The Liz Moody Podcast - 21 Things I Learned In 2021—Lessons For Body, Mind, Beauty, Money and Beyond

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Today I’m sharing the 21 things that changed my life the most in 2021. I hope they resonate and help you as we move into 2022! PS: My very first product is live!!! Go to htdeck.com to snag your Healthier Together Deck, which has 150 conversation starters in 6 categories! It’s the perfect holiday gift for friends, family members, romantic partners, co-workers…or, of course, yourself. Find out more at htdeck.com—this is a self-funded limited run and these will sell out!! PS: My Patreon is live! You can join Green Smoothie Society and get access to ALL of my green smoothie recipes and advice! Get all the deets at patreon.com/lizmoody. This episode is sponsored by AG1 by Athletic Greens, one of my favorite supplements. Visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. This episode is sponsored by Seed, the makers of one of my all-time favorite supplements. Their Seed Daily Synbiotic is a game changer—it contains both pre- and probiotics, survives INTACT all the way into your gut, AND contains the most studied and powerful strains of probiotics out there. You can get 15% off of your first month’s supply of Seed’s Daily Synbiotic by going to seed.com and using the code LIZMOODY. Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthyer Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a cookbook author and long-time journalist. Are we sticking with cookbook author now? I am a cookbook author. I know, but you... I'm a two-time cookbook author with Penguin Random House. You do so much. You have the new Healthy Together deck.

Oh, like, are we only cookbook author? It's just, you know, it's a fun thing to lead with, but you could lead with so many things. Female Entrepreneur, Liz Moody, the visionary behind food blog, Liz Moody.com. I'm in the social media account at Liz Moody. Today I'm joined by a very special guest, my husband and biggest fan and also biggest critics somehow in one. No. Zach, if you want to say hi. Hi.

This episode, I thought it would be really fun to do a little look back at 2021. This is one of our last episodes, not our last episode of 2021. So don't get sad about that yet. I have a great episode coming for you next week. but I thought it'd be fun to do a little look back at the year, some reminiscing, and then go over some of the stuff that I learned, some of my biggest lessons for the year that hopefully maybe you can take something from it. And I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. It's good to take moments to reflect on and kind of scale out of your life. I don't think it needs to take the form

of a New Year's resolution. But I do think there's like that week after Christmas before New Year's where nobody's working. So nobody's bugging you on email. And it's a good time to take it. and reflect. So maybe you can take some of these learnings and reflect on them and incorporate them into your reflections and maybe some of your goals for 2022 and beyond. What are your thoughts on New Year's resolutions? I think that New Year's resolutions are generally made to be broken when they're in the form of resolutions. But I also secretly like a good vision board. I like setting some intentions. I think it's hard to achieve goals when you don't know what your goals are. You know the difference for me is that what is a resolution versus just kind of like an intention? I like the idea of an

intention because it means we're going to try to do something. I have an intention to work out more this year. Not like, I got to go to the gym every single day. And if I don't, I will have a gym membership that I'm paying for all year long. We get so caught up in the minutia of our day-to-day life. You wake up and you have your to-do list and you tackle it for the day. And sometimes we can get that feeling of am I actually moving anything really forward? Am I moving my career forward? Am I moving my relationship forward, and my moving my social life forward, and I'm moving these larger goals forward. And I think that that happens when you don't take a second to zoom out and say, what do I want my life to look like? What is the larger thing that I'm aspiring for here? And I think moments like New

years can be an opportune time to reflect on something like that. I also think birthdays are great for that. And I think also maybe just scheduling in something quarterly every six months to just really take a second and look at your larger goals. Do you have a vision board for 2022 in your mind? Yeah. I like to do my stuff in early January because my birthday falls in the first month of the new year. So for me, that's my zoom out. Like the birthday, you know, Q1, zoom out. And then I'm like, what are we doing with our life? Okay. Well, we'll get into what are we doing with our life. We'll get into lessons for 2021 in a second. But first, I would love to just do like a little bit of a retrospective, look back on the year. Do you feel like it was a good 2021 for you?

Yes. Yes, I do. I mean, it's interesting. There was a lot of tumult. Yeah. And I mean, I still am in the zone of like, you know, with COVID and everything, any year that you know, you're above the ground and you're doing okay and everything, like, it's a good year. But it was, I'd say, like an especially good year for us from like an adventure perspective. I think we got to travel the country. and see some really fantastic places in a way that I had never really thought that, like, a normal year of my life could hold.

I think two things for me happened this year. One is that I feel like Yumi and Bella became a little family. Like, I think we were a family before. What? Why are you laughing? I'm not laughing. I think we were a family before, obviously. But there was something really magical about having all these adventures together and having the

great times and the harder times of no moment. Madlife, and we experienced as this little threesome. Bella is our cat for anybody who's wondering. Anybody who's wondering. But she was in the car with us, traveling between all these places. If I have... Driving 15,000 miles with a cat really puts the cat in a different relationship in your life. It does. And I think because maybe we were so separated from all of the other anchors of our lives, and it was just you, me and Bella and our environment changed, our weather changed, our house changed, our bathroom changed, our kitchen change, our people we hung out with changed in every single place, the shape of our day, the structure of our day changed. So you, me and Bella, that was the

constant at the middle. So that was one big thing for me was that I feel like we became like a little family. And then the second thing was this is the year that I think I became really comfortable in doing this career. I think I've thought of myself as a really long time as a journalist primarily who happens to write cookbooks, who happens to have a podcast, who happens to do a social media job. I shied away from the term influencer and things like that. But I think this is the year that I really came into my own and I said, this is my job. I love this job.

It is, to me, in a lot of ways, an evolution of the type of content creation I did when I was working in magazines and editorial. But I don't think of myself as like a journalist doing this now. I think this is my job. I am a content creator. and coming into myself in that capacity, I think, made me better at doing my job, but it also made me enjoy it more and it made me less apologetic for it. Slight tangent, but because I handle a lot of the operations for the deck,

I was just registering your company for sales tax in the state that are warehouses, and they make you pick the category of business you are. And I was like, media, publishing, content creation, manufacturing, it's a lot. It's a lot of different things. And I came down on a few different ones. There's a lot of facets to it. Yeah, and I think it's impressive. Thank you, babe.

It's also the year that both of us got on board with Botox, not you doing it, but you were really against it. And I think that's like an interesting transition we both had this year. I wasn't against it. Sorry, that felt like very left field. No, who whap. I wasn't against it in principle, but I'm always really scared of losing the beautiful expressiveness that you have in your face and features and stuff like that.

