Lemonada. And my inaugural guest was the terrific Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, the nation's largest grassroots group fighting gun violence, an executive, highly engaged citizen and writer.
And today we are bringing that conversation to you.
I talked to Shannon about why it's important to ask yourself whether your life goals are your own or someone else's, the cost of indecision and when to double back or double down.
It was a fascinating conversation with Shannon.
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Hello everybody! I'm Gretchen Rubin.
I am so excited to be here for the Secrets of Adulthood live video.
First one! First! Inaugural!
Inaugural one. So I started a substack very recently and on that substack every week I'm going to have a Secret of Adulthood teaching story where I tell a story or relate like a joke or a scene from a novel, whatever it might be, and talk about a secret of adulthood that I think it illustrates.
I've always loved Secrets of Adulthood, and I'm really excited to have this newsletter as a way to have kind of a more reflective place to put those out into the world.
And I'm also going to be doing these live videos with really, like, thought -provoking, fascinating writers and thinkers about their favorite secrets of adulthood because we can all learn from each other, and I love hearing what other people's secrets of adulthood are.
And I am extremely excited for my, as we said, first guest to be talking to Shannon Watts.
Shannon Watts, you know Shannon Watts.
She has worn many hats as an executive, as a writer, as a highly engaged citizen.
She is, among other things, the founder of Moms Demand Action, the nation's largest grassroots organization fighting gun violence.
She has her latest book that just pretty recently hit the shelves called Fired Up, How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age.
And that helps people, you know, discover their dormant desires, whether that's personal or professional or political.
So, Shannon, hello.
Oh, my gosh. It is such an honor to be here with you, but most of all, to be your first guest. I I feel like, you know, this is the Gretchen Rubin Show, and I get to be the first guest. So thank you, truly.
I love your work so much, and it's so wise and so thought -provoking.
So thank you. Oh, well, thank you.
And you've been on Substack for a long time, so this was really calming for me to have one of my secrets of adulthood is it's okay to ask for help.
And so there were a few glitches, and Shannon was right there to kind of talk me through it, because as we always say about technology, it's great when it works, and we're having a great experience.
So what are secrets of adulthood?
So when I talk about secrets of adulthood, I'm talking about like a one or two sentence lesson that we've learned from life, often the hard way through time and experience, something that we really can reflect on and take forward as we're making decisions, dealing with the perplexities of relationships, trying to get ourselves to do something, trying to get ourselves to know ourselves better.
better. One of my favorite secrets of adulthood for myself is accept myself and also expect more for myself.
I think about that all the time because I have to try to remember that.
And a favorite thing that I've loved since the book has come out, Secrets of Adulthood, is that people will have their own take on one of my secrets of adulthood, so I get a new interpretation of it.
But today, Shannon, I'm so excited to talk to you about some of your secrets of adulthood.
You gave me a bunch, but there's a few that I want to make sure that we have time to talk about.
Okay. So it's ask yourself if your life goals are your own or someone else's before you go too far down the wrong path.
This to me is an essential secret secret of adulting.
So put it in context.
How did you learn this?
How have you talked to people about how to put this into action in their own life?
You mentioned this book that I have coming out on June 17th called Fired Up, and I interviewed over 70 women.
Well, that's right.
It hasn't come out yet.
I've known about it for so long that I felt like it was already out on the stands.
Okay, this book hasn't even come out.
There's been so much buzz around it.
I thought it had been been out for like a month okay okay yeah yeah come soon come soon to a bookstore near you okay good all right okay what was interesting you know I interviewed over 70 women and so many of them said that they realized they were not living for their own fulfillment and and I talk a lot in the book about how you know women are often socialized to follow their obligate fulfill their obligations Instead of fulfilling their desires.
And part of that can be that you are told from a young age, your parents, your family, even friends expect you to be a certain person.
What was really interesting is a lot of women who are immigrants in particular, right, to this country whose parents are immigrants who believe that the American dream is you're going to be a doctor, you're going to be an engineer, you're going to be a lawyer, whatever that is.
and they're told like this is the path that you are on and it isn't until they're trying to get through medical school or they've gotten the law degree and they're finally going into the corporate world that they they kind of have this realization that they have spent a lot of time and energy pursuing a vocation that does not light them up that does not make them feel fulfilled build and it's not to say that that's a waste of time certainly the journey is worthwhile you learn a lot right but if you were to ask yourself that earlier it might change the trajectory of what you do in school or the friends
you make or you know the the path that you follow and i teach a lot of college classes even the young women you know i when i wrote this book i kind thought, okay, I'm writing this in many ways for women my age, I'm 54 years old.
