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

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 Review

Here's an interesting concept: Can you truly MAKE yourself be happier? I've been on the fence regarding the answer for a long time. I tend to waver between you can make your own destiny to you need to make the best of what is given to you. But I always end up somewhere in the middle and end up saying the same thing.

I'm not entirely sure.

It appears that Gretchen Rubin had the same questions so she set out on a personal journey: One Year to Focus on Her Happiness. And The Happiness Project was born.

The concept is intriguing, isn't it? With all the talk about the laws and power of attraction and spiritual teachers and psychological writers telling us to Think Big to Change Your Life, it's not surprising that a happier life would be extremely appealing.

The Happiness Project is simple in concept: Resolutions + Self Reflection on a daily basis and each month revolves around a theme. For instance, Month 1 focused on Energy, Month 2 focused on Marriage, etc. Gretchen says (and I agree) that everyone's project is and should be different because everyone is in a different place in life. But certainly some of Gretchen's resolutions intrigued me:

Start a collection
Emulate a Spiritual Master
Give Something Up
Ask for Help
Tackle a Nagging Task (side note: when I read this part, I immediately tackled two nagging tasks and felt much, much better)

Can these simple things really make you happier? Perhaps I should find out. Rather than jump into something like this (as I have the tendency to do) I'm going to do a bit of planning and research and aim for September 1 to start my own Happiness Project. I'm doing this for two reasons.

It will give me time to figure out what areas of my life I really want to improve and how to measure whether or not I'm truly happier
It still gives me plenty of time to ramp up for the holidays.

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 Feature

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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 Overview

Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.

In this lively and compelling account of that year, Rubin carves out her place alongside the authors of bestselling memoirs such as Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically, and Eat, Pray, Love. With humor and insight, she chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier.

Rubin didn't have the option to uproot herself, nor did she really want to; instead she focused on improving her life as it was. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results. She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her—and what didn't.

Her conclusions are sometimes surprising—she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference—and they range from the practical to the profound.

Written with charm and wit, The Happiness Project is illuminating yet entertaining, thought-provoking yet compulsively readable. Gretchen Rubin's passion for her subject jumps off the page, and reading just a few chapters of this book will inspire you to start your own happiness project.

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Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back Review

I am part of the evangelical community (the European part, that is far distanced from republican, far right, bush loving American evangelicalism). I actually pastor an Evangelical church(and find myself agreeing on most of what Frank says, and am also a big fan of the Orthodox church):). I am brought up in the same type of home as Frank, and I relate to some of what he experienced.

Anyways this is a great read. I disagree with some of the other reviews here (and elsewhere) that conclude that Frank is a bitter, offensive, get back at my parents kind of author and man. Far from it, he writes it as he understood his background and parents in view of a long lived life. He balances the good and the bad not only regarding his famous parents, but also from his own life. Its a liberating and fun read!

Frank has important and true things to say to the evangelical community and to the many fundamentalists that are part of it. And there is much to learn from his experience.If you don't want to read to learn, read it for the pure pleasure of a fantastic read and a fantastic and crazy story!

Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back Overview

By the time he was nineteen, Frank Schaeffer’s parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, had achieved global fame as bestselling evangelical authors and speakers, and Frank had joined his father on the evangelical circuit. He would go on to speak before thousands in arenas around America, publish his own evangelical bestseller, and work with such figures as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Dr. James Dobson. But all the while Schaeffer felt increasingly alienated, precipitating a crisis of faith that would ultimately lead to his departure—even if it meant losing everything.

With honesty, empathy, and humor, Schaeffer delivers “a brave and important book” (Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog)—both a fascinating insider’s look at the American evangelical movement and a deeply affecting personal odyssey of faith.

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The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir

The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Review

The Kids are Alright is a memoir about a family growing up in the 1970s. The Welches are a wealthy family who lives in a NYC suburb. The father is an investment banker and the mother an actress who stars in several soap operas and commercials. A tragedy causes the family to fall apart. In the 70s, the family was rocked by a shocking car accident that took their father's life and the discovery that he was millions of dollars in debt. A month later, the mother discovers she has cervical cancer. In 3 years, the mother dies with her children largely being forced to be her caretakers. A trust fund the mother set up for the children largely saves the kids from poverty but without parents the children are adrift. Drugs, alcohol combined with expensive prep schools, boarding schools and elite colleges are the lives of the three oldest children. The youngest, at eight, is sent off to live with a wealthy family and constantly pressured to forget her family and blend in with theirs. This books contains recollections from all four children and varies in story and content. I found the stories of all very honest and well spoken. I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in families and what happens to orphans in the US.

The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Overview

“Perfect is boring.”

Well, 1983 certainly wasn’t boring for the Welch family. Somehow, between their handsome father’s mysterious death, their glamorous soap-opera-star mother’s cancer diagnosis, and a phalanx of lawyers intent on bankruptcy proceedings, the four Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune in the same way they dealt with the unexpected arrival of the forgotten-about Chilean exchange student–together.

All that changed with the death of their mother. While nineteen-year-old Amanda was legally on her own, the three younger siblings–Liz, sixteen; Dan, fourteen; and Diana, eight–were each dispatched to a different set of family friends. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued, Amanda headed for college in New York City and immersed herself in an ’80s world of alternative music and drugs. Liz, living with the couple for whom she babysat, followed in Amanda’s footsteps until high school graduation when she took a job in Norway as a nanny. Mischievous, rebellious Dan, bounced from guardian to boarding school and back again, getting deeper into trouble and drugs. And Diana, the red-haired baby of the family, was given a new life and identity and told to forget her past. But Diana’s siblings refused to forget her–or let her go.

Told in the alternating voices of the four siblings, their poignant, harrowing story of un­breakable bonds unfolds with ferocious emotion. Despite the Welch children’s wrenching loss and subsequent separation, they retained the resilience and humor that both their mother and father endowed them with–growing up as lost souls, taking disastrous turns along the way, but eventually coming out right side up. The kids are not only all right; they’re back together.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir Specifications

Parker Posey Reviews The Kids Are All Right

Parker Posey's films include Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, Clockwatchers, Party Girl, and You've Got Mail. Read her exclusive Amazon guest review of The Kids Are All Right:

As adults, the Welches have remembered the past as they did when they were children, giving us a window into the survival meachanisms of personality, of the the capacity to undergo huge blows of fate, of the manifestations of surviving that fate--and the soulful bonding of siblings to regenerate what was lost. This book carried me along with such speed and emotion and intimacy that I felt cast in the role as their imaginary friend. This book is their song and it will rock you along.--Parker Posey

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More from The Kids Are All Right: Pictures of the Welches

Click on thumbnails for larger images

Mom. Dad, Liz, and Amanda in 1972	Liz, Amanda, and Dan in 1974	Liz, Mom and Dan	Fire Island Family Reunion, August 1991

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