What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Sam Powell, Zach Elliott, Tom Schweizer, Dennis LaRue, and Michelle King.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
90 - The Happiness Project - December
Ever wondered if you could synthesize a year’s worth of resolutions into one powerful month? Join us as we reflect on Gretchen Rubin’s final chapter of "The Happiness Project," where she dives into “Boot Camp Perfect.” We’ll discuss the challenges and triumphs of integrating positive habits into daily life and how eliminating negativity can lead to true happiness. Hear our reflections on the discipline required for happiness, drawing parallels to James Clear’s "Atomic Habits."
Reminisce with us about a nostalgic Herbal Essences shampoo commercial and discover how sharing positive experiences can elevate happiness. We explore a fascinating debate on whether it's more effective to improve weaknesses or enhance strengths, guided by the insights of thought leaders like Mo Gaudet and Dr. Sonia Lyubomirsky. Learn how intentional thinking and actions can cultivate happiness, starting from the mind and radiating outward.
Discover the ripple effect of happiness as we share personal anecdotes on how small, actionable steps can bring joy to ourselves and those around us. Reflecting on the evolution of our podcast, we highlight the significance of self-care and the journey of creating this series, which has brought joy both to us and our listeners. As we conclude our discussion on "The Happiness Project," we share our final thoughts and provide tangible actions for you to implement in your life, setting the stage for our next literary adventure. Tune in for a heartfelt wrap-up and a peek into the exciting future of our podcast journey.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Russo and.
Speaker 2:Samantha Powell. Hi everyone, welcome back. It's another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are living out loud the pages of the books on our bookshelves. The book that we're going through is a book called the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and I can't even believe it, but today we're almost to the end of this book. This is chapter 12. It's called December. The topic is happiness, which has been our topic all year long. My name is Denise Russo and I'm here today with my friend, sam Powell. Sam, it's always so great to be with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm happy to be here with you and I agree with you. I cannot believe we are at that. This is actually the official last chapter of the book. There's we'll do one more episode and there's a little bit of like bonus material at the end. But this is officially her December right? So we made it through the whole year of her journey and I'm excited for how she wraps this up. I like what she's doing here in the month of December, I think so too.
Speaker 2:So she calls it boot camp perfect. So when I think of a boot camp, I think of oh my gosh. It feels so daunting and it feels like exercise that is not fun but makes you stronger, and so it seems like what she's tried to do is encapsulate all of the things that she's talked about from January up until now and how she's going to wrap it all up together, and so I guess the way I'll look at this is that when you go to a boot camp, it's usually because you've made a resolution to want to get stronger or healthier or something. Maybe this is a way to look at it, for how do you take all this information, sam? We'll talk about this more next week, but how do you take it all and synthesize it into your life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, if everybody will remember what she's doing with these resolutions, she's adding new resolutions every month. So she's done 11 months of adding resolutions. And so what she said she wanted to focus on here was I would follow all of my resolutions all the time, and as soon as I read that, which is like the third sentence in the chapter, I laughed because I, like you and I know that's never gonna happen, right, but that's the goal, right, that's the stretch goal that we're focusing towards. And when you think about, like you said, when you think about boot camps, it's that short period of time where you're trying to, like, learn something really fast or boost through something really quickly. Right, it's meant to be a very intensive period of time, and so she's using this one month as this intensive period of time to try to do all of the resolutions we've talked about over the last 11 episodes perfectly for the month of December, which is, you know, obviously never going to happen, but is a really good goal, especially as she's pieced this together right Of.
Speaker 1:Can she integrate this, like you said, into her life, can she make this part of her? You know, after all these months, I was still astonished at how effectively her resolutions worked to make me happy whenever I did faithfully keep them Right. So she she's acknowledging like, hey, I'm going to try to do this Perfect, I'm going to you know, like, that's my goal is to just do all of the resolutions all the time, but even months later on some of them, she really is feeling this boost of happiness. Right, she really did accomplish this goal that she set out to, and so now it's really about how is that integration work in her life? And she can do that through this perfect bootcamp.
