The Happiness Manifesto

In her book, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin includes her Happiness Manifesto—a short statement that sums up her most important conclusions about happiness.

  • To be happy, you need to consider feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, and an atmosphere of growth.

  • One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

  • The days are long, but the years are short.

  • You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

  • Your body matters.

  • Happiness is other people.

  • Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.

  • “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” —G. K. Chesterton

  • What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you, and vice versa.

  • Best is good, better is best.

  • Outer order contributes to inner calm.

  • Happiness comes not from having more, not from having less, but from wanting what you have.

  • You can choose what you do, but you can’t choose what you like to do.

  • You manage what you measure.

  • “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” —Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing your own manifesto can be a great exercise to clarify your thinking when starting any endeavor—and it’s also a creative, absorbing process. Read Gretchen Rubin's Habits Manifesto for more inspiration. What would you include in your own Happiness Manifesto?

The Happiness Manifesto