Ways To Live Better - GF Radio

Nicole sent me an article on 10 ways to a better life. Then we talked through the list for you.

It's not rocket science, just simple steps to make life better for you and your family and friends. Big thanks to Nicole for putting this show together.

10 Ways To Improve https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/happiness-research-how-to-be-happy-advice/629559/ 

The School of Life  https://www.theschooloflife.com/ 

Africa Angel City Chorale   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c9-poC5HGw  

RadPower e-bike affiliate link https://www.avantlink.com/click.php?tt=ml&ti=843269&pw=131043 

Master Class Info  https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=797461&u=1026336&m=62509&urllink=&afftrack=

Start your Amazon shopping here: https://amazon.com/shop/gardenfork

My Stationary Bike https://amzn.to/3z0XQFN

HASfit Exercise YouTube channel is my fav https://www.youtube.com/hasfit

Eric: Hey. How are you doing? Thanks for downloading the show. Welcome to GardenFork Radio. It's eclectic DIY with me and my friends. Today we're going to DIY Your brain. We're going to talk about ten ways to be happier, with my friend Nicole. Hey, Nicole.
Nicole: Hey. How's it going?
Eric: I always love when you email me because it's something you seem to know what's inside my brain. You know what I'm going to click on, You know.
Nicole: I how can I capitalize on that?
Eric: You can't because I don't have any money for and there we I think we kind of subscribe to the same kind of news, news sources or websites. And they have some good articles and stuff. And I thought you sent a couple of them. One is from The Atlantic, and I was like, Wow, this I have thoughts about a lot of these so I always have thoughts about everything.
Eric: So. Did you like the. Did you like the camera operator on the show?
Nicole: Oh, my God, she's the best. Can she be on every week? She's so fun.
Eric: You know, you wouldn't know it, but she's like this high level executive, you know? And I hear her on her zoom calls and she can be kind of fun. But it's it's she's a power she's a power woman. You know, I'm just I'm just lucky to be with her, but she's, you know, there's this there's this fun part that I get to be with.
Eric: But then when she's at work, she just makes stuff happen. And I'm like, how can I be like that?
Nicole: She's like, business camera operator.
Eric: Yeah. So again, we and if you haven't listened that show yet, it's the boss talking about why we have two dogs. Because a bunch of people have asked recently, so.
Nicole: Well, interesting. Well, I wanted to do the follow up show comparing two dogs to two children. But you didn't respond to that.
Eric: I'm sorry. I've been a little overwhelmed with email.
Nicole: No, it was a joke. It was a joke. It was.
Eric: Here. The dogs can't wipe the drool off your chin when you're 86 years old.
Nicole: So I know right now I had two boys, so we'll see if that happens. Here, too. We may be drooling alone. Okay, so the point of the matter is the articles from The Atlantic, it's by. They have like a resident. He must be a psychologist or psychiatrist who writes a lot of columns. So the one that I sent you was How to Build From There, a series of How to build a life and it's ten practical ways to improve happiness.
Nicole: And I like the tagline for When You Need Advice that goes beyond the Danish.
Eric: Also, the gentleman, Arthur Brooks, he has a podcast called How to Build a Happy Life, which I didn't know was out there.
Nicole: Oh, I didn't know that either.
Eric: Oh, I will link to that. So. Right. So let's go through the list and we'll we'll bounce off them.
Nicole: Okay. I mean, the first one, invest in family and friends which to me is just like instead of buying things for people by activities or, you know, experiences that totally resonates.
Eric: By time.
Nicole: Right.
Eric: The reason the research is clear through our natural impulse may be to buy stuff. We should invest in improving our closest relationships by sharing experiences and freeing up time to spend together. And I've also discovered I've spoke I think I've talked about this before in the show. As I get older, it is harder to make new friends Mm hmm.
Eric: And literally a couple of months ago, ah, we have some couple of friends that live across the street here. And we we have dinner almost every week and they just said, look, we need to stay friends. Oh.
Nicole: It's so sweet. No, I think that's true. I think to the pandemic, there's kind of been a winnowing of friends.
Eric: Yeah.
Nicole: And you had to be much, much more intentional in getting together and seeing people and maybe there are some people that, you know, you've let go, and maybe that's okay. And maybe you want to, like, re-up that. I don't know.
