A Little Happier: Have You Ever Felt Like an Employee of Your Former Self?

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do You Feel Like an Employee of Your Former Self? Renowned novelist Ian McEwan makes a funny observation about book tours that’s applicable to many familiar situations.

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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.
0:55.6	Now enrolling infants through children age five. That's primrose schools.com for more information.
1:05.2	Introducing your new Dell PC with the Intel Core Ultra processor. It helps you handle a lot, even when your holiday
1:12.7	to do list gets to be a lot. Like organizing your holiday shopping and searching for great
1:18.2	holiday deals and customer questions and customers requesting custom things. Luckily, you can
1:23.4	get a PC with an all-day battery life to help you get it all done.
1:32.8	That's the power of a Dell PC with Intel Inside, backed by Dell's price match guarantee.
1:36.3	Get yours before the holidays at Dell.com slash deals.
1:52.8	Terms and conditions is a little happier.
1:55.9	As part of my work, I do many things.
2:00.4	I work on two podcasts, happier with Gretchen Rubin, which is the one you're listening to, and my new
2:01.3	podcast with psychotherapist and writer Lori Gottlie, called Since You Asked. I write two free weekly
2:07.4	newsletters, one called Five Things Making Me Happy, and one called Secrets of Adulthood. Please subscribe.
2:14.0	I love writing these. I also create courses. I create products. I have an app called Happier. But my primary identity, and certainly the one that I enjoy most and value most, and that is the wellspring for everything else I do, is writing books. I love to write. In fact, more accurately, I'd say that I have to write. It's true that
2:38.6	I would write even if no one else read what I wrote. I write every day of the year. It is my
	...

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