My Happiness Project

I’m sure a lot of you have heard of “The Happiness Project.” I found out about it last fall and was intrigued enough to put Gretchen Rubin’s blog in my Google reader. Since then I haven’t looked at it much but a post the other week grabbed my attention and afterwards convinced me to buy the book.

What was this post? I can’t remember the exact details but it was a list of “heuristics” or rules of thumbs she had written for herself to remember when she needed to make a decision.

For example, here are a few of her heuristics:

• Whenever possible, choose vegetables.
• Exercise every day.
• Try to attend every party or event I’m invited to.
• “Yes” comes right away, “no” never comes.

In this post she was re-examining her rules, which then made me wonder what rules of thumbs I would create for my own life. Well, I haven’t come up with that list yet and I don’t think I’ll have it anytime soon, but I have decided to read her book this year, one chapter at a time.

After reading the introduction to this book I learned this book is not for people who are depressed, which is great, because I know I’m not “depressed” and actually consider myself a pretty happy person. This book is more about making your life better. You only have one so why not make it even better, right? The idea is to consider ways in which you could improve habits/rituals in your daily life and to focus on one aspect of your life at a time throughout the course of a year. Rubin dedicates each month of the year to one quality she wants to improve and the idea is your habits will change within that month which you would continue as you began to work on another aspect of your life. If this works, think about where you will be in a year!

I read the first chapter the other night. Rubin decides to spend the first month on “boosting energy.” Her list of traits to work on for this month are to exercise, sleep more, de-clutter, and tackle the nagging items on her “to do” list. All of these things sound like qualities I’d like to improve. My hope is to get into the habit of actually tackling the things I need to get done around the house instead of letting them nag me for months on end. I want to actually find the energy to get my “to do” list accomplished this month and it’s a long one.

So… yesterday I woke up excited to tackle something. As I sat up in bed and looked around the room I noticed how frustrated I was with my husband’s clothes. They were piling out of his drawers and we had a slew of his button-down shirts hanging from our bedpost instead of on hangers in the closet. He also was complaining about not finding an undershirt and pair of underwear and asked if there were clothes in the dryer. Nope. I had done all the laundry the day before so I knew he had those things somewhere – he just couldn’t find them. Right then I decided what I was going to do that morning. I had been telling myself that I was going to get him to tackle this task on the weekend himself, but every weekend has come and gone. I realized this was never going to get done unless I did it myself. Plus, it was probably bugging me more than him. Well, I have to say, it was a lot less work than I had predicted and I felt GREAT afterwards. I also noticed what a better mood he was in when he came home that evening and found all his clothes organized.

I decided to write about this on my blog because I know I’m going to want to share the things I organize this month and now you’ll know why and where I’m coming from. If anyone else wants to do this with me and dedicate this month to boosting your energy, I’d love to have someone to chat to about what you’re doing. Again, it’s just about making your life even better.

Now I’m off to change the air filters and take all the clothes I decided my husband didn’t need to a donation center. By the end up this month I’m expecting my house to be de-cluttered and organized which I know will boost my mood each day.

I hope you all find some energy to tackle something on your “to do” list today. If not, there is always tomorrow.