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. This episode was originally published on Aug. 12, 2025. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:01Speaker 00

  This week on Up First, the midterms, less than 15 days away. President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and former President Obama, all crisscrossing the country, rallying voters in key races from Michigan to Georgia to North Carolina. Join us every morning as we guide you through the home stretch of this election season, Up First, on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:24Marielle Segarra?

  You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

• 0:32Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, it's Marielle. 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.

• 0:53Speaker 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.

• 1:18Marielle 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.

• 1:46Speaker 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.

• 1:54Marielle 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.

• 2:14Speaker 04

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• 2:42Speaker 02

  This election season, let the NPR Politics podcast save your time and your sanity. We'll help you understand key races, which polls you can safely ignore, and what might happen if power shifts in Congress. Our short, daily episodes come out every afternoon, so you can spend less time scrolling through each chaotic news cycle. Make NPR Politics your hub for midterm election coverage. Follow our podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:07Speaker 05

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So, marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 3:33Marielle Segarra?

  What made you want to write this book?

• 3:36Speaker 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?

• 4:02Marielle Segarra?

  Well, which one do you think?

• 4:04Speaker 02

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

• 4:09Marielle Segarra?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Like, nine out of 10 times.

• 4:12Marielle Segarra?

  I totally forgot about him. I was going to say the Trix Rabbit.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good one, too.

• 4:17Speaker 03

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

• 4:22Marielle 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.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  Confidence issues.

• 4:32Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:35Marielle Segarra?

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

• 4:41Speaker 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.

• 5:00Speaker 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.

• 5:37Marielle Segarra?

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

• 5:42Speaker 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.

• 5:58Marielle Segarra?

  Okay.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  So, it's more helpful than general encouragement if you are specific about the way that you are 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.

• 6:23Marielle Segarra?

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

• 6:25Speaker 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.

• 7:01Marielle 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?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Number three is that your pep talk doesn't always have to include advice. 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 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?

• 7:48Speaker 03

  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.

• 7:58Marielle 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.

• 8:11Speaker 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.

• 8:24Marielle Segarra?

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

• 8:28Speaker 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.

• 8:52Marielle 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?

• 9:01Speaker 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.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Before you open 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.

• 10:24Marielle 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.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:46Marielle Segarra?

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

• 10:50Speaker 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.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  You've changed, and naturally, your body has too. And thank goodness, bodies do change. Otherwise, we'd also 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.

• 12:21Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah, I love this one. Nobody knows the size of your pants. Truly. So just wear ones that fit.

• 12:29Speaker 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.

• 12:40Marielle Segarra?

  Do y'all give yourself pep talks?

• 12:42Speaker 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.

• 13:02Speaker 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, 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 to apply to yourself.

• 13:24Marielle Segarra?

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

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:28Marielle Segarra?

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

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Write yourself a Post-It.

• 13:34Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, Josh, Paula, thank you so much.

• 13:37Speaker 03

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

• 13:39Speaker 02

  We really appreciate it. We had a great time.

• 13:43Marielle 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.

• 14:00Marielle Segarra?

  If you love Life Kit and you want even more, follow us on Instagram, @nprlifekit. There you'll find videos featuring some of our favorite tips, like a recent one where our producer, Margaret Serino, demonstrates three exercises that improve agility. You can find those by following @nprlifekit. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib, and our visuals editor is CJ Ricolon. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Jay Siz. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

• 14:53Speaker 06

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• 15:25Speaker 07

  Hi there, I'm Brittany Luce. And not to brag, but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called It's Been a Minute. I love making it, and I think you'll love listening to it. Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in. And I gotta say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today.