Life Uncut - HUSTLE CULTURE - The too busy trap

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

It's Thursday guys but this week due to Britt's loss of voice we had to switch things around so this is our big juicy episode!First up, Britt receives an insta DM that wasn't meant for her.Should cosmetic clinics be telling us all the things that are 'wrong' with us!? We think not.Ahhhh the hustle. The grind. The never ending list of things to do. Sound familiar? Why do we feel like to be successful we have to be running around like a chicken with it's head cut off? Always a million miles an hour, always hustling. In fact, as a society, we tend to glorify the hustle, as if if is something we should aspire to! But should we? Does busyness equate to success? Does busyness equate to productivity? Let's unpack that hustlers.Don't forget to join the facebook discussion group and follow us on insta @lifeuncutpodcast and if you loved the ep, tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog and tell your friends and share the love, because, well, we love love. x See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. And we have gone through hell and high water to bring you this episode today and I'm not even sure if that's the right saying. I can't even confirm if it is. You do muck a lot of things up. That's fine. Don't tell them. We do our research for this podcast. No, you make a lot of sayings up. I currently have Lola strapped to me. So this could be a very interesting episode. Britt's been sick. And the reason why we're recording this so last minute is because this was literally the only time that we could do it. Matt's out. He's still training for Dancing with the Stars. Watch this space. I know. Yeah. So he's pretty much not been home for the last five

weeks and if you can hear someone crying or some gurgling it's me in the corner it's Brittany and also Lola no I was so sick that I physically did lose my voice after the last week's episode which you guys so many of you wrote to me in hysterics about my voice I actually thought it was quite soothing personally I didn't mind it but after that I completely lost my voice and I there's no way we could have recorded this episode until now so that's why we've got babies strapped to us I'm glad that you're back and you don't sound like a husky, sexy, sex line worker. I sound better, but I'm dying inside still. So something funny did actually happen.

This is like an accidentally unfiltered, I guess, for someone else that has happened to me in this past week. I have not left the house. I have not put clothes on other than this one track suit that I'm still wearing right now. I've worn it to bed and I've worn it all day. So like 24 hours a day, I'm in a track pant. I haven't had makeup on.

I haven't showered properly. I haven't washed my hair. I haven't eaten anything in seven days I had my first meal which was some soup this morning when you're at that level of sick that you've just totally given up on life and yourself and everything that has meaning I've given up on life yeah I wanted to share with you guys if you follow me you would have seen all my stories that I did some stories letting you know about my voices that I'm sick and that my voice wasn't gonna be great on the podcast and I was doing the best and just keep you posted with how ill I was and I literally was like almost crying in the stories because the

pain was so much then I get an Instagram message from this girl and if anything is going to make you feel better this is it she's obviously her friend has forwarded her my story she's forwarded my story this girl has gone to respond to it to her friend and have a private conversation but you know how easy it is to respond to me so she's responded to me not knowing and she wrote oh my god have you seen how old and gross britney looks with blonde hair that's what she said and i was like wow oh my god i was like i'm so if i wasn't already if my soul wasn't already crushed you've just crashed it that little bit more you're like i didn't think that there was any lower than this but we are here we have arrived thank you so much the internet is a cruel place babe you know what

i was just gonna let it go and i in all honesty i didn't care like if you think i look old and gross who cares you're like no that was just me without a filter fuck you I wrote to her that's what I said I literally wrote and I said hey doll assuming that one wasn't for me just as an FYI the story is literally on my deathbed I've been extremely unwell for a week also I am just 34 this is no filter and I have no makeup I was like this is literally what I look like and she wrote back and she was trying to avoid the bit where she said I look gross with blonde hair she's like no oh my god I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I look like that too I'm really old too and I was like you're digging a hole I was like you're digging she just kept going I'm really old too and I said look if

you have an opinion of me that you don't like my hair and you think I look old and gross that's fine I was like but I happen to like my hair and I we don't need to go on any further and then she kept going then I started to get selfies of her and a friend and stuff with their kids being like we're really run down too and I was like I was like this this couldn't get better and I was like hunt. It's seriously okay. You're like, you've dug the hole. You have reached the center of the earth. Please stop. Just stop. If I wasn't so dehydrated, I would have cried, but I had no tears left. Oh, as an added piece of information, she didn't even follow me. She didn't even follow me. It wasn't even like she was a fan and she was accidentally made a cute mistake. She just

doesn't even like me. So this happened to me not so long ago. Somebody wrote back to a story of Marley and I can't remember what it was that I posted, but it was Marley just being wild and feral and somebody had written back to me which they'd obviously meant to send it to their friend and they wrote oh look her kid got cute at least she's cute now I remember when that happened it was so funny but I guess I think the moral of the story is this does happen a lot and it's so easy to do you need to either be really careful when you're responding to people or maybe just don't respond mean things to your friends I mean I almost did it recently Matt sent me another influencers stories and i was like said some questionable things and almost sent it straight

to them and i was like if i had done that oh the daily mail would have crucified me wasn't me this is your blonde hair you would do i would never i would never actually i have something i want to talk to you about which has to do with like aesthetics great segue i was this is actually a really good segue hey can i just ask you do you like my blonde hair or no i love your blonde hair okay I just I'm feeling self-conscious about now you actually always look painfully beautiful and it hurts my soul because I always feel like the rundown person in this little duo today we're even that still doesn't make me feel very good you've just told everyone that you're on your deathbed and this is me looking as good as I can look no it's not okay anyway the segue is

so for my girlfriend's birthday and like some of you might judge this but it's what she wanted so don't judge me for my girlfriend's birthday a couple of months back she had just finished breastfeeding and she wanted to get Botox so all of us girls we pitched in 50 bucks or something and paid for a voucher for her to go to a very very expensive fancy clinic in Paddington right and she went to go and get her Botox done just recently and she came out with a story that has left me so mad I was like I'm gonna tell it on the podcast oh my god what did they do so she went in there for the first time as a new patient to this clinic I don't know if anyone has ever gone and gotten Botox I mean I definitely haven't ever had Botox but if you have gone no way absolutely

