Why Staying Calm All the Time Is the Wrong Goal | Nadia Narain & Katia Narain Phillips

Key Takeaway

When you notice yourself getting activated, do a 60-second glimmer check-in: bring to mind one small moment that feels good—a pet, coffee, music, sunlight, or a kind interaction—then track the physical shift. Notice whether your shoulders soften, breath deepens, or attention widens. This is not about forcing calm; repeated practice builds awareness of what helps you regain enough capacity to choose your next response instead of reacting automatically.

Episode Overview

Nadia Narain and Katia Narain Phillips explain how tiny moments of safety, connection, and sensory pleasure—“glimmers”—can help build a more flexible nervous system. They share practical somatic exercises, from widening the visual field and releasing jaw tension to slowing down chores, eating regularly, setting boundaries, and treating yourself with the care you would offer a child.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why Staying Calm All the Time Is the Wrong Goal | Nadia Narain & Katia Narain Phillips from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. As somebody who walks around with a hair-triggered nervous system, constantly scanning for threats, anxious since sentience, I was very, very, very interested when I heard about these guests who you'll be hearing from today. We're going to talk about simple ways to regulate your nervous system that you can integrate into your daily life, and said guests are Nadia Narain and Katya Narain-Phillips. Nadia is a personal friend of mine. She's a long-time yoga and breathwork teacher.

Her sister, who I'm meeting for the first time, and I'm delighted about that, is a body worker and somatic practitioner. They have a new book, which is called Glimmers, Tiny Moments to Transform Your Life. Nadia and Katya, welcome both to the show. Hi, Dan. Thank you for having us. Nadia, let me start with you, but Katya, jump in at any time. I'm playing favorites, right? But obviously, there's no rules here. You can both jump in any time you want. But one of the things you talk about in the book is kind of giving readers Nervous System 101.

Can you give us that, please? A lot of books about the nervous system are quite complicated, and they keep you a little bit up in your head. We had so many friends that were like, we didn't even know we had a nervous system. We wanted to write something that people could understand in all parts of their life experience. But also, the title, Glimmers, is ways that you can help to create capacity in your nervous system so that it's not that we want to stay calm all the time.

It's that we want to create flexibility when life gets difficult, when things get challenging. We also can enjoy the parts of life that are enjoyable to live through. Katya, what is the nervous system? Great, I got that one. The nervous system is really complex, but the part of the nervous system that we're talking about with glimmers and triggers and all of that is the autonomic nervous system. Things that are happening automatically, your breath, your heartbeat. Say when we're children and we have something happen to us, your nervous system will automatically protect you.

Everything is happening to protect you, but as we're getting older, some of those protective mechanisms aren't really working for us anymore. We can kind of stay stuck in old nervous system patterns, which when something comes up in our adult life could be seen as a trigger, and that trigger is usually something from the past. Have you ever heard the expression, if it's hysterical, it's historical? Yes, very much. A lot of that comes up, especially in relationship. When you're in intimate relationship, a lot of the stuff that does come up that can be hysterical is usually, it happened when you were a child, and you project that onto the here and now.

I just want to say though, because Nadia, you know my wife, Bianca, so you know that if we ever have a fight, it's her fault. Always. But you're so right, I mean, she'll say something completely innocent, and some part of my reptile brain computes it as my mom criticizing me, and all of a sudden, the heart rate goes up, my breathing gets shallow, and I act like a dick. Yeah, and when you're in long-term, I mean, that's kind of the nice thing about long-term relationship, and you know about this stuff, it's really, you can work through it together.

But if you don't have an awareness of what's happening, it's just really easy to blame the other person. And just coming from that, I think the main thing about the book, and what we've really learned about the nervous system, which is kind of the most important thing for me, it's just awareness of it. So having that awareness that, oh, I might be in a more sympathetic state, or I might be in a more parasympathetic state, and what that means, and what that feels like, and really understanding those sensations, we're able to really tune in and then have a pause and make a different decision, and also not get so stuck in it by having that awareness of what's happening in our nervous system.

What is sympathetic versus parasympathetic? We've talked about this a million times on this show, and I always forget. Yeah. So you've got your sympathetic nervous system, which is kind of like your fight and flight, but also, it's not always negative, it's what gets you up in the morning, it's what gets you excited, it's having an orgasm, so, you know, it's excitement, it's movement. And then the parasympathetic is more calming, but it has two branches also. So you've got the rest and digest, and then you've got shutdown.

