Five tips for gestures that look generous on the surface, but in fact, are thoughtless or even destructive.

Gretchen Rubin

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.

Along those lines, here are some tips for how NOT to be happy.

*
Liz Tascio at the great new site HumanKind ("a blog about healing the world") and I met for coffee a few weeks ago. We had a fantastic conversation about the nature of happiness, from our different perspectives, and she published this interview. Note to self: I over-use the adjective "huge."

*
New to the Happiness Project? Consider subscribing to my RSS feed: Subscribe to this blog's feed. Or sign up to get email updates at gretchenrubin1(at)gmail(dot)com.
If you're starting your own happiness project, please join the Happiness Project Group on Facebook to swap ideas. It's easy; it's free.