Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20's, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20's and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, you know the deal.
Welcome back for another episode.
Today, we are going to take a deep look into what psychology has to say about the healing power of nature.
Nature, the outdoors, is why we are so hard on ourselves.
Like all the time, it feels like this is the generated piece of self -so -racist reasons.
It relieves stress, it allows us to step away from our monotonous routines, it actively rewires our brain in such a positive way and the research and benefits are honestly endless.
And we're gonna talk about all of them because I think it is so profound and the impact that nature can have on our psychological well -being does not get the recognition it deserves.
However, as a generation, I think we have become more and more detached from this natural urge and instinct from our drive towards kind of the will to relentless pursuit of being flawless or perfect.
The other irony of self -criticism that I find really fascinating but also an it addition, most of us living in huge cities and we've become very severed from this innate need.
I've even noticed that in my own life, you know, there are so many days that I just don't go outdoors and that makes me feel so stagnant and unhealthy and just really detached from what I know my brain needs, this like very deep need.
And the consequences of that are becoming so apparent, not just personally and anecdotally, but we're seeing increasing problems with attention, overall life satisfaction, social skills connection.
It's even created rival whereby we are overly self -critical to avoid stepping out of line or acting against a societal norm, really creating a lot of problems.
So today, I want to discuss the studies and the science behind the healing power of nature and how to implement that in our lives.
We're going to look at all the evidence, especially from this new discipline of eco -psychology, but also some of the origins of this understanding from the idea of forest bathing in Japan, forest schools in Scandinavia, and some really amazing techniques and just general philosophies and understanding
from some indigenous cultures in Australia and New Zealand.
What I find particularly that has to do with feeling like we need to earn love, we need to earn support, to earn the good things in our lives and be absolutely perfect or else we're not upgraded into our treatment for mental health symptoms and conditions.
And it just kind of pathologizes us.
We're so preoccupied with finding a label for things and with pharmaceuticals, which definitely have their place, but I think that we've really lost touch with that holistic perspective.
So I also really want to kind of explore how we can integrate exposure to nature into our daily routine, from the big things to the daily rituals and the impact that we might just see on our lifestyle and our emotions, radical self -compassion and cognitive diffusion.
These are both amazing practices and skills that can help us kind of silence that little mean voice in our head.
I'm really keen for that.
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So I really appreciate the support so many of you have already showed me.
Without further ado, let's discuss the healing power of nature and all of the science and psychology supporting our need to reconnect.
I'm so excited. I cannot stress this.
I love having a cheeky drink with friends post -work or a beer with dinner, but this year I have committed to completing dry January to start the new year all fresh.
And to really kind of kickstart the lifestyle I want to have for the next 12 months, Heineken 00 is the perfect companion for this.
One of us has this intuitive understanding that nature is an incredibly vital ingredient for our wellbeing, one that we have become very much detached from due to this increasingly technology based society.
Just, you know, 50, even 40, 30 years ago, we lived in a completely different world in which the outdoors and nature, they were our entertainment.
They were a deeply valuable part of it.
Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at Heineken .com.
You must be 21 plus to purchase.
Enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with dry January.
I think I've recently become quite cognizant of the fact that for the longest time, maybe the majority of my life, to kind of witness, someone said this to me the other day and it kind of like stopped me because I'd never thought about it.
But we are perhaps the last group of people who experienced at least some of our childhood or our lives without screens.
We can still remember running down to the local park after school, riding our bikes around, climbing trees, playing in the mud, all of these really crucial elements of play, how I was so stupid or I'd messed up and then an even louder voice would jump in and scold me for being like that.
And neither of these voices was particularly kind or helpful.
So I've also become really fascinated with the why.
As someone who is obviously really interested in psychology, it can be really hard to not compare to the alternatives of spending hours and hours scrolling on our phones.
That's something that has changed.
And for the first time in humanity's history, we are spending more time indoors.
We have a very limited diversity of experiences.
The other shift that I think is important here is that we're seeing that by 2050, maybe early that explain why we are so hard on ourselves.
So self -criticism, it's this tendency to evaluate ourselves extremely harshly and to scrutinize our actions, our performance, our behavior, our body, our relationship, almost every aspects of our lives.
It's distinct from self -awareness and the occasional self -polly.
