Gretchen Rubin
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Meaning, I can have none, but I can't have a little bit. Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult. See, this is the thing about an aphorism. You have to get it exactly right. But when I read that, it was a huge insight for me because I had this really overwhelming sweet tooth. And I thought, maybe I'm like Dr. Johnson. Maybe I should just have none.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Maybe, and I realized I'm an all or nothing person, I can have no Thin Mint cookies very, very easily. or I can have a whole sleeve of Thin Mint cookies. I can't have one Thin Mint cookie. I can't have half a dish of ice cream. I can't have one square of fine chocolate. You know, and so, and I realized, that's okay. That's just how some people are, and I gave up sugar.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
That was like 13 years ago, and it is so, And I wouldn't say this is true for everyone. Not everybody wants to give up sugar. It's just something that works really well for me. But I hadn't even considered that approach until I read that from Dr. Johnson talking about himself. So that was something that transformed my whole life. There was just this really boring noise in my head that went away.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, and I think that's a great example of like, this is a proverb, that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And I think a lot of times, it's like, the readiness is all. See, I can go on and on with these forever. And it's like, if probably you were ready to hear that,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
and it came to you and then it hit you very hard, whereas it might not have hit somebody else very hard or even you at a different time, or often metaphors matter. like with the Happiness Project, many really well-intentioned people said, do not call it the Happiness Project because project sounds like homework. Nobody wants to do a project. And I was like, what are you talking about?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I love a project. But you know what doesn't resonate with me? The journey. People will often talk about the journey. And for whatever reason, that isn't a metaphor that resonates with me. And so I think sometimes it is you just, you find... that thing that strikes a chord when it's in the right words at the right time for you. But it's kind of hard to manufacture that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So my hope is that with Secrets of Adulthood, maybe people will have those kind of sparks of illumination that are really coming from them, that moment of recognition. Because my favorite thing, like you experienced, is when somebody says something or you read something and you think, oh my gosh, Now I see it clearly, or even better, I've always thought the same thing myself.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I just never quite put it into words. And you feel that kind of satisfaction that comes from it. And so I think we do have these moments.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Wow.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
A little radical candor coming your way. He wrote the book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Right, that he was able to sort of give you that insight at the right moment.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Right, right, right, right.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Oh, good, good, good. This is my favorite part because I love all of them, of course. But what's interesting to me is the ones that strike a chord with other people. And I have to say, I've been very surprised by some of the ones that have sort of floated to the top. They are not the ones that I would have expected. So I'm so interested to hear which ones struck a chord with you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I think really becoming a sleep zealot. Really protecting my sleep and always thinking about sleep and like for instance on this book tour, I did like 10 cities in 10 days and then I took a break and then I did another week and I just, and usually I'm very affected by jet lag and everything and now, but I know sleep is so important. So I really took a nap and it made a huge, huge difference.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But I think that just thinking about one of the OK, talk about. So at the end of the book, there's some like hacks. I can't resist a hack. And as I was writing the book, I couldn't resist. Most of them are sort of transcendent, but then I have to get into the nitty gritty.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And I thought I included them with the draft of the book that I thought my editor would say, like, Gretchen, these do not belong in the book. Take them out. But I couldn't resist. And then she said, oh, I think they're kind of fun. Let's put them in. So here's a hack. if you're trying to guard your sleep.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
If you have cold feet, I bought an electric foot warmer that has changed my life because my feet were icy, icy cold and it would literally keep me up because I was so uncomfortable and I would wear socks and I would wear slippers. I mean, I was trying everything and now this thing really has dramatically, and you know, that's really annoying time, that time when you're trying to fall asleep.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And I feel like it's really made a difference. So talking about micro habits, whereas something like going to the med every day is a very kind of transcendent habit. It's also made a huge difference in my daily life. It's just such a pleasure and it's such a solace and a respite. But, you know, note to self, live within walking distance of a major museum. I got that done.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But I have lived within walking distance of it for a very long time, and I hardly ever went. So it's not like that was enough.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Oh, yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Are you painting your own fakes?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Okay, so the aphorism is the question, are you painting your own fakes? So this is a true story where a gallery owner had come into possession of an alleged Picasso, so he goes to Kahn to ask Picasso in his studio, is this your work? And Picasso glances at it and he says, oh no, that's a fake.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And some time goes by, and another artwork emerges, and the dealer takes it to Picasso, and Picasso says, no, no, no, that's a fake. And then the dealer says, Maître, I myself saw you paint this with my own eyes. And Picasso said, I often paint fakes. And I think this is for people who are creative, which is, are you dialing it in? Are you just following in a rote way?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Is it just coming too easily? I'm always like, if I start typing really fast, I'm like, OK, you're probably dealing with a cliche, repeating yourself, just recycling something from the past. If it's original and fresh, it's hard. I don't want to paint my own fakes.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, that was a fun one. Yeah, the drop-mic quality of aphorisms is part of what makes me fun, but sometimes I just couldn't resist just a delicious illustration.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Oh, this is a great story.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Isn't this one of the great challenges of parenthood? This paradox puzzled me for such a long time because I was thinking... I love my daughters with all my heart. I think they are perfect just as they are. And I push and I prod them to improve. How can both be true? And then I realized both are true. Love is unconditional and love is demanding.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah. Often aphorisms and secrets of adulthood are expressed in paradox because it's a way, it captures our attention. There's often a great truth in paradox. In fact, one of the secrets of adulthood is the opposite of a profound truth is also true. So love is unconditional and love is demanding.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I think I said it all. Yeah. We care for many people we don't particularly care for.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, I would say as somebody who spends a lot of time exploring happiness, I will say that one of the biggest happiness challenges that I hear over and over is the difficulty of making friendships and sustaining friendships as adults. Partly because it can be hard to make new friends. Let's say you move to a new city.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Or it can be hard, even if you have friends, to keep up with friends because friends take time and energy. That's the truth of it. And so one of the things that I've written about many, many times in different ways is like, how might you do that? And like one thing I am a huge fan of is to join or start a group.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Um, because it takes a lot of, I feel like the scheduling of seeing friends is one of the major stumbling blocks. And so if it's a group, it's like, okay, if you can't make it this month, you'll, you'll do it next month. Um, a lot of time.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And then one of my secrets of adulthood, which is also research back, which is one of the best ways to make friends is to make friends with the friends of your friends. And believe me, there is no more elegant way to say that. I have tried. But this is true. It's called triadic closure.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And so if you're trying to make friends, the best way to make friends is to make friends with the friends of your friends. And often if you start a group, whether it's like a birdwatching group or a book group or like a neighborhood club or a mahjong group or whatever it is, that's a good way to make friends.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And there's research showing that density matters, that you're better off having a group of people who are interconnected than having a lot of one-off friends. You get more of a feeling of belonging, and there's greater cohesion.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And so instead of chasing down this person, this person, this person, which can be very time consuming and burdensome, you really are better off trying to form an interconnected group. But one of the things, now I'm just going on, this is just a sidebar on happiness.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I'm writing this book, Project Empty Nest, which is going to be all about what I think is a forced reckoning in adulthood, which is if you're a parent. And one of the very poignant things that I've found is that many people think they have friends. They're like, I've been hanging out with these people for years. We're in a group text that's firing all the time.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I'm so happy to see them when I show up at the soccer game. We're making plans all the time. But they're not friends. They're friendly acquaintances who are connected by something related to their children. And when the children go away off to college, The soccer group falls apart. The performance group falls apart. There's nothing holding those friends together.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
