541 Gretchen Rubin: Happiness, Habits and Understanding Human Nature

"Greatness is living up to your aims for yourself." - Gretchen Rubin If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/541 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is episode number 541 with the number one New York Times bestselling author, Gretchen Rubin.

• 0:08Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:34Lewis Howes?

  Donald Miller said, "When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are." And welcome to this episode with the sensational Gretchen Rubin. If you don't know who she is, she is the author of several books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, and Happier at Home. She has an enormous readership, both in print and online, and her books have sold almost 3 million copies worldwide in more than 30 languages. Now, she hosts the popular weekly podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Fast company named Gretchen to its list of the

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  most creative people in business, and she's a member of Oprah's Super Soul 100. She's also a three-time number one New York Times bestselling author. And I'm so excited about our interview today. She's in the Greatness Studio. And some of the big things we talk about are the four tendencies that human beings have with their personality, and how this affects you at home, at work, and in your life. We talk about what these four tendencies are, how you can understand which one you are, and understand what everyone else is around you. We talk about the best way to tell someone how to work with your personality type, why people are the way they are, the four ways people respond to certain expectations.

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

  That and so much more in episode number 541. If you want to watch the full video interview, make sure to check out the full show notes at lewishouse.com/541. There are a lot of great quotes over there on the show notes. Make sure to tweet them out. Tag your friends on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and tag me as well when you're posting this, so I can connect with you on social media and say thank you for listening. All right, guys, I hope you enjoy this one, all about happiness and understanding human nature. Episode number 541 with the one, the only Gretchen Rubin. Welcome back and more to the School of Greatness Podcast. We have the legendary Gretchen Rubin in the house.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  I like being legendary.

• 2:44Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you. Double high five.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Double high five.

• 2:47Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited that you're here. The last time you were on was a couple of years ago. And, uh, but it wasn't in person. It was over Skype, I believe.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm here in your fabulous setup here. Like, in the middle of the gorgeous LA. It's like, just like you read about.

• 3:00Lewis Howes?

  Greatness Headquarters.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Greatness Headquarters, yes. It lives up to it.

• 3:03Lewis Howes?

  Hopefully. We're always trying to improve.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a high bar, but I think you, I think you meet it.

• 3:08Lewis Howes?

  The word is, is a high standard.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  It is.

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  Cause you can't have average stuff. If you're trying to be great.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, you can't have the mediocre.

• 3:16Lewis Howes?

  You can't do it. But, um, you've, you've impacted so many people's lives over the last many years. With all your books, what is this, your sixth book now, seventh book?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  This is actually like my eighth or ninth book. Cause I started writing a lot before, I, I had a lot of books come out before anybody sort of realized it.

• 3:33Lewis Howes?

  Knew about it.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:35Lewis Howes?

  But in here, I think it shows like six previous books. Is that right? These, these six books?

• 3:39Speaker 00

  I hope they listed them all. One, two, three, four, five, six. So this is my...

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  What? They missed up, they messed up all the books that you wrote.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  They missed a book? Oh, my gosh.

• 3:49Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  This is why I don't like seeing finished books.

• 3:52Lewis Howes?

  Oh, trust me, listen, no.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. I cannot believe it.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  Let me show you something.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  I am super annoyed.

• 3:58Lewis Howes?

  Let me show you something.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Oh, my, my, you know what? It's one of my, well, I love all the books that I wrote, but it's 40 Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, which is such a wonderful book that I wrote. Oh, my gosh.

• 4:07Lewis Howes?

  Gretchen's making a note right now. I just made her mad.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  I am, just, yeah, yeah. Let the record reflect that I'm writing myself an irate note.

• 4:13Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna show you this. So when I got my copy, and this is a nice copy.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  See, I don't even like looking at the final copy because you always see something that's wrong and it's too late to fix it.

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  It's the first pages.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  First. It's the first thing you see.

• 4:23Lewis Howes?

  I'll show you this. So.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 4:26Lewis Howes?

  Right when I, right when I opened, I was like, okay, this looks nice, the first page.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  It looks nice.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  The second page, can you, do you notice anything here that usually wouldn't be on this page?

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Your dedication.

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  See, she got it right away.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  The dedication is on the copyright page.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  I've never seen that before. And I was like,

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:46Lewis Howes?

  How do we miss this?

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:48Lewis Howes?

  Because you'd think it's something so simple that would have its own page, right?

• 4:51Speaker 00

  But I'm going to tell you how we're going to reframe this.

• 4:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  To make ourselves happier. So

• 4:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  There is a, there's a belief, and I don't know if it's true, but like that in certain folk cultures, like the Amish or whomever, I've heard it attributed to different cultures, that when people are making something, say they're making a quilt or they're making a piece of furniture, they deliberately introduce a mistake to show that man cannot aspire to the perfection of God. And so this is just how you show that you're acknowledging that nothing can be perfect. And so I think you have something that's not perfect. I have something that's not perfect, and we're going to embrace this. Maybe we'll make it into a little game for our readers.

• 5:29Lewis Howes?

  Find the imperfections in our books.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Okay, find the mistake in the first five pages. Something, something is missing, something is wrong.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  So I brought this to your attention. You didn't know this.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I give you props for being detail oriented, man, because that's like one of my favorite books that I've ever written, and it's not listed there. Oh, my gosh. You know, I think what it was is they didn't list profane waste, which is a very odd, it's like an art essay that I did in collaboration with an artist. And so I think that got dropped. And so I was so busy putting that in that I didn't check to see if all the books were in.

• 5:59Lewis Howes?

  Because you were just like, oh, they forgot this one, and so it's at it. Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  But despite that mistake, it's an amazing book that will change everybody's lives. So that's okay.

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  Which one? That one and this one.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  This one. This one. Yes, yes, yes.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  Why will it change everyone's lives?

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Self-knowledge. I mean, I really think when people know about the four tendencies, they really do, in my vanity, I have to believe that they really do see themselves differently and more clearly. And then they understand other people better, too, and they can see how to set up situations in a way that... Just allows everybody to thrive.

• 6:32Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. Allows them to thrive, but it also gives you like peace of mind and clarity? Or what is it? What's the main thing it does for you?

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Well, part of it, well, it's peace of mind, but it's, and it's also compassion. It's like, I understand, like, I, like, you're struggling with something that's easy for me. Instead of feeling disdain for you, or like, being puzzled or frustrated that you're not following through in a way that would make sense to me, I think, oh, well, somebody else just needs things to be set up in a different way. So let's set up a, oh, set up this situation in a way that is gonna allow you to thrive. The fact that I wouldn't need this to be set up this way, doesn't really matter. It's like, okay, well, you need something different from what I need, so, okay, well, let's just figure that out.

• 7:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and Christine was going over these, these tendencies, and she is the, what do you, the upholder? Obliger.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Obliger. Okay, well, that's the biggest tendency, that's the one that most people fit into, so it makes sense.

• 7:23Lewis Howes?

  She said she's, if, when there's challenges or rules that other people give her, she like, lives up to it, but if she sets her own rules, she's like, eh, I can slide on these things.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  That's a obliger.

• 7:33Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 7:35Lewis Howes?

  She's like, that's me.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  That is the definition of obliger.

• 7:38Lewis Howes?

  And then what am I, Christine? I'm a rebel?

• 7:41Speaker 00

  If somebody asks or tells you to do something, you're very likely to resist?

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm likely to resist, unless I, it's like my idea.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  That's right, see, rebels, rebels can do anything they want to do. So should I go through the, should I go through the framework?

• 7:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  So it has to do with how people respond to expectations. Outer expectations, like a work deadline, or a request from a friend, and, or inner expectations, your own desire to keep a New Year's resolution, your own desire to start, but write a novel in the, in your free time. So upholders readily meet outer and inner expectations. They meet the work deadline, they keep the New Year's resolution without much fuss.

• 8:14Lewis Howes?

  Upholders.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Upholders.

• 8:15Lewis Howes?

  Anything that they set for themselves, or anyone else asks them to do, they do.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 8:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  So like, her, Hermione Granger is like, the most, right now is probably the most famous upholder in the world. Uh, then questioners. Questioners question all expectations, they'll do something if they think it makes sense. So they make everything an inner expectation. If it meets their standard, they will meet it no problem. If it fails their standard, they will resist. They hate anything arbitrary, inefficient, or unjustified. Whenever anybody uses the word arbitrary, it's like a big warning sign, that it's a, it's a big signal that they're a questioner. Then obligers. So this is Christine Obliger. They readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. Like, I had a friend who said, "Oh, well, when I was on a track team, I never missed track practice, so why can't I go running now?" It's like, "Oh, well, when you had a team and a coach waiting for you, you had no trouble showing up. Well, when you're just trying to go running on your own, you struggle."

