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Hello, everybody.Welcome back to the show.Welcome back to the podcast.New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of your 20s.
Before we get into today's episode, I have a really special announcement.And if you're listening to the episode in the week that it is coming out, you might be some of the first people to know, I wrote a book and come 2025, it will be yours.
It is called Person in Progress. And much like this podcast, it's a psychological roadmap basically to your 20s with even more studies, even more guided exercises, even more personal stories.And it is for you guys to have and to hold.
I cannot even believe that those words are coming out of my mouth.I wrote a book. Before I tell you any more details, I want to just firstly say thank you and to just express my very deep gratitude for every single listener of the podcast.
There is not a moment that I don't pinch myself and feel so grateful to have you all because It would have never been possible without your continued support, without all of you who tune in week after week.
You know, I may have written the book, but you are the reason I had the opportunity.
So before I say anything else, I just want to say thank you, and that I think you'll love this book as much, if not more, than the podcast and the episodes that I put out each week.So Person in Progress, let me tell you a little bit more about it.
I've been in the process of writing this book for the last two years.I think I've given some hints here and there that it would be coming, so it's great to finally have it out in the open.Person in Progress is made up of four sections.
They are Welcome to Your Quarter Life Crisis, Love on the Brain, Work in Progress, and everybody is healing from something.It covers so many of the complicated experiences of your 20s.It's over 300 pages.
We talk about how to figure out exactly what you should be doing in your life, exactly who your authentic self is, how to make friends as an adult, how to stop repeating history in relationships, how to use psychology to fall in love, to heal guilt, shame, embarrassment, loneliness, and so much more.
I could literally keep going. It is also available for pre-order right now, like at this very moment.It's just such a pinch me moment to like even be saying that.
But if you do feel called to do so, grab a pre-order copy now so that you get the book the day it comes out.
Another benefit, it really helps get the book into local bookstores and into local shops, local bookshops, because pre-order numbers help people determine the quantities that they're going to Order, come release.
So if you are excited to get your hands on it, as am I, please consider pre-ordering through the link in the description.Again, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me this opportunity and for giving me this platform.
There will be so many more details to come in the following months.And if you want to see the cover, head to my Instagram and you can see so many more details and exactly what is going to be in your hands come 2025.
Without further ado, let's get into the episode. Today, we are going to be talking about how to create a self life in your twenties.
And what I mean by that is how do we create a life of simple pleasures, of joy, one that is gentle, happy, successful, without feeling heavy and frustrating as everything so often feels these days.It is a daily reality for a lot of us in this decade.
so focused on progress and success it's been drilled into our brains we are focused on not falling behind on this like predetermined race course that we all are traveling on and it means that our lives firstly no longer seem like ours and at times I don't even feel enjoyable
All of our attention and our energy is focused on work, it's focused on school, it's focused on achievement.And it's dictated by this urgency culture to be doing it all and to have it all together right now.
To be rushing from one milestone to the next, from one place to the next. I think it's time that we slow down.
It's my belief that when we really buy into this during our 20s, this overarching perspective and attitude towards life, and we don't have the occasional reminder that life is short and we actually need to enjoy it, we end up being overwhelmed by unnecessary stress, and we prioritize productivity rather than being kind to ourselves, being gentle to ourselves, experiencing the world.
shaking off that philosophy as well, it becomes harder the older we get.So it's a very formative period where we can rewrite the script that we have been taught on how to enjoy our lives.That is what we want.
We do not want to be operating at this really high stress frequency for, you know, the next 30, 40 years and never slowing down.
I think it also comes down to this very important thing to remember, which is that in a culture of hustling and in the culture of success, you don't need to burn out to prove that you deserve good things.
You don't need to deny yourself simple pleasures to prove you're a good person.We want to take a more, I would say, positive psychology approach.We want to take our mental health and our emotional health
seriously by deliberately choosing and pursuing a soft life.The soft life is about slowing down.It's about adopting a lifestyle of enjoyment,
comfort, ease, simple pleasure and it came from the Nigerian wellness community and from black female creators who were sharing this new approach in the last two to three years that really combines agency, ambition, freedom without the need to sacrifice what you enjoy and to always
put others above you, put yourself under this intense stress, you go easier on yourself, you appreciate the details of life rather than rushing through them.
