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