You really have to push a friendly acquaintance into the friend zone. And there's a lot of ways you can push somebody into the friend zone, but you really have to do it because otherwise it just doesn't exist anymore without that centerpiece. It's like work friends.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
You can see somebody all the time and have great conversations by the coffee machine, but unless you really push it into being a friend, it tends to vanish if you get a new job. But the poignant part is that people don't know that. They think they have friends.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So you really want to know in advance so you can make people those friends, or then you want to grab them from the past, which that's a great way to find friends is from friendly acquaintances in the past, but it's nice to do it prospectively.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes, right, yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
that I go work on when I'm like taking a break from what I'm actually supposed to be doing. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination but fortunately for me sometimes my hooky books actually get published. This was a hooky book, The Four Tendencies was a hooky book, Outer Order Inner Calm was a hooky book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite was a bunch of guys and they were like, look, we're not going to read a whole book. Let's be real. And so what they did is they took turns picking famous profiles for the New Yorker, which are like 4,000 words long, written by amazing authors about amazing people. You can get them off the internet. You can read them pretty easily.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I think anything that brings people together is great. And you pick the thing that works for you, that's a terrific way to do it. And then people find their own centerpiece.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I love that you picked that one. That's one of my favorites. That was in Life in Five Senses. Yes. You find that too.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Whatever it is that I'm dealing with my own life, I'm always like, okay, and I'll write a book about it and that's all figured out because I can't think if I'm not writing something down. And so that's definitely true for me. But the funny thing about this book is often when I'm writing a book, I have something called a hooky book, which is the book. It's like my busman's holiday. It's the book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, it's interesting because that's a good example of how with some of these, they're both literally true and metaphorically true. So it's also literally true where like often a fine perfume will have some very bad smelling notes. So it's literally true. But you're saying it's also metaphorically true in a creative sense or in a kind of a more transcendent sense. There's a little bit of ugly.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Along the same lines, one of my favorites is if you don't like a pair of pants... don't pay to get them hemmed. It's like literally true and metaphorically true. A friend of mine said, I disagree. And that's part of the fun and the secrets of adulthood. You may not agree. I'm like, I don't know. It's never worked out in my case, but yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes. Did I include the example in that? I can't remember if it made it to the book. So a lot of these came from like something will happen and I'll be like, oh, there's a lesson there. Or I'll be preoccupied with a story and it will just run over and over in my mind and I'll try to understand the meaning of it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And with that one, what happened was a friend of mine, she was looking for a new apartment. So six months go by, and I see her again, and I say, oh, how's it going with looking for a new apartment? And she said, oh, you know, I gave it up because I thought I wanted an outdoor space, but I realized I actually want a husband. We change what's easy to change.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, I mean, you have podcasts, children's books, adult books, speaking. I mean, do you find this as well?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, it really is true. I remember when we were, my sister Elizabeth, for those of you who, how many people have listened to the podcast? Yeah, yeah. Is it kind of funny to hear my voice coming out of my face? So when Elizabeth and I were getting started, we were telling her parents about it, and our mother said, well, but girls, don't you think you're gonna run out of ideas in like six months?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And we were like, no, Mom. We're not worried about that, because the more you create, the more you create.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, I think that... Part of it is realizing that you will feel regret either way. Because I think sometimes, at least in my case, I would often fantasize that if I made the perfect choice, then there would be no regret. That if I could just get the pros and cons column exactly right, then I could avoid regret.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But it's actually comforting to realize that you can have an apple or an orange, but to have an apple means that you cannot have an orange. And that there is regret in that. And I feel like it's... It relieves your feelings to understand that that is just a necessary part of making a fundamental choice, which is that to choose one thing means that you can't choose another. You can't escape it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But I think it's comforting to realize that that's just the source of why that negative emotion is appearing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Right. Well, that's interesting. Again, this is what's fun about these is that people will take them in directions that I did not anticipate. So I hadn't thought about thinking about it in that context. For me, it's more like sometimes something doesn't work out.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Or you don't get the result that you wanted, but it doesn't mean that your decision-making was bad because we don't control outcomes often. And just to realize you're not in perfect control of your fate. It's just saying, well, knowing what I knew then, I have grace for myself even though it didn't work out the way I wanted.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I think sometimes people are like, well, if it has a bad result, I screwed up. It's like, not necessarily. Things don't always go the way we want.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes, metaphorically and literally. Yeah, so this came to me because I was having a lot of lower back problems. And somebody said to me, oh, it's probably your hip flexor. And I was like, well, why? And they said, oh, well, you know, it doesn't always show up where you would think. And I was like, well, that's very interesting.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And I think that happens a lot to us in our lives where the pain flares up in one area, but actually if we're really honest with ourselves and when we really do a searching look, it actually may be coming from a very different place. And if what you only do is address where the pain point is, you may miss a very different problem. Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Dolly Parton.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I just admire Dolly Parton so much. She seems like a truly good person. And she's so in command of herself and her business. And she's such a great artist. Here's a Dolly Parton-related aphorism. You don't have to be good at something to be good at something. Dolly Parton can't raise music.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Wait, has anybody read Orbital? The novel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's people in space.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Other than like don't break the oxygen seal. I guess be kind.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Right? Is that too basic?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But you get a gold star if you ask the first question, because nobody likes to ask the first one. OK, gold star, right over here. I just got to make sure it's on. OK, hang on. Oh, it's on.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Ooh, what a great question. Do I have a children's book inside of me? What I sometimes fantasize about is taking a classic that I love, like something like The Secret Garden, and then like kind of retelling it in a modern way. I'll sometimes like do that in my head, like when I'm at the dentist's office or something. So maybe one day I would love to do that. I would love to do that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
You have a picture book, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
To be so short is hard.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, shorter is always better.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Ooh, an interesting question. So a couple of people have said I should write a Secrets of Adulthood for the four tendencies specifically, which is interesting. But I don't think... I don't know that I can, you know, the book only came out on April 1st, so I haven't really been able to tell, but that would be really interesting. Do you have a hypothesis?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Because they want the rules and the secrets.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes, good point.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes, yes, yeah, yes. No, that's a very good point. And there's room at the back for people to write their own. So if you're going through and you're like, I completely disagree with her. My secret adult is much better. You can write it in the back or like a lot of times people realize that they do have secrets of adulthood that they never really kind of thought of that way.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But then reading them, they're like, Oh, wait here, I'm gonna write my own. Or it's also like, this is what my grandfather always told me or whatever. So I think that's true. The questioners are like, why would I listen to her? And I disagree anyway.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