Speaker 2:One of the things that she found out as she was going through this experience was she learned about herself, and so if you're listening to this podcast, you can listen and be passive. You may not even subscribe to our podcast. You might have listened to an episode or two or passed on it. Maybe you never liked the episodes or share them with others. That's passive.
Speaker 2:But when you take an active role, which is sharing it with others but absorbing it yourself, that's where the real power comes, and for me, the reason we even started the podcast was because I was taking books that I had learned and lived from, or lived and learned from, or something like that, and shared them with other people. And that's what she's done with this book as well is that she did these things that were very personal to her and then shared them with others so that perhaps their life could be elevating their happiness as well. But it's not easy. It's no different than when we talked about Atomic Habits by James Clear last year, which is that this takes a huge amount of mental discipline and self control, not to mention for this lady Gretchen. It took time. It took an entire year. We've done this over 12 weeks. She did this over 12 months, and so we're going to talk next week even about how to start incorporating it for yourself in your own life as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, and I think that I just I love listening to her story and she pulls in some of, in this last chapter, things that people on her blog had commented right about this journey that she's gone on and things like that. But what I thought was one of the things I thought was really interesting, kind of after she goes through some of that blog stuff is she says that my biggest happiness boost had come from eliminating the bad feelings generated by my snapping, nagging, gossiping, being surrounded by clutter, eating fake food, drinking and all the rest. And I highlighted that and I put a note about how the soul I think it was soul for happy right. It was where you know he makes this argument that happiness is our default state and there are things that get us out of that default state. And it's almost like she discovered that truth for herself as she went on this journey of the biggest boost wasn't maybe necessarily the things that like leaned into the positive. It was like eliminating the negativity, eliminating the things that were dragging her the positive. It was like eliminating the negativity, eliminating the things that were dragging her out of a state of happiness Cause, again, like she started this journey default happy right, like happier than the average person by.
Speaker 1:You know the measurements that we get from. Uh, you know the first book that we read this year. So I thought that that was super interesting and I wondered what your, your thoughts were on that, because it's I don't know, I just it like it's cute, it's this theme that keeps coming up and I just like I don't know, it's like one of those messages I think I need to receive because it just keeps reoccurring and I just I don't know what are your thoughts your thoughts.
Speaker 2:I think it is a good gentle reminder that when we're not feeling happy, to tap into the fact that are we really not feeling happy and what is around us that can bring the happiness and his happiness in a thing or a person, or is it inside of ourself? So one part in this chapter she talks about where she was speaking with a friend and she said that the friend kept saying to her your year is almost up, are you happier? And I think that that was a curious question to be asked because it made me think as I was reading that, sam, that it would tap into well, shouldn't I be happier? Or if I'm happier, does it mean I wasn't happy before? But to your point, she said she always had a baseline of more than average happiness, and so she said that what she noticed was that what was making her happier was that people around her were noticing the things that she was doing, that then they were doing. It's sort of like you might be too young for this commercial, or maybe the listener is too young for the commercial, but years ago there used to be this commercial for herbal essence shampoo and I think I've told you the story before, maybe in some other conversation we've had, but in the commercial there's this lady and she's on the beach washing her hair.
Speaker 2:Now, first of all, that should strike you as funny. Like, like, why would you have shampoo on the beach?
Speaker 1:But she's washing her hair.
Speaker 2:So she's like oh, it smells so great, this herbal essence shampoo is wonderful. And she says I think I'm going to tell my friends. And then it has like this Brady bunch picture of her face. And then they're like and we're going to tell their friends. And then there's like a picture of 12 more people and they're going to tell their friends and their friends and their friends. And finally, the idea is, if you wash your hair on the beach with herbal essence shampoo, you're going to tell all your friends and everybody will buy the shampoo.
