|
39cdcad
|
It is only when you meet someone of a different culture from yourself that you begin to realise what your own beliefs really are. --GEORGE ORWELL, The Road to Wigan Pier
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
29740cd
|
I often learn more from one person's highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal practices or cite up-to-date studies.
|
|
learning
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
d6d4a23
|
I knew I wouldn't discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances; it was right here, right now-- as in the haunting play "The Blue Bird," where two children spend a year searching the world for the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to find it waiting for them when they finally return home."
|
|
happiness
blue-bird
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
b31b7e7
|
When Churchill was running for office for the first time, he went door to door to ask for votes. He knocked on the door of an irritable man who, when Churchill introduced himself, said, "Vote for you? Why, I'd rather vote for the devil!" "I understand," answered Churchill. "But in case your friend is not running, may I count on your support?"
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
ae452cb
|
lzwj lnjH 'Hd 'hm w'qw~ l`wml lmrtbT@ bls`d@
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
88e31fb
|
arriving rarely makes you as happy as you anticipate. p 84
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
0ea2617
|
A willingness to be pleased requires modesty and even innocence--easy to deride as mawkish and sentimental.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
86da370
|
You
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
9e23001
|
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. --Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
c4aae37
|
There are times in the lives of most of us," observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, "when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed."
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
ba63a49
|
Keep it simple' wasn't always the right response. Many things that boosted my happiness also added complexity to my life. Having children. Learning to post videos to my website. Going to an out-of-town wedding. Applied too broadly, my impulse to 'Keep it simple' would impoverish me. 'Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings,' warned Samuel Johnson, 'let us therefore by cautious how we strip her.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
1e8e6e4
|
When I focus on the way "men" or "husbands" generally behave, I start to lump Jamie along with half of humanity. I find myself feeling angry or annoyed with Jamie for things he hasn't even done."
|
|
marriage
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
5c6b13f
|
I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if I wasn't sitting in front of a computer typing, I was wasting my time--but I pushed myself to take a wider view of what was "productive." Time spend with my family and friends was never wasted."
|
|
time
productivity
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
5bca1d5
|
Nothing is more exhausting than the task that's never started.
|
|
chores
just-start
exhaustion
start
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
cec062b
|
How about this," I suggested. "Instead of feeling that you've blown the day and thinking, 'I'll get back on track tomorrow,' try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big."
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
52ef5a1
|
Forbearance is a form of generosity.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
c6308d1
|
This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.
|
|
happiness
control
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
bd04def
|
Experts say that denying bad feelings intensifies them, acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return.
|
|
happiness
emotional-health
denial
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
2eddbfb
|
If we want something to count in our lives, we should figure out a way to count it.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
b4c65f6
|
Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life---and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, be..
|
|
joy
optimism
pessimism
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
feb578d
|
Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
afaa2d6
|
The pleasure of doing the same thing, in the same way, every day, shouldn't be overlooked. The things I do every day take on a certain beauty and provide a kind of invisible architecture to my life.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
8326a1b
|
When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
d5afd8c
|
Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
cc47160
|
It struck me as poignant that my long relationship with my beloved grandparents could be embodied in a few small objects. But the power of objects doesn't depend on their volume; in fact, my memories were better evoked by a few carefully chosen items than by a big assortment of things with vague associations.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
7345dfa
|
Accept myself, and expect more of myself. Give myself limits to give myself freedom. Make people happier by acknowledging that they're not feeling happy. Plan ahead to be spontaneous; only with careful preparation do I feel carefree. Accomplish more by working less. Happiness doesn't always make me feel happy. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection. It's very hard to make things easier. My material desires have a spiritual aspec..
|
|
positive-thinking
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
292bb34
|
In fact, for both men and women--and this finding struck me as highly significant--the most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women. Time spent with men doesn't make a difference.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
0d20fbc
|
It's been freeing to focus on what works for me rather than what's wrong with me.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
1bb2991
|
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
a02341b
|
A sense of growth is so important to happiness that it's often preferable to be progressing to the summit rather than to be at the summit.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
8e6866e
|
Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us mastery over ourselves is destructive." And whatever liberates our spirit while giving us mastery over ourselves is constructive." --
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
8532878
|
Nothing is more exhausting than the task that's never started, and strangely, starting is often far harder than continuing.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
525c656
|
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld advised aspiring comedian Brad Isaac that, because daily writing was the key to writing better jokes, Isaac should buy a calendar with a box for every day of the year, and every day, after writing, cross off the day with a big red X. "After a few days you'll have a chain," Seinfeld explained. "You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the ch..
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
c0d235d
|
What I do most days matters more than what I do once in a while." That kind of self-encouragement is a greater safeguard than self-blame."
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
78ff6b9
|
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. --Journal of Thomas Merton
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
f1286d6
|
W. H. Auden articulated this tension beautifully: "Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity."
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
1143090
|
By mindfully deciding how to act in line with my values instead of mindlessly applying my rules, I was better able to make the decisions that supported my happiness.
|
|
intentionality
values
rules
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
62d6ab3
|
We are happy when we are growing.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
d3e5f23
|
A sense of growth is so important to happiness that it's often preferable to be progressing to the summit rather than to be at the summit. Neither a scientist nor a philosopher but a novelist, Lisa Grunwald, came up with the most brilliant summation of this happiness principle: "Best is good, better is best."
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
feb9d51
|
Happiness doesn't always make you feel happy." Activities that contribute to long-term happiness don't always make me feel good in the short term; in fact they're sometimes downright unpleasant."
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
e9e2b24
|
I don't want to reject my life. I want to change my life without changing my life.
|
|
life
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
2e5cf98
|
once the habit is in place, we can effortlessly do the things we want to do.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
9df8c2e
|
I started thinking more about music. I thought I'd accepted the fact that, as part of "Being Gretchen," I didn't really like music, but in fact, the truth was slightly different: I thought I didn't like music, but in fact, I didn't approve of my own taste--I wished I liked sophisticated music, like jazz or classical or esoteric rock. Instead, my taste ran mostly to what might play on a lite FM station. Oh, well. Be Gretchen."
|
|
preferences
taste
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
c308b34
|
Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life. We repeat about 40 percent of our behavior almost daily, so our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.
|
|
|
Gretchen Rubin |