A happiness project-the research stage.

My overall goal: I'm trying to conquer my own faults and limitations and heal from the abuses that were inflicted upon me. I know I'm the only one who can change me, but I know I also need help, and I know there are things I've tried to change that I don't know how to make progress on.

Gretchen, author of the Happiness Project, read what many others said on happiness before beginning her project. I hope to do this a little more quickly than she did.  Below is a list of the quotes I found that resonated with me in the order I found them-it's more of a collection of things I need to process in the future than wisdom or clarify I'm trying to impart to my one hypothetical reader(you know who you are).

Gretchen's paradoxes resonate:

"I want to change myself but accept myself. I want to use my time well, but I also want to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget about myself. I want to let go of anxiety and envy about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition"

Part of me worries that the way to get happy would be to go exercise. To finish my homework. To clean the mess in the kitchen behind me. I have 15 year of journaling behind me-perhaps that time was well spent-I've clearly made growth in that time period. But perhaps it's a bunch of rambling.

I found this on the "original" happiness blog-before it was all the rage:

Nearly all humankind is more or less unhappy, because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one’s Self is to be blissful always.
~ Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi , the sage of Arunachala

I don't feel like I know myself as well as I could. I drew a picture of myself the other day-it was mostly dark hurt and anger with a little bit of light. Most of the light came from the world around me. I'm starting to think of my friends, my family and the world as an endless source of love that has been holding me up all these years. But I know that a lot of my happiness is based on my resume, my body, my youth, my adventures, my academic success. If that goes away, and I don't know myself, then how will I be happy? And, I know that my health will go away. I just lost a friend and it reminded that everyone I love will go away and probably many before I die. I'm questioning placing my happiness in my academic success because I worry about being consumed by work.

Finally I found this by Liza and it helped me justify today, a day where I'm allowing myself to be mired in reflection and sadness.

I have a tendency to be uncomfortable with moodiness—as if I’m wasting my time with being sad.  I just keep calm and carry on, if you will. All the while hoping that the sadness will just go away.  But, all those Jedi Mind Tricks do is—of course—tamp it down and make it come out in other ways.  Sadness is like a linoleum bubble, you can push it around all you want, but it’s not going anywhere until you deal with it. So, when I’m feeling blue what helps me is to allow it. Be in it.  Experience it and let it move through my body so I can digest it.

Happiness is such a pure place to be that what I’ve finally figured out is that so is sadness.  And to deny one is to deny both.

 I feel that facing my thoughts about my father is a giant mountain of work. I reread the letter I wrote to him in counseling and I had no idea how to move forward. How do I live with something as unforgivable as what he did? How do I sort out all of the insane things I learned to cope with and start to trust myself again? How do I love myself, just for me, when I'm used to loving myself because of my perfect GPA and adventures and speed on the bike. After I wrote the letter I felt so exhausted that I retreated into the arms of the world where I knew I found solace. I planned a romantic birthday weekend with my adorable boyfriend. We did an easy hike, up a cool creek in a beautiful canyon. We stayed in a hotel instead of a tent and went out to eat and didn't do dishes. We slept in. It was wonderful. The sad, angry, hurt broke through, but not for too long. I planned a marvelous dinner party for my birthday and invited my favorite people and asked them to bring my favorite foods. We didn't even have a cake for me to feel guilty about eating. But it takes a lot of work to keep practicing the "Jedi Mind Tricks" to keep me happy. I wore out. I fell apart the morning after my birthday party. It was too much.

So I agree that I can't deny sadness. I understand the linoleum bubble metaphor. My sadness pushes up in body image issues, defensiveness, being confused about what I want in life. I don't probably understand exactly how my sadness pushes up-I think it is only some of my emotions that I have categorized into the irrational and unwanted bin. It's not that I don't want emotions, but I don't want to cry for 45 minutes when I make a mistake that didn't hurt anyone and wasn't a result of carelessness on my part. I don't want to yell about nothing, just because I'm insecure.

I found more that resonated. Living in sadness for a moment allows me to know myself and that is where one finds happiness.

Yesterday in Yoga I was thinking about knowing my body to heal my body. I was thinking of all the time I was spending trying to be in touch with my body and ostensibly my mind. Liza tried a cleanse and said afterwards she was happy:

I was happy about my body for the first time in a long time. So happy, that I actually connected body and mind together. I had been so detached that finally being on a team with my body instead of against it was like going from black and white to color.
I’m experiencing a level of happiness I’d only dreamed about in the past.  A happiness based on being whole again.

I have to remind myself to love my body. This week I've been reminding myself that eating sugar and horrible things doesn't make me happy. It makes me feel guilty.

I like this reframing of my goals by W.H. Auden.

“Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”


This is so connected to accepting myself and pushing myself. I must accept where I am on the bike today. I must accept my career today. But I can't accept it to the point that I stop trying, because pursuing goals makes me happy. I don't want acceptance to mean that I regress. I want to accept my body as it is today but not let that be an excuse to continue eating too much refined sugar.

I feel no closer to the 12 resolutions that Gretchen started with.  I'm tired. It seems self-indulgent to think about my own happiness all day, but it is actually very tiring!