Be happier

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, has just come out with a new book, Happier At Home. It is filled with tidbits, some of them so obvious you wonder why you aren’t implementing them and some eye openers. I loved the pages about making yourself happy by pleasing yourself. Here is a little excerpt:

”I used to tell myself, “I should learn more about art.  It’s beautiful, it’s interesting, it’s fun!” But I somehow couldn’t figure out how to approach it. When I paid close attention to what caught my eye, to what I looked at with pleasure—not what I thought I should like, but what I actually did like—I found my obsession and the ways to pursue it.  I had so many claims on my time, yet I found myself spending hours looking at the work of certain artists.
Christopher Alexander remarked, “It is hard, so terrible hard, to please yourself.  Far from being the easy things that it sounds like, it is almost the hardest thing in the world, because we are not always comfortable with that true self that lies deep within us.”

Does that resonate with you? Are you doing the very thing that makes you the most happy? I once read an article that asked you to write down the three things that you did as a child that made you so happy you’d do them over and over. Then write down as a teenager what did you gravitate to that made you always smile. Then as an adult, where did you find yourself that always drew you out and was blissful. Looking back on your life you should be able to spot the repeating themes and sources of your happiness.
  Mine were art, reading, music and being around people. Those are the things that charge me up. I have often remarked that you could tell how happy I was by the amount of time I spent with my art and music. So why don’t I play the piano more often? Or pick up a paintbrush? Hmmm..