The Psychology of your 20s - 167. 5 steps to build a life you love

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

A considerable question for those of us in our 20s is how do we create a good life? What does it mean to design a life we love and how exactly do we do that? In today's episode we break down five ways we can do this, including:  Deconstructing your old life for your new one + the Odyssey Plan Prototyping your new life + the 15 minute rule  Addition through subtraction  Pursue daily joy  Positive future planning + dopamine scheduling  Listen now!  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg  Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Ellen, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian. Michael Mancini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. You know the deal. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we dive into the psychology of our 20s. Today, we're going to talk about something a little bit different. I think normally on this show we love to take a specific topic and dive into all of the studies, dive into all of the, of course, science behind it. But we're going to step back for today's episode and just look at the lives that we are creating from a holistic point of view and the ways in which we can actually design a life that we truly love based on, of course, like some of those core propositions and core theories to do with what makes us happy, what

makes us satisfied, what it actually means to enjoy life from a psychological perspective. I think a big worry for a lot of us in our 20s and me included is this kind of lingering question of how do I get the most out of my life? How do I ensure that when the time comes and I'm on my deathbed, there's nothing. left to do, there's nothing left to say that I can look back and be like, well, you know, wow, I had a really great life. Not just that, I had a life that I really loved. I think that very existential questioning of feeling like we have to make a lot of decisions right now to set ourselves up for future happiness can keep us up at night. You know, we want to feel in control.

we want to feel like we have some say in choosing what we want from these, you know, 70 to 80 odd years that we get if we're lucky. And I think more than that general just sense of purpose and general sense of satisfaction, we also want that daily enjoyment. We want to wake up and be excited by the lives that we are creating, but also the lives that we are currently living. I think it's one of the best feelings in the world. when you go to sleep at night and just feel grateful. You feel grateful for your friends. You feel grateful

for where you're at in your career. You feel grateful for all the joy and the happiness that you're experiencing and bringing. So how do we make that a reality? I think it's, you know, one of those big conundrums where at some stage you're going to reach a turning point and realize that what you've been doing so far might not actually create a future that you're really excited about, especially during this decade when we feel like we are on the cusp of a lot of huge life decisions, but also kind of at a crossroads where we're trying to make the best choice for us that's going to set us up for long-term happiness. I want to take some of the pressure off. I want to take some of the pressure off from feeling like there is a singular decision that is going to make you

happy in the future, a singular decision that is going to allow you to build a life that you love, and focus on those core principles and five kind of practical things that you can do that regardless, regardless of what's going on around you, regardless of what the world throws at you, regardless of your choices, you can still be happy. You can still feel contentment. And I don't think it's going to be necessarily easy. I'm not going to sit here and be like, oh, you know, just follow these five simple steps. You'll be done in 30 minutes.

It's like obviously not. Anything worth having, I think, comes with hard work. It comes with self-reflection. It comes with dedication. But the person that you are investing in is yourself. That's what I really want to remind you. Like, this is your best investment. Best investment ever is to set yourself up for a beautiful life.

To set yourself up for a life that you love. So let's talk through it today. I'm super excited for this episode. And I think if you're listening, hopefully you're excited as well. well. When we begin this process of essentially designing our lives and designing our futures, we cannot go into this transformation from a place of blindness. You know, we actually need to identify those crucial points where we are dissatisfied, where we are perhaps getting ourselves

into a rut. Like what is actually the problem here that is causing us to want to take action? I think we tend to get stuck in the life that is easiest for us, the life that is convenient and comfortable, even though it's maybe not what we truly want. I think this is because as humans, we naturally crave our creature comforts and what is, you know, what seems familiar. We are innately scared of situations, events, choices that are going to disrupt the norm. It also might be that we don't necessarily feel. We are not necessarily feel like we have the tools that are necessary to redesign our life because we have become so stagnant and stuck in our patterns and stuck in our daily routine. We've kind of reached this point where we've

stopped believing in our agency and in our self-efficacy, which is essentially our sense of feeling in control of our decisions and our future. That is a really hard pattern to break out of. And before we can build a life we love, I think we actually have to deconstruct the one that we have. And even if you are at like a seven or an eight or even a nine out of ten on like life satisfaction, it's still possible to really raise that ceiling for what you want and what you expect. So this first tip, this entire approach of deconstructing the life you have really relies on choosing courage over comfort and challenging what you have come to expect from life by identifying where maybe certain events and experiences are not contributing to your expectations

and shaping your life around that potential, that potential for improvement. So what we need to look at in general is kind of the four biggest areas of life where we feel the most to satisfaction. We have money and career, of course. We have our relationships. We have our health, which includes mental health. And then this final one, which I think we don't often discuss. which is values and spirituality.

