Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin joins Robert Glazer to discuss risk-taking, happiness, purposeful growth, and discovering unique tendencies. They explore the importance of daily habits, embracing passion in career transitions, the elusive pursuit of happiness, communication, fostering growth at work, daily consistency, the Four Tendencies Framework, and lessons from a book failure.
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Quick takeaways
Purposeful growth at work enhances employee happiness.
Autonomy and strong relationships are key to workplace happiness.
Consistency in daily actions is more impactful than sporadic efforts.
Deep dives
Purposeful Growth Enhances Happiness at Work
Creating a sense of purposeful growth in the workplace significantly contributes to employee happiness. Employees thrive when they feel like they are contributing, learning, and making meaningful progress. This growth isn't about random tasks but about adding value and improving the status quo. Encouraging personal and professional development aligned with a sense of purpose and growth fosters a more engaged and satisfied workforce.
Balancing Control and Relationships in Work Happiness
In the quest for workplace happiness, a balance between feeling in control and fostering strong relationships is essential. Individuals find happiness when they have autonomy in how they work and feel connected through supportive relationships. Cultivating an environment where employees have both control over their tasks and solid relationships with colleagues and managers leads to enhanced workplace satisfaction.
Consistent Effort Trumps Occasional Heroic Acts
Consistency in daily actions holds more significance than occasional grand gestures or sporadic efforts. Whether it's in health habits, meaningful interactions, or work progress, the cumulative impact of regular, deliberate actions surpasses intermittent bursts of intensity. Emphasizing daily practices that align with personal and professional values sustains happiness and growth over time.
Understanding the Four Tendencies Framework
The podcast discusses the Four Tendencies, a personality framework dividing individuals into Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels based on how they respond to outer and inner expectations. Upholders readily meet both outer and inner expectations without much fuss, while Questioners question all expectations and will only meet them if they make sense. Obligers readily meet outer expectations but struggle with inner expectations, requiring outer accountability to succeed. Rebels resist all expectations, wanting to do things in their own way and time, often needing rules to push against.
Learning from Failure
The podcast host shares a personal and professional failure related to her book '40 Ways to Look at JFK', which didn't find its audience. This failure led her to realize the importance of developing a direct connection with readers, shifting her focus to building tools like a blog, newsletter, and live show to engage directly. Despite the initial setback, this failure became a valuable lesson, guiding her towards a more interactive and reader-focused approach in her writing career.
Gretchen is the author of severalbooks, including #1 New York Times bestsellers The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, Better Than Before and The Four Tendencies. Her books have sold almost three million copies and been published in more than thirty languages. With her work, Rubin has emerged as one of the most thought-provoking and influential writers on habits and happiness. Gretchen and her sister, Elizabeth, also have their own podcast called Happier where they discuss good habits and happiness.
In this classic episode, Gretchen Rubin joined host Robert Glazer on the Elevate Podcast to discuss risk taking, happiness, purposeful growth, our unique tendencies, and how to discover and apply them.