Happiness Project: Update

It has been a while since I last talked about my Happiness Project. There has been a lot of buzz about other people’s projects lately. There’s even a Facebook group amongst the Philofaxers who are reading the book and embarking on their own projects. Mine own project hasn’t changed much, until the start of the Facebook group.

When I first started, I wasn’t going to get involved with monthly resolutions, as author Gretchen Rubin suggests. Rather, I just wanted to work on many things continuously. Then, when I read what others’ were engaging in as part of their monthly resolutions, I thought that focusing on three things per month would help me hone in on those long-term, continuous items. In other words, I don’t have to change the items, but just focus on three at a time for a month. I started this in mid-June.

My first set of resolutions was:

• Exercise daily 
• Go to bead earlier (which should result in exercising daily) 
• Notice beauty everyday 

Since I started these resolutions half-way through the month, I didn’t get very far with them. I have been slightly successful in going to bed earlier—I can accomplish this when time allows. I have been very busy in the last few weeks, and some nights, it just wasn’t possible to get to bed any earlier than I did. As a result, I have not been exercising daily, but I have been doing better at exercise more. So, I’d say both of those resolutions have been semi-successful. I have been noticing beauty almost every day. The trouble is that I don’t get much time to focus on that beauty. It’s more like a passing observation than a true appreciation. But that’s something, I guess, so another semi-success.

I have been thinking about what my resolutions for July should be. While I’m going to continue to work on June’s resolutions, I have come up with the following for July:

• Say “no” at least once a week (part of my not-enough-time-in-the-day problem stems from always saying yes to everything) 
• Cut back on the “stuff” that needs to be done (realistically, what needs to be done is often confused with what I want to get done, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to finish it all—that stops [or at least wanes] here) 
• Make more time for down time (this should be easier once I cut back on the “get stuff done” mentality) 

For my monthly resolutions, I am keeping a list of the current month’s items in my every day planner, my personal black Malden. With that list, I keep a log of how I’m progressing. Ideally, I’d like to make notes every day, but I’m not going to pressure myself into doing that. I will update my notes when I can and if I have something to make a note of. When the month is complete, the list will be added to my Happiness Binder, under the “Notes” tab. This allows me to look back on my notes and see how I’ve progressed in my overall project.

My goal is to update my blog with my Happiness Project progress. This will (hopefully) push me to keep working on it. Now that my binder has been complete for a few months, I found that I wasn’t adding to it very much, nor was I referring to it as much as I would like, making it all but a “completed project,” left behind. I don’t want my Happiness Project to be something I worked on just when I was feeling down (though it helped tremendously). I want it to become a part of my everyday life and help me progress and evolve during the course of my entire life. I have finally bought a copy of the book for myself and have started to reread it. I want to pick up on those little things that I may have missed the first go-round, making my own project even better.

My Happiness Binder may have been neglected for a while, but it definitely hasn’t been forgotten. This is a step in the right direction, bringing it into focus once again.