I’ve spent more than 12 years studying happiness and human nature. Along the way, I’ve collected what I call “Secrets of Adulthood” — the lessons I’ve learned, with time and experience, about how to create lives that are happier, more meaningful, and more confident.

Many of my most important discoveries can be distilled into one short line. As the old saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” and sometimes reading a single sentence can spark a transformative insight.

1. Accept yourself, and expect more from yourself.

To be happier, seek to have self-compassion and acknowledge the natural limits of your nature; also seek to grow, stretch, and push yourself outside of our comfort zone.

2. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination. 

In my case, work-procrastination often takes the form of needless research. It may look like work, but if it’s not actually helping me achieve my work aims, I’m goofing off.

3. What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.

If we go for 20-minute walk most days each month, it’s okay if we miss a few days here or there; if we go for an hour’s walk just one day each month, we won’t accomplish much.

4. A strong voice repels as well as attracts. 

As a writer, I often remind myself of this truth. If I aim to be so mild that no one can disagree with my conclusions or object to my style, my work will be featureless and boring.

5. Perfectionism is driven not by high standards but by anxiety. 

If you feel plagued by perfectionism, don’t worry about lowering your standards but rather work to address your anxieties.

6. To respect us, people must first notice us; we can’t earn trust and admiration from the sidelines. 

Many people are puzzled when their efforts aren’t recognized; the problem is that no one knows what they’re doing.

7. If we’re not failing, we’re not trying hard enough. 

By trying to avoid failure, we’re also avoiding the risks and challenges that lead to accomplishment and opportunity.

8. Before declaring that something is superficial, un­healthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, or immoral, we should consider: Maybe this just doesn’t suit my taste. 

Consider instead: Writing was denounced for fear that dependence on the written word would weaken people’s memories. Railroad travel was denounced for fear that it would cause brain damage. Postcards were denounced for fear that they would encourage heedless, frivolous disclosure.

9. The sharing of tasks often leads to the shirking of tasks.

We’ve all experienced this phenomenon!

10. Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started.

I’ve felt overwhelmed for a week because I delayed writing an email that, in the end, took me 20 seconds to draft.

11. It’s easier to change our surroundings and our schedules than to change ourselves.

Instead of trying to become a “morning person,” do your most taxing work late in the day. Instead of trying to become a marathoner who works slowly and steadily toward a deadline, embrace your sprinter nature and the fact that you do your best work when you’re racing to meet a deadline.

12. The bird, the bee, and the bat all fly, but they use different wings. 

Nothing is a one-size-fits-all! Use the approach and the tools that work best for you.

Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential observers of happiness and human nature. She’s the author of many books, including the bestseller ”The Happiness Project.” Her books have sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, in more than 30 languages. She hosts the award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, where she explores practical solutions for living a happier life. Her new book, ”Secrets of Adulthood,” is out now.

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You may think your emails are polite and professional, but passive-aggressive phrases can unintentionally slip in — whether you’re updating your boss, sending client deliverables, or coordinating with coworkers.

Email and other forms of written communication strip away context like tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. So if you’re not careful, even seemingly courteous phrases can make you sound angry or frustrated, undermining your trust and influence with others. 

As the author of “Managing Up” and an executive coach for over a decade, I’ve heard leaders confess that they won’t promote someone who can’t handle conflict diplomatically and directly. At higher levels, you need to express yourself with tact, bringing others along rather than putting them on the defensive.

Here are five passive-aggressive phrases that put you on thin ice with colleagues.

It can be interpreted as: “Why haven’t you gotten back to me yet?” Even though you’re masking it in a friendly tone, the other person may feel called out or guilty for not responding sooner to what you’re implying should have been a simple and easy task.

Instead of dancing around what you need with vague niceties, clearly state your request and deadline. For instance: 

• “We need your feedback on the new hire. Please send me three bullets about who you prefer and why by end of day tomorrow.” 
• “Could you let me know your thoughts on slides 3-6? I’m hoping to finalize the deck and send it to the committee by Tuesday.”

