You know Gretchen, right? She's got one of the most popular blogs going, The Happiness Project. You can find her on Huffington Post, Slate and on Amazon with her forthcoming book, aptly called, The Happiness Project: Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.

She's classy and warm-hearted, and her work is helping people to not just consider being more happy, but to actually do something about it.

1. What are you positively addicted to? (Note: my shrink defines positive addiction as “a healthy high, it makes you stronger. As long as the craving for it doesn’t take you over, then it’s, like totally cool.”)
Reading ... books for adults and also for children. Blogging. Walking the streets of New York City. These days, True Blood on HBO.

2. What do you wish you knew for sure?
That nothing too terrible would befall my family.

3. If you had an altar, what symbols of devotion would you put on it?
* Dice, to symbolize the role of chance.
* A blue bird, to symbolize happiness.
* A dictionary, to symbolize reading and writing.
* A flower, to symbolize growth.
* Locks of hair from everyone in my family.
* An apple, to symbolize health.
* Ruby slippers, to symbolize the idea that I already have what I need to be happy; it’s with me all the time.
* A peacock feather, to symbolize symbols beyond words.

4. What great idea do you wish that you had the good sense to think of?
Diet Coke.

5. What book(s) are you always telling people to read?

Christopher Alexander, A PATTERN LANGUAGE
St. Therese of Lisieux, STORY OF A SOUL
Flannery O’Connor, WISE BLOOD
Everything by Samuel Johnson

6. Who or what has rendered you awe-struck?
The internet. Not a day goes by when I don’t marvel at the incredible treasures that it offers. I’m old enough to remember, REALLY remember, pre-internet days, and I will never become jaded about the incalculable richness of knowledge, creativity, and connection that it affords.

7. I’m going to give you a word. Tell me the first thing that comes to mind when you read it... Ready? The word is: SINCERITY.
The first thing that comes to mind is my personal First Commandment ... to “Be Gretchen.” This sounds so easy, and yet the more I try to “Be Gretchen,” the more I realize how hard it is to do. Sincerity, authenticity, enthusiasm, humility, cheerfulness...all follow from knowing ourselves. A constant challenge!

Thanks for inspiring all of us rise to that very divine challenge, Gretchen.
xo
Danielle

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Find Gretchen:
The Happiness Project
The Happiness Project ToolBox
Twitter
Facebook
On Amazon

Good. Yeah, good.

Fine. Things are fine.

Let me ask that question again:

How are things?

Fabulous. It all feels like an adventure right now. I have synchronicities piling up everywhere. I’ve got all the money I need, in fact, it’s flowing good n’ steady. My skin is glowing. Most nights we dance in the kitchen. Even sex is better than ever. I giggle everyday. And really, sometimes when I smile at a stranger in the market I can feel my heart swell. In fact, I swear I felt bliss while I was walking home the other day. Yeah. It was bliss.

Happy?

Then say so.

I notice this in my self, I see it in other people: the happiness muffle. We feel the sparkle, really we do. We feel rich with gratitude, we’re keenly aware of a true smile curled in our cells. We tend to live on the light side of things. But we don’t pronounce it. As a new friend just put it, “we butt back the joy because... happiness is a form of power.”

Is that anyway to treat happiness?

Happiness is power. Happiness is carbonated consciousness. It wants to spill out and radiate and be articulated. And every time we downplay our joy we confuse our synapses. Our brain is firing smiley neurons and our mouth is short circuiting them. Repeated happiness muffling numbs our senses. If you keep it under the surface too long, it just might stay there ... a light under a bushel.

So do us all a favour. No matter what the weather, the odds, the circumstances, the company, if you’re happy and you know it, by all means, say so!

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RELATED + RESOURCES
The Happiness Project

what is your relationship to life?

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I had another dream about lions at the door
They weren't half as frightening as they were before
But I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

- Bruce Cockburn

Slam dunk. Piece of Cake. Pure joy. Your absolute pleasure.

No matter where I am, on the airplane or in the park, people just tell me stuff. I hear this a lot: “Wow, I’ve never told anybody that...I can’t believe I just told you that.” That’s been happening to me since high school. {No wonder I make my living essentially, listening.}

My route to landing one of the most powerful, hard-to-get to literary agents in the publishing business was as buttery as 1-2-3. It was an incredibly charmed process that Changed My Life. {Really good things happen when I write.}

I love to wrap presents. Invite me to your house at Christmas time and I’ll wrap your gifts for you. Something about the folding, the giving, the tape...I guess that makes me a wrap-a-phile. {Confucious say, "Good packaging bring happiness."}

PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT'S EASY FOR YOU
Those unremarkable happinesses, those second-nature ways, those almost unbelievably easy-breakthroughs ... that is where your divinity lies. Go there, often. More often. Your essence is always waiting for you.

Happiness wants to come easy.