The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin Flashcards
(175 cards)
1
Q
According to current research, in the determination of a person’s level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts. In other words, people have an inborn disposition that’s set within a certain range, but they can boost themselves to the top of their happiness range or push themselves down to the bottom of their happiness range by their actions. 161
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2
Q
the opposite of happiness is unhappiness, not depression. Depression, a grave condition that deserves urgent attention, occupies its own category apart from happiness and unhappiness. 183
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3
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Benjamin Franklin is one of the patron saints of self-realization. In his Autobiography, he describes how he designed his Virtues Chart as part of a “bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection.” He identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate—temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity, and humility—and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues. 196
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4
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Research had taught me that the most important element to happiness is social bonds, so I resolved to tackle “Marriage,” “Parenthood,” and “Friends.” 229
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5
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I didn’t want to reject my life. I wanted to change my life without changing my life, 280
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6
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in the haunting play The Blue Bird, where two children spend a year searching the world for the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to find the bird waiting for them when they finally return home. 282
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7
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According to Aristotle, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” Epicurus wrote, “We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.” Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens. I wanted to be one of those people. 316
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8
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I didn’t want to wait for a crisis to remake my life. 327
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9
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Studies show that by acting as if you feel more energetic, you can become more energetic. 356
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10
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“Sleep is the new sex,” 359
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11
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one study revealed that along with tight work deadlines, a bad night’s sleep was one of the top two factors that upset people’s daily moods. Another study suggested that getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person’s daily happiness than getting a $60,000 raise. Nevertheless, the average adult sleeps only 6.9 hours during the week, and 7.9 on the weekend—20 percent less than in 1900. 362
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12
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study showed that 25 percent of Americans don’t get any exercise at all. Just by exercising twenty minutes a day three days a week for six weeks, persistently tired people boosted their energy. 410
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13
Q
With extrinsic motivation, people act to win external rewards or avoid external punishments; with intrinsic motivation, people act for their own satisfaction. Studies show that if you reward people for doing an activity, they often stop doing it for fun; being paid turns it into “work.” 424
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14
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Parents, for example, are warned not to reward children for reading—they’re teaching kids to read for a reward, not for pleasure. 426
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15
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In Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness, he argues that the most effective way to judge whether a particular course of action will make you happy in the future is to ask people who are following that course of action right now if they’re happy and assume that you’ll feel the same way. 444
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16
Q
The repetitive activity of walking, studies show, triggers the body’s relaxation response and so helps reduce stress; at the same time, even a quick ten-minute walk provides an immediate energy boost and improves mood—in fact, exercise is an effective way to snap out of a funk. Also, I kept reading that, as a minimum of activity for good health, people should aim to take 10,000 steps a day—a number that also reportedly keeps most people from gaining weight. 455
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17
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Nietzsche wrote, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” and his observation is backed up by science; exercise-induced brain chemicals help people think clearly. In fact, just stepping outside clarifies thinking and boosts energy. Light deprivation is one reason that people feel tired, and even five minutes of daylight stimulates production of serotonin and dopamine, brain chemicals that improve mood. 471
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18
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One study suggested that eliminating clutter would cut down the amount of housework in the average home by 40 percent. 479
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19
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Over the next few weeks, as I adjusted to my half-empty closet, I noticed a paradox: although I had far fewer clothes in front of me, I felt as though I had more to wear—because everything in my closet was something that I realistically would wear. 562
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20
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“Junk attracts more junk. If you clear it off, it’s likely to stay clear. 575
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21
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One of life’s small pleasures is to return something to its proper place; 611
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22
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Sometimes, though, the most difficult part of doing a task was just deciding to do it. 650
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23
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one of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success, 653
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24
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although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act. 657
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25
“It is by studying little things,” wrote Samuel Johnson, “that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.” 677
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26
One alarming fact jumps out from the research about happiness and marriage: marital satisfaction drops substantially after the first child arrives. The disruptive presence of new babies and teenagers, in particular, puts a lot of pressure on marriages, and discontent spikes when children are in these stages. 689
