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

bed sounds so great to me that I think I’m going to turn out the light early.”
    One big challenge of Pollyanna Week was remembering to keep my goal uppermost in my mind. During the activities of the day, I forgot my resolution. So, borrowing from some of the mindfulness strategies I had tried in October, on the third morning, I started wearing a wide orange bracelet for the rest of Pollyanna Week, as a constant reminder of my goal to make only positive comments. The bracelet worked fairly well—except that once I caught myself complaining to a friend that the bracelet was too heavy and clunky! So much for reminding me to make only positive comments. But I did have moments of triumph. I didn’t complain about our loss of Internet ser vice. I didn’t grouse when Jamie baked three rich desserts in three nights. When Eliza accidentally ran Eleanor’s stroller into the kitchen wall, where it made a dark mark, I let it go without making a fuss. And when Eleanor grabbed my lipstick off the counter, then dropped it into the toilet, I said, “Well, it was an accident.”
    During Pollyanna Week, I never did manage to go an entire day without a negative comment, but I nevertheless declared it a successful exercise. Though 100 percent compliance was an impossible ambition, making the effort jolted me into an awareness of my usual attitude. The effect of Pollyanna Week lingered long after the week was up.
    FIND AN AREA OF REFUGE.
    One fact of human nature is that people have a “negativity bias”: we react to the bad more strongly and persistently than to the comparable good. AsI’d learned in February, within a marriage, it takes at least five good acts to repair the damage of one critical or destructive act. With money, the pain of losing a certain sum is greater than the pleasure of gaining that sum. Hitting the best-seller list with Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill thrilled me less than a bad review upset me.
    One consequence of the negativity bias is that when people’s minds are unoccupied, they tend to drift to anxious or angry thoughts. And rumination—dwelling on slights, unpleasant encounters, and sad events—leads to bad feelings. In fact, one reason that women are more susceptible to depression than men may be their greater tendency to ruminate; men are more likely to distract themselves with an activity. Studies show that distraction is a powerful mood-altering device, and contrary to what a lot of people believe, persistently focusing on a bad mood aggravates rather than palliates it.
    I’d often noticed my own tendency to brood, and to counter this effect, I invented the idea of the “area of refuge.” Once when I was back visiting my former law school, I noticed a sign by an elevator that declared that area an “area of refuge.” I guess it’s where a person in a wheelchair or with some other difficulty should go in case of fire. The phrase stuck in my mind, and I decided that if I found myself dwelling on bad feelings, I’d seek a mental “area of refuge.”
    As an area of refuge, I often think about Churchill’s speeches—in particular, his eulogy for Neville Chamberlain. Or I think about some of the funny things Jamie has done. Years ago, when we were first married, Jamie came into our bedroom in his boxers and announced, “I am LORD of the DANCE!” and hopped around with his arms straight at his sides. I still laugh every time I think about it. A friend told me that she thinks about her children. Another friend—not a writer—makes up short stories in her head. When Arthur Llewelyn Davies, the father of the boys who inspired Peter Pan, was recovering from an operation that removed his cheekbone and part of the roof of his mouth, he wrote a note to J. M. Barrie:
    Among the things I think about
    Michael going to school
    Porthgwarra and S’s blue dress
    Burpham garden
    Kirkby view across valley…
    Jack bathing
    Peter answering chaff
    Nicholas in the garden
    George always
    These phrases mean nothing to an outsider, but for him, they were areas of refuge.
     
    By the end of November, I’d realized that one of the most important lessons of the happiness project is that if I keep my resolutions and do the things that make me happier, I end up feeling happier and acting more virtuously. Do good, feel good; feel good, do good.
    Over the course of the month, I noticed that a frequent subject of my negative comments was Eliza’s hair. Jamie and I thought it looked cutest when it