BOOK REVIEW: Happier At Home, by Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin brings us tales of her second happiness project in her new book, Happier at Home.  (Her first project, summarized in her book The Happiness Project, is reviewed here.)  As the title suggests, this time she focused her happiness efforts specifically on her home, after observing that so much of her happiness depends on the physical and spiritual environment of her home.  (I bet the same is true for you and me, too.)  While the focus on home somewhat narrows the scope of her resolutions, her conclusions that I found the most profound were remarkably consistent throughout both books:  Be yourself; Happiness is found in paradoxes; and Do it now.

Be yourself.  In nearly every chapter in Happier at Home, Rubin reminds herself to “Be Gretchen.”  She has found, and she describes vividly and repeatedly, that trying to be something or someone else is a major source of unhappiness.  Thus “Be Gretchen” has become the first of her “Twelve Personal Commandments.”

For example, for years of her adulthood she harbored a love of children’s literature.  She continued to re-read and cherish classics such as Little Women, The Little House in the Big Wood,  and A Little Princess.  But she felt slightly ashamed about this hobby, since she felt she “ought” to like adult literature and “should” read more educational non-fiction.  But then she remembered:  “Be Gretchen.”  Gretchen likes children’s literature, so she embraced it and started a children’s lit book club for adults.  It has proved so popular that she now has three groups running.  Instead of suffering boredom or worse reading books she “should” read, she is immensely happy reading, discussing and celebrating the literature she has always loved.

Since Socrates first admonished his students to “Know thyself,” being self aware has been a mark of maturity and wisdom.  Unfortunately modern consumerist society, in its rush to sell us more stuff, constantly tries to convince us that happiness will come once we change, upgrade, or transform ourselves, preferably with the latest new product.  Rubin finds again and again that happiness does not lie down that path.  Happiness begins with you know yourself, and then practice being yourself.

Happiness is found in paradoxes.  Early on Rubin makes the observation that the opposite of a profound truth is also true.  Thus in an early chapter on possessions, Rubin embraces the old truth that “Less is more.”  Simplicity adds to happiness.  And yet, she acknowledges, many of the things in her life that make her the happiest have added complexity to her life:  kids, her marriage, big work projects.  More is more, too.  Happiness, it turns out, is not found in the extremes, but in the paradoxes between the extremes.

Once you realize this, you begin to notice the paradoxes all around you.  The days are long, but the years are short.  It would be good to have more time to do some things; it would be good to have less time to do some things.  To be happy, you have to make other people happy; to make other people happy, you have to be happy.  

These paradoxes show that happiness does not consist of a removal of all tension, conflict, and imperfection in life.  Rather, as Rubin finds throughout her book, happiness comes in adapting yourself to the tensions of life, in resolving the conflicts, in celebrating the imperfections.  Want what you have, in other words, instead of constantly searching for the perfect.

Do it now.  The final chapter of her book is Rubin's most philosophical:  as she looks back over her year of new happiness resolutions, she realizes that in each case, Now is the time to be happy.  Now is the time to enjoy and appreciate her kids, her marriage, her neighborhood, her health.  Sure, there may be much to look forward to, but look too far forward and suddenly the Now is gone.  Wishing she were happier would have taken her nowhere.  But taking action--in come cases, quite small action--made her happier right now.  In her words, "Now is now, and now is already a long time ago."  Where does the time go?  Her suggestion is to not let it go by unnoticed.  Undertake a happiness project of your own to help cultivate an attitude of gratitude, and an appreciation of what you have right now.  Do it Now!

I'm no writer of Rubin's caliber, but with a blog about living in the present tense, you can imagine I've thought a lot about Now.  (A couple of examples are here and here.  This post explains what we mean by Present Tense Living.)  As we've said before, it is easy to live your life in any time BUT the present.  We get stuck obsessing about the past, regretting it, or wishing we could return to it.  Or, we worry about the future, or we long for it.  Either way, we miss out all that is good and worthy about Now.  You can't go back to the past.  Tomorrow may never come.  Now is all you have, so make the most of it.  This is your life, this is your time.  What will you do with it?

Make it a great day!  

Materialism Fails, Again

It turns out that not only does materialism hurt your kids, but it hurts your marriage, too. The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported on a recent study that looked at how couples’ attitudes toward money affected their marriages:

Couples who said money wasn’t important to them scored about 10% to 15% better on measures of relationship quality, such as marriage stability, than couples in which both partners were materialistic.

The effects are additive, too: couples where both spouses were materialistic were worse off than couples where only one spouse was.

"Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at,” says Jason Carroll, a BYU professor or family life and lead author of the study. “There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other.”

Interestingly, it was the attitude to money that made the difference—regardless of how much money the couples actually had. So I guess money can’t buy happiness, after all.

One obvious question: how did they define materialism? I haven’t seen the actual study, but apparently the authors asked participants to rate how important it is to them to have lots of money and things. In a consumerist society, it is impossible not to have some level of interest in having money and things. I think the line is crossed when the pursuit or maintenance of stuff begins to crowd out human relationships. If your possessions are more important to you than people, then your marriage, or your relationship with your kids, is naturally going to suffer.

The late, great Steve Jobs was quoted in 1993 saying, “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me….Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.” Doing something wonderful isn’t limited to grand projects like upending industries and creating desirable electronic devices (as Steve did). Wonderful might be coming home earlier to help your spouse with dinner. Wonderful can be offering to take the kids for a morning so a spouse can have a break. Wonderful would almost certainly be putting down the Blackberry and listening to your kids talking to you.

I’ll bet you can think of at least one way where your focus on money or stuff is getting in the way of an important relationship. Why not try, just once, to put the relationship ahead of your wallet, and see what happens. Let me know in the comments how it works for you.

Materialism Fails

I was fascinated by a news item I saw yesterday here on Britain's Daily Telegraph site, where it was reported that a recent UNICEF study concludes that in Britain materialism is rampant.  Indeed, according to the report,

materialism has come to dominate family life in Britain as parents 'pointlessly' amass goods for their children to compensate for their long working hours.

One researcher goes on to conclude that:

While children would prefer time with their parents to heaps of consumer goods, [their] parents seem to find themselves under tremendous pressure to purchase a surfeit of material goods for their children.

I haven't found a similar study focused on America, but it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that materialism is rampant here, too.  The observation of Reg Bailey, chief executive of Britain's Mothers Union, speaking about British society, could apply equally well to American society:

I think it is an issue with the nature of our society, that so often we’ve placed a dependence on things rather than being.

As I've written before here, contentment comes from not from seeking stuff, but from seeking REM:  relationships, experiences, and memories.  British kids are crying out for time from their parents; according to the UNICEF study, their parents seem to despair of giving it to them because they are working too hard to provide stuff for them instead. But stuff can never provide long-term contentment, because the thrill of acquisition never lasts; pretty soon we adapt to the new thing, the feeling of elation wears off, and we turn to pursuing the next new thing.  What a treadmill to be stuck on!  Lord willing, I will be able to recognize when I am on it....

Materialism certainly is a problem in America, but I wonder if its effects are as severe as in Britain, which in an earlier UNICEF report ranked worst of 21 developed countries for child welfare.  According to the Telegraph article,

British children were twice as likely as the average to have been drunk by the age of 15, and significantly less likely to be in two parent families than those elsewhere, were more likely to have tried drugs and had one of the worst diets in the developed world.

Why has materialism seemingly had a more deleterious effect in Britain than in America or other developed countries?  Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood, has a hypothesis:

We are teaching our children, practically from the moment they are born, that the one thing that matters is getting more stuff.  We are probably the most secular society in the world, we do not have the counterbalance of religion but at the same time we are a very driven society very into progress and making money. (emphasis added)

According to the Scripture of that religion that Britain used to have, Jesus warned the crowd, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."  (Luke 12:15).  Be rich not in stuff, but in relationships.  Pursue experiences with those you love instead of another gadget.  Stockpile memories, not shirts.  You, your children, indeed all your loved ones, will be the happier for it.

BOOK REVIEW: The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin

What would make you happy?

Gretchen Rubin set out to answer that question for herself, and in discovering her answers and recording her experiences in The Happiness Project (published in 2009) she does not presume that the things that bring her happiness will also bring her readers happiness. Instead, she provides several valuable principles that can help us find our own happiness in our own lives.

It quickly becomes evident that Rubin is a highly motivated, compulsively organized person. To launch her project, she reads widely the works of philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, and poets to identify the physiological, psychological, and behavioral factors that seem to lead to happiness. Then, in the spirit of Ben Franklin's famous self-improvement project (which he described in his Autobiography), she makes a chart of these happiness virtues and sets about to work on a few of them each month for a year. (For many of Rubin's readers, I suspect that simply learning to organize like this would go a long way to boosting happiness, or at least to reducing stress.)

