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

bottle was still in its box, and when I opened it, I saw that it was still full to the top. I didn’t ask her about it, but I’m sure someone, many years ago, gave her that bottle of perfume and she was “saving it.” For what? After she died, I took the box home with me, and I keep it in my office to remind me to “Spend out.”
    I posted on my blog about that bottle of perfume, and several readers responded with their own experiences of “spending out.”
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    Y our story reminds me of some pretty linen napkins that I found in my mother’s house after she died. I lived in that house for a LONG time and never even SAW those napkins. She was apparently “saving” them. For what, I have no idea. But she never did get to use them. Now they’re mine and I’m sure as heck gonna use them the next time I have someone over for dinner, which come to think of it, is tomorrow night!
    Life is too short to save your good china or your good lingerie or your good ANYTHING for later because truly, later may never come.
     
    I can’t believe that there is someone else out there that does this, too! I have struggled with this for years. I realized it WAS contributing to my mental dismalness! I thought I should be keeping some of my new, better stuff just in case of (so pessimistic, here!) “bad days ahead.” Sadly, I found that I have even pushed it over on my own daughter (i.e., don’t use up all the battery power in your toys!). I think that’s when I realized it. Now, I am on the track to using it all up today…’cause who knows about tomorrow!
     
    I learned this lesson painfully. When I was a child, my grandparents gave me a very elaborate box of art supplies for Hanukkah—really beautiful paints, brushes, chalks, paper, etc. I kept “saving it,” planning to use it only once I was a better artist, because I didn’t want to waste any of these treasures. (As a kid, you really do see yourself getting more skillful, so this wasn’t totally crazy.) One day, I happened to look for the box, and couldn’t find it. My mother said, “Oh, you never touched that art set, so I figured you weren’t interested.” She’d taken it to the thrift shop! I was crushed. But I’ve never forgotten it. Sometimes “later” becomes “never.”
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    GIVE SOMETHING UP.
    Sometimes something that makes you happy also makes you unhappy, like smoking cigarettes, having one more cupcake, staying up until3:00 A.M . to watch The Godfather for the fifth time, and—surely one of the most popular happy/unhappy activities—shopping. Many people get a big kick out of buying things, but once they’re home, cash register happiness changes to remorse and guilt.
    Although I’m generally an underbuyer, every once in a while I do switch to a “Buy” setting; a friend once described this as my “drive-by shopping mode.” This happened when we moved to our current apartment. For the first time, I had my own little home office, and I went nuts outfitting it. I bought a complicated desk chair, a wooden desktop organizer, special boxes to hold my supplies, all kinds of mailing envelopes and elaborate notebooks and sticky pads, fancy rubber bands printed with patterns, a headset for my phone, an extra battery for my laptop, anything I could think of.
    It was after I bought a magnetic paper clip holder shaped like a little chirping bird that I started to feel guilty about the amount of stuff I was accumulating. I resolved to “Give something up.” I had everything I really needed, and I made a rule for myself: no more purchases for the office. I cut that category of spending out altogether—and it felt good to say no to myself and to stop buying. Enough.
    When I wrote a blog post about my experience of resolving to “Give something up,” someone wrote to say, “It’s better to focus on the positive. Instead of telling yourself ‘no’ or ‘never’ or ‘don’t,’ focus on what you want, and be moderate. Otherwise you’re just setting yourself up to backslide and fail.”
    That’s a good point to keep in mind, but I don’t agree that it’s always true. First of all, when I’m trying to give something up, I find it easier to give it up entirely than to try to indulge moderately. Also, sometimes it feels good to say, “I’m going to stop!” “No more!” “Maybe tomorrow, but not today.” Happiness experts point out that merely making and sticking to a decision is a source of happiness, because it gives you a feeling