Gretchen Rubin Quotes About Habits

Quotes about: Habits

• Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Everyday, Architecture, Invisible

• A 'treat' is different from a 'reward', which must be justified or earned. A treat is a small pleasure or indulgence that we give to ourselves just because we want it. Treats give us greater vitality, which boosts self-control, which helps us maintain our healthy habits.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Self, Healthy Habits, Giving

  "What Are Your Treats? Do You Have Any That Don’t Look Like Treats?". gretchenrubin.com. March 24, 2014.

• We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, were free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Decision, Needs, Use

• Sometimes, counter-intuitively, it's easier to make a major change than a minor change. When a habit is changing very gradually, we may lose interest, give way under stress, or dismiss the change as insignificant. There's an excitement and an energy that comes from a big transformation, and that helps to create a habit.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Stress, Giving, May

• In 'Before and After,' I identify the sixteen strategies that we can use to make or break our habits. Some are quite familiar, such as 'Monitoring,' 'Scheduling,' and 'Convenience.' Some took me a lot of effort to identify, such as 'Thinking,' 'Identity,' and 'Clarity.'

  Gretchen Rubin

  Thinking, Effort, Identity

  Gretchen Rubin (2016). “The Best of the Happiness Project Blog: Ten Years of Happiness, Good Habits, and More”, p.50, Hachette UK

• When we don't get any treats, we feel depleted, resentful, and angry, and we feel justified in self-indulgence. We start to crave comfort - and grab that comfort wherever we can, even if it means breaking good habits.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Mean, Self, Comfort

• I've found that I snack less and concentrate better when I chew on a plastic stirrer - the kind that you get to stir your to-go coffee. I picked up this habit from my husband, who loves to chew on things. His favorite chew-toy is a plastic pen top, and gnawed pen tops and little bits of plastic litter our apartment.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Husband, Coffee, Snacks

• We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period, provided we work slowly and consistently. Anthony Trollope, the nineteenth-century writer who managed to be a prolific novelist while also revolutionizing the British postal system, observed, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” Over the long run, the unglamorous habit of frequency fosters both productivity and creativity.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Running, Creativity, Daily Tasks

• I think the big myth about habits, and happiness too, is that there's somehow a magic "one size fits all" solution. That, "If it works for you it's going to work for me," and it's just a matter of figuring out what that habit would be, whether that's do it first thing in the morning, or start small, or do it for thirty days, or give yourself a cheat day.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Morning, Thinking, Giving

• I'm doing a lot of speaking and talking about habits, which is this subject that obsesses me. That's a lot of fun.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Fun, Talking, Habit

• Think about what kind of person you are and shape your habits, and your happiness, to show what's true about you instead of thinking that you can just import the right answer from the outside.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Thinking, Answers, Shapes

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin