Weirdly Helpful (formerly The Best Advice Show)

Diego Perez is the writer behind the pen name Yung Pueblo. His new book is Clarity and Connection. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 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

Hugh Amano is a chef and co-author of, most recently, Let's Make Dumplings. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 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

Ian Coss is the creator and host of the new podcast, Forever is a Long Time. If you have some advice for me, give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. And if you can think of someone in your life who might benefit from this episode, consider sending them this episode. 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 is an engineer living in Michigan. He gave invaluable plumbing advice last time he was on the show. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST Understanding Time Horizons with Justin Waring. 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

Jamie Feldmar is a food writer, editor, and cookbook author, mostly working on things related to food. Stupid Taxing with Jordan To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 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

April Baer is the host of Stateside on Michigan Radio The Fog of War To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 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

Janine Rubenstein is Editor-at-Large of People Magazine and host of the People Every Day podcast To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 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

Beth Nichols is an amateur baker, professional editor and excellent gift giver. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST Paul Hollywood's Fortune Cookies 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

Andy Eninger is an improviser, writer, facilitator and dog dad. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Is there a principal that you could share? Something for those of us who haven't taken an improv class but something we might try in our everyday life, taken from improv? ANDY: The improv philosophy that is serving me the most right now is this sense of following the follower. This sense of looking up and looking out and seeing what somebody else is doing whether that's the audience. Whether that's the person that you're performing with or the musician that you're improvising with and following where they're going and the magic of then they start to follow you and you follow them and they're following you and who's actually leading? It's almost like, have you ever seen a murmuration of birds when they're flying around. You're like which one's leading? They're all leading. They're all following each other. There's this magical sense when everyone's attuned to other people, you can go in this direction together. Even if that direction changes and changes again. ZAK: I'm thinking about concretizing this. I'm in a Zoom now, right, with a dozen of my colleagues. How do I look to follow the follower in a context like that? ANDY: I think it's really powerful for the person that might be leading the meeting to notice, 'Oh, I think people are shutting down. Lemme follow what's going on there by maybe asking or maybe it's time for me to be quiet and see if someone steps up.' I think that's one of the hardest things for someone who's a real driving personality who's leading a meeting is to shut up and leave a space and let someone step in and speak and I think it's not intuitive for leaders to surrender. ZAK: Is there a check-in that people who are natural leaders, like something that they can do just to catch themselves leading and not following the follower? ANDY: I think for a leader to take on this sense of following the follower, probably the best thing that they can do is ask themself, 'what does this person need?' Often, we're trying to apply our perspective and view of the world to everyone else. It's like, 'here's what you need to do' rather than finding out and listening to understand what another person actually needs. Asking those open-ended questions and I think that it goes counter to how many leaders think about themselves. 'Oh, I have to be smart. I need to have the right advice. I have to know what to do.' And there's so many situations where we simply can't know what's right for this person to do in the moment. We may have the vision in mind where we want the scene or the job, the project to head. But what this person needs in the moment can probably only come from that person. It's not going to come from us. I think that's what a leader is surrendering 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

Caveh Zahedi is a filmmaker and creator of The Show About the Show and 365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 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

Andrew Zerbo is the chef and creator behind Fermental State More fermenting advice from the archives! To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 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

Kat Harris (@therefinedwoman) is an author, coach and host of The Refined Collective Podcast. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST Kat's last episode from the show is ESSENTIAL! - listen. 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

Chelsea Ursin is the creator and host of the podcast, Dear Young Rocker To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST SELF-TALK ADVICE FROM THE ARCHIVES Self-Talking with Steven Handel Expecting the Opposite with Sarah May B. Talking To Your Best Friend with Lauren Evolving Self-Talk with Kelly Travis 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

Maddie Pasquariello is a nutritionist. She runs @eastcoasthealth If you have some advice for me, call 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

Joe Keohane, a veteran journalist who has held high-level editing positions at Medium, Esquire, Entrepreneur, and Hemispheres is the author of The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting In a Suspicious World. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: JOE: My name's Joe Keohane. I'm the author of the new book, The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting In a Suspicious World. ZAK: We've all gotten rusty talking to strangers because of COVID but also because of our phones and because of where we are as a culture. The thing that I like to do with this show is give people something they can try today. So, give me a strategy for getting back in to where it's not gonna overwhelm and feel like we have to go be friends with the world. JOE: First know that everybody is anxious. Everybody was anxious about talking to strangers before this for a lot of reasons I get into in the book and everyone's especially anxious now because we've been in the hole for a year. So, start easy. Start with a waiter or waitress. Talk to somebody that's at a coffee shop in a structured, public place where your roles are clear, right. You're not just sneaking up on someone on the street which I would not advise people to do. And there's a really cool technique that I learned from a woman named Georgie Nightingall who's this communications expert in London. I took a class with her where she taught people how to talk to strangers and she was very keen and very good at it. The idea that she had was, it involved scripts. So, when we have an interaction with someone at a corner store, right, you go in and say, how you doing? And the person says good, how are you and you say, good, thanks. And that's it. You've put no effort into it. There's no curiosity being exercised. It's just a way to recognize that you're standing there, right? Cause it would be weird not to say anything but you don't want to put any effort into it. So, that's a script and we use those all the time to converse cognitive load and things like that. When you find yourself in a situation like that and someone asks you a scripted question, give them a specific answer. So, what Georgie advised and what she always does and this is brilliant and I do it all the time. When someone says, how you doing? Georgie says, ehhhh, 7 our 10. So now you're off script. You're in uncharted territory. The person's gonna be alert now being like, ok, something different is happening here. I have to dial in. I have to pay attention. And then Georgie will say, how are you doing today? And now she's modeled something and they follow her lead because it's rude if they don't. This is how we communicate. They'll say, oh, pretty good. I'm about 8 out of 10. And then she'd say, what'll take to get you to a 9 today? And then they'll be like, my mother's not been feeling well. Maybe I'll go see her later. Maybe she'll be feeling better. JOE: When you get to that point, you get a glimmer of the other person. You get a glimmer of the depth and complexity of another person you would never register as a human being. People in service positions are often dehumanized. But, just a little trick like that is super useful and super easy and it's really funny and people I find are often kind of delighted by it. It's playful. It's audacious. You do that stuff enough, it leads to a little interaction and you'll feel good after you do it. 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

Haley Nahman runs a weekly newsletter and podcast called Maybe Baby, which was recently written up in The New Yorker To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Welcome back to the Best Advice Show and today, we're gonna get meta. We're gonna talk about advice about advice. Back in episode #48, Julia Putnam touched on this.. JULIA: You should never give unsolicited advice... ZAK: Today's advice-giver is Haley Nahman. She is a writer and proprietor of the excellent newsletter, Maybe Baby and her advice dovetails nicely with what Julia said. HALEY: I think it's also ok to not follow advice and just make mistakes. I think are own experiences teach us lessons better than anyone else. I really don't think you can learn lessons before you experience them yourself. All the wisdom is out there. If you could just hear wisdom and live it, we would all be perfect but that's just not really how it works. So, yeah, I think my final comment is the worst case scenario is you fuck up and now you are smarter and now you know yourself better. The stakes aren't as high as ever think they are and your life will teach you so much more if you're paying attention than other people ever can. ZAK: Yeah. That's great. I love that. Cause especially me as the maker of an advice show and people that listen to this advice show, I think we can get obsessed in trying to subscribe to or search for the best path, but, can't know until we know. HALEY: Yeah, I spent so much of my 20s trying to follow everyone else's advice. It lands you into a really weird place. You don't know who you are. A lot of pent up emotion that you just want to release that feels like...you feel misunderstood. And it doesn't really help you grow to just follow the perfect path. So, there's always an upside to fucking up. I saw a Kurt Vonnegut quote that said, "the truth is we know so little about life, we don't know what the good news is and what the bad news is" and I think that's true of our mistakes too. We don't know what's gonna help up and what's gonna hurt us until we find out. 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

