Speaker 1: There's kind of the energy of starting. And so maybe
Speaker 1: you start and then you stop, and you think, well,
Speaker 1: that's okay if I stop, because I'll just start again.
Speaker 1: And I found it really easy to start, but starting
Speaker 1: over is harder than starting the first time. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Gretchen Ruben, an author,
Speaker 1: podcast host, and founder of the Happiness Project, helping create
Speaker 1: an ecosystem of imaginative products and tools to help people
Speaker 1: become happier, healthier, more productive and more creative. Gretchen has
Speaker 1: been interviewed by Oprah, walked arm in arm with the
Speaker 1: Dalai Lama, and she's probably our only guest that has
Speaker 1: been an answer on Jeopardy. Today, Gretchen and Eric discuss
Speaker 1: her new book Outer Order in her calm Declutter and
Speaker 1: Organized to make Room for Happiness. Hi, Gretchen, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hello, I'm so happy to be talking to
Speaker 1: you today. Yeah, I am really happy to have you
Speaker 1: back on. We're going to be discussing a variety of
Speaker 1: things related to happiness to the new year. Primarily we're
Speaker 1: going to focus on one of your more recent books,
Speaker 1: which is called Outer Order, inter Calm Declutter and Organized
Speaker 1: to make more room for happiness. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that will constrain the whole conversation. But before we get started,
Speaker 1: we have a traditional way of starting, which is that
Speaker 1: we talked about the parable. So in the parable, there's
Speaker 1: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear, And the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second and looks up with their
Speaker 1: grandparents says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you and
Speaker 1: your life right now. Well, I love that you start
Speaker 1: with this parable because I'm a huge fan of paradoxes
Speaker 1: and Cohen's and teaching stories, so I love a teaching
Speaker 1: story like this one, and I think it's exactly right.
Speaker 1: One things I really focus on is this idea that
Speaker 1: by thinking about our aims and the kind of life
Speaker 1: that we want and how we can be happier, healthier
Speaker 1: and more productive and more creative, we can feed that wolf.
Speaker 1: And we can think about, well, how would I feed
Speaker 1: that wolf, Like not just thinking like I want my
Speaker 1: wolf to be bigger, but like, what are the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that would feed that wolf? And then also
Speaker 1: if I want one wolf to shrink, what are the
Speaker 1: things that I would do that could take away from
Speaker 1: that wolf? What can I do with my conscious thoughts
Speaker 1: and actions to bring that about? So I love that
Speaker 1: it makes this a very concrete thing to imagine, and
Speaker 1: I think that when things are more concrete, it's easier
Speaker 1: to keep them in mind. Yeah, as we move into
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, I think that's the year we've lost
Speaker 1: your acts. Some people do New Year's resolutions, other people
Speaker 1: pick a word for the year to orient them. Do
Speaker 1: you participate in any sort of New Year's rethinking about things?
Speaker 1: And if so, have you done that yet or that's
Speaker 1: yet to come this year? Yes. I a big fan
Speaker 1: of using January one as sort of a catalyst for reflection.
Speaker 1: I mean, many people say, well, it's an arbitrary date,
Speaker 1: we could do this at any time, But what I
Speaker 1: find is that things that can be done at any
Speaker 1: time are often done at no time. So it's good
Speaker 1: to have a reminder. And whether that's New York's Day
Speaker 1: or your birthday, or an important milestone or the solstice
Speaker 1: or whatever it is for you. And I'd like that
Speaker 1: at January one, everyody sort of talking about it and
Speaker 1: kind of reminding each other to think about it. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I do make resolutions. On the Happier with
Speaker 1: Gretchen Movement podcast, my sister and I always pick a
Speaker 1: one word theme for the year, so for two My
Speaker 1: theme was salt um, which has a lot of kind
Speaker 1: of metaphorical meanings. And I haven't unveiled my word for three,
Speaker 1: but I think I'm like cent committed to it has
Speaker 1: a lot again, it has layers of meaning um. And
Speaker 1: then we also do something and it changes every year.
Speaker 1: So we did like a twenty list for twenty one
Speaker 1: list twenty two lists where we make a list of
Speaker 1: twenty three things that we would like to get done
Speaker 1: in the year, and some of them are fun things.
Speaker 1: I always add a few things that I can do
Speaker 1: and like the next day, you know, I like the
Speaker 1: morale booster of having something to cross off. And then
Speaker 1: some are more ambitious, and then you know, some we've
Speaker 1: carried over from each of us on our list, have
Speaker 1: carried over, you know, from year to year. But there's
Speaker 1: still something that we want to get done, so we
Speaker 1: keep it on the list so we don't forget that
Speaker 1: it's something that we want to do. And then also
Speaker 1: each year we do a challenge like we had walked
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty and rest twenty two and twenty two
Speaker 1: where you would rest for twenty two minutes a day,
Speaker 1: join that challenge, and then again we haven't unveiled for three.
Speaker 1: But it's a good way to sort of think about, well,
Speaker 1: what is something that most of us want to bring
Speaker 1: into our life. A lot of people are turned off
Speaker 1: by resolutions, like they have bad associations because they've like
Speaker 1: maybe made and broken them in the past. So having
Speaker 1: a different way to set a name and think about,
Speaker 1: well what would I do to achieve that aim? I
Speaker 1: think if it makes it feel more fun and more playful,
Speaker 1: people are more likely to engage with it. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: My editor Chris has a rest in twenty two, but
Speaker 1: his was twenty two hours a day. Maybe he got
Speaker 1: get carried away. Get carried away. And if you keep going,
Speaker 1: you know, um, if you're fortunate enough to be doing
Speaker 1: a podcast in thirty years, you're going to be having
Speaker 1: like fifty five things to do in a year. No, no no, no,
Speaker 1: we've thought about that. Okay, you've got a plan, so
Speaker 1: we might do five plus five is ten or maybe
Speaker 1: it's you know five or yeah, got it. We've already
Speaker 1: had listeners kind of flagging that for us because I
Speaker 1: think they're sort of getting overwhelmed in advance. It's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: there's solutions for that. Creative solutions, and then some nice
Speaker 1: people use it in a different way, like they might say,
Speaker 1: I want to read twenty three novels, I want to
Speaker 1: try twenty three new hikes. So again, like you can
Speaker 1: use it or I want to do twenty things that
Speaker 1: are easy and three things that are harder. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just the idea of there's a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to interpret it, but it's just to get you in
Speaker 1: the process of articulating a name. And then you know,
Speaker 1: once we articulate a name, we're a lot more likely
Speaker 1: to follow up on it than if we just sort
Speaker 1: of leave it banging around in our heads. Agreed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the new year can't have the ability to really jump
Speaker 1: start a way of thinking. I've experimented with having a
Speaker 1: word of the year the last couple of years, and
Speaker 1: I'm starting to wonder if for me, I need a
Speaker 1: word per six months. Interesting, that's a great idea. It
Speaker 1: sort of seems to run out of energy for me
Speaker 1: in you know, June, July, August. Now, maybe that's a
Speaker 1: sign I need to recommit and double down at that point,
Speaker 1: but it might also just be a sign that, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've really lived with that word and that idea and
Speaker 1: I'm ready for something else to give me the energy
Speaker 1: to carry forward. I have an idea for you, halfway Day.
Speaker 1: So I was reading an essay about people on submarines,
Speaker 1: and apparently, at least on this one submarine, they would
Speaker 1: celebrate halfway Day. And when the people would come onto
Speaker 1: the submarine, they would bring like a shoe box full
Speaker 1: that had been packed by like their friends and family,
Speaker 1: which they would keep closed, and then on halfway day
Speaker 1: they would all open it and get all these sort
Speaker 1: of piventos and things, and it was a way to
Speaker 1: celebrate the fact that they were halfway through their tour
Speaker 1: of duty. And I was just enchanted by this idea
Speaker 1: of halfway day, because again, it's a catalyst to recommit.
Speaker 1: I love a catalyst. So I have like a whole
Speaker 1: calendar of catalysts that people want, like interesting creative ideas
Speaker 1: for catalysts, like you use April first to think about
Speaker 1: money and savings because it's for oh one day for anyway,
Speaker 1: And so maybe for you, since you've noticed this about yourself,
Speaker 1: instead of trying to fight it and be like oh,
Speaker 1: I should double down, you should say like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: ready for kind of like a new refreshing view. Why
Speaker 1: don't I celebrate halfway day with my new word? That
Speaker 1: could be fun? I like it. I'm going to run
Speaker 1: with it. I'm gonna go with my intuition that half
Speaker 1: a year is enough. What was your word last year?
Speaker 1: I'm scous love classic, Classic. Yeah, it was really for
Speaker 1: me about like I've done a lot of work over
Speaker 1: the years, really trying to live into the fact that
Speaker 1: love is an action. And I feel like I've gotten
Speaker 1: pretty good at that. Right, We all can improve, but
Speaker 1: I feel like I've got loving action. It's a strength
Speaker 1: of mine. What I don't have as much is the
Speaker 1: experience of feeling love moment to moment, day to day. Now.
Speaker 1: I know we're not going to always be in it.
Speaker 1: For me, I wanted to try and connect more to
Speaker 1: the feelings of love, to actually have the experience of
Speaker 1: a feeling of love more. And as I did that,
Speaker 1: I actually realized, like I experienced it more than I
Speaker 1: thought I did. You know, I was sort of starting
Speaker 1: to connect the dots and be like, well, eight times today,
Speaker 1: you've been in love with your dog. You know you've
Speaker 1: fallen in love with four new pieces of music this week? Right,
Speaker 1: you feel warm and affectionate towards your partner a lot.
