Gretchen Rubin at 2013 World Domination Summit

well I'm Gretchen Rubin and I'm very happy to be here I have been the biggest fan of Chris's work for years and I've been wanting to come to world domination summit from the first time that I heard that he was putting it together so I'm so thrilled to be here this weekend now I read and write and think about the subject of happiness and from time to time someone sidles over me over to me and whispers Gretchen what is the secret to happiness like they're gonna trick me into revealing the secret of the universe and actually I think there's a couple of different good ways to answer that question depending on what framework you use to think about happiness you might answer relationships relationships are the key to happiness but another answer to that question is self-knowledge self-knowledge is the key to happiness and that's what I'm going to talk about today self-knowledge and I'm gonna pose some questions to you to help you get a better insight into yourself now you might think what's so challenging about self-knowledge I mean what do I do all day so just hang out with myself what could be more obvious but the fact is it's very easy to lose track of what's true about ourselves we get so distracted by thinking about the way we wish we were or the way we think we ought to be or what other people think we ought to be that we lose track of what's really true about ourselves and it's also true that there's a sadness to self-knowledge because when we acknowledge the truth of who we really are we have to also acknowledge the truth of who we are not and who we will never be so for instance travel travel an adventure this crowd more than most right love's travel an adventure yeah okay that's not how I feel I mean I don't really like to travel I mean okay sometimes I like to travel for a few days under very specific conditions but I don't like to travel much and I don't like adventure I'm a very uh adventurous person I eat the same food every day I rarely leave my neighborhood I do the same few things all the time and it makes me sad to see this limitation of myself because I understand the appeal of travel I see that it's novelty and challenge and new cultures and new foods and new people I don't like to travel music I see how much other people love music I see why they love it and they get so much pleasure out of it and I used to think if I would just apply myself properly I could learn to be live music - I just need to download some more music and read some books and take a class and go to some concerts and learn to play a musical instrument I mean I like a song here and there but I just nothing into music and it makes me sad but what I've found is when I let go of my fantasy of the music loving travel loving Gretchen I have more time and energy for the things that I really love now as part of my happiness projects I developed twelve personal Commandments and these aren't resolutions like make my bed and embrace good smells these are really overarching which which are my resolutions these are more overarching principles that are meant to guide my life the way that I think and the way that I act and the first personal commandment and the most important personal commandment is to be Gretchen and everyone should feel free to substitute their own names but what I found is the more that I brought my life into a reflection of my own nature my own interests and my own values the happier I became and when I started out to be Gretchen I was trying to figure out what I could do to do a better job at Gretchen and it turns out that one of the things that just happens to be true about Gretchen is that I had this crazy passion for children's literature children's literature and young adult literature I read as a child and I read it now as an adult but for a long time as an adult I didn't really admit this to other people and not even really to myself I mean I remember when a couple of the Harry Potter books came out I don't think I got a copy for a couple months which is just crazy I was so in denial about what was really true for me I had this idea of the way I thought I should be and I you know I was very adult and I had very refined tastes and I was very discerning and sophisticated and my love for children's literature didn't fit into that idea of myself that I wanted to reject but as part of this effort to be Gretchen I realized you know I don't have so many passions and interests especially things that I can do at home that I can afford to sweep them under the rug and I really decided to shine a spotlight on this love for children's literature so I made a place for it I made a shrine to children's literature in my apartment I spent a lot more time reading these books and I started not one not two but three reading groups with other adults who loved children's literature now I thought I was the only adult who read children's literature but what I found is that when I was willing to step forward and admit the truth about myself and what I really liked then I was able to connect more meaningfully with people who shared my values and that gave me a tremendous amount of happiness so now we're going to turn to some questions for you now all of you and your swag bag I got this cunning little notebook so you can write in your notebook or on any piece of paper that you have get out something to write with and read with and don't worry this is not gonna be extensive answers it's just notes to yourself to jot down the answers to these questions it's very hard to know ourselves we so often don't even want to admit what's true we don't want to look in the mirror and so sometimes it's helpful to ask questions that get it aspects of your nature indirectly