If you want to read about the exact history of this term, there is an amazing article by Andscape, which is like an online journal, titled The Soft Life Isn't As Easy As It Looks Online. and they interview some of the originators of this term.
It's incredibly fascinating for, you know, where their desire to embrace the soft life and promote the soft life really came from.I like to think of it as well as really living similarly to how our Ancestors would have lived long ago.
They would have woken with the sun.They would have felt their feet on the earth.They would have watched the trees move, watched the sunset, enjoyed like the sweetness of the berries, really savored it.
They would have done just what they needed to survive and then rest easy at night with their clan.They didn't have to-do lists.They didn't have teams meetings.They didn't have Microsoft Word.They didn't have keynote presentations.
that needed to be done for their boss.
And this soft life is about appreciating that obviously circumstances have changed, so we need jobs, we have these responsibilities, this is an element of who we are, but choosing to return to a life before productivity to find us in the time that we have.
We want comfort, we want low stress.
So let us jump into five ways you can really create that life for yourself at this pivotal point, how you can reprogram, re-socialize, retrain your brain to see this as the version of success you should be pursuing and talk about the psychology behind it.
Talk about the mental impact, all of that and more after this short break. There are, of course, a few straightforward ways to embrace a soft life that we hear about quite frequently.
You know, prioritize self-care, especially self-care that isn't just about self-improvement, but a genuine generosity to yourself.Setting boundaries with people or situations which are emotionally taxing.
Another important one, practicing gratitude, incorporating rest, treating yourself every now and again, all very important, all pretty well known for a good reason.
But with that in mind, I really want to focus on five more specific things that are a little bit different and that you can do daily, weekly, monthly, that have an evidence base behind them.
The most significant one, in my mind, in my opinion, comes down to gratitude.And that is, number one, go searching for joy.Go searching for things to savour and embrace the kind of little things that are presented to you every day.
Savour the crunchiness of the apple that you had for breakfast.Savour the fact that you found that perfect shower temperature, your cup of coffee, the little kid giggling on your bus, the joy of your daily walk.Wake up without an alarm once a week.
Choose a slower pace for your meals.Reconnect. Joy as an emotion is so overlooked and so often confused with happiness as well, but it's a lot deeper, it's a lot more profound.
Joy is elation, it's delight, it's like this whole body experience of synchronicity.Almost like, the best way I can explain it is the sense that in that moment you exist right now just to experience this.
This is the reason you were put on this world.This is such a human experience to feel joy.This is what we're here for.Here is the thing.The more you go searching for joy, the more it tends to find you, even when you don't want it to.
Because once our brains start searching for a certain kind of stimulus, moment, thing, like a joyful thing, it becomes naturally more attuned to the presence of such things in our environment. So, noticing joy makes joy more evident in your everyday.
It's kind of like when you notice a yellow car and you can't stop noticing them.
Like, there is this green car near my house, it's like a lime green car, and now anytime I'm in a new city, a new suburb, sometimes even a new country, I see that car everywhere.I always notice it being around.
Having that search for joy, that personal search for joy is really, really helpful for your health and your life satisfaction.
So there was a study published by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and it found that when we regularly experience joy day to day, something we take for granted, something we don't tend to focus on in health literature, it triggers a number of psychological but also physical changes.
better blood flow, better focus, a better mood, all things that make for a softer life.
Now, that was one study, but there is another one from 2019 that was a research paper that is the perfect example of how embracing joy makes you more holistically well. So this paper measured the impact of an intervention called Picture This.
I love this intervention.It's very similar to the exercise that I'm going to talk about in just a second.
But in the Picture This study, the researchers asked 200 of their participants in the experimental condition to use their smartphones to take at least two photographs of an event, moment, place that made them feel joyful.
And they had to do this each day for three weeks and then they uploaded those photographs to a server for the staff to kind of look at.
So the researchers gave them some examples of like things to take photos of, you know, you could take a photo of the sky at sunset, you could take a photo of a good friend, of getting a really good grade on a paper or a test that you worked hard for.
They were also instructed, this is the second part, they were instructed to focus on the physical sensations and the cognitive and emotional response that they had in that moment that they decided to take a photograph.
