Melinda Morley

I found a site called The Happiness Project. Premise (and a novel coming out this year): a woman tries for one year to try out all the suggestions she hears to make herself happy. I found this list on her blog.  

19 tips for cheering yourself up—from two hundred years ago. (Commentary by me.)

Note: In a biography of English writer Sydney Smith, Heskith Pearson’s The Smith of Smiths(1820), contained a letter that Smith wrote to an unhappy friend, Lady Morpeth, in which he offered her tips for cheering up.

“1st. Live as well as you dare. (But how daring are you?)
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees. (I don’t know about you, but cold showers make me miserable. Have you ever shaved goosebumps off your legs. Don’t answer that.)
3rd. Amusing books. (May I recommend Janette Rallison’s My Fair Godmother? LOL funny.)
4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea. (Maybe it would be better not think about human life at all. Just about furry little pets or something.)
5th. Be as busy as you can. (Yes, then you can’t think about human life.)
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you. (Agree.)
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you. (Totally. Agree. Kristi, where are you when I need you? Florida?! Ugh.)
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to you friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment. (Everyone needs an Abby for this. She listens to you complain and never thinks less of you.)
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you. (Personally, I wouldn’t know. Word of Wisdom thing there.)
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people. (YES!!! But only those people in lower situations.)
11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best. (Now that’s depressing.)
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence. (I must be morbid, because depressing stuff often makes me feel better. After a few days anyway.)
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree. (What ever happened to the saying that you can’t please everyone?)
14th Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue. (Unless you live in the haze of Utah, when open air could give you serious respiratory problems. But, otherwise, fresh air is rousing.)
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant. (I’m sure he mean happy and pleasant. I agree with this one.)
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness. (I wonder if internet time counts as idleness…nah.)
17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice. (Yes! We are our own worst critics.)
18th. Keep good blazing fires. (Heck yah! A good blaze cheers me right up. Minus the problem of adding to the air quality. See 14.)
19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion. (Yes, nothing irrational or any of that. Have you ever wondered where you came from and why you are here? I can answer that…)
20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana.” (Of course. Believe me, too.)