#449 - Favorite Discoveries of 2025

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Here we are lazy geniuses, being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode 449, my favorite discoveries of 2025. Oh man, this is going to be fun. This is a round up of all my favorite things that I have discovered and loved this year only. And it's a really fun list. We will send this out in email form on Friday to those of you on the podcast recap email list. So if you would like to join that, you can head to the lazygenuscollective.com slash listens. After the list of my favorite discoveries, we'll have a little extra something where I share several of my favorite small businesses that you can support all year long because that's just a lovely thing to do. We will of course celebrate the lazy genius of the week. It is a beautiful idea about staying connected with a friend and with yourself. And then we'll close with a pep talk for when you can't slow down. Quick reminder that our digital store closes for good in one week. So if you would like to snag a printable that you can download and then print as many times as you want forever of any of our digital products now is the time. There is the swap, the holiday docket, the summer docket, or the recipe ebook which I'm honestly really sad to see go. So you can find those at the lazygenuscollective.com slash store to get them before they're gone. Okay, we got a long list of 20 favorite discoveries. So we're just going to go ahead and jump in with a couple before we take an ad break. My first favorite discovery of 2025 is the show The Diplomat. You guys, I don't know where I've been. This show, which is in its third season on Netflix and waiting on the fourth, it is scratching every itch. I love Kerry Russell, like a ridiculous amount. She's so good in the show as the new U.S. ambassador to England. There's intrigue and treason and explosions and love triangles and it is such fun storytelling. I love it and I'm so behind in loving it with the rest of you. I'm trying to catch up. I promise. Number two, Albany's gummy bears. Guys, there are no other gummy bears. There's no other way to get in with your attention. Like, I don't even like gummy bears. And I could eat a giant handful of Albany's without hesitation. That we are a candy household cause and Annie, especially really love candy. And it's nice to have for like the tiny little compartment in their plant a box lunchboxes. Now, I'm not a huge candy person. Like it's fine, but I would much rather have ice cream or something baked as a dessert as opposed to candy. But Albany's gummy bears are the exception to every rule. They are just the most delicious flavor and texture of any candy ever and our whole family loves them. There are maybe four foods in all the world that all five Adaches are obsessed with and Albany's gummy bears are one of them. They're that good and I just discovered them this year. Oh, what a loss for the other years. Number three is the Libby Paws. Okay, y'all are familiar with Libby. It's the app that allows you to borrow ebooks from your local library. Well, Libby and I are on a short break because I just cannot be at the mercy of when a hold is ready. However, there is something that I discovered this year that I've utilized several times to help me with that. And that's the hold Paws when it's your turn to get the book. Libby asks you, are you ready to download this or upload it or whatever the word is? Or do you want to pause your spot? If you pause, it'll send the book to the person in line after you, but you still get to keep your spot at the top of the line. It is a brilliant invention for when you're just not quite ready to borrow a book yet. Love the Libby Paws. All right, one more quick one. I discovered flossing sticks and tiny toothbrushes this year. So I started it in Visaline early in the year and I have like this little pouch of tiny toothbrushes and flossers so that I can tend to my teeth no matter where I am. So I will keep this pouch even after I'm done with in Visaline. These tiny toothbrushes, they are so great. They make dental hygiene habits easy and I love it when annoying things are made easy. Okay, we're going to pause for an ad break, which makes this episode free for you to listen to. So thank you to our sponsors. Also here is your quick reminder that we send out a podcast recap email every other Friday. It's called latest lazy listens and it summarizes the episode, shares the lazy genes of the week as well as other segments we have on the show and it has a little extra note for me to help encourage you through the weekend. The next one will have this whole list of discoveries with links to anything linkable. So if you would like to get that recap, you can head to the lazygenyscollective.com slash listens. Hello, I'm Melissa Beth Day, the creator and host of How to Fail. It's the podcast that celebrates the things in life that haven't gone right and what if anything we've learned from those mistakes to help us succeed