But it was interesting because the conversations I had with these young college kids said, here I am in college and I'm not sure I know what I want to do.
And I thought I did when I went in, but now I'm in college and I'm not positive.
So my whole mantra is that we should be constantly asking ourselves, especially as women, what do I want?
So true, right? Right.
Do you agree with that?
I mean, what's what about you?
Do you have you ever found yourself on a path where you were like, how did I get here?
Are you kidding? I went to law school for all the wrong reasons.
I can always change my mind later.
It's a good education.
I'm good at research and writing.
It'll keep my options open.
So I think that this is absolutely key.
And you might say, how do you not know what you want?
It's like, it's extremely easy not to know how what do you want?
So I think this is absolutely true.
So here's my here's my question for you.
like how do when you're asking yourself like what are some good questions to ask yourself or how do you get yourself to look into the mirror and see what you really want because our vision is so clouded by other people's expectations or or even just like sort of expectations in the air around us so how do you know if you are on that wrong path you say don't go too far down it but like what are the warning signs like hey there was a fork maybe you need to turn back and take the the other fork?
I think what we're talking about is living from the outside in instead of the inside out.
So, we get all of these inputs from society, from family, from friends, and we decide that is how we're going to live, as opposed to looking inside and then putting that out into the world.
And so, that really is the whole ethos of my book, right?
There's a formula for figuring this out and I figured it out when I was 41 years old and I started mom's demand action and then I held the hands and walked thousands of women through that same door and here's what it is you marry your abilities your values and your desires now your your abilities abilities your values and your desires and those will change throughout your life so you kind of have to look look at where you are.
I mean, you know, Brene Brown is a very expert in value.
There's even thousands of them.
So, what they are at a particular time of your life, maybe when you're younger, going to be different than when you're older.
So, the first thing I suggest is doing an audit of your values.
You know, for me, when I started Moms Demand Action, I had very young children.
And so, it was protecting my family and my community.
I'm an empty nester now.
So, you know, my values are different.
Not that those go away, but they're different priority.
ability. Abilities.
Those can be innate or they can be something that you acquire over a lifetime.
And so auditing those and taking stock in what are the values that I bring.
When I started Moms Demand Action, it was after a decade -long career in corporate communications.
I could tell a story.
I could build a brand, right?
That was a unique ability to me.
And then you might also realize during the audit that you have to go pursue some skills that you don't have yet that it will get you to where you're going.
And then the last thing are your desires to be honest about what do I want?
And that doesn't have to be huge.
It can be small, right?
It can be a tough conversation or it can be something big like starting an organization or changing the relationship.
So if, if we are, I don't even think many of us, especially women ask ourselves, what are our desires?
Because, you know, imagine what would happen if we did systems would fail Institutions would crumble.
Families would fall apart, right?
The system is designed to keep us from saying, what do I want?
What are my desires?
And so it is a practice.
It's not like you figure those three things out and it's, you know, magic.
Well, that's part of what's confusing, right?
Is that it has to evolve over time as our lives evolve.
So it's a constant process.
Yes. It's a practice and you keep trying it.
And then when you do do it, it is like alchemy, right it feels a little bit like touching the divine okay so it's say that say again abilities abilities values and desires excellent okay um okay that is so thought -provoking i i love a formula i think that's very clarifying and we'll be right back with more with shannon watts Introducing the new Dell AI PC powered by the Intel Core Ultra Processor.
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So another one that you suggested that I thought was very thought -provoking was, It's okay to end a relationship, including a marriage, if you're unhappy.
Not all relationships are built to last forever.
And I think this is very poignant because we are social creatures.
We value relationships, which is really important.
And that can make it hard sometimes to understand maybe why it needs to end.
So put context in that, and how do you think about that one?
I do think you're right in that we value relationships and that that becomes part of the social fabric.
But there's another component to it, which is women are often meant to feel guilt or shame when they are in a marriage that no longer works for them.
right? I think of my mom's generation and how so many women stuck it out in relationships for a long time that just didn't fit and that weren't right.
And I think there's an interesting conversation right now in the zeitgeist, you know, books like Liz Lenz has written a book about this, which is not all relationships go the distance.
