Shownotes:
What if the best life advice didn’t come in a long-winded lecture—but in one short sentence that actually sticks?
In this episode, Gretchen Rubin—New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Secrets of Adulthood—shares the bold, memorable truths that can shift how we show up every day. From reframing procrastination to recognizing how our senses shape our gratitude, Gretchen breaks down big ideas in a way that’s instantly usable.
We also dive into her Four Tendencies framework (you’ll want to take the quiz!) and how to stop hiding behind busyness and start living with more clarity, intention, and joy.
This isn’t a to-do list—it’s a mindset shift. And it starts with one simple phrase: “The bird, the bee, and the bat all fly—but they use different kinds of wings.”
Let’s figure out your wings—and fly your way.
Thrive Global Article:
About Our Guest:
Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. She’s known for her ability to convey complex ideas—from science to literature to stories from her own life—with levity and clarity.
She’s the author of many bestselling books, such as The Happiness Project, Better Than Before, and The Four Tendencies, which have sold millions of copies in more than thirty languages. Her most recent book is Life in Five Senses.
She’s also host of the popular podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and founder of award-winning Happier app, which helps people track their happiness-boosting habits.
Gretchen Rubin has been interviewed by Oprah, eaten dinner with Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, walked arm-in-arm with the Dalai Lama, had her work reported on in a medical journal, been written up in the New Yorker, and been an answer on Jeopardy! After starting her career in law, she realized she wanted to be a writer while she was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Raised in Kansas City, she lives in New York City with her family.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, emotional intelligence, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Instagram - @LainieRowell
LinkedIn - @LainieRowell
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available here! And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!
Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌
Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Well, welcome. I can't even believe I'm saying this. Welcome Gretchen Rubin.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, I'm so happy to be talking to you today. Thank you for having me.
Lainie Rowell: First of all, I love the whimsy and the novelty that you bring into everything you do. And I just wanted to start with sharing one example of how you've brought that to my life.
And I wanted to share with you my own little Muse Machine.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, I love it. It's in a Rolodex too.
That's the best way. Oh my gosh. So what's in your Muse Machine?
Lainie Rowell: Would you be okay sharing your muse machine story? And then I'll tell you what's in mine.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes. Okay. So I had two things kind of going simultaneously. One is as a person who's creative, I started creating a list of kind of these enigmatic statements that somehow helped me move forward or come up with an idea and sometimes these ideas came from somebody else like a friend of mine said that when She was writing her PhD thesis She put a sticky note on her computer that said down with boredom and I was like, oh my gosh It's like one of my things to skip the boring part So I'm writing a biography Winston Churchill, but I could just skip the boring parts And so I've gathered this huge collection of these things, but I do this all the time.
I'll write Big collections and do and then I sort of forget that I have it. I'm constantly stumbling across some like giant document that I forgot that I worked on for three years. But anyway, so I was home visiting my parents in Kansas City, Missouri, and my father's old Rolodex from like 1000 years ago when he was a lawyer with like, you know, a real phone and all that old technology.
And I loved just the physicality of the Rolodex and like turning the pages and just the way it even felt in my hands. It was just, it was such a pleasing form. And then I had the idea of putting my ideas on a Rolodex so that when I needed to give myself a prompt, I could just choose one at random and I got the name Muse Machine because I go to the Met every day.
Ever since I wrote my book, Life in Five Senses, I visit the Metropolitan Museum every day and there's this beautiful ceramic ink stand covered with muses and poets and artists. And I was looking at it one day and I'm like, wow, if you're an artist, that's what you need. You need like a bunch of muses right there to call on whenever you want.
And then I thought, oh, muse machine. And then I thought, oh, that's what I'll call my, my and I ended up just turning it into a deck of like a card deck because for me to manufacture it because now it's for sale in my shop, it was too hard to have an actual Rolodex, but it looks like you have a handmade one.
So tell me your process. Well, that's super fun.
Lainie Rowell: The one that's available on your website is stunning. Like it's really, really pretty.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's very beautiful. Yeah,
Lainie Rowell: it's very beautiful, so I want to collect words. I'm a word collector, inspired by Peter Reynolds, like he has a whole book called The Word Collector, which I read to my children, and I just love this idea of collecting words as a writer, so that when you get stumped or you just want a creative thing, and I love to put two words together that don't normally go together, that convey an original idea.