My husband is a questioner. So yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Wow.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I think I started out being very much pushed forward. And that's how I went to law school. I was just pushed forward by events, which I would call drift. pushed forward by events and just led forward by the next step. I would just take the next step and then take the next step. And I ended up clerking on the Supreme Court, so it worked out great.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But then I think when I became a writer, then I was much more pushing my own. And then I was much more like, I'm in charge. I'm deciding to do things. So that's very interesting. I think I started out one way and flipped to the other. That's a very, very profound question.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, that's exactly why I did it, yes. It's so great because it's given me, it's forced me to deal with it with clarity because I think a lot of what, this is, okay, so spoiler alert, this is all in the book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I think a lot of what is puzzling to people or makes the transition more difficult is that people just sort of have like a general feeling of an easiness or a transition and they kind of don't, it's kind of hard to put your finger on it. And by really forcing myself to examine what I was going through, I realized there's actually 12 changes that people go through.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And that what anyone's individual experiences is like, do you experience this in the positive or in the negative? Is it intense or mild? And how does it fit into sort of your kind of general overall personality, circumstance, history?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And for me, really getting clear on like, okay, this is good, but this is bad, and I'm feeling this, really I think is helping me understand how to specifically address the things that are unsettling or saddening to me, and then being grateful and taking advantage of the things that are good. So one of the things that I felt and that my husband also felt was that
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
One of the things that we missed is just the sense of life in the house. There's just less sound. There's less energy. There's just less of a feeling of movement.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
We picked a name. You think that's unwise?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, we've seen pictures. Look, my daughters picked the name. This is where I let them have their way. But yeah, we will maintain the flexibility. Nothing's written in STEM. But that's part of the reason that we did it. What we're feeling is that it would be fun to have more life and more energy. definitely feeling a lot of dread and trepidation about, but it's gonna be great.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I'm gonna trust to the research, trust to life experience, we're gonna love it. Elizabeth has two dogs, she loves it. But for somebody, but then I remember talking to a guy who's like, oh my gosh, every time I look at my son, I'm so full of resentment and anger and jealousy.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
He's just having so much fun and he's taking all these courses and he's so free and he has no responsibilities, he can just do what he likes. And his wife is like, let's get a puppy. And I'm like, I don't think that's what you need. I think you need more freedom, more adventure, more spontaneity. That's what you're yearning for, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And so if you know what the problem is, you can see a solution better. And maybe two people want to, if you're married or you have a partner, maybe you're experiencing different things. And so you have to navigate that. But just sort of thinking like I'm sad doesn't really help you figure out your way forward.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And so that has been really helpful for me because I feel like, because I'm writing it and talking to so many people and seeing all these patterns unfold, it's really helped me feel like Okay. Well, like another thing. So if you follow the podcast, you know that one of the things I'm doing for 25 to 25 is I'm doing watercolor every single day. I said, I'm an all or nothing person.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I'm like, I'm either going to do it never, or I'm going to do it every single day. So I'm doing it every single day. And this is because one of the things that I feel, is a lack of the atmosphere of growth.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
The children give us this feeling of growth because they're growing and we're contributing and we're teaching and we're helping and we're participating and they give us that feeling of growth. And I'm like, I don't want to stall out. I don't want to feel like there's no growth in my life. How can I get a feeling of growth?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And I'm like, well, I'm going to learn to do something new and like throw myself into a whole new arena. The funny thing is, I feel like I might actually be getting worse as time goes by. But I'm like, I'm just not even gonna think about that. That's not what this is about. I'm just gonna do this. I'm just gonna trust the process. It's only April 17th, I got a long way to go.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Because I knew that I needed the atmosphere of growth. But for somebody else, organization of time is a big, big problem. They might really have to think about, okay, how am I gonna think about my time? For me, I experienced no difference. No difference at all. So this is one where I'm like, that's not a problem for me. I'm moving to the next one in line.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Whereas for somebody else, that might be like the major focus of how they deal with the transition. So it's been extraordinarily helpful to me. And it's also absolutely fascinating. If anybody has any good resources, and I'm especially looking for novels that deal with the emptiness, I'm finding almost no novels. It staggers me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But often it's from novels that I feel like I get the biggest insight. So let me know somewhere on social media. I'm taking suggestions.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I... So I get up at 5... Well, it's all going to change with the puppy, but what I usually do is I get up at 5.30 and I write from like 5.30 to like 9. And during that time, I take my dog out for a walk, so that's like, you know, a little bit. And... because I'm a real morning person and I'm at my freshest early in the morning and that time is not interrupted.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I know that if I'm doing like original writing, which is my most difficult writing, I will do it first thing. So I get up, I get a cup of coffee and I sit down and write and I will always start with something that's hard. So in original writing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And then as the day goes on, if I have time, I will write again, but often what I end up doing is things like podcasts, or podcast planning, or interviews, or like I do a tremendous amount of note taking, which is when I'm looking at a source and I have to transfer the notes from the source
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
into writing, now that's a huge part of my process, so that's real work, that's not, it's not like that's procrastination, but it doesn't take the same amount of mental energy, so I might do that later in the day, but I can, because I always start with a huge amount of notes, and then, so I start with a huge amount of notes, then I start to understand a structure, then I organize the notes that I have into a structure,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
and then I start figuring out how to make a book out of it, I never face a blank page. And I think that's really helpful for me. I'm always working off of something. I'm always like, this is the part where I'm writing about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then I'm writing with something in mind. And I always write my introductions last. So that's my process, yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So for me, it's that early morning is the most precious.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
That's the structure is always the hardest part.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
They and I have the same agent, which is like being from the same hometown.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
It's very annoying that they do that. I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. But to the point, a book whose format I've always admired is a book called Why Don't Students Like School? And that's the question. Why don't students like school? And then the chapters are different questions within that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Thank you. We're mic'd. Yeah, yes. Hello.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And I thought that was such a brilliant way to structure it, because it immediately arouses your curiosity, and it's a great organizing principle. So I think that's really, really good advice. Follow the questions. My other one is skip the boring parts. You can do that. As a writer, it's so exciting.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Probably all this stuff about love, probably love. That's a hard one, yeah. When also, you know, in order to write it, I had to like think it, you know, and that's hard too. It's hard to have a thought. Yeah, but I think those were the ones, thinking back, those are the ones that I struggled with the most.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes, any travel expenses, yep.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, so by way of background, a lot of times people will say, oh, because my sister and I have this podcast together, like, oh, you two are so close. Like, was there anything that your parents did to help you to stay close? And so what my parents did is they would always pay any time when we were young adults for us to go see each other. So if Elizabeth was taking the train,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
from New York City to New Haven, they would pay for that, or if we were gonna go, so that we could afford to do it. Another thing that they did, I was just thinking about this today, is that they didn't, if we made plans together, as young adults or as adults, they didn't always insist that they could join us.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Because lately, I've noticed with Eliza and Eleanor, Eleanor was home from college, and Eliza lives in New York City, and they went out to lunch. And I wanted to say, well, I'd like to come to lunch with them. But I'm like, no, they have to have time together, just them. And they can't feel like they can't tell me or