Speaker 1: You watch three TV shows that brought you to tears
Speaker 1: because they were so beautiful. Like I realized, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not bereft of it maybe in the way I
Speaker 1: thought I was. So that became the learning more than
Speaker 1: I have to increase it. Although I did work on that,
Speaker 1: I became more conscious like, oh, that's actually there. It
Speaker 1: just needs a little nudge to the foreground. You know.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting because Better Than Before is a book
Speaker 1: that I wrote about habit change, and I identify the
Speaker 1: twenty one strategies we can use to make or break
Speaker 1: our habits. And one of the strategies is the strategy
Speaker 1: of monitoring, because what the research shows is that when
Speaker 1: people monitor something, they tend to be better at doing it,
Speaker 1: even if they're not trying to change it kind of
Speaker 1: moves them more in that direction. But I found also
Speaker 1: is that like with monitoring, sometimes it's very reassuring for
Speaker 1: something like I want to spend more quality time with
Speaker 1: my child. Sometimes what people find is when they look
Speaker 1: there like actually, I'm doing a better job with this
Speaker 1: than I think. As sometimes we get discouraged, we don't
Speaker 1: give ourselves enough credit, and it's great for you to realize, like, actually,
Speaker 1: now that I'm shining a spotlight on this and really
Speaker 1: trying to pay attention to it, I realized that I
Speaker 1: am actually experiencing this more. And then by realizing that
Speaker 1: you're experiencing it, you sort of do experience it more.
Speaker 1: That's exactly it. Yeah, it's interesting. So it wasn't even
Speaker 1: that you weren't doing it, It's just you weren't realizing it,
Speaker 1: sort of running under the level of sort of your
Speaker 1: conscious awareness. Yeah. I teach a program called spiritual habits
Speaker 1: where we try and take spiritual principles and combine them
Speaker 1: with the habit of behavior change. And one of them
Speaker 1: is generosity. And you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I say in that lesson is go be more generous.
Speaker 1: Another way to interpret this lesson is to look at
Speaker 1: all the ways you already are and reconnect to those,
Speaker 1: reconnect to the time you are spending with your kids
Speaker 1: is generous, That it's loving, And because again, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I always find as humans, it's so odd that we
Speaker 1: can be sort of doing and experiencing something and yet
Speaker 1: completely sort of unaware that we're doing and experiencing it.
Speaker 1: You know sometimes like it is I call it sort
Speaker 1: of connecting the dots back, like just connect the dots
Speaker 1: back to what you're doing or the ways that you
Speaker 1: already are living according to your values. Well, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I made these like sticky pads to sell and like
Speaker 1: some of them are is a to do list, But
Speaker 1: another sticky pad is a t doll list, because I
Speaker 1: realize that for a lot of people, they're they're constantly like,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. I'm procras
Speaker 1: Like you know, the list gets longer and longer, and
Speaker 1: you're like, but you're not giving yourself credit for all.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like what you're saying about monitoring, we
Speaker 1: don't realize about what we've done. And so for a
Speaker 1: lot of people making a to doll list, they've got
Speaker 1: to do and they've got to dot which is everything
Speaker 1: they've already done. For many people that's very energizing and
Speaker 1: encouraging because they can sort of get hard on themselves
Speaker 1: thinking about the things that are undone and not connecting
Speaker 1: the dots to think about the things that they have done.
Speaker 1: And strangely, sometimes you can do more when you realize
Speaker 1: how far you've already come, and so I think for
Speaker 1: some people that's a really important, like you say, spiritual practice,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, what is my tada and what
Speaker 1: can I say that I'm already participating in. There's a
Speaker 1: classic example of the gift I was talking about before
Speaker 1: the show that you have of taking a concept and
Speaker 1: giving it a very clever name, very good, thank you. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have to say I was proud of that. I
Speaker 1: love I love it like a rhyming symmetrical yeah, the
Speaker 1: fluency bias they call that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about outer order inter calm, because my first
Speaker 1: reaction to the d clutter movement that showed up was
Speaker 1: one of sort of a profound non interest. I don't remember.
Speaker 1: With the best selling book by Marie Condo that just
Speaker 1: went crazy right, and I just was like, well, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe it's because I'm fairly tidy anyway, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But when I heard your title Outer Order Inner Calm,
Speaker 1: I went, oh, Okay, that actually connects a dot for me, right,
Speaker 1: that actually connects a dot that says yeah. Because the
Speaker 1: minute I heard that, I went, oh, yeah, like I
Speaker 1: get that completely. When my outer environment is chaotic, I
Speaker 1: feel slightly chaotic, and so you said that. In my
Speaker 1: study of happiness, I've realized that for most of us,
Speaker 1: outer order contributes to inter calm more than it should.
Speaker 1: So say a little bit about how you found your
Speaker 1: way into this well, because for exactly what you're saying,
Speaker 1: it's like I felt this connection between sort of if
Speaker 1: there was chaos on the outside, it felt like there
Speaker 1: was chaos and me. And if I felt in control
Speaker 1: of my environment, I felt more in control of myself,
Speaker 1: which is an illusion, but it's a helpful illusion. And
Speaker 1: when I talk to people just like you, it's like
Speaker 1: there's a connection there. And I remember a friend of
Speaker 1: mine said, you know, I finally cleaned out my fridge,
Speaker 1: and all I know, I can switch careers. And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I get it. And and people would would say, like,
Speaker 1: I feel like when I clean out my closet, I
Speaker 1: feel just kind of this sense of energy and focus
Speaker 1: and and and a sense of possibility. And I think
Speaker 1: kind of disproportionately, because we can all agree that like
Speaker 1: a crowded coat closet is not something that is like
Speaker 1: a significant relevance to whether you're happy, healthy, productive, creative,
Speaker 1: and yet over and over people reported that they did
Speaker 1: feel this connection, and it is something that it's very
Speaker 1: much within our control. Also, it's interesting where often by
Speaker 1: getting rid of things, whether that's by donating them or
Speaker 1: fixing them or tossing them or recycling them or whatever
Speaker 1: is appropriate, people feel more engaged in their environments, like
Speaker 1: they're not fighting their way through stuff that doesn't work
Speaker 1: or is broken, and so they feel more engaged with
Speaker 1: their things. If there are things connected to memories, they
Speaker 1: feel more in connection. Those memories feel kind of alive.
Speaker 1: The clutter of life gets wiped away, and so it
Speaker 1: seems like one of these things where it really seems
Speaker 1: like a minor thing, but then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's actually kind of a major thing.
Speaker 1: And so I was just very interested in exploring that
Speaker 1: because I thought it was kind of surprising. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in your work on habits, you and I both share
Speaker 1: a real interest in this. Right, one of the things
Speaker 1: that becomes clear is that little things can often make
Speaker 1: a big difference. Right, our environment is stupidly important. Like
Speaker 1: the example I always give is the difference between my
Speaker 1: guitar sitting on a stand and sitting in the case,
Speaker 1: And every time I realized that when it's on the stand,
Speaker 1: I play it way more. I feel like, what is
Speaker 1: the matter with you that that could possibly be it
Speaker 1: like it takes two seconds to flip the case open, like,
Speaker 1: but it's undeniably true. Yeah, And I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: Somebody just told me yesterday. So he was like, I
Speaker 1: wanted to ride my bike to work, but I kept
Speaker 1: taking the car and I realized, like, I parked my
Speaker 1: bike like around the corner so it's kind of slightly
Speaker 1: more out of sight, and like chained it up there.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, you know, it's just like I
Speaker 1: can't be bothered to walk like the extra few steps.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put it right in front of my door,
Speaker 1: so I see it every time I walk out. And
Speaker 1: he's like, huge, huge increase in the number of times
Speaker 1: to victories. And he's like, look, if my bikes gets stolen,
Speaker 1: my bike gets stolen, but if I'm never riding my bike,
Speaker 1: it might as well be stolen. Because this is, you know,
Speaker 1: the same thing. I mean, you think the difference between
Speaker 1: opening a case and not opening a case, how could
Speaker 1: that possibly make a difference, And yet it does. There's
Speaker 1: this hilarious research showing that if you are at a
Speaker 1: salad bar, if people can use a spoon instead of tongs,
Speaker 1: they will take more food because like tongs are just
Speaker 1: too much work, and people won't take as much food
Speaker 1: because they just can't be bothered to use tongs. So
Speaker 1: you're exactly right, like these very very kind of laughably
Speaker 1: small changes can end up being quite significant. It's really hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the other things I think you do
Speaker 1: a really nice job of in your work is sort
Speaker 1: of recognizing not everybody's the same. You know, your four
Speaker 1: tendencies as an example of this. So is outer order
Speaker 1: inter calm sort of work for everybody, or there are
Speaker 1: a group of people that it just doesn't seem to matter.
Speaker 1: There seemed to be people we know who have the
Speaker 1: crazy the desk that were like, if that was my desk,
Speaker 1: I would jump off a bridge, But it seems to
Speaker 1: be what suits them right. Well, I think there's a
Speaker 1: couple different distinctions. One is that some people are truly
Speaker 1: clutter blind. Um and my co host Unhappier with Gretchen
Speaker 1: Movement is my sister Elizabeth, and my sister is clutter blind.
Speaker 1: So I'm very in touch with this and these are
Speaker 1: people who just don't see it. It doesn't back up
Speaker 1: on them because they just don't see it. My sister
Speaker 1: would never close a kitchen cabinet door for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life if she lived by herself. It doesn't
Speaker 1: weigh on her the way it weighs on me. She's
Speaker 1: just totally indifferent to it. And we know people like this,
Speaker 1: and I think for them, if they're sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: why would I bother to do it? I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: why would you bother to do it? If you're with
Speaker 1: other people and have to share an environment, then you
Speaker 1: have to figure out a way so everybody feels comfortable.
Speaker 1: But if it's just your space, like there's no magic
Speaker 1: to it. If you feel like you don't feel any
Speaker 1: better doing it, don't spend the time, like it's not important.
Speaker 1: So those are people who are clutter blind. But then
Speaker 1: there are people who are abundance lovers and simplicity lovers.
