Figuring out the pitfalls and best practices of adulthood can be tricky. It’s helpful to have some pearls of wisdom to guide you along the way.
My guest today has spent decades collecting these kinds of helpful truths and has crafted her own guiding mantras of maturity.
Gretchen Rubin is the author of numerous bestselling books, including The Happiness Project, and her latest, Secrets of Adulthood. Today on the show, Gretchen shares how she came to write hundreds of aphorisms on how to navigate life, and we dig into some of my favorites of these concise, sage sayings. Amongst many topics, we discuss why “happiness doesn’t always make us feel happy,” the best strategy for changing ourselves, a very useful heuristic for making decisions, why you should wear a favorite sweater more often, and even why big top tables at restaurants are one of my pet peeves.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- Gretchen’s books
- Gretchen’s “What’s the next new habit that will make you happier?” quiz
- AoM Article: The Self-Deception Destroying Maxims of Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- AoM Article: Nietzsche’s 66 Best Aphorisms
- AoM Article: Just Go to Sleep
- Sunday Firesides: Life Is for Living
Connect With Gretchen Rubin
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Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Figuring out the pitfalls and best practices of adulthood can be tricky. It’s helpful to have some pearls of wisdom to guide you along the way. My guest today has spent decades collecting these kinds of helpful truths and has crafted her own guiding mantras of maturity. Gretchen Rubin is the author of numerous bestselling books, including The Happiness Project and her latest, Secrets of Adulthood. Today on the show, Gretchen shares how she came to write hundreds of aphorisms on how to navigate life, and we dig into some of my favorites of these concise, sage sayings. Amongst many topics, we discuss why happiness doesn’t always make us feel happy, the best strategy for changing ourselves, a very useful heuristic for making decisions, why you should wear a favorite sweater more often, and even why big top tables at restaurants are one of my pet peeves. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/secretsofadulthood.
Gretchen Rubin, welcome to the show.
Gretchen Rubin: I’m so happy to be talking to you.
Brett McKay: No, likewise. So we were talking before we got on, we go way back.
Gretchen Rubin: We go way back.
Brett McKay: Way back. So both you and I started off as bloggers. We still blog. Do they still call it blogging?
Gretchen Rubin: I call it my site. I’m posting on my site.
Brett McKay: That’s what I say, because I feel kind of silly when I say I’m a blogger.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, that feels very retro.
Brett McKay: So yeah, you have The Happiness Project. That was what you started off with, got the art of manliness. We were part of this community of other self-development writers back in 2008. So yeah, you’ve been writing about personal development for almost, it’s been almost 20 years now or over 20 years. As you look back on your career, what would you say is the connecting thread through everything you’ve written and put out there?
Gretchen Rubin: Well, if I had to say what my subject is, I would say my subject is human nature. And in fact, before I started writing about sort of happiness and good habits, I wrote a book called Power Money Fame Sex, A User’s Guide, which is my first book. Then I wrote kind of a short unconventional biography of Winston Churchill and one of John F. Kennedy. And to me, I think to a lot of people, those books seem very different from the books that I’ve written sort of in the last while. But to me, they’re all about human nature. So you learn about human nature by studying Winston Churchill because he’s just this gigantic figure. So I think that is my subject. Like, who are we? How do we understand ourselves better? How do we change if we want to change? How do we understand other people?
Brett McKay: And then, yeah, you started The Happiness Project, started off as a blog, turned into books. It’s kind of become this media empire. And there you’re just trying to explore, it seems like, what does it mean to live a flourishing human life?
Gretchen Rubin: Exactly. Like, can you make yourself happier? And if so, how? That’s my question, yes.
Brett McKay: When you say happiness, how do you define happiness?
Gretchen Rubin: Well, I started out my career in law, as did you, Brett. And maybe you also have happy memories of spending an entire semester arguing about the definition of contract. And happiness is an even more elusive concept to define. There are something like 15 or 17 academic definitions of happiness. And I think that for the layperson, it’s just, it can be whatever you want. Joy, peace, bliss, satisfaction, well-being, whatever you conceive of as being happiness for you. Because I think that it’s more useful to think about being happier. Whatever that means for you, what can you do with your conscious thoughts and actions starting tomorrow, without a lot of time, energy, or money to move yourself in the right direction? So next week, next month, next year, can we make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? And I think that’s much clearer to understand. Like, is this going to make me happier? It’s much easier to answer for the average person than like, can I achieve happiness? Because when I think about that, I’m like, what does that even mean? It feels so abstract that it’s hard to grasp even what that would look like.
Brett McKay: Well, something you’ve done recently, you come out with a new book called Secrets of Adulthood, where you’ve put together a collection of aphorisms that you’ve developed to help people make sense of this topsy-turvy, complex world we live in. And at the beginning of the book, Secrets of Adulthood, you talk about your lifelong love of aphorisms. You’ve been collecting them since you were eight years old. What draws you to the aphoristic style?
Gretchen Rubin: Well, first, let me say what an aphorism is, because I think a lot of people don’t know. That’s why I didn’t use the word aphorism in the title or subtitle of the book. So an aphorism is a short, usually a sentence or two, insight observation about human nature that’s meant to be sort of a general observation. And it’s attributed to a particular person. Maybe it’s Mark Twain, maybe it’s Oscar Wilde, maybe it’s Warren Buffett, maybe it’s Montaigne. And then that way it’s different from a proverb. So a proverb is folk wisdom. These are ideas, you know, reminders, things that have been kicking around for centuries. Like you can’t push a rope or sailors fear fire more than water or you’re only as happy as your least happy child. These are pieces of folk wisdom. But an aphorism, we know who said it. And I’m very drawn to aphorisms because, well, first of all, they’re short. And I love, I think there’s so much power in keeping things brief and really having to crystallize ideas to distill them down into like just a sentence or two. That’s very creatively challenging. And it’s also intellectually challenging because to write that way, you really have to be able to think that way. And that’s hard.