Rubin's quest is not of the total life change variety. Unlike the authors of other recent entrants in the Discover Yourself genre who undertook major disruptions to their lives' routines (like traveling to India or cooking difficult recipes nearly every day of the year), Rubin acknowledged from the beginning that she is generally satisfied with her life, family and career, and that a major change of location or career wouldn't really boost happiness. Instead, Rubin sought happiness by finding more enjoyment in her daily existence; by appreciating more readily the raw material for happiness already present in her life. (At this blog, we might say she sought to live in the present tense.)

The narrative of her year spent working on these virtues is by turns earnest, sad, obvious, trite, poignant, impressive, and exhausting; sometimes more than one of these at a time. Rubin retains a sunny optimism about the project throughout, and I think by the end concludes that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. (In this instance, that means that even though she may not have perfected any of her individual happiness virtues, the whole project provided a noticeable boost to her well-being.)

I found that Rubin made one of her most profound observations right at the beginning of the book, when she unveils what she calls her "Twelve Commandments," or rules to live by. Number one is "Be Gretchen," and throughout the book this commandment serves as a reminder not to try to change her fundamental nature. No amount of mental resolve or personal discipline can change your fundamental interests and abilities, and you will only set yourself up for failure (with a resulting loss of happiness) if you try. It doesn't matter if everyone says you should do power yoga to get fit; if you hate yoga, you will never stick with it and thus won't get fit. As Rubin states it in her Happiness Manifesto: "what's fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa." Rubin did an admirable job of keeping that principle front and center.

Also, Rubin proves that a series of small improvements can add up to make a major improvement in our lives. None of her individual happiness virtues is that big of a deal on its own. (Example: "Take Time to Be Silly") But because she was disciplined and stuck with her project, the little improvements worked together to change her outlook on her life; to help her appreciate the causes for happiness that were already all around her. That is a realization from which I'm certain we all could benefit. In a way, that is the goal of Present Tense Living: to appreciate life today.

In the end, I was impressed by Rubin's efforts and inspired to be David, and to be more aware of my everyday blessings. I haven't decided whether to undertake my own happiness project yet, but I have loaned the book to my wife to get her perspective on the idea. Perhaps we will decide to do one together, or to do separate ones at the same time so we can encourage each other. If you've read the book, let me know what you think, and whether you've done your own happiness project. How did it go?

Magical Time

Our home is filled with four children, which means every evening from about 6:00 to 8:30 or so is what we call the "triple witching hour", filled with hungry and tired kids, messy rooms, cooking, dirty dishes, baths, bedtime stories, and other activities typical of suburban American families. It is chaotic, noisy, and exhausting, and it gets repeated every night.

But for the past few evenings, blessed by lovely late-spring Georgia weather, Sylvia and I have been able to recover from triple witching hour by sitting on our back patio, under the canopy of trees that surrounds the back of our house, while dusk falls. The calmness is restorative, and mentally invigorating. The sky slowly fades from the light blue of afternoon into gray, then to dark gray, then to the dark blue of night as the few stars that are able to shine through the urban light pollution twinkle in the heavens. The sounds add to the effect: the ubiquitous traffic noise of inside-the-perimeter Atlanta forms the background, but does not overpower the bark of a distant dog, the rustle of leaves in the dusky breeze, the occasional chirp of a late bird, the soft splash of our neighbor's pool fountain. This week even smell has come into play: the gardenias along our back wall are in full bloom, bathing us with fragrance on the evening breeze.

Our stress level falls with the dimming light; although I am in general a morning person, I have to admit this is a magical time of day. As I watch the earth fall asleep, it is easy to let the cares and concerns of today fade away with the light. Tomorrow will bring a new sun and a new opportunity to work and worry and strive and play. For now, we let our mind rest, just as the earth rests.

These evenings are a good reminder: sometimes it is doing nothing that makes all the difference.

Let Your Boat Be Light!

I recently read Jerome K Jerome's comedy classic, Three Men In A Boat, first published in 1889 and continuously in print ever since. It is the story of the adventures of three friends who decide to take a several-day boat trip up the River Thames, observing life along the way. Filled with amusing situations and spiced with the narrator's (presumably Jerome himself) philosophical musings, the book is a rare mixture: thought-provoking comedy.

As the three friends are preparing their boat for departure, they bring everything they think they will need to the river, only to find they have brought more stuff than they can ever fit in the boat. One of the friends, George, comes up with a different idea, and Jerome's observations about that idea provide excellent advice for life:

George said:

"You know we are on a wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without."

George comes out really quite sensible at times. You'd be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How thy pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation and with--oh, the heaviest, maddest lumber of all! The dread of what will my neighbor think, with luxuries that only cloy with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man--all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, and you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness--no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchids, or the blue forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need--a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life's sunshine--time to listen to the Aeolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heartstrings around us.......

