I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. I've been studying happiness, good habits,

and human nature for many years now. One subtopic I love to study is loopholes. When we're trying

to follow a good habit, when we're trying to push ourselves to do something challenging,

we're so great at finding loopholes for ourselves to let ourselves off the hook. These loopholes are

often ingenious, imaginative, and hilarious. When I think about loopholes, I often recall one of my

favorite passages from Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel through the Looking Glass and what Alice found

there, which is the sequel to his novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. During an argument,

the white queen tells Alice, the rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.

When Alice pretends it must come sometimes to jam today, the white queen says,

uh, nope, it's jam tomorrow and jam yesterday. This reminds me of the way we often argue with ourselves.

So often when we contemplate how we wish we had, we think, gosh, I don't know why I'm not already

doing this. Why didn't I do this when I was still in college or before I had kids or before I started

this new job? Yesterday it would have been much easier, but today and not today. And we also tell

ourselves tomorrow, I can't do this now, but starting tomorrow or next month or once it's

summertime or once I get through this project, then I'll do it. Tomorrow it will be much easier.

I often fall for this loophole myself. I have a fantasy of myself in the future. Future

Gretchen will have more time and more energy for tasks that don't interest now Gretchen.

Chords that I keep putting off, like turning my notes into actual writing or going to the dentist,

all those will be easy for future Gretchen. But with everything we wish to do, we only have today.

It may feel like jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but the only day we can reach out for that jam

is today. I'm Gretchen Rubin and I hope this makes your week a little happier.