I'm Cretch and Ruben and this is a little happier.

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I love quotations. I've collected quotations my whole life.

I even have a daily newsletter where I mail out quotations to people every single day.

I was thinking about two of my favorite quotations and how these two brilliant writers talked about the same issue in different ways.

This is a tension that comes up all the time when you're thinking about happiness or habits.

It's the tension between when do we accept ourselves and the truth about ourselves and when do we really push ourselves to go out of our comfort zone.

And WH Auden puts this beautifully.

He wrote, between the ages of 20 and 40, we're engaged in the process of discovering who we are,

which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations, which it is our duty to outgrow,

and the necessary limitations of our nature, beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

And then more succinctly, Flannery O'Connor in a letter wrote, accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become a writer.

And I think about this a lot myself.

For instance, when I was writing Happier at home, I wrote about my challenge with driving.

I'm a very fearful driver. And for a while, I really stopped driving altogether.

And I came to a point where I had to decide, was I going to just accept this about myself that I was afraid to drive and just not drive,

or was I going to push myself to get back into driving even though I dreaded the thought and really expect that I could do this for myself.

And I decided that, indeed, driving was something that I could demand of myself.

And I thought, I want to accept myself and expect more for myself.

So thanks to Auden and O'Connor for helping me articulate that for myself.

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