Book # 45

The Happiness Project

By Gretchen Rubin

I checked this book out the same time as the last one and I loved this one too. Not only did it have great ideas, but I really clicked with the author. She is just my speed.

She is an author, mother of two small daughters, happily married, resident of New York City, content daughter and d-i-l. She graduated in law, and was clerking for Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, when she realized that her real passion is writing. Wow! What a waste of money! Going to law school ain't cheap! I hope her books made her enough money to pay off her law school loans.

Anyway, she has a good life and one day she realized that she truly does have a good life and that she didn't appreciate it as much as she should. She wasn't as happy as she should be. She let the little things in life get her down. She thought that someday something big and bad might come along and she wouldn't be prepared for it, and so she decided that developing a habit of happiness would be a good idea. She decided to make it a year long project; her happiness project. And if you know me, I like projects. I like setting goals and resolutions. And I like what she said about the difference between goals and resolutions. "You hit a goal, you keep a resolution. 'Run a marathon' makes a good goal. It's specific, it's easy to measure success, and once you've done it, you've done it. 'Exercise better' is better cast as a resolution. You won't wake up one day and find you've achieved it. It's something that you have to resolve to do every day, forever."

As she began she realized that she had to have some guidlines to help her discover what was most important for her to work on. She came up with her Twelve Commandments. They were:

1.   Be Gretchen

2.   Let it go.

3.   Act the way I want to feel.

4.   Do it now.

5.   Be polite and be fair.

6.   Enjoy the process.

7.   Spend out.

8.   Identify the Problem.

9.   Lighten Up.

10. Do what ought to be done.

11. No calculation.

12. There is only love.

She also came up with what she called her "Secrets to Adulthood". I liked most of these.

~People don't notice your mistakes as much as you think.

~It's okay to ask for help.

~Most decisions don't require expensive research.

~Do good, feel good.

~It's important to be nice to everyone.

~Bring a sweater.

~By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.

~Soap and water remove most stains.

~Turning the computer off and on a few times often fixes a glitch.

~If you can't find something, clean up!

~You can choose what  you do; you can't choose what you like to do.

~Happiness doesn't always make you feel happy.

~What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.

~You don't have to be good at everything.

~If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.

~Over-the-counter medicines are very effective.

~Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

~What's fun for other people may not be fun for you--and vice versa.

~People actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts off their registry.

~You can't profoundly change your children's natures by nagging them or signing them up for classes.

~No deposit, no return.

In January, her resolutions were to boost her energy and vitality. 

She decided to achieve this by

~Going to sleep earlier.

~Exercising better.

~Tossing, restoring, organizing.

~Tackling a nagging task.

~Acting more energetic.

These are all things I know, and attempt to work on sporadically.

I keep thinking that I will get to sleep earlier when....my baby gets older, my current teenager is gone, school is back in session, school is out....you get the idea. Its never convenient to go to bed earlier. There is always something else I want to do, on top of the things I feel I have to do. 

As for exercise....oh lets not talk about exercise right now. Although I did take note about how she hired a personal trainer and made her workout time shorter and more effective.

I am funny about the third item. I go through cycles, about a 6 month cycle. I am unorganized and keep stuff for about 6 months and then I get sick of it and dejunk. I am organized for about 6 months and then I get lazy and start collecting again. Maybe some day I can make the disorganized time go away, or at least make it last a shorter amount of time. Funny thing is, I'm pretty good at hiding my clutter. I look so organized that I've had people ask me to help them get organized. I always decline. Partly because who wants to tell someone to get rid of all their junk and also because I know how frustrated I get when I become messy again, I think I would feel doubly frustrated at someone else.

I have my own list of nagging tasks. Some of the items on it, have been there for years. Others stay just a moment. Sometimes I add the task just after I've completed it, so that I can mark it off and feel satisfaction at success, and also to have a record of completing it.

The last item of "acting more energetic" is daunting to me. How can I go ride a bike with my son when I am too tired to go ride a bike. But I have found that when I FORCE myself to do it, I usually find the energy. And usually enjoy it a lot more than I thought I would.

