Liz Moody: Simplifying Wellness

For the past decade, Liz Moody has been building a steady foothold in the world of wellness—first, for her work developing recipes. In recent years, her empire has expanded rapidly as she’s become a point of distillation for many of us who want to know…what’s what in a sea of overwhelm. Liz has a genius point for simplifying an onslaught of information to a few salient points—easy shifts that can lead to meaningful change. She does this on The Liz Moody Podcast, and also in her new book, 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success. She was only half-joking when she offered that this is an old-school bathroom book—the sort of guide you can pick up for a few minutes at a time and gain some insight, or return to time again, like why temptation bundling is wise, or it’s good to talk with your hands. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.

MORE FROM LIZ MOODY:

100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success

The Liz Moody Podcast

Healthier Together: Recipes for Two

Liz Moody’s Website

Follow Liz on Instagram and TikTok

TRANSCRIPT:

(Edited slightly for clarity.)

ELISE LOEHNEN: One of the things that I love about you, Liz, is I don't even know if I would put myself in the world of wellness anymore. Who even knows what it means?

LIZ MOODY: It's like the New York Times commented on your position on wellness these days.

ELISE: This is true. I mean, it's one of those terms that has come to mean everything and nothing. I'm sure you kind of feel the same way. And it's such an interesting industry because it contains so much that's good. And I think it started from an essential place, and it still maintains that ground, but it's just such a fine line before it tips into endless problem solutions and distortions and extreme self obsession. And one of the things that I really like about you is you keep sort of expanding your world and what lives in it rather than sort of diving so deep into wellness that you're inventing problems for people.

LIZ: Thank you. That's a big goal of mine. And I have a tip in the book that's about knowing why you're doing what you're doing, because I think sometimes when we're caught up in the pursuit of wellness for the sake of itself, we have all of these habits that we're adding to our to-do list every day, and we have no idea why we're doing any of them. And so I think every single thing that you're wasting your, or that you are using your very precious time on this planet for, you should know the reason behind it. Yes.

ELISE: And I think that the promise of wellness sometimes is that in what I think is our ultimate goal or desire, which is to feel comfortable in our bodies to feel fully like ourselves to, in some ways, reattain our sense of wholeness and completeness. We end up with building these incredibly complex to do lists, looking for every single reason why we can't achieve the former without actually simplifying. And I feel like you are a distiller, ultimately, a simplifier, distiller, not a minimizer, but and not a minimalist necessarily, but that you are really good at grinding things down to their component parts.

LIZ: Thank you. I think one of my driving philosophies on my podcast, in the book, in my life is to feel as good as possible now and to feel as good as possible later. And I think a lot of times in that wellness, picking everything apart, what do I have to do? Like I'm so stressed about accomplishing my meditation and my workout and my cold blood and all of that, you are forgoing feeling as good as possible now for the feeling as good as possible later. And I just don't think that's a reasonable way to live. First of all, we have no idea how long we are going to be granted of time on this planet. But also it's not motivating. And I think that's why a lot of people fall off of their wellness routine so quickly or they need to cycle in something new and look for that kind of new hit of a new habit is because it's not motivating to feel crappy and to be beating yourself up every single day.

ELISE: Every single day.

No, a hundred percent. And I think that it can also, exactly what you just said, can become a trap, where invariably you're sort of catastrophizing yourself or again, looking at everything as a problem to be solved rather than recognizing that so many things are just states. And you talk about this a lot with Susan David and other experts in book, the fleeting, sort of the ephemeral reality of so many emotions, but to know what's happening, to recognize it. And sometimes those emotions have physiological implications. You write about our dear mutual friend, Ellen Vora. But I think that there is, it's something I'm really conscious of in my own life. And it's something that I've talked about at length with our other dear mutual friend, Tara Schuster, in terms of her work where, you know, she's written two books about her childhood trauma and she's very upfront about this and she's like I'm done because I think when you Are at the center of your work as you and I both are, it can become a crutch or it can become an instinct to sort of destroy your life or catastrophize your life or sabotage your life so that you have content. It is kind of a hook.

LIZ: That's interesting. I feel like the opposite. I feel like my work inspires me to be a better self than I would be if I wasn't doing this work. Yeah. Like I feel like my work keeps me curious. It keeps me intellectually stimulated. It keeps me hopeful because I'm like, I have this problem and somebody's like, I have a solution or I'm like, I'm struggling with thinking about this and I wonder if it's because a podcast is not as centering of self you're centering the other person so much. And I think that's been really helpful for me. But I've found it to be one of the most hopeful and inspiring things that I do, I also want to speak to the state thing for a second, because I just did a podcast, a solo podcast about getting out of a slump and I share a bunch of different advice like tools and things that you can use to get out of a slump, but one of my key takeaways for it is just that like a slump is temporary and if you did none of the tools that I'm sharing in this episode, your slump would go away, like we think that the moment that we're in is forever and in my periods of really extreme anxiety, I was like the most uncomfortable part was the idea that I was going to feel this way forever. It was It's terrifying, but it never is forever. The good moments are never forever. The bad moments are never forever, and I think that that can be scary because we want to hold on to those good moments, but it can also be really comforting, both in the bad moments, but also I've experienced, and I know a lot of people experience anxiety even in the good moments of, it's so good, what if I lose it? What if it goes away? And you want to just grasp onto it so tightly, and I think there's something comforting in being like. It is going to go away. It's going to change. It's going to evolve. And that's okay. Like, that's the nature of life.

