Gretchen Rubin on CreativeLive | Chase Jarvis LIVE | ChaseJarvis

hey every house going I'm Chase Jarvis welcome another episode of Chase Jarvis live here on creativeLIVE you are tuned in to the 30 days of genius series specifically here at creative live what is that series that is a series where I sit down with the world's top creatives entrepreneurs and thought leaders and create actionable insights to help you live your dreams and career hobby and life if you're new to this series you can go to creative lab comm slash 30 days of genius the number three zero days of genius all you got to do is click that little blue button it's 100% free and then you get one of these badass interviews in your inbox every day for 30 days real healthy dose of dose of inspiration and that actionable insight my guest today Wow she is many things first and foremost she's an expert on happiness and habits and if that's not intriguing wait for number two and three her second thing is that she has a podcast one of the top podcast it's called happiness with Gretchen Rubin I've already given away who my guest is she's also an author of many many books most of which are number one New York Times bestsellers my personal favorite is called The Happiness Project my guest today is none other than Gretchen Rubin hey welcome to the show thank you again one more handshake but super super glad you're here and I've been a fan a long time devoured the Happiness Project when it first came out and I know we had a lot of same friends so yeah grateful to get to sit down ya know I'm so happy to be talking to you my know my favorite subjects creativity how to get there how to do it how to build it yeah a build and one of the things we're I'm just going to go right to this thing because we were talking about this before we started rolling is you used to be a lawyer and we're clerking for Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court yes when I realized I wanted to be a writer what was it something about what was it we running from something or two simple you know that's a really good question because I was having a great experience as a lawyer you know clicking for justice O'Connor was amazing I'd had a lot of great experiences but you know some people really feel a calling where they feel like almost a compulsion to do something and sometimes it's to be a doctor sometimes funnily enough like to be a circus performer if you like circus performers often how like this overwhelming desire to like perform the circus and mine I felt a kind of a compulsion to write and I always had this sense that I was sort of digressing like everything I was doing was great but it was sort of like not exactly where I was supposed to be um and and finally I think when I was clerking I got to the point where it I just felt the call so strongly to become a writer it was more about going somewhere than leaving someplace I loved that and I'm on record saying if you don't write your own script someone else will write it for you and I was nearly a victim that I was literally thinking about this this morning when I was lying in bed I have a little gratitude practice and I'm like I am so glad that I followed my gut my intuition I you know bailed on a bunch of previous careers we talked about that and I ran to becoming a photographer which was some or something in me told me that that's what I needed to do how common is that story because if if I was told to go I'll do these other things that was going to be a doctor and a professional athlete and you lawyer do we have a cultural is there a systemic problem that's telling us to be things we don't want to be or how does how should we think about that no I think of it as drift and is and that's what happened to me it wasn't that people were telling me what to do it was just that I wasn't spending the time really searching within myself and asking hard questions like what did I really want to do and I think drift is what happens when you take the path of the least resistance so you don't want to ask yourself hard questions you don't want to risk conflict with somebody who's important to you you know your mom's a doctor your dad's a doctor into and everybody's like why don't you go to your grade in math and science why don't you become a doctor and you're like okay I'll go to medical school and you do fine and you should have never stopped stuff like this do I want to be a director because and then at some point often now sometimes that works out yes and that's what's tricky about drift because sometimes it works out but you always run the risk when you're not making a conscious choice that you kind of end up someplace a lot of time after spending a lot of time and energy doing something that then you leave behind and so I think whenever you're whenever you feel like you're being carried forward by events or when you know you're doing what everybody else is doing I'm getting married because all my friends are getting married so I should be getting married you know alarm bell alarm bell alarm bell or if you have feelings like this can't go on but it does go on or like if you have a fantasy of like well maybe maybe I'll break my leg and then I won't be able to do it you know kind of fantasies of sort of emergency release these are the kind of things that point you towards drift so was there drift in your case is a harness trap just going look I know my gosh I got this opportunity Saturday no I mean that's exactly what happened so like my father's a lawyer he's some really really happy ler so I had that in my life and I'm good at research and writing and that's good for law school and then people say things about law school like it's great preparation it's a great education you'll keep your options open you can change your mind later you know and so I was a choice it was an on choice choice and I'm really good at taking tests and so it was like well take the LLCC and see how you did I did really well in the lset Alpina law school see where I get in oh I got a DA Law School can't say no to a law school and I was like oh you just gotta kiss Supreme Court clerkship like yes you know I mean like it was carried long and all these were wonderful experiences so I don't regret them but I was doing it kind of for all the wrong and you know people say well why is it the lawyers are so unhappy and I'm like people who want to be lawyers love being lawyers I have I have many friends who love being lawyers but if you go to law school because you can't think of anything better to do with yourself and then you don't like it it's kind of like you might have solved gone to like engineering school and it's like maybe it'll work out for you maybe it won't so I think it's all about this idea of really knowing what you want and making a decision that's right for you not what your fantasy self is not what other people expect of you not what's the easiest thing but you really say well what do what do I want you know and that's very uncomfortable variant like one worse than buying a bikini looking in the mirror loving it I bought yeah that's right to tell you I'm gonna put a pin in that idea for a second of knowing yourself yeah come back to that but there we go everything yeah it is it's very powerful but before we do that so that I've talked at length in you know on this show and others around going from 0 to 1 there's a huge population of people who are paying attention to this right now like I'm curious I really I don't natively identify as great and then there's a whole other section of people who are like yeah I've stepped into that world I'm leaning into creativity that's part of I'm a designer a photographer an entrepreneur I look at building businesses something very creative and what I love about you and your story is that you have you made the zero to one jump and then when you were in the one category you went from 1 to 10 and became a massively successful writer so I'm looking into I'm going to harvest all of your information over the course of the next hour but how do you think was there a shift in mindset from you when you're going from 0 to 1 and 1 to 10 I don't think so I think for me it was very much like once I was able to articulate for myself the desire that I wanted to become a writer and I was really lucky because that took the part I became obsessed with an idea which became which I started researching which is something that I do often for fun like I'll often get really