Eric: I've had to dial back some friends that are depressing, basically. Mm hmm. I have depression, and it and if I'm around someone that's depressed, it it makes me depressed.
Nicole: So I'm like, right. Right now, in German, it's called the Joyful Cries. It's like the devil's circle because you kind of feed off of each other right back in many, many contexts. Yeah. No, I think that's really okay.
Eric: It's kind of like if you want to be a dentist, a better tennis player, hang out with people that play tennis better than you. So it might be hang out with people that live life better than you. I try and help. I have some friends that are truly hurting, and I go out of my way to help them.
Eric: Mm hmm. But I also go out of my way to hang out with positive people like yourself. Thanks.
Nicole: Yeah. I mean, I think it's true. What is the annoying adage you are what you spend your time on. To that end. The New York Times has done a series about adolescents and cell phone use and causing depression. Wow. And one of the article, what the time the article is like, you know, what we all know as parents is you have to model the behavior you want to see.
Nicole: And so I did. Because I can't help it. It sucks me in, and it's not a good feeling. So I did put my phone on like sleep mode from 3 p.m. until 7 a.m.. And I showed excuse me, I showed my boys that I was doing that and I was going to be much more intentional in how I use the phone around them, you know?
Nicole: But I was like for work hours, I'm going to use it for work, but I'm just going to be much more intentional. But I think that's kind of investing in friends and family. Like my kids would much rather read a book with me than, you know what? Yeah. Then all of us stare at our screens together, so.
Eric: Oh, cool. Yeah. All right. Number two is join a club.
Nicole: Well, I made my own club. The biking club.
Eric: Yes, I agree with that. I've. I formed a Urban Beekeepers email list. Oh, yeah. And just for it's where it's for, you know, New York area, but most of us are in Brooklyn, and I. I felt a little. I was like, oh, should I do this? Should. And, and I was like, well, what the heck, Eric: , it's just a couple of clicks and an invite.
Eric: Email your beekeeper friends and see what happens. And it's actually there's like 40 people in the group now. And mainly we're by email, but we get together twice a year. We meet in a community garden and it's, I guess it's the Brooklyn Beekeeper Club you know, it's not, it's not hard if you find a common glue, there are other people that will rise to the I don't the word is challenge but rise to the the thing hey let's make this happen hey, real quick here, just a reminder, if you're shopping on Amazon, would you consider using the Garden Fork link to Amazon?
Eric: It links to our storefront there. There are several subsections when you go to that page. I think the most popular one is the tools I use listing my most favorite cordless drill driver kit. There's just some like aha moment tools that I've put on there. I recently learned about a new kind of a better, higher quality brand of electrical wire strippers that I didn't know existed.
Eric: And I've kind of beat up mine, and I got these and I'm like, Oh, these are much nicer. Anyway, there's a link in the show notes. Do that, or it's Amazon.com slash shop slash garden for Amazon.com, slash shop slash garden talk that really helps us pay the bills. It's, it's, it's kind of a big thing. So think about that.
Eric: Right. Thank you.
Eric: Okay, so something happened there behind the scenes. We're going to let you behind the scenes here. The Internet just completely died here in my basement office in Brooklyn. And then Nicole and I rescheduled and literally 10 minutes before we were going to do our call. So that was twice in the span of three days. The Internet just went out on the whole block and crazy.
Eric: They said they were doing maintenance. If you look at the infrastructure of cable and Internet and phone and all that, it's it's held together with hot glue and baling wire, you know, because that.
Nicole: Right.
Eric: The main distributor amplifier, signal amplifier, I guess, is what it is. For our block is in a metal box under the sidewalk and the sidewalk. You know, in the winter, it gets snowy, salty water I don't know if it's waterproof, but it it's exposed to the elements. And I'm surprised it works at all. But but here we are.
Eric: We're back. We talked about investing in family and friends and join a club. I don't know if we mentioned want to join a club, but I am a member of the Lions Club in our little town. It's a service organization. And if you're looking for just a group of people who want to get things done, I like the Lions Club.
Eric: They're not associated with any religious organization or political organization. They're just kind of get stuff done. People, a lot of times the Lions Club in a town runs the volunteer ambulance service. So that's interesting. Yeah.
Nicole: Well, yeah, one of my friends got to go to Austria on a Rotary scholarship. I think it's a similar, I guess more.
