Milestones Matter: Celebrating 8 Years of Crappy to Happy

0:04 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Hello, and welcome back to Crappy to Happy. Very special episode today because a couple of days ago, let's just say this week marks the eight year anniversary of Crappy to Happy. Eight years is a long time to host a podcast, and I could not let this milestone go by without mentioning it. I know that eight years is not like you know, five years or ten years or twenty years, like it's not one of those. It doesn't feel like one of those significant kind of milestones, but it's still worth mentioning. Twenty seventeen, this podcast launched in August. I was on holidays with my family. We were in Disney World, Florida on this day eight years ago. All of the first ten episodes had been recorded with my friend and my co host at the time, Tiff Hall. Tiff and I had gone into the studio. We had a full schedule of the

1:36 topics that we wanted to cover in our first series of ten episodes. We recorded them and they were all scheduled for release on that date when I was out of the country, and I remember being so excited to get the email to say that they had gone live. It was it was huge. It was a huge moment. So for anybody who has been around since those early days, thank you so much for being here sticking with me for this long time. I am more determined than ever. Not that I was ever not going to continue, I don't think, but I am certainly more committed than ever to seeing it through to ten years, because this whole time I've been going, oh, eight years is not really that special. Ten years now, that's a real milestone. So you can be sure that I will be here for another couple of years so that we can do that one in style. We will celebrate that in a big way. Yeah, So it did cause me to pause and reflect a little bit, as you do when milestones roll around, to really look back on the past eight years. And not that I necessarily want to bore you with all of that, because that's sort of my personal reflection. Maybe if you've been around here for a while, you'll have your own reflections on what this podcast has meant for you or world have been your favorite episodes or guests or moments or whatever in the last eight years. But it did cause me to think about just the importance of milestones

3:10 and markers in our lives and the opportunity that they present to reflect and to take stock and review, I guess, and also to pause and consider maybe what is coming next now. Interestingly and purely coincidentally, there has also been some big news this week about my former co host Tiffany Hall. So if you have not been around since the beginning, allow me to just give you this little recap. My very good friend Tiffany Hall is a celebrity fitness trainer in Australia. She has been running a very successful online fitness program health and wellbeing program Workouts, Meals, Recipes, Mindfulness and I was part of that program from the very beginning. So I was the resident psychologist on that program.

4:07 I provided meditation scripts. I don't think I actually ever recorded the meditations. I definitely wrote all the scripts for the meditations. I wrote blogs and articles and did Facebook lives, and really my role was obviously to do with the mental health side of things, but not so much mental health though it was mental health, but you know, the motivation, the mood, mindfulness, all of that kind of emotional wellbeing and the psychology of goal setting and overcoming self sabotage, things like emotional eating if that was an issue, things like you know, getting unstuck, dealing with people in your life if they were unsupportive of your goals, you know, how to work with the people around you to get them on board. So that was that's my role. Okay.

4:55 So Tiff and I started doing these video segments together where we would discuss these shoes big part of the community as well, and I would get messages from people in my DMS, and I would get emails from the help desk about people struggling with certain things, and I would answer questions in the community, all to do with the psychology and the emotional wellbeing side of things. So I did a Facebook live every week, Mindful Monday. I did every single week for a while in the Facebook community. I see, it's all coming back to me at some stage during one of those Facebook Lives, somebody said, Cass, you should have a podcast, and I said, oh, who would I talk to on a podcast? What would I talk about? And Tiff was there and Tiff said, I'd talked to you on a podcast cast. And so we had a little joke that we should have a podcast.

5:37 Oh and some months later, not that many months, to be honest, I got a call out of the blue from Tiff saying, hey, Cas, remember how we mentioned that podcast. Do you want to do a podcast together? And what happened was there was a new podcast network launching in Australia, which was podcast One Australia. It was our Australian version of Podcast One, which was a big network in the USA, say at the time, and we were invited to pitch to pitch a podcast, and so Tiff and I got our heads together and we had to draft out what we would talk about, and essentially it was all the stuff that we were talking about in her program, right. She was about the physical health and workouts and all of that kind of side of things, the physical fitness, and I was the mental fitness. And so we crafted up this series of ten episodes and we had to take it to a meeting and present it and talk about why our podcast would be so great, and we got it. So the Crappy to Happy Podcast was born.

