Pod Insights Happy Place Fearne says hello to intuitive exercise and goodbye to people pleasing About this episode There’s a bit too much pressure on reaching an unwavering state of happiness isn’t there? It’s just not realistic. So Fearne’s going to be dropping into your feed every week for some candid nattering about what’s making her feel great, and what’s making her feel crap.
This is a cosy little corner for all of us to explore what’s been on our minds, what’s been getting us down, inspiring us, and making us laugh. Wanna join the chat? Send us a voicenote, DM, or comment on Instagram @happyplaceofficial!
Today: what joyful little moments are getting Fearne and Team Happy Place through the grey winter, and what are we all leaving firmly in 2025?
In this chat, Fearne covers:
-The joy (or, maybe not) of finding your inner child through skipping
-Transitioning from being a gym-bunny to an intuitive exerciser
-Being constantly infantilised by others
-Reaching your gardening and electric blanket era
-How to deal with mansplaining
-A reminder for you to stop people pleasing, please
-Why treating yourself to a little gift is a very good idea
Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service.
Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:30 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet.
0:32 Speaker 02 Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer.
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2:07 Fearne Cotton? The disclaimer is, I love men. He said he doesn't have Instagram because he's got a garden to tend to, front and back. Let's face it, for a lot of us, January is shit. So what we're wanting to do is shed everything with a snake and get a fucking move on with this horse. Because I was a kids TV presenter, I was infantilised for a very long time. Do people eat cress in a sandwich? I don't know. I'm not massively on board with this one, but apparently it's meant to make us take ourselves a bit less seriously. Enough is enough. Don't sit there placating this person. Heated blankets are in and mansplaining is in the bin. I'm not giving you advice like I'm some fucking guru. I'm saying this to myself. I need to hear this more than anyone.
2:53 Fearne Cotton? Hello everyone, this is very exciting. This is the first of a brand new kind of episode that's going to be dropping in your feed every week. Because there's too much emphasis on, we must find our happy place. I think most of us are somewhere in the middle trying to figure it out. So this is a gorgeous little safe space where we can get curious about whether we feel happy or not. Anything goes. And today, I'm going to be chatting about what is making me and team Happy Place feel happy? And what is not during this quite miserable grey month? One of them, you might not be expecting this, is skipping.
3:37 Fearne Cotton? Okay, so Basil, who works on team Happy Place, is smirking in the corner. Not into skipping? I'm not even talking about skipping with a rope, I'm talking about like how kids skip. So skipping instead of walking. I'm not massively on board with this one, but apparently it's meant to make us feel childlike, joyful, make us take ourselves a bit less seriously. I think I've got a bit of a hang-up with this one. Because for years, because I was a kids TV presenter... I was infantilised for a very long time. So even when I was sort of like a home owning
4:16 Fearne Cotton? adult who had a mortgage and cats, people would still send me like stickers and like Hello Kitty T-shirts. I'm like, I'm a woman. So I, I don't know if I'm on board with the skipping thing, but Amelia, who works on Team Happy Place, that's making her feel happy. The one thing I'll say, when we're talking about moving our bodies, is what I am on board with is moving in a way that feels right to you. Because I used to be, back in the day, a real gym bunny. I'd like get in the gym, sprint on the running machine, do that, this cross trainer, what's, is it a cross trainer, that thing when you do that with your arms? Pointless, does nothing. Um, and kill myself in
5:00 Fearne Cotton? there. And also with running, and I've got a dodgy knee at the moment, so I'm, I'm not running anywhere, can barely walk up a hill. So what I'm doing is movement that feels more intuitive, a bit calmer. Also, because I'm a lunatic, I am often like bashing my nervous system to the point of where like I feel fraught. So I know that at this point in age of my life, I need to do exercise that makes me feel calm and grounded and just not like I'm jumping out of my own skin. So on the skipping note, what I would say, if you're starting a fitness thing this year,
5:42 Fearne Cotton? do a fitness thing that feels right to you, rather than just like, oh, I've got to go running because everyone else is running. Do a thing that's enjoyable. Life's too short. Life's too short. Um, the other thing we're going to be chatting about, which you might not be expecting, is gardening. Okay. Now, I've not reached the gardening era yet. I, maybe I should have, I'm forty four. Maybe I should have, um, started like buying seeds or something. I'm not there yet. But Jack O'Connell, again, Amelia from Team Happy Place is in love with Jack. I think that's why he's getting a mention. He said recently, he said he doesn't have Instagram because he's got a garden to tend to, front and back. I don't know, is he, is he talking about his actual garden?
6:25 Fearne Cotton? At this point, I don't know, but he apparently is big on gardening. I feel ashamed to say this, but I've got fake grass, which is not a great start. And very thin flower beds with not much in them. When am I gonna get into my gardening era? I understand the benefits. I know that I would probably wildly reap from the benefits of just being outside, getting my hands dirty. I'm not there yet. Maybe I'll start with, I don't know, like a tomato plant or cress. Like I'm back at school. I'm gonna go with cress. Is cress still a thing? Do people eat cress in a sandwich? I don't know. The other, the thing that's making me feel happy at the moment.
