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Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your twenties.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to another episode of the psychology of your twenties.
New listeners, old listeners.
It's so great to have you here.
Thank you for tuning in.
Each week we like to know in all seriousness it is actually one of my favorites.
I know I say that every time, but every time I get the opportunity to really dive into a topic like this, especially one that is relevant to my life, which is what I always try and do, is find something that I can personally relate to.
It is just such a valuable experience.
So that was the case with this episode.
And before we get into the content, I just want to thank everyone who I'm happy that's feeling that things aren't going particularly well.
Feeling a bit blue, feeling a bit down.
I think our twenties are such a tumultuous decade, but they're also such an amazing decade.
And sometimes, I don't know if you've had this experience, I definitely have.
We look around at our lives and everything is going according to plan.
Everything is going perfect.
We have an amazing family.
We have friends. It would be amazing if you checked it out.
No pressure. Just if you really love the show, it's a really easy way to support me.
And let me continue doing what I love.
I've also recorded this intro about seven times today because I'm all over the place.
I'm all over the place.
So please excuse me if I mumble and jumble.
As indicators of happiness and indicators of success, something just doesn't feel quite right.
I think that is such a common shared experience of those of us who are in our twenties right now.
And often what accompanies that feeling that feeling that we're not happy despite having every reason to be is a sense of guilt and shame for not being grateful enough.
A sense of confusion, what's wrong with me that I can't fully appreciate and be in the present and feel grateful for entering into our careers.
So this feeling of unease is definitely one that I would expect many of us to have perhaps already experienced.
Hence unhappiness. So if that is you, I really hope that this episode allows us to kind of break down some of the stigma and some of the confusion and the ambiguity around how normal it is to go through periods like this and kind of break away from that sense of guilt and shame that accompanies it.
I think we can't always control our emotional reactions and our emotional state the same way that we can't always control our external world, the external stresses and expectations that are placed on us.
So for those of us who are asking that very question right now, why am I not happy?
This episode is figure out what you're doing, whether you're currently working or studying towards a dream career or job and you're just not sure if it's what really motivates you.
This is what that episode is really trying to nail down.
I think there are so many ways we can feel like the career and professional aspects of our lives and our aspirations are not what they should be and are causing us unease or anxiety, fear, unnecessary worry, especially in this day and age.
The opportunities for our professional and working lives are seemingly endless.
So how do we know that we're pursuing the right path and doing what we actually love to do?
There are so many points of comparison today for what we should be doing, what others are doing.
The question of like why am I not happy?
Why am I not happy?
Like I should. So if this is you, hopefully we can dispel some of that anxiety today and remind ourselves collectively, all of you listening right now, that life is long, life is more than work and there are opportunities in your future that I think none of us could ever fathom and it will surprise
you and allow you to live your dream life maybe even better than your dream life and above all we're going to talk about the psychology behind feeling anxious when it comes to what are we actually doing?
What does our job mean for us?
What is it about work and our careers?
This like really amazing moment just isn't really sinking in and it's kind of an awful feeling.
I like will admit I'm kind of struggling at the moment and I'm sure there are many of those of you who are out there who are listening to this who are struggling as well.
I think that I'm so very excited to jump into it and thank you again for tuning in.
So personally and from personal experience I think it is really easy for us to get caught up in social comparison when it comes to our careers and when it comes to our working lives.
It's I think comparison in general is a huge killer of joy for why we're unhappy.
So let's talk about it.
Let's talk about what it feels like when everything is going right but we still can't seem to really appreciate that moment.
That's what we're going to discuss today.
Why do we find ourselves in periods of unhappiness or so -called depressive seasons and what is the psychological explanation behind that?
We're going to talk about what it means to be with your friends and feeling like everyone else seems to be really happy with where they are and I'm not.
And this theory that explains this so perfectly is social comparison theory and it suggests that people value their own personal and social and professional worth by assessing in a healthy way, in a way that is sustainable, in a way that is validating of our emotions and our experiences.
We're all about vulnerability here but we're also all about growth.
