20 Secrets of Adulthood
Episode Stats
Summary
Gretchen Rubin is the author of numerous bestselling books, including The Happiness Project and her latest, Secrets of Adulting. In this episode, Gretchen shares how she came to write hundreds of aphorisms on how to navigate life, and we dig into some of my favorites of these concise, sage sayings.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Figuring out the pitfalls and best practices of adulthood can be tricky. It's helpful to
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have some pearls of wisdom to guide you along the way. My guest today has spent decades collecting
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these kinds of helpful truths and has crafted her own guiding mantras of maturity. Gretchen
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Rubin is the author of numerous bestselling books, including The Happiness Project and her latest,
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Secrets of Adulthood. Today on the show, Gretchen shares how she came to write hundreds of aphorisms
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on how to navigate life, and we dig into some of my favorites of these concise, sage sayings.
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Amongst many topics, we discuss why happiness doesn't always make us feel happy,
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the best strategy for changing ourselves, a very useful heuristic for making decisions,
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why you should wear a favorite sweater more often, and even why big top tables at restaurants are
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one of my pet peeves. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash secrets of adulthood.
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No, likewise. So we were talking before we got on. We go way back.
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Way back. So both you and I started off as bloggers. We still blog. They still call it blogging.
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That's what I say. Because blog, I feel kind of silly when I say I'm a blogger.
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So yeah, you have the Happiness Project. That was what you started off with. Got the art of
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manliness. We were part of this community of other self-development writers back in 2008. So yeah,
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you've been writing about personal development. I mean, it's been almost 20 years now or over 20
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years. As you look back on your career, what would you say is the connecting thread through everything
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Well, if I had to say what my subject is, I would say my subject is human nature.
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And in fact, before I started writing about sort of happiness and good habits, I wrote a book called
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Power, Money, Fame, Sex, A User's Guide, which is my first book. Then I wrote kind of a short
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unconventional biography of Winston Churchill and one of John F. Kennedy. And to me, I think to a lot
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of people, those books seem very different from the books that I've written sort of in the last
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while. But to me, they're all about human nature. So you learn about human nature by studying Winston
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Churchill because he's just this gigantic figure. So I think that is my subject. Like, who are we?
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How do we understand ourselves better? How do we change if we want to change? How do we understand
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And then, yeah, you started the Happiness Project, started off as a blog, turned into books,
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it's kind of become this media empire. And there you're just trying to explore, it seems like,
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what does it mean to live a flourishing human life?
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Exactly. Like, can you make yourself happier? And if so, how? That's my question. Yes.
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When you say happiness, how do you define happiness?
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Well, I started out my career in law, as did you, Brett. And maybe you also have happy memories
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of spending an entire semester arguing about the definition of contract. And happiness is an even
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more elusive concept to define. There are something like 15 or 17 academic definitions of happiness.
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And I think that for the layperson, it can be whatever you want. Joy, peace, bliss, satisfaction,
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well-being, whatever you conceive of as being happiness for you. Because I think that it's
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more useful to think about being happier. Whatever that means for you, what can you do with your
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conscious thoughts and actions starting tomorrow without a lot of time, energy, or money to move
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yourself in the right direction? So next week, next month, next year, can we make our lives
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happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? And I think that's much clearer to
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understand, like, is this going to make me happier? It's much easier to answer for the average person
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Because when I think about that, I'm like, what does that even mean? It feels so abstract that it's
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hard to grasp even what that would look like. Well, something you've done recently, you come
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out with a new book called Secrets of Adulthood, where you've put together a collection of aphorisms
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that you've developed to help people make sense of this topsy-turvy, complex world we live in.
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Yeah. And at the beginning of the book, Secrets of Adulthood, you talk about your lifelong love
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of aphorisms. You've been collecting them since you were eight years old. What draws you to the
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aphoristic style? Well, first, let me say what an aphorism is, because I think a lot of people
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don't know. That's why I didn't use the word aphorism in the title or subtitle of the book.
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So, an aphorism is a short, it's usually a sentence or two, insight observation about human nature
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that's meant to be sort of a general observation, and it's attributed to a particular person. Maybe
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it's Mark Twain, maybe it's Oscar Wilde, maybe it's Warren Buffett, maybe it's Montaigne,
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and then that way it's different from a proverb. So, a proverb is folk wisdom. These are ideas,
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you know, reminders, things that have been kicking around for centuries, like you can't push a rope,
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or sailors fear fire more than water, or you're only as happy as your least happy child. These
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are pieces of folk wisdom, but an aphorism, we know who said it. And I'm very drawn to aphorisms because,
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well, first of all, they're short, and I love, I think there's so much power in keeping things brief,
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really having to crystallize ideas, to distill them down into like, just a sentence or two.
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That's very creatively challenging, and it's also intellectually challenging, because to write that
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way, you really have to be able to think that way, and that's hard. And then I think that they're just,
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they have more power in the mind, because we can grasp them. So, for the last while, I have been
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really pushing myself when I have a big idea to see if I can express it in an aphorism.
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Are there any famous historical aphorists that you like?
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Well, I do love Oscar Wilde. If you read something like The Portrait of Dorian Gray,
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it's like reading Hamlet. You recognize so many lines, because so many of them are so famous.
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One of my hopes with writing this book is to bring back into the spotlight one of my favorite
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aphorists, who is a 19th century Austrian aphorists named Marie von Idna Eschenbach,
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who's amazing. Like, one of my favorites of hers is, you can fall so fast, you think you're flying.
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Which I'm like, whoa, that's powerful. And then there are people who, like I mentioned,
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Warren Buffett. He can invest, and he can also really write. There are many really funny,
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thoughtful aphorisms in his letters to shareholders. So, I'm looking for them all the time.
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And so, those are some of my favorites. Oh, Andy Warhol. I don't even really like his art,
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but he said these extremely unpredictable, thoughtful aphorisms, you know, that just keep
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Well, he's come up with, like, you know, everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame.
