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Creativity and a learning mindset are essential
to succeed. Learn how these innovators put

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these skills to use to become the
best in their fields. Welcome to Innovators

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to Know. Brought to you by
Idemas. It's a pleasure for me to

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welcome Gretchen Ruben to our show today. She's a friend and a driving force

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behind the book group we've belonged to
for twenty years. She's one of today's

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most influential and thought provoking observers of
happiness and human nature. The specific niche

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she's carved out is breaking down abstract, complex ideas into comprehensible nuggets and,

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more importantly, practical strategies for individuals
to implement to increase their self awareness and

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improve their lives. Gretchen most often
uses herself as the guinea pig, and

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her authenticity and self knowledge make her
content compelling to her many many readers,

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and Gretchen's been interviewed by Oprah,
eating dinner with Nobel Prize winning researcher Daniel

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Kahneman, walked arm in arm with
the Dalai Lama, had her work reported

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on in a medical journal, being
written up in the New Yorker, and

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being announcer on Jeopardy, which is
probably the most interesting thing. Definitely,

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that was the biggest excitement of all
for sure. So Gretchen, welcome,

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Thank you for joining us today.
So happy to be talking to So.

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You've written several best selling books,
The Happiness Project, Better Than Before and

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The Four Tendencies in the Past.
Your newest book is Life in Five Senses.

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Tell us what made you focus on
the senses and decide to write about

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it. Well, it was right
near here where we're talking right now.

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I had a bad case of pink
eye, so I had to go to

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the eye doctor. Yeah, I
just walked nearby, and as I was

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leaving, he said to me very
casually, like as if he were saying,

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oh, be sure to wear some
or drink it up water. He

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said, be sure to come back
for your regular checkup, because, as

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you know, you're more at risk
of losing your vision. And I was

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what, I don't know, I
don't know that. What are you talking

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about? He said, Oh,
yeah, you're extremely nearsighted, and that

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means you're more at risk of losing
your vision so through a detached retina.

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So if that starts to happen,
we want to catch it right away.

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Yeah, and I have a friend
who lost some of his vision to it

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attached retina, so that felt like
a very real possibility to me. So

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I go out onto the street,
and I'm looking at this beautiful New York

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City city scape all around me and
thinking how precious it is. But also

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I didn't notice anything on my way
over. I was like stuck in my

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head, lost in my own thoughts. I didn't notice one thing. And

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often, you know, we don't
know how much we appreciate something until we

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lose it, or we fear that
we might lose it. And so I

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was taking this all in and then
in an instant, it was like every

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knob in my brain got jammed up
to eleven and I could see every detail

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with perfect clarity. I could hear
every sound on a separate track. I

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could smell every smell in New York
City, which is very small and lots

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of different bloods, of different smells, um, and you know what your

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neighbors are getting up to. And
my whole walk home was just this sort

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of transcendent, almost psychedelic experience when
I'm just feeling all these sensations just overwhelming

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me, and I realized, like, this is happening all the time.

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There's nothing special about this. It's
just that I'm paying attention, and usually

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I don't. Yeah, and I
have been studying happiness for a long time,

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as you mentioned, and I had
had a sense that there was something

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missing, that there was a puzzle
piece that I hadn't identified, and that

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walk home really showed me this was
the missing piece. This was the way

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that I could connect to the world
and to other people and to myself through

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kind of this intense connection with my
five senses. That's u. I'm so

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glad you describe that experience because I
think so many of us walk through our

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lives, especially near city. You
know, we're sort of almost bread to

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believe that busyness and packing as many
things into one day as possible, it's

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sort of a prerequisite, right,
and it desensitizes you to all of the

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everyday stimuli around us that we should
be in fact taking it. Yeah,

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you're so busy ticking through your to
do list that you just you don't even

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notice the blossoms on the trees.
Yeah, yeah, so true. Remember,

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So we're going to take a quick
look at this short video clip in

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which you talk about how you felt
your brain was just driving the car that

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was your body. Let's take a
quick look. A few years ago,

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I had an epiphany. I've done
countless things that made my life happier,

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and yet too often I felt stuck
in my head, disconnected from the world

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and other people, and also from
myself. I've been treating my body like

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the harror my brain was driving.
In my book Life and Five Senses,

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I describe how I discovered that by
tuning into my five senses, I could

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transform my everyday life by paying true
attention to the richness of the physical world

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around me. Through the lens of
my research and adventures, I explore how

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our senses can help us cheer up, calm down, live in the moment,

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give us more pleasure, more energy, deep in our connections, and

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even allow us to touch the transcendent
and catch up. Will never taste the

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same again. So Gretchen, tell
us a little bit about this feeling of

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disconnection from your body. I mean, there's so much now that's been research

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written, more and more talked about
in all sorts of ways about the mind

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body connection, and that feeling of
disconnection is common for a lot of people.