Eric: Yeah, I like it. And we have a blood. We have two blood drives every summer and I go to I'm a big blood donor. We talked about this, but when I go to the regular blood donor place, they have like chocolate chip cookies and the little, you know, like Oreos in that. And at the Lions Club Drive, they have homemade homemade sandwiches oh.
Eric: And someone will always make deviled eggs. And and it's just it's a it's a much homey or blood dried Yeah.
Nicole: The children's hospital here in DC is always looking for blood, and they actually really always need plasma yeah.
Eric: It's there are some restriction about who can give blood, but and be sure to hydrate three days before you're going to do that.
Nicole: So the last time I went, I couldn't give because my iron was too low.
Eric: Yeah. My sister has tried a couple of times and she passes out and one of the phlebotomist said there are other ways to give in other words, volunteering, you know, and things like that because I think they run into that all the time. And so anyway.
Nicole: Okay, so number three, be active both mentally and physically.
Eric: Yeah.
Nicole: I mean, honestly, I've learned that during the pandemic I have endless red chair that I like sat in making my children go to school every day. And I just kind of sat there and drank coffee all day and was kind of losing it and then realized I needed to leave our home every day for an hour. It's a trial walk for an hour and it is.
Nicole: Yes, leave your home.
Eric: It really I noticed during the pandemic a lot more people walking up in the woods by us. Oh, and everyone. Would you kind of talk to each other from across the road? Yeah.
Nicole: Oh, how are you doing?
Eric: And I bought a I bought an e-bike during the pandemic, and I liked it so much. I bought a second one because I wanted the one in the city and I wanted one in the country. And it's kind of a heavy bike to carry, so. Yeah, but it's rad power bikes. This is a unvarnished plug for them. I also have an affiliate link, if you're interested below it.
Eric: It's a great bike. And we Nicole and I have had a couple of podcasts here about the e-bikes, but yeah, that it just gets you outside instead of taking the subway. Now I ride my bike everywhere and I just kind of get like a little energy boost from that.
Nicole: Yeah. Somebody tweeted the like they never feel happier than when they're on the bike. And if we could get like everybody on bikes.
Eric: It would help. So yeah, go out there and do cool stuff. Yeah. Sounds like a familiar phrase. I don't know where we heard that before.
Nicole: We heard that. Okay, I'm excited about the fourth one practice or religion, because I am not religious, but I love this website, School of Life. It was started by Alain de Botton. He is an author he's fascinating. He spent a day or a week at the LaGuardia Airport and wrote a book about it once. And it's a great little book.
Eric: Oh, wow.
Nicole: Yeah. He just sat there at a desk and people would come talk to him but the idea of the School of Life is they have a website, they have a ton of free stuff. They have a ton of books that go along that explain how to meditate, how to, you know, reconnect with family and friends. They have stuff for children that help kids deal with big feelings and emotions.
Nicole: But his idea was to take the good parts of religion because he's an atheist as well. And and there were lots of good things like singing together, like, I miss singing with people. That's something we did in church that we don't do.
Eric: Wow.
Nicole: So anyway, I really am a big fan of of that website School of Life.
Eric: There is a choir in Los Angeles. Who the name. I'll look it up here at a second. They do a they do some cover versions of popular songs and hits. Right. And then there's a YouTube video which I'll link to you. They did the song called Africa from the band Toto, and they look like they're having so much fun singing this song.
Nicole: That's awesome. I love that song.
Eric: I'm going to look it up right now. It's so YouTube. If you go to YouTube and type in Toto Africa Choir, it will come up Toto Africa. I can't spot choir.
Nicole: Singing.
Eric: Our it is the Angel City Chorale and it's it's a great video there. They're just smiling and I don't sing very well, but they're just like as like, oh, wow.
Nicole: Yeah. But it doesn't matter how you sing if you're in a group, you know, like to sing or in the shower. Hey, my son, my youngest found out about rickrolling. Oh, and he Rick rolls us like live all the time. He'll be like, hey, mom, I've got a question and I'll be like, What do you need, honey? And he's like, Never going to kiss you up.
Nicole: Like, stop it with the rick rolling. Okay.
Eric: All right, so go watch the YouTube video in the school of life. Yep.
Nicole: School of life. I can do that.
