Gretchen Rubin Quotes

One thing that continually astonishes me is the degree to which we're influenced by sheer convenience. The amount of effort, time, or decision making required by an action has a huge influence on habit formation.

Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control.

Both money and health contribute to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of them brings much more unhappiness than possessing them brings happiness.
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I read a lot, all the time, but often I read books for research, or because they're interesting to me in some way, even if they aren't exactly 'pleasurable.'

It struck me as poignant that my long relationship with my beloved grandparents could be embodied in a few small objects. But the power of objects doesn't depend on their volume; in fact, my memories were better evoked by a few carefully chosen items than by a big assortment of things with vague associations.

For one person, organized files might be a crucial tool for creativity; another person finds inspiration in random juxtapositions.

Being taken for granted is an unpleasant but sincere form of praise. Ironically, the more reliable you are, and the less you complain, the more likely you are to be taken for granted.

Work done by other people sounds easy. How hard can it be to take care of a newborn who sleeps 20 hours a day? How hard can it be to keep track of your billable hours? To travel for one night for business? To get a 4-year-old ready for school? To return a few phone calls? To load the dishwasher? To fill out some forms?

Now that I know I'm an Upholder, an Abstainer, a Marathoner, a Finisher, and a Lark, and have spent a lot of time thinking about what is, and isn't, important to me, I'm much better able to shape my habits.

If you've had something for more than six months, and it's still not repaired, it's clutter.

Keep it simple' wasn't always the right response. Many things that boosted my happiness also added complexity to my life. Having children. Learning to post videos to my website. Going to an out-of-town wedding. Applied too broadly, my impulse to 'Keep it simple' would impoverish me. 'Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings,' warned Samuel Johnson, 'let us therefore by cautious how we strip her.

Siblings Without Rivalry and How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.

Happiness can seem like an abstract, transcendent notion, but in fact, I found that getting enough sleep (very important!!), getting exercise, not letting myself get too hungry, not letting myself get too cold (I'm a person who is always cold), made a big difference. Partly because I felt happier, partly because feeling physically comfortable makes it easier to keep other difficult happiness-boosting resolutions like biting my tongue.

Feelings follow actions. If I'm feeling low, I deliberately act cheery, and I find myself actually feeling happier. If I'm feeling angry at someone, I do something thoughtful for her and my feelings toward her soften. This strategy is uncannily effective.

Life is too short to save your good china or your good lingerie or your good ANYTHING for later because truly, later may never come.

There is no Future-Gretchen, only Now-Gretchen.

Getting paperwork under control makes me feel more in control of my life generally.

Skillful conversationalists can explore disagreements and make points in ways that feel constructive and positive rather than combative or corrective.

Do I need fifty finger-painted pictures by my toddler, or is one enough to capture this time of life? Mementos work best when they're carefully chosen - and when they don't take up much room!

I should pursue only those habits that would make me feel freer and stronger.

There are no do overs and some things just aren't going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is

To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right.

Pay close attention to any flame of enthusiasm.

When scheduling a new habit, it helps to tie it to an existing habit, such as "after breakfast," or to an external cue, such as "when my alarm rings," because without such a trigger, it's easy to forget to do the new action.

He is my fate. He's my soul mate. He pervades my whole existence. So, of course, I often ignore him.

Also, as I discovered when I took the Newcastle Personality Assessor, which measures personality according to the Big Five model (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, or OCEAN),

When we do stumble, it's important not to judge ourselves harshly. Although some people assume that strong feelings of guilt or shame act as safeguards to help people stick to good habits, the opposite is true. People who feel less guilt and who show compassion toward themselves in the face of failure are better able to regain self-control, while people who feel deeply guilty and full of self-blame struggle more.

Your unhappiness doesn't help anyone else - and in fact, as I mentioned in another answer, happy people are more altruistically inclined. So happiness is not a selfish goal.

I knew I wouldn't discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances; it was right here, right now - as in the haunting play "The Blue Bird," where two children spend a year searching the world for the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to find it waiting for them when they finally return home.

Don't let yourself fall into 'empty.' Keep cash in the house. Keep gas in your tank. Keep an extra roll of toilet paper squirreled away. Keep your phone charged.

I often learn more from one person's highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal practices or cite up-to-date studies.

It's about living in the moment and appreciating the smallest things. Surrounding yourself with the things that inspire you and letting go of the obsessions that want to take over your mind. It is a daily struggle sometimes and hard work but happiness begins with your own attitude and how you look at the world.

This Doesn't Count" Loophole: We tell ourselves that for some reason, this circumstance doesn't "count.