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I will want to show up or Jamie and I will want to show up they have to have an independent relationship and I think that like you know it's like everything as you become a parent you realize wow I understand my parents choices much better and they realize they were very wise and that they really supported us having our own independent friendship just the two of us we didn't always have to be the four and of course now what we're realizing like much later is
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Elizabeth and I have been talking about how much we really like being just the original four of us. And we're making plans to try no children, no spouses, just to be Elizabeth and me and our parents. Because there is something special about going back to that. But I think that making it easy for us to be together really, really did help that. Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I wrote a book called My Color Pilgrimage because I went through this period of being absolutely preoccupied with color And I've shown it to a few people. I think it's really interesting, I have to say. And they're always like, well, you had fun with that, didn't you? So that may never see the light of day. So I have all kinds of oddball projects, some of which will come to have a life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, yeah, that was about the LU City Industries, which is a subject that continues to preoccupy me to this day. I love the LU City Industries. And it just didn't work. I don't have that novelistic skill. And Elizabeth is doing like 1,000 things. She seems to have seven full-time jobs, as far as I can tell. So we did try it, and then it just sort of drifted away.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And a part of what that was is we really did want to collaborate. And now, because of the podcast, we have that vehicle to collaborate. So I'm not sure that we will pick that up. But maybe someday, because we had fun with it. I couldn't play my role, because I just sort of don't have that novelist bent.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I did all the research into the El Euclidean mysteries, but because it's a mystery, there's a lot that they don't know. But I did find one of my very favorite phrases of all time, which is mystical pigs. Mystical pigs played a very important role in the El Euclidean mysteries. It feels like you need to write a novel just around that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Oh, well, who said this? I forget who said it, but somebody said... Okay. Okay. The true test of a vocation is a love of the drudgery involved. So I would say I think about 15% is something where I'm like, I really have to push myself to do it. Like scheduling podcast recordings is something I do not like to do.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And I cannot seem to delegate it because there's too many factors that by the time I explain the factors, it takes just as long to just do it. But most of it, most of it I kind of do like, or I want control of it so badly that I would never give it up. For instance, this cover was very, very hard. I do not like covers.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
You know, if you, I always thought, oh, that would be so fun, but I don't know how to express myself visually when it comes to words. I know exactly how to make words better. I know how to express what I want, but I don't know how to do that visually. And you're working with a team. You don't want to seem impossible to please, and yet it matters tremendously.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I mean, how many people here have bought a book simply because you like the cover? I do this constantly. And yet I would never say like, oh, somebody else, you're better off, you just pick the cover. Because no, even though I don't enjoy the process because it's so high stakes and I feel like I don't really know, I'm not very good at playing my part, I still feel like it's really important.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I would say 10 to 15%, which I think is pretty good.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
It's so fun to have a podcast. Yeah. Don't you think?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Why would he say that?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
That's like everything.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
There you go. That's good. It's a good filter. Right, you have to have the true desire to do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Ah, okay. So if you're a rebel, I would say you want to tap into your identity. Like, do you embrace the identity of a podcast? Well, you know who is an amazing, incredibly consistent podcaster who's the biggest rebel is Chris Guillebeau. Chris Guillebeau has a podcast called Side Hustle School. It is literally every single day. And why is that?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Because Chris Guillebeau is like, I'm not going to do it the way everybody else does it. You do your podcast once a week and you think you're so great. Watch me, I'm gonna do it every single day.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So he found his own way to do it, but because that was the challenge, he was able to do it perfectly consistently, because that's his identity, it's like I'm the person who's gonna blow you away with my ideas and my chops. And so it's that identity, and just remember, I want this platform, I want this money, I want this way to spread my ideas with people who they'll resonate with.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
But always to stay in that mode of like, this is what I want. This is what I choose. And so you might say like, well, I choose to do it once a week because I think that I'll have more listeners and I am the kind of person who wants to become a habit with listeners because you don't want to build up that spirit of resistance even in your own mind. Yeah, you're nodding your head.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Okay, you know how it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes, yes. Yeah, I think that rebel is the most misunderstood tendency of the four. Yeah, I think, yeah. Well, I'm glad it strikes a chord with you. Yeah, so just tap into the identity that you're striving for. What would you say?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
How many people experienced that? Wow. A lot of people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, on the publication day, my older daughter Eliza texted me and said, my secret of adulthood is to have you on my team. That was very sweet. But I asked them which ones they think of the most. I will say they do probably feel like innocent bystanders with some of this. So Eliza said the one that resonated the most with her is you're unique, just like everybody else.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And for Eleanor, it was something that can be done at any time is often done in no time. So those were the two that struck a chord the most with them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, it's funny because people have told me that they use it in a way that I didn't think, which is like they'd sort of pull it out at the dinner table or like at a restaurant and just read a few and then people discuss it. So they're kind of using it like table topics. So I'm like, that's so great. Excellent. My family would not go for that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I think that's super fun. So I think there's two ways. I think some people just love this stuff. Like I have books of aphorisms and I'll just sit down and read them from beginning to end. I love them. And so I think some people will do that. And then I think some people will probably, well, actually there's three ways.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Then I think some people will just sort of have it lying around and they might pick it up and read a few just sort of as an interstitial thing, just to have like something to spark a thought, just like some kind of, you know, like a thought starter.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
at random, and then it is very, it is divided pretty precisely into kind of problems or situations that we face where you might think like, wow, I could really use the secret of adulthood. So you might be facing something and think, oh, well, let me see if something here sparks an idea or response for me. So you might go looking for it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I did the table of contents, hoping that if somebody wanted to use it that way, they could. So I think people might approach it in a lot of different ways. And I think a lot of people too, one of the things I'm hearing from people now is that they do write their own at the back, and then they'll give it to a graduate or something.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So it's sort of like, here's Sickness Adulthood, and at the end are mine that I want you to remember, or that we always talk about, or like our inside jokes or whatever. And so then it becomes almost like a keepsake.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
It's amazing. Thank you. Beautiful story. Thank you for organizing. And John, thank you. Amazing book. I can't wait to read the next one. You were telling me I heard all about it. I can't wait to read it. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Oh, thank you. Thank you, everyone.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, I went to the eye doctor, actually.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got pink eye. And I was getting checked out. And as I walked out of his office, he said to me very casually, well, be sure to come back for your regular checkup because, as you know, you're more at risk for losing your vision. And I was like, what? I did not know that. What are you talking about?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And he said, oh, yeah, you're so severely nearsighted, you are at risk of having a detached retina. And that can affect your vision. And in fact, I have a friend who lost a significant amount of his vision because of a detached retina. So that felt like a very real thing to me. So I walk out, and I live in New York City, so I had walked to the eye doctor.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And I'm looking at New York City all around me and thinking, I didn't notice one thing about this on my way over. I'm just up in my head. I don't notice anything. And now that I'm thinking about the possibility of some threat to one of my senses, it's like it's all so precious to me. And on my walk home, it was like a psychedelic experience where I could I could see everything crystal clear.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I could hear every sound. I could smell everything. New York City is quite smelly. And of course I could have a rich, meaningful life if I lost one or more of my senses, but it just showed me how important they are and how easy it is to take them for granted. And so I did that walk home and I realized, I feel like I'm on this kind of psychedelic experience, It's just because I'm paying attention.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And that's why I decided, you know what? Research is research. If I want to fix this, I'll write a book about it. And I'll explore the five senses. And that was such a joy to write that book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I do. I go to the Met every day that I'm in New York City, except Wednesday when it's closed.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And the gala's coming up. I always forget and go anyway. But this year, I'm like, I'm not going to forget. The first Monday in May.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Well, a couple strands came together. First of all, my daughters, you know, I'm going into the empty nest phase, which I am rebranding as the open door because I don't like the term empty nest. And so I wanted to write down kind of the lessons that I had learned through time and experience, usually the hard way.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