better. Each week my guests share three failures, sparking intimate thought provoking and funny conversations. You'll hear from a diverse range of voices, sharing what they've learned through their failures. Join me Wednesdays for a new episode each week. This is Melissa Beth Day in Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's keep going with my list of favorite discoveries. All right, next up is B word sauce with bell peppers. Okay, we call it B sauce at my house and we even decant it into another container because two of my three children are very offended seeing the actual word on the container. But this sauce, particularly with bell peppers dipped into it, is one of the best things ever. There are only two grocery stores in my city that carry it and one of them has not carried it and almost two months, which is devastating. I need more access to this sauce, just the original. Costco has the giant Chipotle flavor. I don't want the Chipotle flavor. I want the original one. But anyway, it doesn't matter. I love it. I love it so much. I love it. It also helps me eat more peppers, which I kind of loathe everywhere else. So this stuff is great. All right, we're on number six. Number six, Merit Beauty. So I started using Merit Beauty products this year for the first time and it's a truly great brand. I use all of their makeup products. The foundation stick, the bronzer, the highlighter, and the flush blush many days of the week, especially depending on how long I want to look more made up. But the foundation stick I use every day. It is my go-to foundation for sure, better than anything I've ever tried, including foundations by other favorite brands. It's just so good. It works great for me. I love that it is a stick formula. And then the brush, the Merit brush, it smooths it out so fast. Now I tried this foundation formula earlier in the year and I didn't like it. It's because I chose the wrong color. It didn't look good because it didn't match my face. So that's just really important with all makeup, right? The colors need to be right. Foundation needs to match your face. Blushes need to match like the warm or cool undertone of your skin in order to really pop. I think most makeup that you see on people, that works, is more about getting the colors right than the makeup itself, not always, but sometimes. I know that's been true for me. So I love Merit. I love their blushes, which are so great to pop into a bag because they're just really tiny. I love blush. I love blush. I have several brands that I rotate through. I choose usually based on what color I want, based on what I'm wearing that day, or how long I want something to last. So I have an RMS powder blush I love. I have three colors of road blush. That stuff is sneaky good, and maybe my favorite formula, that's Haley Bieber's line. And I have this one color in Glossier's new cream blush that is the red of my dreams. But Merit blushes, they often make an appearance. They're more subtle, which some days I need. They feel more like getting a quick glow up than makeup, you know? Oh, in the Merit mascara. Oh my gosh, the Merit mascara is so good. It's so good. I had two other go-to's of mascara, and now Merit has bumped both of those off the podium. It is like, it's just a great brand. It's made for people like me who don't want to look super made up, but just want to look like a little more awake and bright and like yourself, you know? And I just really love it. Such a great discovery this year. Okay, number seven, the main, ready or not hair brush. I shared this on the most recent episode of what saved me my life, and this brush is still saving my life. It is the best, it is the best brush. I don't understand it actually. We now have two since Annie Stollmine, and I just have never been this impressed by a hair brush in my life. I didn't even know that you could be impressed by a hair brush. Plus, after I talked about it on the podcast last time, a beauty influencer who I think is like a professional hair stylist and who has like a couple million followers, she caught that I was talking about it. She reposted the clip of me talking about it, and then her caption in the share was, see, I've been telling you all this is the best brush. So then I was like even more convinced because she's a pro. It is so good. It's just so good. And it makes my hair look better than it should like every single day. I love the main, ready or not hair brush. Number eight, this year I discovered that I should always order a flat white at a coffee shop. I love a flat white. I love it. It's like my perfect coffee drink. It's what I make at home. That or a cafe LA, a flat white is espresso with milk. But with less milk than a latte and like no foam really and I don't love foam. And then a cafe LA is like pretty much equal parts strongly brewed coffee and milk. But a flat white needs to be my go to because what often happens when I'm out with friends or like a couple of months ago, we went to this, we went on a thrifting trip, a