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How do we come back to that
and how did you navigate that?

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What's interesting. I think a lot
of people do think that they want to

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reum they want to appreciate the moment, they want to get back in their

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own body. And I think it's
because of two things that sort of point

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in opposite directions. I think,
on the one hand, reality can feel

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sort of drained and flat because we're
doing things through screens or like you know,

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um, so we're not we're not
engaging, we're not picking up smells,

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we're not we're not so much of
it is flattened. But then on

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the other hand, sometimes things feel
hyper processed or overly saturated, like a

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snack food that hits every bliss point
and it just or you go to a

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movie and you see more details than
you could see in a week, and

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you hear this music that's very emotional
and stirring, but there's no smells,

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there's no air currents, And so
I think people are trying to get back

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into balance like they want to like. I think that's why things that are

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immersive are so popular, because anybody, anytimes something's build as immersive, it's

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like sign me up. That sounds
amazing totally, and because I think it

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is that people are trying to get
back into their bodies and anything that sort

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of helps you remember to just like
experience your body, it's just very energizing.

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So I did it by sort of
systematically going through the five senses,

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which I don't think is the way
that most people would want to do it.

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But I was so curious and just
really wanted to learn more. So

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I did it by going through all
five senses and looking for adventures or experiments.

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You know, the more you know, the more you notice. I

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tried to really learn a lot more, a lot of different things. For

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you, How did you structure that
exercise for yourself, because in a sense,

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you created a plan and sort of
a mechanism to experience have different experiences

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involving each of the five senses,
right, A lot of which you talk

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about in your book. Right.
Yeah, It always for me starts with

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research. So the first thing I
do when I get interested in a subjects,

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I got the library and get a
giant stack of books. So part

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of it was just sort of understanding. But the more that I would research,

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the more I would think, like, oh, I really want to

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learn more about this, or I
want to try this, or I need

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to test this, and so it's
sort of through the research or often they

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would mention things like one thing that's
funny. This is fun to just do.

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You know, it takes one second. So you know how with two

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eyes we have three dimensional vision,
and with two ears we are able to

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locate things in space because we're comparing, so our two nostrils also pick up

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slightly different smells so that we have
a richer smell. So you can do

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this. You can just like take
something that has a strong smell and test

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it on one side and then the
other and you can. And that's the

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kind of thing. I would read
about it and I'd be like, I've

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got to try that for myself.
Where's a jar of capers and I mean

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to sniff it up. So a
lot of times, just by learning about

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it, it made me think of
things that I wanted to do. I

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read about Flavor University, which is
this two day free course you can take

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in Jadeva, Illinois, and it's
all about flavor and I was like,

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can I just email them and go? And it turns out you can't.

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Yeah. They're like they're like,
we're not sure that this is something that

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you'd be interested in, and I
was like, well, I think so,

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so if you'll have me account and
stuff, I went fantastic, Yeah,

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I love that story. So,
Qutchen, you also host the podcast

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Happier, and you've built a Happier
app in fact, which helps people track

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their habits really and it's been super
popular with your followers. Tell us how

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you realized the Happiness Project needed to
go beyond the book and be made accessible

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to people in the various ways that
you've now made it accessible. I mean

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it's such a you know, many
writers write books. Many of those books

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do extremely well. Few writers,
I think, are able to take their

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research and insights and turn it into
this effectively practical tool for everyday living.

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Right. Well, it's interesting because
because I think I am always interested in

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thinking understanding the abstract ideas. But
then what could the average person do starting

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tomorrow without spending a lot of time, energy, your money? So like,

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how would you make I'm kind of
the Benjamin Franklin side of the Happiness

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studies, and so with Better than
Before it is my book about how people

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can make or break habits, And
so I did a lot of thinking about

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the different tools that worked the best
for people, and why because I've the

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sport Tendencies personality framework on that divides
people into upholders, questioners, obligers,

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and rebels and which people can take
gretchenba dot com slash quiz to find out

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what they are. But the kind
of tool that you use effectively really depends

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on what tenancy you are, Like
that that can really make you much more

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efficient in figuring out how to approach
that an important habit change. And I

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just wanted to help people make that
match because I get so frustrating when people.