7:09 Fearne Cotton? That's really getting me in my happy place, because let's face it, for a lot of us, January is shit. I know that is a cliche, but I am struggling. I am pulling myself through January. The one thing that is guaranteed to put a smile on my face at the moment. Is a gift that I got for Christmas. And this gift is an electric blanket. Okay, so maybe I bypassed the gardening era and went straight to Oxygenarian. That's where I'm at. I am, and also I'm not dissing people in their eighties, because there are cool people in their eighties who are yet to get an electric blanket. I am there prematurely and it, the feeling, if you've got one, I don't need to sell this to you. But the feeling of getting under that electric blanket.
7:53 Fearne Cotton? The other day I was reading Hamlet, because that was our book club pick for this month. And I had this blanket on so toasty and at about 3pm I blacked out. I was like fully in a deep REM sleep. These things are the best, best thing I've been given ever, actually, not just last year, ever. It's amazing. So Team Happy Place are really keen to chat about the whole year of the horse, year of the snake thing. Because that's not happening until Feb, by the way, because obviously I'm a Chinese calendar expert. But we've just done year of the snake, which was all slithery and dreadful.
8:31 Fearne Cotton? Making this shit up and February onwards, year of the horse, which is like charging forwards, a galloping handsome steed. Again, I'm making this up, but not the horse snake thing. So what we're wanting to do is shed everything with the snake and get a fucking move on with this horse. And I am, I massively subscribe to that. There's loads of stuff that I want to leave in 2025. A big one for me is people pleasing and it's definitely on my mind at the moment because I've got a new book coming out in March called Alikable. And it's all about how so much of my life has been completely centred around and informed by people pleasing.
9:13 Fearne Cotton? And some of it, you know, is whatever. It's everyday stuff that we all do. We say yes to parties we don't want to go to. We say yes to doing a, you know, a job for someone we don't want to do. But actually, it's the, the extremes, I think are quite severe for many of us and we don't take it seriously enough. And the extremes for me have led me into some real like dark patches of having extreme anxiety because I'm frazzled and overwhelmed. And dipping into self-loathing because I'm sort of resenting the people around me. It's some, some serious shit in there that I want to really, really get rid of. So that means that for the year of the horse and for 2026 in general,
9:56 Fearne Cotton? I need to be more assertive and I need to say no more. And I, I find saying no so hard still, even though I know the implications, even though I know that saying yes a lot is going to lead me down a really tricky road. So I'm practising it at the moment and it's uncomfortable. And I think that's the thing I need to talk about is the discomfort we feel is fine. We're allowed to feel uncomfortable and recognise it, but we shouldn't then go back on the no that we've just said. And that is the big test for me and it might be for you too.
10:39 Fearne Cotton? For example, I'm going to do a disclaimer before I say what I'm about to say because I feel a bit nervous saying it. The disclaimer is, I love men. Got loads of great men in my life. Basil's here. Basil's great, by the way. He's wearing a green hat. He's got long ginger hair. Absolute legend. I've got loads of great men in my life. Friends, my brother, my dad. But this week, on two occasions, I had something mansplained to me and it fucked me off so badly. And I think the old me in 2025, a couple of weeks ago, would have gone, oh, okay, thank you. Great. And played along with it. And I just thought, I've not got time for this. And I went, no, I know, I get it. I know. I know what you're talking about. I know what you're trying to tell
11:23 Fearne Cotton? me. And I think the feeling I had was not just my own irritation that I was being slightly patronised, but it was also perhaps the voice of many generations of women before me that are like, enough is enough. Enough is enough. Don't sit there placating this person, going along with it for the sake of it, because you don't want to rock the boat. Just say bluntly, you don't need to carry on. I know. Thank you. And stop it dead. You don't have to be rude. You don't have to be an asshole. But you equally don't have to waste time. Because I think what I would have done before is sat there, listening to the sort of patronising, almost like someone,
12:05 Fearne Cotton? like they were talking to a child, basically. And then later on, I would have felt a deep rage burning within me and felt really pissed off that I'd allowed that to happen. So that one for me is out. And it's not just mansplaining. As I said, love men. This is not a rant about men. It was just two men last week. This is generally about people either talking to you in a way that doesn't feel right to you, asking too much of you, telling you something about yourself that you don't want to hear. My God, I have had that so many times. And again, before, I would have just sat there and taken it and then felt wretched later. I think many of us now
12:49 Fearne Cotton? feel like we don't want to do that anymore. And we want to bin it. So we let, should we bin that one together? Should we jump on our trusty steeds and ride into the sunset with no more people pleasing? That is the big aim for me. Also, can we put in the bin just January? Can it go in the bin? Just really over January now. And I think January feels particularly hard for many of us in a cliche way. Because Christmas, although Christmas isn't all, you know, amazing fairy lights and joy. Um, I had a kind of good one with bumps in the road, but I do love
13:31 Fearne Cotton? just the smells and the sounds and the fact that I was very lucky. I got a couple of weeks off work. So I really became quite sloth like actually, and it was heaven. So we, that's behind us. And then summer is, summer might as well be 50 years away. It's so far out of reach. Especially if you're listening to this in the UK, we might have shit weather until like July. That is, it's too bleak. It is too bleak. And I saw Rob Beckett talking about this on Instagram this week, and he had a great idea. Can we do September, October, November, December, March?
