40 Ways to Slow Your Holidays

Today’s episode is all about joyful living. What it is, what it isn’t, how to get more of it and how it differs from happiness.

Stemming from Brooke's intention to try and find more joy in 2024, this conversation is delightfully and unexpectedly wide-ranging, and in it Ben and Brooke explore:

• the definition of joy, and why it means so many different things to so many different people

• why much of the literature around joy is religious or spiritual

• how joy differs from happiness and how it is similar 

• the role that alcohol has on our ability to experience happiness and joy (and how Brooke's experience has changed since she stopped drinking)

• how to adopt a lens of joy and happiness to life when you’re not a joyful person by default

• why choosing joy is a revolutionary act

• what the difference is between choosing joy and toxic positivity

• how we can add more joy to our lives

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, including links to the articles mentioned in today's episode, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Thanks for listening! 

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Welcome to Episode 10 of The Tortoise - the p(l)odcast all about the possibilities of slow. In today's show — the final one for 2023 — Brooke and Ben look back over the year that was and walk through their personal Top Ten list. That is, their favourite:

• TV show

• Small detail

• Movie

• New destination

• Book (you know I failed to limit this one)

• Discovery

• Album

• New listening (podcast or otherwise)

• Meal

• Experience

It’s a fun thing to do together, and they'd love to hear your Top Ten list for 2023. 

Head over to The Tortoise to share your list and to see the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Thanks for listening, and see you in 2024! 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This month's episode digs into the topic of addiction (and more broadly, obsessive behaviour) for things like tech-use, busyness, food and consumption. If you need help with addiction or mental health, there's a list of resources over at The Tortoise. 

In today's show, Ben shares his experience with tech over-use and the links he sees between it and the hustle-grind-capitalism-productivity culture, and he and Brooke look at how the proliferation of tech (especially smart phones and social media) have increased our desire for instant gratification. 

Brooke talks through her compulsion to consume bad news, and shares a few ways she's trying to break those patterns of behaviour. She also talks about the role that tech and consumerism intertwine to create a world that feels simultaneously too much and not enough, and how that has her and many other women she knows feeling angry. 

It's an interesting and meandering conversation that will hopefully leave you with lots to think about. Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Thanks for listening! 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today Brooke and Ben are talking about hard times. Or more specifically, how to deal with the emotional heaviness that comes from living through really difficult things.

Digging into this feeling of heaviness, they discuss how they're trying to acknowledge and accept the challenges, as well as the tools they use to help them move forward. They also talk about practical ways to protect ourselves when things feel hard, why limiting social media is a powerful way of drawing boundaries, the impact of gentle activism, why rage-cleaning can help process anger, the rebelliousness of finding joy and why pairing all of these things with action is so important. 

Hopefully this conversation shows that it’s okay to look for and hold onto joy in amongst the difficult times. 

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Thanks for listening! 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this month's episode, Brooke and Ben dig into the topic of seasonal living. Not only the calendar kind of seasonal living, but also the other seasons that exist in life too. The ones that don’t change every three months. The internal seasons, the life seasons, the in-built cycles and rhythms that — whether we realise it or not — have a profound impact on how we live, how we grow, how we show up in the world.

They begin with a pretty traditional look at what seasonal living means — that is, how it can impact the food we eat, the activities we do, our energy, our personal environmental impact, our connection to the world around us and the rhythms that drive it all.

But from there, they dig into the broader conversation around seasonal living, including the seasons we experience throughout life, why many people find themselves resistant to the stereotypical ‘spring, summer, autumn, winter’ analogy, the archetypes that mark our way through adulthood and the importance of recognising the inherent messiness of transitions.

It's thought-provoking and juicy in all the best ways. 

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Thanks for listening! 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For a term we throw around a lot, self-care is not all that well defined. It’s attached loosely to the ideas of wellness, self-help, relaxation and mindfulness, and so often comes to us packaged, commoditised and ready to be bought/sold.

Ben and Brooke start today’s episode by trying to define self-care, and eventually land on one that is as broad and inclusive as possible:

Self-care can be anything that leaves us feeling cared for or supported from within.

From there, they dig deeper into their own experiences of self-care, including how they make time for it, what constitutes "boring self-care", the weird rituals that act as self-care on the days there's not a lot of time and the parts of self-care they struggle with.

Brooke then reflects on a comment left on a recent Tortoise newsletter about toxic positivity, which asked about the difference between resilience, positive thinking, wallowing and toxic positivity. It's a juicy topic that both Brooke and Ben have some thoughts on, and will no doubt return to again.

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Thanks for listening! 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For our kids (and adults as well), there is barely a part of life that isn't somehow connected to smartphones, social media or screens, and they're starting to feel the effects of being constantly connected. 

In today's episode, Ben and Brooke talk about their experience raising two high school-ages kids (12 and 14) and the constant negotiations around tech boundaries. They also talk about the broader impact that high levels of screen time are having on kids in general, the challenges that are beginning to emerge in regards to relationships, well-being and self-esteem, and what we as adults can do to help support them. 

Brooke also reflects on a hugely impactful documentary she saw recently, that has given her something that's been in short supply lately: hope.  

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's a phrase we hear a lot about — the mental load — but what does it actually mean? And how can we navigate life while carrying it? 

Brooke and Ben discuss their differing definitions of mental load and how it plays out for them personally. They also dig into the broader conversation (Is a heavier mental load a gender issue or one of personality? Is it about convenience? Does it differ across generations?) and look at suggestions on how to make changes that could help lessen or even out the load in a relationship.

In the reflection part of the pod they discuss the big, beautiful benefits of being content versus being happy, and dig into how our values might help define both contentment/happiness. 

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

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If you're feeling squashed between competing needs - raising kids and caring for parents while trying to work/live/look after yourself, for example - then this episode is for you. 

Brooke and Ben talk about what it means to be a part of the 'sandwich generation', and why, for them, it represents a transition rather than a challenge to be overcome. They discuss what being sandwiched could look like, why the additional pressures of caring so often fall to women, how they manage expectations, why they're thinking so far into the future, the slow living tools that might help, and yes, their favourite sandwiches (yes, really).

In the reflection part of the pod, they talk about different types of community, and the lightbulb moment that came in a recent comments section over on The Tortoise.

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What exactly is "wellness" anyway? We hear it tossed about as an umbrella term covering health and fitness and diet and mental well-being and any number of topics, but what does it mean to try and achieve wellness? And what does any of it have to do with slow living?

In today's episode, Brooke and Ben dig into wellness and social media - the good, the bad, the quackery, the evidence-based and the liver-eating diets - exploring the messy mixture of influencers, algorithms and genuine well-being tools that exist in the trillion-dollar industry.

It's an interesting and fraught conversation, because not only do definitions of wellness differ greatly, as do our individual levels of access, exposure and finances, but there is a clear crossover between wellness and diet culture that muddies the waters even more. And, while some of it is undoubtedly harmful, there are many parts of the wellness industry that offer genuine help too.  

Brooke and Ben look at their own experiences with wellness influencers, as well as their own hang-ups, privileges and blind spots. 

In the reflection segment, they discuss the benefits of embracing physical discomfort, which leads to a conversation about the different kinds of discomforts we might experience and the pros and cons they offer. 

They both give a quick update on their year-long experiments (the 1% and the four-day work week), one of which is going well, the other...not so much. 

Head over to The Tortoise for the full show notes, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter while you're there. 

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.