Elizabeth Day: Your Twenties Shape the Best Years Of Your Life | GREAT MOMENTS

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2:17Hello everyone, I'm Jamie Lang and this is Great Moments. Hey guys, how you doing? Welcome back to another Great Moments. I hope you're having a great day, whatever you're doing. Now, today we're sharing a little slice of my conversation with my very good friend and friend within the industry, Elizabeth Day. Now, Elizabeth Day, she's an author. She's a podcaster. She has a podcast called How to Fail. And actually, I don't think she knows this, but she was the first person to sort of champion me. Coming from Made in Chelsea, kind of a little bit like Marmite and definitely Marmite within the industry.

2:54But she was the one who asked me onto her podcast to talk about my three failures. And still to this day, I get comments about it. So I got to thank Elizabeth Day a lot for that. Now, I think many of us in our 20s feel like we're kind of failing. I definitely did. I know that a lot of us feel like we're comparing ourselves to everyone else. And I did that as well, especially with social media that happens a lot. Elizabeth knows that feeling too. So in this great moment, she talks about the pressure to keep up in the rat race that can define your 20s. But actually, she believes power comes with age.

3:27So if you're feeling behind or you're feeling like you're not quite where you should be, this great moment is for you. And don't forget, okay, if you like this, check out our other amazing guests on Great Company. Just search Great Company wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like this little snippet, go and click on the show notes and listen to the full episode. Okay, here it is. Enjoy this. It's Elizabeth Day on Great Moments. Walk me through the decades. So why were your teen years tricky? Why is that a tricky just in general for people? In general, because speaking from my own experience and from the experience of some other people that I've spoken to, you don't know who you are and then some in your teenage years.

4:10So you are trying to forge your own identity at the same time as you are still part of your family unit. And your family unit will still encourage you to see yourself in that way. So I'm the youngest child of two. That will forever be my role in my family. I'm going to be the youngest. I'm going to be the baby. I'm going to be the one who in her own head doesn't have enough agency to be herself almost. And I think your teen years are the first time that you start experimenting with those boundaries. And actually, how much do I think I'm part of this family unit? And how much is it important for me to forge friendships outside of that?

4:51And who am I within that soup? And at the same time as that's happening, you're going through school, which by the way, is so tough. I still wake up today and think I'm so grateful I'm not at school. and I was of a generation honestly yes what school is hell you have to it's like prison it is so regimented you have to get up earlier than anyone ever wants like it's often dark you have to like either at boarding school where you're questioning everything like does my family love me and then doing a cross country run at 6am in the freezing cold I'm told you can't wear trousers. Your knees are freezing.

5:37It's minus five. You're like, what? You had a night listening to other people shuffle, cough and masturbate, like in beds next door to you. And Theo Bossom sits next to you and shouts, Mommy! And you go, what the hell is this? Theo Bossom? Oh my gosh, isn't that an actual person? Yeah. Shout out to Theo Bossom. Theo Bossom, you love him. Oh. Yeah. Shuffle and masturbate. So you're either that or you're at a day school and you have to schlep out. Often like getting buses before dawn to get this lesson. And then you're forced for years to study subjects you're not good at. Until you can finally give one or two of them up.

6:23And then it's just so weird. And I understand it's the best system we have. But I hated it. I should say, I hated school as a concept. The second secondary school I went to was actually a really good school and I met some lovely people and it was really good for me, but I just didn't like school. But they had a course that was lessons called Life Skills. Now, the only thing I remember being taught in that lesson was how to put a condom on a piece of plastic. I don't remember being taught about taxes. It was such a shock to me when I was like, I have to pay taxes. I'd love to have been taught key accountancy skills or the importance of collaboration, or dare I say it, like the limits of fertility.

7:09Whereas it felt like all of my education was about double maths and don't get pregnant as a teenage girl. So much of it was that. And obviously, that's important, but I think that there needs to be a little more balance. So I think that's why teenagedom is quite tough. And then you enter your 20s and you're out of school and either you're in the world of work or you're at university and that kind of forging and discovery of identity continues. And then it's your first experience of adult life. And adult life is bafflingly free of signposts and exams. So there's no exam that you can take that will tell you that you're doing a good job at adulting.

