Gretchen Rubin is a favorite author of mine on the topics of happiness and habits. In my post “Habits Good Or Bad: They Affect Our Happiness,” I reviewed her book Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits (highly recommended!), and I occasionally listen to her podcast “Happier with Gretchen Rubin.”
In a recent, very short episode: “A Little Happier: There’s No Magic, One-Size-Fits-All Solution for Happiness or Good Habits,” Gretchen reminded me of a truth I feel is so important it’s worth repeating:
[tweetthis]Don’t assume what makes someone else happy will make you happy.[/tweetthis]
Obvious, I know, but time and again, we knock ourselves out trying to like books or music—or activities or opinions, people or places—we dislike or even hate just because someone else likes them and perhaps thinks we should like them too. This recently came to mind in reading the “Summer Reading Lists” of various bloggers and authors.
Life is too short!
Part of my fervor for encouraging you to connect with yourself and understand yourself better is so you’ll know—really know—what makes you happy and what doesn’t. Then you can step into that reality and use it as a filter to prioritize your time and your emotional energy.
I loved Gretchen’s reference to a story from Greek mythology in which a character named Procrustes was a bandit who hijacked travelers and made them fit into his iron bed. If they were too short, he stretched out their bodies. If they were too tall, he chopped off their feet. This has led to the term Procrustean and the notion of lying down in a Procrustean bed, which means the attempt to force conformity to an arbitrary standard. Gretchen Rubin believes, as do I, that too often “we try to fit ourselves into someone else’s idea of what we should do, instead of setting up our circumstances to fit ourselves.”
I’m learning to navigate the tension between that voice saying, “You should do this!” and the deep inner knowledge that it is not the best use of my time.
I wish I could tell you I always make the wisest decision. I don’t, but trying to be more conscious and intentional about aligning our inner values with our actions is always a worthy endeavor.
How do you avoid lying down in the Procrustean bed—forcing your square pegs into round holes? I’d love to hear your tricks and strategies for staying true to your deepest self.
Beauty Through The Eyes Of Love
I think you’re right: there is a constant pull between wanting to do what fits us best, and wanting to do what others want us to do or be. Perhaps this is especially challenging for women, because we’re raised to be attuned to others’ needs.
But I think we owe it to the world, as well as to ourselves, to learn how to tune in to our own needs and choices. That’s the only way we’re ever going to be able to give our unique gifts to the world, right?
I don’t have answers for anyone else, but for me I have to pull away from the outer world and enter my introvert-hermit space on a regular basis in order to remember who I am and what I want to do next.
Thank you for this wonderful elaboration on what I was trying to say. I agree with you completely, and especially appreciate your pointing out that there is a “constant pull” or tension in life. This is natural, but I love that you’ve used yourself as an example — you’ve connected with yourself enough to know what you need for self-care. Of course there are going to be times when we do things for no other reason than to please someone else. As long as we know what we’re doing and don’t neglect ourselves in the process, that’s part of generous living, don’t you think?