"Let your boat of life be light"--what excellent advice to those of us who live in a society that drives us in the constant pursuit of more, better, faster.

Consider your own life; there are naturally many things you'd like to have on the journey, but what are the things you truly can't do without? What will you do to devote more of your time to those things?

The Best Gift

The holidays are a fading memory now, and I'm not sure if the arctic cold that seems to have gripped the entire country will preserve those memories a little longer than normal, or freeze them out as my mind focuses instead on getting to the next warm place as soon as possible. Just in case it is the latter, I'd better get my holiday thoughts written down now.

Did you get a favorite gift this year? My friends and family were once again abundantly generous. I will be looking smart in my new clothes, and I received enough interesting books to keep me reading for months. My in laws added a touch of class to my office life with an attractive set of desk implements--including a cool desktop telescope, with which I can watch for attacking rival bankers from my sixth-floor office window. For me, it was a typical year of material blessing at Christmas.

But one of our tenets at Present Tense Living is to seek to be rich not in things, but in REM: relationships, experiences, and memories with the people in our lives. With that in mind, I must declare that my favorite gift of the year was not a thing at all: it was time. I got to spend nearly two full weeks with my family, including my brother and parents, in Phoenix. The trip was a blessing of time well spent, and not just because of the warm weather. I played in the pool with the kids; took morning jogs while the rising sun painted the desert sky; lingered over the table with my parents and brother, catching up on personal news; showed my kids the Grand Canyon for the first time, and watched them delight in throwing snowballs into the abyss; and walked with my toddler as he chased desert bunnies across the sidewalk. We had a grand time, and oh how hard it was to return to freezing Atlanta.

In short, it was two weeks of doing nothing, but it meant everything to me. There were no schedules to keep, no pressures to be productive, no rushing around to do more in less time. We were simply there, enjoying each other's company, and delighting in the gift of time. We built relationships, shared experiences, and created memories that will last long after our last Christmas gift has been consigned to the landfill.

If only we could capture a little of that feeling in regular life! The ability to set aside the quotidian cares of existence for just an evening, or a weekend day, would do wonders for our psyches, I believe. Perhaps my new year's resolution should be to pick one evening a week to do nothing, or to have no purpose, other than to spend time with my family. If we all agreed to do it, maybe we could capture a little of that holiday magic throughout the year--what an enduring gift that would be.

Be Rich in REM

No matter what is your actual station in life, it is easy to feel poor these days. Your house is worth a lot less than it was a couple of years ago, but your mortgage is still the same. If you've managed to keep your job, you probably won't be seeing much in the way of a raise or bonus anytime soon. And don't look to your 401k or investment account statement for solace: that's like staring over the edge of a cliff. (Oh look, way down there--there's my balance!) And even if things are going pretty well for you financially, the reality of the culture right now is that you'd better act like times are tough--so don't be too flashy with new clothes, restaurant meals, or God forbid a new car. Conspicuous consumption has been replaced by conspicuous thrift.

But, if anything, the recession has thrown into even greater focus the absurdity of seeking happiness in money and the stuff it can buy. When you levered up and bought the big house three years ago, I'll bet you thought it would make you happy forever. Did it? Be honest with yourself: even before the markets melted down, and the pressure of the mortgage started to hurt, hadn't the happiness already faded a little bit? Did you settle into the house, then your mind moved on to the next thing that you thought would secure your happiness? (e.g., "I would love a big screen TV over the fireplace. Then we could really use this room.")

Stuff is beside the point, and so is happiness, to be honest. Happiness is a byproduct of a life well-lived, not our life's goal. If we now, in difficult times, get stuck in the past (we used to live so well!) or stuck in the future (once the economy turns, then I'll be happy), we are going to repeat our mistakes and once again miss much of what is good in life today. Yes, even in austere times, there is much to find that is good.

How to find it? The Present Tense way: focus on REM--Relationships, Experiences, and Memories. Become rich in these three, and life will be good. Yes, losing a job or facing reduced hours will be hard to cope with, but spend some of your freed-up time with your partner or children or friends, and make those relationships richer. No, you can't afford the 4-star restaurant outings anymore, but get the family together in the kitchen and build a wealth of experiences cooking, eating, and cleaning up together. You will be rich in memories regardless of the balance in your bank account--and, I daresay, you will be much happier than the richest person in your neighborhood.

There will always be limits to the money we have--and right now, those limits feel uncomfortably tight. The one thing you have without any limits is love--so spend your love on those around you, and bank the memories to serve you for the rest of your life.


This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!