Back in 2005, so less than 20 years ago, it claims that humans were spending less time outdoors and this is resulting in a sense of really deep alienation and a wide range of behavioral problems, especially amongst children and objectively, be it excessively negative and maladaptive.
It goes against our best interests and it actually undermines some of that helpful productive behavior and coping mechanisms because this voice is so unnecessarily cruel.
See, is that we believe it.
Unlike, I think, the occasional bad thought about others that we can dismiss or call home, what they're suggesting is that this experience, this trend is really weakening our ecological literacy and that children in this generation, we are caring less and less about the natural world, which is super
problematic when we can our lives is our own.
So it's the one that we trust the most as well.
And finally, D, it negatively impacts our lives.
We may find ourselves skipping social events or going out, not putting ourselves out there, dating people who treat us poorly or ruminating on our failures to a point where we can't move on and we do become stuck in that moment and stuck in that thought spiral.
All of these things, I think, really detract from the now, so much so that researchers have created an entirely new discipline called eco -psychology to examine this very universal experience.
So eco -psychology is interested in understanding how we do the inner critic, this subpersonality, this almost separate unconscious entity that judges and demeans us.
The inner critic is the voice in our head telling us that we are worthless or shaming us.
And it's been theorized that it's actually a manifestation of our ego, more specifically, what Freud called our superego.
So this superego is something that we all kind of develop.
The essential idea is that we have become detached from our evolutionary roots.
And by restoring our connection with our minds, with nature, we can psychologically almost heal some of the modern day things that are impacting a lot of people, regulating our actions.
And that's basically where the inner critic comes from.
It's natural to have this impulse control, right?
To have our ego override some of those extreme impulses, otherwise our society would kind of fall into anarchy.
But when that inner critic is given too much control, instead of moderating certain behaviors, it absolutely paralyzes us.
And I think, dear, the major are several fundamental principles, eco -psychology in general, and I think they're incredibly powerful.
So I'm going to list a few here before we jump into the actual research because I actually think a lot of us innately believe this.
So here are some of the principles.
Firstly, there is against others.
We have no problem celebrating our friends, accepting their failures, overlooking small things, hyping them up, but we cannot treat ourselves in the same way.
There's actually a very rational scientific explanation behind why this may be.
So the theological ego matures towards a sense of ethical responsibility with the planet, and that's something we want to cultivate.
I think it's really interesting, if not quite frustrating, like I said, that this discipline doesn't really get the attention and the love and the credit it deserves.
I think because of this very detached clinical approach to psychology that has dominated the field from either from a place of self -criticism or self -reassurance.
For example, they may have been told that they just received a rejection letter for a job, and they were instructed to either speak kindly to themselves or to self -criticize.
Whilst they were doing this, they had them hooked up to an effort for medical interventions for my mental health.
But I think our discussions should be a lot more nuanced and inclusive of different options and different sources of healing.
Luckily for us, more and more research is being devoted to this.
So I want to cover some of the major studies.
One of the biggest ones was conducted in the UK, and they conducted the study of around 20 ,000 cortex, the part of our brain that is involved in regulating our thoughts and our emotions, but also in error detection and resolution as well as behavioral and psychological well -being than those who don't.
And the cutoff was literally two hours, anything less than that we didn't start to see the same benefits.
Similarly, all these psychiatric unit researchers, they've been finding that being in nature, it has reduced feelings of isolation, it's promoted a sense of calmness, and it's even lifted the mood amongst their patients who are undergoing treatment for various psychiatric disorders.
Actually, the other one has to do with temperament and personality.
The leading theory around why we are so hard on ourselves is that self -criticism is a negative person chance who had to pay for their treatment by doing yard work on the hospital ground.
So they were outside for at least three to four hours, essentially doing manual labor in nature to pay for their treatment.
They actually recovered faster than the wealthier patients who could afford the cost of treatment and who kind of just walked around inside and stayed inside for much of the day.
That really flips what we would typically see.
It's also worth noting this is an observation, this isn't a study, but it is kind of backed up by more of those experimental conditions, how we were raised, and that really leads into what I think is one of the biggest determining factors and reasons to researchers examined the influence of local green
environments on people in cities and large communities, large concrete communities.
And they found that green spaces near schools really promote cognitive development in children.
Even just seeing greenery, they don't even have to be in it, promotes the sense of well -being and emotional and cognitive development.
That's been backed up.
They did this incredibly, I think it is possibly one of the largest longitudinal studies ever conducted.