preoccupied with something and do a ton of research on it like I just went through this period of being obsessed with Thomas Merton we you know and so this was something that was familiar to me but I this was a topic where I was just doing more and more and more research and it was spending more and more time and it finally said you know and it finally started to occur to me this what somebody would do if they were going to write a book and some people write books as their job they don't do it as in their free time like after work and maybe I should do it and so I was lucky because I wanted to become a writer but I knew the book that I wanted to write because sometimes people are like well I want to be a writer but I don't know what is it that I do and so my book was called I became real I had asked myself the question what am i interested in that everybody in the world is interested in and I thought well power money fame sex and that became my first book so I was doing this gigantic research project around just those cour many famous sex users guide um and and once I was like this is a book I want to write and I want to try to become a writer I was like you know at a certain point I was like I would rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer so I need to make the jump it was I was fortunate because my husband and I were both living in DC we moved from DC to New York and he also left law to be to go into finance and so it was sort of like this very obvious kind of break in our lives like we have law jobs now we move to New York and now we don't have blood jobs and I remember the day when we got a letter from the New York Bar Association asking you know we had to pair barfy's and I said to my husband should we para barfy's he's like yeah we're not yeah we're never going back now I know that you can like if you just pay up your missing bar fees you can go back kind of the bar so whatever um but it felt very important at the time and and so once I did that once I made that mental chef's yeah then I felt like it was just like I was constantly like okay well what's the next thing I have to do what okay so I have to get an agent right or I have to reverse tide to write a proposal cuz I had to get an agent so that's write a proposal what does that look like I'm go to the book store got a book called like how to write and sell your non-fiction book proposal okay I did that you know then I got an age and you don't each of these things was it felt like a really big ordeal um but it was just sort of like as I did one then the next thing presented itself I think that just I've done this ever since there's a huge lesson in there and say you don't actually have to do all of the steps yeah you really have to do is do the next yes or was it whatever's right you can get overwhelmed if you're thinking about oh my gosh like what would it take but if you're just looking all I have to focus on now is what's the next step for me yeah and people I feel like they ask that well when will I know if it's time to fill in the blank that's so hard yes so so yeah I think for us it was it was nice that there was kind of an artificial break where there was kind of a logical time to switch not made it easier okay so then you start writing yeah because you don't just go right out and write a book you start writing presumably or did yeah just like did you go chapter one thing and what I've been doing all this work on it like in my free time for fun so I had this gigantic thing and that I had to write a proposal which is like a whole other kind of writing and yeah and write a sample chapter and a table of contents and yeah all that and and my book was odd it was sort of like it's kind of like the preppy handbook meets the print Machiavelli's The Prince so there were a lot of like boxes and like it was meant to be this sort of very funny non-traditional book and so there was a lot there were like kind of a lot to manage just a presentation of it got it so when let's go back to the thing I said I was going to put a pin in oh yeah which is knowing yourself because presumably what you said something interesting is second ago which was I had I had been doing this thing in my spare time yeah so so that's step one that people I think a lot of times overlooked like if you're a lawyer what can I do is start writing will chart writing like yes the verb is for right right yes like do what you do and you're like what do you do when you're just like left to your own devices and here's a great example of that okay um I have videos on my site and the way that I found the person who makes the videos my videographer was this was a woman who she'd like left the workforce Maria chiquinho and then she did this our children we're in kindergarten together and she did this amazing video of the kindergarten year when I was like oh my god she's so amazing and then we had a mutual friend who also had kids at the school and as a favor to her Maria did this woman's book trailer and I was like that's an amazing book trailer will you make a book trailer for me and she's like sure I got like I'll hire you then she did a great book trailer for me and then I'm like well I need somebody to make videos for me every week will you do it and she's like okay so you know she was just doing what she was doing for fun which is like make a little kindergarten video but that just that was just doing what she did and then that was enough to put her in the game kind of and then other people were like I'll hire you and I've seen that you've done this great work I think you probably know the author researcher brené Brown oh sorry yeah so she's like very much about the show before two times actually I'm talking about putting yourself out there being in the arena yeah and it's sort of that the arena the way she talks about is like a lot of people can see you and you know you might be subject to ridicule but also like there's a lot of people in the arena and you're connecting with other people and you say you're a writer yeah other people in your life there so there's something about declaring yeah your writer in this yeah or something like yeah but this is why I think all this new technology is so great because like you can have a blog and you can be blogging regularly and that can be part of your identity and so you are right in your lawyer but you're also writing you're your you are part of the blogger identity you know there's ways now that you can enter into the fray used to be we're either an unpublished writer or you were a published writer but now it's like you can be self-published you can be published online you can have an amazing Twitter feed that like a million people follow like there's so many ways I feel like could get into the arena now in a way that you control yourself there's no gatekeeper to keep you out and you can you can start putting it out there and seeing what response you get and then like you know I know people I know literary agents who have seen people stuff online and and and said to them like do you want to write a book because your stuff is really good now that's rare rare yeah that doesn't go your life right hey don't build your life run it but again it's like sort of put yourself out there and kind of own whatever it is that you want to do in it kind of low stakes low investment way because it can really pay off then later when you're trying to make that transition when you quit the bar and yeah yeah I'm gonna do this full-time you already had a whole sort of body of work behind you yeah all right so you said you know another key word in there it's like yourself a couple times in that last phrase that last paragraph and then I'm going to pin that back to the thing that we said we were going to get back to which is knowing yourself so many people I end up being a little bit of a therapist as a professional creative and someone who puts a lot of content out in the world my gosh how do you know if I know I don't want to do this thing but I don't know what I do want to do I got I love taking pictures I don't know what I take pictures of how to make a living so how do we know ourselves or you talk a lot about knowing yourselves around habits and so what's step one in in because you currently Farallon you talk about need to know yourself before you actually prescribe what you should do or something there's something yeah right so let me step one one of it is yeah I mean specifically with habits