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

spent a lot of time writing in it the things that have bothered me, or things in my life that I feel I have botched, but far less time writing down what I have to be grateful for.
     
    From my experience, a gratitude journal is a great thing—and it doesn’t really need to be a written journal. I tried a written journal for a couple of weeks, but it always felt artificial. Now, every day as part of my evening meditation I take some time to really become conscious of the things I am grateful for—and I intensify the emotion. Switching from writing down what I am grateful for to feeling gratefulness with my heart is a great thing. I learned a lot of that in Thailand, where many people have the habit of visiting temples and making merit. The first couple of times I went with them, I always asked them what to do and how to behave, and they answered you shall just pray with your heart, make gratitude for everything you experience a real heartfelt emotion. And this really made a big difference for me, from “a fake make-up gratitude” to a real, enriching experience.
     
    I went through a terrible period when everything, and I mean everything, in my life went wrong. I had no self-esteem, no confidence in myself. So I started keeping a gratitude journal of things that I was grateful for about MYSELF. I was grateful that I had the discipline to keep exercising, even when I didn’t feel like it. I was grateful that I’d given up smoking two years ago. I was grateful that I managed to organize a birthday party for my father. Maybe this makes me sound conceited, but keeping that journal helped me not be paralyzed by self-loathing.
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    But after two weeks of keeping a gratitude notebook, I realized that although gratitude boosts happiness, my gratitude notebook wasn’t having that effect anymore. It had started to feel forced and affected, and instead of putting me in a grateful frame of mind, it made me annoyed. Later, I read a study that suggested I might have had better luck with my gratitude notebook if I had kept it twice a week instead of every day; expressing gratitude less often seemed to keep it more meaningful. But by then I’d soured on the task. I gave it up.
    Because my gratitude notebook didn’t work, I had to find other ways to cultivate gratitude. I tied the action of typing my password into my computer to a moment of gratitude; while I waited for my computer to wake up from its slumber, I thought grateful thoughts. This gratitude meditation had the same effect as a gratitude notebook, but somehow it didn’t bug me. (Speaking of “gratitude meditation,” I noticed that if I put the word “meditation” after any activity, it suddenly seemed much more high-minded and spiritual: when waiting for the bus, I’d tell myself I was doing “bus-waiting meditation” in the slow line at the drugstore, I was doing “waiting-in-line meditation.”) I worked harder to appreciate my ordinary day. This thought arose most naturally when I put the girls to bed. I give Eleanor her sippy cup of milk, then cuddle her in my lap as I rock her to sleep. With Eliza, after Jamie has read to her from Harry Potter for half an hour, I go snuggle with her for fifteen minutes or so. We lie together on her bed, her head on my shoulder, and talk. I tried to appreciate the seasons more, too—to notice, in the midst of concrete and cabs, the color of the sky, the quality of light, the flowers in window boxes. “There is, indeed,” wrote Samuel Johnson, “something inexpressibly pleasing in the annual renovation of the world, and the new display of the treasures of nature.”
    When I was feeling a distinct lack of gratitude, I tried to cure it by applying my Third Commandment to “Act the way I want to feel.” Could I turn complaints into thankfulness? When I felt annoyed at having to takeEleanor for her pediatrician’s checkup, I told myself, “I feel grateful for taking Eleanor to the doctor.” The crazy thing is—it worked! How disappointed I’d be if someone else took her. One sleepless morning, I was wide awake at 3:00 A.M ., and at 4:00, instead of continuing to toss and fume, I told myself, “I feel grateful for being awake at 4:00.” I got up, made myself some tea, and headed to my dark, quiet office. I lit my orange-blossom-scented candle and settled in—knowing that I’d have no interruptions for at least two hours. Instead of starting my day feeling frustrated or groggy, I started my day with a feeling