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Yes, exactly. He's extremely famous for that. And then he has, like, my favorite kind of atmosphere
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today is the airport atmosphere. And I'm like, I know exactly what you mean by that. Or I can't
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remember how he said it exactly, but he said something like, the most old-fashioned thing
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that people do is get pregnant. And I completely understand that. It does feel so old-fashioned
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to, like, actually get pregnant. I'm also like, volcanoes. Haven't we all kind of outgrown
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volcanoes? That seems like kind of an ancient Rome thing. Are they still happening? Every time there's
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a volcano, I'm like, huh, I thought these things are sort of out of date. I don't know,
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you know. But again, it's like, what do I even mean by that? That's a ridiculous thing to say.
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But Andy Warhol helps me have these odd thoughts. So, that's one of the reasons that I love his
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Yeah, a few aphorisms that I enjoy. Nietzsche, he had some killer aphorisms. I think his
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writing style, his best writing style is his aphorisms. I also like Francois de la
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Roche Foucault, the French author. Yeah, he's great. He's amazing.
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He's kind of, like, cynical, which is interesting. The aphorism is a very judgmental form. When you're
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writing them, you find that you, I see why he is so cynical. It's a form that invites you to write
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that way. So, okay, so what are some of your favorites? Well, here's one I brought up. We did
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an article highlighting some of his maxims. Here's one. Fortunate people rarely correct their
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faults. They always think they are right, while fortune is favoring their evil conduct.
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Another one. This one's really cynical. No one deserves to be praised for kindness if he does
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not have the strength to be bad. Every other form of kindness must often merely be laziness or lack
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It is, but I kind of think there's some truth to it. Because, I mean, for being good to mean anything,
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you have to have the capability to do otherwise.
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Wait, if you give me a second, I can read some of my favorites. Hang on.
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Those who apply themselves too much to small things ordinarily become incapable of great ones.
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Well, here is one that I really think is true. However dazzling an action may be,
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it should not pass for great when it is not the result of a great design.
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And I think that's very true. Like sometimes people do things accidentally and you don't
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really get credit for that because you didn't do it on purpose.
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Yeah. That reminds me of Machiavelli where he talks about the difference between virtue
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Oh, I love Chesterton. I'm so glad you mentioned him because I feel like he's kind of fallen out of
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the spotlight and I love the writing of GK Chesterton.
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Yeah. He does this thing where he kind of inverts the sentence.
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And so he comes up with these little witty, witty sayings about life. So in this book,
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Secrets of Adulthood, you developed your own aphorisms. Did you find that challenging?
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Well, it is very challenging because first you have to have a thought and I don't know about you,
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but I find it very hard to have thoughts. And then you have to really distill the thought
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into a succinct form and to aim for elegance because, you know, we're talking about La Roche
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Choucault, Chesterton, Oscar Wilde. You know, they express their ideas very beautifully. There's,
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as you say, there's often inversion, there's often paradox, often with an aphorism, there are,
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there are things to kind of increase the writerly elegance of them. So that's very challenging.
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So I have been working on these for years. I've certainly, I've been collecting them for ever
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from other people. And then I started writing them myself and collecting them myself. And,
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you know, this is not the kind of book that I could have sat down and written in like,
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you know, just like done it, just like, because they had to come to me in moments. And some of
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them arise out of my previous books, like The Happiness Project or Better Than Before,
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like The Aphorism, The Secret of Adulthood, Habits Are the Invisible Architecture,
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of Everyday Life. That was something that I wrote for my book Better Than Before. That was an idea
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that I had when I was thinking about how we make and break habits. But a lot of these are things
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that I've just noticed along the way and been gathering up for a really, really long time.
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So as you were putting together the book Secrets of Adulthood, how did you figure out which ones made
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it? So I had this giant trove that I'd been working on for years, but I decided I wanted them to be
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Secrets of Adulthood, meaning there was something in them that could be useful as you were facing a
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challenge of life. So maybe you were facing procrastination, or you were finding it hard
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to make a decision, or you were perplexed by a relationship, or you were trying to know yourself
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better. All of them are aimed to help give insight into something that is a challenge of adulthood.
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Because many of the aphorisms that I wrote were just observations, like a dog doesn't gaze at a
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waterfall. I think that's interesting. It's true. Or the tulip is an empty flower. I believe that. The
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tulip is an empty flower. What is up with that? But those are mere observations. And then I had a lot
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of bleak aphorisms. As we were saying, the form kind of pushes you in a dark direction. And I had a lot
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that were very dark. And I thought, oh, you know, nobody wants my dark aphorisms. Let me distill this
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into the Secrets of Adulthood. I love it. Well, maybe you should release the dark ones as a secret
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item somehow. Well, you know what's, I know, Gretchen Rubin after dark. What's funny is on my
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book tour, whenever I, a lot of times it would come up that I had written those, everybody said,
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I want to read your dark aphorisms. And I think that's the negativity bias, right? People are always
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interested in the dark things or the negative things. And so I should figure out what to do
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with them because I worked on them just as hard as I worked on the ones that ended up in
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Secrets of Adulthood. Brett, I am sure you know the feeling. It's so painful to leave anything on
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the cutting room floor. It's always very exciting if you think, oh, maybe there's a way I can use this
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stuff after all. So let's dig into some of your Secrets of Adulthood. I really enjoyed reading
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through your aphorisms and I've kind of picked out some that I like. And let's just riff on them. I'll talk
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about them and let's just riff on it together. So the one that really stuck out to me is one of
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the very first ones. Happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. Yeah, because I think when I was
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first writing the Happiness Project, I was really struggling to understand, like, how do you even
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think about happiness? What's a framework for even contemplating it? And I realized that if you're
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thinking about how to make our lives happier, we want to think about feeling good, feeling bad,
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feeling right, and an atmosphere of growth. So feeling good is enthusiasm, love, friendship,
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energy, all the things that we want to have more of. And then there's feeling bad. So that's things
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like anger, resentment, guilt, boredom. Those are things that make us feel bad. We want less of those.
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Then we also want to feel right, which means we want our life to reflect our values. We want to put our
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values into the world and we want to demonstrate our values through our actions. And then also we want the
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atmosphere of growth. And so the atmosphere of growth is when we're growing, learning, teaching,
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fixing, solving, where we feel like we're growing or we're contributing to the growth of others or to
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the growth of the world. And the fact is, sometimes when we do things to help us live up to our values
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or to cultivate an atmosphere of growth, we don't feel very happy. Like an atmosphere of growth,
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when you're learning to do something, often you feel insecure or frustrated, even angry.