ELISE: Yeah. No, certainly. And learning, I think, to make, to maybe even out, at least that's how I felt in my twenties, like, and maybe the function of the twenties is to ride really big waves. It felt very extreme.

LIZ: I thought it was about doing drugs.

ELISE: You're a greater explorer than I am, Liz. I'm very boring.

LIZ: I feel like you are now. It's actually something I'm jealous of you for. I feel like I messed up my ability to use drugs therapeutically by going too deep into it for Fun, but it ended up not being fun at the end of the day, so I've, like, lost that tool for myself now, so I'm jealous of people who still have it.

ELISE: So are you clean? Or you're just, you...

LIZ: I do I anything, Mm mm. No, it stokes my anxiety too much. Like, I really would love to experiment with particularly, like, psychedelics and MDMA and all this stuff that has really interesting research behind it, as you know and share all the time. But it's just so anxiety ladden for me.

ELISE: Why do you think it's so attached to trauma?

LIZ: So, when I was 19, I smoked pot on the beach in Brazil, and it was pot of questionable origin, and it was during this period of my life when I was doing a ton of... Drugs of questionable origin. I thought I was being really responsible when I would like get my MDMA and like look it up on DanceSafe I was like, I'm a responsible drug person, it's got a dolphin on it so it's safe, but I was smoking pot on the beach and I had a seizure and I was by myself traveling in Brazil, and I went to a public hospital, which is a really, I witnessed things there that I have never seen before in my life that were really traumatizing. And at the time, I did not realize I had PTSD, but I started having these, like, disassociative episodes, and I had my mom, like, send me multivitamins, because I was like, I'm probably vitamin deficient, and that's why I'm having these episodes. But they were, they were panic attacks, and I didn't know what to call them. And I also thought I was... Like having a seizure again every time I was having a panic attack and so for me that feeling of kind of like drifting away from your body, I very much associate with this extreme trauma that I had.

Yeah.

ELISE: Mm.

LIZ: So I kind of wanna like, stay in my body.

ELISE: That's good. When you have so many other modalities and tools at your disposal.

LIZ: They seem so powerful. Like you've had some really powerful experiences with those things, right?

ELISE: I would say MDMA was certainly the most powerful, primarily the first time that I did it in a therapeutic setting with the therapist. And I had a lot of deep revelations. It just speeded things up for me.

LIZ: That's what I want though, like I like to think that I am somewhat immune from that like quick fix culture that we live in and I understand that things take time, but the idea of getting to like go to a session and really experience some level of transformation or just having realizations that would take me months, it's very appealing.

ELISE: Well, maybe there's a way for you to do it without, although initially, as you know, I mean, your heart rate speeds up and it is a little bit scary. But then the reason also I like MDMA is that it's not a psychedelic. It's just a drug of embodiment and connection essentially. So you are in yourself experiencing your memories in a way that I think is, for me at least, was very clarifying and very loving because I got to be present with myself as a child. Even though, you know, I don't know, maybe I don't know if we have this in common, but I was like a big little kid, you know, full of over responsibility and seeing myself as completely in control, very confident, but that has its downside to in terms of things that can happen to you, where you think you're in control or you're making these things happen. And so for me to experience myself as a child who is essentially the same age as my own children who are bugging me for Robux and, you know, wanting me to cut up their fruit for them, like I could recontextualize myself as a child.

LIZ: Has the experience of parenting helped you reparent yourself in any way?

ELISE: Yeah, it's interesting. I find it fascinating. I think it certainly has for my husband. I think having boys, I think having children of the same gender is extra triggering because I think it's impossible not to project yourself onto them.

LIZ: Also, the way that we have changed societally and how we are teaching boys to become men has drastically shifted just in the last few years, decades, so that must be such a fascinating

ELISE: It is. So, and my husband has done said with love, but has far less interest in himself or is much more blocked in terms of excavating his childhood. And so it's a lot easier to trigger him than it is to trigger me. So he finds parenting boys hard and particular my oldest son, who's 10, is like a quivering feeling. And he's fascinating kid. He was just diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder. I had never heard of this. And which explains a lot about how he passes information from his left hemisphere to his right hemisphere back to his left hemisphere. And he's a really interesting kid. But my husband, who's very sweet, sensitive guy, as Max sort of continues to move through the world as a big, quivering feeling, is always a little bit like, I want him to be armored, and I don't ever want to tell him not to be himself, and I also am like, very concerned as he grows up that he will be rejected for who he is, which I think is a fear that every it feels like.

LIZ: the struggle of being a parent is like, In my mind, raising boys who lean into their feelings is just one of the most powerful and amazing things you can do. But then, any time you're encouraging your child, even if you want them so desperately to be themselves, you want to protect them against how everybody else will receive them being themselves.

