I just returned from Kansas City—and I always love a visit to my hometown. My mother, my sister Elizabeth, and I were planning to go to Nantucket together, but the nor’easter forced us to switch to Plan B. (I always feel like I’m pretending to be a New Englander when I use the term “nor’easter,” but Elizabeth assured me that it’s a technical term, not just New England for “big storm” as I’d always assumed.) Elizabeth and I walked through Kauffman Garden and sat on my father’s favorite bench, just as we would have done if he’d been with us. It’s hard to believe that he has been gone only ten months.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
Yesterday was the Feast Day of St. Therese of Lisieux, the “Little Flower.” Ever since I read her extraordinary spiritual memoir, Story of a Soul, for the first time, I’ve been fascinated by this 19th-century Carmelite nun who lived in a small, cloistered convent. She died of tuberculosis at age 24—yet she’s one of only 37 saints named as a “Doctor of the Church.” I’ve read dozens of books about St. Therese, and have re-read Story of a Soul many times, and want to visit the Basilica of St. Therese in France. “When one loves, one does not calculate.” “It is not enough to love. We must prove it.” “I choose all!” “I am very far from practicing what I understand.” “For the love of God and my Sisters (so charitable toward me) I take care to appear happy and especially to be so.” One day, I’ll probably write a little book about St. Therese—because I just won’t be able to resist any longer.
Ever since I wrote Life in Five Senses, I’ve loved optical illusions—or really, any kind of odd quirk of perception. Using celebrity photos, Jason Pargin posted about a very unsettling illusion that happens in our peripheral vision.
I was absolutely fascinated by the article “Sympathy for a dog in San Diego who seemed to greet an intruder.” In eerie home-security camera footage, we see an intruder breaking into a house—and being approached by the golden retriever Nash with a toy in his mouth. The article discusses why Nash responded to the situation as he did.
My husband and I went on a double-date with some friends, and after dinner, we played miniature golf in an indoor course near the Empire State Building. I was surprised by the name “Swingers,” because mini-golf seems so wholesome—then I got the pun. It was such a fun thing to do: quick, easy, novel, amusing. Bring on the whimsy.
My first Personal Commandment is “Be Gretchen.” We can build happy lives only on the foundation of our own nature, our own interests, our own values, our own temperament. I wrote about how I developed the Know Yourself Better Journal as a tool to help people develop a deeper understanding of their own nature.
This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
PODCAST EPISODE: 606
Here’s what we learned from our own Do-Spend September, and how to get a luxury-resort experience for a fraction of the cost. Plus: really, what can go in a microwave?
INTERVIEW
Pooja Lakshmin, MD
Pooja Lakshmin, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist, New York Times contributor, and the author of the national bestseller Real Self-Care, an NPR Best Book of 2023. Her work explores identity, change, and the structural forces that shape our lives. Her forthcoming book, Quantum Shifts: A Practical Framework for Navigating Life’s Biggest Changes, will be published on March 23, 2027.
Q: Can you suggest something we might try to help ourselves to become happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative?
Stop asking yourself, “Am I doing enough?” and start asking, “Does this life actually feel like mine?”
As a psychiatrist, I work with so many women who are doing everything right on paper. They’ve built successful careers, they’re taking care of their families, they’re checking all the boxes. And yet, something still doesn’t feel right. They’re exhausted, disconnected, or wondering why the life they worked so hard to build doesn’t feel the way they thought it would. There’s an ease and a sense of joy that’s missing.
My advice is to get curious about that feeling rather than immediately trying to fix it. Instead of adding another habit to your morning routine or another item to your to-do list ask yourself: What am I doing because I genuinely want to do it, and what am I doing because I’ve been taught that I should? This is actually a question of identity and meaning, not simply one of happiness or health. It gets to the root of what has changed in your life and what might need to change next.
This is one of the central ideas in my forthcoming book, Quantum Shifts: Sometimes the most important changes in our lives begin when we question the assumptions that have been organizing our lives in the first place.
Sometimes happiness is about giving yourself permission to want something different.
Q: Do you have a Secret of Adulthood? A lesson you’ve learned from life the hard way; something you’d tell your younger self?
You can do everything right and still end up somewhere you don’t want to be. Admittedly, this is a bit of a tough one to stomach. I spent a lot of my younger years believing that if I worked hard enough, made the right choices, and followed the rules, I could guarantee a certain kind of life. That being good at something meant I was supposed to keep doing it. That if I could just figure out the right next step, everything would fall into place and my life would feel certain and like my own.
What I’ve learned (at times the hard way) is that life doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes the things we thought would make us happy turn out to be things we need to leave behind. And sometimes we have to disappoint other people in order to stop abandoning ourselves. I’d tell my younger self that you don’t have to keep living a life just because you worked very hard to build it.
Q: What simple habit boosts your happiness or energy?
I’ve found a new habit relatively recently. Three years ago, I was recovering from burnout after launching my first book, and then, more recently, I was pregnant with twins. Getting into the water has become my balm.
I joined my local YMCA, and a couple of times a week I’ll spend time in the pool. Sometimes it’s slow laps, but a lot of times it’s just floating or soaking in the hot tub. It’s one of the few times I can just be in my body and get out of my head. As a working mom of three young kids, I spend so much of my day anticipating what needs to happen next. The sensory experience of being in the water is immersive enough to allow me to let go of that internal dialogue (temporarily!).
Q: Is there a particular motto that you’ve found very helpful?
“I always want to belong to myself.”
This is something I come back to over and over again, especially when I’m making a difficult decision that involves potentially disappointing someone else.
It’s so easy to build a life around what other people need from us. We can become excellent at our jobs, devoted to our families, and deeply committed to the people we love, while slowly disappearing from our own lives.
To be clear, belonging to myself doesn’t mean putting myself first all the time. It means remembering that my needs, desires, and values deserve a place at the table too.
Q: Has a book ever changed your life – if so, which one and why?
The Happiness Project changed my life (!). I read it on when I was on my honeymoon with my first husband…[Gretchen: Awwwww, thanks Pooja! It makes me very happy to hear that.]
But one book I return to again and again, and that teaches me something new with each reading, is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. In these times, Butler’s words feel prescient and unflinching. There’s something about her willingness to look directly at a world that is falling apart and still imagine the possibility of something hopeful, that helps me feel grounded when so much about our lives and the future is uncertain.
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