A Little Happier: A Story from Real Life: Sometimes, We Help Best by Hanging Back

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sometimes, helping can hurt. When people are struggling, our impulse is to try to pull them back on their feet, when what they really need is for someone to sit beside them and ask, "What do you need? What can I do?"

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Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Did you know that infants are ready to learn sign language?
0:03.5	Two-year-olds are ready to learn the basics of science, and three-year-olds are ready to learn coding?
0:08.9	Your child is ready to learn, and at Primrose schools, teachers make the most of this time by creating a joyful, purposeful learning experience unlike any other.
0:19.4	For instance, have you heard of the Primrose Friends? In every
0:23.8	Primrose school classroom, teachers use these 12 lovable puppets to make character development
0:30.2	joyful, meaningful, and memorable. From exploring generosity with Benjamin the Bear to practicing honesty with Peanut the Pony,
0:40.6	every friend plays a special part in helping children learn important values while having
0:46.9	plenty of fun along the way. We can all use some friends like that. You can learn more at primrose schools.com, now enrolling infants through
0:57.7	children age five. That's primrose schools.com for more information. Elizabeth, you know, we are always
1:06.9	talking about the small things that we can do that make a big impact, not just in our own
1:11.3	lives, but for the planet as well. And that's why I'm such a big fan of our food recycler, Mill.
1:17.2	Mill is the one easy thing that makes reducing food waste effortless. Mill is the cleanest, easiest way
1:24.3	to prevent food waste at home. It makes keeping food out of the trash as easy as
1:29.2	dropping it in. Toss in your scraps, forget about it, no smell, no mess, no effort. You can keep
1:34.7	filling it and filling it for weeks. You might even skip a garbage day or two. Mill turns your
1:39.6	food scraps into nutrient-rich grounds you can use in your garden or compost, or Mill can pick them up and get
1:44.9	them to a local farm. And an added bonus, wasting less food feels really good. All the guilt and
1:51.2	stress I used to feel when cleaning out my fridge is gone. Mill makes it easy and even joyful to
1:56.9	reduce food waste, taking a global problem and turning it into a simple daily step at home.
2:03.2	But you have to live with Mill to really get it. Good thing you can try it risk-free and get $75 off with code happy.
2:11.0	Visit mill.com slash happy. That's mill.com slash happy.
2:19.5	Lemonada.
	...

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