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

commandments directly contradicted other people’s commandments, but I could envision how different people would benefit from opposing advice:
    Just say yes.
    Just say no.
    Do it now.
    Wait.
    One thing at a time.
    Do everything all at once.
    Always strive to do your best.
    Remember the 80/20 rule.
    As for me, six months into the project, I could say that although, as I’d realized in April, my basic temperament hadn’t changed, each day I felt more joy and less guilt; I had more fun, less anxiety. My life was pleasanter with cleaner closets and a cleaner conscience.
    One thing that had surprised me as my project progressed was the importance of my physical state. It really mattered whether I got enough sleep, got regular exercise, didn’t let myself get too hungry, and kept myself warm. I’d learned to be more attentive to keeping myself feeling energetic and comfortable. On the other hand, one thing that didn’t surprise me was that the most direct boosts to my happiness came from the steps I devoted to social bonds. Jamie, Eliza, and Eleanor, my family, my friends—it was my efforts to strengthen those relationships that yielded the most gratifying results. What’s more, I noticed that my happiness made it easier for me to be patient, cheerful, kind, generous, and all the other qualities I was trying to cultivate. I found it easier to keep my resolutions, laugh off my annoyances, have enough energy for fun.
    But the areas that had been toughest for me when I started were still the toughest. When I looked back on my Resolutions Charts, I could see definite patterns. The checks and X marks revealed that I was continuing to struggle to keep my temper, to go off the path, and to be generous, among many other things. In some ways, in fact, I’d made myself less happy; I’dmade myself far more aware of my faults, and I felt more disappointed with myself when I slipped up. My shortcomings stared up at me reproachfully from the page. One of my Secrets of Adulthood is “Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy,” and a heightened awareness of my failings, though salutary, wasn’t bringing me happiness in the short term—but in the long term, I was sure, I’d be happier as a consequence of behaving better. I was comforted by the words of my model Benjamin Franklin, who reflected of his own chart: “On the whole, though I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet as I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been had I not attempted it.”
    Ironically, too, I suspected that I had lost some of my playtime to the happiness project. My resolutions were making me happier and I was having more fun, true, but it did feel as though I had less pure leisure time. Observing the evening tidy-up, remembering friends’ birthdays, showing up, making time for projects, and all the rest meant that I had less time to reread David Copperfield in bed. Though of course I could make a resolution to cover that activity, too.

7
JULY
    Buy Some Happiness
    M ONEY
    Indulge in a modest splurge.
    Buy needful things.
    Spend out.
    Give something up.
     
    T he relationship between money and happiness was one of the most interesting, most complicated, and most sensitive questions in my study of happiness. People, including the experts, seemed very confused.
    As I did my research, Gertrude Stein’s observation frequently floated through my mind: “Everyone has to make up their mind if money is money or money isn’t money and sooner or later they always do decide that money is money.” Money satisfies basic material needs. It’s a means and an end. It’s a way to keep score, win security, exercise generosity, and earn recognition. It can foster mastery or dilettantism. It symbolizes status and success.It buys time—which can be spent on aimless drifting or purposeful action. It creates power in relationships and in the world. It often stands for the things that we feel are lacking: if only we had the money, we’d be adventurous or thin or cultured or respected or generous.
    Before I could figure out my resolutions for the month, I had to clarify my thinking about money. I was skeptical of much of what I read. In particular, I kept seeing the argument “Money can’t buy happiness,” but it certainly seemed that people appear fairly well convinced about the significance of money to their happiness. Money is not without its benefits,