Goes Without Saying - new year, same shit & the january slump: podmas #23

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

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You can't wait, let me guess, you're excited for this one. I can't wait. I'm so excited about this one nearly being over guys we're so joking what a luxury to check in every day literally so like it's literally the honor of a lifetime we're just fools who decide to tire ourselves out all day and then be like oh should we get a microphone now that'd be nice it's just a weird move every time it always is weird choice from us but when is it not what's in the door of your advent today it's i can't quite make it out but it looks like it's a photo of you slumping there i go again it's classic me it's an image of you a new year's same you lying on the ground oh she's got a fleece on

you know what that means she's in a slump god yeah so january slump new year new slump new year same you same slump yeah blah blah blah same old you get the gist i know you do we're slumping there's an emphasis for transformation and whole new era unlocked in the new year it's gonna be my year yeah and it might be god i hope it is everybody's year here yeah but also look realistically it can't be all of our years i'm happy to sacrifice some of you i'm joking yeah guys there's only so much goodness what are the chances that it's all our years it's horrible it's horrible no what we mean is i kind of hate that iconic you're iconic you're iconic what new year new you no oh it's gonna be my year what the fuck do you mean well almost what do you know you don't know what i've got in store for you

i don't like it cut to clips of us last year saying this is just gonna be my maybe my year oh yeah i say loads of things i hate it's kind of part of the thing yeah no it's part of the gag it's because it's just it's just a thing you know um a bit mental actually is this yeah yeah yeah no no no let's keep it going okay okay so well right i think here we've made it no secret we do like to get into we always like to get into festivities okay because we're quite miserable girls and we need to lighten things up a little every now and then yeah okay so we can put some bunting on it forgive me but i will but i do also very much feel the pressures of like you know get some new habits in order let's start setting some goals you know let's start actually being a real civilized human being for

once like pack it in wing you need to sort it out sort of thing yeah and the end of the year does start you start getting itchy of like god i haven't really done much have i god this is not looking good around here i think birthdays and i think new year there there's no coincidence someone someone actually requested an episode on something that i thought was a great phrase and because and i think it's it applied to me it caught my eye because my birthday is the 27th of december it's coming up guys i think it might be their birthday as the, it caught my eye because my birthday is the 27th of December. It's coming up, guys. I think it might be their birthday as the day we're recording this.

Oh, wow. Well, happy birthday. Happy birthday. But they requested an episode on the big birthday cry trademark they put. And I thought that is so it. Like, why? I know the reason why. But on birthdays and New Year, there's this huge, like, it seems to be that a lot of people

cry on those days and feel upset and like introspective and it's obviously because time is marked in a way that you're not really confronted with on a daily basis that you're aware of like the growth that you've made how things have changed just you're aware of like mortality and the moving of time in like a deeper way and also confronted with like the decisions you've made um and like in a judgment way of like did i complete the things i wanted to do am i in the place that i want to be and all of those things yeah um which i think is really horrible well it can be really hard because we have a tendency to be really brutal exactly and that's exactly what i was going to say is like the reality is you will have done amazing in some areas i'm pretty shit in others guys because you're fucking human beings on planet earth and i

think if i know you guys and i think i do by now and if i know if you're anything like us over here us too yeah you're gonna be really you know what i'm gonna say you're gonna be really hard on yourself and it's just like let's not let wouldn't it be nice if we just like didn't be cunts to ourselves for like five fucking minutes honestly like it's it's really it's especially on a celebration totally it's so natural to come to the end of a year or come to some sort of milestone and be reflecting back on like okay you know what was i hoping for where have i landed where have i fallen short what am i still looking forward to but i think adding the layer of like well i haven't done enough so that means i'm shit and almost being really binary about it as well of like i've totally failed or i've really

not done enough this year or i really haven't you know i've really fallen short and it's like there will be so many areas i know this i know it's so deeply there'll be so many areas so many things you've achieved so many things you've handled that you just are so dismissive of like you haven't even literally given yourself like 30 seconds to be like actually you don't even know it something really fucked up happened in march and i just moved on like it was nothing it's like no let's have a moment to be like actually guys compliments to the chef cheers to me congratulations on the podcast yeah look at me handling my shit look at me being a real human girl on planet earth yeah it's hard it's not easy out here

and i think the tendency to feel really hard and frustrated and angry on yourself is really natural but you're just ruining your day your birthday yeah let's zoom out actually you're just ruining your new year you've got a glass of champagne in your hand yeah you've got a dress on it let's go you're surrounded by people you love like what's going on here well yeah or like um Or like, even not. Like, the New Year's that I've been like, right, okay, I'm going to bed before midnight. I don't even want to do anything. It's still like, you're in a comfortable bed. You made the decision to do that. You've got the world of entertainment at your fingertips.

