Where Do You Thrive? Gretchen Rubin On Playing To Your Strengths & Building Better Habits

Today I sit down with New York Times bestselling author Gretchen Rubin to find out what happened when she asked a large number of people one singular question: how do you respond to expectations? The answers led Gretchen to an epiphany — that four distinct human tendencies intrinsically underlie how each and every one of us approach our interior and exterior lives. Understanding your tendency changes how you perceive yourself and others. It informs better communication. It provides the structure to create better habits. And ultimately it serves to support the purposeful pursuit of the personal and professional life experience you most seek. This is the terrain of today's exploration. A member of Oprah’s Super Soul 100 who was named one of the Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, Gretchen is an über-author who has sold over 3 million books on the subject of habits, happiness and human nature. You may know Gretchen from her wildly popular blog, her runaway bestseller The Happiness Project*, or from one of her other many titles such as Happiness At Home* and Better Than Before*. An exploration of the aforementioned architecture of human motivation, Gretchen's new book is entitled The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How To Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too)*. When she isn't writing, Gretchen hosts the wildly popular Happier With Gretchen Rubin podcast (along with her sister, TV writer Elizabeth Craft), awarded “Best Podcasts of 2015” honors by iTunes and named one of the “Best Podcasts of 2016″ by the Academy of Podcasters (I didn't even know podcasting had an academy, but there ya go). In addition, Gretchen is the creator of Better, a free mobile app that connects you with others to harness the Four Tendencies and create a better life. This conversation is jam packed with super helpful amazing takeaways. A former editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, we track Gretchen's leap from high-powered lawyer to pursue a career in writing. We talk about how her revelation about “expectations” led to The Four Tendencies, then unpack the specifics, tracking how these core archetypes can better inform our habits, our understanding of others and how we structure our professional and personal lives. I learned a lot about myself in this one. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  We all have to construct the life that's right for us. There is no one best way. There's no magic, one-size-fits-all solution. Because what works for you isn't going to be what works for me, because you and I are different. And so if we want to be happier, healthier, more productive, more creative, it's like, okay, well, what kind of person are you? Where do you thrive? What works for you? And not to try to jam ourselves into somebody else's conception of what we should be able to do, or what is the best thing to do. It's like, it doesn't matter what works for somebody else, or what you should be able to do. It's like, it only matters what works for you. You don't have to feel bad about yourself. You just have to figure out how to work with yourself. The upside is the downside. The strength is the weakness. It just depends on what the context is.

• 1:46Rich Roll?

  That's Gretchen Rubin, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:03Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll, in case it was not already immediately apparent. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Thanks for dropping by. Today, I sit down with the amazing Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen is a former lawyer turned uber author and blogger. She is somebody who has sold over 3 million books on the subject of habits, happiness, and human nature. You may know Gretchen from her runaway bestseller, The Happiness Project, or one of her many other titles, which include Happiness at Home and Better Than Before, or from her wildly popular blog at GretchenRubin.com. Well, Gretchen has a new book out. It's called The Four Tendencies. It's an amazing read.

• 2:48Rich Roll?

  It basically parses fundamental personality types based upon how we as humans respond to one singular question. How do you respond to expectations? In other words, what motivates you? How do you go about doing what you claim you want to do? And extrapolating from this, and supported by a huge data set based on a simple quiz that she constructed that has been taken by millions of people, which you too can take. I'll put the link up to that in the show notes. Gretchen discovered that pretty much everybody falls into one of four general tendencies. And when you understand your tendency, it changes how you see yourself, how you relate to others and the world around you,

• 3:33Rich Roll?

  and how you better structure your life to consistently meet the expectations that you set for yourself and, in turn, support the life experience that you seek. And it is this terrain that we will be exploring today.

• 3:49Rich Roll?

  Fast company named Gretchen Rubin to its list of most creative people in business. She's a member of Oprah's Super Soul 100, and she's also the host, along with her sister, TV writer Elizabeth Kraft, of the wildly popular Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, which was named to iTunes list of best podcasts of 2015 and in the Academy of Podcasters Best Podcasts of 2016. I didn't even know that there was an academy of podcasters. I guess I should know that, but I didn't. In any event, Gretchen is also the creator of Better, which is a free app where you can connect with others to harness the four tendencies to create a better life.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  Okay, Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen was great. I met up with her at her sister's office on the Disney lot, which was cool. I love going to movie studios. And this one is packed with super helpful, amazing takeaways. We track her previous career in law. And to give you an idea of how accomplished Gretchen is, she was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal before clerking for Sandra Day O'Connor, and then serving as chief advisor to the chairman of the FCC. Like, she had a huge career in law, and then walked away from it all to become a writer, which is kind of an amazingly courageous leap of faith, which obviously worked out for her. We talk about how her revelation about expectations led her to

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  write The Four Tendencies, and we then unpack these four tendencies, tracking how they can inform our habits, our patterns, our communication, and how we fundamentally structure our lives. And I've learned a lot about myself in this one. It's already helping me reframe certain aspects of how I approach myself and others, and I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. One final note before we get into it. As you may recall, a couple months ago, I put the word out on this podcast, looking for a filmmaker to help create a visual arm to the work that I do. Well, I think I found my guy. His name is David Zammatt. He is a young and quite talented photographer, editor, and filmmaker, hailing

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  from Malta. And our collaboration has already begun. Last week, we posted a short film called Let's Celebrate, and today, we just posted a video that takes you behind the scenes of This very podcast with Gretchen, essentially how I bake the bread, so to speak. And our intention is to create at least a few videos every single week going forward, including eventually filming entire podcasts. We've got to kind of solve that equation. We're looking into it. We have filmed a couple already. We're trying to figure out if they're worthy of putting up because we don't have the editing all dialed in yet. This is all an experiment that's kind of unfolding in real time. In any event, you can find all

• 6:41Rich Roll?

  of this content on my YouTube page at youtube.com/richroll. So check it out. And if you enjoy it, please subscribe to the channel. I'd appreciate it. All right, let's talk to Gretchen.

• 6:57Rich Roll?

  So it's an absolute delight to finally meet you. I'm just, I'm so excited to talk to you. Thank you for making the time.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm so happy to be talking to you. It's great to see you face to face.

• 7:06Rich Roll?

  I'm glad that the person who is the forward-facing person of happiness is happy.

• 7:13Rich Roll?

  And I feel very entertainment-y doing this over at Disney.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  Which is cool.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  We're in Burbank, California.

• 7:19Rich Roll?

  We are. Fancy Burbank. And we have a ton of mutual friends, a lot of my favorite people I know are friends of yours, Chris Gilbo, Jonathan Fields. I adore those guys. Louis introduced us, of course.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  I'm going to see Chris tomorrow night, actually, or no, Wednesday night.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Terrific. And I'm seeing him Monday.

• 7:36Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:37Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, it's a big Chris love fest.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  It always is. There's so many things I want to talk to you about. Of course, the new book, we're going to unpack all of the archetypes that you have, that you have determined that are helping so many people. But I think one, what I wanted to kind of explore a little bit with you first, myself being a recovering lawyer, a writer and a podcaster.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of us.

• 8:02Rich Roll?

  Do people ask you about how you transitioned out of this law practice you were in? Because, I mean, you weren't just some lawyer. I mean, you had like a big career in law, Supreme Court clerk and FCC. And there's a whole trajectory built into that.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. In hindsight, it all feels very simple, but I'm sure it wasn't as simple at the time. But, you know, I was, I had started working on researching a subject that just absolutely had me obsessed, which was Power Many Fame Sex. Like this, I was like, what am I interested in the world that everybody else is interested in? Power Many Fame Sex. And so I was like struck by wanting to do massive amounts of research on that subject, which is something-

• 8:44Rich Roll?

  You mean, just in your free time?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yes, in my free time.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  While you were at the FCC?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Clerking.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, you were clerking?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:50Rich Roll?

  Because you had so much free time then, right?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, because, yeah, I mean, you think, oh, gosh, all I did all day was read and write, and then I would go home and read and write. And, but, and I often get obsessed with subjects. This is something that's happened to me my whole life. But I just, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And finally, it occurred to me, you know, this is something that some people do as a job. They don't just do it in their free time. And maybe I could do it as my work. And, and that feeling sort of grew and grew until I was, until I realized, you know, I'd rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer. So I should try it and see if I can succeed or fail. I need to put it to the test. And I think I was lucky, because I don't know about you and the people that you know, maybe who've transitioned out of law or out of anything. Sometimes people

• 9:34Speaker 01

  know where they want to leave, but they don't know yet where they want to go. And so they have to figure out where to go. And that's hard.

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  That was me.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. But so I was lucky, because I had this project that was pulling me so hard. I wanted, it wasn't so much that I wanted to leave law, but that I just wanted to devote myself to this writing project in, you know, totally.

• 9:53Rich Roll?

  But it's not exactly like there was a, you know, a clear cut path as to how that was going to work out.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Well, you know what I did is I went to the bookstore and I bought a book. I don't remember the exact title, but it was called something like, How to Write and Sell Your Nonfiction Book Proposal. So I bought the book and followed the directions.

• 10:08Rich Roll?

  That book was, maybe that was the best money you ever spent?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Probably, right? And I don't even remember the title. Yeah, you're right. It's true. It's funny. I just did what it said.

• 10:21Rich Roll?

  And, and, and so was your, but you, you wrote these biographies first, those came first, didn't they?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  So Power Many Fame Sex was my first book. And then I wrote two biographies. Yeah, good memory. One of Winston Churchill, one of JFK. And I wrote a strange little book called Profane Waste. And sometimes people look at those earlier books and think, oh, wow, they look so different from the books that I wrote, The Happiness Project or The Four Tendencies. But really, my subject is human nature. That's what I'm always thinking about and writing about. So to me, all my books feel very unified, even if they don't look that way from the outside.

• 10:55Rich Roll?

  Right. It's human behavior.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:57Rich Roll?

  You're unpacking human behavior, trying to sort of go behind the curtain

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:01Rich Roll?

  in what motivates people.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And looking at someone like Winston Churchill, for instance, he's such an exaggerated figure. He's so enormous that you can see human nature more clearly because he just casts such a tremendous shadow.

• 11:14Rich Roll?

  Right. As does JFK.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  As does JFK. Yeah. I just saw The Grassy Knoll for the first time when I was in Dallas for my book tour. And I was like, oh, my gosh, here it is.

• 11:23Rich Roll?

  Here it is. Wow.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  But what do you think, what's behind this desire, this impulse, this drive to, you know, really delve deep into human behavior? Like, where do you think that's coming from?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  It's always been a subject that's fascinated me my whole life. But I didn't, I sort of didn't isolate it as a subject. It just seemed to me like the thing that was most interesting in the world. And it took me a while to realize that that's what I was researching and trying to figure out, trying to look at it from every different angle and trying to penetrate the mysteries of who we are.

• 11:56Rich Roll?

  And when you were at the FCC, was that your last law job?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  That was my last law job.

• 12:01Rich Roll?

