Happiness doesn’t always make us feel happy, says New York Times bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. That’s because it’s a complex state of well-being that requires awareness of both positive and negative emotions, personal values, temperaments, and habits.

Dr. Michael Gervais has a podcast series called Finding Mastery built around a central goal: unpacking and decoding how the greatest performers in the world use their minds to create amazing journeys while they pursue the boundaries of human potential.

He recently sat down with author Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen has spent the past decade researching and writing about happiness and is the author of several books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before, and The Happiness Project.

In this episode, Michael and Gretchen discuss how happiness and habits are linked.

Michael Gervais: Welcome back or welcome to the finding mastery podcast. I am Michael Gervais and the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery or switched on and dedicated their life’s efforts to figuring out difficult stuff and what these conversations are designed to do is understand what they’ve come to understand as best we possibly can but also work to understand the psychological framework. Like how do they explain events. What is their world view. How do they make sense of where they’re positioned in the world and literally how other people, and Mother Nature, and their craft all intertwine to be able to work together. And then we want to also understand the mental skills they’ve used to build and refine the craft that they’ve invested their life with.

Now this week’s conversation is with Gretchen Rubin and she spent the past decade researching and writing about happiness and she’s the author of several books including a massive New York Times bestseller The Four Tendencies and she’s also written Better Than Before and The Happiness Project. And I wanted to talk to Gretchen about happiness because it’s something that every one of us seems to be searching for, yet some of us have trouble finding. And when you ask people on the street or in a casual conversation what are you looking for in life, what does it all come down to, many people do say “happiness.” To read more from Dr. Michael Gervais, click here.