And let's take a moment to be grateful for that. A new episode of Ghosts That Sang every bloody day. That we were born in this time where we can access everything we want anything I remember the days of being so desperate to listen to a song and it's like what are you going to do wait for it to come on the radio

by now that's what I call music a million and ten I can't wait for this I think also I need to have the normalisation of the January slump immediately. Well, let's start the normalisation now. Can we? Let's start it early.

So by the time January rolls around, it's fully normalised. But there is so... Of course there will be a crash. Of course there will be a natural come down to such a huge like almost cultural climax yeah of christmas and new year and the ending of of 2023 the ending of a year wherever you're listening to this um it naturally anticipates a sort of kind of lull in your life where it's like oh your skin your skin is so fucked up like you've been eating so much dairy like you look mental like you're absolutely fried like yeah you are a shell of

a human being you're gonna be knackered and and yet your calendar is screaming you get up get up you said you were gonna wake up at 6 30 every day and drink two liters of water you piece of shit it's just there's never a worse time to set millions of like really intense goals for yourself when you're absolutely knackered and i also think the the narrative around new year's resolutions really ignores the fact that we're trying to do those in like midwinter like it's almost like there's this idea that's like christmas winter we all love it we all love it jan We all love it. January 1st, it's winter's over. It's January. Come on.

New year, new year. Yeah. It's like, wait, I hardly feel any motivated than I did in November when it was all, guys, just get into bed. Cozy up. Cozy, cozy, cozy. And now it's, no, it's still as cold. Excuse me.

It's still as rainy and grey and horrific. It's more miserable. There's no celebrations. But it's, why aren't you in a gym? are you not being really social why are you not is it because it's still literally fucking miserable outside and i want to be inside yeah where's the energy where's the christmas lights where's the pizzazz there's january is pizzazzless penny pizzazz locked out i don't know what that means but i agree i don't know what that means, but I agree. Penny pizzazz. I don't know what that means. You're Penny pizzazz. Am I?

Yeah, you are. I like the sound of her. My mum's name is Penny. It is, which is, I mean, she has a stunning name. Penelope. Penelope. Famously. Famously.

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podcast isn't mine don't go there but i saw this a while ago a few months ago actually haven't actioned it at all but i've been speaking about it with people in my real life and they're all really lapping it up so i'm gonna pass it on to you guys i saw someone talking about kind of cumulative goals and i do think this is quite actionable and quite nice i wonder if we've spoken about this actually but say for example you're going to do it in the kind of new year sense and if you're looking at 2024 and thinking right there's 12 months there for me to work with what this person was saying was that and how they like to do it and maybe we could learn from them and you know just take a little bit of take some light inspiration maybe shake it up to fit your life but whatever they consider their goals but make you make them cumulative they

stack them so they would say right january mathematician right so that's where it doesn't really align with me already i'm lost i need someone else to do the math so here we go here we go no it's very simple it's we're stacking these new habits okay i'm in i can deal with stacks yeah we're stacking uh give me a habit that you wouldn't wouldn't mind having or like a nice little goal i play badminton okay lovely sorry i really had to go from my my mind yeah so a goal is i want to play badminton more often i want to dedicate time to playing badminton this thing that i enjoy i don't want to play badminton more often i want to dedicate time to playing badminton this thing that i enjoy i don't know enough about badminton to elaborate any further there's not much more to it than that i get the gist over shuttlecock that's it but for some

reason it's so fucking fun so january more simple can be be more amazing January your focus is making time for badminton making an effort to play badminton yeah by the end of January look at her go she's been playing badminton a bit more than usual okay so you've built that into a habit now February your new habit is going to be um kind of calling a grandparent once a week lovely look at you go right you continue throughout february to play badminton but you've also stacked on a new habit of calling the grandparent okay so march we're going to introduce a new one i love this and blah blah by the end of the year i mean in heaven badminton court she's a grandma calling water drinking gym girl like she's she's doing everything she's learned French she's got a badminton racket in one hand the phone in the other

she can't do it's really like the outfit of like when you're playing badminton at nine ringing granny I can't talk right now I'm playing badminton but by the end of the year you've introduced 12 new habits but almost the subtl end of the year you've introduced 12 new habits but almost the subtlety of the way you did it just it was so natural of you it's like nothing it was actually achievable totally achievable but by the end of the year it's like god will you be finishing that year in a totally different place yeah then you would be the year before like you've achieved so much like in a real tangible sense by the end of that year by introducing 12 new things whereas i don't no offense guys i really