This phrase is the email equivalent of saying: “I already told you this and now I’m annoyed I have to say it again.” While it’s normal to be frustrated when someone doesn’t seem to have read or acted on an earlier message, this phrase can come off as scolding the recipient or suggesting they’re incompetent. 

Swap the adversarial tone for options like: 

• “To recap the key points…” 
• “Here’s what we agreed on during our last conversation…” 

Or simply restate the information they need with no preamble: 

• “The deadline is Friday at 5 p.m.” 
• “The choices are A, B, or C. Which would you prefer?” 

This phrase is a thinly veiled way to escalate the situation by bringing in someone with more authority or influence. It immediately shifts the dynamic from collaborative to confrontational, and can make the original recipient feel ambushed. 

Sometimes you do need to loop in a manager or stakeholder to get things moving. That’s fine, but be transparent about why you’re adding them to the conversation. It should be clear you’re including them for legitimate business reasons, not as a passive-aggressive power play. 

Say something like: 

• “I’m adding Isaac since he’ll need to approve the final design.” 
• “Looping in Nadia because this impacts her team’s timeline.” 

This phrase can seem presumptuous, undermining the other person’s ability to say no. It also comes across as impersonal and transactional, like you’re more focused on getting the task checked off rather than actually appreciating their effort or time.

Acknowledge that the person has a choice. Try: 

• “Could you review this in the next 48 hours? Let me know if that’s feasible.” 
• “Please let me know if this timeline works for you.” 

But avoid overly deferential language that makes you sound like a pushover, like: “I’d appreciate your help, if you get the chance. No worries if not!” 

This phrase is typically used when you’re peeved that something hasn’t been resolved. You want to say: “I don’t know what to do about this mess. You figure it out.” But you can’t, so you resort to a formal, almost legalistic tone that feels distant and cold. 

Use a more casual question or make a statement showing you’re on standby. For example: 

• “What are your thoughts on this?” 
• “Can you clarify the process for me?” 
• “I’ll hold off until I hear from you.” 
• “Let me know your preferred approach.” 

Are these phrases always passive-aggressive? Of course not. But if you find yourself reaching for them when you’re feeling angry or impatient, it’s a red flag that you might be letting strong emotions seep into your communication. The more conscious you become of your word choices, the more confident and influential you’ll seem.

Melody Wilding, LMSW is an executive coach, human behavior professor, and author of ”Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.” Download exact scripts to diplomatically say no at work here.

Join our book club discussion with Melody Wilding! Request to join our LinkedIn group, and come talk with us and Wilding on Wednesday, October 1, at 10 a.m. ET, at our next CNBC Make It Book Club discussion. 

Any questions for the author? Drop them in the comments of this LinkedIn post (you’ll need to join our private group first, which you can do here). Or email them to us in advance at askmakeit@cnbc.com, using the subject line “Question for Melody Wilding.”

In the meantime, you can also read Wilding’s articles, including on how to influence people and two toxic words that will hold you back.

Hoping to get ahead on the next books? Our October pick is “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life” by Sahil Bloom.

Have suggestions for future picks? Send them to us at askmakeit@cnbc.com, using the subject line “Make It book club suggestion.”

If you want to get ahead and gain respect at work, don’t make “being nice” your priority, says Stanford University organizational behavior professor Jeffrey Pfeffer.

You might think being nice will help you stand out from your peers, but you weren’t hired “to win a popularity contest,” says Pfeffer, 76. “You’ve been hired to get things done.” Focusing on results doesn’t mean you should be mean or rude, but “you shouldn’t optimize on being popular and being nice. You should optimize on getting your job done,” he says.

Many young professionals, especially women, feel pressure to be liked at work, notes Pfeffer, who has taught at Stanford for nearly five decades and written or co-written 16 books on topics like leadership and career development. He’s the host of MasterClass’ “The Power Playbook” course, which published on August 21.