and that's what these questions are meant to do and we are going to begin in a very dodgy area and that is the area of negative emotion now if someone who writes about happiness people often act as if I'm telling them that the way to have a happy life is to experience no negative emotions but we should all try to be 10 on the one-to-ten scale 24/7 now this is not realistic and I don't even think it would be a good life negative emotions have a very important role to play in happiness because they are big flashing warning signs that something needs to change things like anger guilt boredom resentment are all very very helpful there implore so the first question I'm going to ask you this is I hate this emotion Envy write down whom do you envy and why and more than one if you can think of it think about the people you envy and why Envy is such an unpleasant emotion that often we don't even allow ourselves to acknowledge that we're feeling envious towards a person we pretend like we're feeling something else but in fact Envy is super super helpful because when someone has something that you want that's a very very useful piece of information for you now I this was a very important clue for me I started out my career as a lawyer and I was actually clerking for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when I realized that I actually wanted to be a writer and when I look back on my life I think I always wanted to be a writer I did so many things to prepare myself to be a writer but it wasn't willing to acknowledge it to myself for a long time but it was getting to the point where I was really beginning to grapple with it and then a very important thing happened I was reading my alumni notes in my college magazine you know this magazines you get with what everybody's doing and I noticed that when I read about people who had cool law jobs I felt a kind of mild interest when I read about people who had cool writing jobs I felt sick with envy and that told me something about myself that I hadn't been willing to admit they had what I wanted next question lying what do you lie about think to yourself what are some examples when you've caught yourself lying about how much you're doing something or not doing something how much time you're spending on something or not doing on something we should always pay very special attention to anything we try to hide so for instance a friend of mine said well I finally did something about how much TV my kids were watching because I went to the pediatrician and my pediatrician said to me how much good TV or your kids watching and she said I lied through my teeth and she realized it's because there was a disconnect between her behavior and her values that lie showed her that there was a way which her life was not reflecting the what she wanted it to be another friend of mine moved and was much closer to his work and he said people kept saying hey dude are you walking to work and he'd be like yes it's awesome um but he wasn't actually walk he'd only would like to work like one or once or twice so he said you know I really I had to start telling the truth you know I had to either start actually walking to work or admitting to the fact that I was not walking to work but I just couldn't keep lying about it next question for you and this has to do with a kind of ennui that certain people feel it is a sad fact about happiness that when you say to adults what do you do for fun if you suddenly had a free afternoon what would you choose to do many adults are truly mystified they have no idea what they would do for fun they spend so much time doing what they have to do or what's fun for the whole family if such a thing exists that that they've completely lost track of what's actually fun for them and this is a very important thing to know both about your work life and your leisure life what do you do for fun what do you like to do so here's a helpful question for you to think about about fun for yourself what did you do for fun when you were 10 years old write it down what did you do for fun when you were 10 years old more than one thing if you can think of it it turns out that for most people what they enjoy doing as an adult whether for leisure or for work is very much related for the kind of thing that they enjoy doing when they were 10 years old if you liked walking in the woods with your dog or shooting hoops or making things with your hands or performing in front of an audience that's probably the kind of thing you would enjoy doing as an adult so I have a friend who said to me I played with my three doll houses way past the point of social acceptability and what does she do now she's an interior decorator my own sister said to me I just wish I'd watched more television as a child because what does she do now she's a television writer when I was 10 years old I spent countless hours making what I called my blank books so I got these blank books and I would spend hours copying passages from my favorite books on one page and then I would accompany it with images that I had cut out of magazines beautiful pictures that I would match to the quotation which is exactly what I do now with my daily moment of happiness email I pick a favorite happiness quotation from the thousands that I have collected and I match it with a beautiful image I'm doing exactly the same thing that I loved as a 10 year old and I'm enjoying it in the same way but it's adapted to a context and to an adult context now this is a little bit of a different question it turns out that when you talk to people about the things that make them unhappy something that makes them unhappy often is trying to resist temptation this is something that comes up a lot people are trying to resist