Gretchen Rubin - NYT Bestselling Author, Podcaster & Speaker | Simple Truths For Our Complex Lives

Somebody that wants to see you succeed, those are the kinds of things that make people. Gretchen Ruben, one of the most influential voices on human nature, reveals how we can unlock the happiness we're all searching for. Happiness is an elusive concept to define. Being about relationships is always a great place to start. But here's the catch, it's not the same for everyone. Somebody that is connected with you who like wants to see you succeed, those are the kinds of things that make people happy. From dining with Nobel Prize winners to being interviewed by Oprah, Gretchen has spent her career breaking down the complexities of happiness. In this episode, she shares the surprising truths about what really makes us happy, and why your path to joy might look completely different from mine. But there's one key lesson that changes everything, and you'll want to hear it. This conversation will challenge your assumptions about what true happiness means. And negative information will catch our attention faster than positive information, just understanding... Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. I am a huge fan of HubSpot because they support entrepreneurs. A lot of entrepreneurs, founders, executives, listen to this show, and for entrepreneurs that are trying to build, I have a question for you. Does it feel like your teams are getting pulled in a million different directions? When everyone's digging in on different projects with different platforms in different places, it can be tough to stay focused on a common goal, and that throws a wrench into things. That's why HubSpot brings everything your team needs into one easy-to-use and easy-to-love customer platform. With it, they have everything they need to scale the business at their fingertips. So your marketers can write blog posts in a snap with AI and build better leads with in-depth campaigns, sales, can build connections, and close deals faster with tracking tools, and real-time performance insights and service can get a hand from AI-powered chatbots for better support and more five-star reviews, and everyone can deliver killer results and grow revenue faster than ever before. Because when your team's work better, your business grows faster. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free today. Gretchen, I'm very excited to chat with you today. Thank you for coming on. I want to start off just jumping into it. So after years, you studied happiness, you studied habits, you studied human nature. You studied a lot of good, but what are some maybe unsettling or uncomfortable truths that you've discovered about what makes people happy? Well, I think one thing that's really interesting to think about is how our attention is attracted by anything negative. This is called the negativity bias, and you can see why from an evolutionary standpoint, why this would make sense. If something is dangerous, we want to pay attention to it. But what this means in ordinary life is that it's like news casters say if it bleeds, it leads, and negative information will catch our attention faster than positive information or like negative feedback from our boss will be seared into our memory while we'll forget all the positive feedback that we got. And so one of the things about happiness is it's very helpful to be aware of this negativity bias and to sort of fight against it. Because when you think back on, okay, oh, I had this weekend, sometimes the negative things might stand out to you or I had this encounter with my coworker. So you have to consciously think about the positive. I think this is why gratitude practices are so popular because they help their practice to think about the positive instead of focusing on the negative, which is our natural inclination. I have to say, I'm a person who was deeply annoyed by a gratitude journal. This is like advice that they often give and I found that I was very irritated by a gratitude journal. That particular approach did not work for me, but it is certainly something that many people find helpful and I found other ways to stay focused on gratitude because it is important because otherwise we do tend to really concentrate on what's going wrong. I think that I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it kind of seems like half the battle is just understanding our own biological like proclivities to negativity. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and then just more broadly on your point, just understanding ourselves, you know, really having self knowledge and doing that personal reflection because I think it's very easy to think like, well, if it's true for me, it's true for everyone or if it's true for someone else, it's true for me. And so part of it is our biology, like what is biologically wired into us. And then also in what way are we different or alike other people? I mean, one way this comes up that's funny to me is, you know, you know how you see that advice like, you know, if you're going to exercise, you should get up at 7 a.m. and go for a run before work. And I'm like, well, that's good advice if you're a morning person like me, but if you're a night person and like 30% of people are night people, it's largely genetic and a function of age. If you're a night person, you're not setting yourself up for success because you're at your most productive and energetic later in the day. So it's not that there's anything wrong with that advice. It's just that it might not be the right advice for you. And so we have to get past these sort of boilerplate answers because we're all different from each other. Well, what was the, what was the, what was the inflection point in your list? Such an interesting topic to study into into research. It's like, because it, it's crazy because it affects everyone so much. Yet outside of you, I can probably count on like half a hand of how many people put a lot of effort and energy into studying this phenomenon that impacts our entire life to such a degree where I mean, it can make or break us. It can cause depression. It can cause suicide. It can cause, like, it's so impacting. So it talked to me about that point in your life where you're like, listen, I got to figure this, this happiness thing out. Well, I can tell you exactly when and where it happened. I'm very subject to epiphany. It's one of my favorite things about myself. And I live in New York City. You might be able to hear a siren going off in the background right now. And I was, it was the pouring rain. I was in a cross-town bus moving very slowly. And so I had one of those rare opportunities for reflection. Because you know, in the tumult of everyday life, it's hard to step back and take the big look at the big picture. So I was there and I was worried. So I did. I thought, well, you know, what do I want from life anyway? And I thought, well, I want to be happy. And I realized at that moment that here I was saying that happiness was so important to me, but I didn't spend any time thinking about, was I happy? Was it possible to make yourself happier? If you could make yourself happier, what would you do? And I thought, you know, I should have a happiness project. And I was hit by this idea the next day. I ran to the library got a giant stack of books, contemporary science, ancient philosophy, pop culture, memoirs, novels, biographies, anything I could get my hands on to study happiness. And at first, it was just for me, it was just for my own happiness. But the subject was so fascinating. And there was so much that I wanted to learn and that I wanted to try in my own life that I thought, well, maybe this could be my next book. And so that I did write a book called The Happiness Project, because that's how the idea for struck me. But it's turned out that it's such a vast, fascinating subject that basically I've been studying different sub topics within happiness ever since. Yeah. So there's so many sub thoughts. Okay. So let's first back up a little bit and just maybe define because you had your own preconceived ideas and notions about what happiness was. I'm sure a lot of those are probably disproved when you started to research. So what is happiness as a concept? Okay. Well, I started my career in law. I was actually clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when I decided that I wanted to be a writer. And we spent an entire semester arguing about the definition of contract. And if happiness is an even more elusive concept to define, there are something like 17 academic definitions of happiness. And what I've decided is that if you're not a scientist, if you're a lay person, you can have your own definition of happiness. It can be peace, joy, contentment, satisfaction, well-being. Everybody can bring their own definition to it. And we don't have to spend a lot of time arguing about definitions because to me that just goes round and round. What's peace versus joy? What's contentment versus satisfaction? Whatever you want happiness to be, what I found is that it's really more productive to think about, how could you be happier? For you, Scott, however you define happiness for yourself that might be the way I define it for myself or different. Next week, next month, next year, if you did this or you did that, is that going to make you happier? Because I think when people ask themselves, what is happiness? Am I happy? It's really hard to figure out. But if you say, well, if you did this, do you think it would make you happier? That we understand and know. And so that's why I always talk about my podcast is called happier. Because I think it's easier to think about being happier than to achieving happiness, which suggests kind of a reach end result. And right, which is realistic, right? That's not how human life is. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that that scenario you described, especially in New York, where like I'm in Miami right now. And I do find that people in Miami do slow down once in a while and enjoy life. But I actually go to New York, I enjoy it. I enjoy the fast paced and I enjoy the hustle and I enjoy the just all of it. It's just it's it's it's it lights a fire, right? And and that's good. At the same time on the flip side of that, you never your mind never slows down. You never really stop to think in this little rat race and rat race could be nine to five, rat race could be entrepreneurship, rat race could be whatever it is. And rat race is not including just your work. It's your work, your family, your parents, your friends, your extra cricket, like the stack of things that you've built into your day to day. And we have a really good as humans, we have this great way of just including more and more and more and not taking time down or taking time away to just think about is this like what we're everything we're doing? Is this what we enjoy? Is this really what we want our life to look like? And I think that that's the that's the reason why people don't understand. Are they happy? Is there a benchmark that they can say this is where I'm at? And this is where I want to go. And I think that we're just always in this constant this constant race. And I and I'm curious as part of your research or as part of the insights or the lessons that you teach over what would be the first step for the average person that what I just described is like, yes, that's my life. Okay. What is the practice that allows me to really reflect? Is it meditation? Is it going on a trip and not opening up email? Because now we're always connected. What is the thing to start somebody on that journey? Well, I have to give us. I don't I never do either of those things. I am a person who's tried meditation three times including a silent meditation retreat. It is not a tool that works for me. I get that many people find meditation useful. It doesn't work for me. And I never want to connect. I never like step away from my email for 24 hours. I would find that more stressful than less stressful. So that's not a practice that I would do not to say that other people don't find that really useful. But again, that's not a tool that I would embrace. But here's what I would say because I think it's very confusing even to think about happiness. I want to get it black and white. So here's a way to think about it. If you're thinking about creating a happier life, you need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, feeling right in an atmosphere of growth. So what you want to do is you want to look at your life and you say, where could I have more of feeling good? Where could I have more love, more enthusiasm, more fun, more time with friends, more feelings of connection with the people who matter to me? I want to have more of whatever makes me feel good. Then you could say, well, I also want less of whatever makes me feel bad. I want less of what makes me feel guilty or angry or resentful or bored. What do I need to address so that I have less feeling bad? And I have to say in my happiness project, this was the area that I worked in the most. Then there's feeling right and feeling right is a little different because sometimes the things that we do to feel right don't make us feel good. Like a friend of mine said to me, like he had a really bad relationship with his father who was a very kind of mean person, very inattentive father. He was in the hospital. He was dying and my friend was going to the hospital every day to see him and he was saying, I hate going. I dread it. I don't enjoy seeing him. And when I leave, you know, I don't feel good about it at all. And I was like, right, but you feel right because this is your idea of like what it means to be a son, even though it wasn't, you know, you don't have a great relationship. That's still what you do to feel right. Or like you might volunteer even though it's a lot of time and energy and inconvenience and uncomfortable feelings or whatever, but you're like, this is what I do to feel right. So sometimes you do things to feel right that don't make you feel good, but you do that because living a life that reflects our values is very important to having a happier life overall. So it's not just the moment to moment feeling good. It's feeling good about our life overall. And then the final one is the atmosphere of growth. And I have to say this took me a while to understand, but in our lives, we're happier when we have a feeling of growth. When we're learning or teaching or improving something or helping, when we see that like what we're doing is creating growth in ourselves or in other people. And so whether that's, you know, volunteering for a nonprofit and helping them like get their finances, find its other control or you're raising a child or you're picking up trash in your neighborhood as you walk by and you see a bunch of wrappers on the sidewalk and you're like, okay, I'm just going to pick this stuff up and throw it away since I'm out here. This atmosphere of growth is really important for our happiness. And it's good because even when a lot of things are going wrong in our lives, this is something where we can create that feeling, we can control that. And so you're like, okay, everything in my life is like going wrong, but I'm going to stick to learning three words of Italian every day. And at the end of the year, I'm going to be so much better at Italian and that's going to make me feel good. Well, like you said about like being too focused on getting things done, you're exactly right too often we focus on the to-do and we don't think about the ta-da, but the atmosphere of growth is part of what helps us feeling like we are like we're improving ourselves or the world in some way. So feeling good, feeling bad, feeling right in an atmosphere of growth. And for each person, they might have to work on on different elements of that. But I think that that makes it easier to sort of pick apart what's working and not working and what you want to further work on in your life. I think that's phenomenal advice. One of the things that like I'm really hearing you say is this value alignment because that's the feeling good piece of it, feeling good about what you're doing. And I think that's so important because I think that not to say that your life is structured around doing things ethically incorrect. And people are not bad, but are they really in a job for a company that champions what they believe in? Or are they building, are they even building their own company that aligns with what they believe in? And so it's not just your personal life. It's not, are you teaching your kids, are you spending your, you know, are your kids doing things in activities that that you are proud of them doing? Like it permeates everything. So it's a lot. It's a lot to think about, oh my God, are my values actually in every single activity that I take on in my day to day? Is that aligned with who I am? And I bet, I mean, you do the research. I bet a lot of people don't even know what their values are. They're just going through life. No, you think, well, I just have good values and everybody that has good values has the same values as I do. And then you're like, actually, no, like a funny example of this is spontaneity. Somebody said to me, like, you know, as a journalist, he was like, why is it the people today? Can't be spontaneous and like, life is like, blah, you know, and I'm like, I don't value spontaneity. I dislike spontaneity. I go out of my way and I have spontaneity. I reject it as a value. But for this part, for the person I was talking to, like, that was a super important value to her. Now, spontaneity is not the most, you know, let's say it's not the most transcendent value, but it's a funny example where you're like, yeah, some people want it. Some people don't. It's, you know, it isn't a one-size-fits-all thing when it comes to values. Have you done like a lot of, um, because I'd like to look at the author of the work as the case study for everyone else? So maybe even like, I mean, because you've done this work on your research and research when it comes to, hey, I'm my own guinea pig for sure. So what have you discovered as you go through this exercise and you figure out, like, if you apply all these items to your own life, what have you discovered was misaligned? What have you discovered in terms of your own growth? Oh, well, one of the things I learned is that, especially when my daughters were younger is that I just was way too quick to lose my temper and very irritable. I'm one of these people that wants to go, go, go. And I just was, I just was not the kind of parent that I wanted to be and that I imagined myself to be. And so I, when I did my first happiness project, I did a huge amount of work and eat on just basic things, like making sure that I got enough sleep, making sure that I got up early enough that like I can get my, I can have my cup of coffee and get myself organized before like the all family life started, um, working on how to fight right with my husband so that I could like maintain like, you know, not perfectly, I will admit. But better, like having a lighthearted tone, being able to joke around, being able to poke fun at myself, um, you know, I, I did a ton to make sure that, you know, you know, here I am a happiness expert and I'm like, you know, yelling, you know, being snarky or, or it's happened. Well, it's easy, it's easy to research it. It's easy to, but it's, it's, it's, that's the thing. It's hard, it's hard to implement. Oh, well, this is what I learned is that it is so easy to give people advice and then, and it makes so many things, it's like the meditation, right? All these people recommend meditation. I'm like, well, do you meditate because I gotta say it doesn't work for me. Um, because when you really try things, sometimes you find out, well, it is a really useful tool, but it's not a tool that works for everyone. Um, and so I really do think that, um, yeah, I always have my own guinea pig. Well, you know, one of the things that I'm, that I talk about the most is this four tendencies personality framework that I, that I developed. And one of the reasons that I developed it is that I was, as I was writing my book better than before, that's all about habit formation. I started to get the understanding that I was a real outlier that I wasn't average like that. My experience was not difficult. Ex, no, but explain that explain explain explain. Yeah. Okay. So let me explain the four tendencies. And then I was going to go to four tendencies and a sec. Okay. But the only question I had and then we'll go there because then I want to understand your own experience. I just wanted, I mean, if people know your work, if they're listening to this podcast before we go into the four tendencies, somebody wants to do their own happiness project, very tacked with like, think of some tactics that they can do to start this process. Okay. I'll give you some quick answers, but if people really want a specific answer, because I get this exact question all the time, and it's kind of unsatisfying for me to give broad strokes because really it is very different for everyone. I created a quiz. It's called habits for happiness. Go to gretchenrubin.com slash quiz and it will kind of remarkably in just like 11 questions tell you the habit that you should focus on. Not just you like a person, but like you Scott, what is the specific habit that for you is the one that is going to most move the needle. It asks you a series of questions that will remarkably get you to that answer. So go to gretchenrubin.com slash quiz, and you can get a very specific answer. But if I was getting given answer, if you were going to be like, Gava Gretchen, what's the answer that like is the most universal answer? That's clear. You want to do it. You want to do things that are going to deepen and broaden your relationships with other people. We are social creatures. You were mentioning kind of biology before it. Like we are very social species. We rely on other people, and to be happy, we need to be able to confide. We need to be able to get support. And just as important for happiness, we need to be able to give support. We need to feel like we belong. We need to have deep intimate bonds. And so if you're thinking about how to use your precious time, energy or money, anything that is going to deepen a relationship, like should I go to my college reunion, right? Yes. Probably that's going to make you happier because that's going to deepen an old relationship or broadening relationship. Hey, should I join that poker group? Yeah, probably because you'll meet some new people and hang out with them, and that'll broaden