Gretchen Rubin is a New York Times bestselling author, podcast creator, and speaker who explores the concept of happiness and how we can implement different things into our lives to achieve it. Gretchen breaks down the strategies needed to create a more fulfilling life. Tune into this podcast to discover self-awareness, appreciation in the small things, and tune into your curiosity and creativity.
Episode Transcript:
Narrator [00:00:00] Creativity and a learning mindset are essential to succeed. Learn how these innovators put these skills to use to become the best in their fields. Welcome to Innovators To Know, brought to you by ideamix.
Sam [00:00:17] It’s a pleasure for me to welcome Gretchen Rubin to our show today. She’s a friend and a driving force behind the book group we’ve belonged to for 20 years. She’s one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. The specific niche she’s carved out is breaking down abstract, complex ideas into comprehensible nuggets and, more importantly, practical strategies for individuals to implement, to increase their self-awareness and improve their lives. Gretchen most often uses herself as the guinea pig, and her authenticity and self-knowledge make her content compelling to her many, many readers and listeners. Gretchen’s been interviewed by Oprah, eaten dinner with Nobel Prize winning researcher Daniel Kahneman, walked arm in arm with [00:01:10]Dalai Lama, [0.3s] had her work reported on in a medical journal being written up in The New Yorker and been an announcer on Jeopardy, which is probably the most interesting thing.
Gretchen [00:01:20] Definitely. That was the biggest excitement of all for sure.
Sam [00:01:24] So, Gretchen, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Gretchen [00:01:27] I’m so happy to be talking to you.
Sam [00:01:29] So you’ve written several bestselling books, The Happiness Project, Better than Before, and The Four Tendencies in the past. Your newest book is Life in Five Senses. Tell us what made you focus on the senses and decide to write about it?
Gretchen [00:01:45] Well, it was right near here where we’re talking right now. I had a bad case of pinkeye, so I had to go to the doctor. I just walked right nearby. And as I was leaving, he said to me very casually, like, as if he were saying, Oh, be sure to wear sunscreen or drink enough water. He said, Be sure to come back for your regular checkup because, as you know, you’re more at risk of losing your vision. And I was like what? I don’t know. I didn’t know. What are you talking about? He said, Oh, yeah, you’re extremely nearsighted. And that means you’re more at risk of losing your vision through a detached retina, so if that starts to happen, we want to catch it right away. And I have a friend who lost some of his vision to a detached retina, so that felt like a very real possibility to me. So I go out onto the street and I’m looking at this beautiful New York City cityscape all around me and thinking how precious it is. But also, I didn’t notice anything on my way over. I was like, stuck in my head, lost in my own thoughts. I didn’t notice one thing. [00:02:41]And and often we don’t know how much we appreciate something until we lose it or we fear that we might lose it. [6.1s] And so I was taking this all in, and then in an instant, it was like every knob in my brain got jammed up to 11 and I could see every every detail with perfect clarity. I could hear every sound on a separate track. I could smell every smell in New York City, which is very smelly.
Sam [00:03:06] Lots of different smells!
Gretchen [00:03:08] Lots of different smells. And you know what your neighbors are getting up to and my whole walk home was just this sort of transcendent, almost psychedelic experience where I’m just feeling all these sensations just overwhelming me. And I realized, like, this is happening all the time. There’s nothing special about this. It’s just that I’m paying attention and usually I don’t. And I have been studying happiness for a long time, as you mentioned, and I have had this sense that there was something missing, that there was a puzzle piece that I hadn’t identified. And that walk home really showed me this was the missing piece. [00:03:42]This was the way that I could connect to the world and to other people and myself through kind of this intense connection with my five senses. [8.0s]
Sam [00:03:51] That’s–I’m so glad you described that experience because I think so many of us walk through our lives, especially New York City–you know, we’re sort of almost bred to believe that business and packing as many things into one day as possible is sort of a prerequisite, right? And it desensitizes you to all of the everyday stimuli around us that we should be, in fact, taking in.
Gretchen [00:04:19] You’re so busy ticking through your to do list that you just don’t even notice the blossoms on the trees.
Sam [00:04:26] So true.
Gretchen [00:04:27] Remember.
Sam [00:04:28] So we’re going to take a quick look at this short video clip in which you talk about how you felt your brain was just driving the car. That was your body. Let’s take a quick look.
Gretchen [00:04:41] A few years ago, I had an epiphany. I had done countless things that made my life happier. And yet too often I felt stuck in my head, disconnected from the world and other people, and also from myself. I’d been treating my body like the car. My brian was driving. In my book, Life in Five Senses, I describe how I discovered that by tuning into my five senses, I could transform my everyday life by paying true attention to the richness of the physical world around me through the lens of my research and adventures. [00:04:57]I explore how our senses can help us cheer up, calm down, live in the moment, give us more pleasure and more energy, deepen our connections, and even allow us to touch the transcendent. And ketchup will never taste the same.[0.0s]
Sam [00:05:37] So, Gretchen, tell us a little bit about this feeling of disconnection from your body. I mean, there’s so much now that’s been researched, written more and more talked about in all sorts of ways about the mind body connection. And that feeling of disconnection is common for a lot of people. How do we come back to that and how did you navigate that?
Gretchen [00:05:59] [00:05:59]Yeah, well, it’s interesting. I think a lot of people do think that they want to re–they want to appreciate the moment. They want to get back in their own body. [9.7s] And I think it’s because of two things that sort of point in opposite directions. I think on the one hand, reality can feel sort of drained and flat because we’re doing things through screens or, you know, so we’re not we’re not engaging, we’re not picking up smells. We’re not, we’re not–so much of it is just flattened. But then on the other hand, sometimes things feel hyper processed or overly saturated, like a snack food that hits every bliss point. And it just–or you go to a movie and you see more details than you could see in a week. And you hear this music that’s very emotional and stirring, but there’s no smells, there’s no air currents. And so I think people are trying to get back into balance like they want to like. I think that’s why things that are immersive are so popular, because anytime something’s built as immersive or is like, sign me up, that sounds amazing. Because I think it is that people are trying to get back into their bodies and anything that sort of helps you remember to just like experience your body, is just very energizing. So I did it by sort of systematically going through the five senses, which I don’t think is the way that most people would want to do it. But but I was so curious and just really wanted to learn more. So I did it by going through all five senses and looking for adventures or experiments. You know, the more you know, the more you notice. I tried to really learn a lot more, a lot of different things.
Sam [00:07:33] So how did you structure that exercise for yourself? Because in a sense, you created a plan and sort of a mechanism to experience–to have different experiences involving each of the five senses, which you talk about in your book, right?
Gretchen [00:07:49] Yeah, it always for me starts with research. So the first thing I do when I get interested in a subject is go to the library and get a giant stack of books. So part of it was just sort of understanding. The more that I would research, the more I would think like, Oh, I really want to learn more about this or I want to try this or I need to test this. And so it’s sort of through the research or often they would mention things like one thing that’s funny, this is fun to just do, you know, takes one second. So, you know, with two eyes, we have three dimensional vision and with two ears we are able to locate things in space because we’re comparing. So our two nostrils also pick up slightly different smells so that we have a richer smell. So you can do this. You can just like take something that has a strong smell, test it on one side and then the other and you can–and that’s the kind of thing I would read about it and I’d be like, I’ve got to try that for myself. Where’s the jar of capers? I’m gonna sniff it up. So a lot of times just by learning about it, it made me think of things that I wanted to do. I read about Flavor University, which is this two day free course you can take in Geneva, Illinois, and it’s all about flavor. And I was like, can I just email them and go? And it turns out you can. Yeah. They’re like, we’re not sure that this is something that you’d be interested in. And I was like, well, I think so. So if you’ll have me, I’ll come. And so I went.