I married right out of college.
I was 23 years old.
My parents were going through a divorce.
I think I was looking for a, create a new family unit.
and we had three kids very quickly by the time I was in my in the 30s I realized if I had waited to marry until my brain was fully developed this is not a person I would have chosen he probably would have chosen me either right and we ended that marriage and we were wonderful co -parents and you know we adore one another but I found the love of my life because I found the courage to to leave that relationship.
And that was part of this process of saying, you know, what do I want?
Is this a marriage I would want for my children?
Is this an example I want to set for them?
And the answer was no. And what are some questions if a person is thinking, do I recommit to this and really work to make it work?
Or do I really understand that it's time to move on?
Are there there's some kind of helpful ways to think about that, frame that, because it is a very large decision that a person would face.
That's a huge decision.
You know, if you can't afford a therapist, I recommend a therapist. When I came to a crossroads in my life, and I write about this in my book, I found myself in an emergency room covered from head to toe in eczema, and it was not going away.
And it was really my body telling me from the inside out that that.
Yeah, I was on autopilot.
And I kind of realized in the doctor's office that I was at a crossroads in my life that if I wanted to get better physically feel better mentally, that I needed to be honest. And I couldn't go home and confide that in my husband, because part of the issue was our marriage.
I couldn't afford a therapist at that time in my life.
And so I began to journal and just sort of took account.
We were talking a lot about auditing, which I think is interesting, you know, just sort of stopping and thinking and pausing.
Like, Like, what is working for me and what isn't?
Applying the formula.
And I really wrote a roadmap for myself for the life that I wanted.
And that life did not include that person as a partner.
Well, it's interesting because research does show that keeping a journal like that really can help people make sense of their lives.
There's something about the writing process where we start to think about causation and we start to look for patterns.
And there is something about putting our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences into words that really does seem to help people find clarity and even kind of hopefulness that like things start to make sense.
Or we start to say like, that was really tough, but I learned an important lesson.
Or I see what I gained from that, even though there were things about it that I regret or did, you know, don't look back on, look back on with pleasure.
So that's interesting.
So how do you still do that?
Or is, was that something that was kind of like an emergency practice that helped you get through that, achieve that clarity?
No, I'm, I'm a huge proponent and fan of journaling.
And I'll be honest, the first time I did, I thought like, this seems like something people that are very woo -woo do.
And you know, that was not the case.
I mean, I should know better as a writer.
How old were you? How old were you then?
I was probably about 35.
Okay. Because I think sometimes people think, oh, people are bored.
They've been, and some people are like, I kept my diary at seven years old, but you started as a full -blown adult.
I did, and I have found it to be so helpful to me.
Another thing that I talk about in the book is managing my leadership, my ego, my self -awareness through moms demand action.
I knew that this role power was going to be finite.
I knew this wasn't going to be the rest of my life.
I don't think think power should be infinite.
And so I would write about like, what is my plan?
How am I going to extricate myself eventually?
Who am I going to hand the organization over to?
And I could look back 11 years later and say, these are all the reasons that I had as a 41 year old for deciding that I wouldn't be here forever.
Well, you know, my next project is going to be about the empty nest. And like a lot of people like are asking me, well, how do I prepare for it?
Like, you know, no, it's coming.
This is a really good idea, which I had not considered, which is start keeping a journal about what, just to help you sort of sort through your thoughts, as you know that a big transition is coming, to help you start thinking through when it's still far away, and you kind of are sitting in a calm, collected space, and you can start working through all the big issues issues, and keeping a record for yourself, I think that's a brilliant tool to think about.
Are you still journaling?
You know, I write all the time.
I'm kind of like, it's not a journal per se, but I feel like I'm memorializing my thoughts and experiences like constantly, but it's definitely how I process things.
I mean, for me, my book's research is research, and so why do you think I'm writing a book about the emptiness?
It's like, I think I need to process this.
So, yeah, so I'm a big Big fan of that.
Coming up, we'll be back with more from Shannon Watts.
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Oh, but so I have a secret of adulthood that I want to share with you and I want to hear what you think.
And I think that it's going to be one that will resonate with you, but we'll see.
One of my secrets of adulthood is decisions will be made by choice or by chance, because not deciding is a decision.
Not choosing is a choice.
Oh, I love that. And the reason I love it is because, in part, the reason I wrote my book is I've met so many women who have such brilliant ideas, right?
