I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

Sometimes we learn about ourselves from other people.

I've often written and talked about the fact that we can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own nature,

but it can be hard to know ourselves.

We get distracted by the way we wish we were,

or by the way we think we ought to be,

or by other people's expectations,

or by the pressures of everyday life,

and we lose sight of ourselves.

I have 12 personal commandments,

and my first commandment is to be Gretchen.

This sounds so easy, and yet it's one of the great challenges of my life.

I found that one helpful, though painful question is,

whom do I envy?

When we envy people, that means they have something we wish we had,

and that can be an important clue about what we want from our lives.

Or sometimes someone says something about himself or herself,

and you think,

you know,

I'm the same way,

and a truth about yourself becomes clear.

That's what happened to me when I was reading Samuel Johnson,

...