And then I think that they’re just, they have more power in the mind because we can grasp them. So for the last while, I have been really pushing myself when I have a big idea to see if I can express it in an aphorism.
Brett McKay: Are there any famous historical aphorists that you like?
Gretchen Rubin: Well, I do love Oscar Wilde. If you read something like The Portrait of Dorian Gray, it’s like reading Hamlet. You recognize so many lines because so many of them are so famous. One of my hopes with writing this book is to bring back into the spotlight one of my favorite aphorists who is a 19th century Austrian aphorist named Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, who’s amazing. Like one of my favorites of hers is, you can fall so fast, you think you’re flying. Which I’m like, whoa, that’s powerful. And then there are people who, like I mentioned Warren Buffett. He can invest and he can also really write. There are many really funny, thoughtful aphorisms in his letters to shareholders. So I’m looking for them all the time. And so those are some of my favorites. Oh, Andy Warhol. I don’t even really like his art, but he said these extremely unpredictable, thoughtful aphorisms that just keep your mind warm.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Well, he’s come up with like, you know, everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, exactly. He’s extremely famous for that. And then he has like, my favorite kind of atmosphere today is the airport atmosphere. And I’m like, I know exactly what you mean by that. Or I can’t remember how he said it exactly, but he said something like the most old fashioned thing that people do is get pregnant. And I completely understand that. It does feel so old fashioned to like actually get pregnant. I’m also like volcanoes. Haven’t we all kind of outgrown volcanoes? That seems like kind of an ancient Rome thing. Are they still happening? Every time there’s a volcano, I’m like, huh, I thought these things were sort of out of date. I don’t know. But again, it’s like, what do I even mean by that? That’s a ridiculous thing to say. But Andy Warhol helps me have these odd thoughts. So that’s one of the reasons that I love his writing so much.
Brett McKay: Yeah, a few aphorists that I enjoy. Nietzsche, he had some killer aphorisms. I think his writing style, his best writing style is his aphorisms. I also like Francois de La Rochefoucauld, the French author.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, he’s great. He’s amazing.
Brett McKay: He’s kind of like cynical, which is interesting.
Gretchen Rubin: The aphorism is a very judgmental form. When you’re writing them, you find that you… I see why he is so cynical. It’s a form that invites you to write that way. Okay, so what are some of your favorites?
Brett McKay: Well, here’s some I brought up. We did an article highlighting some of his maxims. Here’s one. Fortunate people rarely correct their faults. They always think they are right while fortune is favoring their evil conduct.
Gretchen Rubin: I mean, is that so true?
Brett McKay: That’s true. That happens.
Gretchen Rubin: It’s so true. Yes.
Brett McKay: Another one. This one’s really cynical. No one deserves to be praised for kindness if he does not have the strength to be bad. Every other form of kindness must often merely be laziness or lack of willpower.
Gretchen Rubin: I mean, that is cynical.
Brett McKay: It is, but I kind of think there’s some truth to it. I mean, for being good to mean anything, you have to have the capability to do otherwise.
Gretchen Rubin: Wait, if you give me a second, I can read some of my favorites, hang on, from my collection of his, hang on, let’s see. Those who apply themselves too much to small things ordinarily become incapable of great ones. Well, here is one that I really think is true. However dazzling an action may be, it should not pass for great when it is not the result of a great design. And I think that’s very true. Like sometimes people do things accidentally. You don’t really get credit for that because you didn’t do it on purpose.
Brett McKay: Yeah, that reminds me of Machiavelli, where he talks about the difference between virtue and fortune. So sometimes we confuse the two.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes.
Brett McKay: Another aphorist that I like, G.K. Chesterton is another one.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, I love Chesterton. I’m so glad you mentioned him because I feel like he’s kind of fallen out of the spotlight. And I love the writing of G.K. Chesterton.
Brett McKay: Yeah, he does this thing where he kind of inverts the sentence.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, yes.
Brett McKay: And so he comes up with these little witty sayings about life. So in this book, Secrets of Adulthood, you developed your own aphorisms. Did you find that challenging? And if so, what was hard about it?
Gretchen Rubin: Well, it is very challenging because first you have to have a thought. And I don’t know about you, but I find it very hard to have thoughts. And then you have to really distill the thought into a succinct form and to aim for elegance. Because, you know, we’re talking about La Rochefoucauld, Chesterton, Oscar Wilde. You know, they express their ideas very beautifully. There’s, as you say, there’s often inversion. There’s often paradox. Often with an aphorism, there are things to kind of increase the writerly elegance of them. So that’s very challenging. So I have been working on these for years. Certainly I’ve been collecting them forever from other people. And then I started writing them myself and collecting them myself. And, you know, this is not the kind of book that I could have sat down and written in like, you know, just like done it. Because they had to come to me in moments. And some of them arise out of my previous books, like The Happiness Project or Better Than Before. Like the aphorism, The Secret of Adulthood, Habits Are the Invisible Architecture of Everyday Life. That was something that I wrote for my book Better Than Before.
That was an idea that I had when I was thinking about how we make and break habits. But a lot of these are things that I’ve just noticed along the way and been gathering up for a really, really long time.
Brett McKay: So as you were putting together the book Secrets of Adulthood, how did you figure out which ones made it?
