A Rather Personal Interview With Gretchen Over at The Happiness Project

The amazing Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project, posted a rather personal interview about what makes me happy -- and unhappy -- over at her blog.  Frankly, it was one of those things were she sent me the questions, I typed out the answers without censoring myself and did not think about it again until they appeared.  I winced a little when I read it because it has a bit more personal information than I probably should have revealed, but I think it is accurate.  She calls it "Be Yourself, But Keep Your Inner Jerk In Check."  Here is where the headline came from:

Gretchen asked:

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”)

I answered:

There are three things that I say to myself:

“Think about how others around you feel, not how you feel or what you want.” (This makes me less selfish)

“Focus doing the best you can, not on doing better than others.” (This focuses me on intrinsic qualities and rewards, not social comparison and competition – I am much happier and nicer when I don’t see life as a contest… and as Dan Pink’s book Drive shows, focusing intrinsic rewards might make me creative too).

Also, I use a variation of Be Gretchen, but because I have the capacity to be a jerk (this is certainly a reason I wrote The No Asshole Rule), I say to myself like “Be Yourself, but keep your inner jerk in check.

You can see the rest of the interview here; I have been focusing mostly on promoting Good Boss, Bad Boss these days, but Gretchen's questions made me stop and think about what matters most. So although I might have edited out a few things if I was to do it again, it was most constructive to be forced to stop and think about more important things during this rather crazy time in my life. 

Thanks Gretchen!  As I have written before about her book, she wrote a great self-help book for people (like me) who in theory hate those kinds of books!

Comments

[Jared Cosulich]

For a while now I've felt like this:

“Focus doing the best you can, not on doing better than others.”

is maybe the most important thing to keep in mind both as a person and within an organization.

Most people seem to agree at the personal level (although it's awfully hard to do consistently), but a lot of people seem to disagree from the organizational perspective. Personally, though, I've found that little if any value comes from paying any attention to your competitors and trying to beat them. Focusing your attention internally on giving your employees the opportunity to grow personally and professionally and serving your customers as effectively as possible seems to be a lot more effective then worrying about what your competitors are up to.

[Jason Telerksi]

Bob, Thank you for sharing this. Your openness and ability not to be perfect is one of the things that I value so much about your writing. I appreciated what you had to say about how you and your wife get more out of experiences than things. Its a lesson that my wife and I try to teach our children--we'll take them to Disney but we won't buy them the t-shirt.