This week’s story: Be polite, and be fair.

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I love short mantras that cover a lot of situations. Do you have a mantra or catchphrase that helps you remember how you want to behave? My favorite personal mantra is Be Gretchen. (Other people should substitute their own names, of course.)

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I’m surprised by how true this Secret of Adulthood proves to be.

Research shows that when people move faster, their metabolism speeds up. Also, because the way we act influences the way we feel (to an almost uncanny degree), acting with energy will make you feel more energetic. Standing up while talking on the phone, walking more quickly, speaking with more animation.

In fact, I’ve found that a slightly goofy–but highly effective–way to boost my energy is to jump up and down a few times. I do jumping-jacks by my desk, I run down the stairs, I hop over puddles. It takes energy, but it gives energy.

Have you found this to be true?

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Essential Oils — are wrung –

The Attar from the Rose

Be not expressed by Suns — alone –

It is the gift of Screws –

 

The General Rose — decay

But this — in Lady’s Drawer

Make Summer — When the Lady lie

In Ceaseless Rosemary –

– Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems

The last day of school is always bittersweet to me; it’s fun to head into the summer, but it’s always a little sad that another year is over. I’m always reminded that “The days are long, but the years are short.”  (The one-minute video I made about this feeling is probably the thing, of everything I’ve ever written, that resonates most with people.)

The end of the school year is also significant to me because I still measure my own life by the school calendar. September is the other January–which is why, for my second happiness project in Happier at Home, I did a project from September through May.  September is a new beginning, and the June/July/August season feels separate from the rest of the year.

So now that school is over, my summer has started–but fact is, my summer is a lot like the rest of my year. We go on some family trips, and my daughters’ schedules are different, but my work and routine, and my husband’s work and routine, don’t change much.

But I want the feeling of summer in my life, and so I’ve made a resolution: every weekend, I’m going to read a book for pleasure. Pure pleasure! I read a lot, all the time, but often I read books for research, or because they’re interesting to me in some way, even if they aren’t exactly “pleasurable.” But on summer weekends, I’m going to read only what I LOVE. Books that I can’t put down, books that I’ll race through in a few days. And if I don’t love a book, I’m going to stop reading it (another new resolution for me).

In The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies, Davies wrote, “Every man makes his own summer. The season has no character of its own, unless one is a farmer with a professional concern for the weather. Circumstances have not allowed me to make a good summer for myself this year…My summer has been overcast by my own heaviness of spirit. I have not had any adventures, and adventures are what make a summer.”

Reading is my adventure, it’s my cubicle and my playground–and this summer, I’m going to make sure to spend a lot of time on the playground side.

How about you? How do you plan to “make your own summer”?

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I met Lea Carpenter many years ago, because we were both involved in the New York Public Library (one of my favorite New York City institutions). She’s always been an ardent lover of libraries, literature, and books of all sorts–so I was thrilled when I heard that she was writing her first novel.

I’m so happy for her, because her debut novel, Eleven Days, is just about to hit the shelves, and just today got a great review by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times. Who called her “an extraordinarily gifted writer.” Zoikes!

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?

Lea: Exercise. Scrambling the perfect egg.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?

It comes from within. And it is fleeting, by design.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?

Yes.

 Is there a happiness quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful?

“J’ai decide d’etre heureux parce que c’est bon pour la santé.” It’s Voltaire; I trust him. [I decided to be happy because it's good for my health.]

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost? Or, like a “comfort food,” do you have a comfort activity? (mine is reading children’s books).

Reading. Swimming, if that’s an option.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness? 

Texting must detract. I lack evidence, but it must. It’s so rife with ambiguity.

Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy – if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?

I agree with the experts that we each possess “set points,” but that theory needs something like what bankers call a MAC clause. Because certain events sure shift you from center. A wedding, for example. A loss.

Is there some aspect of your home that makes you particularly happy?

Bed, of course. Bed with books, children, dogs.

Have you ever been surprised that something you expected would make you very happy, didn’t – or vice versa?

I don’t expect happiness. I do think becoming a mother exceeds everyone’s expectations, emotionally. Parenting is one place where emotion isn’t circumscribed, or conditional. IMHO, as they say.

This Wednesday: More questions about the Four Rubin Tendencies.

I’m still obsessed with the four categories I’ve developed–which, for lack of a better name, I’m currently calling the Four Rubin Tendencies.

These categories describe how people tend to respond to expectations: outer expectations (a deadline, a “request” from a sweetheart) and inner expectations (write a novel in your free time, train for a marathon).

To learn more about the Four Rubin Tendencies, read here and here. In a nutshell:

Upholders respond readily to both inner and outer expectations

Questioners question all expectations, but will follow expectations if they think the expectations are sensible (effectively making all expectations into inner expectations)

Rebels resist all expectations

Obligers meet outer expectations but struggle to meet expectations they impose on themselves

I’m still working on refining these types, and I’d love to hear what you have to say about the following questions.  Obviously no one would answer all these questions, but if one strikes a particular chord with you, I’d be interested in your reaction.

Do you feel that you have to work by yourself, or be in charge, or work with others?

How do you feel about standing in line?

Do you make and keep resolutions? Why or why not? Do you do them as New Year’s resolutions?

Is it important to you to have a lot of information?

Are you powerfully motivated by a desire to avoid feeling guilty?

Do you struggle with the question, “How do I make time for me?”

Do you hate making a mistake or dropping the ball?

If you believe that a rule is arbitrary, though not unethical, would you be likely to follow it or not?

If you have difficulty sticking to a course of action, do you find yourself assigning responsibility to someone else? “I can’t stick to a diet because my mother urges me to take more food.” “My boss makes it hard for me to exercise.”

Do you prefer to do things spontaneously?

Do you prefer to do things according to a plan?

Do you sometimes feel paralyzed when you feel that you don’t have enough information to judge a course of action?

Do you enjoy the process of questioning and learning?

Do you like to be the boss? Do you need to be the boss?

How do you view shared work in a household? (Laundry, trash, cooking, etc.) How do you view your obligation, if any, to contribute? Who does what work in your household?

Do you find yourself researching issues that other people make with much less knowledge? Or do you make decisions with less knowledge than others might wish to have? E.g., picking a summer camp or a travel destination.

Do you believe that it’s very important that people keep their commitments to themselves—to go to an exercise class, to make time for their friends?

Do you feel a sense of accountability to your own calendar? So that you’ll do something if it’s on your calendar?

Here’s something that’s a bit hard to pose as a question. I’ve noticed what seems to be a pattern of Obligers sometimes “snapping” and refusing to do something they’re expected to do, or stubbornly and uncharacteristically not obliging in a particular matter, though they oblige in general. Has anyone noticed this themselves or in others? Is this pattern peculiar to Obligers or do Questioners and Upholders also do this occasionally? (Not an issue for Rebels.) I suspect not, but would be curious to hear from others on this question.

I welcome all observation and insight!

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This week’s story: Would I have been able to tell right from wrong?

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As I said, I didn’t really understand what happened with Enron; I understood just enough to make me feel unsettled.

The passage I read is: “The overriding basic principle of accounting is that if you explain the ‘accounting treatment’ to a man in the street, would you influence his investing decisions? Would he sell or buy the stock based on a thorough understanding of the facts? If so, you best present it correctly and/or change the accounting.”

If you’d like to read the full text of Sherron Watkins’s memo, read it here.

How about you? Can you think of examples when you found the right question or the right test to identify the right path? Often, I say to myself, “Do the loving thing.” That often helps.

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Warning: blatant self-promotion to follow. You’ve been warned.

If you’re looking for a gift for Fathers’ Day, for a father in your life, may I suggest…my books?

From what I hear, many people give my book Forty Ways To Look at Winston Churchill to their fathers. It’s funny–I wrote that biography to be a Churchill gateway drug, I wanted to write a short, accessible book on this vast subject, for people who didn’t know much about Churchill, to get them fascinated about his life. But in fact, the people who enjoy the book most seem to be the people who already know a great deal about Churchill. The “forty ways” structure holds particular appeal to them.

What a joy it was to write that book–what a subject, what an age!

And for those who aren’t fans of Churchill, well, that version of history is also in Forty Ways To Look at Winston Churchill.  There are forty ways, after all.

Or may I suggest The Happiness Project? I often hear about family members buying copies for each other, especially when a person is facing a happiness challenge. While I’m in declared self-promotion mode, I can’t resist adding that The Happiness Project has now sold more than one million copies. Zoikes!

One day, toward the end of a conversation I was having with the painter David Salle in his studio, on White Street, he looked at me and said, “Has this every happened to you? Have you ever thought that your real life hasn’t begun yet?”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“You know–soon. Soon you’ll start your real life.”

–Janet Malcolm, “Forty-One False Starts,” in Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers

I know this feeling very well. I wrote about it, which I try to fight with the reminder that “Now is now,” in the last chapter of Happier at Home.

How about you? Do you ever feel that your “real life” hasn’t yet begun?

In case you haven’t been breathlessly following this line of argument: in a nutshell, when facing a temptation, abstainers do better if they abstain altogether, while moderators do better if they indulge a little bit, or from time to time.

The other day, a friend who is a true moderator told me, “I got a sundae from my favorite ice cream store, and it was so, so good. But after the tenth bite or so, I could hardly taste it anymore. I had a few more bites, then it turned into a puddle, and a friend of mine finished it for me.”

To me, this is a very foreign way of acting. The difference between my friend and me made me wonder if this is a distinction between abstainers and moderators, and I’d love for you abstainers and moderators out there to weigh in on this question.

Moderators, does your desire often  diminish as you eat? Does it drop off in intensity? Or have you not noticed this phenomenon?

Abstainers, do you experience this? Or do you find that your desire for the last bite is just as strong as for the first bite? Or does desire actually gain momentum from the first bite, so you want the next bite even more?

Perhaps this is another pattern that distinguishes abstainers and moderators. Or perhaps not.

If you want to read more about abstainers and moderators, I write about it in Happier at Home, chapter 5. You might also be interested in the post–I must say, one of my favorite posts of all time–about my sister’s experience when she decided to be “free from French fries.”