In the month of February 2008 I had the opportunity to interview 34 amazing people on the subject of happiness. The possibility that I created for this project, is that everyone who participates, and reads these interviews will be left inspired, empowered, and happier than they were before.

What made this project so exciting is that it taps into something that all of us, as humans can related to. From the most selfish human, to the most selfless saint, the one thing that we share in is the desire to be happy. While we realized that happiness can mean different things to different people, there are many similarities that can be captured by just about anyone.

Reading through all of these interviews I realized that much of this is common sense, or I could have thought of that, but I didn’t. Reading them inspired me to just let go, be happy, and enjoy the beautiful moments in life. I know happiness is available and possible for every one of us.

What I would love to do is to be able to share this happiness with every one of you! There are several ways in which I envision this happening. You can go ahead and read through the 34 interviews which I was fortunate enough to capture for this site. Additionally, other people took it upon themselves to answer these questions on their own sites to share their own views and opinions with all of us. All of this can be found on the main Happiness Project ^[1] page and I welcome you to read them.

To take things to the next level, I would absolutely love it if you would take the questions, think about them, and answer them for yourself. If you have a blog, then answer them there, if not, feel free to answer them in the comments section below this post.

The Questions

1. How do you define happiness?
2. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your happiness now, versus when you were a child?
3. What do you do on a daily basis that brings you happiness? (and how consistent is the feeling of happiness throughout your day)
4. What things take away from your happiness? What can be done to lessen their impact or remove them from your life?
5. What do you plan on doing in the future that will bring you even more happiness?

Group Writing Project Guidelines

1. Answer the Questions. In a new post answer the questions that you see above, while being as genuine and open as possible. I might not know you very well yet, but believe me, you are awesome, and I want your readers and my readers to be able to see this extraordinary side of you.
2. Overview and Linkback. In the introduction of your post, go ahead and give a brief overview of what the Happiness Project is and where you happened to hear about it first. This is the part where I would appreciate if you linked back ^[2] to this post, in order to let people know about the guidelines, and how they can participate. While your doing that, I would love it if you also linked to the main Happiness Project ^[1] page, and gave people access to the full list of interviews and participants.
3. Tag your Blog Friends. The purpose of this project is to share it with as many people as possible and to spread the awareness about happiness all over the world. The best way you can help us do that, aside from answering the questions on your own blog, is to tag some of your blogging friends (no limit here, the more the merrier), and let them know to participate.
4. Comment Here + I Link To You. After you’ve successfully published your Happiness Project post on your blog, and linked back to this post, go ahead and leave a comment here to let me know you participated. What I will do is add a link to your entry into the main Happiness Project page as soon as I can. Another bonus is that I’ll do periodic updates of where the Happiness Project is going, in which I’ll link to the newest group of participants. That means you get two links from a Page Rank 4 blog, and exposure to tens of thousands of people. Good deal?

Optional: Use This Banner

^[1]

My good friend Mark happens to be an excellent graphic designer and he was kind enough to make this banner for us to use for this project. Thank you Mark! You can use this banner to not only show off your participation in the project, but also to point people towards the rest of the interviews, and spread awareness to as many people as possible.

Instructions: Copy-paste the code below into your blog post’s ‘code’ section or into your sidebar. This code will link the banner right to the Happiness Project ^[1] page.

<a title=”Happiness Project” href=”http://www.alexshalman.com/blog/happiness-project/”><img src=”http://www.alexshalman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/contributetoalex1.gif” style=”border:none” alt=”Happiness Project” /></a>

^[3] Tweet This Post ^[3]