  So and you're like, I'm gonna walk away from this and I'm gonna write a book now. I mean, how was that received by your coworkers?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it was interesting. What was more interesting, what was probably more influential to me was like, how did my friends, my family and my husband think about it? And I was really lucky because first of all, my husband was making a transition at the same time. We were gonna move from Washington DC to New York. He was, we met in law school. He was working, he was also working at the FCC, totally coincidentally. And he was gonna go into finance. So we were both gonna make the change together. We were gonna move to a new city and we were gonna start new careers. So that was really good. And I remember the day when we got a notice from The New York Bar Association and I said to him, are we going to pay our bar fees? Just kind of hedge our bets? And he's like, no, because it's expensive to pay your bar fees. So he's like, no, we're not. I'm like, okay, we're really, we're really doing this.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  We're not paying our bar fees.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  That's when it becomes real. I remember, I remember when I got that email and I was like, I'm not doing it. I'm cutting that cord.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I'm cutting, but you find out later that if you just like pay your back fees and like, you know, you can pretty much do it.

• 13:04Rich Roll?

  They still send me stuff all the time. I'm like, hello?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Every nine years, we get some kind of weird warning letter, which I just.

• 13:10Rich Roll?

  Right, you're in trouble.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not in good standing. I think I paused it or did something. I don't know. But I was really lucky because everybody who was closest to me was very tolerant of me taking a big risk. And I think, I think I would have done it anyway, but it would have been much more difficult if everybody had really been saying like, oh, it's not a safe bet and it's such a tough career and you've done, put so much time and effort and money into it. And, you know, given, you know, you have all these options now, but they were really like, you know, if this is what you want to do, okay. Now, and my sister, my younger sister, Elizabeth, was already working as a professional writer. So I was lucky in that somebody very close to me was already a professional writer. And so I think that, that also played a role in my willingness to take a risk.

• 13:57Rich Roll?

  That's cool to have that level of support. I mean, it could have gone the other way. I mean, you could have a sibling who's like, what do you mean you're going to be a writer? Like, that's my thing.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  That's true. And, and also I see people often from the deepest sense of love, try to protect people from failure and risk. And so to say, do the safe thing, don't risk failure, don't risk being embarrassed, don't, don't risk like not being able to get a job, take the safe path. But the fact is there is no safe path. Like so many people do things thinking that they're safe and then those things blow up, you know?

• 14:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and the lawyers are those safety seekers, right? So these are the people that are, that are seeking out that, that supposedly, that elusive, more secure route. And look, man, it's tough. You know, when you're going to New York, oh, well, there's Davis Polk and there's, you know, they're dangling huge paychecks in front of you. And having clerked for Sandra Day O'Connor, I mean, you could have done whatever you wanted to do.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Well, I had an interesting experience. And so now, because I write about happiness and sort of self-knowledge all the time, one of the questions that I suggest to people, if you want to increase your self-knowledge, because it's hard to know ourselves, surprisingly hard, one question I say, I often suggest is, whom do you envy? Because when you think about whom you envy, then you're like, that person is something that you want. And maybe you could get that for yourself, you know, but often, we don't want to admit to ourselves what we really want. And one of the things for me was that when I would read the alumni notes from my law school, when I read about people who had really cool law jobs, I felt like a kind of mild interest. And when I read about people who had cool writing jobs, I felt sick with envy. So I thought, well, they, like, I guess that's what I really

• 15:37Speaker 01

  wish that I had, because that's what I really envy.

• 15:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a good, that's a good litmus test.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's painful.

• 15:45Rich Roll?

  I definitely can relate to that.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  It's painful to admit to envy.

• 15:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, it's baked into us as human beings, I suppose.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:52Rich Roll?

  So let's get into the tendencies.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:55Rich Roll?

  I took the quiz, by the way.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  Not that I didn't already kind of know where, you know, how it would work out for me.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  But I think we're going to get along swimmingly, because I'm definitely an upholder.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  All right. We're rare, a rare breed.

• 16:08Rich Roll?

  So we can like, you know,

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Get into it.

• 16:10Rich Roll?

  Pat each other on the back or whatever. But I think I have a light dusting of rebel in me. But I also have, first, by the way, I'm going to use this as like a personal counseling session.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Excellent, Drew. I love that. It's my favorite thing.

• 16:25Rich Roll?

  Okay, good. A light dusting of rebel, but also a definite strain of people pleasing that when I was kind of going through the tendencies and trying to understand them and these four archetypes, felt a little bit at odds with being an upholder. So I don't know. But maybe even before answering that, we should describe what we're talking about.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So the four tendencies are whether you're an upholder, a questioner, obliger, or rebel. So you and I are both upholders. And this has to do with how you respond to expectations. And all of us face two kinds of expectations. So there's outer expectations, like meeting a work deadline, meeting a request from a friend. And then there's inner expectations. So your own desire to keep a New Year's resolution, your own desire to start lifting weights again. So upholders readily meet outer and inner expectations. They meet the work deadline, they keep the New Year's resolution without much fuss. They want to know what other people expect from them and meet those expectations, but their expectations for themselves are just as important. Then questioners. Questioners question all expectations. They'll do something if they think it makes sense.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  So they make everything an inner expectation. If it meets their inner standard, yeah, this makes sense, then they will do it, no problem. If it fails their inner standard, they will reject it. They tend to hate anything arbitrary, inefficient, unjustified. So they always want to know why they should do something. Then there are obligers. Obligers readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. And I got my insight into this when a friend of mine said, "I don't understand it. I really want to go running, and when I was in high school, I was on the track team, and I never missed track practice. So why can't I go running now?" Well, when she had a team and a coach waiting for her, she had no trouble showing up. But when she was just trying to go on her own, she struggled. And then finally rebels. Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner, like they want to do what they want

• 18:16Speaker 01

  to do in their own way, in their own time. If you ask or tell them to do something, they are very likely to resist, and typically they don't even like to tell themselves what to do. Like, they wouldn't sign up for a 10:00 AM yoga class because they're like, "I don't know what I'm going to want to do at 10:00 AM." So those are the four tendencies. Now, you and I are upholders, and that's pretty unusual because the biggest tendency for both men and women, the one the biggest number of people belong to- Obligers. Is obliger. That's big. Second to them is questioner, also very big. Rebel is the smallest tendency. It's the longest chapter in the book, but it's the smallest tendency. It's the one the fewest people belong to. But our tendency, upholder tendency, is only slightly larger.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Those are the two kind of extreme polar tendencies, and they're pretty small. Not that many people are rebels or upholders.

• 19:05Rich Roll?

  So before we get into the particulars of these four different personality types and the pros and the cons and kind of what we're supposed to do with this information.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:16Rich Roll?

  How did you arrive at this? Like, how did it dawn upon you? Is this the result of just a continuing pursuit into the depths of what make people tick? Did you have like an epiphany? Did it come to you slowly?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Well, both. I started picking up these patterns. So my friend said that thing about the track team and that really got me thinking like, well, what's going on? Because it's the same person, it's the same behavior. Like, why was it at one time effortless and now she can't do it?

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  And let me just interrupt you to ask you this.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:43Rich Roll?

  When you hear that, as an upholder, what is your reaction when somebody tells you that?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Well, see, that's what's interesting. And that's why I think it was an advantage to me to be an upholder in figuring out this framework. Because to me, I was like, I don't understand that.

• 19:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  That didn't make, like, I'm like, huh.

• 19:58Rich Roll?

  Just get on with it.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, I'm like, that's interesting because I don't experience that. And also, people were saying other things that I was like, I don't experience that. So like, when I would talk to people about New Year's resolutions, because I wrote this book Better Than Before that's all about habit change. So I was talking to people about, I would also often ask people about New Year's resolutions as a way to get into their habits. And a certain number of people would give exactly the same answer. They would say, I would keep a resolution whenever it made sense to me, but I wouldn't do it on January 1st because January 1st is an arbitrary date. And that really struck me because I was like, well, the arbitrariness of January 1st never bothered me. Then there were people who would say, like, things like, well, why is it that busy parents like us can't take time for ourselves? And I would think, well, I'm a busy parent, but I don't have any trouble taking time for myself. And

• 20:42Speaker 01

  then there were some people who just, like, when I talked about habits, like, to me, the idea of habits is energizing and freeing. I love the idea of a life full of habits. But some people were repelled by the idea of habits. Like, you could tell that the whole idea of trying to form habits was repugnant to them. And I was like, it's so weird. They see the world so differently from me. So I was trying, all these things were sort of running through my head simultaneously. I had no idea how they fit together or if they were part of a pattern. And then one day, I was just glancing down on my to-do list, which was like, you know, all messy, half things crossed off. I have things that I still needed to do. And all of a sudden, this idea jumped out at me, expectations. And I realized that was at the core of all of these things.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And once I saw, once I focused on expectations and I saw that it was outer expectations and inner expectations, then everything started sliding into place. All these patterns began to fit together and make sense. And so it was like, I was pondering, pondering, pondering, kind of wandering around my head for months, and then suddenly it just clicked when I thought of the word expectation.

• 21:47Rich Roll?

  And there can only be four, right? Because there's only four permutations of expectations that are either motivated, stimulated internally or externally.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Yes, it's sort of like inner, inner, outer, outer, inner, outer, outer, outer, inner. Those are the four, there can only be four because those are the four combinations.

• 22:02Rich Roll?

  Did you wake up in the middle of the night and jump up and down? Or how did?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I was sitting there and, and I, and part of it too was at first I was trying to make it into a two by two. And I couldn't get it to work out two by two because it's like, how do they fit together that way? When I realized it was a Venn diagram of the overlapping circles, that showed me how they all fit together because like they, they, they touch each other. So you and I are both upholders. Well, upholders are like questioners in that we both resist, that we both meet inner expectations. But upholders are also like obligers and that we also meet outer expectations. So it showed me the relationship of the four, how, how they really intersect with each other. So that was another big breakthrough is when I realized it was a Venn diagram and a diamond shape of circles. It was like, the visual.

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  And then you, you constructed this test, this quiz.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:52Rich Roll?

  And how many people have?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm coming up on a million people.

• 22:55Rich Roll?

  That's so crazy.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Soon, yeah. Happiercast.com/quiz if you want to take the quiz.

• 23:01Rich Roll?

  Everybody should take it if you're, if you're not sure where you fall on this. And so you have this massive data set.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:06Rich Roll?

  And I'm interested in, in, you know, as you kind of dig into that.

• 23:12Rich Roll?

  Are most people some combination of the two? Or are there people that are just purely in one camp? Like, how does that look and break down?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Well, from my observation, people, almost everybody, really is within one core tendency. But like you say, you can kind of tip because you could be, like, say, my husband's a questioner. He's a questioner. Now, some questioners kind of tip to upholders because upholders and questioners both meet inner expectations. But some questioners tip toward rebel because, like rebels, they both resist outer expectations. And so the flavor of your questionerness can change depending on whether you tipped one way or the other. So it's not that you're a mix, but you sort of are leaning in one direction. You're tipping towards an adjacent tendency. But I really do think that people fit within a core tendency.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And let's talk a little bit about the pros and cons of each of these. I mean, to me, like, if I take rebel, or let's take questioner. It's kind of easy to discern the pros. I mean, to me, tell me if I'm wrong, but a questioner who's going to ask a lot of questions, that's good because they want to make sure they're making the right decision. And that's going to be based on logic and what's best for them. But questioners, I would imagine, can also end up in some form of paralysis as a result of not being able, they can just keep asking questions.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Analysis paralysis.