not if you have gone and had Botox what they do is they make you sit down and fill out a form pretty much like you would do at any new clinic that you would go to if you're seeing a doctor so you fill out the concerns that you have the things that you want to focus on if you have any contraindications with your past health and what it is that you're there for so she filled out on the information form she was there for botox she wasn't interested in anything else she didn't have any other concerns about her face or her body or whatever it was she just wanted some botox and then to get the hell out of that just get rid of this deep line across my forehead yeah like i've been dealing with a newborn child for the past year i'm finally off breastfeeding i just want

to just want to get rid of these lines so anyway so she sits down with the clinician and he goes okay take this mirror i'm gonna give you a face examination which was like yeah right here he goes and he's like okay so straight off the back you're quite hollow under the eyes so we could put some filler under the eyes to help like you know bring back some volume you're also very hollow around the temple so i would also recommend some filler here you've got these quite deep lines around your mouth you know from expression lines so we could put some filler there and have you had a major trauma to your nose oh my gosh so at this point he said that like have you broken your nose have you had a major trauma she's never broken her nose anyway at this point my girlfriend was laughing

and she was like jesus tell me what you really think and he was like oh i'm so i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i have to do this we have to do this for all new patients and it made me so mad because at the time when she told me the story i was like you are monopolizing on people's insecurities you are creating insecurities in someone so that they will come back and get this long list of things that you think are wrong with that person. And the thing that has gotten me so upset about it is, so I saw my girlfriend just a couple of days ago, and this is about a week since she went into the clinic. And you don't recognize it because her face looks like a basketball from all the filler that you just went willy nilly and put in. No, she said at the time she thought

it was really funny. And she was like, Oh God, of course he's just trying to upsell me on more things that I need done but she said over the past week I've just keep looking at myself in the mirror now and seeing all these things that I don't like about myself that I'd never ever considered before because this doctor pointed out to me the things that he thought he could fix about my face and look maybe Botox is the gateway drug to all the other things but I'm just so mad I think it's so unconscionable that somebody would tell you the things that they think is wrong with you 100 the fact of the matter is he has no right to do that and for anyone to capitalize on someone else's insecurities and flaws and i say flaws it's not even a flaw it has never bothered her in the

past i think it's a real sign of where society is going today that it's just this expectation and this preconceived idea that every single woman is unhappy with herself and every single woman must want to change everything the fact that she can come in with a specific treatment she wanted in a specific area and he tries to tell her all these other things she needs with her face you absolutely nailed it because he was like shocked that she said oh I'm not unhappy with anything else he was like well what do you mean you're not unhappy with anything oh you like your face you should be you're supposed to be unhappy with the way you look that's the society we live in and it is I think that's exactly it the more you think about it it's this idea that no one's ever happy

with how they are and they always are trying to improve you know I this just got me thinking when you mentioned it this is something that happened to me the other day some old photos I linked my old computer to my new computer and all my old photos from my traveling in the past in my young 20s and all this linked over and I was like going back through them and I saw this photo of me well actually most of them I was just like shocked I saw these photos of me traveling and I thought I was really pretty I thought I was a normal girl I was never insecure at that age like I was just living my best life traveling in the best places I wasn't wearing makeup because you know it was just like whatever and I remember how happy I was at that time and thinking I was really pretty and

hot and I was like hooking up with guys when I looked at these photos now I could barely look at myself because I was like oh my god look how ugly I was that's what I was thinking now and I think that's a sign of what's happening to our generation and society that all of a sudden we've got these ideas that are ridiculous of what it needs to be for someone to be normal and attractive like the fact of the matter is before it was all social media I loved myself and the way I look and now I look at it and I'm like oh my god like before I had Invisalign you know I had like this crooked tooth and and a wee bit of botox before I had any botox I've had botox before Laura's had botox every single person you probably know has almost had look I'm not going to say every single person

but you know I'm not going to sit here and say I haven't had stuff done I absolutely have I haven't had anything done recently because of having back-to-back babies and breastfeeding but when I'm not breastfeeding anymore yeah I'll go and do some things that will make me feel good about myself but the thing that you nailed in that conversation Brit is like why is it expected that we hate ourselves why why do we have to do that you know and the more that i have told people about this story the more that other people have come forward with very similar things and i actually experienced something almost identical as well like i used to grind my teeth and so i was encouraged by a cosmetic clinician to get botox in my jaw and this is going back about three years

ago so post bachelor you guys if you look back on my stories or my photos on instagram you'll probably notice it but he was like oh you should get this botox in your jaw because you clench your teeth but also because you're very wide in your jaw and so it'll slim your face down and make you look slimmer and I was like oh okay great I want a slim face if you think I should do that and then I got it done and it made my smile uneven and it made my face so thin that I hated looking at myself in the mirror and something that I'd never been concerned about I never thought I had a fat face and then all of a sudden I had this insecurity about something that never existed before and I just hate that we live in a society where it's okay for one for people to tell each other what

they think is wrong with each other and two where we're supposed to think that there's something wrong with us totally and we are not against like I'm not against anyone doing anything to their body if they really want to change something for their own reason and you've thought about it you're comfortable with it and it's off your back you're the one walking into the clinic saying I really want this for this reason I think that's fine I looked back at this photo now I never noticed when I was traveling that I had a big wrinkle across my forehead I never noticed it because it wasn't on my agenda. I wasn't in my world. No one was talking about it. And now I look back and I love that I got it in my phone. I love that I got rid of it. But why do we feel

like now? It's because everything on Instagram, we've got reality shows that are dedicated to like makeovers and hauls and improving your body. And I just feel like it's influxing everyone's in every aspect of life. But as long as you are in control and you know what you want and why you want it, that's fine. But don't let anyone tell you what's wrong with you and what you need to get done. And I think the last thing I want to say on this, I love that we just had such a good conversation about this and this wasn't even the topic for today. It wasn't even planned. It's the comparison game. If you are getting something done because you want it, but the reason why you want it is because you've been playing the comparison game and you think, well, this person looks better

