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

morning by sending an e-mail that included only forty-eight words and took forty-five seconds to write—yet it had been weighing on my mind for at least two weeks. Such unfinished tasks were disproportionately draining.
    An important aspect of happiness is managing your moods, and studies show that one of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success, such as tackling a long-delayed chore. I was astounded by the dramatic boost in my mental energy that came from taking care of these neglected tasks.
    ACT MORE ENERGETIC.
    To feel more energetic, I applied one of my Twelve Commandments: “Act the way I want to feel.” This commandment sums up one of the most helpful insights that I’d learned in my happiness research: although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act. For example, studies show that even an artificially induced smile brings about happier emotions, and one experiment suggestedthat people who use Botox are less prone to anger, because they can’t make angry faces. The philosopher and psychologist William James explained, “Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.” Advice from every quarter, ancient and contemporary, backs up the observation that to change our feelings, we should change our actions.
    Although a “fake it till you feel it” strategy sounded hokey, I found it extremely effective. When I felt draggy, I started to act with more energy. I sped up my walk. I paced while talking on the phone. I put more warmth and zest into my voice. Sometimes I feel exhausted by the prospect of spending time with my own children, but one tired afternoon, instead of trying to devise a game that involved my lying on the couch (I’ve managed to be astonishingly resourceful in coming up with ideas), I bounded into the room and said, “Hey, let’s play in the tent!” It really worked; I did manage to give myself an energy boost by acting with energy.
     
    By the end of January, I was off to a promising start, but did I feel happier? It was too soon to tell. I did feel more alert and calm, and although I still had periods when I felt overtaxed, they became less frequent.
    I found that rewarding myself for good behavior—even when that reward was nothing more than a check mark that I gave myself on my Resolutions Chart—made it easier for me to stick to a resolution. Getting a bit of reinforcement did make a difference. I could see, however, that I’d have to remind myself continually to keep my resolutions. In particular, I noticed a decline in my order-maintaining zeal by the end of the month. I loved the big payoff of cleaning out a closet, but keeping the apartment tidy was a Sisyphean task that never stayed finished. Perhaps the “one-minute rule” and the “evening tidy-up” would keep me attacking clutter regularly, in small doses, so that it couldn’t grow to its previous crushing proportions.
    Nevertheless, I was astonished by the charge of energy and satisfaction I got from creating order. The closet that had been an eyesore was now a joy; the stack of papers slowly yellowing on the edge of my desk was gone. “It is by studying little things, ” wrote Samuel Johnson, “that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.”

2
FEBRUARY
    Remember Love
    M ARRIAGE
    Quit nagging.
    Don’t expect praise or appreciation.
    Fight right.
    No dumping.
    Give proofs of love.
     
    O ne alarming fact jumps out from the research about happiness and marriage: marital satisfaction drops substantially after the first child arrives. The disruptive presence of new babies and teenagers, in particular, puts a lot of pressure on marriages, and discontent spikes when children are in these stages.
    Jamie and I had been married for eleven years, and sure enough, the incidence of low-level bickering in our marriage increased significantly after our daughter Eliza was born. Until then, the phrase “Can’t you do it?” had never crossed my lips. Over the last several years, I’d started doing too muchcomplaining, nagging, and foot-dragging. It was time to do something about that.
    As corny as it sounds, I’ve always felt that from the moment we were introduced in the library during law school, when I was a first-year and he was a