Mark Bittman is an American food journalist, author, and former columnist for The New York Times. Knife Skills Are Bulls*it from THE BITTMAN PROJECT To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's The Best Advice Show where every episode I give you one discrete morsel of advice. Today, I'm pleased to welcome back, Mark Bittman, the famous food writer and cookbook author. You know Mark is? He's like your uncle who reminds you, it's fine. Just relax. For example, sometimes you hear a chef talk about how important knife skills are. Mark Bittman disagrees. MARK: And, I saw some famous chef say, if your knife skills are bed, you'd better up your game. And I'm like, how can this possible matter. I know we're not videotaping this but my grandmother, I mean peasants all over the world, cut food by holding it in their hand cutting it with a pretty dull knife. Or maybe with a sharp knife. But that's a different kind of knife skills. But, chefs grew up or in the days of apprenticeships, would be giving a box of onions and say, here, cut these onions and you'd have to learn how to cut 50 big onions in 20-minutes and that's an amazing skill. Incredible. A home cook doesn't need to know how to do that. You cut an onion up any way you want to cut an onion up. It'll still taste fine and the fact that someone can do it in ten-second and it takes you a minute, cause even a novice can't take more than a minute to cut up an onion. So what? So it cost you 45-seconds. I mean, the dish takes you a half-hour to make. 45-seconds is not a big deal. ZAK: It made me think that maybe there's a metaphor in there, too. Like, life is so much more accessible when we don't think we have to be perfect or something. MARK: Or expert. I mean, mostly we don't. No one thinks they have to drive like...I don't know the names of any race car driver. No one, thinks they need to drive like somebody who drives in the Indy 500 if such a thing still exists. No one thinks they need to play tennis like Naomi Osaka just to give credit where credit's due. You just do those things. Maybe you feel bad or you wish you were better but somehow...and I think it's because chefs took over food television and so everybody thinks well if I'm gonna cook, I need to be able to cook like a chef. And, it's not in your interest to think that you need to be a chef in order to be a cook. You just need to think like your grandmother or great-grandmother. These people just cook and they don't fuss around with like, is this parsley minced uniformly enough or is this onion...did it take me 10-seconds to perfectly slice this onion or is this browned evenly enough? Your stove's not good enough for that. You don't have a good enough stove to do a real stir-fry. There's all these limitations in being a home-cook. Live with it. You're not a chef. It's fine. It's not a big deal. 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 Naylor is a audio producer and presenter in London To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I was gonna talk to Emily about a few Spanish comprehension strategies she's devised. But then I realized, she and I had something in common. ZAK: Is that a phrase over there, people-pleasing? EMILY: Yeah, it might as well be my middle name to be honest with you, Zak. (Laughter) ZAK: Emily People-Pleasing Naylor. I am Zak People-Pleasing Rosen. It's nice to meet you. (Laughter) EMILY: You too. Pleasure. Only if you like meeting me. If not then... (Laughter) ZAK: What do you think is the alternative to people-pleasing? Just to please yourself? To be a self-pleaser? EMILY: No, I don't think that quite it either. I think it's to be a person with people. You don't have a to be a people-pleaser. You don't have to be a person pisser-offer. You're just a person with people and it sounds so simple and obvious but perhaps we don't spend enough time thinking, you are a person. Think about how complex you are. Your emotions, hopes, ambitions, worries...what you're gonna be thinking about in 24 hours time isn't, that something said something weird and maybe they don't like me now. That's irrelevant. Think about how you and how complex you are as a person and then think you're in a room with 20 other people and they're just as complex and not in a negative way but you're not that big an influences on their life in that moment. They're going home. They've got to think about what to have for dinner. So, you're just a person with people. ZAK: Ugh, you're making me cry. I love this. Be a person with a people! Stop trying to curate their interpersonal dynamics. Just be with them. EMILY: And be present because ultimately when you're people-pleasing you're trying to manipulate a situation. You're taking a step back. You're not in the moment. You are analyzing little things. You're worrying and that can be quite self-centered and you aren't a person with people. You are yourself worrying about all these things which you can't control. So, don't waste your energy on that. Just be present and listen and try as best as you can in this kind of mindful, social way to let go of those little things. Doesn't mean they're not gonna worry you. If they do, just accept that. You can't shut it off, but, just try to listen to what that person's saying and if they like you or not, that's not really a) your concern and b) you can't control it, so... ZAK: Yeah. Yeah. Them liking us isn't the point. It's just a possible by-product of being present with them. EMILY: Exactly. And ultimately your job as a human being is to socialize with other human beings. We'd love that to be positive. Fine. But also if you are in a super important business meeting or you're in a courtroom and you're defending your client and then the prosecutor is whatever...you don't want the prosecutor to like you. You want your client to get the best deal. Forget about the people-pleasing. 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

Debra Allison is a seasoned Spanish teacher in California. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: DEBRA: So, my best advice to acquire another language is repetition, repetition, repetition. I'll repeat that again, repetition, repetition, repetition. I'm gonna give you a little tidbit of information about the ways we acquire language and then I'm gonna tell you the two best ways to actually acquire language. The tidbit of information is this. Some people say that they are bad at learning languages. But, there's actually no such thing as somebody who's bad at learning languages. If you're listening to this podcast and understanding it, you're actually good at learning languages. The two ways that we acquire language is one, by reading and the other is by listening. What I mean by reading is when we read materials right at our level and for some people who are beginning to acquire their language, that might be those books with 1-3 words on a page. We learn vocabulary that way. We learn sentence structures that way. We learn grammar through reading. The second way we acquire grammar is by listening right at our level so it's understandable....almost 100 percent understandable but it's repetitive. It's that notion of ugh, I can't get something out of my head. It's stuck in my head. When my students say to me, "Ugh, Mrs. Allison I can't this voice...this phrase out of my head." I might apologize on the outskirts but inside so happy. This is not short-term memory we're talking about. We want to hear something five-thousand times so it just falls out of our mouth without even trying. Language learning or more technically speaking, acquiring a language should absolutely be effortless, like your first language was. 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

To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST STOCKING UP WITH VALERIYA TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's Food Friday on The Best Advice Show and as always, I'm really hoping you'll call the hotline and give me your piece of advice. It's 844-935-BEST. Valeriya called the hotline and offered this... VALERIYA: I feel like often people are really willing to share food with someone when that someone is going through a really big thing. Like grieving the loss of someone dear to them or weathering the exhaustion of a newborn baby or a big thing and that can result in the presence of an overwhelming amount of lasagna in one's kitchen and so what I'd like to advise instead or rather in a addition to is to share food more often as a way of extending comfort to people in your life even when they're struggling with something acute or maybe less intense like a difficult job hunt or a flooded basement or whatever. I feel like in those one-off instances it's maybe even ok to reach out a few hours before dinnertime rather than sign up through a meal-train that you create or something and offer a spontaneous food drop-off. Sometimes when people are least expecting it a warm, home cooked meal can go a long way. Pro tip I found that making sauces like really simple pesto with some garden fresh herbs with whatever nuts you can find in your pantry or if you want to make it fancy, not so hard, but so fancy aioli and putting those little sauces in little zip-locks or small jar can real seal the deal. So, yeah, cook more often for your friends when they're struggling with things that are not big things. 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 (@gretchenrubin) is the co-host of the Happier podcast and wrote New York Times bestsellers Outer Order, Inner Calm, The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before, and The Happiness Project. - QUIZ - ARE YOU DRIFTING To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Gretchen Rubin is back with another absolute gem on drift. GRETCHEN: So, drift is the decision that we make by not deciding or by making the decision that is just the easiest and causes the least friction. You know, I go to law school because I'm good at research and writing. I become a doctor because both my parents are doctors. I get married because all my friends are getting married. I take this job because someone offers me this job. We're drifting because we're not making an intentional choice. We're not deciding what we're going after. We're just doing the thing that comes most easily. Now, what can be deceptive about the word drift is it sounds like the easy way or the lazy way but drift is often accompanies with a tremendous amount of work. I drifted into law school because I thought, well, my father's really happy as a lawyer, maybe I'll be happy. I'm good at research and writing I can always change my mind later. It's a great education. It'll keep my options open and I don't know what else to do with myself. So drift isn't always the easy way but it's the way that makes us make the non-choice choice. And sometimes drift works out find and people drift into situations and careers that they're happy with. But a lot of times drift doesn't work out that way because we haven't chosen to do something, we've just drifted into it. So, you know, there's a good change that maybe it's not gonna be a great fit. ZAK: How do we know when we're drifting? GRETCHEN: One is if you often have the feeling that you're living someone else's life. Or you feel like you're off-track. I was as a lawyer, clerking for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and I was enjoying it tremendously. I felt so lucky to be there and yet I did feel like I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I felt like I was sort of on a lark. On a detour is the only way that I can describe it. It didn't feel like it was the center of my life. Or, if you have a fantasy that something's gonna blow up your life or in a way that would somehow make it impossible for you to continue or if you have a fantasy life where you're constantly day-dreaming. Or, maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe you're very distressed when somebody talks about something that maybe was once interesting to you but now it's like you can't even bare to think about it because it's so emotionally fraught for you, you can't bare it. Or if you get extremely defensive if somebody suggests that what you're doing isn't the right choice or not the only choice. If you're an associate at a law firm and somebody says something like, well, financial security isn't taht important to me. And you become furious at the idea that somebody would say that. It's like, why is that so energized for you? Often, drift is just feeling like I just did the obvious thing at every turn. I just did the thing that everybody expected for me or that I expected for myself and I took the obvious choice. Often, that is drift. ZAK: Just so you know. If you are drifting. That's ok. 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

CNN "Reliable Sources" Interview with Rose and Bud Fenster They Call It ‘Insane’: Where Myanmar Sends Political Prisoners ‘The darkest days are coming’: Myanmar’s journalists suffer at hands of junta TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: 36 days ago, Danny Fenster was detained and thrown in jail in Myanmar without a charge, without access to lawyer and without a phone call to his family. He has subsequently been charged under penal code 505 a which essentially makes it a crime to practice independent journalism. Danny's family still have not been able to talk to him. It was just last week that he was finally granted a phone call to the American embassy in Yangon. Danny has a hearing this Thursday where he faces as much as three years in prison. Again, the crime being practicing independent journalism. Danny is a friend of mine. I've known him and his family for nearly all my life. But even if you don't know Danny. You should care about this story. I've put a bunch of links to learn more in the show notes. I hope you'll take a few minutes to learn more and then tell your friends and family. For now, though, I'm honored to get some advice from The Fensters. Danny's mom Rose. His dad, buddy and his brother Bryan. ZAK: You three are going through a living nightmare. Have you noticed something that people say that is very helpful or something that people say that isn't helpful. Cause a lot of times we just don't know how to engage with people suffering a tragedy. ROSE: I can speak. Especially from my hospice nursing experience and dealing with life and death and family and all that. I mean, it's definitely some people walk toward you with the right words. Some walk toward you with...they don't know what to say. It might agitate you but you've got to realize that they're coming from a space of love and trying to hold a space for you of love. But people also need to realize, I guess, that sometimes in these situations you don't have to say anything. Just be present and a hug, a look is helpful if you don't know the right words. BRYAN: Yeah, I think just being there really. Showing up, a hug. Don't get me wrong the meal train has been delightful and people going out of their way to do stuff, obviously, just the simple things, really. Knocking on the door, smiling, giving hugs. That's been going a long way for me. BUDDY: You know, it's funny, a lot of people they mention you something like, "I don't know what I would do! I would be losing my mind!" I just smile to myself cause it's like, you don't know what you would do and I don't know if you'd lose your mind. I'm not losing my mind. I'm angry at the unfairness of it. It's a parent, knee-jerk reaction to say something like that and I don't know if I'm gaining anything from it or not, but I think to myself, you really don't know until it happens to you. No one prepares for this kind of thing. Don't bring me food. Just sit down and talk for a minute. That's nice. I appreciate that. I'm not as social as her and Bryan. I'm the quiet guy here but it's very appreciated when someone...doesn't even have to be related to what's going on. Just to talk. Say hi, how you doing. ROSE: And in multiple texts that we're getting and people every couple days people check in and say sending love and prayers and no reply needed. So, that's nice because it's hard to reply to everybody but you care about everybody that's caring for you. BRYAN: And as exhausting as it is to keep talking about this, I find myself comforting my own self by comforting others cause people don't know what to say and I enjoy very much being like, it's ok, come here and let me get my arms around you. Let's talk about it. It's alright. It's a lot of work but it makes me feel better at the same time. ZAK: To follow Danny's case...to sign a petition to pressure the Biden administration to secure Danny's release and to learn more about sweet, brilliant, Danny Fenster...visit BringDannyHome.com 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

Mark Bittman is an American food journalist, author, and former columnist for The New York Times. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Guess who's back. Back again. Bittman's back. Tell your friends. Bittman's back. Bittman's back. Mark Bittman is back to talk about protein. MARK: We do have an obsession with protein and the fact is that the official recommendation for our protein intake is about double what most people need. So, if you're following labels or MyPlate or whatever you're probably eating twice as much protein as you need to eat already. But everybody is obsesses with protein so they're eating more. And actually protein turns out to be much easier to get get than it used to be. So you could actually eat much less. So this is two myths that you're busting at once. One is that you need more protein than is recommended in order to be strong and build strong muscles. That may be true if you're an elite athlete but it's not true for anyone else. So that's one end of the spectrum. And the other end is it's hard to get enough protein and especially for vegans. That's also completely wrong. The key here is that a balanced diet is what matters. Whether it's vegan or omnivorous or flexitarian or pescatarian. If it's a balanced diet you're almost assured to be getting enough protein. 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

Lainey and Brody thank and plank from Metro-Detroit. WORKING HARD w/Lainey TRUTH-TELLING w/Lainey GENERATING ENERGY w/Lainey MINIMIZING w/Brody TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: You know me. I'm a sucker for a good morning routine and also the sound of children's voices. So today is a perfect storm of an episode. BRODY: I'm Brody and I'm 10 years-old. LAINEY: I'm Lainey and I'm 7 years-old. ZAK: And my niece and nephew, Lainey and Brody whom you've heard on the show before have this excellent morning routine. It's called Thanking and Planking. BRODY: It started off where we just started every morning doing a little workout, then my dad gave me and my sister an idea to start naming three things that we're grateful for everyday. And we call it Planks and Thanks and it's something that we do every other morning sometimes and it's just a little workout and something that shows what we're grateful for. LAINEY: It kind of just like wakes us up. Gets us ready for the day. And shows us how much we should be grateful for all the things we have. ZAK: And how long have you been practicing this morning routine? BRODY: Maybe two, three months probably and yeah, just makes us happy. Makes us really thankful and just happy with what we have. ZAK: Do you find that you come up with new things to be thankful for? LAINEY: Everyday we can't say, I'm thankful for my couch. I'm thankful for my couch. I'm thankful for my food. I'm thankful for my...we need to see how many things we have and be grateful for everything that we have. 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

Eric Johnson is the host of the Follow Friday Podcast. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Not all of us but most us are struggling with some form of social media addiction. I certainly am. And that's why today's advice is very refreshing and helpful. ERIC: Yeah. So my advice is to mute people aggressively. Specifically on Twitter but I think this applies to any sort of social media. And my reason for that is part of the way I think you have a good experience online is to curate who you follow to really seek out the best people and try to and just focus your time on the people who are most interesting to you who also represent a broad range of your interests who are not just one thing. But, a necessary compliment to that is that I think you should also be muting, un-friending, un-following...generally speaking policing what else gets into your feed and really trying to be vigilant about not letting too much in that's going to unnecessarily wind you up. There are good reasons to get angry. There are good reasons to get sad but there's a lot of crap on social media and the most effective way to maintain your sanity is to just, you know, mute people, block people, move on...not them drag you down into their swamp, you know? ZAK: Not them drag them down into their swamp. That's really good. Why are we diving into other people's swamps voluntarily? There's no reason to do that. There is the promise of social media that you can learn about divergent points-of-view and stuff and this isn't necessarily what you're talking about. What's the criteria for, if I'm gonna go onto Twitter today and mute the swamp people. What am I looking for? ERIC: Yeah, I think it is really important to distinguish between, I disagree with this and this should be muted. It's not a complete overlap. My main criterion is, is someone acting in bad faith? Are they saying something just to get a rise out of people? Are they saying something that I think they don't really mean? It's a gut call. I don't perfectly know for sure. If you spend enough time online, you can get a sense for when someone is earnestly trying to represent how they feel about something versus when someone is playing the game. Right? When they are playing the algorithm or when they're ramping the all caps or the exclamation points or the adjectives they use to really wind people up and get attention. ZAK: And now after having done this for several years now and ramped up over the last year, how do you describe the difference in your spirit now that you've done this? ERIC: Oh my gosh. It's so much better to really be taking control. I do think that there should be more more intentional proactive efforts made on the part of Twitter and Youtube and Facebook and other platforms to let everyone have a saner experience...to make it easier and more transparent of how to use these tools, how to mute people but as someone who has dove into the settings and taught myself how to us them I do feel so much happier when I go online. To your point earlier when you're talking about the difference between what you disagree with versus what you're muting...I don't think people should be getting all of their news, all their information from social media. I think that a healthy news diet comes from all sorts of places and not just online, not just any one website or social app but the reality is that we spend a lot of our time on these apps. This is how, especially during the pandemic, a lot of us have been doing our socializing is just hanging out on these apps and so I think, you know, the more control you can exert over it, it really does have a profound impact on your sanity, your happiness. At least that's what I've found. It really works for me. 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

Mark Bittman is an American food journalist, author, and former columnist for The New York Times. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: If you're a home cook you probably know the name, Mark Bittman. He's a legendary food writer. I've been cooking out of his How To Cook Everything book which my cousin, the goatman gave me when I was in college. I love Mark Bittman. He has a new podcast it's called Food with Mark Bittman and he's here on Food Friday with some very simple, yet profound advice. ZAK: You said something. I think it was in your show that truly re-wired my brain, which is this. If you don't want to cook dinner...DON'T! MARK: I did a story, literally 30 or 40 years ago where I called people who I respected in the food world who were that prior generations' famous food writers...they're all dead...and I said, what do you do when you don't want to cook and one guy said, you know, there's nights where we have a tuna fish sandwich and a glass of milk and we're really happy about that. So, the advice, the straightforward advice there is look at the big picture. It doesn't really matter what your diet is on any given day. It just matters what your diet is in the long-run. Doesn't matter if you have snickers for dinner one night as long as the majority of your diet is sound, it's not like you're going to go into insulin shock and die. You know, or if you decide to eat a big steak that you're gonna have a heart attack. It's like, what are you doing on a day in, day out, basis and if you follow the sort-of...if I say the phrase, good diet, what comes to everybody's mind is the same thing. It's more fruits and vegetables, more unprocessed plants in general, less junk food, fewer animal products. Done. There's nothing else to say. So if you have that attitude over the course of the year then whether you have ice cream or snickers for dinner. As I said to somebody the other day, I'm eating a lot of licorice. It's not an important thing. It's not the big considering and one of our problems is that we look for silver bullets. We look for evil-doing things. Like, don't eat X. Don't drink Coke. Yeah, don't drink Coke all the time but a Coke is not gonna kill and I think it's important...nor is a head of broccoli gonna save you. It's what you do the majority of time that matters. 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

