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I’m no self-help guru. And while I don’t think Gretchen Rubin would identify as one, she’s dedicated her work to figuring out just what the hell it means to live a full life. As a writer and former lawyer, Gretchen has spent years trying to understand happiness, the ways she can access it herself, and how to bring others in on the wisdom she’s gained. We talk action-led thoughts and aphorisms — anything in pursuit of leaving a conversation feeling happy (or at least, as Gretchen would say, happier).

Gretchen’s podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, is now part of the Lemonada Media network and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow me on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Stay up to date with Lemonada on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gretchen Rubin, David Duchovny

David Duchovny  00:06

I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Gretchen Rubin is considered one of today’s most influential observers of happiness and human nature. She has a slate of New York Times best selling books, including The Happiness Project, an award winning app and a hit podcast called happier and happier is now a part of lemonade, which you might know is the same network that puts out this show. Before she got into this work, Gretchen had a very successful law career, including advising the chairman of the FCC and clerking for Sandra Day O’Connor, and she still just wasn’t happy. Gretchen was in her 40s when she decided to research how to be happier, and her approach has turned out to be pretty much the opposite from what we hear from self help gurus. Now, Gretchen identifies primarily as a writer, which is obviously something I relate to, but otherwise, her work is pretty foreign to me. You know, she at least appears to be on the other side of the spectrum from failure, but I knew she’d have a lot to say about ups and downs and maybe bring some more ups to this podcast. Here’s our conversation.

 

David Duchovny  01:21

Hi.

 

Gretchen Rubin  01:22

Hello.

 

David Duchovny  01:22

Hi Gretchen, nice to meet you. I’m David.

 

Gretchen Rubin  01:24

Nice to meet you.

 

David Duchovny  01:27

I’m really happy that, well, that’s the wrong word, isn’t it. I’m really happy to talk to you today, because it’s a very kind of deep subject in my family. Because when I was a kid and up until adulthood, easily, my mother would always ask me, Are you happy? And I never, I could never understand the question, you know. I would say, I don’t even know what that means, Mom, you know. And I hated it so much. I hated that question, and she always it was almost like the end of the conversation, are you happy?

 

Gretchen Rubin  02:05

And then do you think it was like you’re only as happy as your least happy child? So she wanted to know if you were happy, so she could be happy.

 

David Duchovny  02:13

No, she was Scottish. So she knew all her children, she knew all her children were miserable. So it wasn’t. It wasn’t, wasn’t even I always liked hearing when I when I became a parent, and I heard that phrase for the first time, it rang very true, though, you know that you are only as happy as your least happy child, but that’s the ironic part. Is that when I became a parent, I found myself asking my kids if they were happy, and I didn’t even know what the question meant, you know, I didn’t know how to answer it. I didn’t know. And yet, something genetic in me went, Oh, I’ve got to ask my kids if they’re happy or not. And I realize in in going over a lot of your your work, that you kind of shy away from a definition of happiness. You know, it’s this kind of pivotal word. It’s the crucial word in your work. And yet you’re not going to define it, are you? That’s true. You won’t define it for me.

 

Gretchen Rubin  03:12

No, because I feel exactly the way you do. When people say to me, are you happy? I feel like my brain melts. I’m like, I don’t even understand how to think about it, because it’s like, rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. What does that even mean? Because sometimes we’re happy and unhappy at the same time. Like, how do you weigh things that make you happy in the long term but make you less happy in the short term? So this is why I don’t there’s something like 15 academic definitions of happiness, and I sort of think everybody should just find what works for them, peace, joy, satisfaction, well, being there’s, there’s so many ways to describe it, but I think for the average person, I find it more helpful to think about being happier, whatever being happy means for you, for David, for Gretchen, If you do a certain action this week, this month, this year, isn’t going to make you happier. And I think most of us have a sense of like when we’re moving in the right direction, but what it means to be happy or achieve happiness, I feel like that’s really confusing, but if you just think about well, what would make you happier, that feels very concrete and manageable. So that’s why I think, like, just define it for yourself, but just move in the right direction.

 

David Duchovny  04:25

And I think also what you’re getting to is an important point, because when you’re speaking, I’m reminded of, you know, we might be the only culture that’s ever asked ourselves that or has said, hey, we deserve to be happy. You know, where is our happiness that somehow we were promised this thing called happiness? I don’t know. I think that’s a relatively modern kind of a feeling.

 

Gretchen Rubin  04:51

Well, the I mean, many cultures throughout time have have looked at it. And here’s the thing, which I always think when, when, when I hear that argument, is like. Yeah, it almost seems like people think, well, it’s not appropriate to think about being happy. But I’m like, what would be more appropriate to then to think about having a life? Because also, a life of happiness is not a life of hedonic self indulgence.

 

David Duchovny  05:15

No, I think it’s the opposite. I think what where the confusion happens is, and I think the ancient wisdom and the ancient addressing of this issue was more of a light, what is a life well lived, as opposed to what is what makes me happy? Or what is happiness, you know.

 

Gretchen Rubin  05:31

Then we get into the definitions again.

 

David Duchovny  05:33

Yes, I know exactly happiness might be a life well lived, indeed, you know, so sure. But what I wanted to get to was that idea of, I don’t know if I want to call it like a selfishness, because I think that that often my sense of happiness exactly what you were saying. It’s not hedonistic. It’s it’s the times when I have felt most happy in the end, whatever that means is when I’ve been connected outside of myself, when I’ve been connected, whether in service or in community or in self Abnegation, really, there’s a certain kind of happiness in getting your mind off of your goddamn self, You know? And what the trick that you’re talking about that’s interesting is that in order to get to that point, first, you’ve got to really focus on yourself. You know, there’s this kind of, there’s this kind of, like, it’s not a bait and switch, but it’s like, okay, you’re thinking too much about yourself. That’s why you’re miserable. My antidote is, we’re gonna think more about yourself.

