Like many, I’m starting the new year off on a hopeful foot.  I see all the potential in the 365 days ahead to fix everything in my life that I’m not happy with.  I start most years off this way and have lists and lists of resolutions and goals.  But, again like many, the resolution ideas fade quickly and the year ends as so many before, with frustration and disappointment as I look back over those lists.  This year, I’m hoping that frustration (nearly 40 years of it!) will finally ignite that fire in my belly so strong so that I won’t end the year as I have done so many times before.

I’m looking to make a change this year…several changes actually. I have a milestone birthday approaching and it’s prompted me to do a LOT of thinking and reflecting about my life.  While I am blessed in many areas of my life, I noticed that I was missing happiness.  My life is certainly not what I thought it would be at 40.  And I feel that while I can recognize what’s good in my life, everything could use a bit of improvement for me to really be happy with it.  For example, I’m a relatively healthy person. I’m technically within the healthy weight zone for my height and gender. I don’t have a lot of aches and pains or complications.  Food goes in, waste comes out – my body systems are in working order. My blood pressure is where it should be at and my resting heart rate around 70 bpm.  Overall, I have my health.  With that being said, I could benefit greatly from improving my diet and exercising more often. I need to make regular effort to incorporate stress reduction and relaxation into my life. I should be better about getting regular checkups with actual physicians (as opposed to self-diagnosing symptoms on WebMD.)  I’m not yet where I want to be in the health-department, which means I need to makes some changes.  Enter Gretchen Rubin.

I bought the Happiness Project book years ago.  As someone who loves to mark up books while she reads, I became aware that I’d never read the book beyond January because I hadn’t any markings after that section.  I know what past-me was thinking – I’ll read each month as it approaches.  At that time, it didn’t make sense why I would read August as I’m working my way through the actual month of January.  I read the book in its entirety over the last couple days and now understand why it makes sense to read the whole thing prior to starting one’s own happiness project. The book was Ms. Rubin’s story, her experience, her journey.  Mine won’t look like hers; my experience will be my own.  Ms. Rubin had “Laugh out loud” as a resolution for November; I’m making it one of my overarching commandments.  Laughter and humor is something I cherish and value very highly.  I don’t want to start implementing that into my life eleven months from now; I want it to linger over all that I do.  A day without (appropriate) laughter is a sad day in my book.  I think the reason I never actually stuck with a happiness project of my own was that I was going to try to replicate Ms. Rubin’s book but that’s so not the point. Plus our lives are very different.  I would love to be a writer living in NYC with a husband and children but I am very much not. I’m a teacher living on the west coast, no kids (aside from the 30 I work with each day of course), not married but have a wonderful boyfriend, just to name a few key differences.  This was not going to be like Ms. Rubin’s happiness project at all!

But taking a cue from her experience, I’m going to use the format that is laid out for me in the Happiness Project book.  This is new for me: allowing her to be my role model, to not fight against what she did, to simply follow her model to see what happens in my own life.  I will try to not overthink and overcomplicate things but rather see what others did, do the same, and see if I too can achieve my own desires.  So in following along with the project, I came up with some overarching commandments for myself (some I did borrow straight from Gretchen because they made sense for me too):

I’m still working on the details of how to remind myself of these thoughts.  Maybe a reminder in my phone… Maybe write them on a small card and keep it in my wallet.  My memory isn’t as sharp as it once was so reminding myself of these will be key for me to live by them.  If only I could remember how my grammar school teachers drilled the Bible’s Ten Commandments into my mind that I can still reiterate them now 30+ years later despite not having been to church in years…

Not all of Gretchen’s themes will work for me so the next thing I did was to spend some time deciding what I needed in order to find my happiness.  I found myself continually drifting back to thinking about how I want to feel this year, what emotions I wanted in my life.  Long story for another post but after being numb to emotions for so long, I began wondering if increasing feelings was going to be my road to finding improved happiness.  My mind also began wandering off on tangent about how I could rename this Happiness Project into something catchy of my own that would be more emotionally charged and maybe not so much a “project” but rather a way of life or lifestyle. Then I reminded myself to just follow the Happiness Project as it is and see where it takes me; a new exciting name/project could wait for another time.  So here’s where my monthly focus will be for 2016: Healthy & Vitality, Love & Gratitude, Serenity & Peace, Connection, Excitement & Enthusiasm, Silliness & Amusement, Optimism & Acceptance, Confidence & Braverism, Wonder, Kindness, Joy, Happiness.  First up: January is all about being happy and healthy.

The main idea for January is to take actions that will improve my mental and physical health.  I am a big believer in the importance of mental health to a person’s overall well-being; in some ways, I think it’s the most important piece.  Health is something so many of us take for granted until it’s no longer there.  If you’ve never experienced issues with mental health, understand that you are very fortunate.  If, like me, you have battled inner demons, then you know what I’m talking about.  I think it was even more important that I start off the year with this theme because I haven’t been in the best mindset about turning 40 in a few weeks.  It will happen no matter what so I want to ensure that I am ready for it and will not just suffer through it but find some source of joy within the experience.

As a side note, I tried looking for bloggers who went through their own Happiness Projects.  I pride myself as being skilled in the googling department but found very few blogs about people’s individual projects.  The few that I found only wrote about a few months.  I know that I’ve struggled to be consistent with blogging as well as sticking with a self-help project such as this but it made me sad that I didn’t find one other blog that showed someone, other than Ms. Rubin of course, who completed their own Happiness Project.  I hope I won’t also be one to fall off that wagon.  I hope to find others to share this journey with, to help hold one another accountable.  But for now, I’m on my own.  No time like the present to jump into action – time to put on my sneaks and head outside for a walk.