The Happiness Project

Gretchen Rubin writes:

A few days ago, I posted about a phenomenon I describe as “oppositional conversational style” (OCS for short), and I’ve been flabbergasted by the heated response.
I thought I’d identified some obscure, rare pattern of human interaction, but it turns out that lots of people had already identified this kind of interaction.

A person with “oppositional conversational style” is a person who, in conversation, disagrees with and corrects whatever you say. Maybe in a friendly way, maybe in a belligerent way, but their remarks are framed in opposition to whatever you say.

I was fascinated to read people’s comments. I learned several things.

First, people recognize this pattern easily. OCS, it turns out, is a widespread phenomenon.

Second, people find it tiresome to be on the receiving end of OCS. To be repeatedly told “I’m right; you’re wrong,” in every context, gets annoying.

Third, at least some people who practice OCS recognize it in themselves, and they think there’s value to this kind of exchange. They engage with others in this way because they find it fun to argue, or they want to get facts exactly correct, or because they want to make clear that there’s another side to an argument (even if they don’t particularly believe in that side of the argument, they want to explore it).

Fourth, OCS is sometimes related to the Tigger vs. Eeyore distinction. OCS seems associated with Eeyoredom, though not everyone who exhibits OCS is an Eeyore.

I think it’s helpful to watch out for the “oppositional conversational style.” Sometimes, just being able to identify something that’s bugging you somehow lessens the annoyance. Instead of reacting to the exchange unthinkingly, you realize, “Oh, I’m in the presence of the oppositional conversational style! How very interesting!” Get more here: Watch Out For the “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Conversation | Psychology Today.

July 3, 2012 1

Find a "Comfort Food" for your mind

Gretchen Rubin writes…

One common happiness question is: How do you give yourself a boost? If you’re feeling anxious, blue, angry, scared, what can you do to soothe yourself?

A few days ago, I posted 5 myths for fighting the blues. Okay, those don’t work very well. So what does?

One suggestion: find a “comfort food” for your mind. Know what you can do with your brain that will give yourself a comforting break from your worries, at least for a little while. By doing so, you’ll re-charge your battery, find it easier to stay calm and cheerful, find it easier to take action to remedy your situation—and you’ll sleep better. But this is easier said than done.

We all suffer from “negativity bias,” that is, we react to the bad more strongly and persistently than to the comparable good. (What do you remember better, a compliment or a criticism?) Research shows one consequence of negativity bias is that when people’s thoughts wander, they tend to begin to brood. Anxious or angry thoughts capture our attention more effectively than happier thoughts.

So if you’re feeling blue, look for ways to pull your mind away from your worries onto positive topics…

Source: The Happiness Project: Find a “Comfort Food” for Your Mind.

Go to the source if you’d like to read the rest of Gretchen’s post…

April 7, 2012 0

The Quotability of Samuel Johnson

A tip of the hat to Gretchen Rubin for pointing me in the direction of Samuel Johnson with her Happiness Project quote du jour…

On this basis, my top five people who have featured most often in Quote … Unquote questions (as opposed to having just been quoted on the programme, which would be too big a task to measure) turn out to be: (1) Winston Churchill (2) Oscar Wilde (3) Noel Coward (4) Bernard Shaw (5) Mark Twain. No sign of Dr Johnson there, I’m afraid.
Then one of the readers of the Quote … Unquote Newsletter came along with his list of people who had featured most often in that Newsletter (and I have to emphasize that this was usually because of some issue regarding their quotations), and this gave a slightly different result, namely: Churchill (first), Wilde (second), Shaw and G.K. Chesterton (joint 4th), Mark Twain and P.G. Wodehouse (joint 6th). Samuel Johnson came 8th in that list.
Then, I counted up the number of quotations attributed to this sort of quotee (again I emphasize written and spoken quotees) in the latest editions of the two major dictionaries of quotations, the Oxford and Bartlett’s Familiar (in the United States). And what do you think I found?
In the Oxford, giving you the results in Miss World order, we have: in fifth place, Thomas Jefferson with 50 quotations, fourth, Winston Churchill with 53, third, Oscar Wilde with 61, second, a stonking 105 from Bernard Shaw, and in first place, with no fewer than 254, from Lichfield, England, Dr Samuel Johnson.
Turning to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, and again giving you the results in reverse order, we find: in fifth place with 48 quotations, Oscar Wilde, in fourth place, a new entry, Abraham Lincoln with 51, in third place, with 61, Winston Churchill, shooting up the charts to No. 2, with 83 quotations, Mark Twain, and – I hardly need tell you – this week’s, this year’s No. 1, the top of the quotation pops for all time, with 142 quotations, your own, your very own, Samuel Johnson. Gratifyingly, however you measure it, it’s game, set and match to Dr Johnson.
The next question that must be addressed is, Why is Johnson the most all-round quoted source apart from the Bible and Shakespeare? If you define a quotation, as I will, as: ‘Something written or spoken by another that we wish to use for our own ends because it expresses something memorably and well’, then I need hardly go any further. Apart from the truths and wisdom that they contain, Dr Johnson’s quotations are so memorably phrased that they cry out to be repeated until the end of time.
Does a gentleman who marries a second time show disregard of his first wife? ‘Not at all, Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.’
Johnson had a very positive view of marriage (though it is easily forgotten that he was himself a widower), hence his remark, ‘Even ill assorted marriages are preferable to cheerless celibacy’ – that’s in the Life – and ‘Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures’ – which is in Rasselas.
`If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman’ – and then he adds: ‘But she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation.’
Then there is the famous piece of advice he gave Boswell, who was having landlord trouble and considered it a ‘serious distress’. Johnson told him: ‘There is nothing in this mighty misfortune … Consider, Sir, how insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth hence.’ Which, frankly, is the best piece of advice you can give anybody.

