Happiness Tips from the Happiness Project

Gretchen Rubin's as-yet-un-subtitled Happiness Project is centered on coming up with a formula achieving happiness. It is a one year journey that she is just part way through. However she had already come up with the first two parts of her happiness formula and just this week added her third.

The first two:

1. To be happier, you need to think about FEELING GOOD, FEELING BAD, and FEELING RIGHT, in an atmosphere of growth.

While happiness can indeed just happen, the odds of it doing so are greatly enhanced if you consciously think about being happy. The "atmosphere of growth" is necessary to ward off hedonic adaptation--which is the tendency for humans to grow accustom to improved circumstances.

2. One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

If you are happy, you will be more attractive to others. People are just naturally attracted to happy people. Also, it's rare that doing something for someone else, even something as small as opening a door for a stranger, won't make you at least a little happier.

Now for the latest aspect of Gretchen's happiness formula:

There are four stages for enjoying a happy event:
-- anticipation (looking forward to it)
-- savoring (enjoying it in the moment – remember to turn off your cell phone!)
-- expression (sharing your pleasure with others, to heighten your experience)
-- reflection (looking back on happy times – so take pictures)

She explains:

Anticipation is a key stage; by having something to look forward to, no matter what your circumstances, you bring happiness into your life well before the event actually takes place. In fact, sometimes the happiness in anticipation is greater than the happiness actually experienced in the moment – that’s known as “rosy prospection.”

How can this make you happy now? Even if you have a calendar full of commitments that you'd rather not be doing, there is nothing stopping you from enjoying the anticipation of an upcoming trip, holiday, or other event. Don't think anticipation as that thing that happens before you get to have fun, think of it as part of the fun.

A reminder that LifeTwo's happiness week is coming up. Sign up for our monthly newsletter (see upper right hand corner) to be notified of all of the details. Prior to that, we encourage you to visit Gretchen's Happiness Project blog and to consider buying this book on happiness. Remember the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right but it's one you have to exercise to make work.