About

Welcome to Merely Merel, it’s so good to have you! My name is — you guessed it — Merel, and this is my lifestyle blog where I document my personal Happiness Project. The Happiness Project is a year-long project that runs throughout 2019, with which I’m trying to make myself happier. You’ll get all the details from my blogposts, but it’s based on Gretchen Rubin’s book-of-the-same-name: The Happiness Project.1

A Quick Note about Happiness

Not that I’m particularly unhappy. I can feel unhappy at times (but who doesn’t?), but I definitely am not. I just think I could be happier. Happiness, I believe, is a skill that you can learn and become better at with practice. True, some happiness-related factors are predetermined. You don’t always have a say in how much good fortune befalls you. However, we can influence many happiness-factors quite a lot. We can create the right circumstances for a good health, we can invest time and effort into loving relationships, we can even change parts of our character that unintentionally bring us down.

In fact, I believe we are not only able to influence these happiness factors and change them for the better, but we have the obligation to. In many ways, it’s our own responsibility to be happy. If people who are poor, deal with illness, or have experienced loss, can be happy, we — the fortunate ones — should certainly be too. Actually, studies show that people who have dealt with great adversity often end up being happier than they were before. You see? Loads to learn.

What You Need to Know about Me

Of course I have dealt with my own piece of the adversity-cake, but on the overall, I have every reason to be happy. I’m from The Netherlands, which is number six on the list of Best Quality of Life Countries worldwide.2 I currently live on Gran Canaria, one of the subtropical Canarian islands that belong to Spain. I have a great boyfriend and two kitty cats (yes, I’m aware I’m saying that as if they’re my children). And — pop the champagne! — I work from home, which is what I always wanted to do. It’s about time to become my happiest self!

The Happiness Project

That’s why I’m dedicating the year 2019 to my own personal Happiness Project. You can read more about what that is, and why I’m doing it in my first blogpost.

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PS. I hope you’ll enjoy following along my Happiness Journey and get inspired to bring a little more happiness into your life as well. If you wanna stay in touch, follow my blog via Bloglovin’ so you’ll get an update every time I post. For some visual updates about my life on Gran Canaria, follow @merelymerel on Instagram. If you have any comments, questions or feedback, or if you want to collaborate, leave me a comment here on the blog, or send an e-mail to info@merely-merel.nl.

  1. If you’re interested in what I’m currently reading related to happiness, check the sidebar!
  2. At least that’s what a quick Google search tells me. Find the whole list here.