Tiny pep talks for everyday problems

We use encouragement and support to get through life's big moments. But what about a little pep talk for those smaller moments, like when it's raining and your dog needs to go out? Or some inspiration to help you parallel park or send that email you've been avoiding? In this episode, Paula Skaggs and Josh Linden, co-authors of the book Tiny Pep Talks, share bite-sized motivation for everyday nuisances. For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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• 0:17Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, it's Marielle. We're so glad you're here listening to Life Kit. But when you want to switch it up, check out NPR's Pod Club newsletter. Sign up and you'll get fresh podcast recommendations every week, handpicked by the people that live for this stuff. You can subscribe for free using the link in today's show notes or at npr.org/podclub. You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

• 0:51Marielle Segarra?

  I want you to think about the last time you knew you had to do something, or you wanted to do something, at least in theory. But then the moment came and you just didn't have the juice. You got scared, or you started to doubt yourself. You lost motivation. Friend, I believe what you needed in that moment was a pep talk.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  I have to give myself a pep talk every single time I parallel park. And I live in Chicago, so I am constantly parallel parking. And every single time, without fail, I have to talk myself down, remind myself I can do it, remind myself that I've done it before, that I'm capable. And I don't think that will ever change. I think I'll just never get used to parallel parking, and I will just have to keep, keep being used to giving myself the pep talks.

• 1:35Marielle Segarra?

  This is Paula Skaggs. She and fellow writer Josh Linden wrote a book together called Tiny Pep Talks, and it's full of motivational speeches for life's small, but still daunting, moments. The moment when it's terrible outside, but your dog needs to pee. Or when you're really bad at something that you've never tried before. Or when you have a little crush. The point of a pep talk is encouragement, of course, and it's also a simple act of support.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Really just the concept of you're on their side. You're in their corner. You're their friend. You've got their back, and they can do this.

• 2:10Marielle Segarra?

  On this episode of Life Kit, how to give a good pep talk. After writing a whole bunch of them for the book, Josh and Paula have tips for us. And by the way, they say you can give pep talks to yourself, too.

• 2:30Speaker 00

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• 3:31Marielle Segarra?

  What made you want to write this book?

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Josh and I met doing improv comedy here in Chicago, where we live. And over the pandemic, we, like everybody else, were like, what are we going to do with all of our now spare time? And the theaters were closed. And we ended up creating a conversation card game called No Wrong Answers. And we jokingly, quote unquote, guarantee that there are questions you've never been asked before, like, which cereal mascot would be the best kisser?

• 4:00Marielle Segarra?

  Well, which one do you think?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  The number one answer we get, like, far and away, is Tony the Tiger.

• 4:07Marielle Segarra?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Like, nine out of 10 times.

• 4:10Marielle Segarra?

  I totally forgot about him. I was gonna say the Trix Rabbit.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good one, too.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's not who you're gonna spend your life with. It's really just who would be the best kisser for you.

• 4:20Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, I'm not marrying the Trix Rabbit. They seem like a lot of work to be around and always hopping around from here to there.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Confidence issues.

• 4:30Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you had this card game. Sorry, complete aside, but I needed to dive in there.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  No, I'm glad, I'm glad we got it. So, you know, just with any small business, Josh and I found that we were giving ourselves pep talks or giving each other pep talks. All of the time for, for everything, for our eighth trip to the post office that day, or for everything else under the sun.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  And then also, you know, just as two people who are collaborators and co-creators and friends, just giving each other pep talks for our lives and realizing that, you know, you can get a pep talk for all the really big stuff, you know, you're going to get married, you need to kick the game winning field goal at the Super Bowl, you're going to Mars, whatever the big idea is, but all the, you know, day to day stuff, we didn't really have, there wasn't someone who was saying, you know, hey, you can go ahead and you can parallel park, you got this. And so it kind of came from that idea. And then we had the opportunity to turn this into a book. And that's how Tiny Pep Talks was born.

• 5:35Marielle Segarra?

  Do you have any rules for a pep talk on what it should include or should not include?

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, we have kind of a framework that we use for ourselves when we're writing pep talks. So we kind of have four key things that we look out for when we're thinking about giving someone a pep talk. And the first one is that we want it to be specific.

• 5:56Marielle Segarra?

  Okay.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  So it's more helpful than general encouragement if you are specific about the way that you were helping someone. You know, if you're giving this to a friend, they're probably nervous or excited about a specific thing, not just in general. So making sure that you're really kind of listening to what they need and tailoring the pep talk to the specific anxiety, nerves, excitement that they have.

• 6:21Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, what's next? What's number two?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Pep talks aren't only for the really big things, or the things that we know a friend or a family member or whoever is going through a very hard time. They can also be for something small that you know is going to bug your friend, or you know that maybe they're excited about while also being a little bit nervous about. So if somebody mentions, hey, I'm feeling nervous about a presentation I have next week, just remembering that and giving a little short pep talk about you're going to be great at your presentation and here's XYZ reason. It can be really meaningful. It can be just as meaningful as the big things when people are probably getting support from a bunch of places.

• 6:59Marielle Segarra?

  Rule number one is be specific and rule number two is pep talks don't just have to be about the huge things in life. What's number three?

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Number three is that your pep talk doesn't always have to include advice. But if you have a genuine perspective and experience that would be helpful in that particular situation, by all means, your friend probably wants to hear that. And that's probably why they came to you in the first place is because they want your advice in that scenario. But

• 7:29Speaker 03

  high level advice is totally okay. It can be things like take a breath. That's totally fine. You don't have to have all the answers to give someone a pep talk. Sometimes also, people don't want or need solutions. That whole idea of, you know, are you looking for someone to listen? Or are you looking for solutions? The pep talk in some cases can just be encouragement and being witness to the challenges that they're going through, the excitement that they're having, whatever it might be.