Speaker 1: And this is something I think that you see where
Speaker 1: like one person is says like, well, it clutter means
Speaker 1: a cluttered mind, and like they want bare counters and
Speaker 1: lots of room on the shelves and not much on
Speaker 1: the walls and kind of just you know, one little
Speaker 1: bud vase, and it's like lots of simplicity, and I
Speaker 1: count myself in this camp much of the time. And
Speaker 1: then there are abundance lovers, and abundance lovers like profusion
Speaker 1: and choice and collections and buzz and a lot going on,
Speaker 1: and so they tend to like to be an environments
Speaker 1: where there is like maybe there are piles or there's
Speaker 1: like a bunch of stuff on a coffee table or
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff on the shelves, and simplicity lovers
Speaker 1: that can look like clutter, but to an abundance lover
Speaker 1: what I consider to be kind of beautiful emptiness. They're
Speaker 1: like this looks sterile and stripped to me, like there's
Speaker 1: no life here, Like what's going on? And again, no
Speaker 1: one's right, no one's wrong. It's just a matter of preferences.
Speaker 1: And so if we have to share an environment, we
Speaker 1: need to figure it out. But it's not like I'm right,
Speaker 1: you're wrong, or you're right and I'm wrong. It's just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I like it this way, you like it that way.
Speaker 1: How do we proceed? Yeah, I'm so grateful that my
Speaker 1: partner Jenny now and I have an exact same feeling
Speaker 1: on clutter and environment. It's so good, such a luxury.
Speaker 1: We both do it, and so I just notice every one.
Speaker 1: So I think about it, was like, I don't think
Speaker 1: we've ever had a conversation about put your stuff away,
Speaker 1: you know, like from either side. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: ever been a single conversation. And that's kind of remarkable. Okay,
Speaker 1: and here's my second question, which is do you like
Speaker 1: to leave for the airport at the same time? Roughly,
Speaker 1: because if you match on both of those, you have
Speaker 1: saved yourself pretty percent of sweetheart arguments. I think we're
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. Okay, we cut it a little closer
Speaker 1: than she. Okay, Okay, I'm not like, let's get there
Speaker 1: twenty minutes and she's like, let's get there three hours
Speaker 1: and managing an hour, and she's like, we should have
Speaker 1: an hour. Okay. I did discover a new area of
Speaker 1: difference between us, though, which is that she gets near
Speaker 1: half a tank of gas and she immediately wants to
Speaker 1: get gas, and I will drive the thing just to
Speaker 1: the very brink. It actually comes up more often than
Speaker 1: you would think, because we have been driving from Columbus
Speaker 1: to Atlanta every month for the last six years because
Speaker 1: we've had parents in both places that have needed care.
Speaker 1: So we encounter this a lot, like it's fine, let's
Speaker 1: just keep going. She's like, no, we gotta stop. But
Speaker 1: luckily we kind of joke about it and it's not
Speaker 1: a not a big deal. You know, this would actually
Speaker 1: be kind of a funny list. Maybe I'll write a
Speaker 1: funny list like this where it's sort of like, not
Speaker 1: the big issues of being a couple, like how do
Speaker 1: you think about money and savings and parenthood and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, It's more like how much time do you
Speaker 1: need to have at the airport? And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: these funny little things that it's like they can, really
Speaker 1: though in a relationship, end up taking up a lot
Speaker 1: of space. How do you feel about laundry? Like does
Speaker 1: laundry need to be in a basket? Can laundry be
Speaker 1: on the floor? How long can laundry be on the
Speaker 1: floor before it goes into basket? You know this kind
Speaker 1: of thing you're talking about dirty laundry, Yeah, socks in
Speaker 1: the basket? In the basket? Well that's a clutter related one. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is fun. I bet there's like ten questions
Speaker 1: that come up disproportionately, they cause more arguments than they
Speaker 1: should given their importance to sort of the significant matters
Speaker 1: of a happy relationship in a happy life. It's funny.
Speaker 1: And then the other piece, of course, is that if
Speaker 1: the significant matters are well tended, it's easier to laugh
Speaker 1: about the little ones, whereas when the big things are
Speaker 1: a problem, everything becomes a problem. I've been in those
Speaker 1: relationships where it's just like an excellent point. The airport
Speaker 1: thing is not about the airport thing. It's about this
Speaker 1: fundamental issue in our relationship that you're not listening to
Speaker 1: me exactly exactly. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about There's a bunch of benefits of outer order that
Speaker 1: you list, and I'm going to go through a few
Speaker 1: of them. There's nine of them. We're not gonna have
Speaker 1: time to go through them all, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: pick a couple, and one of them is that outer
Speaker 1: order creates a feeling of sanctuary. You say, I experience
Speaker 1: true leisure because I don't feel pressured to jump up
Speaker 1: and deal with a mess. Yeah. What a lot of
Speaker 1: people say is that they would be sort of erratically
Speaker 1: kind of in their downtime, and yet they would feel
Speaker 1: this pressure to like get up and put things away,
Speaker 1: and you know, they don't feel comfortable in their own space,
Speaker 1: or they feel like they're either putting off things that
Speaker 1: they should be doing and that made them feel guilty,
Speaker 1: or they were doing those things and then they felt
Speaker 1: resemble because they weren't getting the leisure time. And so
Speaker 1: when things are put away, you have that feeling of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a place that I can go to. I
Speaker 1: can be in my home and I have that feeling
Speaker 1: of rest, I have that feeling of kind of security.
Speaker 1: I have this feeling like this is a place where
Speaker 1: I can go to like recharge and refresh myself, and
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm just changing, you know, one
Speaker 1: set of obligations to another set of obligations with no
Speaker 1: place to sort of relax and recharge. Being consistent with
Speaker 1: your habits is the engine that drives your transformation and growth.
Speaker 1: Think about it. You can't feed your good wolf one
Speaker 1: big meal a year and expect it to thrive. Consistent
Speaker 1: steady bits of food fuel a good, healthy wolf, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to create consistency. You might listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast on a Thursday feel really inspired, but then life
Speaker 1: takes over and by Saturday night you've forgotten all about it.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm hosting a free live Q and a
Speaker 1: town hall zoom meeting on Thursday, February, where I'll be
Speaker 1: answering your questions about how to take what you know
Speaker 1: and turn it into what you consistently do. Had to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash town hall to register
Speaker 1: for this free live session with me. During this town hall,
Speaker 1: you'll ask me your specific question and I'll answer it.
Speaker 1: It's that simple. So if you would like my help
Speaker 1: creating some tools to deal with real life when it
Speaker 1: gets in the way of your best intentions, let me
Speaker 1: help you. If changing habits feels overwhelming, if you struggle
Speaker 1: to make time for things because life is so busy,
Speaker 1: if it's easy to get caught up with your to
Speaker 1: do list, you feel consistently behind and taking time for
Speaker 1: yourself feel selfish, then let's talk. The things we do
Speaker 1: consistently are more important than the things we do once
Speaker 1: in a while. In this free town hall session, you'll
Speaker 1: ask me your questions and I'll help you find what
Speaker 1: works for you. How you might look at things differently
Speaker 1: and create this structure to help you do the thing
Speaker 1: you really want to do. And if you don't have
Speaker 1: a specific question, just come listen to the conversation. A
Speaker 1: little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.
Speaker 1: Truth is, you can make a lot of progress by
Speaker 1: doing just a little bit. To register for this free
Speaker 1: zoom session on February to one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash town hall. That's when you feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: town hall. I hope I get the chance to meet
Speaker 1: you there. Hey, everyone, this is Jenny. One of my
Speaker 1: absolute favorite things is when we hear from listeners of
Speaker 1: the show, and something we hear quite often is that
Speaker 1: one of the biggest obstacles to feeding the Good Wolf
Speaker 1: is remembering because life is busy and we get caught
Speaker 1: up in routines and we're all on autopilots so much
Speaker 1: of the time. So to help with that, we've started
Speaker 1: sending a couple of text messages after each episode is
Speaker 1: released to listeners who sign up for them, and it's
Speaker 1: something we're offering for free. A listener wrote us and
Speaker 1: said the message has caused me to pause, even if
Speaker 1: just for a moment, and help me to remember important
Speaker 1: bits of wisdom, bringing them to the forefront of my mind.
Speaker 1: Remembering is the hardest part, and the text messages are
Speaker 1: super helpful. So if you'd like to hear from us
Speaker 1: a few times a week via text, go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash text and sign up for free.
Speaker 1: You also say that outer order foster's peace within relationships.
Speaker 1: We were just kind of hitting this right, Yes, you
Speaker 1: were where you know, I spend less time nagging at
Speaker 1: or arguing with other people. But what do you do
Speaker 1: if you and your partner, or your housemates or your
Speaker 1: children have very different feelings on outer order intercalm? As
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, this is just a very common
Speaker 1: source of conflict. And I think the one thing that's
Speaker 1: important to remember is these are preferences because a lot
Speaker 1: of times people will say, well, I'm right, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you all the reasons that I'm right.
Speaker 1: But the thing is somebody else can be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm right, and I'm gonna tell you all the reasons
Speaker 1: I'm right, because the fact is, there really is no
Speaker 1: right or wrong. It's a question of like where do
Speaker 1: people feel comfortable, And if you're sharing a space, you
Speaker 1: have to think about like, okay, well, how do we
Speaker 1: manage that so people feel comfortable. And I have to
Speaker 1: say somebody who's pretty tidy myself, I do have sympathy
Speaker 1: for the people who are saying like, look, I don't
Speaker 1: care if the bed is made. If you want to
Speaker 1: make the bed, knock yourself out. But I don't see
Speaker 1: why I should spend my time and energy to make
Speaker 1: a bed when it just gets unmade the next night.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of like, right, if you don't care,
Speaker 1: there's no magic to it. And sometimes people want to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, but there is a magic to it.
Speaker 1: It's like, there's only a magic to it if you care.
Speaker 1: I deeply commit to making my bed. I make my
Speaker 1: bed in a hotel room on the day I check out.