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I'm like, I've been talking to
you for five minutes, and I

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know why this isn't working for you, Like you're just It's not that you're

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lazy or you can't make yourself a
priority or you can follow through. It's

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that you haven't picked the right tool
for you. And my sister calls me

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a happiness bully, which is true, you wouldn't be happy, yeah and

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so and so if I think there's
a way for you to be happier,

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I get pretty insistent. And so
the app is something where it helps you

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figure out your tendency and then it
suggests it's like, you can use any

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tool. Anybody can use any tool. But I'm just saying, if I

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know you're an obliger, I know
that this kind of tool is probably going

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to help you more. Or if
you're a rebel, I'm not going to

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suggest this kind of tool for you
because often rebels don't have good, good

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success with that tool. But then
there's also like I have, like I

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love quotations, I love doing yourself
better questions. I think that can also

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help us to become happier and to
change our habits if we really like are

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you a morning person or a night
person? A lot of people try to

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form their habits and ignore that.
I'm like, if you're a night person,

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you're you're not going to get up
early and work on your novel for

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two hours from six to eight am. I'm just that's not gonna work for

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you. Yeah, And it's not
that it's not a good idea. I

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can do that. I'm a morning
person, yeah, but for a person,

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it's just but I think sometimes people
just want to skip that stage.

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They want it the best way.
They wrote the silver bullet. They want

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the silver bullet. They want like
the most scientifically proven way and I'm like,

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such a thing can't exist because people
are so different. Yeah, it's

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I always say to people, what's
the best way to cook an egg?

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Yeah, and they said, well, it depends on how you like your

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eggs, or they say, I
don't even like eggs, right right,

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nobody can tell you the best way
to cook an egg. Yeah, because

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it depends on how you like your
eggs. Yeah, as you've done this

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would have been what have been some
of your learnings as a as a you

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know, effectively it is having built
this business around this concept. What are

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the learnings that you've had from that? Well? I think the biggest learning

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is what we were just talking about, is that there's no one right way.

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And when I started out with the
Happiness Project, when I wrote,

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when I started that book, I
really believed that I could figure it out

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and present it. It's sort of
like, if I could just present it

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clearly enough, everyone can read the
book, everyone can figure it out.

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Okay, Now, if I thought
about it, I might have said,

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well, people have been thinking about
this for thousands of years. If somebody

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could just figured it out, probably
it would have been figured out, you

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know, before this. And that's
one reason why I'm skeptical when people are

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like, oh my gosh, incredible
new finding and what is there an incredible

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because it's probably wrong, but but
just understanding how often the opposite things can

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work for people. Okay, good
example. Some people will say to you,

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if you want to make a change, what you have to do is

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small incremental change. Ye little,
you know, step by step, floss

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one tooth, do one yoga pose, run for five minutes, and that's

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the way you've been. And there's
all these reasons why that's true, except

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that some people get very bored with
that. They want to go bigger but

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go home. They want bold,
radical challenge, yeah, or they lose

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it gist. So why would I
say to that person, No, no,

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no, you're setting yourself up for
failure just because that wouldn't work for

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me. So I think again,
it's like it's like ext or if something

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doesn't work for you, like a
lot of times with and I'm sure you

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see this in the coaching world.
Some people there they feel like they shouldn't

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have to have accountability. Yeah,
they're like, it's kind of like training

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wheels, Like some people just need
accountability. Lots of people need accountability.

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There is absolutely nothing wrong. That's
what you need get yourself, what you

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need to achieve your aims for yourself. Some people resist that. They don't

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want anybody looking with their shoulder,
they don't want anybody checking in with them.

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If you tell them to do something, they're going to resist. That's

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the oblige of rubble in my framework. Yeah, and that's fine too.

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It's like, we don't have to
change ourselves, and we certainly don't have

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to change other people, but we
have to think about what works for us

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and not to me has been the
thing that just do. And then with

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the five senses, how we all
live in such a different sensory environments.

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I mean, it's genetics, it's
upbringing, it's expectations. But like you

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can't smell your home the way I
guess smells it. You're so accustomed to

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it you don't even smell it.
Yeah, where somebody walking next to you

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could have an overwhelming smell of lilies
or air freshen or dogs or whatever.

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Um, probably dogs is what the
smells. I mean, you don't know.

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And it kind of made me pronix. I was like the house,

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I'm like doc, because I wouldn't
my apartment wouldn't. I got to go

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away for months before I would be
able to tell or something. Or we're

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in New York City, a big
siren can go by, we probably wouldn't

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even notice, Yeah, because our
brain doesn't flag sirens absolutely, whereas for

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someone else in LA they don't hear
helicopters. Yeah, no, that's so

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true. I think, you know, in coaching we see this all the

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time, right. I think the
personality types, as you've said, really

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matter, and as a result,
their level of self awareness. I mean,

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some people can have like almost too
much self awareness to the point where

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they're super self conscious. Right,
And equally you can get the opposite where

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there's zero self awareness and all the
states in between, and and coaching,

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you know, is adaptive to that
personality type effectively. Right, It's like,

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how is this person going to understand
what we're trying to tell them in

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the most most acceptable way possible.
And the words really matter? The words

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matter. That is another thing that
surprised me, because I'm like, what

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does it matter? The aim is
the aim, But it's so it's really,

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do you practice piano or do you
play piano? I mean it really

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or just the metaphor that you choose. So when I wrote the Happiness Project,

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several people said to me, we
can't call it the Happiness project because

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a project sounds like homework. Nobody
wants to do a happiness project. And

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I thought, well, that's odd
because to me, a project holds fun.