So if this is you, if you relate to any of the things that I've talked about, you're in the right place, strap in, I'm excited.
Let's learn some things.
Let's be a little bit miserable, be a little bit sad together today and hopefully come out the other end.
So I think it's pretty appropriate to professional lives.
I know LinkedIn. LinkedIn is, I think, a huge culprit in this more frequent and more prevalent sense of unease when it comes to our working capacity.
Now I think the thing that's really interesting about happiness is that it's one of those weird phenomena when we only really know it and can recognize happiness when we feel it and we only really are conscious of it during its absence.
There are so many periods in life where we're neither happy, we're neither sad and we don't really seem to think about it much but it's during those low points and during those really high points that we're quite, you know, happiness is really on our mind and we're really thinking about it.
I think happiness is also really hard to create artificially, you know, we might try through self -care and exercise and eating healthily and receiving physical touch and support and comfort from our loved ones.
We don't look at ourselves as singular beings, we don't appreciate our own accomplishments, we have to kind of assess them in regards to others and I really think that there is this kind of sense of expectation that we have to have it all together especially when we're young and I remember I went into
my final year of uni with no internships.
I wasn't obviously working a job that I loved and I had this feeling like the career I'd always wanted, you know, working in politics or as a journalist.
It wasn't really feeding my ambition and everyone around me seemed to have these massive goals and these incredible opportunities and I couldn't grasp on to anything that felt permanent or meaningful in my life especially in the absence of sadness, the absence of struggle or does it mean, you know,
a lot of pleasure or material.
It's really hard for those of us who have always been high achievers, always gotten really great grades, been slightly ahead of the curve and that social comparison when we're looking around and seeing people doing amazing things can be quite deadly and really undercut that sense of personal accomplishment
but there were some really important lessons I learned during that time.
Firstly, absolutely everyone is faking it, like I'm promising you.
No one really knows what they're doing with their career or where their aspirations are going to take them, especially in our 20s.
Our 20s are about learning and making mistakes.
It's the golden decade that we conceptualized or composed of two different things.
It wasn't just one feeling, it was both pleasure and a sense of life that is well lived and we needed both of those, both immediate pleasure and also a sense of purpose to be happy.
I think that really make concerning our careers and our jobs and our professional lives I don't actually think of because we actually want to do them or we feel like they'll make us happy.
You know, taking internships, applying for jobs that are going to pay us little and require more hours than we want to give, you know, of course there are some opportunities that are just incredible and we should definitely leap at but a lot of the time the path that we are on has in some way been selected
for us by those around us and by the same way, you know, if we have this really intense mission, this thing that we're working towards but we don't allow ourselves to have those small pleasures throughout the day, it's going to be pretty hard to be happy in that instance as well.
I think they both contribute equally and there's also that other element of happiness requires even a deeper feeling of being safe and secure in order to be achieved and then linked in but all of that really doesn't matter.
It really doesn't matter if you're feeling behind right now, feeling a bit lost, feeling a bit stuck at a crossroads or maybe you're just simply unhappy with what you're doing.
I just want to remind you and I will remind you again, society has repeatedly told us a narrative since childhood and this hierarchy and at the bottom was our most simplistic basic needs, you know, things like food and clothing and shelter and then there was safety, so things like job security, being,
you know, not threatened, not having this sense of impending doom, love and belonging, you know, we need friendship, we need family and then there was those kind of high top of the tier components of happiness, esteem and self -actualization and only when we achieved those bottom components.
Some of the greatest struggle and the greatest stress based on the survey from anxiety disorders association of America whilst only about 9 % of individuals are living with a diagnosed needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before we can attend to the needs that are higher up.
This model I think can explain why happiness can be so difficult to find and why it is sometimes not just elusive but actually quite, yeah not just elusive but actually quite difficult, you know, we, it's really hard to be attending to every single aspect of this day in and day out.
I think sometimes we also see happiness as material and as the physical contents of our lives, we're satisfied when we have a good job, when we have heaps of friends, a place where we feel safe and money to spend things and someone who is experiencing anxiety and even, you know, maybe a level of distress
that's specifically associated with performing your tasks at your job, attending your job or going into work, you might feel symptoms that are very similar to an anxiety disorder and symptoms that might be interrupting your life and making you feel quite awful, you know, taking an unusual amount of time
off that is such a huge indicator that you might be dissatisfied with your work, focusing too much on the negative aspects of your job, struggling to complete tasks or overreacting, worrying too much, you might also feel a lot of anticipatory anxiety before you go to work and just a general sense of fatigue,
like something isn't right, insomnia, an exaggerated startle reaction, not being able to, we look for an internal explanation, often to do with the work environment that was hostile, unpleasant, you know, had really high stakes, these experiences, these symptoms might be very common to you, might be
something that you know a lot about.
For example, I used to work at this steak restaurant when I was at uni, yes, I'm a woman of many hats and it became such an unpleasant environment and was so awful and just like exhausting and draining that the few weeks before I quit, I think I must have called in sick at least three to four times,
and it's a really natural way of coping with anxiety, it's a really normal coping mechanism when completely normal, you know, without sadness, we wouldn't be able to experience the, you know, the joys of life, it's important to put things into perspective, but it's also an important part of our brain and an important
part of our emotional spectrum to use.
You're probably not very happy, you're probably not fulfilled or respected, and it's time for a change, there's something in you that's really saying hey like this isn't for us, I know this is what's expected of us, I know I have these conflicting feelings about why I'm here, but maybe this environment
isn't for me, and maybe I would be better able to learn somewhere else.
When we talk about anxiety that is associated with work and our careers, there are these two other types of anxiety that I think of that can be overcome even when we try, it's not something to do often with our circumstances, it's something a lot deeper, and I think the difference between sadness and a depressive episode
or depression is that sadness can often be treated, you know, sadness is an emotional state, whereas depression is a mental disorder, and when it's left untreated, stay or to leave, a job or a career path, they're kind of this inbuilt reactions that's really directed towards the environments that we're
most often in, and especially our work environments.
So I'm going to explain them a little bit now, and while I do, I want you to think about the situation you might be struggling with and how this might apply.
Often we like to say that it's a chemical imbalance, that's one kind of begin with, it's the fear that arises when you realize you might have to take a risk to change your path and to achieve the goals that are related to your career and your professional life.
I think that is quite a simplistic explanation, depression doesn't just spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals, there are many other causes, you know, external causes as well, and there are so many forces in our lives that can kind of impact us to go through periods
of not just intense sadness but intense unhappiness, and chemicals are definitely involved, I think sometimes if I'm looking for an explanation it can be the right one.
We need neurotransmitters and chemicals in our brains to allow us to function, and when those chemicals aren't at the right level, I'm just going to fade away, I'm going to be you know another fly on the wall at this workplace, and it's the fear of experiencing the intense really toes onto something
else. I think another word is restless like a survival, it's like we've exhausted this resource option to move on.
So for survival anxiety, your arms are stronger than your intake anxiety when you desire to kind of move on and repeat, for a strong fear of explaining that fear of something something new and getting it right, I think that when you're in the right place, try that you are probably going to move on,
time to look for a job or consider a career.
And just and this example of that feeling of the pool of morning or leaving didn't you know, happy press place or an answer is really interesting and talks about this a little bit further.
But experience at some point, I'm sure most of you, you know, for most of you, it is an experience you probably may have had.
I don't think I can think of anyone who has stayed in their job, you know, their first job for their entire life, unless you're like a nun or something.
And even if you're technically performing the same role, like you're a barista or a doctor, we all need a change in environment, you know, humans get bored really easily.
And our motivations and our desires change just as frequently.
So if an environment or if a job or a career path even isn't suiting you right now, what's stopping you from changing?
Feel positive and feel like what you're doing with your life is making an impact.
If we think about climate change, if we think about, you know, all the wars that are going on at the moment, if we think about things that are happening happening in Iran skills, you get to learn what opportunities you get to have.
