My Happiness Project - Thank you, Gretchen Rubin! Part 4

I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right in an atmosphere of growth. – Gretchen Rubin

Rubin’s last suggestion in developing her Resolutions Chart is to live in an atmosphere of growth. This is really important to me. I want my life to get bigger as I get older, not smaller.

One reason that challenge brings happiness is it allows you to expand your self- definition. You become larger. The more elements that make up your identity, the less threatening it is when anyone element is threatened.

I like that.

 “Novelty is an important source of happiness.” I like that, too.

I want to grow in a way that is authentic and natural to me:

       Be Karla.

So here is her last suggested reflection before developing the Resolutions Chart.

Do you have sources of an atmosphere of growth? In what elements of your life do you find progress, learning, challenge, improvement, and increased mastery?

·      

Starting my blog. Practicing my writing. Sharing my life and what’s important to me with my friends and readers. Blogging uses my leisure to cultivate my creativity, (one of Rubin’s suggestions).

·      

Try new groups. I have recently gone to the book group at our local library, attended Threshold Choir practices and attended services at Heart and Soul Center of Light, a predominantly African American Religious Science church near our home. It has been suggested that

I join a writing group. Maybe . . .

·      

Always having a subject that fascinates me. My most recent one was mountain climbing.

·      

Writing a book proposal, Vacation at Home, Cultivating Delight in the Everyday (yes, after all that, I stayed with my original title), and sending it to my first targeted publisher, Conari Press.

·      

Learning new things. Recently I learned Dropbox, how to work an I-Phone, (I’m a frighteningly late adopter), and my next area of growth is changing my picture on my blog to reflect the new hair! And I’m proud to share with you that I am typing this post on Rob’s MacBook Air.

·      

Stay adventurous. Adventure equals growth. I want to see life as an adventure even when it’s tough. What a long, strange trip it’s been. (thank you Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter).

·     

Let there be a little chaos, a little disorder, a little inefficiency.

Rubin talks about a concept called the arrival fallacy, basically the belief that when you arrive at a certain destination, you’ll be happy. But she also warns that arriving rarely makes you as happy as you anticipate. She goes so far as to say that arrival often brings more work and responsibility. (What if my book actually gets published? I’ll actually have to write it!)

The fun part doesn’t come later, now is the fun part!

I want to enjoy the process.

Fun is energizing.

Rubin says there are four stages of happiness:

Anticipate it.

Savor it as it unfolds.

Express happiness.

Recall a happy memory.

I really want to learn how to live and spend more time in each of these stages, especially savoring it as it unfolds.

The days are long but the years are short.

Signing off from the Square at Healdsburg, California after the clergy conference at Bishop’s Ranch.