The premise of The Happiness Project is this: the writer, Gretchen Rubin, embarks on a 12 month journey to conquer her faults and limitations. Therefore, enabling herself to appreciate life more and live up to it better. To be more grateful. To be happier and in turn behave better.
This is the part that is so totally GO! related I got chills while reading it. I had to read it aloud to Geoff immediately:
...Founding Father Benjamin Franklin is on of the patron saints of self-realization. In his Autobiography, he describes how he designed his Virtues Chart as part of a "bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection." He identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate - temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility - and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.
Current research underscores the wisdom of his chartkeeping approach. People are more likely to make progress on goals that are broken into concrete, measurable actions, with some kind of structural accountability and positive reinforcement. Also, according to a current theory of the brain, the unconscious mind does crucial work in forming judgments , motives, and feelings outside our awareness or conscious control, and one factor that influences the work of the unconscious is the 'accessibility' of information, or the ease with which it comes to mind. Information that has been recently called up or or frequently used in the past is easier to retrieve and therefore energized. The concept of 'accessibility' suggested to me that by constantly reminding myself of certain goals and ideas, I could keep them more active in my mind....
Cool huh?
She ends up developing 12 resolutions and begins working on one per month. The first resolution is "boosting my energy. More vitality, I hoped, would make it easier for me to stick to all my happiness-project resolutions in future months."
The ways she intends to Boost Energy:
Go to sleep earlier (GO!-related)
Exercise better (GO! related)
Toss, restore, organize (GO! related for me)
Tackle a nagging task (GO! related for me. First GO! round I conquered Quickbooks.)
Act more energetic
She also develops 12 commandments and "Secrets of Adulthood" both of which are funny, witty and enlightening. I will share these in another post.
I can't wait to share what she has to say about her second resolution "Remember Love - Marriage." It is so interesting!
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