Philosophers, psychologists and self-help gurus all have
advice on how we can be happier -- but what really works?
Journalist Gretchen Rubin decided to find out. She devoted a year
to "test-driving" happiness strategies and gathered feedback from
visitors to her popular Web site. She called her research "The
Happiness Project." Different happiness strategies work for
different people, but a few strategies stand out...
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Seek novelty and
challenge even if you value consistency and
comfort. I didn’t expect exploring new challenges to
make me happier -- familiarity and comfort are very important to me
-- but I was wrong. Trying new things is one of the most effective
paths to happiness that I have encountered.
The human brain is stimulated by surprise and discovery.
Successfully coping with the unfamiliar can provide a high level of
happiness. Repeating what we’ve done many times before can be
comfortable, but comfortable is not the same as happy.
Example: Launching and updating
a daily blog have brought me great happiness, though initially I
feared that I lacked the necessary technical skills.
Challenge yourself to do something that sounds interesting --
even if it’s different from anything you’ve done before or it
requires skills that you’re not sure you have. Take a class... try
a new hobby... learn a language... or visit a different town or
museum every weekend.
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Try doing whatever you
enjoyed doing at age 10. The person we are in
adulthood has more in common with the person we were at age 10 than
we realize. Renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung started playing with
building blocks as an adult to recapture the enthusiasm he had felt
in his youth. If fishing made us happy when we were 10, odds are it
will make us happy today... if playing the drums made us happy
then, it probably still will.
Example: I was given a blank
book when I was a child and really enjoyed filling it with
clippings, notes, cartoons, anything that interested me. So as part
of my happiness project, I bought myself a scrapbook and started
clipping items from magazines and newspapers to paste into it. I
was amazed by how much happiness I still could derive from
this.
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Read memoirs of death
and suffering. Paradoxically, sad books can increase
our happiness. These books put our own problems in perspective and
remind us how fortunate we are.
Examples: I became happier with
my own life when I read Gene O’Kelly’s
Chasing
Daylight, the former CEO’s memoir about learning that
he had three months to live... Stan Mack’s
Janet &
Me, about the death of the author’s partner... and Joan
Didion’s
The Year of
Magical Thinking, about the death of her husband.
It’s not that I’m happy that other people have been unhappy.
It’s just a way of appreciating everything that I do have.
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Declutter your
home. A few minutes of cleaning can substantially
improve one’s mood by giving us the sense that we have accomplished
something positive. Cleaning also creates an impression of order
that can contribute to serenity. And it helps remove a source of
stress -- conspicuous clutter is a visual reminder of a
responsibility that we have neglected.
Try a brief burst of cleaning the next time you feel
overwhelmed or anxious even if you don’t think it will work for
you. Even people who are not particularly fastidious discover that
this boosts their mood.
Examples: For me, cleaning out
a drawer... organizing my medicine cabinet... or just making my bed
in the morning provides a real boost to my happiness.
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Be appreciative of
people’s good traits rather than critical of their bad
ones... be thankful for what they do for you, and
stop blaming them for what they don’t.
Example: I stopped getting
angry at my husband for forgetting to withdraw cash before we went
out. Instead, I started taking it upon myself to make sure that we
had the necessary cash. I also made a point to be more appreciative
of all the things that my husband does do, such as dealing with the
car.
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Enjoy today even if
there’s still work to do. Many of us assume it’s
normal to live with limited happiness until some major milestone is
reached -- we earn that big promotion, have a family or retire. We
tell ourselves, I’ll be happy when I achieve my goals.
Example: As a writer, I
imagined how happy I would be when the book I was working on was
finally published.
Unfortunately, people who pin their happiness on a distant
goal usually spend most or all of their lives less happy than they
could be. Often they set ever more distant goals as the original
targets approach... or they discover that the goal that they
thought would bring happiness actually brings added stress. Some
never reach their goals at all.
I’m much happier now that I remind myself to be happy about
making gradual progress toward my goals, even if the goals
themselves remain far in the distance.