Tuesday, December 4, 2007

The Happiness Project

Check out The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin's blog about finding happiness. Here is her description of what the blog is about:

I'm working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT--a memoir about the year I spent
test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study I could find,
whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah. THE HAPPINESS
PROJECT will gather these rules for living and report on what works and what
doesn’t. On this daily blog, I recount some of my adventures and insights as I
grapple with the challenge of being happier. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will hit the
shelves in late 2009 (HarperCollins).


One feature I especially like is her lists of tips that she writes every Wednesday. Here's an especially relevant one entitled Seven topics to avoid if you don't want to risk being a bore. Number one on the list: a dream.

Here's another interesting, related one: Quiz -- do you make other people unhappy?

Note: most of her lists aren't so negative -- these just happen to appeal to me!

I really like her writing -- she's sincere, writes often, and brings in material from a wide range of sources.

5 comments:

Cindi said...

I agree that talking about the route one took to get here is boring. That conversation topic drives me nuts!

Mary Beth said...

I haven't heard people talk about that, but I have had people tell me how to get somewhere when I didn't ask!

Anonymous said...

People do find dreams interesting. For example, that blog got more comments than most. We all have dreams in common, so general similarities and differences are interesting. However, if you are going to tell a specific dream, you should perhaps limit it to no more than 3 sentences to avoid boring the listener....I hope you hadn't just told them your latest dream and they were telling you how to get back home.

Mary Beth said...

I do find (or would find -- no one's ever told me about his golf game or wine collection) lots of these topics boring, but not dreams. The author suggests that these things are boring because they give the listener nothing to say, but I don't find that to be true when people tell about dreams. Although... possibly they stick to the 3 sentences rule.

Anonymous said...

No more than 3 sentences? I don't think I've ever had a dream wroth mentioning that could be told effectively in 3 sentences. When someone tells me their dreams, I like to hear details!