Blog Posts by Gretchen Rubin

Research shows that the quality of a couple's friendship plays a huge role in their happiness with their marriage's romance and passion.

Kindness and helpfulness may not sound like particularly sexy qualities, but turns out - they are. A recent New Yorker cartoon summed this up perfectly. A guy in an SUV is talking into his cell phone: "Hey, baby, I just dropped the kids off at school, and now I'm going to the grocery store, and then I'm going home and unloading the car - am I making you hot?"

I'm working hard to nag less, to say "Thanks" more often, to be more light-hearted, and to stop slinking away when I see the Big Man doing a chore.

I'm also trying to "fight right" - to use gentle words, keep a sense of humor, and let the sun go down on my anger.

Here are some phrases I've eliminated (I hope) from my conversation. I've learned that you just can't say such things if you're trying to fight right:

Don't start.
What's that supposed to mean?
Haven't we

Do you WANT to annoy someone? Do you want to pretend to be generous, while in fact, you're behaving in a way that's irritating or perhaps even hurtful?

Never fear, you can be inconsiderate, and even controlling and sabotaging-under the cloak of thoughtfulness!

Here are some suggestions, just to spark your thinking:

1. Bring over a rich dessert to a person who is perpetually trying to lose weight.
2. Ignore a wedding-gift registry and give a couple a gift they haven't registered for.
3. Buy a toy that makes a loud noise-or maybe even a pet!-as a surprise for someone else's child.
4. Even in the face of polite protest, insist that everyone must come to your house for Thanksgiving dinner.
5. Tell your child, "I'm happy to pay for college-but only if you major in XX or XX. Otherwise, you're on your own."

If you don't think about it much, you might manage to fool even yourself into thinking that you're behaving with someone else's benefit in mind.

For years, I hesitated to use Ziploc bags. I've always loved them, but it seemed very wasteful to buy a bunch of plastic bags, especially because so often they'd just be thrown away. (I knew I would never be one of those people who will wash and re-use Ziploc bags.)

Then, when we moved, we made a big run to a discount store to stock up on all sorts of supplies: cleaners, trash bags, light-bulbs, and Ziploc bags. We bought all sizes: the prototypical "sandwich" size, the cunning, small "snack" size, the gallon, and my favorite, the two-gallon.

With all those Ziploc bags in the house, I caved. I couldn't resist all that handiness. Now I use Ziploc bags all the time. Some suggestions:

1. Whenever I get a new electronic gizmo, I start a special Ziploc bag for it. I label the bag with the name of the device ("Vaio laptop," "digital camera") and the date. Inside the bag, I put all wires, disks, manuals-all the paraphernalia that come with a new piece of equipment. I keep all

Novelist James Fenimore Cooper is out of fashion now (unless he's sprung back into fashion without my noticing, entirely possible), but his novels, like the The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans, were highly praised in their time. Mark Twain disagreed with that praise.

You can't get the full hilarious effect of Twain's essay Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences unless you read the whole thing, but we can all learn from his rules for writing. Here are some of my favorites from his list.

Mark Twain divides his rules into large rules and little rules-all violated by James Fenimore Cooper:

Large rules:
1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.

3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive,

The internet is a treasure trove. I'm constantly amazed by the astounding information and tools that are out there.

I've found several sites that provide great services that help boost happiness, in one way or another. I've used all of these myself and have found them extremely useful.

1. Happybirthday.com - one of the keys to happiness is keeping close relationships with other people. I plugged in dozens of birthdays to get reminders, and now I never forget a birthday. A friend of mine also uses Happybirthday.com to remind himself of happy anniversaries, like the day his daughter said her first word.

2. An RSS reader -- looking for ways to use your time more efficiently? If you find yourself visiting a lot of different sites, use an RSS reader instead of your "favorites" list or typing in the URL. I use FeedDemon, but there are many readers from which to choose. It's a far more efficient way to cruise through the internet.

For example, consider subscribing to my RSS

You're with your kids, and you're stuck in a long line at the drug store. Or waiting for a plane to take off. Or trapped in a car for two more hours. What to do?

Here are some ways to pass the time. Maybe they don't all sound incredibly compelling to an adult, but I've successfully relied on them all many times:

This or That: would you rather eat a hotdog or a hamburger? would you rather be able to fly or breathe underwater?

Imaginary Bedroom: ask your child to imagine the perfect bedroom, complete with magical features.

Who Am I?: one person describes himself or herself as a familiar character-Wilbur, Hermione, Shrek-and the other person guesses the identity.

Name That Store (my invention): I feel like I'm indoctrinating the Big Girl in capitalist culture, but hey, it works. I ask her to come up with names for a pet store, a toy store. Strangely fascinating.

Twenty Questions: never fails to amuse.

Name Game: one person picks a person's name, the next

One of my worst faults is my tendency to "snap" - to react sharply, in a minor but harsh way. This trait clouds my happiness and the happiness of everyone who feels the lash.

The conventional advice for mastering your temper is to "Count to 10" before reacting. My problem is that, in the difficult moment, it never occurs to me to count to ten.

Figuring out ways to control my snappishness is one of my chief goals for the Happiness Project. To try to rein it in, I've tried everything from the Week of Extreme Nice to hypnosis.

I also came up with a set of questions that kick into my brain (sometimes) in time to affect my behavior.

If you're about to lose your temper, ask yourself these questions:

1. Am I at fault? I hate to be criticized or to be in the wrong. Often, I'm angriest when someone is chiding me about something that I am, indeed, guilty of. When I'm about to hit back, I remind myself to accept criticism politely, if grudgingly.

2. Will this solve

Samuel Johnson wrote, "It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible."

One "little thing" that can be a source of unhappiness is being stuck on a task that's boring or irritating. Sitting in traffic. Doing laundry. Waiting in a doctor's office-or worse, having tests done.

The more you focus on your boredom or irritation, the more you'll amplify that feeling. Here are four tips to "re-frame" the moment; even if you can't escape a situation, by re-framing your emotions about it, you can transform it.

-- Put the word "meditation" after the activity that's bugging you. (This is my invention.) If you're impatient while waiting for the bus, tell yourself you're doing "Bus waiting meditation." If you're standing in a slow line at the drugstore, you're doing "Waiting in line meditation." If you're cleaning up after Halloween mayhem, you're doing "Cleaning meditation." Just saying these words makes me