 

Gretchen Rubin  06:42

Yes, absolutely. This is very confusing. You put your finger right on something that confused me for so long, when I began my study of happiness, and this is how I frame it. See if this works for you.

 

David Duchovny  06:53

Okay?

 

Gretchen Rubin  06:55

Because two things are true. One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. And that’s absolutely true. It’s one of the nicest things about human nature. One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happier. And what’s also true is that one of the best ways to make other people happier is to be happy yourself. Oh yeah, because when we’re happier, we’re we’re more able to turn outward and to think about the problems of other people and the problems of the world. We’re more likely to volunteer. We donate more money. We volunteer more time. We’re more likely to help out if somebody needs a hand. We just can think about other people, because we’re not preoccupied with ourselves and sort of, you know, because we might feel defensive or isolated or lonely or because we’re not feeling very happy. And also, happiness is contagious. There’s emotional contagion. We infect each other with our emotions in just a moment, in a phone call, In a photograph, over a podcast, like we pick up emotions from other people. So when you’re happier, that helps other people to become happier within reason. Of course, I don’t want to paint like an unrealistic picture, but I think these two things are true at the same time, and it can get very confusing. You’re right, because it’s like, do I think about other people, or do I think about myself? But both are true. They’re not. It’s a false choice to think about, well, I have to think about other people. It’s wrong to think about myself, or I only should focus on myself and neglect thinking about other people. I just have to, you know, just focus on my self. Work all day long. It’s like when we have to think about both things at once.

 

David Duchovny  08:28

Well, you can also think of it as a process, you know, a process of going through yourself, to get out of yourself, if that makes sense, you know, I’m so easily bored by myself, that I that I have trouble, but, but that gets, but that gets to something that I’d want to talk to you about, which is it very interesting to me that, you know, if we just talk about, like, a traditional therapy, traditional like, say, Freudian therapy, Where the concept is, I’m going to go in and talk to this expert, and I’m going to know why I am unhappy, or I’m going to know why I do the things I’m going to do, and it’s going to take a long time. It’s going to take years and years and years, and then all of a sudden, this other cognitive therapy, or 12 step therapy, whatever you want to call it, says, no, that’s not important. It’s not important to know why. Maybe it’s fun, it’s cool. It makes for good writing, whatever a good story. But what’s more important is start doing it the right way. Start doing start acting as if the person you are, the person that you want to be doing the things that you think you want to do, and that will change your mind. Rather than your mind changing your mind, action is going to change your mind. And I see you in that kind of a camp. Is that correct?

 

Gretchen Rubin  09:52

That’s absolutely correct. I very much am drawn to sort of, what are the practical steps that we can take with our conscious. Thoughts and actions to make ourselves happier, healthier, more productive or more creative. And you’re right, having insight can be very profound, but there’s also a lot of things that you can just do starting tomorrow that can change your experience. And I’m just that is what interests me, is sort of like given all that science shows and philosophy shows and pop culture and ancient wisdom, like, what can we do in our own lives, just in an ordinary day, to put those ideas into action?

 

David Duchovny  10:31

And it’s your sense as a as an observer and as like a lay scientist.

 

Gretchen Rubin  10:37

Yeah, street scientist. Street scientist is that that’s what I call myself.

 

David Duchovny  10:43

That it’s your sense and it’s your experience. Is what I’m getting, is that that is true, that right action leads to right thinking, and not necessarily vice versa.

 

Gretchen Rubin  10:54

Yeah, and I don’t even know that I would say right thinking, because I would just say, what is the experience of your life? You know, I would just say, like, in my observation, if you do this, what is the experience of your life? Because again, I think I at least find it frustrating when I’m trying to get into my own head, like when people are like, Oh, well, I want to be more optimistic. Well, I’m like, oh, that’s like a habit of mind that’s like very to me, that feels very hard to sort of think about what to do, but there are things that you can do with your conscious thoughts and actions that are much more concrete, and therefore it’s much easier to know whether you’re following through with them. So like, instead of thinking about, you know, I want to be more connected to the people I love, it’s more like, Okay, five times a day I’m going to text, email, call or talk to somebody important to me, or whatever it might be, just to try to make it into a conscious.

 

David Duchovny  11:45

And then you’re gonna get that text. It’s like, will you stop texting me so much?

 

Gretchen Rubin  11:48

Right, exactly, yes. He’ll back off. Yeah, my sister calls me a happiness bully, because I can kind of come on strong if I think that there’s some way for me or somebody else to become happier. So yeah, sometimes you got to dial it back. But, but, like, so, for example, one thing that I started doing because I wanted to have, like, warmer relationships in my family, was every time somebody comes and goes from the apartment, I try to give them a warm hello or goodbye. So like, think about your dog. Like, that’s why people like dogs, they always seem happy to see you. And I was like, I should do that for my family, and so now, you know, like, if my husband comes home, I get up, go to him and, like, give him a kiss. And that’s very easy. It doesn’t take much time or energy, but it dramatically increased, like, my feeling of connection and just kind of like the atmosphere of tenderness and attentiveness, because it doesn’t feel good to walk in and nobody pays attention. So again, it’s like.

 

David Duchovny  12:45

A great Scotty dog growing up who would actually turn her head the other way when we walked in the door.

 

Gretchen Rubin  12:55

You had a cold upbringing.

 

David Duchovny  12:58

She was a wonderful dog, but she was, she was tough. She really she was she’s got to earn it. Where the hell have you been all day? Where have you been all day? You bastard school, I guess? Huh, yeah, like, that’s so important. And I think it’s like the cart before the horse again, that we’re talking about, which is very much, you know, like a fake it till you make it not that you’re faking, that you’re in love with your husband, but in that moment you don’t, you’re not necessarily like, oh my god, I love that guy. I’m gonna go give him a kiss. It’s like, right? I’m gonna go give him a kiss. And now it’s like, oh my god, I love that guy.

 

Gretchen Rubin  13:31

Amanda Kelly.

 

Gretchen Rubin  13:32

And this is a really profound insight, and I want to ask you about this, actually, about acting, because this is something that’s always, always wondered about. But so the idea is that we often think that we act because of the way we feel. So I’m yelling because I’m angry, or I’m throwing things because I’m mad, but in fact, a lot of times our feelings come from our actions. It’s like our brain is saying, like, Wow, there’s so much yelling and throwing of things. You must feel real. We must feel really angry. And so if you so, it’s hard to control your thoughts, but it’s easier to control your actions. So if you like, if you want to fight with somebody, hold their hand. It’s just harder to fight with somebody when you’re holding their hand and or if you feel listless, act with energy. You know, speak with more energy. Move with more energy. If you’re feeling shy, act friendly. And then your feelings kind of flow from that. So it’s kind of uncanny how much we can influence our emotional state by just kind of tweaking the way we behave, which is which is not always that easy, but it’s something we can do. But I’ve always wondered, given that this principle is true, I’ve always wondered this about actors like, Do you have a lot of like leakage, if you’re acting in a part that is requiring you to be angry or or guilty, like, do you do you have to manage that kind of leakage into your own mental state? Or is that part of the craft is that you have some kind of boundary between the behavior you’re displaying in your own emotional state, like when you’re walking off the set?

 

David Duchovny  14:59

Well, I’ll give you an honor. Just answer, and it will obviously obviate any kind of excuse I’ll ever have in the future for being an asshole at any point, like coming off the set, but I’ll answer that in a second. But I just while you were talking, have you read much William James? Who is?

 

Gretchen Rubin  15:15

Yes, I love William James.

 

David Duchovny  15:16

Yeah. So he.

 

Gretchen Rubin  15:18

You were you, were you an American Studies major?

 

David Duchovny  15:21

No, but I did. I did teach in American Studies, or a TA in American Studies course.

 

Gretchen Rubin  15:26

You were the TA for my roommate.

 

David Duchovny  15:29

Yeah well, do I say, I’m sorry, what do I say? Well, how was it? How was I was good, yeah. What was your roommate’s name?

 

David Duchovny  15:40

Okay, not sure I remember, but it’s a long time ago.

 

Gretchen Rubin  15:44

But William James is what I’m if you’re doing American Studies, like limb James is gonna be.

 

David Duchovny  15:48

Yeah, but I think James said we don’t cry because we’re sad. We’re sad because we cry, you know? And that’s an acting tip. That can be an acting tip, fake it till you make it is obviously, you know, there are many ways to go about trying to get a performance out of yourself. There are many secrets that you that you have in your craft or your skill set or whatever, when you’re on the set. And some of them can be working on some days and some of them don’t, and some days you find yourself dry, empty, unable to have the feelings that you’re supposed to be having. And on those days, that’s when you earn your pay, you know, that’s when you, that’s when you that’s when you fake it till you make it. That’s when, you know, I will, I will do a scene, you know, at a really high volume, just to get my energy going, just to get my anger going, if that’s a necessary thing, all those things that you’re talking about are, are fair game for an actor, obviously, you know, and but to to answer the other part of your questions, like, does it leak? No what I find is, you know, you get it out, you know, you deal with whatever it is, you know, I don’t find that it continues to make me respond. You know, maybe there’s a bit of a cooling off period on drive home or whatever, but in general, the experience that I’ve had with the overflow of great emotion when I’m working on those particular characters of days is great relief, great kind of satisfaction. I hesitate to say therapeutic, because I don’t like to portray actors as people that are, you know, undergoing their own personal therapy in front of other people for a living. But it is, these are feelings. You know, we’re talking about feelings. And maybe happiness is a feeling. Maybe we have to identify it as that. And feelings are not facts. You know. Feelings flow feelings. You know, and I know what you’re doing is trying to give people agency, you know. And you know that’s a good thing, but I think there’s a limit. You know, just as you would say, Sure, just as you say, there’s a limit to happiness. Personal habits. Is another thing I found fascinating in your work, is that you know because you’re dealing with happiness, which is such a big, broad concept, but you also say at some point, you know, it seems that people have a ceiling.

 

Gretchen Rubin  18:30

Well, what research? What the actual scientists say is that about 50% of happiness is genetically determined, then about 10 to 20% is something called life circumstances. So that’s things like health, income, marital status, occupation, education, and then the rest is very much a product of our conscious thoughts and actions. So what I would say to you is like, yeah, maybe you’re a person where your natural range is like four to seven, and then somebody else’s natural range might be seven to 10 but.

 

David Duchovny  19:00

Those bastards.

