The following quote by Gretchin Rubin is a been-there-done-that thought I’m sure I can share with a few people: “In that moment I realized, I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasn't going to change unless I made it change.” It’s one of those jump-off points where one asks, “well, great what do I do next?” And then proceeds to make an effort or thinks something along the lines of “ I am happy, I don’t need therapy or anything, I have a good content life.”
The amount of “happiness” and “self help” there is for sale these days makes me further question the success of anti-depression pills and therapists. I’m not knocking everything about the American health care industry I’m just saying, I think that our society is so obsessed with a doctor’s exam and a prescribed diagnosis that we’ve forgotten in many ways that we can heal ourselves. Not to mention, that the answer to our problems or the cure to our illnesses may be even less known and understood by a doctor than by us.
“I decided to dedicate a year to happiness,” Gretchin Rubin blogs about the motive of her project and new book. Author of The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin is a Yale Law graduate and my newfound inspiration for the launch of my own happiness pursuit. I know, call me a biter, but I can’t help but think we’d all be a little less bitter if we spent more time focusing on what makes us happy. The Happiness Project is Rubin’s reflection on a year she spent focusing on finding her own happiness. From health, organization, attitude, spirituality, friends, family and love, Rubin dedicated a month to each new resolution. Creating her own commandments, holding herself to a daily one-sentence journal entry and keeping the whole situation light-hearted by referring to her “secrets of adulthood,” Rubin had the whole process organized into a twelve-month project.
To complement, and I’m sure to get a little self promotion in with her book, Rubin has created a website, entitled “The Happiness Project Toolbox,” where readers can start, chart and blog about their own “Happiness Projects” as well as read up on the projects of fellow bloggers. I’m not going to deny my own excitement about the whole thing, I am a self-proclaimed nerd when it comes to the self-help section of any bookstore and I do like the idea of starting my own “Happiness Project.” This is why, as of yesterday, I have joined the web community of fellow happiness seekers on happinessprojecttoolbox.com. So far I have six Personal Commandments, the two most pressing being “#5. Whatever the present is, be there,” and “#6. Sleep.” Being a noobie to the whole adult scene, I only have one “Secret of Adulthood” but I’d say it is relevant in learning how to feed myself properly: “You sure do spend a lot of money on food, so you might as well be buying the good stuff.”
Granted, my route so far in this journey to happiness is not yet as nicely charted as say, Rubin herself, but two days has given me a rough outline and like she said “every project is going to look different.” Well of course, unlike Rubin I am minus two kids, husband and apartment on The Upper East Side; but when it comes to having the desire to acknowledge every moment of happiness there is and create many more, I am right there. I wish I could get my roommates in on this project. We could start by the self-responsibility of removing the film of food that acquires on the stovetop daily, and then we could all bond over the experience of not waking up to each other’s filth.
I’m excited to see how my progress pans out. My focus for this month is my health: mental, physical and spiritual. I mean sure, I’d love to wake up and look like Beyonce like every other women, but I’d settle for waking up feeling like Toni the tiger over a bowl of frosted flakes, and that’s why I’m starting where all good things do: bed. My focus this week: sleep.
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