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When you're feeling right about living up to your values, often you might be doing something that
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you don't enjoy. Like I remember a friend telling me how he went to go visit his very, very difficult
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father in the hospital and his two brothers refused to go. They wouldn't see their father. But he said,
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I really don't like to go. I dread going and we've never gotten along. And he was a terrible father,
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but he's still my father. And so I feel like I have to go. And I'm like, well, yeah, it made you
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feel bad, but you feel right because you're like, I'm living my values, which is we're still father,
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son. And I feel like I need to do this. And so happiness doesn't always make us feel happy.
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Yeah. When I read that, I love Aristotle. So immediately I thought of Aristotle.
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Oh, talk about aphorism. Yeah. Got a million of those. But you know, he talked about like his idea
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of happiness, the way it was defined, it was flourishing or eudaimonia. And it meant just living
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a good life all around. And it didn't necessarily mean feeling good. It wasn't hedonism. And even
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Epicurus, he makes that argument that sometimes in order to live a pleasurable life, you have to do
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unpleasurable things in the short term. Yeah. Yeah. Like exactly right. There's some things that don't
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feel good in the short term, but if you do them, it's going to lead to something bigger.
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Yes. And it's going to make you feel good in the long run.
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Kind of related to this, another one of your aphorisms, there is no right way to create a
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happier life just as there's no best way to cook an egg. Well, this came from an experience that I
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have often, which is because I write about happiness. People are always like, okay, what should I do to be
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happier? What's the secret to happiness? And I always say, well, you know, it depends on you. It
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depends on your nature, your challenges, your interests, your values. There's no one best way because
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we're all different. And then they say to me, okay, well, we're just like, what's the best way?
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And so now, and I could never think of an answer, a satisfying answer. And so now I say, well,
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what's the best way to cook an egg? And they say, well, there is no best way. It depends on how you
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like your eggs. And some people say like, I don't even like eggs. And I'm like, that's right. There is
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no best way to cook an egg. Just like there's no best way to make your life happier because it depends
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on each of us what we want. Oh yeah. That idea of like the secret to life. Everyone's just looking
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for it. Reminds me of, you remember City Slickers? Yeah. Yeah. Curly, you know, the guide on the,
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the, the ranch trip. I'm not sure I ever actually saw it. Is this the one with Billy, um, with Billy
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Crystal? Yeah. He's had like a, he has like a midlife crisis. Yeah. I don't think I ever actually saw it.
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Okay. Well, it's a great, I would recommend it. It's, it's a fun baby boomer movie about midlife
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that were made in the nineties. You have me. Yeah. I'm convinced. But, uh, you know, Curly's
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this like hardened trail hand who's taking these guys on this dude ranch trip. And he said, the
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secret of life is just one thing. And he never says what that one thing is. That's funny. Because
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the answer is, well, it's the one thing to you. You got to figure that out. Right. Right. Well,
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it's funny because since so many people are like, but what is the habit I should work on the most? I
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actually did create a quiz that will tell the individual because I can't like meet you and
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just from that tell you the right thing. But this quiz, which is just on my site will tell
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each individual, like what right now is the thing that would move the needle the most on
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your happiness based on your answers. And of course it might be different in a month, but
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it is kind of uncanny how often people are like, Oh yeah, you know, that is really where
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I feel like I need to do the most work. So there, there are definitely individual answers,
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but there is no one size fits all answer. Yeah. And related to that is the idea that
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what makes you happy is going to change throughout your life. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's something
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I've learned. Like what worked for me when I was in, when my twenties does not work for me in my forties.
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Well, and related to that is something called hedonic forecasting, which is the ability to predict
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what will make you happier in the future. And turns out we humans are really, really bad at this.
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We are not good at thinking, okay, what is the happiness consequence of this decision?
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And so that's one thing if you're working on your happiness is to try to improve your hedonic
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forecasting because we tend not to be very good at it. All right. Here's another one that stood out
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to me because I've, I've been thinking about this for a long time, accept yourself and expect more
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from yourself. Okay. This is a good example of something that took me months and months and
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months to wrap my mind around because I got caught in like, well, it's really important to accept
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ourselves and to show ourselves self-compassion and not to like be unrealistic and set ourselves up for
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other people's expectations. But then I would also think, but we also have to try to get ourselves out
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of our comfort zone and we do need the atmosphere of growth and we don't want to be complacent and we
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don't want to fall short of our potential. And then finally I thought, well, both are true.
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And then I was like, okay, I could write about that for pages, but is there a way to distill those two
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truths that are intention to distill that into a single sentence? And so saying, accept yourself and
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also expect more from yourself. That took me months and months and months really to write.
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Yeah. And I'm spending like my entire life trying to figure out, am I accepting myself and expecting,
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like, am I, am I just, am I being content, but not being complacent? And sometimes you have to ask
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myself, you know, when I think I'm being content, well, actually, am I just being complacent?
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I mean, it's the great challenge of our lives, I think is to recognize, and people are always like,
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okay, but then how can you tell? And I'm like, that is what's hard about adulthood. There's no magic
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answer to tell you, is this something where you should accept yourself and just say like,
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hey, that's not my thing. And spend your time doing things that are more in line with your true
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nature. Or you're like, no, this is something that's reasonable for me to expect for myself.
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I can do this. I can expect this from myself. I want to push myself, even if it doesn't feel good.
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Let's talk about change. You write a lot about change.
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We want to expect more from ourselves and get better. One of your aphorisms is,
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it's easier to change our surroundings and our schedules than to change ourselves.
