The theme for this month is Happiness, and in this first episode, we’re exploring what impact the people around us have on our happiness.  From friends to family to coworkers, nearly everyone we interact with has the potential to have an impact on our mood, for better or worse.  In fact, we only have to believe that we are sharing an experience with a friend to get a boost in our enjoyment of it.  While there are certainly some unconscious systems in play, we can take control of our happiness by being intentional about who we spend a majority of our time with, regardless of the types of activities we are engaging in.

Conversation Kindling:

In 2006, on the way home from work, Gretchen Rubin, an attorney and law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, experienced an epiphany when she realized that her vaguely stated every day goals and her failure to achieve them made her feel like she was wasting her life away. As Rubin explains, she realized two things: "I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasn't going to change unless I made it change.” It was in that moment of desperation that The Happiness Project was born.  Rubin quit her job and started what began as a yearlong experiment to pursue happiness, based on the advice of a host of notables, past and present, from Aristotle to Tolstoy to Mark Twain. It became Rubin's mission to test as many of these ideas as possible within one year. During those twelve months, she managed to sort through what worked and what didn't, which has made her something of a lay expert on the subject.  In this video interview with CBS This Morning, Rubin expounds on ways that we can each make room for happiness in our lives.

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