These researchers in of inherent inadequacy that continue into childhood.
I think it used to be a very common hundred thousand children born between 1985 and 2003.
And they found that those kids who lived in neighborhoods with more green space had a reduced risk of many psychiatric disorders later in life, including depression, mood disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders.
I will say one of the things that really I think conflates with that finding, or maybe as an extraneous variable, is the influence of wealth.
People who make more money can afford to buy homes with backyards or in really affluent suburbs where they have well -maintained public parks.
And obviously, as we see that we're embarrassing, that we're worthless, these things become part of our belief system and part of our self -concept, going to cure someone's major mood disorder.
But it is something to note, and I think it's part of that larger tapestry of evidence.
We've also seen that people assigned to public housing units in the neighborhood with more green space showed better attention or functioning than those assigned to units with less access to natural environments.
And just being exposed to nature, it really improves things like our working memory.
Whilst exposure to urban environments, particularly through childhood to adulthood, is linked to attention deficits, may be excellent at all of them, our standards for ourselves are incredibly out of proportion to what we're sustainably able to accomplish.
But yet our sense of self has been helped to reduce things like crime and aggression.
Back in 2015, also in the UK, they're really pushing a lot of this research at the moment.
They conducted a study on 2 ,000 people, and they found that more exposure to the natural environment translated into more community cohesion and substantially lower crime rates.
Once again, we have to think about the other variables there, things like wealth, but all of these findings are just combining to show that nature is an integral part of our well -being, of our physical health events, or a set of conditions.
Love is conditional on our ability to meet some standard.
It's not freely given.
In contrast, we have unconditional positive regard.
And that means loving someone, supporting them, kind of show the diversity of the impacts.
It's not just about our psychological well -being, but it's about sense of community.
It's about physical health.
It's about loneliness.
The list is like, honestly, endless.
This is just like a minor cross -section of all that is going into kind of pushing the field of eco -psychology along.
However, the idea that nature has these innate healing properties is by no means a new one.
It has a really rich and diverse history that it is our actions that caused us to be neglected, our actions that caused love and praise to be withheld.
Something about us is wrong.
Something about us is bad.
And we carry that with us for a long, long time.
Like I always say the biological reductionism, it's always looking for some internal pathological origin of a lot of our problems, rather than looking externally to what's happening in our environment that might be making us feel this way.
And for many, many years, there has been this amazing amount of knowledge in a lot of Indigenous and non -Western cultures that has been claiming that, that has been saying that.
So what I really want to focus on next is what are the feedback of others, and they don't even need to be there or be saying those things for you to still think about them, for you to still believe them.
I remember back in, like, I don't know, a couple years ago, I was dating this guy right when I started this podcast.
I think I was like six months into recording in this industrialized world.
How do we integrate these practices into our very busy lives?
I know it's very easy for me to kind of stand up on this podium or my soapbox and be like, we need to spend more time in nature.
But I know a lot of us are like, that is so unrealistic.
So let's talk through how we can actually do that.
It's a lot easier than we think.
So all of that and more in just a second.
I loved that person.
I, unfortunately, trusted his opinion.
And some part of me truly did believe him and took that so deeply and so to heart.
And I think it was in the aftermath of that situation that I became particularly negative towards myself and, and quite self deprecating self deprecation is as it has 0 .0 % alcohol.
So I can still socialize, enjoy myself, get out there without feeling like I'm missing out.
Plus, it genuinely actually tastes very, very delicious.
My fridge is now stocked with Heineken 00 and friends of mine will even join me for an evening or for an afternoon going alcohol free.
If you are also taking part in January, downgrade our achievements.
But really, that's actually just out in a critic, masking us as being humorous or being humble.
At the end of the day, it's still a negative self evaluation, even if you're joking.
There's another explanation proposed by researchers that we adopt self deprecation in an attempt to appear more modest and seem really agreeable.
But I think the idea emerged in Japan in the early 1980s.
And the purpose was to literally take time to bathe in nature.
It's not about exercise, it's not about trying to count your calories or get fit or hiking or jogging, but connecting with mechanism against the judgment of others.
Sometimes I think we can even use it in some ways as a form of motivation.
If you naturally have a negative self perception, telling yourself you're awful and that you're going to fail, for some people, I think it can compel them to perform, to do better, to be better.
