Wednesday, May 14, 2014

How My Own Happiness Project Came About

Up until mid February I had a boss, who put a lot of emphasis on reading books and personal development. When planned his going away party – with funny stories, photographs together and things which we will always remember him by, practically the whole team made jokes about the number of books they got from him during his 7 years with the company. People claimed, they had to buy book shelves to store all of them!



I got quite a few books from Rob too. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin is one of them. It was sitting on my book shelf for over a year and I never opened it. 

I had started to read a number of books and got into a habit of stopping in the middle and not finishing. Life, wrapped around unhealthy relationship with my husband got in the way. 

All the time. 

It happened to other books – the office where I work used to be just 3 miles away from my place and I would go home for lunch and listen to Focus On The Family on my way home. I’ve heard a lot of interviews with authors of excellent books. I bought quite a number of them. 

They too, are currently sitting on the shelf. But I made it a very prominent shelf. And I plan to read all the books I have on that shelf. I am giving myself one year to completely transform my life. All aspects of it. Including books I plan to read.

Anyway, The Happiness Project happened to be the first in line – the subtitle ‘Or, Why I Spent A Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun’ was so in tune with my plans for my life after my third divorce, that I got curious to see what’s inside. 

No, the author did not go through dramatic/traumatic life change which required restructuring everything familiar like in my case, but her insights are so helpful! 

I was delighted to see that clearing the space around me in my home is the first step I took – just like her. I am not done yet, there’s more to go through, and I will get rid of everything that is of no value any longer so I can create my new environment.

Today I finished reading The Happiness Project and feel very accomplished – I love the feeling of completion, it brings a lot of satisfaction to me. Now I can plan out my own happiness project and tackle creative projects on my YouTube channel and Udemy

Wait, an Excel training course for a group of sales managers I will give in mid June 2014 comes first. And I now have mental clarity to do it now – right after I am back from New Orleans after my daughter’s medical school graduation!


Here’s Rob and I after his going away party. He is still my big brother. J


No comments:

Post a Comment