to give my daughters, to try to spare them some of the suffering or frustration or procrastination that I had gone through. And then also I wanted to write it down for myself because I feel like I keep learning the same lessons over and over and over, like something that can be done at any time is often done at no time. I have to remind myself of that constantly.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
When I was working on this, I had a giant document of aphorisms. And some were secrets of adulthood in that they had some kind of useful thing to remind people when they're dealing with relationships or trying to get ourselves to do something or trying to know ourselves better. But then I have a lot that I would call just mere observations. This was me just noticing something.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And so I wanted to write these down in a collection. But I also have, for a very long time, as you noticed, been very attracted to this form of the aphorism. Now, the word aphorism does not appear on the cover of the book because nobody knows what an aphorism is. And an aphorism is a general observation about human nature that's made in a very succinct way.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And it's attributed to a particular person. So this is different from a proverb. So a proverb is something like, a stumble may prevent a fall. Or here's one of my favorites. Sailors fear fire more than water. This is folk wisdom that's floating around. We don't attribute it to a particular person. If it's an aphorism, it's like Mark Twain said it, Warren Buffet said it, Oscar Wilde said it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
And so these are my secrets of adulthood. So they're aphorisms because they're attributed to me. And then I really wanted to embrace this very ancient literary form where you're really trying to distill big ideas into a very, very short form. And it's hard to be concise. It forces you to be very clear in your thinking. And I often would think of that line, I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I didn't have time to write a short one. It takes a long time to write short.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
No, yes. I always, whatever it is that I'm dealing with my own life, I'm always like, okay, and I'll write a book about it and that's how I'll figure it out because I can't think if I'm not writing something down. And so that's definitely true for me. But the funny thing about this book is often when I'm writing a book, I have something called a hooky book, which is the book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
It's like my busman's holiday. It's the book that I go work on when I'm like sort of like taking a break from what I'm actually supposed to be doing. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination, but fortunately for me, sometimes my hooky books actually get published. This was a hooky book. The Four Tendencies was a hooky book. Outer Order, Inner Calm was a hooky book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
I wrote a book called My Color Pilgrimage because I went through this period of being absolutely preoccupied with color. I've shown it to a few people. I think it's really interesting, I have to say. And they're always like, well, you had fun with that, didn't you? So that book may never see the light of day. So I have all kinds of oddball projects, some of which will come to have a life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
When I was working on this, I had just a giant document of aphorisms. And some were secrets of adulthood in that they had some kind of useful... Yeah. thing to remind people when they're dealing with relationships or trying to get, when we're trying to get ourselves to do something or trying to know ourselves better. But then I had a lot that I would call just mere observations.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
This was me just noticing something like the tulip is an empty flower. What is up with that? The tulip is an empty flower. I find them very unsatisfying. That is a mere observation. And then I also have a bunch of bleak aphorisms. I'm like, nobody wants Gretchen Rubin's bleak aphorisms. I'll leave those to the side. So these are really the ones that are useful.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
The tulip is an empty flower. What is up with that? The tulip is an empty flower. I find them very unsatisfying. That is a mere observation. And then I also have a bunch of bleak aphorisms. I'm like, nobody wants Gretchen Rubin's bleak aphorisms. I'll leave those to the side. So these are really the ones that are useful.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yes, raise your hand.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Prospective authors included, yes.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, it was my fourth book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Yeah, no, that's very true. I would say it almost feels like a compulsion to be writing to me. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Oh, one of my own or somebody else's gave it to me?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
Okay. So, and I've told this story many times because it truly did transform my life. So I am a huge fan of Samuel Johnson, Dr. Johnson, and he is an amazing aphorist. I highly recommend him. And I was reading kind of, he was so celebrated that they would even just keep accounts of conversations that he had.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets of Adulthood and Happiness | EP 604
So I was reading, it's not even really a book, it's sort of an appendix, but there was an account of a conversation where Dr. Johnson walked into a party and someone asked if he would take a little wine. And he said, I can't take a little. Moderation is as difficult to me as... Abstinence is as difficult to me as temperance would... Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
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Yes, because I think a lot of times people make the mistake of thinking like, well, I'm a perfectionist, and so what you're asking me to do is to lower my standards. And so I refuse to lower my standards, maybe, or maybe I do lower my standards, but it doesn't seem to help. That's because perfectionism is about anxiety. And so you have to address the anxiety, not the standards.
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Because some people have extremely high standards, but they don't have the anxiety, and so then they don't feel, they don't have that feeling of, oh, I'm a perfectionist. They just think, I'm just doing my best.
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Okay, Mike, this took me so long to understand. This was something that I realized that I did all the time. I delayed making a decision by pretending that I needed more information or I needed to consult with somebody. It was really just a form of procrastination. I didn't need more time. I just needed to make up my mind.
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Or I just needed to just deal with the facts that I knew, which I had perfectly satisfactory amount of information. I just was hoping that somebody else would do the hard work of deciding. Or I just wanted to put it off. And yeah, you're right. Probably sometimes I kind of in my heart already knew what I wanted to pick.
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But sometimes you just you just you're just sort of hoping that somebody deciding is hard. Deciding is hard work. We get a lot of decision fatigue. And sometimes we're trying to I realize that a lot of my bad habits are me trying to foist off decision making on other people. Like I realized I had a bad habit of saying to my husband, like, well, what time do you think I should leave for the airport?
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I live in New York City. It's a hassle to figure out what time you leave for the airport because there's so many factors. What time of day is it? How is the traffic? Which airport are you going to? It's a multi-factor decision-making thing. I just wanted him to tell me. But why is that his problem? That is not his problem. He has no more information than I do.
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I'd be like, I'll just wait and see what he thinks. No, I don't need more time. I just need to make a decision and I don't need to consult with somebody else. Or like, you know, make them do that work. That's for me to do. I'm the one going to the airport. Just deal with it, you know.
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Well, that's true, too.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Yeah, no, see, that's another meaning of it that I hadn't even considered, but that's a great example of how an aphorism can reverberate in many ways. And this also reminds me of something that I've noticed, because I have the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and I've written all these books. Sometimes people will write it, and I try not to give advice, except to me, I give myself advice.
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People will write with situations and they'll say, well, what do you think I should do? And inevitably, I can just write back, It sounds like you already know what to do, because even in their framing of the question, they almost always tip their hand. You know, they know what to do. And so I think you're exactly right. You sort of you want someone to come in from the outside and sort of tell you.
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I trained in law and I was actually clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when I decided I wanted to be a writer. And people often say to me like, oh, how did you do that? Like, that must have been really hard and everything. But what made it much easier for me is I knew the book that I wanted to write. I had an idea for a book.
