Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
You know that feeling you get when you eat comfort food? There is something magical about it. This episode begins by exploring why some foods become comfort food while other food does not and what causes us to feel so fondly about certain foods but not others. https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2015/03/052.html What are the secrets to being a successful adult? That’s a hard question to answer but Gretchen Rubin joins me to take a swing at it. Gretchen is wildly successful expert on happiness having written books on the topic and she is also host of the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin. (https://gretchenrubin.com/podcasts/). Her latest book is called Secrets of Adulthood: Simple Truths for Our Complex Lives (https://amzn.to/3RutUfP). What’s fun is that Gretchen writes about adulthood in aphorisms – short saying that say a lot. Here’s one to give you a sample: "Don’t do something to make yourself feel better if it is only going to make you feel worse.” Listen as Gretchen frames adulthood in these easy to digest nuggets and offers some valuable insight. Do you have good mental health? What does that even mean – to have good mental health? That is what Dr. Drew Ramsey is here to discuss He is a board-certified psychiatrist, and pioneer in nutritional psychiatry and mental fitness and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. Dr. Ramsey says there is strong evidence that our lifestyle can have a big impact on mental health and that we can do things to build our mental fitness in much the same way as we can improve our physical fitness. Dr. Ramsey is author of the book Healing the Modern Brain: Nine Tenets to Build Mental Fitness and Revitalize Your Mind (https://amzn.to/4j8hqXf). You need to drink more water! It is common advice, and it turns out to be pretty solid. Listen as I reveal some of the benefits you get when you hydrate yourself that you may not realize. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/beauty/health/a2714/body-without-enough-water/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is comfort food and why do we crave it?
Comfort food is most often food that we grew up eating as children. And comfort food can be different for everyone. In a study at the University of Buffalo, some participants said their comfort food was healthy food. For others, it was starchy, fatty food. Upon closer examination, the researchers discovered something pretty interesting.
Comfort foods are often the foods that our parents or caregivers gave us when we were children. As long as we have a positive association with the person who made the food, then there's a good chance that you will be drawn to that food during times of rejection or isolation later in life. And that is something you should know. Do you know what an aphorism is?
An aphorism is a concise statement that contains an expansive truth. Here's one. Here's another one. It's more fun to change the wallpaper than to fix the roof, but it's less important. Okay, so now you know what an aphorism is. Let me tell you about my guest, Gretchen Rubin.
Gretchen's been here before, and I love having Gretchen here because, well, first of all, she's fun and happy, and she's made a whole career out of writing and talking about happiness. She's also very wise and insightful, and she has a new book out called Secrets of Adulthood.
And she is here to talk about some of these, and I know they will ring true for you and perhaps even give you some clarity on what it means to be an adult. Gretchen is also host of the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Hey, Gretchen.
I'm so happy to be talking to you again.
And so rather than go into a big long explanation about aphorisms, because that would kind of be contradictory, grab one, pick one, and talk about it as it relates to why you're talking in aphorisms.
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.
So as I go through and look at many of these, you know, some of them ring a louder bell than others. And I imagine everybody has that experience when you look at these going, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's like what we do every day matters than what we do once in a while. That that struck me. I mean, I like that one because it's well, because it's true.
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Chapter 2: How can aphorisms provide insights into adulthood?
And then for other people, it might not be that meaningful.
So can we pick a few and talk about them? Sure. So since you're kind of the queen of happiness, why not? I don't mean to crown you or give you a title.
I'll take it.
That there's no right way to create a happier life just as there's no best way to cook an egg. And I like that. That's so true.
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.
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.
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.
So you pick one or two that really either people say they like them or you really like them or you were kind of struck when you came across them or just grab a few.
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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Chapter 3: What are some secrets to being a successful adult?
One day now will be a long time ago. I like that because we get so worked up and wrapped up in what's going on right now. And ultimately, you won't even remember this.
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.
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.
Everybody can think back on Times in their life when they were so involved in something, and like you say, you think it's going to be like this forever, and the storm never lasts.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's very, yeah. Yeah. Pick another one. This is a good thing to remind ourselves of, yeah.
Pick another one.
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.
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.
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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Chapter 4: How do relationships contribute to happiness?
Well, that's true, too.
I knew a long time ago what I was going to do, but just in case, maybe there's something else I need to consider. But at the end of the day, I did what I was going to do in the first five minutes I knew I had to make a decision.
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.
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.
I mentioned one in the intro to this segment that I liked and like you to comment on, and that is we often know we want to leave before we know where we want to go.
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.
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.
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.
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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Chapter 5: What is the role of decision-making in reducing anxiety?
Chapter 6: What is nutritional psychiatry and mental fitness?
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.
And you probably already had made up your mind. You just needed to say it out loud and do it.
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.
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?
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.
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.
When I saw that one, what I reflected on is more that when I look back at some of those kind of decisions that I put off and needed more time, I ended up doing what I knew in the beginning I was going to do.
Well, that's true, too.
I knew a long time ago what I was going to do, but just in case, maybe there's something else I need to consider. But at the end of the day, I did what I was going to do in the first five minutes I knew I had to make a decision.
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