is a lot of times people are sort of like these are the seven habits of highly creative people they do this they get up early in the morning they write 800 words a day that you know and it's you're like oh that's what I need to do and then I'll be highly creative no um what I found and I think it's just irrefutable true is that there is no magic one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to habits or happiness or anything and then we always have to begin by saying like what's true for us so you might say oh you know I get up at 5:00 a.m. and right and my 5 to 7:00 a.m. is you know it's quiet my mind is fresh I just done my meditate it's like amazing this is what everybody should do but it's like well some people are night people and they're not at their most creative until 4:00 p.m. so for them to get up early and try to write is like nonsensical it does it's just not right for them it's not that you're wrong or they're wrong it's just that people are different and so when you're trying to have create your habits it's really important to start by saying well what kind of person am I what's true about me you know and like another thing that comes up is simplicity lovers and abundance lovers simplicity lovers like clean surfaces bare walls you know quiet choose choices and that's how they feel like they can they have focus and creativity and energy abundance levers like a lot of buzz a lot of profusion a lot of choices people running around a lot going on there's nothing wrong with that either and a lot of times people are like if you're going to be creative you have to clean up your desk no it's not different it's not necessarily true and I'm sure you've seen it all the amazing book Mason Mason Corey's book daily rituals which is all about the habits of the like super super genius people and what you see they're all over the place they're all over the place you know so one person's gets up early and one person stays up late one person drinks coffee and one person vodka one person works in a crowd and one person works over themselves and one person works a half an hour a day like Gertrude Stein another person works 14 hours a day like P G Wodehouse I mean it's like this just you can't prescribe you have to begin by knowing yourself and so I think that's the first thing for people to do so it well what do I recognize when do I do my best work when have I succeeded in the past what attracts me what what idea attracts me does it attract me the idea that I would get up at 5:00 and maybe that maybe that sounds great or maybe that says look half you know even you just sort of think about it I think a lot of times we just we sort of again we're kind of adrift and we're reacting instead of saying like what's true for me how should i shape my environment like my schedule as much as I can to see myself is it fair to say that in Gretchen Rubens world that step one is knowing yourself yes okay so there are many we just slide away like the most ancient advice whole time it's on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi no they sail okay so yeah TM Gretchen Rubin yeah okay I take credit for that I love it so if that's the case do you have some things let's go tactical for a second suit exact DNA yourself how do you know your self good question how do you know yourself and what do you do in order to like do you record this so you just go yeah I'm that kind of person do you write it down you have daily journal so yeah hiding it yourself and then what what's the actual mechanism for exploit for putting that down so you can like reference it often well it's funny because um you mentioned I have a podcast with my sister and one of our recurring segments is called know yourself better and we try to pose a question that will help people know themselves better so like one of the questions was do you like to discuss long or discuss short because sometimes people who are going through a big thing want to discuss at length that's if you want to just discuss it as short as possible and that's just a helpful thing to know about yourself so think a lot of times these like just to constantly be asking yourself questions or noticing how you're different from other people and certainly in all my books I try to point out those things but here are some questions that I think particularly people get at your pen and paper or you can rewind this may be a reference reference material this question is a very uncomfortable question to ask but it was actually one of the questions that was most helpful to me whom do you envy hmm because when you envy something we'd often don't like to that we feel envy because it's so uncomfortable but when you when somebody when you envy someone they have something that you wish you had and that's a really really important clue and when I was thinking about switching to becoming a writer I got one of those magazines you know there's alumni magazines that you get and it reports on like everybody in your class in college and I noticed that when I was reading about people who had really cool law jobs I felt a kind of mild interest and when I read about people had really cool writing jobs I felt sick with envy so it's like that they were telling that was telling me they had something that I wish I had and so thinking about whom you envy who you know this is powerful ya Edison yeah okay another thing to ask yourself to know yourself better is what do you try to hide because if you're trying to hide something then there's in some way that what you're actually doing is not in keeping with your values or with the values of the people around you which might not be your values but so like if you're hiding the fact that you're visiting certain websites or you're hiding the fact that you're spending three hours writing in your journal because you feel like other people won't approve or whatever it might be or you're hiding the fact that you love to sew or you're light you or is it so I did I mean this is this and I think they feel that whatever they have like complicated motions or it's not as it's things that are less healthy like I'm hiding how much I drink I'm hiding how much I'm spending anytime you look at what you're trying to hide it's a big clue about how your life is not reflecting your values another thing that's really helpful to know yourself and this this is something that comes up particularly in areas of creativity and productivity so it's it's a very specific question but are you a marathoner or a sprinter so marathoners are people like me we like to start early do a little bit every day and we feel like that's how we get our best work creativity and productivity is when it's like you know not up against a deadline just like slow steady work but sprinters like the adrenaline of the deadline they like being up against that that that that crunch they work long and intense and I feel like that's what Spurs our creativity that's what crystallizes ideas if they start too early they kind of burn out or lose interest or they like waste time and the fact is a lot of times marathoners and sprinters tell each other they're doing it wrong like in for a long time I would tell sprinters like no you've got to start early you've got to do a little bit each day that's what I'm like now that's what we're sure me because I'm a marathoner if you're a sprinter I'm not gonna work at the yeah yeah but and it can be hard to work with sprinters yes um but a lot of times like my sister's a television writer and she was working with a showrunner and showrunner is like the boss of the writers yeah um and he really believed he was a sprinter and he believed that tough people did their creative most creative and best work and so he would artificially engineer crises to put people into into sprint mode and but marathoners but yeah but a marathon are like my sister was just driven mad by this and didn't undertake to hurt seem totally unnecessary and also counterproductive so it's just a good way you know yourself and then also other people so you can say like well we have a work environment how do we create a circumstance where we we can both do our best work and maybe we can complement each other but we just have to have a vocabulary for understanding who we are and how we do our best work man so those questions alone can get you a long way I was just sort of replaying how would I have acted those questions in that world where I was living the script that