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Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Little Happier: It’s Right to Do the Right Thing, Even When It Makes No Difference

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.713K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Three distinct voices—Leonard Woolf, Gerald Heard, and Thomas Merton—point to the same truth world: The value of right action lies not in the results we achieve for others, but in the rightness of the action itself, and its significance for ourselves.

Get in touch: [email protected]

Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app

Find the transcript for this episode on the episode details page in the Apple Podcasts app. 

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Gretch, you know I am really trying to be healthier and I am succeeding, I want to say.

0:05.8

But even though I'm trying to be healthier, that does not mean that I want to spend a ton on groceries.

0:11.2

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0:18.1

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0:22.3

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0:28.4

Save on your wellness routine with great everyday prices at Whole Foods Market.

0:34.0

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0:55.2

Lemonada.

1:01.9

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

1:08.7

In my research, I'm always interested to see a similar idea expressed in different ways by different people.

1:10.7

Here's an example from three different writers.

1:13.8

They are all commenting on a notion that I think many people might find counterintuitive.

1:21.1

The idea that we should do good works with no regard for the results for others, but only because of the rightness of the action,

1:30.7

and because it's the right thing for us to do for ourselves. The first example comes from

1:38.7

Leonard Wolfe. Leonard Wolfe was an English political theorist, author, publisher, and civil

1:43.9

servant, and civil servant,

1:44.7

and husband of author Virginia Woolf.

1:47.5

Ever since I read this passage from Leonard Wolfe's memoir,

1:50.8

The Journey Not the Arrival Matters, It Has Haunted Me.

1:55.3

Here's a lightly edited version of the passage, she wrote.

1:59.6

Looking back at the age of 88, over the 57 years of my

2:03.9

political work in England, knowing what I aimed at and the results, meditating on the history

...

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