Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast that gives you strategies and tips for how to build happier habits into your daily life.

This week we'll talk about why you might schedule a weekly play date with yourself and talk about dealing with an inconsiderate,

trouble, brother.

I'm Gretchen Rubin, a writer whose studies happiness good habits before tendencies and human nature.

I'm in New York City and with me is my sister Alyssa Kraft and Alyssa, I would love to have a weekly play date with you. How fun would that be?

Yeah, I would love that. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer, living in LA and Gretchen, I have to say you are the opposite of an inconsiderate rebel brother.

You're very considerate, uphold or a sister.

Good point.

Before we jump in, we want to remind everybody that we're going to do an upcoming very special episode related to travel.

Because here in the United States, a lot of people travel in the summertime and we want to have hacks, tips, strategies, try this at home, anything that you can think of that will help us all travel easier, better, faster and just with more fun and less trouble.

Yes, so please send us an email or a voicemail. We particularly want to feature a lot of your voices. So if you're so inclined, please do leave us a message at 7-7-4-277-9-336 or easier to remember. 7-7-Happy-336 or you can always email us a voicemail to podcast at GretchenRubin.com.

Excellent. So listen, this week I tried this at home tip is to schedule a weekly play date with yourself to really put it on the calendar, make that play date for yourself.

Yes, I'm always making play dates for my son, GretchenRubin. I was never occurred to me to make a play date with myself.

Well, I think the thing for me, and I think this is true for a lot of people, if something's on the calendar, it happens. If it's not on the calendar, it's very unlikely that I will get to it. And so I think the idea is once a week, by yourself, do something that's playful, whimsical, creative, idea broadening, something that just sounds fun. Like what would be a play date?

And put it in there and put it in your schedule like an adenos appointment.

I love this idea, of course, because it sounds very fun. And it reminds me, Gretchen, I used to sort of do this play date with myself for years, not every week, but quite regularly. I would go to Benny Hanna by myself for lunch.

And that was what I would call play date with myself, because you would just go for fun. It was just like, oh, this is something I really enjoy. So I'm just going to go when it works in my schedule.

Yeah, yeah, I love Benny Hanna more than is probably appropriate for a grown woman. And when I had a lot of times, like on a Saturday, this is before I was married or had a child.

I would say, I'm going to take myself to Benny Hanna and I would go and sit at the table, you know, and just a lot of times I would do a crossword puzzle or read us weekly.

And of course, give the proper amount of attention to the chef when he was doing his tricks.

Well, no, I just don't know Benny Hanna, explain why the appeal of Benny Hanna.

Oh, yes, they cook the food in front of you and do tricks with like lighting and setting things on fire. And it's very fun. And kids love it. But clearly adults like me love it too.

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