Parasympathetic kind of sounds like the route you want to go down, but there's a detour there into shutdown that is kind of a counterfeit rest and digest. Yeah. And sometimes being dissociated and shut down, it feels good sometimes, so you have to sort of be careful, like, oh, am I just zoning out, and am I shut down, just scrolling, but it kind of feels good, because I'm just numbing myself, or am I relaxed? I feel like this is a bit of a societal sickness right now, because there are so many states of mind out there that masquerade as rest and digest, but they are actually self-medicating, shutting down, scrolling, shopping, gambling, that kind of thing, where you're glossing over what's going on, not truly relaxing.

I totally agree. And I think that's why it's so important to really understand sensations, like, am I, you know, can I still feel my feet on the ground? Do I still have awareness in the room? Can I still feel my breath, or am I just, like, gone? Nadia, you've used the name of the book, again, as Glimmers, but you've used these two terms as a pair, Glimmers and Triggers. Can you define those terms? Well, we all know what a trigger feels like, because that's something that we've, you know, it's common, it's been spoken about a lot, and Glimmers is the opposite of that.

And so, when you have a trigger, you feel it in your breath, you feel it in your body, you feel it in your posture, and actually, when you have a Glimmer, it's the complete opposite of that. Your breath deepens, you feel softer, you feel more open, more connected. So it was Deb Dana, who was a clinician, and she worked with a lot of people that had quite severe trauma. When she used words like safety, and she used words like connection, people couldn't find that, it was too difficult to reach.

But when she came with the word Glimmer, it was something that everybody could find a Glimmer in their daily life. Yeah, Deb has been on the show, and I think it's a really, that's a really cool and powerful concept. It's like, we, because the human animal is wired for what's called the negativity bias, which you can understand from an evolutionary standpoint, we most likely, you know, evolve to scan the environment for threats. It's very easy to overlook the opposite of triggers, the opposite of threats, the moments of beauty, the moments, tiny little moments of beauty, like the way the sun reflects on your glass in the morning, or your cat unfurls its belly to you, or some stranger.

I had a nice little chat in the elevator with a stranger on my way to the studio today. Those little moments, I think that's what you're calling for us to tune into. Yeah, and that takes slowing down and paying attention and getting off the phone that we're always looking down at. But also, I think we can become so overwhelmed by everything that's being fed to us, whether that's the news or on social media, and we can become quite shut down and fearful and forget that there's this whole other thing happening at the exact same time as this chaos in the world.

There are beautiful moments in nature or with your pet or with each other that create human connection or pet connection, not just human connection. Exactly. Human connection because we're so isolated and in this tech-drenched, consumerist, individualistic society. I'm not saying that all of those things are fully bad, but if you're just in that headspace, it's a recipe for the problem I began this episode with, which is feeling dysregulated, feeling like you're on a hair trigger. Just to add to that, sorry, we kind of know about this stuff, but even we get super caught up in it when the feelings become overwhelming.

It's super easy to, you can go and hide in the toilet. No one knows that you're just scrolling on the phone and numbing out. So it's become just such a normal state for a lot of us that it takes even people that know this information to be super, super disciplined. That's how clever it is. Also, something just came to my mind while Nadia was talking, I mean, even without the phones and all of those other things, it's like, say you go into a space where you might not know anyone.

People either would reach for a drink or, you know, in the olden days, smoke a cigarette. Now we just sort of scroll through our phone and it just takes away that feeling of being uncomfortable. You know, we're so not able to stay with the uncomfortable feelings. And part of nervous system regulation isn't just about being calm and, you know, relaxed all the time, but being able to have enough capacity to sit with the uncomfortable. So I think what you're saying is these moments of safety, connection, booty that we're calling glimmers, they're not just about getting you to rest and digest.

They're about regulating your nervous system so that you can do hard things. Yeah. And create resilience and give us a little bit more capacity. We always talk about the nervous system being flexible so that we're able to handle things because, you know, it's the human condition is to have suffering and to have difficult things to handle. And so to be able to feed ourselves with some of these glimmers is also a good thing. I hear it all the time, Dan, I know I should meditate, but I'm too busy and I get it.

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And one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you both is that the book is just filled with easy-to-grasp, easy-to-adopt practices that we can weave into our day. And I've kind of made a list of them and was hoping to go through them with you. Are you game for that? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so first on my list is glimmer check-in. Katya, why don't you take that one? So a glimmer check-in is a moment when you have time to sit and pay attention to your body.

