Happiness - In a Year

So, I finished both the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Happiness Project in the last week or so.  My book club is supposed to discuss Battle Hymn on Friday, so I think I'll wait until then to talk about it here.

But Happiness.  It was ... interesting.  And thought provoking.  And something I'm not sure I could tackle, but it sounds cool.  The premise is that the author, Gretchen Rubin, has something of an epiphany and spends a year focusing on happiness as a project - specifically, her happiness.  It's not as selfish as it sounds, and her background research and readings sound intriguing. 

She breaks the year down by focusing on a different aspect of happiness each month (playing, marriage, life passions, etc.), to produce a sort of cumulative effect over the year.  I'm not sure I'm organized enough or have the forethought to spend an entire year on something like that, but the concept is pretty cool.  I'm also not sure I have enough energy to do something like that.  There was a lot of record keeping and work involved, and I'm not sure I could overcome my inherent laziness.

I expected the book to be a little self-helpy and maybe a bit campy, but it really wasn't.  She had several excellent quotations scattered among the chapters (she has a reading list that looks quite interesting), and I've noticed my thoughts returning to the book several times in the last week or so as I encounter "challenging" situations.  No, it's not a panacea or silver bullet or anything like that, but it does remind me that some of my thought processes might be a little too well-ingrained, and it might be time to reconsider some assumptions.

I think one of her later chapters, Attitude, probably hit home most for me.  She focused on giving positive reviews, using good manners, laughing more.  To use one of her quotes from Tolstoy, "Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness."  This is something that I've lost sight of over the years, and this chapter helped bring a few things into focus.  Some of her self descriptions sounded eerily familiar - rushing past people in a hurry, not thinking of others who might need to go first, not offering to help when the chance arises, having more than my share of cynicism, and being a "deflater."

I could do with a little thinking outside of myself at times (okay, probably a helluva lot more than a little), and it was interesting to read the challenges faced by someone doing so.  There are plenty of things that I identified with in the book, and, on the other hand, just as many strategies that would never work for me.  But at the end of the day, it was an interesting read.  It has crossed my mind more than a few times since I finished, and if I can absorb a few strategies that help make me a little happier?  Well, I consider that a few bucks well spent.