Recently, I recorded the audio-book for my new book, Secrets of Adulthood: Simple Truths for Our Complex Lives. The book consists of about two hundred aphorisms—many just one-line insights—so it didn’t take us very long. As always happens when I record an audio-book, I learned that I’ve been mispronouncing some words (such as garish) my whole life, and I struggled repeatedly to pronounce some names (such as Vauvenargues). Good news: I’ve been right on my pronunciation of illustrative and magniloquence.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
My second book was a short, unconventional biography of Winston Churchill, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, and I’m still interested in all things Churchill. I know a lot of surprising facts about Churchill (for one thing, he liked to wear pale pink silk underwear), but this was a new one: “The first known use of ‘OMG’ was in a letter to Winston Churchill.” Amazing.
Years after writing that Churchill biography, I wrote Life in Five Senses, a book about using our five senses to make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. My study of the five senses gave me enormous respect for the role that hands play in our lives. As George Orwell observed, “Cease to use your hands, and you have lopped off a huge chunk of your consciousness.” So on a lighter hand-related note, I was interested to listen to episode 77, “Hand Models,” on the podcast The Economics of Everyday Things. Yes, hand models really do exist — even beyond that famous Friends episode when Joey finds his identical hand twin.
I love whimsy, and many thoughtful listeners sent me the link to this online whimsy extravaganza. Take a look if you need a boost.
Do you speed up your podcasts, audio-books, or video content? Many people do, and apparently there are some benefits, but I have to admit, I listen at ye olde 1.0 speed.
I love hearing about the discovery of a lost masterpiece or buried treasure. So I enjoyed reading about how a pharmacist in Dublin found a virtually unknown short story by Bram Stoker, author of the brilliant novel Dracula (if you’ve never actually read the novel, you should, it’s great). “Gibbet Hill” was published in a newspaper in 1890, but then dropped out of sight.
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This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
PODCAST EPISODE: 520
Very Special Episode! Ask Us Anything, Part I
INTERVIEW
Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop
Rebecca Winthrop, Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, and Jenny Anderson, award-winning journalist, are co-authors of the influential education and parenting book The Disengaged Teen.
Q: Can you suggest something we might try to help ourselves to become happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative?
Rebecca: Getting into Explorer mode! In our book, we found kids, and all of us, engage in four ways: Passenger, Achiever, Resister, Explorer.
They are what they sound like. Passenger mode is coasting and doing the bare minimum to get by. Achiever mode is trying to get a gold star in every hoop that is put in front of you. Resister mode is avoiding or disrupting. Explorer mode is following your curiosity and finding points of support and connection.
We all can cycle through these modes every day or week. When kids get a chance to be in Explorer mode in school they get higher grades, have better mental health and are building the skills to be the author of their own lives in an AI world. When I feel myself getting stuck in Achiever mode and worried I won’t succeed at what I am trying to do, I tell myself “get into Explorer mode” and start looking for what I will learn from the experience and what new connections I will make (e.g. between people or ideas). Explorer mode helps me see the possibilities in my experience and makes it a lot more fun!
Jenny: More “radical downtime.” In researching our book we came across this concept from Ned Johnson and William Stixrud (The Self Driven Child). Radical downtime means no inputs: no music, or reading or conversation: just being. This process can activate the default mode network of the brain which is critical for creativity. It can be a leap of faith for productivity maximizing types to believe that not doing something can be useful to another kind of doing, but it is one worth taking!
Q: In your own life, have you found ways to tap into the power of your five senses?
Jenny: I was on a walk with my then 12-year old daughter when she announced to me that I did not pay enough attention to visual things. I hadn’t noticed a dog we (apparently) always saw, or that a house had been repainted (bright blue). She was right: I am often in my head, thinking and working through endless to-do lists. That means not noticing the fresh coat of green paint on the rails by the river; the level of the tide on the Thames, the snowdrops poking out in February. So I use my eyes to notice more, to see the beauty in the world around me. My family has started a “Daily Gratitude” chat in WhatsApp where we share things we notice and appreciate. This has reinforced the noticing (and allowed me to encourage my kids to do the same).
Rebecca: I start every morning by doing yoga. Even when I am extremely pressed for time, I will do one minute of breath work and select an intention for the day. The act of sitting on my knees, feeling the gentle stretch in my thighs and the oxygen filling up my
lungs helps me feel grounded and purposeful throughout the day. I always feel a little off if I don’t do my morning practice.
Q: Is there a particular motto that you’ve found very helpful? (I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful?
Jenny: Be brave. That sounds pat but in the context of the work we have done to develop ways to coach kids to learn better, it’s important. Learning requires courage: to admit you don’t understand something; that you need help; that you are stuck.
So be brave means admitting you are stuck in something—which is naturally part of learning—having ways to get unstuck, and being willing to be uncomfortable enough to let that all happen.
Rebecca: Explore. Lately, I have found it very helpful to channel my inner Explorer. Through our research for the book, I have seen how powerful Explorer mode can be for kids and learning. I think it applies equally to us as adults. Reminding myself to explore helps me tackle new things, many of which are outside my comfort zone, with excitement rather than trepidation.
Even if I don’t know what I am doing and do it badly, I will still learn and grow from the experience. Explorers take many wrong turns and that is part of the joy of exploration.
Q: What simple habit boosts your happiness or energy?
Jenny: Walking my dog without music or podcasts. I am solidly of the vintage of productivity-obsessed humans. When we got a dog, I thought I would use walks to listen to podcasts, or if I need “downtime,” to listen to music. But what I’ve discovered is that doing neither and just walking boosts my energy and happiness. The dog helps with that too.
Rebecca: Hanging out with my kids or husband or family members without an agenda. Playing cards, talking about life, being silly, drinking tea. Just being together without thinking about what needs to happen next (e.g. make dinner) or what I want them to do
next (e.g. clean their room) fills my cup every time.
Q: Has a book ever changed your life – if so, which one and why?
Jenny: Well, the obvious one is the one I wrote: It changed my life by taking it over. But an early influence was Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, which I read when I was 18.
I attended a private school in Washington DC and loved my education: the classes, my teachers, the friendships I made. The challenge and support of it all made me truly love learning. The book woke me up to the fact that this was the exception, not the rule.
It showed me the power of journalism to shine a light on deep societal problems, namely the staggering gap between my experience and the reality of too many kids. It angered me and mobilized me, as well as being beautifully written. I recognized the power in that trifecta.
Rebecca: When I was younger, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed opened my eyes to the power of naming the world in your own words—to the power of what education could be and do. It inspired me to want to help young people have access to this type of liberating education. It is one of the reasons I have been working in education for my whole career.
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