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And I was doing all this research sort of even before I thought, oh, this could make a book. Then it occurred to me, hey, this could make a book. And, hey, I could be the person to write that book. And so it was so much easier for me to leave because I knew exactly where I wanted to go. It wasn't even that I wanted to write.
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It was that I wanted to write this particular book, which, in fact, I was already well underway. And that made it so much easier for me that I realized, like – as I talked to other people and observed the world, that actually that was very unusual. And then I was extremely fortunate.
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That actually made my transition much easier than it usually is because often we know that we want to leave before we know where we want to go. And sometimes it's just helpful to realize like, yeah, you may not know where you want to go, but you know it's time to leave.
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I think that's very true for some people, yep. One that I think is funny is you're unique, just like everybody else.
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Oh, this is so helpful. So Dolly Parton can't read music. Michael Jackson couldn't read music. I think when I was growing up, I kind of had this idea that if I was going to do anything, I had to excel at all the parts of it. But now I know people who work in finance who are not good with numbers. I know people who are, you know, highly acclaimed artists who are not good at sketching.
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This idea that you have to be good at everything to be good at something. Like, you don't have to be good at something to be good at something. I feel like sometimes people limit their possibilities because there's some element that they think is necessary. Maybe you don't need it. Maybe you just work around that. Maybe there's just something that there's some part of it that you just don't do.
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Yes, that is it. Not deciding is a decision. Yeah. One of the great challenges of life is making decisions, because that's just one of the hardest things that we have to do. And sometimes we just delay and delay and delay. without confronting the fact that not deciding is a decision.
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Because at a certain time, events are foreclosed or something just isn't possible anymore or it's not realistic anymore. I remember when my husband and I first got married, We were moving cities a couple times, and my mother and father said to us, well, if there's someplace you want to go, get there. Because at a certain point, you're just going to stop moving. You get rooted in place.
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It becomes much more challenging to keep moving. Obviously, some people do, but it becomes harder. And I thought that was such good advice because... We might have just ended up someplace, not because we were deciding that we wanted to spend the next 30 years there, but just because we hadn't thought about it.
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Or, you know, you just you miss a window of opportunity for something and not deciding is the decision.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I mean, yes, that's just a very helpful thing to keep in mind. Because people will say, oh, well, I'm doing this for self-care. I'm doing this because it makes me feel better. I'm doing this because I need to calm down. I need to energize myself. But if it just makes you feel worse, the minute it's over, if you've been impulse shopping or impulse snacking or impulse...
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I'm so happy to be talking to you again.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
So something like a quest is more fun than a jaunt. I just noticed that. A quest is more fun than a jaunt. It's more fun to go to the flea markets of Paris than to just go to Paris. Or, you know, it's more fun to walk, and I find it's more fun to sort of walk through the Metropolitan Museum and look for something than to just be wandering around.
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Because it's true. I know. It's helpful because it's true. Well, one of the things that I'm really excited about having the book going out into the world is which of these are going to resonate most with people? Because I think you're exactly right. Some of them will strike a chord with people and you're like dog-earing the page and underlining it.
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And then for other people, it might not be that meaningful.
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I'll take it.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Well, and I found that the hard way because I do write about happiness so much. People would often say to me, but what's the best way to make yourself happier? And I gave a very unsatisfying answer clearly, which is, well, you know, there's no one right way. It all depends on your nature and your temperament and your challenges and your situation. And they'd say like, okay, sure.
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But what's the best way or what's the right way or just what's the most efficient way? And I could never find a way to answer that question to people's satisfaction until finally I started saying, well, what's the best way to cook an egg? And people would always look at me very puzzled and they would say, well, it depends on how you like to eat your eggs.
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Here's one I think that is very helpful. Before declaring that something is superficial, unhealthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, or immoral, we should consider, maybe this just doesn't suit my taste.
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And then some people would say, well, I don't even like eggs. You know, like, oh, I escaped this whole, you know, the whole premise of your question. And I'm like, that's right. There's no one best way to cook an egg. Because everybody has it. It feels different. Everybody has a different view. So there can be no one right way.
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Well, one that has many people who have seen the book have quoted back to me is we care for many people we don't particularly care for. People are sort of like, oh, yeah, I get that. We care for somebody, even though we don't particularly care for them. And there's sort of a paradox there. And the form of the aphorism often will embrace the paradox as a way to make a point.
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Another one that I think, and some of these are literally true and then also metaphorically true. So one that I like is the place that hurts isn't always the place that's injured. And I learned this from when I strained my back because they said, oh, well, you know, your back hurts and you think it's your back that you've injured, but actually it's your hip flexor or something like that.
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So the place that hurts isn't always the place that's injured. But I think that's also true in life where often we say, oh, well, um, You know, I need to switch careers, but in fact, it's my marriage that's in trouble or something like that. You know, sometimes what we identify as the pain point isn't actually the place that needs to be fixed.
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Yes, that is so true. And it's very helpful when you're just dreading something that's on your to-do list. Just think, in five years, I will not remember this. But it's also true about remembering how to appreciate the present as well, that it feels like it's now and it will be this way forever.
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But I remember when my children were young and it just annoyed me to have a stroller right by our front door. It just... There was no other place to put it. It just looked terrible. It just bugged me so much to have that stroller. I thought we'd have a stroller by our front door forever. Then looking back, I thought, that now is a long time ago.
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Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's very, yeah. Yeah. Pick another one. This is a good thing to remind ourselves of, yeah.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Well, another one that's metaphorically true and literally true is, if you don't like a pair of pants, don't pay to get them hemmed. I think that's funny. Here's one I think that is very, very helpful. Before declaring that something is superficial, unhealthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, or immoral, we should consider, maybe this just doesn't suit my taste.
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Because a lot of times, in my estimation, the things that people say are superficial, unhealthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, and immoral are often things that you're like, nah, that's just not my taste. I used to tell people, oh, you should just get up early and do everything first thing in the morning. That's the most efficient way. And it's like, yeah, but that just suits my taste.
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I'm a morning person. Like for me to say to somebody, oh, there's no way for you to be productive at 1130 at night. Who am I to say that? Many people are highly productive at 1130 at night. It just doesn't suit my taste.
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Right. That's not me. Yes. And it's very often that you can just say, I don't have to tell you how to do your business. Another one that I really like, this is very helpful. And when I was writing these, I wrote many aphorisms or secrets of adulthood, which I realized were just sort of mere observations. They were just my observations about the world.
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They were things like, the tulip is an empty flower. I really believe that the tulip is an empty flower. To me, that's an interesting idea and interesting way to put it. But it's just an observation. It's not a secret of adulthood. It doesn't have any kind of, it doesn't, there's nothing helpful about it in terms of moving through life. Um, but one thing, and so I cut all those out.
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These are the secrets of adulthood are only things that I think are useful in navigating adulthood. Um, whether it's like young adults and people are entering adulthood or people are well into adulthood like me. Um, and one, I, one that I, I live by all the time, which is when in doubt about how to spend our time, energy or money, spend it on relationships.
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Because ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that the most important element of a happy life is relationships. And so if we're debating, should I spend money on going to my college reunion? Should I spend time joining a poker club? Should I make an effort to go to that happy hour to see some friends from work?
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The answer is probably yes, because anything that we spend on relationships benefits our happiness.
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Mm-hmm. Yes, that's so true. It's something that we have to remember. Sometimes people, they don't bring out our best side.
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Maybe. Maybe not. Right. Absolutely.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I think a lot of people have sort of an almost superstitious belief that if they review and review and rehearse disaster, that somehow they'll prevent it. But that doesn't happen. I mean, it's good to mindfully prepare for disaster, but just going over it and over it in your mind is not going to do anything to offset it.
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One that many people say are kind of puzzled by, and that's part of what I like about some of these is that you have to stop and reflect and ask yourself what they mean. It might be that some of the people will disagree, and that's good, too. That's one of the strengths of the aphorism is it forces us to clarify our own thinking because we have to decide whether we agree or not.
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But one of them is don't expect to be motivated by motivation. And this is something I believe very profoundly. In my observation, people are not motivated by motivation. Being highly motivated does not at all correlate with whether somebody does something. So don't expect to be motivated by motivation.
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I think a lot of times people get discouraged because they try and fail to form a habit over and over. But in fact, they haven't set it up in a way that's right for them. And so that's why they're not succeeding. What you see is that the people who are happier, healthier, and most productive are the people who have figured out themselves and they've set up their lives to suit them.
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So somebody would say, like, oh, I'm exhausted all the time. But really to me that sounded like, you're not going to bed early enough. Like, why aren't you able to form the habit of turning the light out at 11 instead of at 2 a.m.? What's going on with your habits?
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And often people would talk about a habit that they knew that if they made it or broke it would make them happier, but somehow they just weren't able to translate that into action. And then I had a lunch with a friend who made this casual comment that got me obsessed with habits. And she said the thing is I would be happier if I exercised. And when I was in high school, I was in the track team.
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And I never missed track practice. But I can't go running now. Why? This just floored me. I was like, what is it? It's the same behavior. It's the same person. What's different? What meant that at one point to have it was effortless and now she can't do it. Try as she might. And so then I was like, okay, that's it. My next book, Habits.
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I think that so many people say start small, or do it for 30 days, or have a cheat day, or do it first thing in the morning. And all those strategies work well for some people, sometimes, but they don't work for everybody all the time where we would all have perfect habits. And I think really what I found when I really delved into this is that There is no magic one.
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And what we really need to do is to think about ourselves, understand ourselves, the significant elements of our behavior, and then shape our habits to suit us. Sometimes people are like, well, this is what Steve Jobs did, so this is what I'm going to do. Well, that doesn't tell you anything about yourself.
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I mean, maybe it'll give you some interesting ideas, but it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. And I think a lot of times people get discouraged because they try and fail to form a habit over and over. But in fact, they haven't set it up in a way that's right for them. And so that's why they're not succeeding.
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But if they took a different approach, they might very well have a different outcome. And so in Better Than Before, what I'm trying to do is talk about, well, how do we understand ourselves as it comes to kind of our habit nature? What should we understand about ourselves? And then how might we put that into practice to shape our habits and suit ourselves?
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Some people drink a lot of coffee and some people drink a lot of booze and some people stay up late and some people get up early and some people... Work steadily and some people work all at the end and some people work a lot every day and some people work just a little bit every day.
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I mean, what you see is that the people who are happier, healthier and most productive are the people who have figured out themselves and they've set up their lives to suit them. If they are morning people, they do their most important work in the morning. But if they're night people, that's not how they go about it.
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You know, it's all about fitting your circumstances to what's going to allow you to succeed, figuring out what is the combination to that combination lock. But a lot of it is just how you're hardwired. So everybody might say to you like, oh, you should get up early and work on your PhD thesis. But if you're a night person, getting up early is not going to work for you.
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It might make sense on paper, but it's not going to work for you. Yeah.
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Well, rewards are very, very dangerous when it comes to habits. Whoa. They're very dangerous. And so you have to distinguish between a reward and a treat. Treats are good. Rewards are very dangerous. So a treat is something that you get just because you want it. You don't earn it. You don't deserve it. You just want it. So you get it.
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And we should really load ourselves with healthy treats because when we give ourselves treats, we feel comforted and taken care of. And our battery gets energized. And so that gives us more self-command. And we want our self-command to be as high as possible. We want self-control. We want willpower to be – we want those reserves to be very high.
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And when you do those little things for yourself, whether it's doing a cluster puzzle on your iPad or buying yourself new music on iTunes or, you know, whatever it might be, people have all different treats, then that's good. Now, there are unhealthy treats, which are like food and drink. You don't want to do something to make yourself feel better that's going to end up making you feel worse.
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So treats are good because they boost our self-mastery and they keep us from getting into that dangerous land of feeling deprived. I need it. I've earned it. I should get this. That's when we start giving ourselves unhealthy treats. I need this. Rewards are bad because the reason that habits are superpowers is
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is that they get in and out of the dangerous, draining, difficult job of using decision-making and using willpower. If it's a habit, it just happens automatically. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to judge it. You just do it automatically. I do not decide to wake up at 6 a.m. I do not decide whether to take dessert. I just know. And that happens automatically.
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It doesn't take anything from me. And so that frees up my mind and it frees me from having to use my self-control because It doesn't take any health control. I know exactly what I'm going to do and I do it. A reward, though, always requires a decision. Have you earned your reward? And that interferes with a habit because I'm saying, well, if I run, I get to have a beer. Well, I ran half today.
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Do I get a beer? But I hurt my foot, so I really couldn't run, but I still want the beer. Do I get the beer? I'm on vacation. Who could run? I should get the beer. And then sometimes what happens is you make a habit of reward, and the habit itself falls away. You have a beer every night because you got used to that, but you're not even running. But they're also bad because...
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When you give yourself a reward, you're telling yourself that you're only doing something in order to get the reward. So you're undermining intrinsic motivation because you're giving yourself an extrinsic motivation. So you're saying, well, this is why I'm doing it. And with a habit, you want it to just happen automatically. You don't want to be judging it.
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REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And you don't want to give it a negative association. You want to do it because you want to do it. And if you're rewarding it, then you're just teaching yourself that it's something that you wouldn't otherwise do. When also often we give ourselves perverse rewards. We give ourselves rewards that exactly contradict whatever we want.
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Like my friend said, the minute I lose 10 pounds, I'm going to have a big piece of chocolate cake. The one kind of reward that is good is a reward that takes you deeper into the habit. So let's say you're doing a lot of yoga. You would buy yourself a new yoga mat because the person who does a lot of yoga needs a new yoga mat.
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Or let's say you're doing a lot of work on a side project and so you buy a new fancy laptop because the person who's doing all this extra work needs technologic support. That makes sense. I talked to one company that had a really smart reward, which was that if you exercise 75 times in a year, you got the next year free. So the reward for exercise... was more exercise.
