1KHO 859: The Duty of Being Happy | Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
You know what's funny about becoming a parent? Suddenly you spend a lot of time thinking about things you never used to think about. Smoke detectors, backup plans, estate planning, life insurance. It's all part of realizing that people are depending on you. For us, getting life insurance wasn't about expecting something bad to happen. It was about making sure our family would have some financial stability if life ever took an unexpected turn. It was one of those grown up decisions that wasn't exciting, but definitely worth making. If getting life insurance has been sitting on your to-do list, Ethos has made the process so much easier than many people expect. It's completely online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and you may even get same-day coverage. There's no medical exam, just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $3 million in coverage with some policies costing as little as $30 a month, and Ethos helps you find the lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get a free quote at ethos.com/1000hours. That's ethos.com/1000hours.
Application times may vary, rates may vary.
Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000hours Outside. I've been so looking forward to this and thrilled to be on thrill that Gretchen Rubin is back. Welcome, Gretchen.

**Gretchen Rubin** (1:13)
Thank you. I'm so glad to have the chance to talk to you again. It's great.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:17)
It's been a little bit. Last time we talked about life and five senses, the book was just coming out, how exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world. I told you that my mom is a huge fan, so my mom never knows really who's coming on the podcast and who the people are. I'll tell her who's coming on. Most of the time she's never heard of them, but when it was you, it was such a big deal.
We were constantly texting back and forth. Did it happen yet? Have you talked to Gretchen? So they did the Happiness Project for one of their book club. She's been in a book club for a really long time and it's just such a huge fan. You've written so many fantastic books. We're going to be talking about happiness today. You have your own podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and also a newsletter. People can sign up called Five Things Making Me Happy. I'll make sure I'll put those links in the show notes and written so many books. But of course, it's like we want to be happier. So you dive into this happiness project. Even though you say in the book, most people actually are pretty happy, the statistics show. But you're like, I want to be happier.
This leads to you writing this incredible book where you go from January to December, working at this goal of just being happier, of appreciating today more, yesterday, things are going pretty good. So how about if you could kick it off with talking about how I thought, your husband Jamie was like, people aren't going to be really super interested in reading your personal journey.

**Gretchen Rubin** (2:35)
Yes.

**Ginny Yurich** (2:35)
But I did find it, I'm sure you've gotten so much feedback that by reading about your own, you use the word idiosyncratic, reading about what you chose and why you chose it, it really does help the reader to think what, and so many people have done their own happiness project, what would it look like for me?

**Gretchen Rubin** (2:53)
Right. You put your finger right on it. I think that for a lot of people, they might know something abstractly like, exercise is good or we should connect more with other people, but they don't really have a vision for how they would make that practical in their own life. It's not that they would necessarily, sorry, I have the hiccups, so you may hear some hiccupping.
It's not that they would necessarily do exactly what I did, but it's more the idea that seeing an example of how somebody took a research finding or a principle of human nature and how they made that real in their own life. I think a lot of times it did give people an idea, either they would try what I tried like kiss in the morning, kiss at night, which is something very easy that a lot of people have started to doing or follow the one-minute rule, which is anything that you can do in less than a minute, you do without delay.