Speaker 2:But I think in correlation to this is that if you can share with your friends, like we're trying to do here, that it is possible maybe not to shampoo your hair on the beach, but it is possible to find little glimmers of happiness, whether you're going through obstacles or even really challenging times, like Mo Gaudet did when he lost his son, or whether you are looking for ideas that can tell you how to be happier, like we learned from Dr Sonia Lyabromersky in the how of happiness, or you create your own happiness project where you focus with intention on what things will elevate your already state of happiness.
Speaker 2:I remember there was a time not long ago that I was talking with someone maybe it was my kids or a teacher or somebody about. Should you focus on the things you're not good at and try to perfect them, or would you get more bang for your buck or more ROI? If you focus on the things you're already good at, that you just want to elevate more, and where would the best return in your life come? And for me, long story to the close, is that I think focusing on happiness and elevating an already baseline state wherever you are, instead of focusing on the lack of happiness, is the way really to have better balance and peace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's where this line stood out for me. So much is because I'm with you. When I'm coaching someone, when I'm mentoring someone, it's always that you should lean into your strengths. Right, it's the strength finder, you know. Assessments, it's that book, you know, it's that kind of stuff where you know your, your energy is better spent on your strengths, and to me that's like, right, the positive side of it, leaning into the positive.
Speaker 1:But what she's saying in this line is I found that my happiness, the most return on my investment in this happiness, was from eliminating the negative which I thought like, and I think that there's a part of me that, like, I think, like it jarred me a little bit because it's like I don't know about that Like, right, I'm more of the optimist, I'm the eternal optimist of, like, you know, let's focus on, you know, the positive side of things. Let's, you know, let's focus on our strengths, let's focus on, you know, moving forward, moving in a positive direction. But I just like, as soon as I read this, I like immediately started arguing with myself of like that was my first thought, but my second thought was oh, but if I think about solve for happy, if my default state right, it's like I'm bringing, I'm being brought out of happiness, which is the default Right, and so eliminating the things that bring me out of that is is, is one of the you know big ways that I can do it. And then I thought about right again, like the same coaching that I give people is I tell people you should focus on your strengths, you should focus on the things you're good at. That's where you should really lean in.
Speaker 1:But there might be things that fall on that like quote, unquote weaknesses, side of the scale that are hindering you, that are getting in your way, and you have to address those Right. And that's the. That's all you do is you just fix the problem Right. You eliminate the clutter, you eliminate the gossiping, like she's saying right, like you eliminate the problem so that it can bring you to this place where then you can get into your full potential, get into it, and so I don't know, I just like I really like this line, I really like sat here and thought about it for, you know, for a while on on that, but you know, I like I agree with everything you just said. It's just there's something to that little bit of like eliminating the negativity so that your energy is spent on the positive side of things. You know, the things that are your strengths, the things that you should be leaning into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. She says a couple of things that I think are important to sort of tie this together, which is we can talk a lot about the actions, like the how of happiness gave you activities. Solve for happy gave you an equation. The happiness project also gave activities, but really at the end of all three books it starts with your thinking, and to me that's why coaching is so helpful and imperative. If there's something in your life that is out of balance, whether it's that you're trying to find a solution to a challenge or you're trying to find a resolution to an opportunity, or you're trying to elevate your happiness or elevate your career or elevate something in your personal life. Even Gretchen says, in a way, that it starts in your thoughts. The way she says it is. She says if I think I am happier, I am happier. She calls it something the fourth splendid truth, and she says this fourth splendid truth may have been the last splendid truth I identified, but in fact I understood it on some level from the first moment on the bus when I had the idea to even start a happiness project. I am not happy unless I think I am happy, and by pushing myself to be mindful of my happiness. I can truly experience it, and for me that was a profound way for her to end this chapter by saying we've given you all along 12 things you can do. But this isn't about doing, it's about being, and the being comes from the believing, and the believing comes from your thinking. And so if there's something that you need to do to change your thinking, if you can't change it on your own because it's not easy then that's where having a coach can really help you untangle some of that. Even if you think you're above average, happy, like she did, that there's a way to still boost it.
