I was looking around Barnes & Noble the other day. It's not normally the bookstore I go to, but the Borders near me has gone away, so there I was.
I'll be the first to admit it - I wasn't feeling as happy as I could. But just as I was getting sadder about the fact I wasn't happy, I stumbled into this section. And really, if this couldn't make me happy then what could?
Apparently I should've been happier since there are a lot of things to be happy about. But then I started thinking - in a world this big, 14,000 didn't seem like very many things to be happy about. I couldn't help think there should've been more. And that made me sad. Because even with thousands of reasons in front of me, at that moment I couldn't think of one.
Fortunately, thanks to Marci Shimoff, I realized I didn't need one. I could just do it. I could just force myself to be happy for the sake of it. The problem with that approach was even if it felt like real happiness, how would I know if it was?
Here's how. Authentic Happiness would tell me by showing me how to put the New Positive Psychology to work. To realize my potential for lasting fulfillment. Truth be told, it didn't need to be that lasting. I'd settle for a couple hours. Or at least enough to last while I was browsing the store. But since I wasn't going to be there that much longer, would I have enough time to find out everything I needed to know to be happy?
Turns out I would, thanks to A Short Guide To A Happy Life. I liked the idea of this one, because first of all I really didn't want to spend a lot of time reading about a happy life - I wanted to get to it. The shorter the guide, the more time for me to get to work on my happiness project. But where should I start?
I'll start here. The Happiness Project will be like a go-to manual for my happiness project. I love it when life works out.
The one thing all this browsing of happiness books made me realize is how many freakin' depressed people there are walking around bookstores.
Frankly, I was happy to get out of there.