Sam [00:09:01] Fantastic. I love that story. So Gretchen, you also hosts the podcast, Happier, and you’ve built a Happier app, in fact, which helps people track their habits really, and it’s been super popular with your followers. Tell us how you realized the Happiness Project needed to go beyond the book and be made accessible to people in the various ways that you’ve now made it accessible. I mean, it’s such a–you know–many writers write books. Many of those books do extremely well. Few writers, I think, are able to take their research and insights and turn it into this effectively practical tool for everyday living. Right?
Gretchen [00:09:52] Well, it’s interesting because I think I am always interested in thinking, in understanding the abstract ideas. But then what could the average person do starting tomorrow without spending a lot of time, energy, or money? So like, how would you make kind of the Benjamin Franklin side of the happiness studies. And so Better Than Before is my book about habit, how people can make or break habits. And so I did a lot of thinking about the different tools that worked the best for people. And why? Because I have this four tendencies personality framework on the divides people into upholders, questioners, obligers, and rebels, and which people can take GretchenRubin.com/quiz to find out what they are. But the kind of tool that you use effectively really depends on what tendency you are like that that can really make you much more efficient in figuring out how to approach it and importan–have a change. And I just wanted to help people make that match because I get so frustrated when people I’m like, I’ve been talking to you for 5 minutes and I know why this isn’t working for you. You’re just–it’s not that you’re lazy or you can’t make yourself a priority or you can never follow through: it’s that you haven’t picked the right tool for you. And my sister calls me a happiness bully.
Sam [00:11:06] You wouldn’t be happy.
Gretchen [00:11:09] Yeah. And so and so if I think there’s a way for you to be happier, I get pretty insistent. And so the app is something that helps you figure out your tendency and then it suggests. It’s like you can use any tool, anybody can use any tool. But I’m just saying, if I know you’re in an obliger, I know that this kind of tool is probably going to help you more. Or if you’re a rebel, I’m not going to suggest this kind of tool for you, because often rebels don’t have good success with the tool. But then there’s also like, I have like I love quotations, I love do yourself better questions. I think that can also help us to become happier and to change our habits if we really like–are you a morning person or a night person? A lot of people try to form their habits and ignore that. I’m like, If you’re a night person, you’re not going to get up early and work on your novel for 2 hours from 6 to 8 a.m. I’m just–that’s not going to work for you. And it’s not that it’s not a good idea. I can do that. I’m a morning person. Yeah, but for a night person it’s just…but I think sometimes people just want to skip that stage. They want to know the best way. They want it the right way.
Sam [00:12:05] The silver bullet.
Gretchen [00:12:06] They want the silver bullet. They want the most scientifically proven way. And I’m like–such a thing can’t exist because people are so different.
Sam [00:12:13] Yeah.
Gretchen [00:12:14] I would say to people, what’s the best way to cook an egg?
Sam [00:12:16] Yeah.
Gretchen [00:12:17] And they said, Well, it depends on how you like your eggs. Or they say, I don’t even like eggs.
Sam [00:12:20] Right.
Gretchen [00:12:21] Right! Nobody can tell you the best way to cook an egg because it depends on how you like your eggs.
Sam [00:12:26] 100%. Yeah. As you’ve done this, what have been–what have been some of your learnings as a, you know, effectively as having built this business around this concept, what are the learnings that you’ve had from that?
Gretchen [00:12:43] Well, I think the biggest learning is what we were just talking about is that there’s no one right way. And when I started out with the Happiness Project, when I started that book, I really believed that I could figure it out and present it. It was sort of like if I could just present it clearly enough…
Sam [00:12:57] Everyone can read the book.