Gretchen Rubin: I have a collection of those.
Lainie Rowell: That doesn't surprise me. And by the way, I am very familiar with your work, but you are prolific. I can't keep up, but I'm working on it.
Gretchen Rubin: So I want to hear some of these combinations. How fabulous.
Lainie Rowell: Well, so one of them, I actually turned into the title of my guided gratitude journal.
So it says bold gratitude. And there's a little play on the fact that it's like meant to be an artistic journal if you want it to be . So I tend to just put words in here that, I think I want to play with down the road. So, for example, under F is famished. And the example is time famished.
But like, what are other ways that we could be famished? And so I just love these words. I have. Mm. Right? Isn't that fun? And then
Gretchen Rubin: It is very true that there are words that are powerful and words that are not powerful. And I know that because I started my career in law, like a lot of very abstract terms do not have power.
And the more concrete you get, the more power. And like famished is a powerful word. Much more than even something like depleted.
Lainie Rowell: Right.
Gretchen Rubin: And I run into this with, I don't know about you as a writer, but there are often words where, like the word purport, I was working on aphorisms. I wrote a whole book of aphorisms, but I'm still writing more aphorisms.
And I was like, the word purport is exactly the word that I need, but it's not a strong word. It's not a familiar word. So how do I get where I wanna go? But maybe don't use purport even though I, I appreciate its exactitude. Mm-hmm . It's slightly fancy.
Lainie Rowell: That's so true. It's so true. So sometimes I'm wanting to go more basic.
Sometimes I'm wanting to go more fancy. But it's like you said.
Gretchen Rubin: More elevated. Okay, so what are some more? Just look through it and read them out loud. I can't, I cannot wait. I think this is, I love this idea.
Lainie Rowell: This is about you, but okay. I'll just give you like a couple more. I loved the idea of using a word like dusted or dappled.
Especially dappled.
Gretchen Rubin: Okay, stippled.
Lainie Rowell: Stippled.
Gretchen Rubin: Stipple is like when you're dabbing. So it's in the dapple.
Lainie Rowell: It's in the family.
Gretchen Rubin: Dusted, yeah. So, yeah. Stipple. Just learned that word.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, my goodness. And I mean, I just was so inspired by you. I actually not to be like a stalker, but in washi tape on the side it says inspired by Gretchen Rubin.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, well thank you. I appreciate that gold star.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And then sometimes I like to put Just funny things that I want to make sure, like, hey, could I ever work this into, like, "don't threaten me with a good time" or "over your skis". So sometimes it's words, sometimes it's more like sayings. But it's just kind of like, when I'm stuck and I need some inspiration, what are some words or some sayings that will get me excited to write?
Gretchen Rubin: I love it. I love it.
Lainie Rowell: There's so many things we could talk about. We're definitely going to talk about your new book, Secrets of Adulthood. And I do want to start with, how did a routine eye exam turn into Life in Five Senses?
Very powerful book for me.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh. Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. Oh gosh. I loved writing Life in Five Senses. Yeah, so I woke up with a case of pink eye and you know, usually pink eye goes away on its own but this was a very bad case pink eye so I went to the eye doctor and he checked me out and set me on my way and just as I was leaving the office he said well Be sure you don't miss your regular checkup because as you know, you're more at risk for losing your vision and I was like No, I was not aware of that.
What are you talking about? And he said, yeah, you're extremely nearsighted, which I am. And so you're at much higher risk for having a detached retina. And if that happens, that can cost you your vision. So we would want to catch that right away. And I have a friend who lost some of his vision to a detached retina.
So that, to me, felt like a threat that I could really understand. And so I walked out of his office and I live in New York City, so I had walked to there and I was getting ready to walk home. And I just realized, you know, on the one hand, of course, I could still have a rich, happy life, even if I lost one of my senses.
But I also realized how much I love my sense of sight and my senses. And yet I just completely take them for granted. Like I'm out there, I'm looking at the landscape around me, the city landscape that I love so much. And I think I did not notice one thing on my way here. I'm just stuck in my head. I am like, you know, I'll be on the most beautiful beach at sunset and I'm thinking about how to rewrite a paragraph in my head. And yet all of this beautiful world is happening. And as I started walking home, it was like everything in my head got turned up to 11. Like I could hear every, every sound, I could smell every smell, and New York City is quite smelly. Like, I could feel, the ground under my feet, and the wind everything just felt so vivid and alive.