This is actually called sensory perceptual sharpening, noticing how your senses respond to something that you're perceiving.
Basically, what they were doing in this not so sly way was forcing their participants to take note and take notice of joy and capture a photo of the source.
Over that period, all these 200 people, their mood improved, they became more grateful, more motivated, they expressed that they enjoyed their life more.For some people, it was actually quite a profound experience.
They were like, I just didn't realize how much beauty my life had. It really seems to show that daily experiences of awe, curiosity, gratitude, love, that can put the average person on a trajectory of growth, success.
And we know that a soft life is about being present and immersed in experiencing whatever you get the privilege to enjoy and whatever you get the experience to, you know, to feel. Taking inspiration from that study, and I love this study.
I've talked about this on the podcast before, and I've talked about it on Instagram, but I have my own version of picture this, and it's called the smile file.Some people also have a ta-da list.These are your only instructions.
Very similar to that exercise, once a day, all you have to do is take a photo, screenshot or take a note of something that has brought you joy or something that has seemed so magical to you.
Almost like someone has placed this thing in your life and gone like, ta-da, look at it, enjoy it, I made this for you.Savour that moment, find one moment every single day, focus on the sensations.
I think life becomes so much easier to enjoy and it's so much more gentle when you have this outside armour of gratitude.When that is the first thing that any experience that comes at you will have to penetrate, an armour of gratitude.
So moving on from that, our second step for adopting a soft way of living and a soft way of flourishing in our twenties, every single day, I want you to remove two things from your to-do list that you cannot do.
Let me tell you, there is a lot we can do in a day.There is 24 hours.That's a lot of time, but there is a lot more that we actually don't need to do.We actually never need to do.We just convince ourselves that we're lazy if we don't do it.
If you grew up in an environment where you were called lazy for relaxing or you were an overachiever, every single piece of your worth was tied to what you can do in a day, your grades, how impressive you looked.
You know, these days you may feel quite an intense internal conflict or guilt when you aren't busy.And so you feel like you have to earn your rest by creating more tasks, more challenges for yourself day in and day out.
But the idea of being, quote unquote, lazy, It has no place in our soft era because reducing your stress by reducing how much you have to do, it's actually not laziness.It's deliberate.It's actually quite hard to do.
And it is about providing yourself with space to be human rather than just being a product of how much output you can produce. Another version of that, so you can remove two things from your list a day.
This is a version of that that I swear by and what I do is I have my to-do list.That is the things I really need to do.Couldn't do them any other day.
Essential for my job, essential for living, essential for being a good friend, being a good partner, paying taxes, you know those kind of things.That's my to-do list. Then I have my I would like to do list.
This is the things that I would really kind of like to get done.I really like to get around to.It's not going to be the end of the world if I don't do it.And then I have my extras list.
This is the things that I would do if I have like a shit ton of time. But none of those things are essential.Anything on my I would like to or my extras list doesn't need to be done today or tomorrow.
Eventually they might even fall off the list altogether and nothing's going to go wrong.So you have your must list, your I would like list and your extra list. Why is this important?
Well, too often, and I'm guilty of this as well, but too often we put every single small thing on our to-do list from our small tasks to our large ambitions, and it's just not helpful.
I do think that we tend to do this as a way of organizing or structuring out our thoughts and a way of visualizing and finding a space for remembering what needs to get done.But it has the ripple on effect of making us insanely overwhelmed
because we have no vetting process.We have no vetting process as to what actually deserves to be on our daily agenda.It's like everything from do the dishes to find my birth certificate to get a new job to like insert huge task here.
Because of this, we never actually finish the to-do list.Every day a new task is kind of carried over.
You add on more items, which you can't do anyways, then you don't do them, you feel like a failure, even when you already did all the things that you already needed to do.So why is it important to have a realistic list rather than an ambitious list?
It's because of how our brains prioritize and think about unfinished tasks.They become rather intrusive.There is a natural spotlight on everything that we haven't done rather than on what we have done.
So this is due to a psychological phenomena known as the Zeigarnik effect, which basically says that we tend to fixate on interrupted tasks or incomplete tasks more than others.
When we feel like we have, I hate using this word, but failed to do something, something that we needed to do.
This creates this underlying cognitive tension and it means that our brain keeps coming back to it, keeps saying, hey we haven't finished that yet, we haven't finished that yet.
Even as you're trying to switch off, even as you're trying to fall asleep, even when you are totally exhausted, even when actually there's no need to do that thing today. In some ways, this is sometimes helpful.
You know, when you're really under the pump, you don't want to forget things, you don't want things to slip off the list, but you are not meant to feel that way all the time because then everything becomes about what you didn't do with your time rather than prioritizing what you chose to do with your time in order to be more present in your life.
So this is my new rule for myself. Yes, I have my must, like, and like my extras list.But I also say if any sentence starts with I could, such as I could do this, I could add more things to my to-do list.I could sign up for new projects.
I could, you know, add this extra element that's going to take a lot of time.I could find time in my day.I have to shut it down. Any sentence at this time in my life when everything is so busy that starts with I could is I can't.
I only have space for things that are urgent, for things that are important, for things that I want to do.Because I was doing all this stuff before that just really drained me enormously and it actually didn't even matter.
Like it had no impact on my life.It wouldn't have made my life better.It wasn't really doing anything.It wasn't important.It wouldn't have mattered whether it was done or not. and it made my life heavy.
And, you know, it was things I didn't even care about.And the things that I did care about, I wasn't able to prioritize because I was carrying the stress of these tasks that were unnecessary.
You know, someone said to me recently, I think this really does summarize it.If you don't have to struggle,
Don't, don't force yourself to struggle just because you think it means you deserve more, just because you think that people are going to think you're lazy if you don't.So tip number two, cut down that to-do list, please and thank you.
We're going to take a short break, but when we return, I want to discuss my remaining three steps or pieces of advice for creating that soft, tender, gentle life that you deserve in your twenties.Stay with us.
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One of the other crucial elements of creating a routine and a lifestyle that lets you go slowly and at your own pace is developing a better relationship with stress.Now, that probably sounds unrealistic, undoable for many of us.
Stress is, of course, it's a necessary part of life, you know, like it or not. You are never going to eliminate it entirely, nor actually should you want to, because you'd miss out on so much important information.
But we can get better at regulating our nervous system so that it's not being triggered by unnecessary stresses, things that are minor stresses, things that really don't deserve that much attention and energy, you know, the daily hassles.
Stress has an impact.We want to be selective with when it is activated because when our fight-or-flight response is consistently set off, it changes our immune system response, it suppresses digestion, it reduces our body's ability to heal itself.
There are so many cognitive impacts.It actually does put your body under a lot of tension.It's like a vigorous workout for your body and You know, workouts are great.Workouts keep you healthy.
You don't want to be doing like four or five of them a day.It's going to put a strain.It also just like doesn't feel nice.That's like a pretty simple way to say it.
I've noticed, though, that so few of us realize how often we are actually being pushed into that stressed state, how often our environment is triggering a response that was meant for survival.But this is not a matter of survival.
you know, a workplace deadline, missing a train, having an argument with a friend is not a matter of survival.
But we cannot help but feel like this insane stress response and this fight or flight response is being triggered because we have been trained by our environment to be more on edge.
So, this is a long way of saying, number three, if you want a soft life, we have to improve how we regulate our nervous system in organic ways, in ways that we are evolutionarily and our ancestors would have regulated their emotional response and their stress response.
A regulated nervous system like that term, it has been getting a lot of buzz online recently, I've noticed this.What it basically means is that your body and your mind can effectively respond to stress.
So it is not the complete removal, the complete absence of stress. It's actually important to note that it is about having this important two-way street relationship with stress, where stress is welcomed, but it is not allowed to dominate.
You are able to return to a balanced, calm state after it has passed.And that state, that balance is called homeostasis.It's crucial because it means that your nervous system isn't overreactive, it's not stuck.
It allows you to be flexible, it allows you to adapt to various situations.You are not a tense creature.Here are some ways that we can get to that regulated state.
You need to have a process for grounding yourself and for remaining present when everything in you is calling to panic. I always repeat to myself, just be where your feet are.Just be where your feet are.And that means taking off my socks.
I don't know if that's gross to some people, but whatever.I take off my socks.I take off my shoes.I just place my feet on the floor and I say, the only thing that I'm going to concern myself with is whatever is 10 centimeters from where I'm standing.
This is my zone.This is my present.This is what I can control. not the future, not others, not the past.I'm going to take a moment in the stress state to be where my feet are.
This is even better when you combine it with like a natural environmental setting.So this kind of grounding, it's called earthing.
When we combine that centering technique with nature, earthing really focuses on realigning your electrical, your neural energy with the earth.
You know, those words, they might not sound scientific, but the research behind this type of grounding, it really is the best study that I've come across this ever.
It talks about how our lost connection with nature and the earth has basically caused our nervous system to no longer have a stable environment in which to calm itself. You know, we no longer sleep on the ground.We rarely walk barefoot outdoors.
We live and we work inside.We spend so much of our time disconnected, like up far above the ground in high rises, not out in nature.You know, some of us wouldn't spend more than an hour outside a day.Everything is loud, busy, overstimulating.
urgent, that never ends.And all that external information means we need to be constantly on so our threshold for stress has been lowered.
But when we practice earthing, we return our body and our mind to the place it evolved from, to where it belongs, to where it can recalibrate itself and feel calm.And a grounded body is a healthier and stable body.
The most fascinating part of this study, though, And you kind of have to see it to believe it.Because I read this and I was like, I need some more evidence of this.I need something.I need a graph.I need a picture.They had them.
Basically, in the study, they looked at thermal imaging of a person's body before and after earthing. So thermal imaging basically looks at body temperature and lower body temperature would typically mean less inflammation, perhaps even less pain.
That was very clearly documented in these images.People were talking about how even spending 30 minutes earthing themselves, so just basically grounding using nature,
They felt more calm, their pain from certain chronic health problems or certain joint pains, things like that was relieved.They felt less stressed, less like almost even hot, less jittery.
All of these coming down to nature's innate capacity, it's innate role as our friend and as our collaborator in handling our emotions. So there's some other things that you can do to help with that regulation.
Cold showers in the morning, that's a big one at the moment.Personally, don't like it.No, it works.Not for me, but just to put it on the table.You can also do progressive muscle relaxation, which is beautiful.
You can get guided versions of this online, which I really recommend. This one was something that I thought of where I was like, huh, this would really work.And I tried it the other day and it was actually very, very interesting.
Unplugging from your phone or your headphones when you go for a walk.So we often, you know, you and me both, we are listening to podcasts, we are listening to music.
We are calling our friends, we've got our noise-cancelling headphones on, we've got earbuds in.Instead, next time you go for a walk, take your headphones off, just pay attention to your environment.
And it means that we don't experience this disconnection between what we're listening to, like our senses and what we're seeing.So, our eyes and our ears are not processing different information.
I just think that all those options are free, like you can literally do them tomorrow, but it really just like reconnects your mind and your body to your environment in a way that our current situation and our current work, life, travel, existence doesn't really promote.
This really brings me to my next big tip.Look at this amazing segue I'm about to perform because my next piece of advice is really, really related to that.
And it's related to how we treat self-care as a consumerist act when we should be focusing more on creation. Self-care is really, really important, but it's so often associated with spending money and having more.
More skincare, more candles, more luxuries, buying yourself little things.This is all really, really nice, right?I do it all the time.It's a joy getting a new little trinket.It's a joy getting something that you've really worked hard for.
But it can also make self-care unattainable. And after a while, I would make the argument that it makes self-care quite shallow, if you can just buy yourself a better mood.
It's of course going to give you the dopamine hit that you want, because it is an act of consumerism, and companies are great at leveraging that to get you to think that self-care really just means buying more things, really just means consuming more things, thinking it's going to make you
happier.There was a really great Vox article written about this in, I think, June or July this year.It's called How the Self-Care Industry Made Us So Lonely.
And it talks about how self-care used to be a term that meant nurturing yourself by filling your cup with community and creation and rest, expression.All of these are so psychologically nourishing.
But nowadays, those things are harder to come by and they're harder to prioritize because we are so disconnected.Those spaces aren't as available.Those communities aren't as available.
And so we replace them with what we can buy or what is most convenient and available, which can actually make our lives quite heavy. We talked about this in last week's episode, so if you're up to date, last week we talked about hobbies.