And you're gonna bring to mind a glimmer, something that makes you feel good inside. So it could be your first cup of coffee in the morning where you feel the warmth of the cup on your hands and you smell that coffee coming up. It could be walking in nature. It could be your pet cuddling with you or a smile from a stranger. And when you bring that glimmer to mind, notice what happens in your body. Maybe your shoulders drop. Maybe you have a smile on your face.

Maybe your breath gets deeper. Maybe you just feel a settling and an okayness in your system. So that's a glimmer. I love that and it just seems so doable. And I'm wondering, the way you described it is like, hey, take a break and do this, which I think is a beautiful thing to do and doable by anybody because we all have these little moments in the day when that is possible. But what if, a lot of people listen to podcasts while they're driving or taking a walk or getting ready for the day.

I feel like we could do this glimmer check-in in the midst of our daily activities. Just, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't we just bring to mind something beautiful in the midst of our daily activities and then tune in and savor the nervous system ramifications of that mental exercise? I think definitely. And I think once you understand it and know it, you will find them everywhere. But it's kind of that first, it's just about the awareness of what a glimmer is and then we've had so many people write to us going like, oh my God, they're contagious.

I see them everywhere now. I stop and I smell the roses. I've had my favorite song playing on the radio, but it's not just like, oh, that thing that I did, it's tuning into the body and seeing what's happening during the glimmer. So a good thing, driving is a really good one and playing music that makes you really feel good is one where you can really tune into that and notice how that makes you feel in your body and you can still be driving. And maybe you notice that how it feels when you've let someone, my partner, he was quite an aggressive driver and I have to remind him all the time, just let them go, it doesn't matter.

And now he's like, actually, that feels good. It feels better in my body to be generous when you're in these stressful situations and they're glimmers, they're contagious. You feel it, they feel it and everyone moves on with their day feeling that they can take a breath. This reminds me of, and tell me if you think I'm making an appropriate connection here, but, and I'll say, I've talked about this before on the podcast, so long time loyal listeners, I apologize for the fact that I'm being repetitive here, but I've got this little practice I do before I go to bed.

I historically have not been the greatest sleeper, so I have this whole wind down routine that involves a warm shower and then while I'm in the shower, just bringing to mind all of the good things, you might call them glimmers from the day. And even on shitty days, there are a lot of them. And what this practice has done over many years, I think I've been doing it for like eight years, is it kind of counteracts the negativity bias I was talking about earlier, because now I'm kind of on the lookout for this shit during the day.

Even though we do these practices, we just have good days and bad days, all of us. And so just to have this awareness when I do get into my negative bias loop and I'm in it, it makes me want to step out and go into the park or find the people that make me feel good and really go in that direction when I'm in it, rather than I used to think, I'll just isolate and stay quiet in it. So once you become aware of it and how it feels, you can start to reach for those things when you need them to.

I appreciate the fact that you keep coming back to the obvious but overlooked truth that perfection is not on offer here. And even as you get better and better at these practices, you're still gonna have bad days. Katya, let me ask you about the next one. Nadia, I promise I'll loop you in sometime. I realized with siblings, you gotta be careful with favoritism. But another practice you recommend is facial tension release. What's that? So we hold so much tension in our face and in our jaw.

And one way to help is to, if you stick your tongue in your cheek, and you hold it there, you start to release the fascia in your jaw area. Just helps to release that whole area as well as doing the little massage, holding it. And yeah, when you release that jaw area, the face area, you release a lot of tension. For people listening instead of watching, just wanna restate that. So it's a kind of a two-part move. The first is take your tongue, and this you probably wanna do when nobody's looking, and take your tongue and stick it into the side of your cheek.

Yeah, and just hold it. And you'll feel the tension there. And then the other move that you did as a follow-on was to kind of take your hands and massage your jaws. Take your fingertips and just massage into your jaw and under your cheekbone area. And so this is meaningful because we tend to hold a lot of tension in our face, most especially probably our jaw, and releasing it can produce a beneficial cascade? Yeah, of course. So the fascia is connecting everything. So when you start to work with your fascia, wherever it is, it's gonna help release it everywhere.

And also the jaw is really connected to all the tension that we carry around in our neck and in our shoulders too. And so once we start to release that tension in the jaw, the neck lengthens, the shoulders relax. And also I think anything where we bring some kind of touch to ourselves allows us to come back to our body. And sometimes when we're all caught up in our head, just to place your hands on your body, connect to your tongue in the cheek, hands on your shoulders, whatever it is just allows you to drop back into your body.

