The Best Advice Show

Cheri Passell runs I Love Italian Movies.com and runs Barbie_Snack on Instagram.--Always Beginning with Norene Cashen - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020105_always-beginning-with-norene-cashen/--To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: My guest today, Cheri Passell, has some advice particularly for woman over 40. But I think it applies to all of us.CHERI: This sounds so trite, but my advice is to never stop dreaming and to dream big. And it's not as trite as it sounds because something happens to woman, woman over 40. It happens to men to but not as much as it does for woman. Woman become pretty invisible. All the sudden you notice when you come into the room, nobody really notices you. I was at a party, my husband's company party that I didn't really want to be at anyway and I thought, oh, nobody really wants to talk to me. I mean people were doing it but you know, like, I wasn't the interesting person to talk to in the room, you know? And I kept thinking, hey, I have lots of really interesting things to talk about! I could see the look in their face. They were thinking, I wish I was over here talking to this person instead. They were kind of looking for an escape route. You know when somebody looks out of the corner of your eye and you think, oh, you're not paying attention to me. You're looking over there at that.ZAK: Yeah, we all know that look. What did that feel like?CHERI: I think for a lot of woman it's pretty devastating. But, it didn't destroy but it made me rethink my life. Lets put it that way.ZAK: In what way?CHERI: My desire to amuse myself has always been greater than my need to please people. So, I just decided to start looking for ways to amuse myself. I think a lot of woman my age thing, it's too late. Particularly my age cause I'm now 64. But even when I was in my 40s I thought, I don't know if I want to use the word re-invent, but it's find out what was still there for me. It's not over yet. I think woman think oh, I should have done this, I should have done that. Well, do it. And I always thought, oh, I should have studied languages in college. And I probably should have but what's stopping me now. So, when I was about 45, I started taking Italian lessons and I started watching Italian movies to improve my Italian and that's when I just became this expert-ish person on Italian Cinema cause I was so into it.ZAK: Cheri became such an enthusiast that she started a blog, ILoveItalianMovies.com.CHERI: And I never thought it would be anything. I think some people are afraid to start things cause they think, I won't be any good. That's not the point. I just wanted to do something that I thought would be fun. But eventually I developed a little audience and now I go to the Venice Film Festival with press credentials every year. I mean, it turned into something. I'm not bragging, honestly.ZAK: I know.CHERI: Everybody should do this. I'm not special. If you find a passion, do it! Just go for it.ZAK: I love it and I love so much this thing that you articulated which I think is really a North Star for, for a good life is, amuse yourself and don't try to please others. That's so big and so hard for so many of us.CHERI: Yeah.ZAK: When Cheri isn't writing about Italian Films. She's running her Instagram account Barbie_Snack which really could only exist for her amusement. But it looks like people really like it. It's so weird and delightful.CHERI: I call myself a Barbie artist.ZAK: Cheri's advice today pairs particularly well with the episode we did called Always Beginning with Norene Cashen. I linked to that in our show notes. If you have some advice for me, give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. And if you can think of someone in your life who might benefit from this episode, consider sending them this episode. Thanks so much. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Michael Strausz is a sourdough enthusiast, baking in Fort Worth, Texas. Starter-Along Sourdough Pizza Recipe | Serious Eats -https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/12/starter-along-sourdough-pizza.htmlTo offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: We've come to the end of another week of The Best Advice Show. It's Food Friday. If you have some food-related advice for me, call me on the hotline at 844-935-BEST.MICHAEL: I mean, it's pretty cliched, but it was during the pandemic, I think a few months in and my spouse, Kate, she started to think, maybe we should try sourdough. So first we tried to make our own starter and we failed. So we gave up on that but then we just borrowed some from a friend. Cause, that's the nice thing about sourdough is that you can share it very easily. So we got some from a friend and we started feeding it. I feel like that was around June. And we've been feeding it and using it a ton ever since.ZAK: It's kind of like a lifestyle.MICHAEL: Definitely a lifestyle. I really like the fact that I can keep this thing alive in my fridge and use it to cook and I really like just the ability to sort of continue to