Happiness Project: Finding Your Passion

Author Gretchen Rubin believes that you can increase your happiness level by finding your passion(s) in life. Hers is writing and blogging. She says that it brings a challenge to her life, one that results in happiness. “…It allows you to expand your self-definition. You become larger.” I have found this to be true as well.

Since finding my own passion in life, I have been working hard at it—creating this blog and making time to write in my journal. I find writing therapeutic and necessary in order to straighten out the chaos of my life. It’s also no secret that writing in my planner helps in this area too. It seems to be the act of putting thoughts and ideas down on paper (or sending them out into the virtual universe) that helps me make sense of this world. Maybe this is why I’m so passionate about organizing too—it helps to put order to those things that we can actually control. And there are other things I’m passionate about, just because I enjoy doing them—knitting, reading, spending time with friends and family.

Now, it seems, I can add one more item to my list of passions: my happiness project. Since finishing The Happiness Project, I have been working on my own list of ideas and mini-projects to increase my happiness, to focus on the things that matter in life, and be actively grateful for all that I have in my life. I have nearly finished my collection of notes on this topic and will soon be ready to reveal my Happiness Binder (the updated “Me” Binder). Since first discussing my passion, I am very pleased to see that others have started their own passion quests. This current passion is indeed “expanding my self-definition” and helping me to “become larger.”

It’s funny how Rubin says that finding one’s passion will help bring about happiness. This is certainly true. And now my happiness project has, in turn, become a passion of mine. Things really do come full circle it seems.