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Yes. Oh my gosh. I so firmly believe this because people will often, and I saw this when I was
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writing Better Than Before, when I was really focusing on habits, is people will be like,
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well, I want to be a completely different kind of person. And I'm like, I don't know if that's
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possible, but if it is possible, it's very hard. And then I'm like, but you could just change your
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schedule. You could just change your surroundings. You could work on the things around you,
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your conscious thoughts and actions. And that's much easier. I remember I was doing an interview
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with a reporter in front of an audience. And there was this very, to me, very poignant moment
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where she said, I want to be the kind of person who loves to get up and go for a five mile run
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every day. And I was like, I don't think you ever will be that kind of person. Like, I don't want
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to be discouraging, but knowing you as I know you, I don't think that's, I don't think that's who you
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are. I don't think that's how you're wired. And in some ways we just have to say to ourselves,
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you get what you get and you don't get upset. And like, I'm me. I'm like, but if what you want
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is you want to be fit, if what you want is to have a healthy body, if what you want is to be
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consistent in your promises to yourself, to do something that's going to be really good for
00:22:18.620
your life and your mood and your immune function and your memory, that you can work on. You can put
00:22:25.180
it in the schedule. You can set yourself up for success to keep that habit. But saying like, well,
00:22:30.600
I want to be a different kind of person so that this behavior will come easily. That's not a good
00:22:35.680
way to succeed. You have to say, given who I am, what can I do to get where I want to go? Instead
00:22:40.400
of, can I transform myself into an utterly different kind of person and therefore live a
00:22:45.140
different life? No, I totally agree. I've seen it in my own life. So going back to Aristotle,
00:22:49.560
if you want to be fit, you have to do fit things or put yourself in a fit environment. We'll get you,
00:22:55.220
help you out a lot. Exactly. Excellence is a habit. Yeah. Speaking of change,
00:22:59.360
another one, you talk about just changing other people because in adulthood, you're going to deal
00:23:03.600
with just so many frustrating, frustrating people. And we're just like, why can't you just be like
00:23:08.820
this? But so you have an aphorism for that. It's we can't make people change, but when we change,
00:23:14.700
our relationships change. And so others may also change. Yes. What got me thinking about this was
00:23:20.140
when my daughters were very young, I'm an irritable person. I'm a cranky person. I'm a carping person.
00:23:26.400
I'm a high strung person. I'm a rigid person. Like that's who I am. Right. And if you have little
00:23:32.360
kids, that's a hard way to be because they are disorderly and messy and for your schedule off. And I
00:23:38.800
was just a more irritable kind of parent than I wanted to be. And I would get frustrated and kind
00:23:44.660
of crabby and they would get frustrated and crabby. And then it was just, it all went downhill.
00:23:48.760
But then when I was like, okay, I'm going to get up earlier. So I have a bigger margin in the morning
00:23:53.300
so I can get up and just sort of like my own quiet way, get dressed and get organized and
00:23:57.920
have my cup of coffee. Thoreau said, I love a broad margin to my life. I'm a person who needs a broad
00:24:03.220
margin. I'm going to build in more margins so that I don't feel rushed or pressed for time. And so I'm
00:24:07.860
not hustling them along. We have plenty of time. When I started doing all these things to make my,
00:24:13.480
and then just working on staying patient, staying good humored, seeing the funny side and, you know,
00:24:20.900
not constantly depressing. When I relaxed, they relaxed. When I had a warmer, more tender
00:24:28.500
attitude, they also became calmer and more cheerful. And so I didn't do anything to change
00:24:35.200
them. I only changed myself, but because I changed, they responded. And so then the atmosphere of our
00:24:41.540
household changed. Yeah. This reminded me when I read that aphorism of Bowen family systems theory,
00:24:46.640
are you familiar with Bowen family systems theory? A little bit. Yeah. I mean, I know, I know that
00:24:50.320
it's, yeah, but not in what, in what, in what respect? Yeah. So there's this idea, this thing
00:24:55.580
developed by this guy named Murray Bowen back in the 50s, 60s. And his idea was that, you know,
00:25:00.540
we carry over our relationship dynamics that we developed when we were kids and our family of
00:25:05.860
origin to other relationships. And one of his big ideas is there's often a lot of what he calls
00:25:12.340
anxiety in a relationship. I mean, anxiety isn't like nervousness. It's just kind of like stress.
00:25:17.300
Everyone's just kind of freaking out about stuff. And he says, in order to change that dynamic,
00:25:21.240
one person in that relationship, they have to be differentiated. And so they have to like not
00:25:28.360
catch the anxiety of the other person. So he says you have to be a calm, non-anxious presence.
00:25:34.940
And then his idea is like, well, if you change, if one person changes themselves in the system,
00:25:39.400
then the system becomes more calm. Yes. Yes. That's interesting. I think that's
00:25:43.320
100% true. In my own family growing up, my father is just this very calm, unflappable,
00:25:49.920
cheerful, enthusiastic person. Like whatever you want to do, that's great. And I realized
00:25:55.180
much later in life how much I had taken that for granted and how much his attitude really did act
00:26:01.360
as a buffer for other people's agitation or, you know, that he could kind of absorb it and then
00:26:08.520
let everybody kind of calm down or reach equilibrium. And it's only, you know, with
00:26:15.000
much greater maturity that I was like, that's a lot of work. I always thought that's just his nature.
00:26:20.160
And I'm like, that does not, that's, that's not easy for anyone. Like that is a way that he is
00:26:26.340
choosing to be. And I realized how valuable it was and probably how, how much energy it took to be
00:26:33.040
always that person in the system who was able to be like, let's just, let's just chill out a little
00:26:38.660
bit here. Like, let's have a sense of humor about it. Yeah, I agree. I'm like you. I'm very high
00:26:43.140
strung, not super high strung, but I'm cranky. I mean, that's why we went to law. Yeah. Possibly.
00:26:49.260
Yeah. It's good for cranky people. It's good for cranky people.
00:26:51.580
It's a cranky profession. Yes. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:26:58.820
And now back to the show. One of the hardest things or can be really hard about being adult
00:27:04.220
is being a parent. Super complex. Actually, I've noticed this. Maybe people talk about how being
00:27:09.840
a parent is hard. Like when they have babies, little kids, I actually didn't think being a
00:27:14.000
parent of babies or little kids was that hard. It was just because you're just like, you have to take,
00:27:17.780
make sure they're fed and safe and it's fun. And sometimes it's tiring. I'm finding it's getting
00:27:23.860
harder and harder to be a parent as my kids have gotten older because their problems have gotten
00:27:28.960
bigger and more complex. Well, they say little children, little problems. Yeah. Big kids,
00:27:34.280
big problems. Yeah. That's a folk proverb. Well, I think when they're young, it's physically demanding.
