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I celebrated a birthday this week, so I'm extra happy. But I also finished reading Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. I saw the book in a store, checked it out of the library and picked it up and put it down in the 'return to the library' basket more than once.
I'm skeptical of projects like this. But something was tempting about the notion of working towards happiness. What was it? Lately, happiness has been happening, and I suppose that's why I was attracted to this book. This week I read through it and flagged pages here and there. It's about a writer working, over the course of a year, to imbue her already-seemingly happy life with the things, people, actions, ideas, etc. that make her happy. And it works for her.
What made me reluctant to drop so fully into Rubin's theory of happiness as a project is that, from the look of the book, it made more of a novelty of happiness than I prefer---that happiness is something to be bought or gained or thought about a lot in the mind rather than fully experienced by the body and the heart. It seemed like a very Western approach towards achieving contentment and fulfillment.
I have to say, though, that after reading it, The Happiness Project presents a way into the body, mind and heart that reminds me a lot of a committed yoga practice. It encourages one to really identify and work towards being more aware of being loving, kind, generous, appreciative, articulate and compassionate. All of these states do inspire more happiness. And a yoga practice encourages an individual to tap into and find these very same states. In my mind, what is key between both yoga and The Happiness Project is that you at least have a practice. That's what I picked up from this book.
I used to think happiness was all around you, waiting to be discovered. If you were lucky, the gold dust of joy would sprinkle itself all over you as you walked through the world. And I stress the word lucky because I thought it was something that happened to you. It took me a long time to realize that happiness is self-generated. Happiness is all around you, but you have to work to see it and, more importantly, feel it every day. We know what it feels like to feel stress every day {unless you're on vacation!}. What does it feel like to feel happiness every day?
For me, yoga, breathing and having a daily creative practice adds to my feeling happy. Some days happiness isn't happening, and that's okay. Because the mere fact that happiness happens means that it is happening to others. That should make you happy but also trust that it will happen to you again soon. You just have to step into the practice of making space for its happening. Happiness is a verb.
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| Think of what makes you happy. Now think of why it makes you happy and what happens when you're happy, how that happiness feels in your body. Make a list of the whys and associated feelings in your body. Commit to closing your eyes and imagining one moment of happiness from the list, each and every day.
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"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure not this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing." ~Yeats
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