The Happiness Project

I am reading a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I don't know if I should write about it before I finnish it, but because I am enthusiastic and impatient, I will. The main reason why I am writing about it is the chapter "Launch a blog".

I read lots of different kind of books, but lately I have been a big fan of non-fictional sort of self-study books like Eat, pray, love and Committed by E. Gilbert. The idea of The Happiness Project is to explain why waking up early, cleaning your closets, fighting right and setting up a blog among other things will make you feel happier.

I am creative and spontaneous person. I rely on my intuition. I write on the floor and the computer is not a laptop (I think that tells you a lot about me, actually). I admire super-organized, well spoken and tidy people who are always on time. I am always late (except work deadlines). Then again I am worrying if I begin to be more organized, more clean and always on time, will I loose something on the creative side? I mean every coin has too sides: Am I unorganized because I am creative? Can a super-organized and tidy person be very creative and bohemian? Do we always admire those characters in other people that we don't have in ourselves?

I found a sentence that makes sense to me: "The brain is stimulated by a surprise and successfully dealing with unexpected situation gives a powerful sense of satisfaction. If you do new things (travel to a new place for example) you are most apt to feel happy than people who stick to more familiar activities. This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.¨

I tend to organize my life so that there is room for unexpected things. For example my graduation day/night (college) wasn't that special nor fun and maybe only because I had planned it for months with my friends. I had organize it and I had high expectations. Then again one Friday night in April this year I went to the movies with my friend. We had tea afterwards at a cafe. I called my mum and asked if I could come over for a sauna. When I was in sauna my other friend called me and asked if I feel like going for a drink. It was 10 pm and I had just cleaned my make up. Nevertheless I told her I need 30 minutes and I would be ready. I had not seen her for six months and we had a good talk over a class of red. I love being spontaneous and sometimes I get a bit annoyed when other people are not, but then again maybe they are those people I admire in the end: organized, always on time and whose houses are always clean...

So how does blogging make you happier? Rubin tells you to start your own blog, because it is challenging and we need a good challenge. It also will make you punctual (I am working on it!). You should blog because it is fun and can give you new identity; "a new identity brings you into contact with new people and new experiences, which are also powerful sources of happiness".  Personally I believe blogging can increase the bloggers happiness, if the blogger doesn't get too stressed about updating it. So why don't you try it, it is really FUN! :)

More about the Happiness Project here.