It was like psychedelic. But then as I got to my apartment door, I thought, this is happening all the time. I just stopped paying any attention to it, and I thought, okay. For me, research is me search, and I always write the book that I need to read. That's my approach, and I thought, okay, I really have to understand my five senses.
And, oh my gosh, that was just a joy to explore that subject.
Lainie Rowell: Indulge me please, I want to tell you why, there's a couple reasons why this book is very important to me. One is, I can very much relate. So hearing is an issue in my family. So I'm deaf in my right ear and it's been like my whole life.
I've struggled to hear, which, you know, it's so amazing how you can go your whole life with a sense and not realize how much you would miss it if it was gone, like how isolating it could be to be deaf and not be able to participate in conversations the way that other people can, or to lose your vision, not be able to see those things.
And like you said, you can still lead a full life, but it's just so easy to take these things for granted. So that's one reason. I mean, I just, I so connected to that example of what if you lost your vision or what if you lost your hearing? So that was really powerful to me.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah. Well, I'm sorry to hear that.
Were you just born with it or did it without it or did it, was it like a condition?
Lainie Rowell: It's interesting because my dad was a pilot for 30 plus years. So he is very hard of hearing because of being on those jets. So it's not like it's hereditary, but we both have significant hearing loss.
I'm so happy for this. I like kissed this year. Thank you. Mm-hmm . Yes. And, and there's some friends who are very accommodating at dinner parties that mm-hmm . They know to seat me with no one on my right.
Gretchen Rubin: Right? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lainie Rowell: But Life In Five Senses one of the other reasons is 'cause gratitude is something that I write and speak about.
It's so profoundly important to me. And I actually think your example of the eye exam... there's one of my favorite practices called counterfactual thinking. Or mental subtraction, where you actually, as a gratitude practice, go through and think about something important, or someone important, remove that thing, or that person, and imagine your life without it.
So, to me, it was almost like Life in Five senses was kind of your counterfactual thinking practice.
Gretchen Rubin: No, absolutely. It's one of the things about human nature is that we often don't appreciate something until we lose it, or until we are threatened with the loss of it. So it's a very sound practice to say, Well, I don't have to wait.
That's kind of what I did with life of my senses. I don't have to wait until these things are really like slipping away from me. I can appreciate them now. So I think that's that's a great. That's a great practice.
Lainie Rowell: I love Life in Five Senses. I mean, I just want people to go read it.
If they haven't already, but is there anything from that that you just really want to share now that it's been out for like a couple of years? Right?
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's a really fun thing. So if you go to my site, GretchenRubin.Com and you go to the quiz, so just go to GretchenRubin.com/quiz.
There's a quiz there called What's Your Neglected Sense? And I created this once the book sort of went out into the world because what I found is for me, and also for a lot of other people, there's some senses that we really enjoy and like one or two that we neglect. So the one that we enjoy, like we explore, we use it to have adventures, we use it to connect with other people, like we take great joy in it.
But then there's ones where you're like, You're kind of more aware of the negative than the positive. You're not trying to learn new things or use it to connect with other people. And so it's really helpful to take this quiz and learn your neglected sense, because then you have a lot of low hanging fruit.
So like for me, surprisingly, because it's very popular with a lot of people, my neglected sense is taste. Like I'm not really a foodie. Like, I eat the same food every day. I'm kind of a picky eater. I don't eat sugar. So there's a lot of food that I just like don't eat at all. And probably the reason why it was easy for me to give up sugar is because I'm not much of a foodie, but even for someone like me, I did all these things to kind of like deepen my enjoyment and appreciation for my sense of taste.
And it added so much to my life. I had all these great adventures and, and, and now I just appreciate it so much. And so what I would just say to your point, like thinking about how much you gain from these and then, at least in the Western tradition, there's a lot of people kind of treat scent as kind of, kind of a bonus thing.
Like it doesn't really matter. It's kind of nice to have. But it actually, if you lose your sense of smell, it really affects your sense of well being. And sadly, because of COVID, I think people are much more aware and much more grateful for their sense of smell than they were before when they just always had it and always took it for granted.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and if you're someone like me who gets allergies, I feel like I'm sharing a lot of ailments today, but if you lose your sense for that, you start to realize how important it is for taste.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, well, it's absolutely connected to taste. There's some fun exercises. I talk in the book, how you can explore that.