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REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
So that's a reward that's taking you deeper into the habit. It's not irrelevant to the habit or actually undermining the habit. It's just making it easier for you to do the habit and more pleasant. And that's good because the easier and more pleasant, more convenient it is to do a habit, the more likely you are to stick to it. That's my strategy of convenience.
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But you don't want a reward that's not related to it or that actually pushes you in the opposite direction. So rewards are dangerous. They're tempting. It's a tempting solution, but I think it's often counterproductive when it comes to habits.
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REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I think we often think of habits as forming very gradually. And I was surprised when I really started looking at the pattern in my habits and how often habits change very quickly. People say to me all the time, like, I want to go through my day making healthy choices. And I'm like, no, you don't.
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You don't want to spend your day making healthy choices because you'll probably choose wrong a lot of the time. You want to choose once, then no more choosing. Are you going to bring lunch today? Yes, you are. Are you going to eat fast food today? No, you're not. Are you choosing? No, you're not. That already happened. That happened months ago. You don't revisit that choice. There's no emotions.
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There's no debate. There's none of that inner struggle. It's just so tiresome and boring. Today, tomorrow doesn't count. You know, it's done.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Well, the easiest kind of habit is when it happens in exactly the same way every day. So like if you get up and the first thing you do is you brush your teeth, like that's what I would call a fixed habit. Like it happens exactly the same way. And so that's easier. You use the same strategies. So I have, I identify 21 strategies that people use to shape their habits.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
You use the same strategies to make a habit or break a habit. It's the same strategies. And so with a simpler habit, it might take less to cement it in. But if there's a more complex habit, then there has to be more thought put into, like, how do you get this into your life and keep it in there? How do you safeguard it, too?
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I feel like the idea of a habit is it's completely automatic, and that's really what we strive for. But I think for a lot of habits, they're never 100% automatic. Like, you know, if every day is a little bit different and you have to kind of think about your exercise every day, you might be in the habit of exercising, but it takes a little bit of work every time. Like, when am I going to go?
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
What am I, you know? Right. And so you need to, and one of the strategies is the strategy of safeguards, which is what are the things that you do to protect a habit once you've got it going? If you do this, then do that, which I would call the strategy of if-then planning, which is if this happens, then I do this. You go ahead and figure that out in advance.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
So with the simple habit, it might take less, and then a more complex habit might take a little more thought to figure out how to get that into place. You know, I started a podcast myself. It's called Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and I talk about all this stuff. It's so much fun. And one of the first things that we talked about was the habit of making your bed.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Because whenever I talk to people about what habits do you feel like make you happier and more productive and feel healthier, and so often people mention it's the habit of making your bed. And as you say, it's a very simple habit. You can do it first thing in the morning, and then the rest of the day, you're like, oh, look, if I did nothing else, I made my bed.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Well, I'm very happy to be talking to you today.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And it's funny how much that resonates with people.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Thank you so much. It was great. I feel like we could talk for hours.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
On my website, which is just GretchenRubin.com, there's a bunch of blog posts about habits and also a lot of downloads, a habit change checklist, some one-pagers about working better than before, eating better than before, exercising better than before, like to get you started because those are some of the habits people most want to form.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
A starter kit for people who want to start habits groups for people who are going to help each other change their habits. And I have this podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin where we talk about a lot of these kinds of issues about science from ancient wisdom and also around experiences.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
You know, as you said, I wrote two books about happiness, and I had been spending a lot of time thinking and researching and talking to people about happiness, and I began to notice a pattern that often when people talk about, well, a happiness boost that they've had, but really even more often a happiness challenge that they face, they often were pointing to something that at its core involved a problem with a habit.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
You have an opinion on using rewards and incentives and treats. What's your philosophy on how rewards fit into having good habits? Well, rewards are very, very dangerous when it comes to habits. Whoa. They're very dangerous. And so you have to distinguish between a reward and a treat. Treats are good. Rewards are very dangerous. So a treat is something that you get just because you want it.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
And that interferes with a habit because I'm saying, well, if I run, I get to have a beer. Well, I ran half today. Do I get a beer? But I hurt my foot, so I really couldn't run, but I still want the beer. Do I get the beer? I'm on vacation. Who could run? I should get the beer. And then sometimes what happens is you make a habit of reward, and the habit itself falls away.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
If you have a beer every night, because you got used to that, but you're not even running. But they're also bad because when you give yourself a reward, you're telling yourself that you're only doing something in order to get the reward. So you're undermining intrinsic motivation because you're giving yourself an extrinsic motivation. So you're saying, well, this is why I'm doing it.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
And with a habit, you want it to just happen automatically. You don't want to be judging it. And you don't want to give it a negative association. Like you want to do it because you want to do it. And if you're rewarding it, then you're just teaching yourself that it's something that you wouldn't otherwise do. When also often we give ourselves perverse rewards.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
We give ourselves rewards that exactly contradict whatever we want. Like my friend said, the minute I lose 10 pounds, I'm going to have a big piece of chocolate cake. The one kind of reward that is good is a reward that takes you deeper into the habit. So let's say you're doing a lot of yoga. You would buy yourself a new yoga mat because the person who does a lot of yoga needs a new yoga mat.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
Or let's say you're doing a lot of work on a side project and so you buy a new fancy laptop because the person who's doing all this extra work needs technologic support. That makes sense. I talked to one company that had a really smart reward, which was that if you exercise 75 times in a year, you got the next year free. So the reward for exercise was more exercise.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
So that's a reward that's taking you deeper into the habit. It's not irrelevant to the habit or actually undermining the habit. It's just making it easier for you to do the habit and more pleasant. And that's good because the easier and more pleasant, more convenient it is to do a habit, the more likely we are to stick to it. That's my strategy of convenience.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
But you don't want a reward that's not related to it or that actually pushes you in the opposite direction. So rewards are dangerous. They're tempting. It's a tempting solution, but I think it's often counterproductive when it comes to habits.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
You don't earn it. You don't deserve it. You just want it. So you get it. And we should really load ourselves with healthy treats because when we give ourselves treats, we feel comforted and taken care of. And our battery gets energized. And so that gives us more self-command. And we want our self-command to be as high as possible. We want self-control.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
We want willpower to be – we want those reserves to be very high. And when you do those little things for yourself, whether it's doing a cluster puzzle on your iPad or buying yourself new music on iTunes or, you know, whatever it might be, people have all different treats, then that's good. Now, there are unhealthy treats, which are like food and drink.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
You don't want to do something to make yourself feel better that's going to end up making you feel worse. So treats are good because they boost our self-mastery and they keep us from getting into that dangerous land of feeling deprived. I need it. I've earned it. I should get this. That's when we start giving ourselves unhealthy treats. I need this.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
Rewards are bad because the reason that habits are superpowers is is that they get inside of the dangerous, draining, difficult job of using decision-making and using willpower. If it's a habit, it just happens automatically. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to judge it. You just do it automatically. I do not decide to wake up at 6 a.m. I do not decide whether to take dessert.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
I just know. And that happens automatically. It doesn't take anything from me. And so that frees up my mind and it frees me from having to use my self-control because It doesn't take any health control. I know exactly what I'm going to do and I do it. A reward, though, always requires a decision. Have you earned your reward?