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

accomplished.
    Soap and water remove most stains.
    Turning the computer on and off a few times often fixes a glitch.
    If you can’t find something, clean up.
    You can choose what you do; you can’t choose what you like to do.
    Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.
    What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
    You don’t have to be good at everything.
    If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.
    Over-the-counter medicines are very effective.
    Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
    What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you—and vice versa.
    People actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts off their registry.
    You can’t profoundly change your children’s natures by nagging them or signing them up for classes.
    No deposit, no return.
    I had fun coming up with my Twelve Commandments and my Secrets of Adulthood, but the heart of my happiness project remained my list of resolutions, which embodied the changes I wanted to make in my life. When I stepped back to reflect on the resolutions, however, I was struck by their small scale. Take January. “Go to sleep earlier” and “Tackle a nagging task” didn’t sound dramatic or colorful or particularly ambitious.
    Other people’s radical happiness projects, such as Henry David Thoreau’s move to Walden Pond or Elizabeth Gilbert’s move to Italy, India, and Indonesia, exhilarated me. The fresh start, the total commitment, the leap into the unknown—I found their quests illuminating, plus I got a vicarious thrill from their abandonment of everyday worries.
    But my project wasn’t like that. I was an unadventurous soul, and I didn’t want to undertake that kind of extraordinary change. Which was lucky, because I wouldn’t have been able to do it even if I’d wanted to. I had a family and responsibilities that made it practically impossible for me to leave for one weekend, let alone for a year.
    And more important, I didn’t want to reject my life. I wanted to change my life without changing my life, by finding more happiness in my own kitchen. I knew I wouldn’t discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances; it was right here, right now—as in the haunting play The Blue Bird, where two children spend a year searching the world for the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to find the bird waiting for them when they finally return home.
     
    A lot of people took issue with my happiness project. Starting with my own husband.
    “I don’t really get it,” Jamie said as he lay on the floor to do his daily back and knee exercises. “You’re already pretty happy, aren’t you? If you were really unhappy, this would make more sense, but you’re not.” He paused. “You’re not unhappy, are you?”
    “I am happy,” I reassured him. “Actually,” I added, pleased to have an opportunity to show off my new expertise, “most people are pretty happy—in a 2006 study, eighty-four percent of Americans ranked themselves as ‘very happy’ or ‘pretty happy,’ and in a survey of forty-five countries, on average, people put themselves at 7 on a 1 to 10 scale and at 75 on a 1 to 100 scale. I just took the Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire myself, and on a range of 1 to 5, I scored a 3.92.”
    “So if you’re pretty happy, why do a happiness project?”
    “I am happy—but I’m not as happy as I should be. I have such a good life, I want to appreciate it more—and live up to it better.” I had a hard time explaining it. “I complain too much, I get annoyed more than I should. I should be more grateful. I think if I felt happier, I’d behave better.”
    “Do you really think any of this is going to make a difference?” he asked, pointing to the printout of my first blank Resolutions Chart.
    “Well, I’ll find out.”
    “Huh,” he snorted. “I guess so.”
    I ran into even more skepticism soon after, at a cocktail party. The usual polite chitchat devolved into a conversation more closely resembling a Ph.D. dissertation defense when a longtime acquaintance openly scoffed at the idea of my happiness project.
    “Your project is to see if you can make yourself happier? And you’re not even depressed?” he asked.
    “That’s right,” I answered, trying to look intelligent as I juggled a glass of wine, a napkin, and a fancy version of a pig in a blanket.
    “No offense, but what’s the point? I don’t think examining how an ordinary person can become