Yeah, and I think there's some research here. I've heard about the research through Kristen Neff, who's the person who kind of named and developed and pioneered not only the concept, but also the scientific studies around self-compassion. And her argument is, most of us think of self-compassion if we're familiar with it at all as the ability to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. But one way to supercharge that is to put your hand on your heart, to give yourself a hug, to rub your own forearms, whatever it is.

Again, I rejected a lot of this stuff initially because it just seemed so cheesy. But there appears to be nontrivial amounts of evidence to suggest that this can have a real benefit. Yeah, I rejected this stuff immensely, and I am now a qualified self-hugger and self-stroker. And it really, really does help. Actually, Katia brought it up for the book with this, and I was like, I don't know about the self-hugging. I don't know. One thing I was just thinking about, if we go back to the jaw thing, everyone who's listening, just like clench your teeth and maybe even make your lips like they're angry.

Purse your lips. Purse your lips and clench your teeth. And just notice what happens in your body when you do that. I mean, my heart starts going a little bit faster, and I'm getting a little sweaty, and something's happening in my stomach as I do that. And then, and just create that space in your mouth and just put a gentle smile. And then again, notice what happens in your body. And you can feel the shift. So we can get really scientific about everything, but you have to feel it to understand it.

Yes, that's a great point. And I do have the tendency to kind of layer on lots of evidence. And that's really because I, and I may not need to do this, but I always have the most skeptical person in mind when I'm creating content. And I think often for, to get people to the point where they're gonna do the thing and then feel the benefit, they need to be convinced at the level of the intellect. Yeah, I'm kind of like, let's feel it, and then we believe it.

Your approach may be the right one. I'm gonna concede that. Yeah, but I mean, it's another thing. And not, I love having the evidence because people can be a little woo-woo, but I think we can also, and I'm very guilty of this, I can read the science and go, oh, I've read it. That makes sense to me. I don't need to do it. And then it's, it is really that, it is really that letting yourself feel a bit weird, giving yourself a hug or a stroke or sticking your tongue in your mouth and then practicing it over and over again when you really do start, when it starts to drop in.

Nadia, let me get you to describe another exercise. Shake it off. What's that about? Yeah, that's one of my favorites. I think I've seen you do this because I've been in the room when you've guided yoga and other sort of exercises. And I believe I've done this one with you. Yes, you have done it. And it can start as something as simple as just standing on your feet and feeling a little bit of a shaking motion go through your feet and up into your legs and be really gentle with it.

And you'll start to feel your fingers and maybe your shoulders. And you can add as much dynamic energy to it as you want. You can start to lift your feet off the ground and give yourself a good jump. And you could add your arms overhead and give your fingers a good shake. And you could go for as little as 10 seconds, 30 seconds or play a song, play your favorite song and shake it out. And this is such a great one if you have a lot of energy in your body and you have nowhere to direct it.

So it's really good if you've had an argument with someone or you're just feeling that kind of tension in your body just shake it out and you can do it anywhere. You can hide in a toilet cubicle and shake it out. I mean, I've been known to do that many times. And in relationship, sometimes if you're in a heated discussion or argument we all know that we can just go and take ourselves off for a walk and let the personnel be back in five minutes. I'm just gonna go and walk this off but you could also go and shake it off a little bit too.

And you'll really start to see the energy change in your body and your feeling change. Isn't this what animals do after a stressful event? That's exactly what they do. Yeah, so you can see, I mean, you've seen your, have you seen your cat do it? Have you got a cat? I've got too many cats. If anybody wants one, come to my house. And you're a cat man. We have three, we had four and now we have three. But they don't tend to shake it off. Dogs do it a bit more.

Yeah, dogs do it more. And David Attenborough, you watch animals on documentaries and when they've been chased or they're scared, they shake off that excess energy. So it is a really good one. We used to live in like in tribes. And I mean, if you even just look at the Maoris, for example, before they go into battle, they've got their haka that they do and that's bringing the energy up. But then once you've gone into battle or whatever, they used to come together and dance or move and that would sort of release that energy.

Disperse it. So I think we've just lost touch with all of these natural ways of being, being with each other, being with our own bodies because we're so much living in our heads. Like the whole world is like telling us to be productive and on and busy. cognitive that we've lost touch with what our bodies are doing and what they need. Next exercise the visual field exercise. So when you're being chased by a tiger or in our modern way just looking at your phone the whole time or on screens your visual field narrows and that narrowing is sending a signal to the nervous system like I'm in danger I've got to focus and I got to get out by opening up your vision you're sending a signal to the nervous system that it's safe because you're not going to look up and look around if you're in danger being chased.

