49. Gretchen Rubin: The Power Of Habits - How To Make And Break Them
The Life Stylist
Luke Storey
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2017
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you ever considered how much habits play a part in your day to day successes or failures? Many of us live most of our lives on autopilot, without ever actually taking a pause to examine our positive and negative personality traits, and how they manifest as the habits that shape our destiny in life.
Our guest Gretchen Rubin takes us on an inner journey of self-discovery where you'll learn how to discover your best personality traits, and how to build habits to support them.
In this episode she outlines different personality types, the four human tendencies and which one best describes you. Are you a closer or a finisher? An abstainer or moderator? A night or morning type? Listen and find out. You'll also learn how to use habits to make changes naturally without engaging willpower or self-control, which often lead to exhaustion and failure. We also talk about the differences between habits and addictions, and how to get along with people who are very different from you.
Gretchen is the author of several books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. She has an enormous readership, both in print and online, and her books have sold more than two million copies worldwide, in more than thirty languages.
On Gretchen’s popular weekly podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, she discusses good habits and happiness with her sister Elizabeth Craft; they’ve been called the “Click and Clack of podcasters.” Her podcast was named in iTunes’s lists of “Best Podcasts of 2015” and was named in the Academy of Podcasters “Best Podcasts of 2016.” BuzzFeed listed Happier in 10 Life-Changing Things to Try in June and the New Yorker said, “Their voices remind you that life is a human project that we’re all experimenting with.” The podcast consistently ranks in the iTunes Top Charts.
She started her career in law and was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she realized she wanted to be a writer. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters. Episode Breakdown:
- Getting to know Gretchen and her work
- The value of her personality test and the 4 human tendencies: upholder, questioner, obliger or rebel. Which one are you?
- Inner and outer expectations, and breaking commitments to others and yourself
- Morning vs. night person: stop trying to change yourself, rather, change your circumstances
- Simplicity lover vs abundant lover: one size doesn't fit all
- Respecting the truth about ourselves and our natural habits
- Learning about the personality tendencies of others increases our chances to manage differences more easily
- Habits and addictions: is there really a difference?
- Using habits instead of self control, decision-making and willpower to manage changes in our lives
- Abstainers vs. moderators: the key is to know yourself
- Decision fatigue and how it wears you down
- Piggybacking and the importance of knowing what's true for you
- Building new habits: what's the right way?
- Opener or closer: are you a starter or finisher?
- Lifestyle recommendations
Episode Resources:
Enjoy!
Luke
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Lifestylist, Episode 49, featuring Gretchen Rubin. |
| 0:11.6 | I'm Luke Story, a former celebrity fashion stylist and founder of School of Style. |
| 0:17.5 | For the past 20 years, I've been relentlessly dedicated to my deepest passion, designing the |
| 0:23.0 | ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of health and spirituality. |
| 0:28.8 | The Lifestyleist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them |
| 0:34.9 | with you. |
| 0:38.3 | This little number right here goes out to the beautiful people. |
| 0:41.5 | And that would be you, my friend. |
| 0:43.3 | I'm Luke Story, and I am here to deliver another episode of the Lifestyleist podcast unto you. |
| 0:50.0 | Right to the dome, right to the eardrums, right to your head, right upside the head with some good, |
| 0:55.2 | valuable content per usual. And today's guest is none other than esteemed author, |
| 1:01.8 | Gretchen Rubin. Now, Gretchen is a super cool person. I really relate to her a lot because she's |
| 1:07.5 | spent years studying human nature and what makes us tick and that's one of my favorite |
| 1:12.1 | subjects. I love self-discovery and I love discovering the nature of other people so that we can all |
| 1:17.5 | work together more harmoniously and have a better life. I mean, it's pretty simple, isn't it? |
| 1:23.2 | So what she likes to talk about and her area of expertise is really habits and how they relate to happiness. |
| 1:29.6 | So we know that self-knowledge and self-inquiry is so important. |
| 1:33.4 | Understanding others is so important. |
| 1:35.3 | But what really makes us tick is the type of personality we are and how that dictates the habits that we have, whether they be positive or negative. |
| 1:43.4 | My life has been full of a lot of very negative |
| 1:45.5 | habits. And for the past 20 years or so, I've been reversing as many of those as humanly possible |
| 1:51.3 | and adding as many positive ones as I can. So in this episode, you're going to learn a lot about |
... |
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