The Best Advice Show

Eli Sussman is a co-founder and chef at Samesa restaurant in Brooklyn, NY.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:ZAK: It's Food Friday and today on the show a smorgasbord of cooking advice.ELI: My name's Eli Sussman. I'm talking to you from Brooklyn, New York and I'm one of the co-founders and chefs of Samesa Restaurant which is a Mediterranean restaurant.ZAK: Today's advice revolved around being resourceful in the kitchen and the first thing to consider, says Eli, is that recipes are meant to be fungible.ELI: You need to understand that it's not a legally-binding document. You can navigate away from that recipe. So think about ways that you can use what's in your cabinet and not have to rush out and buy 100-dollars of ingredients every time you want to make a recipe. So think about spice substitutions. If it calls for a certain, specific type of spice that you don't have on hand, google it, figure out what it may sort of taste like and see, ok, I don't have Aleppo flake which is something we use a lot in cooking at the restaurant. But ok, I can use chili flake and achieve a similar result. Ok, I don't have sea salt. Can I use regular salt? These are certain things you learn overtime while cooking...just what works as a good substitution. The recipe calls for brown rice. I don't have that but I do have, you know, spaghetti. Is it gonna be weird if I cook it and serve it over spaghetti? Or is it gonna be fine? Is it gonna be better? So there are all these different ways where you can tweak recipes and move to a place where you're actually using up the things that are in your cabinets as opposed to just always buying new stuff which leads to this scenario where you have so many things that you just have sitting around that you never end up using because you're afraid to experiment and use them in a way where you're substituting for a specific other items in recipes.ZAK: That's great. Do you have advice about how to use up the odd stuff in the kitchen?ELI: Yeah, totally. I think the best way to use up vegetables that are just sitting around in your fridge is to just do a stir-fry. And basically a stir-fry works in any ethnic style of cuisine that you like. If you're going for a Vietnamese, Italian, Indian root, whatever type of food you may feel comfortable cooking, or not, but just simply roasting some vegetables in a pan, getting the pan hot, sautéing them, letting them get some caramelization, break down a little bit. Covering them with a good amount of spice that you're comfortable with and then serving them just with either a grain that you have. Like that's a full meal. You don't need protein in every single meal and that's an awesome way to get rid of just vegetables that are just sitting around. And then if you have a lot of starches around, I love to cook potatoes and have them in my fridge as a building block to a meal. So a lot of people will peep and blanche potatoes right before the meal. But I say get a big bag of sweet potatoes or Yukon Golds. Two sort of things that cook very quickly and easily just by boiling them in water and are delicious on their own and then you can use them breakfast. You can turn that into a hash. You can put it in a salad and eat it cold for lunch and then for dinner, you can take those cold pieces of potato, toss them in a little bit of oil and roast in a pan or in the oven till they get crispy and then serve them with a piece of chicken. You don't beed to cook everything to order for every single meal that you have and that's a good way to get rid of a bunch of stuff.ZAK: Eli Sussman and his older brother, Max, are the authors of several cookbooks. Most recently, Classic Recipes for Modern People. This has been another episode of Food Friday. Thank you so much for listening. And as always, I want to hear your advice...your food related advice especially. 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

Sua Im is a teacher in Worchester, Massachusetts.Listening with Rikke Houd - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020713_listening-with-rikke-houd/Listening with Autumn Brown - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020714_listening-with-autumn-brown/Listening with Sterling Toles - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020715_listening-with-sterling-toles/Listening with Eleanor McDowell - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020716_listening-with-eleanor-mcdowell/Listening with Dallas Taylor - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020717_listening-with-dallas-taylor/To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT:ZAK: Do you know what I love? (Long pause). Silence.SUA: Hi Zak. My name is Sua Im and I'm a teacher from Wooster, Massachusetts. I'm a special educator and this is my advice.My advice is to be ok with silence. There's a term for it in teaching. It's called Wait Time. Wait Time refers to the silence you give your students after you present a question or a thought or any other opportunity to gather their thoughts before they respond. It sounds simple but it's really hard. We want to fill the silence. We ask follow-up questions or provide clarifying points or make assumptions about what they must be thinking but really we just need to be silent. In the silence is where magic happens. I work with students who have learning disabilities, many of whom take longer to process information than their peers and they're used to people interrupting their thinking time...their magic-making. They've trained me to stretch out that silence. It's nothing for me now to be silent for an entire minute. That doesn't sound a like a long time but trust me, it is. I'm almost always surprised by what comes after the wait time. It's a letting go of control and showing trust and making space...real space for my students.ZAK: Sua's advice goes really nicely with the week-long listening series we did back in July. You should go back and check that out.RIKKE HOUD: Go somewhere where there's trees and birds and sit there. If you sit there for awhile suddenly there's this sort of parralel society of birds that have very interesting lives and you can just start by listening to them and watching them.ZAK: You've been listening to The Best Advice Show. I would love to hear your advice. Give me a call like Sua did 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