Speaker 2:There was a story years ago that I heard it was called the 212 degree experiment and basically the 212 degree experiment, and basically what it was talking about was if you imagine a pot of water and that a pot of water on the stove can get really hot as you turn it up, but it isn't until it reaches one degree more, 212 degrees is the degree that the boiling water becomes steam, and what's profound about that is not that the steam comes off of the pot whether you're cooking something in your kitchen, but that same thing happens in a steam locomotive train. It takes all that energy to get that water bubbling and boiling to the point in which it releases steam. And it isn't until it has steam, which is an evaporated form of water, that runs that train. And once a train is going, the train can't stop. Or it's no different than saying I don't remember what the number is, maybe you know, sam, but the number of when water turns into frozen ice. It's just one degree that makes the difference.
Speaker 2:So what if you could just do one degree of something different in your life? That would, could change your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's really like. You know, what she found as she went through this journey is, right, it was one thing and one thing and one thing and one thing. Right, this is 11 months of resolutions that she has now compounded into a whole thing. Right, she didn't do it all at once, she did one thing at a time, added in a few things in a month, right, like it all just sort of added up to her being happier. Right, she thinks she is happier. Therefore she is right, like that's her. This is the truth she found of it. And these activities, right, some of them were eliminating, some of them were adding, but they made her happier, they made her think she was happier and therefore she was.
Speaker 1:And again, it's by degrees, it's not by some huge jump, some huge shift. And I like she talked about her resolution chart, right, because she had a chart she was checking off on this stuff. And in this month it was really like, yeah, I mean she's going for a perfect month, right, so she really is checking every day all of this, like think of all these resolutions we've talked about, like tons of stuff. But she said that, you know, by providing an opportunity for constant review and accountability. It kept her plugging away, right.
Speaker 1:So having that thing to check that I've moved up a degree, right, I'm at one, oh one, I'm at one, oh two, I'm at one, oh three. Right, like checking that off does make a really big difference. Right, like having that accountability, and that's something we learned from atomic habits, habits. He offers you a free habit tracker on his website. You know all that sort of good stuff and you know, knowing that it's by little moves, it's by those little tangible, doable things that we make significant changes in our life, and I just I thought that was. I totally agree with you and I think that that's what she found through this journey.
Speaker 2:I think so too.
Speaker 2:You know, this title of this chapter is called happiness, and one of the things that she says in here that is maybe it's, I'm not going to say, unique to her, but maybe it's not the experience we will all have, but it was her experience which was that she said one of the best ways to make myself happy was to make other people happy, and one of the best ways to make other people happy was to be happy myself.
Speaker 2:And so I thought it was interesting that she found in her own journey that she realized that the thing that brought her happiness was making other people happy, but that if she wasn't doing that, it wasn't making her happy, and if she wasn't happy she couldn't do that thing. So it was like this push and a pull of some sort of what it was that she was trying to do to make herself happy. She then talks about this thing I don't know why she did it backwards, but she goes from the fourth splendid truth to the second splendid truth, and the second splendid truth was clear to her about why working to be happy isn't selfish, but it's, I would call it self-centered, because it has to be focused on yourself first. It's sort of like when you're on the airplane and they say put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you help others. It isn't to be selfish, it's to be self-centered so that you could help other people because you're at your optimum best self.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of my best things I heard in a like from a mentor was about a teacup, you know, like a teacup with a saucer on the bottom Right, and that you know, if we envision ourselves as the teacup, right, it's that you can't pour from an empty vessel. Right Like, you have to fill yourself in order to show up, which I think is really what she's getting at. But the teacup analogy I love because it's that you serve people from the overflow, from the saucer, not from the teacup. You're the teacup. You have to keep yourself filled, you have to keep your happiness filled up and what spills over on that is what you have for other people. And I love that because it's not this constant, it's the you know. And john maxwell says right like, be a be a river, not a reservoir. Right like we, you know, be the things that people that flow through. Not this. Um, you know, not, not where you're just hoarding this all yourself or you're constantly emptying yourself to try to take care of other people.
Speaker 1:And I found this truth that she found to be very true myself, even just with our podcast.