• 9:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  And then finally rebels. Louis, you're a rebel. So rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. They want to do what they want to do in their own way, in their own time. If you ask or tell them to do something, they're very likely to resist. Typically, they don't even want to tell themselves what to do. Like, they might not say, "I'm not going to sign up for a 10 a.m. spin class on Saturday, because I don't know what I'm going to feel like doing on Saturday."

• 9:26Lewis Howes?

  That's so me. I don't like planning anything.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the thing. Spontaneity.

• 9:29Lewis Howes?

  Wait until the last minute, then I'll plan and commit.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, a lot of spontaneity. Again, like, there's certain things that people say, and you're like, "Mm, that's a tip-off." When anybody's trying to talk about, like, it's important to be spontaneous, I'm like, "I bet you're a rebel."

• 9:41Lewis Howes?

  So someone who likes to schedule out a year in advance, who is that?

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Well, that could be upholders, or questioners, or obligers, though it's very typical of upholders. But the thing about rebels, and I think you're a great example of this, Louis, is they can do anything they want to do. They can do anything they choose to do. You and I are both friends with Chris Gilibow, a brilliant, great guy. He's a rebel. Because once they make up their mind, they can do anything. But the fact that you're telling them to do something is not going to make them do it, and might make them be like, "You know what? You're not the boss of me. I'm not going to do that right now, or I'm not going to do it at all."

• 10:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Because...

• 10:15Lewis Howes?

  It's almost reverse psychology. You tell me I can't do something, then I'm going to rebel against you and say, "You know what? I'm going to show you."

• 10:20Speaker 00

  So, and that, people can use that. So, for instance, let's say you have a rebel in your life, and you want to encourage that person to quit smoking. You wouldn't say, "You have to quit." You wouldn't say, "You should quit." You shouldn't say, "The doctor says you have to quit." You shouldn't say, "You promised me you'd quit."

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  I bet you can't quit, though.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. "Guy like you, you've been smoking 10 years. You're addicted, man."

• 10:40Lewis Howes?

  There's no way you can quit.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  There's no way you can quit. Big Tobacco's got you right where they want you. You're pouring money into their pockets.

• 10:46Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Why even bother?

• 10:48Lewis Howes?

  Don't even try.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  You can't, don't even try.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  Keep smoking for the rest of your life.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, keep smoking.

• 10:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, Big Tobacco, you're the guy they're depending on. Yeah, yeah, you're stuck. You can't quit. Yeah. And then often, they'll do something in their own way, too. Like, doing a typical cessation program, they're like, "No, I'm going to just go hardcore and quit overnight, or I'll have my own system for doing it." So that's

• 11:08Lewis Howes?

  Come up for the process for them that works.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  They want to do it their way.

• 11:11Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. So sometimes you could say, well, sometimes this works for some people or some people like this. And this, I've seen people have success with this and maybe you want to think about this when you're thinking about what would work for you. But then it's just whatever you think, you know, whatever works for you. And you know, I've seen you do amazing things in your time. If you make up your mind that you want to quit, I don't know, maybe you could quit. Because I've seen you do some pretty powerful stuff when that's what you want. So when you make up your mind.

• 11:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  That kind of thing.

• 11:37Lewis Howes?

  Are we born with these tendencies?

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:39Lewis Howes?

  Or are we, we are?

• 11:40Speaker 00

  I think we're, I think they're inborn. I think they're part of our, our personality.

• 11:43Lewis Howes?

  Or is it triggers of things that happened in our childhood?

• 11:46Speaker 00

  I don't think so.

• 11:46Lewis Howes?

  That like make us start resisting and reacting and then we become rebellious or whatever, no?

• 11:51Speaker 00

  I really think that these are inborn. You're not one at 20 and one at 40. You're not one at work and one at home. They're really hardwired into your personality.

• 11:58Lewis Howes?

  You never change. Can you never change from being a questioner, upholder?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Well, okay, so one, so one big question in sort of personality studies is do people change? And I think in my observation, for the most part, most people do not change. Like you recognize the person at maybe eight years old that they would be at 58. Like they're basically the same person.

• 12:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  And I think for those kinds of people, you, you stay within your tendency. With time and experience and wisdom, you might be able to use your tendency to your advantage. Or maybe if you're in a culture, like if you're in a North Korea, being a questioner, you're going to tamp that down. If you're in Silicon Valley, you might get rewarded for it. Every once in a while, there are people who go through truly personality altering events. Maybe it's a severe trauma. It's a brush with death. It's a serious bout of addiction. It's, you know, you go on a, a medication that really fundamentally changes the way your personality comes out. Or something so extraordinary happens to you, like, oh my gosh, you were pretty much a normal person and now you're Diana, Princess of Wales.

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  And that is such an extraordinarily distorting thing to happen to somebody that I think then, then people's tendencies can kind of slip out of place. But I think for the basic person who's more or less the same person that they were.

• 13:15Lewis Howes?

  You're stuck, you're born-

• 13:16Speaker 00

  You're not stuck, you're born with a tendency and you can, yes.

• 13:19Lewis Howes?

  Can people choose to change if they want to? They say, "You know what? I don't like being a rebel, I want to be an upholder."

• 13:25Speaker 00

  So this gets to another big question, which is, can you really change your inborn nature? And the fact is, if you even can, which debatable if you can, it's very, very hard and takes a long time and is an enormous struggle.

• 13:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  But it's super easy to change your circumstances. So what I say about the four tendencies is if there's something you don't like about your tendency, just fix it from the outside. Like figure out, figure out the hack in your circumstances to get you wherever you want to go. So if you're an obliger and you're, so obligers, if they want to meet inner expectations, if they want to meet their own expectations for themselves, what they need is outer accountability. That is the solution that will always work. So if you want to, if you want to read a book, join a book group. If you want to exercise, join an exercise class, or you know, there's a million ways to create outer accountability once you realize it. And sometimes obligers will say to me, "Well, I don't want to have to rely on outer expectations. I want to be able to just have my own inner expectations. I don't want outer accountability."

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  And you won't get anything done.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm just like, "Well, there's a quick, easy way to do this and to get done what you want to get done, or you could spend a lot of time trying to deeply change yourself, which I think seems incredibly frustrating and probably not even possible. So why not do the quick, easy thing? You know? And that's one of the things I like about the four tendencies framework, is that it really does suggest fairly simple solutions to common problems. Once you realize what the issue is, it's like, "Oh, okay, I see, I see how people like me solve problems like this. It's not so hard."

• 14:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What advice do you give for people who don't understand the tendencies? Like, let's say, "I understand these, but you don't."

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 14:56Lewis Howes?

  How am I supposed to connect with you so that you understand my tendency and what I'm going to need to be able to effectively be, you know, a better leader with me, or communicate with me, or-

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:06Lewis Howes?

  -understand who I am?

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Well, see, I think the thing-

• 15:08Lewis Howes?

  So not just clashing it.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Right. Well, I think one of the things that happens with the four tendencies is a lot of times people don't understand what actually they need. So like, let's say you're a questioner and you're having a lot of conflict with your boss. What you might not understand is happening is- Okay, you're like, okay, I'm as a questioner, need to have robust justification for everything if I'm going to get with the program. And so I'm asking you question after question after question because I don't understand a decision that you made. Okay, I as your boss am perceiving you as being obstructionist, insubordinate. Why are you questioning my judgment? I'm feeling thin-skinned and defensive because I feel like here's somebody who's really refusing to accept my authority. So we have a conflict. Whereas if I'm the questioner, I could be like, okay, I see that this is something that

• 15:53Speaker 00

  comes up sometimes with questioners. We questioners sometimes drain and overwhelm people with our questions. I need to think of a way to be more constructive in the way that I'm approaching my boss because I can see that this is causing a problem. Or I as a boss could say, this guy's a pain in my neck, but he's probably like this all the time with everybody he ever runs into. He has all these questions. There might be other people here who have questions. So why don't I say, why don't I say like, hey, team, if you feel like you understand why we picked the software program, you do not need to come to the meeting. You know, if you're not, if you don't want to know more, that's fine. But if you feel like you would really like for us to take some time, an afternoon this week, and I'm going to really sit down and take you through the logic and the reasons that corporate used in order to pick the software, if you feel like you have questions

• 16:38Speaker 00

  that haven't been answered, I'd be happy to take your questions. So it's like, okay, I don't have to take it personally. This guy isn't, you know, he's not trying to be disrespectful. He just needs answers. So it's like, once you realize that's what's going on, it's easy to see. But it's not like both of those players need to have the other person understand. They just have to be like, oh, I see how I'm reacting to this person.

• 17:01Lewis Howes?

  Got it, got it. How did you do the research for this to figure these out?

