The Psychology of your 20s - 288. "Your calling, won't stop calling" ft. Victoria Hutchins

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

So many of us worry about finding a purpose and progressing in our career from an early age, but sometimes our path through life looks different to how we imagine it. The poet Victoria Hutchins is one example of this being the case. In today's episode we break down:  How to find your calling When to take risks  The best decisions you can make in your 20s  The power of vulnerability  Why hope is the answer  PLUS, her best anxiety tips and more  Listen now!  Buy Victoria's amazing book of poetry here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/755776/make-believe-by-victoria-hutchins/ Follow Victoria here: @thedailyvictorian   PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/general-clean Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. there is a lot of back and forth about what we should be doing in our 20s. Even more so, I think, what we should be doing with our lives. Should we be pursuing success?

Should we be content and fulfilled with the slow life? What would make us the happiest? What would make us the most fulfilled? Big questions, very big questions. And a lot of us are looking for one particular answer. The thing is, I don't think we ever will have the answer. but we do have the stories of individuals who have taken the most remarkable, unexpected paths through life and can really share their wisdom with us, you know, what they've learnt, what they wish their

younger selves would know, what they have to say about fear and what they have to say about finding purpose, their mistakes. Today I had the privilege of getting to speak to one of these individuals, a poet, a mental health advocate, you've probably seen her on Instagram, a very wise woman, Victoria Hutchins. And every piece of advice she gave today felt so important and so life-changing. Without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Victoria Hutchins. How are you going? Hi, Gemma.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I am such a rabid fan of psychology of your 20s. So this is a thrill. I'm delighted. I'm doing great. How are you? You're doing great?

I love hearing that. I'm doing good as well. What a surprise. Look at us both. Doing good. Full moon at the moment. Have you had any creepy things happen? Any weird energy shifts?

Well, today has been a day. So my poetry book, Make Believe, comes out on Tuesday as we record this. So today I went to the independent bookstore in Houston that I'm doing the signed copies with and signed copies. So that was just like I was crying. all day just because it felt so special. I'm sure it had something to do with the full moon too because it's also a total lunar eclipse.

So it was like a super powerful full moon. Not going to lie, that makes a lot of sense. In like the background of my life right now, so many things have just happened. Literally in like the last 24 to 48 hours. Obviously I'm such a scientific person, but I do feel like that sometimes I really notice when there's like shifts in just like our collective energy as humans. And I definitely noticed that today. So I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I definitely also cried today as well. Okay. I shared a few tears. Okay. Maybe at the same time. Yeah, maybe at the same time. Okay. We've kind of jumped right into it, but I do want you to introduce yourself to the listeners

who may not know how powerful and amazing you are. You're so sweet. Hi, listeners. I'm Victoria Hutchins. I am a content creator. I'm a poet. I until recently was a corporate lawyer, so I left my job as an attorney about a year and a half ago to do a bunch of different things on the internet. So it's been a really strange and beautiful past few years. I love to write and talk and think about mental health. I love to write about Nestle. I love to write about Nestle. and childhood body image, thinking about purpose, thinking about mortality. I know that's a little dark, but those are some of the themes in make-believe and things that I like to talk about.

And so it makes sense that I'm an avid listener of psychology of your 20s because I feel like you talk about those things a lot, Gemma. I was literally, I was listening to that being like, oh, tick. Tick. Dating friendship, which you talk about a lot too. Yeah, all the things we grapple with in our 20s. And you know what? All the things we grapple with as humans, but you've had this like really incredible path. And one of the big reasons I wanted to bring you on is obviously to talk about

vulnerability and hope and art and creativity, but also to talk about big life changes and making career shifts and career changes, not even later in life, but at a time when it doesn't feel expected. So one of the big reasons that I wanted you to come on is not just because you are this incredible healer and to talk about creativity and vulnerability, but also to talk about your path from having that corporate career to doing what you do now. One of the big series of questions and like themes of questions that I get so much for people in their 20s is I don't know what I want to do in my life. I don't know how to figure out that path and I feel like I need to decide right now and lock in for this career.

What was your experience perhaps with a similar feeling? So I will say I think it's super normal to feel that way. I definitely felt that way. And if there's one thing that being in my 30s and having a drastic career change at the end of my 30s or at the end of my 20s rather and the start of my 30s has showed me, life is long. You know, we have way more time than we think we do. and it is normal and okay to change your mind. I think that at least in the U.S., the education system implores you to decide what you're going to do

for the rest of your life when you're 18 years old. And that's just not realistic. So for me, I was always someone who loved creativity. As a child, nothing lit me up like acting poetry anything like that i loved however i think there's a time for many of us where we kind of realize those types of hopes aren't practical or we start to think that they are and i definitely experienced that so i specifically remember the moment that i sort of pivoted away from the dream of doing something creative i was a sophomore in high school and i

I went to visit NYU, which is a college in New York City. And I wanted to do something creative at that time. I wanted to be an artist or an actress. And I remember visiting NYU and just feeling so intimidated. Everything about it intimidated me. And I think on that trip, I kind of realized, okay, this isn't practical. Let me just try to be really good at school. And I will just go the passionless route.

I will just have a job that isn't what I'm passionate about. And look, I still believe in that model for a lot of people. Your career doesn't have to be your passion. But for me, I think I always deeply wanted that. And so even though I stayed the course of like going to a super serious school, then law school, then straight to a huge law firm, that feeling never went away. It never went away.

And so I found myself approaching 30 still having that scratching feeling in my brain. And so I think that you do not have to know what you want to do with the rest of your life in your 20s. However, if you have a gut feeling of not this, it's probably not going to go away, you know? And so I think noticing that feeling that you're desiring a change is a really important step that could happen for a lot of people in their 20s. You know, it reminds me of this beautiful saying that if it's your calling, it won't stop calling, which I really, really like it. And I think sometimes people get really stressed because they're like, well, I don't even have one of those yet. I love that you said we have so much more time than we think because it is 100% true. We just don't realize it because we are so engrossed in the moment, which is a good thing at times.

It's good to be present, but we don't reflect on how many changes have already happened in our lives that we've survived and we've been good at and that have been for the best and how many changes are yet to come, right? We just see ourselves in this present moment. And, you know, at 18, I wanted to be a politician. Like, I went to a political science university, and I just did psychology because it was fun. And then I was working as a management consultant, which I love that we both have these very corporate careers where no one really knows what we do on the day to day, but like they know it's, you get paid for it. To now doing the creative thing.

And I think that battle between passion and practicality is a very, very, very. very present one in a lot of our lives for you did you have a turning point where you were like I cannot ignore this calling this voice this creative drive any longer well so I think I had a couple different turning points in my career there was a moment when I was at my law firm where I had a panic attack on a conference call I was working a ton and And it's very hard to explain. It's the only panic attack, at least like that that I've ever had. I couldn't feel my hands.

I couldn't breathe. I thought I was having like a medical incident. I thought I was having a heart attack or something. And I think after that experience, I knew something had to change. However, I didn't leave law at that time. I went on to go in-house. So I went to work for a cybersecurity company, stayed practice. law, but it was under less demanding circumstances. I had more work-life balance. And it's funny because I

thought that that would scratch the edge, right? I thought, okay, now I'll have time to engage with my passions as hobbies. I'll have time to practice yoga. I'll have time to write. And the first thing that happened when I left my law firm is I was so burnt out that every moment that I wasn't working my new job, I was sleeping. I think we forget that, you know, you think you're going to be able to just dive from one end of the spectrum to the other, but often you're deeply burnt out when you leave a job that has been draining for you for a long time. So that was the first phase. I thought I was going to dive into all these hobbies and really I just slept because it was the first time my body felt I think I came out of that fight or flight after a really long time.

Like survival mode almost. Yes. And important to note, like people think that a weekend off gets rid of burnout, recovering from burnout is like a six to 12 month process. It was long. That's so interesting to hear because that was exactly my experience. And then after I started to come out of burnout, I did start to engage with my hobbies. And that felt really good.

but I found that it was just I wanted more more more it wasn't enough for me to engage with my hobbies as hobbies the more I poured into them the more I wanted to do them until I was because I still had a corporate job that was pretty demanding I was still working eight to ten hours a day but I would finish that and then stay up till like three o'clock in the morning writing poems and just be waiting for the moment I could get away to pour into my hobbies and so I found that the moment I came back to my hobbies they started to swallow me whole very fast and so it was sort of just like rolling down a hill versus a turning point from there i love this swallow swallow me whole totally what it feels like was that your experience because i know you worked a corporate job before the podcast what was that like for you i was literally listening to you being like yeah absolutely i i'll tell a little story a little secret here which hopefully no one from my old workplace is listening, although it doesn't really matter at this point,

but I used to do like podcast work on my work computer and pretend that I was working. So I wouldn't be like, you know, I wasn't, like I was busy, but like I wasn't, you know, I was still busy. But if I could like find time, I would literally sit there and I'd have two documents up and one was whatever I was working on and one would be like an episode. And sometimes I would get in the zone.

