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[MUSIC]
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EMILIYA ZHIVOTOVSKAYA: A lot of people are taking a stronger interest in happiness right
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now than ever before. EBONY STATON WEIDMAN: Why wouldn't you want
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to do something to increase your happiness? JENNIFER PELKA: I've decided that I'm actually
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going to buy all of the women in my life this book.
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JENNIFER PELKA: I remember hearing about the happiness project and thinking this sounds
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so incredibly annoying, I'm never going to read it. And I ended up actually really loving
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this book. EMILIYA ZHIVOTOVSKAYA: I really love the element
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of the story that Gretchen brought to it. I felt like I was her long lost best friend.
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Just hanging out with her and getting to know her kids, getting to know her husband.
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EBONY STATON WEIDMAN: I read the book last year and had a chance to meet the author and
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was really fascinated and captivated by her. And recently I decided to start my own happiness
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project. ANGRY BOB: Here's the deal. I like this book.
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You know why? Makes a very weird noise when you throw it against the wall.
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GRETCHEN RUBIN: I had the idea for "The Happiness Project" when I was on the city bus in the
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pouring rain and I thought "What do I want from life anyway? I want to be happy." But
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I realized I had never spent any time thinking about whether I was happy or how I could be
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happier. GRETCHEN RUBIN: This book is really a memoir
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of thinking and researching and experimenting. So its one of these "year of" experiments.
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JENNIFER PELKA: Every month Gretchen creates different happiness resolutions so she can
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figure out what really makes her happy. EMILIYA ZHIVOTOVSKAYA: Reading "The Happiness
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Project", the image I sometimes get is like Gretchen trying on all these different outfits.She
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tries on the "let me clean up the house" project, "let me put on the connect with my friends"
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one and then at the end of the day she kind of tries to put that outfit together.
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EBONY STATON WEIDMAN: She was doing it almost as a researcher and using herself as the subject.
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JENNIFER PELKA: I think what's so amazing about her twelve experiments is that many
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of them..she fails at. She realizes that her happiness is not the same as other people's
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happiness and that's ok. GRETCHEN RUBIN: Clearly I am way over the
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top with my happiness project and part of the idea was it was like "I'll do all these
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things so you don't have to." And my sense of it is that most people read it and they
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take away a few things that really work for them, but they don't do the whole project
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as systematically.
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EBONY STATON WEIDMAN: There was lots going on in my life at the time and I could tell
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that I was ready for a change. There's tons of self-help books out there but I think this
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seemed very doable, involving every day changes to make a really big impact.
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EBONY STATON WEIDMAN: So what I'm doing with the vision book is, you know, some writings
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but a lot of visual things as well. Picture and things that inspire me or just little
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sketches. It not a diary but rather let me start to envision my future and let me start
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to envision my happiness.
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EMILIYA ZHIVOTOVSKAYA: If you ask people why do you want to have a successful career? Why
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do you want to learn more? Why do you want to get healthy? If you keep asking them at
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the root of it they would say that they want to be happy.
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EBONY STATON WEIDMAN: I can't think of one person who doesn't want to be happy. But they
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don't pause to sort of say, "What does success look like for me? What does happiness look
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like for me?" And so they're searching for it but they never stopped to define it for
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themselves. ANGRY BOB: Happiness is something that doesn't
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need to be pondered. Just do your life. Go enjoy yourself. Hang out with your friends.
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Stop thinking about it! Stop writing about it!
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GRETCHEN RUBIN: There's this idea that the minute that you start asking yourself if you're
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happy you're gonna kinda trip over own feet and that you're much better off instead of
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pursuing happiness, pursuing other things and then letting happiness come as a by-product.
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JENNIFER PELKA: I think there are so many ways that asking yourself if you're happy
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allows you to be happier. GRETCHEN RUBIN: If you don't remind yourself
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that you are happy, it can just pass unnoticed right under your feet.
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ANGRY BOB: We have it too good in this country. If you were in a third world country you're
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worried about finding food. You're worried about running from animals or political insurgents,
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you know? We have too much free time on our hands to engage in this asinine introspection.
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GRETCHEN RUBIN: We really live in a very prosperous time relative to all of history and I think
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that it's just natural when people feel safe and secure that they turn their minds to higher
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things like happiness. ANGRY BOB: There's been a thousand books written
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all on the same subject lines is "I have almost everything I want in my life, I need a little
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more." JENNIFER PELKA: It is a little bit frustrating
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that the narrator of this book truely is like pretty in control of her life and now she
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has created this, you know, daily document to make her life incrementally that much more
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perfect. GRETCHEN RUBIN: A lot of people felt like
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well it was very sort of self indulgent for a person who wasn't deeply unhappy to be spending
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time thinking about how to be happier. EMILIYA ZHIVOTOVSKAYA: I think the fact that
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Gretchen comes from a slightly happy state to begin with is actually one of the biggest
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strengths of this book. Because most people are actually in the same boat.
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GRETCHEN RUBIN: Happiness has this really bad reputation. And a lot of people say like
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oh well happy people are smug and self-centered, but research shows that it's when we're happier
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ourselves that we have the emotional wherewithal to turn outward and think about other people.
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EMILIYA ZHIVOTOVSKAYA: When you are authentically happier yourself, that resonates. That's an
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energy that people pick up on. JENNIFER PELKA: As somebody who rides the
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subway everyday I can say that when people around me are unhappy, I am also unhappy.
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GRETCHEN RUBIN: It turns out that unhappy people are more likely to be defensive, isolated,
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and preoccupied with their own problems. ANGRY BOB: So Gretchen's argument about that
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unhappy people make other people unhappy, well my feeling is everyone needs a hobby.
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EBONY STATON WEIDMAN: Happiness is contagious. I think the negative can be contagious too
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and so people have to be responsible with how they treat other people. So I hope that
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everything that comes out of this project for me, you know, making me happier but also
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kind of sending that out and paying that forward and then other people, you know, being happier
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as well. GRETCHEN RUBIN: Really I feel like all the
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things that I was working on, I'm going to be working on for the rest of my life. I'm
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more interested in happiness than ever. I feel like the deeper that I go, the bigger
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it gets.
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