Happy new year! Did you remember to say “Rabbit, rabbit” before you spoke any other words when you woke up yesterday, on January 1? (That’s an American superstition.) I did, so I expect good things from 2026.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
For people who write about happiness and self-improvement, like me, this “New Year, New You” time of year is like tax season for accountants. December 29 marked the anniversary of my book The Happiness Project (can’t resist mentioning, it stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, including at #1). Fortunately, I’m even more fascinated in the subject of happiness now than I was when I wrote that book. More knowledge, more questions.
I love learning about the significance of overlooked details of my everyday environment, and I was fascinated to learn how zebra boards help New York City subway conductors accurately line up their trains with the platform—such a simple, effective solution. Now I have to remember to look for the zebra board the next time I take the subway.
I love all kinds of trompe l’oeil, I love fake food, and I especially love the lifelike food replicas, known as shokuhin sampuru, that are part of Japanese dining culture. I really want to visit this exhibition in L.A.’s Japan House.
Each year, I eagerly wait to see what Pantone will choose as the color of the year, and also to see what great works will enter the public domain. In the United States, the copyright on creations from 1930 expired yesterday—which means that anyone can use, share and adapt them. My prediction: In the next few years, we’ll see many parodies, twists, and products based on Watty Piper’s classic picture book, The Little Engine that Could. I’ve never taken advantage of any new out-of-copyright opportunities, myself, but I always look at the list to see if it sparks ideas. I love philosopher Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness…maybe there’s something to do with that? And I love Elizabeth’s Coatsworth’s children’s book, The Cat Who Went to Heaven.
One of my favorite ways to prepare for a new year is to write a list of things I want to get done over the next twelve months. This exercise is part of the “Design Your Year” trifecta that my sister Elizabeth and I discuss on the Happier podcast. For a bit of whimsy, we tie the number of items to the year. If you want to make your own “26 for ’26 list,” you can download a free template here.
Here’s to your teen’s next big step
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This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
PODCAST EPISODE: 567
Do You Feel Unprepared for the New Year? Plus Roller-Derby Names
INTERVIEW
Ben Markovits
Benjamin Markovits is a novelist, essayist, and poet. His latest book, The Rest of Our Lives, was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. I’ll be hosting a conversation with Ben at 92NY in New York on January 8 — virtual and in-person tickets available here. I’m a huge fan of Ben’s fiction. My next project is about the empty nest as a forced reckoning of adulthood, and The Rest of Our Lives is the best novel I’ve read exploring that stage of life.
Q: Do you have a Secret of Adulthood? A lesson you’ve learned from life the hard way; something you’d tell your younger self?
As I get older, I’ve become more and more a creature of routines, especially in the mornings – which is useful for writing, but I wonder if it makes me less open to other possibilities for the day. Does that count as a secret or a lesson? I guess the lesson is that whatever helps for one thing, also rules other things out.
Q: What simple habit boosts your happiness or energy?
I run or bike most days. But I don’t keep track of times or speeds – I don’t want to get competitive with myself, I just want to get out of the house. I can’t say I like jogging, I’d rather be playing basketball, with a younger version of my body . . . but no matter how reluctantly I set off, at some point on my run I’m usually glad to be doing it. My attitude to writing is the same. Don’t worry about word counts or hours spent, just sit down and try at some point to feel like you’re there because you want to be.
Q: Is there a particular motto that you’ve found very helpful?
A few years ago I was sick, and spending a lot of time waiting for doctors to get back to me with scan and test results. There was a line in a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough I used to repeat to myself: If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. It helped a little. [Gretchen: This line comes from the poem “Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth,” which was one of Winston Churchill’s favorite poems during World War II.]
Q: Has a book ever changed your life? If so, which one and why?
Lots of books have changed my life in small ways. But when I was seventeen, we moved to Berlin for a year. We’d moved around a lot when I was a kid (my parents are restless academics), and I’d kind of run out of gas socially, when it came to starting new schools. (I went to eleven different schools . . . ) Anyway, instead of making friends, I read. My parents had access to an English-language library, and I worked my way through most of George Bernard Shaw for some reason. But the book that made the biggest impression on me, and which I reread several times that year, was Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves, partly because it begins with a wonderfully vivid account of a kid who feels like a misfit at his school. (He figures out that if you put straw in your hair, other kids will leave you alone. I did not try this myself.) But mostly I loved it because of the conversational prose – it feels like listening to someone talk. [Gretchen: I love Goodbye to All That, so good.]
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