My Happiness Project

I have now read through Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project three times over the last month, and I love it. The book focuses on incremental month to month changes building over the course of a year that is the culmination of research and simply living her life. Rubin’s happiness project was unique to her, her life, and what mattered to her. Her focus is on her energy levels, her marriage, her kids, and her career.

Now, my happiness project is going to be different from Rubin’s, just like if you did a happiness project, it’d be different.

I am setting mine up similarly to Gretchen’s, with a check off list of three or four things that I can keep up with and add to over the course of the months.

I have set up my project to start now, and to move from here. One of my Rules to Live By is to “Do It Now” so I figure waiting to start resolutions in January isn’t going to help much.

Here are my overarching themes for each month:

• June: Be An Adult
• July: Do What You Love
• August: Share your Time, Talent, and Treasure
• September: Hustle
• October: Give and Find Grace
• November: Career
• December: Plan Ahead

My goal is to take the goals of each month and carry them over into the next month, and keep doing that over and over. A lot of these are built on career and self-fulfillment, as well as building habits as an adult that make me happier.

It is absolutely gratifying to check off the little boxes each day as I complete each day’s tasks, and so far, I am finding myself calmer and more at peace with my day.

I plan to go into each month as each month comes up, so stay tuned for a follow up about my June resolutions.

Have you attempted a Happiness Project? Did you succeed? What’d you do? Let me know in a comment below.