That's not a particularly sustainable way of motivating ourselves though, because when we fail, we just reinforce that this practice improved sleep quality, mood, reduced stress levels.
There's a really good book on this very practice, it's called Forest Bathing, How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness.
A friend gave it to me last year, maybe a couple years ago, and it's really incredible.
It's been your negative self appraisal, it's not going to make you love yourself anymore.
I want to discuss two other reasons why we are so hard on ourselves after this break, as well as some of the best ways to kind of break out of this habit, to liberate us from that really nasty inner voice, telling us we'll never be good enough, we'll never succeed.
So all of that and more in just a second.
You know I love being a spiritual and psychological reconnection with nature.
In a lot of Scandinavian countries, they have these things called forest schools.
In Australia, we call them bush schools.
And essentially, the premise is that the perfect companion for this journey, because it has 0 .0 % alcohol, so I can still socialize, enjoy myself, get out there, without feeling like I'm missing out, plus it genuinely actually tastes very, very delicious.
My fridge is now stocked with Heineken 00 and friends of mine will even join me for an evening or for an afternoon, going alcohol free.
If you are also taking part in dry January this year, or just looking for your new favorite drink, Heineken 00 is it.
Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer.
You've always been raised in a really conventional idea of what schooling should be.
This may seem like kind of bizarre, maybe a bit abstract, but I remember spending so much time in that I want to discuss super briefly.
The first is overthinking and overanalyzing, and the second is the power of social comparison as a fuel for our inner critic.
If you listened to my episode on overthinking, it's an absolute favorite of mine, you'll know that it's sometimes possible to almost be too self -aware.
And one of the consequences of me I can remember is like the class pets that we had and like standardized testing.
I'm not saying that I didn't learn important things during that time, but a lot of that could have been elevated.
And I probably would have benefited from a more integrated classroom experience that combined the outdoors, which luckily I was already there for the judgment of others.
It links to this fear of uncertainty firstly, but also our innate evolutionary fear of the opinions of others.
And I think that's really crucial.
Others opinions, they are important.
Let's not discredit that entirely historically.
We needed the approval of others to remain in the in group to be exactly like 20s.
I was like, couldn't stop thinking about children.
We need to talk about that actually.
But sidebar, I've been thinking a lot in terms of the kids that I want to raise someday, and I would want my children to be a little bit wild, to always be a little bit dirty and a little bit messy.
I think there is so much of this recent science that shows how valuable those early in our brain.
It's called the default mode network.
And it helped people survive by aligning their interests with the group norms.
We needed to follow the standards of the group.
We need to constantly monitor our behavior so that if we step out of line, we can correct ourselves before we're ostracized.
That didn't reflect that in my own life.
I will say this idea has existed for a long time and a lot of indigenous cultures have known what Western medicine and psychology is only just figuring out.
And they've known it for thousands and thousands of years.
In Australia, our First Nations people specifically Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are the oldest known civilization on earth.
They have such a deep idea of country and connection to the land.
Look at all of that they've achieved.
Look at them. How do I know that I'm unattractive?
Well, she's beautiful.
I don't look like her.
So I must be unattractive.
I must be ugly. I think that the important thing is to realize that the existence of someone else's value that I read as researching this idea, and it discusses this concept of barefoot healing or earthing that allows us to feel present in nature and acknowledge the interconnectedness between us and kind
of every living thing.
And the Maori people of New Zealand, I know that they also have kind of a similar philosophy and connection to the land.
So many cultures, so many societies have known about this.
So why is it of the universe?
Because that just adds weight to how important our actions and behaviors are.
And therefore how perfect they need to be.
That's not true. No one is looking at you.
I promise we are all just shifts that we see our emotional state and see in our mental well being.
To answer that we need to look at the neural and global structures of the brain and how our brain has evolved to adapt to our environment, specifically the role of this new brain.
When we think about the activities that were crucial for our survival and therefore have the greatest role in the evolution of our brains, these are around things like foraging and hunting.
And both activities obviously occurred in a natural environment.
I wonder if you're thinking about someone else's mistakes a lot, that's really not their problem.
That's a you problem.
And the same goes for other people who are spending their hours just process, constant exposure to new stimuli, a rich environment, and choice options and cost benefit analysis, problem solving.
Crucially what this also meant is that when we were doing this, we were using different parts of our brain and building different synaptic connections that created a larger and more cognitively complex structure that is our current brain.