ELISE: 1000%. And, you know, my youngest is just such a quote unquote boy, but he's entirely different concern very susceptible to peer pressure, a total bro. I mean, he calls me bro bra, he's the one who treats me like a Robux ATM. And he is really just quite good at everything. Everything is pretty easy for Sam and Max is a totally different, more complex character. And then sort of going back to your book and the chapter about sleep, et cetera, Max, it's been really interesting to watch issues that I have develop in him and then to jump on it for both of us. So we both have, he has an elf expander in his palate. I have an elf expander. We're both tongue tied. I had no idea I was tongue tied.

LIZ: Have you heard the statistic that women are just, I forget the exact number, they are infinitely more likely to take care of their own needs if it's like in relation to somebody else? It's, it's just so funny to me that you're like, oh, because my child needs these problems solved, I guess I'll explore them for myself.

ELISE: thousand percent.

And I have a migraine disorder. Max has a migraine disorder. I'm the sort of person who can function through a migraine and obviously have a plethora of really good migraine medicines to take. But he can't. Like, he immediately, almost immediately starts vomiting, etc. But it's, like, really lit a fire under me to figure out what is happening for him structurally or because we both have clearly have many of the same things going on.

LIZ: I just I love it. Like, I think it's so wonderful, obviously, that you probably have all of these tools that you can share with your son. And that's amazing. But it also just it does ping me in my heart a little bit that the amount of women out there who are probably not taking care of their own needs, even the idea of like You have to fill your cup so that you can take care of the people around you. And I'm like, you have to fill your cup for you, too. You know what I mean? Like, it bothers me that so many women need the excuse of like, I need to take, I need to rest so that I can take care of other people. It's like, no, you just need to rest for you.

ELISE: Yes. Well, that's one of the things that I found incredibly relieving in your book. And also that I find in your company is like you are full of I hate the word hacks. Like, we need a different word. But you are,

LIZ: do you have ideas for that? I feel like hacks is like, it's such a masculine word. It's been so co opted by like the bio

ELISE: so popularized by like the bio hacking community. Who wants to be a hack? And who wants to hack

LIZ: anything?

I also, I think, isn't that so fascinating that the word has this incredible negative connotation to be a hack? But then I haven't yet been able to come up with another word for, like, quick, but grounded in science solutions for things.

ELISE: No, I think that you're masterful at efficiency. And you know, it was as I was reading your book, I don't think that you've interviewed him yet, but for the next one, I haven't interviewed him either, his name's Gay Hendricks. And he and his wife, Katie Hendricks, do a lot with like conscious loving and other sort of conscious leadership, etc. But he's probably most famous for zone of genius. And it's this idea that we have zone of incompetence, zone of competence, zone of greatness, zone of genius. And that many of us are like piddling around in our zone of incompetence, like trying to fix our own cars or washing machines or whatever it may be when we trying to book our own tickets. If you're my husband. And, then I think we spend a significant portion of our days in our zone of competence.

LIZ: Like, if we're lucky, that might be our job.

ELISE: it might be our job. Yeah. Or like you might, I spend so much time doing like dumb data entry. I kind of find it relaxing and meditative and, but there are certain things probably not the best use of my time. And I used to do this all the time. And when I had a full time job where it was like, I don't know if that's the best use of your time, but it's comfort. It's comforting for me. So maybe it is the best use of my time. And then zone of greatness, I think, is where most of us. Then sort of sit. But very few of us are actually doing and exploring and expressing what we are uniquely equipped to do. And that's highly variable. But I think sometimes we might like allow ourselves to touch it or do it briefly. But it's interesting to think about like how comfortable competence is. And so when I think about sort of what you offer in the book, even when that It made me laugh when you said that rather than going to couples therapy, you guys hired an early in your marriage when you were really broke, you hired someone to come and clean your house once a month. And it was more productive.

LIZ: We've done couples therapy too at this point, just to be clear. Love both. Honestly, great tools all around.

ELISE: but you could say that maybe cleaning your house is your zone of competency or zone of incompetency.

LIZ: Zach would strongly say that's my zone of incompetency zone of incompetence. But I had Eve Brodsky on the podcast yesterday. She's the founder of Fair Play. And she was like, I was like, what if I don't care about cleaning and my husband cares about cleaning and so how do we like sort out that card? And she's like, well, in an ideal world the things that matter to your partner would matter to you. And I was like, oh, that's a good point. I felt a little called out.

ELISE: Well, to be fair, I don't know how Zach feels, my husband and I have very different standards.

LIZ: yeah. Well, and that's why a big part of her cards is, like, agreeing on that minimum standard of care. Because for me, I'm just like, So clean to you meant there weren't crusty dishes on the coffee table and he's like, yeah, yeah, that is what clean means.

ELISE: No, the thing that drives me crazy about, my husband is that he's an architect by training and. Oh, there you go. All right. So you can relate. He's incredibly fastidious and fussy. And there's, I have sort of this, that's kind of not a joke, it's sad, but like he loses everything, but everything, all of his check, his sunglasses, everything is perfectly preserved, but he'll lose it, you know, long before it's scratched or dented or damaged. And I don't lose anything. ever. But I will, you know, crack my screen every month for a year. However, despite his fastidiousness, my car is sort of the kid car. Of course, it's the bigger car too. And he'll like clean the exterior, but not the interior, which is sort of the rule. Like if my car has to be the kid car, you have to clean the car, which I think is fair. But I'm routinely like taking their trash out of there and keeping it relatively tidy. But then I'll like open like the middle bin. And my husband has like trash in there, And he, it's like I open a drawer, it's like, what the hell is happening in this drawer.

