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

the main reasons that I set out to become happier in the first place was that I figured I’d have an easier time behaving myself properly if I felt less anxious, irritated, resentful, and angry; when I reflected on the people I knew, the happier people were more kind, more generous, and more fun. By being happy myself, I’d help make other people happy. And vice versa. “Do good, feel good; feel good, do good.”
    Or to put it another way, suitable for a Snoopy poster: “There is an ‘I’ in ‘happiness.’”
    Bring People Together.
    My children’s literature reading group and my writers’ strategy group showed me that another way to be generous was to “Bring people together.” Studies show that extroverts and introverts alike get a charge out of connecting with others; also, because people are sources of information and resources for one another, if you help bring people together, you provide them with new sources of support.
    I looked for ways to connect people. I helped organize a reunion of the Supreme Court clerks who clerked the same year that I did. (The justices organize reunions of their own clerks, but apparently, our group was the only one that held a reunion of all the clerks from a particular term.) I worked to start a group to support the children’s rooms of the New York Public Library. I set up a friend on a blind date, which resulted in immediate, total love. I helped organize a barbecue taste-off: a bunch of people from barbecue-proud states brought their favorite homestate barbecue so we could debate the fine points of beef versus pork, tomato-based versus vinegar-based sauce, and whether popcorn, wilted greens, or baked beans were the most appropriate side dish. I introduced some friends who were moving to upstate New York to someone I knewup there, and they ended up being housemates. In each of these cases, bringing people together took some work from me: looking up e-mail addresses, coordinating schedules, and so on. But my resolutions kept ringing in my ears, so I stuck with it, and each time it was worth the effort.
    I wanted some more ideas about how to “Bring people together,” so I posted a question on my blog. Other people got the same charge from it that I did.
    ----
    W hen team building for the churches I have worked with, we have a rule: FOOD, FOOD, FOOD, FOOD. I have found having really great finger foods are an excellent way to connect people. Particularly unusual foods that people have never tried. It allows you to spark up conversation between people about their interests.
     
    The way I bring people together is by connecting them via whatever may be of interest to them. I know I am gifted at connecting the dots, and I use that skill in the relationships I build with others. I also have a tendency to collect and store what may seem like mundane information about people in my head. Inevitably, I will run into somebody who needs something, and because of the information I’ve collected I will have just the right person to introduce to them to help them achieve whatever they need. Ironically, I am not a social butterfly at all, but I always seem to be able to connect people at the right time.
     
    I’ve found that whenever there’s a get-together of friends, a simple “bring another friend!” prompt helps to make sure there are new people around. It’s great for meeting new people or catching up with people you haven’t met in ages that somebody happened to bump into and invite to the next get-together.
     
    I get energy from meeting and aligning to new people but it wears my wife out. However, she is excellent at building and sustaining deep long-term relationships by “due dilligence,” keeping on making appointmentsand maintaining correspondence. You have to find the aspect of connecting to others that works for you.
    I use dinner parties as a way to connect people and to strengthen my relationship to all of them. The dinner parties are small—usually only 4–8 people—which allows for more in-depth conversation, and we put a lot of thought into matching all of the guests’ interests to bring about a natural source of conversation [e.g., our last dinner party included couples who are animal lovers, another dinner party grouped world travelers, other occasions grouped knitters, Harry Potter fans, film buffs, tea lovers, etc.].
----
    Contribute in My Way.
    As I looked for other ways to “Be generous,” it occurred to me that I should try to apply my