Adulting - Let's Talk About... Feeling Directionless

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

 Hello and welcome to Adulting, and the twelfth episode of Let’s Talk About… a broadening of Adulting... where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school, this is almost like seminars on life; where my audience (that's you!), get to chat anonymously about things they couldn't necessarily discuss over lunch with their friends, or feel like they don't have anyone to talk to about whatever it may be.  To get involved, follow me on Instagram @oenone, where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let’s Talk About… Feeling Stuck. The submission read Feeling Stuck/ Directionless. Ok first, we all need a wellness check I think, I have also been feeling similarly to so many of you but reading these submissions did make me feel a bit sad but also comforted and I hope by the end of this episode we can all come away with a renewed sense of clarity and hopefulness.  I hope you enjoy  as always, please do rate, review and subscribe!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Adulting and the 12th episode of Let's Talk About, a broadening of Adulting where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school. This is almost like Seminars on Life where my audience, that's you, get to chat anonymously about things you couldn't necessarily discuss over lunch with your friends or feel like you don't have anyone to talk about whatever it may be. To get involved, follow me on Instagram at Anoni, where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let's talk about feeling stuck. The submission read, feeling stuck forward slash directionless. Okay, first of all, I think we all need a wellness check. I've also been feeling similarly to many of you, but reading these submissions did make me feel a bit sad,

then a bit comforted, and I hope by the end of this episode we can all come away with a renewed sense of clarity and hopefulness. I hope you enjoy, and as always, please do rate, review, and subscribe. So a few of the earlier messages said, I want to talk about this because for so many years, I wanted the career title I now have. I never thought about what's after that. It's something many experience, but there's a shame around it and socials highlight reels make us feel alone. I'm slap bang in the middle of this feeling at 28. I need reminding that I'm not alone. Everything going on in the world makes normal life seem insignificant and pointless. I've struggled with mental health for so long

and I feel like my progress in life is always stunted. I feel like life is passing me by while I decide what to do now. And a slightly longer message read, not sure if it's seasonal depression kicking in early or if it's a general feeling stuck, but I feel like everyone around me is constantly achieving new great things, but I just stagnate. Thief is the comparison of joy and all that, but it's tough when you see colleagues getting promotions, pay rises, et cetera, but you don't. My job has no progression really, and I'm so ambitious, but have nothing to show for it. Getting me down at the moment and I have no energy to better myself outside of my work because I'm so ambitious, but have nothing to show for it, getting me down at the moment. And I have no energy to better myself outside of my work because I'm so drained from not achieving. And someone else sent a message which read, I'm fairly successful in my field and at a younger

age than most would expect. I probably do talk about work a lot and I genuinely enjoy what I do. However, I think one of the reasons I do that is because I'm compensating for what I perceive as gaps elsewhere, i.e. no long-term partner. I'm at the age where all my friends are engaged, buying houses with partners, etc. While I'm outwardly unbothered, it can be upsetting at times and I'm working my way through this. I don't mean to stress others out by talking about my work career at the moment, but it's probably the main thing I'm proud of. A lot of my friends see me as sorted, content and uncomplicated, but that's certainly not the case. I think we all probably feel directionless in one way or another. No one's life is perfect or stress-free and I think it's normal to feel this way surely. I just thought those two messages next to each other were really

interesting because I think we can be our own worst enemy when we focus on the negatives and our brains do kind of have a negative bias I'm sure it's something evolutionary thing to keep us safe and protected and you know fear makes us yeah be more careful about things so we probably hyper focus on the things that aren't going well and infrequently tend to zone in on what we're doing well and it's so easy to look around at our peers of our friends, our colleagues, our family members, people that we see on social media and be like oh my god they're so good at xyz and like this person said in that message maybe outwardly on social media or with our friends we're comfortable talking about the things that are going really well but maybe we shy away from talking about

what's going badly. Maybe that's why I had so many messages on this subject because it can feel kind of embarrassing or shameful to admit that actually you feel like you're not enough or you're not getting there you don't want to get your friends down you don't want to feel helpless or like a loser and so maybe we keep these secret parts of our own wanting and wishing and hoping to ourselves so as not to admit that actually we're struggling and we feel like we're falling behind but what was so interesting in this conversation is I actually had quite a lot of messages from people who were like, on the outside, my life looks amazing. And like that person said in the

message I just read out, a lot of my friends would think it's sorted, but actually it's not. And I thought, God, what an amazing self-awareness and honesty and how funny that we can see that. And yet we're so scared perception is everything and perhaps this conversation might help us to realize that it would actually really help me because I feel really stuck and obviously in so many ways I probably look like my life's quite glamorous I don't know actually or like I've got a lot going on but I feel the same I think often we compare and I've talked about this my friends sometimes we always look up and look at everyone who's doing better than us and feel like oh my god I'm failing I'm falling behind this with my friends sometimes, we always look up and look at everyone who's doing better than us and feel like, oh my God, I'm failing, I'm falling behind.

