One of my goals in blogging is to share some of the resources that have helped my life. Over the past couple of years I have been blessed by reading close to 200 books. Many of them have been non fiction books that I have found interesting and helpful. A few I even describe as life changing. One of those is “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin.
Gretchen is a lawyer turned writer who decided she wanted to be happier. Not that she was unhappy, but she sensed she was missing out on happiness that was available. Gretchen created a list of 12 projects that she would do to increase her happiness and then did one a month for a year. She wrote about her year and the lessons learned in “The Happiness Project.”
I use many of her principles but the most life changing truth that I received was about the Happy Person in your lives.
If you are like me, sort of happy but find it very easy to be crabby, I hope you have a Happy Person in your life. Your Happy Person is someone who shares your life with you and finds happiness in most everything. While you are getting up tight and frustrated, overworked and feeling under appreciated, your Happy Person is seeing the good and sharing the love. Gretchen’s Happy Person is her husband and mine is my wife. Now I knew Carol was my Happy Person but here are two things I didn’t know until I read Gretchen’s book.
1. How much happiness a Happy Person adds to life. This would seem obvious, but if you have been with your Happy Person a long time, you likely just assume them and the happiness they bring. Once I started noticing how often Carol’s happiness nudges me towards happiness, I was blown away. Her happiness offers me the chance to be happy multiple times a day. I don’t even know how to calculate the impact she has on my happiness. And I don’t want to think about living without her happiness. One more cool thing I have learned lately is to seek her happiness. If I’m feeling a crabby spell coming on, I seek her out so some of her happiness can rub off on me.
2. Happy People work hard at being happy. It only looks easy. They float around sharing the love and joy and they do it so well that we think it’s just the way they are. Not true. According to Gretchen, your Happy Person works at being happy. She work’s hard at it. She chose's happiness many times a day. I asked Carol about this and she confirmed that being happy and being an influence for happiness is something she works at and it is hard work.
- Thank God for happy people.
- Open yourself to their happiness.
- Thank your Happy Person
- And last of all, if you are in really bad mood and are planning on staying that way for a while, do you rHP a favor and stay away:)
You learn more about Gretchen at www.Happiness-Project.com
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