Life Kit - The key to happiness? Know thyself, says Gretchen Rubin

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

What is happiness? How do you define it? Maybe it's feeling good, having a sunny disposition or being fulfilled, even if you don't feel pleasant all the time. Gretchen Rubin, host of the Happier podcast and author of The Happiness Project, says happiness is less about attaining joy than it is about growing in the right direction. In this episode, she explains how to make small changes that can move you toward happiness, and why knowing yourself helps contribute to this emotion.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Bella DiPaolo is glad if you're happily married, but she is perfectly happy being single. I would love to have someone who took care of my car or someone who cleaned up the dishes after dinner, but then I'd want them to leave. From yourself to your dog to your spouse are significant others. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey everybody, it's Mariel. Question for you. How happy are you? Yeah, I know. I guess I should answer it too.

I don't know. I mean, what is happiness anyway? I started my career in law. So I have many memories of spending an entire semester arguing about the definition of contract, and happiness is even more elusive. This is Gretchen Rubin. She is a writer who studies happiness, good habits, and human nature. She also has a podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. She says trying to pin it down exactly, and yes, I did try to do that in our interview, isn't all that helpful.

There are like 15 academic definitions of happiness. And I think that for the regular person, it's not that useful to argue about joy versus contentment versus wellbeing versus life satisfaction. It's easier to think about moving in the right direction. Because what is happiness is a very hard question to answer, but will this make you happier is something that usually we have a lot of clarity about.

Another thing Gretchen has learned about happiness is that it's not one size fits all. And to get closer to it, to move in the right direction, we need to understand ourselves, our preferences, our habits, how we tick. So on this episode of Life Kit, we talk about how to do that and how to move towards happiness. On the Throughline Podcast, the myth linking autism and vaccines was decades in the making and was a major moment for vaccine hesitancy in America, tapping into fears involving the

pharmaceutical industry and the federal government. No matter how many studies you do showing that this is not a problem, it's very hard to unring the bell. Listen to Thru Line from NPR, wherever you get your podcast. Gretchen, you write in your book, Secrets of Adulthood, that happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. What do you mean by that? If you're thinking about how to make your life happier, there's four to four pieces

that you can think of. Feeling good, feeling bad, feeling right, and an atmosphere of growth. So feeling good is having more of the things that make you feel good. Then there's getting rid of the things that make you feel bad. Then there's feeling right, which is does your life reflect your values? And sometimes we do things that don't make us feel good.

They might make us feel bad, but we do them because they make us feel right. So you might visit a sick friend in the hospital, even though you hate going to hospitals, you dread going, you don't enjoy being there and you look back on it with dread and yet you think well to be a good friend I should visit my friend in the hospital. You don't do it because it makes you feel good, it actually makes you feel bad, but it serves your happiness because it's a way of feeling right, it's a way of feeling that your life reflects your values. And there's also the atmosphere of growth and this is we feel happier when

we're growing, when we're learning, when we're fixing things, when we're teaching, when we're sort of making the world a better place. And often the atmosphere of growth is accompanied by insecurity, frustration, feeling incompetent. Learning something can be very very stressful. So sometimes to have our lives be happier, we have to put up with things that don't make us feel happy. They don't make you feel like that yellow smiley face on the side of the plastic bag. And we know that relationships are very important to our well-being. A thousand percent. Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree if you had to pick a key to happiness

Maybe even the key to happiness you're exactly right its relationships Well you talk about how in order to be happy we need to know ourselves, right? What does that look like in practice? Well, you think you'd know yourself, right? You just hang out with yourself all day long but knowing ourselves is hard because it's very easy to get distracted by the way we wish we were or the way other people expect us to be or our fantasy self. So it's just very helpful to pay close attention to what is true about us. And it's funny, like how we might not notice very obvious things about ourselves. Like are you a morning person or a night person?

And if you're a night person and you say to yourself, well, I'm gonna get up and exercise first thing before I get to work in the morning, you're not setting yourself up for success. Not because it's not a good idea for someone, but it's not a good idea for you because you're a night person, you're probably much better off doing it later in the day.

And there's so many ways to understand ourselves and how we thrive as we're trying to shape our lives, but it can be very hard to see ourselves clearly. What are some other things that people do because they think it'll make them happy, but it's not actually the right fit for them? That's a mistake that is so easy to make is thinking that there's one right way or there's one best way to go about making our lives happier. And the fact is, like no tool fits every hand. For example, many people swear by meditation.