00:27:39.200
And when they're older, it's more emotionally, intellectually demanding. Yes. So you've got some
00:27:44.160
aphorisms about being a parent. And one of them is, I really resonated with this. We can't change
00:27:50.500
our children's natures by nagging them or signing them up for classes. Right. I mean, it's just,
00:27:58.520
again, it's like, you get what you get and you don't get upset. Like, of course we can help people
00:28:03.480
reach their potential and we can help them accept themselves and also expect more from themselves.
00:28:07.800
But in the end, you're not going to change people's natures. And, you know, with a lot of these,
00:28:13.780
these aphorisms, there was kind of an origin story or there was something that happened to me or
00:28:17.720
something that I read, which really caught my attention and sort of had me thinking and turning
00:28:21.420
it over in my head, like a dog with a bone, trying to understand it. And in this very funny
00:28:25.760
encounter with somebody that I hardly knew, she was the mother of somebody who had a son that was my
00:28:30.220
daughter's age. And she was talking about how he had gotten all this money for his birthday. And he
00:28:35.280
was young, like a young teenager. And he wanted to start one of these, these, I don't even really know
00:28:40.860
what it is. It's some kind of account where you could put your money in and you do kind of pretend
00:28:44.760
investing. It's the kind of thing that if you were the kind of kid that wanted to grow up and become
00:28:49.520
a finance person or investor, you would be very interested in. Like he wanted to learn about the
00:28:53.880
stock market and he wanted to like place his bets and everything. And she was like, you know,
00:28:58.680
though, I just think, wouldn't he be better off spending that time doing something like learning
00:29:03.280
ceramics? And I was like, let me stop you right here. I think you would like to learn ceramics.
00:29:10.860
I think you should let your kid do what he wants. That's a totally reasonable thing for a child to
00:29:15.280
want to do. He's not actually risking his money. He's interested in a subject that's, you know,
00:29:21.600
so why would you say like, oh no, I mean, it would be the rare child who would like to do both of those
00:29:27.800
equally. And I think that that's just what sounded fun to her. Yeah. As my kids have gotten older,
00:29:33.940
I've noticed this more and more is that they have their own personality. Yes, they do.
00:29:39.240
And no matter how much I nag them about something like, hey, you know, it doesn't do anything. So
00:29:46.020
it's just trying to figure out like, what can I do to harness that in a more positive direction is
00:29:50.460
what I'm trying to do. But I also think that there's a different, and I think about this a lot
00:29:53.620
because I think it is, it's one of the big challenges of parenting, which is there's helping
00:29:58.080
people do something that they want to do, but they're dreading doing either because it's so much
00:30:03.440
work or there's so many steps to it, or there's something about it that just makes them really
00:30:07.060
uncomfortable. So like I live in New York City and neither of my daughters who are like 26 and 20,
00:30:12.080
neither of them have a driver's license because it's so hard. They have to learn how to drive and
00:30:16.320
it's hard to practice because we live in New York City. And then it's really hard just like to take
00:30:20.360
the test. And one of my daughters failed the test. So then she has to take it again. And it's just,
00:30:24.520
there's so much paperwork. There's so many steps. It's so awful. So I am kind of badgering them
00:30:29.260
about that because I know in the end, this is something that they want. They both know how to drive.
00:30:33.300
It's just like a lot of steps, but that's different from saying, oh, I think you should,
00:30:37.180
I'm going to badger you to take up scuba diving, even though you have no interest in it, just because
00:30:41.900
I think it's something that would be cool for you to do or something or, or what's really hard,
00:30:47.880
I think is when, because the parent loves something, they want the child to love it too. And they become
00:30:54.480
angry when the child doesn't love it. Like everybody in our family loves University of Nebraska football.
00:31:01.220
We're all Cornhuskers. You should love University of Nebraska football too. And if you don't love
00:31:07.660
it, then there's something wrong with you. Yeah. You can't do that.
00:31:10.820
Yeah. You know, you can try to expose them. You can try to get them people interested,
00:31:14.200
but at a certain point, it's like people have their own, I mean, I don't like the Olympics and
00:31:19.840
I can't tell you how many people are constantly trying to convince me to like the Olympics. I'm like,
00:31:23.980
I'm just here to tell you, I'm not interested in the Olympics.
00:31:26.900
Not doing it. You know? Yeah. I mean, I think as a parent,
00:31:30.540
what you can do is you can kind of think of yourself as a gardener instead of a carpenter.
00:31:34.920
Yes. That's the Alison Gopnik. Yeah. So you're a gardener, you kind of create an environment where
00:31:39.680
they can flourish because they come with these seeds of personality and talent and potential
00:31:45.720
already embedded inside. And you can't just reconstruct them and build them differently.
00:31:49.940
All you can do is create an environment that nurtures those seeds and then you see where
00:31:56.800
it goes because it's up to them after that. Yes. Yes, exactly.
00:32:01.640
So there's another favorite one of mine. My wife liked this one a lot too, because she's been talking
00:32:05.740
about this for a long time, but I love how you really put this in a succinct aphorism.
00:32:09.520
Well, so in my collection of aphorisms, I have a giant list of things that in previous times and
00:32:31.100
cultures, people considered inefficient, dangerous, immoral. And it's just bananas.
00:32:37.680
What people will take into their mind to oppose? I mean, when postcards were introduced,
00:32:44.360
people were violently opposed to postcards. It's like, maybe you just don't like postcards.
00:32:51.080
You don't have to decide that they're immoral. And I remind myself of that when I'm thinking like,
00:32:57.120
oh, it's terrible that people are doing X, Y, Z. I'm like, well, maybe it's just because I don't
00:33:00.720
like to do X, Y, Z. So I don't understand why somebody else would like it.
00:33:04.080
Yeah. As a person who's been putting out articles and podcasts for almost 20 years,
00:33:09.920
you've probably experienced this too. There's people who are going to criticize you.
00:33:13.600
And the way they frame their criticisms like, this is wrong and blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you'll
00:33:18.540
have people who say, I love what you're doing. This is great. I think it's the greatest thing in
00:33:23.160
the world. And so this aphorism reminds me of that. And it reminded my wife of a story from Ben and
00:33:28.580
Jerry's, the ice cream example. And one of the guys, Ben or Jerry was doing an interview and he
00:33:34.940
talked about how they would get letters from people saying, your chunks are too big. And this
00:33:40.460
is why the ice cream is bad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's awful. I'm not going to buy
00:33:44.080
your ice cream anymore because your chunk's too big. But then they'd also get letters saying, oh,
00:33:47.940
I just love how big your chunks are. It's one of my favorite things about your ice cream. Keep doing
00:33:52.620
that. In fact, I want them bigger. And Ben or Jerry says, I wish I could just somehow swap the
00:33:58.280
letters so that the people who were complaining about the big chunks would get the letters from
00:34:03.500
the people who love the big chunks and then vice versa. So people could see like, oh, it's just
00:34:07.480
taste. There's nothing wrong with the ice cream. It's just that your taste doesn't suit and that's
00:34:11.200
fine. Yeah. Well, in terms of creativity, to your point, I always remind myself that a strong voice
00:34:17.860
repels as well as attracts. And that if you're so innocuous that nobody objects to you, you're
00:34:25.060
probably catching nobody's interest either because you're right. Everything, somebody doesn't like
00:34:31.360
something. One of the funniest tourist slogans, my whole family grew up in North Platte, Nebraska,
00:34:37.260
so I have a real fondness for Nebraska. And their tourist slogan for a period was, honestly,
00:34:45.340
it's not for everyone. And I think that's so funny because it's like, we love Nebraska,
00:34:50.880
you know? Um, but honestly, it's not, it's not for everyone. And, um, right. And so you can just
00:34:58.180
say like, that's just not my taste. You don't have to say like, oh, it's, there's something wrong with
00:35:03.240
that. The chunks are too big. The chunks are too small. It's like, I like a chunkier ice cream.
00:35:09.220
Yeah. I think it's so true. Um, another one that I liked by trying to save things for a special
00:35:14.820
occasion. We may squander them. Spices go stale, white shirts turn yellow, wine turns to vinegar.
00:35:22.060
Yeah. No, I mean, I have kind of a hoarding nature. I will save things like I'll buy a new
00:35:27.980
shirt and I'll save it, or I will get new stationery and I will save it. And I have to
00:35:34.300
remind my, it was one of my 10 personal commandments is to spend out, meaning like put things into use,
00:35:39.940
like use things up because by saving them, you're often wasting them.
00:35:46.480
Yeah. So true. Life is for living. Money's for spending. Use the good dishes. Yeah. China. Don't
00:35:52.380
save. Don't wait for it. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, that's a good lesson for adulthood to make it more
00:35:57.280
enjoyable. I had a pair of pants once that I loved so much that I saved them and wore them very
00:36:02.940
sparingly because I wanted to like keep them in really good shape. But then, you know, fashions
00:36:06.540
changed. And then all of a sudden I'm like, they're not great pants anymore. I could have
00:36:10.120
worn them like 10 times more than I did, but I felt like I had to hold them back. But I feel this
00:36:15.360
way creatively. I don't know if you ever have this where you're like, I can't put out all my good
00:36:19.960
ideas. Like if I put in all my good ideas, maybe I'll run out of ideas. Maybe I need to hold an idea
00:36:25.140
back. My sister, Elizabeth, who's the co-host of the Happier podcast with me, she's a television writer.
00:36:30.380
And she said, they always remind themselves, put every good idea in the pilot, put in every good idea that
00:36:35.460
you possibly can. Don't say like, oh, we'll put this in episode four because you may never get to
00:36:39.820
episode four. Use everything up right away and then trust that there will be more. So I think it's true
00:36:45.520
for the good dishes. It's literally true, but it's also true creatively, which is the more that we
00:36:51.900
create, the more we will create. All right. Here's another one that I liked. It's about, you know,
00:36:57.520
doing well in life, making a change in the world, an impact on the world. To respect us,
00:37:03.080
people must first notice us. We can't earn trust and admiration from the sidelines.
00:37:09.540
Yeah. I mean, maybe that's a little bit of a dark aphorism. Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes people
00:37:15.460
are like, oh, I'm silently working away and nobody notices me. Why am I not getting a promotion? It's
00:37:21.420
like, I think you've answered your own question. Yeah. I'm sure you've noticed that as, you know,
00:37:26.480
with your career, putting out content, you can put out really great stuff, but if you're not
00:37:31.200
actually promoting it, you know, no one's going to know how great the stuff is that you're putting
00:37:35.080
out. I know. I know. I remind people of that all the time because they're like, well, I don't like
00:37:39.120
to do that work. I'm like, well, that is part of the work. That isn't like a icing on the cake.
00:37:45.220
If you want to reach people through your work, you have to do what needs to be done to reach them.
00:37:49.620
You got to hustle. You know, I think Ernest Hemingway is a good example of that. Like he
00:37:54.260
really dedicated to his craft of writing, but the guy knew how to do self-promotion.
00:38:03.060
Oh, I mean, and that is, if you read biography of great artists, you usually see that they are
00:38:07.400
tremendously self-promotional. You know, it's not an accident that they are in the spotlight.
00:38:15.200
Well, yeah, there was a biography I read about Emerson. You know, we think of Emerson as this
00:38:21.500
kind of, you know, sage that he was kind of above self-promotion, but that guy hustled. Like he was
00:38:27.920
constantly promoting himself, getting himself out on the Lyceum circuit, speaking because he wanted
00:38:34.040
to make a name for himself. And Thoreau, he wasn't comfortable with that. And he didn't have the
00:38:41.380
success like in his lifetime that he wanted. He actually kind of felt bad about it. I think he
00:38:46.160
felt kind of bad that he didn't have the admiration that he thought he deserved. He was a great writer.
00:38:51.580
He had these great, great insights, but he just didn't want to promote himself. And Emerson would
00:38:55.680
get on and was like, you need to get out there, man. But he was like, I just don't want to do it.
