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

themselves at the perfect balance of challenge and skill. But I think that Mill meant, or people generally believe, that thinking about your happiness makes you self-absorbed; you’re not thinking about other people, work, or anything other than your own satisfaction. Or perhaps Mill meant that happiness comes as a consequence of pursuing other goals, such as love and work, and shouldn’t be a goal in itself.
    Of course it’s not enough to sit around wanting to be happy; you must make the effort to take steps toward happiness by acting with more love, finding work you enjoy, and all the rest. But for me, asking myself whether I was happy had been a crucial step toward cultivating my happiness more wisely through my actions. Also, only through recognizing my happiness did I really appreciate it. Happiness depends partly on external circumstances, and it also depends on how you view those circumstances.
    I’d thought about this question many times during the course of the year, but finally it hit me that this was my Fourth Splendid Truth: You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy . Then it struck me that the Fourth Splendid Truth has a corollary: You’re happy if you think you’re happy .
    And that means thinking about happiness, no matter what John Stuart Mill said.

10
OCTOBER
    Pay Attention
    M INDFULNESS
    Meditate on koans.
    Examine True Rules.
    Stimulate the mind in new ways.
    Keep a food diary.
    W hen I told people I was working on a book about happiness, the single most common response was “You should spend some time studying Buddhism.” (A close second was “So are you drinking a bottle of wine every night?”) The Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness was the book most often recommended to me.
    I’d always been intrigued by Buddhism, so I was eager to learn more about both the religion and the life of the Buddha. But although I admired many of its teachings, I didn’t feel much deep connection to Buddhism, which, at its heart, urges detachment as a way to alleviate suffering. Although there is a place forlove and commitment, these bonds are considered fetters that bind us to lives of sorrow—which of course they do. Instead, I’m an adherent of the Western tradition of cultivating deep passions and profound attachments; I didn’t want to detach, I wanted to embrace; I didn’t want to loosen, I wanted to deepen. Also, the Western tradition emphasizes the expression and the perfection of each unique, individual soul; not so in the Eastern tradition.
    Nevertheless, studying Buddhism made me realize the significance of some concepts that I’d overlooked. The most important was mindfulness—the cultivation of conscious, nonjudgmental awareness.
    I have several tendencies that run counter to mindfulness. I constantly multitask in ways that pull me away from my present experience. I often run on automatic pilot—arriving home with no recollection of having gone from point A to point B. (This sometimes terrifies me when I’m driving; I have no recollection of watching the road.) I tend to dwell on anxieties or hopes for the future, instead of staying fully aware in the present moment. I often break or spill things because I’m not paying attention. When I’m introduced to someone in a social situation, I often forget the person’s name as soon as I hear it. I finish eating before I’ve even registered the taste of my food.
    In September a jarring experience had reminded me of the importance of mindfulness. After a pleasant family weekend, spent mostly going to children’s birthday parties (three in two days), I was walking down the hallway after putting both girls to bed. All of a sudden, as I headed to my desk to check my e-mails, I had the sensation that I was zooming back into my body. It was as if I had just returned from a two-week trip away from myself. The very hallway in which I stood seemed unfamiliar, yet I’d been living my ordinary life the whole time. It was very, very unnerving. If I was just getting back home—where had I been? I needed to do a better job of staying in the moment.
    Mindfulness brings many benefits: scientists point out that it calms the mind and elevates brain function, it gives clarity and vividness to presentexperience, it may help people break unhealthy habits, and it can soothe troubled spirits and lift people’s moods. It reduces stress and chronic pain. It makes people happier, less defensive, and more engaged with others.
    One highly effective