temptation especially eating temptation or drinking temptation and it drags them down it drives them crazy but it turns out that if you know yourself and your own nature you're much better prepared to handle temptation so here are two questions aimed at helping you understand your own nature and how to organize things better when it comes to fighting temptation so just imagine your mind whatever it is is that is your trigger food you know whether it's potato chips or french fries or chocolate or MMS or swedish fish whatever it might be whatever whatever is the thing that tempts you so here's the first question and you're going to answer either A or B so a I walk up to you and just for the sake of argument I hand you something that you find very tempting a bar a very very fine chocolate made in Portland okay so I hand you this bar of chocolate and you eat one square and then you put the chocolate bar down on the counter what happens for the rest of the day hey you're thinking about that chocolate bar all day long now later I deserve it I earned it it's my birthday I need a treat um gotta have it or that's a or B I like that that was great maybe I'll have some more later maybe tomorrow whatever B okay next question I hand you a hot fudge sundae and you eat the first bite and it is delicious okay a or B a you eat the first bite it is so delicious and you keep eating and it is so delicious and that 10th fight is just as good as the first bite and that last bite is just as important as the first bite may be more important you get that maybe you're ready for seconds love it all the way through hey be the first bite was amazing this fight not so great mouths getting cold maybe it's too sweet 10th fight you're losing interest maybe you don't even finish it be ok this has to do with the difference between abstainers the A's and moderators the bees and I recognize this this difference in human nature when I was reading Samuel Johnson now Samuel Johnson was offered wine and he declined saying abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult meaning I could give it up cold turkey but I can't have just one when I read that I thought that's me I'm like Samuel Johnson I can have none I could say no but I can't stop with just one and that's the thing abstainers do very well when they just have none it's not in the house they don't take even one french fry then they forget about it but once they start they're gonna have a lot of trouble stopping moderators on the other hand feel trapped and rebellious if they're told that they can't have it they need to know they can have it sometimes they need to know that they can have a little bit they need to know that they can have it when they want it so they got a box of cookies up in the cabinet it's getting stale and crumbly the moderator just wants to know what's there the abstainer its lucky if it's there for the next day so raise your hand how many people are abstainers all right okay that's that's my team how many people are moderators there you go now see the thing is there's no right or wrong answer there's no right or wrong way approach it's whatever works for you but once you know your own nature you're much better able to organize things to suit yourself and the thing about it is is upstanders and mutters are always trying to convince each other that they're doing it wrong as an abstainer I want to say to the moderators why do you keep breaking your own rules why don't you just go cold turkey why don't you just get it out of the house and moderators say things to me like you're too rigid you need to learn to enjoy yourself it's not healthy not to be able to eat one brownie but it's not a question of right or wrong it's just a question of whatever works for us and for our own nature and when we know ourselves we can set up circumstances in ways that will allow us to succeed now we're gonna turn to a different way of looking at human nature at ourselves leave behind the unpleasant world of negative emotions and now come into a different realm the realm of expectation now this is a framework that I've developed as part of my next book the research for my next book which is all about habits which turns out to be like the most fascinating subject of all time I'm obsessed with habits and I'm obsessed with why is it that some people can do it and some people can't and what are the circumstances in which people succeed and and like what's going on with habits and the more I looked at it the more it became clear to me that we're not alike and that in fact we fall most of us into one of four categories and I call these the four Rubin tendencies because I couldn't think of a better name is to feel free to email me or put it on Twitter if you think of a better name now and these are very helpful when you're trying to know yourself because if you understand your nature within this respect you're much better able to set up circumstances that are gonna allow you to succeed and if you understand other people better you're also able to create circumstances that are going to allowed them to succeed so this has to do with expectations now when you are trying to change a habit you're trying to impose an expectation on yourself and people respond to this idea very very differently depending on their category there are two kinds of expectations outer expectations which are things like a work deadline or a request from a sweetheart and then there are inner expectations your own desire to keep a resolution your own desire to practice meditation outer expectations and Inter expectations so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through the four categories just to define them then I'm gonna go through and ask you to raise your hands