Source: The Quotability of Samuel Johnson

Go to the source if you’re curious to know more about this most quotable of all authors…

March 14, 2012 0

Are YOU the one that everyone finds difficult?

porcupine_CCDrew_Avery Gretchen Rubin again. This time on the topic of being an a$$…

We all see the world through our own eyes, and it can be hard to recognize how our words and actions appear to other people. One of the challenges of being a difficult person is realizing that you’re a difficult person. I’ve known many difficult people who, I suspect, have no idea that others find them difficult!

In his excellent book The No A****** Rule (I’m omitting the title not from prudery but from fear of spam-blockers), and also on his blog, Work Matters, Bob Sutton has a quiz to help people recognize if they are a*******.

I was inspired to adapt that material for this quiz. As you answer these questions, be brutally honest with yourself. Don’t make excuses for yourself or other people; just try to answer accurately. These questions apply to family members gathering for a holiday, or to co-workers, or to any group of people who are trying to get along with each other.

Source: The Happiness Project: Quiz: Are YOU the One That Everyone Finds Difficult?

Go to the source if you want to read Gretchen’s quiz. Personally I was disappointed that she offers questions but no recommendations. Fortunately, one of her readers suggested this series of posts from writer Annie Zirkel. Annie says…

We come into contact with prickly people all the time. It might be a scowl, a frosty attitude or a touchy disposition. It might be the choice of words as in ‘What do you want?!’

Sometimes they serve us coffee. Sometimes they sit across from us at work or in committee meetings. Sometimes they live in our neighborhood or even worse! in our own homes.

And sometimes – more often then we’d like to admit – they are staring back at us in the mirror.

Source: How Prickly Are You? Part 1

Me? I often ponder why society secretly venerates a**holes like Steve Jobs, Gregory House of House, MD, and Cal Lightman from ‘Lie to me‘ and why they are a source of entertainment for us. Personally I’m a recovering assaholic [got that word from Steve Jobs’ biography] – deep inside I know I am warm, loving and caring but for reasons I often don’t understand even my best intentions are frequently taken the wrong way. And the results are far from entertaining. Because Gretchen’s quiz got me thinking I’ll be digging into Annie’s series for insight. Join me if you’d like. I’ll report back on what I find…

March 7, 2012 0

Carl Jung’s five key elements to happiness

In 1960, journalist Gordon Young asked Jung, “What do you consider to be more or less basic factors making for happiness in the human mind?” Jung answered with five elements:

1. Good physical and mental health.
2. Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.
3. The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.
4. Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.
5. A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.

Jung, always mindful of paradox, added, “All factors which are generally assumed to make for happiness can, under certain circumstances, produce the contrary. No matter how ideal your situation may be, it does not necessarily guarantee happiness.”

I did disagree strongly with Jung on one point. He said, “The more you deliberately seek happiness the more sure you are not to find it.” I know, Carl Jung vs. Gretchen Rubin, who is the authority? But though many great minds, such as John Stuart Mill, make the same point as Jung, I don’t agree.

For me, at least, the more mindful I am about happiness, the happier I become. Take Jung’s five factors. By deliberately seeking to strengthen those elements of my life, I make myself happier.

Source: The Happiness Project: Carl Jung’s Five Key Elements to Happiness.

If Gretchen can disagree with Jung, so can I. My issue? The list appears random – I think there’s a sequence to these 5 steps that is important. I would reorder the list like this;

A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.
Good physical and mental health.
Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.
Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.
The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.

Maybe I had too much of Maslow and his hierarchy of needs but it seems to me that there are certain items in the list that need to build upon the other, in other words, 1 affects your ability to do 2-5. How about you? What’s your take on Jung, Rubin, Maslow and me?

February 23, 2012 3

To Be Happier, Write Your Own Set of Personal Commandments

One of my favorite authors is Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project. Recently, she shared her thoughts on having your own set of personal commandments…

One of the most challenging—and most helpful and fun—tasks that I’ve done as part of my Happiness Project is to write my Twelve Personal Commandments. These aren’t specific resolutions, like make my bed, but the overarching principles by which I try to live my life.

It took me several months to come up with this list, and it has been very useful for me to have them identified clearly in my mind. It’s a creative way of distilling core values.

To get you started as you think about your own commandments, here are my Twelve Commandments:

1. Be Gretchen.
2. Let it go.
3. Act the way I want to feel.
4. Do it now.
5. Be polite and be fair.
6. Enjoy the process.
7. Spend out. (This is probably the most enigmatic of my commandments.)
8. Identify the problem.
9. Lighten up.
10. Do what ought to be done.
11. No calculation.
12. There is only love.

So how do you come up with your own list?

Consider phrases that have stuck with you. When I look at my Twelve Commandments, I realize that five of them are actually quotations from other people. My father repeatedly reminds me to “Enjoy the process.” A respected boss told me to “Be polite and be fair.” A good friend told me that she’d decided that “There is only love” in her heart for a difficult person. “No calculation” is a paraphrase of my spiritual master St. Therese (“When one loves, one does not calculate”), and “Act the way I want to feel” is a paraphrase of William James.

Aim high and fight the urge to be too comprehensive.I’ve found that my commandments help me most when I review them at least daily, to keep them fresh in my mind, and to do this, it helps to keep the list short and snappy. I suspect that Twelve Commandments is too much. Maybe I only need two, “Be Gretchen” and “There is only love.”

Think about what’s true for you.Each person’s list will differ. One person’s commandment is to “Say yes,” another person’s commandment is to “Say no.” You need to think about yourself, your values, your strengths and weaknesses, your interests.

Source: The Happiness Project: To Be Happier, Write Your Own Set of Personal Commandments.

Is happiness an issue for you? You might benefit from Gretchen’s work. I have!