What Started Me Thinking

  • "The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." Mark Twain
  • “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
  • "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
  • “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
  • “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
  • “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
  • “A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
  • “Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
  • “Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

  • Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
  • Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
  • Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
  • Sartre: "Hell is other people."
  • Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
  • Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
  • John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

The Happiness Project book

“A cross between the Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and seamlessly buttressed by insights from sources as diverse as psychological scientists, novelists, poets, and philosophers, Gretchen Rubin has written a book that readers will revisit again and again as they seek to fulfill their own dreams for happiness.”
Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want

“This book made me happy in the first five pages. And the more I read it, the happier I got. It’s filled with great insights that have changed every part of my life, from love to money, from work to play, from writing to Diet Coke.”
A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically and The Guinea Pig Diaries

“Happiness is contagious. And so is The Happiness Project. Once you’ve read Gretchen Rubin’s tale of a year searching for satisfaction, you’ll want to start your own happiness project and get your friends and family to join you. This is the rare book that will make you both smile and think—often on the same page.”
Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind

“The Happiness Project is a wonderful book. Gretchen shows how you can be happier, starting right now, with small, actionable steps accessible to everyone.  Among her many attainable strategies, her discovery of the connection between inner happiness and outer order is spot on!”
Julie Morgenstern, Organizing from the Inside Out and SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life

→ More Reviews and Buzz about The Happiness Project book.

The Happiness Project is one of the most thoughtful works on happiness to have emerged from the recent explosion of interest in the subject. Rubin weaves together philosophy, scientific research, history, analysis, and real-life experiences as she explains what worked for her—and what didn’t. Her conclusions are sometimes counter-intuitive – for example, she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent correctly – but they resonate with readers of all backgrounds.

Filled with practical advice, sharp insight, charm, and humor, The Happiness Project manages to be illuminating yet entertaining, profound yet compulsively readable. But The Happiness Project isn’t just an engaging and provocative book. Gretchen’s passion for her subject jumps off the page, and reading a few chapters of this book will inspire you to start your own happiness project.

Gretchen has a wide, enthusiastic following, and her idea for a “happiness project” no longer describes just a book or a blog; it’s a movement. Happiness Project groups have sprung up from Los Angeles to Enid, Oklahoma to Boston, where people meet to discuss their own happiness projects. More than a dozen blogs have been launched by people who are following Gretchen’s example. On her companion website, the Happiness Project Toolbox, enthusiastic readers track and share their own happiness projects.

Rights have been sold for 31 foreign editions of The Happiness Project

Buy from:


Foreign Cover Gallery

Canada

Germany

Netherlands

Russia

Slovenia

China

Denmark

Estonia

Hungary

Lithuania

Portugal

Spain

Turkey

Thailand

Italy

Norway

Korea

Czech Republic

Slovak

Sweden

Poland

France

Gretchen RubinGretchen Rubin is the best-selling writer whose book, The Happiness Project, is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. Here, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.

Now in Paperback


Buy the book
Sample Chapters Book Video
Free Audio Book Sample

Follow me

RSSHappiness Project Twitter updatesFacebook updates
Daily Email updatesMonthly Newsletter Email