LIZ: Your tiny little chaos area so that everything else can feel sane.

ELISE: apparently. But I'm very tidy. Like through and through. And Rob, I don't know if Zach does the same thing. Exterior, perfection, interior chaos, clean around. Oh, all around.

LIZ: He's just good to go. Wait. I have two questions for you. One is, I'm curious how often you get this, but like, you were like, my car is the kid's car, of course, I assume because you're the mom in the relationship. Do people ask you how the patriarchy still like shows up in your life, given your work?

ELISE: Yeah, people do. And it is an ongoing process to get it out. And one of the reasons that the kid car is my car is because Rob really likes small, like, this was such a fight for us, he really likes very small cars. And I think it's ridiculous. He has like a tiny little, this Audi e- tron car that like you can barely fit four people in if two of those people are little and so I don't like the car. It's so low. And I wanted a bigger car. I'm tall. So is he. I don't understand. It's like he like likes to watch Formula One. And I think he feels like he wanted this like I don't know, Ford. I don't know, Liz. I don't know anything about cars. I just know that I like to go to Costco. I actually find Costco to be a happy place for me.

LIZ: I do too. The samples are just the dream. I like tasting menus, which is such a bougie thing to like, but to me, it's like a fancy buffet where you just get a teeny tiny taste of everything I love.

ELISE: It's so fun. I just, I don't know. I love Costco. And they're really good to their employees. I just love it. And so I like to go to Costco. I like having a little bit of clearance above my head. And so, and I wanted a back that I could push a button and it would open. And so I ended up getting the newer car and it's like the de facto kids car.

LIZ: Do you feel pressure to be the model of not letting the patriarchy show up in your life?

ELISE: No, because a part of my work is allowing our humanity and badness and imperfection to to coexist with what we perceive as our virtues. And so that's been more my work, just letting myself be myself without prejudging and condemning everything that I do. And so perfection is a fallacy, right? Don't you think?

LIZ: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. I don't know any person, place, or thing that is perfect. So that would suggest to me that it is a fallacy. And then my second question was, what's your zone of genius?

ELISE: Oh, synthesizing disparate sources, maybe? I don't know. I work with this woman, Courtney, as a coach, and she's a good friend.

LIZ: Kardashian?

ELISE: No, I once had a meeting with Courtney about a book project and I was wearing a black blazer and I was like, as we were sitting there, I think I made a joke where I was like, Am I freaking you out? Like with my Kris Jenner vibes, my momager vibes. Wait, this is I'm supposed to be interviewing you. Nice try Liz. I know that you think perfection is a fallacy, and it's also why I like the idea of sort of, like, pick a page, pick a part of this book, try one thing, if you feel called, there's something about your book and your work in general, I feel like, in your podcast, too, that's not so pressure loaded.

LIZ: Yeah, well, first of all, I think that all of it should feel fun. Like, I don't think listening to a podcast should feel like work. I don't think it should feel like it's boring you to tears. I think it should be interesting and enjoyable because that's still like an hour of your life that you're not getting back. So that's a huge thing that I try to do on my podcast. It's like, we're gonna give you the science, we're gonna give you the information. It's gonna be credible, it's gonna be actionable, but you're gonna get it in a really fun way. But then with the book, I really wanted it, first of all, to be pretty. So you'd want to like leave it out on your coffee table, but you're going to need different tools at different times in your life. I think that's part of the overwhelm with wellness that we were talking about earlier is you're like, Oh, I got to do all the things right now. And it's like, no, what are your problems right now? What are your goals? And then what are the things that you can do to begin to address those? So again, you feel better in this moment of your life and hopefully feel better in the long run. So for me, You can read it straight through. A lot of people have gotten a lot of value from the book that way, but I love the idea of leaving it out, flipping through, seeing what you need at that moment, and then applying it.

ELISE: Well, one of the other things that I think is fun about the book is moments of, and I do not say this as someone who understands the ins and outs of wellness and has a million virtuous habits. So just prefacing that. But there's something about reading the book that was like an affirmation of many things that I already do. And they're not the obvious ones. Like, for example, What do we call this chapter gesture and fidget more like remember I don't know last night if you remember that had just come back from leading a workshop in Ojai with Ellen and Tara and we they were like, oh we were all doing...

LIZ: literally thought about Annie Murphy Paul one.

ELISE: Yeah. Can you tell people about the hand gestures that I so naturally

LIZ: Yeah, so that is from Annie Murphy Paul, she's a science journalist that I absolutely love and she did this great book about how to think outside of our brains, like how we're basically over utilizing our brains for the thinking process and we're under utilizing all of these other tools that help us solve problems and make connections better. And one of my all time favorite tips that she shared was that when we gesture and fidget more, it helps us access our thoughts and our memories that much faster because essentially our brain processes that movement faster. So you can use it in two ways. You can use it either when we're having a conversation like this, or when I do my podcast introductions, I used to be like Sitting there with like my hands folded in my lap because I was like nobody's watching me like who am I performing for? But if you let yourself kind of like move freely in space the words will come better The thoughts will come faster the solutions will come faster If you're taking a test in school like letting yourself move around I actually think it's a huge problem with that Traditional education is that we're forcing kids to sit there and not move and we're yelling at them for fidgeting when actually fidgeting is a natural instinct to access a huge chunk of our brain. But then also if you are like researching something or studying something that you want to remember later, you're practicing a speech, you're practicing a presentation. Moving your body, doing that fidgeting, doing that gesturing, as you're encoding it, is going to make you more able to recall it later.

ELISE: Yeah. No, I really, that was extremely validating because like you, I used to, when I worked in magazines, I used to do all the morning TV. And it was a lot of tabletop, so I was allowed to do use my hands somewhat, but one of the things that was compulsively trained out of me was my hand talking.

LIZ: Which is such a bummer. I mean, I guess it's distracting on television, but it is an important part of how we communicate and how we think.

ELISE: No, a thousand. I felt incredibly validated, Liz, because I had not seen that. And then also, this idea , you write a lot about Katie Milkman, who I feel like I want to know.

LIZ: Oh my gosh, you need to have her on your podcast. It is wild to me how every single, to this day, I had a podcast guest on on Tuesday, and she was like, oh, ask Katie Milkman, who's a Wharton professor. And I'm like, I know who Katie Milkman everybody talks about Katie Milkman.

ELISE: Yeah. Well, I had never heard of her. So thank you. But the temptation bundling, can you talk about that? Cause that's something I intuitively do as well.

LIZ: Temptation bundling is the only way that I could have ever gotten myself to work out, I think. Like, I, first of all, for a very long time, because I was so immersed in diet culture, I didn't even think working out was important. Because you hear that thing that like, your body is 80 percent what you eat and 20 percent the working out. So I was just like, I'm in a calorie count, working out doesn't matter at all. Which is such a bummer retrospectively, especially since I was going through really extreme anxiety at the time. And right now, one of my best uses for working out is as an antidote to my anxiety. But I didn't work out until I was well into my 30s. And when I started it, it was during a period of extreme insomnia. And I was just like, I need to try absolutely anything. So one of my tricks is to notice the immediate reward of something. I think that's really, really important for making habits stick. So for me, instead of thinking about working out in terms of my body and like, longevity and wanting my thighs to be a certain size, which all of those things take a really long time to happen if they happen at all, I'm like, Oh, I sleep better tonight. My anxiety is less right now. After this workout, I have more energy to take on my day, like noticing those immediate rewards. But the second thing is temptation bundling means you take something that you do not like to do and you bundle it with basically your favorite thing to do. Something that's going to be really, really, really motivating for you. So for me, that's podcasts. I love podcasts, so much that I host one. I love them though. I just think it's so cool that you just get to sit around and while you're in your daily life you get to hear all these really fascinating people's ideas and stories and I just I love them so much. So, when I work out, I do a 20 to 30 minute workout at home. I'm also a huge fan of setting the bar low so you can actually stick to your commitments. I think that is so under discussed and often we set the bar high and then we're not showing up for ourselves and we're teaching our brain not to trust ourselves and reinforcing that message. So I set the bar low, I do it at home, but I just mute. Sorry to the people that I work out with, but I mute the instructor and I put on my podcast and that way I look forward to it. And the key to temptation bundling is to really save your favorite thing so that you can only do it that during that time. So I'll listen to other podcasts throughout the rest of my life, but I will only listen to my favorite podcasts when I'm working out. Or I'll only watch my favorite TV shows when I'm folding laundry, which is another task that I absolutely hate. Saving those things so that you actually begin to look forward to the task that you hate is so helpful in actually accomplishing that task.

ELISE: Yeah. I know you opened the book bringing us back to the beginning of your journey, where you were suffering from agoraphobia, some childhood trauma, some Seizures, anxiety disorder, drugs.

LIZ: A lot when you say it all together. Yeah.

ELISE: But, you know, as for so many, you were trying to sort of solve problems in your own life or just get out of bed, right?

LIZ: Yeah, which is a big problem to not be able to get out of bed.

ELISE: I've certainly been that person, though, as you describe where you're like, and the computer's sideways. so that I can watch…

LIZ: Yeah.

ELISE: my head off a pillow. It's rough. How do you manage your anxiety now?

LIZ: I still struggle with anxiety and I wanna be clear about that because I don't think there is just this like magical moment where you're like, oh, my anxiety's better and I think it's an ongoing thing in my life, but I think I've learned to have like an old friendship type relationship with it where I'm just like, oh, it's you again. Like I know you, I'm familiar with you. I know what you need. I know what you like. I know what you want. I know the ways you're going to try to take advantage of me. It's a familiar relationship instead of this thing that comes out of nowhere and seizes me and kind of attacks my life. The things that are most helpful for me is one, talking about it, a huge struggle I had during my agoraphobic days was I was so embarrassed about being so anxious. And I still remember, it had been a few months where I barely left my room and I came downstairs. I was living in London at the time. And we had a roommate and She was kind of like in the kitchen. We were drinking tea and she's like, oh, I haven't like seen you in a while. Her and my husband were in this graduate school program. So they're really busy just like out of the house all the time. And I was like, yeah, and I kind of paused and I was like, I've been having this really extreme anxiety.