00:38:59.020
And then, you know, Thoreau had to die. And then maybe a hundred years later, he became famous.
00:39:03.940
Well, you know, it's interesting. I've, for a long time, I've been wanting to learn more about
00:39:06.620
the transcendentalists. So you're inspiring me to dig up some book and read about them because I
00:39:11.420
know a little bit about them and I certainly admire their writing, but I don't really know
00:39:15.320
that much about their relationships. And that sounds really interesting.
00:39:18.920
Oh, they're interesting characters. There's just a lot of bickering between them and sort of
00:39:26.140
Well, didn't Thoreau live with Emerson for a while?
00:39:28.320
Yeah. Thoreau was his kid's babysitter, basically, and handyman. And they were like best friends,
00:39:34.800
but then they would have these falling outs. They're really interesting characters to read
00:39:39.500
Oh, good. Okay. You've inspired me. I mean, as an aphorist, you would think I would have spent a
00:39:44.000
lot of time studying the transcendentalists because those characters are writing aphorisms
00:39:47.960
left and right. And I love their writing, but I have always wanted to know more about their
00:39:54.560
All right. So another one I liked kind of hit home to me at this point in my life, it is,
00:39:59.400
do you need more time or do you need to make a decision?
00:40:03.100
I remind myself of this all the time because the way that I postpone the difficult work of
00:40:08.340
decision-making is sort of saying like, oh, I need to consult someone about that,
00:40:12.780
or I need to talk to my husband about that, or I need to do more research about that. And it's like,
00:40:16.880
no, you don't. You just need to make a decision. It's just a form of procrastination.
00:40:23.920
Or you don't know the answer, but you know you need to just decide.
00:40:27.880
Yeah. I think that's a fair point. At that point, you probably just flip a coin.
00:40:33.900
Yeah. Okay. Another one that I liked. Oh yeah, this was, I really liked this one.
00:40:38.380
One is about if you have a decision to make and you don't know what to do,
00:40:41.700
you have a heuristic and aphorism for it. When uncertain about how to proceed,
00:40:46.560
make the choice that allows you to choose the bigger life.
00:40:50.200
Yes. This is extremely helpful. I would say of all my secrets of adulthood,
00:40:55.060
this is one of the ones that people most often will say to me has been useful to them. And I can't
00:41:00.880
even remember where I wrote about it first, maybe in better than before. Anyway, and I'll give an
00:41:05.820
example from my life where my daughters were begging for a dog and my husband was like, okay,
00:41:11.640
I'd get a dog. He grew up with cats, but he was open to it. But to me, it was a perfect balance
00:41:17.060
because on the one hand, I knew all the happiness research about a dog and how much dogs bring
00:41:21.920
happiness and actually even good health. I knew I had a dog growing up and I love my dog, but then
00:41:27.560
I thought, oh, it's all those errands and all those responsibilities. And then we have to worry about
00:41:32.740
the dog every time we want to leave town and we live in a New York city apartment. So it's like a
00:41:37.460
whole thing. And I just felt paralyzed because the pros and cons felt very equally balanced. And then I
00:41:43.880
thought, well, choose the bigger life. And then the answer was immediately obvious to me,
00:41:50.200
which was that for our family, the bigger life was the life with a dog. Now, somebody else might say,
00:41:55.300
no, the bigger life is the life without a dog because then you can travel, you can be spontaneous,
00:41:59.500
you have more money to spend, like you're freer. And so that might be the bigger life. But for us,
00:42:05.460
I was like, the bigger life is to get a dog. And we did. And we were so happy we got the dog.
00:42:09.900
Yeah. I find I have to be more intentional about that as I've gotten older. Because as you get
00:42:14.420
older, you kind of get complacent. You become a hobbit where you're just like, I just want to
00:42:17.960
stay in my little hobbit hole and not do any things that's comfortable. When I was younger,
00:42:21.960
it's like, oh yeah, go do big things because I got nothing to lose. As you're older, you're like,
00:42:26.600
oh man, if I do that, there's going to be a lot of complications. It's a risk. So yeah,
00:42:31.180
I need to make that my mantra. Choose the bigger life.
00:42:33.640
Yeah. Well, for me, relatedly, and this came to me after the book was already done. So I didn't
00:42:38.280
make it into the book. But I was realizing exactly what you were saying. I would have
00:42:42.440
opportunities to do things, fun things. And I'd be like, oh gosh, I just don't even want to deal
00:42:47.220
with scheduling it. It's like, we'll pick a day, then one of us will have to reschedule. And it's
00:42:51.260
this will be this whole thing. And then I'll have to figure out how to get there. And oh my gosh,
00:42:54.620
in the end, like, wouldn't I just rather stay home and read in bed? But then I thought,
00:42:58.960
scheduling is life. Like I say, I hate to schedule, but scheduling is life. Everything
00:43:04.740
that I want to do needs to go into my schedule. And if I'm not scheduling, then I am just staying
00:43:11.920
home and binge watching The Office, which is, you know, in a sense, my favorite thing to do and
00:43:16.220
certainly the easiest thing to do. But that's not a good life. Scheduling is life. So that's how I try
00:43:21.400
to embrace it for myself now. I like schedule. That's another great effort. Scheduling is life.
00:43:28.080
Scheduling is life. Adulthood, volume two. Yeah.
00:43:29.760
Let's do a few more because there's so many. How many did you include in the book?
00:43:34.980
Yeah. It's awesome. You can just flip to a page and like, here it is for you.
00:43:38.200
I thought this was an interesting one because I think it's true, but I couldn't figure out why
00:43:41.660
it's true. To understand a new place, visit a grocery store.
00:43:45.900
Oh, I just think this is just a fun thing to know. If you're in a new place, it's just fascinating to
00:43:51.980
visit the grocery store. Like what is the food? How is it presented? How is it different?
00:43:55.940
It just gives you an insight into a new place. It's a very fun thing to do.
00:44:00.620
Yeah. No, when we go to, our family would go to Vermont for the summer and we'd always go to the
00:44:06.360
first thing we do when we get there before we go to the Airbnb, stop by the local grocery store.