I have tried meditation. I mean, tried for months, like three times, doesn't work for me. I tried keeping a gratitude journal. That's something also that you're often recommended to do. I was deeply annoyed by my gratitude journal, but for some people they're a really important tool. And so I think the mistake is thinking that somebody can tell you what will work for you, but you're unique just like everybody else. And each of us needs to figure out what is right for us. And that's where the self-knowledge comes in, because there is no magic one-size-fits-all solution.

This is something Gretchen has learned over many years of studying happiness, that self-knowledge is key. Because as she puts it in one essay, we can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own values, our own interests, and our own temperament. So take away one, know yourself. There are lots of questions you can consider about your personality and your preferences. Some suggestions from Gretchen,

are you a morning person or a night person? Do you prefer simplicity or abundance? Do you need other people to hold you accountable or do you hate having someone tell you what to do? When you make decisions, are you a satisficer? That means you'll pick the hotel as soon as you find one that meets your criteria. Or are you a maximizer who needs to look at every single option first? Here's another one. When you're facing temptation, are you an abstainer or a moderator? Abstainers are people like me where it's easier to give up something altogether than to indulge

in moderation. But moderators are people who get kind of panicky and rebellious if they're told they can never do something and so they should have it a little bit or sometimes. So like I can have like no thin mint cookies or I can have a sleeve of thin mint cookies. I can't have one thin mint cookie or half a brownie. So I just gave up sugar altogether because that's easier for me. For moderators, they think, oh, you know, don't be so rich and don't be so hard on yourself. Don't deny yourself.

Don't make something totally off limits. That's not good. And I'm like, it works for me. It's better for me. It's easier for me. I prefer that way, but it's not for everybody. Some people are moderators. Once you know yourself,

how do you use that information to be happier? Do you try to be more like yourself or do you try to push back against some of who you are? Well, often when we're trying to make our lives happier, we might be trying to follow a new habit, like reading more, going to sleep on time, exercising, or we might be trying to cut back on something like doom scrolling or night snacking, or we might be trying to cut back on something like doom scrolling or night snacking,

or we might be wanting to push ourselves to do something that we kind of don't wanna do, but we know we would make us happier in the long run, like start a book club or join a hiking group. And so when we know ourselves, we can think about what are the things that are making it harder for me to do that and how might I think about ways to make it easier. Like let's say you're somebody who loves familiarity. So some people love

familiarity and some people love novelty. So let's say you're trying to exercise more. If you know that you love novelty you might really think about, okay let me think of lots of ideas, different ways I could exercise, like different sports I could try. I'll join a gym that like has many, many, many options. I'll set up my life so that I have a lot of different choices and I really mix it up. Where somebody who's a familiarity lover might say to themselves, I want to get really comfortable in one place. I know that's going to make it easier and more pleasant for me to go. So I'm really going to commit to this one place. I'm going to go

and I'm really going to pay attention. I'm going to try to get to know the people there. So it feels very familiar because as a familiarity lover, that's going to make it easier for me to stick to a habit that I think is going to make me happier. So again, it's not that one person's right and one person's wrong. It's just that different circumstances appeal to different people and you want to take yourself into account as you're setting things up. Okay, takeaway two. Gretchen has another framework

that can help you understand yourself and what might make you happy. It's called the four tendencies. This is about whether you meet or resist outer and inner expectations. And she says, this is a narrow aspect of our nature, but it is significant. So we all face two kinds of expectations,

outer expectations like a work deadline and inner expectations like my own desire to meditate more or keep a New Year's resolution. So depending on whether you meet or resist an outer and inner expectations, that makes you an upholder, a questioner, an obliger or a rebel. Upholders are people who readily meet

both outer and inner expectations. So they meet the work deadline, they keep the New Year's resolution without much fuss. They wanna know what other people expect from them, but their expectations for themselves are very important. They tend to love schedules, to-do lists, execution. They don't need a lot of supervision. They can be a little bit rigid.

I say that as an upholder myself. So their motto is discipline is my freedom. Okay, so that's the first one, upholders. Then we have questioners. What's their deal? Questioners question all expectations. They'll do something if they think it makes sense. So they're deciding whether something meets their inner standard.