And having seen people. that are maybe less expressive with maybe less talented applications of it. Right. It was a big revelation for me, though, too. Even with stuff like filters this year where I kind of, I think I went from a more judgmental space at the beginning of the year where I was kind of like, this is the right way to do things. This is the wrong way to do things.

To being more like being a person in this world is hard. And there are so many ways we are all muddling through that. And all of them are valid. and all of them are beautiful. And I think that was a really big learning for me over the course of the year. So I'm a lot less judgy about pretty much any way that anybody chooses to approach most things. Whether that's wellness, filters, Botox, any of that. Including to myself, I think I used to judge myself.

I was like, I don't want to be a person who does Botox. I don't want to be a person who defines myself in any of these ways. and what a weird thing to constrict yourself with labels in that way. I don't think that one thing necessarily says all of these other things about you. And I think to extrapolate all of these things about a person leads us down a really negative path societally. And the fact that I was kind of privy to that and engaging with that for a while didn't make me feel good. And I think I've moved through a lot of those feelings over the course of this year. Excellent.

All right. So I have 21 things. learned in 2021. I have also some bonus things that are going to be just for podcast listeners, but I'm going to post the full list of these on my Instagram. I do this every year. It's one of my favorite things to kind of look back and think about everything that I've learned over the course of the year, but I wanted to talk through things in a little bit more depth on here. So I'm not going to do these in any particular order. I would love your feedback whenever you feel like you have feedback on any or extra learnings. I'm going to have more feedback than

you're going to have let me have time for, but just wave at me when I'm just rambling. Why don't we start with a fun one just because we had a little bit of a viral moment on TikTok with this. Did we? Yeah. Oh, we did. And I've posted a lot about cellulite specifically this year, but the learning is smaller bodies have cellulite, larger bodies have cellulite, babies have cellulite.

Cellulite matters, not at all. And any time spent thinking about it is time wasted. I love this one because we did this viral TikTok that was like me asking you what your thoughts were on cellular light. And you almost had such a hard time doing it with me because you were like, I don't have a lot of thoughts on this. Like it's... Yeah, it turned out what the people wanted was basically why it was so hard for me, which is that I truly could not care less. Like you literally, you notice it you're not blind to it. Because you're also actually, you're interesting.

I have extremely bad eyesight. Well, you're an interesting person because they always say there's these tests. that say that men actually don't notice detail in the same way that women do. Like, their brain processes detail in a different ways. And some evolutionary psychologists think that it's because women were on the ground picking berries in the old days. So we had to, like, be picking out this precise detail. I would love to be an evolutionary psychologist.

You could just come up with theories. And nobody can disprove you. They're just like, well, that sounds feasible. For all you evolutionary psychologists out there, sorry, right? We know it's a lot harder than that. But you don't. You notice detail precisely. Yeah, yeah.

You block hairs off my face that I have not seen yet. That's never happened. When it comes to objects in space, I think, certainly between the two of us, I noticed things maybe at like. You're the master of space in time. Okay. But I, well, can you speak to your thoughts briefly on cellulite, stretch marks, etc, these things that I think women and myself, I spent a lot of time being like, should I be hiding this? mostly because I've been told I need to hide this. And then it's been interesting to be in this long-term relationship with you.

And clearly you've seen my body from angles and lighting that nobody should have to see my body from. Oh, there's been some bad lighting days. You took care of me after my nose job. But you love it all. And I think that's been really interesting for me. I'm going to answer this with also kind of a question because I like to be frustrating. you have an opinion about scars that I think is really mature and kind of fun where you're like, scars are badass.

They show that you've used your body and that it's like a piece of living. And I kind of feel that about almost all parts of a person's bodies. The idea of people looking airbrushed is also like looking less, right? You're just removing content. You're removing things. In general, like my body isn't without dimples. and scars and mess-ups and fat and all the other kind of stuff like that. Your body is for living, not looking.

I feel like you're saying that. It's a motto I had. Yeah, that felt like it. It's true, though. I agree. It's a good motto. And I think having things be read as evidence of living, not looking, is great. And also so many people who worked in childcare, like,

NICU nurses or nannies or things like that were like, I spend so much time with babies and babies have cellulite. And I think it's ridiculous that we as a society have decided to tell you like something bad when literally we are born with it. It's not something to spend a lot of time thinking about. Totally taking the left turn. People make investing sound super complicated. This was a huge realization that I had both in, I did a podcast interview of money Q&A with her first 100K, which I highly recommend you listen to. It's a really great podcast episode.

but just kind of, we've been really going on like a money journey this year, I think particularly because we haven't done much saving or investing or things like that before this year. We've never had savings before, therefore. But the realization was people make investing sound super complicated, but really the best financial move you can make is putting your money in well distributed index funds and then don't freaking touch it. That's it. That's the trick.

I think even when I first was looking at doing something like that I'm, money. I remember calling my uncle and being like, oh, you've done really well. Like, what's your strategy? And I was looking for him to be like, oh, you buy these stocks when it's the market's at this number and blah, blah. And you're always looking for these little tricks. And we were just listening to another podcast episode where it was the head of one of the biggest venture capitalist firms in the country, one of the most successful ones. And he was just like, you're never going to out predict the market. Like nothing that we're going to do is going to out predict what the funds are going to. And he was, going to do basically. Even professional investors, I think what was it, like 25% of the time only

get better than the funds do? Something like that. Yeah, I mean, it's given the timeline that people actually should care about for investing, if you're not just kind of trusting a well-distributed market dynamics kind of policy, you're going to get burnt eventually. Well, and I think that it makes it seem more scary and complicated and people don't want to get involved in it because it's like, oh, it's this big thing. I don't know what I'm doing. But in actuality, you don't need to know what you're doing. You just need to put your money in these funds and then don't touch it. And the mistake people make is they want to get involved and they want to touch it. And they want to be like, oh, the market's high today. I'm going to take it out and put it here. And actually, you just like

want to put it in these funds and not touch it. Yeah. Put people, people have the tendency to want to over, over manage. Even me, I've had that. I've been like, wait, that's it. So we put our money in some of these funds this year, and I feel really good about it. It makes me feel like a responsible human. All right. Next, frequent little things can matter more than infrequent big ones. Instead of focusing on your once-a-year vacation, ask what you can do to add 10 minutes of joy to your daily life.

This was a huge realization that I had when I was doing my holiday gift guide episode was how many of my gifts I had chosen to elevate every day. moments of our lives. So I think if you're interested in looking for products that will actually do this, definitely go check out the holiday gift guide episode. But it's stuff like, I think one, I was reading a study once that one of the best ways that we can spend money is to solve problems, not to add stuff to our life. So looking for those little problems in your life and then spending money to address them, buying things to address them, or changing your habits to address them. But then I also think little ways to elevate these everyday moments. Like, we have that soap that I'm obsessed with, that I love, that it smells so good. And then every single time I

wash my hands, I'm in a moment of bliss, you know? Yeah. And it feels like you're like walking through a rainforest just by getting in the shower. That is a relaxing shower. Our creosote shower hanging. Love that. It's not really a rainforest, but yeah, the opposite is. The Sonoran Desert. Yeah. And I do think COVID's been a big realization for me with this. I used to be like, I do my big vacation every year. I look forward to it all year. That's like my moment of joy. But I'm like, why am I looking for one to two weeks to make up for the entire year? Well, and I think the like other studies are trying like the real satisfaction for that is in the anticipation for the thing. And it like doesn't necessarily pay off. So I mean, there is to a point like right, like something that

you actually truly can anticipate for all year, maybe has some impact. But also, I know lots people that they go on that vacation, that one vacation, and then it pours, and then they're sad. And it's like the whole thing. Right. Or there's a global pandemic and then you can travel to another country or something like that. So I do think still plan the vacation. Most people don't take all their vacation days. And I think that's so important whether or not there's travel restrictions. Yeah, exactly. Like we barely have any as is. So take all of the ones that we have. But I I also think really being like, how can I have sheets that I'm going to be excited to get into every single night?

How am I going to have? I have my sippy cup, my grown-up sippy cup, and I has like a really fun pattern on it. And I love it. And it makes me happy to drink my water every single day. I have tea that I love. I have my hand soap that I love. I think identifying those little tiny moments that you can take that will elevate your every single day is way more critical to our happiness than these bigger deal events.

Well, and especially, I think, the solving problems thing, too, because, like, you look back and like, well, this thing is bothering me every single day. Every single day. It's not, it's not even just joy. This thing is bringing me discomfort every single day. There was somebody that I... Invest in your workspace. Invest in literally, like, how your body moves, you know, every day if you can.

There was somebody that I interviewed a while back, and they said that they take, like, a half an hour on every Sunday to just kind of look back. at things that cause them strife throughout their week and then see if they could solve one of them as a problem. And I think that's interesting. Whether it was a relationship thing, is there a way to like smooth some friction in a relationship and have a conversation? Whether it's a day planning thing, is there a way you could restructure, reorganize your day or whether it's a, you know, something easy you could buy, like buying a, the thing I immediately think of is like one of those plug things with all the, a surge protector. Oh, yeah, nothing like a good surge

So that you like instead of always unplugging and replugging stuff in, you can just like plug yourself in or it has a little. Most of people are like, we don't have that problem. Thinking about, but I like the idea of kind of scheduling in a little bit of time where you actually think about problems and try to solve them. I actually have never heard you say that before. I might actually start doing that. That's a great as a problem solver.

As a problem solver. Like I love the idea of dedicated time. You're listening to the healthier together podcast. Look, I'm never going to make everything that I want. wear organic. But your sheets, your pillows, your comforter are literally touching your skin for eight hours every single night. That is a third of your life right there with one simple swap. And if your bedding is worn out, it's trapping heat or it's made with questionable materials, your sleep is going to suffer. And so will everything that depends on it? You want a bed,

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Exclusions apply. Our next partner has a product that I use literally every day. I start I started taking AG1 by Athletic Greens maybe five years ago because I was traveling a lot and I wanted an alternative to green smoothies when I was on the go. I actually don't think that I've taken a trip without it since because it makes such a difference with travel constipation. I went from having constant gut problems on trips to being able to poop regularly and also still feeling energized, even though when I travel, I'm usually mainlining croissants like five times a day. The energy element is the main reason I started to bring it into my daily life. As I'm sure you're very sick of hearing me say, I don't drink coffee or any type of caffeinated tea in the morning. It just messes with my anxiety too much and it makes me feel jittery and then crashy later. Now, when I feel sluggish in the morning, I mix a scoop of AG1 into water

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care about you on a personal level. So stop carrying on a personal level about your job. This is one of my favorite ones. It, I think, applies a little bit less to self-employed people, although it actually really does still employ to self-employed people. How does it apply to you? Well, the reason I thought of it was because I kept having friends call me and saying they were so stressed about work and basically having to have these boundary conversations with them about your work will make you work all hours because, like, they don't care that you need to go home and watch TV with your partner and eat a nice dinner and do yoga and feel good about yourself. So you need to draw that boundary yourself and then you need to stick to it. And I've had other, you know, somebody else was nervous about leaving a job and

they're like, what will they do without me? And then they left and literally like nothing happened. Like I do think we. That's always, that's always such a depressing feeling is you like, you're like, you're like, without me, this thing will collapse. And then you walk away and you're like, I felt like that in my last job. completely. I was like, I am indispensable. This whole place will come crumbling down without me. And then I left to go on book tour and everything was fine. Like everything is still running very successfully to this day. And I think our work is important. We can get a lot of a sense of purpose from our work. And that's important too. But I also think sometimes we create a level of intensity that's maybe not there. And thus coming with that, a level of

pressure that maybe doesn't really need to be there either. Well, and also stress is addictive. Right. It's addictive. That's a thing to note. Yeah. People just get caught in the cycle of it doesn't feel good, but it still is something that's kind of craveable by your body. I think, I think, like chemically. So. Yeah. And it's hard to get out of that cycle. But I think on this level, on my working for myself level, I think that it's the idea that there could be an infinite amount of things I could do on any given day and having to draw those boundaries. And, you know, I love getting to show up and interact with my whole community. It's one of my favorite things. But I also

think that can bleed into, I could just produce one more piece of content, answer, five more DMs, and I could work and work and work forever. Yeah, the infinite expanse of work always extends kind of thoughtlessly to your time and need, you know, no matter who you are. This is one of my favorite ones. Don't take advice from people who you wouldn't want your life to look like there's in that area. So don't let a hairdresser with hair you don't like, cut your hair. Don't let someone who's relationship you don't want to emulate, give you relationship advice. I think this one is critical and we lose sight of it. And I think that it sounds totally like normal. You're like, of course, with the hairdresser one, right? You're like, why would I let somebody who's

hair that I hate cut my hair? I was actually the other way around. I'm like, of course with the relationship one, but the hair one, I'm like, well, like, not everybody has the same hair. Like, that might just look much better on them. Somebody who's worky who don't like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do think with the relationship one, it's so interesting to me how often that we look at a friend who has a job that we don't like or a work-life balance that we don't like, and then we go to them for advice about how we should handle our career. Or we look at somebody whose dating life is a mess, and then we listen to their opinions on how we're doing our relationship. And I think that it's something that, you're something that we do all of the time inadvertently. And you can value your friends. You can