February's resolutions were about her marriage and to remember love. This is one I don't need. I have the perfect marriage! My husband and I NEVER argue. HA HA. (I am a widow in case any of you reading this are strangers) But many of her resolutions can apply to children and other close relationships as well.

~Quit nagging

~Don't expect praise or appreciation

~Fight Right

~No dumping

~Give proofs of love.

When she began to elaborate about the first goal, she told the story of a friend who worked for a very difficult person. When she was being interviewed, the HR person told her that if she took the job, her new boss would be a man very good at his job, but extremely difficult to work for. The woman really wanted the job and so she decided, "there is only love". She refused to think critical thoughts about him, never complained about him behind his back, never listened to others criticize him. When asked if her co-workers thought she was a goody-goody, her answer was that they all wished they could do the same thing because he drove them crazy, yet she honestly could say that she liked her boss.

That is a lesson I wish I would have learned a long time ago. Like back when I was a newlywed. Or even when my husband was still alive. Its never too late to start being a better, more loving and forgiving wife. We had a good marriage but everything can be better and I wish I had been better.

Anyway....I don't feel like talking any more about this topic....sighhhh

Except..... I just came to a page I had dog-eared. She read a lot of marriage books during this month and there was a study she came across that I found very interesting. I am going to quote it so that it comes out right. "Perhaps because men have this low standard for what qualifies as intimacy, both men and women find relationships with women to be more intimate and enjoyable than those with men. Women have more feelings of empathy for other people than men do (though women and men have about the same degree of empathy for animals, whatever that means). In fact, for both men and women--and this finding struck me as highly significant--the most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women. Time spent with men doesn't make a difference."

AH HA! I already knew that. After Adam died, there was a family that we were close to that took us under their wing. She was, and still is, my best friend. Many of her children matched up with mine in age and so we spent a lot of time with them. We spent nearly every Friday night with their family and she and I saw each other nearly every day and if we didn't, we at least spoke on the phone. About four years later, they moved 2 hours away. It was hard on us all, and for the first time since Adam's death, I really felt lonely. It wasn't until then that I actually considered dating, and then remarrying. I wonder if they had stayed in our town if I would have married again.

March resolutions had to do with aiming higher in her work. She resolved to:

~Launch a blog

~Enjoy the fun of failure

~Ask for help

~Work smart

~Enjoy now.

The two that resonated with me the most of these was Ask for help and Enjoy Now. These are both lessons that I have learned and am re-learning constantly. I have always been a very capable independent woman but losing a spouse and having so much to do, has made it wise to learn to ask for help. I don't do it a lot, but I do it more than I used to. I ask my kids for help more because they were starting to believe that I didn't need or WANT their help. And they were not learning to help when they should. So we are getting it. And losing a spouse is a HUGE lesson in Enjoy Now. When I went to a get together of girl friends for the first time after his death, I told them, "Don't let a day go by that you don't tell him and show him you love him." There were a few husbands grateful that I shared this wisdom. lol...

Her goals for April had to do with parenthood and she titled the chapter "Lighten Up".

~Sing in the morning

~Acknowledge the reality of people's feelings

~Be a treasure house of happy memories

~Take time for projects.

Now this is something that I need...to lighten up I mean. I worry too much and I am way to serious. Just ask my 18 year old. My 8 year old will tell you that I do not like to acknowledge the reality of his feelings. All my sons dread my projects because it usually has to do with what they consider work. And if I sang in the morning, they would roll their eyes and probably ask me not to. My 13 year old, when he turned 2, started putting his hand over my mouth when I would try to sing to him, even though I had sung to him, and to all my babies from birth. Sometimes I sing in the car, but the radio drowns me out. I know I need to find my own ways to lighten up and I am. Happy memories? I hope they will have many.

May's subject was an important one for me. It was focused on leisure and was titled "Be serious about play".

~Find more fun.

~Take time to be silly.

~Go off the path.

