The right idea, invoked at the right time, can change our lives. Drawing from her long studies of happiness, and also from the challenges she's faced herself, writer Gretchen Rubin has discovered the Secrets of Adulthood that can help us manage the complexities of life. To convey her conclusions, she turned to the aphorism--the ancient literary discipline that demands that a writer convey a large truth in a few words.

Perhaps you're paralyzed by indecision, struggling to navigate a big change, fighting a temptation, or puzzled by the behavior of someone you love; whatever you face, the right aphorism can help. From procrastination to the pursuit of happiness, Secrets of Adulthood is filled with witty and thought-provoking reflections such as:

• Recognize that, like sleeping with a big dog in a small bed, things that are uncomfortable can also be comforting
• Accept yourself, and expect more from yourself
• Easy children raise good parents
• What can be done at any time is often done at no time

#1 New York Times Bestseller

An enlightening, laugh-aloud read. . . . Filled with open, honest glimpses into [Rubin's] real life, woven together with constant doses of humor. --Christian Science Monitor

Gretchen Rubin's year-long experiment to discover how to create true happiness. Drawing on cutting-edge science, classical philosophy, and real-world examples, Rubin delivers an engaging, eminently relatable chronicle of transformation. This special 10^th Anniversary edition features a Conversation with Gretchen Rubin, Happiness Project Stories, a guide to creating your own happiness project, a list of dozens of free resources, and more.

Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. The days are long, but the years are short, she realized. Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter. In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.

In this lively and compelling account--now updated with new material by the author--Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.

This updated edition includes:

An extensive new interview with the authorStories of other people's life-changing happiness projectsA resource guide to the dozens of free resources created for readersThe Happiness Project ManifestoAn excerpt from Rubin's bestselling book The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles that Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too)

An inspiring and practical guide to living in the moment.--SUSAN CAIN, author of Bittersweet and Quiet

For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she'd been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She'd spent so much time stuck in her head that she'd allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world invigorated by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.

From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending a flavor university, Rubin shows us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us immediate, sustainable ways to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us--as well as ways to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent.

Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives--and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.

During her multibook investigation into human nature, Gretchen Rubin realized that by asking the seemingly dry question How do I respond to expectations? we gain explosive self-knowledge. She discovered that based on their answer, people fit into Four Tendencies:

- Upholders meet outer and inner expectations readily. Discipline is my freedom.
- Questioners meet inner expectations, but meet outer expectations only if they make sense. If you convince me why, I'll comply.
- Obligers (the largest Tendency) meet outer expectations, but struggle to meet inner expectations--therefore, they need outer accountability to meet inner expectations. You can count on me, and I'm counting on you to count on me.
- Rebels (the smallest group) resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. They do what they choose to do, when they choose to do it, and typically they don't tell themselves what to do. You can't make me, and neither can I.

Our Tendency shapes every aspect of our behavior, so using this framework allows us to make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress, and engage more effectively. It's far easier to succeed when you know what works for you.

With sharp insight, compelling research, and hilarious examples, The Four Tendencies will help you get happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative.

If anyone can help us stop procrastinating, start exercising, or get organized, it's Gretchen Rubin. The happiness guru takes a sledgehammer to old-fashioned notions about change.--Parade

Most of us have a habit we'd like to change, and there's no shortage of expert advice. But as we all know from tough experience, no magic, one-size-fits-all solution exists. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives.

In Better Than Before, acclaimed writer Gretchen Rubin identifies every approach that actually works. She presents a practical, concrete framework to allow readers to understand their habits--and to change them for good.

Infused with Rubin's compelling voice, rigorous research, and easy humor, and packed with vivid stories of lives transformed, Better Than Before explains the (sometimes counterintuitive) core principles of habit formation and answers the most perplexing questions about habits:

- Why do we find it tough to create a habit for something we love to do?
- How can we keep our healthy habits when we're surrounded by temptations?
- How can we help someone else change a habit?