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marriage expert John Gottman calls the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” for their destructive role in relationships: stonewalling, defensiveness, criticism, and contempt. 700
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the worst of my bad habits was to focus on his faults while taking his virtues for granted. 718
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G. K. Chesterton echoed in my head: “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light” 739
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“What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.” 742
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the quality of a couple’s friendship determines, in large part, whether they feel satisfied with their marriage’s romance and passion, and nothing kills the feeling of friendship (and passion) more than nagging. 752
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“unconscious overclaiming,” the phenomenon in which we unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people. 783 when students in a work group each estimated their contribution to the team, the total was 139 percent. 785
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33
We hugged—for at least six seconds, which, I happened to know from my research, is the minimum time necessary to promote the flow of oxytocin and serotonin, mood-boosting chemicals that promote bonding. 815
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Fighting style is very important to the health of a marriage; Gottman’s “love laboratory” research shows that how a couple fights matters more than how much they fight. Couples who fight right tackle only one difficult topic at a time, instead of indulging in arguments that cover every grievance since the first date. These couples ease into arguments instead of blowing up immediately—and avoid bombs such as “You never…” and “You always…” They know how to bring an argument to an end, instead of keeping it going for hours. They make “repair attempts” by using words or actions to keep bad feelings from escalating. They recognize other pressures imposed on a spouse—a 839
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In marriage, it’s less important to have many pleasant experiences than it is to have fewer unpleasant experiences, because people have a “negativity bias” our reactions to bad events are faster, stronger, and stickier than our reactions to good events. 859
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It takes at least five positive marital actions to offset one critical or destructive action, so one way to strengthen a marriage is to make sure that the positive far outweighs the negative. 862
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Mark Twain observed, “An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.” 867
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most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women. Time spent with men doesn’t make a difference. 938
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Oscar Wilde observed, “One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy.” 968
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a phenomenon known as “health concordance,” partners’ health behaviors tend to merge, as they pick up good or bad habits from each other related to eating, exercising, visiting doctors, smoking, and drinking.) 971
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Hearing someone complain is tiresome whether you’re in a good mood or a bad one and whether or not the complaining is justified. 988
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Pierre Reverdy: “There is no love; there are only proofs of love.” Whatever love I might feel in my heart, others will see only my actions. 992
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one study, people assigned to give five hugs each day for a month, aiming to hug as many different people as they could, became happier. 1001
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if you want to know how people would like to be treated, it’s more helpful to look at how they themselves act than what they say. 1019
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One way to make sure that you’re paying attention to your spouse is to spend time alone together, and marriage experts universally advise that couples have frequent child-free “date nights.” 1096
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It’s not right that I show more consideration to my friends or family than to Jamie, the love of my life. 1118
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“Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,” 1139
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studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn’t relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces. 1142
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To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right. 1169
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To be happy, I needed to generate more positive emotions, so that I increased the amount of joy, pleasure, enthusiasm, gratitude, intimacy, and friendship in my life. That wasn’t hard to understand. I also needed to remove sources of bad feelings, so that I suffered less guilt, remorse, shame, anger, envy, boredom, and irritation. Also easy to understand. And apart from feeling more “good” and feeling less “bad,” I saw that I also needed to consider feeling right. 1172
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“Feeling right” is about living the life that’s right for you—in occupation, location, marital status, and so on. It’s also about virtue: doing your duty, living up to the expectations you set for yourself. 1179
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William Butler Yeats. “Happiness,” wrote Yeats, “is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.” 1187
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To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. 1202
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When you give up expecting a spouse to change (within reason), you lessen anger and resentment, and that creates a more loving atmosphere in a marriage. 1217
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A study showed that students who were happy as college freshmen were earning more money in their mid-thirties—without any wealth advantage to start. 1236
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Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability, it turns out, because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice. 1260
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My research had revealed that challenge and novelty are key elements to happiness. The brain is stimulated by surprise, and successfully dealing with an unexpected situation gives a powerful sense of satisfaction. 1303
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“People don’t notice your mistakes as much as you think.” 1335
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“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”—Anthony Trollope 1352
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One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self-definition. 1386
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Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened. 1387
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W. H. Auden articulated this tension beautifully: “Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.” 1396
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Robert Browning: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” 1402
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I applied to the prestigious writing colony Yaddo, 1407