Gretchen Rubin: So I had this giant trove that I’d been working on for years, but I decided I wanted them to be Secrets of Adulthood, meaning there was something in them that could be useful as you were facing a challenge of life. So maybe you were facing procrastination or you were finding it hard to make a decision or you were perplexed by a relationship or you were trying to know yourself better. All of them are aimed to help give insight into something that is a challenge of adulthood. Because many of the aphorisms that I wrote were just observations, like a dog doesn’t gaze at a waterfall. I think that’s interesting. It’s true. Or the tulip is an empty flower. I believe that. The tulip is an empty flower. What is up with that? But those are mere observations. And then I had a lot of bleak aphorisms. As we were saying, the form kind of pushes you in a dark direction. And I had a lot that were very dark. And I thought, oh, you know, nobody wants my dark aphorisms. Let me distill this into the Secrets of Adulthood.
Brett McKay: I love it. Well, maybe you should release the dark ones as a secret item somehow.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, you know what’s funny? Gretchen Rubin after dark. What’s funny is on my book tour, a lot of times it would come up that I had written those. Everybody said, I want to read your dark aphorisms. And I think that’s the negativity bias, right? People are always interested in the dark things or the negative things. And so I should figure out what to do with them. Because I worked on them just as hard as I worked on the ones that ended up in Secrets of Adulthood. Brett, I am sure you know the feeling. It’s so painful to leave anything on the cutting room floor.
Brett McKay: It is.
Gretchen Rubin: It’s always very exciting if you think, oh, maybe there’s a way I can use this stuff after all.
Brett McKay: So let’s dig into some of your secrets of adulthood. I really enjoyed reading through your aphorisms, and I’ve kind of picked out some that I like, and let’s just riff on them. I’ll talk about them, and let’s just riff on it together. So the one that really stuck out to me is one of the very first ones. Happiness doesn’t always make us feel happy.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, because I think when I was first writing The Happiness Project, I was really struggling to understand, like, how do you even think about happiness? What’s a framework for even contemplating it? And I realized that if you’re thinking about how to make our lives happier, we want to think about feeling good, feeling bad, feeling right, and an atmosphere of growth. So feeling good is enthusiasm, love, friendship, energy, all the things that we want to have more of. And then there’s feeling bad. So that’s things like anger, resentment, guilt, boredom. Those are things that make us feel bad. We want less of those. Then we also want to feel right, which means we want our life to reflect our values. We want to put our values into the world, and we want to demonstrate our values through our actions. And then also we want the atmosphere of growth. And so the atmosphere of growth is when we’re growing, learning, teaching, fixing, solving, where we feel like we’re growing or we’re contributing to the growth of others or to the growth of the world. And the fact is, sometimes when we do things to help us live up to our values or to cultivate an atmosphere of growth, we don’t feel very happy.
Like an atmosphere of growth, when you’re learning to do something, often you feel insecure or frustrated, even angry. When you’re feeling right about living up to your values, often you might be doing something that you don’t enjoy. Like I remember a friend telling me how he went to go visit his very, very difficult father in the hospital, and his two brothers refused to go. They wouldn’t see their father. But he said, I really don’t like to go. I dread going. And we’ve never gotten along, and he was a terrible father, but he’s still my father. And so I feel like I have to go. And I’m like, well, yeah, it made you feel bad, but you feel right because you’re like, I’m living my values, which is we’re still father-son, and I feel like I need to do this. And so happiness doesn’t always make us feel happy.
Brett McKay: Yeah, when I read that, I love Aristotle. So immediately I thought of Aristotle.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, talk about aphorism. Yeah, got a million of those.
Brett McKay: But he talked about his idea of happiness, the way it was defined was flourishing or eudaimonia. And it meant just living a good life all around. And it didn’t necessarily mean feeling good. It wasn’t hedonism. And even Epicurus, he makes that argument that sometimes in order to live a pleasurable life, you have to do unpleasurable things in the short term.
Yeah, exactly right. There’s some things that don’t feel good in the short term, but if you do them, it’s going to lead to something bigger, and it’s going to make you feel good in the long run. Kind of related to this, another one of your aphorisms, there is no right way to create a happier life, just as there’s no best way to cook an egg.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, this came from an experience that I have often, which is because I write about happiness, people are always like, okay, what should I do to be happier? What’s the secret to happiness? And I always say, well, you know, it depends on you. It depends on your nature, your challenges, your interests, your values. There’s no one best way because we’re all different. And then they say to me, okay, well, which is like, what’s the best way? And so now, and I can never think of a satisfying answer. And so now I say, well, what’s the best way to cook an egg? And they say, well, there is no best way. It depends on how you like your eggs. And some people say like, I don’t even like eggs. And I’m like, that’s right. There is no best way to cook an egg, just like there’s no best way to make your life happier because it depends on each of us what we want.
Brett McKay: Yeah, that idea of like the secret to life, everyone’s just looking for it, reminds me of, you ever see City Slickers?
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah.
Brett McKay: Yeah, Curly, you know, the guide on the ranch trip.
Gretchen Rubin: I’m not sure I ever actually saw it. Is this the one with Billy?
Brett McKay: With Billy Crystal?
Gretchen Rubin: Crystal?
Brett McKay: Yeah, he has like a midlife crisis and decides for his 40th birthday.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah. I don’t think I actually ever saw it.
Brett McKay: Okay, well, it’s a great, I would recommend it. It’s a fun baby boomer movie about midlife that was made in the 90s.
Gretchen Rubin: You have me. Okay. I’m convinced.
Brett McKay: Yeah. But, you know, Curly is just like hardened trail hand who’s taking these guys on this dude ranch trip. And he said, the secret of life is just one thing. And he never says what that one thing is.
Gretchen Rubin: That’s funny.
Brett McKay: Because the answer is, well, it’s the one thing to you. You got to figure that out.
Gretchen Rubin: Right, right. Well, it’s funny because since so many people are like, but what is the habit I should work on the most? I actually did create a quiz that will tell the individual because I can’t like meet you and just from that tell you the right thing but this quiz which is just on my site will tell each individual like what right now is the thing that would move the needle the most on your happiness based on your answers. And of course it might be different in a month, but it is kind of uncanny how often people are like, oh yeah, you know, that is really where I feel like I need to do the most work. So there are definitely individual answers, but there’s no one size fits all answer.