produce my own leavening agent. I think that if it wasn't for the pizza dough and breads that I make with it, including pita bread, it's very good with pita bread by the way. If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't do it. But just being able to have your own leavening agent that you're growing is really enjoyable.ZAK: Do you have a name for yours?MICHAEL: We call it The Animal. And my kids will joke sometimes that I love it more than them, or it's third, after the two of them The Animal is a close third. ZAK: And for those of us who are like, alright, there's too much work. There's this living thing in our fridge. Make the pitch for why we should try this. MICHAEL: So, if it's in the fridge. The work that it takes you to just keep it alive is once again. You get it out of the fridge. You take some out and then you add in, you know, the same amount of water and flour. So, I usually do 100 grams cause I have a kitchen scale. It takes like a minute. You pull a little out. You add the same amount of water and flour and then put it back in the fridge and that keeps it alive and that's it. And then whenever you want to use it, it's there.ZAK: So, I'm gonna include your favorite sourdough recipe in the show notes. What might that be?MICHAEL: It would be the pizza dough. I'll send it to you. It's from Serious Eats.MICHAEL: I'm Michael Strausz. I'm the President of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Education Agency in Fort Worth which runs a pre-school. The Lil Goldman Early Learning Center.ZAK: Thanks for listening to the show. If you're enjoying it, please consider leaving a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. And again, I am hungry for your food advice. Call me at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Stephanie Slagle is Senior Director, Brand Agency and Sales Strategy at Graham Media Group. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:STEPHANIE: Oh hi. I'm Stephanie Slagle. I work with sales teams. ZAK: Stephanie and I work for the same company, Graham Media. She's a gem.STEPHANIE: I'm a very high-energy person. I'm kind of always like, bleeeeeee. I actually had a mentor of mine tell me long, long ago that when someone goes up you go down. And what he meant by that was when the energy level of somebody because they're stressed or concerned or worried and these are all real things...when you're managing people all of these things are real things and their energy and stress and concern level goes up...if you take yours down then you will help them come down. Right? Because it's usually fear or a concern and anxiety that they're challenged with, that gets them to that state. And in the beginning, because I am such a high energy person, I was like, that's crazy! Why would you do that? But over time I started practicing it and so when someone would come in to my office saying, oh my God I lost an account! I physically would get quieter and say, what happened? The very act of taking your voice, your tone and your energy down, they naturally kind of match you and it helps them calm down. ZAK: And have you brought this strategy outside the office?STEPHANIE: I did eventually. Initially it was, I do this at work to kind of help manage things. But now it's become natural to who I am. When there is a big stressful moment, it's, let's get back to what can we control. ZAK: Have you figured out a helpful way to manage your stress or the stress of those around you. If so, I would love to hear it. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST or email me at Zak@BestAdvice.Show. Thanks! Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Brenden Murphy is an amateur plumber from Michigan.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTo offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Today's episode is a little longer than usual, but it contains some advice that you are going to carry with you for the rest of time. There are few things more terrifying than this moment.ZAK: Ok, I'm in my bathroom. I'm just wondering if you can tell me how you became an amateur plumber.BRENDEN: Well, in my life, toilets seem to get clogged a lot. As embarrassing as that is to admit, it's true. So I know for me, personally, if I go into anyone's bathroom and there's no plunger I won't go number two. I'm gonna find another bathroom cause I'm like, I'm not gonna risk it.ZAK: I think it's very big of you to admit that you clog toilets. But everyone has clogged a toilet. And if you say you haven't clogged a toilet, I don't know if I would even believe you, you know?BRENDEN: Right.ZAK: Brenden Murphy is here to save the day. Here is his advice on how not to make toilet overflow and humiliate yourself in four easy steps. So you've flushed the toilet and it's not going down.BRENDEN: My first piece of advice is to get some hand soap. If you put a couple squirts of hand soap just right over the toilet hole, what will happen is, soap is a lubricant, it'll help it go down easier but the soap will also, when you start plunging, it will help keep the odor down so there won't be a