"The Happiness Project" Review

The Happiness Project

By Gretchen Rubin

 7/10

My Synopsis:

The Happiness Project is a memoir by Gretchen Rubin who had an epiphany one day and wondered if she could be happier in her life.  Over the course of one year she attempts to increase her happiness.  She sets out on her personal happiness project tackling a new topic each month and attempting to better her life.  She tries everything from cleaning her closets to singing in the morning.  She asks:  What makes people happy?  How can you have more happiness in your life?  How can you measure happiness?  Follow along as Ms. Rubin attempts to answer these questions in relation to her own life and possibly be inspired to do a happiness project of your own.

My Opinion:

I was very interested in reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  I started reading enthusiastically.  I was quickly inspired to begin my own happiness project.  Unfortunately, that is where I think the problem was for me.  I wanted to do my own happiness project – not necessarily to read about someone else’s.  The book was interesting and gave me some ideas for my own happiness project but I just couldn’t get into living this through someone else by reading their endeavors.  I did learn about the areas Ms. Rubin focused on:  marriage, family, work, play, finances, and spirituality to name a few.  While I agreed with some of the points she worked on, I felt others were not applicable to me and thus I grew bored with some sections of certain chapters.  I also grew a bit impatient reading through the responses that people had to specific questions and topics on her blog.  It felt like filler to make the book longer to me - almost a kind of justification that the author’s opinions were legit.  Some things seemed to be a bit repetitive but some things were real revelations.  I think I learned more about myself from reading this book than I first realized.  While there were parts of the book I wanted to simply skim over, overall the book did inspire me to attempt my own happiness project at some point in the near future.  7/10