Erica Heilman (@rumblestripvt) is the host of the podcast, Rumble Strip.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:ERICA: My name is Erica Heilman and I think my only religion is the religion of starting and finishing and starting and finishing.ZAK: Are you referring specifically to non-utilitarian, creative things or starting anything in general?ERICA: I think the former. I think it's any creative thing at all. There's always a reason not to do it. I mean I think that making anything, the making of it in my case anyway, it's a kind of existential crisis every time because I don't know what it is or what it's going to be or what it...I don't know what I'm making and so to sit there and figure it out it is the nearest thing to religion that I have that that is possible. And be aware that as soon as you begin to do that, there will be this massive undertow. Really compelling, strong, dark undertow which is comprised of all the many reasons why you shouldn't do it. Um. It will be there. It will meet you there and it will pull at you and if you decide to do it anyway, that is a very brave act and I think it's a practically religious act because it's an act of faith and you will be delivered to some other place if you do that over and over and over again. Do it four times. Make four things without reason, without any expectation of audience but make four things the best you can and the fourth one will be better than the first one. And the twentieth one will be better than the fourth one. That is a certainty because you'll fall in love with what you're doing and you will want it to become...it's just...you'll be playing and you get better at playing the more you play. You know? And it's in a strange way it's deeply, you know, self-absorbed and selfish but it's also I think really generous. You know?ZAK: Yeah, it's a total contradiction. Erica Heilman hosts the excellent, unique and soul-affirming podcast, Rumble Strip. I hope today's episode gives you some strength to start and finish and start and finish and start and finish and start and finish. I'd love to hear from you. Give me a call on the hotline if you have some advice. Give me a call on the hotline if you have some advice at 844-935-BEST. And if you're looking for something to start and finish how about writing a review for this show on Apple Podcasts? It really helps. 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

Alexandra Elle (alex_elle) is an author & wellness consultant living in the Washington, DC metro area with her husband and children. She is the author of multiple books and journals, most recently After the Rain, Neon Soul, and Today I Affirm: A Journal That Nurtures Self-Care. She hosts the podcast, hey girl.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:ALEX: Hi, my name is Alex Elle and I'm an author and self-care facilitator who is passionate about bringing people closer to their voice by way of writing practice.ZAK: One thing Alex has written that I wanted to talk to her about is the following quote. "Making peace with your pain is a daily practice."I know everyone's different but what might that practice look like for someone who's just starting to figure out how to make peace with their pain?ALEX: I know for me as a writer, I like to put things down on the page so I often tell my students and clients to greet your pain with a sense of curiosity and doing that requires a daily practice of not running from the things that may hurt us, scare us, etc. And facing it head-on which is extremely uncomfortable and no one really like doing it, myself included. But I think it's very important for our spiritual growth, personal growth and just evolution in general to be able to create a practice of not running from the pain and looking at it in the face and being ok with whatever's there, looking back.ZAK: Is there a writing exercise that you teach that kinda gets people in that mode of, of, you know, being ok with being around their pain?ALEX: I tell folks to write a letter to their pain...so literally writing Dear Pain and going for it. A free-write letter that can be funny at times or can be serious, it can be rooted in love or it can be like, you know, I don't feel like dealing with you anymore hahahah, I would like you to leave me alone...so having that dialogue makes people feel a little less intense about it and when we put down our pain on the page we can often see that it's not as big as it feels when we're carrying it in our mind or in our heart. So it just kind of gives a sense of ease to the practice, not that it's gonna make it go away all at once and all of a sudden but that it kind of gives us this space of compassion and understanding for ourself.ZAK: Dear pain, you think you're so cool and special and dark. You're not. You're here today, gone tomorrow. Like everything. Love, Zak.Alex Elle's new book is After the Rain, Gentle Reminders for Healing, Courage, and Self-Love.I want to hear how you deal with your pain. Give me a call on the advice hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. Also, if you found this episode helpful, please consider sharing it with your family and friends, that's how this show is gonna sustain itself. Thanks a lot. 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

