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 by Gretchen Rubin
The Happiness Project is the engaging, relatable and inspiring result of the author’s twelve-month adventure in becoming a happier person. Written with a wicked sense of humour and sharp insight, Gretchen Rubin’s story will inspire readers to embrace the pleasure in their lives and remind them how to have fun.
This was an enjoyable book - and in its way reminiscent of AJ Jacobs lifestyle/stunt journalism books.... and not surprisingly had warm words from him on the back cover. Rubins does a nice job of detailing her quest to understand what can improve "happiness" - and provide tools (both in the book and related website) for others to follow in their own "happiness project."
This methodical approach to happiness oddly reminds me of the Agnes Sanford;s methodical approach to healing from God in her classic "Healing Light":
If we try turning on an electric iron and it does not work, we look to the wiring of the iron, the cord, or the house. We do not stand in dismay before the iron and cry, "Oh, electricity, please come into my iron and make it work!" We realize that while the whole world is full of that mysterious power we call electricity, only the amount that flows through the wiring of the iron will make the iron work for us.
The same principle is true of the creative energy of God. The whole universe is full of it, but only the amount of it that flows through our own beings will work for us.
Be that as it may - this was a fun book to read, and has left me thinking about little things I can do to increase my own (and others) happiness quotient.
