The Best Advice Show with Jacqueline Raposo
The logo of “The Best Advice Show” is white chalkboard writing on a blue and purple background. This image then has a book author photo of Jacqueline Raposo wearing a yellow dress with her black hair whisping down. She’s holding a blue book and has a stuffed bird balanced on her arm. On top are the words, “Going Without with Jacqueline Raposo.
This interview with Zak Rosen’s The Best Advice Show is one of my favorite juju-boosting collaborations to date.
In 10 minutes, we cover how taking one habit out of your life can deliver transformational results.
It’s beautifully edited and underscored, too. The transcript is below for those who need it. But I highly encourage you to have a listen!
Episode Transcript
Music: Jazzy woodwind theme music underscores the introduction.
Zak Rosen: It's The Best Advice Show. I'm Zach. I have a couple of warnings before we get started. The first one is that this episode is a little bit longer than usual. I hope that's OK. I really loved this interview and I think the length helps. And the second warning is that I throw in an emphatic F-bomb at one point. If that is going to offend you, or maybe your children, if you're listening with them, maybe skip this one. Here it is, Jacqueline Raposo's advice.
Music ends.
Jacqueline Raposo: It's applicable to anyone who feels either overwhelmed by their life — because life is overwhelming and scary — or underwhelmed. If you feel like you're in a rut, if you feel like you don't know how to change things up, that instead of, like, overdoing; instead of trying something new; instead of achieving something; instead of being like, "I'm going to do this workout plan, this goal, this self-help book," whatever... Instead of trying to achieve something or be productive, give yourself a break… and take out something from your life instead.
Music: Ethereal ambient music comes in and underscores the following.
Jacqueline Raposo: The project that I did that transformed my whole inner life and put me in this place of sensory awareness, living in the moment, "I have no clue what's happening next and that's awesome," was just studying my habits. And not trying to change them, not trying to formulate better ones. But taking one habit out for a significant period of time — at least a couple of weeks, but something that feels symbolic to whoever is doing it, because other people are doing this now, and it's wonderful — take the habit out, and it can be something that you don't like, that's bad for your health, or social media addiction is a big one, or television, or coffee — whatever the habit is, just take it out for at least a couple of weeks. And just observe what happens. Don't do it with a goal. Don't do it like, "Oh, if I take sugar out, I'm going to lose weight." Or whatever. Or "if I take social media out, I'll finally start writing the book that I want to write." Just take it out…
Music: stops.
Jacqueline Raposo: ...and observe what happens in the space that it leaves.
Jacqueline Raposo: So if we all of a sudden can't, like, "I'm not going to go on social media for a month." And 30 times a day, we're reaching for the phone to go on social media, if we then have to ask, like, "All right, well, why did I want that? What do I want? What do I need? How can I fill this? What do I think about this? How do I feel about this?" It sort of forces us into sensory awareness of the moment right there. And then we have to choose what we want to do with it. And once you start doing that regularly, you realize how many choices you have and how exciting it is to live! You know, if all of a sudden you're not getting takeout food for a month and you have to cook every single thing and you're very aware of the food in the pan as it's changing colors and the smells coming out of it, the sounds coming out of it, all of a sudden, life feels really cool again! All of a sudden you're, like, really in the moment. And those things start to morph and build without expectations that necessarily you had.
Jacqueline Raposo: Some of them could be bad. You could realize that, you know, when people go off social media, that you're lonely or that you don't have strong communication skills or that you need to call people; that your relationships are frayed. Or that you have some physical addictions to things. Or that you were reaching for some pretty superficial replacements, you know, for deeper longings that you have. So that can be hard to face, but at least you start to face them and figure out how to, to be braver in changing them.
Zak Rosen: I got to say, just when you describe this action of stepping back from social media and noticing, you know, all this time that you now have, it gave me, like, I got like butterflies and it was such a such a liberating thing just to do.
Jacqueline Raposo: So good butterflies or scary butterflies?
Zak Rosen: No, good. Good. I was like, "Oh, oh, fuck, yeah, I need that so bad."
Jacqueline Raposo: Yeah! I interviewed Amber Case, who is a former tech designer, and she calls herself a Cyborg Anthropologist.
Zak Rosen: Mmm, cool.
Jacqueline Raposo: I was asking her about like, "Well, we've created this world where we have to be on social media, right?" And she's like, "No, we just think we do. It's norms and anthropology. We're the frog in the boiling pot of water not realizing it's coming to a boil around us. But we're humans. We can jump from the pot." And I was like, "Pow. Mind blown."
Jacqueline Raposo: Like, yeah, I don't have to be on social media, even though I'm a writer and a podcast producer and I want people to hear my stories. Like, we've just decided that we think that we have to. And it's so liberating.
Zak Rosen: So, you, you wrote a book about all this stuff, all of these practices called The Me Without: A Year Exploring Habit, Healing and Happiness. So, can you just list some of the things that you subtracted?
Music: Cool ambient music starts. The below sentences somewhat overlap themselves in an ethereal and awesome way.
Jacqueline Raposo: Yes, I did social media for 40 days. No shopping for 90 days — that included superfluous groceries, clothing, books; anything I did not need, I could not buy for 90 days. I did zero waste, so product packaging. Sugar, which was during the 2016 election, so no sugar or alcohol, which was very hard for me. No negative thought, which was a little bit less tangible. But I was getting to a really dark place from all the discoveries I was making with those other things so that I had to tackle my patterns of negative thoughts. No television, which I failed twice. I did a couple where I just did them four days or a couple of days, so I did, like, no electricity, no talking things like that. There were more, but those were the significant ones. I did it for a year, a full year of this.
Zak Rosen: I need to ask before I forget: So, you failed the TV thing twice. What was the show that, what was the first show you went back to?
Music: fades out.
Jacqueline Raposo: I was really into the Gilmore Girls back then, which I'm not entirely proud of.
Zak Rosen: Why? It's delightful.
Jacqueline Raposo: It's delightful. It is delightful. It's true. But there's, like, amazing television out there.
Zak Rosen: Sure.
Jacqueline Raposo: That I watch over and over. I'm like rewatching Umbrella Academy and Schitt's Creek right now, and I have no qualms about sharing that comparatively! [Laughing]
Zak Rosen: [Laughing] So if we want to try this subtraction method, how do we decide? I mean, because we all have a bunch of habits that we carry. What might be a way for us to decide the first thing we want to try to take out?
Jacqueline Raposo: Well, when people, a lot of people have asked me that in different scenarios. And I always reflect back that you sort of know. If there's something that feels... uncomfortable... in your life that you feel like, "This is taking time in my day or energy from my day that I don't feel good about..." Then that's probably something to... This is not about changing habits or formulating new habits. It's about reconsidering our relationship with the things we do habitually. So, if there's something that you're not feeling good about, that doesn't feel like a choice, go to the first thing you think about. And then commit to it for a while.
Jacqueline Raposo: Because it's not, again, it's not about like, "Oh, am I addicted to social media?" "Am I addicted to sugar?" It's not about that question. It's about, "Who am I without it? What do I choose without it?" Or like with television, I now admit that I love television, and I let myself enjoy it so much more because I don't feel guilty about it.
Zak Rosen: Yeah. Great, great.
Jacqueline Raposo: I no longer feel guilty about it because I recognize how much I love it and how it serves me. So, like, go for the thing that you feel like isn't serving you well. Or on the flip side, something that you know is harming you. So if you know that, you're like, "I'm hypoglycemic or diabetic. I don't know, but sugar is bad for me." Maybe try that. Expect more dramatic experiences, you know. But maybe go for that. I would say go for something gentler first.
Zak Rosen: It seems like this helps us get down to like our essential selves. Like we're figuring, it's like, this is a way for us to figure out who we really are.
Jacqueline Raposo: Entirely. And I did not expect that. My values are so clear to me. What I love is, what makes me happy, and I'm less bashful about it. I nerd out on the things I really love to nerd out about. And I'm not, you know, I'm excited by it! I'm not ashamed of the things I nerd out about. And it, and it also, the whole "awareness in the moment", it gets you excited about how things sound and smell and hear and other people and what excites them and the experiences they're having and their awareness of the world! It just, it really did, doing this for a year and then writing a book and talking to people about it, it really, um, it's lightened the emotional pressure and it's brought so much cooler stuff into my space in a way that I did not expect and I'm so thankful for.
Jacqueline Raposo: And then when people report back to me that they're doing their little "withouts", that's what they say — they're going without this or that — and how it's changing, especially their inner life, even more than your outer life, your inner life. It's just... It's just the coolest thing.
Music: Delightful strummy guitar music comes in.
Jacqueline Raposo: My name is Jacqueline Raposo. I'm the author of "The Me Without: A Year Exploring Habit, Healing, and Happiness." Which is a memoir-cross-case study about our relationships with habits. And I am a disabled creative. So everything I do comes from the perspective of someone who lives with an incurable chronic illness. And I tried to tell underdog stories.
Zak Rosen: I love this episode. I love this advice. If you are going to try this going without journey, I would really love to hear what you're working on. You can email me as always at Zak@BestAdvice.show. And you can always leave me a voicemail at 844-935-BEST. That's 844-935-BEST. And let me know how you're going without journey is going. I will be sure to share it with Jacqueline.
Music: continues and then fades out.