Eric: It's I don't know, I just. And also, if you are interested in Christianity, but don't really like the dogma, consider a Unitarian church.
Nicole: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Uh, my, a couple are very good friends are Unitarians, and I have not met an unkind Unitarian person.
Nicole: I agree with that. I would agree completely agree with that.
Eric: They they're kind of like, we're all here and however you feel that's okay and you know it's they're the most laid back on on dogma group I've ever met.
Nicole: Nonjudgmental.
Eric: Yeah I what is my religion is really meditation and being in the woods I think.
Nicole: Okay I'm all about that.
Eric: Headspace app it kind of lets you it's it's it's it's not it just changed my life say they go.
Nicole: So my husband never uses Instagram. I mean he'll look at what I post but he posted the other day he was on his like 1300 day of meditation.
Eric: Oh that's.
Nicole: Great. Yeah I know. I was like, wow, that's really impressive.
Eric: My the Headspace app will tell me how many hours I've meditated and it's a pretty big number by now.
Nicole: Yeah, that's really great. I like that. Yeah. Whatever you can do with great physical exercises.
Eric: Number five, a slightly souped up version of number three above your daily walk should be supplemented with a purpose purposes a purposeful, I guess, exercise plan. This is consistent with research showing that regular exercise of all different types enhances mood and social functioning.
Nicole: Okay, so I have a friend. When she turned 40, she decided this was her decade of skills acquisition, and so every year she's learning new skills. So, so far she's learned how to sail scuba knife, knife safety, not tying winter survival her family's doing climbing now, joined a climbing gym anyway. I kind of love that I the intentionality of that like okay I'm going to learn how to do a lot of things in the next ten years.
Eric: Yeah, I love that. What actually really helps with that is accountability with someone else.
Nicole: Yes.
Eric: And that's what I need. I need someone to I like Nicole has like when are we finishing the podcast gentle text nudges, you know?
Nicole: Well, it's because you're on my to do list. So I'm like, Okay, I've got to get this off of my.
Eric: Oh, all right. I'm I have spoken about this before, but my favorite way to exercise is what the YouTube channel called has Fit Heart and Soul Fitness. Coach Kozak and Claudia, they are I believe they are married. They're the most on hyped up exercise people they're just like, hey, whatever you can do is great if you please keep with us.
Eric: They always have one of them. Does they? The easier version of the exercise and the other one does the more challenging version of the exercise. Almost all the exercises can be done either with resistance bands or hand dumbbells or even a couple of bottles of water, just water bottles. And they have short programs and long programs and they have a Patreon account to Patreon.
Eric: They are on Patrizio and I gave him I signed up for a year with them. I'm like, it would cost me a trainer is like, what? 150 an hour? I don't know. Yeah. Going to a gym is whatever. And I literally have a TV on the wall in the basement with some home depot, rubber mats on the floor.
Eric: And I just, I have a playlist built up and I just do 20 minutes and it it helps your brain and it helps your body.
Nicole: I, I find that I'm more likely to exercise if I can make it useful. So like riding the bike to the post office or walking with my books to the library to pick up more books like I like having a goal. And then I feel like I've gotten two things done for one.
Eric: Excellent. Yeah, yeah. Number six is act nicely agreeableness is consistently found to be highly and positively correlated with happiness, and it can be increased relatively easily. Huh?
Nicole: Be nice. I guess that seems great.
Eric: It's not too hard. It takes so much energy to be angry. I used to be unhappy or a lot unhappier than I am now. And with the meditation, I've gotten much better letting stuff go. Like, there's a couple of people on our block and some of our surrounding blocks that have nicer cars. And first of all, I'm like, What do you do in trying to own a car like that in a neighborhood like this?
Eric: And they take up to parking spots and or previous Eric: that would have grinded on me night and day. And now I'm like, Okay, I'm not happy you've done that. But I believe that karma is boomerang, and at some point in our lives, that negative act is going to come back at them, that they're going to come back at them.
Nicole: Not going to find a parking spot.
Eric: Yeah.
Nicole: I know. I think that's smart. As as Ana and Elsa say, let it go.
Eric: Yeah, it's really that's what the meditation is about, is it? You know, I meditate for a 15 minutes and two, two thirds of that time, my, my brain, the hamster wheel is spinning. But there are these moments of afterwards bliss or just emptiness or calmness. And I can kind of bring that feeling back when there's something bad going on or something.