And very infrequently, do we look at our strengths and where we're doing really well and think about how many people look up to us and think, God, they're amazing. Whether it's your junior colleague at work, whether it's your younger sibling, whether it's someone that you went to school with or someone that just follows you on Instagram, to someone you're always going to be an inspirational, aspirational figure. And I think it's really important sometimes to step back and look at the whole picture. And I had a really lovely message, which read, I'm 29 and often feel very overwhelmed by all the choices we can make in life. It can be scary because some decisions which we make now can affect how we live forever.

However, I tried to turn that into something beautiful. How lucky I am to have all these amazing choices to make and what a privilege that is. I also tried to imagine myself when I'm 60 or 70 and I know I'll look back on myself and feel proud of what I achieved, whatever that might be. It might not always be the road imagined or maybe it'll be exactly that, I don't know. I'm sure if we ask older generations if they thought they would end up living, working, doing their life in a certain way, then many of them would say they never imagined their lives to turn out a certain way. I think there is beauty in accepting that the one thing we can't change in life is that we're all going to age and we will always face obstacles at different stages in life.

And sometimes we just have to ride the wave. I thought that was really gorgeous. And it really reminded me of, so one of Dolly's 58 rules for life was let go of the life you thought you'd have. Every single one of us will have to do this at some stage. The process is hard and sad, and then it can be easy and liberating. In fact, it's less of a process and more of an art form. It's spectacular to watch someone do it successfully. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as you know, God, I've got to stop talking about it. I went through a breakup, but it wasn't just a breakup. It also became a revision of the life that I thought I was going to be leading from this

age of 30, which is such a seminal age. And I'm really frustrated at how much I am allowing it to dictate how I feel about my day to day and allowing it to dictate how I perceive myself in the world, because what difference does it make if I'm 30 or 29 or 35 or 24? It really doesn't matter. I feel just as young as ever. Anyway, the point is, I'm really trying to, instead of clinging on and going, oh my God, this is where I was going to go. That was the way that my ship was going to sail. And maybe it was going to be towards marriage and children and a home. Now I'm going, okay, well, that was one of the paths. We'll shut that door for now. And now the new door that I'm opening is I really just want to focus on my career for the next 10 years and whatever else kind of comes along that path, whatever. But it's just,

I think that loads of malaise and sadness and depression can come from constantly grasping towards something which has perhaps moved out of your reach for now, for whatever reason, the butterfly effect of life, you know, you made one choice, which was right for you at the time, you should never regret whether it's changing your job or going through a breakup, or, you know, all of these life choices that we make, and they're really hard to make. So if you made them, you know, trust yourself that you did it. And you just got to wait for yourself to reroute and that can be really uncomfortable but you're going to keep going on that path and there's another quote I save constantly these really well it's not embarrassing I love them but I can be quite earnest and I share them with lots of my

friends and we love them but it feels cringe sometimes online to post quotes although I have been doing it quite a lot and one that I saved recently that I just saw on Twitter was let it end allow it to escape from your grasp if it's meant to be yours it'll find its way back to you choose peace give yourself permission to breathe a little easier in its absence resist the urge to try to control the outcome all will be okay I read that like once a day resist the urge to try to control the outcome. All will be okay. I read that like once a day, resist the urge to try to control the outcome is such an important thing to do. Because I think this is so much of what we're talking about is, and that last message was really gorgeous. It's so true. It's like we can have such set ideas of where we think we're going. And we can be really

resistant to a change in that. And actually allowing yourself to just succumb where you're going, move forwards in the direction that you're kind of floating down the stream. That is the best way. And another gorgeous message I received read, honestly, I'm so grateful for you guys. This Let's Talk About was really like therapy for me. I found it so helpful. So this message read, is this feeling, the one that we're talking about of directionless, a result of inaction? I feel like this when I spent too long in my head trying to figure out a direction or next steps. To bastardize Newton a bit, I think that every

action is a reaction and I've only ever seen tangible motion forward in life when I actually take a concrete step forward outside the confines of my own brain. Even if the direction itself is divergent from where I want to go, the compass eventually lands on the right spot. God damn, it's a good message. Exactly that. This is, and I feel like we've had this thread through a lot, but it's that thing of just getting through each day and doing something that you wouldn't normally do, making progress in an area, and you don't have to necessarily have all your ducks in a row. I know some of this might sound a bit like woo-woo and spiritual and manifestly. It's actually really not. It's just literally

that thing of this message. It's every action has a reaction. If we allow ourselves to stagnate, if we allow ourselves to wait and pause for things to come to us, nothing's going to come to us. So we might just have to throw shit at the wall and hope that it sticks and it might be that we'll focus really hard on our work we'll try and see our friends we're just going to get through each day we're going to pay our bills we're going to do the bare minimum to get through but we're active in that motion of getting through each day and even if that sounds really boring even if it doesn't right now feel like anything's happening from that, because that's how I feel. I'm kind of constantly trying to do more work, do more things, put myself out there, create, create, create.

And right now, maybe we are also sort of like dopamine addicted, that we're really constantly seeking a rush or a thrill or that sort of like immediate reaction, that we're really constantly seeking a rush or a thrill or that sort of like immediate reaction to whatever we've done. Whereas maybe there's periods in our lives when actually we're just sowing seeds and we've got to wait for them to germinate and grow. And six months time, we'll look back and go, oh my God, all of that time when I thought nothing was happening and I was just toiling away. I was actually building something. I was creating. And I completely agree with this message. If you spend too long trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future, none of us can prophesize. The best way to determine the future is to act in the present. And I just was like, what a bloody,

you're all such a smart bunch. Lol. Another gorgeous quote that one of you sent to me read how you spend your days is how you spend your life is a quote i tried to live by life is composed of small quite objectively mundane moments we have to find joy in these and not wait for big things to give us purpose gorgeous another message hopefully this conversation helps people to feel less alone and having these feelings as they can often make you feel extremely sad and isolated. My therapist once said that we all spend so much time consumed with living our best possible lives when instead perhaps being content is a much easier benchmark to aim for. I had a mindset switch last year and now every time I get drawn into thinking about what I don't have or haven't achieved, I have to counterbalance that with something positive about what I do have or have succeeded in. It's so powerful.

That and meditation. It's such a powerful way of rooting yourself in the present, here and now, not the often uncertain future. Sending lots of love and hugs. Do you know what's so cute about you guys? I don't know how long you've followed me, but I know that lots of you have been around for a long time and we've kind of all grown up together and we all go through these feelings together. And I can really remember when adulting, I was first starting it, we were all like in our mid twenties. I'm sure some of you listening at different ages, but lots of you around my age. And there was a general sense we were all so passionate and we were all really caring about the world and we were all really determined to share our voices and look after other people.

And I still think that's absolutely true. But that was kind of at the forefront. We were feeling lost. But when you're lost in your mid-20s, it's like, oh, that's okay. You know, we've got this time to play around. And now that we're all reaching this age, it seems like we've all got this huge wave of introspection. And we're all looking out at everyone's divergent lives because it's such a weird

time to be going through where really some people are shooting off in one direction others going in another direction and we spoke about this in the milestone episode and so I think just having space to have this chat and realize that this really is a kind of a universal feeling even though it feels just so terribly isolating like we must be the only ones that feel like our lives aren't sorted and another message read I can see myself in all of these responses and also want to give everyone a huge hug from the outside I appear to have the perfect life but it's far from it and I'm sure that's the reality for a lot of people but then I remember life isn't perfect I listened to a podcast recently that really helped me see things from another point of view. We set our sights on the big

things like career, kids, marriage, a home, etc, which is all perfectly normal. But in the meantime, we lose the gratitude and awe we used to have for the small things, a coffee or a walk with a friend, treating ourselves to a new top, booking theatre tickets, planning a picnic, participating in sports, watching a beautiful sunset, etc. If we can bring it back to basics and try and find the small joys and wins amongst the mundane, it makes the everyday feel not so sad whilst perhaps working towards the bigger things if that makes sense. Another message, I think a perceived lack of purpose also plays into this feeling. Previous generations who I don't think had this problem, were a part of much smaller communities so they could see the impact of their work and relationships. Nowadays, my job