than me. And I, you know, I see these people who had this done on Instagram, or if you ever get into the trap where you're looking at other people's before and after surgery photos or cosmetic photos on instagram step away from that world because it's really really really fucking unhealthy and it's just so easily accessible now to see what you are and what you could be if you just did this little tweak and this little tweak and i think that filler feel have you seen that stupid filter going around the filler it's not good i can't say the bloody filler filter it's actually disgusting but it's also for people like the biggest influences in the world are literally the kardashian family and they are the biggest

culprits of plastic surgery and enhancements and again there's nothing wrong with it but that's who our youth are looking up to and that's what they think is the new norm well that then leads into another conversation which is the one that we were having the other week around influencers being role models right so we were talking about celeb spellcheck and we were talking about how there's a social responsibility that influencers have because they are modern day role models and we did a big chat about you know the fact that celeb spellcheck had taken her account offline and had you know, hidden all the posts and was kind of taking that time out to reconsider what it was that she wanted to do with her account and how she wanted to move forward with the content that

she was creating. And guys, after that episode, Celeb Spellcheck actually slid into my DMs. She didn't slide into my DM. I thought I was going to be in a bit of trouble after that conversation, but you know, it was actually a really, really even handed chat that we had personally. She invited her out for coffee. So now Laura knows who she is. No, no, no. I still don't know who she is, but she appreciated the perspective that we had taken and that it was relatively even handed, but something that she did mention, and it was something that we didn't bring up on the podcast and it's something that I really wanted to kind of mention to you guys and sort of reiterate her message was that... We're like the messenger for

Celeb Spellcheck now. She's not even paying us. Celeb Spellcheck. Yes. She has an anonymous message for you all. No, what it was is that, you know, we kind of critiqued and we analyzed why the things that she's posting could be damaging, why the bullying and culture could be damaging and what things could be done to be different. But something that we didn't raise is the fact that her account, Celeb Spellcheck, went from relative obscurity

to having a huge following in a very, very quick time. And what people don't realise is when you kind of garner that huge audience in such quick succession, it's almost like the responsibility doesn't quite catch up in time. So like you don't really realise the impact and the the reach that you have because it all happens so quickly and that was the one of the

points that she made she was like look I am taking this time out to consider what I want to do and it is you know it's been a really good little break for me mentally but what people don't realize is that this account got so big so quick and I didn't know what the fuck I was doing I was just creating content that I thought was funny and all of a sudden it had this massive audience that I'm responsible for and I guess the the responsibility didn't quite catch up as quickly as what you would hope and that I think happens to a lot of influencers. Well the thing is too we've seen a lot of influencers in the past post things that a year later they would never say and their opinions are completely different because they've educated themselves and they've learned from it and I guess

in a way she's doing the same thing she's posted some things that she's realized now maybe were too far or didn't land and she's adapting to that. I think the fact of the matter is we all do make mistakes we all will say things that we will learn from and regret and our opinions will change. Celeb Spellcheck, she did take down a few of the posts that were a bit more defamatory. She did take one of Lorena Fleur down. And for whatever that reason, maybe she just looked at it and realized she didn't go too far. She's learning from it or she might realize she wants to take a different route. Whatever the reason is, she's learned from it. She wrote to us really even handedly. And as long as for me, my opinion, as long as she's going back to just like roasting

us for really funny things, then I'm here for it. From that conversation, although it was extremely brief I just had a newfound respect for her and also looking at it from a different perspective and not just the perspective of you know having a vendetta against influencers I still stand by my fact that I think that influencers need to be held to some sort of accountability for the things that they post because we do have a great responsibility because we have a huge following but I didn't look at it with the same lens of that it was malicious or nasty intent maybe just a little bit misguided also cute that if she does listen to us and she's a fan also keep us keep us on your good side please i don't know if she was a fan or if she just read the daily mail article

which was very very freaking misleading let's go with she's a fan who would have thought that daily mail would put a misleading article out there so unlike them anyway guys it is time for our favorite part of every episode and that is accidentally unfiltered accidentally unfiltered It is basically just your most embarrassing moments, which you write into us, we read them out, and we all laugh at you together as the beautiful community that we are. I'm back. What was that laugh?

I always do this. I pre-think of my story or my joke and I laugh. I make myself laugh before I read it. No, I accidentally unfiltered this week. Okay, this one is super cute and innocent. And for some reason, Laura reminds me of something that you would do. Come at me. Hey guys, I love the podcast.

So I'm just at dinner with my girlfriends and I've got a killer accidentally unfiltered. Here it is. My comfort at night time is to- Oh my God, this was mine. Sucked in. I hate you. It's so good. So my comfort at night is to interlock toes with my partner.

Just like holding hands, but with our toes. Okay, it's just weird. That's weird already. I loved it so much. So we're at a family dinner and my partner was sitting across from me. I stretched out my leg and felt his foot so I decided to spread the toes and give my partner a bit of some toe love. I then proceeded to lock in tight but weirdly he tried to play a game of cat and mouse and tried to pull back. He's not overly fond of affection in front of his family

so I thought he was just being a bit of a prude. All of a sudden he gets up to go to the bathroom and in that moment I realized my toes were interlocked with someone else. I was toe sexing my father-in-law it's so good it's so funny it's so good from the start to the finish because it is okay matt and i do it from time to time but it's so i knew it would remind me of you for a reason it's so weird i don't like matt touching the sole of my feet but i like his toes on my toes okay feet and feet jam and not a thing they do not turn me on it is not how i do foreplay but the way i pictured this is i pictured her like like a comedy movie like you know how they slide under their chair a little bit to reach out their toe and like seductively look across the

table but then the boyfriend just gets up and walks off and the dad the funny thing is like she's like my husband was trying to play cat and mouse but she keeps like trying to molest his feet with her feet but it was his dad I just can imagine the dad like making really a really intense eye contact afterwards like this is fucking he's cancelling crew family dinner for the rest of eternity okay I have to have another one now which is really sad because that was the one I wanted lucky you had two I did I had another one up my sleeve but this one is equal parts funny and revoltingly disgusting you know this has never actually happened to us we've never picked the same one out of like nearly two years okay so this is like i said yeah i slept with my

