An absolutely astonishing Knicks victory! Am I turning into an actual sports bore? I may have to accept that fate during this playoffs season. Game Four was a triumph…in the last few seconds. During the game, I turned to my husband, Jamie—who is a lifelong basketball fan—and asked, “Has any team ended up winning after being so far behind?” and he said grimly, “Not this far behind.” At one point, the Knicks trailed by 29 points, but the team clawed their way back to a 107-106 win. The New York City jubilant spirit is wonderful. My daughter Eleanor went to a watch party downtown where, on a closed-off street with a big-screen TV, neighbors and passersby sat on the pavement to watch, shared drinks and food, and met each other. “Fun and wholesome celebration” as she described it.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
Like many people, I’ve seen the famous Friends episode where Chandler reluctantly explains that he peed on Monica’s jellyfish sting to take away the pain. Big surprise, it turns out Friends isn’t a great source of scientific information. The article Think urinating on a jellyfish sting is helpful? Think again explains why this approach doesn’t work. The best first step is a saltwater wash, and fortunately, if you’ve been stung by a jellyfish, you have a lot of saltwater near at hand.
I’m joining Libro.FM to celebrate Audiobook Month with their Audiobook Walk on June 13th. Head outside, put in your headphones, and join thousands of people around the world on an audiobook walk. Here are my 10 audiobook recommendations—all books I highly recommend, and most of which I’ve read at least twice.
Speaking of audiobooks, I’ve also just released a special “Move 26 in ‘26” episode that includes the first chapter of Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Mighty Red, described as “terrific and darkly funny…about love and survival on the American prairie.” Listen for free.
To be happier and healthier, we should take care of our teeth. Worse oral health is associated with a higher chance of dying of any cause over a fifteen-year-period—though interestingly, scientists aren’t sure why these associations exist. “Correlation is not causation,” and it’s not clear if there’s a cause-and-effect relationship, but it’s clear that gum disease and cavities make us less healthy. I recently started flossing again regularly, so I’m giving myself gold stars for that (though I also give myself demerits for quitting flossing in the first place).
One of my “Design My Summer” aims is to read the complete Diaries of Virginia Woolf. I’ve read and reread A Writer’s Diary, a collection of excerpts where she discusses her writing process, but I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy reading the entire text. It’s a lot of reading. Well, after having finished the first volume, I can’t wait to continue; it’s such a pleasure to read her work.
Feel Your Best This Summer
I partnered with Ivim health to create a companion resource to help you design your summer. It’s a short, free worksheet to help you uncover what you want to start or stop, what might be missing in your body, and how you can move through the next few months with more intention.
This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
PODCAST EPISODE: 590
We tackle a big happiness stumbling block: worry. We share 20 practical strategies for managing worry—from scheduling time to worry, to recognizing when a worry isn’t “ripe,” to making a list, and more.
INTERVIEW
Allison Aubrey
Allison Aubrey is an award-winning science and health correspondent, as well as the creator of the How to Thrive as You Age project. Her new book, Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love, is available for pre-order. In the meantime, you can find her on Substack.
Q: Can you suggest something we might try to help ourselves to become happier, healthier, more productive, or more creative?
Time travel back to childhood to recall the “you” before social media, before you understood societal expectations. What made you feel happy and free? For me, rediscovering the 8-year-old Allison, Freckles, who loved to roam the woods behind her house and come home muddy, energized and full of wonder has been a treat. I’m a believer in taking time to excavate the ‘OG’ version of you. I realized in midlife that I had abandoned that carefree part of me. Now I’ve intentionally invited her back.
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?
Pick yourself! Don’t wait for others’ validation. Tap into your intuition and learn to override the analytical brain that tries to talk you out of things. No one said to me, “Wow, Allison, you have a message to share, you should write a book.” I didn’t wait around. I picked myself. In researching Your Turn, which profiles dozens of women who have made successful “third turns”, I found there’s a throughline common among many of their journeys: First, they look inward to rediscover what their heart is telling them about who they are now. Next they look outward to connect with others who share the same passions, goals, hobbies or sense of adventure, which helps to create a sense of belonging. Then, it’s possible to move ahead to make your third turn, which is how I describe the midlife passage, passing through to a life led by heart and intuition.
Q: What simple habit boosts your happiness or energy?
Showing up. A few weeks ago my friend Megan asked me to join her on a last-minute trek to the Lincoln Memorial to watch monks who had been traveling on foot for thousands of miles to spread a message of peace. We gathered behind a rope line with thousands of others. The monks walked right by us. I didn’t pull out my press pass or post a video. I was just there to take it all in, and as we watched the crowd move silently toward the monument, I felt a quiet euphoria, like I was part of something bigger. Megan and I hugged each other, both brought to tears. An older gentleman in a security guard uniform, who had stopped on his way to work, turned to us and said, “Imagine if everyone in the world could feel this sense of peace.” I find that when we take the time to show up and be present, that’s when moments of transcendence arise. We can’t curate them. We just have to unplug enough to let them in.
Q: Is there a particular motto that you’ve found very helpful?
It’s your turn! After raising three kids and working in a frenetic newsroom for two decades, now I’m looking forward to a new phase of life. Time to look beyond parenting and the paycheck — to parlay our skills and talents into a third turn, where we live by heart and intuition rather than by society’s script. Of course, we’ll never stop adulting. We’ll always be parents and workers. But the Third Turn is a mindset. It’s time to embrace the you that you were meant to be.
Q: Has a book ever changed your life?
The Joy Luck Club found me in college, at a time when I was thinking hard about who I wanted to be. Back then I read everything as if it were an assignment! I’d read with a pencil in hand, scribbling notes in the margins and dog-earing pages that spoke to me. I was probably too young to fully understand the sacrifices parents make for their children, but I was taken by Tan’s stories of mothers and daughters reinventing themselves across generational and cultural divides, even if I couldn’t have articulated why at twenty. Now I can. She was writing about the tension between the self you were handed and the self you’re still becoming.
As Mary Catherine Bateson wrote, midlife brings the opportunity for a second adulthood. But often, the path to get us there feels like a second adolescence. We must wrestle with the same questions we face in adolescence: Who am I now? What do I want? What’s next? That’s the heart of the Third Turn: not leaving the past behind, but rather using the momentum we find by connecting with the things that truly make us happy.
The origin of my “third turn” metaphor is a horse race. It’s a reference to an observation my grandfather shared after watching the Kentucky Derby decades ago. He pointed out that the exciting and unexpected part of the race is when the horses pass through the third turn and are galloping toward the finish line. When you can see the homestretch, a sense of urgency sets in. For me, midlife (which I define, optimistically, as 50–75) is a chance to find your own ‘third turn’ energy and surge ahead.
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