I'm Gretchen Ruben and this is a little happier.

I have a friend who went through a period of tremendous rejection.

In the space of about two months, she was fired from her job.

She was rejected from a graduate program to which she'd applied.

And her boyfriend broke up with her.

Everything worked out fine in the end.

I'm happy to report.

But I asked her later how she got through such a tough time.

And she told me, you know, I was practically addicted to doing good deeds for other

people.

It was the only way I could make myself feel like I wasn't a total loser.

And this remark reminded me of something that I figured out when I was writing my books,

The Happiness Project, and Happier at Home.

I was struggling to come up with a framework to let me think about happiness because to

me, the idea of happiness felt transcendent and complicated.

I really wanted to distill it down so I can understand it more clearly.

And I came up with my eight splendid truths.

And the second splendid truth is one of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make

other people happy.

One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

And my friend was addicted to good deeds because it's true.

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy.

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