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Hey, everyone.
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It's me, Marie, and I'm recording this in LA.
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I'm here with Josh and Kuma and we're hunkering down and staying inside due to the coronavirus
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pandemic.
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Now, I hope you and your family are well.
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I did want to set some context with this interview, though, because when we recorded and sat down
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with the incredible Gretchen Rubin, coronavirus wasn't a thing yet, so you won't hear any
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mention of the current state of affairs in this conversation.
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And, to be honest, my team and I went back and forth on whether or not we should even
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release this.
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But then I thought to myself: I think we all need a break from the news.
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This conversation is incredible and I really hope it will inspire you.
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Now, as it relates to the coronavirus pandemic, I want you to know that we created something
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incredible for you.
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It's actually a coronavirus support guide and it's over at marieforleo.com/blog.
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Or you can just google my name, Marie Forleo, and coronavirus support, and you'll find it.
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I'm also going live a lot more on Instagram.
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I'm @marieforleo and I want to be a source of support and love and inspiration for you
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during this time.
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So come follow me over there.
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Finally, take good care of yourself.
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I'll be here for you week after week of new content and connections and don't hesitate
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to reach out if there's anything you'd want me to know.
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With that, enjoy the episode and I'll see you soon.
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Hey, it's Marie Forleo and welcome to another episode of MarieTV and the Marie Forleo Podcast.
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Now, if you're interested in a happier life, and let's be honest, who isn't?
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My guest today has made it her mission to help us all find the way.
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Gretchen Rubin is the author of the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, The Happiness
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Project, Outer Order Inner Calm, The Four Tendencies, and Better Than Before, among
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others.
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Her books have sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide and have been translated into more
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than 30 languages.
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On her award winning podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, she discusses happiness and
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good habits with her sister Elizabeth Craft.
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She's been interviewed by Oprah, walked arm and arm with the Dalai Lama, and been an answer
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on Jeopardy.
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She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.
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Gretchen, thank you so much for being here.
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I'm so happy to be talking to you again.
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Yeah.
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This is a long time coming.
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Yeah.
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So, I want to go back in time.
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So, you started your career in law and were actually clerking for Supreme Court Justice
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Sandra Day O'Connor when you decided you wanted to be a writer.
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And I feel like there's so many people in our audience right now, every different age,
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from all parts of the world, who find themselves in a situation like that.
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Meaning they want to make a big career change.
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So, can you take us back there and talk to us about just what that process was like?
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The thinking, the actions, all of it.
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Well I went to law school for all the wrong reasons.
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I was like, "I'm good at research and writing.
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It'll keep my options open.
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It's great preparation.
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I can always change my mind later."
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So, I went to law school, not because I had a passionate desire to be a lawyer, but just
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because it felt like a logical thing to do since I didn't know what to do with myself.
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And I was very fortunate.
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I had a great run in law.
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I was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal, which is the Yale version of the law review.
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And I was clerking for Sandra Day O'Connor, which is this amazing opportunity.
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And one of the things about me that's still true and was true then is that I will become
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really preoccupied with a subject.
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I'll get intensely interested in something and just want to spend all my time thinking
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about it.
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So, I just went through this with color.
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I went through it with placebo, like I get very interested in something.
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And at this time I was out having a walk one day and I was on the Capitol Hill and I looked
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up at the Capitol dome against the sky and I just asked myself this rhetorical question,
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"What am I interested in that everybody in the world is interested in?"
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And I thought, "Well, power, money, fame, sex."
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And it was like, "Power, money, fame, sex."
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And I became intensely preoccupied with researching the ideas of power, money, fame, sex.
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Which to me seemed very linked.
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They still do.
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And I was just doing research and I was staying late at work and doing research and if you're
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a Supreme Court Justice you can actually check out books from the library of Congress.
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So, I would check out books for Justice O'Connor.
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My favorite book was Deep in The Heart of Texas, the true story of three Dallas Cowboy
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cheerleaders who are sisters.
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It's an amazing book about fame.
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And I just got more and more interested in it and I was writing and taking notes as I
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was going, as I was thinking through the subjects.
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And finally it dawned on me, this is the kind of thing somebody would do if they were going
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to write a book.
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And I had never thought about being a writer myself because I always thought either you
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wrote fiction or plays or poetry or you were a journalist or you wrote academic books.
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I didn't really think about creative nonfiction, which is what we would call it now.
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But it occurred to me, "Well, this could be a book."
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And then I thought, "Well, maybe I could write that book."
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And then I went to the bookstore and got something called How to Write and Sell Your Nonfiction
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Book Proposal.
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And I just followed the directions and skip ahead, I got an agent and got a book deal
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and that's how I did it.
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So for me it wasn't as much leaving something as going towards something.
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Just this desire to write this book.
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And it wasn't even like, "I want to be a writer."
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It was like, "I want to write this book."
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Interesting.
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Yeah.
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You know in Star Wars where the Millennium Falcon is getting pulled in by the tractor
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beam and they're like, "We have to go.
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We can't resist or it's going to pull us apart."
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Yeah.
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That's how I felt.
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At a certain point I was like, "I would rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer.
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I have to give this a shot.
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I have to try and either fail or succeed.
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But if I get another law job, I'm afraid I won't try.
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I won't do it."
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And so...
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Did you have any inner conflict around leaving law or no?
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The pull to write this book was so strong that you were clear for yourself.
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I was very clear for myself.
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But again, I was married, so my husband was working.