your social relationships. And that's probably going to make you happier. And this is ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree. If there's one thing it's relationships. When they look at people who say they're the happiest, they tend to have more friends. If they ask somebody at work, are you happy at work? They're people who say, I have a friend at work, not just like a friendly acquaintance that I'm like, you know, talking about sports and pop culture with, but someone who has my back, someone I could tell a secret to. Or do you have a manager like the person you report to directly who cares about you and helping you to achieve your aims for yourself? Not some visionary boss who's standing at the top of the pyramid, but somebody that is connected with you who like wants to see you succeed. Those are the kinds of things that make people happy at work and at home and in life. So thinking about relationships is always a great place to start. Where no one has to reinvent the wheel. We're all in this together, learning and growing. And here's my ask. If you love this show, it's made a difference for you. Please share it with somebody who needs it. Hella friend, host on social, whatever works. It's the best way to keep this thing going strong. Bring on even better guests and share more life changing wisdom. And you can find us on all the spots. So you can go to successstorypodcast.com if you like listening to podcasts. If you like video, you can go to youtube. It's youtube.com slash c slash Scott Declary or the newsletter newsletter dot Scott Declary.com just spread the word. I'm eternally grateful for each and every one of you. Let's keep learning. Let's keep growing and let's keep making this world a little bit better together. All right, let's get back to the show. I would assume then post COVID. You saw massive decline in happiness. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting and we're still kind of working through it, right? Because what does it mean to connect with people virtually when we're really designed, you know, IRL is better than URL. And we're still trying to figure that out. How do you work for and you're seeing so much conversation about companies struggling to balance employees value of flexibility with the employers, you know, conviction that office culture and office cohesion are built on face to face. It's like how do we reconcile these two values? It's still being worked out. And yeah, COVID was really, really rough because I was going to say I was going to say it's interesting because if employers want you to come back into the office, I think that just happened. Amazon just asked people come in five days a week and people are pushing back on that because they want to stay home. But then the question is, are they actually jeopardizing their own happiness by cutting off the only social connections they have through their nine to five? Well, it depends because maybe that they might have all kinds of other values that are being served by working flexibly. And that's part of the problem is that people are very are in very different situations. If you look at what makes people unhappy, I'll tell you what they know makes people unhappy consistently and they never adjust to it because often we're really, we're very flexible and we can really adjust to a lot of things and be pretty happy with circumstances that are tough, but you never adjust to a bad commute. It will bum you out every single time and one of the things that people want from flexible work as they want to commute spend less time commuting. So that's very understandable, you know, like if you live, if you can walk to work, that's very different from like if you've got, you know, an hour and 15 minute drive, or you're fighting traffic for an hour to go just across town. So anyway, these things are complicated because they hit different people very differently in different stages of their lives and in different circumstances. And so, you know, we just never questioned it before. It was always just like, well, of course you have to go in five days. Nobody even ever thought it was very, it was very edge for people to talk about remote or work from home. And it was, you know, it wasn't, most people didn't know. So now we're dealing with a whole set of, yeah, new, a whole set of problems because now there's so many options. So now you're balancing. Okay, so you don't want somebody to press to be depressed and lonely at home, but they also hate the commute. That's time and energy and money. And then okay, so coming to the office is good for the work, it's good for the employer, but it's a good for the worker. And now you're balancing all these different dynamics. This makes work more complicated. Then you have to think of like, how much office space do we have? What's the experience when you show up? I mean, there's just, there's a million things that we're still in the very early stages of grappling with the long-term implications. So it's complicated. Well, that's why that's why you have to keep doing research. So we understand more. That's exactly what we got about. That's right. It's always, it was something new, right? Yeah. Okay, so let's go back to four tendencies. First of all, before we even get there, why did these tendencies come up? Where did they come from? Okay, I created them because so I was working on my book about how to change. And I started seeing patterns emerge that I couldn't explain. Like, certain people would say like exactly the same thing and exactly the same words. Like, people would say, well, I'll keep a near resolution when it, when I, when I think it's important, but I wouldn't wait for January first because January first is an arbitrary date. And they would always say that arbitrary. And I was like, that's interesting because the fact that January first is an arbitrary date really doesn't bother me. So, but to this class of people, that's clearly very important. But my big moment of revelation came when I was, my sister calls me a happiness bully because if I think there's a way for you to get happier, I can't get insistent. So I was drilling a friend about her happiness and her habits. And she said something that just blew my mind. She said, because I'd heard many people say something like this. She said, when I was in high school, I was on the track team and I never mistracked practice. So why can't I go running on my own now? So why? So I can come up with a lot of different theories. But why? And I started thinking about that and all the arbitrary people, all these different patterns that I've observed. And then finally, I was sitting right here right in this theory where I'm talking to you this moment. And it was like the word expectation just burst off the page to me. And I realized that the idea of expectation, how we respond to expectations, whether we meet expectations or whether we resist expectations, has this huge consequence on our behavior on how we form habits successfully or not successfully. And also many, many aspects of our life. And so that's what, and it took a long time. I mean, I was just like the hardest intellectual undertaking. I've rid of because I, you know, now I can see other these four categories. And they fit together in a diamond, then diagram, and it's super elegant. It's like the, it's like a, I feel like I, it was like the periodic table of the elements, right? It's got this kind of the elegance of nature. But of course, I didn't know that when I was coming up with that, I was like, are there farmed? Maybe there are six. Like, you're figuring out like, like, like, equals mc squared for the first time. That is exactly what it felt like. And then I remember like, when I saw how they all fit, because I was trying to do a two by two, but it's actually an interlocking bend diagram. And once I saw that, it was like every single like example that I could think of all fit in into these four categories. And it was so elegant. It's so straightforward. And the thing is about the fork, the four tendencies. And the four tendencies are uphold or question or obliger or rebel. They are so obvious. Once you say that, once you hear them, you will see them in the people around you. You can see them on TV. I can tell you the tendencies of the Game of Thrones characters. I can do the characters on the office. They're madmen. They're really obvious to say. Because these are just like deep, deep, just aspects of human nature. So anyway, I'm super proud of you should be. That's impressive. I know. I sort of can't believe I figured it out. And of course, I was terrified for like the first three. I was like, and surely I'm not the first person to figure this out. So I was like, worried that I would find out that somebody else had figured it out long before. As far as I know, I'm the first person to figure this out. So explain, explain people who have done, let's think of like a business, a now like a disc profile, or like a Myers-Briggs, all these different like all these. So what are those versus the four tendencies? What does the four tendency framework show you about yourself that the other ones would not? You know, I think all the frameworks have their own power, their own strength, their own vocabulary. They're all looking at human nature in a little bit of a different way. But the four tendencies is it describes a very narrow aspect of your nature, but a very significant aspect of your nature. And so I think it's more precise because it's just more specific in what it's trying to explain. And yet what it explains is very important. So I would say that is what I would say is different. And it's very predictive. Like I can often say like, well, if you're a questioner, did you, did people say this to you when you were in grade school? Do you have this kind of argument with your sweetheart? Do you run into this kind of problem at work? Do you find yourself saying these words? And people will often just like burst in laughing and say like, oh my, or like, I'll give a talk and everybody in the audience will start pointing to one coworker and just like cracking up because they're so far. This is the person like we get it. Like here, here it's exhibit A, you know, because it's very easy to spot. Whereas I think something like the, you know, Myers-Briggs, you're kind of like, well, I'm a little bit of this. I'm a little bit of that. Maybe on that, it's kind of, I don't know, I can, I can get there. But they're all valuable, I think, because they help us with self knowledge. But I think that's, I think that's really the goal, right? Like I think, first of all, if you even know what any of these tests are good for you because that's already a level of self awareness that I don't even think enough people pay attention to. Like I knew of these tests, I mean, disk is a very common hiring test, right? Now people use Myers-Briggs as well. But I think that just having these tools at your disposal and being able to look inside and understand how you operate in this world is very important. It's so powerful. Because you're not leaving life the chance. You know exactly what, what scenarios you should be putting yourself in or moving yourself from who you can work with, how you operate, how you work, what stresses you out, what makes you happy, what makes you not so happy. I think these are great tools. I mean, so