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I'm like a street scientist, so I'm always just like looking around. It's anecdata. I'm like looking, you know, looking to try to understand what I see around me. And one of the, I had this giant lightning bolt when, very normal, ordinary moment of my life where I was having lunch with a friend and she said something that is very... It's like something that a lot of people have said similar things. When she said, "I don't understand." When I was on the high school track team, I never missed track practice, so why can't I go running now? And that was the thing that really got me noticing patterns. And then I started noticing that, like, some people, if you say, "Well, how do you feel about New Year's resolutions?" Some people would say, "Oh, well, I would keep a resolution whenever it made sense for me,

• 17:49Speaker 00

  but I wouldn't do it on January 1st because January 1st is an arbitrary date."

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  So would that be a rebel then, or?

• 17:54Speaker 00

  That'd be a questioner.

• 17:56Lewis Howes?

  Questioner.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Because arbitrary is like, is the key. Yeah, it's like, I would do it whenever it makes sense because that's like, what's more efficient?

• 18:03Lewis Howes?

  I was thinking like, I'm not gonna do it when everyone else does it, I wanna do it when I wanna do it.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  That's true, but also rebels often will say things like, "I don't wanna bind my, I would never bind myself to New Year's resolution. If I wanna do something, I'll do it. If I don't wanna do it, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna tell myself I'm gonna do it." And in fact, rebels will often say that if they do try to make a resolution, then they rebel against it. So if they're like, "Oh, I'm giving up bread," then they run out the next day and buy a giant loaf of sourdough bread. Or it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna make a to-do list and do everything on my to-do list." It's like, no, I'm not gonna do anything on my to-do list.

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  But so I started noticing these patterns. And it took me a long time to sort of figure out how all the pieces fit together. And it was really when I understood that the core idea is this idea of expectation, which is such a boring word. I was like, searching for a synonym that sounded like juicier. But it really does come down to this outer and inner expectations. And once you see that, then all these patterns that seem very disconnected, all of a sudden make sense.

• 18:56Lewis Howes?

  Expectations is just like the killer of community. It's like the killer of relationships. When people have an expectation that's not understanding the other person's expectation and it's not met.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  Or it is met, I feel like so much conflict happens when people aren't aware of expectations or they're not clearly defined.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, absolutely.

• 19:15Lewis Howes?

  It's challenging.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  It is challenging.

• 19:17Lewis Howes?

  But when we can understand the tendencies, we're gonna understand someone's expectations, I feel like, right?

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yeah. Well, and it's also, I think it highlights exactly your point, which is that it's very important to think about the role they're playing. Don't have them be implicit or assumed or not discussed. It's like, if you want, if you have something that you want to have happen, you need to spell that out. You know, it's like, well, if I load the dishwasher, I expect you to unload it. And then we can have a conversation about it. But it's like, don't just expect that somebody's gonna volunteer and understand that this is how all right-minded people behave. They might not.

• 19:51Lewis Howes?

  What makes you so curious about these things? Like about, you know, the Happiness Project, this, all the stuff you've been doing. Why are you so curious to know all these things?

• 20:00Speaker 00

  I think this has just always been my subject. And all my books, including the one that's not listed in my book, my latest book. It's all about human nature. It's like trying to understand, um, why are people the, how, what, what are we like? Why do we do what we do? How, how can people change? Like, why can people change sometimes, but not other times?

• 20:21Lewis Howes?

  Why are you so curious though?

• 20:22Speaker 00

  How are people alike and different? I don't know. It's always been the thing that's most interested me. In fact, it was so interesting to me, it didn't occur to me that it was an interest. It just seemed like the thing that everybody in the world was interested in. It didn't seem like a specialty in a way. Took me a while to realize like, oh, this is the subject.

• 20:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Were you always curious as a kid too? Just about these things?

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:42Lewis Howes?

  People and observing people?

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Well, I've always been a huge reader. And so I think that's how it comes out, is just always wanting to read more and more and more. Because that's a, that's a great way to learn about human nature is through reading.

• 20:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you still read a lot today?

• 20:55Speaker 00

  I do. I do read a lot.

• 20:56Lewis Howes?

  Every week, a new book, two books?

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Yes, and in fact, on my Facebook page, every Sunday night, I do a thing, a hashtag Gretchen Rubin Reads, where I just, I, all I do is post a picture of the books that I've read that week. And I always, this is one of the, the things I did for the Happiness Project, is I stopped reading any book that I don't like. So if I, if you see it in the stack, it means I liked it well enough to finish it.

• 21:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  But I don't otherwise editorialize about it because it would just be, I read a lot, so it would just take too much time to write like a little thing.

• 21:25Lewis Howes?

  Do you speed read at all? Or do you actually like read it word for word? Do you skip over stuff and kind of like first chapter, last chapter?

• 21:31Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I, I don't, I, I'm certainly not trained in speed reading. I don't do anything that's officially speed reading. I must read pretty fast because I feel like I never have time to read. It's like this huge thing that I'm constantly working on in my book Happier at Home. And also in Better Than Before, I've had habits. I talked a lot about the habits of reading more, which is a habit that a lot of people want. I feel like I'm never reading, and yet I do read several books a week. So I must be reading some time, some fairly fast. Um, but I really feel Like I'm always fighting to have that.

• 22:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  But one of the things I love about a book tour, um, I don't know how you, when you go on book tour, how you use your time, but a friend of mine gave me a great piece of advice. She's like, when I travel for business, I only read for pleasure. So she never tries to work on a plane when she's traveling for work. She's like, that's my time to read for fun. It's totally transformed my travel because instead of either working or feeling guilty about not working, I'm like, I'm just gonna, I have this huge stack of, of books that I'm gonna, I'm.

• 22:25Lewis Howes?

  For pleasure.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Yes, that I'm slowly reading on my book tour.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Cause I love reading on airplanes. It's one of my favorite, favorite times, cause you're not interrupted.

• 22:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  It's quiet. You're just like, you've got nowhere else to go. You don't have to jump up and deal with anything. You're just in your seat.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  You're not waiting for the wifi to load while you get your emails.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  No.

• 22:42Lewis Howes?

  Sitting there for five minutes for one email frustrated, yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:44Lewis Howes?

  Like me last night.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I know that feeling. Or it's just like, oh.

• 22:48Lewis Howes?

  Trying to get through all my emails.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Loading, loading, loading, loading.

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  Everyone else get off wifi.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know. Uh, no, but so, yeah, so I've been, uh, I love getting the chance to do some hardcore reading.

• 22:58Lewis Howes?

  What brings you the most joy in your life?

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Reading.

• 23:02Lewis Howes?

  Reading this?

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Reading, reading and writing probably. I mean, my family, of course, and my friends, but I mean like.

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  The way she said that, my family.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  No, no, I mean, I feel like that's like understood. It's like, that's always like, let's, can we stipulate to the fact that, um, people are the most important? But in terms of activities.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  Reading and writing.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Reading and writing.

• 23:17Lewis Howes?

  Brings the most joy.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I am a person of very narrow interests. I like, that's basically the only thing I like to do is read and write.

• 23:24Lewis Howes?

  Is there anything that you're, uh, afraid to write about?

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Interesting question. Um, I wouldn't write about something that would cause extreme distress to somebody close to me.

• 23:37Lewis Howes?

  You mean revealing something or talk about them in a way that would hurt them or?

• 23:41Speaker 00

  Right, and actually like nothing's really happened in my life. There's nothing I would disclose. There's no secret that I would reveal, but if I was gonna be like snarky. I mean, one of the things that I'm sure as a writer, you felt this too. You can get your digs in, like there's sometimes, you know, you're like, or, or even to characterize something. I mean, it's, it's interesting to me, but, um, like my husband never reads anything that I write, which some people find shocking. I totally get it, cause it's like going inside someone's head in a way. It feels like in a way you've. You've crossed a barrier that's usually there. And I think for my husband, that just gives him the heebie-jeebies. So I wouldn't want to write something that would be really, you know, just for whatever reason, some observation or something that would just be hurtful to somebody.

• 24:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  I write about happiness. I don't want to create tremendous unhappiness to the people I love by saying something. But A.J. Jacobs told me a good trick. This is good for any aspiring writers out there.

• 24:31Lewis Howes?

  I just got a new book in the mail today, actually.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love A.J. Jacobs.

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  He's great.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  He's the funniest guy. And so he writes, because he writes a lot of, like, celeb-- not so much now, but at one point, he was writing a lot of celebrity profiles. And he also writes a lot about his own family. He's written unflattering things about members of his own family. And I was like, well, how did that go over? He said, well, I've learned this, that if whenever you write about somebody, you write about in some way that they're very attractive, they will forgive you anything. So it's like, he said all these kind of mean things about one member of his family, but he was like, described him as lean, or something like that. And you're like, oh, all is forgiven.

• 25:06Lewis Howes?

  All is forgiven.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but I don't want to get into that kind of thing.

• 25:09Lewis Howes?

  What about any other fears that you have right now that you're facing? Since you're so focused on happiness a lot and talking about these things, is there anything that you're afraid of tackling? Any topics you're afraid of tackling?