• 24:40Rich Roll?

  Allow that, you know, questions can be fear, right? They're just afraid to move forward. As long as they keep asking questions, they have an excuse to not actually do anything.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you see this in something like exercise where it's like, well, I don't know what the most efficient, the very best thing, so I'm going to do this exercise.

• 24:56Rich Roll?

  What shoe should I get?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no.

• 24:58Rich Roll?

  I feel these questions all the time. Which watch? What's the heart? And it's like, and they're going to research that forever. And days are going by where they could just go outside and at least go for a walk.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  So if you're a questioner who's dealing with this, or you're around a questioner, one of the things you can do is you can remind them, at a certain point, it's not efficient. Because efficiency is such a deep core value for questioners, remind them, at some point, it's better to just start exercising than to... Find like the mythical perfect form of exercise, or it's better to just get a shoe. You don't need to get the perfect shoe. You can also do things like hit deadlines. Like I'm going to decide by Friday, like best guess by Friday, or I'm going to visit. I'm going to go to these three stores where the people, you know, I'm going to look at this. I'm going to look at these choices. I'm not going to go every single place in the city. Or you could use, go to a trusted authority. You could say like, okay, this person I know really thinks things through, does their research.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  If something is good enough for this person, it's probably going to be good enough for me. I'm not going to just slavishly do what they say, but I'm going to be very guided by their judgment. I don't have to research this from the ground up. I can like take what they say and think about whether that's good enough for me. So there's ways to sort of intervene in this analysis paralysis. Once questioners realize that they're experiencing it. Because sometimes they don't realize that they've fallen into this black hole of why, why, why, why, why?

• 26:17Rich Roll?

  But getting somebody like that to respond to a boundary requires them to be responsive to external motivators, right?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Well, what they're really responding to is their own inner sense of efficiency. Like at a certain point, you're just like, you know, like you're just, you haven't exercised in a year. Like you, you've been researching it for a long time. Like you know, you really need to start exercising. So why don't you say that by the end of the week, you're going to pick a shoe? You're going to pick a class? You're going to pick a mechanism? And also what you can remind, questioners tend to love to customize and they love to experiment on themselves. So you could say like, well, you know, this is the way people typically do it. But if you want to tweak it, tweak it the way you want. Or, you know, why don't you try it as an experiment? And then you're going to learn something about yourself. Okay, try this form of training. If it doesn't work, then you can move on to something else, but you'll have learned something about yourself. These are the kinds of things that appeal to questioners.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  And so they can get them moving past that starting point if they're getting stalled out.

• 27:14Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Do you, did you do any probing into kind of the emotional underpinnings that create these archetypes? Like the psychology behind it? Like is it nurture? Is it nature?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  I think it's nature.

• 27:26Rich Roll?

  Can these things be changed? Like they're just set in stone?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  I think that they're genetically hard. Wired, I think we bring them into the world with us. I don't think they're a function of upbringing or, or, or culture, or birth order, or anything like that.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Now, the question about whether you can change, I think what you can do is with time and experience and wisdom, you can learn how to harness the strengths of your tendency and then offset the weaknesses and limitations. Because all of these tendencies have strengths and weaknesses, and they're the same. It's like the strength is the weakness. So you can figure out ways to kind of hack yourself so that you don't, you're not hobbled by the weaknesses of your tendency. I think it's very, it's, is it possible to change your inner nature? I mean, people dispute that. I think if it is even possible, it's extremely difficult. But it's very easy to change your circumstances. So I'm like, don't worry about like trying to change your inner nature and trying to change your fundamental tendency. If that's even possible, it would be extremely difficult and take a long time. Take the simple, easy way and just figure out a way to deal with it.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Like if you're a questioner and you're stalling out, don't try to turn yourself into a different tendency. Just say like, hey, man, decide by Friday, or you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just, you know, here, my brother-in-law is like been doing this for years. I'm just gonna do whatever my brother-in-law does and take it from there. Like I'll start, I'll try it that way. If it doesn't work, then I'll, then I'll, then I'll have learned something, but I just need to get myself going, you know, rather than trying to fundamentally change your, you know, relationship to the world.

• 28:51Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. And, you know, as I was, you know, kind of absorbing these ideas, it made me reflect back on my own path. Like I've undergone a tremendous amount of change professionally, emotionally, like a lot of change in my life over the last 10, 20 years. But I didn't change my core fundamental nature.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 29:10Rich Roll?

  But I think what I was doing, and I think this might be something that's common to a lot of people, is I was structuring my life in accordance with a tendency that was not my core. You know what I mean?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:24Rich Roll?

  I put myself in a situation that didn't allow me

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:28Rich Roll?

  to fully embody and express the positive aspects of that core nature and that tendency.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  But see, this is the most important thing. Like you put your finger right on the key thing, which is, we all have to construct the life that's right for us. There is no one best way. There's no magic one-size-fits-all solution, because like what works for you isn't going to be what works for me, because you and I are different. And so we always have to be, if we want to be happier, healthier, more productive, more creative. It's like, okay, well, what kind of person are you? Where do you thrive? What works for you? And not to try to jam ourselves into somebody else's conception of what we should be able to do or what is the best thing to do. It's like, it doesn't matter what works for somebody else or what you should be able to do. It's like, it only matters what works for you. And sometimes it makes me sad because people will say, well, I don't like being my tendency.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And I'm like, all these tendencies have huge numbers of people in them. There's nothing wrong with you. You don't lack self-control or willpower. You don't need to change who you are. You just need to set things up in a different way and then you'll get to be able to go wherever you want to go. It's like, you don't, you don't need to change yourself.

• 30:34Rich Roll?

  I bet the rebels all like being rebels, though.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Interesting. Some do, some don't.

• 30:39Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, rebels get frustrated because they can't make themselves do things. And so it's like, if you have a rebel who like, really like, wants to be healthy, wants to eat better and exercise, they'll get frustrated because they'll be like, well, the minute I make a to-do list, I refuse to do it. The minute I say to myself, I'm not going to eat bread anymore, I go out and buy a loaf of sourdough bread. The minute I promise myself that I'm going to train for the marathon, I like, refuse to get off the couch. These, this is something that many-

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  A natural resistance to any kind of rules or boundaries.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yes, and so they-

• 31:07Rich Roll?

  Even when self-imposed.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Even when self-imposed. They don't want to impose, so there are ways to harness the tremendous powers of the rebel tendency, but they have to do it in a rebel way. They can't try to impose those rules on them, you know? You need accountability. You need to put it on the calendar. And then, no, no, no. Those don't work for rebels. Don't do that. Don't, don't let people try to convince you that you should try these tools. If they work, now rebels can do anything they want to do. If you'd like to do that, some rebels do like to-do lists. Some rebels do like to, you know, go to classes. If you like to do it, then do it. But if it doesn't work for you, like, okay, there's a lot of things that rebels have come up with to get themselves to that same place. You don't have to feel bad about yourself. You just have to figure out how to work with yourself.

• 31:52Rich Roll?

  And the positive side of that is there's a lot of spontaneous creative energy and you know, these are, these are world-changing kind of people, right? Because they do tend to see the world a little bit differently, I would imagine, or just they're, they're less afraid to try different things, or just push the boundaries of whatever edges they're, you know, they're bumping up against.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  I don't want to suggest that they are more likely than the other tendencies to be creative or world-changing, because I don't think those things are at the core of a tendency. So being creative, like, that's independent of your tendency. Being willing to buck convention is at the core of the rebel tendency. They're definitely more likely to be willing to buck convention, because they don't care about inner or outer expectations. That's going to allow you to buck convention, to ignore it, or even to enjoy flouting it. So they, they absolutely will do that. But sometimes, one of the things about the four tendencies is it's a very narrow aspect of your personality. So you and I are both upholders. We could line up 50 upholders, and depending on how ambitious we were, how considerate of other people's feelings we were, how adventurous we were, how, how introverted

• 32:55Speaker 01

  or extroverted we were, how, you know, controlling we were, how neurotic we were, all these things would be very different. How intellectual we were. We would add up to completely different people, but as to how we meet expectations, we would be the same. So sometimes people are like to me, like, "Oh, the rebels are the creative, artistic", you know, and I'm like, "No, because creative and artistic, those are different. They don't, they don't necessarily correlate to the tendencies." But it's going to, it's going to color the way these things are expressed. It's going to come out in a way that's, that takes on a flavor of the tendency. But it's not like, "Oh, upholders lack creativity because they're rule-bound." It's like, no, there's a lot of creative people who are upholders.

• 33:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and this idea that the strength is also the weakness. Like, these things can't be parsed from, it's not like you have strengths on this side and weaknesses, these things are the same thing.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Exactly, and that's what a lot of people don't understand. It's like, "Oh yeah, I meet inner and outer expectations, and therefore I'm also, can seem rigid and, you know, inflexible." Because those, that's like the two sides of the same coin, and just like you were saying with questioners. Questioners, it's great that they also So many questions. It can also drain and overwhelm people that they ask so many questions. It's great that they flout convention, but it's also hard to work with somebody who will resist if you ask or tell them to do something. The upside is the downside. The strength is the weakness. It just depends on sort of what the context is.

• 34:27Rich Roll?

  We gotta talk about obligers, though. That's the biggest group.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yes, the biggest group. Oh, the obligers are the rock of the world. They're type O. They're the universal, they pair up the best with the other three tendencies. You either are an obliger, or you have many obligers in your life. And here's the key thing for obligers. This is like, if there's anything in the Four Tendencies book that I think has been the most helpful to the most people, here it is. If you are dealing with yourself or someone else who's an obliger, who's struggling to meet an inner expectation, which by definition you are, that is the definition of an obliger, the answer, the solution, the very, very easy fix is outer accountability. If you want to meet an inner expectation, you must create

• 35:11Speaker 01

  a form of outer accountability to do it. If you want to read a book, join a book group. If you want to go running, or you want to exercise, like my friend on the track team, what would I say to her about how she could exercise? I would say, take a class where the instructor takes attendance, or sign up with a trainer, or work out with a friend who's going to be annoyed if you don't show up, or think about how disappointed your dog's going to be if he doesn't get to go for his daily run, or, you know, say that you're going to run for a 5K for a charity that's going to make less money if you don't follow through with it. Think of your duty to be a role model for other people in your family. I'm going to model good behavior, healthy behavior. I'm going to keep my promises to myself. I'm going to show you me doing that. These are all forms of outer accountability, and there's a million ways to build in outer accountability. Once you realize that that's

• 35:56Speaker 01

  what you need, a lot of times, sometimes obligers sort of instinctively realize, like, ooh, if I'm going to do this, I need, you know, if I'm going to study for the SAT, I need to take a class. But sometimes they don't realize that that's what they need, and so then it's a huge revelation to realize, eh, you just plug in outer accountability, and then you can do whatever you want.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so for the obliger, the... Quality of your environment becomes paramount. Whereas somebody who is internally motivated, what that, what your surroundings are, become less instructive in terms of what your behavior looks like.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:31Rich Roll?