value their advice. But I think there is something so critical about figuring out the very specific realms in which you would like to value their advice. Figure out who you go to for what and then go to them for that and figure out the sectors that you don't want your life to look like theirs, that you maybe would go to somebody else for that advice. Which is also important to say, you know, be clear on what advice you're actually seeking at any given time, too. I think it's very easy to be either given unsolicited advice or to not make your advice advice requests clear enough and therefore you get broad brush kind of like, well, maybe you should fix your hair and you're like, I was really just looking for help with like writing this like a little blurb

of my dating profile. And you're like, no, it's true. Or the times when you're just like, I just want to talk to you. I think that's a very powerful thing to say. I think I said that on my Instagram. I remember when we were out at Bettys and you were like talking to me about something and you asked my opinion and I just kind of looked at you and you were like, that was not something you would even have an opinion about. I don't remember what it was about, but it was something that is just so clearly within your category of our relationship. And I was like, oh, you just wanted to talk out loud for a second, which is so valuable and real, honestly, to just talk out loud and sort out your own thoughts. But sometimes I think we're not great at communicating that that's a need that we have. For sure. And which also means you need to recognize it yourself, which is work. Which is work. The idea that we need to find what we're doing with our lives is flawed and boring. Most people do many things. Leaving room for change is how we grow, evolve, and don't have regrets on our deathbed. I think this one is critical. I think we spend so much time sometimes looking for our one thing. Like, who am I? What am I going to do?

do, who am I going to be? What's my life going to look like? And I think, like I said at the beginning of the episode, while it's important to zoom out and have a vision for your life because it's hard to achieve goals that you don't know what those goals are, I also think that we're not going to be one person and we're not going to have one career and we can pigeonhole ourselves by looking for who is that one person I'm going to be and what is that one career I'm going to have. I'd like to actually see like data on people who have, you know, accomplished things that are really great and see if they ever said, you know, I'm, I knew from the beginning I was going to do this one thing. Or like, I was always like.

There's Serena and Venus. And you know what? They would be. We just watched King Richard. They would definitely say that like, that's. If you haven't seen King Richard yet, it is on HBO Max, I think. It's with Will Smith. It literally is a testament to how much a single drive and focus can actually transform a life

in a family's life. But I think that that's the exception, not the rule. And probably, you know, without having ever chatted to either of them, I would imagine that they... You don't talk to them? Not that often. I imagine they would also consider themselves as doing other things as well. And they have. They've taken that success and turned it into so much more than tennis. I was going to say just tennis, but I'm like, there is no just tennis. Tennis is so wonderful to itself. But yeah, I think it's really critical. Like, how many careers would... Would you say that you've had at this point in your life? Paid?

Probably five. And I think, you know, just as an example, you started as an architect and now you work in technology and design. And I don't think you would view that time you spent as an architect is wasted. No. Use it all the time. It's additive. I think that you learn and you build. And I think that saying this is wasted time, I think I definitely fall into the trap of saying if this isn't progress.

progressive time and I can't directly see how this leads to this leads to this leads to this, then it's time that's wasted. And I think that's almost never true. I think we're always learning and growing. And it's also like wasted for what? Wasted to get where? What's the end? Because the goal is the living. The goal is the every day. The goal is what makes you wake up and get out of bed in the morning and the living and the growing and the learning and the changing is all part of that. So wasted for what? Well, I mean, it's time you could have been sitting playing tennis. I could have been Serena. I was really a waste. Zach and I play tennis together. It's like one of our go-to things and we are truly terrible. Oh, very bad. We're bad tennis players. So I think

that's the really big one is what's the Elizabeth Gilbert advice? She said, like, follow your curiosity. That was another time I needed to just talk out loud because I did not think you would know the Elizabeth Gilbert advice. Everything she's ever said, I think she said follow. She's like, I don't like the idea of following your purpose or your passion. I forget which one. But follow your curiosity because your curiosity is going to lead you to new and exciting places. And I think this is important too.

It gives you room to change. I think by saying, I'm going to be this person. I'm going to do this thing. We can also really trap ourselves into a version of ourselves that no longer fits. There is maybe an equally valuable, but like very not. that, you know, kind of sweet and beautiful stat, which is basically that CEOs, like, the best quality for CEOs is a diverse background. To actually run businesses to be successful in the very kind of peak executive level thing, you, it's considered to be one of the absolute best things

to do is that have diversity and experience. I love that. Focusing on a few things that really move the needle on your health is way more effective than trying to do too much and feeling stressed and overwhelmed. And I hear this a lot from listeners of this podcast, from followers on Instagram, from people in the wellness world at large. As I think sometimes people, you know, listen to all the ask the doctors. And then they're like, oh my God, how do I fit all of these different life changes into my life? It's so crazy. It's so overwhelming. And I think that viewing the wellness information more like a charcutory board where like it's all there, but you can take what specifically serves you?

Like sometimes you're in like a meat and cheese mood and sometimes it's like a good deviled eggs mood and then it's like it, no? No, no. Never really. I want to figure out what the analogy of deviled eggs is for you. Deviled eggs. Mood. Deviled eggs is like endurance, like long distance marathon running.

Yeah, probably will never get that. But no, I think it's important. And also to think what are the problems I'm trying to address? So for me, I'm trying to usually address my anxiety. I'm trying to address low energy is something that I struggle with. a lot. So when I'm looking for health solutions, I'm really looking for ones that are geared towards tackling those issues, whereas you might have different things. Like you were having a knee thing a while ago. So we were really trying to tackle inflammation in your body and paying

attention to different resources that you could use to tackle inflammation. Yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways, too, it's like what, I'm going to keep on your Shrek board analogy. It's like, what do you want to eat every day? Like, what are the things that, like, are going to bring you back to the table every morning, you know, before the work stuff happens or like basically, like what is consumable and easy and actually like what will make that lift possible for you that you won't just like burnout on. Yeah. And I think that trying out different things is definitely a way to get there. Like my morning routine has come from me trying out so many different things to do in a morning until I found the ones that really got me to my goals. And my goals with my

morning routine were to feel grounded and then to be more productive and more energetic. throughout the day. And it took me a while to find that like perfect concoction of things that got me there. But I think trying this stuff and then realizing you don't need to do it all, giving yourself some space and grace to just do a few things. And you don't have to try it all either. Again, try the stuff that is addressing the issues that you have concerns with, not the issues, which are going to be so different than the issues I have concerns with that Betty down the street is going to have concerns with. Betty. Okay, a pinch of mineral salt and water.

