In June, I talked about wanting to take on a Happiness Project, as modeled off of the book of the same name by Gretchen Rubin. So whatever happened to that?
First, let me define Rubin’s premise. The premise of a happiness project is to devote yourself to changing little habits to incrementally change your mood and overall happiness. This book/idea is not the Eat, Pray, Love method of happiness transforming where one must take a physical journey to change their life, but rather tackles self improvement in a way that can be done from ones own home, with a pen and paper
That said, how did I do on my own defined happiness project? Well, I failed. I started tracking my habits and measuring my happiness throughout June, made it half way through July, and simply failed. I got distracted, busy, bored, whatever, but the point is, I didn’t keep up with it.
Part of this has to do with the fact that these last few months have been a bit…much for me to handle. I have had a lot of personal stuff happening, and as a result, trying to keep up with another thing just wasn’t going to happen.
I think also that ultimately, my happiness project wasn’t making me happy. It was adding happiness, sure, but the things I needed out of it were not being fulfilled because I was wanting it to fix all of my problems. And while changing my habits could help some of my problems, it certainly wasn’t going to help all of them.
I want to try again though, and update this blog on the topic, but I think I want to do something different. Like, three ongoing monthly goals that I check off once a month, as well as a set of tasks to grade myself on every day.
One thing I realized with my meticulously organized Excel spreadsheet is that I need to keep a paper list. I don’t turn on my computer every day(especially with my current day job, where I am never at a computer), and as a result, a paper list would be much more grounding.
What about you? Have you considered a Happiness Project? What have you done to proactively increase your happiness? Let me know in comments.
-M
Mehek Writes 