Really? But then maybe if I cleaned out my closets, I’d have space in my brain to contemplate reading such worthy works. This all sounds more exhausting than my memories of working 110+ hours-a-week on call as a Junior Doctor! She lists 77 books in her happiness reading list, including for example Schopenhauer’s Parerga and Paralipomema and War and Peace. I do slightly suspect her salad was sprinkled with crushed amphetamines rather than the powdered sweetener she recommends. All this fuelled only by determination, diet coke and salad. By September she writes a novel in a month whilst converting her photo-albums and scrapbooks into shiny hardback books. In February she is exceptionally nice to her husband and tries to stop nagging both him and her two daughters (who I have to say sound like little angels compared to my three children!) In March she ‘aims higher’, launches her successful happiness blog, enjoys ‘the fun of failure’ (although the only example of failure I can remember is one occasion when she didn’t get a book reviewed by the Washington Post) and ‘enjoys now’. In January she works on her energy levels by joining a new no-sweat weights class, going to bed earlier, cleaning out her closets and tidying up every evening. Gretchen Rubin has lived her book – seven months planning her assault on happiness as thoroughly as any Everest expedition, then a full year of month by month assent to the peak. This is especially the case in The Happiness Project. I had planned to make my book reviews unremittingly positive, after all it takes a lot of time and emotional energy to write a book, and then to have some stranger come along and criticise it…? Books are an author’s baby, and as with babies, they take over their lives. Make a Difference: Change the World, Change Yourself.High School Happiness and Wellbeing Curriculum.Annotated Bibliography – Mindfulness & Positive Thinking.Review of Key Studies on Mindfulness & Positive Thinking.The Philosophy & Science of Mindfulness.To me, the idea of creating concrete change in my life through making lists is very appealing and I’m really enjoying the book so far. She mentions several times throughout the memoir that the Happiness Project is not a “one size fits all” process- it is highly customizable.Īccess several resources from Gretchen with this link! While she shares the monthly “themes” of her happiness project as well as her goals, Gretchen encourages the reader to look at their own lives and determine what will make them happy. Each month of the year, Gretchen dives into an area of her life and creates goals to improve herself and find happiness in that area. Creating a “Happiness Project” is more than a New Year’s resolution… it’s a year-long quest to improve your levels of happiness by addressing different areas of your life.

The happiness project com