Brett McKay: Yeah, and related to that is the idea that what makes you happy is gonna change throughout your life.
Gretchen Rubin: Absolutely, absolutely.
Brett McKay: That’s something I’ve learned. Like what worked for me when I was in my 20s does not work for me in my 40s.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, and related to that is something called hedonic forecasting, which is the ability to predict what will make you happier in the future. And turns out we humans are really, really bad at this. We are not good at thinking, okay, what is the happiness consequence of this decision? And so that’s one thing, if you’re working on your happiness is to try to improve your hedonic forecasting because we tend not to be very good at it.
Brett McKay: All right, here’s another one that stood out to me because I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Accept yourself and expect more from yourself.
Gretchen Rubin: Okay, this is a good example of something that took me months and months and months to wrap my mind around, because I got caught in like, well, it’s really important to accept ourselves and to show ourselves self-compassion and not to like be unrealistic and set ourselves up for other people’s expectations. But then I would also think, but we also have to try to get ourselves out of our comfort zone. And we do need the atmosphere of growth. And we don’t want to be complacent. And we don’t want to fall short of our potential. And then finally, I thought, well, both are true. And then I was like, okay, I could write about that for pages. But is there a way to distill those two truths that are in tension to distill that into a single sentence? And so saying, accept yourself and also expect more from yourself, that took me months and months and months, really, to write.
Brett McKay: Yeah. And I’m spending like my entire life trying to figure out, am I accepting myself and expecting, like, am I being content, but not being complacent?
Gretchen Rubin: Yes. Yes.
Brett McKay: And sometimes I have to ask myself, you know, when I think I’m being content, well, actually, am I just being complacent?
Gretchen Rubin: I mean, it’s the great challenge of our lives, I think, is to recognize. And people are always like, okay, but then how can you tell? And I’m like, that is what’s hard about adulthood. There’s no magic answer to tell you, is this something where you should accept yourself and just say like, hey, that’s not my thing, and spend your time doing things that are more in line with your true nature? Or are you like, no, this is something that’s reasonable for me to expect for myself. I can do this. I can expect this for myself. I want to push myself, even if it doesn’t feel good.
Brett McKay: Let’s talk about change. You write a lot about change. We want to expect more for ourselves and get better. One of your aphorisms is, it’s easier to change our surroundings and our schedules than to change ourselves.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes. Oh, my gosh. I so firmly believe this because people will often, and I saw this when I was writing Better Than Before, when I was really focusing on habits, is people will be like, well, I want to be a completely different kind of person. And I’m like, I don’t know if that’s possible, but if it is possible, it’s very hard. And then I’m like, but you could just change your schedule. You could just change your surroundings. You could work on the things around you and your conscious thoughts and actions. And that’s much easier. I remember I was doing an interview with a reporter in front of an audience, and there was this, to me, very poignant moment where she said, I want to be the kind of person who loves to get up and go for a five-mile run every day. And I was like, I don’t think you ever will be that kind of person. Like, I don’t want to be discouraging, but knowing you as I know you, I don’t think that’s who you are. I don’t think that’s how you’re wired. And in some ways, we just have to say to ourselves, you get what you get and you don’t get upset.
And like, I’m me. I’m like, but if what you want is you want to be fit, if what you want is to have a healthy body, if what you want is to be consistent in your promises to yourself to do something that’s going to be really good for your life and your mood and your immune function and your memory, that you can work on. You can put it in the schedule. You can set yourself up for success to keep that habit. But saying like, well, I want to be a different kind of person so that this behavior will come easily, that’s not a good way to succeed. You have to say, given who I am, what can I do to get where I want to go? Instead of, can I transform myself into an utterly different kind of person and therefore live a different life?
Brett McKay: No, I totally agree. I see it in my own life. So going back to Aristotle, if you want to be fit, you have to do fit things or put yourself in a fit environment will get you, help you out a lot.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, exactly. Excellence is a habit. Yeah.
Brett McKay: Speaking of change, another one you talk about is changing other people. Because in adulthood, you’re going to deal with just so many frustrating, frustrating people.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes.
Brett McKay: And we’re just like, why can’t you just be like this? But you have an aphorism for that. It’s, we can’t make people change, but when we change, our relationships change, and so others may also change.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes. What got me thinking about this was when my daughters were very young, I’m an irritable person. I’m a cranky person. I’m a carping person. I’m a high-strung person. I’m a rigid person. Like, that’s who I am, right? And if you have little kids, that’s a hard way to be because they are disorderly and messy and throw your schedule off. And I was just a more irritable kind of parent than I wanted to be. And I would get frustrated and kind of crabby, and they would get frustrated and crabby, and then it was just, it all went downhill. But then when I was like, okay, I’m going to get up earlier, so I have a bigger margin in the morning, so I can get up in just sort of like my own quiet way, get dressed and get organized and have my cup of coffee. Thoreau said, I love a broad margin to my life. I’m a person who needs a broad margin. I’m going to build in more margins so that I don’t feel rushed or pressed for time, and so I’m not hustling them along. We have plenty of time. When I started doing all these things to make my…
And then just working on staying patient, staying good-humored, seeing the funny side, and not constantly depressing. When I relaxed, they relaxed. When I had a warmer, more tender attitude, they also became calmer and more cheerful. And so I didn’t do anything to change them. I only changed myself. But because I changed, they responded. And so then the atmosphere of our household changed.
Brett McKay: Yeah. This reminded me when I read that aphorism of Bowen Family Systems Theory. Are you familiar with Bowen Family Systems Theory?
Gretchen Rubin: A little bit. I mean, I know that it’s, yeah, but in what respect?