housemate one saturday night who was temporarily living with us we had just come back from king's cross hotel so we were pretty drunk to be honest the next day was a hot summer day and we were keen to get to the beach and have a swim to enjoy the rest of the weekend so i tidied up my room and briefly noticed that i really couldn't find the condom i didn't think much of it as like a typical girl my room was a bit of a mess and my makeup my clothes were everywhere and like anyway it was fucking chaos so two days later i was in a body attack class when i felt something when i felt something weird and slimy on my leg i ran to the toilet and i was shocked and appalled to find the condom it had slipped out of my vagina during the star jumps what the hell this was actually

my backup one i ran to these were like my two favorite axelian filters this week i just pictured this a goalie it's like an oyster goalie running down her leg in a gym class that is how i pictured it and it is rank my question is you went to the beach the night after you had sex you went to the beach for swim how did it not come out when you were in the ocean also two days it's two days worth of activities where it stayed up it must have been really up girlfriend that's like i would be checking your contraception i would be checking that you've taken the morning after pill because that is some very located sperm high up up in cervix okay i have a question yes that was very detailed sorry i don't know why i never thought i'd say cervix on an accidentally unfilled you're

a mom now i'm so the cervix girlfriend you are getting pregnant and you need to think about your actions my question is because this does not has never happened to me but is it common for the condom to come off and you lose it inside of you is this a common thing i'm gonna say it's not that common it's not right we would talk about it if it was i mean breaking yes but being lost inside in the nether flung off the willy into the cervix like that can't be common that actually rolls all the way off the penis and gets stuck up there maybe it was a bit loose like maybe it wasn't a fitting condom a little bees wheelie or maybe no do you know what i reckon happened i reckon they had sex and then they cuddled for a while and he stayed inside her and he got soft and then

this is getting really, really in depth. And it's been a long time, a long time since I've encountered a condom. It's the only way I can think that it would happen. Yeah. Anyway, I'm glad that we unpacked that. Guys, thank you for writing these in. We absolutely love them. You give us a field day. Keep them coming in. Just make sure you slide into the DMs with accidentally unfiltered at the top and please you'll always be anonymous because we still get a lot of you right oh my god please don't tell anyone it was me we have never told anyone that it was any of you it is only brit and i that know your deep dark and dirty secrets but we don't even look anyway i don't do you oh sometimes you looked at the condom one for sure didn't you i looked at the

toy one so guys today we wanted to talk to you about something that i think we are all guilty of at some point in life. And I feel like everywhere we look and everyone we know and everyone we speak to is perpetually busy. They're always hustling. They're always on the go. There's always something else they have to do. There's somewhere that they need to be. We want to talk about the idea today of the hustle and are we glorifying the hustle as a society? Are we making it look like hustling and never having any spare time is the equivalent of success? Is that what we are aiming for as people and families and societies. So we want to chat today about why we feel like we need to perpetually be busy, why we feel like we need to be on the go all the time

and some of the characteristics and traits that we can change in our life to maybe look at this and approach it in a different way. So I think this is so interesting because when we first started talking about this idea of busyness and this concept that like we are so flat out all the time and like a lizard drinking like a rat up a drain pot but it is this answer you know when someone asks you or how you been oh my god I'm so busy I'm crazy busy I just I've never been so busy in my life my eyeballs about to pop out of my head I think what you just said then Brit like why are we choosing to be busy if you had said that to me prior to me doing research and actually looking into this topic and really sitting with my own junk for a little while I would have said

to you I'm not choosing to be busy I am so busy that why would I choose to be this frenetic in my life and then the more I thought about it the more I was like ah you know what all the things that I'm packing my schedule with all the extra work that I'm taking on all the things that I prioritize in my time a lot of them are choices yes of course I have two kids and yes there are other things that I have commitments and are non-negotiables but the other stuff that I busy my time with really are negotiable the thing is I get a sense of purpose and I get a sense of success almost by filling my time up and filling my work schedule up and you know not having supposedly any time for leisure but the more that we looked into this the more that we unpacked it

maybe we're not as busy as we think we are maybe we just really thrive in this culture and because it is a symbol of success it is a status quo to be so busy and if you have lots of leisure time or what what we call idle time and lots of time where you know you aren't filling it with something else then is that a mark of being unsuccessful is that what we've created and that that's the dynamic that we're trying to live up to at the moment well that is literally what society is telling us at the moment that you do need to have a hundred things on the go and you do need to be multitasking and you do need to be busy to be successful and when Laura and I started to chat about this we were saying imagine walking down the street imagine Jordan and I walking down the

street and I run into Laura and Matt and I say to Laura how you been and you're like I have been so fucking busy I cannot I cannot sleep I have don't have time to do anything I've got all this work to you tomorrow you walk away and you're like wow she's got so much going on and like your subconscious thought is she's killing it like she's successful she's killing it she's got all these things going maybe not killing it in that you know you definitely would feel like oh god I wouldn't want to be that stressed but there would be a little part of you that would be like well why don't I have that much going on yeah like she's important she's so important because her time is so monopolized that there is a level of importance there and it is kind of a humble brag

right well conversely I say to you how you been and you're like yeah yeah great like I don't have much going on at the moment got a lot of spare time so I picked up some new hobbies I would walk away being like wow she doesn't really have much going on maybe jobs are slipping for her or she's why like why does this woman have so much spare time when no one else does well we think of it as being a little bit directionless and a little bit aimless don't we like you know we think that someone who is busy has purpose and they're on their way to success because they have purpose and they're driven whereas someone who has a lot of spare time and a lot of idle time we look at that as being like well they're not really making the most of their life or they're taking a side

step and I think sometimes we look at that side step as being a negative but you know even in that question that you just asked it's like that's a very neutral response oh I don't have a lot going on in my life right now that doesn't have to be a negative but I think we're so geared that that's what that outcome is that it's like oh I feel a bit sorry for you really when you think about it I wish I had less going on in my life. I want to go surf right now. And I think the thing is, and Laura and I are both guilty of it. I'm definitely getting better now. We're both guilty of being, I'm going to actually say a workaholic. I have been addicted to work in the past. And it wasn't until again, we sat down researching this topic and I look back and I'm

