The Habits Manifesto

Writing a personal manifesto is a great exercise to clarify your thinking when starting any endeavor—and it’s also a creative, absorbing process.

In Better Than Before, her book about how we make and break habits, Gretchen Rubin includes her Habits Manifesto.

• What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.

• Make it easy to do right and hard to go wrong.

• Focus on actions, not outcomes.

• By giving something up, we may gain.

• Things often get harder before they get easier.

• When we give more to ourselves, we can ask more from ourselves.

• We’re not very different from other people, but those differences are very important.

• It’s easier to change our surroundings than ourselves.

• We can’t make people change, but when we change, others may change.

• We should make sure the things we do to feel better don’t make us feel worse.

• We manage what we monitor.

• Once we’re ready to begin, begin now.

You might find it helpful to write your own manifesto, with guiding principles and inspiring reminders for your Happiness Project. Keep them on sticky notes where you can see them every day, frame them on the wall, or record them in a journal where you're tracking your progress.