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To me, it sounds exciting.
Um. But then a lot of

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people want to use the journey metaphor. I don't like the journey metaphor,

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maybe because I'm not well, yeah, I don't know why, but to

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me that it's not a compelling metaphor. But many people love. And so

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again it's like, it's not that
one is. We don't need to argue

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about whose metaphor is right. Um, it's but it's that the words matter.

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Well, this is reframing too,
like this is the classic do I

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have to or do I get to? Yeah? Really matters, It really

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really makes a big difference, totally. Yeah, as we know from our

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experiences with our children, Yes,
no, it's so true. So having

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known you as long as I have, Gretchen, it's hard for me to

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imagine you ever feeling blocked. That
said, however, prolific any of us

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is. The feeling of being blocked
is very real right, whether that's in

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work or in writing, or as
a parent or whatever, and it's super

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frustrating. Let's take a quick look
at this clip in which you describe some

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of the strategies that you use to
overcome the block. I discovered that we

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can use our hands to help our
minds to think. Here's an example.

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For years, on my computer,
I kept a list of my indirect directions,

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short somewhat mysterious creative prompts that I
consulted whenever I felt stuck, like

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skip the boring parts and break the
frame. I loved these indirect directions,

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but it bothered me the this was
just a document that could vanish or be

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forgotten. When I was home visiting
my parents, I came across my father's

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ancient rolodex. I loved it,
and it hit me I could buy a

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new rolodex for my creative prompts to
choose at random whenever I felt stuck.

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I copied my indirect directions onto the
cards. First task, I needed a

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better name for this tool, which
I was calling by the boring name of

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Rolodex of ideas at random. I
pulled at a card find a fresh metaphor.

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After a few weeks of thinking I
was inspired news machine. Putting an

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idea in my hands helped put an
idea in my head. So question,

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how did you start doing these creative
exercises and what's the importance in your view

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of it? You know, sort
of focusing actively on exercising the creative parts

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of our brain rather than the sort
of more what i'll call the more routine

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ones where we just kind of do
the things that we need to do on

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a daily basis. It's so energizing
to do something that's creative. And I

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think the word creative can can feel
scary to people, and people will say,

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like, I'm not creative. My
mother, who's one of the most

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creative people I know, she's always
like, oh, I'm not creative.

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I just copy. I'm like,
that is creative, Like what is it?

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All the great artists copy? Yeah, And I think, you know,

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just tapping into something even like trying
to have a funny intro to your

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annual report or doing a holiday newsletter
for your family, like they're all like

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trying to figure out a way to
make a birthday present for someone. There's

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all kinds of ways to be creative, and it just it's so energizing,

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and I think part of it is
the atmosphere of growth. It's seeing yourself

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do something and create something, build
something, um, put something into the

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world that doesn't already exist. Part
of it also, for many people's beautiful

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tools. Yeah, like it's so
fun to use beautiful tools. Yeah,

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whether that's beautiful ingredients or or beautiful
Like I love markers. You can believe

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have any markers we have in our
house, It's like, I have way

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more markers stickers. I'm really there's
this point renaissance of stickers, of self

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intire I mean, there's just like
there's just a playfulness that comes right.

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It's right on the food thinks.
Somebody told me, they're like, you

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should buy any food because I was
saying how expensive some ingredient was. He

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said, always buy anything you want
in the grocery store because it's always cheaper

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to cook yourself that you eat out. And I thought, Okay, that's

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good. That's permission to buy whatever
you want. Um. But woodworking,

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knitting, entertaining, all these things
can make it. I'm decorating from the

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holidays. These are all outlets that
can be so pleasing and so energizing.

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And part of what they do is
they connect us with our senses because we're

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using our hands and we're looking,
and there's often sounds involved. Why have

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we as a society, do you
think come to define creativity as you know,

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some grand piece of output, like
I wrote an essay or a book

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or different painting or whatever it is. It is how most people what you're

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describing about your mother, it is
how most of us tend to view creativity.

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We don't think of it, and
in that we all manifest it in

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our daily lives in different ways.
I think that is an excellent question,

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and I think we should lead a
movement to identify as creative things that I

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would say are more or like are
more immature, that are just not professional.