I want you to, I want you to just sort of walk through if you can, like the four tendencies, what, what they are at a high level. So people can start to wrap their mind around and they're going to listen to, oh, that's me, that's me, that's not me, is so on yet. Yeah, listen to all four of you before you decide what you are. So I'm going to describe it and the truth is most people will know exactly what they are from this brief description. But if you want to take a quiz that will spit out an answer and give you a report, you can go to Gretchenreuben.com slash quiz. Again, like three million people have taken this quiz. It's free. But again, I'll just describe it briefly. Most people will know what they are. And I will say this, be honest. Because sometimes people sort of answer the way they wish they were. But this is all of these tendencies have include people who are wildly successful and also people who struggle. They all have strengths and weaknesses. So, you know, be honest. Okay, so what the four tendencies looks at is how you respond to expectations. And we all face two kinds of expectations, outer expectations, like a work deadline, an inner expectation, like a request from a no, like a work deadline, an inner expectation, like your own desire to keep a New Year's resolution. So depending on whether you meet or resist, outer and inner expectations, that's what makes you an appolder, a questioner, and a blager, or a rebel. So, appolders are people who readily meet both outer and inner expectations. So, they meet the work deadline, they keep the New Year's resolution without much fuss. They're very focused on execution. They love schedules and to do this. They don't need a lot of supervision. They're very disciplined. They, once they make up their mind to do something, they'll do it. They tend to love like reviewing rules. So their motto is discipline is life freedom. Then there are questioners. Who has dinners? Who has general expectations? They'll do something if they think it makes sense. So they're making everything an inner expectation. If something makes sense to them, they'll do it no problem. If it doesn't make sense to them, they will push back. So they love customization. They love reason. They're always asking for more justification. They can sometimes, in fact, suffer from analysis paralysis when their desire for perfect information makes it hard for them to make a decision or move forward. Strangely, a lot of times, questioners don't like to answer questions. Funnily enough, they like to teach, but they don't like to be questioned themselves. Ironic for true. I married to a questioner. I experienced this myself. So their motto is, I'll comply if you convince me why. Then there are old blighters. A blighter is the biggest tendency for both men and women. You either earn a blighter or you have many of blighters in your life. So a blighter needs a lot of attention because it's a big big category of blighters readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. So these are the people who say things like, why can I keep my promises to other people? But I can't keep my promises to myself. This is my friend on the track team. When she had a team and a coach waiting for her, she showed up with no problem. But when she was trying to go on her own, she struggled. These are people who talk about the problem of self care. These are people who talk about why can't I make myself a priority? The solution, and it's a very simple solution, for a blighter is even to meet an inner expectation and a blighter must have a system of outer accountability. If you want to read more, join a book group. If you want to exercise, work out with a friend who's going to be annoyed if you don't show up, pay a trainer, take your dog for a run who's going to be disappointed if she doesn't get to go for a run, raise money for a charity that's important to you. Think about your duty to be a role model, to other people. There's a lot of ways to have outer accountability, but it has to be a form of outer accountability, even for an inner expectations. And that's just what works for a blighters. And of blighters, but the one thing is spouses and sweethearts often don't make good accountability partners for a very romantic reason. It's like, oh, honey, I'm so close to you that you're like me. And so I'm going to ignore you just the way I would ignore me. So you got to get that outer accountability if you were an abliger. Then the smallest tendency is the rebel. It's a conspicuous tendency, but this is the one that the fewest people fall into. Rebels resist outer and inner expectations alike. They want to do what they want to do in their own way and in their own time. They can do anything they want to do anything they choose to do. But if you ask them to do something they are very likely to resist. And typically they don't tell themselves what to do. Like they don't sign up for the 10 a.m. spin class on Saturday because they think, I don't want to put something on my calendar. And just the idea that somebody's expecting me to show up is going to annoy me. So their motto is, you can't make me. And neither can I. And I will say this as you're thinking about this, if you're thinking to yourself, I question the validity of this framework. You're probably a questioner. And also if you were thinking to yourself, I fit all four categories. I'm equally all for that is also a questioner because what you're doing is you're saying, well, if it's appropriate to act like a rebel, I'll act like a rebel. But if it's appropriate to act like an appolder, I'll act like an appolder because you're saying, why would I act that way? That is a big sign of questioner. Appolders, obligers, and rebels recognize they are firmly in that tendency. So if you're not sure, that's the sign of questioner. Is there is there benefit to trying or is it even possible to change your category if you recognize who you are? Well, I don't think so. I don't think you can change your tent. I'm a firm believer in the genetic roots of personality. And I really think that this is something that's hard wired. But also I don't know why you don't need to change your tendency because every tendency has strengths and weaknesses. And if you're experiencing like a downside or limitation of your tendency, rather than trying to change your inner nature, which is very hard if even possible, it's like fix the problem. So if you're in a bliger, like a bliger's will say, well, I want to be an appolder because I want to exercise regularly. I'm like, well, you don't have to be an appolder to do that. You just have to have outer accountability to do that. So you understand the levers that you pull in your particular circumstance. Right. You just have to like use what you know about your tendency to get to achieve your aim for yourself. Because that's much more straightforward. I'm like, that's the easy solution, which is just like, get what you want. Don't try to change your whole personality because that's like, is that even possible? And like, that's not even what you want. You want to achieve certain as certain aim for yourself. And you think, well, if I were a different tendency, it would be easier. Well, you just just fix it for your tendency because all these tendencies have strengths and weaknesses. Why? How does expectation play such a big role in how we go through life? Just part of life. I mean, that's part of, if you're work, you're surrounded by expectations. If you're at home and it just weighs on us, it just weighs on us, it forces our hand. But it's part of the type. I mean, a life of that expectations would be a life of of meaninglessness because it would mean nobody's counting on you for anything. I can't even imagine what that would be. I mean, even interesting. It's such a novel concept coming into it fresh and not living in it. Like, it makes so much sense when you say it, but then you don't. I think it's almost a little jarring to understand how much expectation, both internal and external plays on how you navigate through life. Like, it's not comfortable. It's not a comfortable thought. Because you never, I've never thought about that. I know expectation exists, but I've never thought about how much it impacts every little thing that I do. Yes. No, it does. That's true. Well, let's see. This goes to my point. Like, I'm in a polder. So I'm part in a polder is the second smallest. So rubble is the smallest and a polder is only slightly bigger. We're like the fringe personality types. And like, as I was saying, when I was studying habits, I realized, I'm not typical because I realize that like, when you say that about expectations as an a polder, we're very comfortable with expectations. Like, we kind of thrive on expectations. So for me, that's a very kind of almost reassuring, like way of thinking about things. But see, you're saying, whoa, back up. Like, what it, what it is. So this is interesting, right? Because it's showing that we have different perspectives. And this is one of the, I remember I was talking to somebody. I hadn't come up with my framework yet. So I didn't know that this person was a rubble. But as it turns out, she's like one of my OG rebels. This is a super important conversation that I had with her that showed me how differently an a polder and a rebel think. Because when I told her, I was writing a book about habits, which to me was like a super exciting and energizing topic. She literally took a step back from me because the idea was so low that some to her. And she's like, why in the world would you like volunteer to write a book about a subject that's just like, so awful? I was like, whoa, that's interesting. I love the idea of habits. To me, a life full of habits is a life of freedom and possibility. But you don't feel that way. That's interesting. So that was a really important conversation because I was like, whoa, there's a totally different perspective here that I hadn't realized. I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now HubSpot has an incredible podcast network. Success stories part of it. And if you like success story, you're going to love other podcasts in their network. One of my favorites is iDigress, is hosted by Troy Sandage. What Troy does exceptionally well is in under 30 minutes. He helps eliminate complexity, complications, confusion in your business. He talks about frameworks, strategies that really work to help you achieve scalable and sustainable success. So you need to go listen to iDigress, one of the most useful podcasts for entrepreneurs and founders, part of the HubSpot podcast network, wherever you get your podcasts. That's so interesting. And when you now go through life, I mean, with family, spouse, I mean, children, peers, how does out of these frameworks, should they impact how you go through life and it? That's right. No, you can save yourself so much time and energy and conflict and procrastination and misunderstanding. If you know about the tendencies, so okay, like I said that I'm married to a questioner. As an appolder, I'm like, if he asked me to do something, I just do it. And I'm like, it must be important if he asked me to do it. Like, I don't even really care. Like, whatever, I'll just take your word for it. You know, if you want this phone number, I'll just give it to you. But with my husband, it's not like