And then I told her my seizure story, which I never told anybody, it almost could like trigger a panic attack just to talk about the seizure story. And she was like, oh, something really similar happened to my boyfriend. And I was like, what? I didn't think anybody else in the world had ever had like a one off seizure like that. Like I literally did not think that existed, which is why it just caused such panic to talk about. I also didn't think anybody else in the world experienced anxiety the way that I did. I was searching for those stories of connection, like one of the things I would do when I was laying there sideways was YouTube celebrities with anxiety, so like I've seen Amanda Seyfried, she had like a panic attack on Letterman, I think, and I've like watched that video a lot. There's a British YouTuber named Zoella who talked about her panic attacks, and I watched those videos, I could tell you every celebrity who's ever struggled with anxiety ever, because I'm looking for that connection, but For some reason, I was like, I'm the only one in my actual life. This is embarrassing for me. So beginning to talk about it and having so many people say, I struggle with that too, or that's not my struggle, but this is my struggle. And I feel like everybody has their something. Every single person just has something they're struggling with, something they feel shame about, something they're embarrassed to let out, something that's really vulnerable for them.

And Realizing I wasn't alone in that shame and that that shame was really unwarranted was so helpful for me. So that was really helpful talking about it. Structure has been huge for me, putting some structure in my day. I talk about that in the mental health checklist section of the book, which is based around the idea that often we focus on these like high level nitpicky things. We're like, oh, what supplement should I take should I combine these two foods and we're completely neglecting these base level structural things were kind of like what molding should I put around my wayne Scott.

ELISE: I'd like to help you, but I actually don't. I know the word. I just don't even know what it is.

LIZ: what should I decorate my house with? But you're like, your foundation is non existent, like, build the foundation first, and then we can decorate. And one of the foundational things that Julia Smith, who's a psychologist who I had on the podcast shared, is having structure and routine. Our bodies crave structure and routine. And in moving to England, leaving behind my support system, I stopped working full time. I was doing complete freelance work. So I just had no structure in my day. And getting that structure back has been really helpful. I was actually really nervous when I left my full time job to work for myself that my anxiety would come back. And I put a lot of bumpers in place to make sure I would keep that structure in my day. Yeah.

ELISE: I think we sort of shame routine or shame a lack of novelty as boring. You know, we so, adulate people who are constantly trying new things and exploring and test driving every trend. And honestly, I feel like that's for teens and 20 year olds. And as I've gotten older, I just love Again, like the routinization of my life, I think gives me a lot more bandwidth. I don't want to try a new coffee shop. No, thank you. When we go out for dinner, my husband, I mean, we're the same, but we like going to Hillstones, which is essentially Houston's, and getting artichoke spinach dip, and

LIZ: So I want to push back on the idea that new stuff is for 20 year olds because I talk about this in the book in the busting aging myths part, but I had on Dr. Becca Levy. She's a Yale professor who specializes in the study of aging and you can add literally 7. 5 years to your life if you have positive aging beliefs. And once you notice negative aging beliefs, I was yelling at Ellen about this yesterday, I've become such a nitpicky person about the aging beliefs because they're so pervasive. They're so everywhere and the second the glass shatters for you and you start to look around, you're like, Oh, over there's a greeting card that says I'm over the hill because I'm 30. Over there's my friend saying we don't go to the club anymore. We're 40. It's Everywhere the messages of what we can and cannot do at any age. So I would push back on that. I would say You can try new stuff at any age. You can enjoy it. There's gonna be 20 year olds who are listening to this podcast who are like, I don't like trying new things, you know what I mean?

ELISE: Sure.

LIZ: But then I think secondly…

ELISE: Sorry, personality, not age.

LIZ: I just think that I'm gonna catch anytime anybody around me, or I say to myself, anything that is a negative aging belief because I think it's a lot more destructive than we think it is, and treating it like a joke when it's costing us seven and a half years of our life is insane, you know? And I don't like the idea that my brain is hearing me say things I can or cannot do based on my age. My brain can say things that I can or cannot do because I like them or don't like them or because I'm physically able to or not, but I don't want my brain limiting me because of a number that it thinks

ELISE: Sure. No, I think that's fair. I would say, of myself, working in magazines and needing to pay attention to things that were quote unquote on trend, like I don't even know if I wanted to try new restaurants. It is probably more of a personality thing. But feeling pressure, social pressure,

LIZ: So it's not just like that's for people in their 20s, it's like you feel this confidence and freedom in yourself to adhere to the person that you maybe always were, which is super cool.

ELISE: a hundred percent.

LIZ: And then second, I do think that structure and routine, having some certainty, for me gives me the safety to take the risks that I really want to take in life. So I think that for me, having that baseline of structure means that instead of having every decision be like, Oh, should I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this? I can save that mental energy for the risks that I really want to take and the decisions that I really want to make.