like, why was I so busy? Why was I taking on a fifth job when I already had four? Why was I taking on a job that started at 7am when I get home from the hospital at 1am? And now for me to reflect back. And like Laura said, sit in the junk for a little while. When you sit in your junk and you actually think about it, I 100%, I've always been a workaholic since I was a teenager, but I think it's me feeling my time, my twenties. I think I was doing it to distract myself from facing what was happening in my life and what was happening internally. And the fact that maybe I felt alone and lonely. So I used to feel every second of the day. And I'm talking the second until I physically could not keep my eyes open. I would walk in from work and collapse and fall

asleep. In hindsight, I wasn't doing that then to be successful. I was doing that because I was trying to distract myself from more pressing problems that were happening in my life. Now in my thirties, when I take on extra work, it's different. I'm completely happy with where I am, but in my head, it's always been a sign of success. I've wanted to do something else because I want to be more successful at what I do. Britt nailed it. We were talking about this just before Britt arrived and she kind of perfectly summarized it. We have a big project that we've just kind of signed off on and we're working towards for later this year,

which we can't tell you guys about it yet. We'll tell you later. But we will tell you about it. It's super exciting for us. And we're both very excited. We're so excited about it. But at the same time, we are already stretched so thin

with our work commitments and our capacities. And, you know, Britt kind of made the comment. She's like, I was reading about this idea of us glorifying busyness as a way of pinpointing our success and a way of making other people realize that we're successful. And it made me realize that by taking on another job

that you know will be an accolade to our names it was almost like I'm only doing this because there's a part not that I'm only doing there's a big part of me that's doing this because I want to feel like I'm successful and I want to feel like I'm achieving something whereas had it been done in a year's time or at a time when our lives were a little bit more calmer and quieter I mean like there's no time like taking on another project like straight after you've had your second baby exactly you know but why do we do that to ourself and a lot of these choices are exactly that their choices you know we're not being forced to take on the amount of work that we're taking on and we're not being forced to do all the activities that we're saying yes to

but we do feel this peer pressure because we compare ourselves to other people who are also living this frenetic lifestyle and we're like oh okay well if they can do it if they can achieve all that stuff then I should be doing more as well I think there's a part of me too that deep down I would hope that at one point in life someone can look at me and be like I want to be like Brittany if Brittany can do it I want to do that like I want to be an inspiration to someone to be like well, you know, Brittany went and did this extra thing and she worked really hard and it didn't come to her easy. Like I want to be someone, I've always thought I want to work hard enough that people realize that good things can come from working hard. And I think it is really important

to instill work ethic in people. The difference that we want to make today is working long, crazy, hectic hours does not equate to success. There is a big difference with success, working hard and productivity how productive are you in your time a lot of people will find that they can get the same amount of work done in three hours that it takes them over a 10-hour day because they're distracting themselves all day at the end of the day your productivity has been the same but you will feel 10 times more stress and you'll feel 10 times more manic and you'll tell everyone else that you're pulling your hair out because you don't know how you're going to get through the day but I think if we could take some steps to look at what fills your day look at what distractions

you have and actually see how productive you're being. We can completely change our mindset and our day-to-day life. Well, there's a massive difference between being busy and being productive. I think, you know, we can say that we live this and I do it. I live this like very, very busy lifestyle, but at the same time, I still have time to sit on Instagram for an hour in the morning, don't I? And I could be using that in a way more productive sense. But before we kind of get into the breakdown between like ways that you can go about sort of redefining how you look at your lifestyle and how to kind of create more leisure time and create more you time and also create less noise in your head, there is a quote which I read, which I think really perfectly sums

this whole thing up. So on the website, The Opinionator, it's an article that's written by Tim Kreider and it says, notice it isn't generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the ICU or commuting by bus to three minimum wage jobs who tell you how busy they are. What those people are is not busy. Those people are tired. They're exhausted. They're dead on their feet. It's almost always the people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed work and obligations they've taken on voluntarily classes and activities they've encouraged their kids to participate in they're busy because of their own ambition their own drive and their own anxiety because they're addicted to busyness and the dread of what they may have to face in its absence which is exactly

what you commented on before brit when you were saying i didn't want to have to face the fact that maybe i was a little bit lonely or maybe i was on my own and instead filling my time was a way of escapism almost and a way of at least reassuring to myself that my life has meaning totally and I instead of coming home to a house and realizing I'm coming home to a house alone and a big empty house alone I would come home and it wouldn't even cross my mind because I was like okay next on the list is I've got to get this this and this done I've got to be at Laura's at 10 p.m to record a podcast my life felt manic but I didn't feel overwhelmed by it most of the time I was I'm the first person to say I was choosing that life and I know that I was choosing that

life it got to the point where you know people were like you need to cut back at the hospital and I was like I don't know how to do that like I physically don't know how to not be working 24 7 or you're like I can't because they need me and it's like this constant reassurance of like I'm so needed you know like I can't possibly pull back from any of my commitments because I'm so important that I'm needed in all these different commitments in my life the reality is is that when you pull back from some of your work commitments it's very few occupations where you're completely indispensable. Somebody else will step in and yes, that will put pressure on. But one of the things I thought was interesting in this whole conversation is this idea that like

we create this environment and we create this social norm for ourselves. If you work in an office space, for example, where the expectation is that everybody does overtime. So you rock up at 7am or 8am and you stay until six every day. And that's the norm. If you cut back and just did the normal hours that you're actually paid to do, then there would be this impression that you're underperforming or you're not putting in the hours that's expected of you. And that's because everybody else has created an environment that's so competitive that you have to do more. You have to be more, you have to offer more of yourself in order to fulfill it. And that's a really, really fucking potentially bad space to get into for your own mental health because you're