smell associated with it. And everything will just be a little cleaner.ZAK: Aren't you glad you tuned in today. Step number two, the plunging.BRENDEN: The basic advice is you wanna make sure it's sealed around the hole because you're not actually pushing the material down with that plunger handle. You're creating a pressure difference that's going to pull the material into the pipes. So, one way that you can do that faster is when you push down with the plunger, jerk it back and instead of doing a slow forward, backward, when you push it down and it's sealed, if you do a quick jerk, that should create a little more pressure and that should help it move faster.ZAK: Ok, you got that? First soap, then the quick jerk. Now on to number 3.BRENDEN: The third piece of advice which I think is the most important one is when you get to the point when you might have to flush it again, you know, like the water is low, maybe you need some more water, if you add more water, it will help push the material down but of course you don't want to overflow the toilet. So, if you look to the left of the toilet, there will be a knob. In most houses it's a handle. It's normally coming out from the wall about one-foot off the floor. It's silver and that's called the supply line shut-off valve.ZAK: Yes. Here is this valve you're describing which I have never noticed before.BRENDEN: There should be a handle/lever on it that you can turn to the right. That's gonna limit the amount of water. You want to make sure the water level is pretty low but as long as it's fairly low and it looks like it's a decent amount, by shutting off the supply line you should not overflow the toilet. It shouldn't spill out.ZAK: Ok, so we're almost home free. Soap. Plunge. Turn the supply line off and at this point you can flush, hopefully everything goes down.BRENDEN: And then you turn back on the supply line. Everything fills up. Everything's somewhat clean. And my last piece of advice is to take that plunger and to plunge your toilet once it's clean water. You've already got the plunger out. You've already filled up the toilet with clean water. So, go ahead and rinse it off. My name is Brenden Murphy. I'm a cost-estimator in Sterling Heights, Michigan and I'm an amateur handyman.ZAK: Brenden, I speak for myself and all the listeners of The Best Advice Show, you've just saved us so much heartache. Thank you so much. If you have any life saving advice, I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Brian is a husband, father and hugger from the Midwest.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTZAK: Brian is from the Midwest. He works in insurance. His daughter is grown now, but when she was a little kid.BRIAN: I noticed a funny thing. She was a pretty easy kid to raise but if she was ever upset or crying or cranky, hungry, tired...if you sat down on her level and just pulled her in for a little bit and if you'd feel her take a deep breath and she would just let go. And I thought, that's funny...Not yelling at her, not telling her to do anything. Just grab her and hold her a minute. When I would come home from work and I'd be exhausted somedays, getting home late and she'd run to the front-door and she'd hug me and I said that's a fake hug. That's a movie hug. Give me one of your real hugs and she would squeeze me as hard as she could and I would say, I can't breathe! And her response always was, try.BRIAN: But then I recently was reading about hugs and when you hug 20-seconds or more there's actually a hormone, oxytocin. It makes you let go. It lets rest. It lets you relax. And during this pandemic, I was always a person that was gone and traveled and I've been home a lot and I have a little of this feeling. And I saw my wife getting a little bit more anxiety too and we would occasionally, just, I'd pass her in the kitchen in between calls and I'd realize, hey, that's big hug opportunity. And I'd just reach out and grab her and at first she'd be surprised but she'd hug and then she'd try to walk away and I'd say, no, it's gotta be 20-seconds. That's when you really get the full effect.ZAK: Yeah. Do you have a name for these long hugs?BRIAN: I call them a drive-by hug. Because I almost pass her and then I turn around and say, whoa, I missed a chance for a hug there.ZAK: That's so sweet. Do you count to 20?BRIAN: I actually don't count but I do it by breaths. Cause I try to take deep breaths when I do it too.ZAK: Do you think it works on yourself if you do a self-hug? I'm thinking about folks who don't live with other people.BRIAN: You know, I think it does.ZAK: Can we try a 20-second self-hug?BRIAN: Yeah, let's do it.ZAK: I'll follow your breaths here.ZAK: Listener feel free to breathe and hug along with us at home.Extended Breaths.....ZAK: I feel better. What's not to like about that? I want to thank Brian for sharing this concept of the 20-second drive-by hug with me. I've been practicing at home. You've been listening to The Best Advice Show and I want to hear your advice. How are you getting by? Lemme know on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. And here's an idea. I know we can hug anyone outside of our pod right now, but maybe sending them this episode would be a nice consolation. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Amy Dallas is a public defender living in New York.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: AMY: I am Amy Dallas and I am a person, a mother, a public defender, a person interested in restorative justice and a very emotional lady. Andrew and I, my husband and I have this concept that we call mood transferring where one person might be in a crabby mood, right? And the other person's just minding their own business at home and it's all being emoted through huffs and puffs around the house and even though you might not be articulating what is going on if you're the crabby one, suddenly the other person's like, what's up? What is going on? And if it's not really communicated or worked through then suddenly that other person's crabby because you've been crabby around the house.ZAK: Right. Crab soup.AMY: Yeah, and then also maybe you do articulate what's going on with you and you do burden them with all the emotions that you're feeling and you're like, whoa, I feel so much better and now they're walking around with it. And then they might have it for the next day or two and it just kind of goes back and forth with this mood transferring and I've found that it's not necessary to do that...to always put these emotions on someone else or put it in a space where it doesn't need to be. So, I've let myself find time, especially during the pandemic to just be alone and feel things through. So, like I'll go for a run or go for a long walk and just let those tears come. If it's something that's coming up that's making me sad. But I find that in doing that I'm able to function in a more balanced way. It's like, I can modulate my personality a little bit more appropriately where it's necessary. It's been really helpful during this time to just let myself feel all those feelings through. There's also clarity that emerges after a session of feeling through whatever I'm going through.ZAK: But I don't think it's always a burden to dump stuff or express to your partner or your friend what you're going through. So how do you distinguish when you want to modulate and do it on your own and when you want to share it with someone and kind of off-load to someone you trust?AMY: Yeah, I think in these moments where we're home with our loved ones so much, I think it starts to emerge when it's necessary and when it's not. Like, something might be coming up for me my partner's clearly in a different headspace. I don't necessarily need to shift the whole perspective of what's happening at home for this one thing that's coming up for me. And also, by knowing that I will allow myself a time later with it, I can also hold it and deal it with later and not make it a as it's coming, burdening. But of course, yes, I think also in going through some emotions on my own, when I do want to talk about something with my partner it can be a much more clear conversation.ZAK: We've been watching a lot of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood in our house. And Amy's advice reminded me of one of my favorite songs from that show. It's called, There Are So Many Feelings. It goes like this...(singing)...There are so many feelings for you to knowSo many feelings like colors in the rainbowBe happy with a smileOr sad with a frownSo many feelingsZAK: If you have some advice for me, I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Lainey is 7 years-old and a motivational speaker based in Michigan. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: My niece has been getting really into cooking. And the other day she made something she was really proud of.LAINEY: A whole chicken. Like, it's not just chicken thighs or chicken nuggets. It's an entire chicken without the head. ZAK: Right, the full chicken, minus the head. Yeah. Can you describe what you had to do to make it?LAINEY: You need to take the giblets out of the chicken which is basically the insides of it. And you take some salt and you take some pepper and you put it over it. And then you can put some cut-up onions and carrots around it and then you can put some oil or butter on top. And then you just cook it for 70-minutes and that's literally all you do. ZAK: What temperature did you do it on? LAINEY: 400 degrees. ZAK: Lainey's not here just to talk about chicken. She just sees cooking something kinda complex as a metaphor.ZAK: With the chicken recipe you thought that it was gonna really difficult. LAINEY: Yeah, we were about to make it and I kind of just was tired and I wanted to watch a show cause it was after school and then I did it and it was super fun and we ended up making a great meal and I just thought I should let everybody know this good tip. ZAK: What do you think it is about us humans where we think about a task and we get so overwhelmed by it that we don't even try it?LAINEY: Um, I think maybe you might even be tired. You probably are thinking in your head, I can't do that. If