You hate that I do this. I'm sorry that you hate that I do this. I don't hate it. It's just there's salt in your water now. A pinch of mineral salt and water. It's just a little. It should not be enough to actually make it taste salty. It makes it way more hydrating.

And it needs to be mineral salt or sea salt or something like that. Basically, those electrolytes, those minerals are going to help deliver the water to your actual cells so that you're getting more hydrated from the water that you're drinking versus it actually just passing through you as. Okay, can I just put it on like a piece of butter and toast and then just drink a lot of water right afterwards? I think you really want the water to absorb the salt. I think that's the point. One of all just like mush up in there in the stomach part?

You can try it. Why don't you do an experiment in an end of one and tell me how hydrated you feel? But I will say that every single person who has tried this trick, just a little pinch, it has to be mineral or sea salt. So you're getting all of those minerals and not just the sodium. Sodium is only one component that we're looking for. So all the minerals in your water, drink it, you'll feel way more hydrated. I get hundreds of messages literally weekly from people who are like, I cannot believe how hydrated. I feel this has changed my life.

How do I know if I feel hydrated? You'll feel it. You'll feel the difference. In my heart. Will you try that one this year? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, you'll try it.

Okay. Set boundaries with the news. You can find ways to be informed without subjecting yourself to a barrage of headlines and TV hosts who are using your fear to build their advertising budget. I think this is particularly important with TV news. I'm just going to say it. I think TV news is the worst way to get information. I think it is entertainment and playing fast and loose with entertainment that quite frankly makes you feel bad doesn't feel productive to me. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that there's so many households where TV news is just on in the background 100% of the time

and it's sapping energy, it's sapping productivity and frankly it's sapping the ability to make the changes that being informed is supposed to inspire. Well, all you have to do is sit around in like an airport or a hospital or like the DMV and watch how the same stuff is recycled because, you know, for national news, there actually isn't, there's only so much stuff that is technically national news every single day. And, you know, that gets put in the headlines of newspapers and whatnot. And then 24 hours, it's people just reliving that and talking about it and chewing it over and coming up with like sometimes wildly inaccurate opinions and speculations for the whole day. Which makes us ruminate as well.

And I think that it's really an important thing to note that hyperrumination is considered one of the main causes and signs of depression. And so I think if you're feeling depressed and sad, often it is because you are hyper ruminating on something. And that's a real clinical diagnosis that psychologists use for depression is hyperrumination. And hyperrumination means. And hyperrumination means to think over and over and over about a subject. And so what the news is doing, especially TV or cable news, is hyper ruminating for you.

It's causing you to ruminate about what's going on in the world versus digesting it in an informed way that, again, can help trigger the actions that you need to make change. I do think this is so important. We talked about this in the Ask the Doctor Stress edition of the podcast. I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode to hear our conversation of the news. but also our conversations around stress generally. But action is the antidote in so many ways to feeling anxious or feeling depressed. We also talk about this in the neuroscience of anxiety episode. So I think sometimes when we're just taking in information and we feel anxious or depressed about it,

the way that we can break out of that cycle is to take action about it, whether that's donating to something, getting involved in politics on a local level, even just getting involved in your community, having a conversation with somebody, any of those things. And even like journaling, because I think there's a big contrast in hyperrination because it's not just like you're having the conversation with yourself. Because if you are sitting down with a book and you're actually like putting down your thoughts on paper, there's no going back and just rehashing the same thing. You have the answer right there. That is almost, that's in itself in action. But the hyperromanation, I'm only harping in this because I think it's such an important concept is like it's when you're just like, oh, that's bad news.

Oh, that's bad news. And the thought comes back and you just kind of, you don't necessarily. process it, it just floats and is literally ruminated in your head. So I recommend either picking Dr. Bordman and my Ask the Dr. Stress Edition was like, pick a person who tells you like the stuff you need to know. I think that's an interesting technique. I also think picking a single podcast that you listen to regularly or a form of long form journalism can be really helpful.

But I just don't think we need to be constant consumers of the news. I don't think that's helping us. I think that's helping them get clicks and advertising. revenue. Although all that being said, like the quality of your sources matter. The quality of your sources matter. All right, decision fatigue is one of the biggest mental drains and should be eliminated whenever possible. Automate your morning routine. Create health habits. So you're not deciding what to incorporate each day. This was huge for me when I decided I was going to work out every single day. And I know that people are going to be like, oh, you need rest days and whatever.

And I'll talk about that in a second. But every day, I was working up. And I was like, is today a workout day? is today a workout day. I don't know. And that decision fatigue often led to me not moving my body in any way, shape, or form. So now I do 20 to 30 minutes of movement every single day. I alternate between yoga, online weights workouts, online sort of Pilates dance workouts, and then walks, longer walks and hikes. So I'm not doing like a full weight training that you would need a rest day from. I'm just moving my body every single day. But by making that non-negotiable, I've taken the decision of is today a movement day or not off the table? Recovery days don't mean laying on the couch all day.

No. Walks are apparently one of the best recovery. Absolutely. Like walks, yoga. Those are recover. Those can be recovery days. Yeah. Are there any parts of your routine that you've automated to make it easier?

Yeah. Also working out. Although, I mean, I thought you were going to say about the rest days. It's like, but eventually something is going to destroy my whole routine within the week. So there will always be at least one rest day. But yeah, working out, we've been doing our circadian morning walks, which are legit. Even when I make you do them in the rain. We did one in the pouring rain today.

And I got to say it was less than ideal. It was less than it was than its best. It wasn't its best. Yeah. It was wet. But it was good. Green smoothies are one of my biggest automated habits. That's my breakfast every day.

I don't wake up and think what's going to be for breakfast. I wake up and I make a green smoothie and I don't even think about it. And I think that having those, also having associations, is really important for habit. So if you have like a time of day that you're already doing something else, and you want to tie a healthy habit to that, I think that that can be really useful. Oh, I did that with putting on face sunscreen,

because apparently my face is going to fall off. But I'm doing when I brush my teeth in the morning. And it's worked? You've been able to incorporate that routine? As long as I brush my teeth in the morning, which has always been yes. And an associated one you had, you'd put on a fun song and then you do your cold shower to that fun song.

Yes, absolutely. That is how I get my cold shower. in is I rock out to something preferably shorter than three minutes. I've been doing shower time to the Daily Stoic podcast, which I really like because he does two to three minute podcasts that are really similar to that book. We were reading about just sort of like daily philosophical meditations and musings. It's a perfect amount of time for a shower. How would it fit with a cold shower?

