Lessons - How Your Personality Drives Success | Gretchen Rubin - Happiness Expert

In this lessons episode, discover the four tendencies framework that illuminates how responses to expectations shape behavior. Learn why identifying whether one is an upholder, questioner, a bliger, or rebel is vital for self-awareness, and understand how this insight empowers better decision-making and personal growth. What, uh, okay, so let's, let's go back to four tendencies. First of all, before we even get there, why do these tendencies come up? Where do 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 nearest resolution when it, when I, when I think it's important, but I wouldn't wait for January 1st because January 1st is an arbitrary date, and they would always say that, arbitrary. And I was like, that's interesting because the fact that January 1st 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 if I was sitting right here, right in this see 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, that was just like the hardest intellectual undertaking. I remember because I, you know, now I can see, oh, there are these four categories, and they fit together in a diamond venn 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 a fallout? Maybe there are six, like, actually, you're figuring out like, like, like, equals mc squared for the first time. I suck it. That's exactly what it felt like. And then I remember like, when I saw how they all fit to get, because I was trying to do a two by two, but it's actually an interlocking venn diagram. And once I saw that, it was like every single at, like, example that I could think of all bit 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 upholder, questioner, 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 mad men. They're, 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. 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, right? So I was like, worry 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 is, 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, 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 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 I'm that. It's kind of, yeah, I don't know, I can, I can get there, but they're all valuable. I think it, because they help us with self, 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. 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 to 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, it's all on you. Yeah, listen to all four of you before you decide what you are. So like 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 and answer and give you a report, you can go to GretchenRubin.com slash quiz again, like three million people are taking this quiz, it's free. But again, I'll just describe it briefly and 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 upholder, a questioner, and a blager or a rebel. So, upholders 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 my 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 the answer questions. Funnily enough, they like to teach, but they don't like to be questioned themselves. Ironic for true. I'm married to a questioner. I experienced this myself. So, their motto is, I'll comply if you convince me why. Then there are obligers. Obligers is the biggest tendency for both men and women. You either aren't obliger or you have many obligers in your life, so obliger needs a lot of attention because it's big category. Obligers 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 an obliger, is even to meet an inner expectation, and a obliger 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. That's just what works for obligers. 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 obliger. 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 there, 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 either 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 four. 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. A pulleders, 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 hardwired, 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 blight, like a blight, you're supposed to 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 this 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 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 a work, you're surrounded by expectations, and it just weighs on us. It just weighs on us if forces are handed. Of course, I mean, a light of that expectations would be a life of meaninglessness, because it would mean nobody's counting on you for anything. I can't even imagine what that would be. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.