List-ifesto | 1

My boss recently sent out a link to a blog, based on the book, called The Happiness Project, and I have been devouring it ever since. On the sidebar, the creator (Gretchen Rubin) has posted a list of "personal commandments," a kind of list of ideas that she shapes her life by.

She writes that the majority of the list were things she'd heard others say at some point that particularly resonated with her, or things that kept coming back, weaving a theme through her life. You can read the full post on how she went about creating her list here. Here are her 12 Personal Commandments:

* Be Gretchen.

* Let it go.

* Act the way I want to feel.

* Do it now.

* Be polite and be fair.

* Enjoy the process.

* Spend out.

* Identify the problem.

* Lighten up.

* Do what ought to be done.

* No calculation.

* There is only love.

I am so intrigued by this. My favorite is Act the way I want to feel. I love lists and manifestos, and I so sincerely believe that there are themes woven into our lives, and how much there is to be gained by seeing and understanding our lives as story... as stories within bigger stories. Rubin writes, "When I was working on my biography of Churchill, I was repeatedly struck by the literary quality of his life – how rich it was in symbols, foreshadowing, motifs, all the elements of the novel. I came to believe that this was true of my life, too, I just wasn’t paying attention.”


I also really believe in how much we are shaped by words. I one time read this book about breath prayer, and love that idea of saying a prayer just as short as the time it takes to inhale or exhale, that you repeat over and over throughout the day. I think words have power, and that words can become part of us and shape our behavior and our thoughts. Choosing what those words are, the words we repeat to ourselves throughout our life, that become written on our hearts, is exciting to me. I love reading them, and am going to start hunting other lists or personal manifestos like these to post here too.