Nostalgia is powerful – and it turns out, experiencing it regularly can boost our mental health, especially during difficult times. In this episode, we share:

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We look back on the concepts, tips, and takeaways from our first 50 episodes, choosing 10 that have changed us the most and inspired the most listener response:

Language warning: Even though we usually keep our language clean, we do some swearing in this one, so you may want to listen with headphones.

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Join us in a fun and liberating exercise: The F**k It List. Think of it as the anti-Bucket List. Instead of “Things to do before you die,” it’s “Things to stop doing so you can fully live.” It’s a list of things that don’t bring you closer to the life you want, and therefore bring you farther away from it.

The F**k It List can include big or small things that you may have done out of obligation, or optics, or in service of goals you used to have, but you are consciously letting go of. Because you get to decide!

We share some of the items on our current lists, then talk about some of the questions you can ask yourself to make your own F**k It List.

Language warning: Even though we usually keep our language clean, the title of this episode just doesn’t have the same power if we sanitize it. So you may want to listen with headphones.

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Back in Ep. 13, Stop Shoulding, we discussed why “should” is a word rooted in expectation, obligation, and criticism. Since then, we’ve mostly eliminated it from our vocabulary, which has felt liberating and has significantly boosted our happiness.

Even so, there are still plenty of silent shoulds lurking in our thoughts. Though we may not even be aware of them, they are nonetheless driving our feelings and actions. We surface our most common silent shoulds about career, family (including The Mommy Wars), and life in general and reframe them in a more intentional way. Ultimately, we believe there is no “should” -- WE get to decide what we want and choose to do, and so do you!

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Do you ever feel anxious about not knowing what your calling is, because you’re interested in so many things? Well, you may be a Scanner, and the good news is that you don’t have to limit yourself to just one thing.

When Melia talked in In Ep. 47 about identifying her core purpose, Gill shared some anxiety about still figuring hers out. Soon after (perhaps by kismet!), she discovered the book Refuse to Choose!: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love, by Barbara Sher, which describes two types of people: Scanners and Divers.

Scanners like to scan the horizon for a variety of interests instead of deep-diving into just one. A Diver, on the other hand, is happy being completely absorbed by one field. Melia and Gill talk about which identity resonates for each of them and invite you to share, too.

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Happy New Year! It’s FINALLY 2021.

Melia and Gill talk about what they’re taking forward with them from last year, and what they’re happy to leave behind. They check in on how their 2020 goals ended up going in spite of it all, share how they’re paring down their goals for the new year, and offer a few tips to help you think about your own goals.

Big caveat: Survival is still the primary goal right now. If you want to set goals for the year, great! If not, totally understandable. You make the rules, and you don’t have to do anything. If you do set goals, focus on what you truly want, instead of what you think you “should” do.

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It’s going to be a different kind of holiday season this year, and it’s important to acknowledge and accept the range of emotions we’re feeling. "Good vibes only" isn't realistic or helpful. We are human, and living through very challenging times.

Even in normal years, the holidays can be tough or emotional for a lot of reasons, and the expectation that we will be merry all the time can make us feel even worse.

Melia and Gill share a few ways we can all make space and grace to feel it all this holiday season – accepting what we can’t do, looking for what we can do, embracing an “all vibes welcome” mindset, and making a “Want To Do” list.

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Melia and Gill interview Daman Tiwana and Khyati Thakur, hosts of the excellent podcast Brown Girls Read. They chat about books, cocktails, and cultural differences – plus the habit-changing strategies that have helped them the most after reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Daman and Khyati met for the first time at a women’s book club meetup and started their podcast earlier this year. Both Daman and Khyati lived in India until they moved to the US for their masters programs, and their discussions about books are through the lens of their unique perspectives and experiences as immigrants and women of color in the US.

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We’ve all been through a lot in 2020, and the weeks leading up to the presidential election were especially stressful and emotional. It’s time to press the reset button to renew our energy and hope.

Melia and Gill recorded this episode two days after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were announced as the next president and vice president of the United States. They talk about how they’re dealing with intense emotions from the past few weeks (and years!) and how the book Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski has been a game-changer. They share strategies – like movement, laughter, and creative expression – they’re using to move through stress cycles and avoid burnout and chronic stress.

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October is ADHD Awareness Month, and Melia has some surprising news to share: she was recently diagnosed with ADHD, at age 40.