But you don’t actually need anyone except your boss — and, perhaps, your boss’ boss — to like you, he says. Start building those relationships with some old-fashioned flattery, he recommends: Compliment them on a new initiative they’re spearheading, for example, or show them you value their insight by asking them for career advice.

“The people in the hierarchy are the people who are responsible for your career,” says Pfeffer, adding: “You need to worry a lot about what your boss thinks about you. You don’t need to worry so much about what everybody else thinks.”

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As for showing your boss that you’re a capable employee — and standing out from your colleagues — you’ll gain a positive reputation simply by being a person of your word, Walmart chief people officer Donna Morris told CNBC Make It on August 25.

Good employees “deliver what you are expecting at the time that you’re expecting,” and the best ones deliver ahead of schedule, said Morris. “So what I would say is you’re better to deliver early than to deliver late, and you’re better to deliver more than less, if that makes sense.”

High-achieving employees also find ways to “reduce stress, rather than create it,” billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said in October 2024. In particular, they know how to “analyze a situation, find a solution and not make a big deal out of it,” he said.

“There’s a lot of people that are just a whirlwind and everything seems to be difficult, causing a lot of unnecessary stress,” said Cuban, adding: “The greatest value you can offer a boss is to reduce their stress.”

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Whether he’s listening to an employee’s idea or considering investing in a new startup, Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson says he looks for one particular quality in anyone he works with: the ability to inspire others.

“You need to be able to inspire people,” the 75-year-old billionaire tells CNBC Make It. “You need to inspire them to believe in an idea and commit to the vision.”

Even the best ideas still typically need a strong sales pitch. A person’s ability to sell their idea effectively — enough to inspire others to believe in the idea as much as they do — can help those merits stand out from the rest, Branson says.

Branson constantly fields pitches, particularly from entrepreneurs who want him to back their big ideas, he says. (Virgin StartUp, his U.K.-based not-for-profit program that offers resources to early-stage entrepreneurs, has distributed more than £100 million — or $135.4 million — in startup loans to thousands of founders, a spokesperson says.)

DON’T MISS: How to build a standout personal brand—online, in person and at work

He gives one particularly high-profile example: Jamie Siminoff, founder of smart doorbell company Ring. In 2013, Siminoff took Ring to ABC’s “Shark Tank” and walked away without a deal. He got publicity, but was desperate for funding: “We were out of money at the time,” Siminoff said in December 2017.

A guest at Branson’s resort in Necker Island connected the billionaire and the struggling entrepreneur. Branson emailed Siminoff, initially only intending to order a bundle of Ring doorbell cameras as gifts for his friends, he says. Instead, Siminoff took the opportunity to pitch Branson on joining Ring’s in-progress Series B funding round.

The product alone didn’t necessarily demand Branson’s investment, he says. He was won over by Siminoff’s passionate description of how Ring could disrupt the home security industry, and became convinced that Siminoff had “the personality to promote and market” Ring, he says.

“The reason I jumped in and helped [Siminoff] get Ring up and running was him as an individual,” says Branson. “He had strong conviction and personality and determination.”

Branson ultimately co-led the investment round, which gave Ring $28 million of funding at a $60 million valuation, the company announced in August 2015. Amazon bought Ring for a reported $1 billion in February 2018.

Branson discussed the required skill for selling a big idea while promoting a new project called the “Doorbell of Dreams,” which launched in the U.S. on Tuesday. It calls on people to walk into Virgin Hotels New York in Manhattan and record a 60-second business pitch on a video doorbell. (The doorbell is not advertised as being manufactured by any particular brand.)

Together, Branson and HelpBnk founder Simon Squibb review “select pitches” from the recordings for their social media followers, he says. In the U.K., where the program first launched on June 17, thousands of prospective entrepreneurs have already submitted pitches.

Squibb’s advice: “People need to be themselves. Don’t try and be anything other than who you are.” In the best pitches he’s seen so far, the entrepreneurs are “not pretending to be something else. It’s not sustainable if you do that … Be authentic,” he says.

This story has been updated to include comment from a Virgin StartUp spokesperson.

Conversions from GBP to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 GBP to 1.35 USD on September 12, 2025. All amounts are rounded up to the nearest dollar.

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Most of us never got a formal lesson in how learning works, but we picked up messages about what counts as “smart,” what’s worth knowing, and how we’re supposed to learn. 

But there’s a catch to an education built around knowing the right answers: Life doesn’t always come with a clear solution. And when uncertainty shows up, too many kids freeze. 

Over the past 15 years as a business school professor, I’ve studied how successful people navigate complex problems when there isn’t a step-by-step guide. What I’ve learned is that the ability to move forward wisely when you don’t know the answer is a very valuable skill — and one we should teach our kids as early as possible.

Every summer for the last 12 years, when we go to the beach, I create a themed puzzle hunt for my daughters, niece, and nephew. 

You must try several things out to find the non-obvious insight and solve the puzzle. Think Escape Room meets Treasure Hunt. There are few directions, so there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion. 

For example, one puzzle might just be a bag of jellybeans, and the kids must figure out how that is a clue that would lead to something else. They might try counting the total number of jellybeans and notice that there are different numbers of different colors. Maybe there are two purples, four blues, three yellows, one green, and so on.

Then they might try to take the second letter of the word “purple” and the fourth letter of the word “blue,” which might uncover a string of letters to unscramble, leading them to look for the next clue.

When they were younger, they’d get frustrated fast: “We’re stuck! Just tell us the answer.” Then they’d eat the jellybeans and call it a day. Now, they stay curious and experiment.

More importantly, they’re learning that being smart isn’t about always having the answer. It’s about staying with the problem, trying different approaches, learning from what doesn’t work, and collaborating with others along the way. That’s the kind of thinking that builds resilience, and it’s exactly what kids will need to tackle life’s big challenges. 

If you want your kids to be comfortable with uncertainty, you must model it yourself: 

1. Don’t dismiss doubt. Let your kids know that it’s okay to not know the answer right away and feel two different ways about something. Praise when they spend effort to figure something out. Doubt is a sign that they are facing something meaningful and need to learn. 
2. Help them generate ideas, not just answers. It’s tempting to want to solve problems for your kids, but when we step in too soon, we rob them of the chance to build critical skills. Support them by asking questions about what they could try and what might happen. 
3. Model doubt and decision-making. Don’t hide difficult choices of your own. If they are appropriate to share, walk through your thought process with your kids, show them what you’re doing to learn, and demonstrate curiosity instead of panic.  
4. Make time for play at any age. Creative expression and imagination are essential training grounds for navigating doubt. Activities like music, visual art, or theater give children a space to express themselves and learn about the effects of their choices in a safe environment. 
5. Build healthy habits. A tired brain is a reactive brain. Sleep, nutrition, movement, and strong relationships make it easier to stay calm and think clearly in uncertain situations.

A summer puzzle hunt won’t fix everything. But every time my kids move from “We give up!” to “Let’s try something else,” they’re building mental muscle. Every time they see me navigate uncertainty without falling apart, they’re becoming more resilient by learning how to do it themselves.

Bidhan Parmar, PhD, MBA, is the Shannon G. Smith Bicentennial Professor of Business Administration and Associate Dean for Faculty Development at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He is a former fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and was named one of the top 40 business school professors under 40 in the world. Dr. Parmar is the author of ”Radical Doubt: Turning Uncertainty into Surefire Success.”

Adapted excerpt from Radical Doubt by BIDHAN L. PARMAR, available now wherever books are sold. Copyright © 2025 BIDHAN L. PARMAR. Printed with permission of the publisher, Diversion Books. All rights reserved.

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