Rubin reveals the true secret to habit change: first, we must know ourselves. When we shape our habits to suit ourselves, we can find success--even if we've failed before.

Whether you want to eat more healthfully, stop checking devices, or finish a project, the invaluable ideas in Better Than Before will start you working on your own habits--even before you've finished the book.

Gretchen Rubin knows firsthand that creating order can make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. But for most of us, a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution doesn't work. When we tailor our approach to suit our own particular challenges and habits, we can find inner calm.

With a sense of fun, and a clear idea of what's realistic for most people, Rubin suggests dozens of manageable tips and tricks for creating a more serene, orderly environment, including:

- Never label anything miscellaneous.
- Ask yourself, Do I need more than one?
- Don't aim for minimalism.
- Remember: If you can't retrieve it, you won't use it.
- Stay current with a child's interests.
- Beware the urge to procrasticlear.

By getting rid of things we don't use, don't need, or don't love, we free our minds (and our shelves) for what we truly value.

Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry's last great charge and inventor of the tank, Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war. With penetrating insight and vivid anecdotes, Gretchen Rubin makes Churchill accessible and meaningful to twenty-first-century readers by analyzing the many contrasting views of the man: he was an alcoholic, he was not; he was an anachronism, he was a visionary; he was a racist, he was a humanitarian; he was the most quotable man in the history of the English language, he was a bore.

Like no other portrait of its famous subject, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a dazzling display of facts more improbable than fiction. It brings to full realization the depiction of a man too fabulous for any novelist to construct, too complex for even the longest narrative to describe, and too significant ever to be forgotten.

If anyone can help us stop procrastinating, start exercising, or get organized, it's Gretchen Rubin. The happiness guru takes a sledgehammer to old-fashioned notions about change.--Parade

Most of us have a habit we'd like to change, and there's no shortage of expert advice. But as we all know from tough experience, no magic, one-size-fits-all solution exists. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives.

In Better Than Before, acclaimed writer Gretchen Rubin identifies every approach that actually works. She presents a practical, concrete framework to allow readers to understand their habits--and to change them for good.

Infused with Rubin's compelling voice, rigorous research, and easy humor, and packed with vivid stories of lives transformed, Better Than Before explains the (sometimes counterintuitive) core principles of habit formation and answers the most perplexing questions about habits:

- Why do we find it tough to create a habit for something we love to do?
- How can we keep our healthy habits when we're surrounded by temptations?
- How can we help someone else change a habit?

Rubin reveals the true secret to habit change: first, we must know ourselves. When we shape our habits to suit ourselves, we can find success--even if we've failed before.

Whether you want to eat more healthfully, stop checking devices, or finish a project, the invaluable ideas in Better Than Before will start you working on your own habits--even before you've finished the book.

And what did she want from her home? A place that calmed her, and energized her. A place that, by making her feel safe, would free her to take risks. Also, while Rubin wanted to be happier at home, she wanted to appreciate how much happiness was there already.

So, starting in September (the new January), Rubin dedicated a school year--September through May--to making her home a place of greater simplicity, comfort, and love.

In The Happiness Project, she worked out general theories of happiness. Here she goes deeper on factors that matter for home, such as possessions, marriage, time, and parenthood. How can she control the cubicle in her pocket? How might she spotlight her family's treasured possessions? And it really was time to replace that dud toaster.

Each month, Rubin tackles a different theme as she experiments with concrete, manageable resolutions--and this time, she coaxes her family to try some resolutions, as well.

With her signature blend of memoir, science, philosophy, and experimentation, Rubin's passion for her subject jumps off the page, and reading just a few chapters of this book will inspire readers to find more happiness in their own lives.

Descubre cómo sintonizar con tus cinco sentidos puede llevarte a una vida más feliz, consciente y plena

La autora del bestseller número 1 del New York Times The Happiness Project nos descubre un sorprendente camino hacia una vida con más energía, creatividad, suerte y amor: sintonizando con los cinco sentidos.