14:11 Fearne Cotton? It's a fucking great idea. Shall we just do that? I don't know how we do that, like what the inner workings of that are. But I'm very on board with that idea. So what I really want for these happy place pending episodes is for us to have a bit of a two-way conversation because otherwise this is just me sat in this really nice fluffy chair, talking at you, which, you know, might be fine, but I would love this to also include you. So if you've got, I don't know, stuff that's making you feel really good, tips on stuff that's making, you know, helping you get through this time of year, shit that is riling you, stuff that is making you feel like you are not in your happy place.
14:52 Fearne Cotton? Then we definitely want to know about it. You can jump on our Instagram. If you're not already following us on Instagram, please do, because we're doing so much stuff outside of the podcast. We've got a load of stuff coming up like. Thing that may very well help you this January is our brand new Happy Place Edit Box. If you've not seen our edit boxes before, they are heaven. Not only if you want to treat yourself, which I think is a jolly good idea, because when do we buy ourselves gifts? Never. But if you want to get someone that you love, a really personal gift, we do these beautiful edit boxes. And they're full of delicious products made by small brands that we sell on our Happy Place market.
15:34 Fearne Cotton? A lot of them are UK based, a lot of them are female founded, and they're all packed with real individuality and love. So our edit boxes, each time we do a drop, are full of these lovely small brands. It could be anything from face products to something you can eat, to a cute little gift. It could be anything in there. So we're doing a reset box. So it's not about going, yeah, it's a new year, it's a new me. It's just about having a moment to pause and go, right, this is a moment for me to actually stop and think about what I want to do going forward and reset. It's a really lovely box. So that box is dropping on Jan the 30th. So if you're listening to this before then, look out for it.
16:18 Fearne Cotton? And if you're listening to it after that, go get yourself one. They're lovely. And they're like, the products inside are worth like a hundred quid. And it's a bargain of, I think we're doing them again, Lana, if you can hear me, for 29.99? Yeah, yeah.
16:33 Fearne Cotton? Lana's just the other side of the wall shouting. By the way, you enjoy this episode, Lana? Oh, good. Lana likes it. So even if you don't, I've got one listener. So we are gonna put that box out full of lovely products that will hopefully help you get yourself in a good frame of mind and treat yourself. I think we all need to treat ourselves more. Because not only do we do it rarely, but I think it shows you, it's proof to yourself that you give a shit about yourself. And this again, maybe ties into the whole people pleasing conversation. When we're people pleasing, we're constantly proving to ourselves that we don't
17:15 Fearne Cotton? care about ourselves because we're putting other people first. And that doesn't mean that you never help anybody ever again, or that you say no to every party invite, or even people asking you to do them a favour. If you know, if you feel like that goodness is in your heart and you want to do that good thing, beautiful, that's a lovely thing to do. But equally, if you know that you're saying yes, but in your head, you're screaming no, you're proving to yourself constantly. And I'm talking, I'm not giving you advice like I'm some fucking guru. I'm saying this to myself. I need to hear this more than anyone, that you're proving to yourself constantly that you're not worth it, that
17:55 Fearne Cotton? you don't deserve to say no, or to go, my, my plate is full. I actually can't do anymore right now. So I think the opposite of that is doing nice things for yourself. For me, that means like getting under my electric blanket, having a bath, reading in the bath. I bloody love reading in the bath. There is nothing better than reading in the bath. Or buying yourself a little treat. And I think the, the new happy place edit box is a very good place to start. Just a box of goodies all for you. So I conclude by saying heated blankets are in, I'm on the fence with skipping, and mansplaining is in the
18:35 Fearne Cotton? bin. Okay, it's a big, that one to mansplaining. Do join me and let me know what's putting you in your happy place and what is taking you right out of it. We're going to keep doing these lovely episodes that will drop every week in your feed. So do become part of it and let's carry on this delightful little two-way conversation. Thank you so much for listening to Happy Place Pending. Your happy place does not need to be this like major future event that you're seeing in the distance, nor do you need to feel happy every second now. It can be something that we're querying, curious about and chatting about constantly. That is what we're going to do right here.
19:18 Fearne Cotton? Love you all. Have a bloody lovely week.
19:48 Speaker 02 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer.
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