Soul Gum

You spend all year working on non-attachment, mindfulness, and conscious consumption. And then it’s the holidays, and suddenly you're fighting for your life at the family dinner table and contemplating buying a $70 candle as a stocking stuffer. Welcome to the spiritual girl's guide to the holidays: a three-part survival guide for enjoying the magic of the season without losing your mind, your money, or your sense of self. Along the way, we’ll talk about the history of Christmas consumerism, what bell hooks can teach us about our relationship with luxury and material things, and the strange psychological phenomenon of holiday regression. I also share a low-consumption holiday gift guide full of thoughtful, thriftable, and DIY ideas.

If you want the holiday magic without the interpersonal chaos, financial ruin, and return of your teenage coping mechanisms, I made this episode for you.  

PS: If you want the PDF version of the gift guide, go to this link to give me your email and I’ll send it to you!!! 

EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00 Intro: the spiritual girl's guide to the holidays
05:52 1. Holiday regression: why going home makes you feel 16 again
07:25 How to make a plan for boundaries & weird conversations
12:12 2. The holiday spending spiral: the history of Christmas consumerism
15:20 How to give more thoughtful gifts
16:14 Low-consumption holiday gift guide: DIY, thrifted & meaningful gifts
21:27 bell hooks on beauty, luxury & conscious consumption
22:54 Extremely specific tips for mindful spending
25:49 Living the aesthetic you want to buy
27:00 3. How to stay grounded when your routines fall apart
31:39 10 journaling prompts for the holiday season
36:13 Closing poem: December by Hannah Rosenberg

EPISODE LINKS
ADD YOUR EMAIL HERE TO GET A WRITTEN VERSION OF THE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE
My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
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The best year of your life doesn't start on January 1. It starts with what you do before the year begins. Today, I come to you with three things you can do right now to prepare for 2027 to be the best year of your life. 

I know it’s still October, but every year we lose our collective minds from November until January. And soon it will be New Year’s Eve and we’ll be trying to make our vision boards without having given any thought to the actual vision. SO: we’re getting a head start on preparing for 2027 before the holiday chaos hits with 3 audits that will help you get clear on what you want, what's holding you back, and how you actually want to live.

Along the way, we're talking about why we're so bad at estimating how much we can get done in a day, why being harder on yourself might actually be holding you back, what the Stoics (the original chads) can teach us about new year’s resolutions, and how to chase your biggest dreams without wishing away the life you're living. 

PS: I made you a free worksheet to walk you through all three audits! It's got all the questions we talk about in this episode and space to work through them yourself. Find it here!! 

EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00 Intro + why we’re starting before January 1
06:40 Audit #1: the levels of energy audit
07:36 How to make an energy ledger
10:02 The energetic evolution of choices
12:32 Epictetus on how to handle temptation
14:02 Reflection questions to audit your energy
14:44 Audit #2: the promise audit
16:26  Why shaming yourself doesn’t work
18:01 The planning fallacy
20:25 How to actually plan your day accurately
21:57 Intentions are not plans 
23:08 Procrastination as a coping method 
24:54 Audit #3: the perfect day audit
26:17 How to design your perfect mundane day
27:08 My perfect day
29:12 Comparing your ideal day to reality
29:57 Loving your current self while working to meet your next self
30:46 lightning round recap + worksheet! 
33:48 The Orange by Wendy Cope

EPISODE LINKS
GET THE FOLLOW-ALONG WORKSHEET HERE
My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
⁠Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠
Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok

We all have that one person who can ruin our day in less than 30 seconds. Why is it so hard to stay in our values around certain people? And how do we stop giving them so much power? In this episode, we're turning to the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche for five lessons on dealing with difficult people, navigating conflict, and becoming unbotherable. If you've ever let a five-minute interaction ruin your entire week, this episode is for you.

EPISODE OUTLINE - NIETZSCHEAN PRINCIPLES FOR BECOMING UNBOTHERED
00:00 Intro
9:13 1. Navigating other people’s opinions of you
14:50 2. Let them misunderstand
21:01 3. “They muddy the water to make it seem deep”
24:30 4. Are you actually keeping the peace?
31:10 5. Knowing when to walk away
35:40 Lightning round recap
38:08 Help keep Soul Gum ad free
39:05 To Take Back a Life by Kate Baer

EPISODE LINKS
 
My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
⁠Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠
Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok

According to the existentialists, the core problem of being human is this: we are meaning-seeking creatures in a universe that is silent on meaning. But somehow, we're supposed to figure out what to major in, who to marry, and what to do with the approximately 30,000 days we get to be alive.
In this episode, we walk through six levels of living a meaningful life as described by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1947 work The Ethics of Ambiguity, moving from brainrotten aimlesness to a life driven by purpose. If you want to live a life that feels meaningful but have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing with it, this episode is for you.

EPISODE OUTLINE: THE 6 LEVELS OF LIVING A MEANINGFUL LIFE (according to 20th century existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir) 

00:00 Intro 
04:57 1. The sub-man 
10:13 2. The serious man
14:17 3. The nihilist 
16:43 4. The adventurer 
22:06 5. The passionate man
24:10 6. The compassionate person
26:27 but btw life isn’t a ladder 
27:51 Reflection questions 
30:20 Lightning round recap
32:07 When Death Comes by Mary Oliver 

MY LINKS

My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
Follow Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠
Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok

The manosphere wants you to think charisma is all about dominance and control. But what if it’s actually about deep presence and social courage?
I don’t want to be like the guy who uses scarce communication to hide his lack of depth and fear of commitment. I want to be like the people who make you feel cool just by talking to them, while radiating charisma themselves.
If you’ve ever wondered why some people can have fun talking to literally anyone, struggled to know what to say when someone asks you a question, or wished you were more comfortable saying what you actually think, this episode is for you.
In today’s episode, we unpack 5 habits of highly charismatic people, from what they say when they’re getting to know someone to how they navigate disagreements. Along the way, we’ll talk about what we can learn from Socrates about swag, dive into the science of answering any question well, and use Byung-Chul Han’s concept of “the smooth” to investigate how we can stay raw and real in a world that tries to sand our edges.

EPISODE OUTLINE: HABITS OF HIGHLY CHARISMATIC PEOPLE
00:00 Intro
07:14 1. How to ask better questions 
08:18 The science of how asking questions makes people like you 
10:18 The power of follow-up questions
13:41 2. How to answer any question without freezing 
14:37 The scary thing no one tells you about writing a book 
17:11 Why your mind goes blank when someone asks you a question 
18:03 The secret to answering questions with ease 
20:21 The link between storytelling and charisma
22:40 3. Stop performing agreement in conversations 
23:18 What is backchanneling? 
23:59 Upspeak, confidence, gender, and the way we talk 
26:05 Should we actually backchannel less?
28:58 4. How charismatic people handle disagreement 
30:27 What Socrates can teach us about intellectual humility
32:14 5. Stop treating human connection like a formula
33:36 Byung-Chul Han and “the smooth”
36:13 Btw you’re not a chad for wanting to be loved
39:04  Lightning round recap
40:44 Poem: Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris

MY LINKS
My debut poetry collection MAKE BELIEVE is out everywhere now⁠
⁠Subscribe to Soul Gum’s new instagram :-) ⁠
Follow me on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok