Weirdly Helpful (formerly The Best Advice Show)

Céline Williams is a culture engineer, business strategist, speaker and founder of reVisionary. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Whether you are a boss or hope to one day be a boss, I think today's advice from an executive coach is essential. I feel like most people I talk to are pretty disappointed with the culture at their work. If you have any thoughts about why you think that is...that it's so widespread that people are dissatisfied with the way their workplaces run. CELINE: I think it's because most leaders and most organizations are really attached to an old paradigm of how things work. Partly because for some organizations, that's how it worked for them 15 or 20 years ago and we have lots of large organizations and small organizations that are attached to an idea that was effective 20 years ago or 30 years ago or 50 years ago and that's not the case anymore. ZAK: So say there's a boss listening to you right now...what's something they might try tomorrow when they go into work to start shifting things? CELINE: Well first and foremost, ask your people what their experience of the culture is and actually listen. I, I often talk about culture iceberg which is that the leaders are at the top of the culture iceberg and they are where 5% of the reality of what is happening in their organization. And middle-management is lets say aware of 30% of it and then you get down to the front-line workers and they're aware of 100% of it. So what often happens is we run on assumptions. We are human beings who like assuming things and who like to create categories in our brains cause that keeps us safe, so we assume that our experience of the culture is the same as someone else's and leaders are especially bad at it because often leaders see the positive things more than the negative and so the first and easiest thing a leader can do is go in and ask their people, ask their direct reports, ask the people underneath those people...but talk to people about what their experience of the culture is and make it safe for them to say, this sucks and here's why. Make it so that there's no fear for them to actually tell you the truth of what they're seeing and that, when you have that information and that data you can actually do something with it. Otherwise you're trying to make changes on assumptions. And we all know what happens when you assume. CELINE: My name is Céline Williams. I'm the founder of reVisionary and I'm an executive coach and a culture strategist. ZAK: Are you happy at your work place? I want to know why. What's working there that the rest of us can learn from. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shane Bernardo is a food justice organizer and the founder of Food as Healing -https://www.foodashealing.com/ To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: SHANE: My name is Shane Bernardo. I'm a lifelong resident of the city of Detroit also known as occupied Anishinaabe territory. I'm also a food justice organizer and the founder of Food as Healing. My advice is to do everything with ease. Now this might seem like a really tall order but what's more important than to focus our energy on checking in with ourselves and our needs around kindness and compassion. We often think of these things as virtues that we extend toward others but how many times have we forgotten to extend those things to ourselves? So, what this looks like in practice is whenever you feel a sense of nervous energy, anxiety, frustration or regret...ask yourself this question. 'In this moment what do I need in order to bring more ease into my life?' And hopefully what that helps you do is helps you refrain from having life just happen to you. It helps you maintain your sense of self, personhood, humanity and dignity and these are things that anyone should be afforded. A lot of frustration comes from feeling like we don't have control over our own well-being and that's such a terribly unhealthy place to be in. This point is even more critical considering that we're in a global pandemic and that the need for racial justice and racial healing in this country has been unmatched like no other time in this country's existence and it also recognizes how the capitalists profit from maintaining the psychic toll that all these things have on us and especially those of us that are on the margins that sequester this impact that it has. So I'd like to invite you to maintain this practice as a form of resistance, as an act of resistance and ask yourself on a daily basis, at least one time, ask yourself what do I need to create more ease in my life. Try it on. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wendy S. Walters is a writer and the Director of the Nonfiction Concentration and Associate Professor of Writing, Nonfiction in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: WENDY: Well, I think I'm used to being uncomfortable so I am very enthusiastic about other people being uncomfortable because it kind of makes you pay attention in a slightly different way than you would with others and, you know, I say this to my son all the time you know you have that moment of discomfort, uh, but generally you survive it. Like, usually 9.9 times out 10 you survive your discomfort. So, I think that the discomfort is a real gift in terms teaching you how to get past something that is completely internal. Other people may not recognize that you're uncomfortable but you feel it and you know when you stop being uncomfortable and the more resilience you can develop in terms of that discomfort, the more engaged I think you can be with other people who aren't like yourself. Many Americans...they associate being uncomfortable with being in danger. On the base level being uncomfortable is not having access to choosing the options that you would normally choose. And for many people that is experienced as catastrophe. That is experienced as damage and I think that is really, it's an overstatement and it in some ways reflects how much we become accustomed to being catered to. ZAK: So is this advice...make yourself uncomfortable? WENDY: Let's see, is it make yourself uncomfortable or is it if you find yourself in the space of being uncomfortable, embrace it as a moment for opportunity and reflection on who you are and what you value. ZAK: Wendy S. Walters is a writer and professor of writing at Columbia University. I want to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. If you're finding this show valuable I hope you'll share it with your friends and family and maybe even write a review on Apple Podcasts if that's where you listen. That's gonna help this show sustain itself. Thank you in advance. I'll talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Friedman pops corn and makes films in LA. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT ZAK: It's Food Friday and today's advice, yes, it's related to food and food prep but I think you can also read it as a metaphor. The advice comes from filmmaker, Ben Friedman. BEN: I love making popcorn and I know that other people would like stove-top popcorn too cause it's the absolute best. And I think that one place where people get stuck is they try and get every kernel popped and what ends up happening is that opens them up to the risk of burning a couple of kernels and that will just ruin the whole batch. And so my feeling is always that it is better to leave a couple kernels un-popped and to get a great batch of popcorn every time than to try and get every single kernel and risk losing the whole bowl. Kind of like that 80/20 rule but more like 98/2. That's it. ZAK: So is this really advice about not being a perfectionist? That's how I hear it. Regardless, I want to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline like Ben did at 844-935-BEST. This has been yet another week of The Best Advice Show. I love making this show. If you love listening to it, please consider sharing it with your friends and family. Thanks! Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greg Fox (@gdfx) is a composer, drummer, teacher and coach. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: You might be a freelancer or an artist or just someone trying to figure out what to do next. I think today's advice is gonna be especially helpful if you check any of those boxes. It's gonna help you narrow your focus and figure out what's really important. GREG: My name's Greg Fox. I'm a human being. And I play music. I run a music studio. I teach drumming and I also am a certified professional coach. ZAK: One of Greg's early teachers taught him what he calls the 2 of 3 rule. It's a really simple filter for trying to figure out whether a project is worth taking on, or not. GREG: The idea is that you need a strong 2 out of the following 3 things for the project to be worthwhile. And those 3 things are good hang, meaning you enjoy the company of the people you do the project with. Good product, meaning you enjoy the work that you're making, right? Uh, you like whatever it is you're working on and sharing with other people when it's finished. And 3, good pay, right, the money solid, right? So 2 out of those 3 should be strong for the project to be worth doing and I'd add as an asterisk to the entire thing that if you are involved in a project and you find yourself constantly or regularly questioning whether or not you should do the project...you also probably just should do it. ZAK:And once you started using this, like, filter to apply to your work and creative life, did you find yourself saying no more frequently? GREG: Yeah, definitely. And I also left some projects that I had been doing. Whenever anything comes in now I do think of it in those 3 terms and you know, a lot of times people will say yes to doing something and then wish they hadn't, right? And, uh, it's a good way of avoiding that. It's been very, very effective for me. It's been awhile since I've found myself in a situation where I regretted saying yes, you know? ZAK: And if you're not wondering about whether or not you should be doing a project. Like if it's pretty obvious that you should, then you don't really need to apply this advice. GREG: If you're not wondering, man, I don't know. This band that I love so much and everybody in it is so great and we actually make some dough now and then...nobody's asking themselves whether or not that should do that project. It's like when you start to find yourself asking those questions, this is a good way to evaluate, like, maybe to clarify it for yourself. ZAK: Super clarifying, Greg. Thank you so much. If you have some advice to offer I would love to hear it. Gimme a call on the Best Advice Show hotline, that's 844-935-BEST. 844-935-BEST. ZAK: Also, you should follow Greg Fox on Instagram. He's an amazing drummer. You can see him drum there. I put a link to his website and Instagram in our show notes. Alright, I'll talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susannah Goodman (detroit_fertile_earth) is an artist and potter and community organizer in Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: SUSANNAH: Yeah, so this piece of advice is really simply stated that the more you look, the more you'll find and it's just related to the way you can walk through the world. I firmly believe that, um, wonder and awe is a muscle that you have to exercise and the more you use it the more it becomes accessible to you. So I use it when I'm feeling stressed. Before pandemic times if I was like on my way into a meeting or something and I was worried about what was gonna happen, sometimes I would just sit in my car and look at, I don't know, grass on the berm on the side of the parking lot and just watch the way the wind blows across it or how fertile just little bits of sod are in all the places in our urban landscape. If you just sit and observe the more patience you have with yourself in the process, the more it will become available to you for appreciation cause I think when I'm the most stressed is when I'm like not observing the world around me. ZAK: When you're in your head? SUSANNAH: Yeah. ZAK: Huh. Yeah. Well we're outside right now in our friend's backyard. Normally I imagine this would be like an internal monologue of you, uh, you know, noticing but can you do it externally and help me understand how you would do it? SUSANNAH: I think the best thing about being outside for me recently has been just watching the way trees move across the sky when the wind is blowing cause it's this great reminder that we're sitting at the bottom of this giant air ocean and looking up from the ocean floor at these massive, amazing bits of tree seaweed or something, hahaha. I'm Susannah. I'm an artist and potter and community organizer in Detroit. ZAK: I want to hear about the ways you deal with your stress and anxiety. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. And if you can think of somethine that might benefit from Susannah's advice consider sending them this episode. You can do that by going to Best Advice dot show. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doron Levin is the Editor-in-Chief of Better Investing Magazine. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: When anyone starts talking about investing, I get so bored. But I know it's pretty important to pay attention, at least to some basic principles when it comes to this stuff. And so, I talked to longtime financial journalist, Doron Levin. He says for young people especially, their greatest asset might be time. DORON: When you've just gotten your first job, it's very, very important to start investing and it's very, very important to realize that money invested over time can generate tremendous sums. So you have the compounded annual growth rate...let's say an average of 7% which is what you get in the stock market, generally speaking. Over time that can generate massive amounts of money. So if you start when you're in your 20's, by the time you're 50 you can have money that will pay for your kids' college, that will buy you a house on the lake, that will allow you to retire, that will allow to change jobs or allow you to do a lot of things and give you a lot of freedom but you have to start early and recognize that time is an asset. ZAK: Even if you're making, like, 30-thousand dollars a year? DORON: Even if you're making $30,000 and all you can put aside is $1,000, you should definitely do that. And then if you get a job at a place that has a 401k, which is a retirement account taht allows that money to compound, tax-free, then you should do that as well. There are lots of stories of janitors, teachers, fireman, people like that who retire with tremendous, tremendous pension accounts or tremendous savings accounts simply because they over time always invested and never spent that money and allowed it to accumulate and allow it to generate even more and more interest and the amounts become exponential. ZAK: Doron Levin is the editor-in-chief of Better Investing Magazine. If you have some pragmatic life-advice that we should hear, give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nell Wulfhart (nellmwulfhart) is a decision-coach and writer. More about Nell's decision making practice @ DECIDE AND MOVE FORWARD - http://www.decideandmoveforward.com/ -- To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: One of my favorite things is learning about jobs I didn't know existed. That's why I was very exciting about today's interview. Can you tell me who you are and what you are? NELL: Sure, my name is Nell Wulfhart. I'm a decision coach and I help people make tough decisions in one-hour sessions where we go over the problem and by the end of the one hour they know what to do and can start taking action. ZAK: Do you know any other decision coaches? NELL: No. ZAK: So you may have invented this job. NELL: I think I did kind of make it up, um, but it turns out there's a real need for it. Like people really struggle with it. I'm wondering if there's a way to start getting decision making into school curriculum or something because it seems to me like this is a really useful skill and something you can get better at but a lot of people have such a hard time with it. ZAK: Can you tick off a cross-section of the types of decisions you help people make? NELL: People who are wondering whether or not to start their own business. People who wonder if they should take a job, especially when that job involves like moving their family. People want to know whether to stay in relationships. I told somebody whether or not they should have a second child. I've given someone advice to quit their job and set-up as a sex therapist. It's a pretty wide range. ZAK: So you're actually coming out and saying you should do this? NELL: Yes, I wanted to call my site the Decision Maker but a friend of mine told me that people prefer to have a little more agency in their decisions so I should be the decision coach but it's essentially, by the time people get to me they've spent so long agonizing over these decisions that they just want someone to tell them it's ok to do what they want to do and this thing that they...these two things they're deciding between there is one better option and that's what I give them. ZAK: So that's usually the case that it seems clear? NELL: It almost always seems clear to me. I mean people come to me with hard decisions. Sometimes it's very early like somebody is in a bad relationship so you tell them break up with that person. Sometimes, like, it really is a very difficult decision but I know that any kind of decision and then taking action on that decision is better than continuing to stew in indecision so, literally any decision I tell them to make is better than continuing to be in the state of analysis paralysis. ZAK: Which brings us to Nell's advice. NELL: Take less time to make your decisions. The problem that most people have is that they spend way to much time trying to make decisions...which is essentially trying to predict the future, right, we're tying to figure out what decision is gonna make us happier, what's gonna make us feel better but we're all just taking out best guesses. And there's a certain amount of time, certain things to consider, pro and con list. I love a pro and con list but after that there's a lot of wheel spinning. There's a lot of going back and second-guessing and talking to other people and to me that is just a total waste of time and energy. So, the way that we know whether we like things is not by thinking and trying to predict that we might like them, it's by trying them out. So, my suggestion would be to take that time you would normally spend agonizing over a decision and use it to start taking action on one of your options. Because you'll have spent the same amount of time but if you take action you will have real tangible data about whether or not this is a good decision and the same amount of time will have passed as if you were still just thinking and debating and wondering. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ZAK: Back here with regular contributor, Shira. SHIRA: Hi everyone. ZAK: You have another gem for us today for Food Friday? SHIRA: Yeah, this is my advice called splitsies. theme music SHIRA: So I think, in general, whether it be you're out to dinner with your partner, your friend...I advocate for a splitsies set-up and this means that we get two dishes and we split them. And I think that this is a good practice on multiple levels. First of all, you get to try two dishes instead of one. But maybe even a more essential thing is that it makes the eating process this wonderful, you know, kind of, adventure. We're in it together. We're discovering these new foods together. And I really think that that is a good way of like, connecting and I think it elevates the experience cause it makes you guys in it together. So, Zak and I, we always go splitsies. ZAK: And you might be thinking, well what if the other person gets more than me. What you and I do, we're very fastidious about doing an even split. It's not like, oh yeah you have a bite of this, I have a bite of this. No no no. We do ever/thing short of busting out a ruler. SHIRA: Yeah, cause your bites are bigger than my bites. So we learned early on, I'm not doing bite for bite cause Zak's bites are a lot bigger than mine. ZAK: I take a big bite. SHIRA: Yeah, so we just truly just split it in half so there's no discussion and people don't feel like, oh, if I go splitisies, I'm not gonna get as much. We take away that component. Split it directly in half so everyone gets the equal amount and that's not a concern for the splitsies action. ZAK: Great. I love you. SHIRA: Love you too. Splitsies for life. ZAK: Splitsies for life. ZAK: I'm very interested in how couple's make it work from the micro to the macro. Tell me what you do at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. This has been another week of The Best Advice Show. Please share it with your friends and family. And as always, consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts. It all helps. Thank you so much. I hope this helps. Bye. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keisha (TK) Dutes is an audio producer and the co-host of the new podcast, Open World. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: We're home. We're probably not going anywhere anytime soon. And so today's advice inspires you to make your place as cozy and fun as possible without breaking the bank. KEISHA: Hi, I'm Keisha TK Dutes. I'm an audio producer and with my home space, I like to make different rooms so that I can go from room to room and have a different experience everyday. My bedroom is peaceful, I got plants. Then the bathroom is like a black aunty jungle. Cause I know that's where I do my thing. And I get ready for the morning and if I have to stare at myself I want to see jungle wallpaper behind me. You know? hahaha. And the living room is like an abstract-modern thing and that's just cause over time I would buy little things from like vintage stores or through traveling and even if I didn't have like a proper place to stay, I had like a box somewhere with these little things. ZAK: Some of us are living in houses that we haven't put a lot of time into designing just cause, like, you know, we got work, we got family, we got all this stuff to do. But now we might have some time to think about and organize our space. Do you have some advice about getting started? KEISHA: Yes, go through the stuff that you have already. You have so much... I think a lot of people pack away their lives but I went through like, pieces of paper...there's always a bag of envelopes somewhere. Right? Go through that bag of envelopes. Go through that bag of cards. Some of the cards will look nice enough to like, just tack up on the wall or put in a frame. There will be photos that you forgot. Put them on the fridge. Like little stuff. The fridge can be the jumping off point for like...ok, cool...I really like the colors in that photo. Boom, lemme paint my cupboards. You know, like, find your stuff first then start branching out. Going through my stuff and finding things over time it helped me to buy less things. ZAK: You might be searching for something to listen to while you're redesigning your place. If so, check out TK's new project. It's called Open World. It's a fiction anthology podcast about how science and technology serve as a backdrop for imaging a better future. It's really cool. You've been listening to The Best Advice Show. If you have some advice I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Gluck is the co-author of Everydata and author of 40 Freelancing Secrets. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPTS: ZAK: Where would you say is the most beautiful place you've gotten work done? MIKE: Probably, I mean my brother and his wife live out in Hawaii so I've gotten some work done out there which is nice. The local park is pretty cool. Just knowing that if I have my laptop and a wi-fi connection most of the time, I can do pretty much whatever I need to do anywhere, anytime. ZAK: For lots of us, working from home is new and this setup takes some getting used to. I asked for some advice from long-time freelancer, Mike Gluck. He says with the great freedom of working at home, it can be much harder to get stuff done...and if you've been doing this for the last six months like I have, you know you're not just gonna be able to work from nine to five. You have to be creative. MIKE: So, yeah, I've got to two teenage boys and one of them loves tennis, one of them loves fishing. And the one, Zack, who loves tennis works very early in the mornings on the weekends, so lsat Saturday, I think, I dropped him off at work at 6:30 in the morning. I'm not gonna go and sit inside a Starbucks right now, so instead, I grabbed my laptop and I went to work. It was light out and I sat on a bench and I got some work done. And then for fishing, my younger son loves to fish and he scoped out all these fishing spots around where we live so, you know, sometimes I'll go and just sit in a chair and hangout and we'll talk about life or whatever, but, you know, he likes to do it everyday, so sometimes what I'll do is I'll bring a lawn chair, I'll bring my laptop and I'll sit there and I'll get stuff done for part of it. I think you have to embrace that. One of the benefits is that flexibility, but you also have to look for those pockets of time when you can work and you can be productive because you can't just nap during the day and go to the gym and do your laundry and then not work at night or on the weekends...you have to find those times when, ok, I have an hour here, I have half an hour here, I have three hours here. Let me take advantage of it. It doesn't have to be in a traditional work setting at a traditional work time...you can do it whenever, wherever, ZAK: Mike Gluck is the author of two books, one of which is called 40 Freelancing Secrets which you might find very valuable right now. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lois Langberg sleeps soundly in Metro-Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Today's advice from Lois Langberg goes out to all you night peers and insomniacs. LOIS: My advice, this is really helpful to me, when I go to sleep at night, I usually go to bed around ten and then I wake up to go to the bathroom and I find if you don't look at the clock and see what time it is then you can just get back in bed and go to sleep, because if you look at the clock and then you're thinking oh my gosh, it's 2 o'clock in the morning, I have to get up at six and then you're freaking out because you're stressing about getting back to sleep. ZAK: Don't stare at the clock. I love this. I've actually tried this since I heard Lois' advice and it works. Big anxiety reducer. If you want to call the advice hotline like Lois did I would love to hear from you. That number is 844-935-BEST. I want to hear about the things you're doing to get through these long days and sometimes even longer nights. This is The Best Advice Show. Talk to you tomorrow. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Norene Cashen (@there.is.a.light.somewhere) is a life-long learner, therapist, poet, coach and writer. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: NORENE: My advice is, if you want to have an ageless mindset, always be a beginner at something. theme music NORENE: I'm 52 and I don't feel it and I think that's probably because I'm constantly on these adventures to try something new and to evolve and grow and change. I got a couple of masters degrees, one when I was just gonna turn 50 and then another at age 51. I did Brazilian Jujitsu for 15-months in my mid-40s and I'm always learning. Just always being a beginner...it's a reset. It takes you to a place of energy and humility and focus. ZAK: Was there a time in your life that that would have been, uh, a foreign idea? NORENE: Yes, I believe that I always thought I would have a career path and I would stick with that and that would be it and I envision myself as 40 or 50 being really old and things being rather static in the future. But that's now how it's turning out. ZAK: I can imagine some people, maybe they're not at their best but maybe they're just comfortable in the groove that they have found themselves in. You know and finding one path and just kind of moving forth. Do you have words for that person who might just need a little encouragement to take the jump and to, and you know, moving from being an expert at the one thing they're so good at into being a beginner at this thing that they know nothing about yet? NORENE: Well, um, when you're an expert you run the risk of becoming an expert of instead of just being a human being. And when you open yourself up to new things and you humble yourself to a new lesson and a new activity, a new learning, you realize you're really super present with your own humanness. So there's a huge payoff there. And the other thing is, don't be so hypnotized or convinced of your own advertising and your own resume that you forget to be present in the moment and be yourself. Alan Watts had a great quote. Um, "you are under no obligation to be the same person you were five-minutes ago." And I just love that quote and when I talk to people who are stuck that's one of the things that that quote sometimes sets people free in the moment and I see a smile. Like, darn it, that's true! ZAK: So good. That Watts fella. Very good. ZAK: Can you tell me who you are and what you are? NORENE: I am a life-long learner. I'm a therapist. I'm a coach. I'm a writer and I'm a person who upholds the values of bravery, respect and humility in work and in life. ZAK: You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five-minutes ago. Thank you Norene Cashen. Thank you Alan Watts. That you listener for listening. I would love to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Talk to you tomorrow. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Valeriya Epshteyn is co-eggxecutive director @ The Next Egg. To offer your own Food Friday advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT VALERYIA: Hi Zak, it's Valeryia and I want to advise people to save vegetable and bone and mushroom scraps because we're at the peak of the season for lots of amazing food right now and if you have stems from kale or collards or swiss chard or if you have bits and pieces of chicken or if you have the little stubby parts of mushrooms then you can put them into a gallon bags or a Tupperware container in your freezer and the next time you need to make a broth or maybe even a time that you want to make a broth that you can cook rice in it or potatoes or anything else that needs a little extra flavor, you can just pop open the freezer and make use of the things you were otherwise gonna toss or I hope compost. ZAK: Who doesn't love a thrifty food Friday tip. Thanks Valeryia. Brothy rice, I'm coming for you. This has been Food Friday on The Best Advice Show. I would love to hear your advice. You can call the hotline like Valeryia did at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. I'm looking for advice and life advice and love advice and any kind of advice. Thanks for calling. Also, if you're still here that means you really like this show and maybe you'll consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. That's gonna help people discover the show. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brandon Stosuy is the co-founder and editor in chief at The Creative Independent. His new book is called Make Time for Creativity: Finding Space for Your Most Meaningful Work. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: Hello, my name is Brandon Stousy. I'm the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Creative Independent and the co-founder of Basilica Soundscape which is an annual festival in Hudson, New York and I manage artists with my friend Caleb. We call ourselves, Zone 6. In the end, slow and steady actually does, I don't want to say win the race cause it doesn't need to be a competition, but I think finding a way to be slow and steady is actually a really useful bit of advice and I think, like, what that means longer term is if you sort of do the thing that you set out to do each day, and just keep doing that, even if no one's paying attention to you and no one's keeping track and even if it's a small thing, you just kind of keep doing those small things...things never get out of hand, I find on the creative level or like, even at a practical level. Like, for instance this morning, I've been working on these books and the way to do these for me was realizing I gotta get up at 5 am and start writing the books, and it's like, I don't need each day to do ten chapters, I can just do, you know, a page, a few sentences and if it's not working, I'm like, ah it doesn't matter cause tomorrow I'm gonna do this again. You know you sit down to exercise one time a month and you're like, I'm gonna do this and you build it all up in your mind or I'm gonna write and you set it up in your mind, like, I'm gonna finish this book in one weekend and then you just don't do it and you sort of stress yourself out and you, um, the anxiety grows and it becomes this insurmountable task where I've found through just discovering it over years that if I just do a little bit each day, I don't find myself in these like panicked moments or I don't find myself in these moments of missing a deadline or thinking I'm not gonna get it done and I'm able to juggle the things I do which bring me a lot of joy...I kind go for it Monday through Friday and on the weekends I'm like cool, I'm just not gonna do anything. That's my advice. hahah. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nate Mullen is an artist, educator, dad and friend from Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: NATE: My name is Nate Mullen. I am in artist and educator, dad, friend. ZAK: I'm very excited about Nate's advice. It's a media recommendation. NATE: Everybody should watch Steven Universe. It's a coming-of-age story of this person named Steven learning to control his powers which are deeply connected to his emotional reality. ZAK: What does it work so well? NATE: So, it's a cartoon so it's silly, it's goofy. He raps about his favorite ice-cream cookies. But he also, in order to like, you know, access his power, he has to tap into, like, what is joy for him or what is pain for him, right? And as he grapples with that, right, like, that allows him to access superpowers. And what else do we need at this moment more than understanding that having deep access to our emotions are superpower You can find Steven Universe on Hulu or on Amazon, Apple. The other thing is that like, in my family, like, Meilu, who's 4 has been watching it for 2 years. I watch it. Jenny watches it. We're in our 30s. My mom watches it who's in her 50s. My brother watches it who is in high school. Right? It's this thing that my mom, who is a grown-ass woman and my brother who's in high school, have been bumping heads a lot. In this moment Steven Universe is something that's bringing them together. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Janice Fialka is a nationally-recognized lecturer, author, and advocate on issues related to disability, parent-professional partnerships, inclusion, raising a child with disabilities, sibling issues, and post-secondary education. Janice is also a parent, poet, a compelling storyteller, and an award-winning advocate for families and persons with disabilities. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: JANICE: My name is Janice Fialka. My husband and I have two adult children, Micah and Emma. I'm a social worker by background and also been an activist for a few decades since the early days of the Woman's Movement and I have grown fonder and fonder of poetry over the years. ZAK: And you have a belief about poetry. JANICE: Yeah, I mean poetry lives on the page and many of us, you know, pick up the book or pick up the page and read the poem quietly. And that's one way, but I have found that a way that really...I'm drawn to is to lift the words off the page and read them out loud because it takes a different kind of energy when I'm just reading it from the page silently I sometimes will speed to the punch-line or the last line where as if I'm reading it out loud to myself, it doesn't have to be to anyone else, you know, I linger sort of leisurely on each line. Sometimes repeating the line out loud. So it just has a very different feel for it. There's a call I think of poetry that says I want to be out side just your head and that connects me to taking it beyond sort of the internal. So many times I think it's just for me. I mean for years I was intimidated by poetry. I didn't understand a lot of it and so I found that if I read it out loud or someone read it to me I, I got more of it. ZAK: Obviously, we have to finish with a poem. This one is from Mary Oliver. JANICE: It's called Instructions for Living A Life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ZAK: This is The Best Advice Show. I want to hear your advice. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. And if you love this show think about rating and reviewing it on whatever app you use. I know Apple is a popular one. I know you can rate on Stitcher. It's another way of letting peope discover the show. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gretchen Rubin hosts the podcast, Happier and has written a bunch of bestselling books. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Being the person that you are, do you formally or informally coach people? GRETCHEN: Well, I mean, if by coaching you mean, do I give unsolicited advice, probably yes, my sister calls me a happiness bully because if I feel like there's a way for somebody to get Happier I can just start throwing things out. ZAK: Something that Gretchen throws out a lot is the following prompt... GRETCHEN: Choose the bigger life. THEME MUSIC PLAYS GRETCHEN: Because what is the bigger life? Because only you can decide what's the bigger life. For instance in our family, my children really, really wanted to get a dog. This was like 5-6 years ago. My husband was like, eh, I'm ok with getting a dog. And I was very much on the fence because I thought this is a lot of work, a lot of trouble. It's a big commitment. This dog is probably gonna be living with me and Jamie longer than are only children did...I felt the pros and cons were very evenly balanced. And t hen I thought to myself, choose the bigger life. Now, I think for some families a bigger life would not be getting a dog because you might have more freedom, you'd travel more, you'd have more money freed ip to spend on other things. It's expensive to have a dog. So I think for some people choose a bigger life would be not to have a dog. But it was obvious to me the minute I asked myself that question, that for our gamily the bigger life was to get a dog and so we did and I',m just absolutely thrilled. It was exactly the right choice. But I think for a lot of times you get very confused about what's better, what's worse and then...or like I remember talking to somebody who was like, should I move back to my hometown, my husband's there too, we have all this family and all these old friends but we love being in big city and I said, well, choose the bigger life. And for her the bigger life, she realized, meant going back home because she felt like that's the bigger life for us but other people might have said, oh, the big city, that's the bigger life. It would have been obvious to them. It kind of shows you that indirect look into your head which can be very hard to do. It's easy to get confused and distracted...I feel like that's a helpful question. I'm Gretchen Rubin. I'm a writer and podcaster who explores the issues of happiness, habits and human nature. ZAK:Gretchen Rubin's podcast is called, Happier. Is there a prompt you use in your life when you're feeling confused? I would love to hear it. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. Also, please consider sharing this show with your friends if you think they would like it. I would like that. Thank you. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Polly Washburn (@pollywashburn) makes things in Denver, Colorado. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: POLLY: I'm Polly Washburn and I live in Denver, Colorado and I would recommend that you figure out your sleepy foods. So when I was about 30, I read a book about sugar sensitivity and was like, Me. Me. Me. This is me. And so I started out cutting out sugar. And so my basic advice would be to, it's not like you can never eat sugar or whatever you find out is your sleepy food. But, don't have it during the day. So have it at night and then if it makes you sleepy that's cool, you can go to sleep. So my sleepy foods are sugar and flower. So, I'm not gluten intolerant or whatever, but it's great for me that there's been all these gluten-free foods that have come out cause it gives me an option during the day to have a rice cracker instead of Triscuit or whatever. ZAK: And once you realized that that was a thing and that you were made sleepy by, uh, sugar and flower, was it difficult at all to not go after that stuff? POLLY: So yeah, sugar is totally addictive. So, it is a problem to give it up and and it's tough sometimes and that's why I would say, don't put yourself in the mindset that you can never have it again. Either, I can have on the weekends or I can have it at night... ZAK: How do you learn what your sleepy food is? POLLY: So, the best way is to do a little log for about a week and every half-hour log what did I eat, cause some people, you know, things don't kick in for another half-hour, hour, so make a log of what time you ate everything and then give yourself like an energy scale, maybe 1-10 or 1-5. And rate your energy scale through the day and notice, ok, after I ate that...trash happened...I was fine eating that. You know, so for someone else it might be rice or dairy or you know, something totally different. ZAK: You've been listening to what I hope has been a very helpful Food Friday on The Best Advice Show. Thanks Polly for that advice. My name is Zak Rosen and I would love to hear your advice. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. And if you're enjoying this show. If it's making a difference in your life somehow, I would so appreciate you going on to Apple Podcasts and rating and reviewing The Best Advice Show. Another really helpful thing you can do is tell your friends and family about this podcast. Well, just the ones that you think would like it. Thank you so much. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emilee Speck is the host of Space Curious. Upcoming Rocket Launches - https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/launches-and-events/events-calendar?pageindex=1 TRANSCRIPT: EMILEE: My name is Emilee Speck. I'm a space reporter and digital journalist for WKMG in Orlando, Florida and I host Space Curious. ZAK: In her personal and professional life. Emilee has gone to a ton of rocket launches. And she has some advice for you in case you're gonna go to one, which is possible in a handful of states. Or if you're just gonna watch it online. EMILEE: If you've never been to a launch before. The number one thing you need to do it put your phone down. Don't record it with your phone. Just watch it and be amazed. 3, 2, 1, 0 and LIFTOFF! And the other thing I would do if you're gonna watch it in person is watch it with other people. In particular watch it with kids. Watching a launch with a child especially with one who has never seen a launch before is the best experience. Kids are just, they're just us and they're little and they just don't contain their excitement and they get so excited. Some of the favorite video that I've ever seen covering a launch is watching kids react to the rocket. They're just absolute freaking amazed. It is so cool. If you're trying to watch a launch online, my advice, and this is what I did the other day because during the Coronavirus, I haven't been able to cover as many launches in person. So I will put the launch feed up on my tv in my living room and that's kind of the best thing that you can do. It's amazing. And turn the sound way up. hahaha. Yeah. Cause the booster, the launch, the rumble...it's way, way better in person but sometimes the live streams will do a good job as well. ZAK: And for those of us who haven't witnessed a launch, like, what is it that's so amazing to you about it? EMILEE: If you're watching it in person, just the feeling of knowing that something that we made here is leaving earth, because that's really freaking hard to do. ZAK: If you want to attend a rocket launch in person or online, you can go to the link I posted in our show notes from Kennedy Space Center to see their launch schedule. Emilee Speck is the host of the new podcast, Space Curious. And full disclosure, I edit that show. It's totally worth checking out. I didn't care much about space when I started hte project with her and now she's convinced me that it's amazing and there's so much to learn. Each episode she answers a different listeners' question, like "where does all the space junk go?" How did the International Space Station get assembled in the first place? Stuff like that. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts. You've been listening to The Best Advice Show, I'm Zak Rosen. If you have some advice I would love to hear it. The hotline number is 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Berninger (greengloves777) is the lead singer of The National. His solo album, Serpentine Prison, is out October, 2nd. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: If you're working on a creative project...it's so important to pay attention to your boredom. MATT: If you're bored, you're not making art. ZAK: Do you have like a boredom defense strategy? MATT: If I'm working on something and I'm not excited. If I'm working on a song and I don't jump up and high five myself or cry then I don't know what I'm doing. ZAK: Matt Berninger is the lead singer of The National, which, if you don't know, is an incredible band. To Matt, the art part of, in his case songwriting, but it can apply to any creative form. To him, the art comes in when he notices the emergence an idea that he's genuinely moved by. MATT: It's like the seeds have to be exciting. The seeds are the ideas. If the seeds of the idea at first aren't exciting and you're planting it in soil that's rocky and you're not in the mood to do it. You're not gonna want to raise that tree. You're not gonna want to go back to it. You're not gonna want to keep watering this idea that you weren't even sure if the seed...you don't even want to eat that plant. You know? Maybe it's poisonous or something. And so, I find just go back, find new seeds and go find a new place to plant them and then you'll be excited about raising that plant and pruning it and doing the craft part of it and selling, taking it to market, you know? But the seeds have to be exciting, yeah. ZAK: So it's not like you're crying or high-fiving yourself through the whole process. You're feeling those big feelings at the start of the thing. MATT: Yeah, then you get to work. ZAK: Matt Berniger's new solo album is called Serpentine Prison. It's produced by the great Booker T. Jones. And it's out October, 2nd. You're listening to the title track. This is The Best Advice Show. I'm Zak Rosen. I want to hear your advice. Call me on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice Bagley is a farmer in Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ALICE: Hi, this is Alice in Detroit, Michigan on Anishinaabe land. I'm calling to recommend that people scatter wildflower seeds. This time a year in the fall is a really good time to do it. A lot of seed heads are dried up and ready. The best ones to do are native plants like milkweed or goldenrod or echinacea. Um, it's really good for the earth. It's really fun. You can throw them up in the wind or take a handful and just drop them as you walk around your neighborhood. A lot of times it has a really nice tactile sensation. I like the way milkweed seeds lay close to each other like fish scales in their pod. Or the way that if you rub an echinacea blossom just right it won't be pokey but will be kinda nice and smooth. Um, so, yeah, I think that people should spread wildflower seeds around. ZAK: If I had the rights to it, I would so love to play Wildflowers by Tom Petty for you right now. But I don't so you should go listen to it after this episode. First you should know that you can call the advice hotline anytime. That number is 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. I would love to hear what you're thinking about. Also, think of someone in your life who you think would give great advice. I would love to hear from them too. Thank you. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rob St. Mary is the author of The Orbit Magazine Anthology To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ROB: The phrase that pays, as I like to say is, it's better they say no than to not know. ZAK: It's better they say no than to not know. ROB: That's right. If there's a question you want to ask. If there's an idea that you have...just ask it. Just say it. Just come out with it. You know, um, it's better to do that than to, you know, walk away or to not get that opportunity and go, ah, you know, I really should have asked that question. But I think it even goes furthers when I think about it. Like where this idea of just being willing to ask the question and not feel stupid. It goes back to my dad. And he was always like impressed on me that there really is no stupid question. That it's ok to ask questions and to not feel dumb about it. Just because you don't know something doesn't mean you should feel bad about that. I mean, we're all ignorant in some ways. And asking the questions helps to fill in the gaps. So I found this it's better to say no than to not know. I mean that can go for anything. You know, you want to go apply for a job...why not? You want to go ask that person out, why not? I really wanted that car or I really wanted that thing but it was a little too much and maybe I should have asked the guy if he would have taken 500 dollar less or something. He might think I'm crazy, but you never know. Why not. It's better to be rejected, I think. I think people have a lot of fear of rejection but I think that just asking and finding out if you could do that...I think it helps me sleep better at night because I don't have a lot of regrets. ROB: My name is Rob St. Mary and I'm a radio journalist here in Detroit. Also, published author, filmmaker, musician, cat dad. ZAK: It's better they say no than to not know. As long as I've got you here, I might as well ask, right? How would you feel about going on to Apple Podcasts, if that's the servce you use and rating and reviewing this show. I would really appreciate that. At least I asked, right? You've been listening to The Best Advice Show. My name is Zak Rosen. If you have some advice I would love to hear it. The hotline is 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Louise Belensz called the advice hotline @ 844-935-BEST. You can too! LOUISE: Hi Zak. My name is Louise Belensz. I live in North River, New York. And my advice is whenever you're going to cook something that you're going to put lemon on, like fish or grilled zucchini or eggplant, um, grill or cook or roast the lemon along with that food and then squeeze it on the food and it's so much better and you get so much more juice and it's way sweeter, so, that's my advice for one of your Food Fridays. ZAK: Yes, yes, yes...the power of lemons. They make so many things better. Thank you Louise and thank you lemons. You've been listening to Food Friday I would love to hear your food related advice. You can let me know what that is at 844-935-BEST. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jo Strausz Rosen (@bubjo) creates in Metro-Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: From my childhood backyard, I'm pleased to welcome to the show today...my mom. JO: Ever since I created this outdoor space in my garden, its been such a healing place for me to come and paint all of the feelings that I have from the political upheaval through COVID. So I feel like painting alone, surrounded by beauty and nature helps me figure it all out and helps me get my head around it. Recently I spray-painted by some huge canvases and I've been drawing all these different faces and painting them in and everybody looks different but the one thing we all have in common is that we all have hearts and we all want to live. ZAK: And so, what do you think the advice is? JO: I think the advice is, if you can carve out a space somewhere...whether it's in your house or outside, if you're lucky enough to find a space outside. Make it your own and just let your creative juices flow. Think and play. I think everybody's creative in different ways. So maybe it would be a place to sing a song or write a poem or read and then write your impressions of something. There's so many ways to let your right-brain guide you. ZAK: So what do you need for a bare minimum outdoor art space? JO: I think a space where you can be quiet and you can appreciate the surroundings. You can hear the trees rustle in the wind. But you really only need a table or even a cement sidewalk where it can change and you can draw how you feel and then the rain will wash it away. I think the impermanence of having an outdoor space is kind of fun. It changes everyday. I'm Jo Strausz Rosen. Mother, grandmother, wife, sister, painter, peacemaker, former cheerleader but I never stopped cheering. ZAK: You can look at my mom's outdoor painting sanctuary and at some of her paintings if you go the Best Advice Show Instagram. That's @bestadviceshow. If you have some advice I would love to hear. Please give me a call at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jay Acunzo (@jayacunzo) is the founder of Marketing Showrunners. Pair today's show with: Detaching with Hanif Abdurraqib - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020429_detaching-with-hanif-abdurraqib/ To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Are you feeling creatively stuck or intimidated? If so, today's advice is going to help you to profoundly demystify what it means to make stuff. JAY: First and foremost, creating anything is an act of you trying to understand it. The creator should be, for example, writing to better understand something. Not writing to share what you already understand. Because by forcing yourself to articulate something, you're gonna have to really interrogate your assumptions and the holes in your thinking. You're gonna have to learn how to articulate things that you can remember and others can hold on to. Write to understand. Don't write to share what you already understand. So you think of it as the process of self-discovery and learning instead of I'm a completed product or at least I'm done learning about this one thing and now I'm sharing that back to you. And the way you do that is you have to start creating. You have to force yourself to go a little bit further than you're comfortable because that's where you'll do your best work. And so for me, that's the act of writing before I understand something. I'm writing to understand. And then that leads to new questions. And that's the next thing you write. So it's this awesome, virtuous cycle. When somebody assumes that their heroes or inspirational sources or even just whoever they're consuming today has it all figured out and now they're sharing what they've figured out, it prevents them from seeing writing or the creative process for what it is, which is the act of them understanding through them creating. ZAK: Jay Acunzo is an author and public speaker. He's founded a company called Marketing Showrunners. He's also a really helpful twitter follow. If you have some advice on the creative process, fighting writers block...I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the advice hotline @ 844-935-BEST. I think episode pairs particularly well with an early episode from this show. It's called Detaching with Hanif Abdurraqib. HANIF: I see people talking about this idea of growth and it has be paired with a disdain for the work that one created before they grew. And I think a way that I've avoided that is by understanding that I did the best I could with what tools I had and because I wrote that book, I was able to grow and write something else. ZAK: You can find that episode with Hanif in today's show notes. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren Ober (@OberandOut) is the host of the podcast, Spectacular Failures. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Are you a news junkie but feel like you just can't handle it anymore? If so, today's advice is for you. LAUREN: I am a consummate news consumer. I love listening to the radio and I love reading the newspaper everyday and I have gotten to a point and I feel really sad about this where I can't consume the news anymore. It's so terrible. The view never changes. It's like catatonia, really. And so, I was like, I need something that feels like it has and ending. You know, that it isn't a story that lasts for six or nine or twelve months or whatever. I've always been interested...my guilty pleasure is British mystery novels. There's a beginning, a middle, and end, and then you're done. And I feel like our news cycle does not end with particular stories. And Corona virus is the most open ended hell you could ever conceive of, and these mystery novels...they're not like that. There are no real stakes. It's generally, like, a bunch of goobers who are just flitting about and like, maybe one person's gonna solve a mystery in their spare time. And most of the time they're like smoking pipes and reading The Telegraph. I'm just along for the ride but I know that by page 300, we're gonna be done. This problem is gonna come to an end. And that is very, very satisfying in this particular time that we're living in where nothing seems like it has an end-date. ZAK: So yours happen to be mystery novels, but someone's else's could be like a quilt. It could be. It absolutely could be. Any craft that has an end point. You start it and then you finish it. ZAK: That's partly why making this show has been helpful for me lately. These episodes are short. I can start then and end them. There's something satisfying there. LAUREN: My name is Lauren Ober. I'm the host of the podcast, Spectacular Failures. ZAK: If you have some advice for getting through these hard times, I would love to hear it. The hotline number is 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Garza is one of the main subjects in the spectacular documentary, Boys State. He's currently a student at the University of Texas. Boys State | Official Trailer HD | A24 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1Kh_T5ZBIM To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: I consider myself of connoisseur of movie trailers. And the trailer for the documentary, Boys State, blew me away. The film is about over a thousand teenage boys from Texas who spend a week of their summer building their own government. TRAILER: My name is Steven Garza and I'm running for governor. Steven Garza is one of 4 main characters in Boys State. Since the movie came out, he's become a kind of folk hero and a symbol for why are politics aren't necessarily doomed. TRAILER: When we show the world what patriots are made of. That when things get tough, we pull ourselves by our bootstraps...one nation under God...members of the constitution of the United States of America!!!!!!!! ZAK: To find out if Steven won his governor's race, you're gonna have to see Boys State. It's on Apple+ and the movie is just as good as the trailer. Its been a few years since the movie was made and now Steven is a sophomore at the University of Texas in Austin. We Zoomed from his dorm room. Theme song ZAK: A lot of are pretty disenchanted with, uh, the electoral process and especially, like, as the political season is in full-gear right now...what does it mean to you to be hopeful right now? STEVEN: I think you have to stay hopeful and you have to stay optimistic about the future of the country, no matter how bleak it is because personally, if I ever lost hope or lost that optimism or idealism about our country, then that's a major defeat mentally and spiritually for me, because it's a huge part of my identity. And you're basically give up on the country...you're giving up hope and you're resigning yourself to the circumstance that the bad guys or the dark will win. ZAK: On those bleak days when it's really hard, what does your self-talk sound like to, you know, remind yourself of the citizen you want to be? STEVEN: It's looking back at the history of the country and realizing, you know, the history of this country I think is...the American people continually fighting for the rights that they're owed. Weather it be the Civil Rights Movement, Woman's Suffrage, Disability Rights, Farmers Movement, LBGT...and just imagining how bleak it must have seemed before for people back then, especially that 600-thousand people had to die in a way for slavery to end in this country. And then for another 100 years after that, they were denied the promises guaranteed ot them in the Constitution and they were beaten and murdered...It's just complete awfulness. They were treated as...not even second-class citizens. And the perseverance that they had to have...people like John Lewis, like Dr. King to get thrown in jail...be, you know, threatened and sometimes these people were murdered for their views. But not wavering and not letting that fear get to them. It's, you know, that's the only way, um, the only way that I think change is ever come to this country is by the people rising up and taking, you know, to the streets and demanding that change come to them. ZAK: If you want to give some advice on civics or citizenship or electoral politics of anything, I'd love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. You've been listening to The Best Advice Show. Thank you so much. I'm Zak Rosen. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stevie Lane is a producer on the podcast, Heavyweight. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST ZAK: Maybe you've had this experience, where you go online and try to make a reservation at a restaurant. STEVIE: And you go into the reservation, you know, portal, and you put it in the time you want and the number of people and the date and it's like, no reservations except at like, midnight or like, 3 pm. And you're like, well, that's not helpful. I found that in those situations, the best thing to do is just call because I feel like 8 out of 10 times, there is actually a reservation and once you just get somebody on the phone, you can usually make that reservation. ZAK: I think that that's great and practical. And I also feel like there's like, a deeper meaning there, insofar as like, yes, machines and tech can, like, help organize the world. But there is nothing like, actually, connecting with another human. STEVIE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, my feeling is like, in a world where everything is about texting about maximun efficiency and you can just text your doctor's office to make an appointment or like, message your lawyer on Instagram, or you know, whatever. With all these sort of fast ways of getting in touch, I think people just aren't really calling and having this in-person conversations anymore and it's so easy not to. But there's nothing like actually hearing a voice on the other end of the phone and when you're faced with that person's voice and having that kind of connection with them, you want to help or you want to listen or you wanna be helpful and I think that's part of it too. When you're on the phone with the host, they're like, yeah, maybe we can squeeze you in. Whatever it is, because you're having this kind of like, in-person interaction. My name is Stevie Lane and I'm a producer on the podcast, Heavyweight. ZAK: If you haven't listened to Heavyweight...it's really one of the all-timers. It's my favorite show. You should definitely listen. And if you want to give some advice, I would love to hear it. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. And we're kind of running low on Food Friday advice so I would love to hear your advice on anything but especially something food-related, like today's episode. And if you're enjoying this show, please consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. That's one thing you can do that's gonna help other people discover this show. Thank you so much. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christine Buckley is the author of Plant Magic: Herbalism in Real Life. More on Asclepius - https://www.ancient.eu/Asclepius/ To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST CHRISTINE: This is advice that's attributed to, I think a demigod. ZAK: The only demigod I know is Maui from Moana. CHRISTINE: Oh yeah, that's a good Demigod. I should watch Moana tonight. ZAK: It's really good. Who is this demigod? CHRISTINE: I actually don't know how to pronounce his name but Asclepius of Thessaly. He was the son of Apollo. ZAK: I looked it up. It's actually Asclepius. He was also the Greco-Roman God of Medicine. CHRISTINE: My name is Christine Buckley. I'm a community-based herbalist and professional cook. ZAK: So, Asclepius' advice went like this. First the word, then the plant and lastly, the knife. CHRISTINE: This is all in regard to some kind of therapy for your body or mind. ZAK: First the word, then the plant and lastly, the knife. What is an actual, real-world application for this principal? CHRISTINE: Ok, so right now, lots of us are alone and on top of that we're dealing with many other things. So, as an herbalist my advice would be to just step outside and to see that you're part of this earth where there are trees growing and flowers beginning to form. So I think that would be the first step to ease this loneliness. ZAK: Right, so that's the first part of this advice. First the word. The word in this case being...go outside. CHRISTINE: The next thing is, ok, maybe that's not enough. We're gonna put some plants in our body. Then in this context that would be things like, nerviness to calm your nervous system to help alleviate the anxiety and stress that you're feeling. ZAK: So that's step two, the plant. And if that's still not enough. CHRISTINE: Then you move on to the next strongest thing which is like, maybe you need to take a Tylenol PM to help you sleep. Or maybe you need that beer to help you calm down. Like, see how it gets progressively stronger? That's what we're talking about. We don't just jump right into the strongest thing first. We move through little shifts because what happens in little shifts are windows into change that can be longer lasting. Whereas like, the further you get down the line, it makes you feel better immediately but it doesn't really solve the foundational problem. ZAK: First the word, then the plant and lastly, the knife. Christine Buckley's new book is called Plant Magic: Herbalism in Real Life. If you're finding this show valuable, consider sharing it with a friend. I really appreciate it. We live at BestAdvice.Show. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jules cleans their feet in Los Angeles, California. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST Morning Zesting with Drew Philp - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020424_morning-zesting-with-drew-philp/ Restarting Your Day with Ken Haddad - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020513_restarting-your-day-with-ken-haddad/ TRANSCRIPT: Sound of faucet turning on. JULES: Hi Zak, my name is Jules. I live in LA and my advice is to wash your feet because they often get forgotten and I thought in the shower when you would stand in the shower, your feet would get all washed but they just got neglected because they just had running soap and water all over it. So, give a little more attention to your feet. At the end of the long day, I like to just wash my feet in the bath to get all of the gunk off. Um, and it feels really good once you do it and you get in between the toes. It's something that's so easy to forget and feels so nice to do. ZAK: If you like Jules' advice, you might want to check out a few other episodes that are shower and bath related. There's Morning Zesting with Drew Philp and there's Restarting Your Day with Ken Haddad. KEN: I've discovered a new kind of coffee in the middle of the day and it's something that I'm calling the lunch-hour-shower. ZAK: Both of those episodes are linked to in our show notes. If you have some advice, call me at 844-935-BEST. I'm gonna go clean my feet. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noam Kimelman stretches from his home in Detroit. I love hearing about morning routines. In fact I want to hear about yours. I'm thinking about making a master, morning routine montage track. To tell me what you do every morning, call me at 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Every morning, Noam Kimelman rolls out of bed and then gets on the floor and stretches. NOAM: And if I don't do it, I definitely notice not feeling my best. Also, my legs get tired during the day, especially if I'm traveling or hiking and I don't do my stretches. My legs are, like, heavier, and I feel tired doing much less. And so, my advice is stretch 5, 10 minutes everyday. It'll change your life. ZAK: And so you get out of bed and you start? NOAM: I get out of bed. And the rule is don't look at your phone. But I always look at my phone. But I'm not supposed to look at my phone before stretching. And I tell myself it will make the day even better. But everyday I wake up and then I look at my phone. And then I stretch. ZAK: Uh huh, You can't do it all at once. It's one step at a time. NOAM: But this is just enough to make me feel good, without overwhelming. I love hearing about morning routines. In fact I want to hear about yours. I'm thinking about making a master, morning routine montage track. To tell me what you do every morning, call me at 844-935-BEST Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rich Feldman is a former auto worker and union official. He's a board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. End of the Line: Autoworkers and the American Dream - https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/63wfe4tq9780252061486.html To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: RICH: This is Rich Feldman. I spent 20 years on the assembly line at Ford Motor Company out in Wayne. About 10 years as an elected, local official and about ten years with the international staff of the United Auto Workers. ZAK: Especially on the Labor Day, Rich says it's very easy to be nostalgic about the past. But this year is not like every other year. RICH: Well this Labor Day, which is taking place with almost 200-thousand people killed by COVID and the Movement For Black Lives since George Floyd was killed...it's critical that we not think of just going through the motions or just cheering on unions. So while I always say that without a union, you have nothing. With the union I believe you have a chance to have some security and have your voice heard and be responsible for what your work place should be. So my advice is, ask yourself what is the purpose of work and how do we become responsible workers and human beings? And returning to normal is not the way to do it...it's to create a new vision and a new purpose which is gonna take a lot, a lot of work and a lot of reflection. ZAK: Well, how do you answer that question? What is the purpose of work? RICH: So to me the purpose of work is for individuals to do what allows each of us to express our passions, to be responsible to our neighbors, to be responsible to our community and the planet. It's time for us to say, what are we producing as well as our rights and our contractual rights. ZAK: Rich edited an oral history called End of the Line: Autoworkers and the American Dream. I put a link to it in our show notes. Thank you for listening to a special Labor Day episode of the Best Advice Show. I hope today is full or joy and fun and rest and contemplation. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howie Kahn is a writer and podcaster in NYC. His podcast is Take Away Only To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: You are listening to episode 100 of The Best Advice Show. That was fast. Today is Food Friday. I'm really excited for you to hear the episode but first I just wanted to say, thank you for listening. I really, really appreciate it. I wasn't exactly sure how this show would go when I started it, but I'm learning so much. I feel like I'm actually doing some good. A lot of you have reached out and let me know as much. That means so much to me. If you are one of those people who's finding this show valuable. I would love it if you would share it with your family and friend. Alright, let's get on with the advice. Thanks again. ZAK: There's at least a few kinds of grocery shopping. There's the rush-in, look at your list, get your stuff...maybe you're with your kid. HOWIE: I took my kid to the grocery store recently. And because of COVID he's obviously been inside more in the last 6-months than he ever should have been during normal time, or has been his entire life. And now going to a grocery store with him is like going to a rave with somebody who just can't handle their drugs. You know, are they gonna topple the end display? Is the can gonna fall on his head? Is he gonna get too close to the wrong person who doesn't want a tiny child close to them during a pandemic. ZAK: That's not the kind of grocery shopping we're talking about today. We're talking about the kind where you're not in a rush. The store isn't too crowded. And you can kind of relax a little...and if you want... HOWIE: Get totally lost in the grocery store. Like I go really slow at the grocery store when I'm by myself. Like my wife will be like, where are you? What are you doing? And I've been looking at, like, the blueberries very slowly. ZAK: And them maybe you'll head over to the vegetables to see what looks good. HOWIE: The little fairytale eggplants. The one's that have the beautiful purple and white modeling. They're like chubby, little squat eggplants like the size of a half an iPhone or something like that. And they're just delicious. Like the flavors really concentrated and it just doesn't take much to make them into really happy food, you know? ZAK: Now you begin to fantasize about what you're gonna do with these beautiful, little eggplants. HOWIE: Cut them in half, length-wise. Score em just a little bit. Salt em just a little bit. Let them sit there for like, minutes to let some of the water come out. Dab the water off. Put a little more salt in them. Get pan going with olive oil, pretty hot. Sear em skin side down. Give it a nice hard sear. 3-5 minutes. The inside will get all roasty and toasty and then sweet and delicious. It's fast cause they're small. Take them off. A little salt, pepper, hot sauce, some herbs. You got a happy, happy eggplant dish. ZAK: Most of us aren't traveling right now and we're craving adventure. And so if you love food and cooking, and you must because you're listening to Food Friday...next time you're at the grocery store, treat it as a little mini adventure. Before this interview, the last time I had spoken to Howie Kahn was when he was my counselor at camp. I was 12. He was 18. But now Howie is a New York-based food lover and writer and... HOWIE:...journalist and podcast maker and the founder of a production company called Free Time Media. ZAK: On his podcast, Take-Away Only, Howie's been talking to hospitality professionals all over the world as they continue to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. You've been listening to the 100th episode of The Best Advice Show. Thank you so much for being here. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marcia Lee is the Director of Healing by Choice (@healingbychoice) and a coach and trainer for People's Hub, an online movement school. --- RESOURCES The Power of Online Spaces with Marcia Lee - https://peopleshub.org/project/the-power-of-online-spaces/ Simple Spinal Health Practice with Aziza Knight of Healing by Choice! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIqHoqeEjwQ&feature=youtu.be To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST --- TRANSCRIPT ZAK: If you're feeling Zoomed out, today's episode is for you. MARCIA: I think oftentimes people are like, I don't know how I could energetically connect with people online. But you can do things like, if we do a movement with each other. Like if we try that right now, right. If you just follow me and move your hand in and move your hand out and then just have this idea of our hands moving together. But the key is do it in a way that's accessible, right? So, saying it might be moving your hand or any other body part that you would prefer to move or can move. So that people can have agency and choice. My name is Marcia Lee. I am the Director of Healing by Choice in Detroit and a coach and trainer for People's Hub, an online movement school. ZAK: So you lead like a ton of Zoom meetings. Is there a way that you like to start? Yeah, absolutely. We usually come in and say, yeah, you're welcome to bring your water, your food, your kids...whatever it is that you need to feel like you can show up. And also, sometimes it's ok to turn your video off if you need to. In general I try to hold meetings in a way where people feel like they've had an experience of healing or an experience of grounding and centering even in whatever meeting we're doing with each other. ZAK: Right, like even if you're talking about something dry like next year's budget. MARCIA: Absolutely. And sometimes, you know, we don't want to share about how we're feeling in the moment. Like, right now, one my friend's, Shaquilla Smith said, let's just say everyone is in a bad place, which is true. There's something in us that's hard right now and there's also joy amidst that. We get to feel both, but maybe we don't want to talk about that right now, so we can come up with different questions. ZAK: I think a lot of us have been talking about this lately, that the question, how are you? isn't sufficient anymore. So what are some ways that you're starting meetings or conversations. Lemme know by commenting on today's episode post on our Instagram page. That's @BestAdviceShow. In our show notes today I've posted a video called Simple Spinal Health Practice and in these times where we're spending so much time in-front of our computer, this video might help you out. Thank you for listening. This is episode 99. Oh my goodness! I thought we just started this show, like, a couple weeks ago. It's been really fun. Thank you for being part of it. If you're enjoying this show, tell your friends, tell your family. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts if that's where you listen. Thanks so much. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brenden Murphy practices in Sterling Heights, MI. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: BRENDEN: Hi Zak, this Brenden Murphy from Sterling Heights, Michigan. I was just calling to let you know that practice helps you get better at things. And I know that sounds obvious. The problem is, most people think this just relates to sports. This relates to everything. People seem to ignore the most important things, like self-discipline. People will say, oh, I'm not very disciplined. Well discipline is being like a runner. You're not a runner if you never go running. But if you start running everyday, eventually you'll be a runner. If you start practicing self-discipline everyday, eventually you will be one of those people who manages to get all their stuff done. It also happens with things like road rage. If you practice getting angry. If you practice rage and hatred and yelling at people, you're gonna get better at it. It's gonna get more pervasive. And then you're just gonna be more rage-ful. If you practice things like kindness and peace and deep breathing and meditation...anything. You will get better at it. And that's my advice. ZAK: Thank you Brenden Murphy for your call and your great spiel. Now I want to hear your advice. I'm at 844-935-BEST. And if you don't think you have advice, think about a friend who you think would be great on this show and give them the advice hotline number. That's 844-935-BEST. Thanks so much! Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Barr is the CEO of Graham Media. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: EMILY: One of the things that I have learned is that when you screw up on the job you do something wrong, the best thing you can do is go right in to your boss or call them or whatever and just say, hey, I really screwed up. Cause they can't get mad at you. ZAK: If you own it. EMILY: If you own it. So what happens is they say to you, well, ok, why don't you tell me what you did and then I'll let you know if you really screwed up. And then you say, well, you know I, I thought I was supposed to call this person and do this and I didn't do it and I forgot or whatever and now they're mad at me, whatever the story is. They usually come back and say, ok, that wasn't good but I gotta tell you. That's nothing, let me tell you about the time I screwed up. hahaha. They basically, they take on the responsibly and they totally absolve you. You know you can't do it over and over again, obviously. But it is a really good way to diffuse what could be a bad situation. Because I think what human nature does is, usually you you try to cover up the thing you did wrong. You think about when you're a little kid. When you have little kids and they have chocolate all over their face and you say to them, did you just eat a bunch of chocolate? And they lie, they're like, no, I didn't eat it. And of course when you're a little kid it's just funny but when an adult does that. Basically, did you ever call that person? And they go yeah, yeah, I called and left message and it flat out never happened and they know you're lying. And there's no trust there. There's no bond. But if you just fess up and say, you know, I messed up. I forgot to make the call. I should have done it. I feel horrible. And especially if you can go to them before they come to you. You know, so you kind of circumvent the problem that way. And usually they have a lot more faith in you after that. ZAK: Usually the boss has more faith in the employee who speaks up? EMILY: Yeah. Yeah. ZAK: So, you're a boss. In fact you're my boss's boss which makes you my boss. How common is it for your employees to come and own their mistakes? EMILY: Not as common as you might think. I suspect most people think they're going to get into trouble. And the irony is they're going to get into less trouble if they just own the mistake. Typically. I mean if it's a really terrible mistake maybe not. But most mistakes aren't fatal. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leora is a medical student and dog lover, living in SF. I think an alternative name for The Best Advice Show could be the weird things we do to get through the day. What's that thing for you? Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Welcome back to The Best Advice Show. Today I've got another contribution from the hotline. I don't know the advice-giver but I feel like I do after having heard her advice. It's so specific and unique and I think joyful. LEORA: Hello. I'm Leora. I'm a former museum worker, current fourth-year medical student living in San Francisco. My piece of advice is mainly for dog owners or otherwise dog adjacent people who are prone to melancholy. And the advice is to occasionally feed your dog a berry. How you feed the dog a berry is obviously up to you but my preferred method to blueberries is to use my teeth to bite the berry in half and I then spit it out and hold it between my thumb and fore-finger and then my dog, who's attention at this point is totally on the berry uses his little front-teeth to nibble away at it, bit by bit. Sometimes he'll put his paw on my hand to stabilize as he eats, which, you know, is it's own separate act of extreme cuteness. And this activity combines a few things that I think stand a chance of breaking open some, like, old bubble of serotonin hiding away in my mind. First of all, just the mere existence of berries kind of feels like a miracle...their color, their sweetness, etc. And the same goes for dogs. They're just generally so much nicer and softer than they need to be. And then the fact that dogs love berries and can eat them so gently, or at least Rudy can...my dog. Feels like it sort of belongs in a children's book which is itself a kind of salve. You know that in this moment there are also berry-eating dogs with paws gently placed on your hand. ZAK: I think an alternative name for The Best Advice Show could be the weird things we do to get through the day. What's that thing for you? Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. Oh, and you can see a picture of Leora and her dog Rudy on our Instagram page. That's @bestadviceshow. It's very cute. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blair Nosanwisch is a rabbinical student and a pickler. Blair's Vegetable Fermentation Guide - https://www.dropbox.com/s/j6aa8jld3pfmk36/veg%20fermentation%20handout.doc?dl=0 To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Blair Nosanwisch is a rabbinical student and a pickler and her advice is grab some salt, grab a vegetable and learn again how your hands can create the very things you want to nourish you. BLAIR: Like basically, nowadays we have processed food and I'm in favor of us becoming the processors again in our own kitchens. I think that in that way, not only do we learn skills that we would otherwise lose but we also allow just the fact that the work of our hands can be something that nourishes us to come back into our lives. And the other think I was thinking about was that we're all going through this sort of radical level of change. Change that happened so quickly, that happened to us, that leaves us feeling disempowered and out of control. And I think that learning how to ferment and realizing how simple it is is a tiny way...a tiny and healthy way to take back some control in our daily life. ZAK: Yeah that seems to be so much of the work right now is to reckon with this profound unknown...not knowing and just figuring out what are the little ways in which we can exert some control so that we don't feel wholly helpless. BLAIR: Yeah, in the first few days after this pandemic took its first turn where like, I and think everyone else started to realize, like, holy crap this happening...I had this night where I was like, oh my God, I know what to do...I need to make sauerkraut. That's obviously the thing I should be doing right now. And part of that realization for me is that it's familiar and comfortable and I know how to do it and also that it's a really positive place to put that nervous energy. To say, you know what, I'm gonna remind my hands that they know how to make food that can keep for a long time. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Patia Braithwaite is Senior Health Editor at SELF Magazine 8 Tiny Things I’ve Tried to Make Mondays More Pleasant - https://www.self.com/story/monday-morning-tips TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: You call it the Sunday scaries. I've always thought of them as the Sunday blues but I think we're talking about the same thing. PATIA: Absolute. It's that feeling of dread, sadness. It's like that realization that the weekend is going to end. ZAK: It's so real. PATIA: My name is Patia Braithwaite. I'm a Senior Health Editor at SELF Magazine where I focus on everything from health, wellness, relationships and dating. ZAK: What do you do to alleviate your Sunday blues? PATIA: I know that around 4 PM, I start to get that feeling of like, oh no, the weekend's over and I have to go back. And I have all these things to do. And so, once I noticed that I was having that feeling at 4 o'clock, I just started doing something physical to distract myself. So before the pandemic, that was like going to a yoga class. Now that can be like, going for a walk. That can be using my rower. Just something to distract myself during that time. And obviously exercise stimulates a relaxation response. ZAK: And one thing you also talk about is...on the Friday before, you do some planning for Monday mornings. PATIA: Yeah, for sure. About 15-20 minutes before I'm ending the day. I just take out my to-do list and write down all the pressing things that need to happen on Monday mornings. I might also put in any meetings. Just put them on the to-do list so I know that they're there. It's sort of a brain dump. It's a way of getting those things out of my brain, on to the paper, so that on Monday I'm not disoriented. And so on Sunday nights, when those, like, Sunday Scary's happen, I'm not thinking of obligations and trying to commit them to memory. They're already on a piece of paper that lives on my desk. ZAK: Do you find there's one thing in particular that you have told folks about that really seems to resonate? PATIA: Hmmm. I think this is probably an anti-tip. But I think just understanding that bad days happen. Understanding that we're dealing with an incredible challenging time right now. And understanding that sometimes Mondays are just gonna stink, has really resonated and I think makes people more receptive to trying small things. ZAK: I put a link to Patia's piece in our show notes. It's called 8 Tiny Things I’ve Tried to Make Mondays More Pleasant. Hopefully today's episode will help you start making your Monday's more pleasent if they haven't been. If you're enjoying the show, please consider rating and reviewing on Apple Podcasts and telling your friends and family about it. That's the best thing you can do to help this show sustain itself. I really appreciate it. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Langberg is a nature boy and farming, living on the south shore of Lake Superior. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's not your worst nightmare. But it's a bad one. You leave the house and think to yourself. Uh oh, did I leave the oven on? Did I lock the front-door? Did I set the alarm? Did I leave my freezer open? Well today, advice hotline caller, Andrew Langberg, has a strategy for us to remember to do the things we gotta do. ANDREW: The best way to remember that you've done the thing is, every time you turn the coffee pot off or lock the door, do a little dance or a little twirl or something and that way later in the day when you're trying to remember if you locked the door, you'll remember the silly dance you did and you won't have to worry. Yup. That's it. ZAK: I want to hear your advice. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. A few months ago, Andrew's brother called the hotline and left a piece of advice that might be the most talked about item on the show yet. SAM: So, the idea is when you load...if you have a dishwasher, when you load the silverware tray. After each meal when you're putting your silverware in, sort it in sections so the forks go one side, spoons in the center, knives on the right. That way when you're unloading the dishwasher, you can be more efficient when you're putting them away in the drawer organizer, instead of making the unloading the dishwasher chore an even longer and more arduous process. ZAK: Thank you to all the Langbergs for helping us through the delightful minutiae of everyday life. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donna and Micky Maddin walk and talk in Metro-Detroit. Being Close with Michael Franti - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020618_being-close-with-michael-franti/ To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Donna and Mickey Maddin have been married for a long time. DONNA: 53 years. ZAK: They raised four children together. And it wasn't until after their kids moved out of the house, that they started their almost daily ritual of taking a morning walk together. DONNA: Every morning we gout out between 7 and maybe 8:15 at the latest. MICKEY: And frankly when would any couple have almost an hour of time to talk to each other. It almost never happens. So it's a wonderful thing and it's a wonderful way to community with each other about what's important to each other and what's important as family. ZAK: And that's their advice to any busy couple. If you can find the time, get out the house, move around and listen to one another. DONNA: This gave us a whole new direction to go in and to just really explore life and enjoy each other company and get some really good exercise. ZAK: Thank you Mickey and Donna. I love this advice. I think episode goes really nicely with Michael Franti's relationship advice. MICHAEL FRANTI: There's one phrase that we always go to, and it's do you want to be right or do you want to be close. ZAK: I posted his entire episode in the show notes. You've been listening to The Best Advice Show. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lulu Miller is the author of the book, Why Fish Don't Exist, a co-creator of Invisibilia. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Lulu got deep into this epic novel called A Little Life... LULU: ...by Hanya Yanagihara and it's this kind of very long, very sad. Some people almost call it tragedy porn, heavy, gorgeous novel. ZAK: Once Lulu finished the book, she found that there was this one word from it that stuck with her LULU: Recalibrate. This is from a tangential character in this book. It's a, it's a piece of wisdom from a fictional character. And he was he's this kind of professor character. He's sort of a father figure to one of the guys in the book. And in his own life, he had a son who had all kinds of problems and he and his wife kind of dealt with it differently. Like he basically says, the father says, you know, the whole secret to parenting is the ability to recalibrate and what that, the way he talks about it, it's sort of like to let go of whatever visions you had for a kid. Um, and to quickly just meet where they are and work with that. And that this sort of like haunting of what could be this, this holding on close to a vision for what your kid could be or what you wanted Parenthood to feel like that not only dooms you, but like it dooms the kid, it cuts you off from surprises and connection and other pathways that really might lead to, you know, beauty and fullness. And it is so strange how that word has endured like a little piece of steel on a compass, you know, or whatever compasses are made of. Recalibrate. It pops into my head and it is useful for parenting, but I've found it like a very all-purpose little piece of wisdom that just man recalibrate, like if you can, maybe it hurts in the moment, a disappointment, a roadblock, you know, but like, and let yourself feel that hurt. But that reminder of like, luckily, Lou, if you can, if you can recalibrate, you're going to be okay. And actually like, you know, like ruined plans and chaos are the grand creative constraint of life. And you can either look at them and, and sulk and be wounded, or you can say like, okay, this is the new reality. So how can I be creative? And it's sort of simple, like, and dangerously simple. Like someone I love dies or someone I love just being cruel, just recalibrate. And everything's cool. Like, no, it's not meant to be some kind of ridiculous all purpose don't don't honor and explore pain and disappointment. But I think it is like this little arrow saying, feel what you need to feel. And when you're feeling ready, when you have the energy, the way out is recalibrating. ZAK: Yeah. So how are you training yourself to really embody it? LULU: I mean, I think there is power in the go to sleep and maybe I can't get there this afternoon because I'm swimming in a certain disappointment or frustration or whatever it is, but it's kind of like the pill I swallow. I'm like, all right, Lulu recalibrate might not be able to do it today, but that's your path go to sleep. And then I wake up like maybe a little more able, just knowing that's my mission. And so there's this just kind of little faith in it. Um, and a patience with myself, like might not be able to do it immediately, depending on the size of the disappointment or the frustration or the tangle or the shame, you know, like, but like keep kind of believing in it when you go to bed and seeing in the morning, if you're feeling up for it. And then there are some mornings that strike and I'm like, cool, I've got the energy. Let me crack my knuckles and get creative and brainstorm a path out of this. Or talk to someone who might fill me up in a way that, that gives me a third way, a new path. And maybe it's not even talking to someone about the problem, but just like getting near the people who remind you, there are infinite ways to approach relationships, to approach life, approach stories, you know? ZAK: I love it. LULU: Recalibrate. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Allie Zeff drinks coffee from her home in Detroit. Hastening Slowly with Merrill Garbus - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/202069_hastening-slowly-with-merrill-garbus--from-tune-yards-/ To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: In the meantime, you want to do some coffee talk? ALLIE: Yes. With Linda Richman. I am Allie Zeff and I am an organizer for an organization called Detroit Jews for justice. And I have a cute dog. ZAK: So tell me about your, your history of, of coffee ALLIE: High school. I would say my mom, I think quickly figured out that like having a cup of coffee ready on the counter was like the way to get me out of bed. Um, and to go to school. Yeah. I've been hooked ever since. Very heavy coffee drinker all through college. Haven't really taken very many breaks, maybe one or two. ZAK: And now here you are having arrived at a kind of coffee turning point. It sounds like. Yes. Tell me about your new strategy. ALLIE: No caffeine after noon. Decaf afternoon. It's like hard for me to allow those words to come out of my mouth. No caffeine after noon. ZAK: And so up to this point before you, you decided, no caffeine afternoon. What was your like typical coffee intake? Like over the course of a day? ALLIE: Some days I have a top five cups of coffee in a day and I'd be drinking it until I go home and then I would sleep like a baby. It, it just felt like it was normal. It was delicious. ZAK: Yeah. And so what happened, why it sounded like it was working for you? ALLIE: Yes, uh, the pandemic, uh, and the global uprisings. And when all of these global issues that affect my work were coming to a head and I was confined to my house. And I'm an extrovert. So I think like I didn't, I wasn't getting that like social energy out in the way that I needed to. The coffee just like pushed me over the edge of urgency. I was just like a panicked mess pacing, physically shaking and I'm confined to my home. Um, and the walls are closing in. Um, so yeah, ZAK: All these things still very much exist. Police brutality, rising death toll, et cetera, et cetera. Are the walls closing in less now that you're having less coffee? ALLIE: Yeah. You know, we're still grappling with this stuff. You're right. Like all this stuff is still happening. And when it first, when everything started to happen, I was like, Oh, this is like a, this is a crisis that I need to respond to immediately. And what I've realized in the past, and I know how long it's been four or five months is like, Oh, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And I have to be ready to deal with things as they arise, as long as they arise, maybe forever. Right. So, um, yeah, I think like lowering the amount of like stimulant and my body has really helped me to, to deal. ZAK: This has been another episode of Food Friday on The Best Advice Show. This one is more like Drink Friday, but still this episode pairs particularly well with the one called Hastening Slowly with Merrill Garbus MERRILL: The idea behind it is that there is urgent work to be done. And that in order to do that work slowing down is necessary. ZAK: I'm going to link to that in our show notes. If you have some advice on how you've made your walls stop caving in less, I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tad Davis is an audio producer. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST Pair today's episode with Memorializing Your Day with Sara Brooke Curtis - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020514_memorializing-the-day-with-sara-brooke-curtis/ TRANSCRIPT: TAD: My name is Tad Davis. I'm an audio producer in Detroit, Michigan. My advice is to record your memories. A few years ago. My dad took all the VHS tapes that he had taken of him and his friends and us as kids. And he digitized all of them. And we had like hundreds and hundreds of hours of us just doing all these random things. Um, you know, like going to amusement parks and going to the beach and doing all these awesome things. But then like all these moments of us just doing nothing like playing rock band or eating lunch, or like our parents just asking us questions. And like, for some reason, like my family became obsessed with those moments. Like these moments of nothing actually happening. And I, I don't know why but like these mundane with no purpose at all, were what we loved watching the most. After this. Like, I just became obsessed with recording all the little stuff that happens in my life. So like when I moved out of a dorm room or I was hanging out with my friends around a bonfire. I just started recording those moments. And like I could tell immediately they meant a lot to me, it was almost like a peek behind the curtain of like, what happens every day in our lives that like we miss out on, because we we've kind of started recording for like big moments of like concerts or birthday parties. Like we've saved all these moments to record for like big, big moments that are obviously really important to record, but like there's so much that happens in our daily life that like, we should also be recording. ZAK: I mean, how does recording the mundane stuff impact your ability to just be present in those moments? TAD: Yeah. You just want to be present, right. Um, you want to just be talking with your grandma, but I think in a way it's like, it's saying you choosing to record something just so normal and mundane and everyday life is like saying, I want to be in this moment. And I want to remember this moment. I'm making an effort to record and say, I want to remember this moment, and maybe you never watched the video again, but it's kind of ingrained in your head that this moment happened because you made the conscious decision to say, I want to remember it. ZAK: Thanks for listening to The Best Advice Show. I think this episode pairs particularly well with one called Memorializing Your Day with Sara Brooke Curtis. SARA: One thing that I love to do that really grounds me is to at the end of every day, write the top five most memorable moments on an index card. Before I do it, I'll lay down and close my eyes and just scan from the time I woke up in the morning to the moment I'm in right then in bed. And just think like, if something pops like a pop rock in my head, I'm like, okay, that's, that's one... ZAK: I've linked to that full episode in our show notes. If you're enjoying the show, please consider rating and or reviewing on Apple podcasts. If that's where you listen doing that helps other people discover the show. I really appreciate it. Talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren talks to herself like she talks to her bf in Eastern Washington. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: LAUREN: Hi Zak, my name is Lauren and I'm a young-adult living in Eastern Washington. And my advice is that you should talk to yourself like you talk to your best friend. So, for example. If you are feeling really upset about a mistake that you made or maybe a relationship that ended...instead of saying things like, 'ugh, I'm such an idiot.' Or, 'I'm so stupid for doing that.' Imagine talking to your best friend like they were going through the same thing. I wouldn't feel comfortable telling my best friend you're an idiot for leaving your lunch at home. So why do we feel comfortable saying those things for ourselves. I think it's really important to remember that we need to be our own best friends first and to treat ourselves with kindness and to give ourselves a break once in a while. So, remember, talk to yourself like you'd talk to your own best friend. ZAK: I love this advice so much because if we can actually follow this advice, I think we'd be on our way to a lot more self-love and self-regard for ourselves. This episode pairs especially with Jo Feldmans' earlier episode called Being Your Own Best Friend - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020521_being-your-own-best-friend-with-jo-feldman/ and with Steven Handels' called, Self Talking - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/2020610_self-talking-with-steven-handel/ If you want to call the hotline like lauren, call me at 844-935-BEST Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Lee is a mother and family medicine doctor from Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: RACHEL: So my name is Rachel. I am a mom of two kids and my best advice is to bribe your child, your young child, to go on hikes with you by giving them a sucker for the duration of the hike. ZAK: He's like walking along with you or he's in a back-pack? RACHEL: No, no, he's walking along with us. When we bribed him the first time, he walked, like, almost two miles, with this massive sucker. ZAK: So how does the bribe work? RACHEL: Just, that, as long as you're walking you get to have your sucker. ZAK: Ok, so if he stops walking then you theoretically take the sucker away? RACHEL: Yeah, if he demands to be picked up or go on your shoulders or whatever, then the sucker goes away. Yeah. ZAK: This is ingenious, cause we can't walk around the block in less than an hour with our kid. Becuase they just, they meander, they stop, they don't want to walk. It makes walking not fun. RACHEL: No, I know! And a hike should be something that's enjoyed, right? Like, you don't want to be dragging your kid around with you on a hike. And this is a way to make it enjoyable for everybody. ZAK: That is some keen problem solving. If you have some parenting advice, or any advice, I would love to hear it. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brenda Strausz is a therapist from Detroit, Michigan. The Marianne Williamson poem from this episode is from 'A Return to Love.' Have you even been liberated in a moment? I want to hear that story. Write to me at [email protected]. Talk to you tomorrow. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I'm always amazed by stories of people changing in an instant. I think most of us change over time, gradually. But not Brenda Strausz. She was working as an elemnaty school teacher. She loved her students. But, she felt hamstrung. BRENDA: I couldn't give them the love and caring as much as I wanted to because, you know, we were under all these guidelines that we had to do. ZAK: And then one day, she was at a teacher's conferance, and a fellow teacher read a passage from the author and future presidenteial cnadiatde, Mariiane Williamson. And this passage, Brenda says, completely liberated her, upon hearing. BRENDA: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness That most frightens us. We ask ourselves Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small Does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking So that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, As children do. We were born to make manifest The glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others." BRENDA: That changed my life. I sat in that room and I, I had this feeling inside of me, that I can do whatever I want. You know? And that's when I back to school to be a therapist. I didn't have to be, you know, in a profession that I wasn't able to help as much as I could. ZAK: What did you feel in that moment? BRENDA: I felt so full. ha! I can't explain it. It was like this, uh, you believe in Jesus? hahaha. I just rose, you know? I can't explain it. It was the weirdest thing. When she actually said, No, you are powerful beyond measure. You can do anything. So just realizing that it was in me, you know? That I could be powerful and do anything I wanted. ZAK: Brenda Strausz is a therapist from Detroit, Michigan. That Marianne Williamson quote is from 'A Return to Love: Reflections on the principles of a course in miracles." Have you even been liberated in a moment? I want to hear that story. Write to me at [email protected]. Talk to you tomorrow. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shira Heisler seasons her food in Detroit, Michigan. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's Food Friday, and I'm proud to welcome back The Best Advice Show's most prolific advice giver, Shira. SHIRA: So, something that really bothers, as somebody who's pretty into salt and I come from a family, in particular my mother, who's very into salt. She has her own salt shaker at the table. I get very bothered when I'm at somebody's house for dinner, and I want to add salt but there's no salt on the table. So then it just is like, I have to ask specifically the host and they can maybe offended, like, hey, my food isn't salty enough. And that just bothers me cause we all have a different salt threshold. So my advice is, everybody put salt and pepper shakers on the table so nobody's put in this situation to be embarrassed or uncomfortable and the host doesn't get offended...everyone's happy. ZAK: How's your blood pressure? SHIRA: Oh, my blood pressure is so low. My blood pressure is like 90 over 60. One time they actually couldn't even find my blood pressure and I'm like, 'I'm alive!!!' ZAK: Cause it was so low? SHIRA: They're like, 'We can't find it' and I'm like, 'but I am breathing." ZAK: Thank you for listening to another week of The Best Advice Show. I hope you're doing ok, wherever you are. And that this show is helping you. If it is, maybe you'll consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts if that's where you listen to podcasts, or just simply telling your friends and family about the show. Thank you so much. We live at BestAdvice.Show, we're on Instagram @bestadviceshow, talk to you soon. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lil Rose-Wilen (lilmx.abq) is a pleasure seeker living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: WARNING, TODAY'S EPISODE CONTAINS SOME EXPLICIT AND STEAMY MATERIAL. IF THERE ARE KIDS AROUND, YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS EPISODE OR PUT YOUR HEADPHONES. OK, I WARNED YOU. Hi, my name is Lil Rose-Wilen and I am currently in Albuquerque, New Mexico and my advice is to buy a really quality vibrator. I bought my Hitachi Magic Wand vibrator a couple years ago and it has just completely changed my life. I went from rarely every orgasming during sex or on my own to now it's just a part of my daily life to have multiple orgasms. And so I think it's really important that people know that there are tools, very powerful tools, to help them have that part of their life and that can be people with any genitalia, any gender. So, yeah, that's my piece of advice. Buy a fancy vibrator because I have done the math and I think that per orgasm, the cost has paid off to where it's like a penny per orgasm. And I think that that's pretty good. Alight. Thank you. I love listening to your show. Good bye. Today's episode was brought to you by the Hitachi Magic Wand. No, but wouldn't that be awesome if that were true. This was not surprisingly some of the most delightful advice I've gotten on the hotline. If you have anything similar or completely different, I'd love to hear it. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. --- Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow --- Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better. https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9 --- Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at [email protected] this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices