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Hello, we're here for more Happier, a podcast where we get happier.
It's the weekend. It's a looser vibe. Today, we're sharing a conversation I had on 10% Happier, the terrific podcast hosted by my old friend, Dan Harris. author, longtime ABC News anchor, and meditation expert.
We cover a lot in this episode. how to make decisions when you're stuck, what to notice when something keeps nagging at you, and a small mindset shift that can strengthen your relationships.
If you ever feel like you know what makes you happier, but forget to act on it, this conversation is for you.
Hope you enjoy it. This is the 10% Happier podcast of Dan Harris.
Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing?
I say this all the time, but it bears repeating.
One of the hardest parts about self-improvement or getting happier or spiritual growth, whatever you want to call it, one of the hardest parts is remembering to do all the smart shit you hear about on podcasts or read about in books, remembering to actually do all that stuff.
Because... We listen to a podcast or we watch a great video or we read a great book.
And then we go back into our lives and we're just drifting along on the very powerful habit patterns.
I suspect you might relate to this. You get your mind blown by a scintillating conversation or a fascinating read.
But then you get sucked back into the habit patterns of daily life and boom, the wisdom evaporates.
In my experience, one of the best ways to counteract this is to have memorable little phrases that capture the wisdom and pop it into your mind and just at the moment when you need it.
This is a technique that my longtime meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, uses.
He has these little catchphrases like dead end or is this useful?
And they become earworms in the most positive sense of that term.
They arise in my mind often at exactly the right moment.
So now comes my old friend, Gretchen Rubin, who's an author and podcaster and entrepreneur, and she's been on the show a million times.
And she's got a new book filled with her own aphorisms.
In other words, little happiness inducing missiles that you can use in all aspects of your life.
When you're confronting a dilemma, when you're dealing with a difficult person, when you're experiencing drift or indecision.
Long way of saying brace yourself for an avalanche of practical advice. and profound wisdom from my friend Gretchen.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Gretchen, she's the host of a podcast called Happier and she's the author of many many books including her newest which is called the secrets of adulthood In this conversation, we talk about what exactly an aphorism is and why it can be so useful, how to make decisions that lead to a quote unquote bigger life. why you should pay special attention to anything you lie about or hide the dangers of being why offering emotional validation can often be more powerful than offering solutions. why you should pay close attention when people repeat themselves over and over, and much more.
Just to say before we dive in, mindfulness and meditation can be great ways to help you figure out how to proceed when you're at a crossroads and have a big decision to make.
And if you want to get better at that, we've got a guided meditation specifically tailored to this episode.
And it comes from our teacher of the month, Kyra Jewel Lingo.
It's only available to paying subscribers over at danharris.com.
As you may know, we're now providing bespoke meditations for all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes.
And if you sign up at Dan Harris dot com.
You'll get those and you'll get ad free versions of the show and live video sessions with me where we meditate together and I take your questions.
So sign up, join the party, danharris.com.
We'll get started with Gretchen Rubin right after this.
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Gretch, you know that I am the biggest fan of Audible.
I absolutely love audiobooks. Audible has thousands of titles.
I love a good romance. And they have everything from like the modern steamy stuff to historical.
I love listening to the OG romance, Pride and Prejudice.
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Audible's romance collection has something to satisfy every side of you.
When it comes down to what romance you're into, you can't be pinned down, and here's your invitation to have it all.
Hear modern rom-coms from authors like Lily Chu and Allie Hazelwood, the latest Romantasy series from Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yaros, and Regency favorites like Bridgerton and Outlander, plus all the really steamy stuff.
Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash happier.
Gretchen Rubin, welcome back to the show.
I'm so happy to be talking to you, Dan. It's always so fun.
The feeling is mutual. I think... I don't know that this is true, but I think you may be the person who's been on this show the most.
Really? That's exciting. If it's not you, you're like tied with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein or something like that.
And I believe you may have been my second guest or third guest of all time at the beginning.
Wow. You've been in this business a long time, Dan.
Well, we both have. We both have, yeah. Okay, well, congratulations on your new book.
I'm going to ask you a really basic question to start here.
What is an aphorism? Well, yeah, the book is called Secrets of Adulthood because nobody knows what an aphorism is.
So an aphorism is a brief... like a sentence or two, general insight about human nature that is attributed to a person.
So we all know about proverbs like... When the student is ready, the teacher appears, or you can't push a rope, or a stumble may prevent a fall.
That's folk wisdom that we pass around. With an aphorism, you know that Mark Twain said it or Oscar Wilde said it or Dolly Parton said it or Montaigne said it.
It's something that's attributed to a particular person.
And so I wanted to write my own. We'll get into your aphorisms and why you wanted to write them.
As a... Modality for living life better.
Why are aphorisms useful? Well, I think because they're concise, they stay in the brain better, and they kind of clarify our thinking because they are so crystallized, they're so condensed.
You know, it's hard to have a thought. And to say it very concisely, you really have to get that clarity.
And then it's just easy. easier to remember.
It runs through your mind. And maybe you disagree with an aphorism.
Often that's the fun of an aphorism is if you disagree with it, even that brings more clarity to your thinking.
Many famous aphorisms are from the Buddha or attributed to because there is something like when something is expressed very concisely, it lands harder in our minds.
It sticks with us better, influences our thoughts better.
I completely agree. I'm going to give you a somewhat long response here, but My meditation teacher, a guy you know, Joseph Goldstein, teaches in phrases or he calls them phrases, but they are aphorisms. some of them his, some of them ones that he has appropriated from others, as he once said to me when I was... sheepishly confessing to stealing a lot of stuff from him in my own public utterances, he said, we're part of a lineage of thieves.
Ah, nice. Which is a very nice framing. And I find that with Joseph's phrases, again, either of his own coinage or those he has borrowed from others, they actually surface in my mind at the exact right moment all the time.
And similarly with, as I've been reading yours and we're going to talk about them, they have been surfacing in my mind.
I'll give you an example. One of the aphorisms we're going to talk about is. how I don't have the exact verbiage in front of me, but the importance of when somebody recommends a TV show or sends a podcast to you,
You should watch or listen to it because it is really a form of not only respect, but of deepening a relationship.
And just this morning, a friend of mine.
Another meditation teacher, Sabine Selassie, sent me a two-hour podcast on the history of astrology, a subject in which I have very limited interest.
And at first I was like, I'm not going to listen to this.
But now, I'm going to listen to it because your aphorism surfaced just at that moment.
And I think we've all had that experience where you read a line or two or somebody says maybe even just an offhand remark or something.
You encounter an idea somewhere and all of a sudden it's like you see the world more clearly.
You understand how you should move forward.
Like it's so exciting when you have that.
And also when people recommend, when they're basically saying like, I'm thinking of you, I think this is something that you'll find interesting.
When we say, oh, okay, I'm going to follow up on that.
It is a way to deepen a relationship. Yeah.
Staying at a high level before we dive into your aphorisms that I specifically want to talk to you about.
One of the riffs I often go on, one of the raps I often find coming out of my mouth when I'm in front of a microphone is that I think, among the hardest, if not the hardest part of learning how to do life better or getting happier or whatever is remembering all the smart shit you read or heard And it seems like aphorisms go right at that.
They're like earworms in the best possible way.
That is a great analogy. Yes. It's like, how do you get that earworm so that it pops up and helps you to kind of move forward in the right way at the right time?
But I'm curious, what are some of the ones that have stuck with you from the teaching phrases?
Well, I'm laughing a little bit because, as you know, because we've talked about it a lot offline, I've gone through the last couple of years a very hard time. business separation.
I used to have a meditation app and I don't anymore.
And that's been very, very difficult. And I can because of my conditioning, probably as a or maybe as part of being a man, I can revert to kind of angry inner... diatribes, which are often frankly unfair because it took two to tango here.
It's not like this was somebody else's fault.
I was part of the situation. Right. One of them is dead end.
You know, I've gone down this road a million times.
There's nothing a dead end. So that truly is just a phrase.
Yeah. Dead end. Dead end. So it's not so much an aphorism.
And the other is love no matter what, which is going to sound a little bit like a kind of recipe for being a doormat.
But Joseph means it in the sense that You should understand that everybody is just acting out their conditioning, including you.
And if you came out of the womb... of whatever person you're disagreeing with currently, you would probably be doing the same shit they're doing because of the causes and conditions that are driving all of us All the time.
And so love as a form of understanding love no matter what.
So that's the other phrase I drop into my head.
Interesting. It is true that if you just run through your mind like an earworm, then you can remember it at the right time.
Because as you say, like so often, Even things that I really love to do or want to do, I'll just sort of forget about them for months on end.
I have all kinds of ways that I remind myself of my aims for myself because otherwise... Because you're like, how can you just forget?
And yet... You get distracted, it falls to the bottom of the list, and somehow months have passed and it's forgotten.
So yeah, I think that anything that helps us really get right back in focus is very useful.
Other than aphorisms, what are the other ways that you remind yourself of your aims?
Okay. I talk about this a lot on the Happier podcast with my sister, but every year, based on the year, just for fun, I'll make a list of 20 things I wanna do that year.
So it's called 25 for 25 or 26 for 26 or whatever.
So I'll make a list of things that I wanna do Because again, it's like, I might just forget to do it if I don't write it down.
And so then I'll check on that periodically, like halfway day, which is halfway through the year, it's like that's one of the times where I pull out my list and remind myself if something's important to me, I'll often do it every single day because I'm maybe strangely find it easier to do something every day than to do it some days.
So like in 2025, I'm doing water coloring every single day.
Except I did take two weeks off because we got a new puppy and I'm like, okay, this is just going to melt my brain.
I have to have taffy time. for the puppy, take two weeks off.
Because I'm like, if I don't do it every day, I'm afraid that it might just drift away from me because it's, You want to do it most days, but then you do it some days and then you do it sometimes and then you do it a few times and then you don't do it at all.
So for me, like doing something every day is a really good way to. make sure that it stays in the uppermost of my mind.
I often pick a theme for the year. One year it was salt and one year it was bigger.
And then this year it's door because my younger daughter left and And I'm kind of rebranding the empty nest phase as the open door phase.
And we also, my husband and I, as you know, Dan, bought a lake house And so we have a new door.
We have a new puppy. Like we have all this kind of coming and going.
And so my theme is door because door is a word of transition.
It's a word of hospitality and it's a word of leaving and returning.
Can we do a brief digression on Taffy, your new dog?
Oh, yeah, let's do it. Taffy, yes. My daughters manifested this dog.
I was happiness bullied, my husband and I, into getting this dog.
They just made this dog happen by sheer force of will.
But we love her and she is wonderful. Okay, well, so that's my question.
Your sister sometimes calls you a happiness bully.
Your sister, who's the co-host on your podcast, which is called Happier.
And you got happiness bullied into adopting Taffy.
Yes. Are you happier? It's interesting, right?
Because one of my secrets of adulthood is happiness doesn't always make us feel happy.
And one of the things about Taffy is it is a lot more work.
She's a puppy, so you kind of have to watch her every minute.
Both my husband and I had forgotten about this puppy phase where like, You can't just say like, oh, I'm going to be gone for nine hours today and you're going to be gone for nine hours too.
And we'll, you know, our older dog is very chill and he's got his whole routine worked out.
And so we have this feeling of being much more tied down than we did.
And you know, and there's all the frustration of training and it's never the dog's fault.
It's your fault. So we've been bickering a lot because he's like, you just keep telling me I'm doing it wrong.
You're being very critical. And I'm like, yes, that's true, but you are doing it wrong and all that kind of thing.
But my daughters, they did. They quoted my own words back to me.
They're like, oh, you know that it'll bring so much happiness into our life and it'll be the atmosphere of growth.
And it is true that all the research shows that having a dog tends to make people happier. also makes them healthier just because they even get more exercise.
I said to my daughters like, well, I really wanted to have like a big family adventure trip.
I don't know what that would even be this summer.
And my daughter said, having Taffy is a bigger adventure than any trip could ever be.
And I thought that that was really true.
Like having another dog, And she is so cute and we like send pictures back and forth and everybody's reporting on like the adorable things she did.
And I'm actually my next book is going to be about the empty nest, which, again, I'm calling the open door phase because I don't like empty nest.
But one of the things in it is like, do you have an atmosphere of growth in your life that things are growing or like building?
Yeah. And getting bigger, you have that feeling in your life.
And it is definitely true. It has added so much to our lives already.
Yeah. Just to get back to Taffy for a second, because it does lead to another aphorism.
And again, I'm going to screw up the exact verbiage here, but something about when you're at a crossroads, you say. make the decision that will lead to a bigger life.
Yes. And that is exactly what we did with Taffy because, well, originally with my dog Barnaby, I couldn't decide because my daughters were begging for a dog.
My husband was like, fine. But I was like, it seemed so perfectly balanced to me, the pros and the cons.
But then when I said, well, let's choose the bigger life. it was instantly clear to me that for our family, the bigger life was to get the dog.
And for another family, it might've been not to get a dog because you have more money, you have more freedom, you have more spontaneity.
Less responsibility. But for us, it was the bigger life.
And the same thing with Taffy. Again, my daughter's begging for the dog.
My husband was like, yeah, it could be fun to have a second dog.
And again, I was like, OK, but we already have one dog on and on and on.
And then I thought, well, let's choose a bigger life.
And again, the bigger life for our family was to get the dog.
Okay, so now we're in aphorism territory firmly.
So let's go through some of the aphorisms that I want to talk about from your book.
Just to say the book is divided up into five sections with different types of aphorisms for each section. the five R self relationships, making things happen, including at work, confronting life's dilemmas.
And then there's a whole section called Simple Secrets of Adulthood.
Those are the ones that are not transcendent, you know, are kind of like bigger ideas.
They're more like hacks because I can't resist a hack.
So the last section is just the hacks. I love a hack too, and we'll get to them.
Let's go in order though. Let's start with the self, cultivating the self.
I'm just going to read some of these often at random and get you to hold forth.
The first one that comes to mind is We should pay special attention to anything we lie about or try to hide.
Yes. OK, so a lot of these came out of specific moments in my life. either something like a conversation I had with somebody or something that I read or something that I saw that made a big impression.
And this one, I started thinking about this after a friend of mine said, we had little kids then and she said, oh, my pediatrician asked me how many hours a day my children watch TV.
And I lied. And the thing that's interesting about this is, like, she lied because her actions were in conflict with her values.
Because if she deeply believed, and some people believe, it doesn't matter.
Let them watch as much TV as they want, that's fine.
Because then she wouldn't have lied because there wouldn't have been any reason not to just tell the truth.
But she lied because there was something that was out of sync with her values.
Another guy I was talking to, he was saying, somebody said, how often do you ride your bike to work?
And he gave an answer. And then he said to me later, like, actually, I've only ridden my bike like once or twice or maybe three times.
I'm like, OK, probably that means once. But I lied because I really liked the idea of myself as riding the bike to work every day.
And so again, his actions didn't reflect his values.
And so the fact is like, when we catch ourselves in these lies, it's like, well, this is really good information because in some way, your values are not aligned with your actions.
And so one thing you can do is you could say like, well, this is just an idea of a fantasy self.
I have this fantasy of myself as somebody who's going to ride the bike every day.
And look, that's just not me. And give up the fantasy self.
Or you could say, look, I really want to be the kind of person who rides the bike to work every day.
So let me become that kind of person in the most simplest and straightforward way, which is by writing my bite to work every day.
You can do either thing, but because you're deceiving...
It's a tell that something's out of whack.
So you don't have to kick your own ass for noticing that you've been insufficiently truthful.
You should view it as a kind of divining rod pointing to attention in your life that requires attention.
It's information. Yeah. Here's another from what I believe to be the self section.
One day now will be a long time ago. I find that very reassuring.
And it's kind of back to the truth that you were talking about, Dan, that, like...
We want to care deeply, but we also want to not care.
It's like we want to recognize the urgencies of now But also to remember that now will be a long time ago.
It also makes me appreciate now more because I always want to say to myself, like, remember, whatever experience I'm experiencing in the moment feels like, well, this is just the way it's going to be forever.
But I know now because of time and experience that that is absolutely not true.
So I should really appreciate now. One of the things that I did as an exercise along these lines is I made something called The Album of Now, like two years ago now, I think.
I just went around and took pictures of now.
I took pictures of every room in our apartment.
I took pictures of what was in our fridge and pantry.
I took pictures of our street. I just wanted to have a picture of like, what do things look like now?
Because I realized now when I look back on pictures, say for my childhood, I'm not interested in seeing my family in front of the Eiffel Tower.
I'm like, what did my bedroom look like?
What did our kitchen look like? It's, you know, oh, I remember those shoes because it feels like now is boring.
Now is so ordinary. I could never forget now.
But one day now will be a long time ago.
And it's also reassuring because if like things seem really bad now, you're like, well, this too shall pass.
Yes. No, I love that. I sometimes think about if I woke up in my bed in seventh grade. would I know what to do?
What do you mean? Like, would I know what my life was like then and what time my classes were or how to talk to my parents or what?
Freaky Friday for yourself, right? Yes. Yes.
Can you inhabit your current life with that spirit to reanimate everything?
Yes, exactly. Well, it's interesting. I was talking to a friend of mine who's a novelist and she writes children's and young adult novels.
And I was like, When I read your books, I'm so much back in that way of thinking.
And how do you remember it? And she said, I remember it so well.
I can go back to any year of my life and I know what my worries were, who my friends were, what music I listened to, like what I wanted to do on the weekends.
Like she just has such a recall of that.
And I don't have that at all. I call that, are you a movie person or a snapshot person?
Because movie people have the ongoing movie, but I just have a few intensely vivid snapshots, but they stand out against kind of nothingness.
And so I'm always trying to find ways to help myself remember, to jog my memory and to like try to leave myself information for later so that I can remember the past.
And I really envy that because she could drop right back into seventh grade, but I feel like I'm with you.
I'm like, what's going on? It's confusing to think about what that would have been like.
You and I were speaking at some event together a couple months ago, and you said that whole movie versus snapshot thing.
It stuck with me because I'm definitely a snapshot person too.
Let me give you another. It might be an aphorism.
It might be a proverb because I actually don't know who said it, but it seems apropos to the one day now will be a long time ago aphorism from you.
These are the good old days. Yes, right.
Yes. I think that's a proverb because I also have heard many people say it, but that's true.
That's true. I had a neighbor say it to me just a couple years ago.
She's like, just remember, these are the good old days.
I'm like, yes, you're right. Coming up, Gretchen talks about why offering emotional validation can be more powerful than offering solutions when somebody is complaining to you about something.
A lesson I've learned the hard way. Why you should pay close attention when people repeat themselves over and over.
Another lesson I've learned the hard way. the argument against task sharing in romantic partnerships, and much more.
Every year on the Happier podcast, Elizabeth and I invite our listeners to join us on an annual challenge.
This year, we brought back the listener favorite, and it is Read 25 in 25 to read 25 minutes every day in 2025.
To take our reading challenge to the next level, Liz and I went on our first ever sister's reading retreat with no distraction, just stacks of books.
Gretch, I now want to do a reading retreat with Adam and Jack, but while we're away, our house would just be sitting there waiting.
What would be an even better move? Hosting our space on Airbnb.
Our house could be bringing in extra income I could put toward our next vacation or more books.
Whether it's a spare room, a backyard cottage, or your whole home while you're traveling, Airbnb makes it easy to turn your space into extra cash.
You decide when to host and how much you charge.
Plus, Airbnb offers tools to help you set up and support if you need it.
Your home might be worth more than you think.
Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
If you're someone who's curious about why we are the way we are, why we succeed, why we screw up, then you'll wanna check out Armchair Expert.
Hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, the show explores big, honest conversations with artists, thinkers, scientists and cultural icons. like Alex Cooper, Brad Pitt and Monica Lewinsky, just to name a few.
Gretchen, you were on Armchair Expert, had a great conversation.
Together, they explore everything from identity and addiction to imposter syndrome and finding your purpose.
Then on Fridays, they flip the mic to the listeners with Armchair Anonymous, a listener-driven series where real people call in with raw, funny, and totally human confessions.
From disastrous dates and family secrets to accidentally joining a cult, They've heard it all.
If you love self-reflection, big ideas and embracing the comedic chaos of life, follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. and subscribe to Armchair Expert on YouTube The next section, this one is about facing the perplexities of relationships.
I love so many of these but I'll start with this one.
We make people happier by acknowledging that they're not feeling happy.
This was a really hard one for me to learn because I do have kind of a happiness bully fix it tendency and kind of look on the bright side.
It's not so bad. Like, okay, you're not afraid of clowns.
You always have fun at these things, that kind of thing.
And I finally noticed this does not work.
It actually makes people feel worse because then they feel like they have to insist on their feelings because you're denying their feelings.
It just doesn't make them feel better. It's like telling somebody to calm down almost never works, right?
But... When you say things like, well, that sounds really frustrating, or wow, that really hurt your feelings, or I remember one of my daughters took an exam and in the middle of it sort of misread a chart had no idea what to do, totally freaked out, had just like a huge reaction.
And I said, wow, it really sounds like you really got jangled nerves in the middle of that exam.
I remember it because it was like, never have I felt that I said the perfect thing because she was like, Yes, jangled nerves.
And it was like that framed it in a way that she's like, yeah, it wasn't such a big deal.
My nerves got jangled, you know? Because instead of trying to convince her that she hadn't had this feeling or that nothing had happened, I was just trying to help her Just say like, I get it.
Yeah, I know what it's like. You're in an exam and you get jangled nerves because you don't know what you're looking at. the impulse to say, like, it's no big deal or cable guys never come when they say they're going to come.
I don't understand why you're so frustrated.
You know, it's just like, no, it sounds like it was really frustrating.
Like you wasted your whole morning and they never showed up.
That is just such a bummer. It's like that's much more satisfying. i will never forget right here on the show interviewing brene brown talking about how to deal with her kids when they were upset.
And she said the thing she says to them is I can't fix it, but I can sit in the dark with you.
Yes. You know, it's like people just want to feel validated, not corrected.
It's there's a kind of invalidation when you rush to the fix.
Right, right. Well, and even kind of in a smaller way, that sounds like something that's a big issue, but something that I really love that I did when my kids were really little, and this is an idea I got from my all-time favorite parenting book, but actually it's aimed at the parents of really little kids, but all of the advice is... just as useful with like your boss or your mother-in-law or whatever.
It's just like universally good advice. And one of them was give them their wish and fantasy.
So if somebody's like, oh my gosh, we're out of eggs, but I really feel like having eggs today.
And you're like, I wish that I were Glinda and I could wave a wand and you would have all the eggs you wanted.
Because a lot of times you just want to know that somebody is like, I get it.
Yeah. I'm here with you. I understand. I wish that I could. but I can't.
I wish that I could make it snow two feet and then you could go sledding all day long, but it's raining instead of snowing or whatever it is.
Yeah, sitting with you in the dark is much more profound.
What we're pointing at here, what you're pointing at here, I think, is, in my experience, kind of the skeleton key to interpersonal excellence, which is. is the understanding that what people want, whether they know it or not, is to be understood.
And that is related to- Even to be heard and you're trying to understand even if you haven't gotten there yet.
Correct. Yes. I totally agree with that correction.
It does lead to another aphorism, which is we know what matters to people when they repeat themselves.
Yes. Yeah, right. When somebody tells you a story over and over, I always am like, oh, that's interesting.
Why is that the story they're telling? It's often very interesting.
That and often when I hear people making a point over and over again, I realize that I haven't acknowledged it.
Yes, this is like make people happy by acknowledging that they're not feeling happy.
That's exactly right. Because if you don't acknowledge it, they'll just keep repeating it over and over because they need you to acknowledge it.
But then if you acknowledge it, then they can move on.
Exactly, exactly. For some reason, we find this counterintuitive, even though it shouldn't be counterintuitive because...
It never works to just deny and deflect, but the impulse is real.
Well, I think it's counterintuitive because we're all in our own movies.
So I'm pursuing my own agenda. fucking thinking about your agenda.
And so but I should be because actually, if I think about your agenda, my agenda will be better able to achieve my agenda.
But there is a small mindedness that is very easy to fall into that I personally have fallen into many, many times.
Well, and I also think, and a lot of the secrets of adulthood are about this, is that you can't help... but think that other people see the world the way you do and that they're framing things the way you're framing them and they're responding to them more or less the way you would respond to them.
Whereas in fact, just like you can't smell your home the way a guest smells it, they could be having a completely different experience.
They could be sizing up a situation in a completely different way.
And so much of what I do in kind of my study of happiness and human nature is really to understand like there are movie people and Snapchat people.
And so when somebody's telling you about their experience, it's not to say, you're right, I'm wrong, you're better, I'm worse, or whatever.
It's just to say, this is interesting. People, they're coming to this. with just a very different mind and just understanding that Just because something's true for me doesn't mean that it's true for somebody else.
I used to be really bad about this. I'd be like, everybody should just get up early and do what's important to them first thing in the day.
And if you can't do it, you should just go to bed earlier.
That's just such bad advice. That's just not true.
You know, 30% of people are night people and it's, largely genetically determined in a function of age.
So this idea that you're just going to make yourself be completely different, it's like, no.
Here's a great example, just again, digression, because I think this is the most amazing thing.
I was talking to somebody, she was the host of a morning talk show, which she did virtually.
And it was really hard for her because she had to get up really early in the morning to do it.
And then she moved to Europe. She solved her morning problem by going to a different time zone.
Now she has a very leisurely morning because everything happens six hours later.
You know, her show, she has to do her work at the show at the same time, but it's much later in her day.
And I was like, okay, that is thinking outside of the box and dealing with your chronotype for sure.
I love that. I wish I could have done that when I worked for Good Morning America.
Well, I know. What time did you get up? You had that super punishing morning slot.
3.45 in the morning. I mean, that is rough.
That is rough. I mean, imagine how different it would have been if you could have done that at 7.45.
If you were getting up at 7.45 and your show had gone live at the same time.
Yeah, it would have been great. I would have enjoyed it.
Here's another aphorism that... relates to relationships but relationships broadly understood very in a capacious understanding of the term relationships And it's also very Buddhist.
Here it is. I admire nature and I'm also nature.
I resent traffic and I am also traffic. Yeah, I mean, often we're part of it, for good or for ill.
Yes, I am traffic. I am nature. It speaks to...
The permeability of the self. Yes. We've been talking about this.
We feel separate from the universe, but...
We are the universe. We're made up of atoms from exploding stars and all the ideas coursing through our heads, of course, are influenced by or injected by the outside class.
So there's something really profound about the impersonality and interdependence that this aphorism points to.
Well, and then there's a related one, which is also that, and I can't remember exactly how I worded it, but it's like, we're often part of the problem that we deplore.
So it's like the tourist who's saying like, well, all these tourists are just ruining this place.
I reject tourists. I am tourist. Yeah. Exactly, exactly.
All right, let's move to Section 3, which deals with life's dilemmas.
The aphorism I'll start with here is... the person who works the hardest isn't necessarily doing the best work.
Say more. I mean, I have to remind myself of this secret of adulthood all the time, that just because I'm working really, really hard or putting in a lot of hours or grinding it out does not mean that my work is the best or that I'm making the biggest contribution.
Sometimes it can be very startling And kind of annoying when you think you're doing all this work and then somebody kind of marches in, does one or two things, and... sets everything to rights.
And you think, but I've been working so hard.
But that doesn't mean you're doing the best work.
And so I'm always trying to figure out not to replace just the grind, not letting that... take away from really thinking about what is the essential thing that should be done.
And to give credit for it, because sometimes people do something that looks so easy, but you're like, yeah, but if they can do it and nobody else can do it or nobody else thought to do it, then their contribution is enormous.
This can be the source of a lot of tension on work teams.
A lot of tension. For sure. Because some people think...
I've been doing the hardest work. I've been doing the most unpleasant work.
I've been doing the most work. Therefore, my contribution is the greatest.
And it's like, well, maybe, but maybe not.
There's also the dynamic that I talk about a lot or I don't want to take credit for this, actually.
It's Tony Magyar, the CEO of my team. One of the things that she talks a lot about is that there's a lot of invisible work that happens, by which she means invisible to me at the top of the food chain in this company.
And this is a bit of a digression again, because not necessarily totally on point with the aphorism, but it's a thing as a leader.
I have really tried to attune myself to.
Well, this is one of the things I love about aphorisms is they will often inspire other thoughts or kind of like adjacents. or you're trying to think of illustrations.
And so I think they spark ideas just in that way.
And I think 100%, you're right. Another secret of adulthood is The sharing of tasks often leads to the shirking of tasks.
And the way it connects with your observation is that when they look at shared work, work teams or married couples.
Research shows that if you ask people, what percentage do you contribute? and you add it all up, it'll be like 167% because everybody thinks they're contributing more to the total. than they are.
And that makes sense because we're very aware of what we're doing.
But like you say, what other people do is often invisible to us.
And also, we tend to do the work that we think matters, and maybe we think other things don't really matter.
I don't really care about air conditioning.
Jamie, my husband, cares deeply about air conditioning, so he does everything related to air conditioning.
But I'm like, well, that's not really that big a deal.
But actually, for the height of summer and we had no air conditioning, I think I would be persuaded that his contribution was very significant.
We just do have this tendency to overweight our own contribution and not understand.
As you say, if you're at the top, you literally do not realize like, oh, well. actually the schedule, the sub stack, these 10 steps have to happen.
You don't realize that that's necessary or that that's part of it or that if you make a sudden change at the last minute, why that might have a downstream effect. complication for somebody else because you're just not attuned to it so yeah i think it's really important to remember like you don't know what you don't know you don't see what you don't see Exactly.
What are the practical implications of the aphorism about shared tasks being synonymous with shirked tasks?
I'm very much in favor of assignments and not sharing tasks and certainly not like volunteering for tasks because it can lead to so much conflict.
And the funniest example of this is like, Now it's not so much a thing because so many people work from home or they're in a hybrid workplace, but my favorite thing in the world to do is to go to an office kitchen and just observe and like read the signs because there is so much about human nature.
I feel like I could write a coffee table book or a PhD thesis about the deep, secrets of human nature that are revealed in the office kitchen.
And one of the places is like, how do we load and unload the dishwasher, right?
Because a lot of people are like, well, just if it's full, empty it.
And like, if your dishes are dirty, put them in the dishwasher.
And I'm like, this isn't going to work. Because some people aren't going to do it and some people are.
And the people who do it are going to get resentful and they're not going to understand why the people who don't do it and the people who don't do it are like, this is not my job.
My job is to be a salesperson. If I'm making sales, that's how I support the company.
Any minute that I'm doing, unloading a dishwasher is a minute that I'm not making a sale and that's not good for any.
So everybody, like you say, Everybody from their own point of view has a reason that why they do make sense.
If you want the dishwasher to be unloaded, loaded and loaded, like make it somebody's job.
Say this is part of your responsibility, do it or figure out some way to do it.
But if you're just like, let's all just share in this task, We're pretty good at thinking of reasons why.
Well, today... I'm not going to step up.
Or we step up all the time, cover for other people, and then get bitterly resentful.
Sharing of tasks tends to lead to shirking of tasks.
But aren't some tasks inevitably inexorably shared, like taffy, for example?
No, but instead of saying like, okay, on Saturday afternoon, let's both take care of her.
In which case, both of us are like trying to sneak off and leave the other one holding the bag.
It's more like... OK, how about I take the morning shift and you take the afternoon shift just to be on duty?
And then it's like, OK, you need to run out to the grocery store or something like I can deal with it.
But At least in my observation, it's often easier to just know that something is, it's your responsibility right now, rather than expecting people to just sort of chip in, step up, it just often, they're shirking.
Maybe not everybody's shirking, but that probably means that somebody else is over compensating, like overworking.
And that's not fair. And then often that will lead to resentment.
But even if it doesn't, it's not really fair.
But you can dispute this. That's an aphorism.
You may disagree. You may say, I don't believe that sharing of tasks leads to shirking of tasks.
That's great. Then I have room in the back for your own secrets of adulthood.
You could write a secret of adulthood about that.
This is just what I've learned, but I am not infallible for sure.
So that's one where people might disagree.
Okay, well, here's an aphorism that may be slightly apropos.
The opposite of a profound truth is also true.
Well, I think that's very Buddhist, you know, the union of opposites.
Or maybe not. I don't know. You know that much better than I do.
Is that accurate to say that, that the opposite of a profound truth is also true? is a Buddhist idea?
In later stage Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, about which I don't know that much, there's this talk about emptiness and form being opposites, but also complementary.
And I don't know enough to even explain what that means.
So maybe it is a Buddhist idea. Well, okay, I've just often seen that both can be true, that two things can be true at the same time.
The ideas can be intention. But both are true.
So to take a proverb that we all know, out of sight, out of mind...
And absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Both are true. And a lot of my secrets of adulthood are like that.
Like love is unconditional and love is demanding.
Love accepts you just as you are, and love expects the best from you.
Or for ourselves, we want to accept ourselves and expect more from ourselves.
Both are true. Hell is other people. That's Sartre's famous line.
But heaven is other people. Both are true.
So I think it's often interesting to think of like, well, could the opposite be true?
Okay, so I didn't fully understand you until you just explained.
And so I do think it's a Buddhist thing.
What you're pointing to, if I understand you correctly, is the power of paradox.
Yes. And the aphorism is often, and like Oscar Wilde is one of the exemplars of this, it's often employs paradox.
That's very true in Buddhism. So like one towering example is that in the Dharma, one of the central ideas is that the self that we spent a lot of time building up and defending is on a fundamental level Like if you look really closely for some core nugget of Gretchen, you can't find it.
But it's also true that if you look in the mirror, you'll see Gretchen.
That's the union of the ultimate truth and the relative truth.
So on the level of relative consensual reality, Gretchen's real, but ultimately.
There's no Gretchen. That seems to me an example of exactly what you're talking about with this aphorism. that it's both real and not real at the same time that there's a, yeah.
Interesting. Interesting. Yes. Yes. Or as another paradox comes from TS Eliot, but the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein talks about it a lot, the idea, TS Eliot exhorts us to care and not to care.
It's actually playing off of relative and ultimate.
Like, yeah. It matters. I don't want Gretchen to be unhappy, so I care.
But also on some fundamental level, it's all an illusion, so I don't care.
But these two truths can inform one another so that you can not care too much and also not fall into nihilism.
Exactly. That's a perfect example of the kind of thing that I was thinking about with that aphorism.
Yes. Here's another aphorism I like. To make something beautiful, it's often necessary to add a touch of ugly.
Beautiful music often features notes of dissonance.
A lovely fragrance often... incorporates some bad smells.
An elegant living room includes a garish green pillow.
A hint of sour deepens flavors. Hold forth on that, if you will.
Yeah, exactly that. That it's interesting that you kind of have to add a bit of ugly to things to make them more beautiful.
I just think that that's interesting to see it work its way into so many different areas.
One of the fun aspects of the aphorism is kind of the mic drop quality where you just say something, but there were many where There was a story or examples or illustrations like this one where I just couldn't resist adding them in because I thought that they were so interesting.
I think it was Eugene Delacroix said, to finish a painting, one must spoil it a little.
This idea that something has to have a little bit of something that isn't quite right and that that can be more perfect than perfection.
Coming up, Gretchen talks about the dangers of being indecisive, how to interact successfully with other human beings, and other nuggets of brilliance in this ongoing avalanche of wisdom.
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All right, I've been working through the five sections of your book, Self, Relationships, Making Things Happen.
So now we're going to move to confronting life's dilemmas.
Here we go. Decisions will be made by choice or by chance because not deciding is a decision.
Not choosing is a choice. Yes, I mean...
This is just the fact. A lot of times, if you don't decide, you are deciding.
You can't not make a choice because to not choose is a choice.
And I'm very wary of this in my life. And I'll even say to people, it's fine not to do this, but I want to mindfully choose not to do this.
I don't want just the opportunity to slip away.
Let's say, let's take a big family trip this summer.
If you just don't decide, it will be decided because it will just be too late.
Or like you think you want to switch careers.
Well, at a certain point, you don't know necessarily when exactly that point is.
It will become too late. Like you'll just feel like I've missed my chance, whatever.
Or you might say, well, it's never too late.
Maybe it's never too late for you, but maybe for someone else or for a certain kind of training, it would become too late.
I remember when I was switching from law to writing, I came to a point where I had to decide whether to get another law job or and continue to work on my book on the side or whether I really should try to do it full time.
And I thought, well, at this point, I would rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer.
So I really want to like try. and either fail or succeed, and then take it from there.
But if I hadn't forced myself to really say, Because maybe I would have said like, oh, I want to take a law job and I will work on this on the side.
But then I would have been like, okay, given that I'm doing this on the side, how am I really still committing to this? as a project that's really important to me.
But just to like not decide and just to drift along and then like somebody offers me a job and then I interview and I'm like, wow, this seems really great.
I'll take this job. I can always change my mind later.
This seems like the safe choice. You can just drift through. but you're making decisions all the time without realizing it you know or like you're in a relationship and it's you're not moving forward but you're not moving back and it's just continuing and continuing and continuing.
And at a certain point, you're like, I've been making a decision by not deciding.
Isn't there an aphorism specifically about drift?
Maybe. I talk about drift all the time. Do I have another aphorism or is that the aphorism for it?
Now I can't remember. Again, I have... You know how it is when you're writing a book.
I put in and took out so many times. But yeah, because I talk about drift all the time because I drifted into law school.
So I know drift very well. Drifting is when you just kind of go with the flow.
So you're making decisions, but you're not really making decisions.
You're just doing what the default is or what everybody else around you wants or... the easier choice rather than like really mindfully choosing.
Isn't the idea of going with the flow often used in a positive way?
Aren't there some upsides to that version of drift?
Well, it depends on how much you care. If you don't really care about something, go with the flow.
And then if other people care more, just be carried along.
And then there are situations where we will mindfully refrain from making a decision.
Like maybe we don't have enough information. or we're letting events play out or we're sort of balancing in our mind, but we're mindfully engaged, Or we're purposefully saying, I'm not going to move forward.
I'm just going to take a break from this.
The thing that I'm warning against is when you are really making a decision.
Because time is passing and time will foreclose certain opportunities just by the nature of time passing.
And there comes a point where certain things are no longer options.
And I just think it's fine for that to happen, but you want to mindfully grapple with it.
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I'm not a drifter, so I... have some trouble relating to it.
But I will tell one story about Drift in a positive sense.
When I was 30, I went to Europe with a bunch of college friends and we were going around Spain.
Everybody was arguing all the time about what to do next.
Where are we going to have dinner? Where are we going tonight?
My friend Rudy was always on the outside of those scrums.
And I went to him one day. I was like, why don't you participate?
He's like, because I know I'm going to be happy whatever we do.
There you go. Because it just didn't matter, right?
But if somebody was like, oh, I really want to go see this one cathedral. because I'm thinking that I'm going to write my senior thesis about it, and it's really, really important for me to go.
But... We can do it this day. We can do it that day.
We'll get to there eventually. Blah, blah, blah.
And then... okay, we're not gonna go because it turns out it's closed on Wednesday.
And so you can't go. And that was like the one thing that you really wanted to get done, but because you never, sort of decided to make it happen, you lost the opportunity.
So yeah, not caring is fine. Like if it just really doesn't matter to you, But then sometimes it really will make a difference.
And that's what you want to just be careful.
You know, that you're not just taking a job because somebody offered you a job or you become a doctor because both your parents are doctors or...
You're just doing things because it's the easier course.
Another aphorism from this section, which again is confronting life's dilemmas.
If we take the credit, we must accept the blame.
Mm hmm. Well, I think about this with parenting all the time because I'm like, I don't take the credit.
But that also means that I don't feel that much responsibility in a way.
I mean, I feel a certain kind of responsibility, of course.
But I do think the more you take credit for something, it's like if you take credit for the economy, you have to be like, OK, if we have a bad economy, that's my fault, too.
Those two things go together. Yeah, our current president doesn't necessarily believe in taking blame for the economy or anything else.
They're two sides of the same coin because they're about responsibility.
If you're responsible, you get the credit and you also get the blame.
Yes, if you're responsible, if you're a responsible person.
All right, let's just stay with this section.
We can be wrong for a very long time without noticing bloodletting was a common medical treatment for two millennia.
George Washington died of bloodletting. I didn't know that.
Yes, he did. He wasn't that sick, but they were like, look, he's not getting better.
We better let out more blood. And then more blood.
And my gosh, he's just weaker than ever.
We got to let out some more blood. The guy died.
It wasn't the wooden teeth that did him in?
Apparently not. Though, I don't know. They could have been a contributing factor.
I don't know. But it's just one of these things where we're...
It just becomes what everybody assumes, and it's hard to notice that it's not the case.
So it's the danger of conventional wisdom.
Right. And it's a call for consistent reexamination, I would imagine.
Well, I'll give you an example. With my first daughter, and this was many years ago, I was put on bed rest. at the time, I thought, this is a terrible idea.
This just doesn't make... Just to me, intuitively, it doesn't make any sense.
It's never good for the body to be just like taken out of action, right?
It's like it's never good. It seemed to me.
And so I said to my doctor, what is the evidence that shows that this is like an important thing to do and would be helpful?
And she's like, well, there really is no evidence.
It was basically like, well, it's an old wives tale.
So, you know, better safe than sorry. Seemed to be kind of the message.
And I don't want to sound like a science denier because no one is a bigger fan of science than I am.
Like, my husband was cured from hepatitis C, which was like a deadly... deadly virus that he got from a blood transfusion when he was a child.
So absolutely. But it was a very striking exam.
And I was just like talking to a renowned OBGYN saying like, oh, would they say that now?