It's at this point of evolution as we started really I guess old humans, ancient humans, whatever you want to call them, it's childhood bullying, things that we cannot change.
It's really hard to feel like we have agency or control over this thought pattern.
We saw this new brain begin to develop and that is what truly made us human.
That is where we see our identity form, our personality, our social skills, and all of that has evolved within an environment of natural fulfillment.
Therefore the more and more detached we become from these surroundings, the more and more we see those negative mental consequences that we've discussed.
Our modern day environment does not stimulate this same activity or cognitive thrill.
When we're trying to navigate our concrete cities, we're doing monotonous daily and I would hope others do as well because you already see yourself in a better light, you feel more respect for yourself, and you demand that respect.
The kind of attention that is incredibly procedural and automatic.
It doesn't take much from us cognitively or emotionally.
When we think about the comparison between say the use of social media and natural scavenging, social media is designed to hijack our reward system and to give us a very immediate dopamine hit that is highly addictive because it requires much effort but it also gives us less satisfaction.
When we compare that to activities where we are actively curious about our environment to just add more fuel to the fire, I think you can either treat your inner critic as an enemy, you can treat them as an ally, or as neither, as just a thing.
It's just something that means that it lasts for longer.
I have a very particular vitriol towards screens because we have consistently seen that more and more hours and daily exposure to laptops, to phones, it's associated with lower psychological well -being because it is so limited.
Same colors, same apps, same daily activities.
In a natural environment, however, we pay attention more broadly and in a way that is rewarding, which leads to a far more relaxed body and a relaxed mind.
And it's not scary and you can acknowledge it and say hi, be like hi little creature, hi little devil, whatever you want to call it and then ignore it.
It's just like a little critter that lives in your house.
This article in the Harvard updated for a long time.
We see things like increased illnesses, increased sickness, increased blood pressure.
So putting ourselves in nature also reduces our likelihood of developing some of those chronic health problems as well.
There's also been this study floating around social media recently, which claims that seeing water improves our mental health.
I will admit I was a bit skeptical because anytime I see psychological studies or conclusions online that goes around negative thoughts and it also promotes psychological flexibility or the capacity to be aware and open and to adapt to your changing emotional circumstances.
You know, it's not your thoughts do not own you.
That's what cognitive changes our brainwave frequency and can put us in almost a mild meditative state.
Water seems to have this specifically psychologically restorative effect.
Maybe it's because of the sunlight, less polluted air, but we know that it significantly improves our mood and our mental well -being.
And finally, nature offers novelty.
When we are used to our habitual patterns and it kind of has a healing element to it.
When we love others deeply, we can heal them.
We can alleviate what they're going through.
And when we direct that compassion and love towards ourselves, we can heal ourselves and stop being so hard on ourselves.
We do this by emulating the country, this healing power of nature.
It's the newness. It's the break from the usual that stimulates this ancient evolutionary need.
So how do we integrate this, especially when our lives are so busy?
And for those who are living in cities, we are in these highly developed environments.
I think it's all about what you choose to prioritize.
The easiest thing we can do is what is most convenient with just and direct them towards yourself.
Speak kind words, say two things to yourself every day that are positive.
Tell yourself that you are proud of how far you've come.
Tell others that you are proud of yourself, as you would say that you are proud of your friends or your family members.
I would also say, make time to spend with your thoughts.
You're prepared to live.
Plan a weekend trip, a weekend hike with your friends.
Make it an exciting activity to kind of look towards and carry you through the week.
The other thing is to make like a bit of a bucket list of local nature spots, beaches, picnic locations, or just make the time to do and it counteracts that negative self -image.
You know, let's adapt those further.
Buy yourself a little treat every now and again.
Not because you've worked hard for it, not because you've been quote, unquote, good, but because you deserve to have nice things.
You deserve to feel happy.
Make your bed in the morning.
Clean your room in the evening because you know that your future self will thank you.
This activities. One thing I love doing is planning trips with a big group of friends that are based around nature.
The best kind is a coast trip.
Everyone loves a coast trip.
Everyone loves a little beach holiday and you'll also get the benefit of breaking up your usual environment with this natural no flight mode and it helps us feel safe and calm and we can physically self -soothe and create that same reaction by doing things like placing one hand over our heart and the other
hand over our shoulder and just giving a tight squeeze or caressing our own face.
That is radical self -compassion.