Somi Arian is a tech philosopher, international speaker, entrepreneur, award-winning filmmaker and LinkedIn Top Voice among UK influencers. Her work focuses on the impact of technology on society at large, the future of work and digital marketing. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Today on The Best Advice Show, where do ideas come from? SOMI: I'm Somi Arian. I'm a tech philosopher, entrepreneur, investor, filmmaker, author. One of those things that really helps me in terms of my creativity and what, you know, has helped me been pretty successful in where I am considering, if you see a picture of where I was born and brought up you'd never believe where I've gotten to and the one thing that really helped me with that was this idea of thinking about, I'm not the one making the music. I'm like the hole in the flute that the music come through me, right? ZAK: Somi's advice is inspired actually by one of my favorite poets who's name I've been mispronouncing for years! ZAK: I say Hafiz wrong. How do you say it? SOMI: Yea ZAK: Hafiz was a Sufi poet from the 1300's and here's the poem that Somi's talking about. A Hole in a Flute I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through. Listen to this music. I am the concert from the mouth of every creature singing with the myriad chorus. I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through Listen to this music. SOMI: I'm a big believer that you don't create ideas but ideas come to you. The idea is already out there. If you think about mathematics, did Einstein come up with those equations or did the equations already exist? You think in terms of laws of physics, chemistry. It's all out there. We are like receivers and transmitters so when you think of yourself as a receiver and a transmitter the thing that makes you successful is when you capture that idea or the idea comes to you. You don't actually capture it. You enable yourself like what makes you successful is put yourself in a position where those ideas come to you and them when they come to you...the thing that I have written on my wall is that every minute that you allow that idea to live longer, you know, it has a better change of surviving and becoming reality. 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

Laine Kaplan-Levenson is a producer and reporter for NPR's Throughline podcast. Before joining the Throughline team, they were the host and producer of WWNO's award-winning history podcast TriPod: New Orleans at 300, as well as WWNO/WRKF's award-winning political podcast Sticky Wicket. What's your essential summer advice? Call me at 844-935-BEST. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Summer's around the corner and really, let's be honest, it's already here. I'm svitzing as I record this from my home office in Detroit. So today, I'm pleased to share this essential summer tip from the radio producer, Laine Kaplan-Levenson. LAINE: It's two-fold, really. It's that no matter how old you are, you should never stop wearing kids tear-free sunscreen because if you just stop and think about it for a second, at what age do you want to be tear-full? Not only should I buy kids tear-free sunscreen, I should but kids tear-free sun-stick because that gives me ultimate control. It's hand-held. I am moving at a pace that I am comfortable with around my nose, under my eye, on my forehead and the chances that my entire day will be ruined are just minuscule compared to the gloopy-gloppy grownup sunscreen that, you know, is really full of tricks. So, you know, in terms of what brand I'm not going there. I'm not getting paid by anybody. Obviously, you know, there's natural options to look into and, you know, I don't really have a favorite I'm gonna sell on your here, but if you've never considered this, I highly recommend as we get into the summer season that you drop whatever adult situation you've been fooling yourself with and you go the store and you buy a kids' tear-free sun stick because your life will never be the same. Alright, thanks, man. Talk to you later. Bye. ZAK: Laine is a producer on the excellent NPR show, Throughline. What's your essential summer advice? Call me at 844-935-BEST. Stay cool, pal, 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

Alex Chambers is an educator and artist in Bloomington, Indiana and Laura Soloman is a lawyer in Philadelphia. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's Food Friday on The Best Advice Show and today I've got a twofer. If you've been listening to this show you know I've been excitedly collecting your grandparents advice. If you have some grandparent advice for me. I would love to hear it. Give me a call on the hotline at 844-935-BEST. So today I've got two pieces of food-related advice both from these contributors' grandparents. First, Laura Soloman. LAURA: I think a lot of people just use only one of their senses when they cook. That is, their eye sight. They look at the recipe and maybe they really follow it to a T. But they don't use any of their other senses and I think that really misses an important opportunity. When I was growing up I learned to cook with my grandmother, my Oma, who was blind and as a result we had to use all of our senses. She taught me how to feel the dough, how to measure the ingredients in the palm of my hands, not a measuring cup. How to listen. You know, when the pan was ready for the food. How to even smell when a baked cook was ready to come out of the oven. So, that's my advice for Food Friday. Don't just read a recipe and then wonder why it doesn't turn out right. Use all of your senses because I think if you do that means you're fully present and you're gonna really enjoy cooking just like you enjoy anything else in life when you're really fully there for the experience. Enjoy. ZAK: I love this. Thank you, Laura Soloman. And thank you, Oma! Next up Alex Chambers is gonna talk about something his grandma taught him. ALEX: So, my grandmother died just about a year ago. It was in the midst of COVID but it wasn't due to COVID. She was very well protected from that. She was 99 and a half. Died peacefully. She had said 99 and a half was about when she expected to go. And that was plenty. Her advice for having a good, long life was eat plenty of butter and chocolate. I'm pretty happy to try to follow that advice. At her funeral, one of her 8 daughters remembered that another thing that my grandma always used to say was no bad days. And I think what she meant by that was just that you find a way to get something good out of your day. Find a way to appreciate something that happened during your day. That seems like it was probably good advice. Agreed. That's great advice and one way to do that, it sounds like Alex, is to eat butter and chocolate. How can you have a wholly bad day if you get a little butter and chocolate in there. You can't! 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

Sarah Geis is a Chicago-based producer and editor, and former artistic director of the Third Coast International Audio Festival. She's the keeper of audioplayground.xyz. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST Follow us on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bestadviceshow/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bestadviceshow Twitter: https://twitter.com/muzachary 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

Jonathan London is a leadership development professional and songwriter from Michigan. -- My New Habit for Tackling Nagging Tasks: Power Hour. - Gretchen Rubin To join The Best Advice Show Power Hour Club, email [email protected] and I'll send you an invite. Our first power hour is 6/21 @ 3 PM EST. 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

Zoë Komarin cooks fun, gorgeous, healthy, delicsious food @ ZOEFOODPARTY TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I'm so excited about today's Food Friday because I'm bringing a returning champion, my friend, the chef, Zoe Food Party. ZOE: My advice is for everyone to take some time once a year or quarterly to Marie Kondo their condiments. Marie Condiment. TM her obviously but also, slash me. The reason being, and I'm sure you can relate. I've actually seen your fridge before so I know this for a fact but if I open my fridge I'm also a culprit. We are all hoarding far too many condiments. Granted, I love having extra stuff around. A hot sauce here, a pickle-y, briny, you know, pickled pepper jar there but if we really were to open our refrigerator and gaze deeply into the abyss we would recognize that we do not look at, touch, or even feel enticed to play with 2/3 if not more of the condiments that make their way into that door. ZAK: Gold's horseradish. I haven't touched this in a long time. I don't remember when I bought this. Trader Joe's Green Goddess salad dressing from December, 2020. Spicer Orchard's Cinnamon Apple Butter. I used it once. Pillsbury vanilla frosting... ZOE: So, what happens. We get something as a gift. We find something when we used to be able to travel. We buy something extra at the supermarket. Whatever it is, we use it, it starts to get cruddy or sticky or in some cases rusty and kind of congealed and then it becomes icky. ZAK: Hoisin sauce from 2018. Oh my god. ZOE: We all have this problem where suddenly we have this collection of things in our refrigerator door literally weighting it down physically but I think beyond the weight of that door filled with all these extraneous, unusable condiments, there's then this blockage. ZAK: Enchilada sauce, best by July 2020. ZOE:The blockage is if you want to open your refrigerator and be inspired by what to cook or what to eat, even if it's just as simple as a sandwich and then you have the hurdle of extra things that are unusable and inedible blocking you, you're gonna shut that fridge door again and again and again thinking there's nothing to eat in there but if you open it and you're inspired by what is there, you're more enticed to pull a few things out and mix and match and make something beautiful for yourself. So I really feel like, again, it could be once a year. If you're inclined to do it quarterly, more power to you but Marie Condiment that door and clean it up and some people might see it as wasteful but to be perfectly honest, I think it's more wasteful to just have it sitting there unused than to just give yourself that editing eye and that breathing room. Your refrigerator needs a little breathing room. ZAK: I love this because once you do this you can open your fridge and literally use anything. 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

Phoebe McIndoe is an artist and host of the podcast, Telling Stories. Cheering up with Leora Howling with Laura To offer your own animal kingdom advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: PHOEBE: I think the advice that I'm really offering is to identify a few bird calls for yourself, get to know the sound a bit and then you more or less created your own treasure hunt going around your city because you can go out and try to identify the calls and find the birds. So I'll start the call off and a robin will fly down to the branch near me. Especially when it's at eye-level and you're looking in its eye and the robin is looking at you and you feel there is a connection there. Dear, Zak. This is a poem. It's called Calling for Robins - When the jobs ran awry - and the real money dried up I wanted to let their liquid gold, spill through my ears When love went awry After change and tears I went to catch eyes with robins in the park To feel the old spark igniting in new ways They will just look at me as though I've communicated something in their language and they can't quite understand whether it's real or not. They listen to me and I have no idea what I'm saying to them. So sometimes I try and attach a feeling or an emotion. You are not sure whether it's understood you or not and I think that we always feel that whether it's an animal or a human being. We wonder if the connection is in our heads or whether they felt it too. When words were too Difficult to pronounce the soft whistle still urged itself up I offer myself to Robins, like the worm with the death-wish Their call giving a shape and clarity to the day And in the pin-point of their eyes I seem to find some understanding Rooting me back to the earth. So, when everything begins to feel awry I advise Calling for Robins. PHOEBE: So, let's carry 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