  Is that correct?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  So, so I would think that for the obliger, there are people that not only, yeah, they got to breed community, they have to breed accountability for sure.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Accountability, yeah.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  And those things have to be, there has to be an emphasis or a priority on making both of those two things convenient, so that they're the easy arms-length choice.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you mentioned community, because one of the things I've heard from a lot of obligers is, oh, well, what happens if you're a very introverted obliger, and you don't like the idea of going to an exercise class, or you don't want to go to Weight Watchers, because you don't like the idea of, it's not that you dislike the accountability.

• 37:08Rich Roll?

  It's a problem. The introverted obliger.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's a big issue. And so, but there's a lot of solutions for that. Like, I have this app, the Better app, where, you know, if you search for Better Guts and Ruben, and you can form an accountability group. And a lot of people like, a lot of people prefer the face-to-face, but it's more inconvenient, and it takes more time, it's very powerful. But some people don't like face-to-face. And so, if you do it in an app, then it gives you a little bit more distance. Or you might be able to try, and obligers very dramatically on what they, what makes them feel accountable. Some obligers can feel accountable is to their future self. Like, okay, today, Rich doesn't want to do this, but future Rich is going to be very disappointed if now Rich doesn't do it. So, you have to do it for future Rich. I've been amazed by for how many obligers this works, the future self. To me, I'm like, that seems very advanced.

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's bizarre. It's also like a weird Trojan horse to bring internal motivation and kind of like, re-costume it up.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I'm like, how does this work as outer motivation? Because it's really just an inner expectation, like, yeah, like, in a costume. But for a lot of people, it works. And so, I think one of the things, and one of the things I try to do in the book, The Four Tendencies, is to give lots and lots and lots of examples, because it's definitely true that for some obligers, a running club would be great, but for many, it wouldn't work for whatever reason. And so, you have to think, like, again, what kind of person are you? If you're a very introverted person, the idea of going to meet Eight other people and talking about something is going to be a real turn off to you wholly apart whatever from whatever the behavior is. So you need to think about, okay, well, that's okay. You know, given that that's who I am, how do I work with

• 38:46Speaker 01

  myself to get that out of accountability? Because there's a lot of ways to do it. Once you realize that's what you need.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  Right. And so what is the, what is the strength of the obliger?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  I mean, they're the rock of the world. They're the ones who come through. Um, you know, they're, they're extremely great team members.

• 39:04Rich Roll?

  Because they show up for everyone else.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they can be visionary leaders. I mean, sometimes somebody asks me like, oh, I don't want my son to be an obliger. I want him to be a leader. I'm like, that's a false choice. Many obligers are great leaders. They, they, they feel compelled to lead because of feeling an obligation to others. I'm like, I need to do this for my people or I need to, you know, I need to do this. Um, I need to help others. So they can be very powerful leaders. Um, but here's something that can come out of that. Um, so when obliger, because obligers are often so valuable and so helpful, they can be taken advantage of, they can be exploited, they can be, they can fail to be heard. Um, sometimes expectations just become too pressing on them because they, they do feel that weight of outer expectation

• 39:51Speaker 01

  very keenly. They can suffer from obliger rebellion. And this is when an obliger will meet, meet, meet, meet an expectation and then suddenly they snap and they're like, this I won't do. And sometimes it's small and symbolic, but sometimes it's very destructive. I just got an email this morning from somebody saying, I had a friend for like 17 years. She was just very, very demanding and needy. And one day I was like, I'm done with you. And I haven't spoken to her since. And that's obliger rebellion. It's like it builds, it builds, it builds. And then suddenly there's this eruption. Often the obliger will say that they feel like they're acting out of character. Um, and it can be very destructive because the people around are like, why didn't you say anything?

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. It's all right.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Sorry about that.

• 40:35Rich Roll?

  Do you need to get that?

• 40:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:37Rich Roll?

  It's okay.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  It's just the.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  Don't worry about it.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  It's the main office.

• 40:41Rich Roll?

  Well, that's interesting. I mean, I think what I hear in that is, I mean, that explosion comes from a lack of self-care. Like when you're, when you're so focused on meeting the needs of others and you're not attending to your own self, right?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  So that's, that's an important. Subtle distinction. I would not say, I would say that they are meeting outer expectations. I wouldn't say that they're like putting others in front of them. So they're meeting outer expectations, but they're not meeting inner expectations. But you're right.

• 41:13Rich Roll?

  But it's a boundary thing.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  It is. It absolutely is. That is 100% correct. And the fact is, obliger rebellion is meant to be a safeguard. It's meant to be the emergency ripcord that gets an obliger out of a situation that's no longer sustainable. Like, I can't take it anymore, so this is gonna, I'm gonna blow this up to preserve myself. So it's meant to save them from something that's become unsustainable. But it can sometimes be very destructive and it can, it can be, and others don't understand. They're like, well, if you didn't want to do it, why did you say you would? You know, that's what an upholder would say. Like, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. But like, why are you mad at me? You know, or like, why didn't you say something? This is something that's very puzzling to people

• 41:56Speaker 01

  who aren't obligers. And it also, but sometimes obligers don't understand this outer accountability, inner accountability thing. And they think what's going on. They misconceive the situation and they think that what's going on is that they are meeting, they are putting others first. This is a dangerous mistake because it suggests that if I put others first and I put myself last, if others' needs vanished and the expectations from others went away, then I would meet my own desires. So if I quit my demanding job, then I would be able to keep my New Year's resolutions. If I took early retirement, then I would have time for everything on my bucket list. But what I've found is that doesn't happen.

• 42:35Rich Roll?

  Well, life is never gonna line up like that.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Well, but sometimes people do this. They will do things like quit a job, thinking like, oh, I've always wanted to write a novel. If I quit my job, then I'll write my novel. It's like, no, you won't. Not if you're an obliger, not if you don't have outer accountability. And so over and over, obligers have said to me, I didn't understand because like, I took early retirement, I gave, I gave up money in order to make time for myself.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  But I'm still not doing anything. I'm like, yeah, because what you need is out of accountability. So if you want to write your novel, it's like, take a writing class, or join a writer's group where everybody holds each other accountable, or, you know, say that you're gonna write an ebook and tell people to sign up, and so they're waiting for you. So you have to write it in order to be able to give it to them, because they're waiting for you. Like, there's a million ways to create that out of accountability. But sometimes a writer's think, well, if other people didn't make demands on me, then I would meet my demands on myself. Mm-mm. It doesn't work like that.

• 43:31Rich Roll?

  Makes sense. It's hard to crawl inside the brain of somebody who has a tendency that is not your own, though. Like, I'm like, okay, I can kind of intellectually understand that, but like, I just see the world so fundamentally differently.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. I'm so glad to hear you say that, because it really has been an exercise for me. And I've been fortunate, because I've heard so many examples, like, you know, so many readers and listeners have told me their examples and their insights, and it's been so helpful. But as a holder, you know, the opposite for us is rebel. And it really took me a long time to feel like I understood how rebels see the world. But here's what I've learned. This is the super powerful thing that we can all learn from rebels, is we're more free than we think. Way more free than we think. There's a lot of things we think we have to do. We don't have to do them. I mean, if I wanted to wear running

• 44:23Speaker 01

  shoes and yoga pants every day for the rest of my life, I could do that. There's no one who could stop me. And I probably wouldn't even really get in trouble. You can, you have a lot more freedom than you think. And so that's been very powerful for me to realize.

• 44:38Rich Roll?

  I know that it's sort of unusual for an upholder to be with a rebel, right?

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:45Rich Roll?

  My wife is a rebel.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Interesting. So how does it come out?

• 44:48Rich Roll?

  Well, we've been together for almost 20 years.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 44:54Rich Roll?

  We've worked it out. I mean, we've worked it out. We're very aware that we're different in these regards. Like, I want structure. I need, you know, I need personal accountability to myself. I need to have the schedule. The calendar has to be locked in. Like, I need to know what I'm doing. And I find freedom in that. Like, I'm able to be creative and be more productive and feel good about the direction that I'm heading in and all those, when I have those things.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:18Rich Roll?

  Julie, my wife, she doesn't, forget it. You know, like, that's, you know, she's a whirling dervish and, you know, she's all over the place and she's doing 10 things at once. And she's a powerhouse and she's unbelievably, you know, capable in so many different ways. And, and I just remember when we first got together, I was like, this is like a strange being from a different planet. Like, I don't even understand how this person functions, you know? But I was fascinated by it. And, you know, there's a chemistry and all of that, that has, you know, that attracted us to each other. And I found that I've learned a lot from observing her. And maybe that was fertilizer on my, you know, innate little dusting of rebel that I have within me. Because it's exactly

• 46:02Rich Roll?

  what you just said. It's like, oh, wait, like, this rule that I've erected in front of me my whole life, that's actually like an illusion. Like, I don't have to, it's, and so I tiptoed, you know, in that direction a little bit to my benefit. Like, I've learned a lot about myself. And I think I've broadened my, my perspective on my, my capabilities by observing her and how she functions. And I think similarly, she's learned some structural habits from me. But innately, we're, you know, it's like, all you have to do is look at our desk, you know, what my desk looks like versus what hers, you know, hers looks like. And it's, it's very evident. But we found a way to make it, to make it work by respecting that in each other and not trying to change that in each other.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:44Rich Roll?

  You know, I get frustrated. I'm like, she'll commit me to something. I'm, did you look at the calendar? She's like, no, I don't look at, you know?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Well, let me ask you this, because I am fascinated by upholder rebel combinations, because it is unusual. Do you, is one of the ways that you manage it, that you don't put very many expectations on each other?

• 47:03Rich Roll?

  We definitely put expectations on each other.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  You do.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  But we've had to learn a language for communicating that in a way that it can be heard and received and processed without coming off like a judgment.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:18Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:19Rich Roll?

  That took a lot of time.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:21Rich Roll?

  And that took a lot of frustration on her part as much as mine. There's no right or wrong or better or worse here.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:27Rich Roll?

  It's just understanding that we have fundamentally different operating systems.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:31Rich Roll?

  And, you know, I can try to be like her and she can try to be like me, but it's a square peg jamming into a round hole.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  And so, you know, she does what she does and I do what I do, but we also come together and we create together in certain projects that we work on.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:46Rich Roll?

  And that's required, like, you know, she's learned to know, like, she can't just, you know, roll up on me and say, "We gotta talk about this now."

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:56Rich Roll?

  She has to say, "When you have time, or can you tell me

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:59Rich Roll?

  when you have a half an hour so that we can sit down and talk about that?" And that's a learned behavior on her part.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 48:04Rich Roll?

  And, you know, similarly, I don't expect her to put every appointment in the calendar.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  Like, that's my job.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:11Rich Roll?

  So, we've kind of figured out what our roles are so that we can make it work as a cohesive whole.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  But, I mean, I think you put your finger right on it, which is that it's about sort of recognizing that you're just coming from different places. And it's not that one person's right and one person's wrong and one person should change. It's just like, this is how you work, this is how I work, and if we want to work together, how do we figure out a way to do that? Just sort of accepting that we have, that in many ways, this is a very positive combination. We're both gaining from learning from each other, but then there are certain things that have to be managed. It's not enough to just be like, "Well, obviously, it's more efficient if everybody just writes everything down on the calendar." I don't know why you can't do that.

• 48:50Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, that's a recipe for disaster.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Right, it is. But, I mean, how many people have had that conversation? A hundred million times, you know?

• 48:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it requires a little bit of awareness

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:59Rich Roll?

  and consciousness and not just communication, but the right kind of communication and the right intention, the right delivery, like, you know, there's a lot that gets packed into that so that you can make it work. And it's just something that we've learned to be able to accommodate.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  I have a friend who's married to a rebel and she said, "I finally realized that the less I ask for, the more I get." And I thought, "Wow, that's a lot of, that's a lot of experience."

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  So she's the obliger.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  She's an obliger.

• 49:27Rich Roll?

  Obliger, gotcha.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Married to a rebel.

• 49:29Rich Roll?

  All right. So me as an upholder, like, here's my thing. Very self motivated.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  You know, when I, it takes me a long time to kind of inch up on a, on a goal or a project. And it takes me a long time to, um, you know, become immersed in that. But once I'm in, I'm like all in. And I don't need anybody to like motivate me. I need none of that.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  But see, and that's, you're pointing out something that's very typical of upholders, which is they often, they don't jump in to expect, inner expectations because they know once they commit to it, they will commit. So often they will take their time and think like, well, do I really want to do this? Because once I say I'm in, I'm in.

• 50:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  So they're very thoughtful about it often. They don't lightly do it.

• 50:12Rich Roll?

  But I, I, I think it's sometimes procrastination. Or maybe I'm just ruminating on it. Like a perfect example, I have a book deadline on Thursday.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 50:21Rich Roll?

  I had like, I'm so happy to be out of the writing room right now.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Okay.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  This is my big moment for the day.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  But I know the feeling.

• 50:30Rich Roll?

  It's a second edition on a book I've already written. So it's not like quite as crazy as turning in like, you know, a brand new book, but it's been a lot of work. But I've had like nine months, I don't know, 10 months to do this. And I just didn't, you know, I, I procrastinated. I didn't focus on it. I was focusing on other things. I, you know, I'm well aware that I can't multitask very well. And I was very invested in another thing that I was working on. And I set myself up for, you know, an insane couple of weeks. And I've just been in the hole around the clock. And it took me forever to like, maybe, you know, maybe I needed that external deadline as the motivator. But once I'm in, it's like there's, you can't pull me away from my desk because I'm totally in right now. And I will not be disturbed.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  But did you know that you would meet the deadline?

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  I mean, I think I always have little fears like, oh, this is the time it's not going to happen. But you know, in my experience, I always, I always meet them. Yeah, I always meet them. So I think I knew that I would. I knew it was going to be a very immersive, intense, you know, two week period or whatever. But, but I guess the greater point that I'm getting at is this distinction between, okay, so I, so I have this, you know, you know, strong internal motivator impulse. And, and I don't really need, you know, the external world to push me. And in fact, I find that annoying in most cases. But I'm also, you know, when it comes to external, external, I keep wanting to say motivation, it's not motivation, it's what's the word you're using?

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Expectation.

• 52:01Rich Roll?

  Expectation. That, that I end up being a bit of a people pleaser. And I'm not great about sending, setting boundaries around that. And that's where I get into trouble. Because I will commit, or I'll make a commitment to somebody that even in my heart of hearts, I know I'm probably not going to be able to fulfill. And then rather than being clear and just saying, look, I can't do that, or, or as it notches up upon the arrival date of whatever that thing is to say, it's not going to happen. Like, I, I just delay dealing with it, delay dealing with it. And then it becomes a big problem. And it gets me into trouble with people.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  So, can I make a suggestion?

• 52:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, please.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So always when you're, when you, when you're struggling with something, try to harness the strengths of your tendency. So one of the things about upholders is that inner expectations can be met only if they're clearly articulated. And a lot of times when upholders get into trouble is when they haven't clearly articulated an inner expectation, because outer expectations are often extremely clearly articulated. Like, people are marching around saying what they want all the time. But so if you feel like that's happening, you might say like, well, let me sit down and think about, well, what's really important to me? How do I really want to be spending my time? What are the expectations that I put on myself? Because the clearer that is, the more that will counterbalance outer expectations. I mean, this is why, like, if you're the parent of either an obliger

• 53:23Speaker 01

  child or an upholder child, you want to help Help the child understand what are the inner expectations. So if it's an obliger child, you want to help them create that or accountability for it. But even for an upholder child, it's like, yeah, you might be happy that your child is just doing what you say and what the teacher says, but what does that child want for himself or herself? Help them understand, well, what is it that you like to do? What is it that you want to do? I get that you're doing what others want to do, but if you decide for yourself what you want to do, you're going to be able to do that. So let's take, let's make sure that you understand that. And that's just as true for adults. Once, if you really clearly have it in mind, you know, I need to have an hour to read novels every day. I just have to have that hour to myself. Once you make that decision, you can stick to it.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Upholders are great at that, but you have to have that thought because if you don't, it's not going to just, it doesn't happen if it's not articulated. So, so really think in your mind, what do you want for yourself?

• 54:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's helpful, but I, I think we can't really have this conversation without talking about, you know, the emotional scars that we all carry around and, and, you know, what that landscape looks like because I have self-awareness that, you know, I have insecurities and I want people to like me. And so that's why I, that motivates that behavior that gets me into trouble because it's a lack of self-esteem in some regard that, that remains, you know, where I still need to grow, right?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 54:46Rich Roll?

  So unless you are willing to roll up your sleeves and get into that, that's going to, that, that, that thing is going to persist.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  No, that's exactly right. And, you know, I was saying how earlier, how you could have 50 upholders and they'd all be very different. And like, one of the things where people are very different is anxiety. Like, how anxious are you? That makes a big difference. How much social anxiety do you have? How much, how important is it to you to fit in? Like, somebody was saying to me, like, well, obligers act that way because they want to fit in. I'm like, no, not all obligers want to fit in. A lot of obligers want to fit in. A lot of obligers don't really care about fitting in, but like, that's an important part of your personality. Or like, do you feel, do you have insecurity? Do you have anxiety? That's going to play into your tendency. That's going to, exactly right. That's going to influence its expression because that's just part of who you are. You're right. And it's like, just thinking about your tendency isn't going to fix everything else about your personality because you have to think about all these things. You're exactly right. This kind of deep

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Broad self-knowledge is the great task of our lives. Because you're right, you just like, you have to, you have to grapple with that.

• 55:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and beyond the self-knowledge, the actions that, that, you know, are required to, you know, reconfigure how you're living. So, you know, having self-awareness about your tendencies is one thing. Then, you know, creating structure in your life-

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:59Rich Roll?

  -that will serve the positive aspects of that and minimize the, the negative, you know, outcomes is important.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:05Rich Roll?

  But then it goes, you know, it doesn't end.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:07Rich Roll?

  It's like, okay.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Oh, it keeps going.

• 56:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no magic answer, unfortunately. It's like, you still have to do the work to get there.

• 56:24Rich Roll?

  I'm also interested in how this works when you have somebody who is dealing with addiction. You know, I'm, I'm in recovery for a long time. That's a big part, you know, of, of my story and my struggle and all that kind of stuff. And it definitely influences, you know, a lot. It's the prism through which I, I see the world. It informs everything, right? So if somebody, you know, regardless of whatever tendency, you know, whatever category of, of tendencies someone might find themselves, if they're clouded, you know, if their perception is clouded by the haze of, of addiction, whether to a behavior or substance or, you know, whatever it is, that's going to derail, you know, the, the predictability of their behavior.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  But I think often, um, people can think about their tendency in thinking about how they might fight addiction if they're trying to sort of get out of it. So for like, let's say you're a rebel and let's say you're addicted to smoking, just to pick a very common thing. So rebels really value choice and freedom. That's, and they want to be treated their authentic self. That to them is their highest value. So if you say to a rebel, "Well, you, you promised me you'd quit smoking. You have to quit smoking. Look at all this research about why you should quit smoking. You're setting a bad example for our kids if you don't quit smoking." You, you know, you have to quit smoking. It's like, "I don't have to quit smoking." Right? You're igniting that spirit of resistance. But let's say, but let's say you're a rebel. You could say, you know- Do you want to be free from addiction? You're chained to nicotine.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  You know, the big tobacco companies have you right where they want you. You're pouring money into their pockets. You know, you go to an airport, you go to a restaurant, they're telling you where you can stand and where you can sit. You know, I don't know that somebody like you can quit smoking. You've been stuck so long, I don't know if you can get free. But I've seen you make big changes before. When you make up your mind to do something, I've seen you do some crazy stuff. If you ever decide you want to quit, I don't know, maybe you could quit. It's like, okay, that's like-

• 58:24Rich Roll?

  When you know the button, you know how to, yeah, it's like you know what, how to push that button in that person. It was very targeted messaging, intended to provoke a very certain, particular kind of person.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Because it's appealing to their deep, to their deep sense of like who they want to be. So, take Questioner then. So, Questioners, you might be, because my father told me about how he quit smoking. He's a Questioner, how he quit smoking many years ago. So, you might think with a Questioner, "Oh, I'm going to give them all this information about health." I mean, there's overwhelming research about why you should quit smoking for your health. But let's say that's not working, right? Okay, you're like, "Well, I'm giving them all this information, I'm telling them why it's important that they quit." And yet, they're oblivious to it. So, try a different, try a different argument. So, when my father quit smoking, the way he did it was, he figured out how much money he was spending on cigarettes. And then he figured out, like, over a month, over a year, how much would he save? And then if he invested it, and he got a standard rate of return, how much money would he make? And every time he felt like quitting smoking, he ran the numbers. And he was like, "Oh, my gosh, it's so much money, I want the money."

• 59:19Speaker 01

  So, then he quit because it was more efficient, like, it made more sense for him to have them. So, he found a different way to tap into like, sort of, the, the information, the research, you know, that, that aspect of questioning. And you know, for an obliger, I have talked to people who have been addicted to so many things, and it's like, and I had, I had a friend who's a doctor, and he worked with a very high-risk population, and he said to me, "You know, I've seen people quit stuff that I thought they could never quit, and they did it overnight." And I'm like, "How? What's the secret?" And he goes, "You know, you can guess, what is it?" And I was like, "I don't know, what is it?" He says- No, pregnant.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, pregnant, when people are pregnant.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Pregnant. He said it doesn't always work, but he said, I have seen people quit stuff that they swore to me that they could not quit, because they're like, now I have to quit. So, not that that's always going to work for somebody, but it's like, that is something that, like, now someone else is completely involved in this, for some people, that's going to be enough, you know. And so, I think, I think you're absolutely right. Addiction is a terrible challenge. It's a huge challenge. But I think that thinking about the tendencies can sometimes suggest avenues, and it can also show you why certain messages aren't working. You know, if you keep saying to a rebel, "You have to, you have to, you have to," they're going to keep saying, "You're not the boss of me." You know, if you remind

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  them, "Hey, you're a healthy, energetic, athletic person," like, right? Aren't you? You've always been that way. Like, why now are you like this? And they're like, "Wait, I am a healthy, energetic, athletic person who's always taking good care of my body." What am I, why? This isn't who I really am.