Jon Jordan is the style editor for WDIV, Local4 in Detroit and the style editor for Style Wise Jon. Check out his fashion and style tips here -https://www.youtube.com/c/StyleWisewithJonJordan/aboutTRANSCRIPT:JON: People have a vision or a notion that being well dressed means you have to spend a lot of money and you have a lot of time figuring things out and there's nothing worse...well, I suppose there are worse things but starting your morning in a closet that's disorganized and your confused about what to wear and you don't like your choices and you can't see anything, that's not a good way to start your day out. ZAK: But have no fear, fashion guru, Jon Jordan says there's a cure for this. The uniform. JON: You can wear basically the same thing every single day and the uniform is a look that streamlines your wardrobe efforts because it is basically a variation of the same thing and the references that I have for this are some really high-end people in the fashion world like the designer Tom Ford. He basically wears a black blazer and a crisp white shirt and a great pair of jeans and loafers everyday and he doesn't vary from that.ZAK: For people who are fashion challenged or people who just don't feel confident in putting together an outfit. How do they decide what their uniform can and should be. JON: I think you rely an expert and that might be somebody in a store or a trusted friend because there are basic rules that will help them out like, things should fit well, things should flatter, things should actually feel comfortable. I'm Jon Jordan. I am the style editor for WDIV, Local4 in Detroit and also the style editor for Style Wise Jon on Youtube for Graham Media. ZAK: My uniform lately has been hiking socks, sweatpants and a t-shirt with baby spit-up on it. I call the look COVID Casual. But seriously I love this idea of streamlining and embracing minimalism. Thank you, Jon Jordan. I've linked to some of his Youtube videos in our show notes. I want to hear your advice. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. This is The Best Advice Show, talk to you tomorrow. Bye. 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

Teri Turner is the founder of the popular blog No Crumbs Left.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I have a perfect guest for Food Friday...Teri Turner.TERI: I am the founder of No Crumbs Left which is a...you can find it on Instagram, Facebook, it's a blog, it's a cookbook, Pintrest, for tips, tricks, ideas that take food from ordinary to extraordinary. ZAK: Teri's advice is about food is about food but it's also about love which to her, and to me, and probably to you, are one in the same.TERI: Have your house be the one where the kids come to. You have beautiful food and it's sitting on the stove because you get to know who your kids are, see who their friends are and it is such a gift and it will bring your family together. And if you cook with your kids nobody can ever take that away from your kids. We are so bonded by food and our love for food that it's a wonderful thing. ZAK: Do you think it was because you were making such good food that you were the magnet house?TERI: I think it's like, you know, if you could love your kids in a way that is legendary. I came from real love. Such deep, over-arching, amazing love. Celebrate your kids and them be who they are. And that's just what we knew and my parents loved us not in a spoil us kind of way but just we really knew that we were loved and so for me, I was able to give that same kind of love to my kids. And part of that for me, what that looks like for me personally is creating beautiful food that we enjoyed together. But my feeling is if you didn't come from that kind of love and many people don't, you can create that in your own life. You don't have to say, 'Oh, she had that so she can do it.' No, be that life. Be the love you want to give. ZAK: You're making me cry, Teri. TERI: Oh, I love that. Thank you. We always on our podcast, we cry, on the No Crumbs Left Table Talk podcast we cry every-time. ZAK: Obviously before you invite all the neighbored kids in for a big pot of chili and your famous, homemade cornbread, you know probably weight for the pandemic to end. But this advice in your back pocket until then. Imagine the meals that you're gonna make for your kids or your friends or your neighbors. That's what I've been doing. I can't wait to start hosting dinner parties again. Big sigh. You can hear Teri's podcast, as she mentioned, it's called No Crumbs Left Table Talks. You should follow her on Instagram. No Crumbs Left. Her stuff is beautiful. She's so loving. And this is a good time to thank my parents for cultivating the kind of house that my friend's wanted to be at. Also to my mother-in-law and father-in-law for doing the same. And to all you out there who have homes with open doors. Thank you so much. This is The Best Advice Show. What a year it's been. I hope this show has helped you through it. If it has consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. As always, I want to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline. 844-935-BEST. I'm running low on Food Friday episodes. Give me your food tips and tricks and hacks. I want to hear 'em. I'll talk to ya next week. Bye. 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

