A Conversation with Gretchen Rubin on Success & Happiness

Four years ago, a friend sent me The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin, author of several books, blogger at her popular blog, and co-star with her sister of the podcast Happier. I was going through a rotten time in my life, feeling like a failure, and the book took me by surprise. It inspired me to apply Gretchen’s idea of studying happiness to the question of how I could redefine success. I began reading up on the topic and blogging about it. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit with Gretchen Rubin  - in person - and ask her about success.

The New York Times described Gretchen Rubin as “the queen of self-help.” That’s a darn good moniker. I myself think of her as “the Martha Stewart of happiness.” Like Martha with her practical advice to create the Good Life, Gretchen tackles practical ways to create the happy one. But she’s a lot wonkier, i.e., more intellectual, than Martha. I had the good luck to review her latest book, Better Than Before, which is all about habits and how they contribute to or detract from happiness. She’s great at illuminating home truths we take for granted – for example, if something is easy to do we are more likely to do it.

However, her particular genius is breaking down complex ideas into practical, useful tips. She eschews deep introspection. We couldn’t be more different. If I have a genius, it’s for existing in a state of conflict or ambivalence, and examining all facets of it. Then making fun of myself.

What is success? What makes you feel successful? And how can you tweak the definition so that you can feel successful even if you actually, well, fail? These are the questions that led me to the small office at Politics and Prose Bookstore in my hometown, Washington, DC, sitting at a round table with the Queen of Self Help. She was generous with her time and her enthusiasm*, and offered some interesting ideas for me to consider, which I am now passing along to you, Readers.

Although before I get to the good stuff, let me just come right out and say this. I learned the hard way the first rule of interviewing, which is as follows:

Shut up so your interviewee can talk.

Okay, I’m no expert, so I don’t know if this is the first rule, but it should be. I tell you this after listening to the recording of my conversation with Gretchen Rubin. She talked, she responded, but oh my, so did I. Yes, I was aware, even as it happened, that she was drawing ME out, and yet still I talked on. Was I afraid of silence? Maybe that was it. Maybe that she herself was interested in probing ME was gratifying. That probably contributed to my blathering. Nevertheless, our conversation was revealing.

Annals of Successful Parenting: Submarine Parenting

So I have exciting news! On Sunday, I’m going to meet Gretchen Rubin. That’s right, Readers. This is the scoop I had for you. Me, moi, I’m going to meet her and talk to her for a few minutes about success and happiness. The Venn Diagram of these two subjects has a big overlap. 

Happiness is Gretchen Rubin’s bailiwick. She’s the Martha Stewart of Happiness. I don’t know how she would feel about that nickname, but it’s apt. She’s all about the practical application of everything there is to know about happiness, just as Martha is all about the practical ways to make yourself live the Good Life. GR’s all about taking what research has shown about happiness and showing us how to make our lives happier. She’s written several books, in case you didn’t know: The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, and her newest one, Better Than Before. She’s been on Oprah’s show “Super Soul Sunday,” and now she has a podcast, “Happier,” with her sister. She tells you all about it on her website.

In other news, blergh. I have a skin cancer on my neck that I have to get removed. It’s not serious, but finding out did throw me for a few hours. Make sure you get those weird moles and skin tags checked out, Readers. Especially ones that suddenly sprout. 

That was a little public service announcement for you, Readers. Now, on to more Annals of Successful Parenting: 

If I’m not supposed to be a Helicopter Parent, and I’m not a Free Range Parent, then what am I supposed to be? A Submarine Parent, says Marie Schwartz, CEO of Teen Life. Who is she and what is that, you ask? Well, I had this unusual experience. A few weeks ago, after I posted a piece in the Huffington Post about being neither a helicopter or a free range parent, someone contacted me through Twitter and said, “you mean like a Submarine Parent?” Next thing I knew, she was suggesting I interview her client for my blog. My first impulse was, “Who me? I’m not qualified. I’m not a journalist. I’m a humorist.” But then I thought, heck, why not interview this person? She’s got something to say about success and parenting, after all. And I’m going to lean in. Also, what is Submarine Parenting? 

So I did. And she was really nice. Very gracious. Her name is Marie Schwartz, and she started her company TeenLife in 2006. She worked full time outside the home and was looking for summer activities for her teens. They had outgrown their summer camps, but they needed something to do. So she researched all kinds of programs, academic, community services, arts programs, and came up with a list. This list she shared with other parents she knew, and the rest is history.  After a couple of years of running this list part-time, she decided to make it her full time job. Now TeenLife operates in most major cities in the US, and is getting interest from other countries as well. Pretty impressive. The listings are available free for students, parents, and educators. Check it out. www.teenlife.com.  

Eventually, I asked her about Submarine Parenting. “Raising kids is like building a boat and then launching it,” she said. So if the kid is the boat, the parents are the submarine: the submarine is there, under the surface. The kid knows it’s there - that is crucial - but the submarine stays out of sight and out of the way unless there’s a distress signal. 

This philosophy underlies Teen Life. She thinks that to raise successful kids, parents should provide opportunities for them to experience things that take them “out of their comfort zone.” Ideally, before leaving for college, students should have “at least two weeks” away from home. The goal is to help them prepare emotionally for life when they go away to college and beyond. According to the Jed Report, 60% of college students wish they had been better prepared emotionally. That means giving them opportunities where they have to deal with other people’s negative emotions (and their own) and advocate for themselves. Opportunities that help them feel confident that they are competent. 

So what do you think, Readers? Submarine Parenting? Is that the solution? I like it. I like the term. I discoverd that Marie Schwartz didn’t invent it. It seems to belong to Silvana Clark http://www.silvanaclark.com and dates to 2010. Anyway, it’s a Millenial term. I think it is a synonym for "intuitive parenting," another supposed Millenial parenting style.

http://orig03.deviantart.net/63c8/f/2014/085/c/1/periscope_by_makahilahila-d7bsp7b.png

I like it, although I can see the point my friends have that it has a creepy, lurking feel to it. 

I’m all for sending the kids away for at least two weeks. I think it takes at least that long for them to adjust to being away from home for the first time. Both my children have been away. The senior has been away for five weeks every summer since the summer after 6th grade. The 8th grader has been away twice. The first was somewhat disastrous, as she sees it. She went to a rustic camp during a particularly rainy summer, and spent three and a half weeks slogging around mud and using outhouses. I remember cringing when other kids would talk about their summer camps - how they went water-skiing and sailing - and she talked about swimming in the lake and the rain, picking vegetables, and digging trenches. 

But even though she now says it was awful, she was so proud of herself when we arrived to pick her up that I felt it was worth it. Since then, she has been away to a less rustic camp, a theater camp, with electricity and plumbing - and she’s going back this summer. 

Anyway, since I had a very competent entrepreneur on the horn with me, I pressed her on the subject of successful children and successful parents. Marie Schwartz weighed in to say she feels successful, “if I have a kid who’s really passionate and motivated about what they are doing.” What they are doing, she adds, should pay “a living wage.”  They should also know how to manage their own money and have good relationships in their lives. 

For herself, she defines success as “doing what makes you a better person.” She also thinks success is being a good role model for living with “passion and drive.” Agreed. “If your kids want to hang out with you , you’ve done something right.”

Amen, sister. Time will tell. Right now, I’m not so sure how I'm doing in regard to this definition of success. But I do like a periscope.  

Success: Some Conclusions

Image via Google from alphabetgames.wordpress.com

Okay, so it’s time to check in. What I’ve learned, how I’m feeling about Success. Those self-help how-to be successful books are still in the (reusable) grocery bag. I wanted to wait until I’d examined my own ideas before cracking them – and I still haven’t gotten to them.

So one inspiration for this whole project was Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project. Since she’s one of those hard-driving, confident Type-As, her book and her website, because of course she has a website, are full of tasks, steps and mini-projects for her (and her millions of readers) to do to be, um, happier. ‘Course a happily married, materially and professionally successful Ivy-League educated woman seeking additional happiness seems like overkill. She admits it. But even I’ve had a few friends ask me, in re: success, How much is enough?  For me, unlike perhaps for Rubin, my answer is, “Uh, at least some.”

We’re talking about personal measures of subjective states, ultimately, so it’s a little like trying to ride a seal – slippery purchase there.

Anyhoo, since my last two posts have been about my immobility (conflict, tantrums), I thought I ought to show a few of the things I have been actually doing related to feeling more successful.

First, channeling Gretchen Rubin, I bought myself a dedicated notebook to carry around and jot down short or long thoughts on success. With my trusty notebook secreted away, I’ve pigeon-holed any willing friend, relative or acquaintance and asked her or him for thoughts on success and feeling successful. Then, back at home, or huddled in the car, I’ve written down everything I can remember of what they’ve said.

A few conclusions:

• People have more and different ideas about success than I expected. I expected most people to have what I’ll call the Standard Model.

• Standard Model people feel successful by comparison to norms. By achieving societally selected markers of achievement, by moving up the ladder, they are able to evaluate their lives and feel successful by looking to their peers who are also climbing rungs. *

            *Ambition drives motivation here, and outward signs of success (material possessions, etc) don’t guarantee feeling successful, as there is the drive to climb, and therefore satisfaction only lasts a short time, until the need to achieve kicks in again.  Catch-22 operates here with the following exception:

• Self-aware Standard model people, the rarae aves, who know what enough is for them, and can appreciate their achievements. They accept their limitations, etc, or aren’t hung up on proving themselves to others (!!)

• Classicists take the long view. I’ll call it the Mensch Theory of life. In the Mensch Theory, the question of success is unanswerable until you’re dead, and then you’ll know you were successful if people talk about you at your funeral as a person you could depend on to do the right thing. If you were a mensch, you were successful. The classicists tend to be iconoclasts, or at least unafraid to live individualistically, outside the standard model.

• Spiritual folk feel successful if they can retain faith in the ultimate worth of the pursuit of the Good while tolerating the problem of the ephemerality of everything in life, even the love of family.*

               *This comes across in some as soldiering on in the face of life’s essential futility (and handing one’s friend who’s obsessed with attaining something in life a copy of the Tao Te Ching.) Kinda the shadow or flip side of spirituality and its implication of belief in something More, but I’m a stubborn gal and I can group them however I like.

• Creative types, whether in the arts or sciences, seem to need the spur of feeling frustrated with their achievements to generate new ideas and create their next thing. They feel most successful when creating, and perhaps enjoy their creations briefly, before churning up reasons to make more stuff. Ambition obviously comes into play here, too.

Everybody’s definition includes recognition. Oh yes, even the classicists. They’re just willing to be absent when they are recognized as stand-up folk. Modes vary and may include money, approval, thanks, readers, or mourners talking you up, but however you look at it, recognition is one common essential to feeling successful.

Those are my general conclusions. I don’t want to make this too long, so next time I'll get into a few specifics. I will say that I feel more successful--by writing this blog and noting, through comments, or  FB "likes" or compulsive checking of my page view stats, that each time I post, a few more people are reading my writing. That feels GREAT. (Recognition.)