Looking for happiness? Try singing. That’s the advice in a new self-help book that’s striking a chord with thousands of readers. Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project has become an instant bestseller with simple prescriptions such as “Sing in the morning.” “You know, I’m a terrible singer,” Rubin told Maclean’s this week. “Everybody laughs at my singing. But one of my main focuses of my happiness project was to create a more lighthearted, calm atmosphere in my household.”

Mornings are the most hectic, says the mother of two young girls. “Everyone’s racing around and there’s a lot of whining and nagging. It can be a very unpleasant part of the day and yet it’s the beginning of the day, so it’s important to set the tone. It’s very hard to be crabby when you’re singing.”

In the book, Rubin describes a morning when one of her daughters didn’t want to go to tae kwon do class: “I wanted to snap back, ‘You always say you don’t want to go, but then you have fun.’ Instead, even though it wasn’t easy, I sang out, ‘I don’t want to go to tae kwon do—you’re a poet and didn’t know it!’ After a minute, I added, ‘I don’t give a snap about going to tap.’ ” Rubin’s daughter joined in, rhyming, “I’d rather pass gas than go to science class.” “We laughed until our stomachs hurt, and she didn’t mention tae kwon do again. This technique worked better than telling her to buck up, and it was certainly more fun.”
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