The Happiness Project
By: Gretchen Rubin
Harper Paperbacks; Revised ed. edition (December 29, 2015)
368 pages
The Happiness Project is an interesting book documenting a one year experiment on happiness. Each month, author Gretchen Rubin tackles the issue of happiness and self-improvement toward it from a different angle. Vitality, Marriage, Work, Parenthood – and we are only finished with April. The way Rubin weaves secondary historical sources into her personal narrative takes the story from merely documenting a fantastic experiment, to a catching resource.
Two of my favorite quotes:
“In his book Happier, Tal Ben-Shahar describes the “arrival fallacy,” the belief that when you arrive at a certain destination, you’ll be happy. (Other fallacies include the “floating world fallacy,” the belief that immediate pleasure, cut off from future purpose, can bring happiness, and the “nihilism fallacy,” the belief that it’s not possible to become happier.) The arrival fallacy is a fallacy because, though you may anticipate great happiness in arrival, arriving rarely makes you as happy as you anticipate.”
“One conclusion was blatantly clear from my happiness research: everyone from contemporary scientists to ancient philosophers agrees that having strong social bonds is probably the most meaningful contributor to happiness.”