could disappear and nothing would really change. My boyfriend could have swiped someone else on Tinder and be in a different relationship, lol. Capitalism and individualism encourages us to just live for ourselves, but at least for me, I struggle to find that very satisfying. Another one. I think accepting that a lot of life is mundane is okay. Having things to look forward to, obviously big things like holidays or days out, seeing friends and family, watching a film or a TV show you're enjoying,

making a delicious meal, going for a walk or going out for food. But it's okay for life to just plod along sometimes and just to find joy in the small things. You're all saying the same thing and it's really sweet and it's really true. And I think, I don't know. No, it's not just me, but I definitely feel this. We've spoken about this every single episode, but social media is making this so much worse,

I think, because we want to have something to show. We want to have this new glitzy outfit, this event we went to, this engagement, the party. There is this sense that it's really hard to capture the mundane and to capture the inanities of life which are actually really gorgeous which is why I wrote that sub stack I don't know if you read it a day of one's own which was like I was thinking about making a reel I've got a real reticence towards creating content in the minute and I'm actually this is part of the reason why I'm feeling stuck and directionless is I don't really get any joy from creating the kind of content that does really well on Instagram. And I do quite like consuming it, but I feel like it's so unrepresentative of reality and life that

it actually brings you out into this kind of hyperbolic state where everything is like so shocking or crazy or subversive. Everything's so quick and fast paced. And I don't want to live like that necessarily. And I don't necessarily want to be consuming other people's lives. So I find it really jarring and difficult to then post content like that online. And so part of my, to overshare, personal malaise is coming from what actually do I want to be doing and creating in my career? And I've been an influencer for so long as like one of the main ways that I make my money. Yes, I want to be a writer, but goddamn, that's not going to pay the bills right now. And podcasting is great, but that's not going to pay the bills right now and podcasting is great but that's again not paying the bills and so I I'm also going through this moment of change and it's interesting because I do also think even though it's obviously not a

lot of your guys jobs I do think that that is also what's making us feel directionless because we're just seeing everyone's highlight reels and we're feeling like our lives are so boring I'm really trying to come into myself more as well, having lovely days with friends that cost no money, that mean really nothing, but actually they will be the things that I remember. I went out for a drink with my friend and your friend, Grace Campbell, who I live with on Saturday night, Friday night, Sunday night, Sunday night, we just went to the pub and we ended up having the most random encounter with this couple. This girl both followed us both on Instagram. She was so lovely. And she'd just gone through a breakup with her boyfriend and we ended up having like the most random encounter with this couple this girl both followed us both on Instagram she was so lovely and she'd just gone through a breakup with her

boyfriend and we ended up having this like really interesting conversation and Grace and I came away and we were like god that was so fun like god talking to people and listening to people's stories and we literally just went and had like a couple of glasses of wine and it was so exciting and interesting and it gave me so much balls for thought and I was really fascinated about their relationship and that kind of thing is like you can't post about that on Instagram in a way that's interesting or meaningful to anyone else and the content that does work is very individualistic like you can't really share shared experiences on social media and so much I think of life's important moments hang in the balance of a conversation between you and a friend over a

glass of wine or a coffee or after they've just had a baby or when you're falling asleep after night out you know there's all of these precious gorgeous moments that will be probably the things that come back to you when you're in that winter of your life and you you know like a tear comes to your eye because you're thinking about that lovely walk that you went on with that friend and none of us know how long life's going to be none of us know how long we're here for and it's so interesting how much we're desperate to plan and control the outcome and know where we're going to be in five to 10 years. And every time I look back, this is, I find this really comforting. I'm like five years ago, I could never have guessed that I would be here. And five years before that, I definitely wouldn't

have guessed. So trying to control the outcome is so futile. And it just means that we're constantly sort of giving ourselves anxiety and feelings of inadequacy because we're we're basically barking up the wrong tree god how many cliches do I want to use another message read I work so hard to get to the job I have now I'm married own a home have a child and I'm so totally overwhelmed with life and can't do it all I actually want to take a step back and get a less stressful job with less responsibility, but that means I have less pay and now I have a home and more things to pay for than ever. I wish I could get the balance right somehow. And so many of you replied to this. One message read, it's so interesting to see this point of

view as this is what I'm working towards and feel a bit worthless currently as I'm unmarried at 29. Maybe this is a persistent feeling no matter what stage of life we're at. I do think there's this general consensus within society that once you're married and have a baby and you have a home, then life is going to begin in this new way that means it's more settled, that means it's easier, that means you found your solid ground, you found your anchor, you found your person and you've got your family. And then you can sort of all of the ways that you might feel wayward or stressed or lonely or isolated are going to disappear. And it's just not true.