If it meets their inner standard, they will meet that expectation. If it fails their inner standard, they will push back. So they're very focused on justifications, rationale. They tend to love research. They can sometimes fall into analysis paralysis because their desire for perfect information can make it hard for them to move forward or make a decision. They need their questions answered. So their motto is, I'll comply if you convince me why. Okay, so what about the third tendency? That's the obligers. This is the biggest tendency for both men and women. Obligers readily meet outer expectations,

but they struggle to meet inner expectations. So these are people who can keep their promises to other people, but they struggle to keep their promises to themselves. So these are people who say, why can't I follow through for myself when I'm so good at following through other people? Why can't I make myself a priority? Why don't I make time for self-care? Why do I always give to others but I can't give to myself? That's obliger. So their motto is, you can count on me and I'm counting on you to count on me. All right. And then the last group is the rebels. This is the smallest tendency. It's a conspicuous tendency but it's a small tendency. Rebels resist all expectations

outer and inner alike. They want to do what they want to do in their own way in their own time. They can do anything they want to do or choose to do but if you ask or tell them to do something they are very likely to resist and typically they don't tell themselves what to do., they are very likely to resist. And typically they don't tell themselves what to do. Like they don't sign up for a 10 a.m. spin class on Saturday because they think, I don't know what I'm going to want to do on Saturday and just the idea that somebody is expecting me to show up is going to annoy me. So their motto is, you can't make me and neither can I. And the four tendencies is helpful because if you're trying to do something because you think it's going to make you happier, like read more or call your mom every day or whatever

it is, if you know if you're an upholder question or obliged to rebel, that will give you a lot of clues about how to set yourself up so that you will follow through. Knowing you're an upholder, how do you use that to figure out what makes you happy? Well, I know that something like spontaneity is not important to me. I really like to have a plan, and I use my plan and my calendar to achieve my aims for myself, and I find that immensely satisfying. And I think from the outside, sometimes people feel like upholders might feel oppressed by that, but now I know that I'm not.

And also one of the things that I really learned about being an upholder is like when I'm stressed out, a lot of times people, if you're under a lot of stress, people will say things like, well, you should ease up on yourself and like let yourself off the hook. Like usually you would do X, Y or Z, but you should just like take a break from it.

Now that might be good advice for other people, but as an upholder and having talked to other upholders, that that actually makes us more stressed out. We find it relaxing and reassuring to like execute on a plan. And so often when I'm under a lot of stress, I will go deeper into my usual healthy habits instead of trying to give myself a break because that is what is reassuring to me. And so again, it's not that people are giving me advice that's ill intentioned, they mean well, but I had to learn from experience, like that doesn't work for me. That doesn't actually make me feel better,

it makes me feel worse. Yeah, it's good to know that about yourself. Exactly. I immediately know which one I am, by the way. Ooh, which one are you? I'm a questioner. Okay, well, I was gonna say, obliger is the biggest tendency

and the next biggest is questioner. So I would say, you're probably an obliger or a questioner. I'm going to say, obliger is the biggest tendency and the next biggest is questioner. So I would say you're probably an obliger or questioner. I'm married to a questioner, so I have to say I have a special fondness for the questioner tendency. Yeah, I think that people can definitely find it annoying. They find the questions annoying. They think you don't trust or believe them. And maybe you don't.

That's exactly right. But it's not personal. It's just business, baby. It's just, I mean, I'm a journalist, right? So it's like, trust but verify. And I think I've always been that way. But this happens all the time at the doctor. It's like, OK, but why that thing?

And exactly how does that drug work? Yes. Because you also know that they have a million patients. Yes. And they miss things. Yes. And they disagree with that other doctor. So why shouldn't I ask?

Well, and questioners love to customize. And you're saying, like, but what about me? I need to do it in the way that's right for me. And questioners can drain and overwhelm people with their constant questioning because people don't understand. They just wanna know why. They just wanna understand your reasons. But sometimes people misinterpret this as you suggested

by thinking like you're questioning my judgment or you're undermining my authority. One of the things I always say to people in the healthcare profession is you have to explain why for a questioner or they might just come up with their own reasons for doing something. So if I was going to tell you to take medication, I wouldn't just say to you like, okay, I want for you to go for a 20 minute walk in the morning and then take this medication right

after and then have breakfast. You might say like, well, it's more convenient for me to take it at night and I don't want to go for a 20 minute walk. So I need to say to you, you need to take it with food or it can give you nausea or research has shown that if you take this after exercise, it's going to be twice as effective because once you have those reasons, then you will follow. I've talked about this on the show. I had breast cancer last year. I went through treatment and yeah, and so the decisions that I've had to make and the decisions I'm making still