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Benjamin Franklin, along with twelve friends, formed a club for mutual improvement that met weekly for forty years. 1431
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I began to organize my day into ninety-minute writing blocks, 1456
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Happier, Tal Ben-Shahar describes the “arrival fallacy,” the belief that when you arrive at a certain destination, you’ll be happy. (Other fallacies include the “floating world fallacy,” the belief that immediate pleasure, cut off from future purpose, can bring happiness, and the “nihilism fallacy,” the belief that it’s not possible to become happier.) 1478
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The arrival fallacy is a fallacy because, though you may anticipate great happiness in arrival, arriving rarely makes you as happy as you anticipate. 1481
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The goal is necessary, just as is the process toward the goal. Friedrich Nietzsche explained it well: “The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.” 1500
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Andrew Carnegie’s observation “Show me a contented man, and I’ll show you a failure.” 1551
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One study that examined a group of women’s emotions during their daily activities showed that they found “child care” only slightly more pleasant than commuting. Marital satisfaction nose-dives after the first child is born and picks up again once the children leave home. 1590
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the experience of having children gives me tremendous fog happiness. It surrounds me, I see it everywhere, despite the fact that when I zoom in on any particular moment, it can be hard to identify. 1609
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The days are long, but the years are short. 1705
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world’s greatest parenting experts, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, and in particular their two masterpieces, Siblings Without Rivalry and How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. 1707
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I discovered, just repeating what my child was saying, to show that I appreciated her point of view, was often enough to bring peace. 1720
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much of children’s frustration comes not from being forced to do this or that but rather from the sheer fact that they’re being ignored. 1723
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Studies show that 85 percent of adult messages to children are negative—“no,” “stop,” “don’t”—so it’s worth trying to keep that to a minimum. 1734
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Studies show that people tend to persevere longer with problems they’ve been told are difficult as opposed to easy. 1742
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Experts say that denying bad feelings intensifies them; acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return. 1763
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Studies show that recalling happy times helps boost happiness in the present. 1775
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Depressed people have as many nice experiences as other people—they just don’t recall them as well. 1778
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family traditions support children’s social development and strengthen family cohesiveness. They provide connection and predictability, which people—especially children—crave. 1799
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When my husband and I travel away from our children, we like to bring home little presents. But instead of just handing them over when we return, I make sure to pick the presents early in the trip, then allow my children to ask for clues. Each child gets one clue per day, and they have tremendous fun coming up with the questions, coordinating with each other about who will ask what, keeping a list of the clues that have been revealed, debating amongst themselves, etc. The gift itself brings them much less fun than the guessing game. 1859
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research revealed that a key to happiness is squeezing out as much happiness as possible from a happy event. 1898
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happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory. 1901
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“rosy prospection,” anticipation of happiness is sometimes greater than the happiness actually experienced. 1915
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happiness research that shows that people get a mood boost from contact with others). 1936
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One way to feel good is to make time for play—which researchers define as an activity that’s very satisfying, has no economic significance, doesn’t create social harm, and doesn’t necessarily lead to praise or recognition. Research shows that regularly having fun is a key factor in having a happy life; people who have fun are twenty times as likely to feel happy. 1964
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just because something was fun for someone else didn’t mean it was fun for me—and 2006
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Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction. 2085
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I can DO ANYTHING I want, but I can’t DO EVERYTHING I want. 2154
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“emotional contagion,” we unconsciously catch emotions from other people—whether good moods or bad ones. 2215
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Matthew Arnold wrote, “All knowledge is interesting to a wise man,” 2239
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“Where there is no wood, the fire goes out; and where there is no talebearer, strife ceases.” Proverbs 26:20. 2261
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just because something is fun for someone else doesn’t make it fun for me. 2341
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“fun” falls into three categories: challenging fun, accommodating fun, and relaxing fun. 2343
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Research shows that challenging fun and accommodating fun, over the long term, bring more happiness, because they’re sources of the elements that make people happiest: strong personal bonds, mastery, an atmosphere of growth. Relaxing fun tends to be passive—by design. 2353
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Andy Warhol observed, “Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.” 2363
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having strong social bonds is probably the most meaningful contributor to happiness. 2448
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Studies show that if you have five or more friends with whom to discuss an important matter, you’re far more likely to describe yourself as “very happy.” 2453
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researchers reported that out of fifteen daily activities, they found only one during which people were happier alone rather than with other people—and that was praying. 2460
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Not only does having strong relationships make it far more likely that you take joy in life, but studies show that it also lengthens life (incredibly, even more than stopping smoking), boosts immunity, and cuts the risk of depression. To keep loneliness at bay, you need at least one close relationship with someone in whom you can confide (not just a pal with whom you talk about impersonal subjects, like sports, pop culture, or politics); you also need a relationship network, which helps provide a sense of identity and self-esteem and in which you can give and receive support. 2462
