Also from the Happiness Project

"According to current research, in the determination of a person's level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product  of how a person thinks or acts. In other words, people have an inborn disposition that's set within a certain range, but they can boost themselves to the top of their happiness range or push themselves down to the bottom of their happiness range by their actions. This finding confirmed my own life observations. It seems obvious that some people are more ebullient or melancholic than others and that, at the same time, people's decisions about how to live their lives also affect their happiness"
~The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

So having a complaining attitude or a negative outlook does more to influence your level of happiness than the things happening in your life. Its less what happens to you and more how you interpret it and how you choose to act because of it. That's powerful stuff if you think about it.

I'm currently babysitting a 10 year old boy. Some of the stuff he does drives me crazy. He is slow getting out the door. He always loses stuff and then asks me to find it for him. He hates going to bed. He burps at the table.

Yesterday morning I was really frustrated, he was definitely affecting my level of happiness. But when I stop to think about it, nothing he was doing was going to cause a global apocalypse. He was just moving slowly and I was just taking myself to seriously. I was taking his actions personally. I choose to look at it a certain way, and then my actions ended up being those based on unhappiness. In fact, if I sat back and thought about it, some of the stuff he is doing is really funny. Nothing he was doing was malicious. I could have still gotten him on the bus in time without getting myself frustrated.

Next time, I hope I'll be able to stop and think- after all, attitude is a choice.

Pre-Goal-Attainment Positive Affect

I'm currently at Carrie Starr's House while she and her husband are in India on a missions trip. I am resident mom for her three kids too. On monday I found a book that looked really interesting called "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. I started reading it and am already a third of the way through cause I love it so much. She is a great writer, very funny and informative and insightful.

In the book she dedicates a year to making herself more happy (not that she is depressed, she just wants to systematically learn how to enjoy life more, so that the years don't slip away from her). She reads a lot and does a lot of research, and the most interesting parts she includes in her narrative.

I love the book and highly recommend it.

But this one section I was reading really made me think about my own goals and journey. Here is a quote about working towards a goal:

"You look forward to reaching these destinations, but once you've reached them they bring emotions other than sheer happiness... there is always another hill to climb. The challenge therefore is to take pleasure in the "atmosphere of growth,"  in the gradual progress made toward a goal, in the present. The unpoetic name for this very powerful source of happiness is "pre-goal-attainment positive affect... the arrival fallacy doesn't mean that pursuing goals isn't a route to happiness. To the contrary The goal is necessary, just as is the process toward the goal"

I agree with Muir...

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

~John Muir

John Muir

I am realizing more and more how much I really like this man. 

John Muir was a conservationist who is considered to be the Father of the National Parks. 

He loved nature and he saw where America was going, he knew we were in danger of destroying every beautiful wilderness in our country- so he fought to protect it.

I love this one quote of his..."Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress"

He wasn't against us moving forward and developing lands and becoming a prosperous industrialized nation. He was against doing things without pondering consequences.

Muir was an incredible man, he excelled in everything he tried his hand at. He was a business man, politician, naturalist and writer. And he used all of those talents to have a big impact on our nation. He was passionate and put his passion to use.

Muir had his quirks. If you met him, you probably would have thought he was a bit strange. He would spend days at a time wandering the wilderness and staring at flowers and talking to rocks. He believed that God could best be seen in nature. At his core, he believed that in the dichotomy between nature and civilization, nature is superior.

Muir and Roosevelt in Yosemite Valley

Muir as seen on the California State Quater