Book Musings: The Happiness Project

When it comes to books, my mantra is usually Fiction Or Die, maybe with the odd play or Gladwell-esque polemic thrown in for variety. If I find myself in the "self-help" section of any bookstore, it's because I'm lost, since the very idea of reading a stranger's recommendations on how to better myself goes against just about everything in which I believe. I hated myself for reading Eat Pray Love and loathed sitting through the movie (in transit to Indonesia, no less) even more. Maybe it's an English thing?

But, while wandering around Browser Books, I picked up a book that has caught my eye a few times over the past month: Gretchen Rubin's "The Happiness Project." The $15 price tag was hefty for a book I knew would never find itself, dog-eared and coffee-stained, on my shelf of favorites, but evidence suggests I've been working on my own Happiness Project of sorts, and, if nothing else, I figured it might make for an interesting blog post.

Rubin's unabashedly methodical approach to the cultivation of her personal happiness is researched and reasonably charming, if a little reductive and overly rational for my taste. She begins the project by establishing 12 Commandments, overarching principles that shape the Happiness Project and guide each of Rubin's 11 Resolutions. To each Resolution she dedicates a single month, yet the project is cumulative, so that by the end of the year she is practicing all 11 Resolutions simultaneously in the pursuit of a holistic and near-complete personal happiness. Along the way, Rubin stumbles upon Four Splendid Truths, key happiness principles that ring true across all commandments and resolutions. By the end of the year, yes, she is happier.

My personal concept of happiness is elusive enough to make it near-impossible for me to set about seeking happiness in such a regimented, methodical manner. But the very existence of this blog is testament to the fact that I've thought about happiness in terms that might be articulated. Sock monsters and Skittles are just some of the things that make me irrationally, ridiculously happy. This blog is a way for me to explore, record, and remember the others. And while any personal Happiness Project might not condense itself into such neat commandments, resolutions and compartments as Rubin's, as I closed the book and took inventory of the things that, truly, contributed to my personal happiness, I was left with what I shall call my 8 non-binding imperatives (non-binding because if I had to do all of them, every day, I imagine that they would prove more anxiety-inducing than uplifting).

Amanda's Eight Non-Binding Imperatives
1. Be curious
2. Create your own calm
3. Foster creativity
4. Feel good tomorrow
5. Go outside
6. Make things
7. Don't shoot fish in a barrel
8. Stop saying "OK"

This blog shall, by no means, be dedicated to any sort of formal Happiness Project, nor shall it orbit these eight imperatives (they are non-binding, after all). But Rubin's experiment certainly inspired me to make a more conscientious effort to actively pursue and document those things that I know without fail make me grin with careless pleasure.