constantly giving. And then what's left in the tank for you, for your family, for your social connections for the people that really matter in life well there's actually a name for it good point but it's called the social comparison theory and it's literally determining I love that segue well let me hit you with some research it's actually no but it's you that were like you nailed that but it's actually called the social comparison theory it's determining our own social and personal self-worth based on how we perceive ourselves stacking up against other people if we fair better or worse so it's just a constant comparison and the thing is with human behavior this is ingrained in us since we're a child it is literally human nature we look at people and

we observe and we learn it's literally how we learn if you're brought up looking at everyone in your life being running around crazy working the extra hours putting in the overtime because they need to get that pay rise or they need to get a promotion it's reflected back onto you that oh in order to achieve that level of success, he needed to get through all these hoops and work all these hours to get there. And naturally human nature, you take that on and you, that's a learned trait. And then all of a sudden you think that the only way to become successful is to grind yourself into the ground. Yeah. And I think that we also play into this idea and we, I think a lot of us are guilty of it. And I think about one of my really close friends when I say this is that

we go, okay, I'm going to be really busy in this period of my life, but once I become a director or once I become whatever it is and I achieve the next goal, I'll be able to chill out a little bit more. But I don't actually think it's when we achieve the next goal. I think that we've been conditioned to keep on striving and keep on over committing and overachieving. And, you know, maybe you do hit that, you do become that director or you do get that pay rise or you do whatever it is, get that promotion. It's a never ending cycle because it's part of our conditioned behavior. It's not necessarily just something that we're in right now in this specific time and i know that for me and i know this personally now because the more that i looked

into this the more i was like britney and i tout all this self-help shit we're like oh yeah we know all about this like i feel like i'm relatively awakened when it comes to some of this stuff and then the more i was reading about this is that another way to say woke oh yeah awakened no but like i was like okay i was justifying it to myself i was like no you know what i'm not subscribing to this idea that busyness is a choice because i don't believe it because i would never put myself into the stress that I currently feel. But then the more that I looked at it and the more I unpacked it, the more that I realized I am a drone to this social structure as well. I'm a complete little, what are they called? Like a lemming following along and doing the exact same thing.

Because when I take downtime, even as someone who's just had a kid, when I sit down and I look at Lola and I just have some quiet time in my own space to appreciate the fact that like I should be on maternity leave, I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I'm not using that time product. I feel guilty for taking an hour out to sit down and look at my new child. Isn't that just ridiculous? Which is insane, but that's because it's what we've learned. We've learned that being busy equates to success. Yeah. And I feel like every second that I'm not spending working on my work, working on business, working on progressing myself is wasted time. And it means that when you do have that leisure time, when you do have that downtime,

you're not actually able to fully enjoy it and fully immerse yourself in it. So the problem is with that is that potentially you can create burnout. And that's when we really have to start to worry about our mental health, how we're feeling and whether or not it's a sustainable thing that's long-term. The stress of it. I am very guilty of constantly changing my end goal and my dream. Like I'll be like when, like you just said, when I get to this or when this hits this or if it's a money value or whatever it is, a promotion. Yeah. Like when I get there, I'll go on a holiday or when I get there, I'll cut back my work hours or whatever it is. But it just keeps changing because you're like well now I can achieve this or what can I get like

there's always this constant drive it's a never-ending goal post you know it just keeps moving further and further away as you move further and further up the ladder and also what makes us connected to people as humans is feeling like we are on the same path as someone like you feel a connection when you go to someone they're like I am drowning like I cannot keep my head above water I am working so hard and someone's like I feel you like I am too I know how that feels. Human nature is we feel this connection. We want to strive to continue to have this connection. And if everyone in your life is at this one certain level, then you're going to feel like you don't fit in if you're not in that level. When I was researching this, there was a Harvard

researcher. His name is Matthew Liberman. He studies neuroscience and the brain and he's all smarty pants and stuff. But he was the one that was saying that our need to connect is as fundamental as our need for food and water. So this need to feel wanted in social situations. He also goes on to say that when we feel social pain such as feeling judged or rejected it matters to our mind heart and our bodies we want to avoid that kind of pain so we do everything we can to avoid having experience it what he goes on to say is when you feel that you're being left out socially or you're having some social rejections you literally feel that as physical pain and without a lot of us knowing subconsciously that's why we are over committing ourselves to all these extra social

events and meetups with friends and a lot of the time you might think the person you're meeting might not even be that close of a friend. It might be a group of acquaintances, but you feel like you'll be left out and you'll be ostracized from the group if you don't continue to make up these appearances. Do you know what I'm saying with that? I find this interesting because I think I'm the opposite. And I think it's actually because I have a little bit of social aversion, if anything. And I think that this might be something that if you follow me on Instagram, it might not relate as in like, you know, you see someone who's an influencer and you think, oh, their whole life must revolve around socializing. I'm actually someone who doesn't

particularly like socializing and I fearful and a bit avoidant when it comes to making plans and the more that I've unpacked this the more I've realized it's not because I'm so busy that I don't know what I'm going to be doing on a Wednesday night that I don't want to feel tied down and committed but it's because like I don't really enjoy now at this phase in my life going out and doing like a Wednesday night dinner I find that a bit overwhelming and a bit kind of like out of my depth and it's because I have spent so much time inside living in my own little bubble in the past couple of years I get it I am guys this might come as a shock I am the most introverted extrovert you would meet if I'm out I would love to be the life of the party but my friends will be the first

person to tell you I'm the hardest person to make plans and I'm the hardest person to get out to events I actually don't overly enjoy them I'm exactly like you I would rather if my friends like let's go this party I'd rather be like do you guys want to come over and have a pizza in my lounge in the safety of my room I'm okay for making social plans but so long as it's in my physical house and that sounds outrageous but I'm like the thought of having to get up get dressed potentially you know have to and this is going to sound conceited but I don't mean this in a conceited way at all but like I sometimes feel judged if people like oh that's that girl from The Bachelor I don't want to deal with that and I know that I have the safety of my own little house

