The Health Diaries

Gretchen Rubin on the Secrets to Living a Happy Life

‘I really don’t think we can do everything.’

There are many ways to live a healthy life. The Health Diaries is a weekly series about the habits that keep notable people living well.

In year 2009, Gretchen Rubin became one of the most influential voices in self-help with The Happiness Project, a bestselling book that chronicled her year of dedicating every waking moment to finding happiness. She sang in the morning, cleaned her closets, read Aristotle, and tried to embrace the idea of “fun,” in addition to interviewing dozens of experts on the topic of life satisfaction. But Rubin didn’t always intend to become a happiness authority; rather, she started out as the editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal and even clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra O’Connor, before moving on from law several years later.

Rubin followed her first book with a series of others about how to find happiness in everyday life: Happier at Home, Better Than Before, The Four Tendencies, and her newest (published March 2019), Outer Order, Inner Calm. She also hosts an award-winning podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and has created video courses and an app called Better to help people understand themselves in order to build happier lives.