And I'm including that last one because I think it is a facet of our mental and psychological well-being that we often neglect. It's very hard, though, to feel like you are building this life that you love when you don't actually believe in anything, when you have nothing to put your faith in. And that doesn't necessarily have to do with religion. I think values are equally as important. But more than that, a sense that you have a mission and a purpose in life. That could be a mission to improve the lives of others, a mission to create something beautiful,

to solve some problem that we see. I think we all need something that we're passionate about and something that drives us. It is very hard to even feel like you want to change your life if there's no direction for that. You know, the other areas are pretty self-explanatory. I think we all know what it means to be dissatisfied in a job or in a relationship or dissatisfied with our health. You know, who doesn't worry about those things at least once a week or even daily, you know, because they are truly a foundation for a happy life.

The easiest way, though, to identify what your main source of dissatisfaction is, is to actually follow the stress, to notice where you carry the most stress. what do you think about the most when your thoughts are wondering or when you're falling asleep and all the busyness of the day has kind of ceased? What are you left thinking about in those moments? Is it, you know, I wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow. I wish that I was doing something I was genuinely excited to do. I wish I had more friends. I wish I felt more like myself in my own skin. How anxiety and worries might seem really scary. and really frustrating, and we might choose to avoid them because of the discomfort that they bring.

However, I think that is the biggest mistake we make. And that the reason why is because these worries, these fears, firstly, when we ignore them, we know that suppression inevitably will lead to these fears just gaining more power over us because we are avoiding them. But when it comes to building a life we love, those worries are your best friend because they are shining a bright neon flashing light exactly where you should be starting, where there is the most room for improvement. So maybe you're at this point where I'm going to use that example of like you're super

dissatisfied with your career. That's a really big one for a lot of us. It's not fulfilling. You're bored. You're annoyed at your co-workers. Sometimes the reason why we continue to stay in those situations in a life we don't love is because we don't know what it means to pursue a different kind of future. And we are scared of what that future might look like, that it might be worse.

If the life you have found yourself in is not the life that you love, you really have a duty to question not only what needs to change and in what area, but what the potential outcome of a change might be. So I'm going to explain this a little bit further. there is an incredible book actually on this topic and it is literally called Designing Your Life. It's written by two Stanford professors. There's also a TED talk about it that I really recommend. And they talk about this exercise called the Odyssey Plan. So the time between like our 20s and our 30s is what they call our Odyssey years, like our years of exploration, where we are in this strange vacuum between childhood and what we see is real.

adulthood. And during this time, it is absolutely necessary to test in your mind different life paths or ideas about your future. A lot of the time, though, the way we are told to approach this is super limiting. You know, we're always told to think about our five-year plan or what do you want to be when you grow up or what are you going to do next? What are you going to do after graduation? After high school, after this job contract ends. That way of approaching the future doesn't actually allow us to be creative because it suggests that there is one answer. But the idea behind this Odyssey plan exercise is to think a bit broader and to come up with three different plans or versions of your future life by asking yourself three questions. If your life was to continue the way it was,

what would a day in five years time look like? Go into as much detail as possible. We've talked about this before, but what are you eating for breakfast? Who are you living with? Where are you living? What does your day look like? What do you do for fun? Imagine that situation, five years from now, nothing changes. Now think about what happens if this plan that you're currently living out doesn't work. What would you want from your life instead? And what would a day in your life in five years time look like then? If this plan A, of this current routine doesn't work out? What would you choose instead? Would it be any different? Are you maybe picturing yourself happier or more fulfilled? And finally, what would a day in your life look like in five years time if money, time and social expectations did not matter if you could do exactly what you wanted?

How do you feel then? So I think the last question always gets people in a bit of a tizzy because they're like, well, you know, money and time and social expectations do matter. Of course they do. Of course they matter. They are so limiting, very limiting. And it's not to say that you need to picture this like ideal life and live it out. It's more so being like if you take away all of these external factors that control our happiness, what is the core of your idea of a happy life when none of these things matter. And it's really interesting to see how this exercise changes the older you get. So for example, when I first did this exercise a few years back, I was 20. And I was, oh my gosh, I think I was still working in hospitality. I must have been. I was still working in hospitality. And you know what?