It'd be like two minutes. But would it like fit the vibe? Can you ponder when you're freezing? I guess it was the only one way to find out. Try it out. But yeah, I think as much as possible, automating things, we have so many decisions to make throughout your day. I think especially in the morning automating things because every decision that you're making in the morning is taking away. You basically have a decision bank and you have a certain amount of money in

that bank. And every time you wake a withdrawal from it, you're losing money that you can withdraw later in the day. And then it replenishes overnight. So the more in the morning that you can keep that bank full, the more you're going to have the mental capacity to make the decisions that you need to make later in the day, whether they're in your relationships or at your job or anything like that. So keep the bank full as much as possible and ask yourself, what can I automate? This is a big reason a lot of the big leaders, like company leaders, were the same outfit every day. Steve Jobs wore famously his black turtleneck every single day. And that was so that he took this one small decision away about what he should wear that day so that he kept his decision

bank a little bit fuller for more important decisions later on down the line. I've heard that's why Einstein didn't wear socks. Really? I've heard that. So you didn't have to decide whether to put socks on? I don't know, bro. Okay. Anyways, automate, automate, automate, and think about the ways you can kind of tie habits together

so that you're not thinking about your habits. They just become habits. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm genuinely confused how Masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more

interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Mastering Confidence and Sex Appeal class. It's 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaly, literally, you name it, they're on Masterclass, and it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie, and that it just keeps you entertained and interested, and you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when build annually, and you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode, like,

podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. We love talking about our gut health here on the Healthy Together podcast, which is why I'm so excited to share the life-changing Seed Daily Symbiotic. I actually discovered Seed back when I was working as an editor full-time, a bottle came across my desk, and I was instantly taken by how cute

the green glass packaging is. Then I found out that that packaging was actually refillable so that seed could share its products as sustainably as possible. And then I actually looked into the research behind Seed, and well, I was blown away. First of all, seed is not just a probate. It is a symbiotic. That means it contains both pre- and probiotics, which is super important. In fact, if you remember my Asth, The Doctor, Gut Health Edition, we talked about how prebiotics are one of the most important and often-underlooked components of great gut health. Let me break it down for you. Probiotics are the live bacteria that are so beneficial to our gut health. But prebiotics are the food that those probiotics need to thrive. If you don't

have ample prebiotics, the probiotics you're consuming will be undernourished and not be able to help your health in the way that you want. Speaking of your health, there's also a common misconception that probiotics or symbiotics are for people with gut issues, which is so not true. Like, yes, the seed symbiotic is amazing for your gut health, but your gut health impacts everything in your entire body. Your skin, your mental health, your cardiovascular health, your ability to actually assimilate the maximum amount of nutrients from all that healthy food you're eating, having a

happy gut is critical for all of it. It is hard to narrow down everything else that I love about seed. I am extremely particular with my supplements and I don't take many, but seed is just stellar across the board. It's been tested and tested and tested. Seriously, their testing process is bananas to make sure that it has 100% survival through the digestive process, which is so rare. And somehow they do all of that without needing refrigeration, which is very handy.

I find that when I have refrigerated probiotics, I just forget about them and they get buried behind like old jars of pasta sauce, whereas I keep these on my bedside table, so I'm reminded to take them every single night. They also contain the 24 strains that are the most scientifically studied to support your whole body's health. I am obviously passionate about this stuff. Taking care of my gut has been a key part of my own anxiety journey, and CED has been a vital part of that. So feel free to reach out with any questions. And if you like learning about gut health and how probiotics and prebiotics actually function, I highly recommend heading over to Seed.com. They have a whole educational section that breaks down the science behind your microbiome

in some of the easiest to understand ways that I have ever seen. And if you would like to try Seed for yourself and pretty much change your life forever, you can go to Seed.com and use the code Liz Moody for 15% off your first month supply of Seed's daily symbiotic. Again, that's code Liz Moody on seed.com. Now, let's get back to the episode. Look back at pictures from five to ten years ago that you hated, and you'll immediately be like, why didn't I appreciate when I looked like that? So appreciate today's pictures now. If you can't love yourself for your present self, love it so your future self won't have regrets. I know that you relate to this one.

Oh, absolutely. I always look at your photos. I'm like, oh, God, so bad. And I get old photos. I'm like, nice. Nice. And it's crazy because I just remember thinking, I posted a picture of me in a swimsuit. recently that was from when we went on that British Virgin Islands like sailing trip.

Also nice. And I remember the time thinking I looked so fat. And I was like, I can't post these pictures. I look huge. I can't believe how bad my body looks. And I look back at it now. And I'm like, I had a beautiful body. Like I would love to have that be my body now.

And I love my body now. I will also say I got you that banging swimsuit. You did. I would have ever spent on a piece of clothing for you. Certainly the fabric to cost ratio. Yes, it was not very much fabric for how much it cost. It was like, let's get an agent provocateur swimsuit for this BVI trip. And I so appreciate it.

It was great. But yeah, I think that having me. I just want to think you say, I appreciate it. It was great. I think having the foresight to say, you know that feeling I'm having right now about these old photos, future me is going to have this feeling about the photos now. And that's applicable whether you are 18, 20, 35, 35, 45, 60, 70, I think your future self is always going to want and wish that you'd enjoy these moments of yourself.

I mean, and a piece of it, too, I think ties into what we were talking about earlier with the cellulite context where it's about seeing. And maybe that's even a piece of it is like, you know, we come to terms with how parts of our body have lived. And you look back five years ago and you're like, I've come to terms with all the like the living that had happened back then five years ago. You know, I don't know. Yeah, I really like that. All right, a few quick ones. Tongues scraping is one of the best ways to get rid of bad breath, eliminate cavities, and make your gut healthier.

A tongue scraper costs $6 or $7. You can get it on Amazon. Mine is from the package-free shop. I absolutely love it. Literally, I just tongue scrape after I brush my teeth in the morning. It makes your mouth feel so much cleaner. And if you listen to my Ask the Doctor Dental Health Edition of the podcast, he talks about how incredibly important. I think he thinks tongue scraping is like as important,

if not more so than brushing your teeth or flossing because we just get so much bacteria buildup on our tongue, which causes our breath to be bad. And also that bacteria when we swallow goes down into our gut and affects our gut microbiome. It impacts our oral microbiome. Our oral health is about so much more than just our mouths. And that's why you need to tongue scrape. I've been trying to get Zach to tongue scrape for like six months. And I keep, I bought him a tongue scraper and I just keep putting it in parts of the bathroom, and I think you'll be... I think I want a fancy copper one like yours.