that. It's like, he's got to know why. And so I've learned that I'm like, hey, what time are we leaving in the morning? Because I want to know if I have time to work out. Because oh, he just said, what time are we leaving in the morning? He won't answer me. Or he'll say, what do you need to know? And I'm like, why do you care? Just answer me. But I always now am trying to give him the reason. Like, we need to get the guest room cleared out because my parents are coming on Friday and we're not going to have time on Thursday to move the peloton. So we need to do it tonight because we're not going to have time tomorrow and then they're coming the next morning. It's like, okay, so I understand. You're not asking me to do it just arbitrarily. It's like, Matt, you're asking me to do it for a reason. And this is why now is the time. I just have to give him those reasons. Within a blighter, it's always creating that outer accountability. Something that as an upholder, I used to say to people and now I realize how unhelpful it was, is I would say things like, well, I don't need to be your babysitter. Just do it when it makes sense for you and get it to me when you're ready. Or if something's important to you, you'll make time for it. And if not, not, or, you know, not understanding why other people really need outer accountability. And then when I'm communicating with rebels, oh, wow, I have a friend that I do collaborate with who's a rebel. And it's always like, hey, man, I'm doing this thing. If this sounds fun for you, this is the kind of thing that works for your audience. I was thinking that this could be something that would be fun for us to do. But don't, you know, but if you've got the time and this seems like the kind of thing that's interesting because it's like the more I'm like, hey, is this what you want? Is this something that is interesting to you? That's going to be interesting to him to him. If I'm something like, hey, I just read this newsletter and we should really do this thing. Why don't we get something on the calendar? That's this like going to be an immediate turn off for him. Not that he can't maybe get himself to do it. But it's like, it's just going to rub in the wrong way. It's going to like set his teeth on it. It's like, you're telling me I should do something. You're telling you're giving me a deadline instead of opening up the idea that this is a possibility that someone might be excited about. That's just, and the thing is, it sounds effortful when I say this, but it's like, once you start thinking this way, you can just communicate just much more easily with people. And then you're just speaking their language, you know, and that's just, then you're just communicating more effectively. And that's really exciting. I mean, it just removes all the friction and all your relationships because you don't even realize your put friction in. You don't realize you're creating problems for people. And there's all kinds of ways of miscommunication can occur. Okay, so here's an example. So I collaborate with people, I have my happier podcast and I collaborate with people sometimes. And there was somebody I worked with. And I'm the kind of person where if I have an idea in the middle of the night, or like, I get up at 5 a.m. to work, and if I think of a question for you or I need some piece of information, I'll just spire off an email. But I'm not saying, oh, you got to answer me right away. I just want to get it off my mind, right? I just want to get it done. And now it's on your to-do list on my to-do list. But this person that I worked with had a very different view. She was in a bliger, and she felt like the minute that I sent an email, I created an expectation that she would reply. And she felt very much, I shouldn't tell me this directly, but I heard about it indirectly. That I was ignoring office hours that I was really pushing boundaries that I was being very, very inconsiderate of her by peppering her with these emails at all hours. And she was getting very, very resentful. So what happens? Okay, so did the two of us go into HR and say, okay, what is in the policy handbook? Do we sit down and we say, I'm right, you're wrong, you're wrong, I'm right, whatever. Do we pull rank? What do we do? No, I learned to use delayed delivery in Outlook. And so whenever I have an email at 5 a.m., I just put it in and then I put, you know, delayed delivery till 9 a.m., Monday morning. And then I'm respecting the way I like to work. And I'm also respecting the way that she likes to work because it's not that one of us is right and one of us is wrong. It's just that we have different perspectives and we respond differently to circumstances. And so when we can talk about it openly, instead of like feeling upset about it or that it's a personal attack or that people are being inconsiderate, you're just like, hey, you know, this is how it makes me feel, you know, or questioners question, often drain and overwhelm people with their constant questioning. And they have to learn like, hey, you know, it makes me feel very defensive when you question all of my judgments. I feel like you're really undermining my authority, like instead of raising your hand, you know, and making a meeting pick three times as long as everybody else wants to take it. Why don't you like summarize your questions in an email that I can gather my thoughts and I can answer you like in a way where you get the information that you want, but we keep the meeting moving and we don't have like this protracted thing that's just a pain for everyone. And again, it's like, there's something wrong that there's a lot of value in the questions that questioners ask, but they can be draining and overwhelming for people. And so again, it's like, okay, let me get you what you want, but in a way that works for me. And so again, it's just like, it's just, it's just creating a frictionless your exactly right. It's like removing the friction that doesn't even need to be there. It's just that we don't understand why it's there because we can't articulate, we can't articulate why there's this friction. And that's exactly it. We always think that everybody else sees the world the same way as us. It's so hard not to be seeing the world that you see it. The way that you just are assuming that people are bringing the same energy to things. But that's why I like, and sometimes people will say, well, I don't like categories because also questioners often say this because, you know, people are so nuanced and like you can these categories are so broad and crude. And how can you say that all of humanity fits into one of four categories? And then like, the thing is, it's helpful to have these generalizations because then we have a vocabulary where we can agree on. We have a shorthand. So we can kind of communicate quickly. If somebody says to me, like, hey, I'm an obliged or I need a deadline. I'm like, hey, I gotcha. You know, like, let's, let's figure this out or like, I hate deadlines because it's an upholder. They make me feel like so so much pressure that I feel like I have to do the work right away. And you can't do everything right away. It turns out. So I was just working with an editor and she said, well, what's what let's agree on a deadline? And I was like, here's the thing. I'm super conscientious and I hate deadlines. Can we just not have a deadline? Because it will just stress me out and it won't make me, it won't help me work any better. And she's like a thousand percent. I understand that. But see, if I know I had been an obliged or I might have said, and she said, oh, you don't need a deadline. Just get it to me when you're ready. As if I knew that I were in a blight, I might say, hey, you know what? I work much better with a deadline. Why don't we agree on a deadline? And then when I know that you're expecting it in two weeks, that's going to help me like pace my work and get it to you because otherwise, I might always just flip to the bottom of the of the to do list. I'm not going to do it in a timely way. You know, and that's going to let you down. And I'm going to let myself down. So again, it's like just know you're we're coming back to this over and over again. Know yourself. Begin with what's true for you. So okay. So this, I hope it's not a stretch. I don't think it's going to be a stretch because when you were writing better than before, this is when you started to understand this whole, this whole four quad, four quad. And then I went on and wrote a whole book about it because I want anybody wanted to ask what's the first. But yeah, I others, I got my glimpse into it when I was trying to understand patterns and habit formation. Well, that's what I was going to ask. So we just spoke about how to apply these habits so that you understand how you work, how to interact with your peers, your family, your friends, whatever, anyone in your life. From the lens of habit formation, how do you apply these four tendencies to build better habits or to build better routines? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's one of the, that's one of the main reasons people use it. Okay. So let's say you want to have the habit of going for a 30 minute walk every day, right? So if you're in a holder, what you would want to do is you'd want to put it on the calendar because for upholders, there's some things on the calendar, it happens. Like you just say, I'm going to go every morning, 730 or get up before breakfast or whatever it is. And if it's on the calendar, it will happen. And that for upholders is very, that's very easy. Like that is one of the things that's nice about being upholders. Pretty easy to make habits for questioners. It's all about the reasons they need the strategy of clarity, which is why? So they need to be very clear. Like, why is it a half an hour and like, why is it 10,000 steps instead of 15 or 8,000 steps? Like why 10? Why in the morning? If you have a doctor's that, okay, you should take this medication with meals. It's like, well, why with meals? It would be more convenient for me to customize it and take all my medication together before bed. It's like, you've got to give them a reason. So if you're a questioner and you want, and this is often what paralyzes questioners when it comes to exercise because they're like, well, maybe I should be going a walk for a walk, but maybe I should be doing high-intensity weight training or maybe I should be doing more intense cardio or you know, maybe, you know, there's, I heard about this. I heard stretching. It was really important. And I'm like, if you're not making, but questioners are really good at meeting their inner expectations. So I'm like, if you're not meeting in their expectations, it's because you're not clear on why this is the right thing for you. Get the clarity and then your actions will follow. Obligers, the answer is outer accountability. There's a lot of ways to create outer accountability. That is what you need. You could pay for a class, pay for a trainer. Think of your, some, some of lighters can even have like imaginary, but I would consider imaginary accountability, like accountability to do their future self or like to an app. I have an app, the happier app and like just like having a don't break the chain for some of lighters, don't break the chain tracker is enough or like, have an accountability