Brett McKay: Yeah, so there’s this idea, this thing developed by this guy named Murray Bowen back in the 50s, 60s, and his idea was that, you know, we carry over our relationship dynamics that we developed when we were kids in our family of origin to other relationships. And one of his big ideas is there’s often a lot of what he calls anxiety in a relationship. I mean, anxiety isn’t like nervousness. It’s just kind of like stress. Everyone’s just kind of freaking out about stuff. And he says in order to change that dynamic, one person in that relationship, they have to be differentiated. So they have to not catch the anxiety of the other person. He says you have to be a calm, non-anxious presence. And then his idea is that, well, if you change, if one person changes themselves in the system, then the system becomes more calm.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, yes. That’s interesting. I think that’s 100% true. In my own family growing up, my father is just this very calm, unflappable, cheerful, enthusiastic person. Like whatever you want to do, that’s great. And I realized much later in life how much I had taken that for granted and how much his attitude really did act as a buffer for other people’s agitation or, you know, that he could kind of absorb it and then let everybody kind of calm down or reach equilibrium. And it’s only, you know, with much greater maturity that I was like, that’s a lot of work. I always thought that’s just his nature. And I’m like, that’s not easy for anyone. Like that is a way that he is choosing to be. And I realized how valuable it was and probably how much energy it took to be always that person in the system who was able to be like, let’s just chill out a little bit here. Like, let’s have a sense of humor about it.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I agree. I’m like you, I’m very high strung. Not super high strung, but I’m cranky. I mean, that’s why we went to law, possibly.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, cranky. Yeah, it’s good for cranky people. Yes.
Brett McKay: It’s good for cranky people.
Gretchen Rubin: It’s a cranky profession, yes.
Brett McKay: We’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. One of the hardest things, or can be really hard about being an adult, is being a parent. Super complex. Actually, I’ve noticed this. Maybe people talk about how being a parent is hard, like when they have babies, little kids. I actually didn’t think being a parent of babies or little kids was that hard. It was just because you have to make sure they’re fed and safe, and it’s fun, and sometimes it’s tiring. I’m finding it’s getting harder and harder to be a parent as my kids have gotten older, because their problems have gotten bigger and more complex.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, they say little children, little problems. Big kids, big problems. Yeah, that’s a folk proverb. Well, I think when they’re young, it’s physically demanding. And when they’re older, it’s more emotionally and intellectually demanding.
Brett McKay: Yes. So you’ve got some aphorisms about being a parent. And one of them is, I really resonated with this, we can’t change our children’s natures by nagging them or signing them up for classes.
Gretchen Rubin: Right. I mean, it’s just, again, it’s like you get what you get and you don’t get upset. Like, of course, we can help people reach their potential, and we can help them accept themselves and also expect more from themselves. But in the end, you’re not going to change people’s natures. You know, with a lot of these aphorisms, there was kind of an origin story, or there was something that happened to me or something that I read, which really caught my attention and sort of had me thinking and turning it over in my head, like a dog with a bone trying to understand it. And in this very funny encounter with somebody that I hardly knew, she was the mother of somebody who had a son that was my daughter’s age. And she was talking about how he had gotten all this money for his birthday. And he was young, like a young teenager. And he wanted to start one of these, I don’t even really know what it is. It’s some kind of account where you can put your money in and you do kind of pretend investing. It’s the kind of thing that if you were the kind of kid that wanted to grow up and become a finance person or investor, you’d be very interested in.
Like, he wanted to learn about the stock market and he wanted to place his bets and everything. And she was like, you know, though, I just think, wouldn’t he be better off spending that time doing something like learning ceramics? And I was like, let me stop you right here. I think you would like to learn ceramics. I think you should let your kid do what he wants. That’s a totally reasonable thing for a child to want to do. He’s not actually risking his money. He’s interested in a subject that’s, you know. So why would you say like, oh, no, I mean, it would be the rare child who would like to do both of those equally. And I think that that’s just what sounded fun to her.
Brett McKay: Yeah. As my kids have gotten older, I’ve noticed this more and more, is that they have their own personality.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, they do.
Brett McKay: And no matter how much I nag them about something like, hey, it doesn’t do anything. So it’s just trying to figure out, like, what can I do to harness that in a more positive direction is what I’m trying to do.
Gretchen Rubin: But I also think that there’s a difference. And I think about this a lot because I think it’s one of the big challenges of parenting, which is there’s helping people do something that they want to do, but they’re dreading doing either because it’s so much work or there’s so many steps to it or there’s something about it that just makes them really uncomfortable. So like, I live in New York City and neither of my daughters who are like 26 and 20, neither of them have a driver’s license because it’s so hard. They have to learn how to drive and it’s hard to practice because we live in New York City. And then it’s really hard just like to take the test. And one of my daughters failed the test. So then she has to take it again. And then it’s just, there’s so much paperwork. There’s so many steps. It’s so awful. So I am kind of badgering them about that because I know in the end, this is something that they want. They both know how to drive. It’s just like a lot of steps. But that’s different from saying, oh, I think you should.
I’m going to badger you to take up scuba diving, even though you have no interest in it, just because I think it’s something that would be cool for you to do or something. Or what’s really hard, I think, is when, because the parent loves something, they want the child to love it too. And they become angry when the child doesn’t love it. Like everybody in our family loves University of Nebraska football. We’re all Cornhuskers. You should love University of Nebraska football too. And if you don’t love it, then there’s something wrong with you.
Brett McKay: Yeah, you can’t do that.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, you know, you can try to expose them. You can try to get them people interested. But at a certain point, it’s like people have their own. I mean, I don’t like the Olympics. And I can’t tell you how many people are constantly trying to convince me to like the Olympics. And I’m like, I’m just here to tell you, I’m not interested in the Olympics.