 

Gretchen Rubin  19:03

We see those people. I know exactly what you mean. And so the so, I think the question for each of us is, given my nature, given my circumstances, am I doing everything that I can within my conscious thoughts and actions to push myself up to the top of my range instead of letting myself drift down to the bottom of my range? Because if you can be at a 10, maybe you don’t want to be a seven. And if you can be at a seven, you don’t want to be at a four.

 

David Duchovny  19:26

Why would it be, I mean, and this is complete conjecture, why would it be that, that we have different capacities for happiness? You know what? What would be the this is an impossible question. I didn’t think to ask you this or myself. What’s the evolutionary business behind happiness and whether or not we can attain it and keep it.

 

Gretchen Rubin  19:45

It just seems that evolution thinks there’s, it’s good to have a range, you know, it’s good to have a wide range of temperament, and that sometimes it’s really good for people to be very neurotic, and sometimes it’s good for people to be, you know, more you. Yeah, brilliant, and so. And then each of us gets our own particular cluster. And then, of course, our context matters. Our upbringing matters. You know, culture matters. So many factors come health matters. All these things come into play.

 

David Duchovny  20:45

You know, I think in your personal life, it’s very it’s very interesting to me, You come from a your family business, which is law, right? Is that correct in saying, I mean, your dad.

 

Gretchen Rubin  20:55

Yeah, my father was lawyer, yeah […] is a lawyer. And once a lawyer, always a lawyer. I have found having gone to law school, it shapes you, okay, like being raised Catholic, it’s with you forever.

 

David Duchovny  21:06

Right, I accept that not having gone to law school, but I relate to that so much on a personal level, because I also I didn’t go as far as you, because you were clerking for the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. I mean, you were not just a lawyer. You were a successful lawyer on her way up. So it wasn’t like, you know what? I don’t really like practicing law. I’m gonna write it was, I’m a superstar right now. How old were you?

 

Gretchen Rubin  21:39

Like, 27, 28?

 

David Duchovny  21:41

You know, let me say you’re a superstar. It seems to me, I don’t know anything about it, but if you’re clerking for the first Supreme Court justice as a woman, and you’re a woman and you’re 27 you’re a superstar, and you decide I’d rather fail at writing than I would to succeed at lawyering. You were really courting failure there, you know. So what? Where did that come from? Aside from some small voice inside you that is saying, these clothes don’t fit, and also the stakes for you of throwing that away, which is, this is how it was presented to me. When I did it, you’re throwing something away. You’re throwing away, yes, something you worked so hard to do.

 

Gretchen Rubin  22:30

Well, I think I don’t regret having gone to law school. I had an amazing experience, but I will say that I do, looking back on it, feel like there was a failure at the time to think about. Well, what do I want? I was just one of these people where I was like, I don’t know what to do with myself. So I’m really good at reading and writing. So why don’t I tell take the LSAT and see how I do? Oh, I did well in the LSAT. Why don’t I, why don’t I apply to law school and see where I get it? Oh, I got into law school. That seems cool. I’ll go there. Oh, what you’re supposed to do now is apply for a clerkship. Okay, I’ll do that. I was just it was, I was just drifting. I was just doing.

 

David Duchovny  23:04

Sound like you were drifting, you know what?

 

Gretchen Rubin  23:06

Okay, but see, this is the thing about drift, is drift sounds like it’s easy and relaxed, but it actually can be accompanied with a huge amount of work. But I was drifting, and then I was late to that. I wasn’t making a conscious choice. I was just doing kind of the obvious thing. I didn’t want to sit down and reflect, like, what do I really want from life? Anyway? I had no idea that, like, I didn’t even conceive of even thinking of it, so I was always just doing, like, the next obvious thing. So I never really stopped to think about what I wanted. So I just kept doing the next obvious thing, and then it would work out great. So then I would do the next obvious thing, and then I came to the end, and I was like, Well, what am I going to do now? And I just, I was like, I have no idea. And I was surrounded because I was clerking. I was surrounded by people who loved law. They wanted to talk about law at lunch. They wanted to talk about law on the weekends. They were randomly talking about cases that they read in their free time. They were reading law journals were fun. These were people who loved law. And I was like, I don’t love law, right? I was just good at doing what I needed to do.

 

David Duchovny  24:10

So you’re talking about, you’re talking about passion now.

 

Gretchen Rubin  24:13

Well, and I’m just saying that, like, I didn’t even, I just, I didn’t even, I wasn’t even at the passion level. I wasn’t even like, what kind of thing are you interested in? But I will say too, like, at that time, I only read fiction, like all my I just read fiction. And so I never thought, I never thought, I thought you either had to be a fiction writer or, like, a playwright or a poet, or you were a journalist, or you were an academic, or you were somebody who, like, wrote books about, you know, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge or something like that. And it took me a long time to realize, like, Well, no, there’s a there’s a place for me writing non fiction. Because I’m not a storyteller. I couldn’t write fiction. I knew that.

 

David Duchovny  24:51

Well, why? Why do you? How can you say that? I mean.

 

Gretchen Rubin  24:53

I have written three really bad novels that are safely locked.

 

David Duchovny  24:56

Sometimes I say you got to write 10 bad ones.

 

Gretchen Rubin  24:59

Okay? Oh yeah, I probably will. I don’t know they’re not good yet, but I really like writing nonfiction, but it took me a while to understand, like, how I could do it in the way that was right for me. So I was I, so I spent a huge amount of time and energy, and I had a great experience. Because sometimes drift gives you a good experience, like, I don’t regret probably. I mean, do you regret what you did for your PhD. No, it sounds like it’s really enriched your life, just in this conversation you’re drawing upon absolutely, you know, so sometimes we do.