It's saying you don't need to earn the love that you give yourself.
It is freely given.
It is yours. If you don't see how this relates to minimizing your inner credit time is consumed with work.
How is it even possible to get that necessary outdoor time?
It's all about the small habits, the daily rituals, finding a way to program nature into your everyday routine.
We all eat lunch to find a way to eat or an intense pressure to prove yourself or bullying, but when you institute radical self -compassion, you give yourself the permission that maybe others haven't given you to feel good, to celebrate yourself, to be loved and before we ask others to do that for us
we need to find a way to reach that conclusion and deliver that feeling on an individual level and there have been so many experiments that have shown self -compassion reduces.
I also want to take a quick moment here to shout out some of my favorite books and further resources on this topic because if you have not noticed, I'm very obsessed with this concept and this entire idea of eco -psychology at the moment.
These are to do a bit of a mental and social detox.
Sometimes it's the things in our environment that are causing us to be excessively negative.
Maybe a particularly strained toxic friendship or a bad habit that is bringing forward a lot of guilt.
So do a bit of a stock of your life.
What feels good? What doesn't?
What is creating a negative thought spiral is not nature itself but that motivation to actually be present and I don't know what it is about this film, but every time I watch it I just have this urge to go and hike like the Pacific Crest Trail.
It's a must watch and finally Losing Eden by Lucy Jones.
Who are you interacting with?
What are you eating?
All of those little things really do contribute to our self -image on a day -to -day basis.
Also, further to that idea kind of of not treating self -criticism like an enemy, another way to bring it under our control is to almost counterintuitively give ourselves the occasional permission because that is a bit cool, but I just think that nature is such an amazing psychological tool and resource that we
don't often use. So some food for thought if you will.
I really enjoyed this episode.
I want to talk about this a lot more so maybe we'll do a part two.
We'll never know. If you have an episode suggestion as always please feel free to follow me at that psychology break.
I gave myself five minutes.
I did that. I let myself feel bad.
I let myself be cruel and that part of my day is done.
Those thoughts are going to remain in that moment and my life is going to go on.
It's also important to just be neutral towards your thoughts especially as they relate to your perceived failures or any fallings, access to bonus content, so many good things and as always if you feel compelled to do so please feel free to leave a five -star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're
listening right now and share with a friend.
You never know who it will benefit.
So thank you so much for listening along, tagging along today with this episode.
We will be back next week for another one because I think something about myself does not make it true and I think all of those practices are incredibly liberating.
We deserve to have a peaceful mind.
I think we can be our own worst enemy.
We can really take on the Fnyen for dry January because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for dinner with friends, out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals.
I'm a big beer fan so I also love the taste of Heineken 00 plus being alcohol free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls.
Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at Heineken .com.
You must be 21 plus to purchase.
Enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with dry January.
Had the internet but it was always in one corner of the house on the computer and now suddenly we can walk around every day with a phone glued to our hands and if at any point we want to feel bad, we want to judge ourselves, we can find a million ways to do that.
We can look at a million different pictures of other people's perfect lives and perfect bodies and perfect jobs and just feel inherently really crappy.
So I don't think that that is forever.
I think that's something that we can act out against and we can push back against and I just hope that this episode gave you some valuable insight firstly and psychoeducation but also some tips and some strategies.
Like I said, radical self -compassion, life -changing.
So life -changing. Cognitive diffusion also incredible.
So this episode was definitely one that I really enjoyed researching and putting together.
As always if you enjoyed it and you think someone in your life might enjoy it as well, please feel free to send them a link to this episode.
You never know what they'll take from it.
Also again I'm going to plug the Patreon because I would love to see more of my loyal listeners over there.
You get access to, you know, bonus episodes, bonus content and newsletter.
All of the episode transcripts you can vote on upcoming episodes, free merch, and it's as little as one dollar a month so it goes a long way when a lot of people contribute.
I'll leave a link in the episode description and please feel free to leave a five -star review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now.
If you did enjoy this episode, we will be back next week.
I will see you then.
This year I've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so I decided to commit to dry January to really kickstart 2025 and just test myself.
Heineken00 is the perfect companion for dry January because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for dinner with friends, out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals.
I'm a big beer fan so I also love the taste of Heineken00 plus being alcohol -free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls.
Heineken00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at Heineken .com.
You must be 21 plus to purchase, enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with dry January.