I don't know if it was last week or on Tuesday now.Our most recent episode we talked about hobbies.And I talked about how we are so exhausted from how busy society keeps us that often we just want to do what's easiest.
We want to have the quickest meal.We want the most convenient way to switch off our brain by scrolling, by watching TV, all of which have their place.
But continuously choosing that as your place to relax, choosing that as your source of kind of decompressing, it's going to detract from your life.It's going to make it a lot less tasty.
If you want that delicate, soft, cozy life, you need to make more space for creating things and more space for expression and dedicate less time, less money, less room to just consuming.
So two to three days a week, I want you to invest in creation as a way to feel more connected to what you're doing. So your food, your items, your space, your hobbies.
Take the extra 30 minutes, the extra hour to really pour some care and love into your dinner or your breakfast and to feel proud of what you're making yourself, how you're nourishing yourself.Take an afternoon off.
Take an afternoon off on your weekend to pursue a creative project, get a herb garden, volunteer, take care of someone else, be generous to someone else.
put something back into the world, that is a real true act of softness, being open enough to want to give and not just receive.Finally, rethink what you believe success should look like.
This is a big aspect of shifting from a productive, heavy life to a slower, softer, gentler life. Typically, and historically, our biggest indicators of success, they are material and they are social.
You make more money, you receive more praise, you have more respect, you have a nicer house.But what does any of that actually mean if you are always in a rush anyways, and if you never have the space to enjoy it?
What makes that a more desirable life than the soft life?You know, because quite frankly, you can have all those things and a lot of people have experienced all of those things and still said, I am quite miserable.
So let's consider the alternative, a balanced lifestyle, a day filled of variety, time to just exist, enjoy your experiences, time to socialize, to build connection, room to slow down. Maturing, to me at least, is realizing that is very appealing.
That is the outcome we should want.A few weeks ago, I did an episode, I think it's called How to Be Truly Successful in Your 20s, episode 221.Episode 221, yes.
And I really wanted to rec you to listen to that because when we talk about redefining success, that's like the best place to turn.It goes so in depth.
And it could be a wake up call that you might need to hear that we're putting so much weight on the traditional notions of success, no fault of our own.That's how we've been socialized, that's how we've been conditioned, how we've been raised.
But at their center, they are about self-sacrifice, they are about discipline, productivity, image.The alternative is about giving, enjoying, resting, slowing down, caring.And, you know, I just think that's more valuable.
Doesn't mean you can't still be successful in traditional ways, but it's about kind of opting out of the rat race at some point and being like, huh, I can't win in this system.
I can't win if I have to just keep being productive for the rest of my life to obtain all these sweet, beautiful joys that they're telling me I'm obtaining because of this work, but never actually being able to enjoy them.
You kind of start to really see how that's not a healthy cycle. So, choose the gentler life.It's the simple things, it's the minimalistic things, not the flashy things.It's joy, nature, community, creation, a regulated nervous system.
That is true wealth to me.And the tips that we've shared today will hopefully bring you closer to having more of that in your life.
So, in wrapping up this episode, I'm hoping that this left an impression on you or it just made you think, that's really what's important. I hope you please do just one of these things, just see if it helps.
You could even literally just not set an alarm every now and again, slow down, cook a nice meal, see what happens.See if life feels more fulfilling and more rich. If you have listened this far, thank you so much.
Just a reminder that if you want to pre-order my book, you can do that right now, at this very minute that you are listening.
If you just want to check out the cover, if you just want to see what the blurb looks like, I don't know, whatever floats your boat, I'll leave a link in the description.It truly is an honour to get to...
announce this to you guys, my wonderful listeners today.As for this episode, as for the podcast, make sure you have left us a five star review.Make sure you are following along on Apple or Spotify so you get alerted when new episodes come out.
It's almost December, which, you know, means the 12 days of guests.I can't wait to announce who is coming on.You can follow us on Instagram if you want a sneak peek of that as well at that psychology podcast.And until next time, stay safe.
Be kind, be gentle to yourself, embrace the soft life, and we will talk very, very soon. I cannot wait to get dressed up for the holidays in Abercrombie's new party looks.
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