• 25:23Speaker 00

  It's funny, I don't really, I don't know. I'd have to think about that because what I feel more is like the pull to write about so many things. And I guess my fear is like, I don't want to commit to something that's not big enough. Like lately, I've been wanting to write little books. Like, I wrote this little book, which I haven't dealt with, which I'm going to do once The Four Tendencies is sort of out in the world, called Outer Order, Inner Calm, which is all about sort of like outer order, which is just a subject that I love. It's little.

• 25:50Lewis Howes?

  Outer order.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, because one of my secrets of adulthood is that outer order contributes to inner calm more than it should for most people. Not for everyone, certainly, but for most people, they feel more energetic, they feel calmer, they feel more creative when there's orderliness in their environment.

• 26:05Lewis Howes?

  Cleanliness, order.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  But which, different people, some people want like absolutely nothing on their desk. Some people want neat piles. I mean, some people love abundance, they like profusion. But they, but nobody likes to have a lot of junk around or a lot of trash or like a bunch of stuff they don't use anymore. They don't even, like, what is this cable? I don't even know.

• 26:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  It's just sitting there because I'm scared to throw it away because maybe it's useful, but I haven't used it in two years, but. What do you do? You know, it's just on the counter. Get rid of that. Um, so I have all these like little books. And so I'm like, well, should I do a big book next? Or should I do a little book? I had this idea for this, I'm like, I've been obsessed with the subject of color. I'm like, I want to write a little book about color, which has nothing to do with anything and no one will read it except for me. But I just feel this compulsion to write a little book about color. So I'm sort of like trying to figure out, usually I'm hit by a lightning bolt and I know what I want to write. And I feel this compulsion to tackle a subject. And right now I'm feeling pulled in a lot of different directions. So that's what I'm trying to figure out.

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  So you're not sure.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Cause they all feel interesting. And so I'm like, hmm, what do I do next? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

• 27:10Lewis Howes?

  How many times a day do you get, what do you, what's next? When you come out with a book, do you get that a lot, a lot, right?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Two or three, yeah.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  What's next? This is out right now.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  I know.

• 27:18Lewis Howes?

  What's next?

• 27:18Speaker 00

  I know, I know.

• 27:19Lewis Howes?

  It's like, this is what I'm focused on.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're like, what's next? This? Yes, yes.

• 27:23Lewis Howes?

  But a little book about color, I kind of like that idea.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I'm obsessed with color. Well, one of the things I need to write first is a four tendencies quiz for children. This is something that I've been really, ever since the book has sort of been on the horizon. Many, many people have asked me to write a quiz for, because I have this quiz, which is at happiercast.com/quiz. It's a short quiz for adults.

• 27:43Lewis Howes?

  Happiercast?

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Happiercast.com/quiz.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  It's where you can get the one for adults.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 27:48Lewis Howes?

  This quiz.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm coming up on a million people having taken it, which is amazing. I know, huge number of people have taken it.

• 27:53Lewis Howes?

  That's a lot of data, right?

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, well, you know, I had to do a national, I had to do a representative sample because of course the people taking the quiz, it's a, it's a biased sample. So you couldn't use that. But, um, but I did do a representative sample just to solve for that problem. But so many people have said, oh, well, you create one for children. It's, it's a challenge because of course an eight year old is different from an 18 year old. So I need to sit, but, but so many people, either readers or podcast listeners of the Happier Podcast, have sent me suggestions like teachers and parents and coaches and instructors of scenarios that might be work for children. But I need to sit down and do that. It won't take long, but it's going to take a lot of concentration because it's tricky.

• 28:32Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  Writing the quiz took a long time. It's hard to think of scenarios that are universal enough. That a lot of people respond to them, but that also show you the difference between the four tendencies. It was a big intellectual challenge.

• 28:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And where did most of the people take the quiz from in the adult version? Is it from the US mostly, or is it from all over the world?

• 28:51Speaker 00

  It's all over the world. I think it's mostly from the US, but no, I get people all the time from other countries. Yeah.

• 28:58Lewis Howes?

  Do you ever feel like you're gonna run out of things to write about?

• 29:01Speaker 00

  No, I don't feel like that.

• 29:03Lewis Howes?

  You have like a list of a million ideas?

• 29:04Speaker 00

  I do. I do. I do feel like I have a million things. And then, and then things occur to me. Like the four tendencies, I mean, so I was writing Better Than Before, which was all about the 21 strategies we can use to make or break our habits. And it was in trying to understand how people successfully transform habits that I stumbled into the four tendencies. So I had no idea that I was even gonna write about it until that book came out and people were just deluding me with questions about the four tendencies. And finally, I was like, well, this is the book that I need to write next. So it wasn't part of sort of a long trajectory. It kind of popped into view.

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  Do you ever feel like, your podcast has taken off in a big way. Do you ever feel like your books will become less read and your podcasts will become more popular? And does that scare you that your writing is gonna be less relevant or meaningful to people?

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Less central.

• 29:53Lewis Howes?

  You're just like, oh, why read when I can just listen?

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Well, that's interesting that you say that because I have been very struck.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  Your podcast is blowing up.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, the happier podcast is, yes. And a lot of people will say, like, they clearly know me first as a podcaster.

• 30:10Lewis Howes?

  Really? They know you're first as a podcaster?

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then they're like, oh, and then I went and read your books or something like that. Whereas for me, my, my, my book identity is my central identity and my, my identity as a writer, to me, is central. But what I've started to see is really, I want to reach people however they want to be reached. And, and some people want to read a book and some people want to watch a live video and some people want to listen to a podcast and some people want to read a blog post. And a lot of times, you know, at one time in your life, something makes sense. And then at another time, you've realized something else makes sense. Or you have a certain, like, let's say you're walking your dog. Well, walking your dog is a great time to listen to a podcast. It's not a great time to read a book or watch a video. And so now, oh, you have a new puppy. Well, guess what?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  You've got a lot of time to listen to podcasts. Or you've got a new, long commute. But then, let's say you don't have a commute. You're, you're, now you've moved to New York City and you're on the train. Well, this is great. You have so much more time to read. So now you're gonna read. So I want to be able to reach people wherever they want to be, in whatever form they like to get ideas. For me, writing, the thing about writing is, you can get it exactly right. You know, when you're speaking, unless you script it out, it's not exactly right. It's not, you don't find the perfect verb. The way if you're writing, you can be like, oh, first I had, you know, ask. Then I had grill. Then I had demand. Like, you can get it exactly the right word. And you can lay out a big idea. I mean, one of the things that I've heard about the four tendencies is,

• 31:41Speaker 00

  we talk about it a lot on the podcast, on the Happier Podcast. And I, it was a chapter in Better Than Before. And now people are saying to me, I thought I knew all about it. Because I've heard you talk about it. I read Better Than Before. But now, it's laid out in so much more nuance and complexity. Because a book, you can really get into those subtleties that it's very hard to do in other forms. There's, all media have their strengths. And for a book, a big idea, to really communicate at many levels, you need to do that through writing.

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  Now, The Happenest Project, was that four books ago? Three books ago?

• 32:22Speaker 00

  That was four books ago.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  And that was your, was that your most, your most popular book? Your biggest selling?

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Yes, that was the one that, yeah, most people identify me with, yeah.

• 32:29Lewis Howes?

  And...

• 32:32Lewis Howes?

  How do you feel when you come out with a, you have this mega hit, I think you got a couple million copies sold, right?

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  Mega hit, and everyone identifies you as that person, how do you feel as a writer when you still have new ideas?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  When people still associate you with that one idea and you feel like, well, maybe I'm not selling as well with these new books.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 32:52Lewis Howes?

  Or maybe that'll be my best book, or most sold book.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 32:56Lewis Howes?

  Do you have those conversations with yourself of, I think of Elizabeth Gilbert.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  She's like, my greatest book is behind me. Like, I'll never sell 10 million copies of a book again, probably. Maybe.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:07Lewis Howes?

  But most likely not.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Right, and then we'll go to the Oscars again.

• 33:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Um, well, you know, that's interesting, because I never really thought about that. I mean, to me, I feel, I still feel very close to The Happiness Project, so it doesn't, and it feels very integrated into what I'm doing now. So it doesn't, I think sometimes if you've really moved on and you're in a totally different subject, maybe that feels like a chapter of your life, or some, you know, like, it's sort of like, uh, your former self. And when you're asked to talk about it, it's like being an employee of your former self. It's not like who you are right now. Whereas for me, the things that I talked about in The Happiness Project are still things that are very much part of what I'm talking about now.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  Everyday.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so it all feels very integrated to me. And it's exciting to me that so many people, um, read it or recognize it, but it feels very much of a piece of what I'm still interested in. I could see how that would be difficult if you were, because I have, I know a lot of nonfiction writers, and for many nonfiction writers, the pleasure comes from, oh, I'm gonna learn all about this, and then I'm gonna learn all about that, and I'm gonna go from kind of one world to another world. So that could be discouraging if you felt like, everybody cared about this, but nobody cares about that. But for me, they all feel very tied together. But one of the interesting things, though, in reading, looking at The Happiness Project in retrospect, is the thing that puzzled me when that book came out is so many people said to me, but how did you get yourself to do all those things?