Because yeah, you don't realize how much the taste is, is the smell.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and I love the idea of a signature scent and you just did such a beautiful job. By the way, you mentioned your website. This is like Disneyland, like go the website.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, aren't you nice to say?
Lainie Rowell: So it is so fun. I love going to your website 'cause there is so many resources. It's article, activities and I love,
Gretchen Rubin: there's a lot there. Yes,
Lainie Rowell: there's a lot. GretchenRubin.com/quiz.
Gretchen Rubin: Or just do Gretchen Rubin quiz. Just search for that.
Lainie Rowell: There's a lot of quizzes.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, but the Neglected Sense quiz is what is really fun because it's really cool the way it comes up. The most popular quiz is the Four Tendencies quiz. Are you in a upholder, questioner, obliger or rebel? That's my most popular. I think that's the biggest, like, aha that people get is from that, but you know, the neglected sense is super fun.
And I have other ones too. I love a quiz because I love self knowledge and self knowledge is so hard. Sometimes we need help getting self knowledge.
Lainie Rowell: And I want to make sure we get to Secrets of Adulthood, but if you do want to talk about the Four Tendencies, I will say I am an upholder.
Gretchen Rubin: Okay.
Lainie Rowell: I did take the test. I lean obliger.
Gretchen Rubin: Okay, good to know.
Lainie Rowell: But the Four Tendencies, what is that framework helpful for?
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, I'll do the nutshell version. Cause again, you can take the quiz and then you'll get a report that tells you what you are and kind of what it means, but it's so obvious.
Once, you know, these, they are very obvious. And so a lot of people don't even need to take the quiz. They know what they are already. We can do the Game of Thrones characters. We can do The Office. Better Call Saul. They're everywhere. Once you know what to look for. So what it looks at is a very narrow but very significant aspect of your personality.
So it looks at how you respond to expectations. And there are two kinds of expectations. Outer expectations, like a work deadline. And inner expectations, like your own desire to have a gratitude journal. So depending on whether you meet or resist outer and inner expectations. That's what makes you an upholder, like the two of us, a questioner, an obliger, or a rebel.
So upholders are people who readily meet outer and inner expectations. They meet the work deadline. They keep the gratitude journal without much fuss. So their motto is discipline is my freedom. They tend to be really good at like to do lists and calendars and execution. They don't need a lot of monitoring.
Then there are questioners and questioners are people who need to know that something makes sense. They need justifications, rationale. They tend to love to customize. They're often told that they ask too many questions. If something makes sense to them, they will do it no problem. So they're making everything an inner expectation, but if it fails their their in their standard, they will resist.
Yeah. So their motto is, I'll comply if you convince me why, then we come to the biggest group. For both men and women, the most number of people are obligers and obligers readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. So these are people who say things like, well, why is it that I can always keep my promises to other people, but I can't keep my promises to myself?
Or I never like drop a ball at work, but when I come home, I can't get anything done for myself. The solution for obligers is very straightforward. They need outer accountability, even to meet an inner expectation. So, if they want to exercise more, they need to work out with a trainer, or work out with a friend who's annoyed that they don't show up, or they raise money for a charity, or they take their dog for a run who's so disappointed if she doesn't get to go for a run.
Think of your duty to be a role model for somebody else. There's a million ways to create outer accountability, but that is necessary for obligers. They can't do self care, or putting themselves first, or making themselves a priority. They need outer accountability. And then finally, the smallest group.
The rebel. And rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. They want to do what they want to do, in their own way, in their own time. They can do anything they want to do, but if you ask or tell them to do something, they're very likely to resist. And typically, they don't tell themselves what to do.
Like, they don't tell themselves they're going to go to a 10am woodworking class on Saturday because they think, I don't know what I'm going to want to do on Saturday morning and just the idea that somebody's going to ask me to show up is going to bug me. So their motto is, you can't make me, and neither can I.
So those are the four. And like you say, people can kind of tip one way or another. You're sort of a main one, but you have a little bit of a flavor of another one. But yeah, you and I are upholders and we're a small group.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I'm honored to be in the same group with you. I will say I do love a good commitment device if that obliger side of me needs some, some public or, you know, a partner to say, like, I said, I would do this.
I'm going to get this writing done. I'm going to get this book done. That's pretty helpful too, especially for the longer term ones.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah.