Speaker 1: I have to have a bed mate, but I recognize
Speaker 1: that that's my preference, and if somebody really doesn't want
Speaker 1: to do that, that's their preference. Right. There's no moral
Speaker 1: element to this, right, And there's no like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: more creative, you're more productive. There's an amazing book by
Speaker 1: Mason Curry. I think it's called Creative Rituals anyway. He
Speaker 1: looks at the daily habits of like more than a
Speaker 1: hundred very very accomplished people, musicians, writers, artists, choreographers, sculptors, scientists,
Speaker 1: And what you see is that they're all over the place,
Speaker 1: like one person stays up late, one person gets up early,
Speaker 1: and one person drinks podcast, one person drinks coffee, and
Speaker 1: one works in a crowded studio and one works in isolation.
Speaker 1: And so what you see is that they're just very
Speaker 1: good at getting what they need in order to do
Speaker 1: the work that they want to do. And so there
Speaker 1: is no moral ground, there's no magic to it. It
Speaker 1: feels like this is right because this is what feels
Speaker 1: right to me, but of course somebody else feels the
Speaker 1: other way. So you can think of things like maybe
Speaker 1: you say like, okay, these are the five things that
Speaker 1: really drive me bonkers. Can you agree to do these
Speaker 1: five things, but not everything, but these five things? And
Speaker 1: then sometimes a person out of love will say, I
Speaker 1: will choose to do those things because I know that
Speaker 1: it's really important to you to feel comfortable in this space.
Speaker 1: But I'm not gonna do the five through fifteen things,
Speaker 1: because that's on you. But I will put my dishes
Speaker 1: in the dishwasher, I'll put my clothes in the basket, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. Another thing is to kind of
Speaker 1: have your own spaces. Like maybe if you have a
Speaker 1: big enough place, it's like, well, you've got an office,
Speaker 1: and if I see something of yours, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: throw it in your office and close the door. And
Speaker 1: then if you want it to be messy, it's like,
Speaker 1: that's your mess, that's your space, and then you keep
Speaker 1: your stuff there. Or if like you've got a big
Speaker 1: project where there's a lot of pieces that are out,
Speaker 1: you're gonna do it in your space so I don't
Speaker 1: have to look at that. We were talking earlier about convenience,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times when people are not good
Speaker 1: about keeping things orderly, it's because it's just a little
Speaker 1: bit too much trouble. And I mean a tiny little
Speaker 1: bit too much trouble. In my family, like people were
Speaker 1: just leaving their coats draped over chairs all the time,
Speaker 1: and I was just as bad as everybody else. So
Speaker 1: none of us were hanging up our coats. So then
Speaker 1: I thought, well, what if we had hooks instead of hangers.
Speaker 1: And I also got rid of a lot of our
Speaker 1: coats that we weren't wearing them because it was so
Speaker 1: crowded in our coat closet. You really had to like
Speaker 1: exert your force to jam them in. So I cleaned
Speaker 1: them out so it's easier to hang things up, and
Speaker 1: I put in tons of hooks, and now people will
Speaker 1: hang up their coats because you just put it on
Speaker 1: a hook. So it's just that little bit of things.
Speaker 1: Or like maybe the junk mail, you need to put
Speaker 1: it a little recycling thing right near where you bring
Speaker 1: in your mail, so you can just like put it there,
Speaker 1: and anything you need, you like put in the drawer
Speaker 1: so that it's out of sight and in safe keeping,
Speaker 1: and then you've gotten that done right away because it's
Speaker 1: just that much more convenient. Or you know people who
Speaker 1: have baskets that they put at the top of the
Speaker 1: stairs at the bottom of the stairs. If you're living
Speaker 1: in a house with stairs where it's like anything that
Speaker 1: needs to go upstairs, you put it in the basket
Speaker 1: and then when you go up, you take it up.
Speaker 1: So there's little things that you can do if you
Speaker 1: feel like, well, the people in my house are maybe
Speaker 1: not opposed to this, they're just not very qual operative
Speaker 1: about this. Also, I do find if you go through
Speaker 1: and you really look at clutter from your stuff, you're like,
Speaker 1: I want everybody else to be better about it, and
Speaker 1: they're not, because that's usually the complaint you hear is that, like,
Speaker 1: people are not orderly enough for me. If you really
Speaker 1: go through and really clear clutter, get rid of everything
Speaker 1: you don't use that doesn't work, that you don't you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what this thing is. I don't
Speaker 1: know why this is in our house. Get rid of it.
Speaker 1: I find that a lot of times people do do
Speaker 1: a better job because the more space there is to
Speaker 1: put things away and where it's more clear where things belong. Okay,
Speaker 1: if I hand you a hammer, where does that hammer go?
Speaker 1: You should know where a hammer goes. What about stamps?
Speaker 1: What about batteries? What about a ruler? What about a passport?
Speaker 1: All these things they should have a place, And it's
Speaker 1: sort of people are just more inclined to put things
Speaker 1: away when they're like, this is where this thing goes,
Speaker 1: and it's not hard, Like that drawer when I open
Speaker 1: it will not like explode in my face because there's
Speaker 1: so much stuff jammed in there. If it's just like
Speaker 1: that's where it goes. So I think sometimes when people
Speaker 1: want things to be more orderly, they can't help that
Speaker 1: by doing what they can do within their own power,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes peoper are more cooperative. But the fact
Speaker 1: is this is a place where people have very different
Speaker 1: levels of comfort and very different levels of commitment to
Speaker 1: the work that it takes to maintain order, and it
Speaker 1: can be frustrating when there's disagreement. So it's something to
Speaker 1: work through explicitly. Yeah, and I want to talk about
Speaker 1: some of those ways of creating more order because I
Speaker 1: think all those that you listed are so helpful. Like
Speaker 1: I am a hook guy, give me up, give me
Speaker 1: a hanger. It's gonna be right right, Like particularly as
Speaker 1: you say, a hanger in a crowded closet. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just amazing. It's like it's a three second difference.
Speaker 1: But again it's to our point, you know, it's that
Speaker 1: fundamental rule of behavior change, which is basically like, if
Speaker 1: you want to do more of something, make it as
Speaker 1: easy as possible to do it autely. And if you
Speaker 1: want to do less of something, make it as hard
Speaker 1: as possible. And little increments that make a big difference.
Speaker 1: In my twenty one Strategies of Habit Changed, I talk
Speaker 1: about the twins drive energies of convenience and inconvenience, because
Speaker 1: you're exactly right. Like I've talked to people who sleep
Speaker 1: in their exercise clothes so they don't have to get
Speaker 1: up in the morning and change clothes. Are like people
Speaker 1: who keep their television remote control like in a separate room,
Speaker 1: so they have to like go get the remote control.
Speaker 1: But you know, as we're talking, I'm just realizing something
Speaker 1: in my own life that I could do differently. When
Speaker 1: I was growing up. I grew up in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: so we had a big kitchen and we would just
Speaker 1: leave the dishwasher door open a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: and that made it very easy to put your dishes
Speaker 1: in the dishwasher. But now I live in New York
Speaker 1: City and we have a much smaller kitchen, so our
Speaker 1: dishwasher door is always closed because you know, our kitchen
Speaker 1: too small. And I'm like, I wonder if that's why
Speaker 1: I am much worse about putting away dishes now, because
Speaker 1: you think, well, now Gretchen's have grown up. Of course
Speaker 1: she puts your dishes in the dishwasher. But I actually
Speaker 1: did a much better job when I was younger, And
Speaker 1: now I'm realizing why. It's because the dishwasher door was open.
Speaker 1: I mean, how little effort is that? And yet I
Speaker 1: thinking back on it, I think that probably explains why
Speaker 1: my habit has changed. You have a term in better
Speaker 1: than before that I think really speaks to this. I
Speaker 1: love it. It's called ignition cost, and it's that any
Speaker 1: behavior has a little bit of extra energy needed at
Speaker 1: the very beginning. And again we're talking about very little
Speaker 1: bits of energy. Right, I gotta flip open the guitar case,
Speaker 1: I've got to put on my exercise clothes, right, But
Speaker 1: those little things make actually a big difference. And for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, there is something about going from zero to
Speaker 1: one that is, at least for me, way harder than
Speaker 1: then going on from one to ten. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: and what's related to that? That surprised me, and I
Speaker 1: think it surprises a lot of people in kind of
Speaker 1: a bad way, which is like a lot of times
Speaker 1: when you start a new habit, there's the ignition cost,
Speaker 1: but there's also like, especially if you're starting kind of
Speaker 1: like a habit that you're really fired up about, there's
Speaker 1: kind of the energy of starting, and so maybe you
Speaker 1: start and then you stop and you think, well, that's
Speaker 1: okay if I stop, because I'll just start again, and
Speaker 1: I found it really easy to start, but starting over
Speaker 1: is harder than starting the first time. I remember a
Speaker 1: friend who, like I, wanted to quit drinking, not because
Speaker 1: he thought he had a big problem, and he's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm getting older. It's like interfering with my workout.
Speaker 1: He's like, just you know, it's not good for me anymore.
Speaker 1: And the first time he did it was super easy
Speaker 1: to cut way back on his drinking, and then he
Speaker 1: was like, man, he went back to his old habits.
Speaker 1: He said, well, I'll just go back to it any time,
Speaker 1: But then when he did, it was much harder. And
Speaker 1: I think that's very, very often the case that's starting
Speaker 1: over is harder than starting. So I think once we start,
Speaker 1: once we pay that cost, we don't want to have
Speaker 1: to keep paying it. So once you start, you want
Speaker 1: to kind of try to really try to keep going
Speaker 1: if you possibly can agree. There's a lot of directions
Speaker 1: to go with that. I had your friends experienced times.
Speaker 1: I don't know about a thousand, because at twenty four
Speaker 1: I was a heroin addict and I burned my life
Speaker 1: to the ground and I got sober, and I stayed
Speaker 1: sober about eight years and then after eight years. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into the whole long bit of it,
Speaker 1: but I ended up going out and drinking again. I
Speaker 1: never went back to heroin, but I started drinking. But
Speaker 1: that didn't work out either, and so I kind of
Speaker 1: had to come back into recovery. And the second time around,
Speaker 1: I just was like, how is this so much harder?
