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Happier with Gretchen Rubin

More Happier: 7 Happiness Myths—and What’s Actually True [Revisited]

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.713K Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Money can’t buy happiness.” “It’s selfish to try to be happier.” These familiar ideas seem wise—but they often hold us back. This week, we revisit 7 common happiness myths and share how letting go of them can help us use our time, energy, and attention more effectively.

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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

From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, we all need a little help being human. That's what the Life Kit podcast from NPR is here to do. If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, Life Kit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change. Life Kit offers real

0:21.8

stories, relevant insights, and clear takeaways to help you meet decision-making moments with

0:26.3

confidence and clarity. Gretsch, you and I are always trying to add whimsy to our lives,

0:31.9

so I really appreciated an episode about how to bring more play into life. Love play. Life Kit isn't just another podcast

0:40.1

about self-improvement. It's about understanding how to live a little better starting now. Get help

0:47.3

tackling common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career. Then walk away

0:53.2

with a game plan

0:54.2

you can implement right away.

0:56.5

Listen now to the Life Kit podcast from NPR.

1:03.4

Lemonada. Hello, we're here for more happier, a podcast where we get happier. It's the weekend. It's a looser vibe.

1:26.4

Today we are revisiting. We are talking about seven common myths about happiness, ideas that sound right, but can actually make it harder to feel good day to day. Once we spot them, it's easier to stop wasting our efforts on things that don't work. We first covered these eight years ago, and I still find myself falling for

1:46.9

them all the time, Grutch. Myth number five is a big one for me, which is that you'll be happy as

1:53.0

soon as the project's done. That shows up in Hollywood all the time. I think it kind of describes

1:58.6

my entire adult life. Yeah, yeah, that's the arrival fallacy.

2:02.9

And I know exactly what you're talking about. For me, one that I see all the time is myth number

2:07.4

seven, which is maybe the biggest happiness myth that's out there, which is that it's selfish

2:12.3

to try to be happier. And, you know, once I figured out that myth, it completely changed how I thought about

2:18.3

happiness, why it matters, how it affects the people around us. It's a big myth. Yes, it is.

2:25.8

Well, I can't wait to hear all of these. Let's get into the list.

2:33.9

Okay, so now it's time for the very special episode topic of seven myths of happiness.

2:40.7

So we're going to lay out the seven myths up at the top, and then we will go through them

2:45.6

and discuss each one of them in turn. So myth number one, happy people are annoying and stupid. Myth number two,

...

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