6:36 So we got into the studio, recorded our first ten episodes, and the strategy at the time was to do this like Netflix strategy, which was basically ten episodes that people would listen to and they would binge through them like you binge through a Netflix series, as opposed to a week by week thing. I have since looked at the numbers. Just recently, I've looked at the numbers. Back in twenty seventeen, there were forty four thousand active pod casts, so active podcasts. The definition of active means at least one episode published in the previous ninety days, So ninety days is a long time. That's not like a previous the previous month, or even the previous week. So forty four thousand active podcasts, and that was from a total registered podcast index of about four hundred and forty four thousand something like that, four hundred and fifty thousand, So four hundred fifty thousand registered podcasts like in the index and forty four thousand active.

7:31 Fast forward to twenty twenty five and there are currently four point six million podcasts that are listed in the Podcast Index. That means, you know, published somewhere, and there are four hundred and sixty five thousand, so it's about ten percent, But across the board it's sort of ten percent of the total listed podcast indexed podcast ten percent have had an episode published in the last ninety days, four hundred and sixty five thousand, three hundred thousand have published episode in the last thirty days, and two hundred and eight thousand have published an episode in the last ten days. In the last three days, there have been eighty three thousand podcasts have published an episode, which is double the number of active podcasts there were in twenty seventeen.

8:20 This is my point, This is all My point is it was a very very different podcasting environment in twenty seventeen. Gosh it was. It was a different scene. So we released our ten episodes and they were obviously a huge hit, not just with the people in the community where we were working together in TIFFs community, but also those podcast episodes attracted new people as well. And then I lived in on Queensland, tif lived in Melbourne. I would fly to Melbourne to record these episodes. We'd sit in a room together for a week and record them. And so it took maybe I think nine or ten months at least for us to get back into the studio again to record season two, and everybody was saying, can we have some more? Like one of you coming back? And people listened to these first ten episodes over and over and over again, They're like, I've listened to them five times, can we have some more? So we recorded another ten and then we were ready to renew our contract because it was such a success. It was an amazing, smash hit success podcast from the word go. And then by the time it got around to us getting back for season three, which is like I'm talking going on two years since we started, because there was such long gaps between us being able to get into the studio together with our schedules to record these episodes. By that stage, Tiff had signed onto this other big project that she was working on. She'd gone off to work with Center, which was Chris Hemsworth's fitness program, and she was just timestrapped.

9:47 She couldn't do it, so she left and that was decision point, and that was when we could either wrap it up at that point or we could continue and as you know, I chose to continue, and I started to bring in guests place of Tiff, and so then I started to be able to reach out and get people who I thought were really interesting and who had expertise that I didn't have that I could talk to on the show. And so that's the way, that's the way. It continued for a long time, from I think twenty nineteen to twenty twenty two, it was just guests, apart from a few episodes I did. In twenty twenty around COVID, I did a couple of solo episodes which were really really popular, and I started to get really bored with interviewing people, and I started to feel like I'd lost my way. And this is the point. This is what I mean about reflecting on milestones, using opportunities of milestones and markers to reflect and review, because I realized that when we started this podcast, I was the expert. I was bringing my expertise as a mental health professional to listeners, and when I started bringing guests on, I was no longer the expert. I was an interviewer. I'm not a journalist.

10:57 And while it was kind of interesting, it really I mean selfishly like what was in that for me, I'm pretty much giving up all of my time. It's a labor of lover podcast, trust me, putting pouring so much into this podcast where really just to platform other people. And so in twenty twenty two, that's when I said, I need this to be a mix. I need to get me back in. I need to have the opportunity to talk more about my expertise and offer that back to the listeners again. So that's when we started going one on one off a solo and a guest episode. Now in that time, again, just to keep this, try to keep this really short, I was asked to do a series for Spotify. They were doing this like Daily your Daily Wellbeing series where you would do these little shortcasts, these little tiny, little five minute EPs, and they would roll out each morning on Spotify. And so we put together the Three Mindful Minutes series and I created fifty episodes of three Mindful Minutes and they rolled out on Spotify.

11:56 You can still listen to them, you can still search three Mindful Minutes in or in Spotify. They're all still there. So much positive feedback on those as well, and I have always wanted to get back to producing more of the three Mindful Minutes, because those little bite sized bits of content are just so helpful. I had people tell me that the three Mindful Minutes, the daily episodes got them through some really, really hard times in their life, so that was very gratifying. I also pitched at one point that I wanted to when I started to really get into imposter syndrome in my work, and that's what I was really passionate about, still am really passionate about. I pitched an idea to do a more of a confidence kind of coaching podcast, and so they that was approved and we started off with a pilot of eight episodes of The Confidence Coach. Again very popular. You can search that on Apple or Spotify. And I have never created more episodes of The Confidence Coach, but again it's something that's still there and that I could potentially pick back up if there was interest. Continue to be with that network and a really big part of that network family, I guess for several years until I moved to the UK, and then after about twelve months in the UK, we went our separate ways. It was just really not practical for me to continue to be with an Australian network while I was over here in the UK. There's so much more that I could say about what I've learned over the past eight years. But what I was going to say before was, interestingly I mentioned to Tiff that this was the eight year anniversary of the podcast. And interestingly,

13:27 that program that brought us together, tif XO was called tif XO at the time, and now it's rebranded as TXO. But Tiff has just sold that business. She has sold her fitness business to another online fitness company. Won't bore you with the details. If you're in Australia at twenty eight by sam Wood, you might have seen the news twenty eight by sam Wood has acquired TXO and TXO will sort of be subsumed within sam Wood. So again, just another really significant milestone and end of an era. Really no end of an year error for the podcast. We will continue, but a massive, massive milestone for tifex SO and another big cause for reflection because hearing that news and knowing that that is where this whole thing started.

14:11 This podcast started with that program and tif and I working together and that off the cuff, you know roundom comment about we should do a podcast, and we should do a podcast together, and here we are eight years later, still going with Crappy to Happy and again, thank you for indulging me with all that little backstory. If you've been around for a while, I have you appreciated that little walk down memory lane and here we go onwards and upwards. We are continuing, so you with me at least until the ten year anniversary. And if you're interested in more Confidence Coach or more three mindful minutes, will you know hit me up. There's only so many hours in the day, and I don't get paid for making the podcast, so if you want to subscribe, didn't mean to turn that into a sales bitch. If you love the podcast, then supporting it with ten dollars a month would really help me out. And I love making their beyond Happy episodes as well. I love diving into little little audio series for paid subscribers, so that will be a big focus for me too. Is just expanding that what's available inside that paid subscription. But never mind, if you are not up for that, Crappy or Happy is not going anywhere. I'm here. Let's just use this opportunity to talk about milestones and markers and the importance of taking these opportunities for review. It's kind of human nature to mark milestones. We mark anniversaries, We mark birthdays and positive ones and not so positive ones as well, you know, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, and they mark these points in time where they basically contribute to our personal narrative,

15:44 like our life story. That give us this opportunity to not to segment, but you know, to sort of look at our life in terms of these important periods and milestones, and it's how we sort of make sense of our life. How we sort of create the story of our life is often around these milestones. It's an anniversary for agrepit or happy. It may not be one for you, but it is helpful for you to think about if you're coming up to an anniversary and how long I've been in this job, or how long I've been in this relationship, or how long I've lived in this house, or you know, each time these dates come around and they mark another rotation of the sun. They don't have to be massively significant, but they can provide a really useful opportunity to pause and to consider what has happened in this preceding, Like who was I at the time that I started this?

16:40 Who am I now? How much have I grown? What have I learned? How much have I changed? And we're often so busy looking forward that we don't look back, And so it just can be a helpful reminder or invitation to maybe do a little bit of that looking back and reflecting on how far have come and what has changed. And also, you know, what is still serving you when you think about the reasons that you started this thing? Are they still relevant? You know, I got to the eight years of crappy to happy and, like I said, more determined than ever to see it through to ten years and celebrate that milestone. TIF In terms of her program, you know, she's had to come to this decision, and I don't know all of her personal reasons for it. We've only had the briefest of conversations about it. I know it's hugely major and emotional for her to let go of full control of her program.