 

David Duchovny  25:29

You’ve said in other places that you’re a mastery addict, or, you know, you’re you love mastery. So I think that probably there was a sense for you as a young person that you were, at least you’d gain some kind of mastery over the law in a way, yeah. So, yeah, it was feeding, yes. Was feeding a need. It was feeding a need for mastery, which is a very dangerous and wonderful kind of need.

 

Gretchen Rubin  25:53

It is very dangerous because then you because if you’re committed to mastery, then you can’t fail.

 

David Duchovny  25:59

I know so what? So who are you? Then where are you now?

 

Gretchen Rubin  26:07

Well I’m always saying, enjoy the fun of failure, like, let things fail. Like things won’t work out, things aren’t going to go well, and if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. Like, I have all these aphorisms that I invoke for myself to remind myself that, yeah, because you’re right. Otherwise, the shame, it’s interesting. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but sometimes, when I talk about failure, the fun of failure, people will will say to me, like, oh no. Like, don’t, don’t, don’t, consider it failure. You’ve got to, like, reframe it and see in this whole other way. I’m like, No, that’s exactly wrong. Because I want to say it’s okay for it to be a failure. I can say it’s a failure, and that is fine. I don’t need to pretend like it’s just a success in a different outfit, like it’s okay for things to be failed, yeah? And it also you get that. Do you have people telling you like they deny that even that is that failure is even a real thing?

 

David Duchovny  26:59

Yeah? I mean, you know, they like to couch failure as, you know, another step towards success. Or, you know, with this podcast, they’ll say, what do you know about failure? David, you’re not a failure, whatever, right? And, you know, I’ll say, Well, you know, live in my skin. I’ll tell you what it feels like. You know, every every moment, can feel like a failure where I’m not kind of, you know, I didn’t choose the right word. I didn’t speak to Gretchen in a way that made us whatever got us to a different place. Like, you know, we got to a good place, but we could have gotten into a different place. So it’s like, it’s all these things, you know, there’s there’s no perfection, there’s no real mastery, but there is this kind of undying apprenticeship that I do enjoy, and it’s why I still love acting, it’s why I love writing. It’s why I love music, making music, because I am constantly failing, and that’s the atmosphere of growth that’s no longer I would like to say that I’m not filled with shame, but you know, shame will rear its ugly head from time to time, especially because I do something that’s in public, you know? And if I do something that’s not well received in public, that it’s hard to say, Hey, this is fun. Yeah, this is fun to be called shitty, you know, this week, it’s not wel.

 

Gretchen Rubin  28:12

You’ve described that, getting the bad reviews and, like, and it’s funny, because hearing you tell it, it just sounds like an interesting anecdote from your life, and like, but then, you know, like, what the gut punch it is now it is now. I remember reading James Atlas wrote a not, who’s a very well known essayist and non fiction writer who’s now died, but he said he wrote a novel and, like, he got up super early in the morning. This was long time ago. Like, to get the, you know, get the review, like, the minute it hit the newsstands, and he read it, and it was a terrible review, and he went home and he curled up in bed, and he never wrote another word of fiction.

 

David Duchovny  28:49

Well, this is what I want to ask you. You know, you said you’ve written two or three bad novels.

 

Gretchen Rubin  28:54

Yeah, nobody’s even seen them.

 

David Duchovny  28:58

No, you know, you’ve decided that they’re no good, but.

 

Gretchen Rubin  29:01

I know they’re no good, yeah, but, yeah. I mean, you know how it is. You can, you can have fun creating something and then just be like, you know? Yeah, it didn’t turn into what it needed to be. But it’s, but it’s still like, doing scales. You know what? I mean, it’s writing, it’s doing scales I had, you know? And then, I don’t know if you’ve ever read this, where you have a blocking project, where, like, there’s a creative project that you want to do, even though, you know it’s like, it’s not going to be good, or it doesn’t make any kind of doesn’t make sense, and yet you just feel like you have to do it to sort of get it out of the way. So sometimes I haven’t, I had a couple of ideas like that.

 

David Duchovny  29:33

Right, but let’s get can we? I want to go back to, you know that the moment, because, you know, you brought up the moment of, like, say, I get a bad review or something, and now it’s a funny story, and I’m like, the butt of the joke. And, you know, that’s all good, that’s mature. I mean, that’s fun, but in the moment, no, in the moment, it’s life and death and it hurts. So yeah, take me back to, you know, your. King, and do you actually say dad, family, whoever’s nearest and dearest to you? I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to write. Or do you start writing on your own, on the sly, like in the dark, not telling anybody you’re going to see if it works out, if it doesn’t, no, nobody’s any wiser. What’s what?

 