Speaker 1: It was brutally harder. And I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people that are in my experience, you know, they've got
Speaker 1: a significant amount of time and they went back out
Speaker 1: or went back to the house and they never made
Speaker 1: it back. There is something about that that is really true.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that starts to happen is
Speaker 1: particularly when we have started and stopped something a bunch
Speaker 1: of times. Is that And I see this in in
Speaker 1: you know, coaching clients a lot is they get going
Speaker 1: with something, but the voice in their head is like,
Speaker 1: you're never gonna stick with this. You haven't stuck with
Speaker 1: it before, why is this time going to be different?
Speaker 1: And the first little slip, which everybody has a little slip, right,
Speaker 1: We're not perfect, the first little imperfection and their brain goes, see,
Speaker 1: I told you so. So it really is that start again,
Speaker 1: cost can really be there. I think there's ways to
Speaker 1: mitigate it a little bit in really watching what we
Speaker 1: say to ourselves around it. But yeah, that's a real thing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and in the twenty one strategies, one is the strategy
Speaker 1: of safeguards, which is like, you know, you want to
Speaker 1: plan to fail. You want to think, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what if I go to this place, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: too hard, and if I stand by the dessert tray,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sleep. You know, you want to think about
Speaker 1: what are the safeguards that you can put into place,
Speaker 1: What if I travel, what if I get sick, what
Speaker 1: if I'm with my difficult relatives? You want to put
Speaker 1: in all the sefeguards. But then like, actually, the strategy
Speaker 1: that I found the most entertaining to study is the
Speaker 1: strategy of loophole spotting, which is looking for the loopholes
Speaker 1: that we use to let ourselves off the hook. Because
Speaker 1: there's so many just imaginative, creative examples of this, and
Speaker 1: there's ten kinds of loophole. So there's like there's false
Speaker 1: choice loophole, which is like, well, I've been so busy
Speaker 1: doing that, I couldn't possibly do that, Like I'm so
Speaker 1: busy writing, there's no way I could go in for
Speaker 1: a doctor's check up. It's like, really, like, I think
Speaker 1: you could probably do both those things, or fake self
Speaker 1: actualization loophole when it's like you know you only live once,
Speaker 1: like you know I have to embrace life to the fullest.
Speaker 1: It's like you can embrace life to the fullest and
Speaker 1: not have this, you know, this stale brownie in the
Speaker 1: break room or whatever. Um. But I think all of
Speaker 1: us have these loopholes running. And when most of us
Speaker 1: have a few that are like our go to favorites,
Speaker 1: the lack of control loophole. I'm traveling, there's no way
Speaker 1: I could be expected to do X, y Z. And
Speaker 1: I think just by knowing them, you sometimes can be
Speaker 1: aware of how you're sort of looking for an opportunity
Speaker 1: to invoke a loophole to say, Okay, well, of course
Speaker 1: I would not be able to stick to my habit.
Speaker 1: And so I think when we're more aware of these loopholes,
Speaker 1: we can resist them because we're more consciously aware of them.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I mean to your point,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I found very interesting when
Speaker 1: I was in the study of habits is like, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times when people do slip up,
Speaker 1: as you say, they think, well, if I'm really hard
Speaker 1: on myself, fairly talk down to myself, that's going to
Speaker 1: kind of energize me to do even better. But what
Speaker 1: the research shows is that actually people who are more
Speaker 1: compassionate with themselves, who say things like well you know
Speaker 1: what I learned that less in the hard way, or
Speaker 1: like well that wasn't my best day, or well, you know,
Speaker 1: are more likely to read engage and so you really
Speaker 1: do want to go easier or something like we want
Speaker 1: to try really hard because the more we stick to something,
Speaker 1: the easier it's going to get. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: so it sort of seems like attention. You want to say, like,
Speaker 1: I really don't want to slip up, but if I
Speaker 1: do slip up, I want to have that compassion for
Speaker 1: myself and so that I don't feel too discouraged, so
Speaker 1: that I don't feel like trying again. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much great stuff in that book of yours
Speaker 1: about habits, because this is really actually pretty nuanced stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, it sounds easy to be like, well always
Speaker 1: takes small steps, you know, which the answer is yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, small steps are absolutely the
Speaker 1: right answer, but certainly not all the time. Or pick
Speaker 1: a specific time every day and do it that time
Speaker 1: every day. Well sometimes depending on your life, but other
Speaker 1: times no. And so you know, knowing your life and
Speaker 1: the structure of your life and the type of person
Speaker 1: you are and what works for you is why sort
Speaker 1: of really thinking about these ideas for yourself is so important.
Speaker 1: I could not agree with you more. And I really
Speaker 1: think if people said, like, what is the biggest mistake
Speaker 1: people make with habits formation, I think you just put
Speaker 1: your finger right on it, which is thinking that there's
Speaker 1: a magic tool that will work for everyone. There is
Speaker 1: no magic, one size fits all solution. We each have
Speaker 1: to say, like, well, what works for me, Like when
Speaker 1: am I at my most energetic and creative and productive?
Speaker 1: Because for one person they might work on their novel
Speaker 1: first thing in the warning, or for what another person
Speaker 1: they might work at it at ten o'clock at night.
Speaker 1: There's no one right way. People often say to me like, well,
Speaker 1: what's the best way to change the habit? And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what's the best way to cook an egg? And people
Speaker 1: are like, well, I don't know. It depends how you
Speaker 1: like your eggs. I'm like, right, what's the best way
Speaker 1: to credit Habit depends on you. You pointed out, like
Speaker 1: pick the same time of day. Earlier, you mentioned my
Speaker 1: four tendencies framework. So that's the thing that explains a
Speaker 1: lot of differences that you see in how people effectively
Speaker 1: change their habits or like kind of do things generally
Speaker 1: in life. And one of the things you see is
Speaker 1: some people really thrive on having something on the calendar,
Speaker 1: and some people absolutely turn away from that. It's counter productive.
Speaker 1: They don't like feeling trapped and chained by a calendar.
Speaker 1: That's how it makes them feel. They will resist that.
Speaker 1: And the idea like oh, pay for a class then
Speaker 1: you'll go, It's like that is not good advice for
Speaker 1: those people. So you need to know yourself, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: if I pay for that class, I'm definitely gonna go,
Speaker 1: or like, if I pay for that class, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be less likely to work out, And it's completely legitimate
Speaker 1: to feel like that way. A lot of people feel
Speaker 1: that way. So if you feel that way, it's not like, well,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with you, or you should try harder,
Speaker 1: or like, oh, maybe i'll give you a gift of
Speaker 1: this class and now you'll have to go. It's like,
Speaker 1: well I just wasted that money. You want to say, well,
Speaker 1: what kind of person am I? What works for me?
Speaker 1: If people are curious to know about the four tendencies,
Speaker 1: if they want to know what tendency they are, if
Speaker 1: they're an upholder a question or an abliger or a rebel,
Speaker 1: just kind of quiz dot Gretchen Reuben dot com and
Speaker 1: you'll get a little report that will tell you what
Speaker 1: you are and what to do with that information. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Yeah, that framework is really a
Speaker 1: very interesting one, as well as the abstainer versus moderate
Speaker 1: aim work, which is a really interesting thing. It's interesting
Speaker 1: for me because in certain areas I have had to
Speaker 1: be an absolute abstainer, like drugs and alcohol, like just
Speaker 1: had to and other areas of my life I really am.
Speaker 1: I think I've grown into being a moderator and really
Speaker 1: being able to find my way through that, and so
Speaker 1: I really think it just for me, it wasn't as clear.
Speaker 1: I don't remember whether you and I talked about this
Speaker 1: last time. It's a question that I would love to ask,
Speaker 1: is do you see people potentially transformed through the course
Speaker 1: of their life from one to the other. Because when
Speaker 1: I was younger, I had a whole lot more of
Speaker 1: an extreme streak, right it was yes or no, black
Speaker 1: or white, zero or hundred. And as I've gotten older,
Speaker 1: it's not just age. I actually think a lot of
Speaker 1: it in my cases growth, I've become a lot more
Speaker 1: nuanced in many many things. The risk of trying to
Speaker 1: apply that to drugs and alcohol is too high for me.
Speaker 1: There's just no possible reason that that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: But I've been able to find it in other areas
Speaker 1: to some degree for people, so they know what we're
Speaker 1: talking about with the standard moderator. So standard moderator. This
Speaker 1: is a strategy, the strategy of staining that works for
Speaker 1: some people in some context, but not for everyone. So
Speaker 1: the strategy of standard works for people who find that
Speaker 1: they're kind of all or nothing, that they can have
Speaker 1: none or they can have a lot, but if they start,
Speaker 1: they want to go all the way. So like for me,
Speaker 1: it's sweet. So let's put aside kind of things like drugs, alcohol, cigarettes.
Speaker 1: I think where a lot of people find like what
Speaker 1: is it? One is too many? And are what what's
Speaker 1: the phrase? Yeah? One is too many. A thousand's never enough.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to be a moderate Matthews right, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's put those aside. But let's talk about things
Speaker 1: like sweets, chips. You know wine, well, I guess wine
Speaker 1: is alcohol, So let's talk about things like sweets and chips.
Speaker 1: So for some people, they're ubstainards. And it's like, so
Speaker 1: I can have no oreos very easily, or I can
Speaker 1: have like a sleeve of oreos, but I can't have
Speaker 1: one oreo and easily stopped. I can't have half a
Speaker 1: dish of ice cream, I can't have one brownie. But
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, like I can have half
Speaker 1: a glass of wine because I don't really care about one.