Eric: I know it's starting to grind on me. I'm just like, I just it's all a little stuff if you really once you realize it's all just little stuff. I mean, aside from like something like Ukraine, what's going in Ukraine, right? You know, but the day to day stuff, somebody cut you off, you know, let the guy in the Range Rover cut you off because there's he's got bigger problems.
Nicole: So did you watch that movie that came out during the pandemic up in the air?
Eric: No.
Nicole: Okay, well, don't watch it. But the last line of the movie is we really did have it all, didn't we? And I think about that all the time. We've got everything. We're fine.
Eric: Yeah. Like people. I see people now and they're like, Hey, hi. How are you today? I'm like, I'm above the grass. And they're like, oh, yeah.
Nicole: Yeah. Life is not a burden for me is what one of my good friends says.
Eric: Yeah, no, it's fine. You know? Okay, so be generous.
Nicole: Behaving altruistically towards others rewards the brain with happiness enhancing boost of dopamine serotonin and oxytocin.
Eric: Yes, I need all the serotonin I can get oh.
Nicole: Yeah. No, I think that's true. I always feel better when I do things for others.
Eric: I had a.
Nicole: Grocery store.
Eric: Go ahead.
Nicole: It's the Girl Scout in me I like. I, you know more than anything that the my childhood in Girl Scouts shaped my behaviors towards others.
Eric: That's part of join in a club. Yeah. Yeah, I have a I had a truck. Well, after I bought my bike, I had a nice, like I said, foot ten speed or something. Track bike, a very nice bike, but I was like trying to sell that in Brooklyn. It's kind of a pain. And so I put it on our block email list.
Eric: I said, Hey, I got this checked bike. You know, somebody wants to throw me some money for it. And my neighbor said, Hey, my son is going to college and could really use a bike. And so and he's a nice guy. He came down and he said that my son's going to meet us in a minute here. And and I just said, you could, your kid could just have the bike.
Eric: You know, he's like, really go look, I go, you're he's probably financially stretched as it is. He's going to need the bike. And the kid comes and I said, look, you can have the bike. I said, At some point in your future, I'm going to call you and need a favor. And it's like, okay. All right. And literally this winter, he was back from college.
Eric: During January, we got a big dumping snow. He texted me and said, hey, can I come shovel your sidewalk? Wow. So it it karma is boomerang, you know, so and his dad is his father. And Dan said a couple of times, he loves that bike rides all over town with that. I'm like, perfect, you know?
Nicole: Yeah, it's there. No, you don't need it anymore. You don't need in your garage or whatever.
Eric: Yeah, I don't you know, I don't need the 75 bucks I would have got from someone, so. Right. Wow. I feel so good just talking about this okay.
Nicole: Check your health of all health issues. Those that create the greatest unhappiness are typically chronic pain and anxiety. Don't neglect your visits to the doctor. And the dentist and and seek mental health assistance if your emotions are interfering with your work, relationships or social activities. I think that's so true. There was just an article in the New York Times about women not being taken seriously with their health issues.
Eric: And, yes.
Nicole: Apparently heart attacks and women can be jaw pain. And, you know, just knowing those things and being able to advocate yours for yourself when you although it's really having those things is very scary. I understand. But yeah, I think this is good. Go to the doctor. Make it make it a regular part of your life.
Eric: My doctor, I can email and I really like that because I hate talking on the phone. And his office manager is fantastic. And we're on a first name basis with the office manager. And I and I just go, hey, this is going on. And boom, it happens. So it's it can be hard to find a primary care physician that you, you, you know, work with.
Eric: Well, but I've had experience with chronic pain and anxiety and it it can ruin you. It can just cause other health problems. And I have been to a talk therapist probably for four or five times. It's it's not that weird. It's a little odd. I mean, I guess now they do. I'm on Zoom calls but you're kind of in the room.
Eric: You're in this what I call the therapy room. And there's always like a white noise machine outside and you're like, so why are you here? You know, and you have to find someone that you get along with.
Nicole: Yeah, I think that is the key part. I mean, I, I definitely know there are more there are many more flexible options than just going to the room. Yeah, I know somebody who comes to the house and, like, just goes for a walk with their kids. It's really helpful. A little walk and talk action. But I think remembering that these doing these kinds of things is preventative maintenance because you don't want to get ten years down the line and be like, Well, what should I do?