partner, my sister's an obliger and she has a friend where every day they try to get to 10,000 steps and along the way they'll just say like 6,000 or 7,500. I said that it's like, okay, we got it and then we got to get to 10,000. So she just knows that somebody's checking in on her for an obliger. That is the key thing. It's the outer accountability. Again, there's a million ways to create it. That's what they need. With the rebel, it's really, there's two kinds of things that work for rebels. One is identity. This is the kind of person you are. You're not doing it because you're supposed to or because somebody told you to or even because you promised that you would, it's the kind of person you are. You're an athlete. You're a person who respects your body. You're a bicyclist. And then often they kind of like to do things that are a little bit like, you know, you're kind of meeting a challenge. You say I can't run the marathon in 2025, watch me. Or maybe they like to get around the rules a little bit. I know a friend who's like, I exercise during my work day. They're trying to keep me behind my screens. I'm like, I'm out there. You can go in for a hike. So for him, it was like kind of that feeling of like, you're not the boss of me. Even if you are the boss of me or information consequences choice. And this, this often works if you're dealing with a rebel. So like, let's say this often comes up with healthcare providers. Let's say you're a doctor and you have a rebel and it's really important that that rebel begin to exercise or do physical therapy after surgery. Say, right? Now, if you say you have to do it or it's doctors orders that you do it, that's not going to be useful to them. But what you can give them is information consequences choice. You've given the information they need to make a decision. You tell them the consequences of their action or an action and then you let them decide. So you could say something like, okay, but let me just tell you what we see. So with people who did your surgery, the people who do the exercises, you know, after six months, they're off the pain medication. They're out there traveling. They're dressing themselves. They're getting around like there doing anything they want. You know, we see really good results for the people who follow through with physical therapy. The people that don't have the physical therapy, well, we see that they're stuck on pain medication. They are not, they are not independent. They've got people who may be are helping them dress or helping them bathe. They're not worth, they're not, they're not jumping on a bus or a plane. They're very limited in their in their movements. You know, so up to you, you can do the physical therapy or not. That's your choice. Here's a pamphlet. If you want a pamphlet, that works. If that's interesting to you, if you think that's useful, I got this pamphlet. We're not. It's up to you because the more you push, the more you nudge, the more you remind, the more you rescue, a rebel, the more you ignite their spirit of resistance. And with some rebels, even if you praise them, they feel like you're trying to control them. So it's for some rebels, if you even said something like, oh, Scott, it's so great that you've been following your doctor's orders and you've been doing your physical therapy so conscientiously, some rebels will be like, what? You think that I'm doing what that guy's told me to do? No way. I'm not doing that. You got to be careful with rebels because I do make things worse, like let them do their thing in their way. They can do anything they want to do. Like a lot of times we mess them up. You have to know that so, you know, when you lay out these personality types and the tendencies, like, if you want to change your habit, like, this is why people have such a high failure rate. They don't, they don't even know, they don't even know how they respond to external internal stimuli expectation. And if you knew your, your chance of actually adopting a new habit or taking on a new routine, it probably goes up 100x. If you actually know how you go through this world, though, well, that's why in the happier app, my app, it like, it takes you through the four tendencies quiz so that it can like, you can use any tool you want, but it'll suggest the ones that are propped that are going to suit you best for your tendency because you're exactly right because here's the thing. Certain approaches work really well for some tendencies, but they're counterproductive for other tendencies. So if you keep saying to somebody, you just need to sign up for a class, well, a rebel is going to resist that. That's terrible advice for a rebel. But if you say to somebody, if you say to an obliger, well, you just need to get clear on what you want. And when you're, when you know what's important to you, your actions will follow, that's not going to happen. They can sit around and think about what's important to them or how motivated they are all day long. It's not that that's a bad idea to have that kind of clarity. It's not going to move the needle for them. What an oblige your needs is outer accountability. That's all it works. And you're, and this is what to me is so powerful about the pretendants. It's kind of like, you can throw spaghetti against the wall. All you want. And maybe you'll get lucky and you'll hit the match. And a lot of times people do sort of intuitively start to understand what they need. Like you'll see that obligers will kind of figure out ways to create outer accountability. Because they kind of, they kind of have been tweeted that that's what works for them. But this is just, this way you just know. And you're just like, okay, let me just plug that in. Yeah, I feel like it's just so much easier. Or you know, accountability is very burdensome. As an upholder, I realize I don't need accountability. And so I don't need to worry about having it. Because I don't really need it. Because otherwise, it's kind of a pain to have accountability. It can be super valuable. And it's worth it if you need it. It actually, it could actually upset you. If you're, if you're an upholder and you have no problem going to the gym, but you know that everybody else is getting a trainer. And then you do get a trainer. And then they're harping on you to finish the workout or to stick to the diet plan. That could actually, it won't throw you off or stop you from doing it. But you could like the activity less because you're, you're now getting this external stimuli. You didn't even need. So you're like, F you buddy, you don't need to tell me I'm already doing it. Well, and at the very least, you're paying for something that you don't need. Because you know, everybody needs a trainer. It's like, but do you need a trainer? That's what a lot of people are saying to me, like, oh, I just thought everybody had to have it. I'm like, some people absolutely do. And some people benefit it. Like with some things for me, even though I'm an upholder, for some ways, accountability is helpful. But you're exactly right. Like it can mess with you. If you're just like kind of cool, just assuming that everything that works for everybody else will work for you, but it could end up like really just messing with what you would do on your what comes naturally to you. Yeah. And like questioners, they might feel like, okay, this person is telling me things, but it doesn't make sense. And so now I'm just irritated with this person who I feel like is like, why are they arbitrarily changing this thing? Or I want to customize it. And they insist that I need to do it their way. Yeah, you're it's true. It's like do it's right for you. And don't assume that that just more is better. Are there ways is last question I have on this. I find it fascinating. But I want to ask one more one more topic about habits, which I think is interesting. But before we go into that, are there ways when you just go into a net new conversation with somebody you've never met before to understand kind of where they fit? You know where I'm going with it. Obviously, because I want to make sure that I'm the evaluation. Yeah. Okay. So on my website, Richard Rubinakon, there is like a thing where flash evaluation. I love they I love that you put all this stuff on your website because this is actually very helpful. And I love testing quizzes. It's just like very simply because not everybody has access to you, right? Not everyone has access to you directly. So it's good to be able to go. But there are, but what's funny is that there really are tells. There really are things that you can tell are like, I'm in conversation with somebody and I'm like, I'm just starting to be like, okay. So one is the word arbitrary. It is amazing. How often questioners will mention that something is arbitrary by requirements to address the room. It's arbitrary 65 miles per hour. It's arbitrary. My boss says that we all have to use the same software. I don't see the rationale for that. So and so that is a top that's a cool. And then if you feel like somebody is is is is overloading you with questions, even about things that like maybe you're like, why are you even asking me that? Like, oh, let's have let's have I picked. I made a reservation in Italian restaurant. Why? And you're like, because why reasons, you know, that's the sign of questioner. A bliger, a bliger is the easiest to spot because these are the people that say, why do I keep my promises to other people? But I can't keep my promises myself. Whenever you hear about somebody about like, I don't understand why I can't make myself a priority. A priority. Whenever you when people will even say pridefully, I give a thousand percent to other people. So of course, I have nothing for myself. Like, I give 110 percent to my patients. So who could have time to exercise? That is always the sign that it's in a bliger. And remember, those are the two obligers, the biggest tendency and the second biggest is questioner. So if you're talking to somebody, if you're guessing that someone is in a bliger questioner, the numbers are on your on your side. It's very easy to it's easier to spot up holders of rebels because they are more extreme with rebels. It's people where they do what they want when they want. They will not, if you ask your tell them to do something, they're very likely to resist. They will often, like, if you tell them to do something that they were going to do anyway, they might not do it. Like a rebel said to me, a rebel teenager said to me, like, I like having my room neat. And sometimes like, I'm making my bed and my mother says, don't forget to make your bed. And then I like, I make my bed because I just like, I'm not going to let her tell me what to do. So that kind of behavior is rebel. And then the upholder is really when you do, and I will say, this is a rebel. We are often called rigid. We are often called judgmental because, like, we get an idea in our head of how things are supposed to go. And then we will start to execute. So when you see that kind of, like, sort of, you know, like the kid that remembers to bring their homework in every day and, and, and, and, and be their pet without reminders. That's the, that's kind of the upholder vibe. Once the more you know about it, you start to get a feeling for people really quickly. It's funny how people just do communicate