Speaker 1: But then there are people who are moderators, and moderators
Speaker 1: get kind of panicky and rebellious if they're told that
Speaker 1: they can never have something. So these are the people
Speaker 1: who are, like, I'm just gonna keep a bar of
Speaker 1: fine chocolate in my desk drawer and every other day
Speaker 1: or so, I'll have one square of fine chocolate and
Speaker 1: that's all I need see for me. If that was like,
Speaker 1: I would be eat that thing at eight am, because
Speaker 1: otherwise I would just spend my whole day thinking about
Speaker 1: when am I gonna eat the rest of that chocolate bar.
Speaker 1: I think that people are in mix depending on like
Speaker 1: what they find truly tempting. And I just found out
Speaker 1: that for me, it was much easier just to have none.
Speaker 1: And I think in culture we accept that for certain
Speaker 1: things you have to abstain, like you were saying, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes,
Speaker 1: but then for other things people are sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: follow the twenty rule and you don't want to, like
Speaker 1: say that any food is off the table. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, for me, it's just easier to have nute.
Speaker 1: Like I have a tremendous, tremendous sweet tooth, I find
Speaker 1: it really distracting and boring to deal with it. If
Speaker 1: I just never have sugar, I just never think about
Speaker 1: it and it just goes away. And I just find that,
Speaker 1: to me is a much more pleasant way to live.
Speaker 1: And I found that to be true of a lot
Speaker 1: of people. But then moderators feel very different about it.
Speaker 1: But to your larger point about do these things change
Speaker 1: over time, I definitely think with time and experience, like
Speaker 1: what you say with the nuance, I think we do
Speaker 1: understand more of how other people might see the world.
Speaker 1: I also think that maybe things that were once strongly
Speaker 1: tempting are less tempting, and so maybe it's easier to
Speaker 1: be a moderator because you don't have that tremendous feeling
Speaker 1: of just wanting more and more and more and more
Speaker 1: and more, which is what stainerds. Is often very exhausting
Speaker 1: to like deal with that more and more and more
Speaker 1: and more more feeling. Um, if you feel like that's okay,
Speaker 1: I think over time maybe that that also kicks in.
Speaker 1: But you're exactly right. We all would hope that time
Speaker 1: and experience would teach us to have a larger view.
Speaker 1: The phrase that's always resonated with me is that there
Speaker 1: is a beautiful clarity to zero. You know, like it's
Speaker 1: just not a lot to figure out there, right, Whereas
Speaker 1: to your point when when it's when it is like,
Speaker 1: well you know, okay, I'm only going to do that
Speaker 1: on special occasions. Well what's a special occasion? And you know,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's like, well, you know, Sam
Speaker 1: got a B plus on his paper at school. It's
Speaker 1: a special occasion. Right, Like I will say this if
Speaker 1: you're a person were like basically I want to be
Speaker 1: an abstainer, but like I am one of these super
Speaker 1: low carb people, like I really don't eat curbs except
Speaker 1: for like vegetables and nuts, And most people don't want
Speaker 1: to be abstainers the way I am an abstainer, and
Speaker 1: a way that you can be an abstainer most of
Speaker 1: the time and like manage it. I think like the
Speaker 1: special occasion when you're talking about okay, Bobby gotta be plus,
Speaker 1: that's kind of an ad hoc loophole. You're okay, lack
Speaker 1: of control or you know, moral licensing or however you
Speaker 1: want to do it, whatever kind of loophole you're invoking,
Speaker 1: you're kind of invoking it on the spot. So if
Speaker 1: you're like I want to abstain but not all the time,
Speaker 1: how do I manage that? You can do planned exceptions.
Speaker 1: How you do a planned exception, You think about it
Speaker 1: in advance, you decide in advance how you're gonna behave,
Speaker 1: you do it in the moment, and you look back
Speaker 1: on it with pleasure. That's how a planned exception works.
Speaker 1: So planned exception is like I'm going to Paris with
Speaker 1: my husband for my anniversary. On our anniversary night, We're
Speaker 1: going to go to this amazing restaurant. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: like their most glorious dessert. I can't wait. I do it.
Speaker 1: In the moment, I look back and I'm like, that
Speaker 1: was a wonderful moment. But that doesn't mean like now
Speaker 1: I'm like doing that all the time because I end it.
Speaker 1: And so that's when we feel like we're staying in
Speaker 1: control of ourselves, because what happens a lot of times
Speaker 1: is people are like, Oh, I'm walking into my favorite dinner.
Speaker 1: Oh they have the best Jeremy's two in the world.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's like two for one night. How
Speaker 1: can I not take advantage of this? Like life's too
Speaker 1: short not to eat a piece of Teremans too, And
Speaker 1: then you feel bad later because you're like, I really
Speaker 1: didn't want that. I've had that a thousand times. It's
Speaker 1: really not that good. But just in the moment, I
Speaker 1: convinced myself, I don't look back on it with pleasure.
Speaker 1: So the planned exception, the way that you know that
Speaker 1: it's a plant exception is that you're like, I feel
Speaker 1: good about it because I'm basically I'm creating the life
Speaker 1: I want. You know, what we do most days matters
Speaker 1: more than what we do once in a while and
Speaker 1: in most days you're abstaining if that's what works for you. Again,
Speaker 1: this doesn't work for everybody, but it works, you know
Speaker 1: for some people. Then you can feel good about it.
Speaker 1: And you also want to say, like it's a holiday.
Speaker 1: This isn't like the holiday season. Is my plant exception,
Speaker 1: which is like six weeks it's like, you know, Thanksgiving dinner,
Speaker 1: and like what does that look like. It's like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to basically do it, but a and have you know,
Speaker 1: one piece of pie or whatever. To me, it's not
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving if I don't need pumpkin pie. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to have a piece of pumpkin pie and I can't wait,
Speaker 1: and I'll do it and I'll look back on it
Speaker 1: with pleasure. It doesn't extend for more than a month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that idea of just clarity on what it is.
Speaker 1: You know, with coaching clients in the past, I've said like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're getting ready to go on vacation, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about vacation. Don't just roll into vacation with the assumption
Speaker 1: that you're going to keep the habits that you have
Speaker 1: at home, because it's very possible you're simply not going to.
Speaker 1: It would be much better for your long term adherence
Speaker 1: to these habits for you to decide ahead of time
Speaker 1: either ay, I'm going to be I'm not going to,
Speaker 1: or see, I'm going to make some amendments and decide
Speaker 1: that ahead of time. Then to roll yourself into a
Speaker 1: situation that's beyond your capacity to handle and decide in
Speaker 1: that moment that you're going to go against what you
Speaker 1: said you were going to do. The proactive approach is
Speaker 1: way better. And so I think it is thinking ahead
Speaker 1: and clarity, and I think that phrase planned exception is
Speaker 1: a good word for it, or a good phrase. Now
Speaker 1: it's the strategy of safeguards. It's like thinking, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the cold moment of today, how am I going
Speaker 1: to behave in like the excitement of like whatever I
Speaker 1: have coming up? Absolutely makes a huge difference. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: heard somebody say something recently that really resonated with me,
Speaker 1: and it was don't plan to do something from your
Speaker 1: highest moment of energy for when you're going to be
Speaker 1: in a lower moment of energy advice. It's sort of
Speaker 1: the don't go to the grocery store when you're hungry thing. Right,
Speaker 1: So don't take your like you've got ten minutes a
Speaker 1: day where you're like peak energy and be like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to apply that to every moment of my life.
Speaker 1: You know, or don't plan that at three pm you're
Speaker 1: going to do something that's really taxing when you know
Speaker 1: at three pm you always feel tired. It's sort of
Speaker 1: really thinking about almost future self, Like what's myself going
Speaker 1: to be like in that moment? I need to take
Speaker 1: that into account instead of assuming that how I feel
Speaker 1: as I'm planning is the me that's going to keep
Speaker 1: showing up. One of the things I do to accomplish
Speaker 1: that is I think about treating myself like a toddler.
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, you don't take risks with a toddler.
Speaker 1: You don't let a toddler stay up too late day
Speaker 1: after day. You don't let a toddler get too hot
Speaker 1: or too cold. You don't let a toddler get too
Speaker 1: hungry or tooth thirsty. Like you make sure that that
Speaker 1: toddler is in peak form because you will pay. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, Gretchen, is that toddler? And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: have to get enough sleep. I can't let myself get
Speaker 1: too hungry. I get so angry I can't behave myself.
Speaker 1: I'm one of these people who get super cold, like
Speaker 1: I wear a ridiculous amount of clothing because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's just the realistic thing. And if everything's
Speaker 1: at its best and you're thinking like, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be the way it is all the time,
Speaker 1: it's just very unrealistic. You have to plan for what
Speaker 1: you're going to feel like at those low moments, and
Speaker 1: then also think about, Okay, well, how do I get
Speaker 1: the circumstances to keep me from getting into that state
Speaker 1: where I know it's going to be very very hard
Speaker 1: to manage myself because I'm exhausted or overwhelmed or hungry
Speaker 1: or whatever it might be. So I'm going to jump
Speaker 1: us back to our order inter Calm and talk about
Speaker 1: their six steps that you talk about, make choices, create order.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's five steps, make choices, create order, know yourself
Speaker 1: and others, cultivate helpful habits, and add beauty. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the first one for a moment, which
Speaker 1: is make choices. And first I'll let you say what
Speaker 1: you mean by make choices, and then I have an
Speaker 1: actual specific question in that area. Well, this is one
Speaker 1: of the things that's hard about clearing clutters. You have
Speaker 1: to make choices. You have to think like, well, do
Speaker 1: I need both these bowls or just one of these bowls?
Speaker 1: And it like do I wear all three of these sweaters?
Speaker 1: Are just one of these sweaters? And are we ever
Speaker 1: going to use this tennis racket again? You really have
Speaker 1: to decide what you're gonna do with things, and this
Speaker 1: can be very hard a lot of times, like paper clutter,
Speaker 1: the decision making around paper clutter can be very overwhelming,
Speaker 1: but it's really an essential part and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. One of the big reasons we accumulate
Speaker 1: clutter is that it's like, especially if you live in
Speaker 1: a place where you can just like throw it in
Speaker 1: the basement, You're like, it's just easier to keep it
Speaker 1: than to make the decision of like do I need
Speaker 1: to keep this or how long should I keep this?