Megan Stielstra (@meganstielstra) is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way To Save Your Life, winner of the 2017 Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Review of Books. She is a 2020 Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas.An Axe for the Frozen Sea - https://believermag.com/logger/an-axe-for-the-frozen-sea/TRANSCRIPT:MEGAN: For the first 6-months of the lockdown, my son and I quarantined at my mother's house in rural Michigan which in some senses was really lovely because her home is in the middle of the woods and on the other side of the woods from her house is the Amtrak going from Ann Arbor to Chicago every single day at 6 o'clock.There were things that I was experiencing myself that I wasn't expressing cause I didn't want to worry my kid. I didn't want to worry my mom. I didn't understand what was happening in the world.I was trying to keep my kids safe. My mom is immune compromised so I was there to help her out as well too. So I was trying to keep her safe. So all these things are happening inside my head and heart and what the hell do I do with it? One of my favorite writers, Lidia Yuknavitch, talks about how our bodies can't possibly carry everything that we've been given to carry, so we have to get it out of our bodies so we can see it.So everyday at 5:50 my kid and I would go outside and we would walk, like down the road from my mom's house and then we would stand by the tracks and we would wait. You feel it first in your feet like you feel the train coming up through your shoes and up through your legs and then you can hear it and then you can see it and as it gets closer and closer it gets louder and louder and you can feel it more throughout your own body and as soon as the front of the train would cross right in-front of us we would start screaming. And for him it's just letting out the energy and for him it's letting out everything that I can't say, and I can't talk about and I can't express how scared I am and I don't know where to put out all of that fear so it's just a release through the body and sometimes we would throw rocks and sometimes we would like break sticks and just like this physical release of everything that we'd been carrying all day and I could feel the brambles in my back unwind and everything...and you try to do this stuff in yoga class or in running but it never works, right? But just kind of that primal screaming my face off for the 2-minutes it took for the train to pass, which sounds like such a short period of time, like 2-minutes but really it is a long time to scream without stopping. Like even if we just sit-here for 10-seconds.....................................like that's a long time of dead air space and that's a long time to open your mouth and just be truthful.ZAK: mmmm. What's a good way for each of us to find our own form of release, you think?MEGAN: Whatever you're doing right now, can you stop and roll your shoulders? Can you remember to breathe? I don't mean that in any yoga, magical, just let yourself breathe, I mean it just straight up, are you actually breathing? I mean that with edge and knives and whiskey but are you actually breathing because I haven't been. It's a thing that I have been forgetting to do. So just even this awareness that we live in a body and how are we getting whatever emotional response we're having to the world out of it. Can you break something? Cause if you don't put it out of ourselves in these possible bonkers but also maybe healthy ways, it's gonna come out of us in ways that aren't healthy. So maybe that means booze or drugs or sex or cruelty or violence. Domestic violence numbers are up right now...just trying to think of what people are doing to care for ourselves.ZAK: I'm gonna go scream.MEGAN: Please do. I hope everybody does.ZAK: Yes. Go scream listeners. 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