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an Internet site, HappyBirthday.com, that sends out date reminders, 2477
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Generous acts strengthen the bonds of friendship, and what’s more, studies show that your happiness is often boosted more by providing support to other people than from receiving support yourself. 2506
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One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself. 2538
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“There is an ‘I’ in ‘happiness.’” 2554
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I use dinner parties as a way to connect people and to strengthen my relationship to all of them. The dinner parties are small—usually only 4–8 people—which allows for more in-depth conversation, and we put a lot of thought into matching all of the guests’ interests to bring about a natural source of conversation 2582
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people’s lives are far more complicated than they appear from the outside. 2635
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The “fundamental attribution error” is a psychological phenomenon in which we tend to view other people’s actions as reflections of their characters and to overlook the power of situation to influence their actions, whereas with ourselves, we recognize the pressures of circumstance. 2637
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Familiarity, it turns out, breeds affection. The “mere exposure effect” is the term for the fact that repeated exposure makes you like music, faces—even nonsense syllables—better. 2664
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“spontaneous trait transference.” Studies show that because of this psychological phenomenon, people unintentionally transfer to me the traits I ascribe to other people. So if I tell Jean that Pat is arrogant, unconsciously Jean associates that quality with me. On the other hand, if I say that Pat is brilliant or hilarious, I’m linked to those qualities. What I say about other people sticks to me 2695
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the amount of time you smile during a conversation has a direct effect on how friendly you’re perceived to be. 2721
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you’ll find it easier to befriend someone who is already the friend of a friend. 2752
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people evaluate their circumstances is to compare themselves with the people around them and with their own previous experiences. For instance, people measure themselves against their age peers, and making more money than others in their age group tends to make people happier. 2871
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It depends on how much money you have relative to the people around you and relative to your own experience. 2906
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Money doesn’t buy happiness the way good health doesn’t buy happiness. 2918
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Happiness theory suggests that if I move to a new apartment or buy a new pair of boots, I’ll soon become accustomed to my new possession and be no happier than I was before. 2981
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Studies suggest that satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers spend a lot more time and energy to reach a decision, and they’re often anxious about whether they did in fact make the best choice. 3143
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people who give money to charity end up wealthier than those who don’t give to charity. After doing complex number crunching to control for different variables, a researcher concluded that charitable giving isn’t just correlated with higher income; it actually causes higher income. 3186
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Happiness experts point out that merely making and sticking to a decision is a source of happiness, because it gives you a feeling of control, of efficacy, of responsibility. 3231
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Samuel Butler wrote, “Happiness and misery consist in a progression towards better or worse; it does not matter how high up or low down you are, it depends not on this, but on the direction in which you are tending.” 3269
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Money. It’s a good servant but a bad master. 3277
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Studies show that spiritual people are relatively happier; they’re more mentally and physically healthy, deal better with stress, have better marriages, and live longer. 3366
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Buddha counseled, “Of all mindfulness meditations, that on death is supreme.” 3372
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A common theme in religion and philosophy, as well as in catastrophe memoirs, is the admonition to live fully and thankfully in the present. 3405
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“There are times in the lives of most of us,” observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, “when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, 3406
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In the days after September 11, 2001, the emotion people most commonly experienced—after compassion—was gratitude. 3482
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Gratitude is important to happiness. Studies show that consistently grateful people are happier and more satisfied with their lives; they even feel more physically healthy and spend more time exercising. 3483
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People assume that a person who acts happy must feel happy, but although it’s in the very nature of happiness to seem effortless and spontaneous, it often takes great skill. 3687
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I set out to imitate Thérèse by doing a better job of acting happy when I knew that my happiness would make someone else happy. 3689
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It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. 3708
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Acting happy and, even more, being happy is challenging. Furthermore—and it took me a long time to accept this perverse fact—many people don’t want to be happy or at least don’t want to seem happy (and if they act as if they’re not happy, they’re not going to feel happy). 3709
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he’d raised the most serious criticism of happiness: it’s not right to be happy when there is so much suffering in the world. 3729
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research shows that happiness and intelligence are essentially unrelated. 3739
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The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. 3755
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some believe that if you allow yourself to be unhappy, terrible things will happen—most likely cancer. This kind of thinking isn’t new. During the Great Plague of London in 1665, for example, people believed that staying cheerful would ward off infection.) 3770
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Publilius Syrus observed, “No man is happy who does not think himself so.” 3778