Gretchen Rubin  30:21

Well, one thing about me is I, throughout my life, will get really preoccupied with different ideas, and I’ll do a huge amount of research and note taking, and I just do that. And when I was clerking, I asked myself, like, what am I interested in that everybody in the world is interested in? To sort of ask myself that theoretical question, and I thought, well, power money, fame, sex. It was like, power money, fame, sex. And I instantly it seemed like this kind of one single major subject to me, and I just started doing all this research and note taking. But this is something that I had done many, many times throughout my life, but this just took over. I was working on it all the time. And finally I thought to myself, this is the kind of thing a person would do if they were going to write a book. And then I thought, well, maybe I could be the kind of person who would write that book. And so I went and got a book called something like, how to write and sell your non fiction book proposal, and just like, decided I would follow the directions, really, yeah. And so part of it was I was starting it. I wasn’t telling anybody about it, because I didn’t think of it as being a book. And then you’re right, like, I was like, maybe this could be a book, and that I sort of was like, I didn’t really say anything to anybody. I was just like, kind of easing up on the idea. And then there had to become the moment where I was like, Okay, this is what I’m gonna do. Like, I’m not gonna my job had come to an end. I’m like, I’m not going to get another job. I’m going to my husband and I were moving back to New York City, and I’m like, I’m not going to get another job. I’m going to my job is to try to get an agent and to get this write a book proposal and get it accepted. And the thing that was really made it much easier for me was how everybody around me was just like, okay, great, excellent. Like, good luck. Like, nobody was warning me or saying, How can you give up everything you’ve done or like? And I had nothing. I had no clip. I had never published a short story. I had nothing in this world of publishing. So I was starting from zero, and everybody around me was just like, okay. Like, give it your shot, and that made it a lot easier. Because I think had they really argued against it, that would have made it much harder for me to sort of because I did think, like, I need to try and either succeed or fail, and if I fail, then I’ll figure it out. But this is my time to succeed or fail. If I take another job in law, probably I will never take the risk. It’ll I’ll just be too busy. It’ll never feel like the right time. This is the right it’s now or never. It felt like to me.

 

David Duchovny  33:15

This is one of the things that purchase on the nexus of failure is also quitting, you know, and that’s something that we don’t, we don’t talk about that much, is like, quitting is so scary, right? And quitting is also tinged with shame, you know, we winners, never quit. This is what we’re taught. We’re taught we’re you know, but there has to be a moment where, if you’re honest with yourself, you can quit something, even if it’s lucrative, even if you’re good at it, even if you’re helping people, all these positive things that could, let’s say it’s not a negative thing that you’re quitting, but you have passion. You have attention somewhere else. It seems like that’s what you went through. Because you were, you were in a productive world. You were being productive. You had a job. You were, you know, with people. You were a productive member of society, you were gainfully employed, and you quit.  You’re a quitter.

 

Gretchen Rubin  34:10

No, and I remember the day where my husband, he switched out of love the same time I did. And we got, we got, like, our bar fees. Like, you know, you have to pay to, like, be a member of the New York bar, right? Yeah. And I said to him, should we pay our bar fees? And he’s like, why would we pay our bar fees? And I’m like, okay, we’re really doing this. We’re really leaving lot. Now, I know you could go back and like, just pay and it wasn’t, but at the time, I felt like, Okay, this is it like we are cutting ties.

 

David Duchovny  34:37

Barfy sounds like, you know, like a Razzie Award, like.

 

Gretchen Rubin  34:42

The fees, the fees for the bar, yes, to be a member of the bar fee. Oh, yes, I yeah. I think that’s a very good name for them. That’s how people feel. They don’t want the bar fees, yeah, but no. So I was like, This feels like a major, like a moment of commitment. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, okay, yeah, like, let’s onward, you know.

 

David Duchovny  35:06

Correct me if I’m wrong. But this first book was not a success, right? This was 40 ways of looking at JFK, or was it?

 

Gretchen Rubin  35:12

No, this was my first book. Was called power, money, fame, sex. So that was your list. That was my first book.

 

David Duchovny  35:19

How did that do?

 

Gretchen Rubin  35:19

It did okay. It did well enough that I got my second book published, which was 40 ways to look at Winston Churchill. And that book did fine. And then my book 40 ways to look at JFK. What they say to you in publishing, if your book is a flop, is they say your book did not find its audience, that’s a very diplomatic way of saying it that book did not find its Why didn’t it? Because my approach with the 40 ways is to show that there’s many ways they’re kind of playing with the biography, the form of biography, and it’s showing like you can give many accounts of the same person, absolutely, factually, accurately, but present them a completely different portion of them. And so I’m sort of very fascinated by you’re re centering narratives, right? Exactly. So what I realized is that with JFK, people either love JFK or they like love to hate JFK. Nobody was interested in, like, a nuanced picture of JFK, and so it didn’t find its audience. You know, so, but I had a great time writing that book. So do I regret it? No, do I wish it had found its audience? Yes, I do.

 

David Duchovny  36:21

So sounds like money, sex, power, fame, or money?

 

Gretchen Rubin  36:25

Fame, sex, sorry, even my agent can never get the can never get the order.

 

David Duchovny  36:32

Power money, fame, sex, they get it. Power money fame, say, power money, fame, sex, sounds like it might have been similar to what you’re known for. Now, it sounds like it was more of a sociological kind of approach.

 

Gretchen Rubin  36:48

Well, it’s kind of, it’s kind of the opposite of a Happiness Project. But the thing that’s really fun about that book is that it’s written like a user’s guide. And so if you remember way back, there was a book called the preppy handbook, and it’s like, it’s like an examination, but as if it’s as if it’s a manual. And so to me, this was, I like form.

 

David Duchovny  37:08

Playing form. Well, the Happiness Project is a manual.

 

Gretchen Rubin  37:11

Yeah, and so this one is, this one is explicitly like, it’s sort of a dark manual for power, money, fame and sex.

 

David Duchovny  37:19

Oh, interesting.

 

Gretchen Rubin  37:20

Mm, hmm. It was a super fun book to write.

 

David Duchovny  37:23

I didn’t see that. It wasn’t in my research. I’m gonna have to check that out. But just take me to that moment of JFK does badly. It doesn’t feel like, well, this was his mistake, like, I’m not a writer. This is, this is not working out or?

