anything goes with emma chamberlain - breaking bad habits, advice session

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

hello and welcome back to advice session, a series here on anything goes where you send in your current dilemmas or anything that you want advice on, and i give you my unprofessional advice. today's topic is breaking bad habits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Travel better with Air Canada. You can enjoy free beer, wine, and premium snacks in economy class, now extended to flights within Canada and the U.S. Cheers to taking off this summer! More details at aircanada.com.

Discover more value than ever at Loblaws, like Price Drop. Hear that? Loblaws lowers prices every four weeks on a selection of items, so you can save more. Whether it's pantry staples or seasonal favorites, you can look forward to new discounts throughout the aisles at Loblaws to get your essentials at great prices. It's your cue to stock up and save. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws in store and online. Hello and welcome back to Advice Session, a series here on Anything Goes where you send in your current dilemmas or anything that you want advice on and I give you my unprofessional advice.

And today's topic is Breaking Bad Habits, which I feel particularly primed to discuss because I just recently finished listening to the audio book of Atomic Habits, a very popular book about making good habits and breaking bad ones. There's a chance that you actually read or listened to this book because it was very popular a few years ago. I feel like it's not as strong in the zeitgeist anymore, but it was all the rage for a minute there. Everyone was reading Atomic Habits. It was changing everyone's lives.

It was a movement. But I recently listened to that book, which is sort of true to my behavior because I always wait until something is no longer hot in the zeitgeist and then that's when I consume it. Like, if there's a really popular TV show, I never watch it while it's hot. I usually almost always wait until it's completely irrelevant and no one's talking about it anymore and then I watch it. I don't know why I'm like that, but I am. Anyway, that's how I was with Atomic Habit.

So I just now finally listened to the audio book and it was a good book. It was really good. There was some really good stuff in there. So I really recommend it. I'll give you an example of something that really stuck with me. There was a story about like a British biking team that constantly lost. Like they were not the most competitive in their field. They were kind of known for losing, if I'm remembering correctly. And then a new coach came in and was like, things are gonna change around here.

And instead of making one large fundamental change, the coach decided to change tiny little small things, like make sure that the cyclists were sleeping better by having a specialist come in and personalize each and every cyclist's bed to be the most comfortable for them. Having specialists come in and make sure everybody's bike fit them perfectly, basically changing all these small little things in in theory, to compound into one larger change. And it ended up working out and the British cycling team ended up fucking slaying after

making all these tiny little changes. And it's basically just showing how little tiny habits, when compounded, can really be impactful. Anyway, that was like my favorite little story from the book. I really love that little story and I feel like it's very true to life. It's something that we should all remember when we're making tiny little habits that they all compound into something far more impactful because we can forget that at times and be like, no, we need to make big changes in life. It's like, no, we can make tiny little ones and that can

actually be more impactful. Anyway, so go check out Atomic Habits if you want. This is not like an ad for the book. Anyway, but yeah, let's get into the advice session. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm like giving you a full fucking summary of the book. Let's get started. Okay, somebody said, how to stop doom scrolling. If you don't know what doom scrolling is, you probably do. You just don't know what the name for it is. Doom scrolling is when you get on social media, you get on Instagram, you get on TikTok, you might even get on YouTube,

you might even get on Pinterest, I don't know, it depends on who you are. You get on social media and you just start scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling until slowly but surely your brain starts to turn to mush and you end up feeling unmotivated and insecure because you've been comparing yourself to other people for the last two, three hours on social media. You feel kind of depressed.

You feel kind of anxious. I feel like doom scrolling is scrolling to the point where the negative effects of social media start to come out almost immediately. Like you scroll for long enough that the negative effects show themselves by the end of this doom scrolling. Do you know what I mean? I used to doom scroll all the time and it was so hard for me to not fall into it because a lot of times you don't even realize that you're doom scrolling

until you're done doom scrolling because social media has this very peculiar way of sucking you in and turning you into, I don't know, like you almost become like a robot. Like you can't control yourself anymore. Like reminds me of biology class when the teacher used to talk about different parasites that would take over their host's body. Like a parasite would take over another animal's body and then begin to control the animal's body. The parasite would take over the animal's brain. So the animal's body is there doing stuff, but it's not the animal's original brain controlling it. It's now the parasite controlling it. That's what I feel like social media is. Like you open up a social media platform and then the social media platform