group of us to like the next city over and we stopped at a cute shop for coffee. And I got mesmerized by the menu as I often do. I see where it's like Pocon and brown sugar and Lord help me chai and I think I should get that. Y'all I don't like chai. I keep trying to like chai and I just don't. So it was on this thrifting trip. I ordered a dagum chai latte. I was done after two sips and then I took a sip of my friends flat white and I was like listen, new decide once order the flat white. Don't matter, just get the flat white. I always love it. I'm never disappointed. So why keep trying other things is beyond me. I am a girl who loves her flat white. Dundeele, great discovery. Keep the chai away. Alright, number nine, this year I discovered cozy earth sheets. Cozy earth is sometimes a podcast sponsor and they sent me a set of sheets to try before an ad campaign. Y'all I just, I cannot, I cannot explain. I cannot explain how magical these sheets are. This is not an ad, although I have said these words in an ad. They are the best sheets I've ever slipped on by a country mile in my whole life. I do not understand how they are so soft and warm and also cooling at the same time. They are a peri men appausal woman's dream. Now they are pricey for sure. But to me, like they're worth spending money on because you sleep on them every single night. Plus you can just put a pin in this next time they have a sale and get you some or don't. I mean, I'm not sharing my discovery so you have to use them too. But man, am I glad I discovered these things. I absolutely love getting into bed now more than I ever have before of my whole life. Okay, number 10 is another sleep related discovery. I discovered that if my back or my neck or my shoulders are hurting, which is, you know, fairly often because I'm getting older, I can sleep on my back for like two nights straight and it goes away. Now I used to sleep on my back every night, but y'all, that is like not fun. I love sleeping on my side and a ball and sleeping on your back is like the literal opposite of that. But during a stressful season or like just a weird angle when I'm sleeping or maybe if I like have some airplane travel, I'm going to experience some back pain, right? But two nights of sleeping on my back, it actually like zips me right up again. I love knowing this because it still lets me sleep on my side until the need arises. And I know that just a couple nights on my back is all it's going to take to make things better. Number 11, this year I discovered the podcast Good Hang with Amy Polar. So I've always liked Amy, but also there are like so many podcasts in the world. I just assumed it would be like any other celebrity interview podcast and I wasn't, I wasn't that interested. But then Leah, my podcast producer, she was like, no, you have to listen. It is so good. So I did. Y'all, it is so good. I look forward to episodes because of how good it is. And that does not happen very often with shows. She is such a good interviewer. It is indeed a good hang. And as a podcaster myself, I appreciate some of the small decisions she makes to make the show like better. I like that she claps before ads. I like that she talks to someone else connected to her guest and they talk well behind the guest's back. I like that she does her little polar plunge at the end where she shares a little something from her life. But mostly I just love how she is with people. She's so authentically herself. She's genuinely interested in her guests and they seem like they are more of themselves on her show than on other people's shows. I just love it. Some of my favorite episodes are with Seth Meyers, Andy Sandberg, Leanne Morgan, I was so funny. Olivia Coleman was super funny. Justin Wigg, Maya Hawk was on recently. It was so good. I do think my favorite of all of them that I've listened to is Kate McKinnon. That one was really special to me. I have so many episodes to catch up on and I want to listen to every single one, which is such a rare thing for me on podcasts. I love this discovery and you can discover it to just keep listening to me too. Just keep listening to my podcast all too. Although I get it if you have to choose Amy sometimes, I do. I get it. She's that good. Okay. I discovered Columbia Coats this year and I don't think I'll ever go back. There are plenty of coats that work great for different climates and reasons and sometimes you want like a pretty trench or a pea coat or something cute. For when you want to be warm, there's a reason the Columbia has been around forever. There's also a reason their coats cost a little bit more. It's because they put wizard magic into their coats and I'm guessing that wizard magic costs a lot. So we ended up getting Columbia Coats for the entire family before we went to New York. We snagged some during an early Black Friday sale, which was great since all of my children had grown out of their current coats. We wore them during very cold days in New York where we were outside for hours and hours at a