• 1:01:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that determining the appropriate strategy that is going to connect with that archetype is important. But I think it's, you definitely also have to understand, I'm sure you do, like, that it transcends logic, like, appealing to the logical, like, what is the argument that's going to trigger the logical response? Like, addiction, the rules kind of go out the window. Like, logic doesn't necessarily apply because there is this, you know, this biological compulsion that's driven by, you know, a physical addiction to something, in the case of substances. So, sometimes it's trickier. I mean, for me, it was just, you know, I did just be, and I was, I had to be in so much pain that there was

• 1:01:42Rich Roll?

  just nowhere else to go, you know. And in my experience, that happens, you know, that's a common thing. You know, it's more uncommon that someone wakes up and says, "I can't believe I'm spending all this money on this. I'm done with it," you know. God bless them. I wish that was me.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Well, it's worth a try. Worth a shot. It's like, you know, it's like, you're right. I mean, sometimes you have to just get to that point. But... It's nice to have something to try.

• 1:02:07Rich Roll?

  Of course. No, I think it's really helpful and instructive to understand like, "Look, this line of questioning, or your approach with this person, or with yourself, is not doing you any favors."

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah. Well, part of it is, I think, people are like, "Well, this is what should work, so I'm just gonna keep doing it, and doing it, and doing it, even if it doesn't work." And it's like, no, there's a lot of different ways that we can think about this. If something's not working, let's move on and try something else. Because you're right, maybe there's, maybe nothing's gonna work. Nothing's gonna push that button until you get to that point. Hey, and some people never get to that point.

• 1:02:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  They never, they never, you know? And...

• 1:02:41Rich Roll?

  I think also, like, we're all addicts on some, at some point on the spectrum to something. You know, we all have obsessive tendencies, or even if they're muted, and really not that invasive in our life. Like, we all are sort of, we kind of gravitate towards things we know aren't so good.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, even if it's like World of Warcraft, or, yeah.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, whatever it is, right? And like, developing an awareness around those things, and saying, "Well, how can I use, you know, my, you know, how can I think about my tendency to perhaps approach that thing that I know I should let go of, but I don't really want to, because isn't it harmless?"

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:18Rich Roll?

  And, you know, and the like.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the thing that you keep coming back to is self-awareness. And I really think that that's, that's absolutely correct. I think that that's where everything has to begin, is like, "What are you doing, and why?" Like, what are you doing? Like, are you spending hours and hours and hours a day watching cable news? Like, you need to know that, and then you can think about it.

• 1:03:37Rich Roll?

  Who are you talking to specifically?

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  But, you know, it's all about just sort of, like, self-awareness and mindfulness. And then, and then you can think about whether you would want your, if your life could be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative, if you made changes. But if you're not even aware of what you're actually doing, which is super easy. Like, I say this as somebody who's like, the least mindful person in the world. It's very easy to really be very disconnected from who you are, what you want. It's very easy to be led to, "Who do you think you are? Who do other people want you to be? Who do you expect yourself to be? Who do you wish you were?"

• 1:04:15Rich Roll?

  It's never...

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  It's distracting.

• 1:04:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think it's never been easier to adopt that mindset, because...

• 1:04:24Rich Roll?

  You know, we are, it's very easy to live reactive to the world around you. Especially when you have a phone that can entertain you and the prospect of being bored is now, you know, something of the past. We can constantly just be ping ponging off the stimuli that we're incessantly exposing ourselves to, whether it's through television or Netflix or billboards that we see when we're driving and of course our cell phone, all these things, right? And all of these things move us away from, from, you know, even thinking about, pondering, let alone cultivating that sense of self-awareness. And that's the one thing that's keeping, I think, in my opinion, I'm interested in what you think, that's keeping people stuck. Like you have to start there before you can then go, okay, well, this is my tendency.

• 1:05:09Rich Roll?

  Now what do I do about it?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:11Rich Roll?

  Right? There has to be some base level of commitment to at least like trying to like probe yourself a little bit.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's interesting because some people are very uneasy with the idea that there's like these four categories and that you sort of fit into a category and there's like, there's a word attached to that. And I've heard people say that if you define yourself, you confine yourself. But I feel like-

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  Those are rebels.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. But I think that vocabulary is helpful or like patterns are helpful in that they help illuminate hidden aspects of your nature or hidden patterns in like what's worked for you and what hasn't worked for you. Because it is hard to know ourselves because we are so distracted by all this stuff. And so sometimes if you're like, and then also it's easier to understand other people because you're like, well, I don't understand why somebody's behaving the way that they're. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, oh, well, maybe it makes sense to them because they fit into this large category of people. So it's just sort of a shortcut of understanding, but it's not meant to circumvent the process of self-knowledge because like you say, it's very easy to be distracted from that, but

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  in the end, it's, it's just, it has to be grappled with.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  Of course. So do you walk around now like trying to determine, everybody that you encounter in the elevator in Starbucks, you know, is it, what kind of person is this?

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  I do, or like I'll be watching Game of Thrones and I'm like, I had a long conversation with my sister about like, what is Cersei's tendency? I don't think you can tell from the show, but some people you can really tell. You know, like Stannis Baratheon is obviously an upholder. And so it's, yeah, so, and I'll be talking to people and I will often be like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, like I'm getting a strong sense of what you are. Yeah, yeah. So that's fun for me. But that helps you learn how to communicate with that person. Oh, 100%. And so I have a couple of people that I work with who are rebels and I absolutely am always like, when you have the time and the inclination, if this works for you, this is why I think this might be a good idea, but totally up to you. And I've also, like, with the obligers, it's like, I, as an, as an upholsterer, I don't know if you've experienced

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  this, but sometimes with the upholsters, because we readily resist outer and inner expectations if they conflict with what we want to do, we're sometimes too demanding because we're just like, well, if you don't want to do it, just tell me, just push back. But obligers find it hard to push back. And I've learned, like, one of the things that I was doing, and it literally never crossed my mind. It wasn't like I had decided that this was okay. It never occurred to me to question whether it was okay, was to send work emails over the weekend. I was just like, well, answer, answer over the weekend or not. I do that all the time. Yeah, do whatever you want. Like, I don't care. Like, wait till Monday, do it on Saturday, whatever works for you. I don't care. But like, it's on my mind. I want to just like, get it off my plate. Finally, I realized, like, for an obliger, that feels like an expectation that has to be met. And if I'm spending a lot of emails to somebody who feels

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  resentful, that's, that could blow up. So what I learned to do was to use delay delivery. And when I know somebody is an obliger, or when I'm not sure, I use delay delivery and have it go like 7:00 a.m. Monday morning. I didn't even know there was such a thing. I didn't either until like six months ago. Yes, see, this is the thing, because in a upholsterer, you're like, well, do it or don't do it. It's up to you. You set your, you set it for yourself. I do that all the time. But you, but that's not realistic. Like, that is just not the way to work most effectively with other people. And it's really helped me to see how I wasn't setting up the situations to be successful. Now, one of the, my, my sister and I have a podcast, Happier with

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Gretchen Rubin, and she's an obliger. And it's been really helpful for me to have her say to me like, hey, that's not everyone's experience. Or, hey, you know, you feel, you sound kind of like a killjoy when you say that. Or, hey, you're a little bit nuts, you know? Because she's, she has a different perspective from me. And so that's one of the things that's fun about talking to her is I realized, like, Okay, like this work email thing, because I said to her, well, do you think this is like something that I really need to tackle? And she said, yes, absolutely. You should use delay delivery. Don't send all these emails over there. It's like, well, okay.

• 1:09:13Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna start doing that.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very easy.

• 1:09:16Rich Roll?

  Here's one more for you from something that I'm trying to work through myself is traditionally I've been kind of a lone wolf. Like I kind of, I like my solitary time. I, you know, I like to write by myself. I like to go on long runs by myself, you know, like I like that. I like being alone and I like being self-reliant. And I'm in a position now where I've had to let go of a lot of that and bring people in to help me in order to continue to, you know, grow what I'm doing. And it's been good, but it's been bumpy because it's uncomfortable for me.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yes, it's hard to delegate.

• 1:09:52Rich Roll?

  And this is only like increasing a little bit more. And so it's causing me to have to confront that. Like I have to learn to let go of that a little bit. Like I can have boundaries and all that. That's all fine. But on some level, like I have to loosen up about this if I want to, you know, achieve my goals and grow what I'm doing to the extent that I think I'm capable of doing. Like, is that something that you have?

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I know exactly. I have the feeling. So I think there's two things going on. One is that you have a high need for restorative solitude, which I completely identify with because I need a tremendous amount of solitude myself. I need to have time by myself. So I would say to you, you need, it sounds like you have a high need for that. So you need to build that into your schedule. Like, when are you getting that restorative solitude? The issue with working with other people is that upholders often are reluctant to delegate because they don't trust that other people will do as good a job as they would, which often they won't because upholders are really good at meeting outer and inner expectations. So they are good at that, you know? And so part of it is learning to say to yourself, People might have different standards. People may let me down. I can only control so much.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  I have to just trust that the people around me are going to do their best. I have to create systems of accountability. I need to, maybe I need to answer more questions than I think is necessary. Maybe I need to give people freedom in the way that they execute because of their tendency. But then in the end, remind yourself, if I want to meet these outer and inner expectations, I have to expand. And I've gone through this exactly. I know exactly what you're talking about. Because you're just like, in the end, isn't it just faster and easier if I do it for myself? Because then I know it's done perfectly and I know that it'll get done on time. Because I, but it's like- And then you can just stay very small in your little room. Then you stay, exactly. And so again, for upholders, it's like articulate that inner expectation. If I want to, if I want to grow, I have to allow others to help.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Which means that I have to delegate and I have to let others do work. And I can't do work. I can't, I can't do that work for them. And it's, it is very hard for upholders. And that's something that comes up in the workplace a lot with upholder bosses, is they don't delegate sufficiently. Or they want, they're too much, they're too micromanaging. So it is, but I think that the restorative solitude is related, but it could be separate. So you could be feeling maybe a little bit panicky because you feel like you're like, there's too many, there's all these people in your life. They're crowding out your time for yourself and they're also needing your trust. And that's a lot to go on at one time. And they're also moving you forward. No, it's fantastic. It's necessary. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  It's exciting, it's empowering, but there are the, but you need to think about, okay, well, as I'm doing this, as I'm making this change, I have to think about how I'm going to think through what I need. Both as part of my tendency, my upholder tendency, and then other parts of my nature, which is like my need for, my need for kind of contemplative solitude.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's super helpful. I mean, I have, I have been doing that and I have been, you know, trying to, you know, let go and do all that kind of stuff. And I think part of it for me has also been,

• 1:12:53Rich Roll?

  like, detaching a little bit more from expectations. Like, is it really that important?

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Rich Roll?

  That it be exactly the way that I would do, you know what I mean?

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Okay, can I tell you?

• 1:13:02Rich Roll?

  This is not that important.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Can I tell you?

• 1:13:04Rich Roll?

  And the more I can like,

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Rich Roll?

  remind myself of that, then it's cool.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Can I tell you an exact example where I went through this very thing?

• 1:13:11Rich Roll?

  Yes, please.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Okay, so I just did this gigantic blog redesign, which is like, the, it is such a difficult, I don't know if you've done this, but it's a hugely difficult task. And it's complex. There's many, many people, at least with mine, I have this giant site that has like, you know, almost, you know, like a decade's worth of content. It's, there's lots of moving pieces. It's very, it's very complex. I've worked with the same team. Now, this is the, the third time that I've worked with them. And I have absolute trust in them. So I think they're great. And when I have done redesigns in the past, I've spent a lot of time really thinking about every decision, like, oh, well, what about this? And maybe this is like a little bit too small, or a little bit too big, or maybe that's a little bit squished, or maybe I want to have this slightly different thing. And then I said, you know, this phrase that you hear, like,

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  you're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And I had to say to myself, let go, trust them, they're experts. I could spend hours and hours and hours, like, making tiny differences that will make,

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  The kern.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  No, that is, I mean, you're reading my mind. Or I could just say, I'm going to trust to their expertise. I'm going to like, take a big look at it, but I'm not going to drive myself crazy looking at every single decision, because in the end, I need to move forward with bigger things and the type, the, the, the, the typeface on this like, you know, Yeah, right. Like,

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  you just, it's like, not a good use of your time and your energy. You need to like, trust to others, let go of the need to like, make everything exactly the way you would want it. Because in the end, you just get used to it anyway. I mean, and that's one of the things I've learned. It's like, a lot of things, this is one of my secrets of adulthood. Most decisions don't require extensive research. You don't have to think, like, everything doesn't, like, they're thinking. Thinking through, and that's why they're who they are. They're thinking very carefully about all this stuff. They're bringing way more expertise to it than I am. So then I'm weighing it at the last minute. I think that yellow is a little bit too acid. It's like, whatever. You know what I mean? Move on. So, but it's hard, right?

• 1:15:07Rich Roll?

  It's hard because You know, you could Actually, I understand it.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:10Rich Roll?

  You know, and it's been repeatedly reminded, you know, people saying, come on, man, this is what you gotta do. You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know. And then I keep doing the same thing. So it's about like taking that and going, okay, well, how am I modifying my behavior? How am I going to handle this situation differently? How am I going to create a dynamic that I can let these people do the best work? And allow them to flourish and give them the space, but also give them the feedback and let go. So I can focus on what's important.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Well, and I think part of it is thinking like, well, what, what is it that only I can do? Like, what is my unique?

• 1:15:39Rich Roll?

  That's what you should be doing.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  That's what I should be doing. But deciding whether that should be 12 point or 14 point, like in the right sidebar, it's like, somebody else I can trust.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  But you don't understand.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. See, but, but it was like, I had to really mindfully say to myself,

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  let, let them do their thing and I will like check it at a broad level. But the things that are uniquely mine, I will spend hours and hours and hours like with the tiny, like my, how many times did I edit my book? A million bazillion times. I mean, I edited it countless times, but that's something that only I can do. Only I can write that book.

• 1:16:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So it's fine for you to go down the rabbit hole on that.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly. But you're right. It's hard when you're like, hmm, maybe I should just do everything myself. It's like, okay, that's not gonna work.

• 1:16:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So all of these, you know, everything that we've been talking about, developing self-awareness and getting a greater understanding of how these, you know, tendencies play out in our life and how we communicate with the people around us, lead us towards living more productively, more efficiently, hopefully more consciously and more aware. And, and really where that road leads is to a life that is more

• 1:16:55Rich Roll?

  Satisfying, right?

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:57Rich Roll?

  And so, we can't have this conversation without talking about happiness a little bit.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Oh, my favorite subject.

• 1:17:02Rich Roll?

  So, how does this play into the greater scheme of what we're all trying to, you know, more express in our lives or experience?

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I think you're right. The reason that this stuff matters is like, is it gonna help you be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? And, um, but, and the thing that's funny, ever since I wrote The Happiness Project, one of the things that really struck me is that often, it's not that people don't know what would make them happier. They know perfectly well what would make them happier. They would be happier if they exercised. They would be happier if they spent more time with their friends. They would be happier if they got more sleep. They would be happier if they quit sugar. They would be happier if they went for a run in the park with their dog every morning, whatever it is. So, the question is, why aren't they? And that's where the frustration comes in, because people will be like, "Well, I know that would make me happier, and yet I'm not doing it." That's where the four tendencies can come into play. So, if there's something that's frustrating you, um, if you're thinking, "Well, I would

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  be happier if I did this," you know, if you're doing it already, well, then, great. It's working for you fine. But if you're running into, uh, like, a stumbling block, well, maybe the tendencies will help you figure out how you can overcome that.

• 1:18:05Rich Roll?

  And how do you specifically define and think about happiness?

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Well, that's very interesting, because, and I think you will identify with this as a former lawyer. So, as a lawyer, I have fond memories of spending an entire semester arguing about the definition of contract. And if anything, the definition of happiness is more elusive. There are something like 15 or 17 academic definitions of happiness, and I, so I never define it. I'm like, whatever you think, it's like, as a lay person, like, if you're a scientist doing research, you have to be very specific about what you mean, but I think for a lay person, if the term happiness is loose enough, for, if you think of it's peace, or contentment, or bliss, or joy, or satisfaction, whatever it is for you, it's, so, for me, it's less about what is it to be happy? What is happiness is less important than how can you be happier?

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  It's all about moving in the right direction, in whatever that would be for you. Um, because I think if you think to yourself, "Well, if I did this, would I be happier in a month? Would this make me happier?" People have a very clear sense of that, but if you said, "What is happiness?" Happiness, all of a sudden, everything becomes extremely confusing.

• 1:19:09Rich Roll?

  But I think it's also worth pointing out that people are confused about what they think is gonna make them happy. I mean, people think this, the new, the promotion, or the new car, or the thing is gonna serve that end. And it does for that, you know, for five minutes, and then they're, they realize like, they're still them.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  So how do you think about that aspect of it?

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Well, you're pointing out something very important, because what you want is not like momentary pleasure, but you want a lifetime of happiness. And so it's sort of like, well, you could use your money to buy a new pair of boots, or you could buy your money to buy a trip to France. Like, what's more likely to pay off? Well, probably the trip to France is gonna be more fun than just like another pair of shoes. Now, it's interesting, because one of the things people talk about in the research a lot is this idea that experiences bring more happiness than objects. But the problem, I think, with that is that often, the line between a possession and an experience is hard to draw. So for instance, is a camera an experience or a possession?

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Is a dining room table an experience or a possession? If having a dining room table means that you can have your friends over for dinner parties, and you're like, oh my gosh, now I can do this. Is a dog a possession or an experience? You know, so sometimes it's hard to tell, and it really depends, like for one person-

• 1:20:26Rich Roll?

  You have to contextualize that person's relationship with it to understand that.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:20:30Rich Roll?

  I mean, an iPhone is an experience as much as it is, you know, depending upon your use, your relationship with that use.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Exactly, or even something as simple as like knives. If you bought a, let's say you bought a fancy set of knives. Well, for one person, it's just like, kind of a trophy thing that they would have in their kitchen, and they would never use it. It's just like, oh, look, I have this fancy set of knives, like, aren't I cool? But then for somebody who's like a real cook, who cooks every day, excellent tools would make work a joy. And they would use the, that would be like the best money they ever spent, because they're like, oh my gosh, I have this most amazing set of knives, and I use them all the time. And it's like, I love cooking so much more. So it's sort of like, yeah, do you, do you have this fancy thing because you just want some fancy thing? Or is it, does it actually make a difference to you because you really use it? You know, like your cell, like your cellphone, for most people, it's like a major tool of their lives. So it's, it's important.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Or I always think like your glasses, you know, because I'm like, wear contact lenses all the time. But when I was wearing glasses, I'm like, I wear them every single day, all the time. If there's ever anything I'm gonna spend money on, it should be my glasses, because they are literally, I mean, I wear them-

• 1:21:32Rich Roll?

  It's your freaking face.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Every single moment of every single day, you know? And now, same thing with contact lenses. I'm like, whatever contact lenses fit, I will get because they just dominate my experience. Now, could I buy? So it makes, you know, so that's part of it is thinking about like, well, why are you, why are you making this decision? Is it meant to just be an empty signal to other people? Or is this something that's really going to be something that's going to change your own experience of the world?

• 1:22:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That being said, though, you're, you know, you've written extensively about decluttering, uncluttering. So, you know, you're down with the minimalist vibe or the ethos, you know, that lurks beneath that.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Well, but here's an interesting thing, how people are different. Some people are simplicity lovers and some people are abundance lovers. So simplicity lovers like less. They want to get, they like clear shelves, they like bare surfaces, they don't like a lot of buzz, they don't like a lot of profusion. But abundance lovers, they like stuff, they like stuff on the walls, they like choices, they like collections, they like things around. So I don't think that it's like minimalism brings happiness. It's like, well, minimalism can bring happiness to you, if that's what you like. But for some people, it's like, they love having a bunch of stuff on the walls and like a bunch of stuff on the tables. And that to them feels creative and energizing. What, I mean clutter is, I think, is things that you don't use, you don't need, and you don't love. So I think some people have a capacity to love and use and appreciate lots of things.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  And some people, it's like, I just want nothing on my, like, I have an empty shelf, which I'm like, I just love my empty shelf because I just want nothing on it. I don't have a very high tolerance for stuff and I don't appreciate stuff very much. But in a way, I think that my life is more cramped and I, I do see that some people just, they appreciate the beauty of the world and the beauty of objects. And for them, having a table full of furniture would be beautiful and something that they would appreciate and love. Is that, are they, am I better than they are? Are they better than I am? It's just we're different.

• 1:23:30Rich Roll?

  How do you think about where things like a sense of purpose and this idea that gets thrown around, you know, that you should be living your life, you're living a life of passion, you should be passionate about what you do. Like, how do you?

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  I feel like that's a lot. I feel like a lot of people get kind of overwhelmed by that idea of passion.

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  I think it's, it can be almost shame provoking.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  Because it's like, well, I don't feel like I'm supposed to be passionate and like, I'm not. And so like, I'm doing something wrong.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, I almost feel like my own example reinforces that idea because I really am the example of somebody who like, was just overwhelmed with an idea and was almost felt compelled to follow it beyond all reason. And it turned out great. So people are like, oh, see, you're a proof that like a life, living a life of passion. But I'm like, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't say that that's always going to work for everybody, you know? It can make people feel like there's something wrong with them.

• 1:24:31Rich Roll?