So if you put two fingers in front of you and your arms out straight and then you just move your fingers as far wide as you can where you still see them it just opens up your visual space. And even simple things like looking at a horizon on when you're able to look at a horizon and there's nothing narrowing your field just that ability to open your vision and your your scape allows a very relaxing feeling on your nervous system. I have really bad claustrophobia that shows up in places like airplanes I have to get on a plane tomorrow in fact I'm flying to Florida to give a speech and I've begged my wife to come with me just because I haven't been on a plane in a while and I need some emotional support but one of the things I do when I get on the plane even if it's small plane is just look around a lot you know when they've closed the door and I'm starting to feel the walls closing on me just looking around makes me realize there's a lot of space here I'm not being tied into my chair.

Yeah and to get really familiar with the space around you and it's interesting that you're claustrophobic on a plane and it's the one place that no one can really it could be your time of total rest because no one can reach you although they can now because all the planes have Wi-Fi. It's a disaster. Another recommendation in the book is to kind of co-opt your daily chores as a way to relax the nervous system to slow them down in a way. We did this in Vipassana in Thailand like when we were given our chores sweeping the hall where we were meditating and we had to do it really slowly so everything was that really slow whatever chore you had they said that you just had to do it super super slow and that's where that comes from.

If you're washing your dishes just try and slow it down so you can actually feel like notice the bubbles notice the warmth of the water just thinking about how we multitask so much as well and we're trying to like do the washing up and brush the teeth and make the coffee and and again bombarding our system and when we can just do one thing at a time it just creates that calm state in the thing while we're still being active without without being overwhelmed. I'm gonna be annoying and introduce some science again but I Richie Davidson who's like the world's you're laughing at me but I'm gonna do it anyway.

Richie Davidson is kind of the preeminent neuroscientist when it comes to like what meditation does to your brain. He was on the show recently and talking about the fact that a lot of people resist formal meditation and I get it they you know feel like they don't have the time or they're too fidgety for it but informal mindfulness practices like sweeping the floor even vacuuming doing the dishes doing them slowly paying full attention to what's happening sent you know at the level of your senses and then every time you get distracted start again and again has just that has just as much benefit as formal practice and I think that's just it's just so cool for people to know that's an option.

Well I also think that the formal practice is really teaching us to be really present in our daily life of doing all these things that we have to do so it wasn't just so that we did formal practice and we just sat on a mountaintop and didn't have the connection with the world but it does take a lot of awareness for all of us because we are in daily life and we are rushing around doing a million things in a day so when you can do something and really take even taking a shower that is something that's joyful to do and take it with awareness slow it down a little bit again noticing what is happening in your body then maybe that will be something that you take into other parts of your life.