is like a parasite and takes over your brain for a brief period of time until you put it down. And that's why it's so easy to fall into it is because it is almost stronger than you in a way. And it consumes you completely in a way that's almost out of your own control. And I think it varies from person to person. Some people have better control over their social media usage and they can maybe catch themselves doom scrolling

and stop themselves in their tracks. They have the self-control to be like, wait, I don't wanna do that, I'm gonna stop. Majority of people, myself included, to not have that trait. I start doom scrolling and I don't catch it in time. I get sucked in before I could pull myself out and I've wasted so many hours of my life doom scrolling. It makes me sick to think about if I'm being completely honest, it makes me sick. And I think that my advice varies depending on what type of person you are. If you're someone who is not super addicted to social media to begin with, and every once in a while you catch yourself doom scrolling, like maybe once a week, I would say my piece

of advice would be either use self-control a way like you're already pretty good at controlling it, right? So you could either use a tiny bit more self control to prevent those one or two times a week that you doom scroll or you know, you could limit yourself to like, I don't know, let's say 15 minutes at a time on social media and you could set a timer anytime you go on social media to make sure that you don't go over, you know, those's say 15 minutes at a time on social media. And you can set a timer anytime you go on social media to make sure that you don't go over, you know, those 15 minutes. And if you're somebody who's, again, not prone to social media addiction, it's just not going to be that hard. Like little things like setting a timer or just using a bit more discipline is enough. For people more like me who are more addicted to social media, I would say the majority

of people are like this because social media is created to be addictive. It makes sense that more people are addicted to it than not, right? For people who have a severe addiction like me, I recommend more extreme measures, unfortunately. I recommend an extreme social media cleanse. I recommend deleting it off of your phone for a month minimum. If you're in a cycle where you're doom scrolling on a daily basis or even on a bi-daily basis

like every other day, I really believe that the only way to break that cycle is to completely remove it from your life for a month minimum. And I say a month because the only way I've been able to break that cycle is by doing that exactly myself. I made an episode a few months back about managing my internet addiction and I talked about how I got two phones. Yeah, I know it sounds excessive, but I got two phones. I have one phone that has all social media and stuff on it for whenever I wanna post or maybe scroll around a little bit

but mainly just post. And then I have another phone that I carry around on a day-to-day basis that doesn't have any social media or anything on it, no YouTube. Actually, I think it had YouTube on it in the beginning. And then I deleted YouTube off of it because I have a YouTube addiction. And I watch a lot of YouTube, too much YouTube, I think. I deleted all social media, Pinterest even. Pinterest is gone. I initially also had Pinterest on there. But then I was like, no, I don't.

I'm only going to go on this occasionally. Like I don't even want to go on this anymore. Like I'm taking extreme measures. So on my phone that I carry around on a day to day basis, there is no Instagram, there's no YouTube, there's no Pinterest, there's no TikTok, there's no nothing. And then anytime I want to post, I'll allow myself like 20 minutes of scrolling around every time I post something, which is once a week or so. And I've been doing that for over a month now. And I do not doom scroll anymore at all, because it's not on my phone. You know, the phone that I take around with me all day every day, it's not on that phone. So I don't abuse it anymore.

Because anytime I'm bored, and I'm like, Oh, let me go on my phone. There's nothing to stimulate me. So instead I'm forced to go do other things. I'm forced to read a book. I'm forced to listen to an audio book. I'm forced to, you know, listen to some sort of educational podcast or something. I'm forced to listen to music. I'm forced to do things that are actually good for my brain anytime I get bored instead of falling into a doom scrolling routine. And what's interesting is because I've been doing this for over a month and I've not had social media on my phone that I carry around on a day to day basis, now for over a month,

I've noticed that when I do post something on social media and I do allow myself, you know, let's say 20 minutes to scroll around, I end up not really wanting to. I'll check in on what my friends are doing, maybe check in on what some of my favorite artists are doing, whether it's a musician or I don't know, a clothing brand or something. I'll check in on all that stuff that I enjoy that's like healthy for me to consume and then When it comes to doom scrolling like sitting there and like stalking A girl that I think is prettier than me or like going down a rabbit hole on reels and like finding

