The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Twelve Sayings That Could Change Your Life

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

There are so many happiness lessons to remember - but it helps if we can boil them down into memorable little sayings. Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin has done exactly that in her latest book - Secrets of Adulthood. Dr Laurie picked twelve of her favorite aphorisms from the book and invited Gretchen along to explore sayings such as “Happiness doesn't always make us feel happy” and “Accept yourself and expect more from yourself”. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin When we think about the factors that affect our happiness, we often focus on the big stuff. Things like finding the perfect relationship, or doing work that gives us a sense of purpose. But we often forget that the little things can matter a lot too. A well-timed joke, a touching song lyric, and especially a memorable quote. These are the sorts of things that can instantly lift our spirits and even help us tackle tough problems. And there are few people who understand that better than this episode's special guest.

So I'm Gretchen Rubin. I am so happy to be talking to you today. Gretchen is a bestselling author, the acclaimed host of the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and one of my favorite experts on the nuances of human nature. Gretchen has just released a new book entitled Secrets of Adulthood. In it, Gretchen offers her readers practical insights for navigating the daily challenges that come with being a functional grown-up in the modern world. But Gretchen manages to share these helpful insights in a truly creative way. She distills more than 200 complex life lessons into short, concise aphorisms. Short punchy sayings that manage to pack a whole lot of wisdom into just a few words.

So tell me the origin story of this book, because it seemed like it had a few threads of how you got to it. Exactly. There were a couple of things that came together. One is I'm a writer and I do feel that sometimes an idea, maybe just one sentence will cross our path, and suddenly we see the way forward or suddenly we have insight into a situation in a way that's really illuminating. I had really been pushing myself over the years to write aphoristically, meaning trying to convey big ideas in a short sentence.

And then also I was feeling like, okay, there are these insights that I'm gaining and I wanted to be able to share them with other people. So I really set myself the aim of trying to write these and gather these. But you did this in the form of these aphorisms. So what is an aphorism? We all know proverbs and a proverb is like a piece of folk wisdom, like a stumble may prevent a fall. Like nobody's associated with that. That's just like a thing we all say. And then an aphorism is when somebody says something like Mark Twain said it, Marcus

Aurelius or Montaigne. One of the biggest challenges is pronouncing everybody's name. But Lilius Siris, my own favorite aphorist is Marie von Ebene Eschenbach, who nobody else remembers, but I'm going to try to bring her back into fashion because I love hers. So like one of her aphorisms that I love is, you can fall so fast you think you're flying. Oh, that's like, right. It's like, whoa. But so she said that. So that's an aphorism because we attribute that to her. She said it in that way. Now, one of the things about aphorism,

and you know this from studying happiness, all of the most important insights are too important to be true. If there's some fresh insight, you're like, that's probably wrong because we've been studying this for thousands of years. The greatest minds in history have been looking at this, but people say it in a fresh way,

or they have a new metaphor, or they say it in a way that particularly resonates with a particular person. So a lot of times it's finding that fresh way to convey an insight. It's creatively exciting. You know, it's like writing a haiku or doing a 30 minute sitcom. It sparks your creativity to have a constraint. And it also really forced my thinking to clarify. First, I had to understand it, then I had to whittle it down. It was very creatively interesting in that way. I wanted ones that were truly secrets of adulthood, where I felt like there was some insight about

making a decision or ending procrastination or dealing with relationships. Then there were some that I just couldn't manage to articulate in an interesting short way, and so some I wasn't able to articulate in an interesting short way. And so some I wasn't able to crack the code. But in the end, I was really, there was sort of a clear set that I felt really rose to the level

that I wanted the book to be. But I still look at all the other ones too. I'm always like going in there and tickering with them. I feel like there's room for a challenge and one you couldn't get the right words for. Are we gonna post it online and see if somebody can come up with a good short saying for it. Oh, that's a good idea. Say this in a more elegant way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I should go through and look for some of my clunkers and see if somebody can crack it. As you're talking about this, it seems like aphorisms are really cool. It seems like the kind of thing we might see as a little Pinterest meme. Yes. But it also feels kind of like old school. Yes. Aphorists you mentioned feel like they were around

in the ancient times. Like you're one of the only people I know who's writing aphorisms today. And so am I wrong? Are they kind of old school? You're bringing them back. Like what's the goal? A little bit of both.

