Alex: What made you decide to undertake the Happiness Project?
Gretchen: One rainy afternoon, as I was staring out the window of a taxi, a realization jolted me so violently that I jumped in my seat. I suddenly saw that years were slipping by, and I was ignoring the great fundamentals of my life. “What do I want?” I asked myself. “Well…I want to be happy.” But I never thought about what made me happy, or how I might be happier, or even what it meant to be “happy.”
I had much to be happy about. I was very happily married, we had two delightful young daughters; I had no regrets about leaving my legal career to be a writer; I was living in my favorite city, New York City; I had a very close relationship with my parents, sister, and in-laws; I had great friends; I had my health. I didn’t even have to color my hair. Yet I also fussed about my career, lost my temper with my family, drifted out of touch with friends, made unkind remarks, and had other sources of guilt, irritation, anxiety, and anger. I wasn’t as happy as I could be. What would it take to be happier? I knew the answer: I needed to start asking more of myself.
One thing stood in the way of my greater happiness, and that one thing was…me. A thousand tiny misdeeds pricked my conscience. Procrastination stopped me from taking steps that might boost my mood. “I need to think about this,” I reflected. “Or maybe, I should start a happiness project.” Eureka!
Alex: What has the project brought to your life so far? How have things been different?
Gretchen: My Happiness Project has made me much happier. My First Splendid Truth is that to think about happiness, we need to think about 1) feeling good, 2) feeling bad, 3) feeling right in an atmosphere of growth. After spending months thinking about these elements in my life, I’ve made positive changes. I have more feeling good: I have a lot more fun, I’m closer to my friends, I make time for my priorities. I have less feeling bad: I feel less anger, I’ve stopped nagging and gossiping (mostly), I’ve tackled some issues that were making me anxious. I feel more right: I’m acting more like the spouse and parent and citizen that I want to be. And I’ve cultivated an atmosphere of growth, by tackling big projects that give me a sense of progress and accomplishment.
Stay tuned for more from Gretchen next week.
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I have been following Gretchen's blog and I am very impressed with what she has learned and what she is sharing with the public. I am particularly fascinated with her concept of realizing that we need to think about creating an atmosphere of growth for ourselves. As a positive psychologist who focuses on positive psychology for women, I think creating an atmosphere for growth is so important. In fact, that is one of the major concepts I discuss in my book,The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy. I wrote this book after realizing two profounds about women in our society: 1. We are encouraged to develop false selves, so influenced by the media and other forms of persuasion to try to fit a mold that is not necessarily true to one's authentic self, and yet 2: women have a much greater capacity for happiness and well-being than society or the media leads us to believe. I call the capacity of a women to find her essential self and enjoy that self in pleasurable, happy, meaningful ways, her Enchanted Self. Once a women is driven by passion, passion that comes from her own talents and interests and potential, she will indeed feel happy and be involved in less petty activities. It is a win-win for everyone when people are in touch with their own talents and capacities and encouraged to flourish! One thing that I have done over the last 15 years is to teach people how to recognize what is most sustaining about themselves and most important to them. That is what a lot of my first book The Enchanted Self is about. I also have a paper, The Seven Gateways to Happiness which gives a lot of detail about what we need to actually do to be happy. It is free and can be downloaded on the front page of my website, www.enchantedself.com. Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein