Try This at Home
Choose a holiday motto. We’ll see how successful I am with my motto of “‘Tis the season to be jolly.” As Elizabeth notes, I can get irritable.
Deep Dive
What are strategies to help you cut back on drinking? When I was researching Better Than Before, my book about how to make or break habits, many people told me they wanted to cultivate the habit of drinking less. I mention the Strategy of Rewards and the Strategy of Pairing. A very important distinction! I also mention the Strategy of Loophole-Spotting (this is the funniest strategy). If you want to take the Four Tendencies quiz, to find out if you’re an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel, it’s here. More than 1.7 million people have taken it.
Listener Answer
Yes, it’s a new segment! Listener ANSWERS. Here we feature listeners’ insightful answers about how to help people cope with end-of-life tasks.
Elizabeth’s Demerit: Elizabeth is so wiped out, she’s not giving herself a demerit. She’s doing her best! I quite agree: gold star for no demerit.
Gretchen’s Gold Star: I give a gold star to the brilliant and inexhaustibly creative Danielle Deschenes, who persevered to create dozens of interesting designs for the cover of Outer Order, Inner Calm that were terrific but not quite right—and then, as time grew short, came up with a gorgeous design that’s so striking, and so perfectly suited to the book, that it’s now one of my very favorite covers ever.
Resources
- If you’re planning to give a copy of any of my books as a gift, you may want to request a personalized, free bookplate to put in it, or request a bookplate for yourself. Sign up here. U.S. and Canada only, I’m afraid—mailing costs.