Speaker 1:Right Like, in having people talk to me about the things we're talking about in the podcast and then having them talk to people sitting at a we're talking about in the podcast and then having them talk to people sitting at a baseball game over the weekend with my grandmother and she was telling my mom's friend that, oh my gosh, you have to listen to their podcast.
Speaker 1:It's so great, like I'm pretty sure my grandma's our number one fan, but, um, it was so like the joy that it brought me to listen to her talk about how we've poured into her just from her listening to this and then telling somebody else why she thinks they should also listen.
Speaker 1:Like again, it's that same like and this has made my hat like and this is our journey, right, this is us going through this, living these books out loud, which has brought me a lot of happiness and has let me live in a space where I am genuinely more happy now than I was when we started this journey at the beginning of the year, and I'm watching other people who are watching this journey become the same right, and then that pours back into me, and then that pours back into them and it becomes this beautiful cycle, like you're saying right, which I just think is really, you know, is really something magical, and so this truth that she found, I feel like I've also found in just our journey throughout the year well, not to sound cliche, but that makes me so happy, because when we finished the first version of our podcast a couple years ago, called let's Be Real, it was about taking leadership and looking at leaders through the lens of they're just real people, and during that particular time I was staying behind the curtain a lot and it was.
Speaker 2:It was my idea for the podcast, but I wanted other people to have the spotlight and to be elevated, and I never came onto the show as the spotlighted person or the host. Well, I co-hosted a couple at the end, but I will remember, sam, there was a time, right before you jumped in to want to be a part of the podcast with us, where I was sitting with Scott and Andy and talking about well, what do we want to do? Because I wasn't really happy at that particular time. I was seeking to find something happy in my professional life and even though I was learning from a leadership lens, there was this other kind of life experience lens that wasn't really at its maximum, best potential, and I recall that at that time I was getting ready to move from one role to another role at work and it was either Scott or Andy said well, what's going to happen, because all the people that are where you work today rely on you to give them recommendations for books, and that only came from the fact that I was reading books and I know a lot of authors and love books, and I love to read and that prompted one of them to say, well, that's what what the new podcast should be, because people need to know what's on your bookshelf, and it was as simple as that conversation.
Speaker 2:What we didn't know, though, then was what it would become this year, which was that it was no longer going to just be about let's talk about the leadership development books on the shelf, let's talk about the life development books on my shelf, and so I was so happy there was this time I don't remember what episode it was, maybe we were only three or four into it, and Andy was getting really busy with work and you were transitioning, and so I think we said, hey, why don't you come in and join us on this conversation, not knowing at that time that this could make you happy or that this would be something that would become a weekly, ongoing thing for the last now two years together. So I remember when we were sitting together, you and I and we talked about, well, what do we want to do for next year, which is this year, because last year we were just sort of picking out books that were either on the bestseller list or books that we thought would sound interesting. And I remember having a conversation with you and we said, isn't it so serendipitously weird that when we did John Wooden, that it was a perfect segue into Atomic Habits? And I remember having the conversation almost like this time last year and you had said to me something like, well, what do you think you want to talk about next year?