believe in you however there are limits to my belief and i do think if any of us sit down at the beginning of january and say i'm gonna do these 12 new things i'm gonna do it straight away here we go first week of jan let's go more badminton more granny more this more that it's not gonna happen a few days in i haven't touched you're collapsing you're exhausted i've been celibate from shuttlecocks no genuinely so i thought that was a nice doable way you can kind of make it fun i love that but what's one thing you would add in so for example for your january what some what would you want to do um okay so I think my overall thing and something I have been thinking recently is well not recently that's such a lie I haven't thought it one bit but just generally something I know to be true allow the narrative

is that generally if I was a bit nicer to myself my life would be a bit more pleasant that seems about right so i guess just a way that i could cultivate a bit more um compassion for myself forgiveness kindness those sorts of things gratitude for myself i'm not sure how i want to do that but the general things like this is already kind of a habit that i have of like doing things i'm grateful for every day yeah kind of i'll be like uh my dog sephie my five you know whatever i'll just little list of things that's a nice one but i already kind of do it so it feels like cheating but i think that's more of that energy that energy i think just generally of like almost and i do think forgiveness is a big one of like okay it's okay if you don't do everything

you wanted to do or like it's okay if you fucked up or it's okay if you were a bit shit at something also it's inevitable it is that's the thing we can deny deny deny until we die but it's it's not going anywhere you're fallible human beings it's not like oh maybe i can get to a point where i i forgive you for doing that stuff it's like i don't know one person that hasn't done all of those things isn't in the place they want to be has fucked up loads made loads there's a silly thing every now and then you make some mistake it's actually good it's actually a good thing the way you deal with it is so good have depth and you are a human what about you what would yours be i know that's not like a tangible

habit but i haven't thought about my tangible habits yet so badminton's a nice one yeah no i don't think i have a tangible habit like i would i actually love that i'm gonna totally try and do that this year like actually try and stack them but i think yeah a feeling I feel at the moment very often I'm like quite rushed off my feet but not in a way that I think there's the whole narrative about oh busy busy is so good busy is so good and I think a few years ago when I wasn't busy I was like busy would be such a nice thing to be and at the moment I feel absolutely quite overwhelmed yeah and desperate to be on my own like i feel very very pulled in a lot of directions and i think a lot of that comes down to the fact that i i'm doing loads of stuff but i'm not actually present when i'm doing them and it's like i'm

desperate to be on my own and get that feeling of like oh okay sit down fucking jesus yeah but actually it's like you can do that whilst you're on the train or whilst you're serving a coffee whatever you're doing whilst you're walking your dog all of that stuff you can actually be with yourself whilst you're doing it and i think i'm really um trying to like tune into myself whilst i'm i don't need to be literally sitting in a dark room to like tune into how i i'm i don't need to be literally sitting in a dark room to like tune into how i feel and be like i feel like a bit stressed right now whatever like i don't need to get to the end of the day but that was a stressful day i can notice it whilst it's happening and i think i want to like start practicing like tuning in with myself in the moment yeah if that

makes sense it's kind of we were saying a few episodes ago about like being on your own and stuff and that almost like time with yourself is the stuff that happens by accident and it's almost like we're so encouraged all the time to like schedule in like seeing a friend or like schedule working and like plan in advance all the things you're going to be doing with and for other people but it's a lot less natural to like schedule in or make an effort or dedicate time to yourself and i think looking at like your week or two weeks in advance and being like i'm gonna make sure that on that friday morning i can rest i can rest and i can just chill and be yeah present with myself all of that bollocks no definitely because it's so important

and that's obviously the first thing to go it's like if anyone else calls you or needs something or a plan comes up something fun etc yeah yeah totally it's like yeah no i'll be there yeah the first thing to go is your alone time because that's the thing that we just think yeah it's movable it's it's not necessary but it's so integral to like it's that's the only fundamental thing like if you as we keep saying in these episodes if you lose that you lose everything because you're not happy at the party you're not happy at the thing you're not happy then walking your dog you're joining you're not even with you're not even there like if you don't actually have a real relationship with yourself you're just kind of going through

the motions you've got nothing you're a mess you're a mess harry you're a mess so i think that's a big thing like i would love to really start yeah being present with myself like in the moment lovely well i hope everyone else is going to be kind and compassionate and forgiving and present with themselves too yeah i hope you'll have a gorgeous january ahead yeah don't put too much pressure on yourself you don't need to suddenly change everything about yourself you're absolutely perfect as you're literally god look at you go look at you fly god save some for the rest of us jesus christ any pizzazz you're slaying too hard okay if you don't hear from us assume We slayed too hard. Okay. If you don't hear from us, assume we slayed too hard. We'll be right back.