time. These coats were everything and more. My body was never cold anywhere the coat was ever. It was crazy because of the magic of podcasting. You will be listening to this episode the day after I'm back from London. But of course, after record this before we leave for London, we're wearing these coats in London and I have full assurance that they will be spectacular. They are warm, thin, simple, stylish. I just love these coats. I love them. I have the Columbia Heavenly Long Puffer jacket as does Annie just in like the kid version. And causing the boys all have the men's powder light hooded jacket. The thing that I think you want to look for to like stay warm is the Omni Heat feature. That's like the aluminum foil looking stuff on the inside that just traps in all the heat is so great. And it's a feature on multiple styles of Columbia Coats. So you can just look for that. But I love this discovery so much. Number 13. This year I discovered tiny silverware you guys. I am obsessed with tiny silverware. So back in January, so like a literal year ago, I ordered some long handled stirring spoons for my coffee, their gold, and pretty. And I wanted a little something special for my morning coffee, okay? Well these little spoons have become workhorses in my kitchen. I mean, holy moly. I use them to like mix up yogurt dips and parfaits. I use them to scoop out anything from a jar. I use them as tasteers when I'm cooking. My kids love to eat with them. They are so good. So in January, I bought a set of four and then a month later I ordered another set because I kept running out of the four. Every single day, they're so great. Then recently I was like, hey, I really enjoy eating with these tiny spoons. The actual spoon part is tiny even though the handle is really long. But I enjoy the experience of eating with these tiny spoons and then I was like, wait, why not extend this to a fork? You get tiny dessert forks, restaurants and stuff, right? So I ordered some tiny forks. Annie loves them more than I do, but we both use them for all kinds of things. Now I will continue to keep an eye out for tiny forks at like thrift stores now because I like the idea of my tiny forks having a story. But either way, tiny silverware was all the rage in the Adachi house in 2025. And I am also glad. All right, number 14. This is another kitchen item I learned about from Bre Mokoi who is my favorite kitchen tastemaker. These are calendar storage baskets from the brand Win Proper. And they have saved me so much money and fruit like for real. It is a plastic container with a colander inside and an airtight lid. So you rinse your fruit in the colander and then you store that fruit inside the colander inside the container. So the fruit, it's always clean, but it never molds. I cannot tell you how it is extended the life of our berries and our grapes and our lettuce. It's amazing. Genuinely, some of the ones that we use, they are quite large because of how much fruit we consume as a family. But I'm happy to shift my fridge organization a bit to fit these things inside. They are so fabulous. And they keep produce lasting as long as you need it to. They are so good. Okay. Number 15. This was the year that I discovered how much I love weightlifting. I am currently like a little hit or miss because of travel and just the busyness of the season. But that's okay. I still love doing it when I'm able. I look forward to getting into a little bit more of a rhythm in 2026 when things slow down. But also like it's okay if it takes a while and I adjust that. But I started lifting two videos by a woman named Caroline Garvin on YouTube. She's a great instructor. She's a great accent. The videos are anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes long. I usually only did the ones that are like 10 or 15 for months and months. I used my barbells that I actually not barbells, dumbbells. I had dumbbells that were like I had a 10 pound set and a 15 pound set and I really enjoyed myself using those. But then I started doing my own routines because I knew the exercises that I liked and that worked for me and I understood like interval training or whatever. And then I bought a set of dumbbells with graduated weight where you can adjust how much weight you're lifting for any exercise. They're kind of enormous and the heaviest weight that I can use. I probably won't ever be able to lift. But that's okay. I genuinely love weight lifting. It just feels so good in my body. I can do it in a short amount of time. I can feel myself getting stronger. And I get to do it while watching a show or listening to an audiobook or something. It's just really great. Okay, number 16. This year I discovered the Quince Sling Bag. I've never been a sling bag person. They just sit weird on me and I thought I would be doomed to wear a cross body or I have to carry a tote forever. Well, a few months ago I decided to take a risk and try the Quince Sling Bag. Quince never sears me wrong. So I figured that if any brand can nail it, they