Kelly Travis is a health and wellness coach and host of She Doesn't Settle. TBAS # 38: Self-Talking with Steven Handel ZAK: WARNING, today's episode contains use of the s-word. 8 times. Kelly Travis is a health, wellness and leadership coach and she's been doing some work. Not just with her clients but on her self. KELLY: I never had a positive thing to say about myself. It derailed me a lot and what resulted was I never really used my own voice. I never went after goals I actually wanted. I would freeze up in taking action on things that were really important. My self-worth was really shitty. Like I just wasn't good enough. And this work has allowed me to see myself differently. ZAK: One of the things thats helped Kelly move forward is this thing that she does. When she finds her self talking shit to herself, she's figured out a way to talk back to that shit-talker. It's a simple question she asks herself, is this thought useful. KELLY: Because the shit-talker is loud. The other voice in our head that's encouraging and is a cheerleader and tells us to keep going is very quiet. The shit-talker is loud and that's the one we head all the time cause it's on auto-pilot. It's the same stuff everyday. Research shows us 85 percent of our thoughts are the same from the day before. And that question, is this though useful...doesn't matter if it's true...IS IT USEFUL and being able to choose something else that will keep us going in a positive direction. Right? So if I say to myself, I'm such a shitty mom. I can't do this. I suck at this. Is that thought useful? No. What can I think instead. I'm doing the best I can right now. It's messy. It's chaotic but I'm doing the best I can. ZAK:And so it's like, we're going through our day. We hear the negative shit-talking come in and we stop ourselves and say, is this thought helpful? KELLY: Yeah. And that's the part that requires the work. Reminding ourselves to check in because as a society we are just on auto-pilot. We don't pay attention to what we're thinking most of the time. So, having a post-it note up on your computer that says, ask the question or setting a reminder on your phone to ask yourself the question so it becomes something you start to do automatically without thinking after time. ZAK:And we answer the question. Is this helpful? No, it's not helpful. And then what? KELLY: You think of a neutral thought. I don't believe in bullshit positive affirmations. The brain just doesn't work that way. It never worked for me. Now, if you have people that like them and they work, awesome, but it's hard for the brain to go from you suck to oh my god you're amazing! It doesn't work that way so we want to go somewhere in the middle. A thought that we can latch on to that we can still believe but is more helpful, right? So, whatever that is whether it's like the example I gave you which is I'm doing the best I can. Or, you know, something along those lines that keeps us moving in a positive direction. 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

Tiffani Rozier is a chef, writer, chaser of curiosities and host of the podcast, Afros + Knives To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Hey pal, thanks for joining me for another edition of Food Friday. TIFFANI: My name is Tiffani Rozier, I am what I refer to as a semi-retired chef because my podiatrist only wants it that way right now. I'm a food writer and I host and produce a podcast called the Afros and Knives podcast. ZAK: You step into your kitchen with a very specific vision in mind. You saw this recipe on the internet and you want to replicate perfectly. Well, that is one way to do it. But Tiffani says there's another way. TIFFANI: So if you show up to your kitchen prepared to practice the act of cooking then you kind of leave the idea of failure and mistakes behind as a dictatorship and you just lean into, like, hey this might not come out the way I had originally planned. This might not look like the picture I saw. But in the end no one's tasting this but you or maybe your family and if it's inedible you throw it out, you start again. And so with cooking it's like, connect with the food, connect with yourself. Or connect with your family history. There's just so many things you can be doing when you cook and it's just like, you can learn more about your family history, you can learn more about yourself and your temperament and your ability to wait for something. Cause waiting for yeasted dough to rise can be a thing and if you don't wait long enough you don't get the result you want. If you wait too long, it falls apart. Learning how to have a certain inner-sense of timing and then on top of that you need to stay curious and curiosity for me is kind of like the center belief of my life. People's favorite meals come from that. You're tasking that experience. The experience of a person coming into their kitchen, practicing the art of cooking and using a tremendous amount of curiosity and imagination. ZAK: You're surprising me in one way but you're also reaffirming some core philosophies here. Like, in art we talk about the process is more important than the product. In travel we talk about the journey is more important than the destination and in cooking I always thought of it as an exception. No, it's about the finished thing. But you're saying no, this IS about process over recipe or end result. TIFFANI: Exactly. Getting people to feel good in the kitchen and making them curious about what's possible. It's just like, there's so many ramifications. And so for me I'm like, go back to your kitchen and be curious. If I can tell you nothing else about cooking...go back to your kitchen and stay curious because if you're curious you will chase the information. You will get on Youtube and watch someone cut through an onion so you know what a small dice, or a mince or a brunoise looks like. You will go to a video to watch how somebody sautés a steak perfectly every single time. You will chase the information because we pursue the things that are important to us. For me it's always a win. Stay curious. Be curious. You buy a whole chicken and the first question you should ask is, what can I do with this? 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

Elia Einhorn is a host at Sonos Radio and Pitchfork Radio and editor of the new zine, Sober 21 To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Quick warning. Today's episode contains a hardy amount of swearing. ELIA: Hey, I'm Elia Einhorn. I wear a lot of hats. I host Sonos Radio, Pitchfork Radio. I hosted the Talkhouse podcast for years. My newest project is Sober 21. It's a compendium that just came out via the Creative Independent as a beautiful zine and online for free and it's these 21 sober musicians sharing crucial tips and hints and advice for musicians who are thinking about getting sober. Maybe sober curious or are newly sober and are afraid that their career is over. We put it together to say it is no. Shit is about to get way the fuck better! ZAK: A lot of us are getting back out into the world and it feels really good. And for the sober among us, Elia has some advice about making that transition smooth and healthy. ELIA: My advice is this. Don't walk around a bar with a pint glass full of Diet Coke. Get your drink in a rocks glass. Get whatever you're having. A Diet Coke. For me, it's a cranberry and soda with lime but get it in a rocks glass. And there's a wonderful piece in Sober 21 about this by Jen Champion and she titled it, Soda Water with a Lime But Will You Put it in a Rocks Glass" and it's something that in sober communities of people who are out at shows, are out at clubs, are playing concerts, we just know this. It's just this implicit experience. Put it in a rocks glass then you don't have some asshole asking you why are you not drinking. But really, why aren't you really drinking! Come on, man. What's the deal? You know that drunk person who's pushing too far. You can do it at parties too. I find you're either at somebody's house where they're putting out glasses if they're feeling a little fancier. Or, there's like a red plastic cup essentially or the equivalent. The Solo cup. Don't drink out of your can of Diet Coke. Don't drink out of your can of Diet Coke. Don't drink out of your gatorade. Put your Gatorade in the plastic cup and drink out of that and you'll almost definitely not have to answer the question all night. And also, a little bit of an addendum; refresh your drink yourself. Cause people are so thoughtful, if they see your drink's getting low they'll grab one for you. Get ahead of that. Refresh it yourself and always have enough in there that you're like, oh, I'm good. Thanks. It's amazing how much of the 3rd degree that totally gets ahead of. I am staunchly pro people drinking when they can drink safely. It's an awesome thing. And I want to say that because I feel like people have this idea that people who are sober are like, oh man. Fuck these guys that are drinking. Absolutely not. It's awesome. If I could drink normally I'd drink all the time which is how I know I'm an alcoholic. And I say that because what I'm about to say next is it's usually the person who's a little but too drunk who doesn't understand the social cues around this. It's like, why aren't you having a real drink? Cait O'Riordan from The Pogues talks about this in Sober 21. Why aren't you having a proper drink cause she lives in Dublin so she deals with this shit all the fucking time. It's just not worth having that conversation with everyone you happen to come across. A lot of people got sober during the pandemic. AA meetings are flooded with new people. A lot of people hit their low, hit their bottom during the pandemic and found help, thankfully and now they're re-emerging and doing things in a whole new way. Getting sober is not supposed to be about being boring and sitting around the house watching Netflix. You're supposed to be out in the mix living your life to the fullest, I'd say. You almost didn't get to have a life. Now you to have it. Fucking live it. 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

Dearest Listener, starting this week, I'm going to put the show out Monday, Wednesday and Friday instead of every weekday. Making TBAS is my favorite thing right now but I have other work responsibilities that require more of my attention. I hope you understand and I thank you so much for your on-going support. Love, z 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

Laura Herberg is a reporter in Detroit and the host/creator of COMPLETE ME. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: This episode is a long time coming. 15-months coming, in fact. That's when I recorded this interview originally. I've been holding it because for the most part we haven't been going to many event together, which is starting to change, thank God. And that's what today's advice is about, at least in part. LAURA: So, Zak. You know that I have trouble getting things done. So much so that I created a whole podcast around that idea. ZAK: It's an absolutely wonderful show. It's called, Complete Me. LAURA: But one thing I'm really proud of which I'm going to give advice on today is the fact that I even launched the podcast in the first place. So for people out there who have a creative project that they've been working on or even just an idea, actually, that they really want to put out in the world. My advice and this is what I did with my podcast is just book the launch event now. Even if, maybe it's not the final, final...the film is finished or whatever event. Maybe it's your showing of where you're at so far. But book it now, tell your friends and don't back out of it no matter what and I think that's the kick in the pants that a lot of people need to get something done. ZAK: I think you're absolutely right. I mean, speaking personally. Deadlines are the only way I'll get anything done. So I think that's brilliant. I feel like, it doesn't even have to be a creative project. You don't have to be an artist or "creative person" to do this. I was thinking, like if you have been meaning to clean out your basement for 3 years, you could plan a house party and send out the invites and then you better clean that shit up before the guests arrive. LAURA: Yes, plan a clean basement party! I love that! 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

Aaron Mondry is a journalist and salad maven. PAUSING WITH AARON MONDRY. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's Food Friday. And today, we're gonna discuss a long held, deeply felt belief of mine. You don't need to buy salad dressing. AARON: I take 2 parts oil, 1 part vinegar and put them in a glass jar. A reused jam jar is a great option. And I shake it up. That's the really, really basic blueprint for a salad dressing. But there's lots of ways you can vary it and mix it up and make it interesting and cater it to a slaw, some greens, Asian radishes. Whatever you want. But that's just the basic blueprint. It's so easy. ZAK: Yeah, I love it. What's the vinaigrette that you make the most frequently. AARON: I'd say I do 2 parts olive oil, 1 part lemon juice, fresh squeezed, of course. Finely mice some garlic. Maybe finely mince a shallot or an onion. Just a little bit. Salt. Pepper. G-d just that is so delicious. It's so good. But you can add a teaspoon of mustard, a little bit of yogurt. If you want to get fancy you can add some black garlic if you have any. It takes 5 maybe 10 minutes. It tastes fantastic. It lasts in the fridge forever and it tastes better than any store-bough dressing you can get your hands on. I guarantee it. ZAK: Yeah. I agree. Before I started making my own dressings my fridge would have like a collection of store-bought dressings that would never get finished. And they would just be all coagulate-y and this frees you from that burden. AARON: Yes. Frees up fridge space and impresses friends, strangely. They're like where'd you get this dressing. Oh, I just made it. Really!? ZAK: Yeah, I feel like you just have to do it once and then you'll be doing it yourself. AARON: Yeah. ZAK: You person at home who hasn't made their own dressing yet. AARON: Yeah you. Why haven't you? ZAK: So you do lemon juice and balsamic vinegar? AARON: I'll typically just do lemon juice but there are tons of great vinegar options including balsamic vinegar, rice wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, sherry. They all have their own unique taste obviously but I just like lemon juice the best, I think. ZAK: Our house dressing of late has been olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey and horseradish mustard. AARON: That sounds really yummy. And thank you for mentioning honey cause it is good to add a little sweetener too cause it can be really sharp without it so some honey or maple syrup will balance it really nicely. ZAK: Yeah. The shaking is also very satisfying I find. AARON: Yeah. Sometimes I'll just take a salad dressing out of the fridge and just shake it and not use it and just put it back. ZAK: Is that true? AARON: No, it's not true. Laughter. But the shaking is satisfying. 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 produces stories in Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I got this voice memo from my buddy, Tad, the other day. TAD: I think to sum it in one sentence is to try to be more...when you're making things or trying to come up with new ideas or working on a creative project that you're excited about buy maybe are stuck and don't know where to go with it is try to unlock your inner-child. I think I've seen that with a lot of creators that I'm envious of. When I hear the things they say, they're so introspective and honest in a way that a little kid could be and maybe not in the sense of the material that they're using but the sense of how they're thinking about it. That there's a vulnerability. That they're not afraid to say what they're thinking and try things that might be out of the norm or uncomfortable as an adult. As I've grown I've just kind of realized that, that the best way for me to make better things or think in a way that is unconventional is to be more playful...to bring out that child-like wonder that kids have and use that for my benefit. It's kind of advice that I need as I'm making things. Ok. Thanks, Zak. 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

Max Linksy the host of a new podcast, 70 Over 70. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Hey, it's Zak. You're listening to The Best Advice Show and today we're gonna talk about something that I've been wanting to talk a lot more about. We're gonna talk about endings. MAX: My name is Max Linsky. I'm the host of a new podcast. It's called 70 Over 70 and it's from Pineapple Street Studios which is a podcast company I work at. ZAK: Max is gonna invoke some advice his dad gave him at a critical juncture in his professional life. MAX: I was leaving a job and it was the first job that I ever had where my leaving was gonna be a problem for people I was working with. It was gonna make their lives harder? ZAK: Because they were gonna have to pick up the slack you were leaving? MAX: Yeah. There were some things based around things at the time I could do at the place and that was gonna be hard. It wasn't just gonna be more work. It was gonna get worse for a little bit after I left before it was gonna get better. And people were frustrated that I was leaving. And I don't like letting people down and so I was really torqued about it because I knew it was the right thing for me to go and I could't figure out how to both do the right thing and leave and not let people down and I did what I always do when I'm stuck in that way and called him and tried to talk it through with him and he said this thing which stuck with me was that he thinks that how you leave is as important as you how you start. I found that to be a really powerful idea and one that I never thought of. I think we put so much energy into first impressions and so much energy into how we start a job or start a relationship or start a friendship or start, even an interview...I mean I do all these interviews and there's so much energy in how it begins and how we present ourselves and what that means about how it's gonna go. And I think we punt on endings a lot, you know. And in part because they end later than they should have and so feelings have sort of crept in and started I think to kind of poison things and one of the things that was helpful about that idea for me...I mean it helped me in that moment and Iw was able to see it from their vantage point a little more. I stayed a little bit longer than I wanted to but I felt really good leaving. Like, I made a goal to leave feeling good about how I left and that really changed the urgency with which I had to leave, you know? And I think if had just been like, I know the right thing is to go. I can't do this perfectly. Like, rip the band-aid off. I just think it's a thing that would have bothered me going forward. And the other piece of it is that it would have changed my impression of the whole time. And that's the other piece of this that I think is really significant and I think it's really true with relationships. It's true with friendships. And I think particularly when things end badly or end because they need to end, there's a tendency to only remember that last stage. And I think that's a pretty toxic thing, actually. And it's worth investing in ended it well so that all of the strong parts of that relationship or that time or that job or whatever...you get to hold on to those and not batch 'em in with the shitty end when everyone was being their smallest self. And how you leave is as important as how you start. Just that phrase from him in that moment really flipped the way I was thinking about it and the terms of the choice. 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

Andy Kushnir is a writer, landscaper, cook, dad and hubby living in LA To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Hey, it's Zak. It's The Best Advice Show and today we're gonna think in the long term and change our behavior in the short term. ANDY: I grew up playing sports and it occurred to me as I get older and my body continues to break down and get worse and worse by the minute that I can't do this forever and I played soccer growing up and you go and look at a soccer field and there aren't 60 year-olds running around and in the pandemic I struggled with depression and I started to take stock of the older men in my life. None of which I would qualify or describe as happy people and I thought, what's that about? Now, all the older woman in my life are thriving. They are in a million clubs. They're doing a million things. They have a vibrant social life and they seem to be doing very well. And, you know, I started to think, a lot of the older men I know are sitting around and watching MSNBC all day and they don't have anything to do. They don't have a hobby. They don't have a place to go. They don't work anymore. Their whole lives were for work and making money and I so I need to start developing a way to be happy that isn't related to work. So, I began cooking and taking cooking very seriously in my house. We moved during the pandemic from a little apartment in Los Angeles proper and we moved to the valley which is like the suburbs of LA and we got a little house that has a yard and I've taken to re-doing the full yard and that brings me a lot of happiness. I've got all of North Hollywood helping me. All my neighbors have lent me tools which has helped foster community as well through this hobby and being outside has made me happier. Its helped with my depression and its helped me talk about things that aren't just work and honestly I think the whole experience is an exercise in anti-Capitalism. Just finding happiness where I am with what I'm doing and not thinking about how will I pay for blank or where am I in my career. 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

Dr. Kira Newman is a physician and scientist who studies poop all day. AVOIDING CATASTROPHE WITH BRENDEN MURPHY To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I took a walk this weekend with a gastroenterologist friend of mine. So, of course we're gonna talk about poop. If you could tell everybody who poops one thing, what would you tell them? KIRA: I think if I could just tell them one thing it would be that there's no right number of bowel movements to have. I think a lot of people get sold this bill of goods that like, you need to have one perfect bowel movement a day. It should look like a snake made out of toothpaste and if you don't do that then there's something wrong with you. But really and truly there are lots of people who poop more than that, less than that...different consistencies and that may just be there normal. ZAK: That's gonna put so many people at ease. That's gonna put so many butts at ease. KIRA: Hopefully. There's definitely stuff we tell people to watch for in their poop. Blood is not a normal thing that should be in poop. Black tar-like poop can sometimes be blood thats been digested. These are things that I want people to know that they should be concerned about. But most poop most of the time is just a sign that the body is doing what its supposed to do. And that's a wonderful thing. ZAK: Can you introduce yourself? Tell me who you are and what you do. KIRA: I'm Kira Newman. I'm a physician. I'm towards the end of my training for gastroenterology. So I study poop all day everyday, talk to people about their poop and help them problem solve when their poop isn't doing what its supposed to do. KIRA: I wish that people paid a little more attention to their poop sometimes cause I think that people don't give it the appreciation that it deserves. ZAK: How do you mean? KIRA: We spend all this time thinking about...you talk about evolution and the magical evolution that gave us eyes that are capable of seeing. But, we all have these guts that are capable of taking all kinds of things from the world and turning them into nutritious things that build an entire human being and nobody appreciates it. Take a moment to be, instead of grossed out, be excited and be like, wow, my body just did something really cool! My body took all the stuff I ate and broke it down and turned it into fuel for me. That's pretty rad. So I hope that people can appreciate it a little but more and just think like, hey, my gut did this for me today and it does it everyday. It doesn't ask for a lot. It doesn't look like the prettiest organ on your body but it's pretty marvelous. ZAK:Thank gut! KIRA: Yeah. Thank gut! ZAK: Thanks, Kira. KIRA: You're welcome. 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

Zoë Komarin cooks fun, gorgeous, healthy, delicsious food @ ZOEFOODPARTY Zoë was last on the show talking about the superiority of spoons. TRANSCRIPT: Zak: It's so nice to be with you for another addition of Food Friday. Before I get started though, I've been doing some soul searching about this show and I have some big questions about what I want this show to become and what you want this show to become and I want to put together a Zoom call with a handful of you who consider yourselves dedicated listeners...people who love the show a lot and listen a lot. I just want to ask you some questions. If you want to get in on this, I would really appreciate it. Email me at ZAK@ BESTADVICE.SHOW. I will be forever in your debt. Ok, on to today's Food Friday advice. Zoë: Hi, my name is Zoë of Zoë Food Party. I'm a chef and a food curator and in general I have a lot of food ideas and I have sticky hands. Zak: Get ready for a very simple, very effective refrigerator trick. Zoë: I can honestly say it has consistently provided me with a much easier time quickly making myself a meal than any other trick I can think of and that is to always keep a rotating bowl or box or plate of the odds and ends that you're cooking with. In your fridge, ready to grab. And what I mean by that is, every time you cut half an onion for a pasta sauce you have this other half. Or every time you use a couple slices of tomato and you've got a bunch of tomato left. All of these odds and ends I feel like people just put them back in their fridge in a haphazard way. Something's on the top shelf. Half a lemon is in the door. Maybe you wrap your onion in saran wrap because of the smell. Whatever it is, they all need to land in a box. And the box should be clear and the bowl should be clear so you can see in there. And every time you open your fridge and think, oh, I'm hungry and I need to make some food and I don't have a thought out plan. The first thing I do is I pull the bowl or box out and land that on my counter because I'm starting with what I have...what's already in use...what's in flux. I've got half and onion and a carrot and a bit of tomato. If I'm making a sandwich, those should all go in it. It just helps me...It's a catalyst for creating something. It's a starting point. Zak: And for wasting less. It's so great. The amount of avocado halves that browned in my life. Zoë: That's the saddest thing I've ever heard in my whole life. What's sadder than not getting the full delight of a whole avocado. Zak: This is fantastic. What's something you recently made out of odds and ends? Zoë: Breakfast. I reached for this scrap bowl and in it were half a zucchini, some red onion. We have some spring garlic from the farmer's market that we store in the fridge. There were some mushrooms. All these little bits and pieces that we just hadn't used up the day before that landed in this bowl and we quickly threw those in a cast-iron pan, got a garlic and salt and chili flake on there and then made some avocado toast and piled it on there and it was absolutely delightful and you know, sometimes it just doesn't matter. Like, you can make a curated avocado toast with exactly what you're imagining should go on one or you can just take whatever you have in the fridge and make one and it's delightful. Zak: What's it gonna be? Curated avocado toast or whatever avocado toast. I'm going for the latter everytime. Thank you, Zoë. If you don't follow Zoë on Instagram, you must. She puts out amazing videos. You'll learn a lot. You'll chuckle. @ZoeFoodParty. Like I said earlier, if you want to participate in an interactive feedback session with me, email at ZAK @ BESTADVICE.SHOW. And thank you in advance! 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

Laura Solomon is an attorney dedicated to providing specialized, but affordable, legal services to nonprofit, charitable organizations, foundations, business leagues, political action committees, and philanthropic individuals. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I'm Jewish and in our tradition we have this thing called tzedakah. That's Hebrew word that translates to righteousness. But really tzedakah is this ethical obligation we have. And one of the core tenants of this obligation is that we're supposed to give ten-percent or our income to charity each year or to people or organizations in need. The ten-percent principle is something I heard my whole life. But one thing I never learned, at least explicitly, is how to give. And that's where today's advice, from Laura Soloman comes in. LAURA: So, I'm a lawyer. I have a law firm devoted to forming and representing charitable organizations and working with philanthropic individuals to achieve their charitable missions philanthropic visions. I think people benefit from having philanthropic mentors, role-models. I was blessed in growing up with a grandmother who was a survivor of the holocaust who would get her reparation check from Germany and we would sit down at her kitchen table in Washington Heights, New York and write check after check until it was all gone for charitable purposes. And she had a catch-phrase. In German she'd say, "the last dress has no pockets," meaning you don't hoard it. You don't keep it for yourself. Give freely with a full-heart and give now and so I think finding a philanthropist of a generous person that you look up to as a role model can be incredibly helpful. ZAK: I love that. And so you had your grandmother as your philanthropic mentor or at least one of them. What are some questions that I might ask my philanthropic mentor once I find them? LAURA: How have your priorities changed over time? Have you always been passionate about the environment or last year were you more interested in addressing racial disparities? I think it's important to understand that, you know, our thoughts and feeling change over time and therefore our priorities and therefore our philanthropic priorities. ZAK: What's the objective of having the mentor? LAURA: I think you can learn to be good at philanthropy just like you can learn to be good at something else. ZAK: Like, what do you think makes a compatible mentor/mentee relationship in this dynamic? LAURA: Somebody who's open to talking about it. Not feeling as through money or philanthropy is a taboo subject but one that should be part of our everyday lives and part of the conversation. You know, one of the things I think COVID has shown us is that we all have this shared vulnerability. But we can also all share in the repair. 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

Andy Eninger is an improviser, writer, facilitator and dog dad. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's The Best Advice Show where everyday, I invite a different guest on to offer one piece of advice. Today, we're gonna talk about moving through grief in our own unique ways with Andy. ANDY: My father passed away from COVID-related caused a couple months ago. ZAK: Oh man. I'm sorry. ANDY: Yeah. It's been rough on top of a pretty rough year for him and certainly for the family. I'm also in such a busy phase right now. And I'm like, you can't busy yourself through something like this. And so, I just had to figure out something new and someone recommended, well, think of a ritual. Have a ritual. And so now, I have created this box and I put in this box different things that remind me of him and different aspects of him. A t-shirt that he gave me when I was a little kid that I still somehow have, a ceramic chicken because he hoarded his mom's ceramic chickens after she passed away. Some other little trinkets and I pull out this box, I light a candle and I just breathe ten times and then whatever comes up, comes up. But just that ritual has been profound in just letting me move through it and be really aware of it and be mindful of actually letting myself do that. Because I know on the days that I don't do it, I'm a crab. I'm just terrible. ZAK: So this is a daily thing? ANDY: Yeah, I do it everyday, every other day. I've replaced my meditation with doing this because it's such a focus right now. ZAK: So how did you figure out that this would be a good ritual for you? ANDY: Trial and error. I wasn't sure. I was like, I don't know what a ritual is. When I think of ritual I think of going to church and something huge and based in history. And just simply thinking, well I can make up what it is was completely outside of my experience. I don't know, I'll put together a box and put some things in that box. I don't know what to do with it. I'll just breathe. And I discovered that just that time with those things and those memories of those things also bring is so profound in letting me bring those things to the surface rather than having the be underneath. Here's my little box. I'm gonna use this box for the next ritual. So the next thing. I'm gonna do one thing at a time right now. As I move through this and when it's time to take on the next thing, I want to use this same box and I want to start thinking what the next process that I want to move through...the goal that I'm working toward. But put those signs and symbols into it and use it as a thing that I can return to. Light the candle, put on some music and assemble the elements that allow me to move through that. I think we often feel like ritual has to be something that's handed to us but I think that what's needed in a moment actually lives inside of us too. 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

Adriana Lozada is the creator and host of The Birthful podcast as well as a working doula, a childbirth and postpartum educator and a sleep consultant. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Adriana is here today to teach us something that I am so incredibly uncomfortable with. Asking again. ADRIANA: This was year's ago and my husband and I were going to the Apple store because both our earbuds had busted. He had an iphone. I had an ipod so his, they were like, here's your replacement, no problem. For me, it was like, you need to make an appointment with a genius. There was no appointments. And it was hours wait. So I asked the person helping us, couldn't they just give it to me. You know that's what's gonna happen at the end. My husband just got it. Can't you just give me one again. He was like, well, I don't know...policy. And I said, can you ask the manager. I'm a doula. So it comes from advocacy and making your voice and needs heard in a very conversational and curious way. Like, why not? Lets just explore this. Is it possible. Not, I'm demanding something to happen. So, that person went and asked the manager and came back and said, no, the manager said no. And I looked up and I said, can you ask them again? ZAK: Whoa. ADRIANA: And of course he laughed and my husband's looking at me like, what!? And he's like, sure. I'll ask again. I'll humor you crazy lady. And he went and came back with my earbuds. hahaha. And he's like, here ya go. And so that was very much the epitome of the ask again moment. But, it's a moment that I've definitely honed in with all I do with my doula clients. Understanding that circumstances can change and asking again does require you to put yourself out there and it does require some vulnerability because you already have the answer you didn't want. If you ask again you might get the one you want. ZAK: My fear is by asking again, people are gonna think I'm a diva or something. How can you give people like me the confidence to actually ask again? ADRIANA: The key point there is you do need to put your ego aside. The outcome doesn't reflect to you or who you are. And I think that also comes from...I'm originally from Venezuela so my other mother tongue is Spanish and there you've got two different words for the verb, to be. And you have ser and estar. And one (ser) is you are. A condition that isn't gonna change. Like, I am a human. I will always be a human. But the other one is estar. It's a condition that is depending on how the moment is. I am cold. That's not who I am. I am cold right now. So, I think having that flexibility in your brain of this doesn't define me has been helpful in being able to navigate that asking again. And then from being a doula for so many years, I get to have the unique perspective of being able to go to different hospitals, work with different providers at home, at schedule cesarian, unmedicated births...The whole gamut and I see one provider might come up or a nurse and say, no, we need to do this and I know just last week in this same hospital down the hall with different providers, we did something different. And so knowing that things can be done in many different ways. There is that strength inside me of, well, I know it can be done differently. Lets see if we can make it different today. 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