you just think about it and get it over with it could actually end up being super fun. ZAK: Right, like, so often we feel like, I'm too tired to do this but once we actually do the thing it gives us this renewed burst of energy, huh?LAINEY: Uh huh. LAINEY: My name is Lainey. I am 7 years-old. Uncle Zak?ZAK: Yeah?LAINEY: I have a question. Should I say I'm 8 years-old just in case you post this during April? ZAK: No, I'm gonna post it before. LAINEY: Alright, great! I'm 7 years-old. ZAK: Thanks for listening to another edition of Food Friday on The Best Advice Show. Is there a young person in your life who might want to offer some advice? I would love to hear it. I'd also love to hear your advice as always. As always, give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. If you're enjoying this show please consider sharing it with your friends and family. And also, leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Aaron Lammer (@aaronlammer) is co-host of the Longform Podcast. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I love a good question. When I listen to interviews or watch them or read them for that matter, I'm often more impressed with a move the interviewer makes than with the answer given in response. One of my favorite interviewers is Aaron Lammer. He co-hosts a podcast called Longform where he interviews writers. His questions often surprise me and therefore his interviews go in places I'm never expecting. AARON: My advice about interviewing...I heard an interview I think on Marc Maron with Seth Rogan and he was talking about how they would prepare for the Ali G show. He was a writer on the Ali G show and he was like, we don't know what's gonna happen in one of these but there's only so many possible ways these can go and I'm just gonna play out a bunch of scenarios and we're gonna write jokes where if it goes this way...we're gonna write hundreds of jokes. They're not all gonna happen but he's gonna be armed with a bunch of these sort of forking path, choose your own adventure style. AARON: So my advice about interviewing is to kind of pre-visualize a conversation that way. Less like a list of questions and more like a forking tree of possibilities and themes. That kind of gives you the power to, like, steer the conversation but not steer the conversation too much. You're giving yourself enough forks that it can go a variety of ways and you can still have some degree of, like, preparation. And people actually...there aren't that many possibilities, even to a wide-open scenario, short of just walking in and being like, hey, what do you want to do talk about, you kind of know some places a conversation can go and I found that much more helpful than having way too many questions which is what I did as an interviewer when I was starting...was like, I'll just prepare by having hundreds and hundreds of questions and then, of course, it doesn't land on those questions or you can't side-track your brain quickly enough to pick up on them. The thing I like about the forking tree is that you don't have to refer back. You're always moving forward. If you pass a point, if you pass a question, well of course that was gonna happen, you couldn't possibly take all the forks of the tree.ZAK: Thank you for listening to my interview with an interviewer about interviewing. Aaron Lammer is co-host of the Longform podcast. If you have some advice for me, I always want to hear it. Call me on the hotline at 844-935-BEST and as always, if you're enjoying this show, please leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Gretchen Rubin is the author of The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, Better Than Before, The Four Tendencies & Outer Order, Inner Calm. Her podcast is Happier with Gretchen Rubin.---Doing Without Delay with Gretchen Rubin - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/202083_doing-without-delay-with-gretchen-rubin/Living the Bigger Life with Gretchen Rubin - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020928_living-the-bigger-life-with-gretchen-rubin/---To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:ZAK: Before Gretchen Rubin was a best-selling author on the subject of happiness and habits and human nature, she was a lawyer. And not just any lawyer. She graduated from Yale Law School and went on to clerk for supreme court justice Sandra Day O'Connor.GRETCHEN: And what I realized about the Supreme Court is I was surrounded by people who loved law. They were reading law journals for fun. They wanted to talk about cases at happy hour, during lunch hour, you know, any chance they got they just loved it and I thought I want to do an excellent for Justice O'Connor, I want to do the best job I possible can but I don't want to spend one extra minute on this than I have to and I thought, in the end I can't keep up with these people who honestly love it.ZAK: And that leads to her advice for today.GRETCHEN: One of the challenges of our lives is to know ourselves and you would think, it's so easy to know myself. I just hang out with myself all day long but it can