could. Well, they did. This is a best bag. It's a best bag. It's just the right size for what I need. It lays really well on the body, like even for people who have, you know, a little bit going on up front. And it looks great. I have used it almost every day for several months and it is truly a fantastic bag. Number 17. This year I discovered that my kids have like super specific jobs that they love to do in the kitchen. It's so cute. They like washing rice. No idea why. But both Ben and Annie are like super happy to wash rice whenever we have it, which is quite often. Ben and Annie also love trying to find, they left trying to find the bay leaves in a pot of curry. Like they fight over the spoon to try and fish it out. I don't know why that I do not argue. Now before I discovered that they love this, like Annie walked into the kitchen one night to see me pulling out the bay leaves from the curry and she was like, Mom, I wanted to do that. So I literally put the leaves back in the pot. I stirred and I just let her find them again. It was so weird, but so cute. The kids, they also love using the Giddle cheese grater. That's the one that sticks to the counter with suction and greets cheese and many other things like a dream. They like setting it up and using it, which I get. It's so easy and satisfying to use. But now I'm just keeping an eye out for other little jobs they like because good is here right now and it's just so stinkin' cute. Speaking of so cute, number 18 is the cutest thing on this list and it is the dream egg portable white noise machine. Have you all seen this thing? It is tiny, like smaller than a baseball tiny. And somehow this tiny little thing lets out the strongest, loudest white noise. Every single one of us sleeps with white noise at our house. So when we travel, there's no way we're bringing all of our big sound machines. Now I use an app on my phone. The kids don't have that. They have real honk and sound machines. Well we bring the dream eggs with us on trips and they are so great. The sound lasts for like two full nights before they need recharging but we also usually just charge them during the day while we're gone so we're like sure we have enough. They take very little time to get to full power. They have different sound and volume options. They're even timer options. They are so cute. So tiny. And weirdly so powerful. Perfect for traveling. The 19th favorite thing that I discovered in 2025 was the hair care brand R&CO. It's like R plus sign CO. So in our bathroom we have all kinds of things. I'm like, actually we have drugstore shampoo. We have custom shampoo. We now also have R&CO shampoo. We still have drugstore styling products, a couple of other brands that sometimes do really great stuff that we have. But I would say that R&CO is the brand that I would choose from my hair if I could only choose one brand. If I had to like only use products from one full line, I think I would choose R&CO. So it started for me with their dry shampoo sculpting product. I read reviews that said it worked really well for hair like mine which is like a lot of fine hair. I can confirm it does. It gives me volume without buildup plus it has like a dry shampoo element that keeps my hair from getting greasy as fast, which is great. Then during a sale earlier in the year, I decided to try a few other products and all have been so good. I love their volume spray. I'm pretty sure it's called Dallas because of like big Texas hair, which is great. Their detangler is the best I've ever used. It saves Annie's hair on a weekly basis. There is a sun protection spray that we used over the summer. That was so great on hair after the pool and being outside. They just make really great products that work. There's no rush to try them, but like maybe keep an eye out. You know, you could wait for a sale and try a product that you've been eyeing. Maybe it will become a favorite discovery for you as well. And finally, the 20th favorite discovery of 2025 is how much I love night baking. So I've been baking for years. Obviously, I love to bake. But in the last couple of years, as the kids have gotten older and are doing more stuff, as the business has grown and my time has shifted, I just don't bake as much, especially during the day. When I do, it's either to like restock breakfast pumpkin muffins for the freezer or maybe we're having breakfast for dinner. So I'm baking for that or I'm just making cookies because we make cookies. I used to bake bread. I used to make my own puff pastry. With full puff, not rough puff. I tried pies with short crust and pies with patsucray. I made biscuits and scones. I just loved baking things and trying things and I have not done that in forever years. Now part of it is that the days are so full, right? There's less time now than there was when my kids were home all the time and I had more time that I could fill up and I would fill it up with baking. Well, this last year, I discovered night baking. Now I've only done it a handful of times. But when I