Eric: If you want someone to be kind of a more, well, you should try this or kind of kick you in the head, you want to see someone who's called a cognitive behaviorist.
Nicole: Mm hmm.
Eric: Rather than like a classic Freudian kind of therapist.
Nicole: Or a social worker or also the way it was described to me was a psychologist are working on interior thoughts and social workers are working on how you respond to the in your environment.
Eric: Yes. Yes. I have seen one psychiatrist who was way too smart for me and that other times I've been with social workers and it's it's a CCW, it's called a certified certified certificate. Anyway, I think they're more based in reality and working with your world. So, yeah, that's very important.
Nicole: Okay, I'm going to take your next one.
Eric: Experience Nature studies have shown that compared with Urban compared with 00 studies have shown that that compared with urban walking, walking in a woodland setting more dramatically lower stress increases positive mood and enhances working memory. Wow.
Nicole: Yeah. I think I read an article years ago that living above the third floor is negative because we need to be closer to the ground. I feel like that's the same as like woodland settings know you need to be grounded.
Eric: That's interesting because I'm thinking about this now. When my urban walking, there is stuff going on all around you and in a woodland setting. Not so much.
Nicole: Right. Much less.
Eric: Oh, and so this is a tangent because it is Garden Fork There is a birding app called Merlin that is put out by the Cornell University Department of Ornithology and their Big Rick. As talked about this in the show, they have a yearly bird census that you can work with them, but they have an app now out that you literally turn on the app, hit the record button and hold it up to your yard or the woods, and it records all the different birds that are doing their sounds chirping or whatever.
Eric: And then it will list out all the birds in your yard that are talking at that that 3 minutes that you recorded.
Nicole: That's awesome. I need to do that around four in the morning when our birds are chirping.
Eric: Yeah, but it's fantastic because you know, I always hear like the chickadees and I can hear the crows and the nuthatches, but there were these other birds in the yard that I didn't even know, like a sap sucker, a yellow bellied sap sucker, which I thought was I think is kind of a woodpecker. But the app has a pretty big database that's like a one gig file because it downloads the audio files of birds in your area.
Eric: But what you're also doing by using the app is you agree to give your location to Cornell University, and they're basically creating a database of birds in your area over time.
Nicole: Oh, interesting.
Eric: So with with climate, the climate crisis, global warming, I've seen this in real life where we're seeing animals in the yard that we never saw before, one of them being the Lone Star tick, which gives you that get bitten, you can get that meat allergy. It used to be in the south and now it's coming up through New England.
Nicole: So what are you guys doing about that?
Eric: About the birds are the ticks.
Nicole: The ticks.
Eric: We're just real careful. We. Well, you can tuck your pants into your socks. Our dogs both have a tick repellant on them. And we just check each other and our dogs constantly during the day.
Nicole: I was wondering if I don't want to do the regular spray in our yard, you know, because of the bees. But I was interested to find out if the garlic spray harms the the bees.
Eric: Oh, I don't know. I don't know.
Eric: Anyway, that was a tangent, but. Yeah. Nature. It's called Merlin. It's from a Cornell University Ornithology lab. It's a big file, but, man, that thing is fun. It's really well designed because as you're recording, it starts scrolling out the birds it's hearing. And then, like, when the nut hatch gets its little thing, the nut hatch name lights up on your phone.
Nicole: Oh, fun.
Eric: So that was cool.
Nicole: All right. Totally going to get that with the kids.
Eric: That's awesome. Nature nature. All right. You want to do number ten, Nicole?
Nicole: Socialize with colleagues outside of work day to have shown that work friendships increase employee engagement, which is associated with both happiness and productivity for workers. I believe that the move to remote work during the pandemic has inadvertently lowered the true compensation for work for millions, explaining in part, the so-called great resignation. Bonding with your coworkers is a way to take it back.
Eric: Oh, yeah, I, I, you know, the camera operator is an executive in a big company, and she has many employees and she just is now back at work part time, and she's traveling the different offices. And what was lost in the remote work was what I call that coffee machine chat, you know?
Nicole: Yeah. WaterCooler. Yep.