other people had written for him yeah and that big shift of shifting over to my own script I wish I had had those questions because I've wrestled so I think and I think so many folks at home even if you're you know we talked about the two groups if you're going from zero to one it's especially hard to get out of that mindset yeah and if you're you're trying to get better like what actually is that you want to do because you have to lean into something that in order to get really good at it all the ten thousand hours we've talked about it but when it comes to knowing yourself better I created this personality framework which i think is actually the most helpful thing and had to know yourself better it's a little bit longer explanation I've heard this talk okay yeah yeah yeah great time okay so um and it has to do with how people deal with expectations and now it's a lot of what we've been talking about is like outer expert so there's outer expectations like a work deadline request from a spouse what your parents want you to do and then there's inter expectations your own desire to write a novel in your free time you're on desire to keep your new year's resolution so they're up holders questioners obligors and rebels app holders readily meet outer and inner expectations alike they keep the work deadlines they keep New Year's resolution without much fuss so I'm in a polder and if I look back on my history it was very upholder it was like I had no trouble doing what law school expected of me and then I had no trouble doing like switching and becoming a writer without anybody helping me then their questioners questioners question all expectations they'll do something if they think it makes sense so they hate anything arbitrary inefficient they'll do something if they feel like it's justified and they love information they love customization then obligers obligers readily mean out our expectations but they struggle to meet inner expectations so they have no trouble meeting a work deadline but if they have they want to write a novel in their free time and no one's checking up on them they can struggle yeah and then finally rebels rebels resist all expectations outer and inner like they want to do what they want to do when they want to do it in their own way if you ask or tell them to do something they're very likely to resist and they don't even like to tell themselves what to do but I think in the context of the what we're talking about the biggest tendency the one that has the most people is obligers and I think a lot of times when people want to switch careers they're caught because in their day job they're surrounded by accountability they have deadlines they have a boss they have co-workers they have bellies Exopolitics you know yeah they have all these expectations on them but they have the secret desire this inner this inner expectation I'm going to become a writer I'm going to become a photographer I'm going to start a blog I'm going to switch to be you know a caterer whatever it is but there's no outer accountability and so they just are paralyzed and stall out and so the answer for anyone who is experiencing that is outer accountability like start an accountability group with other people who are going to hold you accountable hire a coach who's going to hold you accountable get a client you know you want to be a photographer get a client you know and like say you'll do it for free or volunteer and do it so that somebody's like okay hey man where's that project I need it so you feel accountable and then you know you're part of that system of accountability because I think a lot of people who are frustrated with themselves they just need that out our accountability and then they start then they start keeping up with it unless you're the rebel well now if you're a rebel you want to do what you want to do when you want to do it and so you just have to make up your mind but what do I want you're like you I really don't want to be doing this I want to be doing something else and then rebels find it pretty easy to switch they fight it'd be harder for them if somebody you know when their have a job maybe that they like like they have a they're doing something that's in fact I'm think of a specific rebel who emailed me where she had a job that she really liked but it was difficult for her it made it less fun in a way that she had to do with her clients wanted her to do but that was like the essence of the job sevens of having a client she had to keep reminding herself like I'm doing I'm doing this work because it allows me to do this work and so it's a pain for me to have this deadline but this is what allows me the freedom to do what I want and make my own rules I took this job I'm a freelancer I could take this job or not it's totally up to me I decided to take it so in a way even though I feel like they're telling me what to do I'm really telling myself what to do and so but they had to go through that kind of rubble - that is there a problem with people miss identifying themselves on purpose like I want to be something else that you say that a lot of people do kind of are in denial a little bit then in all of them though I all of them I heard from somebody I loved being in a polder but I heard from somebody who's like I really wish I were in an upholder I feel like I should be more laid back I feel like I should be more easygoing and I was like wow I like being not laid-back and not easy going but you know um so yeah every but I think like anything having to do with self-knowledge there can be an element and self-knowledge of sadness because to say who you are is to emit everything that you're not you know like one thing about me is I'm not that into music like I get that other people really like it I understand the cultural significance I wish I liked it just not that any music you know and that's sad it's a limitation but now that I don't try to pretend like I like music I've more fun time for the things that I really like you know and I don't waste time worrying about what I'm not and so I think with the tendencies it's more like you get what you get and you don't get upset and it's how do I harness the strengths of my tendency and offset the limitations rather than which then I was a different kind of part I wish witching hour were a different kind of person because you really you're stuck with you yourself you know it's like let me go more like one deeper let's go because there's a I think there's some sensing some psychological trauma on the other side of camera people I go I don't really want to do that I don't want to admit that about myself any tips for how to sort of process that like I'm an I am Anna Bligh we'll just because you okay I'm so you can talk openly about you like you're in a blige er I'm in a polder you're shy you're an upholder and you're happy to be an upholder yes did did you did you know that that was you don't going in when I created this framework no and that was the amazing thing about creating this framework so I was starting to write better than before and I was starting to see these weird patterns and how people formed habits or like when they didn't form habits what they would say like all these people kept saying to me I would say to them one of my test questions was how do you feel about new year's resolutions and a surprising number of people gave me exactly the same answer they would say I would never keep a resolution on January 1st because that's an arbitrary date if it's important to me I'll do it whatever and that was just striking me because I'm like it's the arbitrariness of it that bothers them that would not even really occurred to me but clearly for them that's a big thing that's a thing or like a lot of people would say things like like a friend of mine said you know I know I would be happier if I had a habit of exercise and when I was in high school I was on the track team and I never missed track practice so why can't I go running now and I was seeing like oh you know like oh I did NaNoWriMo and I had no trouble writing a novel in a month but why can't I why can't I write a nob why can't I write every day now and so I was trying to figure out so I came up nice personality frameworks and it took months and it was like the hardest most intellectually challenging thing I've ever done is to try to see the pattern and when I finally identified it and I realized that I'm an upholder well it turns out a polder is like it's very rare and it's a very extreme personality and I basically had to go back and rewrite all of better than before because I went into it thinking that I was very typical and what I would I learned from it is actually I'm an extreme rare personality and I remember going into my husband and being like you know what I'm like this extreme fringy person yeah and he's like you think like nobody was surprised at me but but but but what was interesting about it was was was seeing how a lot of times people think well there's something wrong with me everybody else has got this figured out there's a problem with me and there's a huge relief and understanding like there's a whole bunch of people who have exactly the same thing as I do and there's no shame in that and so just billions of it yeah we don't we should just build in whatever infrastructure you need to like get where you want to go you don't have to you don't have to feel bad about it you know because sometimes in all of the tendencies you'll see people saying like well I felt bad about you know polders per se like everybody tells me that I'm rigid that's what people always tell upholders and you're like and then you hang out with other Polar's and they're like yeah everybody tells us we're rigid we like it you know or questioners you know questioners will sometimes say like I can get stuck I get analysis paralysis because I'm questioning and questioning and questioning and I want perfect information and I just get swept up in the beauty of research and I can't move forward and it's like that's a very common thing to happen to questioners that's like there's ways to deal with that because a lot of people experience that and then you're then it's like okay well it's just a thing that happens to people and there's their solutions and here's what other questioners do and so then you don't feel so like alone with your own weird idiosyncratic problems can you we go one level deeper yeah and can you tell us a little bit about each of these like presumably you did but ton of research I'm writing a book about them now so I'm like obsessively thinking about the for Tennessee's left and right yeah okay so for those people like what whether I'm a huge advocate of trying to get people to lean into their strengths yes instead of trying to get better you're we and it's like yeah is your strength yeah and you said something about building the structure around you yeah for like to fix that fix yes awesome awesome occasion anything yeah oh yeah I've set or support the things that you're not strong in so what are some characteristically strong things that people who have want each one of the four percent types you know they're good at this and not good at it just realize that you might be special yeah this is we're talking like generally so that we can get some real tactical start focusing on that well and if anybody wants to take a quiz most people can tell what they are right away but there is a quiz at happier cast calm slash quiz there's a quiz that will give you an answer on and I want to say like these aren't mentioned meant to be identities that box you in or make you feel cramped they're meant to just illuminate pattern so that you can sort of see how you could maybe easily fix something that you've been frustrated by so upholders so upholders you know it's great to be an upholder in a lot of ways because it's like you easily meet in turnout or expectations so they put a lot of value on kind of performance and follow-through but they're also good at taking time for themselves because they see that is that's an interesting but they have this weird thing and again I thought this was like my own private weird problem but it's very widespread among upholders which is tightening so like a lot of times people will start with like a habit and over time it kind of loosens up but for holders that will often get tighter and so you could be somebody who's like you know what like five days a week I want to get up and write for two hours in the morning well pretty soon that it's like starting to be every day you're going to get a write for two hours a morning and then it gets to the point where like if one day you can't do it because like your kids sick you feel really uncomfortable because you're like I thought I could get my writing done it's tightening on you and it's very important for upholders to be aware of this so that they can like consciously loosen it up because you don't want to feel like you're this bureaucrat stuck checking the boxes of your own life in a way that becomes choking and for holders that's very that's a very real outcome that things get tighter now questioners and they love research they love information they love to customize they can get analysis paralysis if they can't move forward they can't make a decision I have a friend who's a question of married to a questioner and they didn't accept it they didn't have a dishwasher for two and a half years because every time they were going to buy a dishwasher it's like why this one why not that one maybe we should do the countertops new we should redo the kitchen maybe we should new you know like it was there was no end of the questions and so you have to figure out like I'm gonna give myself a deadline I'm only going to you know explore ten possibilities or I'm going to follow a trusted advisor so for instance let's say your question and you're like well I want to start a blog okay well what platform should I use well I can do research and research research and research and research and then finally you're like okay pick somebody that you trust whose blog you like and say what platform do you use if it's good enough for you it's probably good enough for me because otherwise I could spend a year stall we're going about trying to make another decision to write so you want to be able to like figure out ways to offset when the questioning is becoming and in a way always with the tennessee's is you want to appeal to the tendency if it's getting out of control so you would say to a questioner and this is my husband's a questioner so I would say to him it's becoming inefficient how much questioning you're doing because efficiency is a core value of question or so you say it's not now it is not serving your vet your values and your aims to do so much questioning it so it has to come to an end and that's ultimately what's efficient and justified and then we cook obligor is the biggest tendency so all of us are either obligers or we're surrounded by lighters because they're the biggest tendency for an obligor like they're the rock of the world you know um and I've happened the trains run oh yeah yeah yeah they come through for you and here's the thing about a ledger so they feel like they're being taken advantage of they are upholders questioners and we all rely on them we all will take advantage of obligers and so they're not wrong to think that um and so what obligers when they enter in this place of frustration because they're not meeting their inner expectations they just have to build in that outer accountability and so it could be starting an accountability group it could be having a coach it could be having a client it could be teaching a class if you want to learn how to do Photoshop maybe you volunteer to teach a Photoshop class at your local church and it's like well you better learn Photoshop pretty quick because like tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. a bunch of people are going to show up to hear you talk you know yeah um there's all kinds of ways to build an accountability once you realize that that is what is the necessary piece now but here's another interesting thing about obligers and it's worth mentioning because there's so many obligers obligers have this pattern well they will meet meet meet expectations and then they will snap and almost arbitrarily they will I'm not going to do it not going to do it and funnily enough a lot of obligor this can be small and funny like a lot of horrible probably yeah or horrible it can destroy relationships it can blow up marriages you can walk out in a job and often obligers are super valuable employees so you don't want somebody to just be like you know what you're dead to me I out of here you know um we want somebody to say like how can we make this right like you're too valuable for us we don't want to lose you like this and so if you're around in a blighter you are in a bloodshirt you don't want to get to that place of deep resentment and burnout because it can be very destructive and like a lot of times of Ledger's even will have like a pattern where they will keep going to a job and then kind of a presentment building up some resentment and going from one to another but obligors often can be very frustrated like I had a friend and I'm sure you've seen examples like this where he was at a big nonprofit very very productive guy and but he'd always had a dream of starting a textile company and so he decided he was going to take a year off and try to start this company now knowing what I know now I know he's an obligor I would say what is your system of accountability do you have a coach do you have an accountability group do you have a do you have a client who's going to order who's you know going to put in an order for you or you think are you getting what are you going to do to have accountability but he didn't have any accountability pager and he was paralyzed and did nothing and then eventually went back to his old job and felt like he had wasted his opportunity to make his dream come true and it was very poignant nothing is the only missing piece to me is that accountability if there had been because when he was in his job he never thought about it like the faculty had supervisors and deadlines and colleagues and conferences to prepare for and reports to file and all that didn't even think about it but then when all that infrastructure is taken away he struggled but it would have been so easy to put it in you know so that's the thing for blighters how to accountability I don't answer all right and if were Revels it's always choice and freedom what do you want what do you feel like to incur you how do you want to express yourself that's what they want they can do anything they want to do the key operative word is what they want with it they have to want to do it if you're dealing with a rebel and you're frustrated because they won't do what you ask or suggest that they do you always think about the sequence information consequences choices so we have a client this is our timeline this is our budget if we do a good job with this this could be a permanent a ship that means more cool projects and more money for all of us do you think this is something that your team could tackle information consequences choices I'm gonna tell you I'm going to tell you the situation I'm going to tell you the consequences of that situation positive and negative yeah negative I'm like even yeah even look like a little kid you could say something like if a person plays outside all day and the hot Sun they get a bad sunburn if you get a bad sunburn it really hurts your skin can blister and peel then you got to stay indoors just stuck inside for four days until your sunburn fades do you feel like wearing a hat and a long sleeve t-shirt or do you prefer to wear lotion it's like you know this might be a real question from her to me I feel like I have a this it's logically resonating with me I don't consider myself a rebel but like that way that you just laid it right out right there that's pretty interesting actually yeah in fact it work on small children yeah no and adults no no any because I this is my big question because all these people were like how do you get a rebel to do anything and so I asked all these rebels how do you get a rebel to do something and it's like oh and you can't lecture you can't lecture you can't micromanage you can't keep looking and reminding you can't keep checking on them information and consequences choice and then turn away and it's over to them and you have to let them accept the consequences mmm which can be hard weights can be hard okay so there's a Lumpur tenant that was incredible and there's a little bit of medicine frito yeah very very tactical I love it now let's go to step maybe back a little bit more and I want to shift the conversation to some habits mmm I am on record as a habit person and I'll say I came to this it wasn't something that was native in me but I came to it because I realized that just an objective like I want to be able to run a 4.5 second 40 meter dash or 40 yard dash I know where that Canadia are to be champion but just some just as a simple thing that was well defined I often could get there and ring the bell but I didn't I felt like it didn't maintain yeah it wasn't it well sting yeah is regular this is the thing goals are a really good way to meet a goal they're not a good way to form a habit finish lines are not good for habits that's that was my experience and it was really sort of later in life I'll even said recently that I realized what I was actually like I wanted to always be able to out on a four or five forty or always be able to yeah you know maintain a clear state of mind or whatever the thing was you want a consistent progress yeah consider a consistent outcome consistent progress and that again I feel it's so simple when you stand back and think about it but yeah I had to switch over to habits and it's like what I want I want these things and the things are you know health or happiness or whatever and what are the conditions that put me in that state and that condition is I meditate if I meditate every day of exercise every day if I do something creative every day if I whatever then it's almost impossible for me not to live in this state yeah so therefore I it took me some time yeah to to sort of narrow down ten habits and those ten habits have is what I largely attribute to being able to create a living and a life that I love yeah so am i normal am i right in thinking those things that I just thought or in my weirdo and I manipulated my own psychology to get an outcome well I think you're examined insight that frankly has eluded many a habbit expert which is that it's something like doing like losing 30 pounds doing you know giving up sugar for Lent doing a 30 day yoga challenge like those are great ways to meet short-term goals but when it comes to habits you don't want to think about finish lines because once you pass the finish line you're finished one thing about milestones so it's an exciting milestone to run that race but that's just one of many milestones that you will pass in a lifetime of running or oh my gosh it's great that you like launched this website but that's just the beginning that's not a finish line that's like you're going to keep going you don't want to give up sugar for lunch you want to eat healthfully forever and so it's it's very easy to get swept away by these finish lines but they don't really form habits um which is really more about thinking about how do i shape my life long-term and so one of the things he said is like this is what you want every day to look like this is like your perfect day how can you have that day every day and then you have the light that reflects your values and so I think that habits haven't you know incredibly helpful role to play now research shows about 40% of everyday life is shaped by habits so if you have habits that work for you the way you figured out your habits then you're just going to be happier healthier more productive more creative I get up on the table like it took me a while hey grandma sure know yourself and like what works on there like the invisible architecture of everyday life so they shape everything that we do and habits can be freeing and energizing because once some things I have it you don't waste any energy or time making decisions or using your self-control so I don't decide I have a lot of habits - I don't decide to get up at 6:00 a.m. I don't decide not to eat dessert those are habits they just they just happen on autopilot so they're frictionless so you don't wake up every day should I meditate today well I meditated yesterday so maybe I should get a day off tomorrow or I'm gonna do such a good job tomorrow I'm gonna start next month and after that it's gonna be really easy so then I'm gonna do so I don't have to meditate today cuz starting next month I'm gonna be so good or you know it's raining outside I don't meditate well I'm sleepy I think it'd be better if I got you blah blah blah this case is sound familiar yeah everything go on for hours so in this in my strategies so identified 21 strategies that you can use to make or break your habits and the funniest strategy that I studied oh my gosh that's my favorite chapter to work on was the strategy of loopholes because if you