There are modern aphorists like Sarah Manguso who's writing today and there are some other ones. Warren Buffett is a great aphorist, But you're right, it's a very ancient form that stretches back. And it's funny because on the one hand, you're like, oh, this short form really lends itself to something like Instagram. But on the other hand, they really kind of take a lot of thought often. And so kind of in their worst form, they're like the inspirational poster you see in Dennis office. And in the best, they're ones where you're really pondering. I feel like the real advantage is because they're short

and they're sort of memorable. They're easier to draw into the mind. Because you know, a lot of times we just don't think of the things that would be useful for us to remember. So when it's easier to think about or remember, or like you put it on an index card and stick it on your cork board or whatever, it just can have more power.

And so I do think it's fun that they lend themselves to short form, but they are often kind of weightier than they seem, or they need some reflection. One of the things I found kind of surprising was how many of the aphorisms in your book are actually paradoxes in their own way. They kind of like tell you both things at once, which I was like, huh, like they're kind of philosophically deeper than I was sort of expecting. No, I'm very dry. I have a whole section just on paradoxes. And a lot of times the opposite

of a profound truth is also true. And paradoxes are interesting because they really make us step back. They surprise us. Like I think one of my favorite book titles of all time is All Joy and No Fun, which is Jennifer Senior's book about parenting. It just makes you step back and think like, wow, what does she mean by that? And then you're immediately full of ideas of your own and then kind of wanting to know what she's saying about it because that paradox is so compelling. I think also the confusion and the surprise of those paradoxes gets us to reflect a little bit more. Like, they're these short statements, but I found myself, even after reading your book,

walking around with some of them and like thinking about them a little bit more and stuff. Because some of these I think people will disagree with and that's okay because again, it's to prompt your own reflection and your own insight. And so you've collected a whole set of these for problems as diverse as feeling happier, making tough decisions, handling temptations, even housekeeping. When we get back from the break, I'm going to chat with you about my top 12 from your book.

I cannot wait. Author, podcaster, and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin has a gift for crafting clever aphorisms, short powerful sayings that capture life's truths in a memorable way. Her new book, Secrets of Adulthood, is packed with these insightful one-liners. And today we're diving into my top 12. My first of my favorite 12 aphorisms in the book is one that's about happiness. It is the aphorism, happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. Okay, so you're the perfect person to talk about this

because you approach this scientifically. Now, approaching this scientifically, you cannot say that because you have to say, I have to define what happiness is and what happiness isn't. And so this kind of paradoxical statement is not true. But I think for the lay person and the way the ordinary person uses the term happiness, I think that it is true because sometimes we do things that make us feel happy, but that also

make us feel unhappy or make us feel bad because they're part of living up to our values. And I always think of the person who goes to visit an estranged parent in the hospital and they don't want to go and they don't enjoy going there and they dread it, but still they go because in the end, it's still your father, you're putting your values into the world. You're doing what's right. And so you're happy even though you don't feel happy. And so happiness doesn't always make us feel happier. I think sometimes people get confused thinking, well, if I live a happy life, I'm going to score 10 on the one to 10 scale. And that's not realistic. And it's not even a good life. So that's what I was trying to capture with that.

No, I love this. It actually fits with what researcher Sonia Lubomirski calls two parts of happiness. She says happiness is about being happy in your life and with your life. And I think the like feeling happy part is the happiness in your life. It's like your sense of positive emotion and a lack of negative emotion. Yes, exactly. But being happy with your life is the happiness part in the aphorism. It's kind of the overall living up to your values, having a life of flourishing.

And Sonia is the one of the first to point out that those things don't always go together. Right. That like the things that make you feel hedonically happy and experience lots of positive emotions might make you feel empty when it comes to how you're thinking about your life and vice versa. Visiting a family member who's terminally ill that might not feel great in the moment, it might feel terrible, but ultimately it's kind of getting you towards a life

of true happiness and flourishing. Well, and I think that this explains a lot of what some people think is sort of a paradoxical thing about children where people are like, if you look at people's happiness when they're children, well, a lot of times they're not very happy. They're annoyed, they're stressed out. But then if you say, what makes you happy?

