Book #59: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

The full title of this book is actually The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, but I didn't want to make that the title of this blog post. I loved the idea behind this book: Rubin spends a year actively living resolutions intending to make herself happier, keeping track of her progress through a chart and changing the resolutions she was focusing on each month. She also did a lot of reading and research on happiness--through philosophers, psychologists, pop scientists, pop culture, etc.--and interweaves her discoveries throughout the book. She starts off in January by trying to improve her energy, and has resolutions like exercising better and decluttering her apartment, then in February focuses on improving her marriage by changing how she communicates, etc. It was so fun to read about the little changes she decided to make in her life, and how those changes really did impact the way she was living and interacting and feeling.

The cool thing about this project is that it's something that anyone and everyone can do--and everyone does attempt to do it with New Year's Resolutions (which we all inevitably forget about after a week or two, right?). But Rubin keeps it up by keeping a chart that she checks every single day--how did I do on not losing my temper today? She concludes at the end of the book that it was that chart that really made all the difference and helped her to keep her resolutions in focus every day. Anyway, it really impressed me how she worked at this and kept those resolutions, and makes me really want to do the same type of project at some point. Or at least just keep a few resolutions more responsibly.