be hard to be truthful with ourselves and really see what's in the mirror and so sometimes it's helpful to think about questions that get at the truth indirectly and I think an indirect question that's very helpful is whom do I envy? Envy is a very unpleasant emotion. We often don't want to admit to ourselves or to other people that we do feel envy but it's a very helpful emotion because what it's show us is that somebody has something that we wish we had for ourselves and that's a very, very useful thing to know. And in my case I remember reading...you know how you get those alumni magazines from your college? And I was reading about all the different people in my class and I noticed some people had really interesting law jobs and I was like, uhhhh, that sounds great. And then some people had really interesting writing jobs and I was sick with envy. And I thought, well, I should learn something from that because those are the people that I envy. They're the ones that have something that I wish that I had myself.ZAK: So next time you're banging your head against the wall, thinking to yourself, what do I actually want to do in this life? Maybe a better question or a more helpful question in that moment, is whom do I envy? So good. Thank you, Gretchen Rubin.ZAK: This is the third episode Gretchen has been on. The first two I got great feedback about. You should check them out. I put the links in our show notes. But here's an excerpt from Gretchen's episode called Doing Without Delay.GRETCHEN: Anything you can do in less than a minute, do without delay. If you can hang up your coat instead of throwinG it over the chair. If you can put a document back in the folder. If you can put a dish in the dishwasher, go ahead and do without delay and what this does is it gets rid of this scum of clutter on the surface of everyday life. And for most people outer order does contribute to inner calm and this is a way that you can create more outer order without spending a lot of time or energy dealing with it. You just do it as you go.ZAK: If you have some advice, I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. And if you want more Gretchen Rubin you should check out her podcast. It's called Happier. She hosts it with her sister, Liz Craft. It's so good. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Brody is 11 years-old. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:ZAK: Are you overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff you've collected over the course of your life? Do you want to start getting rid of it but don't know how? Well, today I've got some advice for you. Ok, nephew Brody. It's mid-January and you guys have been doing something kind of interesting this month.BRODY: Yeah, so, for this month everyday we have been trying to give away things. So for the first day, we gave away one thing. Second day, we gave away two things and just started to add up and this is called minimalism and it is just, like, the idea of the less you have the happier you are. So we're testing it out seeing if it works.ZAK: Like, on the first of the month you gave away one thing. The second day of the month, two things and so forth until you get to the end of January, where by the end you're giving away like 30 things, huh? So does it work, this idea of the more you give away the happier you are?BRODY: Yeah, I think so. So far it's working and I'm happy!ZAK: Whoa, it's pouring hale out here if you hear that, people. How do you figure out what you want to save and what you want to give away?BRODY: The things that I want to save are the things that bring happiness to me. They bring joy. Stuff that I use a lot. And just stuff that I don't want to keep are the things I might use once every year or something. But they're just those small things that don't really make a difference. It's not like you have to go until the last day. You can stop on the 20th if you had to give away one more thing it would be something that brings joy to you.ZAK: Oh, I see. So, when you get to the point where the only things left to give away are things that bring joy to you, that's when you know that you're done.BRODY: That's kind of the goal.ZAK: Oh, that's cool. I love that. And what was this exercise inspired by?BRODY: My dad watched a documentary and he just told me the idea so we tested it out.ZAK: Great.BRODY: I'm Brody Maddin. I am 11 years-old and I'm from Michigan.ZAK: What I like about this form of purging is that it kind of turns it into a game. Sounds fun to me. Brody's sister gave some advice on this show. It was the second episode we ever did. It's called Working Hard with Lainey. Here's an excerpt.LAINEY: Because when you finish the thing that you were working hard for, you really feel good that you accomplished it and that you're done with that thing so you can start working hard on another thing.ZAK: Our entire archive of nearly 200 advice episodes is available for you to listen to wherever you listen to podcasts or at BestAdvice.Show. And if you have some advice for me, I'd love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow