BOOK CLUB: The Happiness Project

This week I was thinking about Gretchen Rubin’s happiness project. Gretchen Rubin’s happiness project is perhaps my unhappiness project.

I want you to close your eyes.Imagine yourself living on the Upper East Side, your adoring husband and two healthy and academically gifted young girls trailing behind you. You’re invited to parties. You have friends. You have a nanny. You have an office and you can afford to pave it with bluebirds without a care. Yet something is missing. You spend most of your time (it seems) thinking about how you aren’t acknowledged enough for the good you do, how it doesn’t count for enough, and griping at your family for not following what you want or acknowledging your actions enough. You ready? You got it? Congrats – you might just be Gretchen Rubin.

See, I’d have a lot more stock in Rubin if she’d literally any chops of her own. But she admits to being relatively happy, incredibly privileged – and refuses to engage in therapy. Perhaps in refusing to do so, or otherwise, she neglects to tell the reader what she has overcome that gives her the right to preach to us about being happy. Because without that information, this comes across as, ‘I was bored and trying to deal with the ennui of being a person who is finite and can’t possibly matter to everyone, so I wrote this book and spent a year giving myself gold stars to fix it.’

Alright. Gretchen is a self-described perfectionist. I accept that. But a lot of what being a happier person looks like for her, is also…being a better person. It’s griping less. It’s complaining less. It’s buying shit she doesn’t need and pestering her unbelievably patient friends to let her clear out their closets. It’s downright preachy, and coming from someone whose wealth, health, and familial security I can probably never hope to match, it’s not genuine. Being a better person is all very well – kindness and community is a large part of being happy. Being good to others makes us happier. But Gretchen can’t hope to deal with any of the initial stages of developing self-worth this way. I guess she doesn’t have to, though, since she’s too busy battling that one kind of bad book review her Churchill biography got once. Also, this does not STOP. It’s always ‘my time as a Supreme Court clerk’, ‘my Yale degree’, ‘my very rich and obedient husband’, ‘my adoring daughter’. It makes it so hard to relate to her, because the entire thing seems like a humble-brag about her whole damn life. Like, Gretchen always says, ‘identify the problem’. In one major case of what brings her misery, the problem is her not having a set-aside place for her to put things she wants her daughters to remember. Her solution? A box. Great. Thanks, Gretchen. A box.

So, what is this book about, aside from a rich white woman figuring out how to best use her privilege to her advantage? I’ll summarise. She sets aside twelve commandments, and twelve month-long mini-projects where she has a theme and actions in correspondence with the theme. Some of the more useful things (hint: all of them can be found elsewhere, because Gretchen has not had an original thought in the whole book):

• don’t complain for a full week
• start a gratitude journal
• keep a line a day journal
• be authentic (she says ‘Be Gretchen’ like, every four lines)
• exercise regularly (DUH)
• learn to laugh at yourself
• buy the happiness you can (as in, spend your money on quality things that make you happy. That is, if you’re not living paycheque to paycheque)
• make time for friends, and make room for likeminded people
• try to stop needing affirmation from others

This is mostly good advice (I should fucking hope so, she cites enough secondary research to fill a library), but the lens through which it is delivered makes it patronising and condescending. I’d suggest you take your reading to a summary or a review of this book instead. However, the last few pages do tell you how to start your own happiness project, and the ‘truths’ (platitudes) that Gretchen works with, and I’ll gladly write them here so that you don’t have to buy this!

‘Secrets of Adulthood’ (so trite I could just die)

• We’re more like other people, and less like other people, than we suppose.
• Things often get harder before they get easier.
• It’s easier to keep up than to catch up.
• The things that go wrong often make the best memories.
• We can’t make people change, but when we change, others change, and a relationship changes.
• Most decisions don’t require extensive research.
• Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.
• Every room should include something purple.
• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
• Nothing stays in Vegas.
• When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
• Starting again is harder than starting.
• Go slow to go fast.
• Don’t expect to be motivated by motivation.
• Everything looks better arranged on a tray.
• Something that can be done at any time is often done at no time.
• It’s easier to change your surroundings than yourself.
• The days are long, but the years are short.

To be honest, most of those are things I feel like I’ve heard in Aesop’s Fables. Or The Hangover. Whatever. Moving on, Gretchen’s advice for building your own happiness project:

Answer the following questions:

• What makes you feel good? What activities do you find fun, satisfying, or energising?
• What makes you feel bad? What are the sources of anger, irritation, boredom, frustration, or anxiety in your life?
• Is there any way in which you don’t feel right about your life? Do you wish you could change your job, city, family situation, or other circumstances? Are you living up to your expectations for yourself? Does your life reflect your values?
• Do you have sources of an atmosphere of growth? In what elements of your life do you find progress, learning, challenge, improvement, and increased mastery?