And he's like, oh, no, no, we wouldn't say that now.
But it is one of these things where it's like you get it in your mind and you're like, well, better safe than sorry.
But it is just recognizing that there are things that...
If we don't have any reason to believe what we think we believe, why do we believe it?
Mm hmm. Let me see if I can get this right.
This is an aphorism from one of the ye olde doctors before they had the scientific method.
And it was something like... He always gave the same treatment to a patient.
It was the panacea, because if the patient could be cured, He was cured.
And if the patient was really beyond help, well, then he would die.
It's like, OK, that medicine will work, you know, if it's like either they die or they get well.
Exactly. Okay. So section five is simple secrets of adulthood.
A lot of these are really, really, really practical.
Here's one. If you don't know what to do with yourself, go outside or go to sleep Right?
It always works. Because I love a hack. I love a secret of adulthood.
I love a transcended truth, but I also love a hack.
And as I was working on the book, I just couldn't resist. keeping this kind of side list going.
And I submitted them with a manuscript like as it is.
And thinking that my editor would say, Gretchen, what are you doing?
Like, this is just you goofing around. It doesn't belong in the book.
But she really liked it. And I think a lot of people really do like them.
They just like the concrete, practical nature of them.
So I was really delighted that I got to keep them.
I like the hacks, too, and I think they exist in a nice relationship with the profound troops.
Oh, good. And often are not... not shallow.
Here's another one that I think actually is quite profound, and it's this.
It's okay to ask for help. Why is this so hard?
Is it hard for you? It's so hard. Really?
It is so hard. It's so hard to ask for help.
I'll be indecisive about something or I won't know what to do.
And then it'll occur to me like, actually what I need is more information.
I could just ask somebody who knows about this.
Or I can just say to somebody, I need help with this.
I don't know. Do you find it easy to ask for help?
I am perplexed. Not even that it's difficult, meaning that I'm reluctant to do it.
It's difficult in that I don't even remember that I can do it.
I have to remind myself that it's even possible instead of just like figuring everything out myself, which is just nonsense.
Do you have this story subconsciously or otherwise that if you can't figure everything out yourself, then you're somehow bad or wrong or dysfunctional?
It's more like, well, can't I just figure this out?
Think it through. I don't think it comes from a place of kind of self-punishment.
I don't know. It doesn't feel negative like that.
Maybe it is. Do you find it easy to ask for help?
You know, in many ways, I'm, to use the term the kids use, a heteronormative person. male um and you know like the stereotype about dudes is they won't stop and ask for directions etc etc but i actually am asking for help all the time Yeah, I don't suffer in silence.
Well, I think it's the better way for sure.
I agree. Here's another hack. If you're dreading a family occasion, bring a guest.
Many difficult people behave better in front of outsiders.
Have you tested this? Well, a lot of these things come from my own experience.
So I remember I have a long, long, long time friend.
We were friends all the way back in high school.
Much later in life, I came to understand that her mother was very, very depressed and very, very difficult.
But when we were children, I did not know this at all.
I saw her as like this super kind of extremely hospitable woman who was like, we were always over at my friend's house.
There I didn't know that. I didn't see that side of her.
And I wasn't aware that this whole thing was happening to you as a child.
And she said, We always liked to have friends over because then our mother, it really brought out the best in our mother.
So we were always trying to have people over.
And you see this like in family dinners.
If somebody brings a guest, then there is a little bit of company manners that can be helpful.
Many of these hacks, or at least the ones that stuck out to me, are really about kind of manners, how to conduct yourself in the world in a more skillful way.
I did not see that as a theme. That's interesting.
Well, let me give you some. People probably aren't as interested in your hobby or your travels as they seem to be.
Right? I mean, that's just the fact of the matter.
The thing is, what some people don't realize, and I'm sure this happens to me, but I'm not realizing in the moment, but I see it with others in my world.
Is that we have a tendency to humor people.
And then as the person being humored, you don't know you're being humored.
And so then you bore the shit out of people.
Yes, yes, yes. No, and it's all in this very well-meaning circle of boredom.
Yeah, I mean, there is a certain amount of that.
There's a certain amount of that. And there is a certain amount of it just being like a way as an icebreaker.
Like one of the nice things about having a new puppy is people are like, how is your new puppy?
And then you can talk about that for a minute.
I always remind myself. there's quite a limit in how interesting someone else's puppy is.
Have a cute story or two and then let it go. let's say you've had like a life transforming travel and you really just want to talk about it for like two hours. if people are not interested, but I will tell you one of the most, the rudest things I've ever done in my whole life.
Please. Okay. So we were going on a family trip to Berlin in the summer.
It's like our big family trip. And I am not a foodie.
I just really do. I do not care that much about food.
I'm not interested in restaurants. That's just something that's not... When I wrote Life in Five Senses, it became very clear to me that's the most neglected sense.
That's my most neglected sense. I'm having conversation with this person about what we're doing for the summer.
And I said, oh, we're going to Berlin. And somebody who I don't know came zipping over and in a very, very friendly, energetic way said, Oh, you're going to Berlin?
I have to tell you all the amazing restaurants that we went to.
Let me give you a list of all the places you need to go."
And I looked into her face and I was like, I could see my future stretching out in front of my eyes of like a half an hour of her going into great detail about amazing meals that she'd had. in places that I would never go and never cared about.
And even if I went, it wouldn't even give me that much pleasure, whatever.
And I basically was just like, I just, I just.
I looked at her and I said, I'm not really involved in that part of the planning.
I just turned and walked away. I just fled because I simply cannot manage everything. even like the five minute, like get in, get out that that would have required.
I was just overwhelmed, but I've been haunted by it ever since because here was somebody who was really Reaching out with pleasure, but not recognizing that, like hearing about an amazing meal that you had is not something that most people will find that interesting.
And if they will, they will ask. But that's me coming from my perspective as a non-foodie, which makes me feel like this terrible Scrooge.
Jillian Child said, the people who love to eat are always the best people.
And I'm like, well, what does that say about me?
But anyway, but yes, I could tell that she was somebody who would not read my cues, that I was not interested.
So I fled very rudely. I've repented. You're not extolling the virtues of fleeing here.
It's seared in my memory as rudeness. So just, hey, kids, don't do it yourselves.
Some others, just to back up my point about the fact that the simple secrets of adulthood section of this book. do include a lot of secrets that have to do with manners or how to interact successfully with other people.
Here's one. If you can't think of a topic of conversation, ask what's keeping you busy these days?
So this is a really great question, especially if you don't know what somebody does for a living and you feel like it's not polite to ask.
Some people don't like it when you say, what do you do for a living?
And so this is, I think, a really good question because people can just answer whatever they feel like talking about.
Like if they've had an amazing trip and they want to tell me all about the restaurants, now I will listen to you.
Or they've got an exciting work project.
If you kind of can't remember exactly what somebody does but you really should remember, I don't know about you, but I will often be encountering with people and I'm like, I should really sort of know exactly what they're up to, but I don't.
But so if you say that, then they are just like, well, you know, I'm still promoting the book that just came out a month ago.
And you're like, oh, right. I forgot you had a book that just came out or, you know.
It's a question that lets them answer as they like and also will fill in a lot of information if you're not sure of information that you think you should remember.
I like it a lot. I'm going to use it. Another that I'm going to use, and it really rings true to me, especially right now as I'm about to read it back to you, It rings true because over this past weekend, I was at a bunch of social situations, and introducing people to one another and there were moments where i even though i knew the person's name i couldn't recall it because it was just a cognitive overload And so the aphorism here is if someone might not remember your name, reintroduce yourself.
You know, and I will just say, if you do this, which I do this all the time, people often be like, oh gosh, of course I know who you are.
But it's like, it never hurts. And you don't know if they're telling the truth or not.
You know? And a lot of times you know perfectly well what someone's name is, but the typewriter keys are jamming in your brain, especially if you're seeing a ton of people all at one time.
I wish we all wore name tags all the time.
That would be my dream. Yeah. Yes. Or it had him tattooed into her forehead at birth.
Let's end on this one because this one I think could bear some unpacking.
And I think it's pointing at something really helpful. if possible have a challenging conversation while walking yes This is really, really helpful for a lot of reasons.
Often people... speak more freely when they're side to side instead of face to face.
This is why a lot of times people will say, The time you can get your teenager to talk to you is when you're driving together someplace.
Also, a walk tends to have a beginning, middle, and an end.
And so people know that it's kind of got an it's not gonna stretch out endlessly.
Whereas if you're just like in your bedroom, you're like, are we trapped here in this kind of no exit argument forever?
But people have a sense of like, okay, We're going to start and we're going to go and then we'll end up, we'll be back at the car or whatever.
And then also there is like the nervous energy that comes from having a difficult conversation. that can be hard to manage and it can be expressed by sort of elevating your tone or like, but I think at least for me, when I'm walking, it soothes my kind of, I'm very high strung. and very irritable.
And when I'm walking, that's an outlet for that nervous energy that is more constructive.
And there is just something about walking itself, which is just very calming. especially if you're in a beautiful place like you're in a park or you're on a hike or like in an interesting neighborhood or something.
If things get too intense and you need just like you want to stay in the conversation, but maybe you need a little break.
That's like, oh, look at that. Should we stop and get a copy or whatever?
It lets you stay together because another thing that's good about walking is like no one's going to come in and interrupt you. or someone's not going to be like their eyes aren't going to be flicking to the TV screen every 10 seconds or, you know, your iPad isn't going to be pinging on the coffee table.
There's just a lot of reasons why a walk is, I find, especially if there's something that needs to be talked through.
It lends itself to that kind of conversation.
Isn't there something also about sinking strides with someone?
Oh, I didn't even think of that, but that's exactly right.
Yeah, what is that called? That's called...
Is it synchronizing? Even like your heartbeat will start to synchronize with someone.
Yes, yes. Yeah, that's a great point. I never even thought about that aspect of it.
That's very true. I would say there's another piece of it, and you may have already covered this, but there's something about being in a wide open space.
In nature, that sparks creativity, allows you to see things from a different perspective, which can be very helpful in a situation of conflict or potential conflict.
Absolutely. I think that's exactly right.
If you're standing, like you can also be sort of irritated by like little things that you're seeing or that whatever.
There's something very calming just about being in nature.
And if you have light in your face, that's also good for you.
There's all sorts of things. Good things happen when you go outside and if it's for a difficult moment.
Now, there are some times, I do think, where you need to be sitting down and, like... really with the intensity that just comes from being face to face or right next to each other.
And in that case, it's really helpful to hold someone's hand or have your hand on their back or have your knees touching.
I have a secretive adulthood that it's harder to yell at somebody when you're holding their hand.
But you can hold hands while you're walking through nature, so you can get a double thing there.
Well, this book is like an avalanche of good advice.
Oh, I love that. I love that phrase. Maybe I'll title this podcast episode an avalanche.
I like that. I like that. I feel I feel like someone's tumbling through the snow with their skis sticking out.
Yeah. Two final questions I always ask first.
Is there something that you were hoping we would get to that we didn't?
No. I feel like we covered so many. It's so interesting for me to know which ones stood out for you.
Again, that's one of the most interesting things for me. as I've been talking to people about the book is they're not always the ones that I thought people would focus on.
Final question. Can you just remind everybody of the name of this book?
And you've written so many other books. I'd love to. and you have a website and you have an app.
Can you kind of tell us about the Gretchen Rubin empire?
Yeah, like what is it? Not the extended... Cinematic universe.
Yeah, the cinematic universe of Gretchen Rubin.
Yes, indeed. Everything basically is on my website, GretchenRubin.com.
And so that's a great place to go because you can read about all my books.
My most recent book is called Secrets of Adulthood, Civil Truth for Our Complex Lives.
Yeah, it's a little book with all these little secrets of adulthood.
And I also have a podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin, which is a weekly podcast where I talk about how to be happier. with my co-host, who is also my sister, Alyssa Craft, who is a TV writer.
I have a newsletter, Five Things Making Me Happy.
I just launched on Substack something called Secrets of Adulthood, which is like teaching stories.
Because I really, I love a teaching story.
I love a parable. So this is where I share my favorites and write my own.
I have an app called Happier. I have a bunch of journals that will help people do different things like track their habits or there's a one wonderful little journal called I Want You to Know, which is like how kind of to express your feelings about somebody else if you find that hard.
A lot of different things, but anything can be found at GretchenRubin.com.
And I'm all over social media, and I love to connect with people with insights or observations, resources.
I feel like the world is my research assistant, constantly giving me great insights and ideas and things to read and watch.
So, yeah, I'm in all the places. Always a gigantic pleasure to talk to you Gretchen.
Thank you. Oh, Dan, thank you so much. Thanks again to Gretchen.
Always great to talk to her. Don't forget to check out her new book, The Secrets of Adulthood.
Also, don't forget to check out danharris.com where today we've got a guided meditation that comes with this episode.
It's all about how to tune in to your mind and body when you're at a moment of making a big decision, which of course is something we talked about in the show, indecision and drift, etc.
So we're going to give you the way to counteract indecision and drift.
And that guided meditation comes from our teacher of the month, Kyra Jewel Lingo.
Check it out, danharris.com. Before I let you go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show.
Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasily.
Thank you so much for having me. and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
Well, we hope you're feeling happier after this episode.
If you'd like to hear more, Dan Harris and I just did a Substack Live where we kept the conversation going and he shared some of his own secrets of adulthood from the meditation world, including one that really stuck with me. certainty is not an indicator of truth.
You can find that conversation at secretsofadulthood.substack.com.
Remember, the best time to start a happiness project is 20 years ago.
The second best time is now. From the Onward Project.
Every year on the Happier podcast, Elizabeth and I invite our listeners to join us on an annual challenge.
This year, we brought back the listener favorite, and it is Read 25 in 25 to read 25 minutes every day in 2025.
To take our reading challenge to the next level, Liz and I went on our first ever sister's reading retreat with no distraction, just stacks of books.
Gretch, I now want to do a reading retreat with Adam and Jack, but while we're away, our house would just be sitting there.
What would be an even better move hosting our space on Airbnb?
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