00:44:10.940
And it's always interesting to see what foods they have in New England that they don't have in Oklahoma.
00:44:16.840
It's like devil dogs are a thing in New England, not a thing in Oklahoma, like maple cream donuts
00:44:26.940
What's funny because I remember when I went to college, I didn't realize that there were like
00:44:30.460
regional brands, that there would be brands that other people thought were huge that I had never
00:44:37.720
heard of, like Entenmann's. This is a thing. They may have it now, but in Missouri, when I grew up,
00:44:43.000
we didn't have Entenmann's. And everybody, when I got to college on the East coast, they were like,
00:44:47.880
how do you not know this? It was like not knowing, you know, Coke. They thought it was this ubiquitous
00:44:54.280
brand, but it, and so it was interesting. And then there were brands that I knew that they didn't
00:44:57.540
know. So it is, so it is. And that like maple, you're like, I'm in the land of maple now and
00:45:02.520
everything will be maple, maple, maple, or I'm in the land of lobster or I'm in the land of,
00:45:09.040
So here's another fun one that I agree with. Once a group includes five people,
00:45:14.640
a single conversation is very hard to maintain.
00:45:18.360
Yes. So you're reading now from the simple secrets of adulthood. So I have my transcendent
00:45:22.640
secrets of adulthood, which is most of the book, which are what I hope are like deep insights.
00:45:26.380
But as I was writing the book, because I just love hacks. I love a practical tip. I just couldn't
00:45:32.040
stop myself from making a list of those as well. And when I submitted my manuscript, I thought my editor
00:45:37.200
would be like, Gretchen, these simple secrets of adulthood just don't belong with the other ones
00:45:41.320
that are so much more transcendent. But she said, oh, these are fun. Let's include them. Like the one
00:45:45.720
about the grocery store or the one about the five people. This is something that I learned from writing
00:45:50.100
my book, Life in Five Senses. This is called the dinner party problem. It's a very well-established
00:45:54.120
psychological phenomenon that once a group includes more than four people, it will almost inevitably break
00:46:00.460
into smaller conversations unless you make enormous effort to keep people unified. And if you've ever been
00:46:05.100
to like a single topic dinner party or something, like you have to like tell people that that is
00:46:11.140
the rule and then really enforce it because people just will naturally break into smaller
00:46:15.400
conversations. So it's a useful thing to think about when you're, you know, approaching a social
00:46:21.360
occasion that that is something that you will encounter. I read in this, I agree. I've been in
00:46:26.880
conversations where there's more than five and it just doesn't work. But also I relate to this rule
00:46:31.820
because I was a waiter in college. I absolutely hated big tops, you know, like where people
00:46:39.660
get like 20 people and we had the smoosh tables together because it's just like, why are you doing
00:46:45.700
this? No one's talking to each other. You're only talking to the people in front of you and it makes
00:46:49.300
it harder for the waiter. And so whenever I see it. That is a great point. I guess it's, you want to
00:46:56.880
feel like you're together, but maybe you're like, you'll actually enjoy it more. Yes. You'd enjoy it
00:47:01.860
more. Cause after like, you know, two people over, like you have no idea what the other, what the
00:47:06.220
other people are saying. And it makes it also good talking across the table would be easier. So in a
00:47:12.000
way you're less, you feel like you have access to fewer people, but you might actually have access to
00:47:16.860
more. Yes. And it makes it, it'll make the experience better for you and the waiter. Cause the
00:47:21.420
waiter can actually, it's just easier to manage. So whenever I go in a restaurant, I see a big top,
00:47:26.720
I'm just like, ugh, people don't know what they're doing. What are they, they need to stop
00:47:30.240
that. That's my pet peeve. No big talk. But you know, but that's interesting because I do think
00:47:34.220
that our impulse is like, oh, well we all want to be together and we don't want anybody to feel
00:47:38.700
like they're stuck at the wrong table. It feels very high stakes. Yeah. You could be in the same
00:47:44.920
area. Right. You could be next to each other. Next to each other. You don't need to smoosh all the
00:47:48.800
tables together. Interesting. I like that. See, and there's room at the back of the book for people to
00:47:54.080
write their own secrets of adulthood. So that would be what like, you know, like I'm going to
00:47:58.660
write that down myself as a hack. So a lot of times reading these will inspire people to realize
00:48:04.720
that they have their own. All right. Last one. Cause I relate to this one a lot. If you don't
00:48:09.380
know what to do with yourself, go outside or go to sleep. I mean, I just feel like that works. That's
00:48:15.380
just like, that is to me one or the other or both. I always am going to feel better.
00:48:22.020
Yeah. I have this tendency. You probably have this tendency too. Everyone has this tendency
00:48:25.460
at nighttime, you're tired and then you get stuck on something that you're just upset about and
00:48:32.200
depressed about. And then because you're tired, you start ruminating and go down this death spiral
00:48:36.540
and you're blah, blah. And then my wife usually tell me, just go to bed, just go to bed. And then
00:48:40.340
in the morning, you feel great and you have the answer. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Well, Gretchen,
00:48:46.180
this has been a lot of fun. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:48:50.740
GretchenRubin.com. There's links there to my quizzes, the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast,
00:48:56.520
the books, all my books, my writing. I have a newsletter, Five Things Making Me Happy. I have an
00:49:03.700
app. I have products. I got all the things that I love to connect with people on social media. I love to
00:49:08.620
hear people's observations and questions and resources that they suggest. So follow me on
00:49:15.420
social media. I'm Gretchen Rubin in all the places. Fantastic. Well, Gretchen Rubin,
00:49:19.720
thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
00:49:23.360
My guest there is Gretchen Rubin. She's the author of the book, Secrets of Adulthood. It's
00:49:26.760
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about her work at
00:49:30.520
our website, GretchenRubin.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash Secrets of Adulthood,
00:49:35.840
where you can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
00:49:38.160
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:49:49.540
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00:49:54.040
for men and women alike. It's a great way to support the show directly. You can learn more at
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00:50:05.880
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member if you think there's something out
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of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay.
00:50:13.240
Remind you to not listen to anyone podcast, but put what you've heard into action.