Doing Things for Myself

I've been following Gretchen Rubin's - The Happiness Project blog for some time. There was awhile there where I was reading books all about happiness (including The How of Happiness and Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment), trying to figure out ways where I could make my life happier. At the time, work was really crappy and the unhappiness of it seemed to leak into every portion of my life.

That was before her book The Happiness Project came out and although I haven't yet read the book (I figured I would get most of the info in it on her blog), I've been filing away little tidbits of what she's learned into my daily life.

The latest thing I'm trying to incorporate to make my life (and marriage) happier was found on Tip Wednesday a couple of weeks ago.

Gretchen wrote an article about the 5 mistakes she continues to make in her marriage and even though I could identify with Every.Single.One of them, I worked on just the first one over the weekend.

I always want to be recognized for what I do around the house, something Gretchen calls "Demanding Gold Stars". Like her husband, mine is also not very good about handing them out. He normally doesn't care if the house is super tidy or that the sink is free of dirty dishes.  Those are things I appreciate. So instead of getting annoyed when he doesn't do something, I've been just trying to do things for myself that I know will make me happy. For instance, this weekend The Hubs washed his car and then took it out for a drive and didn't wash mine at the same time. So while he was out, I went ahead and washed my car myself. I felt such a sense of accomplishment and it made me happy that I had a nice, sparkly car (that got rained on today!) It's the little things people! :-)

From now on I'm going to try to give myself gold stars both at home and work when I check something off a To-Do list or accomplish something I think is significant!

Image Source: The Happiness Project

The next mistake I definitely need to work on is Number 4 - Scorekeeping. I'm always keeping a tally of all the thing I'm doing around the house and I'm oblivious to the things The Hubs IS doing around the house. He gets annoyed that I only see what I do and that I don't see what he does. Anyone else have this problem?? I think if I followed the rule above about doing things for MYSELF, we'd BOTH be happier!

Are any of you guilty of one of Gretchen's "Marriage Mistakes"??

Have any of you read The Happiness Project? Is it worth reading even if you follow her blog?