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I do worry about that sometimes with
like, like with music in particular,

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like you read about the old days, it was like it was very

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common for people to get together and
sing, or you'd be in a village

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and there'd be one person who's like
really good at playing the piano or the

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guitar, and they would do it. They weren't professional, but they were

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just really good as sort of an
ordinary person, and there was a lot

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of pleasure and a lot of community
and of community and a lot of and

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like a person who wasn't good enough
to be, you know, on the

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national stage could still get recognition and
an audience and stuff. And now that

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we have all this, you know, super professional artistic output. I worry

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that then people they don't it's not
exercised as much and people don't participate in

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it as much. Um. But
there's so many ways in just part of

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ordinary life that you are using your
creative um, your career. I mean

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even something as funny is like um, working on life in five sents has

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made me much more appreciative of things
like cosmetics or like what color. I

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never paint my nails, but people
have a lot of color, like picking

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their nails and they'll do every nail
there's like a love. Or like the

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way a man will be dressed like
all monochrome, but then have like a

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really bright sock and it's like this
is where I'm having my fun. I

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worry about men not wearing times because
that used to be a thing that guys

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really had a motive self expression.
Well yeah, it was like it was

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really fun at least like my husband, my father, like the men in

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my life. They really kind of
had they like their picking a time,

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and now they don't. It's it's
sort of like this, you know,

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the album cover, it's just gone
away as something that people know. That's

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something that was like a creative form. That's that's going away. So but

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then there are all these other new
creative forms. You see, see what

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people can You can make a movie
with your phone. Yeah, you can

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do an extraordinary presentation just you know, with free tools. So um,

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but people need to do it,
you know, people need to do it.

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I think that's so exciting. That's
uh the important point. I think

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in ways small and every day,
rather than like trying to dream up some

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grand project that that may or may
not happen absolutely yeah yeah no. Um.

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Sometimes people sort of have this idea
that, yeah, that it has

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to be so outstanding or so excellent
or it's not worth doing it. Yeah,

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anything worth doing is worth doing badly
for sure. A great I want

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to shift is a little bit now, Qutchen. Um, you know,

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we obviously spend a lot of our
time thinking about coaching, coaching various individuals.

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Um, what role is coaching played
in your life? I have never

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coached or been coached. Okay,
And what about mentors who have been key

352
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mentors? Had a mentor? You've
never had a mentor, I don't think

353
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so, Okay, so this is
the first because nobody ever got So what

354
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do you consider to be a mentor? I mean, I've had bosses,

355
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but I haven't anybody who liked took
a long term Yeah, that's what I

356
00:24:33.359 --> 00:24:36.440
mean, a long term mentorest in
your career, and that's never been the

357
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case. Fair enough, there are
there sort of a couple of people that

358
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you think have been particularly key at
various points during your revolution. Funnily enough,

359
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I think the people who are most
influential to me, or other writers

360
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whose work has really influenced me.
Um, And this I don't mean.

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I know that this memory is false
because I've tried to do the chronology,

362
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so I know that this memory is
false. And yet it's a very powerful

363
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memory. So there you go.
When I when I was still working as

364
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a lawyer, and I was thinking
about and I was having an idea for

365
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what eventually became my first book.
But I had I had been an English

366
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major, I'd always read a huge, huge amount, But I didn't understand

367
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how I never even occurred to me
to become a writer, because I didn't

368
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know how I would enter the writing
world, because I thought people either wrote

369
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like novels or plays or poems,
or they were academic writers, or they

370
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were journalists. And I didn't want
to do I knew I didn't want to

371
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do any of those things. But
in my memory, I walked into the

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bookstore and saw the book cod The
Story of the World to the Eyes of

373
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a Fish by Mark Kurlansky something like
that, and it just blew my mind.

374
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And I was like, this is
a whole different way to do that

375
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fiction, you know. And so
there have been different books where I have

376
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been like, oh my gosh,
there's a book called Jackie under my Skin

377
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by Wayne custom Bomb. Again I
was like, this is a whole different

378
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way that a person could approach biography
or um, you know. I read

379
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the Pillow Book of say Shaunagun and
I was like, okay, you can

380
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just pull pieces apart. I don't
know. So I think those are the

381
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biggest influences are me. Are things
that I read makes sense? Act your

382
00:26:21.160 --> 00:26:25.519
final question as we as we wind
up, you talked in this clip,

383
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let's take a quick look then as
people say, well, you have to.

384
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You have to appreciate the moment,
live in the moment. The moment

385
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is all we have. That's true. But a life that has that takes

386
00:26:33.079 --> 00:26:37.480
no consideration for the future is not
a good life. And a life where

387
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you don't reflect on the past is
also not a good life. And so

388
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how do we think about the present, the future in the past in the

389
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right way, Because there's it's sort
of they all have to be weighed against

390
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each other. Well, the one
I think about the most is like,

391
00:26:49.799 --> 00:26:53.839
sometimes the solution to a problem or
an obstacle or a situation is to zoom

392
00:26:53.920 --> 00:26:57.400
wagh in, to look at it
super close, just the immediate thing in

393
00:26:57.400 --> 00:27:02.440
front of you, and sometimes have
to zoom way and see it from a

394
00:27:02.519 --> 00:27:04.799
distance, see it, you know, in light of what's happened before and

395
00:27:04.839 --> 00:27:08.880
what will happen after. And you
might need to do one one minute and

396
00:27:10.079 --> 00:27:12.960
literally the next minute and the next
situation do the exact opposite of what was

397
00:27:14.039 --> 00:27:21.640
just supposed to be this universal problem
solving technique about the relationship the past,

398
00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:26.680
present, and future have to one
another. So many of the influences surrounding

399
00:27:26.680 --> 00:27:33.000
our teenagers and young adults keep sort
of telling them carp DM right, live

400
00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:37.559
in the moment, your mother of
two young women, how have you tried

401
00:27:37.599 --> 00:27:41.319
to frame this for them? On
the one hand, live in the moment.

402
00:27:41.519 --> 00:27:45.440
On the one hand, we're such
an outcome of our past experiences,

403
00:27:45.079 --> 00:27:52.519
and it's so important to look to
the future because without it, there's it's

404
00:27:52.559 --> 00:27:55.960
hard to define that sort of a
place where going to or moving towards.

405
00:27:56.119 --> 00:27:59.359
Right, tell us a little bit
about that. I think that's very true

406
00:27:59.359 --> 00:28:00.920
because people will say, well,
the most important thing to live in the

407
00:28:02.039 --> 00:28:03.799
moment, it's you know, it's
the only thing that we have. But

408
00:28:03.920 --> 00:28:07.480
a life where you only think about
the present moment would not be a good

409
00:28:07.519 --> 00:28:10.200
life because you have to do things
in the present that will set yourself,

410
00:28:10.279 --> 00:28:14.519
set yourself up for you know.
But in the future, yeah, whether

411
00:28:14.559 --> 00:28:17.599
that maybe you're you're doing something that
you don't want to do, or you're

412
00:28:17.680 --> 00:28:22.400
not doing something that you would prefer
to do. So I think with my

413
00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:26.599
daughters, I just but what I
do not do with my daughters is trying

414
00:28:26.599 --> 00:28:30.440
to steer them in any direction because
I think I don't know what the future

415
00:28:30.480 --> 00:28:33.160
really is going to look like,
like certainly like the future of work.

416
00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:37.759
So I would never say to one
of my daughters, like this is a

417
00:28:37.799 --> 00:28:40.920
good this is a good path or
a bad path because I don't know.

418
00:28:41.319 --> 00:28:48.359
Yeah, and probably they will have
careers in things that don't even exist right

419
00:28:48.400 --> 00:28:52.079
now, which is you know,
how many people do we know are in

420
00:28:52.119 --> 00:28:53.880
careers that didn't exist ten years ago, fifteen years ago, or how many

421
00:28:53.880 --> 00:28:56.839
people do we know who have changed
careers, you know, four or five

422
00:28:56.920 --> 00:29:00.359
times over the course of their working
lives. I think was unheard of our

423
00:29:00.359 --> 00:29:04.519
parents generation, absolutely absolutely, And
so with them, I'm much more about

424
00:29:04.519 --> 00:29:08.680
like skills, like is this a
skill or like I have a daughter who's

425
00:29:08.680 --> 00:29:11.000
sort of like new in the order
place, and I was like, everything,

426
00:29:11.079 --> 00:29:14.640
this is great because you're going to
learn so many new skills. Everything's

427
00:29:14.680 --> 00:29:17.400
new to you. That's the advantage
of being at the beginning, Like there's

428
00:29:17.440 --> 00:29:22.319
no waste because everything is new.
Everything is like positive because you're learning,

429
00:29:22.519 --> 00:29:25.279
even if it's really boring you like
or you think it's you think you don't

430
00:29:25.319 --> 00:29:26.880
want to do it. I'm like, well, that's something that you know

431
00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:30.759
about yourself. Like some people are
very attracted to scrappy, and I want

432
00:29:30.920 --> 00:29:33.920
one thing you've learned about yourself is
you want to be in a very well

433
00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:40.440
managed place. You don't like scrappy, you know. She went to submates,

434
00:29:40.440 --> 00:29:42.839
she said, do you guys have
an organization chart? And they said,

435
00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:47.480
oh, if we had an organization
chart, we wouldn't be in this

436
00:29:47.559 --> 00:29:48.759
situation. Like, and she's like, I would like to be in a

437
00:29:48.759 --> 00:29:52.079
place that has an organ or could
even imagine having an organizational chart. But

438
00:29:52.119 --> 00:29:56.079
that's not everybody. So now she
knows something about herself. So part of

439
00:29:56.079 --> 00:29:57.759
it is I do think the one
thing that we can do as a parent

440
00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:02.720
is out to them what their own
strengths are. Yeah, Like one of

441
00:30:02.720 --> 00:30:04.599
my daughters is very resourceful, and
I myself, I'm not resourceful, so

442
00:30:04.640 --> 00:30:07.440
I admire it in other people.
But I don't think she knew that about

443
00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:12.200
herself until I said, like,
you're showing me that you're very very resourceful,

444
00:30:15.240 --> 00:30:17.839
so that you have you And I
think coaches can do the same thing.

445
00:30:17.880 --> 00:30:21.119
They can they can because they have
a little bit more perspective. They

446
00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:25.680
can illuminate strengths you might be taking
for granted. It's very easy chose to

447
00:30:25.680 --> 00:30:29.119
take our own strengths for granted or
think, well everybody, like everybody likes

448
00:30:29.160 --> 00:30:32.000
to get up in front of an
audience and talk and like are you kidding

449
00:30:32.079 --> 00:30:36.000
or they don't. Yeah, So
I think that's one thing they're trying.

450
00:30:36.039 --> 00:30:40.279
Yeah. I think understanding our strengths
is it happens with time, right,

451
00:30:40.359 --> 00:30:48.839
and experience, and for young people, developing an awareness of those strengths,

452
00:30:48.880 --> 00:30:52.279
both so that they understand that they
are real strengths and they can lean into

453
00:30:52.319 --> 00:30:55.319
them, but also so that they
don't just over index on them, right

454
00:30:55.359 --> 00:30:59.680
and then kind of constantly go to
those strengths and ignore other other aspects of

455
00:31:00.319 --> 00:31:07.920
that they need to need to go
down. Is so key because we live

456
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:11.880
in a world of sort of these
kind of you know, sound by d

457
00:31:11.079 --> 00:31:15.519
moments, right, of these super
oversimplified phrases of like lean into your strengths

458
00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:22.119
or pursue your passion or whatever,
and they're sort of meaningless because, as

459
00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:26.960
with everything, it's never just one
thing or another. It's it's a much

460
00:31:26.039 --> 00:31:32.160
more complex sort of amalgam of different
things, right that have to be taken

461
00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:34.400
into consideration. And that's why I
think a lot of times somebody on the

462
00:31:34.440 --> 00:31:37.960
outside can help you see it,
because since they're not all emotionally caught up

463
00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:41.480
with all the things, they can
kind of say like, oh, well,

464
00:31:41.480 --> 00:31:45.720
it sounds like you have a pattern
of this, or I see you

465
00:31:45.839 --> 00:31:48.720
light up when you talk about that, or you always are trying to get

466
00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:52.160
out of doing that. Is there
a way you can just like drop that

467
00:31:52.279 --> 00:31:56.559
from your set of responsibilities? I
think sometimes sometimes sometimes it's hard for us

468
00:31:56.599 --> 00:32:00.400
to see ourselves clearly. I think
that's one of the great challenges our lives.

469
00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:02.000
Yeah, I mean, one of
the phrases we use a lot is

470
00:32:02.960 --> 00:32:08.119
this idea of coaching providing you with
a balcony onto yourself as you can find

471
00:32:08.160 --> 00:32:12.880
me sort of step outside and kind
of look at yourself in terms of your

472
00:32:12.920 --> 00:32:16.599
behaviors and how someone else is seeing
it. Yes, and that kind of

473
00:32:16.599 --> 00:32:20.720
one hundred thousand foot view is just
so important. Well, a funny story

474
00:32:20.759 --> 00:32:22.880
along those lines is I do high
intensity weight training, and my trainers said

475
00:32:22.920 --> 00:32:25.759
to me, he said, the
same people are always late, and the

476
00:32:25.799 --> 00:32:29.440
same people are always on time.
He said, the people who are later

477
00:32:29.480 --> 00:32:31.240
always like, oh, I'm always
on time, except you know this,

478
00:32:31.279 --> 00:32:35.200
one day I had a bad traffic
or like today there was really bad weather,

479
00:32:35.240 --> 00:32:37.880
And he said that sounds right,
except that people who are always on

480
00:32:37.920 --> 00:32:39.759
time are always on time. Yeah, and they're in the traffic and they're

481
00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:43.079
in the weather, and so sometimes
I think a coach is sort of like,

482
00:32:43.200 --> 00:32:45.839
yeah, you're telling me it's the
traffic and the weather, but not

483
00:32:45.839 --> 00:32:49.119
really. But maybe maybe maybe we
can figure out a way so that you

484
00:32:49.119 --> 00:32:52.000
can still get there on time totally
even if there's a bad traffic in weather.