can spot loopholes then you can avoid them when they're undermining your habits and like they we just there's 10 category of loopholes and people are just so inventive about letting themselves off the hide yeah and so I think that ferment for most people habits really can be super powerful the thing that's important is to know that if you published your ten habits that I couldn't say like oh these are the these are the magic habits chase has identified them there now like established like you know the table of the elements and if we would all do this we would all have an equal success because these are carefully tailored over a lot of time and it sounds like experimenting with yourself to find like the magic solution that is perfectly calibrated for you so true and that's just like meditation I've tried meditation all these people I know meditate okay show me a million research things that show that doesn't work for me I'm just saying right now maybe they'll try it again but I'm just like I can live without it um it's still fine okay so I'll do something else it works for you so somebody else can say like maybe I'd like to try maybe I don't you know there's no magic answer but the thing is what you did was you put in the time the self-knowledge the experiment and then you're like and then one of the questions that says like when do I succeed when have I succeeded in the past and when do I do when do I feel my best and it might be like you know it's funny everybody sits around telling me how I should you know like have a clean desk but I do better when I have a messages or I get an interview with rosanne Cash and she was saying how everybody said to her like to be creative you really need to sit down and treat it like a job and sit down at your desk at nine o'clock and really you know really take it seriously and don't wait till you're in the mood and she said she always felt really guilty because she could she never could do that and then she realized from reading my book like she's actually the kind of person who wanders around the house and writes like song lyrics on a post-it note sticks it on the ping-pong table and that's her process and it's like okay if it works for euros in cash like I don't think it needs fixing because whatever you're doing works for you yeah and so whenever people start saying like oh I deliberately this was working really well but I deliberately changed it to be more like Albert Einstein yeah I'm like well I don't know I mean if it's working for you maybe you want to go deeper into that or try to understand it is it fair to say that when you try and adopt someone else's habits or something it's been prescribed to you that you it's actually useful because you will learn if that I don't thing for you yes yes because it's always worth experimenting and sometimes things just sounds so wrong that you're like okay you're getting a bit by BM then anyway like see I would love to get up at 5:00 a.m. that attracts me but I would have to go to bed too early and that would disrupt my life too much but it attracts me but for other people that would never attract them or like when I first heard about National Novel Writing Month somebody I hardly know was in a coffee shop and she described it to me and I'm like I'm going out right now in buying Chris Bailey's book I cannot wait to do this it's so attracted me but for other people they'd be like and that's awful you need to so part of it is just like think about it and maybe try it and so well maybe that doesn't sound like something I would like to do but I'll try it this comes up a lot of times with resisting strong temptation whether that's food like resisting chocolate chip cookies or technology like candy crush um for some people they do better when they give it up altogether they have none so it's like my sister had to delete candy crush because it was actually affecting her career um she couldn't play a little candy crush and I don't need any sugar cuz it's like once I have a little bit I want a lot and I just like that's boring to me I don't want to have to like have one cookie or you know like one scoop of ice cream I want to have all the ice cream or no ice cream but then moderate that those are abstainers moderators do better when they have a little bit so maybe they want to play candy crush for 20 minutes so they want to play when they're in line at the store and that they just need to know they can have it a little bit and so but a lot of times everyone is told that we should be moderate like oh give yourself a cheat day follow the 80/20 rule like don't be too rigid but if it's not working for you if you feel like I can't play World of Warcraft a little bit I can't eat to french fries try abstaining because like you say spirit of experimentation yeah for a lot of people it works better maybe you think you're one kind of person but this would really work better for you and it's like what's the harm in it you don't need you don't need the Hubble telescope and it's pretty efficient because you'll know after a few days does this work for you or not yes absolutely and and that's the thing that I did is like oh I want to do X and I would just some kind of mine suggested that I try this it's a thing that works for him or her tried it like wow that was super painful right I know that that's not my so she's like the timer method suppose like I love using the 15-minute timer it's like they're crazy about it they're like to try the timer method it's like you don't offend us much you give that a shot yeah exactly and then for some people it's the magic answer that solves everything you know and so maybe it will be for you or maybe not so try it Farrah and I want to over the next five minutes I'm going to cover two main topics one topic is specifically creativity yeah then one topic is Gretchen Rubin okay so I'm gonna go with the creativity first and then we're going to finish with a bunch of Gretchen Rubin like Batman man man okay lightning round lightly round Iran so around creativity we've touched on it it's been a I think one of the dominant threads through our conversation I really enjoyed and appreciated that that's one of my core values and the thing I'm trying to help people unlock in their lives with respect to not being overly programmatic about you or this or you have to do these things can you talk to me about some like just the thread of creativity in your work and what you've certainly seen some transit and is to be put to the lens of hey remember everybody know thyself yeah but yeah talk to me about some sort of trends and connections that you see around creativity and how people can tap into it access it one thing is I feel like people have like this thing that is they're kind of their milieu for creativity so for some people it's very visual I have a friend who's an artist and I remember her saying like she quit her job her day job when she first moved to New York was to a receptionist at an art gallery and then finally she was doing well enough with her art that she quit and somebody said to her well now you're going to be working all the time meaning now that you have no job to fall back on all you can do is be looking all you can be doing is thinking about art and the like I'm not visual for me it's all about reading it's always about reading so what I do this they creatives I just constantly I'm reading and people often say like oh you must be speed reader you do so much reading like I have to be reading all the time like I feel like my life I crave it and I'm constantly taking notes on what I read and that's what is creativity for me is this constant like taking in of words processing ideas writing down the parts that catch my attention and then trying to think about where it could lead in my own thinking and again but like for someone who's visual that wouldn't be attractive because they think about the world in a different way so I think part of it is just you know is like I think it's it's a bad for me at least it's about constant exposure but even I realized like if I go to an art like a I go to the Met you're taking notes no you know and what I'm most interested in is the titles of the painter I like really interested in the title spending is like I saw the figure five in gold I'm like best painting ever loved that title I mean and I was like wow that's such like I cannot even get out of my own head or like Andy Warhol I'm like I don't care about his visual art