People say, my children make me happy. And it's like, because happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. Okay. So can I do another way that happiness doesn't always make us feel happy? Absolutely. I think this is a deep way of conveying this idea of hedonic adaptation. The fact that we get used to stuff. Ooh, I hadn't thought of it that way. Yeah. So you hit the lottery, you get married, you get the promotion at work. You get air conditioning, you know, so you hit the lottery, you get married, you get the promotion at work. You get air conditioning, you get elevators.

And you have this moment of this awesome thing comes in and you think this is going to make me feel happier, but then you don't actually feel as happy as you think. Interesting. Lori, I have to say, I never thought of that myself, even though I wrote it. So see, you're already taking me deeper. I love it. That's a whole different way of interpreting it. Okay. So now we go into aphorism number two

about the social world. This one rang deep for me. We care for many people we don't particularly care for. I care for so many people I don't particularly care for. And that's one thing where just reading it, you're like, yeah, because sometimes I think people are confused, like, why is this person in my life

if I don't really enjoy their company? Or we don't have anything in common. Or, you know, all we have is our childhood. And it's like, we care for many people we don't particularly care for. Yeah, I'm feeling this right now because we just had a midterm for my happiness class that I teach at Yale. And the students totally bombed the midterm. And I'm kind of both annoyed, I'm mad at them. Like, why didn't you study? Why didn't you get it? But also like, I want them to learn. I'm going to put lots of effort into kind of helping them. And I feel like this happens so much in so many of our caregiving roles. I think of teachers being partly a

caregiver, but you know, when we're doing elder care, you might be caring for a parent who has such dementia. You don't even connect with them or relate to them. They don't even know who you are, but you care for them. Your kids can be incredibly frustrating and drive you crazy. You're not caring for them in that moment, yet you are caring for them. And I think when you say something in a really concise way, it kind of allows more interpretation

because less is spelled out, more can be put in. Yeah, and I think with this one, it reminds me that the frustration, the fact that I'm feeling so upset about kind of putting the time in is because I care for them. It almost let me like take a breath back of like, oh, it's because I love my students,

it's because I love these people that I'm putting time into. So. Right. The reason you're so annoyed is because you do care for them. Yeah. Okay. That's the social world. I had a bunch that I loved that were basically aphorisms about self-talk strategies. I don't know if you think of them that way,

but that's how I thought of them. I don't, so I'm intrigued to hear what that is. So number three, repeatedly rehearsing disaster doesn't protect us from it. Yes. This one was one that I needed to hear because I am someone who repeatedly rehearses disaster a lot inside my head.

I'm curious some of your favorite strategies to nip that rehearsing of terrible things in the bud. One of the things I like to do is to make a list, because I feel like part of why I ruminate is just my brain is like, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget. And if I write it down, then I'm like, okay, it's memorialized somewhere,

and so my brain can let go of it. Then I do that whole thing about like, well, what's the worst that can happen? The worst that could happen is like I miss my flight. Okay, then what would happen? Well, I'm in the Denver airport, there's a lot of flights to the East Coast, it wouldn't be that bad.

I'm not traveling with a toddler, so it could be worse. And also just reminding myself that I think sometimes we fall into this kind of superstitious belief that if we really rehearse something, we kind of will offset it. It's sort of protective magic. And that just isn't the case. I mean, it's one thing to be prepared for something like I live in Los Angeles, I'm going to have my go-bag ready. But if I'm just constantly going over and over in my mind, then that's, that's not doing anything. There is no protective magic that I'm invoking.

Yeah. One of my favorite studies to share with my students is by my former colleague, Susan Nolan-Huxamah. And she is the study where she looks at the level of rumination that students go through, either by kind of telling them to ruminate or just saying not to ruminate. It's like, think a lot about this or give yourself a strategy that whenever you start to ruminate, you do something else, distract yourself, right? Yeah. And what she finds is that the students in the rumination condition, they wound up actually performing worse on this problem.

So the more they thought about it, the more anxious they got. But it didn't actually help them solve the problem at all. They were better off when they just kind of distracted themselves from this thing that felt so scary. So it doesn't protect us from it. Then there's also scheduling time to worry, where you're like, I'm going to worry about this from 3 to 3.30 tomorrow afternoon, and other than that, I I'm going to worry about this from three to three thirty tomorrow afternoon.