because I think it'll be really interesting to see what categories the people here fall into then finally and this will be my last point is I will go through the categories and explain that the implications of being in a different category what are the pros what are the cons of these different categories but before I start let me give you a word of warning whenever I talk about the four tendencies I get the distinct impression that some people are on the lookout for which is the best category or which is the category that they ought to belong to and then they shoehorn themselves into that category the fact is like anything happened to do with self-knowledge this is only gonna be a useful exercise if you are honest with yourself each of these categories includes people who have been gigantic successes and each of them includes people who have been big big failures so it's not a question of which is the best category or the right category it's only a question of understanding yourself and what's true for you and how you can think about yourself and your context so that you can succeed so at our expectations and inner expectations here we go first category upholders upholders respond readily to outer expectations and inner expectations alike they keep a deadline they keep a resolution without much fuss next question errs questioners question all expectations they must be persuaded that something makes sense but if they're persuaded they'll keep it they'll meet that expectation next rebels rebels resist all expectations our expectations and inner expectations they resist control even self control a rebel wants to do what a rebel wants to do and they're not going to do any other expectation than that finally obligers obligers readily meet our expectations but they have a lot of trouble imposing inter expectations on themselves so for instance a friend of mines had told me ah you know I was on the track team in high school and I never missed a track practice but I cannot make myself go running on the weekends that's an obligor okay now to complicate things slightly I will add this note questioners come in very different flavors it's like you know astrology where it's like Leo rising um questioners often have a default tendency they will default to upholding or default to rebelling so they question that some of them are like yeah they're pretty easy to persuade to go along with it and others like no no no I mean they can be convinced that you're gonna have to work on it because they do not their inclination is not to go along with what you say so first cut and at the end I'm gonna ask you if you felt like you did not find yourself in the categories which is an interesting question - okay first up holders this is my team team of holder alright okay upholders okay next question errs what Reville Reville and upholders like my husband actually is a questioner with upholder tendencies which is a good match for an upholder um next Rebels next obligers interesting interesting interesting so oh and how many people feel like they did not find themselves within this framework it's pretty good I mean no framework is perfect that's we got we got most of most everybody it looks like okay so interesting this this is very interesting because this audience more or less bore out what I'm seeing as I as I this is totally unscientific by the way I'm just making this stuff up but um purely anecdotally I will say this revel is the smallest category but what was surprising to me is an app holder is app holders a very small category - not as small as rebel but pretty small and that's what that's what we saw in this audience and then but there were more rebels here then usually I spoke at Goldman Sachs and there was not one rebel in the room but and then I can't really tell if questioners as bigger or obligers is bigger but those are two very large categories a lot of people fit into obliges them and and questioners so those are those are by far the dominant ones so how do you how do you think about this okay so this is a little bit of information about yourself what difference does it make how can you how can you act on it how can you learn something about yourself that's gonna change the way you live your life in a way that's gonna be helpful to you and maybe you understand somebody else a little bit better too and you can set things up to help with that person so the thing I thought upholders so start there now app holders are very motivated by fulfillment both the idea of the flick fulfilling an order and also fulfillment the fulfilling they feeling that they get when they get something done they wake up in the morning and they think what's on the to-do list today what's on the schedule for today they're very focused on knowing what's expected of them they hate to be blamed for things to make mistakes to get things wrong to let people down they really want to know what the rules are and they're great at following the rules they really they want to understand them they're often looking for rules beyond rules say in art or aesthetics or ethics you know what what do we not even understand our rules and they're they're always very focused on it and they're also very good at self starting they don't need a lot of supervision or accountability if they make up their mind to do something they do it so in a lot of ways they have it's great but there's a dark side to being in a polder too as I well know an upholder wants to know what's expected of them and they could become paralyzed and overwhelmed if they feel like the rules aren't clear or they don't know what's expected of them or if things are ambiguous they will often say things like I wish I didn't want those gold stars so much or I wish it didn't matter