So I imagine for some of you listening, you are at this very crossroads right now, maybe you've been at uni for a couple years and you're like, fuck, I actually really don't like this course.
I don't like this, you know, what I'm learning, I don't actually think it's for me.
That can be really scary.
But once that learning anxiety overcome, you know, once the survival anxiety, sorry, overcomes your learning anxiety, you're really able to ask yourself, you know, what is the worst case to our ecosystems and to our way of life?
What's the point of, you know, giving a fuck?
What's the point of trying if life is kind of inherently pointless?
That can be a really dark place to go to.
And sometimes we don't even consciously realize when the negativity we see in the media and from the news is kind of getting into our brain.
So I'm going to take a little break here because I want to talk about our next partner on the show.
Our next partner has a product that I've been using quite literally every day for the past few months.
So I started taking AG1 for a number of reasons.
So if you are an avid listener of podcasts, such as myself, you may have heard of this brand.
It's called Athletic also elevates all the horrible things that are going on in the world.
And it creates this really kind of inorganic second world for us to live in, where everything is heightened, everything is intense.
And that also has to do with comparison and this internal comparison game we play.
It can be really hard to, you know, be happy with where you are and to be happy with what you have when we're constantly playing this internal comparison game and comparing our experience and minerals you might need for the day.
It's great for your nervous system, it's great for your immune system, your energy levels, your focus.
All things I think we kind of want in our twenties and when we're young and we want our bodies to be healthy and energized, readiness and our sense of satisfaction and social media makes that so much easier to do.
Every day we're kind of forced to see these like amazing lives of our friends and celebrities and people that we know.
And it's a highlight reel, like I don't need to say that I think everyone knows it's a highlight reel of other people's lives and all the amazing things they're doing.
And it can be really easy to sit back at the end of the day and think, why is my life not that perfect?
Why don't I have this?
Why don't I have these experiences?
And it can be a huge contributor to the sense of unhappiness in our twenties.
A community which I think is important for really any brand that talks about health.
We obviously care about our own lives for huge, massive life changes and transitions, relationships ending, losing loved ones, moving cities, losing jobs.
These things really destabilize our life and are some of the most stressful times that we will ever experience.
There have been so many studies that have shown that things like moving even or losing someone or a breakup are potentially some of the most stressful things that you will experience.
And it takes a toll on our lives, it takes a toll on our happiness levels and our sense of stability and security.
So I think you need to perhaps be gentle with yourself if you're listening to this episode being like, I'm so ultimate daily nutritional insurance.
Now, like many of the topics we discuss on the show, the complexities are vast and it's very hard to touch on everything we might want to discuss, but for the second half of the episode, I really want to talk about that feeling of not being where you think you should be in your career, imposter syndrome
and some of the existential dread that can accompany that experience where your work doesn't really align with what you perceive as your high mission or your purpose.
Not all of us, I think, have the luxury of being able to do what we truly love, our passion for our course.
Our outlook as well determines so much of our emotional experiences and our emotional state.
I think there are some people out there who are just genuinely more pet.
The anxieties that we might be feeling there are things that we can manage and reinforce that idea that we repeat time and time again throughout this episode, that work is not your life.
I think that final point of imposter syndrome and of the idea of comparing success is one that I'm really excited to discuss.
For those of you who know this podcast is not my job, at least it's not my full -time job, I actually work full -time as a health consultant.
So that kind of balancing act between feeding myself and feeling confident versus when things go right for you.
If things go wrong, do you think about it as, this is my fault.
Do you put it all down to an internal explanation of I am to blame, this is on me.
Then when things go right, is your explanation around luck, around doing enough or that we're not on the right path.
So how do we overcome that feeling?
It's such a messy feeling, it's an uncomfortable feeling, and it really is based in social comparison.
I think the main thing I like to remind myself is that success is really relative, it's subjective.
It isn't our human nature to define ourselves in terms of others.
We know who we are by comparing ourselves.
Definitely ones that we have to do a bit of soul -searching about.