7:55So in your twenties, all you have to compare yourself to is the example of your parents, if you're lucky enough to have parents, or it's cultural signals. So rom-coms, like the stuff that you watch on television, what that's telling you, or it's your peer group. And in the age of social media, that's so much more pressured than ever before. So you all, my experience, and it was a world before Instagram, was very much like, I'm not doing as well as X. I'm not as far along in my career as I should be because of Y. I am not having a footloose, fancy, free life of the sort embodied in Sex and the City or Friends.

8:39And should I also be having a long-term relationship or should I be having one night stands? I just don't know where I sit in this. And so that's why your 20s, I think, are tough. So you constantly think you're failing all the time because you don't know what's right. Yes. And interestingly, when I started How to Fail, my podcast, the first few seasons, so many people came and chose their 20s as one of their failures. And it became something that I'm really passionate talking about because I think so many people in their 20s feel that they're the only ones feeling that they're failing. And I promise you that you're not.

9:13And also, I think that we've been sold a myth that life is a race, that we need to be achieving greater things younger than ever before. and I think that comes from the wrong-headed idea that as we age our power somehow diminishes and that has been the opposite of my experience. I feel that I have got more powerful, I know myself so much better the more that I age and my success, conventional success, like conventional CV on paper success has only really come from my late 30s onwards. That's amazing, you're so right. I love that that power is with age and it's not the other way around. The power isn't with you when you're young and you are with fed lies.

9:59If you're not Mark Zuckerberg and you're not a billionaire by the time you're two, you know, you haven't been a success. And so that's driven into us. But that's one person out of seven and a half billion. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter. And actually, I completely agree with you. In my 20s, I was doing lots of different things. And there were things that I was doing that I was like, well, I'm successful now because I have an office. I'm successful. But actually, I just wasn't. And now that I'm 35, I realized before everything was just nonsense. And actually, what is success? It's a lot of things, but knowledge is knowledge is everything.

10:36A hundred percent. That is such a good way of putting it. Because obviously, I spend a lot of time thinking about failure. And that means that I've spent a lot of time thinking about its shadow twin success. And how I think of success has radically changed. I saw something on Instagram yesterday saying that the true mark of success is a calm nervous system. And I thought that was so good because that comes from knowledge. The ability to retain your inner calm, even when there is outer noise, the understanding that you don't have to take on everyone else's opinions, that everyone else isn't right and you're somehow wrong, that is success.

11:16That is a measure of authenticity that only age and doing a podcast about failure really has brought me. Because now, to go back right to what we were talking about at the beginning, I feel so accepted by a community of people where I am able to show up as myself, as my deeply flawed self. And that's been a revelation to me and something I'm forever grateful for. 30 is a weird age when you hit it and you're not in a relationship and you're not married or whatever it's not married but not in a relationship it feels a bit weird when I turned 30 and I had just broken up with my ex-girlfriend I remember lying in bed and my dreams would be that I was just going to be alone forever Jamie you know that was one of your failures when you came on Time to Fail I looked them up recently your third failure was I'm 30 and I've still not had a successful long term romantic relationship was that it?

12:12yeah Yeah. And I felt really moved and proud of you that now here we are five years later. That is so interesting because I remember for me, it was something like, again, we go back to this being drilled into you. Okay, you go to school, you then go to university, you come out of university, you have a degree, you get what they call a normal job. You get the normal job, you have the normal friends, you suddenly get a mortgage with a flat or whatever you can afford. And then you get married. And by the time you're 32, you have a kid. That's what I thought life was And so when I had hit 30 and I didn't have a normal job And I wasn't in a relationship I started to thought, well, this is scary And actually, I am so happy that actually I found love a little bit later So I found, you know, I fell deeply in love and married So for the age of 34, 35 But obviously I was in love before that But married at 34, 35 And actually, as we talked about, I understand myself a lot more Yeah.