Identify specific, measurable solutions that will allow you to evaluate whether you’re making progress. See, this is where I start to have a problem – happiness is not necessarily measurable, and often it’s not to be measured in these kinds of evaluable terms! Moreover, I feel like addressing your happiness for monthlong periods at a time is a really terrible and unsustainable way to do it. Maybe as a learning experience – but it’s important to establish which aspects you like, why, and figure out how to keep them going in a sustainable way!

Mine:
1. Radiate love, softness, and honesty. Be kind.
2. Think about you can help others in all things.
3. Breathe into your difficulties.
4. Don’t buy it unless you’ll use up.
5. ‘I like your shoes. What brings you here?’ – a good way to talk to strangers.
6. Be your own punk. This means making shit! It means putting it out there! It means not being scared!

I will leave you with this one example from a book, to really convince you why you shouldn’t buy it. One of Gretchen’s aims is to stop seeking outside approval. She spends ages planning a party for her mother-in-law – arranging for one family member to cater, others to wrap gifts, etc. And she’s feeling hard-done-by that everyone is enjoying it but no one has said, ‘Gretchen, what a wonderful party!’ Fortunately, her angel husband, Jamie, saves the day by presenting her with some expensive jewellery. What’s that life like?

I will also leave you with this: Gretchen compiled the best of her blog posts (a free online resource) into a book. Huh?

DIY: Gratitude Practice

Alrighty, it’s time I talked gratitude. Gratitude is something I stumbled on when I read The Secret at the age of fourteen. I proceeded to cry about my newfound attitude change for the duration of a lengthy train ride, then totally forget about it for literally seven or eight years (how extremely me). It’s something I’m coming back to – not because following the Law of Attraction will give me stuff (I mean, who am I to turn down free stuff, though?) but because focusing on good stuff is good for you.

My logic for this is as follows. People are really good at rationalising through why they are angry or why they are sad, but if things are good, it means all is right with the world and you might not set aside time to figure out why that’s happening, or to appreciate it. By cultivating a sense of gratitude, you are making a huge investment in yourself. Moreover, gratitude is a PRACTICE – just like focusing on the negative is a practice (and one I have definitely pulled my ten thousand hours on).

Here are some buzz figures for this superpower. Gratitude can:

• Facilitate better sleep, lower blood pressure, improve inflammation and immune function, and reduce fat intake
• Make you kinder and more grateful
• Boost your career, make people like you more, strengthen your emotions, help you develop resilience, and increase your self-esteem
• Reduce materialistic strivings

The thing I want to focus on in this post is how to construct your gratitude list in a way that actually makes you feel good. I saw so many articles when I first started – including The Secret, actually – telling me that I should be grateful for things like the clothes on my back and the roof over my head. And it’s like…yeah, I totally should, but those things are so second-nature to me that I don’t feel like being grateful for them is something that is coming easily to me yet.

So I want to talk about easy gratitude. The trick is to write down things that make you feel joy, even for a second – and nothing is too small, especially if you write it down immediately, because then you have it written down and in the moment, you felt it, and nothing can take that away from you. I like the journaling app by Carla White. It’s simple and I get to take photos sometimes, and though I’m not one to take photos of my meals, it turns out I feel really happy about a lot of the food that goes into my mouth.

Things that aren’t too small to write about in your gratitude journal:

• Someone complimented your outfit
• You witnessed someone else receive a compliment, you witnessed human niceness in all its purity
• You saw a great dog
• You had a good hot drink, or a good meal, and it was what you needed in the moment
• You helped somebody and it made you feel alright to have done something
• You heard a song that you liked
• You had the time to cultivate an experience you enjoyed, whether that was journaling, listening to a playlist, or having a cup of tea
• You spent some time with a friend
• You read an article you liked a lot
• You saw a baby make a silly face

That’s really it. Like, keeping a practice is that simple – and you can do it on your phone, on your laptop, in a tiny journal, wherever. If you make a point of doing it in the moment that something happens or in any downtime you get immediately after, that’s a good way to go about it. Some people like to remember all the things that happen at the end of the day, but I prefer to reflect on the things I journaled, because I find that so many things happen in the day that the beginning and the end feel entirely separate.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed being grateful for things. In a lot of ways, it’s a bit like a game, but it’s actually quite hard to lose and I appreciate that. I find myself being thankful for things and then realising that there are underlying mechanisms in place for me to be able to enjoy those things – for example, I’m grateful for this hot chocolate. I’m grateful I was able to afford this hot chocolate. I’m grateful to be able to afford things and to be wealthy enough to afford a frivolity such as a hot chocolate on a January morning.

