the happiness project

Being happy has always been wayyyy up there in my resolutions. The biggest reason for this is that I'd love to see everyone in this world as happy as I find myself most days, and the best way to start to accomplish that is to be happy myself! Over the years I've found many ways of keeping my happiness levels up and trying to boost other peoples as well, but it's a work in progress.

I'd love to be perfect, to never be irritable or rude, to always put everyone else in the world before myself, to do the right thing all the time. I've been blessed with a wonderful life; especially the fact that I have such an amazing family and now, SUCH an AMAZING boyfriend. :) I have no reason not to be happy but sometimes I let life get me down. So I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about happiness and how it directly relates to my life, the life of the people closest to me, and the lives of everyone I come in contact with.

something I just remembered: the other day, someone I work with said to me, "Clare, you're so full of smile." That comment made me smile so hard the rest of the day, and also whenever I think about it. That comment meant more to me than any other kind of compliment on my appearance could have ever meant. (It also made me think, I need to give out more compliments! They make people feel great about themselves!)

I went to the library searching books on happiness and picked up this one. I've carried it around with me for about 2 months (it's a month overdue....hehehe) before I finally broke down and bought my own. It came yesterday! I have a hard time buying books sometimes because there are a lot of other pressing needs I have to pay for, and I worry that I'll read the book once and never look at it again. But this book is a treasure trove of information, it caused me to think so hard and so long about my life and my actions that I know I will return to it again and again.

The premise of the book is one relatively happy woman's quest for happiness. To enjoy every moment, to not commit actions she will later regret, to stress less and to live more. To accomplish these goals she sticks to a rigid one year happiness plan, using each month to focus on a different area in her life. While I'm not sure I could commit to something of this scale, the ideas in the book have inspired me beyond belief to reexamine my actions, thoughts, and attitude every single day.

Gretchen Ruben, the author of the book, has a blog of her own as well as something she calls a happiness project toolbox which will give you all ideas to start your own happiness project. Focusing on becoming a better person and striving for happiness, for ourselves and those around us, is something which I think is extremely admirable. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE. Although a lot of the ideas in the book are thoughts which have already floated through my head, seeing them on paper, from someone else's head, made a world of difference as to my idea of the importance of these thoughts.

I'm still working on becoming a better person, and I'm in the process of developing some resolutions of my own. But that's a blog post for another time :)