Gretchen [00:12:58] Everyone can figure it out. Now, if I thought about it, I might have said, well people think about this for thousands of years. If somebody could just figure it out, probably it would have been figured out, you know, before this. And that’s one reason why I’m always skeptical when people are like, oh my gosh, incredible new finding. I’m like, is there an incredible new finding? This is probably wrong. But just understanding how often the opposite things can work for people. Okay, good example: some people will say to you, if you want to make a change, what you have to do is small incremental change. Little step by step, floss one tooth, do one yoga pose, run for 5 minutes–and that’s the way. And then there’s all these reasons why that’s true. Except that some people get very bored with that. They want to go big or go home. They want bold, radical challenge or they lose interest. So why would I say to that person, no, no, no, you’re setting yourself up for failure just because that wouldn’t work for me. So I think, again, it’s like, or if something doesn’t work for you, like a lot of times with–I’m sure you’ve seen this in the coaching world, that some people, they feel like they shouldn’t have to have accountability. They’re like, it’s kind of like training wheels. Like some people just need accountability. Lots of people need accountability. There is absolutely nothing wrong. If that’s what you need, get yourself what you need to achieve your aims for yourself. Some people resist that. They don’t want anybody looking over their shoulder. They don’t want anybody checking in with them. If you tell them to do something, they’re going to resist. That’s the oblige of rebel in my framework. And that’s fine, too. [00:14:30]It’s like we don’t have to change ourselves and we certainly don’t have to change other people, but we have to think about what works for us. [5.2s] And that to me, has been the thing that just do you. And then with the five senses, how we all live in such different sensory environments. I mean, it’s genetics, it’s upbringing, it’s expectations. But like you can’t smell your home the way a guest smells it. You’re so accustomed to it, you don’t even smell it where somebody walking next to you could have an overwhelming smell of lilies or air freshener, dogs, or whatever.
Sam [00:15:02] Probably dogs is what the smell is.
Gretchen [00:15:03] You don’t know. And it kind of made me curious. I was like, does my house smell like dog food because I would–my apartment–I would have to go away for a month before I would be able to tell. Or something–or we’re in New York City, a big siren could go by. We probably wouldn’t even notice because our brain doesn’t flag sirens for us.
Sam [00:15:17] Absolutely.
Gretchen [00:15:18] Whereas for someone out in L.A., they don’t hear helicopters.
Sam [00:15:21] Yeah, no, that’s so true. I think, you know, in coaching, we see this all the time, Right? I think the personality types, as you’ve said, really matter. And as a result, their level of self-awareness. I mean, some people can have like almost too much self-awareness to the point where they’re super self conscious. Right. And equally, you can get the opposite where there zero self awareness and all the states in between and and coaching, you know is adaptive to that personality type effectively. Right. Yes. It’s like how is this person going to understand what we’re trying to tell them in the most acceptable way possible? And the words really matter.
Gretchen [00:16:04] The words matter. That is another thing that surprised me because I’m like, what does it matter? The aims the aim. But it’s…
Sam [00:16:11] It really matters.
Gretchen [00:16:12] Do you practice piano or do you play piano? I mean, it really, or just the metaphor that you choose. So when I wrote The Happiness Project, several people said to me, We can’t call it the The Happiness Project because a project sounds like homework. Nobody wants to do a happiness project. And I thought, well, that’s odd because to me, a project that’s fun. To me it sounds exciting, but then a lot of people want to use the journey metaphor. I don’t like the journey metaphor maybe because I’m not such a travelor. I don’t know why, but to me that is not a compelling metaphor. But many people love the journey metaphor. And so again, it’s not that one is– we don’t need to argue about whose metaphor is right, but it’s that the words matter. Well, this is reframing to. This is the classic do I have to or do I get to. Really matters. It really, really makes a big difference.
Sam [00:16:59] Totally. As as we know from our experiences with our children.
Gretchen [00:17:02] Yeah. Yes. No, it’s true.
Sam [00:17:05] So having known you as long as I have Gretchen, it’s hard for me to imagine you ever feeling blocked. That said, however prolific any of us is, the feeling of of being blocked is very real. Whether that’s in work or in writing or as a parent or whatever. And it’s super frustrating. Let’s take a quick look at this clip in which you describe some of the strategies that you use to overcome the block.
Gretchen [00:17:34] I discovered that we can use our hands to help our minds to think. Here’s an example: for years on my computer, I kept a list of my indirect directions short, somewhat mysterious creative prompts that I consulted whenever I felt stuck, like skip the boring parts and break the frame. I loved these indirect directions, but it bothered me that this was just a document that could vanish or be forgotten. When I was home visiting my parents. I came across my father’s ancient Rolodex. I loved it and it hit me. I could buy a new Rolodex for my creative prompts to choose at random whenever I felt stuck. I copied my indirect directions onto the cards. First task, I needed a better name for this tool, which I was calling by the boring name of Rolodex of ideas. At random, I pulled out a card, and find a fresh metaphor. After a few weeks of thinking, I was inspired. Muse machine: putting an idea in my hands helped put an idea in my head.
Sam [00:18:52] So, Gretchen, how did you start doing these creative exercises and what’s the importance in your view of, you know, sort of focusing actively on exercising the creative parts of our brain rather than the sort of more what I’ll call the more routine ones where we just kind of do the things that we need to do on a daily basis.
Gretchen [00:19:16] It’s so energizing to do something that’s creative. And I think the word creative can can feel scary to people. And people will say, I’m not creative. My mother, who’s one of the most creative people I know, she’s always like, Oh, I’m not creative. I just copy. I’m like, that is creative. Like, what is it, that all great artists copy? And I think, you know, just tapping into something even like, trying to have a funny intro to your annual report or doing a holiday newsletter for your family, they’re all trying to figure out a way to make a birthday present for someone. [00:19:47]There’s all kinds of ways to be creative and and it just it’s so energizing. And I think part of it is the atmosphere of growth. It’s seeing yourself do something and create something, build something, put something into the world that doesn’t really exist. [15.1s] Part of it also for many people is beautiful tools. Yeah, like it’s so fun to use beautiful tools. Yeah. Whether that’s beautiful ingredients or like, I love markers. You wouldn’t believe how many markers we have in our house. I have way more markers and stickers.
Sam [00:20:19] I remember the stickets.
Gretchen [00:20:20] There a whole renaissance of stickers. I mean, there’s just–there’s just a playfulness that comes out comes from it. Somebody told me, they’re like, you should buy any food because I was saying how expensive some ingredient was. You said, always buy anything you want in the grocery store because it’s always cheaper to cook yourself than eat out. And I thought, okay, that’s good. That’s permission to buy whatever you want. But woodworking, knitting, entertaining, all these things can make it–home decorating for the holidays–these are all outlets that can be so pleasing and so energizing. And part of what they do is that they connect us with our senses because we’re using our hands and we’re looking and there’s often sounds involved.
Sam [00:21:01] Yeah. Why, as we as a society, do you think come to define creativity as, you know, some grand piece of output, like I wrote an essay or a book or a painting or whatever. It is, it is how most people, what you’re describing about your mother, it is how most of us tend to view creativity. We don’t think of it in that we all manifest it in our daily lives in different ways.
Gretchen [00:21:28] I think that is an excellent question and I think we should lead a movement to identify as creative things that I would say are more are like are more immature that are just not professional. I do worry about that sometimes with like look, with music in particular, like you read about the old days, it was like it was very common for people to get together and sing or you’d be in a village and there’d be one person who’s really good at playing the piano or the guitar. And, and they weren’t professional, but they were just really good as sort of an ordinary person. And there was a lot of pleasure and a lot of…
Sam [00:21:59] Community.
Gretchen [00:21:59] A lot of community and a lot of like, a person who wasn’t good enough to be on the national stage could still get recognition and an audience. And so and now that we have all this, you know, super professional artistic output, I worry that then people they don’t–it’s not excercised as much and people don’t participate in it as much. But, there’s so many ways in just part of ordinary life that you are using your creative–I mean, even something as funny as like working on [00:22:32]Life in Five Senses [0.5s] made me much more appreciative of things like cosmetics or like what color–I never paint my nails, but people have a lot of color, picking their nails and doing their nails. There’s this like this look–or like the way a man will be dressed like all monochrome but then had a really bright sock. And it’s like, this is where I’m having my fun. I worry about men not wearing ties because that used to be a thing that guys really had a…
Sam [00:22:56] Mode of self-expression when.