• 34:24Speaker 00

  How did you get yourself to keep all those resolutions? And I said, well, I just, I made resolutions that I thought would make me happier, and then if they did make me happier, I kept them. And they were, then they would, they would just look puzzled, and they would say, right, but how did you get yourself to do them? I was like, I don't really understand what you're talking about. Now I know, I'm in a holder. This is what a holder is good at, setting out and meeting out and in their expectations. So of course it was easy for me. So now I understand like what all those people were saying. So I feel like I should write an epilogue. Like, by the way, if you're thinking, oh my gosh, how the heck do I get myself to put down my devices? She makes it sound so easy. I'm like, okay, now I have an answer for you.

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  That's your next podcast.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:02Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:02Lewis Howes?

  Your podcast, talk about it.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:06Lewis Howes?

  What would you say has been the biggest transformation for you from your first book to this book?

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Well, adding the podcast was a huge new aspect of my identity.

• 35:16Lewis Howes?

  Cause now some people are finding you just from the podcast and they didn't even, never read a book of yours, right?

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's interesting. That's probably the biggest transformation. Yeah, yeah. It's this whole new, cause I was a blogger, you know, and I did the whole, you know, South by Southwest and, and, and the world of podcasting really reminds me of the world of blogging at a certain point. But blogging is much closer to writing, whereas I feel like podcasting is a whole different, it's much more performative. So that, that's been a big transformation. And I do it with my sister. So this is a collaboration, whereas as a writer, I always work by myself. So that's been really exciting to have like a partner. And to do, do something with her, which has been tremendously gratifying. And it's also just like a different way of working. That's really nice.

• 36:00Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself since launching the podcast?

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Did I say like too much? Yeah.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  When you hear yourself back.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know, I know, I know. Yes.

• 36:15Lewis Howes?

  You say, I know too much.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  I know. There you go. Yeah. Yes. Everybody's got their tick there. I know.

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  I'm sure Christine edits out everything of all my ticks all the time, bro.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:24Lewis Howes?

  Or maybe she doesn't. I don't listen to any of my episodes.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  So that's interesting.

• 36:28Lewis Howes?

  I can't listen to them.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  I listen to them because I do the show notes.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  Well, Christine does it all.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Okay, she does it. So yeah. Okay. So you don't have to listen.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  She edits it. She listens. I record and then I pass it to her and then I promote it. I share it out. I think maybe I listened to like a couple of them, like with Tony Robbins or something, the first time I had him on or something where I was like, ooh, I want to hear this.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  See how it sounded, you know, because I was so nervous or in the moment.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Have you ever gone back to listen to like your first or your second episode?

• 36:53Lewis Howes?

  I'm terrified a little bit.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah?

• 36:56Lewis Howes?

  I'm terrified. One of them was on my iPhone.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  And it's just like loud noises all around and yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Keeping it real.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  I don't think I have, have I? No.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  That would be a good, that would be a good, you should do that for like a big anniversary, like for your 600th episode, play the first one.

• 37:12Lewis Howes?

  I'll probably just cringe, I can't believe I did this.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  I do high intensity weight training and one, uh, one day my trainer was like, I'm gonna set you at the weights that you trained at when you first came to this gym. And I was just like, they were whipping. I mean, I had gotten, and it was so, it was exciting to realize how much stronger that I had gotten. So I think sometimes it's good to go back and look where you started.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  The progress.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  Cause you forget, you know, with, like when you're making gradual change, sometimes it's easy to forget to say, wow, look, I really have learned, or really have improved, or I really have created, um, you know, move forward.

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest skill you would say that you've acquired since doing the podcast or like the, not, not being aware that you say like a lot, but something that you've liked, like a big lesson?

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Well, one of the lessons that I've learned is that it's very hard to predict what's gonna resonate most with people. And it's always, cause sometimes my sister now will be like, oh, we think this is something that people, we're gonna get a big response to.

• 38:04Lewis Howes?

  And then it's wah wah.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, and sometimes we're right. And then sometimes it's just like people, so just to take the most mundane example. So my sister, so in the podcast, we always give our, we take turns giving ourselves a demerit, which is some mistake that we've made that has, that has dragged down our happiness. So it's like, learn a lesson, you made a mistake, do better next time. So one of the things Elizabeth gave herself a demerit was she had like 40 children to a six-year-old's birthday party and she didn't write everybody a thank you note. And I was like, I contest that demerit because I don't think you should have to do that. I would not expect myself to do that. They gave you the presents in person, he thanked them in person. It's just totally unrealistic to do this.

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  I'm right, 40 handwritten thank cards.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  40 handwritten thank you notes. I'm like, I just, no, as an, as an upholder, I'm like, I just simply would not expect myself to do that. And, and so, and this was just like a drive-by conversation that we had, you know? It wasn't meant to be like, ooh, this is the centerpiece of this conversation. And we were flooded. It turns out that people have so many nuanced views about thank you notes, written thank you notes.

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  Receiving gifts and what to do.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, it turned, and it was just this giant thing. And you realize, I was like, I'm walking through the world having no idea about how people think about things. And here's how this happens too, like with being an upholder. So one of the things about upholders is they're very good at saying like, sorry, I can't do that. It's like, I'm sorry, I can't do that because I gotta go for my run. Or I'm sorry, I can't stay out late. I gotta go to bed on time. Um, and that can make them seem cold.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  But what it means is that they're very, they're very good at sort of saying to people, "You're pushing too hard," or "I can't meet, I can't meet that expectation." And I, what I didn't realize is, and I, and I knew intellectually that for obligers particularly, it's difficult to do that. But then I found out, okay, so I'd been sending work emails over the weekend, and it had literally never crossed my mind not to do that. It wasn't like I was like, I thought about it and I decided it was okay. It was like, it never occurred to me not to send work emails over the weekend. Because my view was, read it over the weekend if you want. Answer it over the weekend if you want. If you want to wait till Monday morning, that's fine too. Like, whatever, you like, whatever works for you is fine. I just want to get it off my plate. I'm thinking about it, I'm just going to email you, so I don't have to worry about it.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  So I discover, because this comes up kind of sideways in a conversation on the podcast with Elizabeth, and then we're flooded with emails with people being like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it, my boss is always sending me emails," or, you know, "My coworkers are sending me these emails, it drives me crazy, I'm so resentful." It's like, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to do that. And so, many kind listeners told me how to use delay delivery in Outlook, which I now know how to do. And so now I delay delivery until, and like floods of emails go out at 6:00 AM on Monday morning.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  You'll write it and then you'll put, archive it?

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, no, I just put it, you just said delay delivery, and it will just, yeah, yeah, and it will just go.

• 40:50Lewis Howes?

  Gmail.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  No, I do it, well, Outlook, is what I do, how I do it.

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  But this was something where I didn't know that this was a thing. Because it, it's not a thing for me. So I didn't know that I was like, tripping this wire in other people's heads.

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  Because you're very entrepreneurial, so it's not as...

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Well, I'm just like, what, yeah, yeah, I'm not working in an official team. It's like a bunch of different people sort of cobbled together. I mean, I'm not anybody's boss, but you know, so it's, so I'm in a kind of a, it's not like there's an office policy where we all sit down and say like, "Oh, we're all going to commit to not, to taking a real break." So I really learned something from that conversation, again, kind of accidentally got into this territory of how the four tendencies come into play, self-knowledge, understanding how other people respond to things. And I did not see it coming at all. So what part of it is you just don't know.

• 41:42Lewis Howes?

  Don't know.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  What's been the most popular episode ever?

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Well, in my mind, the most popular episode is episode 10, which was way back in the beginning, which was when we recorded me cleaning my sister's closet. In Encino, California, it was just like me cleaning out her closet. I laugh every time. If I'm feeling blue, I go listen to that one because it was so funny.

• 42:05Lewis Howes?

  For you, it's the most popular.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  For me, it's the most popular. That's the one that's most popular for me.

• 42:08Lewis Howes?

  What's the most downloaded one, do you know?

• 42:10Speaker 00

  I don't know. What we did for our 100th, for our, um, for our one year, two year anniversary, we did like a roundup show that was like highlights. And so those are super popular just because those are like best of episodes. Yeah.

• 42:21Lewis Howes?

  We gotta do more of those.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  They are really fun to do.

• 42:24Lewis Howes?

  Like every 50, we should do like the top 10 moments. You know what I mean?

