Gretchen Rubin on Creating Change

Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. We discuss happiness at length in today’s conversation, but we also discuss frameworks, and I think you’re going to find right off the bat that Gretchen sees things in terms of frameworks, in terms of theory. But she’s also known for her ability to convey complex ideas from science, to literature, to stories from her own life, with levity and clarity. So, we bring her into this conversation and we actually bring myself in to today’s conversation, and I think that will make it really come to life. She’s a writer, and she’s going to articulate how much she loves writing and how big of an impact writing has made on her life and how she sees the world. She’s the author of many bestselling books, such as The Happiness Project, Better than Before, and The Four Tendencies, which has sold millions of copies in more than 30 languages. Her most recent book, which we reference in today’s conversation, is Life in 5 Senses. She’s also the host of the popular podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin and the founder of the award-winning “Happier” app, which helps people track their happiness-boosting habits. She’s been interviewed by Oprah, she’s spent time with Daniel Kahneman, she’s walked arm-in-arm with the Dalai Lama, and her work has been reported on in a medical journal (which eventually got written up in The New Yorker). So, she’s been in all kinds of interesting spaces; she’s also been an answer on Jeopardy, which is a claim to fame for her. I think this conversation will give you a sense of yourself, which is what I really appreciate about it; it’ll make you think about yourself and hopefully make you a little more aware of how you show up for you and for others.

Gretchen had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“If we want to make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, more creative, one of the things we need to figure out is how to make habits” (6:00).

“Depending on whether we meet or resist outer and inner expectations, that’s what makes us an upholder, a questioner, an obliger, or a rebel” (7:50).

“Upholders are people who readily meet both outer and inner expectations” (8:00).

“Questioners question all expectations; they’ll do something if they think it makes sense” (10:25).

“Obliger is the biggest tendency, for both men and women” (16:00).

“Obligers are people who readily meet outer accountability, but they struggle to meet inner accountability” (16:10).

“If you want to meet an inner expectation as an obliger, you need to create a system of outer accountability” (16:25).

“The way to keep a promise to yourself is to make a promise to someone else” (16:55).

“Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike” (17:35).

“From the practical comes the transcendent” (19:55).

“My behavior follows from my identity” (22:10).

“Allow rebel children to face the consequences of their actions; that is how a rebel learns” (23:20).

“Sometimes these little adjustments in communication can have massive consequences in behavior” (25:05).

“Once you understand the mechanism of what’s going on, it’s a lot easier to address it” (28:10).

“For many people, there’s a sense that they kind of neglect” (30:50).

“Whatever you want to achieve in your life, even if they’re contradictory, the five senses can help you” (35:50).

“I really get tremendous satisfaction out of just being able to explore ideas in all these different ways and exercise my creativity in a lot of different ways” (40:40).

“We want to accept ourselves and also expect more from ourselves” (44:25).

“I think the word motivation is very complicated” (46:25).

“You can’t expect to be motivated by motivation” (47:30).

“I never define happiness” (1:04:45).

“We all can decide for ourselves what it means to be happy” (1:05:00).

“Negative emotions have a very important part to play” (1:06:05).

“If you get interested in something, really try to become a minor expert” (1:15:30).

“The more you know, the more questions you have” (1:16:05).

Additionally, you can find everything you need to know about Gretchen and connect with her on her website, as well as following her on all social media platforms @GretchenRubin. I’d also highly encourage you to check out Gretchen’s podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, wherever you consume your podcasts.

Thank you so much to Gretchen for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.