I think I need to elevate the experience. All right. What are the gold tongue scraper is going for these days? I'll look for a gold tongue scraper for you. 24 carrot, please. I got you the $6 one from Amazon, and that was my bad. I think that was a mistake. I'm so sorry.

I'll get you the $12 one from the package free shop. But definitely tongue scrape. Another quickie is the de-frizing treatment that I got this year. Pure Lux changed my life. And I think this is another one. It kind of goes hand in hand with those solving problems or automating things. I struggled with my hair almost daily. Like I could get it to look cute, but it was so much effort and so much work.

And then I would think about it when I was trying to do like physical activities. Like when we were going for a hike, I was like, oh, I'm going to make my hair look like crap. When there was bad weather, I was going to make my hair look like crap. And we were going tubing or, you know, hanging out of lake. My hair was going to look like crap. If you complain about your hair to your partner every single day, do it for them. Do it for them. And then I got this one treatment, and yes, it's a little bit pricey, but it's called the Purelux treatment.

You can go to their website. This is not sponsored, but go to their website. It's Purelux.com, I think, and they have a place you can find a salon near you. But it's just basically a non-toxic. It's a keratin-like treatment, but there's no formaldehyde. It's an amino acid treatment, I believe. So it's actually making your hair stronger. And now I can air dry my hair.

and it's giving me back so much time and just I feel good about my hair all the time which again I was always getting there before but it was like with an hour or two of effort. And now you don't leave the house and you're like, oh man, did I leave the curling iron on? How many times did I make you like bike home? Oh, the amount of money spent on like Uber's alone

we were in New York just to go check on the curling iron was probably pay for it in a year. And while we're on sort of body care and things we're putting in and on our body, what you consume changes how your skin looks as much as what you put on it. So vitamin C, having a healthy microbiome, and eating all of the veggies are more important than any serum.

I think a lot of times we're expecting miracles from serums that we put on our face. And I do think it's important to have a good skincare routine, although I think it usually needs to be far less extensive than what people think it needs to be. but I think what we consume is equally, if not more important. And I think things like how our gut microbiome impacts our skin health are often really under-talked about. I personally see a big difference when I'm having vitamin C on a regular basis and when I'm having fermented foods on a regular basis.

So that's a big one for me. All right. Another quickie, just answer the text when you get it. It takes three times as long to close it, reopen it, and come up with an excuse about your belated reply. this one was big for me. I have 499 unread text messages. And I had a lot of people who were feeling neglected in my life. And I realized that opening it and then being like, oh, I'll answer that later was taking me more time ultimately than just coming up with an answer right then, even if that moment took a tiny bit longer.

And what's the spatial corollary to that? And the other one I have was put things in their actual. places. If you leave it on the counter or the floor, you're essentially having to put it away twice. So the idea here is you come home, you have your jacket and your purse, and you kind of like dump it on the table. Then you have to later come and take your jacket and your purse and put them back where they should be going. And instead of just putting your jacket and your purse in their designated place. So it actually takes more time in the long run, even if it takes slightly more time in the moment, you want to take that slightly longer time in the moment so that it's not actually

like twice as long in the grander scheme of things. And Zach likes this one because he thinks I'm messy. Not messy. You just put things in an interim place and then don't put them in the second place. So I'm working on that. I think that sometimes we try to give ourselves an out in the moment and it feels good in the moment, but actually in the long run, we're hurting ourselves more. I think procrastination can often feel like that.

You're like, oh, I'll just feel good if I give myself this time to watch a few TikToks right now. but ultimately you feel worse in the long run and you're doing that to yourself. Well, I also think it's like that kind of category of things is self-perpetuating for stress. When we're stressed, we choose to cut a corner and then the cutting of the corner comes back to bite us and then it makes us more stressed. And it costs, like you said, time. It costs time. And that kind of goes with my next one, which is that keeping promises to yourself is one of the

best ways to build self-love and self-trust. And I think this is so important that sometimes. we just get in our own way and we're so much more apt to keep a promise that we made to somebody else. And sometimes we are like, well, I told myself I would work out this morning, but nobody else is relying on me. So I'm not going to do it. I'm going to let this thing get in the way. I told myself I'd meditate every day, but I'm not going to do it. And every time you do something like that, you're chipping away at the self-trust relationship that you have. And I think that's so important. I think that as much as we would keep a promise to show up for somebody else to a workout

class to a meditation session, we should keep that promise for ourselves. Which also goes hand in hand with making the right promises and making good promises to yourself to keep. Downloading a habit tracking app takes 15 seconds and is the best way to make new habits actually stick. This was a big one for me this year. I downloaded an app. It's literally called habit. And you put in habits that you want to have. And I think it's so important to do a mix of bigger ones and little time. any ones that you know you're going to hit every single day so that I have ones that are like no phone in bed in the evening, which I haven't hit yet, which is terrible. But then I have ones I know that I hit every day, like have your green smoothie every day. I have circadian walks on there.

So I think having a mix of ones you know you're going to achieve so you feel good and ones that feel a little bigger. But something about just pushing that button, it gives me a little dingling. Having little rewards too. I think we underestimate the value of rewards. And sometimes we overestimate know what the reward should be. We're like, oh, I should reward myself with a big dinner or an elaborate bath session. And for me, literally the reward of the little tingling on the habit app is enough to motivate me to do it, which is crazy. It's crazy how little the reward needs to be, but there needs to be some acknowledgement that you've done something. I really enjoyed those gold stars on your essays as a child. I was a big gold star girl.

Yeah. That was really important to me. consistent SPF will change your skin more than any product. Wear it on cloudy days. Wear it inside. Just put it on every morning, no exceptions. And I'm going to put it as a side note to this one. Also, wash your face every single night. I cannot believe I'm saying this publicly,

but this is the year where I started doing that for the first time, consistently washing my face at night. And again, it is just this little act of self-care, but it makes a huge difference not only in your skin, but in keeping promises to yourself in feeling good in your face and your body. I don't do that. Sorry. Well, I need more self-love.

Maybe this will be your year. The game changer for me was doing, I do, instead of doing a long shower at any point, I do a short shower in the morning and a short shower at night. A lot of little showers. I do a lot of little showers. Interspers throughout the day. And I wash my face in the night shower and I kind of like quickly wash my pits and my bits. And then I get out and it's really quick and it's a warm shower.