And other than that, I'm not going to worry about it. That can work too sometimes. OK. Now getting to self-talk strategy and aphorism number four. One day now will be a long time ago. Yes. This hit me in two ways. One is it really brought up all the strategies that I talked with my colleague, Ethan Cross,

about his idea of what's called distant self-talk. That you sort of, you know, project yourself into the future. What's this going to feel like 10 years from now? What's this going to feel like five years from now? It's just not going to feel that bad. But a second reason I love this strategy is sort of the reverse. Like one day now will be a long time ago. So you better appreciate the now, now, while you got it. You have to

savor the moment and notice what's going on because like, it's fleeting. It's going away really soon. Exactly. Both are true. You want to relish what there is, but then also remember that you can put things in perspective. Okay. That was number four. Now we get to number five. This one was like really hit me in the like cognitive science soul because there's so many studies on this. Love this one. It is by changing our words, we can change our perspective.

Yes. So good. I'm a huge fan of reframing. It is bananas how much it matters because I used to think like the situation is a situation and like you kind of can't change the situation just by the way that you talk about it. But in fact, it's wild to me how much a change, I mean, the classic example is do you have

to do it or do you get to do it? Yes. That's huge. Do you play piano or practice piano? Do you have social time or do you network? There are so many ways where you can reframe something and really change your attitude toward it. I remember when my daughter was young and when you have a newborn, you have to go to

the pediatrician all the time. And I was complaining to my husband, oh my God, you got to get all these doctor's appointments, such a hassle. By chance, my in-laws live right around the corner from us. I mean, right around the corner. You do not even cross the street. And he goes, oh, well, you know, call my mother. I bet she'd do it.

And I was like, oh, no way. I want to be the one to do it. So I wanted to complain about it. But the minute somebody said, oh, you don't have to do it, I was like, no, no, no, no, I want to be the one to do it. So I wanted to complain about it, but the minute somebody said, oh, you don't have to do it, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I want to do it. And it just showed me how quickly you can reframe something. I also love it just like how the power of words and the way the words are structured can change our perspective.

Like there's some evidence, for example, that if you say you use the example of playing piano, if you say, oh yeah, I play piano versus I'm a piano player, like it completely changes your own identity about these things. So this is one I've been trying to use of like, I am a healthy eater, not I'm trying to eat healthy. Like I am a healthy eater, I've become this thing. But yeah, studies show that when we kind of use a noun

to describe ourselves, I am a healthy eater, as opposed to like, it's this active verb, I just eat healthy, it completely changes our relationship to those behaviors. It completely changes our habits, right? Like what does a writer do a writer write so you can't be a writer who like actually never writes And you become a writer by writing but sometimes we we have these identities in our head when we don't act on them a lot I know this is something you talk a lot about in your habit book, right? Yes, actually putting it into practice is helpful And if we can hack that with something as simple

as changing the word we use, like that's so easy, so powerful. Absolutely. So that was number five. Now we get to number six, self-talk strategy, accept yourself and expect more from yourself. This took me a really long time to understand because on the one hand, you know,

you know all the research about self-compassion and self-acceptance and that's clearly true. But on the other hand, it's also true that you don't want to be complacent. You want to be willing to put yourself out of your comfort zone. We're happier when we live in an atmosphere of growth, when we're growing, when we're learning,

when we're changing, when we're making things better. And both are true. You can accept yourself and expect more from yourself. And each of us has to decide where that line is. Yeah. In some of your books, we talk about just like being Gretchen. And each of us has to decide where that line is. Yeah. In some of your books, we talk about just being Gretchen. And I feel like this is kind of part and parcel about accept yourself, but also expect more of yourself.