do, I never regret it. It doesn't matter that it's 10 o'clock at night. I'm like kneading brioche and I'm very happy. I don't even mind the dirty dishes for night baking. It's like they don't count the same. I don't know what it is about baking when my kids are like mostly winding down or even already in bed. And I'm starting something new when it's dark outside and it's my own actual bedtime that I just find it really soothing and life-giving. So I can't tell you this. 2026 is the year of more night baking. I'm toying with the idea of having a list of recipes I want to work my way through. We will see how that goes. So to summarize my favorite things of 2020-25, which will be emailed to the latest lazy listens email list on Friday, I think these things are the diplomat. Albany's gummy bears is the superior gummy bear. The Libby Paws, Floss sticks and tiny toothbrushes, Beesauce and bell peppers, Merit Beauty, the main, Ready or Not Hair Brush that I should always order a flat white, cozy earth sheets, sleeping on my back a couple of nights in a row. We'll almost just cure any pain. Good hang with Amy Poler. If anyone knows anyone, by the way, I would really love to meet her and be on her show. So like do your magic. Columbia Coats, tiny silverware, a colander fruit storage containers. I love weightlifting. The quince sling bag. My kids have weird little jobs that they love doing the kitchen and it's totally adorable. The Dream Egg Portable Sound Machine, R&CO hair products and that I really, really love night baking. It was so fun to gather this list and it will be even easier next year when I'm using my yearbook playbook all year long to catch my favorite discoveries as they happen because there's a page in there for that. So hopefully you have found a discovery or two of your own from my list but more than that, I just hope you make your own. Like it really is such a fun practice to notice your life and what's making it enjoyable. And those are my favorite discoveries of 2025. For today's a little extra something, I'm going to share with you some small businesses that you can explore during 2026. So this is a great way to answer the magic question. What can I do now to make gift giving easier later? You can find some businesses that you would like to support and shop from them when you need something. So a couple of my favorite small businesses are Essential Calendar and Inkwell Threads. Okay. Essential calendar is a woman owned business. They have the best wall calendars like in the world. Their calendars are set up by seasons, which is right at my alley and I love them. A great gift for anyone who likes simple organization would be an essential calendar. I also really love the business Inkwell Threads. They are also woman owned great for bookish people. I actually am currently wearing like right now the Netherfield Walking Club sweatshirts from Predipredgidas. Oh my gosh. I have a couple of other t-shirts. They're all actually Predipredgidas themed. That's what I've gotten from Inkwell. They're so great. I get compliments on them every single time I wear Inkwell Threads stuff. I have more small businesses obviously, but those are two in particular I wanted to mention. Now we also asked our Playbook People Facebook group, some of their favorite small businesses to support and these three that they suggested stood out to me. If I scroll for longer than three scrolls, you know I'm all the way in. So the first is Enderly Coffee Company. It's based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, but they ship. So if you want to buy from them, even though you're not local, that's great. If you are local to Charlotte, they do something so cool. They do this Friday delivery of small business items, which is such a fun idea. It's like you can shop from local Charlotte businesses and then Enderly Coffee will deliver those things to you along with a bag of coffee. It's so fun, but anyone can get their coffee. I love the mission and the feel of the whole company, so this is such a fun discovery. The second small business I noticed from the list that got a ton of scrolls for me was Walker Goods. So this is a family, it looks like that makes travel gear and wow, do these bags look amazing. I kind of wish I was in the market for a travel backpack right now because I would snatch one up so fast. Really lovely bags are something that most of us don't buy for ourselves, which makes them a really fantastic gift to give other people. And then the third business mentioned on the Facebook group was Tiny and Snail. Tiny and Snail is this magical green card company. It's run by two sisters who have a truly inspiring story and the cards are stunners, like stunners. I'm so glad to have found this little business and we'll definitely be buying some cards for next year's birthdays and notes to friends. I love small businesses. I appreciate the support of small businesses being the owner of one myself, so it's really fun to highlight some favorites of mine and yours. So again, that's a central calendar, inkwell threads, elderly coffee company, Walker Goods, and Tiny and Snail. And that's today's a little extra something. Now it's time to celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it is Bethany from Texas, Bethany writes, a long distance friend and I stay connected regularly through Marco Polo, which has been so helpful for us. But we also wanted to build in real time conversations instead of just sending videos back and forth. Almost by accident, we started keeping a list of what's saving my life right now and now we face time at the end of each season to share those lists with each other. It's been such a meaningful practice, not only for personal reflection, but also for deepening our friendship. At the end of each call, we schedule the next one about three months out. The date usually shifts a little, but having the placeholder helps us prioritize our seasonal call and reminds us to keep track of what's been saving our life that season. This is tremendous, like just tremendous. I love the value of self alongside the valuing of the relationship. I also love that this is like a quarterly connection. That's so doable. That's starting small in a super tangible way. Bethany, thank you for sharing this with us. I'm so excited for other people in the community to feel inspired by it and probably do it themselves. So congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. All right, let's close with a mini pep talk for when you can't slow down. So a few weeks ago, I made a reel where I said, if you have time to clean out a closet, you have to take a nap. That came during the chaos of December. Sometimes, we channel our seasonal stress into big black trash bag energy, right? We start organizing random drawers. But it's also the time of year where we say we have no time to rest. There was so incredibly busy. Hence my reminder, if you have time to clean out a closet, you have time to take a nap or read or rest or whatever it is. Now I hope that being this close to Christmas day is helping you slow down naturally, but I just want to say here, decelerating is really hard. So many people struggle to slow down. Not just because our bodies and brains have grown accustomed to a certain speed, but because we're so tied to production, even if we don't realize it, we think that slowing down or even stopping is like simply not allowed. It's slowing down as lazy or selfish or insert whatever words you want to insert. Now I know that intellectually, you know that's not true. But in your body and soul, you still might act like it's true. You apologize if your partner comes in the room and you're on the couch with a book. You're like, I was just taking a little break. Like you have to prove that it's okay for you to be there than that you'll totally get back to responsible things soon. Your struggle to slow down is almost certainly tied at least a little bit to that productivity energy, that scurry that you feel. You know, you think you need to keep getting things done in order for everything to be like smooth sailing. But you yourself are like a bundle of choppy waters you're exhausted and in need of a vacation from your Christmas vacation. You can practically eliminate that experience by slowing down earlier, slow down in this season and enjoy it, slow down and believe that you are allowed to. I know that some of you are like, I can't slow down because I have too many responsibilities. I got it. But also if you have time to tell me that on the internet, you have time to slow down. Like put down your phone and enjoy a moment of slowness in your life. You do have time. You do. But if you slow down just on the inside telling yourself that productivity is not what makes you matter or makes you happy or makes you important to the people around you. Even if you just stop believing that, you're going to slow down in your soul and that's going to help immensely. Slow down. Stop arguing with me that you can't. You can and you need to. Don't use your energy to argue. Use your energy to find spaces of slow rest in your day because it matters. Don't let that productivity culture steal your joy. They don't get to have it. You need to keep it and enjoy your life. And that's a many pep talk for when you can't slow down. If this episode was helpful to you or if you've been looking for a way to support the show, it would mean so much if you would share this episode with a friend or you can leave a kind review on Apple Podcast. Most of those are small things to make a big difference. So thank you so much for listening and sharing and supporting the podcast. This show is part of the Odyssey family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jennifer Scher and Angela Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for latest lazy lessons. That email that goes out every other Friday had to the lazygenuscollective.com slash listens to get it. Thank you guys for listening and until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and I'll see you next week.