10 Common Happiness Mistakes

Gretchen Rubin shares her insights to help you avoid the 10 Common Happiness Mistakes that most of us keeping making:

1. To delay to do something important until you have some “free time,” because you may never have any free time
   
2. To retreat into isolation when you’re unhappy
   
3. To neglect to make a small change because you think a big change is necessary
   
4. To refuse to consider a big change because you assume you can only make a small change
   
5. To “treat” yourself to something you wouldn’t ordinarily permit yourself, because you’re feeling blue
6. To postpone something important until you’re feeling healthier, or thinner, or married, or whatever
   
7. To think that you can “make” someone else be happy
   
8. To imagine that what’s true for other people is true for you
   
9. To spend too much time, or not enough time, thinking about the past, present, or future
   
10. To ignore the truth about your own temperament, interests, and aptitudes
    

I had an eleventh mistake, but my computer didn't save the document properly, and now I can't remember what else I'd added. Very annoying. What have I overlooked? Wait! I just thought of another. "To think about everything you don't have, instead of everything you do have." But that wasn't the one that I forgot...

Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier.

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