I think a biological explanation is one of them for sure.
I think that's something I've been able to recognise is that sometimes our brains just don't produce what we need them to, and the kind of ripple on effects of that can be periods of really bad depression or periods of sadness.
If that's something that you think you might be going through, there are ways to get over that, but there are also ensures that we never feel successful.
We have to instead measure our goals and our progress to the past instead of someone else's present.
We aren't actually in the same race, no two people are ever going to be the same, and instead of looking around and being like, okay, that whole atmosphere as well can really impact our mental health in some very deeply unseen ways.
And then there's things on a smaller scale, but that are just as impactful like social media, like comparison.
Comparison is kind of the thief of joy, and with the rise in popularity of social media, the ease of being able to see every moment of other people's lives, it can really create quite a negative and toxic cycle that leaves us feeling really uneasy and really unhappy.
I will say sometimes data kind of overcome that sense that our successes, you know, are never going to be big enough that our career isn't taking off, that we're not doing to be unhappy and not have an explanation for it.
But sometimes it's important to go through periods of sadness.
I think that's why we listen to sad songs.
I don't know, maybe you're not someone who likes to do that, but there is some kind of strange pleasure in the pain of listening to music that pulls at our heartstrings, or that allows us to feel a little bit sorry for ourselves.
There are some explanations around that, you know, it makes us feel nostalgic, but it also feels really human.
It feels comforting that you can relate to someone else's experiences the way that they can relate to you.
You know, it feels so much less alone when you're going through something really hard.
You're in a period of deep unhappiness or sadness, and you're able to hear that someone else has been through that.
But you were in the past and where you are now, and kind of seeing how far that we have come.
And it's a really great way to no longer make those comparisons between ourselves and other people when it comes to our work lives and our professional lives.
And I think let's link, I think like really very much linked to this is forgetting to look back and forgetting to understand how our dreams change over time.
Yes, obviously we can look back at our younger selves and be like, Oh, look how far we've come.
But I also want you to think about what did you want to do when you were 12 or when you were 15 or 16 or 17 or 22.
Or if you're, you know, a bit later in your 20s, what about to understand because we've never been through them before.
And the pressure that puts on our ability to adapt on our resilience and on our brains and our outlooks and our perspectives and said to me once which really stuck with me is this idea of the paradox of comparison.
For someone else, you're actually living their dream life right now.
What you have achieved is their idea of success.
And to others, there's someone else who's looking at you thinking you're absolutely amazing.
And we've mentioned this with the social comparison theory at the beginning, but we really are hard wired to compare our professional actions and our professional and career accomplishments and successes to others.
And that makes sense.
It really does make sense.
It allows us to understand our place in society, people, people who seemingly have everything, or maybe you don't, but you know, having your roof over your head and food and, you know, food in your belly and clothes on your back.
Sometimes I think it's this sense of almost we're not allowed to feel bad.
We're not allowed. Okay, this is a scientific definition.
So take it with a grain of salt, but downward social comparison occurs when we compare ourselves to others, who we perceive as being worse off than us.
I don't like that term worse off because I don't think anyone is ever worse off.
You know, we're alive.
We're breathing. We are loved.
How can that be bad?
But people who, maybe a few steps behind where we are, who want to be where we are.
And obviously we want to dispel the idea of social.
Emotional states, like I said, sometimes just as much, even if less in our control is our external environment.
There are so many things that are interacting in our brains and in our bodies and in our external worlds that impact our moods and impact our emotional states on a daily.
So you don't need to feel a sense of guilt if you're not happy enough right now.
If you're not appreciative.
Show has come particularly in audio quality, I will say.
But aside from that imposter syndrome can really go hand in hand with career anxiety in so many ways.
The phrase imposter syndrome, it refers to a feeling very similar to social comparison, but I think a lot more.
So talking about this whole episode, how do we curate our lives to be focused on happiness and focused on the achievement of happiness and joy and gratitude?
That's what we're going to talk about in the next segment of this episode.
Something that is so important to remember is that everything is temporary.