Eric: Oh, you know, you know, Joe is having a hard time at home or, you know, oh, Dan did this really brilliant thing, you know, so I don't work in an office. I work in my basement. I have two Labradors as coworkers. They just wag their tails.
Nicole: Yeah, but you socialize with them outside of work.
Eric: Yeah, we do. We're going to go have a beer after work.
Nicole: No, I mean, it's the same here, but I will say that I have I have intentional, intentional groups, so I have my writing accountability group and we make a point to meet every week at the same time to talk about our writing and to write together.
Eric: Interesting. It's I actually have started a little YouTube group, some some people that I know that are also on YouTube. And I don't know if it's called a mastermind group, but I, I started it. I'm not very good at organizing, but maybe I can get one of the other people in the group to make us meet on Zoom or Skype or something.
Eric: Once a month, just to kind of talk about YouTube because YouTube keeps moving the goalposts. Right. And just sharing what we find is of interest. But yeah, just see if people go out for I think people drink less now, but you could and I think maybe people roll their eyes at something that the human resources department has created some sort of ice cream, social or something or like a spa like.
Nicole: Yeah.
Eric: Well, it's like, hey, let's just go have some let's take a break at 3:00 and go have some coffee. You know.
Nicole: I think it is sometimes one thing that Brant finds is that once you have kids coming home, like going to a happy hour isn't as easy, you know?
Eric: Yeah.
Nicole: Especially before the pandemic, like, and when they were really little like I was like watching the clock, like, okay, it's, you know, it's 601, and you're not here. So yeah, that's much better now, though. And of course. Oh, this is funny. I have a good friend who has like an executive job. And so I said to him the other day, it was like, Hey, if you guys do the take your kids at work day, could you, you know, take, take one of the boys.
Nicole: And he is like, oh, god, we haven't done that in years. But can't just take the boys up to the attic.
Nicole: That's where Brian's been working for three years.
Eric: And years ago.
Nicole: It was like, well played, well played.
Eric: All right, cool. I you know, I like these kind of lists. They I like that they kind of give me sometimes a a sideways view on stuff and stuff I've never thought about. And it also reinforces that a lot of the stuff I do is is part of this well, on these lists, I think acting nicely as and checking your health are just so incredibly important.
Eric: I caught my wife calls it charitable assumption. You don't know the background of the person that's having a bad day. Or just kind of directing anger at you. And I've learned I've gotten so much better at just stepping back and going, okay, there's clearly something going on here. That maybe I was the trigger for. But there's a lot of a lot of not back issues has a back story baggage I just think about that, you know, if there's some kind of interaction in the parking lot, you know what I do now when something like that, I go, hey, I'm sorry, nothing.
Eric: I didn't mean anything by it. I'm really just sorry. I hope your day goes better and it disarms people. Yeah. Because they're ready for you to whip out your phone and start videoing them, you know?
Nicole: Yeah.
Eric: And I usually take my hand and I take my hand and I hold it over my chest, and I just go, Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry if anything happened here, and it works usually. Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah, totally. Give everybody a little more grace.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot going on right now, you know, it's just you turn on the news and you're like, oh, my God. That just happened. And so if you're asked nicely, maybe something won't happen.
Nicole: I think turning off the news is always a good.
Eric: Option for that. That's number 11. Yeah.
Nicole: Hey, well, this is great.
Eric: All right, so if you are interested in supporting the show and getting more the world of Eric: , I have a Patreon account. You can become a regular donor supporter. Donors for non-profits Actually, Nicole is one, and I post stuff during the week, and we do an after show for the podcast. So we're going to stick around now and do about 10 minutes behind the scenes with the world of Eric: and the calls.
Eric: We consider that everyone else, if you're have some ideas for us as topics to talk about or things that you'd like to add to this list, because we'll revisit this. It's radio at Garden for TV. Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it. It makes me smile to think that people are downloading and I get to be in their ears.
Eric: So go out and do cool stuff and make it a great day. Gardening Talk Radio is produced by Garden Fork Media, LLC in Brooklyn, New York. Our producer is Sean O'Neill. If you need an amazing podcast producer visit Sean's site. Sean in Brooklyn dot com that's Sean SD eight and in Brooklyn dot com. Our executive producers Jimmy goes for more information on Jimmy and the custom hello books he makes visit hello books dot com.
Eric: The music in the show is licensed from Audio Block School and unique tracks. Scott.