Brett McKay: Not doing it.
Gretchen Rubin: You know?
Brett McKay: Yeah. I mean, I think as a parent, what you can do is you can kind of think of yourself as a gardener instead of a carpenter.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, that’s the Alison Gopnik book.
Brett McKay: So you’re a gardener. You kind of create an environment where they can flourish because they come with these seeds of personality and talent and potential already embedded inside. And you can’t just reconstruct them and build them differently. All you can do is create an environment that nurtures those seeds. And then you see where it goes because it’s up to them after that.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes. Yes, exactly.
Brett McKay: So here’s another favorite one of mine. My wife liked this one a lot, too, because she’s been talking about this for a long time. But I love how you really put this in a succinct aphorism. Before declaring that something is superficial, unhealthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, or immoral, we should consider, maybe this just doesn’t suit my taste.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, so in my collection of aphorisms, I have a giant list of things that in previous times in cultures, people considered inefficient, dangerous, immoral. And it’s just bananas what people will take into their mind to oppose. I mean, when postcards were introduced, people were violently opposed to postcards. You know, it’s like, maybe you just don’t like postcards. You don’t have to decide that they’re immoral. And I remind myself of that when I’m thinking like, oh, it’s terrible that people are doing X, Y, Z. I’m like, well, maybe it’s just because I don’t like to do X, Y, Z, so I don’t understand why somebody else would like it.
Brett McKay: Yeah, as a person who’s been putting out articles and podcasts for almost 20 years, you’ve probably experienced this too. There’s people who are going to like criticize you. And the way they frame their criticisms like, you know, this is wrong and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you’ll have people who say, I love what you’re doing. This is great. I think it’s the greatest thing in the world. And so this aphorism reminds me of that. And it reminded my wife of a story from Ben and Jerry’s, the ice cream example. And one of the guys, Ben or Jerry, was doing an interview and he talked about how they would get letters from people saying, your chunks are too big and this is why the ice cream is bad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s awful. I’m not going to buy your ice cream anymore because your chunks too big. But then they’d also get letters saying, oh, I just love how big your chunks are. It’s one of my favorite things about your ice cream. Keep doing that. In fact, I want them bigger. And Ben or Jerry says, I wish I could just somehow swap the letters so that the people who were complaining about the big chunks would get the letters from the people who love the big chunks and then vice versa. So people could see like, oh, you know, it’s just taste. There’s nothing wrong with the ice cream. It’s just that your taste doesn’t suit it. And that’s fine.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah. Well, in terms of creativity, to your point, I always remind myself that a strong voice repels as well as attracts. And that if you’re so innocuous that nobody objects to you, you’re probably catching nobody’s interest either because you’re right. Everything, somebody doesn’t like something. One of the funniest tourist slogans, my whole family grew up in North Platte, Nebraska. So I have a real fondness for Nebraska. And their tourist slogan for a period was, honestly, it’s not for everyone. And I think that’s so funny because it’s like, we love Nebraska, you know, but honestly, it’s not for everyone. And right. And so you can just say like, that’s just not my taste. You don’t have to say like, oh, there’s something wrong with that.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Objectively wrong.
Gretchen Rubin: The chunks are too big. The chunks are too small. It’s like, I like a chunkier ice cream.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I think that’s so true. Another one that I liked, by trying to save things for a special occasion, we may squander them. Spices go stale, white shirts turn yellow, wine turns to vinegar.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah. No, I mean, I have kind of a hoarding nature. I will save things like I’ll buy a new shirt and I’ll save it or I will get new stationery and I will save it. And I have to remind my, it’s one of my 10 personal commandments is to spend out, meaning like put things into use, like use things up. Because by saving them, you’re often wasting them.
Brett McKay: Yeah, so true. Life is for living, money is for spending. Use the good dishes, the good china, don’t save, don’t wait for it.
Gretchen Rubin: Use the good China. Yes.
Brett McKay: Yeah, so yeah, that’s a good lesson for adulthood to make it more enjoyable.
Gretchen Rubin: I mean, I had a pair of pants once that I loved so much that I saved them and wore them very sparingly because I wanted to like keep them in really good shape. But then, you know, fashions change. And then all of a sudden I’m like, they’re not great pants anymore. I could have worn them like 10 times more than I did, but I felt like I had to hold them back. But I feel this way creatively. I don’t know if you ever have this where you’re like, I can’t put out all my good ideas. Like if I put in all my good ideas, maybe I’ll run out of ideas. Maybe I need to hold an idea back. My sister, Elizabeth, who’s the co-host of the Happier podcast with me, she’s a television writer. And she said, they always remind themselves, put every good idea in the pilot, put in every good idea that you possibly can. Don’t say like, oh, we’ll put this in episode four, because you may never get to episode four. Use everything up right away and then trust that there will be more. So I think it’s true for the good dishes. It’s literally true, but it’s also true creatively, which is the more that we create, the more we will create.
Brett McKay: All right, here’s another one that I liked. It’s about doing well in life, making a change in the world, an impact on the world. To respect us, people must first notice us. We can’t earn trust and admiration from the sidelines.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, I mean, maybe that’s a little bit of a dark aphorism. Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes people are like, oh, I’m silently working away and nobody notices me. Why am I not getting a promotion? It’s like, I think you’ve answered your own question.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I’m sure you’ve noticed that as with your career putting out content, you can put out really great stuff, but if you’re not actually promoting it, no one’s gonna know how great the stuff is that you’re putting out.
Gretchen Rubin: I know, I know. I remind people of that all the time because they’re like, well, I don’t like to do that work. I’m like, well, that is part of the work. That isn’t like icing on the cake. If you wanna reach people through your work, you have to do what needs to be done to reach them.
Brett McKay: You gotta hustle. I think Ernest Hemingway is a good example of that. Like he really dedicated to his craft of writing, but the guy knew how to do self-promotion.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh my gosh.