I think any, a lot of people find accountability helpful. It's the question of like, do you need accountability in order to act? Because the obligers, they really don't do, they don't really don't meet expectations unless there's some form of outer accountability.
Lainie Rowell: I don't want to let myself down either. So I was surprised. I thought I was going to come up an obliger, but I'm happy.
Gretchen Rubin: They're all good. They all, they're all include people who are wildly successful and also people who struggle. It's just a question of sort of knowing your own strengths and weaknesses and harnessing that work.
Lainie Rowell: And seeing it in others and being able to kind of,
Gretchen Rubin: it's huge. My husband's a questioner and now it's solved so many conflicts now that I know that about him and about me.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, my 11 year old's a questioner and it's really helped me kind of frame things in a different way.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
Lainie Rowell: Okay. I can't wait any longer. We got to talk about Secrets of Adulthood.
Gretchen Rubin: Yay. Yes.
Lainie Rowell: I'm so excited. It's one of my favorite things about interviewing people is that I sometimes get the book before it's out. And so, major thanks to your team. Molly made sure I got a copy and I got to read it. By the time this comes out, it's out.
So people should just run to Amazon or their favorite bookstore, wherever they get their books, and grab their copy. And this is a book that really delves into aphorisms.
Gretchen Rubin: Mm hmm.
Lainie Rowell: And it's not a word we hear very often,
what is an aphorism?
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, well, that's why I didn't use the word aphorism in the title or the subtitle, because I'm like, I don't think most people know what that is.
So A Secret of Adulthood, you know, these are sort of very short, one sentence, two sentence, kind of reflections of of like lessons I've learned the hard way through life, through time and experience, and I try to express myself with aphorism. So an aphorism is kind of a literary form.
Where a writer has expressed an insight or an observation about human nature, and typically it's in a kind of elevated, elegant way, often there might be paradox or something about it that makes it sort of stand on its own, or kind of particularly memorable. And of course, this is what I aspire to with my book.
Like, was every one of my aphorisms elegant and surprising? I don't know. I tried. But that is the idea with an aphorism. And an aphorism is different from a proverb. So a proverb is a piece of folk wisdom. So, we've all heard, like, You're only as happy as your least happy child, or you can't push a rope, or a stumble may prevent a fall.
These are proverbs in that they have, they're just folk wisdom. These are just things that we repeat to each other. They're extremely helpful and illuminating often, but they're not ascribed to a particular person. But if I said to you people who love to eat are the best kind of people I did not say that.
Julia Child said that. So that's an aphorism because that isn't, that's an observation that we can ascribe to Julia Child, but it's sort of this one line thing. And what I love about aphorisms, it's often a question of like, do you agree or disagree? Well, I disagree with that as somebody who doesn't love to eat particularly, I'm like, Well, I don't agree, but Julia Child, that's what Julia Child said.
So that's part of the fun of aphorisms is deciding whether, what you think.
Lainie Rowell: I do love that. I really do lean into the part of like, well, do I actually think that?
Gretchen Rubin: Right? Like one of them that I can imagine people not agreeing with perhaps is we care for many people we don't particularly care for.
Lainie Rowell: Right.
Gretchen Rubin: Do I care for people that I don't particularly care for? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. You know, it's kind of concise enough that you can sort of think it through what your own thoughts are. And in the back of the book, there's room for people to write their own secrets of adulthood because I think a lot of us have these.
And it's very satisfying to write them down and kind of have a repository for them.
Lainie Rowell: I love that. And this isn't a traditional book. Now, I kind of anticipate knowing you and that you are so good at honoring that there's no one way to do anything. But how do you envision people using this book?
Like, do you expect them to read it front to back? Jump around? Like, what are you thinking?
Gretchen Rubin: Well, it's funny, because as somebody who loves aphorisms, I definitely will buy a book of aphorisms and read it from beginning to end, but I do not think that that is what most people will do. And the thing about aphorisms that's interesting is, like, they're very short, but they're very dense.
And you kind of want to just think about them, so I could imagine people just like leaving it lying around and they just sort of flip it open and just see what they get, or it is divided into subjects. So like one of them is confronting life's dilemmas. And so there's a lot in there about sort of making choices, making decisions.