 

Gretchen Rubin  37:39

You know, a really astute editor said to me, You know what Gretchen you’re interested in, kind of like an unusual approach to biography, but most people want a biography that’s comprehensive, that includes new information. And I was like, I think you’re right. Like, people, like, nobody was going to buy the next 40 ways because the JFK one hadn’t worked. So like, it was like, people are like, Man, this isn’t working. But fortunately for me, that’s when I had the idea for the Happiness Project. Because I was like, I was stuck on a city bus, and I thought, What do I want from life? Anyway? I want to be happy, but I don’t spend any time thinking about, like, what is happiness? Can you make yourself happy? Or like, what does that even look like? And again, I got super interested. Ran to the library, got a giant stack of books, started taking notes, and it was just for me, because I was just curious. And then finally, I was like, Maybe this should be my next book. And so that was my next book, but it was, but it was partly because I was responding to the like, I kind of thought, Oh, well, maybe I’ll just be kind of this sort of kind of biographer for a long time, and I was like, No, that’s not gonna work.

 

David Duchovny  38:44

Did you feel a desperation or a panic, or do you remember those times at all? Did you just.

 

Gretchen Rubin  38:51

I really didn’t, and I think part of it was that I was like, I would do it anyway. You know what I mean, it’s like.

 

David Duchovny  38:57

To it, there was an authenticity call.

 

Gretchen Rubin  39:00

Yeah, it’s almost like a call, or almost like a, almost like a, it’s like, I wouldn’t say a compulsion, but it’s just a feeling like, I’m gonna do it anyway. So I didn’t have this feeling of like, am I gonna stop it? Was like, can I figure out a way to do it for a living? Because I’m gonna do it anyway.

 

David Duchovny  39:18

Right? Yeah, I can relate to that. Because, you know, in my life, when I’ve done things from an authentic place, the success or failure of the thing is almost besides the point. I mean, of course, I’d always rather it be a success. That’s great. Everybody wants that, sure, yeah, but I can put my head on my pillow at night and sleep very soundly if, if I knew, for lack of a better cliche, my heart was in the right place. Well, I, when I, when I look at your your life, you know, who do you see? I mean, I, it seems an American project to me. And who do you see? Who do you see as your precursors? You know, who. Are your mentors, you know, going.

 

Gretchen Rubin  40:03

Benjamin Franklin?

 

David Duchovny  40:04

Yeah.

 

Gretchen Rubin  40:05

Sure, go back to old Benjamin Franklin and Roman act, right? Well, that and I love aphorisms. I actually have a book of aphorisms coming out. Oh, good. I love aphorisms too. Who’s your favorite? Do you have a favorite aphorist?

 

David Duchovny  40:20

Oh, Emerson Nietzsche, you know, I can find an aphorism anywhere, yeah. But who are yours?

 

Gretchen Rubin  40:29

I want to bring back somebody who’s been completely forgotten. Her name is Marie von Edna Eschenbach. She’s one of my favorites. But I love wild. I love George, George Orwell, yeah, but anyway so. But Benjamin Franklin, his autobiography, is really, if you’re, if there’s anybody who’s sort of into, like the practical side of happiness, you know, he sets himself these virtues. And you know, he’s just this person who just in his own cheerful ways, like inventing bifocals and discovering electricity and founding a post office, or maybe he founded a library, or both, I forget. I mean, the guy was just doing everything. And so he’s the sort of early American, you know, founding father, who is all about a very practical approach to, how would you make your life happier, healthier, more productive, more creative. And it’s just a very delightful book. So if anybody hasn’t read it, I really, I really recommend it. It’s, it’s a lot of fun to read. He’s a, really, a great writer, very funny, very self deprecating, too.

 

David Duchovny  41:23

Sure, but going, but going back to precursors, you know, I don’t mean this in a negative way, although I think people think of him negatively now, but there’s a little bit of BF Skinner in there. You know, it’s like conditioning. You’re, you’re training, you’re trying to get people to train themselves like pigeons, like dogs in a Skinner box or whatever. And I’m not. I’m not. I’m not one of these people that thinks human beings are, you know, the great shit and everything. It’s like, I think we’re like, I said, I think we’re animals. And I think if you’re talking about training to make an animal more happy, well, okay, let’s I’m open, you know. But I think what I heard in kind of the list making and the, you know, you’re very kind of, I don’t know the word, but.

 

Gretchen Rubin  42:11

Rigid?

 

David Duchovny  42:12

No, I think rigid, but I think.

 

Gretchen Rubin  42:14

Yeah, I think making, yeah.

 

David Duchovny  42:18

Response and reward, you know, the whole idea of, like, Okay, I’m going to do this behavior.

 

Gretchen Rubin  42:25

Yeah, like, cognitive behavioral therapy.

 

David Duchovny  42:27

Yeah, I’m gonna get a little treat, you know, which is maybe a bit of happiness, or, you know, I get that thing that I envied, or whatever, and then I then I’m on my way to being more trainable, but I’m training myself. I mean, you’re helping me train myself. You’re not the Skinner of people. You’re kind of giving them a blueprint. And I was wondering, you know, yeah, I was just wondering.