Gretchen [00:22:58] It was really fun. My husband, my father, the men in my life, they really kind of had–they like their picking a tie. And now it’s sort of like this, you know, the album cover, it’s just gone away as something that people–you know. That’s something that was a creative form that’s that’s going on. So but then there are all these other new creative forms. You see what people can–you can make a movie with your phone. You can do an extraordinary presentation, just, you know, with free tools. People need to do it, you know?
Sam [00:23:32] Yeah, people need to do it.
Gretchen [00:23:33] It’s so exciting.
Sam [00:23:34] That’s the important point. I think in ways small and everyday, rather than like trying to dream up some grand project that that may or may not happen.
Gretchen [00:23:44] Absolutely.
Sam [00:23:45] Yeah.
Gretchen [00:23:45] Yeah. [00:23:46]No, sometimes people sort of have this idea that it has to be so outstanding or so excellent or it’s not worth doing. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly for sure. [11.4s]
Sam [00:23:58] I agree. I want to shift gears a little bit now, Gretchen. You know, we obviously spend a lot of our time thinking about coaching, coaching various individuals. What role has coaching played in your life?
Gretchen [00:24:12] I have never coached or been coached.
Sam [00:24:15] Okay. And what about mentors who’ve been key mentors for you?
Gretchen [00:24:20] I’ve never had a mentor.
Sam [00:24:20] You’ve never had a mentor?
Gretchen [00:24:21] I don’t think so, no.
Sam [00:24:23] Okay. So this is a first. Nobody ever comes on a show and says…
Gretchen [00:24:27] So what do you consider to be a mentor? I mean, I’ve had bosses, but I haven’t anybody who took a long term…
Sam [00:24:32] Yeah, that’s what I mean. A long term interest in your career, and that’s never been the case. Fair enough.
Gretchen [00:24:37] Nope.
Sam [00:24:38] Are there are there sort of a couple of people that you think have been particularly key at various points during your evolution?
Gretchen [00:24:48] Funnily enough, I think the people who are most influential to me are other writers whose work has really influenced me. And this–I don’t I know that this memory is false because I’ve tried to do the chronology, so I know that this memory is false, and yet it’s a very powerful memory. When I was still working as a lawyer and I was thinking of it and I was having an idea for what eventually became my first book, but I had been an English major. I had always read a huge amount, but I didn’t understand how–it never even occurred to me to become a writer because I didn’t know how how I would enter the writing world, because I thought people either wrote like novels or plays or poems, or they were academic writers or they were journalists. And I didn’t want to do–I knew I didn’t want to do any of those things, but in my memory, I walked into the bookstore and saw the book Cod: The Story of the World to the Eyes of a Fish by Mark Kurlansky, something like that. And it just blew my mind. And I was like, This is a whole different way to do nonfiction, you know? And so there have been different books where I have been like, Oh my gosh, there’s a book called Jackie Under My Skin by Wayne Koestenbaum. And again, I was like, this is a whole different way that a person could approach biography or, you know, I read The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, and I was like, okay, you can just pull paint pieces apart. I don’t know. So I think those are the biggest influences on me are things that I read.
Sam [00:26:18] Make sense. But your final question, as we as we wind up, you talked in this clip. Let’s take a quick look.
Gretchen [00:26:27] [00:26:27]Then as people said, well, you have to you have to appreciate the moment. Live in the moment. The moment is all we have. That’s true. But a life that has that takes no consideration for the future is not a good life. And a life where you don’t reflect on the past is also not a good life. And so it’s how do we think about the present, the future, in the past, in the right way? Because there is sort of they all have to be weighed against each other. [20.7s]
Video Guest [00:26:48] Well, the one I think about the most is like sometimes the solution to a problem or an obstacle or a situation is to zoom way in, to look at it super close. Just the immediate thing in front of you. And sometimes you have to zoom way out and see it from a distance. You know, in light of what’s happened before and what will happen after, and you might need to do one one minute and literally the next minute and the next situation do the exact opposite of what was just supposed to be this universal problem solving technique.
Sam [00:27:19] About the relationship. The past, present and future have to one another. So many of the influences surrounding our teenagers and young adults keep sort of telling them, Carpe diem, right? Live in the moment. Your’re mother of two young women, how have you tried to frame this for them? On the one hand, live in the moment, on the one hand, where such an outcome of our past experiences and it’s so important to look to the future because without it, there’s it’s hard to define sort of a place we’re going to or moving towards. Right? Tell us a little bit about that.
Gretchen [00:27:58] I think that’s very true because often people say, well, the most important is to live in the moment, it’s you know, it’s the only thing that we have. Right. But a life where you only think about the present moment would not be a good life because you have to do things in the present that will set yourself, set yourself up for, you know, the future.
Sam [00:28:13] Yeah.
Gretchen [00:28:14] Whether that–maybe you’re doing something that you don’t want to do or you’re not doing something that you would prefer to do. So I think with my daughters, I just–what I do not do with my daughters is try to steer them in any direction, because I think I don’t know what the future really is going to look like, Like certainly like the future of work. So I would never say to one of my daughters, like, this is a good–this is a good path or a bad path because I don’t know. And probably they will have careers in things that don’t even exist right now. How many people do we know are in careers that didn’t exist ten years ago, 15 years ago?
Sam [00:28:54] Or how many people do we know who have changed careers four or five times over the course of their working lives? Something that was unheard of in our parents generation.
Gretchen [00:29:02] Absolutely. Absolutely. And so with them, I’m much more about skills, like is this a skill or I have a daughter who’s sort of new in the workplace. And I was like, everything, this is great because you’re going to learn so many new skills. Everything’s new to you. [00:29:15]That’s the advantage of being at the beginning, there’s no waste because everything is new. Everything is positive because you’re learning, even if it’s really boring or you think it’s– you think you don’t want to do it. [10.6s] I’m like, well, that’s something that you know about yourself. Some people are very attracted to scrappy and I am like, well, one thing you’ve learned about yourself is you want to be in a very well-managed place. You don’t like scrappy. You know? She went to me and she said, do you guys have an organization chart? And they said, Oh, if we had an organization chart, we wouldn’t be in this situation. And she’s like, I would like to be in a place that has organization or can even imagine having an organizational chart. But that’s not everybody. So now she knows something about herself. So part of it is I do think the one thing that we can do as a parent is point out to them what their own strengths are. One of my daughters is very resourceful and I myself am not resourceful, so I admire it in other people. But I don’t think she knew that about herself until I said, you’re showing me this. You’re very, very resourceful. And I think coaches can do the same thing. They can because they have a little bit more perspective. They can illuminate strengths you might be taking for granted. It’s very easy for us to take our own strengths for granted or think, well, everybody likes to get up in front of an audience and talk. Are you kidding? No, they don’t.
Sam [00:30:32] Yeah, Yeah.
Gretchen [00:30:34] So I think that’s one thing.
Sam [00:30:35] Yeah, I think understanding our strengths–it happens with time, right? And experience. And for young people developing an awareness of those strengths, both so that they understand that they are real strengths and they can lean into them, but also so that they don’t just overindex on them. Right. And then kind of constantly go to those strengths and ignore..
Gretchen [00:30:58] Yes.
Sam [00:30:59] …aspects of learning that they need to go down is so key because we live in a world of sort of these kind of, you know, soundbite-y moments, right, of these super oversimplified phrases of like lean into your strengths or pursue your passion or whatever. And they’re sort of meaningless because as with everything, it’s never just one thing or another. It’s it’s a much more complex sort of amalgam of different things that have to be taken into consideration.