Brett McKay: He created a myth around him.
Gretchen Rubin: I mean, and that is, if you read biography of great artists, you usually see that they are tremendously self-promotional. You know, it’s not an accident that they are in the spotlight.
Brett McKay: Well, yeah, there was a biography I read about Emerson. You know, we think of Emerson as this kind of sage that he was kind of above self-promotion, but that guy hustled. He was constantly promoting himself, getting himself out on the Lyceum circuit, speaking because he wanted to make a name for himself. And Thoreau, he wasn’t comfortable with that, and he didn’t have the success in his lifetime that he wanted. He actually kind of felt bad about it. I think he felt kind of bad that he didn’t have the admiration that he thought he deserved. Because he was a great writer, he had these great insights, but he just didn’t want to promote himself. And Emerson would get on to him, he was like, you need to get out there, man. But Thoreau was like, I just don’t want to do it. And Thoreau had to die, and then maybe 100 years later, he became famous.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, you know, it’s interesting. For a long time, I’ve been wanting to learn more about the Transcendentalists. So you’re inspiring me to dig up some book and read about them. Because I know a little bit about them, and I certainly admire their writing, but I don’t really know that much about their relationships. And that sounds really interesting.
Brett McKay: Oh, they’re interesting characters. There’s just a lot of bickering between them and sort of envy and comparison going on.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, didn’t Thoreau live with Emerson for a while?
Brett McKay: Yeah, Thoreau was his kid’s babysitter, basically, and handyman. And they were like best friends, but then they would have these falling outs. They’re really interesting characters to read about.
Gretchen Rubin: Okay, you’ve inspired me. I want to, I mean, as an aphorist, you would think I would have spent a lot of time studying the Transcendentalists because those characters are writing aphorisms left and right. And I love their writing, but I have always wanted to know more about their relationships. Okay, you’ve inspired me.
Brett McKay: All right, so another one I liked kind of hit home to me at this point in my life. It is, do you need more time or do you need to make a decision?
Gretchen Rubin: I remind myself of this all the time because the way that I postpone the difficult work of decision-making is sort of saying like, oh, I need to consult someone about that, or I need to talk to my husband about that, or I need to do more research about that. And it’s like, no, you don’t. You just need to make a decision. It’s just a form of procrastination.
Brett McKay: Yeah, usually you already know the answer.
Gretchen Rubin: Or you don’t know the answer, but you know you need to just decide.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I think that’s a fair point. At that point, you probably just flip a coin. You have to do something.
Gretchen Rubin: You have to do something.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Okay, another one that I liked. Oh, yeah, this was, I really like this one. This is about if you have a decision to make and you don’t know what to do, you have a heuristic and aphorism for it. When uncertain about how to proceed, make the choice that allows you to choose the bigger life.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, this is extremely helpful. I would say of all my secrets of adulthood, this is one of the ones that people most often will say to me has been useful to them. I can’t even remember where I wrote about it first. Maybe in Better Than Before? Anyway, and I’ll give an example from my life where my daughters were begging for a dog and my husband was like, okay, I’d get a dog. He grew up with cats, but he was open to it. But to me, it was a perfect balance because on the one hand, I knew all the happiness research about a dog and how much dogs bring happiness and actually even good health. I knew I had a dog growing up and I love my dog, but then I thought, oh, it’s all those errands and all those responsibilities and then we have to worry about the dog every time we want to leave town and we live in a New York City apartment, so it’s like a whole thing. And I just felt paralyzed because the pros and cons felt very equally balanced. And then I thought, well, choose the bigger life.
And then the answer was immediately obvious to me, which was that for our family, the bigger life was the life with the dog. Now, somebody else might say, no, the bigger life is the life without a dog because then you could travel, you can be spontaneous, you have more money to spend, like you’re freer. And so that might be the bigger life. But for us, I was like, the bigger life is to get a dog. And we did and we were so happy we got the dog.
Brett McKay: I find that I have to be more intentional about that as I’ve gotten older. Because as you get older, you kind of get complacent, you become a hobbit where you’re just like, I just want to stay in my little hobbit hole and not do any things that’s comfortable. When I was younger, I was like, oh yeah, go do big things because I got nothing to lose. As you’re older, you’re like, oh man, if I do that, there’s going to be a lot of complications, I get the risk. So yeah, I need to make that my mantra. Choose the bigger life.
Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, well, for me relatedly, and this came to me after the book was already done, so I didn’t make it into the book, but I was realizing exactly what you were saying. I would have opportunities to do things, fun things, and I’d be like, gosh, I just don’t even want to deal with scheduling it. It’s like, well, pick a day, then one of us will have to reschedule and it’s just going to be this whole thing and then I’ll have to figure out how to get there. And oh my gosh, in the end, wouldn’t I just rather stay home and read in bed? But then I thought, scheduling is life. Like I say, I hate to schedule, but scheduling is life. Everything that I want to do needs to go onto my schedule. And if I’m not scheduling, then I am just staying home and binge watching The Office, which is, in a sense, my favorite thing to do and certainly the easiest thing to do. But that’s not a good life. Scheduling is life. So that’s how I try to embrace it for myself now.
Brett McKay: I like scheduling. That’s another great aphorism. Scheduling is life.
Gretchen Rubin: Scheduling is life. Volume II.
Brett McKay: Volume II.
Gretchen Rubin: Secrets of adulthood, volume II.
Brett McKay: Let’s do a few more because there’s so many. How many did you include in the book?
Gretchen Rubin: I think there’s a couple hundred.
Brett McKay: Yeah, it’s awesome. You could just flip to a page and like, here it is for you. I thought this was an interesting one because I think it’s true, but I couldn’t figure out why it’s true. To understand a new place, visit a grocery store.