And so I think that I found that really interesting. And I also found it really generous that people were sharing that. Someone else also said, I have a partner of four years, dog, house, stable job, but I don't wake up excited the day and I'm not muscly enjoying my job. I'm often just feeling like, is this it? I know I have a life that many people want and I'm very grateful for it. Maybe it's social media making me aware to so many other paths out there, but I'm just not sure what direction to take if, how I can be happier. Someone else, I feel really lucky. I like my job, friends, husband and have a nice life. But I think what helps me most is focusing on things like my health

today and not worrying too much about the future and just being grateful that I'm okay today. I think what's coming up, which is really interesting, is how much we're determined to define ourselves by our situations or by these certain facets of life, whether it's our career, our relationship status, our friendships, our social lives, you know, the things that we've achieved, our achievements. And we want to be able to sort of like define ourselves by what we've caught. Like it's a game of Crash Bandicoot and we're collecting all the coins. That was such a fun game. Probably the last time I played games. So when I was like 10, anyway, I miss it. I think that maybe what we've got to do is what this person said, which is like, actually just how do we feel in the way that we're moving through our lives? Like,

I think that we have, it must be an age thing where we're just like, where are we at? How have we done this? Have I achieved the X, Y, Z? Maybe what we've got to focus on actually is stop thinking about the outcomes, stop thinking about the levels, stop thinking about the things we've already got and thinking about when I wake up in the morning, do I love my partner? How can I show them that I love them? How can I try to be really grateful for the things that I have? How can I show up for my friends? How can I do things that are going to make my relationships and all these things that we're, instead of like looking, saying we have them, actually working towards keeping them. I think that that's something that

it's something that I wrote about that definitely happened in my last relationship where we kind of forgot to water our relationship. You know, whatever you feed grows. And if you forget to, if you become, if you rest on your laurels, if you think, okay, I've done X, Y, Z, now it's on to the next thing and you forget to nourish those areas of your life, then nothing is going to grow or flourish. And I think that we have to just think about taking action like that message said, think about, we can zoom out and think about what's going to be important to us at the end of our lives. But I actually think just waking up in the morning, and it's so trite and silly. And when you realize that it's so funny, because like, I'm like, fine, okay, it does make me feel better if I exercise every day and if I wake up in the morning and if I try to not let a bad mood take over my day if I think

about what I'm grateful for if when it's raining I'm not like oh I hate that it's raining I'm like oh doesn't that sound really nice I know that you can't positive mental attitude your way out of mental illness or really debilitating depression but you can kind of stop yourself from slipping into it by having these little positive gratefulness moments and being like fuck I don't have any money right now but I can make money I have time I'm not in love right now but there's so many people out there that I can fall in love with what can I focus on today what little things can I do to help me feel better about my life and we spoke about this before in so many episodes but tidying your room setting your alarm a bit earlier remembering to drink your water

remembering to text that friend often doing things for other people and you shouldn't obviously do things other people to make you feel better but remembering to reach out and to be active in so many different areas of your life someone sent a a message actually as well. Let me shut up because you guys are actually being so much better than me at this sometimes. So someone said, I recently learned about the concept of functional freeze, a bit like the fig tree by Sylvia Plath, which I shared on my stories and I'll put in the highlights. It's a long bit, so I won't read it, but I absolutely love it. And they go and say, I feel totally overwhelmed by what to do next with my life that I do nothing. And then I slump lower into a spiral of anxiety and depression because I feel like I'm falling behind and don't have the gap and go to take action totally overwhelming and obviously linked

with comparison to peers and pressure for women to be a certain position in their life based on their age for reference I'm in my late 20s I totally agree totally agree it's why we have to stop trying to control the outcome we have to control what It's why we have to stop trying to control the outcome. We have to control what we can control. We have to just keep putting one step forwards because we will get further along. The days will pass anyway, as I've said a million times. And if we just keep moving forwards, even if it feels so boring, like nothing's happening, just showing up for work, doing that little extra thing, something by virtue of the universe and by the way that the world works, something will happen to surprise us. Something