a certain vibe. But they're, but there is the flash evaluation. And a lot of times people want this for clients because they want to communicate more effectively with clients. And then also it comes up a lot for teachers. And then also in healthcare. Because these are issues. These are really professions where you're trying to get people to do what you want them to do. But willingly, you know, and, and how do you get them to buy in? So, so that's why I created that because so many people were sort of like, I can't make this person take the quiz. But can you give me any, are there any signs? So yeah, that's, no, that's great. That's, and I, like, I'm just thinking from like a work context. If I jumped on a Zoom call with a new client or somebody who was like a peer and I'm like, Hey, can you book a, can you, can you send me a kindly invite for a meeting next week at so and so a time. And you see if they do it or if they don't, or if they push back, like just like a little, like a little ask, a little ask, like a little, like, it's just like such a, I never thought of that. Yeah. An interesting idea. Like, wrote something out of like a minor request out and see if they're like done or do you need it by or like, why are you asking me to do this? Or like, somebody who's like, no, because I know some people, you'll ask them to say, because you know, when you, you're going and booking a meeting and then you like, Hey, can you send a kindly invite? And some people send it right away. Because they're so enthusiastic. And other times that meeting invite never comes because in their head, they're like, why is this guy asking me? Why didn't you just send it himself? And there's some sort of hesitation there. So you can start to categorize people as the, as that where they fit the very, very little, little, little ask, right? Almost like trivial nothing thing. I'm, yeah, I would, under that, that, I don't know if I'm right or not, but you, you, you, you know, like, does somebody have an assistant? Like, there could be confounding things there, but it is interesting like to see how somebody would respond. It like, one thing people often say is like, well, how do I communicate so that it reaches all four tendencies? And that's very hard to do. You know, and, and you can't, I can get into like the how you would communicate, but like one of the things that I think of as there's like one message that's so short and so powerful, this message has not been promulgated in decades. And yet we all know it. And I think it's because it works so beautifully with all four tendencies. It's so elegant, a solution. And that is the message only you can prevent forest fires. Because think about it. It works with the holders. It works with questioners. It works with obligers. And it works with rebels. And so in one very short phrase, like, all of those tendencies are, are, are hearing that message. Only you can prevent forest fires. It's really beautiful. That's very hard. Usually you can't do it. That's exactly for sure. Um, but what you did there, I was going to say what you did there is, what you did is you positioned it so that it doesn't, it doesn't offend anyone's expectations and each four tendency would interpret that sentence differently. Exactly. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. But you could find ways to structure commands or require, it's very hard. It's yes. I don't know. But it's a useful exercise or you can just think about like, I'm going to set something up. I'm going to make sure that I have the reasons. I'm going to make sure that I have a deadline. I'm going to make sure that I have an out for people who want to do something a different way. I mean, you can think about as you're communicating, um, how you could, uh, make sure that you're, you're communicating effectively with all four. It might not be that, that, in that, with such brevity, that is certainly something that you can think of. Or if you're dealing like with a client, you know, you can start thinking like, okay, this person is asking me questions. I need to really come forward with all of the reasons and all my justifications and all my rash now and all my science and my research and let you do you want to go through like the pricing structure and explain like why the pricing structure is exactly this way. Whereas with somebody else, they're like, oh my god, I don't want to know the details. You know, if this is going to get me the result I want, if so, yes. It's like, hey, I know you're an innovator. I know you like the newest thing. Hey, I think this is going to be interesting to you. See if you think this could solve your problem. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. You know your customer. You know your client, but we find that for people like you, this kind of thing often works. Check it out. If you want, I'll give you a free month. Yeah. The rebel, but that's not going to work for the quesadar. That's fast. Yeah. I think that the answer really is you start to understand how to figure out this, this, this tendency, the, like the person who's speaking to which tendency they are and then you start to tailor. I don't think I think it's actually easier to do that than to play this game of I'm trying to say one thing that's going to be received well by everyone. I don't need that's the answer. Yeah. Because you're right. It's just so hard. It's so hard. Yeah. Well, the one thing I wanted to ask you just on the topic of habits, you mentioned foundational habits. I find that interesting. So what are foundational habits and from somebody who's trying to improve anything in their life, their marriage, their relationship with their kids, their work, their health, wellness, what are foundational habits and why are they so important? Right. Well, and you're exactly right. So what I found in my study of habits is that there are, there are sort of four areas of habit formation that are that are the foundation and there are particularly important because if we get these habits under control, we're much better equipped to go on to do other habits like working on our, you know, like stop yelling in our spouse so much or whatever it might be. And so if you're going to start, you want to start with these and what you'll notice is these have to do a lot with like the body and the physical experience and like your physical surroundings. And it's, it's very easy sometimes to get up in our heads and forget that we're actually in bodies, but our physical experience will always color our emotional experience. So the foundational habits are sleeping, moving, eating and drinking and uncluttering. So sleeping is most adults need seven and a half hours of sleep. So maybe you need to set an alarm just like you set an alarm in the morning. Maybe you set an alarm to help you go to bed. Maybe you have a snooze alarm that's like, okay, 10 minutes for now. I got to turn out the light. So getting enough sleep, that makes a huge difference. People who don't get enough sleep tend to think that they aren't really affected by it, but research shows that they're really affected by it. So you want to get enough sleep, then moving exercise. And this is not to be, you don't have to be training for marathon. Research shows that 20 minutes of walking a day, especially if you're on the sunshine, will do immense benefits for you. Mood, memory, immune function, it fights to pride. It just, it's the magical elixir of life. So you really want to figure out how to get more moving into your day. And then eating and drinking right, you don't want to let yourself get to hungry or thirsty, because often what happens is people will like, they'll skip breakfast, they skip lunch, and then at 3 p.m., they're so hungry that they just like are ripping, ripping open the plastic crinkly bags and they can't, you know, so making sure that you're eating and drinking enough so that you're in command of making healthy choices. And then I'm cluttering, so I'm cluttering isn't as universal. There truly are people like my sister, who are clutter blind, and they do not care, like on balance, they'd like things to be neat, but they, it doesn't bother them. All every cabinet door is open, junk mail is piled on the counter, they just don't see it. But so there are those people, and we know those people, you can, you know, those people are, but for most people, it is true that outer order contributes to inner calm more than you would think. And often people will say like, once I got my, my, my physical surroundings, my office, my desk, my car, my bedroom, like orderly, got rid of like things that were broken, things that were in the wrong place, things I don't use anymore, things I can't even identify, trash, got that out of the way. You just feel more in command of yourself. It's just easier to have that self-discipline when the things around you are orderly. And I find this to be so mysterious, like it's kind of a disproportionate effect. Like somebody said to me, I finally cleaned out my fridge, and now I know I can switch careers. And I'm like, I get it, but why? So I wrote a whole book, outer, outer order, inner calm, which is sort of looking at this and like how to, how to get create order in an easy way, because I'm like, it's just puzzling why not for everybody, but for most people, it really helps with like other habits to get like that uncluttering done. Well, I was, you know, the reason why I brought up foundational habits, because you've, like even in this podcast, we've spoken a whole bunch of different topics, but I was trying to figure out a through line between habit formation and happiness. And I was curious, it seems like foundational habits are the prerequisite to achieving any sort of happiness. I don't think you can have happiness if you don't have your foundational habits. And then just interested to hear your thoughts on that. But were there any other through lines between happiness and habit formation? Are they two very separate topics? No, they're very much related. You're exactly right. And the reason that I got led into habit formation is I realized that a lot of times when you're talking to people about happiness, it's not that they don't know what to do to be happier. They know perfectly well what would make them happier. They'd be happier if they read more, or if they got more sleep, or if they got back into fly fishing, or if they meditated, or whatever it is. But what they have is they have a challenge in habit formation, because a lot of the things that make us happier are really about positive habits. It's not about like doing 30 days of yoga. It's about doing yoga kind of for years to come. And that's about habit formation. And so that's what led it to me, because so often people would say, well, but I know it would be happier if I exercise. Why can't I exercise? And then I'm like, well, you don't have a happiness question. You have a habit question. So how would you do it? And so what I figured out is there are 21 strategies that people use to make or break habits. And everybody uses a different set. And some of them aren't even available to us at all times. Some are kind of almost universal or maybe really universal. Some are very work really well for some people and not for others. But it's good to have all 21, because so often when we are thinking about how we would be