17:35 But again, it's like for a season, you know, it's like, who was I when I started this? What was my objectives? Where was I at in life? Why did this matter to me? What did I want to achieve when I started this? Is that still relevant. Is that still current? What's changed? Have my values changed and my goals changed? Have I might just in a different point in my life now, Like it's really important that we pause and consider is this still what I want? Is this still where I want to go? Do I need to pivot? Do I need to change something? Is this a bit stale now? Is this still serving the purpose that I had intended it to when it began? Just useful opportunity With retrospective reflection. When we look back on anything, we see things that we didn't see at the time necessarily.

18:22 We can kind of, like I said, take that bigger pitch of overview of what has happened and what's transpired, and we can see lessons, We can pull out learnings, we can spot patterns, we can see things that we can't necessarily see when we're right in it. I think the other really important thing about milestones is that we do take the time to look back and reflect and learn and all of those things that I just said. Because the hedonic treadmill keeps us running. You know, we set a goal which even we move on to the next one, or we're just so busy in the doing of life and the day to day of life and just continuing, keeping on and keeping on that we rarely have the time of the space or consider pausing and celebrating and acknowledging. You know, what you've done, what you've achieved, how you've grown, what you've learned, because we're just onto the next thing, Like that's just that's how we go. Oh, I didn't even mention that. In the time after the podcast, the podcast led to a book dealer, and I wrote three books and then I wrote an audible original. I mean that podcast. It all started with TIFEXO and Tiffany Hall. Anyway, So slowing down, acknowledging success, acknowledging achievements, and celebrating wins, like what do you have to celebrate? I know I'm talking about me, but this is really all about how you can use this for yourself as well. What have you achieved, how have you grown, what have you learned?

19:42 What can you reflect on? What do you need to review, revise, reconsider at this point in your life? Or if you've got a milestone coming up, like how can you mark that date and then intentionally use that rather than just letting it go by like just another day? How can you intentionally use that date for your benefit, you know, use it in a meaningful way. I think the other really important thing about milestones too, just to be really balanced in the how we present this idea, is that sometimes it can bring up a bit of God, I thought i'd be further along by now, you know. Sometimes it's not always celebrating achievements. Sometimes it's really, gosh, I've been at this for this long and I'm still not where I thought I would be, or I still haven't achieved the thing that I wanted to achieve. So I really think that it's important also to bring that self compassion that I'm always banging on about, you know, be kind to yourself. There's no race and there's no competition.

20:44 The sense of urgency that we get caught up in or feeling like we're supposed to be at a certain point by a certain time, or none of that is really helpful, but it can be useful. It can be useful to consider whether you might be falling into a bit of the old sunk cost fallacy, if you are continueing to pour yourself into something that doesn't work for you anymore. Maybe that's where you know Tiff was at with TXO. Again, I haven't talked to her, so don't go quoting me on that. But you know, I'm just speculating. You know, maybe it got to the point where sometimes you stick at something. We're so dog good in our determination to stick with something and see it through and build it and create the thing that we said that we were going to create. And maybe those milestones, you know, another year rolls around or another six month mark or whatever, and it gives you the opportunity to go, you know, what, is this still valid for me? Like? Am I just pouring my energy and heart and soul into something that actually I just need to be able to let go of.

21:39 You know, maybe it's not ever going to be what I wanted it to be, or maybe I've got everything out of it that I needed to and I just need to cut my less losses and move on to something else. And to be able to be honest about that and to be kind to yourself about that as well. When you're doing that, reflecting about where you're at and what's new, and it may not be that you walk away like I said before, It may be that you consider do I need to pivot? Is there something that I need to change. Do I need to realign or reimagine what this might be or what I want for the next whatever period five years, the next eight years for me, the next two years, maybe till I get into the ten year anniversary of the podcast. Oh, that's going to be so exciting. So I guess all of this is just to say that when we achieve these milestones, it is a really, really great opportunity to do some proper intentional reflection. Celebrate achievements, don't let them go by, be intentional in your reflections. If you can journal about things, if you can really spend the time to really think about it. I mean I could easily just say, oh wow, eight years, Gee wow, lots so much has changed, But I know I could also spend a lot more time considering all of the things that I've learned and the way that I've grown, And there's so much there. There's so much to be learned and reflected on that is useful.