• 42:28Speaker 00

  It is. I think it's nice. We also did it because, um, for people who are coming new and they don't know where to start, it's always kind of nice to have like a, you know, like.

• 42:37Lewis Howes?

  Pick and choose which one you want to do.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And you're like, where do you start? Okay. We'll start with this one. Um, yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's right.

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  What would you say that you think about the most?

• 42:48Speaker 00

  What do I think about the most? Isn't that an interesting question? Oh my gosh. That's so thought provoking. I think about, um,

• 42:58Speaker 00

  I mean, I think about people. I'm like, why, you know, like I'll read a memoir and I'll be, you know, like that's why did he do this or why, why did this happen or,

• 43:08Speaker 00

  I don't know. I'm always sort of looking up, looking, looking up for these patterns. It's funny. I take a lot of notes. I take gigantic amount of notes and.

• 43:15Lewis Howes?

  Do you use a notepad? Do you use an iPad?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. I, well, no, I, I type it into my desktop. Um,

• 43:21Lewis Howes?

  Computer of notes.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  No, my, my, my handwriting is so bad. I cannot, I cannot.

• 43:24Lewis Howes?

  Me too. I look like a six year old child.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  I know. I can't, and you can't, you can't read it. I'm like, well, that's no good. Um, and sometimes, uh, often I will take it, take notes on something that I don't understand why I think it's important. You know, like I'll be like, I don't know why that just seems like, that just seems notable, literally notable. So I take a note about it. And then sometimes months, weeks, years later, it will become clear to me why something is meaningful.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  And, uh, I mean, like, for example, with the four tendencies, there was this Steven Spender, Steven Spender, who's a poet, wrote an autobiography and as just kind of in passing, he was like, oh, and as happens with many soldiers. All his inner discipline had been destroyed by the discipline of the army, or something like that, something to that effect. And I remember writing that down and being like, huh, huh, I wonder what's up with that? Like, is that true? Does the army destroy inner discipline by putting in outer discipline? Like, if it's true about the army, is it true about other institutions? Do I think this is right? Is Steven Spender right or wrong? Like, you know, I just kind of pondered it for years. I didn't, I'm like, why do I even care? And then, of course, it fits perfectly into the four tendencies,

• 44:34Speaker 00

  because it's like, it's about meeting expectations and like, and how expectations are met or not met. So I was like, you know, years later, it was like, oh, mystery solved. But somehow I'd picked up on that there was something striking there. Yeah, so I spent a lot of time looking for stuff like that. Like, I'm always on the lookout.

• 44:53Lewis Howes?

  Interesting stuff.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:54Lewis Howes?

  Not notable things.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Like, I just read Phil Knight's memoir about Shoe Dog.

• 44:59Lewis Howes?

  I want to read that.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  It's good. I read it on an airplane.

• 45:03Lewis Howes?

  On a business trip.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, but not, but yeah, but it's pleasure. And yeah, no, it's really good. Several people had said like, oh, you should just read it. Such a good memoir. It's really interesting, because you're like, hmm, interesting guy, interesting choices.

• 45:15Lewis Howes?

  What are, what are three books you think everyone should read? Besides your own?

• 45:21Speaker 00

  I think everybody should read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. It's a towering classic of world literature, but it's also like an incredibly compelling page turner. It's beautiful, it's thought provoking, it's haunting.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  See, a lot of the, a lot of my favorite books are books that I can't in good conscience suggest that other people read, because they're not to every, like, I love Samuel Johnson, but he's an 18th century essayist, and that's just not, or like Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, I love it. Love it, love it, love it. Is everybody ready to read a book by a founding father? It's not that accessible to all readers. So, those are some books that I would recommend.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  But I'm, you know, it's hard to, I don't know. I love so many books, it's just like my mind, I'm just staggering under the weight of everything.

• 46:11Lewis Howes?

  How many do you think you've read?

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Oh, a lot. I read a lot.

• 46:14Lewis Howes?

  Thousands?

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Yes, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like all I like to do. I don't, I'm not well-rounded. So, if that's basically all you do.

• 46:26Lewis Howes?

  What's something about you that almost no one knows about you? Except for maybe your family?

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Well, I drink a ton of caffeine, coffee, tea, Diet Coke. But anybody who comes into, anybody who's near me knows that. So what's like some secret thing? Hmm, I don't know. I don't, gosh, I have to think about these things.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  I failed the national math exam in high school.

• 46:55Lewis Howes?

  Whoa.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  Yes. I was an A student in math because I just learned, and I failed because of the, the way the national math exam works. It's like, and I think the SAT used to work like this. I don't think it does anymore. You got a, you got a base score of 200. And if you got something wrong, you got more points deducted than if you left it blank. So if you left, if you walked in, put in your name and walked out, you would have 200 points. I had less than 200 points because I'd gotten so many wrong. So I go in and talk to my math teacher, I think I was a junior or senior. And I was like, how do you explain this? Because I am an A student in math and I like could not do this. And he goes, well, Gretchen, you don't really understand math. You're just memorizing how to do it. And I was literally like, I didn't know that there was any other thing to do. I, I thought that everybody just memorized how to do math.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  I didn't like, it was so far out of my conception that you could understand math. And that's what this test was meant to do. You had to kind of improvise. You had to solve problems. You had to apply math knowledge, which I was completely unable to do. So, but fortunately for me, I do not need to do high school math in my current everyday life.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  I'd be screwed.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Yes, I know. Yeah.

• 47:59Lewis Howes?

  If I went to school math, I'd be screwed.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  I know. Yeah, I'm like, like the calculator in the phone is like a major boon to mankind.

• 48:06Lewis Howes?

  I remember I was sick, I think I had like the measles or something. I had some weird disease when I was like a kid. Is measles even a thing anymore?

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Chickenpox? I don't think so, but you could, you could have had chickenpox.

• 48:18Lewis Howes?

  I had measles, yes.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  That's very retro.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it was like, I was seven or something. And I remember I missed like fractions that way.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Uh oh.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  And.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  They come up a lot.

• 48:28Lewis Howes?

  Fractions, right?

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  I missed the whole like week or two weeks of this. And I go back to school and they're going over fractions and it's just like, I couldn't figure it out.

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:36Lewis Howes?

  Couldn't.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:37Lewis Howes?

  Get caught up and it was like, I never got caught up for the rest of my life.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  It was like that one thing held me up. It was like, it was algebra, then it was whatever it was next. I was just like, I just give up.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:48Lewis Howes?

  I'm just gonna cheat on everything.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  Just to get by.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  No, it's like with a, like a language. If you're like, I never really got the subjunctive. You're like, mm. You kinda have to get that under your belt before you can move forward. Yeah, no, it is. It's that kind of, um.

• 49:01Lewis Howes?

  It's tricky.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Incremental knowledge. Yeah.

• 49:03Lewis Howes?

  What would you say is the thing you're most proud of that people don't know about you?

• 49:07Speaker 00

  Oh, um, I'm most proud of.

• 49:10Lewis Howes?

  Something that you've done or been a part of that people don't know about, maybe?

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Well, I was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal when in law school, which is like a previous identity that I had and that I was.

• 49:23Lewis Howes?

  Which school?

• 49:24Speaker 00

  Yale Law School.

• 49:25Lewis Howes?

  Yale Law School. That's a pretty big deal.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and that was, I was very, I was very proud of that, I have to say. That was, that was. And that's something that's just like now is not really relevant to my life. So people don't know it.

• 49:36Lewis Howes?

  Yale Law.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:39Lewis Howes?

  You're a lawyer? Or you went to law school?

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, and I clerked for Sandra Day O'Connor. But a lot of people know that I clerked for Sandra Day O'Connor. So that's not something that's not known.

• 49:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow, cool.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I have a whole lawyerly past.

• 49:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Which I.

• 49:52Lewis Howes?

  Lawyers are great writers.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Well, it's funny, it's funny because sometimes people will be like lawyer turned writer Gretchen Rubin. And like, is there a deadlier phrase that you can use to describe anybody? It sounds so boring, right? Lawyer turned writer. Um, and in fact, I have a couple of friends who are writers who like, won't admit that they went to law school. I'm like, you went to law school, right? And they're like, mm, yeah, I keep that under my.

• 50:11Lewis Howes?

  Didn't Jonathan Fields go to law school too?

• 50:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, he was a lawyer. Well, not 20 years.

• 50:15Lewis Howes?

  Rich Roll was a lawyer.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Yes, he taught, he practiced real law for real time.

• 50:19Lewis Howes?

  Long time.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, he did. I mean, I was only there for like two years, three years. Um, so I got out pretty quick. But yeah, no, there's a lot of us actually. You're right. There's a lot of us. Because I think a lot of people, and I think this absolutely describes me, is a lot of people go to law school, not because they want to be lawyers, but because they're like, "Well, I'm good at research and writing, and it's a great education, and it keeps my options open, and I can always change my mind later." And so it's a lot of kind of writerly people who go to it. But then the fact is, I know a lot of people who love being lawyers, but there are people who want to be lawyers.