~Start a collection

She talks about how she didn't have a good sense of what she found fun. I feel the same way. She said, "just because something was fun for someone else didn't mean it was fun for me, a vice versa." Discovering this was a major break through in my life. This wasn't a recent revelation, but a few years ago I finally got it. I have 7 sisters and one brother and they all have a variety of likes and talents. For a while I felt like I had to like and do the things they did. I have 2 sisters that have run marathons and for years I felt like I had to run a marathon someday. It was with a feeling of relief when I finally realized that I hate running and I would never run a marathon and that was OK!

I have a b-i-l that loves white water river rafting. Every summer he plans a trip for our family down the Snake river in Wyoming. This year I finally made the declaration that I do not enjoy river rafting. (You would have thought I'd said that I didn't believe in God or that I was gay, by their reaction. I am exaggerating but it is sometimes difficult to go against the flow in my family.) I am not afraid, (although I am concerned that an accident would occur and I would leave my children orphans) but I don't like being cold and wet and sitting on the edge of the raft for 2 hours hurts my butt. I would rather go and just relax and enjoy my family, and if I want to do something, hiking is a lot more fun to me. So this year I relaxed and hiked to the lake and it was great.

 A lot of things that I enjoy doing involve hard work. I have determined that I am a workaholic. I enjoy relaxing but when I am in action it is always working. Things that others do for fun don't particularly thrill me. I am satisfied with what I find fun, but being fun for my children is a challenge for me.

I liked what happened when she went off the path and I have had variations of that in my life before. She felt like she was pretty set in her ways and interests and so she decided to expand her mind and possibly her interests. She skimmed newspaper sections that she usually skipped, she looked into the store windows instead of just walking by, she started carrying a camera everywhere to sharpen her eye. And every Monday she bought 3 different magazines, ones that she had never read before, and then looked at them from cover to cover. That seemed like an interesting idea. maybe someday I will do it. My version was; one year, I was a member of Netflix and I watched a documentary for every regular movie I rented. Last year I started 2 blogs. For a period of time I read every magazine that the Jehovah Witnesses brought to my door. For a while I went to a spinning class even though I despise organized exercise.

June's resolution was to make time for friends.

~Remember Birthdays.

~Be Generous.

~Show Up.

~Don't Gossip.

~Make 3 new friends.

I love my friends. Some of my friends are closer than family. Some of my family are my best friends. I didn't have a lot of friends when I was young and so when I got older and made more friends, they became precious to me. But after a few years I noticed something. Friends come into our lives and sometimes friends go out of our lives, and that was hard on me. I thought I had to nurture every relationship that had ever blessed my life. But as time wore on, I discovered this was impossible and unrealistic. So I've had to pick the ones that are most important to me and give them what I could. I have a s-i-l who gave me great advice; "decide what it means to you to be a good _______ (mother, daughter, friend, etc) and then do it. So, some friends get a Christmas card, while others get more of my time and energy and feeling. It is still hard on me at times, but it is what it is.

ARG! OK! I don't know about you but I've had enough. I really enjoyed reading this book but I am not getting through this post very fast. I have checked the book out from the library 3 times. SO, as much as I hate to leave anything undone, I am done. If it has aroused your interest, you can read it yourself, or go to her blog, www.happiness-project.com.

Until next time :o)

The Happiness Project

As you know, this blog is dedicated to book reviews. You may have been wondering why my posts are sparse at times. Well, in honor of the book I am currently trying to write about, I wanted to show you my "happiness project". 

My Garden

In April of 2008, I bought the empty 1/3 acre across the street from my home. I wish I had a picture to show you of what it looked like then but I don't. It had a broken down fence around it, a few scraggly trees, a huge pile of weeds that the neighbor had scrapped together, trash, and gravel strewn across it. 

I remember the first day we worked on it. I had news that the sale was going through and so on General Conference weekend, I took my boys out and we cleaned up trash between sessions. I'm sure they were less than thrilled but I was in heaven. A family project! What can be better?