You kind of want to get back to what's the authentically Gretchen thing to do. And sometimes that might be giving up whatever crazy plan you have to try to improve yourself. But sometimes being authentically, you might be, no, I've got to nudge myself a little bit further. Yeah. And I think it's frustrating sometimes because it's really hard to know sometimes where the

line is and nobody else can really answer that for you. It's sort of like, okay, well, meditation hasn't been going that well for me. Should I say, hey, meditation isn't a tool that works for me? Or should I stick with it? And kind of only you can figure that out. It's just so hard to know ourselves, right? And I think this is where these self-compassion strategies can actually be helpful. You know, Kristin F. who talks about self-compassion talks about talking to yourself like you would

a friend. And sometimes for me, that strategy helps me kind of like toggle this line pretty well. Like if your friend is like kind of being a little lazy or not pushing themselves, or if they're pushing themselves too hard, you can often see it with a friend of like, nah, I think you're being a little self-indulgent, let me kind of nudge you versus like, you are taking on way too much, like give yourself some grace.

And so that idea of seeing yourself and talking to yourself like you would a friend, that at least for me helps me get this right balance between accepting myself and expecting more of myself. Well, it's funny, my sister calls me a happiness bully because if I think that there's a way for you to like push into that zone, I will often like be very enthusiastically encouraging you to do it slash-

Bullying, slash bullying. No, I'm kidding. You know, and then there's another aphorism which is love is unconditional, but love is also demanding. Love loves you just as you are and love expects the best from you. And so sometimes it's like, again, these lines can sometimes be difficult to see, and yet they're very, very important.

So we've gone through a bunch already, but when we get back from the break, we're going to turn to some aphorisms about how to get stuff done and how to get through tough times. And Happiness Lab, we'll be right back. Today we're breaking down my favorite aphorisms in Gretchen Rubin's new book, Secrets of Adulthood. Before the break, we tackled Gretchen's quotes about happiness and self-talk. Now we'll turn to Gretchen's observations about two problems that I struggle with a lot. Productivity and procrastination. Okay, getting stuff done.

I would expect nothing less from a Gretchen Rubin book than to tell me how to get stuff done in concise and pure ways. But I had three of them from the book that I really loved. The first was, good intentions mean nothing unless they inspire practical actions. This is my Achilles heel when it comes to being a happiness expert is actually getting stuff done. I know all these things that I'm supposed to do,

but it's really hard to put those things into action. That is it because it really doesn't matter what your good intentions are. And I think sometimes good intentions can even be draining and discouraging because if you keep making them and then they don't turn into practical actions then they can kind of weigh you down.

Whereas if you never thought about it at all, you would be skipping through your life, not feeling like there was something we're leaving undone. So I just feel like it's really helpful to think like, well, I have to figure out a way to turn this into a practical action. And I love this idea of practical action, because I think it reminds us,

not just good intentions mean nothing unless they inspire action. Throwing that practical word in there, I think is helpful because it's like, it's got to be practical. It can't be like, you know, I haven't exercised in the last three years and then tomorrow I'm going to run a marathon. It has to actually fit your real life.

It has to fit your boundary conditions and your habits and your lifestyle. So for me, that extra word really made me much happier with this aphorism. Now we get to aphorism number eight. Okay. Don't expect to be motivated by motivation. And I think the word motivation is very confusing because motivation conflates the idea that you very much want to achieve an aim and that you're doing work toward that aim.

And in my experience, people are often extraordinarily desirous of an aim. They desperately want to achieve that aim and that they're not doing anything to get themselves towards that aim. So are they motivated or not motivated? I don't know. Don't expect to be motivated by motivation.

Yeah, I think one of the frustrating things about motivation is that whatever we mean by this word motivation, and I agree with you, there's like too many different parts to it. Sometimes it just comes naturally. Like I've like such a sugar craving and I don't have to do any work to seek out sweet, fatty food. The way that works, the way that craving works, it's just completely different than the way

I have to motivate myself to have a hard workout or get a writing project done at work or send off a few emails. I wish they were one and the same. Why doesn't the brain work to make it one and the same? That's why I just don't think motivation is a helpful word. It's too loose. It gets into this whole thing where like sometimes we want to do something, but we don't really want to do it. Or we don't really want to do it, but we want to do it. It just gets very, very confusing. So I just say, stay clear of that word.