Stuff that stresses me out. I like I just don't do that. I have no desire to Lose myself in social media. I'm more intentional about my time. And I just look at stuff that enhances my experience in the real world, if that makes sense. Like seeing what my friends are up to or what they're posting or whatever, that's fun. Seeing what musicians or clothing brands are making or creating is exciting to me. And again, like benefits me in the real world in one way or another. So I'm not doom scrolling anymore. So my recommendation is you might want to give yourself like a month break and then

reap the benefits of that. See how much better your life is. And then when you go back on it, you're kind of repulsed by it. You're like, I spent the last month cleansing myself from this. Now I don't really want to go back on in a way that's negative. I want to go back on in a way that's only positive. And my other piece of advice

when it comes to doom scrolling is to set up your home and your space in a way that inspires you to do things off your phone. If you like art, have your art supplies out. If you like sewing, have your art supplies out. If you like sewing, keep your sewing machine out. If you like writing, keep your journal out with a pen on top. If you like exercise, always keep a workout outfit folded up at the end of your bed. Like, do you know what I'm saying? Have things out that can distract you. And when

you go on your phone to doom scroll and then see like, oh shit, you know, I deleted the apps off my phone. You look up from your phone and you look around and now you have stuff around that can quickly change your trajectory, right? Like, oh, okay, now I guess I'm going to sit down and do a painting then instead. I don't know. It's just very helpful to cater your environment to activities outside of doom scrolling. Next, somebody said, how to finally take action and change something about yourself slash your life that you don't like.

I think the key to this is making a plan. Because if you don't have a plan, if you don't have a first step to take, then how the fuck are you going to get there? How the fuck are you going to get there? How the fuck are you going to change anything? If you don't know what the first step is, it's impossible to get started. Let's say the change that you want to make about yourself is that you want to stop procrastinating. We'll use this as an example. If you know that your goal is that you want to stop procrastinating, okay, that's great.

But there's no obvious first step for yourself personally, unless you sit down and actually make a plan. If that's just your vague goal, that's great. But it does not give you instructions on how to get there. Like, the goal itself is not enough to accomplish the goal. You have to sit down and make a plan. So again, let's use procrastination as an example. You wanna stop.

Your plan could be, okay, this week, I'm gonna get all of my assignments done the night that they're assigned. Like let's say you're at school, or let's say your job includes sort of assignments. And for a week straight, you try your absolute hardest to get your assignments done the night that they're assigned. Now, are you going to fail sometimes? Of course,

we all do. But having a plan being like, the way that I'm going to stop procrastinating is that I'm going to give myself my own deadline for assignments. Instead of having the deadline be the day that something's due, I'm going to make my own deadline. My own deadline is going to be the night that something is assigned, the day that something's assigned, I'm going to finish it. Or maybe it's, I'm going to finish all of my assignments within 48 hours of them being assigned. That is my own personal due date.

That's an example. Maybe the thing you want to change about yourself is you want to start waking up earlier. Okay, well now you need to make a plan. You need to make a plan, not just like, okay, well I'm going to start going to bed at 10 so that I can wake up at 7. Well, that's not even enough because you now have to change everything about your day to ensure that you can go to bed at 10, right? You need to change what time you're going to eat dinner because maybe you used to eat dinner at like 8.30, 9 p.m. Well, that doesn't give you enough time to digest before you go to bed.

Right? So now you need to plan to move your dinner to 5.30 p.m., 6 p.m. Maybe you need to change the time that you exercise. Maybe you used to exercise at 10 p.m. Maybe you need to change that to 7.30 in the morning. Do you see what I'm saying? You have to change around your day to make it possible for you to go to bed at 10 so that you can wake up at seven. So I think the most impactful thing that you can do is

make a very well thought out plan that is realistic and doable. Like I recently came to the conclusion that I need to change the way that I work because I used to work in a much more, like I used to kind of just work all the time. Okay? Like instead of being like, okay, these are my set hours that I work every day. I never really did that. I would kind of work on an hour by hour basis. Like I'd work for an hour and then I would take an hour off and then I'd work for three hours and then take an hour off. And then I'd work for like another hour and then the rest of the evening I would 30 minutes working, 30 minutes not, 30 minutes working, 30 minutes not. And I've been doing that for like five years where I have no consistent routine and my

work-life balance is absolutely horrible because I'm always kind of working, but then I'm always kind of letting myself rest. Like I'm never really doing one or the other. I'm kind of combining it all. And that does not work for me. And it's never worked for me, but I've been doing it for years and years and years. And I recently decided I want to contain my working to a certain number of days per week. Okay. I'm not going to speak about this in detail yet because I kind of want to figure it out. And then maybe I'll make an episode about what I figure out. But I want to work a certain

amount of days a week for a certain amount of hours per day. And then on my days off, I don't work at all. And on my days that I'm working, I don't do anything leisurely at all. No little midday break to like go to the grocery store and walk around the aisles for two hours. No, you know, no lunch break, like no break, like just work all day for those amount of days, and then have a break for X amount of days. You see what I'm saying? And I've kind of had this idea for a while now, but I've never had the discipline to make the change and dedicate myself to this lifestyle change. And so I had to make a plan.

And so I spent a lot of time making a plan so that now I can execute it. And the only reason why it's being executed now and it wasn't being executed before is because now I have a plan. And I think that that's how you ultimately make change in your life. Somebody said, I feel so unmotivated. It feels like no matter what I do, I always feel like I have no energy. This actually kind of relates to what I was just discussing about having strict working days and strict days for relaxation slash hobbies slash socializing slash reading books slash going and taking a fucking pottery class or something. We can find ourselves chronically unmotivated when we're burnt out.

That's what I've noticed in myself is it's usually a sign that I'm burnt out when I just can't motivate and no break, no vacation can help. It's a sign of bad burnout. And the only fix that I've found for burnout is instead of taking a week long vacation, it's changing the way that you operate on a day to day basis. That is the only thing that can fix burnout, at least in my experience. It's an uprooting of your current routine and a reformulation of your routine. Now, obviously there's certain things that you cannot change. Like, for example, if you work Monday through Friday from let's say, 9am to 6pm, that is something that you cannot change. Or if you have school

every day from 8am to 3pm, that you cannot change. There are inevitably things in our lives that cannot be changed. However, the time outside of it is in our control. And we all at least have a bit of time outside of the stuff that we must do that we can manage. I think the first thing to try would be to really analyze what you're doing with your free time. Because our free time should be used wisely to recharge. And I think a lot of times we misuse our free time, which leads us to worse burnout. For example, something that I tend to do

is that I will never really give myself time off. So, and I mean, I have kind of a unique situation where, you know, I'm in my own boss in a lot of ways. I mean, there are things that I must do and there are deadlines that I have. It's not like I don't. I do have a schedule and I do have things that I have to turn in at certain times and it's not completely a free-for-all anymore. I've had periods of my career where that's been the case. Right now it is not the case. I have a lot of deadlines and things that I have to do by certain dates. So I am sort of have a lot of deadlines and things that I have to do by certain dates.

So I am sort of at the mercy of that. And that's totally fine. And that's great. And there's actually a lot of things about that that are nice. It gives me structure in a lot of ways. I appreciate things about that. However, when I'm done with all of the things that I needed to do, the problem is that there's always more to be done.

I know that there's always more that I could to do, the problem is that there's always more to be done. I know that there's always more that I could be doing. And so instead of using my time off when I'm done with the stuff that I must do that have deadlines, instead of using that time to just recharge and fully relax, I tend to try to figure out what else I could do and what else I could complete. Like, is there more I could do? Is there more I could get done? What else is there to do? And it makes it so that I never really have dedicated time on a weekly basis to relax, which is why I'm trying to schedule that in in a creative way. But that's something you should pay attention to. Like, do you ever give yourself time off? Like, once your workday

ends, do you allow your workday to end or do you continue it a little bit? Are you like, well, what else could I get done in the meantime? Like, you know, are you trying to overachieve in a way that's keeping you burnt out? That's something to pay attention to. Another thing to pay attention to is figuring out how you're using your spare time when you're not working at all. Like your spare time, meaning time when work is out of your mind, out of sight, out of mind, what are you doing? There are things that you can do in your non-working time that are great for recharging,

and then there are things that you can do that are bad for recharging. For example, going on social media, hanging out with toxic friends, partying too much. There are certain things that can suck your energy out of you even more, right? And if you're spending all of your resting time doing things that do not recharge you,

then you're gonna return to work being like, I have no motivation to do any of this shit. And it's because you didn't use your free time wisely. And I've had phases where I've done that as well. But then there are things that are incredible for recharging that you can do anytime you get a free moment, such as hanging out with people

who have a positive impact on you, exploring new hobbies, reading books, watching movies, sleeping. There are so many things that you can do that recharge you. I think it really comes down to using your free time wisely. I don't know. Like that's really made a difference for me. And I think, you know, it's different for everybody because what we're obligated to do is it's different for everybody. Right? So you might also be in a place where maybe you're at school and you're just taking too many hard classes. You're unmotivated and burnt out because you've given yourself a workload that does not allow

you to have a life outside of your schoolwork. And I think that there are phases in our lives when in order to do what we must do to reach our ultimate goals, we have to have certain phases where we don't have a life outside of working towards our ultimate goal. But I would say in the grand scheme of life, we should avoid living like that at all times. There are times when we must do that, but hopefully that's a means to an end. That ultimately will end and we can have and find balance again. So I think you might also just be in a phase where this is what you must do to get to your ultimate goal, which will invite a better work-life balance along with

accomplishing the goal. Do you know what I mean? But if you're in a situation with work or school where it's making you so burnt out that you have no motivation and there's no way to alter your schedule anymore or give yourself any more free time and it's destroying your quality of life. I think that that's a question that is important to ask yourself. Like what's more important, taking all of the honors classes or working seven days a week at a certain job? You have to balance your well-being with your financial and career goals. And at times it's not up to you, at times, again, as I mentioned before,

we're forced into a situation where it's like, we have shit we have to do, we need to get good grades to accomplish our goals, we need to work a certain amount to make a comfortable living. There are certain times in our lives when we have to do that. And so that's sort of different. But then there are times when we choose to do that. We choose

to put ourselves into a situation where we're burnt out and we have no time to do anything else. And we actually don't have to be in that position. So it comes down to each of our individual situations, but it's burnout. And solving burnout is so challenging. And the most challenging part about burnout is that it often requires a complete recalibration of one's entire life and priorities and structure to solve. And that's why it's so challenging. But anyway, I think unmotivation not being motivated is as a result of burnout, almost always, at least in my experience.

And you kind of have to go back to the drawing board of your life and figure out what you can do to fix it in the moment, or if not fixable immediately, what steps you can take now that can hopefully allow you to eventually get to a place where you can solve it, if that makes sense. Somebody said, how to stop stalking my ex's socials. It's been a year. It's hard, it's so hard. This is hard, okay. Obviously I mentioned earlier that I now don't

have social media on my phone and I only have it on a phone that I keep in a drawer locked away unless I need it. That has been the most impactful thing for me when it's come to stalking anyone, exes, anyone that you shouldn't be stalking, it's easy to stop stalking them if you just don't have social media on your phone. So obviously that's my first piece of advice is give yourself a social media cleanse, delete the app for a month.

That's going to be the most impactful option and it will work and it will help break the cycle. However, I understand that not everyone wants to do that. Although now that I think about it, I don't really know any other way. Like when it comes to breaking toxic social media cycles, the only way that's ever worked for me in stuck is deleting it off of my phone for a prolonged period of time, at minimum a month, because that breaks the cycle. It's important to break the cycle. And when it's in your pocket, anytime you have a little tinge of curiosity about who your ex is following, or what your ex is posting,

you can just go look. But if it's not in your pocket, because it's not on your phone, you'll have the little desire, you'll have the little piece of curiosity. But then you end up having to distract yourself by doing something else because it's not right there in your pocket. The only way that's ever worked for me is that because it's just too convenient and it's just too right there. And I think why social media is so toxic in breakups is because it gives us a false sense of connection with our ex that we're so used to having because

we used to be dating them, right? Like our connection to our ex was a foundational piece of our lives for a period of time. It built up a piece of our foundation and it's very scary to lose that connection. And so a lot of times what we subconsciously do is that we stock our exes at nauseam because subconsciously that makes us feel like we're still connected to them. So it makes us feel more secure and it makes us feel like our foundation is still intact. But the problem is, is that that prevents us from fully healing and fully rebuilding our foundation and patching up the pieces of our foundation that at once was our X, right? We can't patch up that missing piece of our foundation if we're pretending to fix

it all the time by maintaining connection through stalking on social media. My biggest piece of advice is take a month off Instagram, delete the app. I'm not kidding. I really believe that this can break any cycle. And listen, when you go back on eventually, are you still going to stalk them sometimes? Yes. Like every once in a while I go and check up on all of my boyfriends that I've ever had, all of them. I check up on guys I've hooked up with even like once. Like I hooked up with one guy once I'm like, what is he doing? I don't even care, but it's just fun.

You know, like what are they up to? It's very human and natural. But when it's a new fresh X, by fresh I mean like a year or less, it's still such a deep cut that it's very hard to create healthy boundaries without like fully deleting the app for a month or two. That's my opinion.

I don't know. That's the only way to do it. And my God, does it feel good to not like to set yourself free from what they're up to. It's such a relief. But I also think that you should be a bit more forgiving of yourself when it comes to stalking your ex because I'm so sorry. We all do it. All of us. Every single one of us. We all do it. And it's human. And so I think to an extent, you can't be angry at

yourself for stalking every once in a while. You just need to make sure that you're not overdoing it. Like if you're checking up on their social media every day, it's time to delete the app from the phone for a month and then come back and then only check up once a week. And then eventually you start dating somebody else and you're like, oh, and then maybe you only check every two weeks. And then eventually you don't check at all or well, you'll probably check forever. Like I feel like I'll be 50 years old and like checking up on what my second boyfriend was doing.

You know what I mean? Like, it's just, it's fun and it's human. But you get what I'm saying. Somebody said, how to get my life together. I keep wanting to make changes and keep trying, but I can't get it to last. I keep giving up. This is very similar to the second thing that somebody said. They said, how to finally take action and change something about yourself slash your life that

you don't like. These two are very similar, but there is a key difference, which is this person wants to get their life together, wants to make changes, and is making those changes, is able to make those changes happen, but then can't get it to last. They keep giving up. So they're making the plan, it sounds like, beginning to make the change, they keep giving up. So they're making the plan, it sounds like, beginning to make the change, and then giving up. So it's different in the sense that it's like what happens when you make a plan and you put everything in place to make a change

and take action, but then it doesn't work? What do you do then? I think the key here is to analyze how realistic your goals are. And a lot of times we make goals that are unfairly ambitious. Like it's unfair to ourselves to expect us to be able to do that much. For example, let's say you have a goal to get in shape. You wanna be able to run fast. You wanna be able to lift heavy weights. You wanna feel strong, et cetera, et cetera. Let's say you sit down and make a plan.

You're like, okay, I wanna get in good shape as quickly as possible. So guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna work out every single day, seven days a week. Because I wanna dive in head first. I wanna fucking do this. I want it to happen fast. I want to see results. I want to feel results.

So I'm just going to work out seven days a week. Well, that goal is ridiculous. Majority of us have jobs. We have families, we have friends, we have hobbies. We have other things that we want to do. To work out every day is an incredible inconvenience. Some of us can do it. Some of us can find time and motivation to do that.

Majority of us cannot. I can't. I cannot work out every day. I can work out four to five days a week and that works for me. Sometimes that's even too much. But I can do that. I cannot work out seven days a week. There's just no way.

If I were to make that goal for myself, I would inevitably fail because that is just not a realistic goal for myself. And I think that that's usually why we give up is because we make a plan that's too ambitious. It's not realistic enough and it's far better to make small, small plans at first. Like, okay, I'm going to start working out two days a week. And then once you get that down and that's easy, okay, I'm going to start working out three days a week. Okay. Now it's been six months. I've been working out two days a week. And then once you get that down and that's easy, okay, I'm gonna start working out three days a week. Okay, now it's been six months, I've been working out three days a week. Okay, now let's up it to four.

And then you stick to four days a week for like a year. And then maybe you're like, actually I could go back down to three days a week because you maybe have reached your physical goals and you're like, I could actually go back down to three days a week. Do you see what I'm saying? If you overdo it and you try to do too much, you will inevitably give up and end up,

you'll end up getting frustrated and exhausted and burnt out and then you give up. So make achievable plans to reach your goal and slowly build them over time. Somebody said, how to self-discipline and stick to it. I think the advice for this is similar to the last piece of advice I just gave, which is you have to set realistic expectations for your behavior. If you're too disciplined with yourself, you'll eventually get burnt out and your quality of life will suffer because you're living such a disciplined lifestyle that you don't ever get a reward. Like, if you're like, I'm really going to eat healthy, and you never let yourself have

a bite of cake at a birthday party, it's just, it's, we only have so much willpower inside of us. And we still can reach our end goal while allowing ourselves a bit of flexibility when it comes to discipline. You know? And so I think it's about being disciplined in a fair way to yourself, in a way that still allows you to experience life. Because if you're too rigid and you're too strict, you'll find that you run out of willpower and you run out of discipline and you run out of self-control

and you'll just end up becoming exhausted and you'll throw it all away. You'll throw all the discipline away. You have to allow yourself some freedom. I also think too it's helpful when it comes to discipline to make rules for yourself that are rooted in your own goals, your own priorities, your own values, your own morals, and not those of other people or of society. Because if you're disciplining yourself because you feel like you should because everybody else is, or it's some sort of norm or something, I don't know. You should be disciplining yourself for you. When your motivation to do something comes from you, it's much easier to stick to it. When it's coming from outside of oneself, it's far harder to stick to it. You kind of have to do it

for you if you want discipline to stick. You have to be disciplining yourself for your own personal goals. Somebody said, how do I make time slow down? I want to have a slow summer. I think time tends to speed up as a result of bad habits. Hear me out. And I don't know, like some of you might not agree with me, but I've noticed that time tends to move the quickest when I'm participating in a lot of activities that provide me instant gratification. For example, going on my phone a lot, scrolling on social media a lot, instant gratification, instant entertainment.

My brain is just fully consumed by this thing for the amount of time that I'm on it, and it's almost drug-like, okay? Instant gratification, long-term pain, but instant gratification. I'm instantly distracted and amused, etc When I'm drinking a lot instant gratification I'm instantly feeling warm and fun and outgoing and everything seems more fun and I want to dance more and I want to laugh more

And I will but being drunk is so all-consuming and it alters your brain so much that You wake up the next day and you're like, I literally don't remember that time happening. I don't remember what I did. It all sort of flashed by in a blink of an eye. Things like that make time pass quickly. I feel like instant gratification makes time pass quickly. And I don't know if that's like a truth by any means, but I've just noticed that. So my piece of advice is to participate in slow activities. For example, things like reading, cooking, doing puzzles, playing board games, laying on the beach all day, sober.

These types of things slow down time because they're slow activities. The gratification is not, it's not instant. When you first start reading a book, you're like, ah, this is kind of boring. And then eventually you get into it. When you're gonna have a beach day, it's sort of exhausting.

You know, you have to put all this stuff in the car and drive out to the beach and set up and do all this stuff. But then when you're sitting there and enjoying the beach and the peacefulness of the beach, it's delightful. Puzzles are challenging, but when you finish the puzzle, it's so satisfying. Board games, yeah, it's far more entertaining to get drunk with friends at a bar or something four nights out of the week during the summer.

I get it. It's tempting. The weather's warm. But to sit outside and do a puzzle and to chat with maybe one glass of wine, you get to enjoy that for every single minute that you're enjoying it and you'll remember it. And it just slows down time. I don't know. I think it's about choosing slow activities.

Slow activities allow for a slow summer. Somebody said, I feel like I'm boring. How to stop being boring. Okay. I feel like there's sort of two bad habits hidden within this dilemma. Number one, it's believing that you're boring. I don't think any human being on this planet is boring. Have I said that I think people are boring before?

Yes, I have. Which is rude and I shouldn't have said that, but I definitely have said it. There are some people who are maybe less interesting than others. That's just naturally so. There are so many people who are far more interesting than me. I'm aware of that. There are also people that I'm more interesting than, you know? However, humans by nature are interesting. Like, I love people watching. I went to the beach last weekend and I literally sat and just watched people do stuff for like an hour and a half. I don't know any of these people. I can't even hear what they're talking about, but just watching them exist is interesting. So remind yourself of that when you think that

you're boring, just because by being simply human, you're interesting. Okay. So remind yourself of that. But also that's a limiting belief. To believe that you're boring, that's a limiting belief because you don't have to be boring. Do you know what I'm saying? To say I am boring is to say that you have no potential to be interesting. And everybody has the potential to be interesting. And chances are you're interesting

and you don't even realize it. So I think the first bad habit is negative self-talk. And my best advice for that is stop it in its tracks. Anytime you say something negative, stop it in its tracks and prove it wrong in one way or another. When it comes to, you know, you thinking that you're boring, when you think in your head, I'm boring, be like, actually, because I'm a human being, and because I'm uniquely myself, I am not boring. So that's step one. But step two is, if you do truly feel like you're boring. And you know, I've actually felt boring in different phases of my life. I've had certain phases of my life where I'm like, I have nothing to talk about.

I'm so boring. Because all I do is either do schoolwork or do work or whatever. Like I have no thoughts or ideas to offer because I'm just so engulfed in my work and whether that's school or regular, whatever. If you're feeling that in yourself, like, oh my God, I feel so boring right now. It's so easy to not be boring anymore. Start reading some books, start watching some interesting movies, start asking questions, like look things up on Reddit, like just like allow yourself to be curious, allow yourself to research things that are interesting to you. Expose yourself to more things that will inspire ideas. I think books are the best for that. I think books, I think hanging out with people who

are smart and wise can help to make you feel more interesting in a way, you know, because they can teach you things. Watching movies that have really thoughtful themes in them, you know, all of these things can help you feel more interesting. Try to find a hobby that's exciting to you. All of these things help make you a more dynamic person. And that's something I've really been working on recently because for so long I feel like my entire identity has been my presence online, you know? And I've been trying to develop my personality outside of that so that I can feel more interesting myself. Although I really try to never call myself boring because again, because I'm simply human, I'm not boring.

Last but not least, somebody said, why do I seek romantic attention from people I don't even like? How do I stop? I think that we do this when we're insecure. I think that it's just simply that. When we're insecure, when we want reassurance that we're hot, we're desirable,

we'll take romantic attention from anyone that will give it to us. And it's natural to enjoy romantic attention from anyone, right? Like that's just naturally, of course, like who doesn't want to feel wanted by people, right? That's so human and so natural. But when you're craving it and you're seeking it, I think it's

usually a sign of feeling insecure in maybe what you provide romantically. If you don't feel worthy of attention from people you like, if you feel like you are not good enough to receive attention from them, then you're going to crave attention from somewhere else. And that's going to be from people that you don't like. And so I think the key is to build your confidence on a personal level, which I've talked about a lot. And I think that comes down to honestly being a good person. I always say this, like I'm a broken record, but it's like when you work hard on being a good person, and you have discipline with yourself

and you treat others well and you're constantly a work in progress and you're constantly bettering yourself and slowly but surely making bigger and better goals and you're constantly improving yourself as a human being, you'd be shocked at how much that impacts every corner of your self-esteem. Because it's not directly impacting your self-esteem in dating. But if you have a strong sense of self in general from being a good person, that bleeds

into all other areas of life. Now some of us have deep-seated insecurities when it comes to dating, for example. And we're like, okay, I'm a really good person. I know I'm a good person, but I'm still insecure about my sexual abilities or I'm still insecure about like my appearance. I do think that the more that you work on your general confidence, your general sense of self, the more that you realize that those things don't matter as much and that your personality and your soul is more important.

But also, you'll learn to accept those things about yourself much easier if you have a general sense of confidence And then you won't seek romantic attention from people that you don't like because you're like, I actually don't need that I'm able to reassure myself like I don't need reassurance from the outside. I already have it coming from within and You'll also believe that you deserve attention from people that you like. You'll be like, I deserve to be able to be romantic with people that I like as well, where there's a mutual feeling. I deserve that. I'm a good person. I'm a special person.

I deserve to have this experience. And a lot of times we end up manifesting things like that through believing that that's what we deserve, which is the best part of it all. It's like when you change your mindset, you'll end up attracting that even more without even having to try. That's it. That's all I have for today's advice session. I hope you enjoyed it.

And if you did, feel free to submit your current dilemmas or anything that you want advice on on the Instagram at Anything Goes. You can shoot through a DM or follow the account and see when we request more on Instagram stories. We do a big submission day every once in a while. So tune in for that or just send them in through DM. Follow Anything Goes on social media at Anything Goes. Tune into new episodes

anywhere you stream podcasts on Thursdays and Sundays. Video episodes are exclusively on Spotify though. Check me out on social media at Emma Chamberlain. Check out my coffee company, ChamberlainCoffee.com, at Chamberlain Coffee on social media. We're probably in a store near you, but if not, order online and we'll show up straight to your door. I'm going to go take a nap because I actually think I'm, I think I'm sick, which is really a bummer. And I'm not looking forward to that manifesting into a full blown illness, but I am feeling sick. So I'm going to go lay down and that's all I have to say today.

I love you all and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening and hanging out as always. And we'll be talking in a few days. So don't miss me too much. Okay, bye.