In this week’s episode of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, my sister Elizabeth and I reviewed our one-word themes from 2023 and revealed our themes for 2024. We’ve found that identifying overarching themes for the year really helps us to achieve our aims for ourselves.
We also discussed the symbols we chose to represent our themes; it’s fun to choose a symbol, and having a visual representation helps keep the aim uppermost in the mind, so that it’s effective.
I do many happiness-boosting things to prepare for a new year, and choosing a one-word theme is one of my very favorites exercises.
My 2023 theme: Wave.
I wanted to ride the wave of launching my book Life in Five Senses into the world, to enjoy the chance to wave to so many people during my book tour, and to let myself be carried forward with the energy, motion, and persistence of waves.
I loved this theme, especially because as my symbol, I chose Hokusai’s masterpiece Under the Wave off Kanagawa. This artwork appears on everything from notebooks to t-shirts to skateboards, and I encountered it in very unexpected places. My daughter Eliza made this piece of LEGO artwork for me, as a memento of 2023.
My 2024 theme: Revisited.
I’m so excited to spend 2024 revisiting The Happiness Project in my new course The Happiness Project: Revisited—I’m sure I’ll find many lessons that I’m ready to re-learn and have new epiphanies along the way.
I love to re-read, re-watch, and return to the same places over and over—for instance, that why I visit the Met every day, and why this summer I had my Summer of Re-reading. I find the idea of “revisited” very invigorating.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
Can you identify the happiest moment of your whole life? I can. It came on January 9, 2015, when we learned that my husband Jamie’s hepatitis C had been cured (transmitted when he needed heart surgery at age eight). Thank you, science! Thank you, researchers! So I was deeply interested, and saddened, to read this piece in the New York Times: “We are squandering one of the most important medical advances of the 21st century.” Hepatitis C is devastating, deadly, and very expensive; with the right action, it could be eliminated. Come on, Congress.
I love color, and I love Diana Vreeland’s extravagant writings about color. In her enthralling memoir D.V., she writes: “All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, ‘I want rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple’—they have no idea what I’m talking about. About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait.” I thought of this observation recently, when I stood in front of Ghirlandaio’s Francesco Sassetti and His Son Teodoro. Beautiful, beautiful red. In the Met’s newly renovated European Paintings Galleries.
I can’t stop thinking about the documentary The Beatles: Get Back. (I’ve watched it twice and am gearing up to watch it again.) Because I’m always so fascinated to see how creative people work together, I loved the brilliant show Stereophonic at Playwrights Horizons. With collaboration, people bring problems, and people bring possibilities.
I love the power of a smell to carry us back to a specific time and place in our past, and as someone who grew up in Kansas City, I was riveted by David Owen’s evocative 2010 New Yorker piece, “The Dime Store Floor”—how is it possible that I’d never read this piece before? I’m absolutely the most perfect audience for it! On a trip back to K.C., he and his sister visited a few places to find out whether they smelled the same. I remember exactly how the Dime Store smelled, with its wooden floorboards and shelves packed full of everything; I’ll never forget the smell of that medical building on the Plaza (that’s where my orthodontist had his office); and of course Winstead’s diner is the first place I go on every visit, just like David. When my sister Elizabeth and I are together in K.C., I’m going to suggest we go on our own smell tour.
I love a project, I love using numbers—such as the year 2024 or twelve months—as a catalyst, I love surprising approaches to self-exploration. So I was fascinated to read this essay, “How to avoid being boring at 60.” It tackles the question: “What to do when your life is so routine that you’ve run out of stories? Embark on a series of tame, achievable, eye-opening challenges.” Rob LaZebnik (Simpsons writer) went on a police ride-along, cooked dinner, sewed a shirt, took a sound bath, and had 54 other adventures. It was a great way to make a milestone birthday memorable.
Updates
Something special is coming to the Happier podcast tomorrow! Tune in for a preview of my new course for 2024, The Happiness Project: Revisited.
This weekend only, get free shipping on domestic orders from The Happiness Project Collection. Ends Sunday at 11:59pm PT. Use code: FREESHIP23
We review the one-word themes we chose for 2023—“Scale” and “Wave”—and discuss how and why those themes influenced the last twelve months. We also reveal the one-word themes we’ve chosen for 2024, and what symbol we’ll use to represent our themes.