Next, my boys and I and the neighbor kids burned the pile of weeds, and what an adventure that was! When I say pile, I don't mean a little pile, like the one you make with your leaves in the fall. This pile was about 40 feet across and 4 feet high in some places. The pile had been there for quite some time and if I'd been smart I would have poured a ring of gasoline around the whole pile, but I wasn't smart. As we set one end on fire, dozens of mice ran out of the other side. It was mayhem. A dog, a cat and a bunch of kids all chasing mice. Meanwhile, I was trying to make sure this gigantic fire didn't get out of control and set a neighboring house on fire. We didn't have water on the property yet and so we were using the neighbor's hose. She didn't realize that the plumbing had a leak in it and while we were happily spraying the perimeter, water was spraying in her basement. Oh no! 

We pulled down the old fence, cleaned up the trash, dug out the trees, and scraped off the gravel. I had a contractor friend come and put up a new fence and gate and bring city water to the property. I brought in a couple of loads of manure. I had it tilled and laser leveled. Then I planted. The first year I planted about 10 rows all the way across. On the east side, almost everything died. I attribute it to the bad compost that was dumped on that side, and also that was where the majority of the gravel was. The next year, I was going to plant only on the west side but I had remarried to a man named Mr. Know-it-all-and-we're-going-to-do-it-my-way. He didn't want to hear anything I had to say about it, cuz he thought he was the expert gardener. Even though he had gardened in lush green Idaho and this was Utah, where the climate, soil, and insects are different. Even though he had only grown small gardens and mine had always been larger. So, not wanting to fight, I shut my mouth. I got my revenge a little later as he was showing me how you how hoe your trenches--by hand. The soil was hard and it was a lot of work. So I just watched him. Then when he was on the second to last row, I said, "Gee that would be a lot easier if we used my tiller first to soften up the soil." He was mad but it was oh so worth it! Then when the east half of the garden started dying, I got to hear him whine about it. When I finally told him that everything had died on that side the year before, he was mad that I hadn't told him. I reminded him that he didn't want my input. Anyway. I finally let him know that he really wasn't welcome out there because it was my place of peace and refuge. He honored that, EXCEPT for the sunflowers.

He insisted that we plant a row of sunflowers. Now understand, that when your garden is a 1/3 of an acre, a row is pretty long. Maybe it was only half a row but it was still 75 sunflowers. Yep, that's what I said. 75. I am not a sunflower seed person. I am not one of those people who buys packets of them still in the shell and spits the shells all over the place as they eat them. I buy them shelled at about $1.50 a pound and count myself blessed that I don't have to shell the silly things. But he thinks they are so cool and if one sunflower is cool, then a whole row of them must be cooler. Yeah, sunflowers are cool, Except that they take a lot of water. Except when our Delta winds blow. Except when the birds want to eat them. Except when the weather foils your plans. Except when it comes time to harvest them. I paid the water bill, not him. And when the wind blew, we had to go out and stake them up so they wouldn't blow over.  I was fine with letting the birds have them but he was not good about sharing and so we went out and covered all 75 heads with plastic grocery sacks.  Then it rained and the heads started getting moldy inside the bags and so while he was at a conference,  he called and instructed me to go out and take the bags off. Grrrrrrrrrr! Then with winter coming on and a storm blowing in, we harvested the heads and threw them onto a tarp and wheeled them into the garage in the wheel barrow. As we were doing so, he instructed us on how WE-- meaning me and my boys-- would go about getting the seeds off the heads. "Wait a minute!" I said. "This was your idea and I told you that I wasn't going to harvest all those seeds, right from the beginning. You can harvest them yourself." Guess what? They rotted in the wheelbarrow. The birds didn't even get to eat any. And we saved the damn stalks too because he thought they would come in handy someday. HA! I should have sharpened one of them and used it as a spear. But divorce papers worked too.

Meanwhile, the garden is mine again, and it is my happy place. Nothing is better than getting up at sunrise and going out to the cool of the garden and working, watering, pulling weeds, harvesting, talking to the plants, to myself, to the bees, to the neighbors cat, and to God. Thank you God for blessing me with a garden.