Begin Again Moments: How To Live A Happier More Hopeful Life

In this episode of Begin Again Moments, Davina is joined by award-winning writer Caitlin Moran and acclaimed journalist and author, Eleanor Mills, for two uplifting conversations about finding happiness, rediscovering yourself and learning to live a more hopeful life. Caitlin shares the small but powerful changes that can transform how we feel about our lives. From finding joy in everyday moments and reconnecting with the people around us, to embracing community and doing things for others, she explores how we can feel less anxious, more connected and fall back in love with the world around us. Then, Eleanor opens up about navigating the challenges of midlife and discovering who you really want to be. She shares why it's never too late to make a change, how to rediscover the things you once loved and why even our darkest chapters can lead to extraordinary new beginnings. Together, these conversations are a reminder that happiness isn't always found in the big things. Sometimes, it's about changing our perspective, finding purpose and giving ourselves permission to begin again. To hear the full conversations, watch the complete episodes on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  I want to talk about the list.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Find out a way to wake up without feeling instantly anxious. So you didn't know how to do that when you wrote the list. This was like, this is what I need to do.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I would wake up, you know that scene in Pulp Fiction where they have to stab her in the heart with an adrenaline pack because she's overdosed? I woke up every morning like this.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Because as soon as I woke up, that was just instant anxiety. Like literally, my stomach would go, like that same whoosh that I got 13 years old was happening every morning.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  How did you start not waking up with that? Or was that like, is that the rest of the list?

• 1:01Speaker 02

  That's the rest of the...

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm gonna keep on reading then. Eat bloody breakfast instead of having codeine under banana.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Yes, strong truths.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Well done.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Improve the neighborhood.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  I love the way you were talking about picking up rubbish. Talk to me about that.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Have you got a litter picker?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  No, I'm gonna get one though. After I heard about that.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  You get me a mosh pit friendly bra, I'll get you a litter picker. So I had spent 10 years going, why won't someone do something about this? Our street is so filthy, people are using my front garden as a bin. Who do I vote for? Why won't someone do something about this? Why won't someone do something about it? And I just woke up one day and went, this was the start of my quest, I went, that someone is me. I can see it, it's outside my house. I need to fix it. I am the change that I wish to see. And if you grew up from a generation where you played Pac-Man and you're just going along, you've got like gobble things up, picking up litter in the streets is exactly like playing Pac-Man, but for real life. You walk down the street with your litter picker and you leave behind, in front of you is a filthy street that is disgusting and makes you depressed. And behind you is a perfect serene street that looks like Tokyo. It's like, it's spotless. And it's just, you know, now if I'm in a bad mood, my husband will say, have you been

• 2:06Speaker 02

  litter picking recently? And it sounds quite passag, but I'll be like, no I haven't. He was like, it'll do you good, go and do it. And I literally ring him 10 minutes later, he goes, you were right!

• 2:14Speaker 01

  You said something at the beginning of that that blew my mind, which was, I am the change I want to see.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Yes, I've got another quote on my wall that is, I am my own cavalry. I think we often wait, we're like, when are the cavalry coming? When's someone coming to change everything? It's like, no, you are your own cavalry. Like, one of my mottoes for a really long time has been, when you've complained about something three times, the second time you complained about it, you should have started doing something about it. And it's a really careful line to balance because you don't want to sort of go into that kind of like Thatcherite Norman Tebbit thing of like, kind of like, you know, solve all your problems, there is no such thing as society, but more often than not, it is probably a problem that you could solve and you will feel really good doing it. And the litter was my gateway into change in my life because suddenly instead of feeling powerless and waiting for the government or business or someone great to come and fix things, I was like, no, I could just do this now. That was the start of becoming hopeful.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I'm looking forward to getting my litter picker, thank you.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I'll get you.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Have some kind of small adventures. See new things, be dazzled by the world, regain faith in it, see wonderful things that humans have done, but be home in time for tea.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Right, because again, I think in our age, like if you've been a mother and you've been busy, in your head, you've got this thing of, my life hasn't started yet.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Like, once in a bit, I'll have the time. Like, once this bit of motherhood is over, once this bit of work is done, something will happen, in a while, my proper life will start. I'm just trying to clear all this stuff out of the way and then I will have my proper life. And then you start getting to 15, you're like, I'm still waiting. Where are my adventures? And in my head, an adventure would be going on fabulous mini breaks across Europe or spending six weeks, like kind of like walking through the Japanese mountains or something. And I was like, well, I can't fit those in. But like, what would give me the same feeling of just doing something a bit different? And like, and it came in conjunction with stopping wearing my headphones, which happened by accident, I'd just lost them. And I realized that if you, we all wear our headphones now, everybody, it's like an episode of Doctor Who, everyone's walking around with their headphones on, looking at their phones.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  When I lost my headphones and I started listening to what was happening again, suddenly you kind of tap back into the neighborhood gossip, you suddenly, that whole thing of like, you know, people saying, I feel lonely, there is no sense of community anymore. It's because you've got your headphones on. And also when you start reading, particularly in London, there's so much stuff online going, London is a city on the verge of civil war, like, you know, people that hate each other, like it's so violent and scary. It's not. Take your headphones off and everyone's just going, you can have sausages or chicken for tea, they're on the phone to their mums, they're like playing with the baby at the back of the bus and like waving their keys at it, like you can really quickly fall back in love with humanity again if you take your headphones off and sit in humanity. And then similarly, like walking in nature, like the first time I didn't wear my headphones and I sat under a tree when it was raining, I was like, no one else can hear this.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Like, this is a couture moment. And like suddenly it turns into like a...

