Happy Talk About Happiness

Happy Spring. Happy Easter.  Lots of happy talk going around during this happy season. Must be why I picked up a new book called Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness by Ariel Gore.  I’m hoping that I’ll discover in the book what’s up with the whole notion of the bluebird of happiness because feeling blue is definitely not a happy mood.  The author does point out that the origin of happiness comes from the Old Norse happ meaning “luck” or “chance.”   So does happiness just happen?  If you’re lucky enough?

Part memoir, part research, the book is an easy and interesting read. It turns out that women’s happiness is not as simple as the old  “if Momma ain’t happy then nobody is.”  The author and I are kindred spirits when it comes to an affinity for women and journaling.  For her research, she assembled a large  group of women, somewhat like her lab rats, who joined her in keeping a daily happiness journal.  Many of them happily turned over their private writing to her and these entries appear throughout the book like this one:  “I realize that as I’m recording these moments of happiness, I actually attract more happiness into my life.”

About 75 percent of the women said that they placed their children’s and their husband’s happiness above their own.  One woman said, “First come the kids, then my husband, and then me. I’m stronger than they are. I don’t need to be happy.”  Sad but true, I thought, as I remembered those frantic days of motherhood that went by in a blur, days when I was in charge of everyone else but me.

Egg-stra Happy Eggs

One of the women in Ariel’s group had an ah-ha moment after writing in her journal, realizing that her happiness was coming from external things.  After she thought about the whole concept of joy she writes, “I had a day when I was happy all day.”  Ariel observes, “We create our own reality thusly.”

In search of more happy talk, I remembered a website that I had heard about before, the Happiness Project.com.  This short little video from the site made a deep impact on me, and I shared it with my Weekly Wise Words subscribers. I include it here because it is vivid demonstration that happiness depends entirely on us and how we think.

I’ve added the recently published The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun (what a great title!), Gretchen Rubin’s new book, to my reading list.  It’s about the year she spent testing out happiness theories.

I especially love this wise woman’s 12 commandments listed on her website, beginning with her first: Be Gretchen.  Do you know what an amazing world this would be if we could all adopt this commandment and Be Diane or Be Susan or Be Mary and BE GLAD!

What if I made Be Diane my first commandment? It would mean I can write about what’s on my mind (like happiness), eat Dove dark chocolate after lunch, or stop reading a book that doesn’t grab me. It means I don’t have to be afraid to try new things—being courageous and daring can be part of Be Diane. It also means that I’m free to do the things I like to do, those that make me happy: helping others, making people laugh, and hanging out with a great bunch of women.  Keeping the Be Diane commandment allows me to work hard at being me instead of wishing I were best-selling author Kelly Corrigan or Elizabeth Gilbert (but trading places with them for one day would be okay!)  My commandment helps me to realize that I’m supposed to enjoy my own ride, wherever it’s leading me.

Gretchen’s second commandment is “Let it go”; mine is Be in the Now.  I so have to work on this one since it wasn’t until a few years ago that I even realized that Now was the place to be.  Being in the Now requires work and present moment awareness every day. I guess my commandment to inhabit the NOW does involve letting go. To live in the Now, I have to let go of guilt for what I didn’t do last year to organize my tax records and let go of concerns about my Easter outfit.  It means that I look out my window and really see the fig tree that’s finally full of leaves, stop to pet the cat on my lap and appreciate his nudges on my face, and rejoice that I’m still in my comfy jammies (it’s after lunch) on a relaxing Saturday at my computer. Being in the Now commands me to notice the grackles whistling however annoyingly in my backyard because they’re happy I just put food in their feeder.  Ah yes, the Now is a happy place when I allow myself to truly be here.

Now that I’ve shared two experts’ thoughts on Happiness, what about you, my happy readers and writers?  What are two of your happiness commandments?

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Tagged as: Ariel Gore, Gretchen Rubin, Happiness Project