Céline Williams is a culture engineer, business strategist, speaker and founder of reVisionary.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Whether you are a boss or hope to one day be a boss, I think today's advice from an executive coach is essential.I feel like most people I talk to are pretty disappointed with the culture at their work. If you have any thoughts about why you think that is...that it's so widespread that people are dissatisfied with the way their workplaces run.CELINE: I think it's because most leaders and most organizations are really attached to an old paradigm of how things work. Partly because for some organizations, that's how it worked for them 15 or 20 years ago and we have lots of large organizations and small organizations that are attached to an idea that was effective 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 50 years ago and that's not the case anymore. ZAK: So say there's a boss listening to you right now...what's something they might try tomorrow when they go into work to start shifting things?CELINE: Well first and foremost, ask your people what their experience of the culture is and actually listen. I, I often talk about culture iceberg which is that the leaders are at the top of the culture iceberg and they are where 5% of the reality of what is happening in their organization. And middle-management is lets say aware of 30% of it and then you get down to the front-line workers and they're aware of 100% of it. So what often happens is we run on assumptions. We are human beings who like assuming things and who like to create categories in our brains cause that keeps us safe, so we assume that our experience of the culture is the same as someone else's and leaders are especially bad at it because often leaders see the positive things more than the negative and so the first and easiest thing a leader can do is go in and ask their people, ask their direct reports, ask the people underneath those people...but talk to people about what their experience of the culture is and make it safe for them to say, this sucks and here's why. Make it so that there's no fear for them to actually tell you the truth of what they're seeing and that, when you have that information and that data you can actually do something with it. Otherwise you're trying to make changes on assumptions.And we all know what happens when you assume. CELINE: My name is Céline Williams. I'm the founder of reVisionary and I'm an executive coach and a culture strategist.ZAK: Are you happy at your work place? I want to know why. What's working there that the rest of us can learn from. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 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

Shane Bernardo is a food justice organizer and the founder of Food as Healing -https://www.foodashealing.com/To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT:SHANE: My name is Shane Bernardo. I'm a lifelong resident of the city of Detroit also known as occupied Anishinaabe territory. I'm also a food justice organizer and the founder of Food as Healing.My advice is to do everything with ease. Now this might seem like a really tall order but what's more important than to focus our energy on checking in with ourselves and our needs around kindness and compassion. We often think of these things as virtues that we extend toward others but how many times have we forgotten to extend those things to ourselves?So, what this looks like in practice is whenever you feel a sense of nervous energy, anxiety, frustration or regret...ask yourself this question. 'In this moment what do I need in order to bring more ease into my life?' And hopefully what that helps you do is helps you refrain from having life just happen to you. It helps you maintain your sense of self, personhood, humanity and dignity and these are things that anyone should be afforded. A lot of frustration comes from feeling like we don't have control over our own well-being and that's such a terribly unhealthy place to be in. This point is even more critical considering that we're in a global pandemic and that the need for racial justice and racial healing in this country has been unmatched like no other time in this country's existence and it also recognizes how the capitalists profit from maintaining the psychic toll that all these things have on us and especially those of us that are on the margins that sequester this impact that it has.So I'd like to invite you to maintain this practice as a form of resistance, as an act of resistance and ask yourself on a daily basis, at least one time, ask yourself what do I need to create more ease in my life. Try it on. 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

Wendy S. Walters is a writer and the Director of the Nonfiction Concentration and Associate Professor of Writing, Nonfiction in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: WENDY: Well, I think I'm used to being uncomfortable so I am very enthusiastic about other people being uncomfortable because it kind of makes you pay attention in a slightly different way than you would with others and, you know, I say this to my son all the time you know you have that moment of discomfort, uh, but generally you survive it. Like, usually 9.9 times out 10 you survive your discomfort. So, I think that the discomfort is a real gift in terms teaching you how to get past something that is completely internal. Other people may not recognize that you're uncomfortable but you feel it and you know when you stop being uncomfortable and the more resilience you can develop in terms of that discomfort, the more engaged I think you can be with other people who aren't like yourself.Many Americans...they associate being uncomfortable with being in danger. On the base level being uncomfortable is not having access to choosing the options that you would normally choose. And for many people that is experienced as catastrophe. That is experienced as damage and I think that is really, it's an overstatement and it in some ways reflects how much we become accustomed to being catered to.ZAK: So is this advice...make yourself uncomfortable?WENDY: Let's see, is it make yourself uncomfortable or is it if you find yourself in the space of being uncomfortable, embrace it as a moment for opportunity and reflection on who you are and what you value.ZAK: Wendy S. Walters is a writer and professor of writing at Columbia University. I want to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. If you're finding this show valuable I hope you'll share it with your friends and family and maybe even write a review on Apple Podcasts if that's where you listen. That's gonna help this show sustain itself. Thank you in advance. I'll 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