• 7:56Marielle Segarra?

  I find that it's helpful for me when a friend is just like, it's okay to stop doing that thing. Sometimes I feel like I need permission to stop trying at something.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And like a pep talk, it doesn't have to be something revolutionary that the person you're giving it to has never heard of or has never thought of before. Sometimes it's just reminding them of the thing that they already know to be true.

• 8:22Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah. Okay. You said there were four pep talk rules you'd come up with. What's the last one?

• 8:26Speaker 02

  So our final one is basically keep it simple. A pep talk doesn't have to be a formally written book. It doesn't have to be a halftime speech from a coach that's really thought out. It can just be as simple as a voice note, or a text, or a post-it note, or whatever it is to give your person encouragement. It doesn't have to be something really formal that you spend a ton of time and thought on.

• 8:50Marielle Segarra?

  All right. I'd love for you to give me a few pep talks. There are a lot that I liked from the book. How about for when you want to order delivery, but you really should cook?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Perfect. All right. Quick, we don't have a lot of time before you abandon all plans to cook tonight and order that overpriced gourmet burger. So we've got to work fast. First, don't go anywhere near your phone. Throw it across the room if you have to. Your phone is a portal to every restaurant in a 10 mile radius, and they're all waiting and ready to send you food with the click of a button, plus a $7.99 delivery fee. Next, open your fridge. Take it all in. It's okay if there's not a lot of food in there, or if it's mostly just gourmet hot sauces. For example, maybe past you thought radishes were a good idea. So here we are, staring at a CRISPR drawer, chock a block with radishes. That's a start, or maybe an end.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Before you opened the fridge, you had to choose between every recipe ever created. That's too big a choice for a Wednesday night. Of course, you'd rather get delivery. But now that you've been reacquainted with these radishes, you've got something to work with. You're no longer burdened by the curse of unlimited choice. Next, go ahead and Google recipes that use radishes, or go analog by grabbing a cookbook off your shelf, blowing off the accumulated dust we assume has gathered, and finding radish in the index. Once you find a recipe that seems moderately appetizing, get to chopping. And just like that, you've saved $19. Now get cooking.

• 10:22Marielle Segarra?

  Excellent. I have this temptation all the time. And so it definitely resonated for me. And I think it's super specific, as you said. And also, I feel like this one falls in the category of helping someone do the thing that they know they should do and they want to do because it aligns with their values, but they don't want to do in this moment.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:44Marielle Segarra?

  Paula, can you give me a pep talk for when my clothes don't fit?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Okay, so your old clothes aren't fitting you. Bear with us because we're gonna say a thing that you already know, but that doesn't make it any less important to hear. They're just clothes. That's it. They're just clothes. You know what the world is full of? Discount mattress stores, new and improved laundry detergents, acoustic covers of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, and also articles of clothing. So, so many articles of clothing, including ones that will fit you comfortably, are going to make you feel good, and won't bum you out every time you try to wear them. And you deserve to find those. Think about how much you've experienced since you bought your old clothes. The things you've learned, the trips you've taken, the trashy British dating shows you've binged.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  You've changed, and naturally, your body has too. And thank goodness bodies do change. Otherwise, we'd all still be walking around with the slumping shoulders and raging BO of our middle school selves. You're not static emotionally or physically. No one is. That's why nobody has ever said the words, and the best thing about them? They've worn the same size of jeans since puberty. These old clothes have served you well, but now it's time to stick them in the donation pile, or at the very least, into the depths of your closet, where they're not serving as a daily reminder of the size you arbitrarily think you should still be. And then you're gonna go out and enjoy your life in clothes that reflect the vibrant, exciting, magnetic person you are and always have been.

• 12:18Marielle Segarra?

  Hmm, yeah, I love this one. Nobody knows the size of your pants, truly. So just wear ones that fit.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, we just, sometimes it just helps, even though that is the pep talk that you would probably give to somebody in your life that came to you feeling that. Sometimes it's hard to tell those words to ourselves.

• 12:38Marielle Segarra?

  Do y'all give yourself pep talks?

• 12:40Speaker 02

  You know, in our mind, to give yourself a pep talk, it's probably the same format as giving a pep talk to somebody you love. And you should give yourself the same amount of grace and encouragement and forgiveness, and also the same expectation to not be perfect and to not nail it right off the bat.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  No one is stopping you from, you know, deciding to do a voice note, pretending that you were talking to someone else, giving them a pep talk. And then you listen back to it, uh, you know, when you need it. It doesn't have to be, you know, reciting mantras and affirmations in the mirror. It can be all those kinds of things that we've talked about, just apply it to yourself.

• 13:22Marielle Segarra?

  I've definitely said, like, "You got this, girl," to myself.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:26Marielle Segarra?

  It could be simple even, like, "Okay, you got this," or like, "Stay calm."

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Write yourself a Post-it.

• 13:32Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, Josh, Paula, thank you so much.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you so much. Thrilled to be here.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  We really appreciate it. We had a great time.

• 13:41Marielle Segarra?

  All right, time for a recap. Pep talks should be specific, and you can give them during life's smaller moments and challenges, too. They don't always have to include advice, and it's a good idea to keep them simple. Also, don't forget to give yourself pep talks, too. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to incorporate play into your life and another on the science behind seed oils. You can find those at npr.org/lifekit. And if you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/lifekitnewsletter. Also, if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share with us, email us at [email protected]. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider.

• 14:26Marielle Segarra?

  Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Gharib. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Jay Siz. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

• 14:51Speaker 04

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