and my own little home where I'm not going to feel judged and I do think that sometimes this idea of busyness for me has been a mask for not having to then go out and deal with social situations. One of the things I wanted to touch on is something called contaminated time. And I found this really interesting. I'm going to read you guys another quote. Bear with me. Okay. So Hannah Rosen has written this information about contaminated time and it is all in context of being busy. And what she says is to be deep in the overwhelmed requires not just doing too many things in one 24 hour period, but doing so many different kinds of things that they all blend into one another. And a day has no sense of distinct phases. Researchers call it contaminated

time. And apparently women are way more susceptible to it than men because they have a harder time shutting down the tape that runs in their heads about what needs to be done in that day. Now, what this kind of refers to is this idea that like, instead of having specific time in your day, that is your time, your leisure time. I kind of hate the word leisure. It's just your self-care time. Maybe it's sitting down in front of the TV and watching TV. Maybe it is hanging out with a girlfriend. Maybe it's cooking yourself dinner and reading a book. What we tend to do and what I think so many of us are guilty of is we go for dinner, but when we're at dinner, we're checking our emails. I know for me, if I'm sitting down in front of the TV, I'm also checking Shopify

to check how many orders have come through on Tony May. I'm checking Instagram because Instagram has worked for us as well. I'm always constantly doing something, which means that the leisure time that you have, the self-care time you have is contaminated by work. And that means that you feel like you're never actually getting any time to yourself where really if you could just prioritize some really productive time to get the shit done that you need to get done then you feel like you're allowed to have that time which is self-care time and you don't have to feel guilty about having that self-care time either well the thing this is a prime example this has happened to me the last few days actually since Jordan's been overseas we obviously Skype

each day because there's a time difference we only get like two opportunities one in the morning one at night because we're literally pole opposites we've got this minimal amount of time together that we're skyping and chatting and I last night you know when you're on skype on a phone if you swipe out to do something to get a message or something it goes on pause so they can't see your face anymore and it says pause for a minute you can still talk to them yeah yeah but they can't see you they can't see so I found myself swiping out to like answer emails and messages and things like that while I'm talking to him and he's like what do you where are you going like I can't see your face I'm like I'm just I just have to send this email really quickly and he was like

you don't have to keep swiping out. And I was like, well, I do. And I had a little thing and I was like, look, I've just got a lot on it. It was exactly like, it's pinpointing this to the T. I was like, I've got a lot on that I need to do right now. That is a complete contamination and waste of a very precious amount of time. There is no way that that email could not have waited 20 minutes until I got off Skype. There's no way that message had to be returned in 20 minutes. That is the one precious amount of time that I should have that I was just giving him my complete attention and he gives me his attention. That's just a prime example of me being like an idiot and thinking that I have all this stuff that I absolutely have to do in the world is going

to cave in if I don't do it right then and there. Well, it's this idea of latest and loudest, right? It's like, okay, that's the newest thing that's come in and I need to deal with it right now. And by doing that and by constantly like putting your time and energy to whatever it is that kind of has cropped up means that you're not actually delegating time to the big important things that you need to get done in the day. Like actually prioritizing what is important and how can I make better use of my time so that I'm not living in this frantic, stressed out nature and actually just doing all these superficial small things on top and not actually tackling any of the big projects that need to get done anyway and that's what I think I do I'm like oh yeah I got

all these small bits and pieces done today but I still haven't done my tax guys totally but I've updated Instagram totally like it's just ridiculous it's complicated but just on what you said Britain I think that this is kind of like a nice way to round out the whole conversation is that when we spend so much time being busy, being stressed and being overstretched in all areas of our life, the things that really suffer are the things that matter most to us. And that is our relationships. That's the people in our lives. That's the things that give us purpose beyond money, beyond success and beyond work. And I know for myself, like, you know, when I'm prioritizing so much with work, when I'm so busy that I can't keep my head above water, I don't have time to

see my friends and those relationships really suffer. And we statistically every seven years lose half of our friendship circle. So every seven years, we're going to be screwed in seven years. I'm going to have half of you. But every seven years, your friendship circle diminishes by half. And that is because of time restraint. And it's because we hone down and we hone in on the people that are important to us. But when you let your life get so, so crazy, there comes a point where even the people who are crucially important to us get less and less of us. And that's when we can start to really do some damage to those relationships. Just to really reiterate before we wrap up the things that can be detrimental like laurie just said it can be

detrimental to your relationships and your mental health and things like that but your body can really experience some physical damage from high levels of stress and anxiety and no sleep and just to rattle that off it's things like insomnia you stop sleeping i know that i had insomnia for years you can get severe headaches you can have a complete change in your sex drive and like think of how many times you guys have been exhausted you're like get off me like i'm feeling personally victimized here but no that's a massive one i think you know you're so quick to say oh i can't be bothered to have sex right now can't be bothered because i'm so busy and i'm so tired and i just want to spend this time sleeping and it's like well if you do that for too long your relationship

is going to struggle once again 100 i think i just really want to drive home that you just shouldn't underestimate what stress busyness anxiety can do to your body both physically and mentally and i think a lot of the time we neglect that we don't give enough attention and we don't realize what your body can do. My friends have actually had their period stop for a year purely because they were too stressed. And I think that's amazing that your body can react that strongly to that. I think it has a flow on effect. When you live in this perpetual cycle of being too busy, it means that you're too busy to go to the gym. You're too busy to actually take care of yourself. Maybe you're then too busy to eat well. All of these things have a

flow on effect. You're too busy to nurture your relationships and then you feel lonely and then you feel isolated and all of these things are interconnected and what it really comes down to is making time for yourself and not feeling guilty about making time for yourself and a big part of that is the power of saying no and actually putting some boundaries in place in your life and pulling back a bit of you time into your life whether that's boundaries for yourself as in like you say okay we're not going to be on the phone after 7 p.m and you put your phone in a different room at night time so that you can't be tempted to check your emails when you're in bed whether those boundaries are on other people and you say I don't want to go to that social event or I can't

do that extra work because I'm already fully chocked to the block there has to be some things that you push back on and not feel guilty about doing that especially it's for your own mental health and the last thing I want to say and it's a quote that I freaking love and I'm pretty sure it's from one of the Olsen twins it is and that is that no is a complete sentence sometimes I think we feel so guilty about saying no, that we need to give an explanation. You know, we, we need to justify the reasoning as to why we're not able to do something or why there's no, we rarely say no. We say, no, I'm really sorry. I can't do it because I've got this and this on, and then I've got to do this. And like, I would love to. And by saying that, especially if it's something that