I also think that we have been told from such a young age to be like busy is the badge of honor being busy is success and we've just lost like people feel guilt I mean we were just talking about this today feel guilty to slow down or to have time off we go oh my god you know what should I be doing something should I be productive but we just need to be still and be quiet and be with ourselves a bit more. There's a Tibetan Buddhist master well he's part of Tibetan Buddhism but I think he's based in Nepal he says one of the the most problematic aspects of modern life is speediness and I just see it for myself it's just like it's not only the enemy of nervous system regulation it's also it can be the enemy of positive relationships because actually here's I'm gonna give you another study the famous study of seminarians people studying to be priests and they did they did this study where they brought the priests to be individually into a room they gave them a lecture on the Good Samaritan the person who stops and helps people and then they tell them some of them were told they had an appointment on the other side of campus and some were just told to have a great day the people who were told they have an appointment on the other side of campus were less likely to help a stranger they had a as part of the study they had a person in the hallway pretending to have hurt themselves these future priests haven't just been given a lecture on the Good Samaritan were much more likely to overlook this person who needed help when they were put into a rushing state and we just lived so much of our lives in this state yeah we see it all the time with a woman trying to get up the tube steps with a pram and everyone's just rushing and you I mean if I can be that one person or if I notice someone that can just stop and help her get her pram up the stairs and maybe they have to turn around to do it but it just is yeah when you're rushing you just can't see what's needed around you it's um tomorrow's my birthday and the only thing I asked for from my girlfriends is time I was like can you just make sure that we have time and no one's rushing and that is that because I feel like we're just on the go and everyone's so busy that we we don't get that time together happy birthday Nadia oh thanks Dan just for the American listeners or the non UK what a pram is a pushchair I don't know what it is an American chair is also with the phrase we don't it's baby carriage a buggy oh okay that's another English and it and the tube is the subway yes and the toilet is the bathroom yeah we'll pick it up through content you've talked about titles we need to dub this episode so we you talked about chores there's also a lot in the book about using your domestic space in a way to to give yourself glimmers can you talk about that for us it's our environment is really important to us and to have things that feel soft and comfortable and the lighting to be a certain way and both of us love to you know when you stay in a hotel and you go for dinner and you come back and there's like a turndown situation that happens we do that in our homes and it just sets a really beautiful tone but that's very personal to us when our homes are they feel clear and clutter-free it it feels regulating to us I think you're clear though in the book that one does not want to be obsessive about this and and that's we're coming from that place where we have been very obsessive and everything has I have but it's true because that obsessiveness creates attention you know so so finding that balance with having things feel clean and comfortable and orderly but not in a way that creates a rigidity if anything is out of place because also it's a control right and that control is a part of a nervous system state and so if you're able to be flexible in it then yeah you're you're gonna function a lot better by being able to be in a space that's a little bit messy and in a space that's really tidy when I realized that I was changing when things like I was able to leave the dishes in the sink overnight and I wasn't like oh my god screaming at everyone in the house about like you know why the dishes help me you know getting all freaked out about everything and I remember my it's part of your childhood and because we would get in trouble for for mess so my system is automatically going like there's mess this is danger and I hope once he said that to me I was like that's then this is now I'm leaving the dishes because I'm really tired and I'm not gonna overstretch myself and I'll come back to it tomorrow when I feel more fresh and that's the flexibility that we start to create in the nervous system where we can kind of go a different route and it feels okay and it feels safe I wear a lot of t-shirts because I work from home and I'm a podcaster and so I can be as casual as I want and it's a nice little way to rebel against several decades in the news business when I had to wear a suit all the time and anyway the other day I was putting on a t-shirt and I thought man is this one of these it looks really good and I was wondering is this one of these expensive t-shirts that I got for my birthday that my wife got for me and then I realized no this is a t-shirt from quince which did not cost me much money at all and by the way is much nicer and more comfortable and better looking than all of the 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a book for a while and in order to do the research she's been ordering a lot of books that she is then reading but then the question became what do I do with all these books she didn't want to throw them away or give them away because she wants to be able to refer to them for her research so she found a great solution via one of our sponsors today Wayfair through Wayfair she got these really beautiful translucent bookshelves they're not even waist-high and she has lined her office with them and filled them with books and the net effect is it looks quite beautiful it's an elegant solution and that is what Wayfair can do for you for many of your interior design and also outside backyard furniture solutions as well and now they have something called Wayfair verified Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products great value and trusted reviews products that you see through Wayfair verified or hand vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair rewards join Wayfair rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home that's Wayfair.com Wayfair every style every home my parents did a pretty good job teaching me the value of money I remember when I turned 14 my mom drove me to City Hall in Newton Massachusetts got me a work permit then got me a job at Dunkin Donuts and said bike there every day Dan and earn money so that you've got spending cash it made a huge difference it created a work ethic for me and as the father of a soon-to-be teenager I think a lot about how do I hand these lessons down to him which brings me to one of our sponsors today for all of the parents out there with teenagers we know you're already trying to keep a million different things under control cash app is here to help make sure your teens money and their spending is not adding to the craziness cash app is designed to help teens age 13 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See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Savings provided by Cash App, a Block, Incorporated brand. Visit cash.app.com for full disclosures. It's interesting, these simple strategies, these quick little exercises we can do on the go or little lifestyle tweaks, they go quite deep because they're a way of kind of undoing a lot of unhelpful conditioning. Yeah, and because I think they're so simple, we overlook them and we don't think they work. To keep practicing these things as often as possible, you just start to see, you bank it the more that you do it.

I think sometimes people do these things and they expect these major life changes to happen, but what I always noticed was they were these really small things that were happening and I'd be in a situation that I'd been in a hundred times before and I was like, oh, I just handled that differently and that felt safe and okay, and then I realized there was capacity. Before we were talking about slowing down, another thing you talk about in the book, which again for listeners is called Glimmers, another thing you talk about in the book is how we eat.

Say more about that. Things like making a nice meal for yourself and not rushing and being on the go all the time and really sitting down and having your meal and letting it digest, it's just goodness. It feeds you in a way that you would like to feed other people that come into your environment, but we tend to rush through when it's just ourselves or if you're a single person. I remember in my single life, all I ever did was have some homicidal crackers for dinner and that would be enough for me and now it's really important for me to take the time to make myself something to eat that feels nourishing and feels grounding.