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Wait, couture moment?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  No one else is having it.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Right? Because if I'm listening to the Beatles, which is what I'd normally be doing, obviously they're amazing, but millions of people are listening to the Beatles right now. And like, you can listen to that song whenever you want. If you take your headphones off, the exact sound of the rain at that moment and hearing people putting up their umbrellas and calling to each other and kind of running with their dogs and the smell, it was like, I've been, it feels like the world has really changed in the last 10 or 15 years. And it has in some ways, but the majority of the change that we feel and that makes us feel sad and isolated and hopeless and anxious is that we've changed the way that we interact with the world. You know, we know what the stats are, look at your stats on your phone, how many hours you spent on it, we are walking around with our headphones on all the time, we're making eye contact with people. If you go back to living your life as you did 15 years ago, it's amazing how much things feel like they've kind of gone back to normal.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  You're sort of like, oh yeah, this is how I remember life being, I'm walking down the street and talking to people.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  What's crazy is that for young kids, they are seeing what life could be like, they haven't been this life.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  They don't remember it.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  They don't remember it. They haven't had it. They've not experienced it.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  What have you seen?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  It's absolutely bonkers.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Have you seen the stats though? Like so many, like 69% of people on social media don't post on it. And I have lost count of the young people I know now who've just bought brick phones. They're like, we were told we needed to be on social media, we didn't have profiles for our jobs, people are gonna check out who you are, you don't exist if you're not on social media. And they've just, we gave it 10 years and it hasn't worked. You know, the jobs are being taken away, we're not progressing, we're not buying houses, I think it might be a lie that I need to be on social media. And they're all buying brick phones and suddenly go in, I'm gonna put on a club night, like I'm gonna actually go and see my friends, like I'm gonna do things in the real world, like kind of where at no moment will something I've said suddenly go viral and ruin my life.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Or no picture that I've posted online will be haunting me in 10 years' time and people I don't know can be talking to me at 3 o'clock in the morning. Like, I just think we're starting to realize that that is not working for us.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Like, I think social media, point one, the first iteration is kind of over and there might be a better one in the future.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  But this one, no one likes it.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  That's the big news, no one likes it.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Feel like I'm doing something useful. And then you say, noble. Yes, for humanity. Now, why, what, I mean, I kind of, you know, we know what noble means, but what, what does it mean to you?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Well, there's this thing called, I always forget what the word is, but there's this thing called the hierarchy of need.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  And so the first one is you need to be safe, you need like a roof over your head and you need food. So that's the first one. And then it goes up the hierarchy and so you need to have, you need to have done something that is inspiring in that day, you need to in some way connect with something bigger, whether that be nature or culture. And the top of it is that you need to make sure that you've done something for other people. And it's amazing how often I talk to someone who feels really bad and like their life is bad and that they don't have enough. And they go, how can I fix this problem? And I go, you do have needs and we'll address those as well, but have you ever tried doing something for someone else first? It's amazing how that actually makes you feel better than doing something for yourself sometimes. Like, it's the magic source that kind of like, because then you're seeing someone else's happiness, especially if you're having problems with registering happiness yourself, if

• 8:03Speaker 02

  you've got anhedonia, where you're not feeling any emotions anymore.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 8:08Speaker 02

  So that's a big thing that people started talking about after lockdown, that because anhedonia is where you have no emotions. So you're not depressed particularly, you're not particularly anxious, but you're also not joyful, you just have turned off all your emotions, usually after a traumatic event. And the rise in people, being diagnosed with anhedonia really sort of took off after lockdown. So being in that emotion state, so sometimes it's really hard to make yourself happy if you shut down all your emotions, but the quickest way to feel your own happiness is to see it in the face of someone else. That's a short circuit that gets you back in contact with your emotions again. So just, it's, I always, never want to sound pious, but you know, but when you reconnect with those old truths, like, if you want to make yourself happy, make someone else happy is...