But the thing is, I think that process takes time to build – so you gotta be grateful for stuff in its immediacy first. I definitely struggled with the concept of being grateful for big shit like the roof over my head. Even now, I still struggle with that – which is funny, because honestly, one of my deepest fears in the world is not having a home. You’d think that fear would make it easier to be grateful for that, but the opposite is true.

The point is, the work counts in this regard, and the work isn’t actually insurmountable – it isn’t even boring, like meditation can be. It’s in reliving the most joyful parts of your day, and in collecting them and treasuring them. The work is fun and almost beautiful, if you let it be. Maybe it gets cyclical, like being grateful to yourself for your habits of gratitude. How aspirational can you get?

BOOK CLUB: The Little Book of Lykke

I gave this book five stars on Goodreads.

The only books that get five stars from me on Goodreads are Philip K. Dick novels and Tillie Walden comics. It is a rarity that I actually enjoy a book enough, think it sincere and lovely enough, to rate it that way, leave alone write a review. And yet, this one had me on it. I was taken in by its cover – I came across Meik Wiking’s other book, one about Danish cosiness, a while ago, too.

So, I like Denmark. It’s bitterly cold – once I was there and I was so furious about how cold I was that I yelled something at my boyfriend that implied that no one else in the world had ever been cold before, only me, and no one could possibly empathise. I’ve been to Copenhagen twice in the past couple of years. But what strikes me about Denmark most of all is how well-known it is for its overall wellbeing.

This hails back to a few things (as Wiking so astutely pins down).

First – fewer working hours. Danes finish work at four to five, work a steady thirty-five hour week, and are able to place life above work – i.e., picking up your kid at four rather than sticking around for a meeting. This is something I, a Londoner, am a little agog at. I’ve been looking for full-time work (half-heartedly, I think), and part of what I’m looking for is a regular nine-to-five, something that won’t keep me late just because I’m young or overwork me. I’m looking for that because partially, I want to do things outside of work – creative things, sports, seeing my friends, keeping my community alive. But also, it’s well-established at this point that long hours = less productivity, and the backwards nature of employers demanding that their people pull long weeks in the name of capitalism just strikes me as silly.

Second – a level of trust and care for the everyman that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Consideration and empathy for strangers. Not just holding the door open, but returning a wallet, not stealing a baby in a pram, helping someone with a lot of bags up the stairs.

Third – a sense of community that Denmark is careful to encourage. Wiking underlines that the way this looks varies through communities – it can look like a committee meeting, an annual tomato canning event, a film festival. It can look like anything, and depends on the individuals involved.

Fourth – cycling. Wiking goes on a lot about cycling. I am scared to cycle in London. It makes me feel ill and if it didn’t I’d be scared to do it anyway because I think I might get run over. But cycling lanes in Denmark are huge and the biggest risk most days is a bump between friends. The gist of this is, staying active is important – exercise can ease depression, and it’s one of the New Economic Foundation’s five recommended steps to wellbeing.

Fifth – readily available social care. The knowledge that you pay high taxes for the good care of yourself and others. The unlikelihood of ending up homeless if you’re not working, the ability to go to the emergency room if you break something without worrying about the bill.

That’s a brief summary of what Scandinavia has to offer that makes its residents so happy. But what really impressed me about Wiking’s book wasn’t his confirmation of hunches I’d had for years – I kind of already knew that Scandinavia’s high levels of social care and lack of long-hours-equals-hard-work culture were good for people – in spite of the fact that it’s miserable and mostly dark there for about four months a year. What got me about The Little Book of Lykke most of all was the easy and actionable steps in it to make yourself and those around you happy.

In a nutshell, those personal steps are:

• Keep physically active, whatever that looks like – Wiking discourages pursuits like the gym, stating that the Danes treat exercise as transport – cycling or walking to work, for example.
• Develop a sense of community – ask your neighbours over for tea or wine when you first move in, keep in contact with them, develop a community register of your local residents’ names, phone numbers, and any heavy-duty tools that you can borrow and lend instead of buying yourself. Set up a meeting to see what people want to see in the community, and who can make it happen. See what agrees with all of you and what you can do together.
• Be the change you want to see – I know that’s trite, but in a sense, being trusting of your fellow man, tossing compliments around and accepting that it might not come to anything, it might even be awkward and a bit strange.

Overall, I loved this book. I don’t actually feel that compelled to pick up The Little Book of Hygge – I’m seldom in long enough to light a candle. But this book made me as happy as a Dane, if only fleetingly. I think of it as a good pick-me-up.

You can buy it here!