More basic than that, I mean we have a term now in this day and age called hangry because we don't even have time to feed ourselves. Paying attention to your body signals of like, oh, I'm hungry, I need to eat something and then you're going to notice that your nervous system starts to regulate itself because you fed it. We're all guilty of being hangry and not taking care so it's so important. We were just talking about this the other day because Katia was moving her son into university.

Is that the right word in American? Yes, university. Everyone was stressed out. They were packing the car and trying to get him out the door and she just stopped the whole situation and said, we're all going to sit down and eat something. And so everyone sat down and had breakfast together and then there was fuel to move forward with this stressful move. But I think that a lot of stress happens because we've overlooked really simple things like eating, drinking water, going and having a pee when we need to have a pee.

We're guilty all the time of holding our pee in when that is something that the body is telling you to do. Is pee American too? It is, right? Now I'm getting self-conscious. Urination. I have activated your nervous system inadvertently. No, speak as much British as you would like and I'll just translate. You'll just subtitle it, that's right. Exactly. Okay, a couple more things to talk about before I let you go. There's stuff in the book about the importance of rest. What's something worth leaving our viewers and listeners with on the subject of rest, which is another thing that many of us overlook?

I think some people think that rest is just simply sitting down and not doing anything or just sleeping and they've rested if they've slept. But there are so many different types of rest. It might be even if the last month for me was very social. I had to be around a lot of people and so for me to have some time with no one around and quiet time for myself is the rest that I need. Again, what Katya said early on, it's really having awareness of what you need as an individual.

Some people feel rested when they're around a lot of people. That feels good to them. It's not just one practice. Yeah, one size fits all. Especially, this is just worth emphasizing for people who are obsessed with productivity and I count myself among you if that's you. Rest is not just the reward you get for getting through your to-do list. In order to effectively get through your to-do list, you need rest. Not just sitting on the couch, which I'm a huge fan of, but active rest like exercise, taking a walk, woodworking, whatever your thing is.

Being creative. Yes. In fact, for me as a creative person or an allegedly creative person, I need rest where my prefrontal cortex is offline in a way where I'm not in my thinking mind so much. I'm more in my feeling mind on an exercise bike or running or something like that, which allows me to juice my creativity. It's something that is difficult for us to really allow ourselves to have it because sometimes it can be another thing that you kind of tick off. Oh, if I do this, I'm going to be more creative.

Sometimes it's just creating that space to really allow yourself to enjoy whatever it is that you're doing. I say it because it's really hard for me. When I'm doing things that aren't productive or it doesn't get me to the next thing, I feel uncomfortable. I'm like, I should be doing more with this thing. Also, doing things for the first time are really good ways of resting in a way because you're not going to be really good at it. You're not going to be able to monetize on it or sell it.

It just allows you to go into a completely different part of your brain. My son's 11. We took tennis lessons together over vacation every day. We took tennis lessons. Both of us suck, but we had a great time. Yeah, Mike and I started that as something that we could do together as a real beginner's mind. But then it's interesting because it's funny once you start getting a little better, who's more competitive and it changes completely. Enjoy the days of enjoying it. This is a great way for you and your partner, Mike, to get into conflict.

My son and I had a little conflict because I was taking it really seriously and he was not, but I just learned to do what I always do with my family members as a way to ensure domestic serenity is shut my fucking mouth. It works like a charm. Happy wife, happy life. Exactly. I'm reminded of that constantly. I have one or two more things I want to ask you about, but before I do that, are there other practices in the book that you were hoping that we would get to that we haven't gotten to yet?

I think we've covered a lot of practice. Yeah, we have covered a lot of practice, but the one thing that's just been on my mind a little bit is there was a writing practice. I know you don't love a writing practice, Dan, I heard, but it is a writing practice. You actually don't even have to do it writing, but it was the one on boundaries. That one is something that I have to practice a lot, but you kind of have to ask yourself if you're being asked to do something, really ask yourself where your capacity is at in that moment, how it would feel if you did it, how it would leave you feeling.

Do you have the capacity to it? You kind of have to go through these little questions before you make that commitment because I think we often say yes to too much and then we're rushing and we're not able to rest and then we build resentment and the cycle continues. Also, when you're practicing the yes and the no, practice with really small things that you're okay with saying no to. Otherwise, it becomes too big for you and you just say yes. Really tuning in like, do I want to do this?

What's happening in my body when I think about doing this thing? And then just practice saying no to small things first and yes to, you know, some people have a hard time saying yes to or even receiving and giving and then you can start to, you know, with the nervous system work, it has to be small. So you do small and regular and then you start building. When you go in too much, it just overwhelms the system. On this subject of saying yes when you really shouldn't, which is something I still struggle with.