23:07 And then of course looking forward to what's next, what's the next iteration? What do you want the next stage to look like? What do you want this next chapter to look like? In your life? So there is really something about rituals that is really supportive of our well being. Like I said, they're important markers just these dates, but if you have rituals around certain events, then they build a sense of meaning, a sense of if it involves other people, a sense of belonging, a sense of shared purpose, kind of shared identity, shared values. I'm just talking generally here. So depending on what your milestone is that might be coming up in your life, but having some sort of events, things that you do, ways that you get together, or even just personally, the rituals that you create in your own life can be really important and supportive cycleloge. So you know, even if you just take yourself or go with your partner, or you know, tag yourself out for dinner or get a pizza in or you know, whatever it is that you do just to mark a milestone.

24:10 It doesn't have to be big expensive things. It just can be something that you do for yourself that is just meaningful to you to acknowledge and mark those important milestones in your life, whatever they may be. And it can be six months in your new job, it can be you know, every year of the anniversary of the date that you moved into your house, or whatever it is. In your life. I can only speak really broadly and hope that you can take something that might be relevant to you in your life. So have a think about that. And I really would invite you to spend some time, if you've got the time, to look back and reflect on what you have accomplished, what you have achieved, whether it's in the past year, the past five years, the past eight years since the podcast started. How have you grown, how have you changed? What challenges have you faced? Is there an important marker a Mileston zone that you've skipped over and you maybe haven't been intentional about acknowledging or celebrating, or have been avoiding for some reason. Could you use this opportunity to spend a bit of time acknowledging that even if it's passed now, or is there one coming up that you just want to mark, make a note of that you don't want to miss it. And one really nice exercise to do just I'll wrap this up, but a really nice exercise to do is to draw a line along a piece of paper that is almost like your lifeline. Yeah, like your lifeline. You can do it from left to right across a page and then along that line just marking out all of the significant events, the significant moments or milestones in your life. It could be career changes, it could be relationship changes, It could

25:43 be health issues that you've faced, it could be parenting, personal achievements, goals that you've achieved, positive ones and negative ones. And as you do that exercise and you mark out all of those important pivotal points, and you don't have to do this all in one go. This can be something that you work on over time. You can think about what the meaning of each of those events was, like what did you learn or how did you grow or how did that change you or shape you. It can be a really really useful exercise to do. I think I've mentioned something similar before when I talked about your personal narrative or narrative identity. If you want to listen back to that episode. But you don't have to wait for an anniversary to do this exercise and to actually mark out what some of the big milestones have been in your life. What strengths did you build, What did you learn about yourself? These are all really useful questions.

26:33 And all of the big events in our lives, the big moments in life, have really contributed to making you who you are. So if it feels right for you, maybe make a note to do that little exercise and don't forget to leave space for the future. And maybe as you stretch your timeline out in front of you, you can think about what would you like to put on there for the next two years, five years, ten years. If you were to stretch your timeline out into the future, what are the significant milestones or markets that you're looking forward to achieving or that you would like to achieve. Put it on paper. We're doing a little series in Beyond Happy at the Moment about how we create the life we love, a little bit of the science and a little bit of the woo woo about the manifestation, and specifically a little bit of the science. And one of the most important things is to get really clear and specific about what it is that you want to create.

27:29 So maybe that could be a useful exercise to do. Thank you so much as always for being here. Such a pleasure to be doing this podcast for the last eight years, and honest to God, such a bloody privilege. It is a very very different podcasting environment than it was eight years ago, and I feel so lucky to still be here to still have you listening, and all of the episodes in the back catalog are there for you. If you weren't here from the beginning, you could go back and hear TIF and I talking eight years ago. Still there, but thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait to catch you next week for another fabulous episode of Crappy to Haby. Crappy to Haby is created and produced by me castun. If you enjoy the show, please hit the follow button wherever you listen to ensure you never miss an episode. Share with a friend to get me into the ears of more lovely listeners, and I would love for you to leave a five star rating and review. Thank you so much for being here and I cannot wait to catch you next week for another fabulous episode of Crappy to Happy