And so maybe if you're, if you're facing a big decision, like I can't decide whether to move for this new job, or I can't decide whether to get a dog or, or whatever it might be, you might look there because, or maybe you're procrastinating a lot and you're like, Hmm, I need a little, just like with your muse machine, a word might like spark a thought or give me a moment of clarity.
You might look at it like that, but I have to say my sense is that a lot of people buy these for people who are graduating or starting a new job. It's kind of like, here you go. And I think we all have this desire to like save young people from learning all, you know, suffering through all the lessons that we learned the hard way.
So it's kind of like, maybe this will make your life easier. So I do, I think that for a lot of people, it is sort of a new stage of life. thing, or maybe somebody like an empty nest, or getting a new job, or retiring, kind of going through a big transition.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I tell you, I already pre ordered my hard copy, even though I have a digital copy, I wanted a physical copy, because what really it felt like to me is, I have on my nightstand, in addition to my Muse Machine, my Rolodex, because that's where I do my journaling.
So on my nightstand, I've got a few different books that, well, I actually have an obscene amount of books. It's a lot. And so I've got like The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes. You see, I love a teaching story too. So I, I know that book very well.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And I've got the Maxwell Daily Reader.
I've got Tolstoy's A Calendar of Daily Wisdom.
Gretchen Rubin: I love Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom. Nobody ever talks about that book.
Lainie Rowell: I have it. I think that's a great one, especially because I don't always agree with them.
Gretchen Rubin: No, absolutely not. But Tolstoy himself is very, very proud of that.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, yeah, and so I am putting your book, Secrets of Adulthood, next to those because I choose them because I look through them.
They're not ones that I read cover to cover, they're ones that I pull out and just read a little bit to inspire journaling if I don't have anything readily that I really want to write about. So it's kind of like I gratitude, I do something that kind of stretches my thinking. So,
Gretchen Rubin: well, there is, there is a proverb that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
And I do think that sometimes like we're sort of ready for a lesson, but we need something to give us that spark. And so just sort of opening yourself up and exposing yourself can then sometimes you're like, then you get that big feeling of insight.
Lainie Rowell: I'm super excited. So I highlighted some of my favorites.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, I want to hear. This is, I love all of them, but I'm so curious, like, what are the ones that resonate with other people? I'm so curious.
Lainie Rowell: So let me tell you, I love them all too, but I will say that I think certain ones, like you were saying, hit at certain times. Now, I have an aphorism that I say, and I'd love your thoughts on it, but first I wanted to share some of my favorites.
So " nothing takes us out of ourselves more than being of use." I think that's a really good one, just because I think it's real easy to live in our heads and be a little too focused on what's happening in our world. So whether that's just doing your work or volunteering or whatever it is, that one hit hard.
I'm going to tell you, I don't think I'm a huge procrastinator, but the procrastination section is. Well lit up with highlights.
Gretchen Rubin: Okay, good, good, good. Yes. I like that section too. Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: No, "nothing is more exhausting than the task that's never started." Another one, "what can be done at any time is often done at no time."
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, yes.
Lainie Rowell: That one strongly resonated with me with gratitude.
Gretchen Rubin: Exactly.
Lainie Rowell: Because I feel like it's so often.
Gretchen Rubin: Exactly.
Lainie Rowell: It takes like no time. We can do it any time, but we just feel like we'll do it later.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: Some other time I'm gonna say things. Right. Yeah.
Gretchen Rubin: I'll think about how much air conditioning has done for my life some other day.
I don't know. I don't need to think about that right now. Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: Okay. And then this one always a writer. Did this one hit hard?
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, I can. I predict which one you're going to read.
I bet you're going to say working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, I have that one highlighted.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, that's not the one you're thinking of.
What are you thinking of?
Lainie Rowell: "Perfectionism is driven not by high standards, but by anxiety."
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. That's, yeah, that's helpful, too.
Lainie Rowell: Because it's just that once you put writing out into the world, it's like, that's why I have this anxiety about, is it good enough? Is it good enough?
And I just, I'm getting something published in a, publication that I'm so proud to be a part of. And I just could not finish this. I spent way too much time on this article because I was just so like, it has to be perfect. But that was about anxiety because I'm so worried that they won't like it enough or no one will like it enough.
And so that one. Yeah.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah. Because I think sometimes people think like, well, if I want to feel less anxious, I should lower my standards, but I don't want to lower my standards where in fact, it's like, it's not really about the standards. It's about your anxiety about being judged.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. So that to me was very empowering.