They have strong abilities, they know their values, they have desires, but they don't act on them.
They decide that they have to cross all the T's and all the I's before they can get started.
And that is a decision when you don't act, right?
Because you have decided not to kind of pursue what you want.
And I'm trying to encourage them to make the decision to do the opposite, which is to act, because to not act is a decision.
Yes, yeah. And time passes and opportunities pass.
And what I'm sure you know, this research with regret, we're much more likely to regret things we don't do than regret things we do.
Because sometimes we don't do something because we're afraid we're going to regret it.
But then you'll find out, like, in the end, it's the non -action that often causes more regret.
at this is interesting because this dovetails with the what you're talking about the book on the empty nest in a way so as I said I interviewed 70 women when I said to them what are you afraid your deathbed bed regret will be what do you think it was uh that I didn't take a bold I didn't take I didn't take a bold step the way I wanted to I thought it was going to be that too it was was actually, and these were mostly mothers, I'm afraid that pursuing what I want will come at the expense of my children.
As if figuring out what lights you up will somehow make you a bad mom.
I mean, these were like women from all walks of life, state lawmakers, celebrities, authors, stay -at -home moms, even.
And they were afraid that somehow going after what they wanted would negatively impact their kids.
And I don't know if you feel this way.
I'm on the other side of the chasm.
My kids are, you know, 25 to 36.
Not one of them ever says, mom, I can't believe you didn't go to that soccer game in 2006.
What they say is thank you for having other things in your life to focus on besides me.
It took the pressure off.
And thank you for setting an example of how I should live when I'm an adult.
Right. Because example is much more compelling than instruction.
introduction and so telling somebody you should, you know, you should think about what you want and go for it.
It's like, but if you're not doing that, oh, that's interesting.
Well, it's a false choice.
And I think it's so easy in our minds to fall into a false choice.
Even something as simple like I tell myself things like this all the time, like, I don't have time to go to the dentist. I'm too busy writing as if those two things are incompatible.
Yes, I can go to the dentist and but this idea that like, I have to choose between my family and what I want, instead of saying, how can I choose my family and choose what I want?
There's something about the either or choice that I think, especially if there's something that is a little bit, makes you uneasy or, or uncomfortable to think about, it kind of makes it, it makes it feel easier than, than it needs to be.
Um, or then, or then maybe we want it to be.
totally agree i love that advice okay so we're about to let you go as we wrap up are there any kind of like uh is there a last secret of adulthood you want to suggest or some like quirky quirky secret of adulthood or hack that somebody's suggested to you along the way um that you can think of when i started writing my book i kept being told by women i wish i had a handbook for the blowback that i should expect when i live differently and i'm a little bit of an expert and blowback having started an organization around gun safety, you know, the threats of death and violence began immediately.
And I had a choice, I could double back or double down.
I obviously decided to double down.
But I do believe, you know, if we're looking at each thing in our life as an individual fire, right, there should be small and big throughout our lives.
I think the amount that you can grow your fire is directly proportional to the amount of blowback that you can endure.
And that's a muscle.
Interesting. I love it.
What did you say? Double back or double down?
I love that. That's wonderful.
So anyway, Shannon Watts, thank you so much. Again, her book that's coming out.
It feels like it's been out.
It's getting so much attention, but it hasn't even hit the shelves yet.
It's Fired Up, How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age.
It's out June 17th.
She is traveling to many, many cities across the country.
So you can go, I'm sure you can go to many places online to find, but you can go to her sub stack, which is called Playing with Fire, if you want to get the whole calendar and see if she's coming your way.
So thank you for everyone.
We will be sending out a recap of this conversation to our audience with sort of some of the key takeaways.
But Shannon, thank you for being my first guest. You made it so easy and fun.
This is going to go in my epitaph, was the first guest on Gretchen Rubin's show.
Thank you. Okay, everyone.
Thanks so much. See you next time.
Bye. Well, hope you're feeling happier after this episode.
I really enjoyed this conversation and hope you enjoyed listening.
If you're interested in more conversations like this, head over to Substack and search for Secrets of Adulthood.
You can also find Shannon's Substack by searching for Playing With Fire.
You can also find both of our new books, Secrets of Adulthood from me and Fired Up, How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age by Shannon at your book retailer of choice.
Remember, the best time to start a happiness project is 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.
From the Onward Project.