• 50:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 50:51Speaker 00

  You know?

• 50:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  It's like, if you want to be a lawyer, then you're happy being a lawyer. But if you didn't want to be a lawyer in the first place, it's like, well, that may not work out.

• 50:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Like, people don't become sound engineers by drifting into it. It's like, you pick that.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  You know, but a lot of people drift into law.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  A lot of people drift into medicine. This is something that I've learned since, in my, in recent years, which I was surprised by. It seems so arduous to be a doctor.

• 51:17Lewis Howes?

  Seems like a lot of work.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  It does, and so I would think like, well, you'd have to want to be. And also, it's sort of, you just squeamishness and things like that. But a lot of people are like, "Oh, both my parents were doctors, you know, everybody I know's a doctor. I'm really good at math, you know, math and sciences." And people always said, "Oh, you should be a doctor, so I just sort of stumbled into it." I'm like, "Wow, that is a long road."

• 51:35Lewis Howes?

  I feel like you'd want to just have, have a passion for like, helping people.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:39Lewis Howes?

  You'd think.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:40Lewis Howes?

  And that's why you choose to be a doctor, but...

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Well, but a lot of people drift into it. It's interesting, because every year I give a talk to this group of first-year students, first-year medical students. And it was, been surprising to me how often they're kind of like, "Ah, you know, I'm sort of here."

• 51:53Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  I know. I'm like, "This is a lot of time and energy and money, my friends." Like, I would get clarity on that right now. You know? Don't go all the way down this road.

• 52:04Lewis Howes?

  What's the, what's the dream you've always wanted to do that you haven't done yet?

• 52:09Speaker 00

  Ooh, have my own television show. I think that would be fun.

• 52:12Lewis Howes?

  About what?

• 52:13Speaker 00

  Happiness. How to be happier, healthier, more productive, more creative.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  What are you waiting for?

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Uh, I don't know. I've like, I don't know. I have to, I should pursue that.

• 52:22Lewis Howes?

  Why do you want to have a TV show?

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Just because it'd be another way to reach a lot of people.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  It's like, it's a very, very strong medium. Probably the strongest medium right now. I mean, if you could say television to mean video content delivered to people on a screen, because even the word television now, it's like, I know somebody who's like, "Oh, we don't have televisions in our house." And I'm like, "Yeah, but I know your daughter watches five hours."

• 52:45Lewis Howes?

  Of video content?

• 52:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, like the fact that it's not called a television set is the same thing, yeah.

• 52:51Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Okay, so why is that a big dream for you? Just because you want to reach more people?

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's gonna be fun. It's like a new world to conquer.

• 52:57Lewis Howes?

  What's it gonna take to make that happen?

• 53:00Speaker 00

  Well, I'd probably have to sit down and think about it, first of all.

• 53:03Lewis Howes?

  Cool.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:04Lewis Howes?

  All right. What would be the ideal network or placement for this show?

• 53:08Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't know. I haven't thought about it.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  What about PBS special? Doing something like that, getting it started?

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a good point, yeah.

• 53:15Lewis Howes?

  Aren't there a lot of authors that start with like PBS and then?

• 53:17Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:18Lewis Howes?

  That'd be interesting.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:20Lewis Howes?

  Cool.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  It's all changing very fast. That's one of the things that's, and all of it, I mean, television, radio, podcasting, publishing, internet, magazines, like magazines, crazy what's happening there. It's all happening so fast, which is exciting because you do feel like you could get in there and really have fun and do new innovative things and maybe have opportunities that you wouldn't have had like five or 10 years ago. On the other hand, it's changing so fast, you really feel like you need to keep abreast of a lot of changes because everything, it's not so clear how to get from A to B because B is not where it was.

• 53:54Lewis Howes?

  It could change in a year.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  It could change, I mean, even something like Facebook. How do you use Facebook? I mean, that's changes constantly, constantly how you use Facebook.

• 54:04Lewis Howes?

  I want to dissect this and we'll wrap it up with a few final questions, but I want to dissect this with books, newspapers, magazines, podcasts, TV. What are the main mediums are we consuming? I guess social media, but kind of the traditional, the traditional stuff. Radio, newspapers, magazines, books, podcasts, TV.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Well, podcasts isn't traditional. It's new.

• 54:28Lewis Howes?

  It's been around for 10 years. It's been kind of like...

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like legacy media, podcasts. Yeah, I know. It's like...

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  What do you, what do you see is in the future if you can kind of? You know, predict, what do you think is going to continue to accelerate? Are books going to continue to be popular for people? Or is it going to be more digital books? Is podcasts going to be more popular than radio? Is newspapers completely dead? Are magazines still going to be relevant? What do you think is going to be the most relevant media?

• 55:01Speaker 00

  The thing is with all these things, it seems to me like people want to create it and people want to consume it. The problem is, how do you get paid for it?

• 55:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  So people want to write books and people want to read books. How do people get paid to write books? Because that's changing. People love to read news articles and people love to write news articles. But how do you get the payment to the people who are writing them? Because like, because there's so much changing in the world of advertising or just, or you know, how, what you could charge? What can you charge for a book? What is the right price for a book? It's hard to know. So I feel like I don't even really know. And I feel like we don't know. I mean, if people, you know, people describe Snapchat to you, would you be like, oh, this is going to be a big thing? You'd be like, what is that? Like, there's no chance that's going to work out. Like, what's the point of that? And then it's this huge thing. And it might rise and fall in the space of two or three years. So I don't know. I think we don't even know ourselves. It's just like the smartphone.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Until the smartphone was invented, we had no idea of many things that we now crave and feel like are fundamental right.

• 55:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  Um, but, so, you mean, what's, what's going to, you know, what about augmented reality stuff? I mean, what's, that is like a whole new world. How are driverless cars going to affect media consumption? I feel like that's going to be a big change.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  I drove a Tesla from San Diego to LA. Someone drove it and I was sitting in the passenger seat.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:21Lewis Howes?

  It was like a service, like a Tesla Loop thing it's called. It's like Uber for Tesla.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 56:25Lewis Howes?

  It's like a kind of a higher end service or whatever. And the guy literally just takes his hand off the wheel and is driving for like an hour in the, the lane and it is, it's unbelievable. It slowed down, so you're always three to four lengths behind the car in front of you.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  Were you nervous?

• 56:40Lewis Howes?

  I was like, this is crazy, because there was some turns and he's like, no, it picks it up. It like, all those sensors pick up the lane you're in and everything. And I was just like, he was just on his phone, just like.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  You're kidding!

• 56:50Lewis Howes?

  Swear to you, like, no feet, no hands, just kinda like, yeah, you can just be on your phone, you can do this, like, the car's got it handled. I was like.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  So he didn't even really need to be there? Or he had to get you like, on there and off there?

• 57:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like turning lanes or something, you know, it's like, you turn the lanes yourself, you do some other things, but essentially, you could just put cruise control and push a button, and then you say, yeah, I want to be like, seven lengths behind, car lengths behind, and it like, goes back to seven, or whatever.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Wow, that's the future.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  It was amazing. I was like, this is cool. If it works, you know, it's cool.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  But, um, it was crazy. It was crazy. So anyways, uh, we're going off here.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  I know, but, but, but I think that that, I mean, if you could

• 57:33Speaker 00

  be in a, anytime you're in a car, you could be watching a movie, or reading a book, or writing a book.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  Not stressing about traffic.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's just, it's hard to imagine like, what that's gonna do to people's, to their, yeah, because I mean, people love it. I mean, they have this, we have this insatiable desire for information, for stories, you know, for entertainment, for education, and, um, it's just gonna be a whole, you know, a whole new opportunity to do it. So where, where's that gonna go? I don't know.

• 58:02Lewis Howes?

  Uh, crazy. Do you feel like it's becoming easier for you to write? And get your message out there because you've had success in the past? Or do you feel like, because there's so much more competition, it's harder to get your message out there for a new book? Whereas maybe 10 years ago, when you had a book and it was like, oh, if you get it in the cover of the New York Times, it's like, it'll blow up, and that's all you need, and you're a bestseller. And now, I don't know, there's a million books a year that come out, and so it's like, how do you compete with all these other? Topics and people?

• 58:32Speaker 00

  Well, funnily enough, I think both are true. I think both of your, both of your alternatives are true. I think it is easier for me to get my word out because I do have

• 58:40Lewis Howes?

  Credibility.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  More known, yeah. And that, but then on the other hand, I think it is hard because there's just so much

• 58:46Speaker 00

  stuff that is tugging at people's attention. And people aren't all showing up at the same places the way they once were. So, they're, but both are true simultaneously.

• 58:58Lewis Howes?