If I was still working in hospitality now, I think I would be miserable. My year, you know, day in a life five years from back then would not be a life that I necessarily want now. My backup plan was I'm going to go into consulting, which I did actually end up doing. And you know what? That life was really amazing for some time. But when I really thought about it, and I started contemplating that final idea of a life where you are not constrained by money time, social expectations, I got a better idea of what I really wanted to do. And that was to do something where I was creative, where I was my own boss, and where I lived according to that mission that we were talking about before. So this multiverse exercise, I think the real power and significance in it is that

it allows you to recognize what life has to offer. And it allows you to not be scared when things don't go according to plan and embrace the courage of change and practical change, things that you are going to change. So after deconstructing your life and identifying where you aren't dissatisfied and how that might need to change in the next five years, what it could look like, you need to start prototyping and testing those different versions of the future. To start with, choose one area that you can improve where you will see the most growth. So for example, we've talked about the career one quite a bit, but health is another really big element of this. And often it is a huge source of dissatisfaction for us. We don't like how we feel in our bodies. We don't like how we're treating

ourselves. We don't like X, Y, and Z. That is holding you back from a happy life and is your duty to change it. So instead of going in and being like, all or nothing, I'm going to become like the fittest version of myself. I'm going to be so healthy. I'm never going to have a depressed or anxious thought ever. instead what you want to do is spend just 15 minutes a day working on that area of your life in a positive direction whether it is exercising for 15 minutes building your resume for 15 minutes or finding a passion project that you do every day 15 minutes that contributes to future career opportunities 15 minutes of texting back all your friends or giving them a call building that community that little change is going to go a long way.

I think the reason why is twofold. Firstly, when we think about like creating our dream life, often we do think about this big future, right? That's like 20 years down the line. And that is so daunting. And when we just think about the outcome, it is so big in our minds and we want to get there so fast with such impatient creatures that we forget

that we actually have to be acting on our dreams and goals. Your dream life might involve a really nice terrorist in a big city. Sadly, that's not going to happen overnight, but it will happen if you take 15 minutes a day to educate yourself on investing or to go over your spending. If you want to one day write a book that you get a hold in your hands and say, you know, I wrote this book. I wrote every word. That doesn't happen from wishful thinking. It happens from writing for just 15 minutes every day. And the 15 minute rule really helps us overcome our all or nothing thinking that keeps us in a place where we are scared of even starting. I think this fear of starting comes from a few things. The biggest one to me is perfectionism.

I talk about this quite a bit, this idea of perfectionism procrastination. If we aren't completely sure that our plan is going to work, that our future is going to be perfect, why start, why even begin? Because we are so held back by this sense that if it's not exactly what I want, why should I put in the effort? Why should I face the possibility of failing, the possibility of setting my sights really high and not be able to reach them and being disappointed? So that's one of the first reasons is when we want to create our dream life, when we want to change something really significant, it's very daunting because there is a lot of room for failure. And the other thing is to do with analysis paralysis. Something that I really like to talk about is choice overload. This idea that

there is a lot of different choices for people like you and I in our 20s. And often we think that having a lot of choice brings about a lot of freedom, brings about a lot of options. It actually does the opposite. It creates this thing called analysis paralysis where because there are so many paths that we can take into our future lives because there are so many different things that we want to do. We want to travel. We want the career. We want to settle down. We want to go and pursue acting or whatever it is because there are so many different dreams that we hold at one time. It is so hard to choose one so we don't choose any of them at all. That means that not only do we not create, we just don't end up creating any life that we love because it's so much easier, like I said, to just

stay in the place where we're comfortable, we don't have to challenge ourselves. We don't have to potentially go through mentally and emotionally uncomfortable experiences such as failure. But I think the 15-minute rule allows us to get comfortable with the risk and get comfortable with some of the discipline that we need and slowly see improvements such that when the time comes that we might have to make a big change, we already feel prepared. And my mom used to always have this saying, Shout out to my mom. She's amazing. Very wise woman. And you know what? It probably isn't even her saying, but I'm going to give her credit for it. But she used to always say, the easiest things aren't always worth having because if everyone could have it, they would. And when you think about 15 minutes,

15 minutes to devote to just something that you really want in your life that's really going to improve your life, the majority of people don't take that time at all. You also discovered that with each of these days that you continue to do something that you love and do something that's good for you, what you're actually going to find is what you really want in life. So I'm going to explain that a little bit. When we set our sites and we say, okay, I want to do this thing for 15 minutes. Say, for example, that's writing. When we begin to notice that that 15 minutes starts turning into an hour or even more, you realize that you're doing it because it's something that you love and it's become part of your lifestyle.