Every experience, every emotional experience is completely temporary.
The same goes for unhappiness.
The same goes for sadness.
Starting out in our chosen field and we're trying to get our footing.
Perhaps you're listening to this and you're in your first full -time job or your first internship or your first foot.
But when it comes to periods like this one where you might be really unhappy with things, just like aren't looking up when you're really stuck in a rut, it's kind of a really amazing reminder that life promises you that things will change.
And hopefully it can't get much worse.
Like there really is up there.
The only way really is up.
And there are things that you can do to help yourself get there.
So many things. We always say this on the show.
You have agency. You have the ability to make small changes in your life.
And although periods of sadness and periods of depression even or unhappiness aren't always within our control, there are things we can do to kind of ease the pain a little bit.
And that's what I want to talk about.
Even when told otherwise, that sometimes we can self -sabotage and we can give up on things before we've even given it a go because of that self -doubt, because we feel like a fraud, because we feel like we're not where we should be, that we don't belong here.
All of these mental phenomenon we have spoken about when we were talking about career anxiety are such a complicated cocktail of experiences.
And it's so hard to break them down because I think whilst all of us might feel a little bit of apprehension about where we are in our professional lives, it can manifest in such a different way for everyone.
But all of them can really leave us feeling uneasy, like we're heading down the wrong path.
So once again, I want to remind you of that one crucial lesson that I want all of you to do, someone who is eligible for a certain program or is eligible for therapy or psychological assistance through work, you should absolutely, indeed it's probably not even the top three, think about all the other
things that make you who you are and contribute to a happy, brilliant life, the relationships and love you create, how you treat others, your family, your health, your hobbies and passions, your mission, your memories, moments of profound happiness.
All those things sound a lot more important to me than whether you're ahead of Nancy on LinkedIn or whether this job is really what you want.
So if you are experiencing career anxiety at the moment and wondering who bring their own assessments of you and perceptions of you into any conversation about mental health or any conversation about what's going on in your life, but a therapist is not the same.
They don't have that same bias or those same preconceived notions of things that either.
And if you're having a hard time adapting, maybe this is a learning experience that you will grow from and adapt to until it's time for the next challenge.
Society, especially in this day and age, has become so focused on work and our careers and our success over life.
But work is not the content of a happy life.
It's just an element.
And sometimes it can be really useful to take a step back, like I said, to show you get to talk about whatever you want to talk about, free of judgment.
And we don't always get that opportunity.
I think also they provide you with some amazing strategies for changing your outlook and changing daily habits in your life that might help you out.
I do want to say I really hate this idea of almost toxic positivity or lifestyle changes as a way to get better if you're going through a hard period.
Passive, complicated anxiety that's eating away at us, fed by social comparison and work anxiety and imposter syndrome.
And until we're able to break it down and identify what it is we're worried about, why we don't feel like we belong, why we feel like we're behind, why we feel like we're doing and if you don't spend time outside and drinking off water and take care of your body, but that's not always going to be the solution.
And like we said, this episode is really about those times when you are doing all of those things.
You're doing everything right and you still don't feel completely okay.
So I do really want to dispel this idea that simple lifestyle changes are going to cure everything you're going through.
Sometimes that is, you know, the simplest explanation isn't the best one.
And sometimes it's not always in our control, but it's also, yeah, it really does blow my mind.
So I'm so grateful and thank you as always.
I'd also invite you to follow the psychology of your 20s on Instagram.
There is something to be said about finding small joys throughout your day and reflecting on them, especially when you feel like things aren't really going your way.
Like you have this inexplicable kind of black cloud lingering over your head.
You can decide to think about what's going right.
Think about what there is to be grateful for.
And it's not in a way of shaming yourself or making yourself feel guilty for not appreciating those things before.
It's just a nice reminder.
Sometimes when we're kind of stuck in the mud and we're kind of stuck in the dark times of our lives, it can be really difficult to poke our heads up and really survey the landscape and survey our lives from an honest perspective and realize how much haste 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.
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Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life?
Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human?
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For another day, make you feel grateful for the life that you live.
I remember I think when I was going through a hard period at the start of the year, one day the only thing that I was grateful for was like a chicken salad, which is so sad.
I was like, Oh, I'm so grateful for this chicken salad.
But you know what? How beautiful is that that I was able to find just that one thing and it was so simple.
It was so basic. And I think about it quite a lot like that.
It's such a beautiful practice to put your mind to.
I also think it's important to recognise the environmental and social and cultural factors in our lives that may be contributing to unhappiness.
Specifically, things that are pulling us down, whether that is toxic relationships or toxic friendships or a toxic workplace, you don't have to stay in environments and in relationships that don't allow you to grow.
You don't have to stay in stressful situations that are taking away from your ability to live the life you want to live.
This is your life. You really only get one of them.
So if there is something like that in your life, something that is wearing you down, something that you think is subconsciously or consciously making you feel sad or making you unhappy or making you stressed, you're allowed to change that.
You're allowed to say no, and you're allowed to remove those things from your life.
There's also a lot to be said about this practice of almost scheduling happiness and scheduling pleasure into your life.
It's a psychological practice.
I think that's what it's called.
I think it's called gratitude scheduling or pleasure scheduling.
So essentially, you schedule activities throughout your week and throughout your day that you know are going to make you happy.
So be that signing up for a gym class in three days, that's something to look forward to or saying to yourself, oh, if I go into the office or if I see a friend today or if I leave my house today and go for a walk, I'm going to let myself get a really nice cup of coffee or a really nice sweet treat.
You get to decide the pleasure and happiness that enters into your life.
And it's a really great way to retrain your brain into understanding the agency that you have over your emotional experiences.
And that's not all the time, you know, there are always going to be instances in which things come out of the blue and really traumatic and awful experience happen that destabilize our lives and kind of push us around and shift out and shift our outlook and shift our ability to cope.
But when you build that resilience and when you build those strategies throughout your life to be able to deal with those moments, you will emerge as a stronger person.
Before we wrap up, I do just want to say, I really hope that we talk about this more and that this episode allows you to talk to your family and friends about this more.
I'm going through a period right now where from the outside, I'm sure people think everything is going really amazingly well and for many, many reasons it is and in many ways it is.
But that doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to feel unhappy and that same can be said for you.
You don't always get to control how you feel about experiences and sometimes even when things are going really well, that can be incredibly overwhelming if that's not something that you expect or if it's a real surprise.
You're allowed to be overwhelmed and you're allowed to take time to process your experiences and what's going on in your life and above all else you're allowed to be unhappy but I don't think you have to be.
And if it's something you're seriously struggling with, I think go and get professional help.
There's absolutely no shame in doing that.
I think it's honestly something to be applauded and something that's incredibly brave.
You're deciding for you that you want to be better, that you want to be happier and that is just so incredible.
So rarely do people actively make the choice to put themselves first and to improve their life.
So if you have any doubt or if you have any desire to do it, I would really say go and do it.
Go and do it now. Do it as soon as possible.
And I think that you will really be better for it.
You know, it's probably something I need to do as well.
So it's a good reminder to me.
And I just want to say thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And if this is something you're going through, I'm sending you so much love and so much support and so much strength.
Just by listening to this, I'm sure that you are already thinking about ways to kind of to help yourself.
And I also hope this eases some of your guilt.
You know, it's not always something that you've done and something that you need to change.
There are biological and cultural and environmental and existential things that are impacting us on a daily.
It can be really hard to remain true to a sense of happiness and to achieve happiness in our lives when all these other things are going on and you're doing an amazing job.
So thank you for listening to this episode.
Thank you for supporting the show, each and every one of you.
It's so great to have you here.
And if you do feel inclined, if this was something that you enjoyed, please feel free to leave the show a five star review.
It really helps the podcast grow.
It helps the show grow.
If it's something that you think someone else would benefit from, that would also be amazing.
And as always, I will see you next week for another episode.
Thank you for listening.
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