Questionable Assumption Loophole: We make assumptions that influence our habits - often, not for the better - and many of those assumptions become less convincing under close scrutiny. A reader posted a good example: "I set up weird mental blocks around my time. For instance, if it's 9 a.m. and I have an appointment at 11 a.m., I'll think 'Oh, I have to go somewhere in two hours, so I can't really start anything serious' and then end up wasting my whole morning waiting for one thing to happen." Our assumptions sound reasonable … but are they?

When it comes to fake food, I'm like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." In other words, I can give something up altogether, but I can't indulge occasionally.

If I give more to myself, I can ask more from myself. Self-regard isn't selfish.

W. H. Auden articulated this tension beautifully: Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

For Moderators, the first bite tastes the best, and then their pleasure gradually drops, and they might even stop eating before they're finished. For Abstainers, however, the desire for each bite is just as strong as for the first bite - or stronger, so they may want seconds, too.

Also, there was a Princeton study that found that visual clutter reduces your ability to focus and process information.

I'd always vaguely expected to outgrown my limitations.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld advised aspiring comedian Brad Isaac that, because daily writing was the key to writing better jokes, Isaac should buy a calendar with a box for every day of the year, and every day, after writing, cross off the day with a big red X. "After a few days you'll have a chain," Seinfeld explained. "You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.

It's the task that's never started that's more tiresome.

Eventually I learned to reject this advice. Somehow, I figured out that it was easier for me to resist certain temptations by never giving in to them.

For work: I bought some pens. Normally, I used makeshift pens, the kind of unsatisfactory implements that somehow materialized in my bag or in a drawer. But one day, when I was standing in line to buy envelopes, I caught sight of a box of my favorite kind of pen: the Deluxe Uniball Micro. "Two ninety-nine for one pen!" I thought. "That's ridiculous." But after a fairly lengthy internal debate, I bought four. It's such a joy to write with a good pen instead of making do with an underinked pharmaceutical promotional pen picked up from a doctor's office. My new pens weren't cheap, but when I think of all the time I spend using pens and how much I appreciate a good pen, I realize it was money well spent. Finely made tools help make work a pleasure.

I love taxonomies, categories, ways of dividing people into groups.

We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, we're free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower.

When I focus on the way "men" or "husbands" generally behave, I start to lump Jamie along with half of humanity. I find myself feeling angry or annoyed with Jamie for things he hasn't even done.

I realized that for my own part, I was much more likely to take risks, reach out to others, and expose myself to rejection and failure when I felt happy. When I felt unhappy, I felt defensive, touchy, and self-conscious.

I embrace treats, but I'm also very wary of treats. Treats help us feel energized, appreciated, and enthusiastic - but very often, the things we choose as 'treats' aren't good for us. The pleasure lasts a minute, but then feelings of guilt, loss of control, and other negative consequences just deepen the lousiness of the day.

A 'treat' is different from a 'reward,' which must be justified or earned. A treat is a small pleasure or indulgence that we give to ourselves just because we want it. Treats give us greater vitality, which boosts self-control, which helps us maintain our healthy habits.

It's easy to be heavy; hard to be light.

One of my most helpful Secrets of Adulthood is What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.

The desire to start something at the "right" time is usually just a justification for delay. In almost every case, the best time to start is now.

People feel happier when they feel like they're progressing. When they feel like something in their life is growing or getting better.

If I can do something in less than one minute, I don't let myself procrastinate. I hang up my coat, put newspapers in the recycling, scan and toss a letter. Ever since I wrote about this rule in 'The Happiness Project,' I've been amazed by how many people have told me that it has made a huge difference in their lives.

Take the perspective of a journalist or scientist. Really study what's around you. What are people wearing, what do the interiors of buildings look like, what noises do you hear? If you bring your analytical powers to bear, you can make almost anything interesting.

My writing tends to become very dense, so I have to keep some cushion. Sometimes, words that seem superfluous are actually essential for the overall effect.

The pleasure of doing the same thing, in the same way, every day, shouldn't be overlooked. The things I do every day take on a certain beauty and provide a kind of invisible architecture to my life.

We all know the secret of dieting ... it's the application that's challenging.
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The Strategy of Safeguards requires us to take a very realistic - perhaps even fatalistic - look at ourselves. But while acknowledging the likelihood of temptation and failure may seem like a defeatist approach, it helps us identify, avoid, and surmount our likely stumbling blocks.

Happy people make people happy, but I can't make someone be happy, and no one else can make me happy.

When I became obsessed with Winston Churchill, I wrote a book about Churchill. What a joy it was to write that book!

Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity ... When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.

However, if you want to know how people would like to be treated, it's more helpful to look at how they themselves act than what they say.

Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant but a bad master.

Like Dr. Johnson, I'm an Abstainer: I find it far easier to give up something altogether than to indulge moderately. And this distinction has profound implications for habits.

Look for happiness under your own roof.

One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self - definition. You become larger. Suddenly you can do yoga or make homemade beer or speak a decent amount of Spanish. Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened.

This freedom from decision making is crucial, because when I have to decide - which often involves resisting temptation or postponing gratification - I tax my self-control.

There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.

Eliminating clutter would cut down the amount of housework in the average home by 40 percent.

Another study suggested that getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person's happiness than getting a $60,000 raise.

We can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature.

I'm a person who's fine saying 'No.' I like saying to myself, "no gossiping," "no nagging."

One of the great joys of falling in love is the feeling that the most extraordinary person in the entire world has chosen you.

Did I have a heart to be contented? Well, no, not particularly. I had a tendency to be discontented: ambitious, dissatisfied, fretful, and tough to please ... It's easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied.

I'm constantly on the hunt for insights about happiness or ideas about how to be happier - which probably makes me a somewhat tiresome companion at times.

For an extensive and fascinating discussion of the use and pitfalls of rewards, see Edward Deci, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1996); Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead, 2009).

I sat on that crowded bus, I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasn't going to change unless I made it change. In that single moment, with that realization, I decided to dedicate a year to trying to be happier.

The most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women. Time spent with men doesn't make a difference.

It struck me, in fact, that all of my work on habits and happiness was meant to help us construct, as much as possible, just that: everyday life in Utopia. Everyday life with deep, loving relationships and productive, satisfying work; everyday life with energy, health, and productivity; everyday life with fun, enthusiasm, and engagement, with as little regret, guilt, or anger as possible.

It's hard to avoid 'unconscious overclaiming.' In unconscious overclaiming, we unconsciously overestimate our contributions relative to others. This makes sense, because we're far more aware of what we do than what other people do. Also, we tend to do the work that we value.

I suggested that he write from 11:00 to 1:00 every weekday. During that time, he was to write or do nothing. No email; no calls; no research; no clearing off a desk; no hanging out with Jack, my adorable, three-year-old, train-obsessed nephew. Write, or stare out the window. "Remember," I added, "working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination. You want to use your writing time for writing only. Nothing else, including no other kinds of work.

I love cunning containers as much as anyone, but I've found that if I get rid of everything I don't need, I often don't need a container at all.

I think self-knowledge is a key to happiness.We can build happy lives only on the foundation of our own natures, our own values, and our own interests.

I have a passion for children's literature. Young adult literature. I love it. I've always loved it.

Guard your children's free time - from you.

One of my 'Secrets of Adulthood' is: Somewhere, keep an empty shelf. I know where my empty shelf is, and I treasure it.

Habit allows us to go from 'before' to 'after,' to make life easier and better. Habit is notorious - and rightly so - for its ability to direct our actions, even against our will; but by mindfully shaping our habits, we can harness the power of mindlessness as a sweeping force for serenity, energy, and growth.

Instead of always worrying about being efficient, I wanted to spend time on exploration, experimentation, digression, and failed attempts that didn't always look productive.

In an interview in the Paris Review, novelist and Rebel John Gardner made an observation that I've never forgotten: Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay.

It's so easy to wish that we'd made an effort in the past, so that we'd happily be enjoying the benefit now, but when now is the time when that effort must be made, as it always is, that prospect is much less inviting.

I am living my real life, this is it. Now is now, and if I waited to be happier, waited to have fun, waited to do the things that I know I ought to do, I might never get the chance.

A series of small but real accomplishments gives people the energy and confidence to continue. For instance, a person who wants to write a novel might resolve to write one sentence each day. Or a person who wants to start running might resolve to run for one minute.

When deciding what to buy, remember that some things are easy to buy - but then we have to use them. If they're not used, they don't enhance our lives; they just contribute to guilt and clutter.

People in religions that teach that believers in other faiths are condemned, for example, tend to have lower life satisfaction. People who believe in heaven and hell tend to be less happy than those believe only in heaven.

As Dwight Eisenhower observed, Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

Focus Not on Having Less or Having More, But on Wanting What You Have.

The number one resolution that people mention to me as something that's made them happier is - to my surprise - making the bed.

As one Questioner pointed out, 'The Rebels' best asset is their voice of dissent. We shouldn't try to school it out of them, or to corporate-culture it out, or shame it out. It's there to protect us all.