  But I think finding something that, that, that, that gives your life a sense of personal meaning and thus in turn infuses it with a purposefulness is important. I think that's distinct from passion.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  And I think everybody has the capacity to kind of figure out first steps with that. It's not like a lightning, you know, bolt kind of thing, for most people at least. But, but I think that is important. I think that is, you know, fundamentally an aspect of, of, you know, trying to bring greater satisfaction into your life experience, would you think?

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Well, when I was writing the Happiness Project, I was trying, instead of defining happiness, I was like, okay, what, what is, how do you think about having a happy life? What are the aspects of it? So the first two are obvious. So you want to have more of feeling good. So you want to have more love, more enthusiasm, more fun. And you want to have less feeling bad. So you want less boredom, less anger, less guilt, less remorse.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  So you want more of the things that make you feel good, you want less of the things that make you feel bad. Then the next two are a little bit more complicated. One, so you want feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right. So feeling right is feeling like your life is in accordance with your values. And the thing is, feeling right doesn't always make you feel good. So like, it might be a tremendous pain for you to do the recycling, and you're like, "Every single time I deal with my recycling, it's a tremendous pain. It does not make me feel good, but it makes me feel right, because it's a way of living in accordance with my values." Or like, one of the things that they often say in the happiness research is, they point out the fact that, which is very true, that a long commute, you know, you're a guy who lives in LA, a long commute is something that makes people unhappy every single day. You don't adjust to it, it's a real burden on happiness. So their answer is, "Live closer to your jobs, you don't have a long commute."

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  But the fact is, most people have a long commute because like, maybe they want their children to be in a certain school district, or they want their children to like, have a big yard to play in. So it's not like they don't realize that, they're just deciding like, in order to be a certain kind of parent, I choose to do something to feel right, even though it's not gonna make me feel good. So there's feeling good, feeling, uh, feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. And this is the idea that we're happier when we're growing, when we're learning something, when we're teaching something, when we're making something better, when we're helping someone, when somehow, in some aspect of our life, we're making a positive change in the world. Whether with ourselves, like, "Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get back into playing the cello as an adult," or "I'm gonna volunteer at this nonprofit and help them like, figure

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  out how to balance their books," or "I'm gonna, you know, um, clean my closet." I mean, whatever, that atmosphere of growth can be small, and it can be huge, but I think if you don't have an aspect of growth in your life, you can feel very stagnant. Um, and like, creativity brings a feeling of growth, volunteering brings a feeling of growth, um, you know, doing things where you feel like you're helping the world, um, bring, and I think if you think about those four aspects, um, they don't always make you feel good, they don't always, you're not always like, skipping down the street because of these things.

• 1:27:34Rich Roll?

  No, it can be a pain in the ass.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yes! No, like, learning to do something new can make you feel dumb, resentful, uh, insecure, incompetent, it's like, it's hard. Um, but that's where you get the feeling of growth, and ultimately, the feeling of growth is what, is, is, is a, is a big element of happiness, yeah. So I think all these things fit together.

• 1:27:53Rich Roll?

  There's something magical about stepping outside your own little world and, and investing yourself in, in... The well-being of others that are that are less fortunate that that really can just change your not only your perspective, but you know how you feel about yourself and your place in the world. And, you know, for me, that didn't come easy or natural. It's not a default state, but you know, I've I've learned to embrace that. And it's amazing like how much, you know, I don't know, I just like, I'm just a happier person doing that, more contented, a more fulfilled person with a sense of direction and purpose that you know, I previously lacked.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:31Rich Roll?

  But I also like to go, you know, do crazy things like jump in the freezing water in the Baltic Sea and do wild race, you know, it's like stuff that people, you know, would think, why are you doing that? And that makes me feel it's difficult.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:45Rich Roll?

  Preparation for doing it is difficult. The the participation in doing it is difficult, but it makes me feel alive. You know, it gives me this deep sense of satisfaction and happiness that I can't even articulate.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:58Rich Roll?

  I don't know why that is.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  Sort of two aspects of atmosphere growth, one out of directed and then one sort of like challenging yourself, pushing yourself.

• 1:29:06Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I don't know. Well, we got to wrap this up, but I think, you know, a nice way to kind of bring it around and put a cap on it is to, you know, perhaps leave the listener with with a little, you know, for somebody who's listening, who who does feel stuck and and they're struggling and, you know, maybe they don't know what their tendency is, but they will soon because they're going to take it.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:31Rich Roll?

  But but they're they just have this sense of paralysis or incapacity to create inertia and a new direction. You know, what is the, you know, what is the, what is the thing that you say to that person to kind of help them maybe shake up how they're perceiving themselves and?

• 1:29:51Rich Roll?

  Get moving.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Well, don't accept what other people tell you should work for you. If you're trying something and it's not working, or if you feel stuck, don't assume that it's your, that it's because you, there's something wrong with you. You lack self-control, you lack willpower, you don't, you are insecure, you have no self-esteem, you can't put yourself first, all these things. Just think, let me just think about myself. When have I succeeded in the past? What feels right to me? No matter what other people are telling me I should do. What feels right for me? Because a lot of times, that's, that's what gets people unstuck is when they, they stop trying to do something that's not suited to them and they try something else. Because there's no one right way. There's no magic solution.

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  There's no BuzzFeed list of the, you know.

• 1:30:39Rich Roll?

  Ballistical.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I'm like, it just depends.

• 1:30:42Rich Roll?

  I think most people don't even know, but so many people don't even know. You know, they're like, I don't know what I, I don't know.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Rich Roll?

  You know, that, back to that disconnection.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's what I do in all my writing is I try to sort of point out ways that you can think about yourself and to say like, are you a morning person or a night person? Are you an abstainer or a moderator? Are you a simplicity lover or an abundance lover? You know, I mean, there's like a million ways that people are like each other and different from each other. And I think when people are stuck, it's like, I'm gonna get up at 6:00 AM and go for a run every day. And every day I'm not gonna do it. And every day I'm gonna sleep through my snooze alarm. And every day I'm gonna vow tomorrow I'm gonna do it. And I'm like, maybe you're a night person and actually you should try running at 4:00 PM and you should try to sleep until 10:00 AM and not try to get up at 6:00 AM anyway. Because you're a night person. And that's largely genetically determined and a function of age. Like, and a lot of people are night people. So, there's no reason that you should be getting up at 6:00 AM.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  If you're at your most energetic later in the day, do it when it's right for you. You're not failing because there's something wrong with you. You're failing because somebody's tried to convince you that there's one right way to do this. And like, there's, there's a lot of ways to do things.

• 1:31:50Rich Roll?

  I think it's amazing that you were able to kind of figure out this crazy Rubin's Cube and come up with these, you know, but here's the thing, like, I'm also left with this, like,

• 1:32:02Rich Roll?

  This, uh, this, what is the emotion? Like, coming to understand that there are these four tendencies and that like, everybody can kind of fall into them, almost makes me feel like, like, it makes me feel like the human race is more like, sort of rudimentary, like, we all want to think, we're original creations, you know, I'm different, I can't be, you know, I'm who I am and I can't be categorized by this. And then to go, actually, everybody pretty much falls into these categories, you know what I mean?

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:30Rich Roll?

  You're like, oh, it's kind of a bummer.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:32Rich Roll?

  But it's also, there's freedom in that, too.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Rich Roll?

  And it's so instructive.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. It is kind of strange when you're like, well, there's four categories and everybody's in one of them. And people are like, there can't just be four. And like, well, there's a million ways that we're like each other and different from each other. But in this way, there really are these very dominant four patterns. But, yeah, I know what you mean. Because in a lot of ways, we're alike, but the differences are very important. And it's like, thinking about that, and what's alike, what's different? It's a puzzle.

• 1:33:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think we did it.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:33:06Rich Roll?

  Thank you.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  So fun to talk to you. Thanks so much for having me on your show.

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  Did we do okay?

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  This is so fun. I feel like we could talk all day long.

• 1:33:13Rich Roll?

  No, it was awesome. Thank you so much, Gretchen. Absolutely delightful to talk to you. Definitely pick up the new book, The Four Tendencies. Check out all her books. You can find her at GretchenRubin.com and @GretchenRubin, basically everywhere, right?

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:33:30Rich Roll?

  Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all that kind of good stuff.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33Rich Roll?

  And are you still touring around and, and doing the book tour thing? Or what's going on right now?

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  I've got the book tour going. I did a recording of Happier with, in here in Los Angeles.

• 1:33:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  It was fine, getting, getting out of, uh...

• 1:33:47Rich Roll?

  That was the other thing, I wanted to talk, we'll have to do it next time, but I wanted to talk to you about your podcasting experience.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Rich Roll?

  So maybe you'll come back.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Excellent. Yes, I'd love to.

• 1:33:56Rich Roll?

  But yeah, the, the podcast, for sure. The podcast is huge.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  It's fun, yeah.

• 1:34:01Rich Roll?

  It's been really great to see, like, you guys sailing in that. That's really awesome.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fun to do it with my...

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  You like doing it?

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, it's fun to do it with my sister, Elizabeth Kraft. So, yeah. Yes, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, for people who like to listen to their, get some happiness vibes through their podcasts.

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  And I assume you have appearances coming up if people want to come in and check you out.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, everything's on Gretchen Rubin.com.

• 1:34:26Rich Roll?

  The brand-new designed website.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  With the appropriate shade of yellow.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Font size, yes. You will appreciate the font size when you visit GretchenRubin.com.

• 1:34:35Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right, that's it, you guys. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Come back and talk to me again sometime?

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Yes, I would love to.

• 1:34:43Rich Roll?

  Thanks, Gretchen. Peace.

• 1:34:58Rich Roll?

  How cool is Gretchen, right? I told you guys, she was amazing. That was packed with so much fascinating information. So definitely pick up her new book, The Four Tendencies. Check out her further writings at GretchenRubin.com. While you're there, please take that Four Tendencies quiz. I'll put the link up in the show notes to where you go exactly for that. I think you'll find it revelatory. Are you an upholder? Are you an obliger? Are you a rebel? Are you a questioner? How does this inform how you perceive your own reality and interact with other people? Also, go to youtube.com/retroll. Check out the video that we made behind the scenes of this experience. I think you guys will enjoy that. And if you would like to support this show and my work,

• 1:35:41Rich Roll?

  share it with your friends and on social media. Leave a review on iTunes. Hit that subscribe button on iTunes. And we have a Patreon for people who want to support my work financially, and thank you to everybody who has done that. If you would like to receive a free, short, weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. It's basically a newsletter, five or six things I came across that I found informative or inspiring. Basically, a couple articles, maybe a podcast I listen to, a book I'm reading, that kind of stuff. No affiliate links. I'm not trying to sell you anything. Just good stuff. If you are interested in that, you can sign up for it by just entering your email address in any of those email capture windows on my website. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today.

• 1:36:24Rich Roll?

  Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production for work on the show notes and the WordPress page. Shawn Patterson for all his graphic wizardry and theme music as always by Analemma. Thanks for the love you guys. See you back here soon. Have a great week. Peace, plants and namaste.