Hello and welcome to Happier. This week we'll talk about why you might try to lower the bar and why any major transition is a great time to form a new habit.

I'm Cretan Ruben and did you know that every week we have a list of aims for what we want to achieve in this podcast? Here it is practical, funny, research, transcendent, revealing, sisters, evergreen, loose, fun, and more.

Vulnerable differences community. Yes, I'm Elizabeth Kraft, the sister part of the equation and we actually have those words written on a piece of paper so that we could look at them before we begin.

In Gretchen this week I'm going to try to be practical and funny, and transcendent and I feel sure I've got the sisters part down so I'll do my best.

Excellent. Here's something funny that I just learned. On the cover of the Happiness Project there's a picture of some buildings and I just realized that those buildings are a block from the studio where we record happier.

Oh, it's destiny. Yeah, I had no idea. Yes, it is destiny although I didn't know it until just recently so that was exciting to figure out.

And before we launch into our try this at home segment, I want to tell everyone to get excited because next week is episode 30, which means that it's a very special episode.

We do very special episode every 10 episodes and this time we're going to have a very special guest. So stay tuned. It's going to be good. I promise.

So listen, this week our try this at home tip is to lower the bar. This sounds like something I can get behind. Go continue.

So lower the bar is just the reminder that sometimes if we're struggling with something, maybe we just need to lower the bar.

Maybe we've set our sights too high and we need to just remind ourselves that we can aim for a less ambitious goal. You know, one of my favorite phrases is don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And that's definitely the motto of the try this at home to lower the bar. So can you think of any places where you would lower the bar?

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of places. I can think of where I would lower the bar. But entertaining is a huge one. Right. I think for both of us because our mom, I don't I'm sure we've probably mentioned it on the podcast is a she's a great host.

Yeah, she throws beautiful dinner parties and she is the kind of person who really entertains to the nines when she so chooses.

And you and I did not inherit necessarily her touch. No, so I think for a long time, we've, yeah, saved us. I think for a long time, you and I both felt like we couldn't entertain.

We were too intimidated because we knew we couldn't meet her. Not that it's her standard for us. It's just what she does.

So we know it's possible. It's like you can have this beautifully laid table. You can have this beautiful China. You can have these beautiful arrangements. You can have this amazing food.

Like you can, yeah, it's just you see it and you we both appreciate it. That's the thing. It's not like we're blind to it. So we get it that this is beautiful and lovely and everybody enjoys it.

But we're not capable of creating. So if we ever want to have people over, we have to lower the bar.

And mom even she helped you out with that, right? What did she do? Yeah, okay. So yes, I think after after really trying to help us raise the bar, mom is now trying to help us lower the bar more graciously.

So one of these, I so I have all these book groups. I'm in three children's literature book groups plus I'm in a regular book group where we read, you know, grown up books.

So one of the and we all take turns making dinner and I'm just totally frank about it to people. I'm like, if I'm, if I'm hosting, you're having like take out Chinese food basically because I am the bottom of the curve.

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