Creating the life you love is not about huge, massive decisions that are going to completely move you to a whole new spectrum of life and they're not going to completely change your path in the moment. It's also about building up good habits towards the practices and the future that you want to build over time. So we've spoken a lot about the planning phase and what we can contribute to our lives. through those small moments. And, you know, that is really amazing to have vision.

But we equally need to identify the things that don't make us happy. I think improving your life isn't always about addition. Sometimes it's about subtraction as well. And I think that's something that the self-help space sometimes misses. You know, it's always a new lifestyle plan or a new trending exercise or a book or a product or more relationships or more healthy food. or more whatever. But sometimes we actually need to be in the space and the mindset of removal. We kind of need to, you know, murray, condo our lives and the habits that are holding us back.

It's hard to fully love the life that you are creating when you are beholden to a nasty friendship. Or you are eating food that makes you feel unwell all the time. Or you have a routine that leaves you bored and miserable and unable to wake up in the morning or a job that is completely draining you. there is nothing that you can continue to add to your life that is ever going to replace the things that continue to drain your energy. And there's a quote I saw the other day that I think really puts this quite well, which is your new life is going to cost you your old one. And that includes those habits that hold us back, that we might, you know, might make us happy in the moment or which are too difficult to address, but in the long term, end up,

acting as almost a form of self-sabotage. I have an example of this for you. It's around drinking. And if you listen to an episode I did a while back around should you quit drinking in your 20s, you'll know a bit about this story. But for the longest time, I had a really bad relationship with alcohol. I think that I grew up really wanting to be cool and really wanting to fit in and also being kind of socially anxious. and alcohol when I entered uni and even like post-grad life, alcohol is like the most amazing social lubricant

and it makes everything feel more fun and more free and it's just such an easy way to socialize with people. I began to realize though that actually alcohol was one of the biggest things that was almost acting to undermine the life that I wanted.

Every time I would drink, I would always, I didn't really know when to stop, if that makes sense. I didn't really know what it was like to not drink every day. And I would always kind of find a way to kind of do that. And what ended up happening was I was always completely, you know, physically drained. I didn't feel healthy. I didn't always have a hangover. But when I did, it really like wasn't great. I couldn't be productive. And I think that that's a great example of almost like addition by subtraction, your life improving by removing things that you might feel completely reliant on, but which are actually causing you a lot of

long-term suffering. And it's about identifying what's a driving you to keep those things in your life, even when they're at the expense of your future self. Is it peer pressure? Is it loneliness? Is it dependence? Those things all take away our ability to control our life. lives and kind of be the director, you know, like we want to be the writer, the producer, the director of our lives. We want to be in control, not our impulses, not our cravings, not our fixations, not our bad relationships. So I think cutting things out obviously takes a lot of focus. And the thing that a lot of us make, I think the biggest mistake a lot of us make is that we just want to try and transform every domain of our life at once. And we want to just,

just do a whole big cleanse. Instead, I want you to think about the one thing that is holding you back right now, only one, and focus on that. Put your energy into removing that from your life. I always like to imagine the kind of final hero story, if that makes sense, what it will feel like to tell someone in six months, in a year, in five years, what that journey was like for me. Like, wow, that was a really hard decision,

but I'm glad that I did it. I can tell you that I did this from the point of hindsight, being in a space where that thing is no longer in my life. You know, I'm so glad that I quit vaping when I was 25 and not at 40. I'm so glad I decided to stop drinking every night. I'm so glad that I realized at 23

that that person was not good for me and not at 30 when I had seven years to act. And all along, these things were actually keeping me from being truly fulfilled by a life that is my own. So we're going to take a quick break now, but when we return, I want to talk about a few more kind of joyous habits and practices that I think we all need to apply when designing a life that we don't just love, but we absolutely and truly adore. So we'll be back after this short break? 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of,

of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table. right now.

Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games.

And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field. and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it.

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intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now.

In 2023, former Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistency. in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

Greg Alesspian, Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. this is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news

at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know who needs a reminder of this, but life is meant to be really, really fun.

And there are meant to be really amazing moments. And it's okay and totally amazing to be excited by things and to be pursuing happiness and pursuing joy and pursuing nostalgia and like ecstasy and like all the good and happy feelings. Sometimes I think we forget that in kind of the structures of daily living. and particularly in a world that really focuses on material possessions and material wealth. But if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you will know that joy is such an important emotion and such an important emotion for creating a life that you love is putting joy at the center of what you choose to do.

We overlook this feeling in so many conversations and sometimes we overlook it for things like love and we overlook it for things like happiness. But joy is so much more delicate and beautiful and easy to kind of cure and easy to find. I think it's also something that is so immaterial and yet such a key ingredient to happiness and life satisfaction. I've actually been looking into this a lot recently and we're seeing so much evidence for the power of joy coming out of a bunch of really huge research institutions like Harvard and Stanford. All of them say, saying that more than money, more than fame, more than success, more than even good genes, joy is one of the most powerful factors in what determines a good life.

One of the longest longitudinal studies ever conducted in the history of modern psychology and modern medicine focused on what made a good life. They recruited 268 sophomores from Harvard back in the 1930s, and they followed them for 80 years. And then they also followed their children. And these days, only 19 of the original 268 are alive. But by tracking these individuals for essentially their whole lives, they were able to see exactly what determined longevity and happiness and health into those later decades.

And what they found was amazing. They showed how protective, healthy relationships are for our health, how important empathy is, and also optimism, and how things like joy and looking for good things in your life. life even when they're not there and hard to find keeps you mentally sharp, it keeps you curious, it keeps you excited. We are often really hard at work designing our dream life that it means that we sacrifice daily enjoyment. We get really focused on being productive and working hard and that negates a lot of the significant beauty that we'll find in small silent moments. So I want you to

create joy for yourself. And every day I want you to find three things that make you think, oh my God, it's really amazing that I get to be alive. That is just so beautiful and special and human and whatever it is. The example I love to give is this time that really sticks in my memory when I was coming home from back when I worked my 9 to 5 when I was a consultant. And it was really late at night. I was so exhausted. I'd been working so hard those few months. And there was this little girl on the train. And she had this big brown. leaf and she was just twirling it and patting it and petting it and I was like that is the most joyous beautiful thing is looking and it's like observing someone else's acknowledgement of like beauty

and observing someone else's like curiosity and when I started looking for that joy more often my life did get better because in that joy is also opportunity right there's opportunity for adventure there's opportunity to just have a better outlook about the state of the world as that is right now. And especially when it seems hard to find, search for those joyful moments, search for those three things during every day that make you be like, okay, like this is truly a blessing. I'm really happy to be here. And I'm going to make the most out of this and I'm going to just actually enjoy my life because that's what I'm here to do. I think we're up to my my fourth tip now. Yeah, my fourth tip. And that is to take time to actually be an interesting person. And not just about

being, it's not just about being interesting to other people, but being interesting to yourself. I think we all know the experience of talking to someone and feeling like our life is one dimensional in comparison to theirs. And I think especially in this generation, we spend a lot of time doing things that don't necessarily contribute to long-term happiness or really anything that good. The one that I always think about is like scrolling on our phones and just like spending hours and hours on TikTok or Instagram or I don't know, do people use Facebook? I don't use Facebook, but Facebook.

There you go. Twitter. X. Whatever it is. Those kind of activities have begun to surpass a lot of the activities that previous generations were involved in, you know, reading and being outdoors. And I'm not, not to say that there is like some form of elitism there, but I do think that when you are getting lost in your phone constantly and getting pulled in by that dopamine,

it is not going to last and it is not going to contribute to making you someone who is interested in the world or interesting. One way that I really put this into perspective for myself was thinking about if I could remember the last five Instagram posts or TikToks that I watched or the last five, or at least tell myself five things that I saw on one of those apps in the past 24 hours. And I could never remember a single one of them. I could not remember it. And I realized that every part of my brain that I wanted for myself, that I really wanted to keep active, that I wanted to be healthy, was getting absolutely consumed during those periods.

And there were no memories being made. there was nothing really going on behind my eyes. Sometimes that's great. You know, it's really good for like relaxing and decompressing and toning on our lizard brain. But is that really a sustainable and healthy source of dopamine? And in this kind of short amount of time that we have on earth, is that making us someone who is interested and interesting? I think that that's not necessarily a question that I can answer.

for you? It's a question that you have to answer for yourself. Is the time that you spend online detracting from the brilliant memories and experiences you could be making offline? So I think the reason that this has a place in this whole episode around building a life that you love is that you kind of want to end things, end, be at the end of your life and have stories and have moments that you can look back on and say, like, I did this. things. I did that. Memories and moments that contribute to kind of like the fabric of a lovely, beautiful, spectacular, interesting life. Part of that involves really pursuing hobbies. And I know that people kind of throw out hobbies as like a, this is just kind of like all healing

antidote of like, just get a hobby. Just do this. Just do that. But no, I seriously do believe that some of the best people and happiest people in this world are people who have something beyond themselves that they really enjoy doing. They have something that they are working towards being better at, not because it's going to really get them anything material, not because it's going to be impressive or anything like that, but just because they're really tapped into what it means to do the things that they love and do the things that contribute to not just a healthy life, but a vibrant one. My final tip, and I know I said five, but my final tip is to engage in positive future planning. I hope for everyone listening to this that you have a very long and beautiful life.

Part of enjoying that long and beautiful life is actually giving yourself things to look forward to and planning for a future happy version of yourself and what they need to be happy. So there's this idea called dopamine scheduling where we deliberately, not deprive ourselves of dopamine, but deliberately like put ourselves through hard periods where we're working. working hard, where we're pursuing our dreams with the knowledge that at the end of that, there will be some incredible outcome. It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have that kind of roller coaster of, you know, head down, bum up, really hard overworking and then you can go on a holiday. It's more about making sure that you take time during your life to schedule

activities and memories and moments that are going to make you happy. you don't have to wait until you retire to travel. You don't have to be rich to have rich experiences. You don't need someone to go with you to enjoy an experience. I think that's the big thing that comes down to creating a good life is that so often we are waiting for the conditions to be perfect before we take action. We are waiting for some kind of marker of success or some kind of event that's going to give us permission to do. the things that we want to do. I have a really sad story for you about this, about a family

friend of mine whose grandparents were married for quite a while. And they were around 65 and 67. And the grandfather kept saying, you know, I'm going to retire next year. I'm going to retire next year and we're going to go on this big cruise. We're going to do all the travel that we never got to do while we were working. Next year will be the year. Next year will be the year. year will be the year. Let me just get a little bit more money so that we're more comfortable. And she actually ended up passing away before they ever got to do any of those things. So I think, don't wait. Don't wait. That story has always stuck with me of, and you know, I didn't know this person quite well. I can't say, I'm sure she had a beautiful life, but I think just treating it as like

a bit of a folk story is important and thinking about the fact that there are people out there who really do wait their entire lives to cram in everything they wanted to do in the last 10, 15 years. And I don't think that that's the way to go. I don't think that that's the way to go. I think that there is so much beauty in giving yourself the experiences when you can whilst you can as much as you can. It also just contributes to more optimism about the future. And if we think back to that Harvard study we were talking about, people who have positive, positive past experiences, like kind of have more expectation about future positive experiences.

They have the sense of like there are still good things coming. There are good things in the future and I want to be there for them and I want to stay optimistic for what that life will look like. Even when maybe my youth has passed, even when my bones ache, like there are still good things in my future because I am planning on them. I'm rooting on them. So I think that is all that we have for today. my five practical tips to build a life that you love.

I'm going to quickly go back and remind you of what they are. Firstly, before we can build a life you love, you have to deconstruct your old life. Next is the 15 minutes rule. Start prototyping and testing what a different version of your future could look like and start implementing ways to bring that future you into your current and present self. Next, it's not all about addition. It's also about subtraction. the things in your life that are not bringing you happiness that you can realistically remove.

Number four is to pursue daily joy and, of course, take time to be an interesting person and to be interested in yourself and finally engage in that positive future planning. I really hope that this episode brought you in your perspective gave you something to think about. It's something that I think about a lot in the sense of one of my biggest fears is living with regret. And I really worry that I'll get to a certain age and realize that the things that I always wanted to do are no longer available to me, that I won't have the money, I won't have the time, I won't have the freedom, I won't have the physical ability to do them. And it's a really scary kind of idea to me. It's a really scary worry that I might regret my life and that maybe one

day I won't, I would look back and realize that I didn't take the chances that I needed to. however this perspective I think allows for that allows for the fact that there is not a single thing in your life that is going to make you the happiest person alive or is going to bring you complete utter fulfillment and satisfaction it's a mindset it's a mindset of doing things every day that put you on a path for happiness and that prove to you day in and day out that you're investing in that future version of you and that you are dedicated to this current version of you and giving them the best kinds of experiences, giving them all the joy they could ask for, but also inserting that discipline to make sure that you keep doors open,

you have opportunities and that you get to really design a brilliant, brilliant future. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to share it with a friend who you think may need to hear this advice. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening. I know everyone says this, but I truly do read them all. I read them all, probably at my, at my expense sometimes when I see like a one star review, it really gets in my head. But there's always so much love and positivity there that makes me feel better. So thank you if you have already done that.

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