Speaker 1: And so you're just like, I'll just keep it, and
Speaker 1: then it mounts up and then you've got like a
Speaker 1: whole big bunch of stuff to deal with, and then
Speaker 1: that feels like, well, what am I going to do
Speaker 1: with this big bunch of stuff? So you just let
Speaker 1: it get bigger. Um, So it's making choices. There's an
Speaker 1: emotional labor element. I had a coaching client at one point,
Speaker 1: and you know, her thing was like I need to
Speaker 1: really clean out my space and get organized. And you know,
Speaker 1: at the first it was just like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to break it down into little steps and
Speaker 1: we're going normal run of the mill stuff, right, But
Speaker 1: very quickly realized was that for her getting rid of
Speaker 1: nearly anything was like existential dread, and so there was
Speaker 1: this emotional element to it. I mean, there's the old maricon,
Speaker 1: no question of does this thing spark joy in you?
Speaker 1: Which I think you've had a different phrasing than that,
Speaker 1: and that's not a phrasing that really works for me.
Speaker 1: But what are some ways of thinking about making those choices?
Speaker 1: And what do people do if they find like it's
Speaker 1: just really hard for them to let go of anything. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the first thing to do is to
Speaker 1: recognize that this is a very natural human inclination. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes people are like embraced minimalism, get rid of everything,
Speaker 1: like you'll be happier with list stuff, and that's just
Speaker 1: not the common experience of mankind. In my observation, and
Speaker 1: so I think it's to recognize that we do feel
Speaker 1: an emotional attachment to our possessions. They remind us of
Speaker 1: the people and activities and places that we love. They
Speaker 1: allow us to project our identity into our environment, and
Speaker 1: so they're very precious to us. So when I'm talking
Speaker 1: to people who have that very intense emotional reaction, one
Speaker 1: is to say, like, if it's to hold onto memories,
Speaker 1: which often it is, your possessions will actually serve you
Speaker 1: better in that kind of memory provoking purpose if there
Speaker 1: are few and they're curated. So if you have three
Speaker 1: boxes of all your kids school work from you know,
Speaker 1: kindergarten through fifth grade, you're never going to go through
Speaker 1: it because it's too much stuff and it's all basically
Speaker 1: the same. But if you pick a few items and
Speaker 1: maybe you frame one piece of art and put it
Speaker 1: on the wall where you see it, and you create
Speaker 1: like a thin folder of the best stuff, the most
Speaker 1: representative stuff, you can really manage that and enjoy that
Speaker 1: as a memento. So you're really crystallizing the memory in
Speaker 1: a few kind of iconic things, and so they're gonna
Speaker 1: do that work for you better. When there's fewer of them,
Speaker 1: and they're highly curated. So for people who are like
Speaker 1: I need to hold on the memories, you're like, yes,
Speaker 1: you can pick a few very representative things, and then
Speaker 1: maybe you take a picture of a lot of the
Speaker 1: other things, so you can still get that memory prompt
Speaker 1: if you want. But you don't need this stuff. Another
Speaker 1: thing that many people feel like, it's all these things
Speaker 1: are precious to me because they belong to someone who
Speaker 1: is precious to me. So how can I get rid
Speaker 1: of any of it? Because it's like getting rid of
Speaker 1: the person who I love. You don't need any of
Speaker 1: that stuff to remember that person, but you would like
Speaker 1: to have something to remember that person. Okay, so what
Speaker 1: are you going to choose? And I went through this
Speaker 1: when my grandfather died, I was like, Okay, I could
Speaker 1: pick his armchair that he loved to sit in. I
Speaker 1: could pick the grandfather clock that he loved. I could
Speaker 1: pick his desk that I love to sit at that
Speaker 1: he used every day. Or you can pick his pocket
Speaker 1: watch because he was an engineer on the Uni Pacific Railroad,
Speaker 1: so the pocket watch was a very big deal. Well,
Speaker 1: I picked the pocket watch because I could put a
Speaker 1: pocket watch on the shelf where it's like, what do
Speaker 1: I do with the armchair and the desk and or
Speaker 1: their grandfather clock. I don't want those big things, but
Speaker 1: are the one thing and that's enough because that holds
Speaker 1: all that memory in it. And so again it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you have all this stuff, can you pick a few
Speaker 1: things that are like the most representive, the most rich
Speaker 1: in emotions, and then let go of all the other
Speaker 1: things and remember those things can go and live a
Speaker 1: long and happy life with somebody who will actually use them,
Speaker 1: because if you're not using them, they're just sitting there wasted.
Speaker 1: Let them out into the world to do their work,
Speaker 1: because you have the thing that's going to help you.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times people when they have
Speaker 1: this emotion, the people around them are like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that doesn't count, and then they feel like they have
Speaker 1: to hang on all the tighter. Whereas if you say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is completely understandable, so much respect for that feeling,
Speaker 1: how do we work with that and really help you
Speaker 1: engage in that way because a lot of times when
Speaker 1: you have fewer things, you really do engage with them
Speaker 1: more because they're just like see them and interact with
Speaker 1: them so much more easily than when you're overwhelmed by them.
Speaker 1: So I think so as it takes like a couple rounds,
Speaker 1: but I have found it often going through this, people
Speaker 1: are able to go like, well, I can go from
Speaker 1: fifty to ten, I can go from ten to five,
Speaker 1: I can go to five to three, and they're not
Speaker 1: going to GiB below three maybe, but that's okay three Managel. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: that point's a really good when it's sort of the
Speaker 1: possessions version of the old business cliche. If everything is
Speaker 1: a priority, nothing's approach. That's a perfect analogy. Fifty things
Speaker 1: are a priority in essence, none of them are. You
Speaker 1: just get lost in the noise. And so the same
Speaker 1: thing as you were saying that, I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about like a lot of memory things that I have.
Speaker 1: They're just I need to probably go through and parse
Speaker 1: those things. Luckily, I we have made ourselves sort of
Speaker 1: stay in a small relative, a small two bedroom apartment
Speaker 1: for the last number of years, which it's the time
Speaker 1: of the year December necessitates a December purging, you know,
Speaker 1: And so it has really kept me fairly disciplined because
Speaker 1: I'm like, I do not want to crack the door
Speaker 1: on a storage unit. I do not want to crack
Speaker 1: the door on storage Like, well, I had a house
Speaker 1: before this. It was exactly like you described. I had
Speaker 1: enough space to be like, well, just I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we want it, I don't know
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do with it. Put it down there,
Speaker 1: and because it's hard to decide, and then it grows
Speaker 1: and grows and it just becomes like let meness never
Speaker 1: go down there if I don't, if I don't have to,
Speaker 1: because it's so overwhelming. But this two bedroom is enforced
Speaker 1: a certain discipline that has actually been really good. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because I had not thought of this. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a version of what you're talking about. A
Speaker 1: couple of people have told me how they will use
Speaker 1: an artificial space constraint as a way to manage this,
Speaker 1: because it's sort of like even if you have like
Speaker 1: two giant boxes. Okay, let's say, like my children have
Speaker 1: what they call their men random boxes, which I don't
Speaker 1: know what they call them that, but it's like you
Speaker 1: can fill your memorandom box, but everything has to fit
Speaker 1: in there. So if you want to put more in,
Speaker 1: something has to come out, So it's constantly having to
Speaker 1: use the priority. Same thing. If you've got this apartment,
Speaker 1: it's like, if it doesn't fit in the apartment, something's
Speaker 1: gotta go. You either can't bring it in or something's
Speaker 1: gotta like make room for it. And so some people
Speaker 1: do this, like with Christmas decorations. It's like I have
Speaker 1: so many boxes for Christmas decorations, and if something comes in,
Speaker 1: something has to go because I'm not going to start
Speaker 1: another box, or I'm only going to keep what I
Speaker 1: can store on this top shelf of a closet, and
Speaker 1: if it doesn't fit, something's got to go. So sometimes
Speaker 1: there are ways you can do it through space constraints
Speaker 1: as well. There was another idea the third step is
Speaker 1: to sort of know yourself and others. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about a little of this right knowing what it's important
Speaker 1: to you. But there was an idea that you know,
Speaker 1: are you clinging to an outdated identity? So we don't
Speaker 1: want to relinquish an identity, so we cling to those possessions.
Speaker 1: So a little bit more about that, Well, I've got
Speaker 1: a ukulele, uh some you know, like I was like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna learn to play the ukulele, and it's everybody
Speaker 1: says how fun it is and how easy it is,
Speaker 1: and they're so cheerful, and it's like, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna learn how to play the ukulele. I started. It's
Speaker 1: like it might be easier than learning to play the guitar,
Speaker 1: but is not like that easy? And do I still
Speaker 1: have that ukulele? Yes? I do, because it's it's this
Speaker 1: fantasy self that I had, that like of myself like
Speaker 1: picking up an instrument. No, I'm not going to That
Speaker 1: is the fantasy self. Or I almost bought a set
Speaker 1: of like Linnen cocktail napkins on sale because I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're so fun and they're so beautiful. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: who am I kidding? You know, I narrowly escape fineness
Speaker 1: because I'm totally not the kind of person who would
Speaker 1: use Lennon. I don't even know how to use Linnen
Speaker 1: cocktail napkans practically. So sometimes it's the fantasy self. So
Speaker 1: it can be hard to look of those things because
Speaker 1: it's letting go of the fantasy. The fantasy of myself
Speaker 1: is playing the ukulele, or it can also be the
Speaker 1: fantasy of someone you once were like the friend of
Speaker 1: mine who had like so many tennis rackets and they
Speaker 1: took up so much space and she never really used them.
