Top 100 Gretchen Rubin Quotes
#1. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity
Gretchen Rubin
#2. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer.
Gretchen Rubin
#3. I sat on that crowded bus, I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasn't going to change unless I made it change. In that single moment, with that realization, I decided to dedicate a year to trying to be happier.
Gretchen Rubin
#4. I'm a creature of routine, and I hate feeling incompetent, so I avoided novelty and challenge. Making an effort to push myself in that way has brought me surprising boost.
Gretchen Rubin
#5. Keeping a habit, in the smallest way, protects and strengthens it. I write every day, even if it's just a sentence, to keep my habit of daily writing strong.
Gretchen Rubin
#6. Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.
Gretchen Rubin
#8. Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability.
Gretchen Rubin
#10. Progress, not perfection, is the goal. I'm a gold-star junkie,
Gretchen Rubin
#11. Studies show that people tend to persevere longer with problems they've been told are difficult as opposed to easy.
Gretchen Rubin
#12. Knowing what you admire in others is a wonderful mirror into your deepest, as yet unborn, self.
Gretchen Rubin
#13. It's hard to avoid 'unconscious overclaiming.' In unconscious overclaiming, we unconsciously overestimate our contributions relative to others. This makes sense, because we're far more aware of what we do than what other people do. Also, we tend to do the work that we value.
Gretchen Rubin
#14. Mere acquisition isn't enough to establish a good habit
Gretchen Rubin
#15. To a truly remarkable extent, we're more likely to do something if it's convenient, and less likely if it's not. For this reason, we should pay close attention to the convenience of any activity we want to make into a habit.
Gretchen Rubin
#16. You can love someone but not want to keep a gift from that person. It's okay to pass an item along to someone who will appreciate it more.
Gretchen Rubin
#17. Instead of always worrying about being efficient, I wanted to spend time on exploration, experimentation, digression, and failed attempts that didn't always look productive.
Gretchen Rubin
#18. What I've also noticed is the term happiness, or happy is intimidating to some people. Some people deny that it's even possible to be happy, or to achieve happiness. Happiness sounds like this magical destination that you arrive at and then everything is sort of solved, or it's different.
Gretchen Rubin
#19. Embrace good smells. No cost, no calories, no energy, no time - a quick hit of pleasure.
Gretchen Rubin
#20. There are no do overs and some things just aren't going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is
Gretchen Rubin
#21. Another study suggested that getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person's happiness than getting a $60,000 raise.
Gretchen Rubin
#22. I feel unsettled at any time when I'm not writing. And I mean that. There's a sense of peace, and of being in the right place, that I experience only when I'm writing.
Gretchen Rubin
#23. While some more passive forms of leisure, such as watching TV or surfing the Internet, are fun in the short term, over time, they don't offer nearly the same happiness as more challenging activities.
Gretchen Rubin
#25. The desire to start something at the "right" time is usually just a justification for delay. In almost every case, the best time to start is now.
Gretchen Rubin
#27. A series of small but real accomplishments gives people the energy and confidence to continue. For instance, a person who wants to write a novel might resolve to write one sentence each day. Or a person who wants to start running might resolve to run for one minute.
Gretchen Rubin
#28. One of my most important 'Secrets of Adulthood': Outer order contributes to inner calm.
Gretchen Rubin
#30. The absence of feeling bad isn't enough to make you happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling good
Gretchen Rubin
#31. Getting control of stuff makes people feel like they have more control over their lives - maybe irrationally, but it's one of these psychological truths.
Gretchen Rubin
#33. Feelings follow actions. If I'm feeling low, I deliberately act cheery, and I find myself actually feeling happier. If I'm feeling angry at someone, I do something thoughtful for her and my feelings toward her soften. This strategy is uncannily effective.
Gretchen Rubin
#36. In the chaos of everyday life, it's easy to lose sight of what really matters, and I can use my habits to make sure that my life reflects my values.