Gretchen Rubin: Oh, I just think this is such a fun thing to know. If you’re in a new place, it’s just fascinating to visit the grocery store. Like, what is the food? How is it presented? How is it different? It just gives you an insight into a new place. It’s a very fun thing to do.
Brett McKay: Yeah, we go to, our family would go to Vermont for the summer, and we’d always go to the, first thing we do when we get there, before we go to the Airbnb, stop by the local grocery store. And it’s always interesting to see what foods they have in New England that they don’t have in Oklahoma. It’s like devil dogs are a thing in New England, not a thing in Oklahoma. Maple cream donuts, thing in Vermont, not a thing in Oklahoma.
Gretchen Rubin: Maple. Everything maple.
Brett McKay: Everything maple.
Gretchen Rubin: But it’s funny because I remember when I went to college, I didn’t realize that there were like regional brands, that there would be brands that other people thought were huge that I had never heard of, like Entenmann’s. This is a thing, and they may have it now, but in Missouri when I grew up, we didn’t have Entenmann’s. And everybody, when I got to college on the East Coast, they were like, how do you not know this? It was like not knowing, you know, Coke. They thought it was this ubiquitous brand, and then there were brands that I knew that they didn’t know. So it is, and then like maple. You’re like, I’m in the land of maple now, and everything will be maple, maple, maple, or I’m in the land of lobster, or I’m in the land of, you know, whatever it might be. It’s fun.
Brett McKay: Here’s another fun one that I agree with. Once a group includes five people, a single conversation is very hard to maintain.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, so you’re reading now from the Simple Secrets of Adulthood. So I have my Transcendent Secrets of Adulthood, which is most of the book, which are what I hope are like deep insights. But as I was writing the book, because I just love hacks, I love a practical tip, I just couldn’t stop myself from making a list of those as well. And when I submitted my manuscript, I thought my editor would be like, Gretchen, these Simple Secrets of Adulthood just don’t belong with the other ones that are so much more transcendent. But she said, oh, these are fun. Let’s include them, like the one about the grocery store, or the one about the five people. This is something that I learned from writing my book, Life in Five Senses. This is called the dinner party problem. It’s a very well-established psychological phenomenon that once a group includes more than four people, it will almost inevitably break into smaller conversations unless you make enormous effort to keep people unified. And if you’ve ever been to like a single topic dinner party or something, you have to tell people that that is the rule and then really enforce it because people just will naturally break into smaller conversations. So it’s a useful thing to think about when you’re approaching a social occasion that that is something that you will encounter.
Brett McKay: I read into this, I agree, I’ve been in conversations where there’s more than five and it just doesn’t work. But also I relate to this rule because I was a waiter in college. I absolutely hated big tops where people get like 20 people and we had to smoosh tables together because it’s just like, why are you doing this? No one’s talking to each other. You’re only talking to the people in front of you and it makes it harder for the waiter. And so whenever I see…
Gretchen Rubin: You know, that is a great point. I guess it’s you want to feel like you’re together, but maybe you’re like, you’ll actually enjoy it more.
Brett McKay: Yes, you’d enjoy it more because after like, you know, two people over, like you have no idea what the other people are saying. And it makes it… Go ahead.
Gretchen Rubin: Well, and also talking across the table would be easier. So in a way you’re less, you feel like you have access to fewer people, but you might actually have access to more.
Brett McKay: Yes, and it’ll make the experience better for you and the waiter because the waiter can actually… It’s just easier to manage. So whenever I go into a restaurant, I see a big top, I’m just like, ugh, people don’t know what they’re doing. They need to stop that. That’s my pet peeve. No big tops.
Gretchen Rubin: But that’s interesting because I do think that our impulse is like, oh, well, we all want to be together and we don’t want anybody to feel like they’re stuck at the wrong table. It feels very high stakes.
Brett McKay: You could be in the same area.
Gretchen Rubin: Right, you could be next to each other.
Brett McKay: Next to each other, but you don’t need to smoosh all the tables together.
Gretchen Rubin: Interesting, I like that. See, and there’s room at the back of the book for people to write their own secrets of adulthood. So that would be what, like, you know, I’m going to write that down myself as a hack. So a lot of times reading these will inspire people to realize that they have their own.
Brett McKay: All right, last one, because I relate to this one a lot. If you don’t know what to do with yourself, go outside or go to sleep.
Gretchen Rubin: I mean, I just feel like that works. That’s just like, that is, to me, one or the other or both. I always am going to feel better.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I have this tendency. You probably have this tendency too. Everyone has this tendency. At nighttime, you’re tired, and then you get stuck on something that you’re just upset about and depressed about. And then because you’re tired, you start ruminating and go down this death spiral. And then my wife usually tell me, just go to bed, just go to bed. And then in the morning, you feel great and you have the answer.
Gretchen Rubin: Yes, yes, absolutely.
Brett McKay: Well, Gretchen, this has been a lot of fun. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Gretchen Rubin: Gretchenrubin.com. There’s links there to my quizzes, the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, the books, all my books, my writing. I have a newsletter, Five Things Making Me Happy. I have an app, I have products, I got all the things. And I love to connect with people on social media. I love to hear people’s observations and questions and resources that they suggest. So follow me on social media. I’m Gretchen Rubin in all the places.
Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Gretchen Rubin, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Gretchen Rubin: Thank you.
Brett McKay: My guest today was Gretchen Rubin. She’s the author of the book Secrets of Adulthood. It’s available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about her work at her website Gretchenrubin.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/secretsofadulthood, where you can find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com. And make sure to sign up for our new newsletter. It’s called Dying Breed. It’s for men and women alike. It’s a great way to support the show directly. You can learn more at dyingbreed.net. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you’d take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member if you think there’s something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay. Reminding you not to listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.