Speaker 1: But because she had played tennis in college, it was
Speaker 1: a really important asked identity for her, and so she
Speaker 1: had to acknowledge that her identity had moved forward and
Speaker 1: she was no longer the kind of person who needed
Speaker 1: so many tennis rackets. And so sometimes it's the fantasy
Speaker 1: self in the future, or maybe we're sort of mourning
Speaker 1: the loss of a self that we were in the past,
Speaker 1: and this can be very painful, and so sometimes I
Speaker 1: think we hang onto those objects because we still want
Speaker 1: to hang onto the idea that maybe one day will
Speaker 1: be the kind of person who will learn to play
Speaker 1: the ukulele. And it's like that doesn't seem likely, and
Speaker 1: if it did happen, I could get another ukulele, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem very likely. It's funny that you brought
Speaker 1: up those two examples, because just yesterday I was opening
Speaker 1: up the trunk of my car and I saw two
Speaker 1: tennis rackets, and it's probably been three years now. I
Speaker 1: would guess my partner Ginny and I decided, largely at
Speaker 1: my prompting that learning to play tennis together would be
Speaker 1: a good idea I have. I have joked on the
Speaker 1: show before, and she knows that I joke about it,
Speaker 1: that the fact that our first tennis list and ended
Speaker 1: with her in tears was an indication that this was
Speaker 1: not a hobby that was going to stick. But those
Speaker 1: tennis rackets are still there, and it's interesting because what
Speaker 1: I came to yesterday was I am not giving up
Speaker 1: on wanting to learn to play tennis. However, there is
Speaker 1: no reason to keep carding these rackets around. It's not
Speaker 1: like they are five thousand dollar rackets, right, Like they're
Speaker 1: crappy rackets. Go by a new and if you do
Speaker 1: take it up, because it's still it's on my list
Speaker 1: of things that you carry from year to year, but
Speaker 1: you're not ready to abandon tennis is on mine. Maybe
Speaker 1: you play pickle ball as a couple, because it seems
Speaker 1: like pickleball is the thing that people do, and then
Speaker 1: if you're interested in tennis, you take tennis lessons on
Speaker 1: your own. Tennis is definitely if it's gonna happen, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be me. I've I've accepted that, but I would
Speaker 1: love to play pickle ball, either with or without her,
Speaker 1: So any that you brought up tennis, because literally, just
Speaker 1: yesterday I had this this exact conversation. I looked at them,
Speaker 1: and as I was walking up the stairs, I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm not ready to give up on this yet.
Speaker 1: I still think it's a good hobby for me. And
Speaker 1: I don't need to keep these tennis rackets in my
Speaker 1: trunk forever because they just taking up space and I'm
Speaker 1: not using them now. And that's a perfect example of
Speaker 1: kind of like the evolving self and how the possessions
Speaker 1: can kind of like prompt you to new realizations because
Speaker 1: like looking at them, you you sort of went through
Speaker 1: the thing being like, you know what, this isn't gonna
Speaker 1: be something that we're going to do together. It's something
Speaker 1: that I'm going to do in my own and that's okay,
Speaker 1: but it would still be fun to do something together.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll try pickleball. And the kind of the tennis
Speaker 1: rackets sort of the catalyst of that realization. But if
Speaker 1: you just ignored them and drove them around for three years,
Speaker 1: you might not be prompted to like move forward and
Speaker 1: to realize like, oh well, maybe twenty three is the
Speaker 1: time when I'm going to take the tennis lessons or
Speaker 1: you're sort of alerted to it. So in some ways
Speaker 1: our possessions can help us to realize this kind of
Speaker 1: the evolving self. But we have to pay attention and
Speaker 1: not just like let all this stuff blend into the
Speaker 1: wallpaper so that we're weighted down by all these things
Speaker 1: and we're not seeing how to take the lessons that
Speaker 1: they carry forward with us. Yeah, we're near the end
Speaker 1: of time. But I wanted to maybe end on a
Speaker 1: question that I think is a really great question, whether
Speaker 1: we're talking about possessions or really anything else, and it
Speaker 1: is you say, when trying to make a tough choice,
Speaker 1: challenge yourself, choose the bigger life. Say a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that, because I think that is such a great,
Speaker 1: great question. I think I've got slightly different versions of it,
Speaker 1: but talk about that because I think that's a great
Speaker 1: place for us to wrap up. Well. The way that
Speaker 1: I came to this was I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I will often have a situation where it's like
Speaker 1: the pros and cons of making a decision seem perfectly balanced,
Speaker 1: And I've talked to people where it's like, should we
Speaker 1: move the big city with more opportunities, or should we
Speaker 1: stay in our town where we have family to support us.
Speaker 1: It's like that's an apple in an orange. And you
Speaker 1: could do the pros and cons over and over, and
Speaker 1: sometimes when you say we'll choose the bigger life, it's
Speaker 1: instantly clear which one is the bigger life. Um in
Speaker 1: a way that is not clear when you're doing the
Speaker 1: pros and cons. And the fact is people would have
Speaker 1: different decisions about what the bigger life is. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: in my family, my daughters really really wanted to get
Speaker 1: a dog. My husband was like, yeah, we can get
Speaker 1: a dog if everyone wants to. Who wasn't like really
Speaker 1: weighing in? And I really did not want to get
Speaker 1: a dog. I didn't want the hassle, basically. So it
Speaker 1: was like the pros and the cons and then this
Speaker 1: and then that and all these car arguments, and then
Speaker 1: I was like, well, choose the bigger life. And in
Speaker 1: a second I knew that the bigger life from our
Speaker 1: family was to get a dog. And we got a dog,
Speaker 1: and we love a dog, and it's absolutely the bigger
Speaker 1: life and it's absolutely the right choice. But I can
Speaker 1: imagine that for somebody else. They could be like, we'll
Speaker 1: choose the bigger life. For me, at least at this stage,
Speaker 1: is like it's a lot of money that I don't have.
Speaker 1: I really am valuing my freedom, and if I have
Speaker 1: a dog, I'm gonna have to like worry about, like
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to the dog when I'm at
Speaker 1: at home. I feel like it's a lot of responsibility,
Speaker 1: and I'm in a place where like I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm barely hanging on. I don't want to take responsibility
Speaker 1: for something else. I mean, so for them, they might
Speaker 1: be like, choose the bigger life, because the bigger life
Speaker 1: for me is like not having this responsibility, which you know,
Speaker 1: a dog is a big responsibility. But they choose the
Speaker 1: bigger life kind of instantly. I think sheds a completely
Speaker 1: different light on something that might feel like a decision
Speaker 1: that feels impossible, and and different people answer it from
Speaker 1: their own perspectives. I cannot say for everyone, my choice
Speaker 1: is the bigger life, because people would bring their own values,
Speaker 1: situation circumstances to that. Yeah, it's funny because Jenny and
Speaker 1: I have two dogs. One of them is probably about
Speaker 1: to pass. I said, you know, my inclination is to
Speaker 1: just get another dog. I love dogs. But we started
Speaker 1: talking about like, but we've been talking about for a
Speaker 1: number of years now. Her mom just passed from Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: and my mom we're going to get relocated to where
Speaker 1: my sister is, probably because we've been like, we want
Speaker 1: to go spend six months here, six months there, six months.
Speaker 1: They're like, I have the freedom to do it, and
Speaker 1: you know, I have been wanting to do it, but
Speaker 1: things have stood in the way. And so for us,
Speaker 1: the bigger life in that particular question was I don't
Speaker 1: think a dog is the right idea right now, Like
Speaker 1: we've got one, she travels well, But the bigger life
Speaker 1: for us is six months in Lisbon, six months in
Speaker 1: saying f today, but in three years, that may be
Speaker 1: a radically different formulation on the exact same question exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really helpful that you remember.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is a particular season of life, and
Speaker 1: sometimes things are not suited to a particular season of life.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that you've been making this decision
Speaker 1: for always. And you know, certain things come into the
Speaker 1: foreground and certain things go into the background. As we
Speaker 1: go through but right, you're like, look, I have to
Speaker 1: quarantine a dog. I mean, I gotta air travel a dog.
Speaker 1: Like that's a lot, and it's be a lot for
Speaker 1: the dog too. So that's a perfect example of how
Speaker 1: even someone who loves dogs might think like, not right now, Yes,
Speaker 1: I do want another dog. There's no doubt about. Okay,
Speaker 1: you got a dog in your future. I've got a
Speaker 1: dog in my future, Yes, I do, absolutely. What kind
Speaker 1: of dog do you have? I have a cockapoo named Barnaby. Oh, Barnaby,
Speaker 1: I assume it's a he's he sounds delightful. What kind
Speaker 1: of dogs do you have? We have a Boston Terrier
Speaker 1: name Beans, and she's the one who is I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually thought, like, first week in December, it's time
Speaker 1: for her. And the minute I make that decision and
Speaker 1: she stages a mini rally, I'm like, oh for crying
Speaker 1: out loud. And the other is a sort of a
Speaker 1: fox Terrier slash Chihuahua um little girl named Lola who's
Speaker 1: just such a sweet dog. So she's the kind of
Speaker 1: dog you can absolutely travel. She's small, and she's just
Speaker 1: so well behaved and so chill, and so yeah, those
Speaker 1: are our dogs. Yeah, alright, well, Gretchen, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. It's always a pleasure to talk
Speaker 1: to you. And well links in the show notes to
Speaker 1: where people can find your different things, certainly your podcast.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it a couple of times. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful show, so listeners, I would highly encourage you to
Speaker 1: check that out. And thank you Gretchen. Thank you always
Speaker 1: such a pleasure of talking. We're interested in all the
Speaker 1: same things. I feel like we could talk all day.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support
Speaker 1: the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community.
Speaker 1: With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members
Speaker 1: only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for
Speaker 1: your support now. We are so grateful for the members
Speaker 1: of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what
Speaker 1: we do without their support, and we don't take a
Speaker 1: single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation
Speaker 1: at any level and become a member of the one
Speaker 1: you Feed community. Go to when you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Join the One You Feed podcast. Would like to
Speaker 1: sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.