It all began about 6 months ago when my sister's book club, comprised of some of her friends, chose to read "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. They live up in the central valley, but she invited me to "virtually" join their book club because she knew I'd be into it. So i began "The Happiness Project". I wouldn't quite call it a "page turner" (sorry, Gretch) as it's her story, and her pursuit of happiness. But i found it to be awfully thought provoking. About mid-way though the book i told my sister, all bright-eyed and inspired, "I'm going to do my own happiness project". She was like "yeah yeah, suuuuure..." :) And here we are...
So what exactly is this book?
"One rainy afternoon, while riding a city bus, Gretchen Rubin asked herself, “What do I want from life, anyway?” She answered, “I want to be happy”—yet she spent no time thinking about her happiness. In a flash, she decided to dedicate a year to a happiness project. The result? One of the most thoughtful and engaging works on happiness to have emerged from the recent explosion of interest in the subject"
... so here i am, little ol me, whose never been a "blogger" or a tweeter (did i say that right?? (#don'tunderstandtwitter... haha) or anything like that, has decided to set 2013 as the year of my Happiness Project. I recommend reading the book if you're curious, as of course I won't go into too much detail on EVERYTHING i learned from the book. But I'll try to summarize, and keep most of this short and sweet. though i am a rambler from time to time...
so in life, we all strive for happiness. "wishing you joy and happiness in the new year!"... isn't that nice? We always say it to one another, yet how often do we stop and ask ourselves "what makes me happy?" if we know what those things are, why don't we invest more time in seeking those thing out. or better yet, to help me identify what makes me happy, i had to also understand what makes me unhappy, frustrated, etc.. Once you figure those out as well, you can better identify the opposite that will bring you joy!
According to the book:
Identify your aims
The First Splendid Truth will help you identify areas to tackle in your Happiness Project.
Ask yourself:
▪ What makes you feel good? What gives you joy, energy, fun?
▪ What makes you feel bad? What brings you anger, guilt, boredom, dread?
▪ What makes you feel right? What values do you want your life to reflect?
▪ How can you build an atmosphere of growth—where you learn, explore, build, teach, help?
So, based on this belief, and following the structure of the book, i came up with 12 categories, or resolutions, to which i will focus my happiness project on. Each month, i will focus on a new resolution, and hopefully be able to keep the previous month as well! To track if I'm actually making progress, the resolutions need to be concrete and manageable. So instead of "exercise more", I'll be more specific and say "exercise 20-30 minutes every day". To hold myself accountable, I've created charts that will hang in our office/spare room in our house. I've even dedicated a whole wall to this Happiness Project! Hey, I'm a visual person!
so here are my monthly resolutions:
january: vitality
february: selflessness
march: growth
april: relationships
may: marriage
june: passion
july: money
august: work
september: mindfulness
october: spirituality
november: attitude
december: keep them all
As I started mapping everything out, i got excited at the thought of turning this into a challenge, a game! what will i learn about myself through this project? how will i grow as a person? i think one belief I have about happiness is, well... it's almost like doing a good deed. You shouldn't do a good deed so other people can see you and congratulate you, you do it because you want to. It's kind of the same idea, at least in my mind. If you want to make changes in your life to better yourself, great! Do it, but do it quietly.. you don't need to broadcast it for all to see! It kind of defeats the purpose to me. So even though in the book, Gretchen encourages blogs and going public with it all, i never thought twice about it... NO WAY! after all, that goes against my core belief on happiness! why would i want to write about it?? I should do this project for myself, because i want to, and not to show other people like "hey, look at me, I'm happy!?"
with that said......
So in mapping out my happiness project, i got to my Growth and Selflessness resolutions. I knew I wanted to work on these 2 things, and i came up with concrete ways to do it. And, as you will learn later, creating this blog is fulfilling those two resolutions in their own way. So please forgive me, in advance, if this whole blog idea seems weird and self-centered. if anything, it's supposed to be just the opposite. maybe, just maybe, it will help inspire someone to do the same!
Throughout the book, Gretchen talks about her "twelve commandments". These were principles that kept emerging as she made her resolutions. They will be interesting to keep in mind as I work through my own happiness project.
My thirteen commandments (i couldn't narrow it any more!) to help keep me on track are:
Be Alysha.
Laugh at yourself.
Be nice. To everyone.
Act the way you want to feel.
Do what ought to be done.
Stop the venting and complaining.
Choose to not take things personally.
Start where you are.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Let go, let God.
Be silly. Be light.
Spend out.
Stop buying useless crap...Own less, love more.
She also comes up with another list i found super interesting: Secrets of Adulthood. These are lessons she'd learned with some difficulty as she grew up. I like this concept... that some things just take a few hard years to actually sink in...
So my Secrets of Adulthood, that I have pulled from many different places, are:
There is only love.
The things that go wrong often make the best memories.
It's easy to be heavy: hard to be light.
What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
People don't notice your mistakes as much as you think.
The days are long but the years are short.
It's okay to ask for help.
By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.
It's important to be nice to everyone.
You don't have to be good at everything.
If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.
You can choose what you do, you can't choose what you like to do.
Wow, this blogging thing took longer than I thought. So tomorrow I will go into more detail about my first resolution for January! Happy New Years day everyone, here's to an amazing year ahead!!
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