will always come along that will bring us great joy. Something will always come along that will bring us grief and depression and sadness. But joy and sadness are what make up life. You can't have the highs without the lows. But it's so fine to just feel like you're on some latent conveyor belt that's taking you nowhere and nothing's going to happen. It's simply impossible to live a life where nothing ever happens. And maybe there'll be periods of time when the joy is less frequent and when those kind of moments of kismet, when it feels like the universe is shining down on you and something beautiful has really happened and you're falling in love in a way that's like, oh my

God, I can see everything in HD and everything's so beautiful. That might not be every day. And so like we've been saying, you've got to find the joy in the mundane, getting stuck into a really good book. Fuck me, I want to delete all of social media. I cannot explain to you. I can't articulate it, but every single week I want to do like a video talking about it on social media about how much it is this thing that is really, I think, causing so much of the issue. It's definitely not the main, it's not, no, actually, do you know what? Maybe it is the main thing. It feels so silly to say that because it feels so embarrassing that we've let it take over our lives so much. But just our phones in

general, I guess, I was talking to Grace again about this. Imagine if we didn't have phones, imagine how much time you get back. Imagine if we woke up in the morning and the first thing you did was just made a cup of coffee, maybe read a newspaper or read a book. I just can't even imagine not having a phone at all, like how much time you would get back. So yeah, I wish we could delete it. I don't know if we can, but I think reducing the time on social media, getting out into the world. I hope this episode isn't sort of like a rehash of everything else we've spoken about before. I feel like it might be a little bit, but let me read a couple more messages. Okay, I'm going to read a couple more messages. Someone else said, a bad decision is always better than no decision, is my most of the time mantra.

I just wanted to say that I think as Azza said that this is a feeling that nearly everyone can relate to and we're definitely not alone. Someone once told me that the grass is greener where you water it and my advice is also to watch Perfect Days by Wim Wenders. Someone else recommended Perfect Days and I completely agree about watering the grass. Another message, I couldn't agree more with the impact of taking the time to enjoy the small things in life. I read an interesting study on how taking time to be in awe each day can have a big impact on your mental well-being. Taking the time on a daily commute, walk, run to look around and really enjoy something that you're passing, an old tree, some flowers, a window display.

All these little things in our environment bring such simple joy if we just take a moment to consider them. I think always being plugged in, looking at phone, listening to podcasts really can take away from experiencing and feeling connected to the world around us. I've actually recently been going out without headphones and taking a book with me, but it in doing what this person said really thinking about how long some of these buildings have been here or these trees and how interesting that is also because I've been reading Virginia Woolf which has really inspired me actually to go back and to read old older books that are set in London because it's so amazing to be walking around these streets and think, fuck, Virginia Woolf, like walk down here and to hear about their concept of the world and like go to the parks. It's really given me a renewed sense of wonder for the city to remember

just how many interesting, incredible people have also walked these same streets, having these same thoughts and feelings. It always baffles me just how much we can relate to these women who lived like a century before we did anyway i really really recommend reading like any of those kind of bloom bloomsbury set books going to bloomsbury being i think that that can really be really grounding remembering i just find it so funny and interesting and i think about this all the time that like i think part part of life and we maybe it's because of capitalism, maybe it's because of hustle culture, maybe it's because of productivity. And we forget, I think kind of the point of being alive, if we have to come up with a point is just to live and just to have the full human experience. And part of the full human experience is feeling unsettled. And I do think that in points of unsettledness, the best thing you can do is take action rather than stagnate, rather than leaning into that feeling of direction. It's just being like, okay, fuck, I don't have a direction. Let's just go and see what happens. Life will happen anyway,

whether or not you want it to. The days are going to pass. Time is going to keep moving on. So you might as well just go with it. It might be really uncomfortable. You might feel left out, but this is your story. That's okay. Let's not go as far as to start singing Natasha Bedingfield. But yes, it's like, this is so universal and this is part of what life is. And do not let the pressures of society or your peers or feeling that you're not good enough, not let you live you absolutely are good enough and worthy enough of living and doing and trying and who gives a fuck if you're not have the best job or if you haven't met the love of your life or if you haven't had kids yet who cares this is life you know as so often it can feel like what is the

point we can feel really nihilistic and existential and depressed and when I get really depressed I really am like god I just cannot be bothered like fuck, fuck me. It's so hard every day. You've got to wake up and go again. Are you joking? But if you try and re-narrativize that and go, God, I'm so lucky. Like, who really gives a fuck? Like, none of it matters. What matters is what you make of it. What matters is these friendships that you've made along the way or the people that you've touched. And do you know a really egotistical narcissistic but fun exercise you can do which is so fucking weird but I kind of like doing it is if you imagine your own funeral and try to imagine all the people that would go to your funeral and

what they would say like I don't know I know that sounds really odd but like so many people will care about you and so many people will not care about all the things that you're stressing about. And all they really care about is having you around and enjoying your company and making you laugh and you making them laugh and that you're well and that you feel good in yourself. And as much as these things feel so important and they are important in some ways because we've designed them through society to mean that they're important, you know, all of these milestones. But fundamentally, like, who cares if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and you haven't done these things? It might happen at some point. I was listening to Miriam Margulies on Adam Buxton, and maybe slightly facetiously, she was going, oh, I wish I'd had success younger, because she's kind of become, she's like popped off now and she's like 80, 90 something. And she's suddenly been thrust, like she really is like at the height of her fame. She obviously had fame and she was doing, she was very successful before. But I was like, it is funny. You just don't know. And one of my favorite things to do actually is Google celebrities and at what age they did things like Ricky Gervais famously didn't start getting into comedy until he was in his forties. and I can't think of other examples now but like Cameron Diaz didn't have kids until her

40s or meet her partner until her 40s actually oh my god when I went on Women's Hour me and Livy were on Women's Hour to talk about dating then there was this incredible woman called Yvonne who was 77 and she was going on after us to talk about rape culture in the UK she's an incredibly impressive journalist for The Observer. And we just got chatting to her and she was asking us loads of questions. And I started asking her questions about, is she married? Does she have children? And she was 77. She said she met her partner, her now husband, when she was 40. And they were both in separate relationships and getting together. They've now been married for 37 years, happily have two

children. She was so glamorous, so interesting, so in touch and humble and fascinating. And I really just was like, do you know what? That woman, I was like, she's amazing to me. I'm so interested in her. She was so interested as well. And obviously, sometimes you had that generational divide where you do have a misalignment of views or ideologies or understanding, but she was so clever, so smart, so like nonjudgmental. I was talking about my dating life and like being quite explicit with some stories. And she was just had this beautiful way of looking at life. And sometimes it just takes meeting someone at a different stage in their lives who've done things maybe slightly

in a different, more higgledy-piggledy route. She was like, I didn't even know if I wanted to have kids. I didn't know if I could have kids. And then it just happened. And yeah, anyway, so sometimes it just takes looking outside of the bracket of people that you're competing is the wrong word, but that you're directly aligned with. Look outside of that. I have another really great friend of mine who's in her fifties that when I lived on my own in Clapham, she lived in the flat above me and we made this amazing friendship I really freaking miss her actually because I now live in North London we haven't seen each other for ages she's gorgeous dog Martha she's an artist she doesn't have any kids she never got married and she lived in Africa

for a really long time because she is this incredible print artist and she does beautiful paintings of animals and she had a really interesting life as well and she sometimes I think speaking to people of different generations is really useful because I love Polly and I'd love to be like Polly she's so cool she's so interesting she doesn't have kids she's not married I'd love to be like Yvonne she met her husband at 40 and she's got a really successful career and she's 77 and smart as a whip like I think that can be a really useful way of finding out look ahead meet someone else make friends with a different generation see how they did it and just see all the color and the texture and the fun that is to be had in life rather than being

like oh my god I'm xyz age I haven't done xyz the likelihood is you are going to get there you just might get there in a different way or you'll end up somewhere even better than you ever could have imagined um right i've been waffling on i love you guys i know that it was really sad and a lot of the messages were really down in the dumps and it was giving low-key depressed from quite a lot of you but i hope that we are able to drag ourselves out of this go and do create make fucking who cares if you're not like doing whatever you're supposed to be doing see the value in yourself as you are you're just enough you're perfect love ya i will see you next week and then i'm taking a week off the week after but we'll just we'll talk about that later okay love you bye Okay. Love you. Bye. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated.

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