Speaker 2:And I just remember feeling at that time that I just wanted to be happy and I wanted to have peace. I was coming out of after working in a place for 15 years and I was transitioning into trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and I just wanted happiness. And so we we said, all right, let's look at the shelf. And we pulled out the books that we did, and it resulted in this beautiful journey for my own self to investigate my own happiness. And these were all books I had already read, right, yeah, so rereading them became something different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, like this, it, you know it goes to this idea that she's got of. It's really about integrating this stuff into your life and as you do that, other people take notice, right, other people go how did you do this? Right, like, tell me your journey, tell me what's going on, and then they find ways that they can incorporate it, you know, into their own life. And you know, I just I think it's such a beautiful cycle that it becomes is, when you work on yourself, people take notice. You know, when you work on your own happiness, which can feel like some people have a hard time with that because they're like, oh, it feels selfish. But it's not about that. If it's about, if you're happier, the people around you are happier, right, and if people around you are happier, then you are happier and then they are happier and it becomes this beautiful. You know this beautiful space and again, like you said, this journey was sort of there was intentionality behind it, like as we picked happiness as a topic, but there was this a lot of just unexpected things that you know that have come, you know that have come out of this as she's wrapping up this chapter. You know, one of the things that I really liked that she said was that I had to build my happiness on the foundation of my character. I had to acknowledge what really made me happy, not what I wished made me happy.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest surprises of the happiness project was just how hard it was to know myself, and I think that that's one of those unexpected things. As you work on your happiness, as you work on your happiness, as you work on your personal development, it is hard. You do. You do have to break down these thoughts that you've got in your head. Right, like you always say, right, everything stems from your thoughts. You do have to realize that. No, I wish I was the person that did this, but I'm really the person that does this and this, and chasing that path and that trajectory is what will bring me my maximum happiness. And so you have to know yourself, to grow yourself, right, you have to know really about yourself, but it's hard to know yourself, it is hard to step out of it, right?
Speaker 1:I think we learned a lot of that in Solve for Happy. Of all these things we had to break down, all these you know truths that we had to uncover, is that there's a lot just hardwired into us that we have to. It's hard to pick the hood up on the car and look at it and go how does this engine all fit together? And I just thought all engines worked that way. I thought every car ran this way and the truth is is that it doesn't, and it's that's that self exploration. But as you do that, that's where you reach the core and that, like she says, the foundation of your character. And the closer you can get to the foundation of your character and who you are and who you want to be and really what that in truth is, the better chance you have of finding your own happiness and the people around you that have a better chance of finding their happiness.
Speaker 2:Right, right, she says at the close of this, as we wrap up this episode, was that she said it was funny that only once it was December and my happiness project was drawing to a close Did it occur to me to wonder why I'd had the urge to do my happiness project in the first place? Sure, I had this bus ride epiphany about wanting to be happier, and it had been a relief and a thrill to step out of my ordinary life to contemplate transcendent matters. But what had motivated me to stick with it for the whole year? And so she was challenged by her husband who said well, maybe you just want to try to get more control over your life? And she questioned herself and she thought to herself well, is that really true? Well, maybe, but maybe the feeling of control and is the essential element of happiness, but was that really it for her? And so she said that the year, once it was over, that she really was happier.
Speaker 2:And after, after all of her research, she found out what she knew all along was that she could change her life without changing her life, and I thought that was like a really interesting, profound way to end. It was that she didn't have to do anything except recognize and be present with what was already happy in her life, and that when she made that effort to realize that, then all along she found that she actually was happy, which was such a beautiful ending. And so I'm curious about what you thought about that ending and if you wanna share what we're gonna talk about next week to help people get their ending.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you, I love the way she ended this and I thought it was a beautiful no-transcript all of these books so I thought it was beautifully poetic and I loved the full circle moment of it. I was I, yep, absolutely loved it, yeah. And so next week we're gonna talk about we're just gonna wrap up on just general thoughts about the book, um, you know some, some things there, but also really how to take this to the next step, and then we'll also talk about sneak peek, about what book we're headed to next. So we're gonna do a wrap up, a look ahead. It's gonna be really good, um, with some tangible actions and things that you know people can think about and do. So very excited about that, very excited to be with you next week as we do that and hopefully everybody's really enjoyed the happiness project as much as we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And again, friends, if you are getting value from this, we'd love to hear from you. Let us know. Scott has lots of ways for you to reach us in the show notes. We would really appreciate it if you would share our podcast with others, just the same way that grandma did. I'm gonna have to buy her some herbal essence shampoo. I think that'll have to be my gift for her.
Speaker 2:And so please like it, share it, send it along to others, but we'd like to hear from you as well. This year has definitely elevated my happiness, and I can't wait until we share next week what we can do with and for you, and where we're headed next with the next book. So for now, this has been a happy time together. My name is Denise Russo and, on behalf of my friend, sam Powell, it's been another episode of what's on your Bookshelf, thank, you.