Dr. Michael Gervais has a podcast series called Finding Mastery built around a central goal: unpacking and decoding how the greatest performers in the world use their minds to create amazing journeys while they pursue the boundaries of human potential.
He recently sat down with author Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen has spent the past decade researching and writing about happiness and is the author of several books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before, and The Happiness Project.
In this episode, Michael and Gretchen discuss how happiness and habits are linked.
Michael Gervais: Welcome back or welcome to the finding mastery podcast. I am Michael Gervais and the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery or switched on and dedicated their life’s efforts to figuring out difficult stuff and what these conversations are designed to do is understand what they’ve come to understand as best we possibly can but also work to understand the psychological framework. Like how do they explain events. What is their world view. How do they make sense of where they’re positioned in the world and literally how other people, and Mother Nature, and their craft all intertwine to be able to work together. And then we want to also understand the mental skills they’ve used to build and refine the craft that they’ve invested their life with.
Now this week’s conversation is with Gretchen Rubin and she spent the past decade researching and writing about happiness and she’s the author of several books including a massive New York Times bestseller The Four Tendencies and she’s also written Better Than Before and The Happiness Project. And I wanted to talk to Gretchen about happiness because it’s something that every one of us seems to be searching for, yet some of us have trouble finding. And when you ask people on the street or in a casual conversation what are you looking for in life, what does it all come down to, many people do say “happiness.”
What’s been interesting on this podcast, many of the extraordinary thinkers and doers have not said they’re searching for happiness, they’re looking for something different than that. And so I wanted to pull up from an expert like how and why is happiness something that she spent her life working to understand. So she came up with her own personal framework about it. And it’s the idea being that each one of us fits into one of four characteristics and she calls them the four tendencies and so we talk about that in the podcast and these tendencies according to her explain the reasons behind why we do what we do based on how different people respond to expectations really. And we even touch on my tendencies we get into it and she was spot on with it. It was fun. And when we get to that part of the conversation take a moment maybe even hit the pause button to see where you are on her tendencies and her scale and to see where you think others that you’re close to are as well. And that might be a nice way to bring something home to your loved ones to have that conversation.
So Gretchen mentions that what’s interesting is that if you don’t understand the tendencies you might be sabotaging somebody else with your advice. I totally agree. And you know how I feel about advice. It’s a dangerous, dangerous thing to be able to do. And even if you have the best intentions. If you want to pull that thread a little bit further I did an episode of that on tribe talk and you can find that on our website. I hope this conversation teaches you a little bit more about yourself. I really do. And with that let’s jump right into the conversation with Gretchen Rubin.
Michael: Gretchen, how are you.
Gretchen Rubin: I’m great. I’m so happy to be talking to you.
Michael: OK so I want to do a couple of things with you. I want to know where you came from and what the formative years were like. And then I want to understand how you shaped your career path and took that direction which as I understand was more of a decision for you. And then I want to also understand the insights that you’ve learned from writing and how can the rest of us use some of those insights to improve the quality of our lives. So where did you come from. What was it like growing up?
Gretchen: I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, with a kind of very traditional set up like a mom and a dad and a younger sister and a dog and a yard. And I had a very kind of peaceful, happy childhood. And I’m still very close to my family, which is really great.
Michael: OK. So mom and dad they stayed together their entire marriage. And then did you have siblings.
Gretchen: Yes, I have a younger sister. And for people who listen to the Happier podcast they know my sister Alicia as my cohost — she’s five years younger than I am. We are very, very close.
Michael: What was it like growing up with somebody who was five years younger because there is some research or some findings that five or six years difference between siblings is like growing up as an only child.
Gretchen: Well you know it’s interesting because right now as a parent my own daughters are six years apart so they are even further apart (than my sister and I). And for us it was great. I mean my daughters are very close now — they’re 12 and 18 and they have been very close always.
My sister and I weren’t so close growing up — we were never antagonistic but we were kind of in our own worlds and kind of like only children as you say. I mean I was definitely aware of my sister and spent tons of time with her but I had my friend she had her friends who were doing very different things. But then as we got older, those age differences mattered less, say starting in college we got closer and you know she’s a professional writer she’s a television writer in Los Angeles and also a fiction writer. I’m a professional writer. She switched before I did. She was my role model in a lot of ways. So we have a lot of similar professional interests as well as being temperamentally very similar so I think that made it easier for us to have an enduring relationship because [we] had a lot in common
Michael: How does your sister describe you? This is like maybe a sneaky way of trying to figure out how to show up in the world.
Gretchen: The funny thing my sister calls me is the happiness bully. That’s her nickname for me. She is a kind of a more fun person than I am and kind of a more likable person than I am. I’m a more disciplined person than she is. But all those things there are advantages too. I mean especially now that we work together we have this collaboration in our podcast. I think she sees the value of my discipline more than she maybe did before and she sees that it’s nice for her.
The funny thing my sister calls me is the happiness bully.
Michael: OK. So how about this thought — What was it about your upbringing in your family structure in the places that you grew up that led you down this path to want to understand happiness?
Gretchen: I don’t think there was much in my background that led me to this really. I mean I got interested in happiness not from a place of deep unhappiness but because I was pretty happy already and I thought well what do I want from life. I want to be happy but I never spent any time thinking about whether I am happy or if I could be happier. And I thought well I should have a happiness project. And I think my big interest is human nature and if I look back to my childhood that’s always been my interest — my intellectual interest is to understand human nature. And certainly happiness, good habits, my four tendencies framework. All this is an aspect of human nature. My first book was called Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide. That was also an aspect of human nature. And then I wrote two biographies — Winston Churchill and one of JFK and those are also examinations of human nature. So I think that’s always been my subject. I think I just had to grow into understanding that I could do that, that I could write about human nature. It took me a while to find my way into it. And then once I got started — one subject, it’s so intense, a vast and limitless subject, that as I got interested in one thing then it would start to pull me towards the next things that I wanted to understand better.