Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast that gives you practical strategies for building

happier habits into your daily life.

This week we'll talk about why we should treat ourselves and why we should avoid the

stumbling block of the fake self-actualization loophole.

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

I'm usually in New York City, but today I'm in LA with my sister this age, Elizabeth

Kraft, who's my happiness guinea pig and questioner.

That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer living in LA.

Thanks to Gretchen, I now set an alarm for bedtime and I'm happier for it.

Elizabeth, before we do the try this at home for this week, let's talk about this really

interesting email that we got in response to the point that you were making about the

evil donut.

Oh yeah, we got a lot of comments about that.

Yeah, but the problem about people bringing free food, free tempting food into the workplace.

So here's the email.

I just discovered your podcast while it worked tonight and had a quick thought about happiness

and free food at work.

I'm a third shift janitor in a busy office building and I often bag up trash containing

unwanted treats brought in by the daytime office staff, such as the evil donut box you

mentioned.

If someone really does enjoy buying the box of donuts or baking the batch of brownies,

but their health conscious colleagues don't enjoy being tempted by them, one idea to

...