ELISE: Yeah, no, I agree with that and I think that interestingly, when I think about sort of my reading material, how widely I read, and I can go quite deep into certain writers or paradigms or concepts, but I am all over the map and I think I would honestly break my brain if I insisted on living my life in the real world in such a wild and magpie like way

LIZ: Everybody has their like place of play and I think that having that structure and routine lets you free up that energy for wherever your place of play is.

ELISE: I would agree with that. I love that this feels like an essential, number 36, I'm gonna just go through and give you the numbers. I'm kidding. I love the look on your face. Right, right, right. Number 36. Love that one.

LIZ: Great. Can you tell me what that meant?

ELISE: never be the one to say no to yourself.

LIZ: to say no to yourself. Oh! That's a Lizism

ELISE: that's a great one.

LIZ: Yeah that's one of my all time life mottos, and I wish I knew, like, the first time I thought it, but I think I was, like, five, honestly. Like, I think it's just been something that I've lived by forever, and it has completely changed my life. I started writing a newspaper column which was my first professional writing job when I was a teenager and it's because I basically went to the newsroom and I was like you guys should have a column for teenagers that's written by a teenager and they're kind of like okay. My very very very first writing thing I ever did was Blowfish was coming to Modesto. Do you know them? And they were performing at the State Theater. And I called up the State Theater and I was like, I'm from the Modesto Bee. I want to interview Hootie. And they were like, okay, come by before the show. And then I called them and I was like, I have an interview with Hootie. Do you want to run it? And they were like, okay.

ELISE: that's amazing.

LIZ: And then I went backstage and I met Darius Rucker, who is so cool and so nice. And I did my little Hootie and Blowfish interview and I just think that never being the one to say no to yourself is so powerful for so many reasons. One, the amount of yeses that you get will shock and surprise you. The idea behind the philosophy is that somebody else can absolutely say no to you. Like, you can go try to get a literary agent, you can get a million rejections, you can go try to get a job, you can ask for a raise, you can get a million rejections. But the amount of people, especially since I've shared this online, who write to me and say that they got yeses is so cool. Like yeses they never dreamed of. There's so many people I know who've gotten raises, who've gotten their dream homes, who've gotten their dream jobs, who've moved across the country, who've asked out people that they're now married to, which is so cool. And it's because they went out in search of the no. But then the second thing that I think is really cool, outside of that Like, very quantifiable, pragmatic benefit is that we live in a world where people from all over are going to be shooting us down, telling us we're not good enough. There are messages that we internalize all day long, every single day, and by never being the one to say no to yourself, you are ensuring that you are not part of that cacophony. And I just think that is so powerful. Somebody else in the world can say no to you, but you are always saying yes to yourself, and showing yourself in that way that you believe in yourself, I think, is one of the most powerful things that we can do.

ELISE: No, and you've taught me a lot about that. I Have written about this in my sub sack. I don't know that we've talked about it with anyone on the podcast, but we were talking about it last night, that how every relationship, to some extent, is transactional, even with your loved ones. You're the energy that you're exchanging is love and care and consideration. And it moves out from there, right? And some things are entirely transactional, and that's fine, too. And And the piece that I had written, it was in part inspired by you and as I was bringing my book into the world, sort of the coaching from you of like, you need to be overt and you need to ask for support. Like no more wishing, like you need to actually go out and say, Hey, can you do this for me? In exchange, I can do this for you. Let's talk, let's support each other. Men are really good at this. And it's been important. One, it's As you were just saying, many people will say no to you or not respond at all, and that has its own heartbreak. But I think what I have been doing throughout my long career in media, 20 years, is accruing or developing relationships that I thought were, in some sense, transactional or favor based or like I would try to do things for people and that somehow that would mean, of course, that they would do things for me in turn, there was an implied transactional element, but I had never made it overt. It was always this covert wanting, wishing, hoping, and it was a really good, like you were very helpful in saying and modeling it. It's sort of baked into your personality, I would say, but I think that's really helpful of just say it. Worst case someone says no or they ignore you, but to not actually overtly make your wants and needs known is quite a disservice.

LIZ: two things to add. One, I think when people shape at the idea of a relationship, even a personal relationship being transactional, all you have to do is imagine what it would be like if that relationship, that transaction became incredibly lopsided. Like if all you were doing was giving to your partner and they weren't giving you anything back, how shitty that would feel. And I think then you're like, oh, it needs to be a back and forth. Like it is transactional. And that is just abundantly clear. If you imagine. What happens when that transaction gets really one sided, but then two, I think, yeah, it's fundamentally a communication issue. I say this all the time in romantic relationships that we like expect our partners to know to not only like do such a good job of like showing us the love, like planning the date and getting us the flowers and showering us with everything that we want, but also we want them to have come up with the idea we want them to have read our minds and that's part of what makes it romantic and my entire life changed when I was like, zach, our anniversary is coming up. It's our dating anniversary, which is the one that you plan. I would love if you planned, like, a fun adventure day for us that we could enjoy together. And then he's like, cool, fun adventure day, check. And he plans these, like, incredible Things because he has the information from me about what I want and expect and then I'm not just like sitting around being like, well, you didn't buy me flowers for Valentine's Day is like, well, how did I know you wanted flowers? I think people by and large want to give us what we want. They want to care for us, but we need to give them the information to do so and expecting people to Look out for us to love us to care for us and to be mind readers is like insane

ELISE: Yes. A hundred percent.