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When people are faced with serious setbacks, a psychological mechanism kicks in to help them see positive aspects in the situation, 3796
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Samuel Johnson observed, “If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.” Science backs this up. When researchers tried to figure out what helped third-and fourth-graders remember what they read, they found that the students’ interest in a passage was far more important than the “readability” of the passage—thirty times more important. 3945
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I’ve always thought that the best reading is rereading. 3952
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Michel de Montaigne observed, “The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.” 4026
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John Stuart Mill’s view—and he gave the precise quotation from Mill, I was impressed—“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.” 4036
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only through recognizing my happiness did I really appreciate it. Happiness depends partly on external circumstances, and it also depends on how you view those circumstances. 4049
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Fourth Splendid Truth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy. 4052
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You’re happy if you think you’re happy. 4053
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The Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness was the book most often recommended to me. 4065
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mindfulness—the cultivation of conscious, nonjudgmental awareness. 4073
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Mindfulness brings many benefits: scientists point out that it calms the mind and elevates brain function, it gives clarity and vividness to present experience, it may help people break unhealthy habits, and it can soothe troubled spirits and lift people’s moods. It reduces stress and chronic pain. It makes people happier, less defensive, and more engaged with others. 4084
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One highly effective way to practice mindfulness is through meditation, 4087
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jolt myself out of automatic behavior and to awaken sleepy parts of my mind. 4103
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Zen koans (rhymes with Ben Cohen’s). A koan is a question or a statement that can’t be understood logically. 4110 The most famous koan is “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?” Another is “If you meet the Buddha, kill him.” Or “What was your face before your parents were born?” 4111
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Heuristics are mental rules of thumb, the quick, commonsense principles you apply to solve a problem or make a decision. For example, the recognition heuristic holds that if you’re faced with two objects and you recognize one and don’t recognize the other, you assume that the recognized one is of higher value. 4143
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True Rules—if you’re willing to take the blame, people will give you responsibility.” 4156
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I picked up a very helpful True Rule from my sister. Elizabeth told me, “People succeed in groups.” 4194
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Laughter yoga combines clapping, chanting, breathing, and stretching exercises drawn from yoga to calm the mind and the body, and the simulated laughter provoked by the exercises often turns into real laughter. 4272
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“Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.” Activities that contribute to long-term happiness don’t always make me feel good in the short term; in fact they’re sometimes downright unpleasant. 4306
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According to research, listening to music is one of the quickest, simplest ways to boost mood and energy and to induce a particular mood. Music stimulates the parts of the brain that trigger happiness, and it can relax the body—in fact, studies show that listening to a patient’s choice of music during medical procedures can lower the patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, and anxiety level. 4308
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Studies show that merely being conscious of eating makes people eat more healthfully, and one way to encourage yourself to eat more mindfully, experts agree, is to keep a food diary. 4334
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“Give something up” can be surprisingly satisfying. 4371
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A small child typically laughs more than four hundred times each day, and an adult—seventeen times. 4453
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study showed that New York has the country’s fastest-walking pedestrians), 4462
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Newcastle Personality Assessor test (try this) 4542
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people’s personalities can be characterized by their scores in five major dimensions: Extroversion: response to reward Neuroticism: response to threat Conscientiousness: response to inhibition (self-control, planning) Agreeableness: regard for others Openness to experience: breadth of mental associations 4545
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“Nothing,” wrote Tolstoy, “can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.” 4565
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studies show that people who are critical are often perceived to be more discerning. 4607
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Enthusiasm is a form of social courage. 4620
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Saint Augustine of Hippo includes the line “shield your joyous ones”: Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ; rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones; soothe your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones; shield your joyous ones. And all for your love’s sake. 4633
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I could usually make my point, even if it was critical, in a positive way. 4676
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human nature is that people have a “negativity bias”: we react to the bad more strongly and persistently than to the comparable good. 4701
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one reason that women are more susceptible to depression than men may be their greater tendency to ruminate; men are more likely to distract themselves with an activity. 4707
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The single most effective step for me had been to keep my Resolutions Chart. 4917
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You won’t wake up one day and find that you’ve achieved it. It’s something that you have to resolve to do every day, forever. 4931
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The feeling of control is an essential element of happiness—a better predictor of happiness than, say, income. Having a feeling of autonomy, of being able to choose what happens in your life or how you spend your time, is crucial. 4948
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(www.theyearsareshort.com) 4967
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To help you with your happiness project, I created the Happiness Project Toolbox Web site, www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com. 5036
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