 

Gretchen Rubin  42:53

It’s interesting. I had not ever thought of, like, thinking about, Am I just trying to help everybody create, like, build their own Skinner box and live in it, but that’s kind of I’m gonna have to think through, like whether the shoe fits, you know, whether the Skinner box fits? Because it is true that I do think that for most people, there’s just certain facts about the way they go about the world, that if they try to take those into account, they’re probably going to be happier. For instance, if you’re a night person, trying to make everything in your day later is going to work better for you than trying to do something really early in the morning. You might say, well, it makes good sense. Or there’s all these reasons. Or I want to train myself to be a morning person, whereas I’m just sort of like, well, if you’re a night person, you’re probably better off just trying to get everything later in the day, because that’s where you’re naturally more energetic. So to me, that feels like a positive, like embrace of the self. But could you accurately cast that in a skinner boxy way? I kind of think you probably could. So um, yes, we could frame them differently. We could frame frame these approach, these, these strategies, differently.

 

David Duchovny  44:03

The last question I’ll ask you is, I do so much reading for this podcast, just reading around and I trust the kind of serendipity of something coming into my purview just this morning, you know, which has nothing to do with you, but I think it must, because it came to my attention, and I think it makes sense from what we were just talking about. But Mike Nichols said, What did he say? Oh, shit, I had it written down somewhere, but it’s basically like the gist of it is, your act becomes your prison in a way you know your act.

 

Gretchen Rubin  44:46

Interesting.

 

David Duchovny  44:48

And you are you. It’s not prison, but it’s not, it’s not as negative as that, but it’s something like that. And I’m such an idiot for not. It’s such an easy quote to remember, and I forgot it. But anyway. You get the idea, and now you’re fabulously successful. You’ve got podcasts, you’ve got school, basically, you know, workbooks and, you know, actively engaged in this Happiness Project. Do you feel in prison?

 

Gretchen Rubin  45:19

No, I really don’t know. I think people always say, like, do you feel like you have to be happy? I’m like.

 

David Duchovny  45:23

No I don’t not that you have to be happy. But like, this is.

 

Gretchen Rubin  45:28

This stuck in it? Oh, well, the thing about happiness is that, like, I interpret it so broadly that it’s like, okay, now I want to write about five senses, yeah, or I’m, I want to write about the empty nest. I’m like, I’ll write about that, like, having, like, anything, anything that I’m interested in, basically, can fit in. So I find it very satisfying, and that, like, everything’s sort of building, and I feel like I have a like, a base on which to understand more. So I do feel like I am growing in terms of deepening my understanding, but I feel like there’s enough room that, like, if I was going to write about habits, like I wrote better than before, which is all about the 21 strategies of habits I love. Habits. I loved writing that book. I love talking about habits like it’s one of my favorite subjects. But if everything that I did was about habits, if it wasn’t just like one thing among several things, I think I would get pretty tired of it.

 

David Duchovny  46:14

Your act becomes your enemy. That’s the quote, your act becomes.

 

Gretchen Rubin  46:18

Your act becomes your enemy.

 

David Duchovny  46:20

You know, and as an actor, you know you can get typecast certain ways, whatever you can or in life, you know what we do, what we do, so well, can trap us. You know, this is the flip side to the fear and the shame of failure is the trap of success. And so you’re not feeling that at all. You’re feeling good. You feel like I’ve created. You’ve created. What I hear you say is you created this big bag of your work and of your project, and a lot can fit into it. It’s not just this little purse.

 

Gretchen Rubin  46:51

That’s how I feel. And I do feel like I’ve somehow, by incredible good fortune, ended up in a place where what I do for a living is what I would be doing anyway. It’s like what I want to be doing. And so, I mean, of course, there’s drudge work and there’s things that I don’t enjoy and things that I dread and things that I procrastinate about, and but in the end, it is what I love to do. For instance, one of the things I love to do is, as I read, I’ll take notes like anything that catches my eye, or whatever on the.

 

David Duchovny  47:23

Kindle is such a drag because I can’t really.

 

Gretchen Rubin  47:25

Can’t do it.

 

David Duchovny  47:27

I gotta have a pen in my hand when I read.

 

Gretchen Rubin  47:29

Yeah, can’t do it. And I’m like, I spend hours every week doing it. And I’m like, is this a waste of my time? No, it is not. I never know what’s gonna like, be useful or or be thought provoking. I have no way of knowing it could be. I love children’s literature. I read tons of books that are written for children, and a lot of times I get big ideas from children’s books, you know, so you can’t, it’s funny, like, you can’t go to the Dewey Decimal System and look up like, you know, deep thoughts, or, you know, new ideas, right? You just, you kind of have to try to lay the groundwork.

 

David Duchovny  48:02

Thank you, Gretchen for talking to me today. It’s been a pleasure, and thanks for putting up with me.

 

Gretchen Rubin  48:11

I so enjoyed it.

 

David Duchovny  48:13

I think, and I remember the name Amanda Kelly on a paper. I can see it written on a paper that I’m grading, you know, so say hey for me.

 

David Duchovny  48:35

Good morning, speaking some thoughts after conversation with Gretchen Rubin, I have the wrong glasses on, no wonder I can’t see anything. Okay, that’s better talking with Gretchen, you know, put me in touch with this notion, because Gretchen is very much in touch herself with the truth, her truth, and one that I think I agree with, that we are happy when we’re plugged in. You know, we may be human beings, but a human doing is part of a community in a way I’m not advocating, you know, against, like, Zen detachment in this case, because I look around and I see great strength and happiness in that as well. But I think from the way that I was raised, it’s a long journey to get to that detachment. It might be too long. I don’t know. I might be on that journey. I might not be I might just be fooling myself, because I still love to work, and I still love to make and I still love to be used in a way. I love to be of use. I being of use and being of service, very close and definition.

 

CREDITS  50:15

There’s more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now and Apple podcasts. Fail Better as a production of Lemonada media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neil. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Brad Davidson, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova, Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […]. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.