• 8:53Speaker 01

  So many women, I think, are in something where they feel like, I'm not really living my truth.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yes, so much.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  But it's so frightening.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, to shift out of it.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  To shift out of it.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  What should they do?

• 9:06Speaker 03

  It's really interesting. I see, someone said to me in the Noon Circle the other day, she said, I'm living this life, I'm in this house, I've got these kids. She said, she said to me, Eleanor, I don't feel like I chose any of it.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  I feel like I'm sleepwalking through my own life. And I thought that, that felt to me really sad. And I think that, for me, it was kind of thrust upon me, this change, I had to do something else. But what I see is a lot of women come and they know that something needs to change. They feel really stuck, they feel really numb, they know it's not resonant, and they don't really know kind of how to do that. So what we say at Noon is, the first thing I say is, start doing something that you love. And a lot of them have even forgotten what that might be. And I go, right, go back, what did you really love doing when you were a kid? So for me, I loved reading books and I liked swimming, which is weirdly, like, actually exactly where I vented up.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  So that's quite a good one. It's like, what did you really love as a child? Use those as some building blocks. And, and then I think the other thing that's really important is to give yourself a bit of space. And we run retreats at Noon, and we also do these amazing trips. I took 15 Queen Agers to Morocco, and we went high into the Atlas Mountain and walked for miles beyond the end of the road with this Berber woman, an ex-nobad, who's another Queen Ager.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  And we slept on like floors on little mats and shared showers. So it was something about really stripping back, it's a bit like the travelling we used to do when we were, you know, I did a lot of travelling in my early twenties. So it was like really kind of stripping back all the extraneous stuff. And suddenly the women all began to talk and they began to share their truthiest truths, or what they'd always really wanted to do and hadn't been able to. And there was so much tragedy and kind of difficulties that they'd faced, but there was also this incredible strength. And what we see in our Noon research is actually, in this midlife collision, so over half of women by the time they hit 50 have been through at least five massive life events. Divorce, bereavement, redundancy, death of elderly parents, looking after teenagers.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  We've got an epidemic of anxiety in Gen Z, empty nest, you know, their own health issues, maybe a bit of menopause, some abuse. So over half of women have had at least five of those, and they tend to come all at once in what we call the midlife collision. But what we saw was that the people, the women who'd been through the most, ended up the happiest.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  So there was such a kind of optimistic narrative to that. Because when I started looking at the research, I was thinking, oh, the gloom and doom, this is a nightmare. And actually, there was such, we talk about Queen Agers being forged in fire, and actually, when you come out the other end, you're this kind of like invincible, shiny, kind of great version of yourself, because you slopped off all the things that you aren't.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  I totally see that in women I know.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  The ones that have been through the most.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Our boss bitches, like.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Oh my god, they're boss bitches.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  And they shine.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  You know, and then they take no prisoners, and they're, but they also have a great humanity and empathy and, you know, they're the person you need in a crisis.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  And I suppose also what they're showing us is that, you know, this is what you can be when you go through trouble.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Do not be afraid of going through the trouble. You can't avoid it, you can't go round it, under, over.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  No, I say that, it can't go over it, it can't go under it, it's got to go through it, like the bear hunter, that's what in the book.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  It'll get better.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  It will get better.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  I love what you said about speaking your truth as well, because I think you've earned it, you know.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Like, actually, do you know what? I've earned my right to say whatever I want.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  And what I'm hoping that this book does, and my story does for other women, is to point a map of what this point can look like. And it's, it's both a kind of warning and an encouragement, I hope. It's saying, when you hit 50, probably everything will change massively, and probably the thing that's been most at the centre of your life will fall away. But in the space that that death brings, something amazing new can grow if you let it. And it's, and it's giving people the kind of courage to walk through those pinch points, those dark times, and knowing that something will come better afterwards. And weirdly enough, that's the older, I'm an obsessive storyteller, it's what I've always done, but that story of kind of going into the darkness, then coming out to light,

• 13:13Speaker 03

  is actually the oldest story in humanity. There's a Syrian goddess called Diana, a queen who goes down into the darkness, and she's hung on a hook, like a slab of meat in the dark. And then she's rescued by some people who come down to find her. But when she's in the dark, you think she's dead, but actually she's not, she's regenerating. It's that kind of fallowness, it's the turn of the year, it's like winter, the leaves come off the trees, and at the point where it looks darkest, it's actually when all the buds are going to come out again. That we need that kind of fallowing, wallowing, regenerating, a bit of time in the dark, that's the change is difficult bit, so that we can come back like this new, my new bright green sap.

• 13:54Speaker 00

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