it's his writing that I love um his books are crazy he's crazy totally I constantly quote him right is he not the biggest genius I'm like he's one of the biggest influences on my life okay we must have sidebar on Andy Warhol because he is completely I think really as famous as he is I kind of think that he's underappreciated Oh Bertram anything and he's well I someone said I think it was maybe Neil Strauss said that he is the most famous artist of all time more famous than Picasso and I don't know if that's the case or not but it's it's interesting to me that you can have that sort of you can be in that pool even the top few yeah and still be underappreciated because his work literally is everywhere it's everywhere right I mean it's like the fact that he took a brillo box out of a grocery store and ended up in the gallery or in a museum like that's just one of his many like usurping the traditional sort of a way of thinking what his idea is like he is right online he is in mind like no one else I mean anyway so that's what I'm saying like oh we agree it's like there's his art but then there's then there's the words that underlie it that are so fascinating so so is that I mean that's in a sense it's still know thyself if you're if you're visual I'm painfully visual like if I sit down in a meeting well you're a photographer that makes so much it makes so much sense like I came and said to a meeting without like writing the words down like oh you just said something I need to actually look at the words on the wall to remember them yes it's weird but so is are we still bound to know thyself in order to yeah interview I think it key to everything I mean I really feel like in the end it's by knowing our own interest our own values our own taste our own interests are in temperament like it all comes down to that conflict though were you like oh man I really wish I was not visual but I wish I was more more of a writer or something like that or more conceptual or is there like how do people reconcile conflict in themselves because certainly I I guess I like being visual now that I think about it but you've said it a couple times in the conversation like even don't deny yourself the thing you can just say like I don't like music that's pretty that's pretty bold statement but you're like I'm totally good with that now no I feel a sadness to it because it's a limitation and I think sometimes like there's there's useful things on the edges like if you say like well I'm so visual but like maybe there's a way I can incorporate text or like I think a lot about images in the power of image like I wrote a biography of JFK and one of the things that I loved studying was the pet like the power of images and how he used images and like and how that but I did it in kind of a writer I had like read books about images you know like on photography and something yeah you know but right like that's how the only way I could process it with Sue susan sontag version of it um so I think that there's a lot of times something really interesting on the edges and that you can kind of like pull in the bits like the parts that make sense to you and and you know like maybe you're like snapchat like I'm it's an image that's gonna have this crazy piece of text and I'm gonna have fun with that but I think in the end you can't you can you can become educated you can expand but I don't think you can really move the center of gravity of yourself and I feel like you can waste so much time and energy trying to push against it and taking an actor weaknesses but like you say like you want to go deeper into your strengths and also I feel like and speaking of JFK he said something one time that was so interesting he said people do best what comes naturally and I always think the way so is that true do I agree that people do best what comes naturally I thought about that constantly for the last 10 years and in the end I think people do do best what comes naturally and that's not to say that you can't expand it or become educated they're like incorporate but in the end I think that we always it's very hard that your best work is not really coming from that like that Center place it seems to me okay certainly is for me these these next questions will be very natural but then because they're about you and okay what's something that people don't know about you they would be surprised if they did I'm very scared to drive I'm really scared did you drive but it was like a whole thing and I hate driving I dread it part of this I live in New York so I hardly ever drive habits if you do something habitually your your emotional state becomes you know kind of muffled and that would be good for me if I did more driving I would be less nervous but I do not like to drive and I'm from Kansas City Missouri like I drove I got my life inflation 15 I 16 yeah so butthat habits do you have a list of habits that you look at every day or is it are they ingrained and I'm gonna polder it's just like part of me yeah and how about your a struggle that you had making something creatively that the world doesn't know about like where did you really struck I mean the four tendencies was so difficult for me I'm telling I was sitting this close to you and I could see there's a little cringe yes yeah that was the harsh I know it was it was like I just had all this like loose kind of information floating around I didn't know how anything fit together I couldn't now it's a beautiful pattern that has kind of the elegance of a fern frond do you know so I'm like it it looks like a nautilus shell so it's got to be right um but I couldn't I couldn't make sense of it and I was it was a tremendous and the whole habit book actually was a huge struggle because there was just so much information and I couldn't figure out how to work like should it be habits of creativity habits of exercise but then it beasts are we done then and I'm like it was it making habits breaking habits did that matter like I couldn't like figure out the framework I'm like I'm completely a person who needs structured thinking and I couldn't find my structure and there was just more and more and more information flowing in I was like I was getting crushed by it can you name some of your favorite things reading writing about some be specific like what's a favorite book that people at all might want to pick up ooh CS is like how do I know I have a book club where like every month I really don't know because I'm like I can you know I can eventually I'll get to everything but like just picking the one book all right well actually then we'll just do that you have a book club yeah on your website yeah Gretchen Rubin calm yeah people can sign up and every week every month I it's one book about happiness or habits or human nature one work of children's literature because I'm a crazy fan of color I wanted to get there but we ran out of time and one eccentric pick one of the eccentric pick right I just do something that I'll let you have to hook on that one because there's so much information website and let's find out where people can know more about you on the internet it's Gretchen Rubin comm yeah and then fill in the blanks on the rest of them yeah I'm Gretchen Rubin everywhere Facebook Twitter Pinterest Instagram what are you most passionate about in that world are you like a facebook or you answer humor you know podcast um I love them all because they all have different strengths and weaknesses and so for me it's like how do you communicate ideas with with other people and each one has kind of its own power but in that in my heart I'm a writer so in the end in the end for me the core thing yeah for my books yeah great I'm super grateful to have spent oh thank you so we can talk all day I know the kid was ages like oh my gosh I said where he'd be done by 12 2012 15 folks at home pay attention agreement Gretchen Rubin Gretchen Rubin calm Gretchen Rubin everywhere on the Internet's been a huge influence to me and I know she will for you too signing off until tomorrow not even next week or next month you know one of these tomorrow you

Channel: Chase Jarvis

Views: 27,459

Rating: 4.9202657 out of 5

Keywords: Gretchen Rubin, Entrepreneur, Author, Business, Creative, creativity, Happiness, habits, health, lifestyle, success, law school, dream job, 30 Days Of Genius, 30DaysOfGenius, cjLIVE, CreativeLive

Id: uHSizSVV-qA

Length: 60min 11sec (3611 seconds)

Published: Sat May 28 2016