Gretchen Rubin
#37. Happy people make people happy, but I can't make someone be happy, and no one else can make me happy.
Gretchen Rubin
#38. People often assume that the same approach will work for everyone, that the same habits will work for everyone, and that everyone has the same aptitude and appetite for forming habits, but from my observation, that's not true.
Gretchen Rubin
#39. Both money and health contribute to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of them brings much more unhappiness than possessing them brings happiness.
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Gretchen Rubin
#40. You have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and to be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don't expect other people to react in a particular way.
Gretchen Rubin
#42. From my observation, habits in four areas do most to boost feelings of self-control, and in this way strengthen the Foundation of all our habits. We do well to begin by tackling the habits that help us to: 1. sleep 2. move 3. eat and drink right 4. unclutter
Gretchen Rubin
#43. Growing up in Kansas City, I was always neat, the teacher's pet, know-it-all type.
Gretchen Rubin
#44. What's fun for other people may not be fun for you- and vice versa.
Gretchen Rubin
#45. Remember that although the distinction can be difficult to draw, loneliness and solitude are different.
Gretchen Rubin
#46. We all know the secret of dieting - eat better, eat less, exercise more - it's the application that's challenging.
Gretchen Rubin
#48. You can choose what you do, you cant choose what you like to do.
Gretchen Rubin
#49. People have an inborn disposition that's set within a certain range, but they can boost themselves to the top of their happiness range or push themselves down to the bottom of their happiness range by their actions.
Gretchen Rubin
#50. It's true that people do assume that people who are critical are smarter than people who are uncritical.
Gretchen Rubin
#51. Arriving rarely makes you as happy as you anticipate.
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Gretchen Rubin
#52. I have an idea of who I wish I were, and that obscures my understanding of who I actually am. Sometimes I pretend even to myself to enjoy activities that I don't really enjoy, such as shopping, or to be interested in subjects that don't much interest me, such as foreign policy.
Gretchen Rubin
#53. When you're doing a job that benefits other people, it's easy to assume that they feel conscious of the fact that you're doing this work - that they should feel grateful, and that they should and do feel guilty about not helping you.
Gretchen Rubin
#54. I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if I wasn't sitting in front of a computer typing, I was wasting my time
but I pushed myself to take a wider view of what was "productive." Time spend with my family and friends was never wasted.
Gretchen Rubin
#55. I think self-knowledge is a key to happiness.We can build happy lives only on the foundation of our own natures, our own values, and our own interests.
Gretchen Rubin
#56. I always say you can self-medicate through closet cleaning. Everyone knows that feeling of a clear surface, and how it makes you feel you can really focus and start your work.
Gretchen Rubin
#58. One of the things that you see ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree on is that strong relationships are a key to happiness, maybe the key to happiness. People who have more strong relationships in their lives just feel happier.
Gretchen Rubin
#59. For most people, whenever possible, important habits should be scheduled for the morning. Mornings tend to unfold in a predictable way, and as the day goes on, more complications arise -
Gretchen Rubin
#60. As Dwight Eisenhower observed, Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.
Gretchen Rubin
#62. But perhaps the most acute sense of happiness from writing was the happiness of expressing a very complicated idea - the kind of idea that takes hundreds of pages to capture.
Gretchen Rubin
#63. We need to have intimate, enduring bonds; we need to be able to confide; we need to feel that we belong; we need to be able to get support, and just as important for happiness, to give support. We need many kinds of relationships; for one thing, we need friends.
Gretchen Rubin
#64. If you always use your stapler in one place, keep it there, instead of thinking that all the office supplies should go in one place. I've moved a lot of things around in my house because of that.
Gretchen Rubin
#65. Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction.
Gretchen Rubin
#66. A blog is something that, everyday there's a new thing and that's part of the fun of it, you're just constantly moving forward. A book really gives you more time to reflect and think hard on things very, very deep.
Gretchen Rubin
#67. I have a lucky perfume. I love beautiful smells, but I save one of my favorite perfumes to wear only when I feel like I need some extra luck.