are high stakes. And they're very like, and doctors do disagree, and they'll tell you completely different things and you'll realize that one of them, when you push with your questions, they get upset because they don't actually know. And they're afraid to tell you they don't know, but someone else might know. And so that's where I'm like, you know what? What's going to make me feel happiest and safest is to find a doctor who knows or who will tell me what they don't know. Mm-hmm. But you can imagine that for somebody else they're like, I just want to do what the doctor tells me. Yeah. Just, I want you to just tell me what to do

and I will do it. Okay, what about obligers? How can they use the knowledge of this tendency to be happier? The solution for obligers is very straightforward. Want to read more? Join a book group. Want to exercise more? Take a class, work out with a trainer, work out with a friend who's annoyed if you don't show up, raise money for a charity, take your dog for a run who's so disappointed if she doesn't get to go for her run. You just need outer accountability, even to meet an inner expectation. And what about rebels? What makes them happy?

The rebel, it's like they want to do something less if it's on the calendar. And so if you are a rebel yourself or you're dealing with a rebel, the idea of like, we'll just sign up for a woodworking class. Well, they're not going to want to do it. Or even sometimes rebels, like they don't like the feeling of, oh, we're going to go to a concert in two weeks.

So if you're dealing with rebel, it might be more like, hey, I'm going tonight. Or if you're dealing with rebel, it might be more like, hey, I'm going tonight. Or if you feel like it, you can join, we're gonna go and if you feel like joining us, join us. And if not, we'll catch you another time and then they can decide to join you or not. It's not, when people are like, oh, well, you must not wanna be my friend

because you never wanna commit to a plan. Instead of understanding like, oh no, they just don't like committing to plans. So let's set things up in a way that doesn't irk them. I think a lot of folks imagine that if they make a big change in their lives, they get a new job or achieve some big goal, get married, have a baby, then maybe then they'll finally be happy. They'll have checked off all the boxes and then happiness will just come.

Well, I think it's moving in a direction rather than achieving something. Sometimes, you know, big changes can really have a big effect on our happiness, but often even very, very small things. Like, here's a funny one. So a thing that I often talk about on the Happier podcast is the one minute rule.

This is the idea that if you can do something in a minute without delay, you should just go ahead and do it. You should print out a document and file it, or hang up your code, or put your mug in the dishwasher, whatever. And it just kind of gets rid of the scum of clutter that's on the surface of life. And it takes less than a minute, by definition.

And so many people are like, oh my gosh, this completely changed my life. And sometimes getting that little stuff out of the way makes you feel more prepared to take on big stuff. Like a friend of mine said, I finally cleaned out my fridge and now I know I can switch careers. Sometimes we get energy from these very small things.

So sometimes it's a big change, but sometimes it's a small change. And that is our third and final takeaway. Don't discount the ways you can feel happiness in small doses every day. Happiness doesn't always mean making a big life change. And as Gretchen said earlier, it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be in a state of rapture all the time. There are things that we do that make us happier over the long term that do not make us happier in the short term.

Whether because we have to like ask more of ourselves or maybe we have to deprive ourselves of something. All right Gretchen, thank you so much. This has been great. I learned a lot. Thank you. Made me very happy to get the chance to talk to you. Okay, time for a recap.

Takeaway one is to know yourself. Ask yourself questions about your personality and your preferences, like are you a morning person or a night person? Do you need other people to hold you accountable? Or do you hate that? Are you a satisficer or a maximizer, an abstainer or a moderator? Takeaway two, consider the four tendencies framework. And again, this is about whether you meet or resist outer and inner expectations.

Knowing whether you're an upholder, a questioner, an obliger, or a rebel will also help you make decisions that can move you closer to happiness. And takeaway three, consider the small things too. Happiness isn't just about making big life changes. It's about the things we do every day. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to manage your emotions and another on how to start a spiritual practice. You can find those at npr.org slash LifeKit. And if you love LifeKit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash

LifeKit Newsletter. I think it would make you very happy. Also, we love hearing from you, so if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at lifekit at npr.org. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sam Yellow Horse Kessler. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Grieve. Megan Kane is our supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Zoe Vang and Hoven and Patrick Murray. I'm Mariel Sagarra. Thanks for listening.