ONE Thing co-author Jay Papasan’s webinar series is set to continue this month on September 30th with special guest and bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. Best known for her chart-topping book The Happiness Project, Rubin’s latest title, Better Than Before approaches the ins and outs of habit building—a theme that rings true to The ONE Thing.
In her book, Rubin seeks to explain why some of us find it more difficult to build habits than others. By helping us realize the way our personalities can conflict with our own desires, she attempts to help guide us through different methods and techniques for forming the habits that will improve our lives the most.
In her book she develops a new concept known as The Four Tendencies. According to Rubin, the challenges people face from building habits can be attributed to how they respond to internal and external expectations. She proposes that most people typically fall into one of four categories based on their responses to expectations: Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel.
Upholders respond positively to both external and internal expectations, meaning they can set goals to build habits themselves and can have others set those goals for them and they’ll respond in the same way. Rebels are the antithesis of the Upholder, in that they respond negatively to both internal and external expectations—you can’t tell them what to do, and they can’t tell themselves what to do. Between both extremes are Questioners, who respond positively to internal expectations, but are skeptical of external expectations, and Obligers, who respond positively to external expectations and ignore their own internal expectations.
Jay and Gretchen will talk in-depth about these groups of people and the challenges they face when building habits. If you want to catch up before the webinar, click here to take a short quiz that will help you determine which category you might fall under. And be sure to sign up for the webinar by clicking here!