you don't want to do, you open yourself up to them being like, cool, well, what's another time that you can do that? Or when's another time that you're available? And then you have to come up with a whole nother excuse instead of just being like, hi, thanks for the offer. It's a no from me for this one. That quote is interesting because it does go into every single lane of life. I think the Olsen twins originally said that. I think it was in relation to, you know, consent and sexual interactions. Like no means no, you don't have to say anything else, but it actually channels into every single aspect of your life. Like Laura said, you can say no and you don't have to go and make up a reason. I used to make up reasons and it would bite me in the butt. Okay. Unless it's

like your boss asking you to do some work like you might have to have a reason just know he's like hey can I please get that report from you at 3 p.m tomorrow and you're like no it's a complete sentence Brittany and Laura said so yeah check life on card no but fundamentally speaking busy people have a problem saying no this is a known thing it's half the reason that they're busy because they feel like they're worried about what people will think of them if they say no they're worried about letting people down letting other people down a lot of the time they're sycophants like they're people pleasers so if you are falling into this category just start to prioritize if you've got a manic week ahead I want you to look at every single day and what you've got on I can

guarantee you not every single thing that you've got in your schedule has to be done this week or every event has to be attended and then just start to make a list of your priorities and maybe the bottom one or two cut them and have some self-time these are just little tiny steps you can do because there's no way that if you're saying you don't have time to go to the gym or for a walk there is no way there's not one other thing that you can adapt in that week to make sure that happens. Being busy is definitely not always a negative thing. And we're not here to say that, you know, you should be out there lulling on the beach and smoking a spliff. We're not all going to move to Byron Bay, right? Like being busy is productive and there are parts of it that are

very necessary. And there also are parts of it that are necessary to success. But like we said a little bit earlier, I do think that we can kind of lie to ourselves a little bit and we can kind of tell ourselves that we're busier than what we are and we live in this frenetic frantic lifestyle a lot of it is by choice and we can strip back and simplify things in order to make our life just a little bit more enjoyable but there is a lot of pleasure that can be derived for some people from being busy from feeling successful and from feeling like they're achieving their goals but once that that transfers over into the stressed once it transfers over into feeling like you're drowning that's when you really need to kind of think about what you're doing your day-to-day

and how you can make some changes just to be a little bit more comfortable in your day-to-day life. Yeah, ultimately, each and every one of us need a work-life balance. The difference is that work-life balance is going to be different for every single person. So you just need to work out what percentage of yours is work and what percentage is balance that you're actually happy with. And then you just start to put some things in place to make sure you achieve that balance. But guys, that's it for us today. In some ways, we just need to all stop glorifying the hustle. Keep hustling by all means, keep hustling, but just don't get it driven into your head that that is the only measure of success. Okay, guys, you know, we never end an episode without our

suck and sweet, which is our highlight and our low light, the best and the worst thing to happen to us this week. Sometimes it's hideous. Sometimes it's actually hilarious. Laura, you can go first. Okay. My suck for the week. I kind of told my suck on the other episode actually, but I'm going to tell it to you now. No, well, it didn't come out of the couch. That's the problem. My daughter, Matalola did a projectile, very runny, bright yellow poo across the couch. I witnessed it. Yeah. It was gross.

And I've washed the couch and it didn't come out. Oh, no. So now I have a poo stain on my lounge. Just strategically put a pillow over it. Yeah, but it's just still there. Like, I know it's there. That's my suck. It hasn't – it's been a pretty good week.

I'm not going to complain. But, like, that is a bit annoying. Now you've got a poo stain couch. Love that bit. Everything in my house is falling to shit. Everything is poo stain. Literally. and I have breast milk on all my clothes okay and my sweet for the week is actually this week we

have a really big sweet and I'm super proud of it and super pumped Tony May is having the launch of their new collection on Thursday and I have been working my freaking ass off which suits very well to the theme of today's episode um I've been working my ass off to kind of get it to a point where we're ready to launch and I feel super proud and really excited so like it's been a great week and that I have had a real sense of achievement. Like I really feel like finally this massive project that I've been working on is almost there and I can't wait to share it with you guys.

And not even sponsored, but it's a great range. You're going to die. I'm going to give you some freebies, Britt. You can, then they can be sponsored. You can put them on Instagram. That's the only reason I said it. No. All right, Britt, what is your suck and sweet?

I mean, my suck, guys, you know, I was like, felt like I was on my deathbed this week. I couldn't eat and I was still vomiting so much. And you know that pain when you're vomiting, but there's nothing in you to vomit because you haven't eaten. It was just excruciating. it's been the worst literally the worst week i've had in years i'm not normally someone who's cringy

but like as in like cringes to like visceral bodily things and brit showed me her throat and it made me feel so sick that i almost threw up so that's where we were at i had this like i will feel sick again i don't want to hear guys it was it was bad it was touch and go and then on top of that i had one of you lovely fan members right to me accidentally tell me i was old and gross anyway that was a big suck my sweet I'm like I'm literally scratching my brain for sweet because I've been in bed for a week and this has never happened I also had to cancel my I was going to see my brother we're going to see my family for Easter and I had to cancel that obviously because they've got some COVID in Queensland and I was too sick to go oh my god this is wildly

depressing it was the worst I mean you know what I've been like I've been asleep for like 20 hours a day guys when I was to sleep I was vomiting or had a migraine or it was a it was just like I'm not a complainer but it was a really tough I just also want to say I'm so proud of you are coming and doing this episode and actually pulling your shit together to come and record the podcast so I'm greatly I'm greatly appreciative everybody else who's listened to the episode so far is also greatly appreciative Brittany we love you get better and I think that that is us done for today guys we're sorry that we had to do the switcheroo this week but we'll be back normal next week and you know the drill if you have loved the episode please jump onto apple podcast leave us a review

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