I used to work with this famous American news anchor, George Stephanopoulos, and one day he said that his little practice is when somebody asks him to go to something, go somewhere to do something, he always thinks, if this event were today, would I do it? Because it's so easy to say yes to something three months away, but if you think about it, like, would I really want to do it if it's today? That's a pretty clarifying heuristic. Now I actually am lucky enough that I have a chief of staff, Abby, who just rolls her eyes at me when I suggest maybe I do something.

She's like, bro, no, don't do that. But not everybody's lucky enough to have an Abby. One last thing I wanted to ask you about, you introduced this concept I found really interesting but I don't fully understand and this is kind of a big topic and maybe thought would be a good place to kind of end it because it takes us into the deep end here, I think. Reparenting. What is reparenting? Reparenting is taking care of yourself in the way that you would like to do as a parent and we could go into all kinds of deep stuff about it, but really to, you know, the same way that you would treat your son and take care of him if he was having a meltdown or if he was hangry or if he needed something, you would probably not take care of yourself in the same way.

And so that's the part where I would be so happy if people came to my house. I would love to cook them dinner and food and take care of them, but if it's just me on my own, I'll do whatever's fast and quick and just fills my stomach. And so to reparent just in that level of nourishment to make yourself a delicious meal that feels nourishing and grounding and I'm taking care of myself as I would want my parent to take care of me. Anything to add on that, Katya?

What just came to my mind is, you know, when our children are young, as I did this, I would give them this really long evening routine before bed. So like maybe dinners at five, nice and early, they'd have a bath, there's no TV, there's no loud noises, everything starts to calm down, give them, you know, massage, like really take care of them to like have this beautiful bedtime. And they had this restful sleep, but we are just like, bedtime. And we just don't give ourselves any of it.

So it's reparenting is all about sort of giving yourself those things that you would your child. And also the way that we talk to ourselves, like we wouldn't say half the stuff that we say to ourselves to anyone, forget our child. And so it's like learning to be just be kinder to ourselves, a bit more compassionate and a bit more understanding of ourselves. That was, I was going to go there with the next one, because I think that's a really, really important one. We have this harsh critic sitting on our shoulder all the time judging us.

And if you're, you know, if Katya came to me with some of the things that are going on in her head, I would never go, oh, you bloody idiot, you don't do that. I would be so gentle and calm. Mankind to her and we don't do that to ourselves. Yeah Well, you know that you're writing a whole book on that I fail even in the process of writing this book that attempts to rehabilitate the misunderstood often misunderstood Concept of self-love even in the process of writing this book.

I fail to practice self-love and like you bloody idiot That's me speaking British Bloody idiot, why is it taking you so long and blah blah blah, but there's so much power in reparenting yourself in this way because It you know in my experience it unlocks an upward spiral where you your relationship to yourself improves You have more bandwidth to have good relationships with other people Since your relationships with other people is probably the most important variable and human flourishing you get even happier and then your relationships Improve even further.

It's a very profound kind of skeleton key for flourishing Yeah, and maybe I don't know it just popped into my head when you said that about writing your book Maybe the book allows you to really practice it You know just to notice. Oh god, I'm doing it again And then just to keep practicing because these are all of these practices practices that we talked about like Katya said they are We have a System that has been working to protect us since the get-go and It's only now at 50 something years old that I'm like, oh god that system isn't really working for me anymore So it just takes tiny little increments daily To allow that to change Very well said and probably the perfect place to leave it.

I just want to remind everybody The book is called glimmers By Nadia Noreen and Katya Noreen Phillips glimmers tiny moments to transform your life I'll put a link in the show notes so you can buy the book for Yourself and everybody, you know Katya Nadia such a pleasure to have you on the show. Great job Thanks for having us Thank you very much for listening to the show. I really appreciate it And if you enjoy listening to the show if you get anything out of it, please do me a solid Leave a rating or a review I know every podcast host asks for this, but it really makes a difference.

It helps boost the visibility of this show We view this show as a mission to help people become nodes of sanity and an insane world And so by taking a minute and giving the show a rating or a review You're really helping us out and helping us achieve our mission. Thank you again and now on to the credits Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show 10% happier is produced by Tara Anderson Marissa Schneiderman DJ cashmere David Hart and Hayden broom Post-production is handled by the great folks over at green horn creative and Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band islands wrote our theme Thank you for listening deuces.

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