LIZ: I think that holds in professional relationships as well. It's been a game changer for me in personal relationships making my Expectations known and giving people the space to show up for me, but in professional relationships as well. Making your goals clear So that people aren't disappointing you without even knowing they're disappointing you, I think is so important.

ELISE: Yes. A hundred percent. And there's something too for me where I was like, Oh, all this, this covert wanting or expectation, or someday this person will return this favor or recognize the relationship. In some ways it's like I had a, I just had to light all those. Those covert contracts on fire and let it all go. You can't hold people accountable to something that they didn't actually agree to.

LIZ: No, oh my god, like, but say that again. I just think that that is, that sentence is so powerful. You cannot hold something accountable to something that they actually didn't agree to. If people could internalize that, that would change parental relationships, that would change friendships, that would change romantic relationships, that would change workplace relationships. It's just such a powerful thing and it is hard to internalize because we think everybody's living in the world that we've created in our head and that is not in fact true.

ELISE: in the world out there and marshalling us forward. No, seriously, I am in a, what would Liz do? I want all the things that you do to make your life easier in my inbox, please and thank you.

LIZ: But also I will say even recognizing that and having the communication and having the clarity doesn't take the magic out of relationships. Like, I... Enjoy you as a friend, as a person, and when I want something, I ask for it, and I make that clear, and I actually think that our friendship has benefited from the clarity of what we are also able to give each other and what we would like from each other, so I don't want to make it sound like it's going to be like cold and hard, and you're not going to be able to develop and form real relationships. I actually think having that clarity Freeze you up because sometimes if you're just like wanting in the background and then you're like, well, am I being nice to this person because I want something from them later? Or am I just like enjoying their company or what's the vibe? And by being really clear about what you're trying to get, then it frees you up to actually, I think, have a much realer and deeper and more fulfilling relationship.

ELISE: I completely agree, again, like making what's covert overt is good for everyone. One of the things I like about this book, too, is that it ends up being sort of a cheat sheet to your podcast because everything you do in some ways is, it's not Circular or self referential because you're referring people to other people's work, but it is all tight.

LIZ: Building a universe.

ELISE: building a universe and making it quite simple, which I, again, really appreciate as someone who makes things quite complex. I go for complexity. You go for simplicity. I have a lot to learn from you, but where should people start with you?

LIZ: I think listeners of this podcast should start with your episode of the Liz Moody podcast, which is definitely one of people's favorite episodes. We talk about a lot of the subjects in your book. We talk about the patriarchy. We talk about practical ways that we can start to overcome things like envy and our negative feelings towards a lot of the things that you talk about in your book And it's one of my all time favorite conversations i've had on the podcast and my audience as well So I would definitely direct people to that conversation because they're obviously all in love with you already so you can get more Elise there, but you can find the liz moody podcast wherever you listen to podcasts just by searching liz moody And then i'm liz moody on TikTok, on Instagram, I share lots of little snippets of advice and thoughts and tips from experts and just fun little like bursts of inspiration and motivation and education throughout your day. And then my book is A Hundred Ways to Change Your Life. And we've talked about it a lot, and I really appreciate how closely you have read it. But it's a beautiful book. It's a book that you're gonna want on your coffee table. It also feels like a book, and I don't know if people do this anymore in the age of phones, but it feels like a book I'd like to keep in my bathroom.

ELISE: It's a bathroom book. It is 100%.

LIZ: and I mean that respectfully of my book, but it's just because you can pick it up and you can read a tip at a time and it'll take you about five minutes and you will have learned science and have an actionable takeaway. So I just, I feel like those little interstitial moments of time, especially I'm trying to stay off my phone. So for me, I love books like this because while the water is boiling or when I have those little quick bursts of time. I can pick up a book and have a full experience rather than trying to like get into it.

ELISE: It's very satisfying. Bring back the bathroom book. That seems perfect for you. There's also, you know, you can learn about bloating and constipation.

LIZ: There's tips to have a better poop. Yeah. In the book,

ELISE: book has everything friends.

LIZ: It's real. This book is like, it's whether you're trying to fix your finances, your gut health, or your relationships, we got you covered.

ELISE: Thank you.

LIZ: Thank you.

ELISE: Liz Moody makes me laugh and I like following her in the world of wellness, which again is such a big concept, I don’t think any of us understand what it means anymore, but she’s a great distiller and simplifier in a world that can feel quite overwhelming and always returns to very simple and often free exercises and it is like a bathroom book and I love bathroom books as just a category in general because each of the 100 things she outlines take a few minutes to read, it’s just a few pages of why, for example, you should bundle treats with the things you are trying to accomplish in your life or ways to add fermented foods to your gut. It’s very practical and it spans a range. It’s not spiritual, it’s completely grounded in the physical but it’s a more feminine take on the world of wellness and a lot of it will be affirming and most likely things that you might already be doing, but I promise you’ll learn something. I learned something and I thought I knew everything in that space—just kidding! I’ll link our podcast conversation as well, it was one of my favorite ones to do on my book tour and she really gets it done on her podcast. Alright, I’ll see you next week.