Like my peak hours for productivity are like 7 to 9 p.m. at night. And I can just get so much done during that period. And obviously I was working a really intensive job. So sometimes I wouldn't finish work until 7 p.m. or later. And so instead of risking that productivity period to go home and get on the train, I would just use my work computer and then email it to myself. and would just sit there and I remember this like really senior like partner like senior director was like wow you're always working so hard like we need to give you a promotion and I was like this

isn't for you guys like I don't give a fuck about this job like I was just like this is for me exactly that makes so much sense to me and I relate so much and it is when you have a passion that's growing nothing can stop you from focusing on it it's like like the best productivity hack ever to just love whatever you're doing. Like hours can pass and you can just be, it can be like no time past. I know that's a very psychologically supported thing too, like flow state. But. Exactly.

Yeah. It's one of the highest forms of consciousness, highest forms of focus, highest forms of attention is when you feel equally challenged and excited by something passionate and driven by it as well. So this is the thing that we can take from this, right? if you are someone who's sitting there being like, wow, that sounds really, really fun that you two are talking about how you found your purpose and your calling. What can I do? Like, how does that help me? You really need to pay attention to the moments where you feel like you are floating in a task or an activity. The moments where you feel the time is just passing you by, where you feel completely

plugged in. That is what you need to pay attention to. That, urge to just do and make or be or talk or whatever it is, whatever skill or physicality or anything, you just feel like you are just drawn to do it. That is your calling. It might not look like a calling because you're like, how do I make a job out of this? But explore it more and you'll definitely, definitely find it. Did you experience any like pushback maybe from your parents when you were like, hey, I'm going to quit being a lawyer, which is a very understandable job. and become a poet and a healer and a yoga teacher or a practiser of yoga. What was the reaction to that?

Yeah, I think, so my parents were initially very skeptical. I remember going home for the Christmas holidays and telling them, trying to explain, because by that point, it was, I was growing and I was trying to explain to them, this is a career, people do this, because at that time, it was sort of the internet. I'm thinking about leaving my job to do the internet. So that's not even something they've really heard of, content creator. That was all new to them. And so I think they were a little skeptical.

My husband was a little skeptical. I'm lucky to have a lot of supportive people in my life who love me a lot. However, I'm a really pro-change person, I would say. I'm not super risk averse. That's not the case for, say, my husband. He's very, like, he's thinking about the risks. He's an attorney as well, but he's more, has the personality type you would think of when you think of an attorney. Like, he's on me about my taxes and the, just all the risks.

You know, that's where his brain goes. And I try to remember with kind of pushback that you get from people when you want to chase a dream, I think it comes from one of two places usually. It's either fear, like these are people who love you, who they're afraid that it's not going to work out and you're going to get hurt and you'll be exposed and you'll crash and burn. And that makes sense that they feel that fear and that's coming from a place of love. And then I think there's another bucket of pushback. And this, I would say no one close to me, fortunately, pushed back on me in this way. But there's people who express criticism because they resent you and because they would love to do something different, but they wouldn't try.

And so when they see someone who is willing to actually jump off the ledge and try, that's very triggering for them, you know, because if you, anything that you don't give yourself permission to do, when you see someone else doing it unapologetically, it's very, very, like triggering and it creates a lot of resentment and so I think that that's helpful for me to remember people are either just kind of validly afraid for you because they love you and they want you to be safe and happy or it really doesn't have much to do with you and it has to do with that person and things they don't allow themselves to do I'm going to pull out another quote another saying that I talk about on the podcast all the time if they can't be where you are, the next best alternative is for them to drag you down to where they are. I love that.

It happens a lot. Normally not with like close family, loved ones, people in the periphery, people who you maybe went to college with, people who are kind of maybe in tandem with you in their careers, people for whom their own fear is their biggest problem. not and you are you are a projection of all their fears realized basically because you're doing it and everything's going well and they have this fear of doing it and it going well or maybe going terribly and so there's a sense in them of like if i was to do this i would fail and here's this person succeeding and that's unfair because their brain has like cooked up this like crazy scenario

that they're not capable um it's a really it's something to really watch chat for, especially in your 20s and sometimes it comes down to jealousy. Yeah, especially among women in your 20s and thinking about creative careers that require trying publicly, you know, things like the internet or that's many things where you kind of have to try publicly first. I think it's so easy to not ever try because you're worried about that type of feedback and judgment happening, even if you don't have access to it. You're worried you're in someone's group chat or whatever. you're worried people are making fun of you behind your back and it's just it's possible that they are honestly however it doesn't have anything to do with you yeah and you got to climb cringe mountain

that's right like cringe mountain once you like cringe mountain is really scary for the first 100 meters and then it's like a walk in the park like you have to get over the parts of you that feel like I'm not good enough for this because someone else has told me and I'm going to believe them and it's this crazy thing I guess what we're really talking about as well as impossible syndrome is it's this crazy thing where we believe others' judgments so quickly but we never really trust our own it's like what is it about us and how we were raised that is so trusting of someone else's instincts about us but not what we know to be true when you start interrogating that a lot of a lot of stuff comes a lot of spiders crawl out of dark places um i do want to talk about

your experience posting about vulnerability online because I absolutely love how realistic you are about optimism and authenticity and also mental health and self-care. Why do you think it is so important to be vulnerable about the times when life isn't good and isn't perfect? Well, I had a really hard time in my 20s. I had a very dark chapter. really rough mental health chapter, just a spiral. And I think for me, when I was navigating that, a lot of the talk around hope, around mental health, around purpose, felt super alienating. The you just need to find your why. You just need to keep hope. Those sort of things when you're really struggling, at least for me, feel impossible. It feels completely impossible. And so I think that the

only thing that made me feel less alone when I was in a really dark place were things that showed that experience in all of its grit, right? And so when I write about struggling with mental health, I try to be honest about the grit and the depths of the darkness, but also show a light that's on the other side. Because I think that it's really impossible to keep hope when you're struggling, right? But you can stay with the idea being that maybe hope exists in the future. And that's sort of the vantage point I always try to write about the topic of big, mental health struggles. I never want people to feel compelled to try to find hope right now, because for me, that was always impossible. But I want people to know that it does exist in the

future, and that's worth, that's worth sticking around for, that's worth going through the motions of self-care that feels ridiculous when you're really struggling, like all of these things that we do that often feel supportive if we're doing well, like the gratitude journals or whatever. Often, when you're really in it, it feels so ridiculous and pointless. However, these things aren't pointless. It's not pointless to go for a walk. It's not pointless. To call your friend.

It's not pointless. To make a plan for next week. It can feel that way. But I think there's so much value in going through the motions. The title of my poetry book, Make Believe, is partially about nostalgia. It's partially a reference to playing make-believe as a child. It's also a reference to the idea that we can make ourselves believe in things

by turning our attention to them. So when it comes to hope, if we want to feel hope, maybe a big part of that is directing our attention towards things that suggest it exists, towards things we love and care about, right? And I think that even if the emotion, even if the hope isn't there in the first instance, the more time we spend looking for it, the more likely it is to appear.

Psychologically, 100% proven as well. Your brain and you have a two-way relationship and what you feed it and what you show it is what you believe. So say for example, you have very limited hope around what is our purpose here on this planet? What happens after we die? Like, what is all this about? You can focus on all the nihilistic existential thoughts that you probably are naturally having as a human who is curious and scared of the unknown. Or you can focus on magic and everything beautiful that happens that there is no explanation for and the joy you feel around others.

same with maybe you're struggling thinking like am I going to find love you can focus on all the other people saying oh my god dating is so horrific dating is so awful this really sucks or you can focus on those really surprising love stories you can focus on the love you feel for almost everything around you and how eventually that's going to have another place eventually that will land in the lap of someone who will reciprocated in the way you want it to. So I 100% agree with this sentiment and think that sometimes when you are in the trenches at work, in a friendship, in a relationship, just in life with your mental health, you just have to go through the motions knowing that sometimes our emotions do occur in cycles. Hope is bound to return. Something you care about

and something worth living is bound to, and something worth living for is bound to come back around. I really like what you say about hope is, is something that sometimes just has like a mind of its own as well. Like, anyone who struggle with their mental health will know, sometimes you have no explanation. I remember last year, like, from the outside, my life looked literally perfect, and it felt perfect.

I had this beautiful partner, I have beautiful friends. I was doing really well financially. I had purpose and my whole life was falling apart and in like a very drastic way. And then suddenly, you know, I've been going through a hard period recently, which I would have every reason to completely fall apart over. And there's just all this hope around me and there's just all this like, it just feels lighter. And I haven't done anything differently that I know of.

It just sometimes comes back around. I was going to say, I completely agree it's interesting. how fickle hope is. There's a line and make-believe that is something like hope is easy to lose and hard to kill. And it is fascinating in a bad way. Fascinating isn't exactly the right word. But how often I think when these moments of everything appears to be going well often, those are the most hopeless times.

I don't know why that is, you know, but these moments where we appear to be on top of the world, so often. You hear I've experienced that myself as well, that those are people's darkest times. Strange. Like, I really relate to that. And I think it's, I also love what you said about belief and this idea that we can control the extent to which we believe in purpose and mystery of the world by, by where we direct our attention.

Because, and I think you've dealt with this as well. I think I remember listening to you talk about this on psychology of your 20s, but I had a big part of my spiral in my 20s was related to kind of spinning out about purpose and divinity and afterlife and death and what happens when we die. And for me, this idea that I'm allowed to choose what I believe has been life changing. I'm allowed to choose to believe we're doing something here, to believe we're in a loving universe, to believe we have a soul to believe there's something after this. I'm allowed to choose to believe in those things and direct my attention towards things that suggest that that's the case or that help me believe that that's the case. And that's not naive.

That's protecting my faith, right? And that's protecting. It's making me live my life in a way that that's more joyful and more loving. And so to me, it doesn't even really matter if it's true. It matters. But even if it's not true, I'm still glad I chose to believe in things. And so that's been, that's kind of the core, the heart of make believe. and yeah you just touched on it really beautifully.

I have a very similar thing, which I know you just mentioned, you know this. And I had a very similar thought process where I was just basically like, how arrogant of me to assume that I know what's going to happen, but how arrogant of me to assume it's the worst case scenario? Like, every single human has thought about this, but I'm the one who got it right. Like I'm the one who was like, it's this terrible, awful thing, that happens after we die and life is suffering and and I know that fact for sure and no one and

like, huh? Like, we forget that. Yeah, we forget that lack of lack of belief or belief in negative things is also a belief. You know what I mean? It's still just like as much of a leap of faith as the choice to believe. 100%. And honestly, I need that tattoo to my body as a reminder because it was this thing I kept getting into where I was like, oh, it's going to be, it's so terrible.

And I was like, wait, but there's all these people who don't think that. And there's this beautiful theory, and I'm not sure where it's come from, but that we get to choose whatever your conception of the afterlife is, is what happens. Like, that's what it's going to be. And so anytime you get so stressed and negative about very existential questions, put all that energy into creating what you think would be the best case scenario and envision what that would feel like. and create a whole universe around it,

that's a much better, that's a much better reason and use of your energy. Absolutely. Regardless of whether it's the case after all this, it is because it probably helps you live a more peaceful, joyful, present life in the here and now to not be obsessed over something horrible happening after this. I love how we've just gotten totally off track

and now we're suddenly talking about death. But we are going to take a tiny break. And when we come back, we're going to pivot and talk a little bit more about anxiety and mental health, self-care. And, of course, your new book. 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 stress.

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Okay, we are back with Victoria Hutchins. We're having a very in-depth, deep conversation if you are just tuning in now. We've talked about hope. We've talked about vulnerability. we've talked about career change. I want to talk about self-care, because I think that the way we think about self-care has become very commercialized, very aligned with money and consuming more. To you, what does that authentic self-care really look like?

I think, let me start here with a very practical thing that costs zero dollars, getting off our phones. That's the thing that no one will see. sell you because it's not in its cost money when we get off our phones right that's one of the best ways if we want to take care of ourselves i think being present being in nature taking walks all the stereotypical things but nothing will feel like self-care if you don't do it with a present mindset so if you go out in nature but you're on your phone or you go for a walk but you're on your phone i think how we do all these different things matters as much as whether we do them, right?

And there's also your intention in the sense of are we doing a self-care activity with the aim being to change ourselves in some way? Like so much of self-care when it comes to women relates to beauty practices, practices that help us maintain the beauty standard. And so I think that those things can be things that are acts of self-care, exercising, doing your skin care, et cetera. But if we're doing these things like from a place of I hate myself and I'm trying to change myself, I think that that starts to break down how helpful that's going to be for you. I think self-care is a lifelong journey. I struggle with maintaining a self-care routine still.

I probably always will. I don't know, Gemma, if you've read the book A Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control by Catherine Morgan Shafler. It's a great book. I literally have it in this room somewhere. Really? It's, yeah. Has it got the matches on the front?

Is this a book I'm thinking about? I think so. It has pink. On the front, I guess maybe they are matches. Yeah. Yeah. I think I have, I literally have this book somewhere. Okay.

It's staring at me. It's fantastic. It's looking at me like, you should pick me up sometime. I think you would like it, not to be parisocial, but based on listening to your podcast for years. I think you would like it. But it, I love that book. And I think that it has really helpful, things that were really helpful to me around self-care in the sense of letting go of the idea of, of balance as the pinnacle of self-care.

I think that it's pretty inevitable that we're going to be consumed by different things at different stages in our life, whether it's you're in a really busy phase with your job or you're dating someone new. And that's like consuming all your energy and all your time or you're socializing a ton. And I think that sometimes self-care and balance become another yardstick that we use to tell ourselves we aren't measuring up and maybe self-care looks less like trying to live this perfectly balanced life where you're doing your skin care and you're exercising and you're doing your gratitude journal every day and all these different little things fit in every day and more like

letting chapters of your life be what they are being less mean to yourself when your life doesn't look how you're shown on the internet that it's supposed to look i get so exhausted by the those TikToks and reels that are like my morning routine and they do like 45 things. It's just impossible. It's impossible. And so I think that could be part of your self-care, but it also could be knowing your life doesn't have to look like that. The easiest kind of self-care is just giving yourself more space to do the things you want

to do and giving yourself more time to just go slower. and that's really what changed my perspective on it was that it's not something that is like if someone is trying to sell you something and say this is going to fix you they are selling you a lie a face mask is not going to fix you some you know new crazy diet is not going to rewire your mind most likely a way of thinking isn't going to do that either what truly does change your life is slowing down and being intentional about where things sit in your life. Giving yourself five extra minutes to get to a meeting so you're not stressed. Giving yourself the ability to order takeaway every now and again because it makes your life easier.

For me, I think that self-care is about a pursuit of ease and a pursuit of joy. What systems can you put in place so that actually you spend more time present in your life of them worrying about things from the past or things that are going to happen. Like, it's about anchoring you in the present. And you know what? It's taken me a very long time to learn that. Do you have any other tips for people or perhaps even anxiety tips or mental health tips that you think are underrated currently?

Well, I think that we're in an extremely isolated time right now. And it's hard to overstate the importance of other. people in our well-being. And it's easy to forget that in a media landscape that's showing you a picture of self-care or a good life where people are mostly alone. We're just not seeing much. I think community is really, really important and we've kind of lost that. We're at least in the US. We're such an individualistic society. And it's, It's very easy to when you're going through it, when you're really anxious, want to hide from the world until you're doing better.

I feel that urge still and it's so hard to resist. It's the urge to cancel plans because you're feeling anxious, you're feeling upset, you don't want to see people, you're feeling bad about yourself. I think we should all be interrogating that impulse a little bit more and I'm called, I am among the ranks of people who need to do that. But often we isolate ourselves, thinking it will help when really spending time with people that we love would help a lot more. And I think that the more connected we are to each other, also the more we remember that it's okay to need each other. It's okay to need things from each other. It's okay to call someone when you need to talk to them. I think connection

is a big part of that and it's a hard it's a hard time to be alive right now between just the state of the world and and it's very very easy to isolate in response to it I think it's super important that we don't I 100% agree this is this whole episode is just me being just nodding along in the background being like yes yes tattoo this on my body this is my life philosophy for people who don't have community you know and we're here talking about about connection being like it is it is an antidote it is medicinal community is essential how do you think people can go about building it you know for me when I first moved to Sydney I didn't know anyone and the way I did it was I just went to the same places at the same time until people started

to be like hey I see you here you know same I went to the same Pilates classes on Tuesday and Thursday same time I went to the same coffee shops I went to the same coffee shops I went to same book clubs and I was consistent with that and that's how community was built around my routine. What would be your kind of like little tips for maybe just even making some new friends? I have so many because I struggled with this a lot. So I moved to Houston for my legal job in 2018 and the first three years when I worked for my law firm, I was too busy to do anything. So when I left the law firm to work for the cybersecurity company, I had zero. friends in Houston, literally not a single friend, and I had lived in Houston for three years.

And so I went on this very intentional process of making friends. For me, the things that worked, I think using the internet does help. So if there's someone that say you went to high school with them or your family friends with them and it looks like you might have a lot in common you're connected on the internet, trying to build a banter with someone on the internet is helpful. just like responding to their stories with little enthusiastic things and then throwing in a hey i notice we're both in this town i'd love to hang out like i find when you act familiar with people they start acting familiar with you and that applies in person too so if you say you go to a yoga

class sitting you know if you're sitting next to someone asking them have you taken this teacher's class before or just small little questions and then all offering up a little bit about your experience. I haven't taken it. I've heard it's hard or just some little thing you can offer that implies a sense of familiarity. People really open up in response to that. Compliments are a super easy way to talk to people if you're in line at a coffee shop and there's someone that looks like they could be a friend of yours, someone who looks like they're your age, whatever.

Giving them a compliment about something that they're wearing is a really easy way to start a conversation with someone. And then I think that the process of growing a friendship, we are socialized to think that it should happen naturally. Like thinking about friendship compared to dating. We're very aware that with dating, there's the talking stage, we're going on dates, we're having these intentional moments with connection, there's defining the relationship,

there's this very organized process of bonding and connecting. We don't really have that with friendship, but it's still necessary. I think with new friends, new friendships are very vulnerable to fizzling out. So if it's a friendship that seems like it's a great prospect, you're excited about this person, you do have to be pretty intentional about it. I think that hanging out with new friends is stressful and anxiety-inducing, especially if you have social anxiety. but I would urge against canceling too much and that sort of thing like be mindful that if you do that it could fizzle the friendship in the early stage and of course take care of yourself of course do what you need to do but like anything else if you want it you have to prioritize it and I think that friendship is one of those things that we're kind of made to think it just happens but it doesn't.

You do have to really be intentional about it. You have to work for it and you have to sometimes feel a little bit embarrassed. That's right. You have to feel a little bit embarrassed about double texting someone, a little bit embarrassed about being like, hey and, you know, instigating. But people love an instigator. Yes, they do. Your easiest way to build community is to be the center of that community by being the one who instigates.

That's right. And be shalant about it. like not nonchal. I would like to be your friend. I, the number of times I've said that. I would like to be your friend. Be clear. Be clear because people don't know and people want to feel affirmed and it's such, it's so much easier to connect when you lay your cards on the table that that's what you're trying to do. My closest friends will tell you one of my longest friends. I saw her last night and we, I see her all the time. We're very, very close. Known me for about eight years. And I remember we, we, we met because she was dating another really good friend of mine, who I'm still great friends with.

And I met her when they were dating and they're no longer dating, but I said to her after the first time we met, we're going to be friends. Like, I just need you to be prepared. Like, we're going to be friends. And I felt like a guy going on a first date with someone and going, I'm going to marry you. Or like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, it felt like that just sense of certainty. And I continue to say that to people because I'm like, I'm going to speak this into existence. I'm being the same way that people are like be really clear of your intentions when you're dating be clear with your intentions when you're trying to make friends that's right and as and once they're your friend it continues to be important and it feels weird but we're very these proclamations of love are very

normalized in romantic relationships but it's important to affirm your friends like tell them I'm so grateful to have you in my life you are so important to me I see this value in you I'm grateful for you. Like, all of the ways that we know we have to connect in certain contexts, like dating, are also important in friendship. 100 million percent. I'll also say this final thing about community, because it's my, obviously, you can see how fired up we've both become. I live in this, like, gorgeous little neighborhood in Sydney. And it's like, not a fancy neighborhood.

It's like not near the beach or anything. And a lot of the people who live around me are older. So they've lived here for a long, long time. Like my neighbor across the road was born in the house that he still lives in and he's now 80. And don't be afraid to be friends with people who don't meet who you think you're going to be friends with. One of my closest friends right now is this woman and she's in her 50s and her name's Emma and we do pottery together. And I see her every single week for three hours, which honestly is probably more than I see a lot of my other friends. we've we've continuously agreed to do these courses together and you know when i announced my book

she came to this like announcement party with all my 20 something friends and she brought like me she brought me a hydrangeer and you know my neighbor across the road his name is frank and like we have drinks like out on the porch so that people will like come and talk to us you have to be available but you also have to again get rid of any preconceived attachment to the kind of the kind of a friend or community that you want people of different ages people of different genders people of different like backgrounds or even like who just never thought you'd be friends with incredible like it's incredible that makes me so happy thinking of you making pottery for three hours a week i i couldn't agree more i have i have friends who are in their late 40s have friends who are in their 70s and those

friendships are also so interesting because you get a total different perspective. Not that people in their 20s and 30s are all the same. They're certainly not. But it's so interesting to be friends with people who are really different in age from you because they just grew up in a different time and they have really different stories and they can tell you about how technology used to be. Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more, especially in a time where we're increasingly like categorized into little boxes of people, generationally and aesthetically and just in all the ways like it's so nice to push back on that it's beautiful and like you know the other thing the other really good part about being friends with like older people or

different people like specifically older people they're so generous like my partner i don't know if you know this is also an attorney and um which is so funny just another like weird serendipitous connection between us and um my neighbor frank it was like just gave him all these like old designer suits that he had that he didn't need anymore. And I was just like, that's so generous and that's so nice. And I don't know, you just, people just surprise you. And, you know, we're talking about this loving universe, this beautiful universe. Gosh, like, those little moments where someone just sees you and cares about you, even when it doesn't matter, like, you know, it's not necessarily going to help them. It's just like so wonderful.

I have two final questions for you. The first is I want your best advice that you have for people in their 20s, and it doesn't have to be about what we talked about now. And then I really want you to finish off the episode by reading maybe your favorite poem from the book. How would you feel about that? I would love to read a poem. Let me think on my best advice for a moment here. Yeah, we ask people this at the end of every guest episode.

Because, you know, I get to interview so many cool people, and no one's ever given the same advice twice. which is like so wonderful. I have it. This is borrowed advice from my good friend, Shauna Kruger. She's the host of the Leadership and Yoga podcast. She's an amazingly wise human.

She says something a lot. Your dreams are for people like you. I have been thinking about that constantly this week. As someone who was so miserable in my 20s, it's going to make me cry. I felt so detached from my passions. And I felt so sad and I felt like I had boxed myself into a life that I didn't want so early. And it's truly always possible for you to move towards like a more loving, beautiful, true life.

And so if there is a dream that you have, maybe it's a big dream. Maybe you want to burn your career down and start over. Maybe you just want to find love. Maybe you want community and friendship and people who get you whatever your dream is. You have that dream because on some level it's a fit for you and it's aligned for you and it's coming for you. So I think that would be my best advice. remember that you are a match for what you want. So don't stop hoping.

Don't think that it's not meant for you. It's meant for someone who's younger or older or has more money or whatever. It's meant for someone like you. And life is long. My editor, Lita, says that. And you have to have time. You have so much time if you're in your 20s, even if you're not, you have so much time. You have time to completely start over.

You have time to meet people. If you feel like there's no one in your life who gets you, you just have time for anything that you want. Again, I just absolutely totally agree with that sentiment. It's something I wish I knew at 18 and again at 22 and 25 when I was just thinking that I needed to do everything right now for my life to have purpose, not realizing that you can do it all, you just can't do it all at once. So your favorite poem, because we've never done this on the podcast before, we've never had a poet on.

This is a special treat. Choose whichever one you want. Long, short, I want the listeners to really get a sneak peek into this incredible collection. So the poem I think I'll read. I'm not sure if it's my favorite poem in the book. I do really like it, and I feel like it really goes hand in hand with a lot of what we've talked about today, about finding community. So it's called, I have bad news and good news. I have bad news and good news.

If you aren't cool enough for them now, the $800 coat won't help. You can move to a cooler part of town. They still won't want to come over. waiting to reply until tomorrow won't make them text you back sooner. You can learn how to say can and Houston Street and Asai. They will find other reasons to judge you. When you work hard on your makeup for dinner, they'll ask, why are you so dressed up?

If you aren't cool enough for them now, you never will be. But there are people who, aren't daunted by the commute to your place, don't care how much your coat costs, won't bump you behind them when the street is too narrow for three, think you're beautiful when you're dressed to the nines, and when you're dressed to the ones, won't be scared away by your dark past or your bad temper, or your worst mistakes, let alone by three messages in a row. you find the right people and you will find them you can have nothing and it will be plenty. Aww, that poem is really, really beautiful. Oh, the dog thought I was talking to her. That poem is like

the perfect end to this episode because I think it fully encapsulates everything we talked about, doing things for you knowing that people who love you will find you for what you're giving out that's real and authentic. So thank you so much for sharing. Where can people read more, hear more, absorb more of your work? This was such a delight. It has been so much fun to talk to you. I feel like we could talk forever. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at The Daily Victorian, make believe, I think should be out by the time this podcast comes out. It is out March. 18th. It's available pretty much anywhere you get books. And you can also find me on my podcast Soulgum. It's new on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And thank you, Gemma, so much for having me and

for making psychology of your 20s. I really can't tell you how much it's meant to me over the years. And I know that your listeners are just so grateful for all of the wisdom and vulnerability that you share. love in this episode. Thank you so much again for coming on. And I will leave all of Victoria's links down below. I highly, highly recommend you buy this collection of poetry. If you're trying to get back into reading as well, I always say poetry, great way to do it, specifically this collection. And as always, my lovely listeners, if you have questions, comments, further, I don't know, queries about this episode or anything you heard today, you can always reach out to me on Instagram

at That Psychology Podcast. I would love to hear from you, make sure you leave a five-star review and you're following along for future episodes. We've got some good ones coming out soon. And as always, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. And we will talk very, very soon. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter.

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