Gretchen Rubin
#68. People feel happier when they feel like they're progressing. When they feel like something in their life is growing or getting better.
Gretchen Rubin
#69. We can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature.
Gretchen Rubin
#70. I love finding - or inventing - ways to categorize people.
Gretchen Rubin
#71. My research had revealed that challenge and novelty are key elements to happiness. The brain is stimulated by surprise, and successfully dealing with an unexpected situation gives a powerful sense of satisfaction.
Gretchen Rubin
#72. This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.
Gretchen Rubin
#73. In other words, even though one coin certainly isn't sufficient to make a man rich, a man only becomes rich by adding one coin after another.
Gretchen Rubin
#74. I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasnt going to change unless I made it change.
Gretchen Rubin
#75. I love taxonomies, categories, ways of dividing people into groups.
Gretchen Rubin
#76. When we try to form a new habit, we set an expectation for ourselves. Therefore, it's crucial to understand how we respond to expectations.
Gretchen Rubin
#77. I realized that for my own part, I was much more likely to take risks, reach out to others, and expose myself to rejection and failure when I felt happy. When I felt unhappy, I felt defensive, touchy, and self-conscious.
Gretchen Rubin
#78. I have a passion for children's literature. Young adult literature. I love it. I've always loved it.
Gretchen Rubin
#80. Although people sometimes assume that the happy are self-absorbed and complacent, just the opposite is true. In general, happiness doesn't make people want to drink daiquiris on the beach; it makes them want to help rural villagers gain better access to clean water.
Gretchen Rubin
#81. Eventually I learned to reject this advice. Somehow, I figured out that it was easier for me to resist certain temptations by never giving in to them.
Gretchen Rubin
#82. Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.
Gretchen Rubin
#83. Turns out that people who try new things, go new places, learn new skills, etc. are happier. This can be tough, because novelty and challenge also bring frustration and irritation - but if you can push through that, novelty and challenge can bring enormous happiness rewards.
Gretchen Rubin
#84. During my study of happiness, I noticed something that surprised me: I often learn more from one person's highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies.
Gretchen Rubin
#85. Many people decide to improve their habits, they don't begin by looking where their keys are; they begin by looking in an easy spot.
Gretchen Rubin
#86. I am living my real life, this is it. Now is now, and if I waited to be happier, waited to have fun, waited to do the things that I know I ought to do, I might never get the chance.
Gretchen Rubin
#87. We all must pay, but we can choose that for which we pay.
Gretchen Rubin
#88. We all know the secret of dieting ... it's the application that's challenging.
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Gretchen Rubin
#89. I'm much calmer when there's no TV or music playing in the background.
Gretchen Rubin
#90. I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words.
Gretchen Rubin
#91. In general, religious people seem to be happier than non-religious people - under various definitions of "religiosity," such as church attendance or professed spiritual beliefs.
Gretchen Rubin
#92. I do better with routines and predictability. I don't react well when there's a sudden change in the schedule.
Gretchen Rubin
#93. While television is a good servant, it's a bad master. It can swallow up huge quantities of our lives without much happiness bang for the buck.
Gretchen Rubin
#94. I used to be very disciplined about only buying three books ahead of what I was reading, but my husband corrupted me, and now I'm dozens ahead of myself!
Gretchen Rubin
#95. It's the task that's never started that's more tiresome.
Gretchen Rubin
#96. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.
Gretchen Rubin
#97. I should make one healthy choice, and then stop choosing.
Gretchen Rubin
#98. We often learn most about ourselves by learning about other people,
Gretchen Rubin
#99. A stumble may be helpful, because it shows me where I need to concentrate my efforts in order to do better next time.
Gretchen Rubin
#100. In particular, I'd realized that although I possessed all the elements of a happy life, too often I took my circumstances for granted and allowed myself to become overly vexed by petty annoyances or fleeting worries. I'd wanted to appreciate my life more, and to live up to it better.
Gretchen Rubin
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