Gretchen [00:31:33] And that’s why I think some a lot of times somebody on the outside can help you see it, because since they’re not all emotionally caught up with all the things they can kind of say well, it sounds like you have a pattern of this or I see you light up when you talk about that, or you always are trying to get out of doing that. Is there a way you can just drop that from your set of responsibilities? I think sometimes, sometimes it’s hard for us to see ourselves clearly. I think that’s one of the great challenges of our lives.
Sam [00:32:00] Yeah, I mean, one of the phrases we use a lot is this idea of coaching, providing you with a balcony onto yourself as you can find you sort of step outside and kind of look at yourself in terms of your behaviors and how someone else is seeing it and that kind of hundred thousand foot view is just so important.
Gretchen [00:32:20] Well, a funny story along those lines is that I do high intensity weight training and my trainer said to me, he said, the same people are always late in the same people are always on time. The are the people who are late are always like, Oh, I’m always on time, except this one day I had bad traffic. Or today there was really bad weather. And he said, that sounds right except the people who are always on time are always on time. And they’re in the traffic and they’re in the weather. And so sometimes I think a coach is sort of like, Yeah, you’re telling me if the traffic and the weather but not really.
Sam [00:32:45] But maybe not.
Gretchen [00:32:47] Maybe we can figure out a way so that you can still get there on time. Even if there’s bad weather. And I thought that was just such a great small example of how it makes sense–perfect sense from the inside. But from the outside, they’re seeing a very different pattern because they’re on the balcony.
Sam [00:33:01] Yes, exactly. Well said. Any last words of advice, Gretchen, as we wrap up for our audience on thinking about their curiosity, creativity, their learning mindset?
Gretchen [00:33:16] One thing I would say is just be interested in what you’re interested in. I think sometimes people have a lot of ideas about what they should be interested in and can be very judgmental. And I think if you’re not doing what you’re truly interested in, you sort of can’t maintain it. And so I think an amazing thing is to become a minor expert in something that you’re truly interested in, and you get interested in the life of Dolly Parton, get interested in, you know, Central Park, whatever, something that you’re truly interested in. And just because it’s interesting to somebody else doesn’t mean it’s interesting to you and it can be such a source of energy. And if you can incorporate the five senses, I think it’s even more exciting and energizing. So maybe it’s like all the work of Tina Turner, you know, I listen to all of her music and learn about her. I went through this thing with the Beatles. I watched that Get Back documentary and become so fascinated by the Beatles. And it was so fun. It didn’t last that long, but, while it lasted that I had a great time learning about the Beatles.
Sam [00:34:10] Well, it’s both the enjoyment and the learning always.
Gretchen [00:34:13] And the sense of growth–and the sense of growth and self-efficacy that you come from mastering something that you don’t know.
Sam [00:34:18] Yeah, it is. It’s fascinating how many people, you know, want to only do things that are useful or sort of part of the program. And so many of the greatest learning moments happen when you do precisely those things that are off the path or you didn’t think of or you got dragged into by accident or with reluctance or whatever, you know?
Gretchen [00:34:43] I remember I went to a panel of comedy writers and somebody said from the audience, How do you get a job writing comedy? Right? And one of the panelists said, [00:34:53]You do what you love and then your friends hire you. [2.0s] And I thought that was really good because it’s like if you’re doing something that’s part of just like what you want to do that you do for fun, then you’ll make connections and you’ll be moving forward. Whereas if you’re always fighting against your nature, that’s one of the reasons I love law of like these people love law. Yeah, they talk about law morning, noon and night. They’re reading law journals for fun on the weekends. That’s not me. I can’t bring that level of engagement. So where can I find that level of engagement? Because it’s right for them. It’s just not right for me.
Sam [00:35:27] Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Gretchen.
Gretchen [00:35:30] Thank you. I so enjoyed it.
Narrator [00:35:33] Thank you. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www.theideamix.com. Special thanks to our producer, Martin Milewski and singer songwriter Doug Allen.