  What are you doing differently as an author to get your message out there then? To make sure that your books are being, you know, getting in the hands of people and?

• 59:06Speaker 00

  Well, one thing that I really strive to do is to have a direct connection with my readers and listeners. I want to directly connect with them. So, I don't want to have to depend on the New York Times to book, to review my book for you to hear about it.

• 59:19Lewis Howes?

  Which I think you were just in there, I saw, right? You had like a big cover.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  The Wall Street Journal.

• 59:23Lewis Howes?

  Wall Street Journal, that was great.

• 59:24Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 59:24Lewis Howes?

  Congrats.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Yes, thank you. That was

• 59:26Lewis Howes?

  It was awesome.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was a big picture.

• 59:28Lewis Howes?

  It was huge. It was like full page spread.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  And my mother was like, "Oh, my gosh." But, uh, um, so, but that's what I think.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  Having a direct connection with them.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  It's having the direct connection because then you're not dependent on these, on these, uh, middlemen who might support you, might not. It might not be the right thing for them, so they're not going to pick it up. Maybe like every, nobody's looking at this anymore. It doesn't have the social power that it once had. It doesn't have, it doesn't command the same attention that it once had. So, you've got a, but you know, it's like, and then even to do that, people are like, "Oh, the email list. No, people aren't answering their emails. Oh, you gotta have a Facebook group." You know, all these, that itself is, is evolving all the time. How do you maintain a direct connection with people? Yeah, but I'm lucky because my subject, it's like when people, people have given me so much insight and, and observation and examples.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  So, I think for some writers, they, in their heart of hearts, they feel like it's a distraction to be connected to, to readers and listeners because they're sort of like, "Well, I just need to go off and do my thing." But for me, it's just, it's so illuminating, like

• 1:00:31Lewis Howes?

  The feedback.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's just like with the, for tendencies, it's crammed with examples of people. And I could never have invented those examples because I just don't have the range of experience, you know, like there's one, it was a woman talking about being a missionary, LDS missionary. I don't know what that was like and here she had, or you know, or somebody like a doctor talking about like examining different kinds of patients, I don't know what that's like. And so, but so it's kind of jumpstarts my understanding of ideas because people are constantly, or like I remember with Better Than Before, I talked about how some people are abstainers and some people are moderators when it comes to strong temptation, that some people, for some people, it's easier to have none than to have a little bit. So when I first introduced this idea, which I got from Samuel Johnson, by the way, speaking of Samuel Johnson, I thought I was in the very, very small minority.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  I never heard anybody talking about this, except in the, except in the context of addiction, true addiction, alcohol addiction, cigarette addiction. There are people are like, yeah, you have to give it up altogether, but with everything else, people are like, indulge a little bit, moderation is pleasant to the wise, it's not healthy to be too rigid, all this stuff. And I was like, you know what, I can't hack it. It's too hard for me to have moderation. And then I was overwhelmed with people being like, oh, my gosh, I'm exactly like you. I didn't know that there was, I thought it was just me, I thought something was wrong with me. My husband kept telling me I should be able to have, you know, one brownie, or my doctor kept telling me to have half a dish of ice cream, or, you know, my, you know, my best friend can have half a glass of wine, why can't I? And I'm like, this is the way some people are.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  I'm like this, and it was so reassuring for me to realize, oh, there's a ton of people like this. Maybe half the world is like this, I don't know. I can't never really tell the numbers, but the, I wouldn't have known, I wouldn't have understood that truth if I hadn't heard from people responding to it and saying, yes, this is how I experience this, you know, or not. And so I feel really lucky that for me, it really feeds what my work.

• 1:02:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  It's not a distraction.

• 1:02:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's great. Okay, final four questions for you.

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  Okay, is this a lightning round?

• 1:02:32Lewis Howes?

  Uh, maybe.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:02:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes, maybe. The first one is, what's the question you wish everyone asked you that, but they never do?

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  Ooh, you're asking all these thought provoking questions that I feel like I should have thought about for a month. What question do I wish?

• 1:02:47Lewis Howes?

  More people would ask.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Where can, where can listeners learn more about your stuff? I like it when people ask that question. Gretchen Rubin dot com. What question do I wish people would ask me? I wish they would ask.

• 1:02:58Lewis Howes?

  A meaning, meaningful question.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  No, no, no, I get it. A meaningful question, I don't know, I get good questions. Um.

• 1:03:06Lewis Howes?

  Then what's your favorite question that you get?

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  How can the four tendencies help people be happier, healthier, more productive, more creative? Because I feel like that's like goes to the heart of it. Because it's like the whole point of this is to make your life better. It's not just to, it's just not idle curiosity. Though idle curiosity is fine, too. I think sometimes it's like a BuzzFeed quiz. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun to have a vocabulary and to sort of put yourself in a category. But, um.

• 1:03:32Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like we answered that question?

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we did.

• 1:03:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay, good. Just making sure.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  No, you got there right away. Yes. That's why I hesitated to bring it up.

• 1:03:39Lewis Howes?

  Cool. All right, well, this is called the three truths. I can't remember if I asked you the last time, but we'll ask it again. Uh, if this was the last day for you on earth, many years from now, you've written every book you want to do. You did that big TV show that you always dreamed about. Anything else you'd imagine it came true.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:03:56Lewis Howes?

  Everything. And yet it was all erased from history. All your books are gone. No one has access to any information you've ever put out there. Podcast vanish.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:05Lewis Howes?

  And you had a piece of paper and a pen. Write down the three lessons or the three truths that you knew to be true about all your experiences in life.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:04:13Lewis Howes?

  And this is the only thing that would be remembered by you, these three truths.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Okay. What are they?

• 1:04:19Lewis Howes?

  What would you write down?

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Okay, the first would be be Gretchen. That's my first personal commandment to be Gretchen. Everybody has to fill in their own name, but I think that is the, that is at the core of a happy, healthy, productive life. Be, know yourself, be yourself. One is the days are long, but the years are short, which is like, remember that everything passes. Enjoy it while it lasts. And the third thing is, one of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Ta-da, three truths.

• 1:04:55Lewis Howes?

  I like those.

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 1:04:56Lewis Howes?

  Those are good. Uh, well, before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment for helping so many people heal themselves.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:05:05Lewis Howes?

  Because I feel like. People suffer when they don't feel happy.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:10Lewis Howes?

  They're suffering, they're going through pain, and when they don't know how to get out of it, they don't know how to find happiness within.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Lewis Howes?

  They continue the suffering in other people and they create suffering around them.

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:20Lewis Howes?

  So you've impacted so many people through giving them simple tools to make them heal and find happiness and joy, and it's spreading throughout the world. So I acknowledge you for

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  Oh, well, thank you.

• 1:05:30Lewis Howes?

  Helping so many people.

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  Well, I so appreciate that.

• 1:05:33Lewis Howes?

  Um, I want to make sure everyone gets your book, The Four Tendencies. Make sure to pick it up. You can pick it up anywhere right now. Gretchen Rubin.com has more information, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all that good stuff. We'll have it in the show notes as well. Um, and the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  I think it's living up to your aims for yourself. And some people have very ambitious aims and some people have less ambitious aims. But if you live up to your aims for yourself, that's greatness.

• 1:06:01Lewis Howes?

  Double high five.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  Double high five. All right.

• 1:06:03Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:06:08Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this one. Another powerful episode on the School of Greatness Podcast. If this is your first time here, make sure to tag me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and let me know what you thought about this, @lewis Howes on social media. I'd love to connect with you and hear your feedback on this episode. Also, make sure to subscribe and leave a review over on iTunes. The new podcast app on your iPhone allows you to easily click a five-star rating and leave a review now. Before, it used to be really challenging to leave reviews. Now, you just open up your app, scroll right to the podcast, scroll down a little bit, and you'll see right there, click on five stars and leave a review. I'd love for you to do that and let me know when

• 1:06:52Lewis Howes?

  you do, so I can connect with you and learn more about what you enjoyed about this episode. We're building a powerful movement, guys. We can't do it without you. We need your support if we want to continue to inspire the world, entertain and educate with powerful ideas, showcase important people's messages, and spread it to the world. So continue to share the message of greatness. If you want to learn more about the School of Greatness, check Check out the full show notes at lewishouse.com/541. You can also check out the full video, all the links. Make sure to grab a copy of Gretchen's new book. And if you do anything, just share it with one friend you think this would be invaluable for. Again, it means the world to me that you listen, and every time you share, it helps us get

• 1:07:36Lewis Howes?

  the message out there just a little bit more. And Donald Miller said, "When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are." Make sure to take that today and think about the people in your life. Think about the intimate relationships, think about your family relationships, your friendships, the people that you work with, the people that are actually closest to you all the time. Stop expecting people around you to be perfect and start seeing them for who they are. Start seeing them for the good that they do have and start focusing on and acknowledging that in them right now. I love you guys, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.