So a warm shower at night will actually help you sleep better because it'll raise your body temperature and then your body temperature will drop when you get out of the shower, which mimics the natural process of your body temperature dropping at night, which helps set your circadian rhythm and helps you sleep better. And then in the morning after my workout, I'll take another really quick shower. And this time I don't wash my face. I don't wash my face more than once a day so that I can preserve as much of my skin's barrier layer and microbiome as possible. but I wash it at night because I have on my sunscreen and the pollution from the day and just kind of my makeup if I wore any on it. But I don't wash it in the morning and then I do my cold shower in the morning to wake me up. So I have my two baby showers and that's been the thing that like help that habit stick. But SPF every single day because everything else you're trying to do like when you're trying to get rid of your dark spots or get rid of your acne, like everything else you're trying to do on your face, get rid of your fine lines or your wrinkles.

the sun is contributing negatively to almost all of that. So just putting this protective layer between you and the sun is going to make it so not all of these new issues are forming. So your skin will literally look better if you wear as bad. I think people don't talk about that enough. I totally agree, babe. I just like how your advice these days are like, first, step one, you got to go outside every day for a circadian walk. Step two, though, before you do that, you have to make sure that no sun touches your face. I actually don't often wear sunscreen for my circling walk.

I just wear a hat. Gatsp and a hat. And it's before I put on my SPF. But it's 10 minutes. It's early in the morning. But I do think we underestimate how much sun exposure we have throughout the day. Throughout the day. Later in the day, as you're driving to the grocery store, as you're walking between meetings,

as sun is coming through as you're working, your skin will look better. And I think we focus too much on, like, skin cancer, which is important to focus on. Maybe not too. Let's focus on that. Let's focus on that. But people should say, because it's motivating, your skin will look better. Wear SPF every single day for six weeks and tell me that your skin hasn't changed. You know, it has changed drastically.

So if you want to look gorgeous, wear SPF every single day and then wash it off every single night. All right, this is one that I like. We're nearing the end. If someone likes you, they won't care when you text or call. And if they don't like you, playing hard to get won't change that. Spend less time playing games. and more time asking, what do I actually want? So I think this applies to dating,

which is where you and I have discussed this a lot with people in my life who shall not be named. You know who you are. You know who you are. And we give a lot of our friends and family members advice when they're stressing about like, should I send this text? What do you think?

And they'll often ask Zach because he represents the entirety of the male population. Sorry, guys. And the truth is that if somebody likes you, these little games will change nothing. And if they don't like you, these little games will change nothing. So spending the time worrying about it is just wasted time that we've noticed often gets in the way. People say, well, do I like this person?

Do I want to spend my time with this person and self-reflecting in that way? Much like managing your financial investments. Just put it in the market and don't try to micromanage it too much. Don't try to micromanage it too much. So true. And I think it applies for friendships too. I think that pretending or faking or playing games is really just getting in the way of an end goal of trying to connect with people who want to connect with you because that's what it is all about at the end of the day. But put it in the market, right?

That still means you have like that still means reaching out. That so means actually participating. It means putting your emotional and time dollar into, you know, bettering all of your relations with people. Yeah, I love that. All right. Do you have any other sort of leave people with? these thoughts for 2021 or get excited for 2020 with these thoughts? I've heard a lot of people just be like, nobody, nobody say 2022 is going to be your year.

Like nobody, nobody glad to say, I don't know about you. I'm feeling 20, 22. Oh, no. This is the year that Zach really fell in love with Taylor, which was special for me. If you have a man who's having a hard time appreciating the genius that is Taylor Swift, first point out their misogyny and then explain the stories, behind a lot of those songs. I feel like it really helps them become, it helped open them up for you, right?

Once I realize there was a deep, rich backstory to every single song, it can be listened to like a novel, especially if somebody's narrating it for you. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm excited for 2022. I think that I'll just leave people on this. This is a thought I've been having a lot lately. I woke up today and it was pouring rain.

It was gray and dark and grim out. side. And my first thought was like, ugh, it's going to be a terrible day. It's grim and gray. I like sunshine. I'm a sunshine baby. And then I had the thought, what if today was a cozy day? What if the rain made it feel just really lovely? And I could have a hot cup of tea and I could use it as an excuse to stay inside and catch up on my work and read a really good book. And I think that the attitude that we approach the situations that we're in, it can't change everything. And I'm not going to sit here and be one of those wellness people who are going to tell you that your thoughts entirely create your reality. Sometimes shit is hard. Sometimes your reality is going to be really

hard. But I do think we have a lot of power to change how we approach situations. And I am hoping to bring a lot of that into 2022. We have the power to train our neuro pathways into thinking in the ways that we want to think. And the more that we think, the more that we practice training those neural pathways, the more that we make those into the thoughts that we want, the more they'll naturally go there anyway. So every time we're flipping our thoughts, every time we're approaching the situation

and the way that we want to approach it, that makes us feel the way we want to feel, we're making that groove a little bit deeper for the next time. We're setting the stage to have a little bit more of the experience we want to have the next time. So I hope that's an empowering note, to leave 2021 on, and I'm really excited to see what 2022 brings. I would love to hear what you learned in 2021 if you want to screenshot this episode

and share any thoughts on any of my learnings, any of Zach's commentary, his witty commentary. That, do that. Or anything that you've learned, any of your life lessons from 2021 screenshot, and tag me on Instagram. I'm at Liz Moody, and Zach and I will both look at all of this. screenshots and DMs. And if you'd like to share this episode with anybody who you feel like would benefit from these learnings, I would so appreciate it. Oh, also, this is probably Zach, correct me if I'm wrong. This is going to come out on Wednesdays. It's like pretty much the last

days to buy the deck to ship before Christmas. Are we too late on that already? Do your last, pitch. Last, last days, I think, to buy the deck before Christmas. So if you want to buy the healthier together conversation deck, you can get that at htdeck.com. It's one to three day shipping. It's going to get a little bit longer as we get into the holiday. So really get in there as quickly as you can. HTDEC.com gives you all of the information. It's 150 amazing conversation starters so that you can have the types of conversations that we have on this podcast.

You can bring those into your everyday life with the people that you love and with strangers if you're putting yourself out there in the market and going on the dates and you want to have really good conversations. You need the HTDKDG. The dating feedback for the cards has been actually pretty good so far. It's really fun. And you can tell people my little sister is like, yeah, it's like, My sister's deck, so I have to use it.

But you can use that. Anybody can say, it's Liz's deck. It's my friend's deck. It's my friend Liz's deck. It's my friend Liz's deck. And like, I don't know. She gave it to me. Let's just try it out.

So if you need an excuse, do that. HGDeck.com. Share the episode. Tell me what you thought of the episode on Instagram at Liz Middy. And I will see you next week here for the next episode of the Healthy Together podcast. I love you guys. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skin care. But this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years.

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