happier, what's really affecting us is we're frustrated because we're not able to make a habit. That makes a lot of sense. And as you know, now I'm looking at all the different topics that you've written about and spoke about habits and happiness and you know, you even did a piece on declutterings, you even dove and gone a step deeper into some of the topics that you've done research on. What would be the next thing that you would tie into all your work? What's the next thing that's, you know, it's almost like all the stuff that you speak about is on the human condition to a degree. That is my subject is human nature, human condition. Well, my next book that I haven't even mentioned though, it's very relevant is Life in Five Senses, which is my book that just came out, which is all about tapping into the five senses because it turns out that we can use our five senses or however many senses that we personally have to achieve so many aims for happiness and even things that are sort of contradictory. Like you can use your five senses to like give yourself more energy or also to calm down and to do creative work, but also to do dredge work. And anyway, so that was all about exploring the five senses. That's an amazingly fun book. Then I have a book coming out in April of 2025, which is called Secrets of Adulthood. This is a little playbook. I love aphorisms and proverbs and cullens and paradoxes. So I wrote my own little book of secrets of adulthood. So that is just like a little book that was just such a light as a writer. And then my next big project is going to be about the empty nest phase, which I am rebranding as open door because I just dropped off my daughter. Yeah, for a freshman year of college. And you know, you said this at the very beginning. I think you said something very profound, which is a lot of times we just we don't take the time like nothing prompts us to ask the big questions. And so it's very easy to just not ask them and not think about them. And then we don't make changes that would allow us to make our lives happier. But one thing you find out is the empty nest open door. It's a big life transition for many, many people, which almost forces you to reflect. And because there's such dramatic change to your routine, to your space, to your identity, to your purpose, to your relationships, it's a it's a moment of reckoning. And that to me is very exciting because I'm like, I love a moment of reckoning. So, and again, research is me search for me. And so I'm going through this. I'm like, wow, okay, like this is going to be my book. And I'm going to write about all the things I try and do and that I learn. And it's so fascinating. So that's my next big project. But sick to adulthood is the next one that's like, you know, that in the in the can. And that's a delightful book. Yeah. Well, I think I mean, I think the topics that you write about your research are so important to research because there are things that affect everybody, but they're not things that we really understand. Like, when was the last time you heard about any research about how senses, how you leverage your senses for performance or relaxation or I don't like that stuff very closely. I read a lot and I don't think there's a lot of content out there on that. Okay, when is that when is that one coming out? Life in five senses came out. It's out. It's out now. Okay. So I have a question for you. And we can totally do another podcast in the future. Do you want to give over one bit of information or wisdom from that book while people are listening now so they can go check it out on Amazon? And I mean, in the future, if you do want to do a whole podcast, stuff that you've done in some of the works that are to be released in the life in five senses, life in five senses, excuse me, happy to do that as well. So you let me know. But I love it. Yeah, a little bit. Give me give me one bit from it. One thing I would say, wow, I'll give you a silly little thing that's just very fun. And then I'll give you like the transcendent point. Okay, so here's something that I thought was really funny. And people were so enchanted by this detail that I almost called the book, why ketchup is magic? Because ketchup is magic. Heinz ketchup is magic. And the reason is Heinz ketchup is incredibly popular. If you're an American, you like huge percentage Americans have Heinz ketchup in their refrigerator right now. And I will say to you, this is an amazing thing. Go put just like a little drop of Heinz ketchup in your mouth and experience how sophisticated and complex it is. There's a reason that it is the secret ingredient of so many foods where you would not expect it like American Pad Thai is ketchup has tons of ketchup in it. Lots of sauces have ketchup in them. People put it on things because it is magic. Why? Because of the five sense the five tastes. Heinz ketchup has all five. That is almost impossible. So it's sweet. It's sour. It's bitter. It's salty. And it's umami. Now it's very hard to get all five. Now you can get four. But often it's with something that's like a combination like it's like a margarita with salt on the rim. Or it's a piece of apple pie with cheese on it. You know, but like Heinz ketchup. It's just the Heinz ketchup and it's got all five. And so but but everybody's like everybody's like I must go try it. And then they try it. And they're like this is mind blowing. It is so sophisticated and complex. But we just take it for granted. So no, I would say go taste and catch up. You will love it. And you will understand why it is so popular because it's so powerful. But the more transcendent point is just the point that I made before. Whatever aim it is that you're trying to achieve in your life. If you're trying to calm down. If you're trying to connect with other people. If you're trying to like connect with your past or maybe you're trying to be more present in the in the moment or you're trying to boost your creativity or you're trying to find more serenity. There are you're trying to just get more work done. We can tap into our five senses for that. And this is very easy for us because I said to you, hey Scott, think about using your sense of hearing to increase your productivity. Like what might you do to do that? Well, like you'd probably think of things like you'd say things like, oh, well, there's this really annoying worrying. Like my door has this annoying squeak. Maybe I need to think here of that or maybe I really find that I work better like in a busy chatter. So I'm going to start working in a coffee shop instead of like isolated in my house or maybe I'm going to talk to my co-workers like, can we have music playing because I find that really helpful. Maybe they find it helpful too or maybe they don't. So we I can't just turn on the music and assume that everybody will like it. So it really it's like kind of the Swiss army knife that we can we have. And and there's something energizing about the five senses. He goes through our body. And so this is something that like you it can help you achieve your happiness. Ames, but it also just like is revitalizing like smelling like I'm just like I love smell. Um, I why have another quiz. It's called what's your neglected sense. Again, Gretchen River dot hom slash quiz. If you're like, well, what's my most neglected sense and what's my most appreciated sense? Like one of my most appreciated sense is smell, which is, you know, like I love this sense of smell. And I every single day I do something to like really like bring that into my life and it makes me so happy. So that's what I would say turn to your five senses. They're amazing. And you can optimize and I think that anything that you're trying to achieve, you can find a way to create your environment where it taps into your five senses. So music. Um, I mean, uh, you could have an incense or I've heard that like cinnamon, the smell of cinnamon can do something with your brain. It's a positive or maybe it's just something a nice smelling aroma in the room where you want to study your work. Right. We're the light and dining in your eyes. Yeah. And you want to dim that city. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Okay. Maybe you're sitting in a dining room chair because you work from home and you haven't wanted to spring for like a comfortable chair. Like, oh, yeah, it's time to deal with that. Yeah. There's a million things that come to mind. Um, where can people connect with you? So you dropped your website. I'll make sure that goes in the show notes. Uh, where else can people go connect with you? You have a podcast. All your beer breached and ruined. Yeah. Yes. Uh, and books are on Amazon or wherever you get your books. I'm assuming. Okay. I have a newsletter. I have a weekly newsletter called five things making me happy where I talk about research and things that I've observed and, you know, five things making me happy. Um, and I have like more than a million people subscribed to my newsletter, which is very, um, I'm on all the socials, just a Gretchen Rubin. And I love connecting with people. I feel like the world is my research assistance. So if you have examples or resources or questions or insights or observations, like I love being in connection with people, being in contact with people who are interested in the same things that I'm interested in. Yeah. So I have the pockets, I have the newsletter, the books, I have the website, I have the quizzes, I have an app, the happier app. What else? I've got products. If you like journals, um, I can go book the things. I go to your website, go down the rabbit hole. GretchenRuba.com. That is the hub for everything. Yes. I love it. I wanted to say, I want to say thank you because I love the work that you're doing. I love self-awareness is a concept. I'm very much a fan of it. I think more people have to be more self-aware because it's just been like a net positive in my life. And before I even met you, like the stuff that you speak about and you teach on, it resonates in a really, really big way for me, definitely, because I've always been focused on how do I understand myself? So I can best figure out how to navigate this world and navigate my relationships, navigate my work and navigate everything. And if if you're blind to yourself and you're just on autopilot, life's going to be tough, but it doesn't really have to be because you start to understand how you take. So I want to say, I want to say thank you. That's a really, really good work. Thank you. I so enjoyed the conversation. It was a lot of fun. I have one last, one last question. It's very important. We always close out with this. Had a great career. My goodness, you've written a lot of books. Good for you. You have written so many books and you keep pranking them out and they keep becoming best authors. And I have books that I've never been published to. I have no doubt. Yeah, yeah. I have three novels in a desk drawer. I've got this weird little book called My Color Pilgrimage. I got all kinds of stuff. Yeah. When you look back, what would be the one lesson out of all the lessons you've learned that you try to tell your younger self? Be Gretchen. That's my number one personal commandment. Be Gretchen. And that means accept myself and also expect more for myself. And that's not always easy to discern that line, but that's what I would say.