Gretchen Rubin llevaba más de una década estudiando la felicidad y la naturaleza humana. Entonces, un día, una visita a su oftalmólogo le hizo darse cuenta de que había estado pasando por alto un elemento clave de la felicidad: sus cinco sentidos. Había pasado tanto tiempo metida en su cabeza que había dejado que las sensaciones vitales de la vida pasaran desapercibidas. Esta epifanía la sacó de un estado de nebulosa preocupación y la llevó a un mundo redescubierto a través de la vista, el oído, el olfato, el gusto y el tacto.

En este viaje de autoexperimentación, Rubin explora los misterios y las alegrías de los cinco sentidos como camino hacia una vida más feliz y consciente. Basándose en la ciencia más avanzada, la filosofía, la literatura y sus propios esfuerzos por poner en práctica lo que aprende, investiga el profundo poder de sintonizar con el mundo físico.

Vivir con los cinco sentidos es una absorbente historia de descubrimientos llena de profundas ideas y sugerencias prácticas sobre cómo potenciar nuestros sentidos y utilizar nuestro poder de percepción para vivir una vida más plena y enriquecedora y, en última instancia, cómo movernos por el mundo con más vitalidad y amor.

Este libro inspirador incitará a los lectores a abrirse al mundo que les rodea , Booklist

Un viaje encantador a través de la ciencia y la experiencia de captar plenamente los sentidos del olfato, el gusto, el tacto, la vista y el oído , Adam Grant, autor del bestseller del New York Times número 1 Think Again y presentador del podcast de TED Re: Thinking.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The author of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, luck, and love: by tuning in to the five senses.

Life in Five Senses invites us into the seismic shift toward a life grounded in sensation, vitality, and innate intelligence.--GLENNON DOYLE, author of Untamed

An inspiring and practical guide to living in the moment.--SUSAN CAIN, author of Bittersweet and Quiet

For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she'd been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She'd spent so much time stuck in her head that she'd allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world invigorated by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.

Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives--and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.

#1 New York Times Bestseller

An enlightening, laugh-aloud read. . . . Filled with open, honest glimpses into Rubin's] real life, woven together with constant doses of humor. --Christian Science Monitor

Gretchen Rubin's year-long experiment to discover how to create true happiness. Drawing on cutting-edge science, classical philosophy, and real-world examples, Rubin delivers an engaging, eminently relatable chronicle of transformation. This special 10^th Anniversary edition features a Conversation with Gretchen Rubin, Happiness Project Stories, a guide to creating your own happiness project, a list of dozens of free resources, and more.

Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. The days are long, but the years are short, she realized. Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter. In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.

In this lively and compelling account--now updated with new material by the author--Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.

This updated edition includes:

- An extensive new interview with the author

- Stories of other people's life-changing happiness projects

- A resource guide to the dozens of free resources created for readers

- The Happiness Project Manifesto

- An excerpt from Gretchen Rubin's bestselling book The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles that Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too)

An inspiring and practical guide to living in the moment.--SUSAN CAIN, author of Bittersweet and Quiet

For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she'd been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She'd spent so much time stuck in her head that she'd allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world invigorated by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.

From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending a flavor university, Rubin shows us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us immediate, sustainable ways to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us--as well as ways to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent.

Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives--and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.

This book made me happy in the first five pages. --AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

Award-winning author Gretchen Rubin is back with a bang, with The Happiness Project. The author of the bestselling 40 Ways to Look at Winston Churchill has produced a work that is a cross between the Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. (Sonya Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want) In the vein of Julie and Julia, The Happiness Project describes one person's year-long attempt to discover what leads to true contentment. Drawing at once on cutting-edge science, classical philosophy, and real-world applicability, Rubin has written an engaging, eminently relatable chronicle of transformation.