Pods We Love: Happier with Gretchen Rubin

0:04Sebene Selassie:This is the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:19Sebene Selassie:Hey, hey, happy Sunday. Today we're sharing an episode of a podcast that my team and I love from a person who I have known for a long time and really admire. and respect and love, and it's Gretchen Rubin. She's got a show called Happier. She's a very successful author. She's written books, including The Happiness Project and Secrets of Adulthood and Better Than Before, all of them bestsellers. She's also got a sub stack, and you should check her out there. And like I said, she's got a podcast. It's a weekly podcast with her sister, Elizabeth Craft, who's a TV writer in Hollywood. As I mentioned, it's called Happier.

0:55Sebene Selassie:Today, we're going to share an episode of Happier with you here. On this episode, you're going to hear Elizabeth and Gretchen talk about the idea of the familect or family dialect, words and phrases that are only used within your family. They also have some ideas for how to organize apps on your phone, and they share some secrets of adulthood from listeners. Secrets of adulthood are basically aphorisms or little missiles of wisdom that you can surface in your mind just when you need them. As you'll hear, Gretchen's show is super practical, super fun. You should listen to this and then go subscribe and listen to all of her stuff.

1:32Sebene Selassie:Before we dive in with Gretchen and Elizabeth, I just want to remind you that we're now offering bespoke custom meditations with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes here on the podcast. We're going to be doing this indefinitely as part of our regular programming. Every month, we're going to choose a teacher of the month who will create a batch of meditations, and they will drop all of those meditations in conjunction with our episodes. These meditations are only available to paying subscribers over at danharris.com, so sign up today and you'll get a fresh meditation in your feed tomorrow for the Monday episode.

2:03Sebene Selassie:Also, if you're a paying subscriber over at danharris.com, you can join me for live meditations and Q &A sessions. We have one coming up this Thursday, August 14th at four o 'clock Eastern. Sign up, danharris.com, join the party. Okay, enough out of me. Coming up, it's Happier with Gretchen Rubin. If you're a loyal listener to this show, you know that I am an avid worker outer. And if you are going to exercise on the regular. One thing you need, it's a non-negotiable, at least in my opinion, you need quality socks. You can't skimp on your socks. And one of the sponsors of this show is Bombas, and they've been sending me these socks that I use when I work out, not only when I work out, but also when I'm out in the world just wearing sneakers and I want some good looking socks.

2:48Sebene Selassie:I go to my Bombas on those occasions as well. It's become a little bit of a source of marital discord because my wife and I compete for the Bombas socks. So that's reminding me I need to go order some more. Long way of saying they make high quality socks, but that's not all they make. They also make footwear. Do you know what EVA stands for? Neither did I, but Bombas makes their sandals and slides from this super lightweight, cushy, waterproof EVA foam. It's like walking on marshmallows. They also make underwear and t-shirts, the best base layers you'll ever own. Head over to Bombas.com slash happier and use the code happier for 20 % off your first purchase.

3:26Sebene Selassie:That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com slash happier, code happier at checkout. Hey, it's Dan. I just want to tell you about something I'm really proud of, the new community we are building over on my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. Here's something I I believe, with no reservation. Taking care of your own mind is not selfish. It's actually essential if you want to show up for the world, if you want to deal with the various emergencies on the planet right now. There is, in fact, a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together. In other words, taking care of your own mind is good citizenship.

4:03Sebene Selassie:I think about it like an upward spiral. You train your mind, that makes you happier and less reactive. Because you're steadier, that improves your relationships with everybody around you. And because relationships are crucial to human happiness, you get even happier, then your relationships get even better and up you go. Our mission over at this new app is to guide you through this process with a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers like Sabine Selassie and Joseph Goldstein and on and on. Also add free access to our full podcast archive, exclusive live stream events where we guide meditations and take your questions.

4:38Sebene Selassie:We do those every week and much more. Head on over to danharris.com. You can try it for two weeks free. And if you cannot afford a subscription, we'll give you one, no questions asked.

4:55Hello, and welcome to Happier, a podcast where we talk about strategies and solutions for building more happiness into our everyday lives. This week, We'll talk about why it's fun to write a collection of your own family familect. And we share many excellent secrets of adulthood from listeners. I'm Gretchen Rubin, a writer who studies happiness, good habits, secrets of adulthood, human nature. I'm in my little home office here in New York City. And joining me today from Los Angeles is my sister, Elizabeth Kraft. And Elizabeth, you are full of secrets of adulthood. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer living in L.A.

5:31And Gretchen, I have to tell you, I've been suggesting to everyone that they get your book, Secrets of Adulthood, for graduation gifts and Father's Day gifts. Oh, what a good sister. Thank you. But before we jump in, a few updates. Nicole says, I wanted to share that Eleanor's advice about command hooks and strips has really been amazing for me. Her advice to use command hooks makes me laugh because I'm 36, own a home, and have three kids. I'm a full-fledged adult and I just loved how Eleanor's dorm advice has struck a chord with me. I've always had analysis paralysis when it comes to decorating my home.

6:09For some reason, hanging art has felt too permanent. I remember Elizabeth mentioning the same thing. My walls have been bare and we moved into our home three years ago. Now I'm using command strips to hang art. This has helped me get over the fear of the art having a permanent spot on the wall. I feel better that I can easily move it if and when I change my mind about it in the future. Realistically, I probably will never move it, but I like knowing I could if I wanted to. I love this example of how there's maybe an easy solution for something that feels like a really perplexing problem. It is often that you just feel like, I'll do nothing because I really don't want to make a mistake.

6:51Yes. And this allows you to say, now the stakes are very low. Yes, yes. Very true. Love that. Love command hooks. They are magic. Tish writes, I just listened to the Exceptional Advantage episode. This is where we talked about asking yourself, well, what is an exceptional advantage that you have in your life or your circumstances or your personality? And I headed right over to Lake Michigan, which is a six-minute drive from my home. The proximity to the lake is my favorite thing about our town. I always say I never want to live any further from the water than I am now, but I still don't go on any regular basis except for the month of August when I go every day.

7:27Gretchen Rubin:I now resolve to drive by every time I am out in the car as it takes so little time to stop for a view. My goal is a five-minute sit on a bench to start with, which easily fits into most days. The first bench I headed to had a shiny penny under it. Always a good sign. Thank you for waking me up to my exceptional advantage. I love that. It's like you with the Met, Gretch. Exactly. Right. You have this resource. You feel very lucky to have it, but you really have to take advantage of it if it's your exceptional advantage. And this came from a listener about my mispronunciation because I was talking about my summer of blank.

8:02I've had my summer of Proust, my summer of Virginia Woolf, my summer of rereading, and this was going to be my summer of sundoku, but I should have said sundoku. Tammy wrote, since it might come up a lot if this is going to be a summer of sundoku, the first syllable doesn't rhyme with sun. It rhymes with soon. There's no sun sound in Japanese, the way we pronounce that word in English. Just think of it as sudoku with an N, and you'll come pretty close. So sundoku. Thank you, Tammy. And Gretchen, I am excited because you have an announcement. I have to officially welcome you to the world of Substack, my favorite new world.

8:41I know, Alyssa, and you've got your whole thing about anytime you can, you sort of, what is it? You push a button and you say, please join me. Sign up for our Substack. Yes. Well, sign up for my Substack. I have started a new project on Substack, partly inspired by you, Elizabeth, and it is called Secrets of Adulthood. I am so excited for this new project. This is where I am gonna share reflections and teaching stories related to happiness, good habits, human nature, self-knowledge. as I often say for my whole life I've been collecting aphorisms and proverbs and fables parables paradoxes cohen's all kinds of teaching stories and so this project is a way to share my writings on this to write them myself originally or to comment on other ones that I know I'll also be having a series of live conversations with other writers and thinkers about their own secrets of adulthood so if you want to learn more or if you want to subscribe just search for Gretchen Rubin or Secrets of Adulthood in Substack, or if you want to go straight to it, it's secretsofadulthood.substack.com, but you can just search.

9:43But I'm really excited, Alyssa. That's so fun. Yes, I love it. And a lot of people still aren't aware of Substack, but it's really just a place that has newsletters. It has a feed where you can comment. There's chat. It's got a lot of great stuff, and it's really not intimidating. I think it sounds intimidating to people, but it really shouldn't. And while you're there subscribing to Secrets of Adulthood, also subscribe to Happier in Hollywood for our free weekly newsletter. There, I said it. Now we need to get matching mugs. I was going to get you a mug. Now we need matching mugs. Yes, exactly.

10:23So this week, our Tried This at Home suggestion is to write a collection of your familect. Okay. I love this word. Describe what it means. Okay. A familect, also called a marriage language, is a set of invented words or phrases with meanings understood within members of a family or other small intimate group. And this was inspired by a note from our listener, Robin, who was writing about her favorite words because her favorite words are family words. Here's what she said. Several years ago, I became acquainted with the idea of a familect, which is essentially the unique language your family communicates with, and I love the idea so much.

11:03I started keeping a familect dictionary, and it brings me so much joy to think about the quirky and whimsical things we say to our nearest and dearest that other people might find nonsensical or crazy. A few examples, sassy, a little unexpected present, lalishy, delicious, delicious, hymn and hoot, swimming suit, make them up, makeup, foo-foo juice, deodorant. You get the idea. Anyhow, just keeping these on a little list on my phone brings me a lot of joy every time I think of a new one to add. That's so fun. It's so fun. And listening to our list, like a lot of times the way that words enter the familect is because a child cannot pronounce a word properly.

11:48And then the whole family or a child says something funny and then everybody just picks up on it. I remember when Eleanor was really little, she said, please pass the pajamas

11:55Gretchen Rubin:when she meant please pass the Parmesan. And for a while we called Parmesan pajamas. Now that's fallen out of our usage. I just kind of remember it. So this is one of the reasons that would be fun to make a list of it because sometimes they come in, but then they fade out again. And it is really fun to remember them. They really are kind of a timestamp. And it's fun to have your own secret language within a family. Yeah. So what are some other ones that you have, Gretchen? Well, Alyssa, can you remember why I might say this? Because this goes way back to the dawn of time. Sometimes when food is ready or it's time for dinner, I'll say, this way to the cat fud.

12:34Gretchen Rubin:Do you know what I'm referring to? Totally. Gary Larson, Farside cartoon. There's a hilarious cartoon of a dog trying to entrap a cat. So it says, this way to the cat fud, but it's been misspelled because the dog, but anyway, it's funnier than it sounds from the description, but I, that's just stuck in my mind. Another thing that I always say, so when I was little, I used to read a cricket magazine, which are these very literary magazines for children. I still have them all. They are super precious to me. I probably have practically memorized them, but at the bottom of it, kind of to have like a running little comic strip, but also to explain unfamiliar words or concepts to children.

13:10Gretchen Rubin:So it sort of was like footnotes as well. were these little creatures. There would be a ladybug and a cricket and all these sort of insects that worked because the name of the magazine was cricket and they would all be talking to each other. But they would always say every buggy instead of everybody. And so I will often say like, where is every buggy? Nobody else in my family says it, but I say that all the time. But here's something funny also. And you know, sometimes you say things without realizing it. And so it's sort of part of your family and you're not even conscious of it. So I realized with Taffy, it's calling out in me some of the behaviors that I have as a parent of a new baby.

13:43Gretchen Rubin:And I realized I had forgotten that I did this. The minute I said it, I was like, oh, I did this with Barnaby. I did this with Eliza. I did this with Eleanor. When I go to get them up out of their crib or their carrier with Taffy, I say, well, is there a little girl in here who wants to get up? The minute it came out of my mouth, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is the thing that I said so many times. But then of course, when you're not doing that anymore, it fades away. So Taffy brought that back to my mind. So I will write that down in our FAMILAC. How about you, Alyssa? What have you got? Grutch, I am not whimsical in that way.

14:15I wish I were. I feel like we don't really collect these. I will say Adam and Jack have pointed out that I always say at the ready, like, do we have the keys at the ready? We want to have a sandwich at the ready. Oh. But I don't have like made up words. That's interesting. Maybe partly because with an only child, you don't have the siblings kind of. A lot of times it comes, it seems like from the younger sibling not being able to pronounce the older sibling's name, things like that. I don't know. That's interesting. Yeah, well, like Eleanor, her nickname in her family is Eno. And everybody calls her Eno sort of from time to time.

14:57Or like if they're typing, they'll use Eno instead of Eleanor. And that was because when Eleanor was little, she couldn't say her own name. She would say Eno. That was her name for herself. Well, it's interesting. It probably is the case that some families are really much more prone to this than others, probably depending on their level of whimsy and how many mispronunciations come up. But also a famile can include phrases that have meanings. And it's interesting. I was just, I'm reading this very delightful memoir called Look Back with Love by Dodie Smith. And Dodie Smith, if you've ever read I Capture the Castle, which is this towering classic, super fun read.

15:31She wrote that. And she also kind of strangely also wrote 101 Dalmatians. So it's kind of an odd mix of things. But anyway, Look Back With Love is this just super charming, sweet memoir of her absolutely delightful childhood where she was surrounded by she was an only child and she was just surrounded by adoring an adoring mother and aunts and uncles and grandparents and neighbors. And anyway, it's very funny. But one of the things she often talks about is the familect and how certain phrases, like there would be some funny story or something funny would happen, and then it would become a catchphrase from then on.

16:04So for instance, she said that one of her uncles was always chasing and teasing the landlady's cat. And the landlady would wail, don't touch a tail, don't touch a tail. And that became the family synonym for like, leave well enough alone. or she says that when she was really little, she had a neighbor who was six years older who would play with her all the time, but she would also just, because she was so much bigger every once in a while, she would just pick up Dodie Smith and hoist her around, which she did not enjoy. And she would yell, you can't have me, Muriel. And that became a family saying too.

16:35And again, these are phrases that come into the familect and that have special meaning within your group. Well, I want to try to start a familect because I love this idea. It's very sweet. Well, and I think it could also happen at work. somebody said something's like super preposterous at a meeting and then it becomes kind of a catchphrase. Or people have some funny name for some project that you have to do that nobody likes or I don't know, you know, it's part of, and you know, we also, we often talk about like, how do you increase the feelings of closeness? And this is a way having kind of a secret language, it's like having a nickname.

17:09It's like having nicknames for things that are not people. So it is really fun. And I think that making a collection of it, we often talk about easy ways to hold onto memories, how to be a storehouse of family lore. And this is the kind of thing that could be really, really fun to keep a running list. And over the years, it could be very satisfying to reflect back on it. It would be a time capsule of your family life or your work life or whatever group. And looking at it would bring back this very specific memory that you might forget, like waking up the girls before school. Just saying that brings back those memories.

17:43So I I love this. Or please pass the pajamas, right?

17:46Gretchen Rubin:Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Well, let us know if you do try this at home and how making a collection of your own familect works for you. I have to say, Elizabeth, I'm not 100 % confident that we use the word properly every single time. So anyway, you get the point. Instagram, threads, Facebook, TikTok. Drop us an email at podcast at gretchenrubin.com. Or as always, go to the show notes. Go to happiercast.com slash 537 for everything related to this episode. Coming up, we've got a tech organizing hack, but first, let's break.

18:25All right, Gretchen, we are back with this week's happiness hack. This is something that I just did, and it's really making my life just feel that much smoother and quicker and more convenient, even though it's a matter of milliseconds. seconds. Now, we have talked many times about the value of deleting a soul-sucking app. Yes. Or if there's an app that you really need to keep, but you want to use it less, you like move it late into your swiping so that you have to swipe, swipe, swipe, or you put it in a folder so you have to click, click. You want to make it inconvenient and put it out of reach.

18:57But this is to organize your apps. And I've heard of people organizing their apps by color, which is very next level. But I just realized that a lot of the apps that I use most regularly were like on the third screen. And some apps that I hardly ever used were on the home screen. And I thought, why don't I just take 30 seconds and just move things around and put like next to like. I had two folders that had travel apps. It's like, we'll put those together. So it's like the travel section. And it works really well. And by organizing them, you can make it more convenient to do the things you want to do.

19:32Like, let's say you want to encourage yourself to read more, you can put your e-reader or your library app where you listen to audiobooks that you've checked out from the library, you can put that on the home screen so that you just, it's very easy and you have the visual reminder. And then like, if you don't want to check social media as much, you move that later. So it's just further away. This is smart. I should absolutely do this. My apps are not organized at all. And even though I use the same ones all the time, I'm always hunting for them. So I love this idea like, for instance, my Libby app, which I use all the time, is like in my fourth screen.

20:07I should definitely have it on the home screen. Next to podcasts, next to Audible. Right, exactly. That's like your audio entertainment. You say, how long does it take? Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. But it's these little things that somehow just feel like a little bit of grit. And then when it's just right there, life just feels easier. And I realized that mine were extremely haphazard. So anyway, it's a small thing, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Oh, yay.

20:33Gretchen Rubin:And now for secrets of adulthood. So in episode 523, our Try This at Home suggestion was to share one of your own secrets of adulthood. We had so many great listener suggestions of their secrets of adulthood, and there's kind of a mix. Some of these are proverbs or pieces of folk wisdom that people said, well, here's a piece of secrets of adulthood. It's not that they wrote it, but it's something that they find really useful. And then some are original. So these are the listeners' own secrets of adulthood. So there's kind of a mishmash of these, but they're all useful. And it was so fun to read all the ones that people sent.

21:06Yes. Lanky's library on Instagram said, the people who do it are the people who do it.

21:14Gretchen Rubin:That's worth thinking about. Mrs. Roberts had three. Nothing good happens after midnight. Something is better than nothing and go slow to go fast. I often remind myself, go slow to go fast, because it's when I'm hurrying that I do things like spill an entire cup of coffee on my keyboard, et cetera. Yep. Melanie said, if you have to do something every day or regularly, find a way to enjoy it. Good advice. Seabroose1508 says, not my circus, not my monkeys. I love this phrase for so many situations. Yeah, I believe this is a Polish proverb, a great proverb. Malin said, just because things could have been different doesn't mean they'd be better.

21:58Gretchen Rubin:Very true. Reassuring, yeah. Michelle said, I never feel like doing the spin bike, never. Usually, I'm glad halfway through and definitely after. We all relate to that. Irene said, the anxious bunny survives. Huh, okay. Liz says, our family motto is always carry a book and a sweater. Amanda said, always ride the carousel. Laura, don't attend every argument you're invited to. Jennifer said, always take the high road. There's less traffic there. That's funny. Lucky says, everything in moderation. And to that, I would say, do nothing in excess, even moderation. Miranda says, it's rarely worth correcting someone.