Very...
Gretchen Rubin: oh, I'm glad to hear that.
Lainie Rowell: This is why I need to have this on my nightstand.
Gretchen Rubin: I love being in the pantheon on the nightstand. That is the highest praise.
Lainie Rowell: It is well deserved. So, there's others, but I just really want people to go grab it.
Well, I have one I want to share with you. If you're open to one of mine. And you can maybe help me make it better. And then I just want to hear about your process. Like, how you do this. One that I say that I believe, like, these are things that I think you would shout from rooftops or, you know, jump on a table and say, and the one that I say a lot is the best way to change someone else's behavior is to change our own behavior first.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, and I have an aphorism that's very much like that, which is we can't change other people, but when we change, a relationship changes, so by changing ourselves, sometimes we change others, or something like that. Which is a great example of, A lot of times with an aphorism, many, many people may have expressed kind of the same idea.
But what's different is that each of us has our own particular phrasing and put our own emphasis on it, uses a different vocabulary. And a lot of times, you know, some ideas are just too important to be new. And so, like, you're not going to be the first one to say, like, constraints spark creativity.
Like, I probably have 15 aphorisms where somebody has made some kind of observation saying, basically, constraints spark creativity. But different people can say it in different ways, and it will resonate with people differently in a fresh way. And, so , yeah, I think that's great. I love that aphorism, and I agree with that aphorism.
Lainie Rowell: Well, thank you. And I struggle with the best way to change someone else's behavior, because it's actually like, you really can't ever change someone's behavior.
Gretchen Rubin: This is the thing with aphorisms. As you start getting into this, is it always? Is it sometimes?
Like, is it? Yeah. It's tricky. It's tricky to be short.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah. Goes back to the aphorism about perfectionism, right?
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: So could you tell a little bit about your process for creating these aphorisms? And I know some of them are over time, but do you ever like just sit down and be like, I'm going to crank one out on this topic?
Or how does your process work for you?
Gretchen Rubin: Well, ever since I wrote, Maybe I was working on a biography of Winston Churchill, so I wrote a book on Winston Churchill, and of course, he's this just extraordinary writer, and he would often have these kind of one liners, and that got me sort of focused on the power of kind of like the mic drop sentence, where you just sort of say something like, you know give us the tools and we will finish the job.
And I could see the power in that. And then as I was writing, and I was writing about happiness, which is a lot of times kind of abstract and confusing, I would always try to, try to push myself to say, like, can I really distill a big idea very succinctly? And I, you know, I was a lawyer, and so I have so many memories of, like, long, turgid, complicated, technocratic language.
So I was like, can I just say things as clearly as possible. And of course, here's another aphorism. This one from Lytton Strachey, the true test of a man's intelligence is his ability to make a summary. And so often like the way for me to realize that I truly understood an idea was, can I convey it in a single sentence?
And there was something very intellectually and creatively satisfying about really trying to get something into that sentence. So I started pushing myself to do that in my writing and then I started writing them even outside of like something that like, like I'm writing a book about habit change better than before.
Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life. Okay. That's an aphorism, but then I'd have ones that weren't connected to a book. So then I started keeping a collection of them. And then, and some of them are just observations to like, the tulip is an empty flower. I believe that. I think that's kind of interesting, but it's not really a secret of adulthood.
It's just an observation. So for this book, I went through that giant collection and really pulled out the ones where I thought that there was kind of a lesson to be learned and applied or like something that is the Secret of Adulthood. But what's funny is I mentioned to a couple of people like, oh, and then I have all my dark aphorisms, which are all my bleak Secrets of Adulthood and people are like, I want to read that and I'm like, I don't want you.
That's like dark and be like, no, I want that. That's the negativity bias. Right? Like everybody's like, I want the dark one and I have an aphorism about if something's secret, like everybody wants to know the thing that's kept secret. So by saying like, Oh, I left these out. Now people are like, Ooh, I want the secret chapter.
So maybe I'll release that another time. But I mean, this was going on for years and years and years. And then I've collected them from other people, like Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, Warren Buffet. My favorite is Marie von Eben Eschenbach, who nobody talks about anymore, but she's my favorite aphorist, perhaps.
