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

helps to push down the back part over your ankle, instead of pulling on the toe.”
    Not long after I’d made my cheat sheet, I had a chance to put these principles to work.
    One Saturday, Jamie and I were talking in our bedroom when Elizaburst in crying. We knew it was real crying and not fake crying, because Eliza has a very convenient “tell” when she’s staging her tears. If she balls up her hands and holds them to her eyes, like an actress in a melodrama, she’s faking. This time, her hands were down, so we knew she was really upset.
    I pulled her onto my lap, and she sobbed into my shoulder, “People always pay attention to Eleanor, but nobody ever pays any attention to me. ”
    Jamie and I looked at each other with worried expressions, and Jamie gave me the look that means “I have no idea what to do, can you handle this one?”
    Just in time, I remembered my resolution, “Acknowledge other people’s feelings.” Although I knew that it wasn’t factually true that no one ever paid any attention to Eliza, I managed to restrain my first impulse, which was to argue, “What about the five games of Uno I played with you last night?” and “You know everyone loves you just as much as Eleanor.”
    Instead, I said, “Wow, that hurts your feelings. You feel ignored.” That seemed to help. I rocked her for a few minutes in silence, then added, “You feel like people pay more attention to Eleanor.” “Yes,” she said quietly, “so what should I do?” Instead of groping for some facile solution, I said, “That’s a tough question. You, Daddy, and I will give it some serious thought.”
    When we stood up, she threw her arms around my waist and gave me a big hug, one that felt more needy than grateful. I figured she needed some reassurance. I put my arms around her and said, “No matter what, you know that you’re our most precious, darling Eliza, and no one would ever forget about you or think that someone else is more important than you.”
    “Come on, Eliza, let’s go see if my bread dough has risen,” Jamie said. “You can punch it down.” She took his hand and skipped off!
    Experts say that denying bad feelings intensifies them; acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return. That sure seemed to be what happened with Eliza. This was a real happiness breakthrough: not onlywas this approach more effective in soothing Eliza, it was far more gratifying to me to act in a loving way, instead of giving in to my impulse to act in a dismissive or argumentative way.
    Jamie is skeptical of child-rearing “techniques,” and he hasn’t glanced inside a book about parenting since he tossed aside What to Expect When You’re Expecting after the first chapter, but even he started to use this strategy. I watched one morning when, after Eleanor threw herself, kicking and screaming, onto the floor, he picked her up and said soothingly, “You’re frustrated. You don’t want to wear your shoes, you want to wear your ruby slippers.” And she stopped crying.
    BE A TREASURE HOUSE OF HAPPY MEMORIES.
    Sometimes the importance of some bit of happiness-related research or advice won’t hit me when I’m reading about it; only later do I grasp that I stumbled across something essential.
    One piece of wisdom that didn’t resonate with me initially was the importance of keeping happy memories vivid. But as I mulled over this principle, I realized the tremendous value of mementos that help prompt positive memories. Studies show that recalling happy times helps boost happiness in the present. When people reminisce, they focus on positive memories, with the result that recalling the past amplifies the positive and minimizes the negative. However, because people remember events better when they fit with their present mood, happy people remember happy events better, and depressed people remember sad events better. Depressed people have as many nice experiences as other people—they just don’t recall them as well.
    With this knowledge in mind, I vowed to take steps to help everyone in the family to experience happy times more vividly. Jamie loves looking at photo albums and has a secret sentimental streak for things like outgrown baby clothes, but he’s not going to put in the time necessary to pull memorabilia together. If I wanted a treasure house of happy memories for my family, I needed to be the one to build it.
    I stopped resenting the tedious hours I spend maintaining our family photo albums. I