485
00:32:52.039 --> 00:32:54.480
I thought that was just such a
great small example of how it makes

486
00:32:54.519 --> 00:32:59.559
sense, perfect sense from the inside, but from the outside they're seeing a

487
00:32:59.640 --> 00:33:02.759
very different pattern because they're on the
balcony. Yes, exactly, well said

488
00:33:04.359 --> 00:33:08.079
any last words of advice, Gretchen
as we wrap up for our audience on

489
00:33:09.160 --> 00:33:16.680
thinking about their curiosity, creativity,
their learning mindset, One thing I would

490
00:33:16.680 --> 00:33:20.960
say is just be interested in what
you're interested in. I think sometimes people

491
00:33:21.039 --> 00:33:23.200
have a lot of ideas about what
they should be interested and or can be

492
00:33:23.319 --> 00:33:27.799
very judgmental, and I think if
you're not doing what you're truly interested in,

493
00:33:27.880 --> 00:33:30.400
you sort of can't maintain it.
And so, you know, I

494
00:33:30.440 --> 00:33:34.160
think an amazing thing is to become
a minor expert in something that you're truly

495
00:33:34.200 --> 00:33:37.680
interested in. I mean, get
interested in the life of Dolly Parton,

496
00:33:37.799 --> 00:33:43.279
get interested in, you know,
Central Park, whatever, something that you're

497
00:33:43.319 --> 00:33:46.680
truly interested in and just because it's
interesting to somebody else doesn't mean it's interesting

498
00:33:46.720 --> 00:33:51.799
to you. And it can be
such a source of energy. And if

499
00:33:51.799 --> 00:33:54.720
you can incorporate the five senses,
I think it's even more exciting and energizing.

500
00:33:54.759 --> 00:33:59.039
So maybe it's like all the work
obtain a turner, you know,

501
00:33:59.200 --> 00:34:00.359
like I'm gonna listen to all her
music and learn about it. I went

502
00:34:00.359 --> 00:34:04.240
through this thing with the Beatles.
I watched that Get Back documentary and it

503
00:34:04.240 --> 00:34:07.559
becomes so fascinated by the Beatles and
it was so fun. It didn't last

504
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:09.159
that long, but while lasted,
I had a great time learning about the

505
00:34:09.159 --> 00:34:13.679
Beatles. Well, it's both the
enjoyment and the learning always and the sense

506
00:34:13.719 --> 00:34:15.880
of growth and the sense of growth
and self efficacy that you come from,

507
00:34:15.960 --> 00:34:20.920
like mastering something that you don't know. Yeah, it is. It's fascinating

508
00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:28.840
how many people you know want to
only do things that are useful or sort

509
00:34:28.840 --> 00:34:34.519
of part of the program. And
so many of the greatest learning moments happen

510
00:34:35.320 --> 00:34:38.320
when you do precisely those things that
are off the path or you didn't think

511
00:34:38.320 --> 00:34:42.639
of, or you got dragged into
by accident or with reluctance or whatever,

512
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:46.840
you know. I remember I went
to a panel of comedy writers and somebody

513
00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:52.039
said from the audience, how do
you get a job writing comedy? And

514
00:34:52.159 --> 00:34:54.079
one of the panelists said, you
do what you love and then your friends

515
00:34:54.159 --> 00:34:58.079
hire you. And I thought that
was really good because it's like, if

516
00:34:58.119 --> 00:35:00.360
you're doing something that's part of just
like what you want to do, that

517
00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:04.960
you do for fun, then you'll
make connections and you'll be moving forward,

518
00:35:05.119 --> 00:35:07.039
whereas if you're always fighting against your
nature, Like that's one of the reasons

519
00:35:07.079 --> 00:35:10.079
I love laws. It was like, these people love law. Yeah,

520
00:35:10.199 --> 00:35:14.519
they talk about law morning and at
night. They were reading law generals for

521
00:35:14.519 --> 00:35:19.519
fun on the weekend. That's not
me. Yeah, I can't bring that

522
00:35:19.639 --> 00:35:24.480
level of engagement. So where can
I find that level of engagement? Because

523
00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:28.880
it's right for them, it's just
not right for me. Yeah. Wonderful.

524
00:35:29.199 --> 00:35:30.920
Thank you so much, Scratch,
Thank you. I so enjoyed it.

525
00:35:32.079 --> 00:35:37.800
Thank you, Thanks for listening.
Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave

526
00:35:37.880 --> 00:35:43.679
us a review. Find your Ideal
Coach at www dot videamax dot com.

527
00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:46.760
Special thanks to our producer Martin Maluski
and singer songwriter Doug Allen