to me so much what other people want they there they sometimes find it hard to question enough what they should be doing because that urge to like just cross something off the list or get something done or meet an expectation can be very strong and it's so satisfying for them and there I could say because it's my category there's kind of a relentlessness there's a grinding this to upholders they're gonna do it they're gonna do it they expect you to do it and and it's kind of relentless next questioners so questioners wake up in the morning and they think what needs to get done today they're very motivated by logic and sound reasons they want to know why they're supposed to do something now this can be very very helpful both for organizations and for in relationships because the questioner is the one who's saying why are we doing this at all is this the right way to be doing this like what what are we doing well you know let's listen let's ask ourselves that and that could be very helpful they usually love information they love research they want to gather they want to learn and if they accept an expectation there very good about fulfilling it because they've in a way they make every expectation and inner expectation because they endorse everything themselves so they'll take that on and run with it but their upside is their downside just like with the upholders and the thing about questioners is if they don't think you should have to do it they're not gonna do it you said you wanted the report by Friday they think you don't want it don't you don't need to tell Wednesday so you know what they're gonna give it to you Wednesday I had somebody write to me on my blog and said I got a ticket for parking on the wrong side of the street and I'm not convinced that this improves vehicular safety so I'm not paying it's like good luck with that and questioners themselves can we'll save that they become exhausted with the process of questioning that they say you know sometimes I just want to let it go all right I want to stop researching all right you know I just I know that I'd it's gonna we're gonna do it this way so like I just need to like let it go and they can't because there's always the yyy and people in relationships with questioners sometimes often find it tiresome I think I hear some goats of recognition and also questioners because it is so important for them to know why to do things they can sometimes become paralyzed if they feel like they don't have enough information they want perfect information which sometimes just isn't something that's realistic and so it's very uncomfortable for them to act if they feel like they don't have sound enough reasons for making a certain judgment another thing question they hate anything arbitrary it's very funny one sign of a questioner is if you say do you keep an ears resolution they'll say no because if it's important to me I'll do it right away why would I wait for the new year that's totally arbitrary this is like every questioner makes this remark next the rebels now there are there's great things about rebels I mean talk about thinking outside the box there's thinking outside the box they because one of those aspects of being a rebel is not only do they resist expectations they actually often will actively go contrary to an expectation so if you ask them to do something or tell them to do something not only does that not make them think that they should do it it might actually ignite in them a desire to do exactly the opposite somebody was telling me that that with her girlfriend was such a rebel that if you said to her Oh read this book you're gonna love it she would say I'm not gonna read it I hate it so the Revel the rebel is very free and very unbounded and can go outside that box and ways that can be very very helpful and very free and exciting and fun to be around but it can be frustrating because when you want somebody to do something either because you want them to do it or you want to tell them to do it it can be frustrating if they just won't do it now rebels do often respond to certain kinds of arguments for instance not to say that you would manipulate them but this is the kind of thing that often works I'll show you very very compelling to a rebel I don't think your team can get that report done by Friday I'll show you I know a rebel who basically rebelled her way into an Ivy League college because it was just like somebody you know randomly in like ninth grades like there's no way you're gonna get in it's like haha you watch and also rebels will choose to do something out of love for you they do it because there's an emotional reason to do it they're not doing it because you asked them to do it they're not doing it because you told them to do it but they will choose to do it out of love for you rebels want to do what they want to do so they are very tied to a sense of like present authenticity they know what they want to do which some of the other tendencies have a lot of trouble understanding so that's very positive but it can become stifling when they can't get themselves to do something that they don't want to do they want to do something they don't want to do and they there's a paradox and they will say that if they feel stifled sometimes by their own nature I met at South by Southwest a couple years ago I talked to a guy who had his own tech company and was clearly a rebel I mean he was saying you know I have to work for myself I have to do what I want I can't take orders from anybody else I want to wake up in the morning and you know do the things that I want to do and I said you know I completely get it but I work for myself and all of us have things that we have to do that we don't want to do dis you know they're just these parts of what you have to do how do you handle that and he said it's crippling so I know my business could be much more successful except that I really am NOT able to make myself do things that I don't want to do and unless it's really really down to the wire and I have to do it so these are the pros and the cons of the rebel finally obligors now an obligor wakes up in the morning and thinks what do I have to do today what's expected of me today they are very motivated by external accountability and this is the key thing to understand for obligers for an obligor it is all about the structure of external accountability now obligers are fantastic to have around they make great team members great family members great friends because they're gonna come through for you they hate to let people down they hate to make mistakes they want they want to do what's expected of them but obligors bear the brunt of it on themselves and they'll say that they'll say things like I don't like being a people pleaser I don't like feeling like I can do for everybody else but I can never do for my but I what's important to me and they get very frustrated with themselves but fortunately there's like a very easy fix which is an obligor just needs to make sure to build an external accountability for anything that the obligor wants to do for himself or herself so for instance a friend of mine was told me for like ten years I wanted to take piano lessons I never did but finally my children got old enough to take piano lessons and so I arranged for us all to take piano lessons together and now I have to practice because my children would they know if I won't if I don't um so there was a kind of external accountability there um another friend of mine said well I've been wanting to take yoga forever finally I signed up for yoga class I went one time it was the $700 yoga class and the fact is is if she'd known she was an obligor she could have said okay I need I need structures of external accountability just losing the money isn't enough for some people that might've been enough wasn't enough for her but I needed I need to have an instructor who's gonna email me and ask me why I didn't show up I need to make a plan with a friend who's gonna be disappointed if I'm not there I need to hire a coach like there's all different kinds of external accountability you can build in if you know that's what you need another thing about obligors they're not good at self starting as you can imagine so let's say you're in obligor and you have something like a PhD thesis due in five years that is gonna be a big big challenge to an advisor because without deadlines without accountability without milestones where people are watching when there's surveillance in a sense that you're being held to account it's very easy for these things to slip and slip and slip so they very much need things like deadlines like coaches like late fees like check-ins anything like this that's gonna make sure that they can do for themselves what they do for other people and they're very susceptible to burnout if you're an obligor you need to be aware of that in yourself and if you work with an obligor we all take advantage of the obligors we get it it's gonna get done for us everybody around analyzer needs to be aware of that and make sure that they help protect the obligor from the obligors tendency to over commit and not to take downtime and all this and make sure that we protect them from burnout now one of the things that you see when you think about the tendencies is you can see how certain combinations of people would be more fruitful than others and how certain people would be more successful in certain positions than others for instance I read about this on my blog and a guy wrote and he goes well now I understand why I hate my job I'm the tax accountant and I'm a questioner and here's an interesting fact I have never met a rebel who is married who is not married to an obligor I've met obligers who are married to other categories but I have never met a pair that was not rebel obligor interesting and I know that as Ana polled I don't think I could be married anybody who wasn't an upholder earner or a questioner with a holter tendencies or maybe no visor I don't but you see how you see how this works or I was talking to a guy who was a professor was trying to get his students to be better about turning their papers on on time and his idea was to get rid of the weekly meetings because it was a waste of everybody's time because they weren't making enough progress and I said no no no probably what you have is a bunch of obligors the only reason they're making any progress is all it's because you're having this meeting you should be much more adamant about the fact that you're expecting to see a lot of productivity every time they come in so that they have that feeling of accountability and that's what's gonna help them succeed if he was as an upholder he was like oh I'll just let them go work on their own they'll do better that way I'm like yeah don't kid yourself so with all these things with all questions of self knowledge really my final point is just that in the end we can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own nature our own values our own interests and to take the time to understand ourselves is really the biggest adventure of our whole life which is to understand ourselves accept ourselves and to build a life around the what is true about us so thank you you

Channel: Gretchen Rubin

Views: 15,081

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Gretchen Rubin, WDS, 2013, World Domination Summit

Id: TEx6PiJJemg

Length: 39min 57sec (2397 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2013