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It was a pretty…
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And I did feel like if I was ever going to do it, this was the time because it was the
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lowest risk time because we were moving from Washington D.C. to New York, I didn't have
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a job.
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And so it was a great open transition.
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And I remember thinking to myself, "What more am I waiting for?"
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What sign from the universe am I waiting for it?
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If there's ever a time, the university is being like, "Right now."
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And I thought if I wait, this moment could pass.
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And so at that point I really was like, "This is the time."
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But there was a day where, because my husband left law at the same time, he went to into
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finance, and we had just been married and we got the letter from the New York Bar Association
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asking us to pay our bar fees cause we'd both been admitted to the New York Bar.
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It's expensive.
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It's a lot of money.
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And I remember saying to him, "Oh, are we going to pay our bar fees?"
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And he's like, "Why would we pay our bar fees?
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No."
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And I'm like, "Okay, we're doing this."
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Turns out you can go back into the bar if you just pay and like do some courses, but
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at the time I felt like it was really...
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That was it.
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That was it.
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And I was like, "Okay, this is happening.
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I'm going to do this."
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Wow.
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So I didn't feel...
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You didn't feel conflict.
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No.
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You just went for it.
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I didn't really.
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What was the hardest part for you about that transition?
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Because obviously as an attorney, you are quite experienced at research and writing.
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So, was putting the proposal together and getting that out into the world, did you find
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that difficult?
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Or because you were trained in some of those aspects, you were like, "Okay, this is just
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another way to express myself."
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That part wasn't as hard.
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The parts where I had trouble with it was where there were no directions.
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If I could look up a book and it's like, "This is what a proposal looks like."
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I'm like, "Okay, I can do that."
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But a lot of it is what are the unspoken assumptions of this career?
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And how do people behave?
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And there are all these agencies, how do I understand them?
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Like for me it was like I knew nothing and I had so many great credentials as a lawyer.
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I had many feathers in my cap and this, I didn't have a clip, I didn't have a short
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story, I'd never published anything, I had nothing.
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So, so part of it was just being nobody in a big world that I didn't understand.
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I liked it when it was this is what, like, "Write a sample chapter."
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I'm like, "I can write it.
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I'll take my shot."
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That felt clearer.
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It was more of the...
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The unknown.
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The unknown, and there's things that people can't even explain to you.
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You just have to get in there.
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I feel like even now I'm still always trying to figure it out.
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What are the assumptions?
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What do we know?
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What works?
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Well, I know even the first time you and I spoke, which was at...
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I think it was at a Penguin Random House event, right?
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Yeah.
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For BEA, the big book expo.
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That's right.
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And one of the things that struck me most about you, because I've heard about your work,
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I've admired your work, I've known about you for years.
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And I was like, "Oh, we're finally getting a chance to hang out and have a discussion."
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I was like, "How have we never met before?
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It seems strange."
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I know.
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Sad, it was.
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But one of the things that struck me about you is how many great questions you asked.
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So, I feel like that's just such an amazing trait that's about you.
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Your curiosity and constantly asking great questions.
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So, the reason I want to go into this is because one of the things that I've learned from writing
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my book and talking about it on the show for a couple of years was how many people in our
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audience also want to write books, are writing books, have written books.
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So, I always think it's a good process.
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And there was a stat quote in the New York Times that up to 80% of people believe they've
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got a book in them.
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Oh, interesting.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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So, that's where I wanted to go there.
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So, the first big blockbuster book, if I'm not mistaken, was Happiness Project.
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Yes, that was the one.
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But like many people, that was my fourth book.
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So, I had worked very hard for 10 years to become an overnight sensation.
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People were like, "It's your first book."
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I'm like, "No.
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That was my fourth book."
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It was your fourth book.
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My fourth book.
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But it was the one that popped in the industry.
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It did, yeah.
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And I had done, at that time, I had had a blog to create an audience for the book before
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it came out.
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That was unusual at the time to do something like that.
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But yeah, that was the book.
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For a lot of people that's where they became aware of my work.
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And for the Happiness Project, this is a personal question of mine, did you have that idea and
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then pitch that book and sell it or did you have the idea, do your actual year experiment,
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and then write the book about it?
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When I got the idea I was just going to do it for myself.
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Like I said, I get really interested in things.
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So, I'm constantly going off in these weird directions.
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Oh, I'm so interested in perfume and I'll just march off and spend all this time researching
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something.
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So, at first it was like, "I should have a happiness project.
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Could I make myself happier?
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What would you do to make yourself happier?"
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I was just doing all this research.
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I was finishing up my book, my biography of JFK, at the time.
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So, it started out as a research project that was just for me and me thinking about, "Well,
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what would I do, what can move the needle, what would I experiment with?"
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And then it just got bigger and bigger and got more and more interesting, and I was like,
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"Wow, this is taking over my life."
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And then finally I was like, "Well maybe this should be my next book.
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This should be my next book project."
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But it was interesting, it was unusual for nonfiction because usually, and maybe people
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don't know, usually with nonfiction, you write a proposal and you sell it off the proposal
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and maybe a sample chapter.
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Whereas with fiction usually you've written most of it or all of it.
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Especially if you're just starting out.
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And for this book I would talk to people about it and they didn't get it.
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They would make these suggestions to me and I'm like...
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Somebody was like, "Oh, you really like Benjamin Franklin.
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Why don't you do a thing where you apply all of Benjamin Franklin's rules?"