And maybe we get a hint about how we can do better from aphorism number nine, which is one of the best uses of willpower is to avoid situations that require willpower. Oh, yes. Oh my gosh, I don't know where this one came from, but this is basically just straight out of Aristotle. Like this one's really ancient. Aristotle thought that the way you have willpower

is you set up situations that you don't really need it at all. You set up situations so that basically your only reasonable course of action is to do the thing that at your very highest value level you wanted to do the most. Well, when I wrote my book about habits better than before, that was just the deepest thing, which is like everything should be a habit. Everything should be operating on automatic so that you're not deploying your willpower. It's like I have a strong sweet tooth, too.

It sounds like you have a big sweet tooth. So I just gave up sugar. It's easier for me to just say like, I don't need sugar. And then it's like, do I eat this cupcake? No, because I don't need sugar. Do I eat this piece of free candy? No, because I don't need sugar. Then I don't need any willpower

because once you've done it for like not even that long, your brain is just like, oh, that's not for me. And it just kind of fades into the background. So it sounds like your situation there is really like using words again, as we talked about before to sort of set up like, I am not a sugar eater. I just kind of get rid of it. My move is situation support.

Like I just don't have any sugar in my house when I'm trying to avoid this sort of thing. You don't have to resist the ice cream in the freezer because there's no ice cream in the freezer. Yes, yes. Physical situation support. But I also love to use social situation support, right? Which is like, hang out with other people who aren't going to like demand that we go to ice cream shop or, you know, hang out with other people who by their own behavior model this and

make this easy for me. And that's actually what Aristotle thought of. He said you actually get virtue from other people because your friends are your virtuous selves. You know, it's just, it's something like with sugar, it was so noisy. It was so boring to have that in my head all the time. And just remember like it would just be there buzzing in my mind. It's there, it's there, it's there. And then I could just decide to turn it off. That is like your superpower.

Cause like I've tried to decide many times to shut it off, but my brain just doesn't work. Like that's it. Never again. I have to like restructure my environment and be around people who help. And yeah. Everybody has to kind of experiment to see what works for them because we are all very different and there's a lot of different ways to approach it.

Although can I tell you a puzzle about this willpower aphorism, which is that I had this former student, Ariella Crystal, who's been looking at the consequences of how people judge people who use these different strategies. And a curious thing that she finds is that even though we know that setting up these situation supports help you, she finds that people like people who exert the willpower rather than set up the situation. So if you tell him, you know, person A, Bob, like, really didn't want to eat sugar, and he just decided, you know, hey, I'm not going to eat sugar anymore, right? Versus, you know, there's Phil who decided he didn't want to eat sugar anymore, and decided, you know, hey, I'm not going to eat sugar anymore, right? Versus, you know, there's Phil who decided he didn't want to eat sugar

anymore and he moved the sugar out of his house and he made sure he only hung out with friends that weren't eating sugar. What you find is that participants like Bob better than Phil. They think Bob is more moral, a stronger person. And so, or maybe they think that Phil's way is more realistic and therefore is more of a challenge to themselves. Interesting, yeah. Because if they're like, well, I'm not some Bob that can just go off and do it.

So clearly that doesn't reflect on me. I mean, many people, when they start making their habits better, the people around them are often not very supportive, right? Because they start saying to themselves like, maybe I should be doing this and I don't want to. So it might be that it makes them feel worse about themselves. Okay. Now jumping to number 10, aphorism about getting stuff done.

Focus on actions, not outcomes. You update this to mean, don't try to learn to play the guitar, just play the guitar for 20 minutes every day. Yes. This is very Yoda, who I think has a different aphorism, which is do or do not, there is no try. Yeah, because a lot of times people will say things like, well, I want to write a best selling novel.

Well, you can't control whether something is a best seller, right? That's something other people have to do. And you can't even control whether you can publish a novel, but you can write. People tend to have vague outcomes. People say something like, I want to learn Italian. It's like, that's a major, major aim, right? Or get more fun out of life. Whereas if you're really focusing on your action, like, I'm going to watch a classic

movie every Sunday night. That's something where you're like, did you do it? Did you not do it? And that's a way to get more fun out of life. Or I'm going to practice my Italian half an hour a day. You can measure it. You know whether you did it or didn't do it, so you get a feeling of satisfaction.

It's taking you toward your aim, but otherwise these aims are just so big and vague. It's like on any one day, you're not going to have done it. It's very hard to even know if you're making progress. Yeah, it reminds me of what researchers often call these SMART goals. SMART is this acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound. The actions can be very specific. You can measure whether you did them or not.

You know that you can do them. Yes. You can set a time limit on them so you know exactly when you're supposed to do that specific action. And the interesting thing is like even if you don't get to the outcome, you're getting closer to it than if you didn't do the actions in the first place. Exactly. Because you may never be fluent in Italian, but you're good enough to go to Italy

and talk to the waiter. I can order a cannoli. Yeah. So I think that that's why it's better to focus on your actions than on your outcomes. So those were some pieces of advice for getting stuff done. My final two favorite aphorisms are pieces of advice we can use in tough times. Starting with number 11, sometimes to keep going, we need to allow ourselves to stop. This one, you know, especially in times when I was experiencing lots of burnout myself, reminding myself about the need to rest, that rest is an investment. So, so essential, but so, so hard to remember.

I know, right? And I like the word stop, not just sometimes to keep going, we need to allow ourselves to rest. Sometimes to keep going, we need to allow ourselves to rest. Sometimes to keep going, you need to allow yourself to stop, not just rest, but pause, take a step away. Right? Sometimes you just think if I just go, go, go, go, go, I will just power through it. And then you just become more and more drained and overwhelmed and unfocused.

I'm a big believer in a good night's sleep. I mean, if there is a cliche that I live by, it's everything looks better after a good night's sleep. I'll get a bet at 7 45 if I'm having a really, really bad day. Cause I'm like, I just need this day to be over. I'll feel better in the morning. Even that kind of letting yourself stop. And so final piece of advice for tough times and my final aphorism, which I really loved things often get messier before they get tidier. Yes. I've literally, since I read thisier before they get tidier. Yes. I've literally, since I read this,

Aversum told this to four different people in my life who were going through various tough times and various moments of untidiness. So true, but we forget that things getting a little bit worse isn't necessarily a sign that they're not gonna get better. We just can't think about paths towards progress without assuming it's gonna be in some straight line. Yeah, I mean, this is one of those that's literally true and also metaphorically true

because it's literally true if you've ever tried to like clean out your closet, but it's also very metaphorically true. If you're trying to do something like switch careers or change a relationship or something, a lot of times it can get very messy before it gets cleared up. I think it's also like even locally like trying to get through a tough emotion. Right. I've been trying to engage in all these practices. I tell my students about sitting with and accepting your emotions.

And when you decide to do that, wow, does it feel messy when you're sitting with sadness or wow, does it feel messy when you're really noticing that overwhelm? Yeah. But if you give yourself time to do that, then all of a sudden, oh, you wind up in a much better place. Yes. But the tidiness is on the other side. Yeah.

Well, those are my favorite 12. And I hope my happiness lab listeners will check out the rest of the book. Well, this is so fun for me to hear which ones resonated with you, especially since you yourself are such a happiness expert. It's fun to see what caught your eye. So if people want to learn more, or they want to hear more from you, where should they go? Well, they can go to happiercast.com slash secrets. And then there's all kinds of information about the books and excerpts.

And you can see the cover and order it if you want. Or you can just wherever books are sold. And just to recap, my favorite of Gretchen's aphorisms. Number one, happiness doesn't always make us feel happy. Number two, we care for many people we don't particularly care for. Number three, repeatedly rehearsing disaster doesn't protect us from it. Number four, one day now will be a long time ago.

Number five, by changing our words, we can change our perspective. Number six, accept yourself and expect more from yourself. Number seven, good intentions mean nothing unless they inspire practical actions. Number eight, don't expect to be motivated by motivation. Number nine, one of the best uses of willpower is to avoid situations that require willpower.

Number 10, focus on actions, not outcomes. Number 11, sometimes to keep going, we need to allow ourselves to stop. And finally, number 12, things often get messier before they get tidier. I hope at least one of these nuggets of wisdom connected with you as much as they've resonated with me. But that's not the end of the wisdom that Gretchen will be giving the Happiness Lab community. Because next time, Gretchen will return to share an episode from her podcast's new series on happiness, one in which the two of us chat about friendships, how they evolve, how they go wrong, and what we can do to make them healthier. So be sure to return for a special Friendship Roundtable next time on the Happiness Lab

with me, Dr. Lorie Santos.