Ned Spector dance, sings and inspires from Metro-Detroit. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST listen to COUNTER PROGRAMMING! TRANSCRIPT: NED: I'm Ned Specktor. I'm 40 years-old. I just really stand for positivity, optimism and good energy. I feel like my thing that i've been given is energy and I want to share that. I want to build a platform for good. I want to light people up. No matter what situation I get into, I'm just trying to bring good energy to it in a very, very genuine way. When I watch Ned's videos on Instagram. It makes me want to get up and do aerobics. So, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna cue this music (electro-pop music begins) and as we listen to his advice, if you wanna do some jumping jacks, I'm not gonna stop ya. NED: My best advice is, as fast possible in your life and even if it's later in your life...but man, like, fight for the time to bring your passion to life. If you said, what do you stand for, I'm on a mission to get people plugged into why they're here and I just feel like it gets buried under bills and fear and jobs and everything but, man, I don't care if it's at night, on the weekends, in the morning, please schedule time to work on the thing that lights you up the most, period, end of story. I feel like the world would be so happy even if you're going to a job that's 9-5, maybe there's a creative way you can bring it into your job but if you know even going into that job, if you know Tuesday nights from 7-8:30, that's my time to work on my passion project. Like, you're ok with the BS that happens. You just know, you know there's something else going on here for me. I'm cool. I'm gonna honor where I'm at like Danny Johnson says, prosper where you're planted. But man, please schedule time to work on your passion. I just feel like we all have a gift. As corny as it sounds. But I feel like we're more than a 9-5 and I think we should honor that. Do great. But please just do it. Yeah, and what I so appreciate about your framing of it is, it really only takes 10-minutes a week or a minute a day. You don't have to quit your job and move to LA. NED: And I will say that. Cause sometimes I get a little radical. I'm like black or white. We've gotta quit our job and go do this. And I've learned to live in the grey a little bit. Ok, cool. I'm working on this live show. This motivational musical we're gonna bring to the dance floor and it's literally, dude, it has literally taken me 6-years. Like legitimately its taken me 6-years because A) insecurity and B) sometimes I can only work on it once a week. But there's a great book called The Compound Effect. Small behaviors practiced consistently over a long period of time produce massive results. Brick by brick. Drop it in the bucket, drop it in the bucket. Like, schedule it. Time Ferris, great podcast, I'm sure you're familiar...he's like, if it's not on the schedule it's not real. And it's so true. You're never gonna be like, oh, I have an extra 90-minutes. Not gonna happen. So, schedule the time for your passion. 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

Erin is the Minister of Communications for the Society for the Advancement of the Crush Agenda. MAY 7TH IS INTERNATIONAL TELL YOUR CRUSH DAY! TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Yes, I know that's Food Friday but it's a national holiday and we must observe. ERIN: Hi Erin. I'm the Minister of Communications for the Society for the Advancement of the Crush Agenda, a mostly fictional organization that runs a very real holiday, International Tell Your Crush Day. ZAK: When you're talking about crushes. Is it specially romantic of not necessarily. ERIN: Yeah, not necessarily. I think we all have that connotation and that model of crush can help you know what the feeling is. Like, is this a crush or is it not? You know when you have...sometimes we call it sparklies...that whatever the physical feeling is that goes with that intellectual pining for someone. Yeah, it can be a friend crush. It can be someone you appreciate a lot. There's a lot of room here. We're not too big on specifics and exact rules. ZAK: Yeah. And so what are you big on? ERIN: We're big on knowing that people can't read your mind. That's a big premise of good communication in general I think. We all kind of go around thinking...well if they knew they wouldn't have done that thing. I think we assume that our intentions are clear and that our experiences are clear and they're not and so we're big on, if you want somebody to know something, tell them. And so, we think the world is better when people get to hear that they're loved and they're noticed and a valued part of your community and your world. ZAK: I can think of what it sounds like to tell someone you want to be romantically involved with tah you're interested in them. But how might it work for platonic friendships and people in your life? ERIN: We really encourage people to reach into their own creativity and their own thoughtfulness and to figure out what the message delivery needs to be for their particular situation. There's also two categories. There's the people you're gonna tell, I have a crush on you. And that could sound like, hey, I just wanted you to know that I love it when we both show up in the same places and it always makes me so excited if I know you're going to the meeting I'm going to. If you ever want to get ice-cream, let me know. Like, that could be a basic crush tell. There's also people you shouldn't tell you have a crush on. Whether it's your boss or someone you're gonna have to see everyday and it might make things super awkward. But, if you want to celebrate the day, please join and tell those people, you've been my teacher for the last five years and everything you share fills me with excitement for the work that I do in the world and I can't thank you enough. There's so many different ways to do it. I'm gonna use this crush day to tell someone that I had a a really sweet dream they were in. Like I don't even know if I have a crush on them. But in the dream it was so nice being in their presence and so I'm gonna send a text and tell them. ZAK: I love this. I'm thinking about if someone came up to me and said that, like, to be honest I would be wondering, oh that's so sweet...like, are they interested in me as a partner or are they just interested in me as a friend? How have you dealt with these dynamics? ERIN: That's a great question. I think being careful with your words and saying as much as you need to. Like, you can even say, hey, just so you know...I'm in a committed partnership and I'm not in a position to date other people right now but I also want you to know that I have a little crush on you and it's just fun seeing you when we're both around. Being clear. Setting up what your boundaries are...if you're not sure where you want to go and you want to leave it open, LEAVE IT OPEN! 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

Sarah Knight (@mcsnugz) is the author of the NYTimes Best-Selling No F*cks Given guides and host of the No F*cks Given Podcast. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: SARAH: I have a piece of advice that has kept my 20-year relationship moving smoothly and it involves saying no and setting boundaries. So, I call it, MVP...Mutual Veto Power. And this is something that's been working for my husband and I since the early days. We got together in 1999 and it means that you both have the power to say no to something and not be questioned. If I say no, I don't like that paint color. No, I don't want that couch. No, I don't want to go on our honeymoon to Tokyo...The answer is no and we've agreed to not pre-argue about it. We're not gonna debate. We're not gonna engage in guilt-tripping. It's just a no. We both get to have that Mutual Veto Power and what it means is you avoid a lot of conflict and if the other person is just neutral on the thing...you know, on the vacation destination or the paint color or whatever then you go-ahead and do it because that way one of you is getting what you want. But if anybody is a no then you don't do it because that way nobody has to do what they don't want. And I have to say, you know, it works for the little stuff and it works for the big stuff and it just takes a lot of the pressure off of a relationship and this could work with, you know, a client relationship, a family relationship. ZAK: Because you've had so much practice with this...I can imagine when it first starts it takes some restraint to not push back. SARAH: It does and I think, you know, what we've learned as a couple over time is that life is much better when you don't force one another or guilt another into doing something the other person doesn't want to do. What you're doing when you say yes to things that you don't want to do or force other people into saying yes to things they don't want to do is you're poisoning the time that you do send together. You're poisoning the relationship. You're creating toxicity that doesn't need to be there and it is not ever, I don't think, my intention or anybody who's trying to get me to do somethings intention to make me frustrated, resentful, angry, anxious about it. Wouldn't it be so much better to just rip-off the band-aid at the beginning, say no, have your no be respected and go on about your day and you know, be able to do things with and for one another that you're both excited about it? ZAK: Hell yeah. My wife and I, we've been together since 2006 and I think some adjacent practice that we do, it's called Who Wants it More? You have to be really honest about, do you actually care about this? And if you do. If you really want to go out to eat rather than carry-out, just invoke, I think I want to go out more than you don't want to go out. And it causes us both to evaluate how much we do care about and then just to be like, ok, you care more. We're gonna do the thing that you care more about. SARAH: That's a really good way to phrase it. I have something similar where I talk about making a selfish decision. And I think you can differentiate between good selfish and bad selfish and what I like to advise people is, listen, is the decision that you want to make...is it helping you more than it's hurting anybody else? Because that's probably good selfish. Bad selfish is when a decision you want to make hurts other people more than it helps you. In which case, why aren't you doing it. Why not just go ahead. Go with the flow. And that kind of ties into the MVP rule of, if it's neutral then the person who wants to do it, we can do it. But if either one is a negative, we just both don't do it. And again, that means that at least somebody is getting what they want all the time and nobody is getting what they don't want, ever. 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