Sarah Munguso is probably the best contemporary aphorist that I've come across. So I have huge collections. So, yeah, this is something that I was working on kind of as a side project for years until I decided, like, okay, now it's time to make this into an actual book.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, it's not typically your process to sit down and be like, now I'm going to write 20 aphorisms because that would be incredibly hard, right?
Gretchen Rubin: You have to have an observation but on my podcast, happier with Gretchen Rubin, every Monday I do a little happier, which is like a two to four minute story usually. And it's usually like a teaching story. So it's kind of like, you know, how Aesop's fables have sort of a moral. These are kind of like that.
And so I am very much in that habit of sort of thinking of something and then trying to distill it. But you can't sort of sit down and write them. Something has to happen or I remember something like sometimes it's even something like a joke. A lot of teaching stories are jokes or riddles or kind of folktales or whatever.
And that's how I generate them. But no, I can't like sit down and think like, let me write something insightful about work. I wouldn't be able to think of anything.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I hear you. You need that inspiration. You need to be struck by something.
Gretchen Rubin: You need to be struck by something, right.
Now, it is true, though, that I have to, and remind myself, like, I send myself emails all the time, and it'll be like, just like one or two words, because I'm trying to remember some story that I heard. So I'll just email me something like, penguin, or something like Better Call Saul, and then there's some story connected with it that I, or some lesson that I want to explore.
Lainie Rowell: That's amazing. okay. That was so fun. I hope people get Secrets of Adulthood and you can do like me, keep it on your nightstand.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, exactly.
Lainie Rowell: I could talk to you for hours, but I have to let you go, so I'm just going to ask you a couple more questions.
What is something that you can't share enough, or you haven't had a chance to share before? Like, this is another, like, I'd shout this from the rooftops, is there something that you just really want people to know that we haven't had a chance to talk.
Gretchen Rubin: The one thing I would shout from the rooftop is there is no one right way to make your life happier, healthier, more productive, more creative.
There's no most efficient way. There's no best way. There's no magic one size fits all solution. We each have to figure out what's going to work for us. You know, we can all get there, but we might need to take very different paths like a morning person and a night person might set up their schedules completely differently. An abundance lover and a simplicity lover might have a completely different design of their home office, but they can both get things done You know, they can both be creative and productive and my aphorism for this I have several aphorisms for this but one of them is the bird the bee and the bat all fly but they use different kinds of wings.
Lainie Rowell: Ooh, I love that.
Gretchen, this is so cool. I'm so excited to get this out there. Before I let you go, what are the best ways for people to connect with you in your work?
If they're not already, they definitely need to be listening to your podcast, go to your website, but what's all the ways that you want people to connect with you?
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah I have a weekly podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where I talk about sort of practical suggestions for making life happier, healthier, more productive, more creative.
My co host is my sister, who's a TV writer in Hollywood, so that's super fun. And then every week I also have those little teaching stories that I mentioned. So that's Happier with Gretchen Rubin. You can go to my website, GretchenRubin. com. As you said, there are so many resources, there are so many things there.
There's the four tendencies quiz, the neglected sense quiz, the habits for happiness quiz, if you want to know what habit you should do right now. For you personally to make your life happier. That's there. All kinds of stuff is there. I'm on all the social, not all of them. I'm on many social media platforms, just Gretchen Rubin.
And I love to connect with listeners and readers there. And I have a weekly newsletter called Five Things Making Me Happy. And this is just super fun. It's a free weekly news newsletter where I just share five things making me happy. So that's just a fun place to put things that I just think are delightful. So I love to connect with people. I love insights, observations, resources. Like my next big project is going to be about the empty nest phase, which I am rebranding as open door. Anybody got any resources for that? I'm especially interested because I'm just getting ready like to go deep on that subject.
But I love hearing anything about habits, happiness, human nature, love to connect with people.
Lainie Rowell: I am so happy to have this opportunity to connect with you here today. I am a huge fan, I think that came through, and I really want people to connect with you in all the ways. I subscribe to the newsletter, you definitely want to do that, and then just go block out on your calendar some time and go get lost on Gretchen's website. There's so many good resources. You don't want to miss it.
Gretchen Rubin: I love that. Lainie. I feel like we could talk all day. We're interested in all the same subjects.
Lainie Rowell: I mean, we could be friends, my friend. Okay. I know I have to let you go, but thank you all for listening. And Gretchen, thank you for being here.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, thank you. I so appreciated it.