13:10And I think for people listening who are single, perhaps in their 30s and worried about it, actually, I think it's a good thing. I totally agree. I really think it's a good thing. And I think as well, as I've mentioned, I'm 45. So when I was in my 30s, it was a different economic climate. And I do actually think that that has an impact. So it was easier for my generation to get our first step on the property ladder. And it is so fucking difficult for people now. And I think, therefore, one of the knock-on effects of that, of not being able to own your own home until you're 85, is that your sense of life stages has probably shifted a bit.

13:50So maybe that's why there are more single people in their 30s now. And I salute and applaud you. I completely agree with you that it took me, I think, it definitely took me until 39 to have a relationship that is fully functional, healthy, loving, accepting. And that's partly because I don't think I knew myself until then. And I had to be knocked around a bit by life. And I had to be humbled by some of the things I went through and I had to think, oh, I failed here. Why is that? And be really honest with myself. Not pretend to be honest, which I was doing for a long time, but be really stripped back and honest.

14:32And thank goodness I went through that. And thank goodness I went on a hinge date, age 39, and met my husband. And why do you guys work? When I first met Justin, and we laugh about it now, but he is a big believer in pacing and appropriate pacing. And I'd been very used to thinking romance was love bombing and narcissism. Yeah, chaos. Let's fly to Rio tomorrow and go and live there. And I'd be like, oh my God, he loves me so much. And then with Justin, again, because he was a grown up and had been through lots of life, he was just very considered with the pacing and so we took it for me really slowly and to begin with I couldn't understand that and I didn't know if he was into me for months.

15:22That's great. You build that slow. It relates to everything. People want a viral hit on TikTok. It's a bad thing you people want to have a hit now in music and number one hits a bad you want to have that slow growth and in a relationship you that's why when you meet a friend and then you suddenly fall in love with a friend it actually turns out that it probably works better is you've had that slow growth you know each other yeah much better than that instant flash in the pan and that flash in the pan romance isn't healthy totally i mean exactly that and that's another thing that i think our popular culture has done us a disservice because it's made us think of what romance is in a certain way it's made us think that it's fireworks and actually with Justin I think I have a slow burning steady bonfire and I love that no I love a bonfire yeah it's not boring at all and it is so much more exciting because we feel safe enough to experiment now I'm sounding really kinky.

16:23But I just feel like experimentation and communication. I know that I can talk to him about anything and that's amazing. And I also know quite early on in our relationship, he said a couple of things to me that have stayed with me ever since. One time I was feeling really overwhelmed with work and demands and he said to me, you'll get through it and just remember, I think you're amazing. Even if you never do anything ever again, I just think you're amazing because that's you. It's not about the things you do. That is such a meaningful thing. I'm speechless just saying it again. It gave me permission to just be myself.

17:02And then another thing he said to me, I've sometimes worried in the past, I'm very emotional, not in a kind of sexy Italian way, but in a like weepy, I'm going to cry now because I'm just feeling like everything's too much way okay and I I sometimes worried about that in the past I'm just like too much in that way like I will cry at anything and that's how I process stress anyway and I remember sort of saying that to Justin he was he would say I actually love the fact that you're so emotional because I think that that makes him feel safe that I'm not hiding anything that it's coming and that it's taught him a lot.

17:44It's amazing. I actually spoke to someone yesterday who said, we all react in different ways and I can get quite emotional. In a sexy Italian way. Yeah, not in a sexy Italian way. And, you know, maybe it's in a business setting or whatever, but they said, oh, I feel like that's a weakness. It's not a weakness. I totally agree. It's not a weakness. And people feel sometimes that vulnerability or emotion is a weakness. and it is totally the opposite. You have to be so strong to show up vulnerable in a business setting. And actually, that's one of the things that I talk a lot about when I talk about failure in companies.

18:24I say a lot, if you take the risk of being vulnerable with your team, I guarantee you that that will be paid back in spades, that they will then feel permission to be vulnerable with you and to admit when something goes wrong rather than trying to cover it up and making the problem worse. And actually, there's so much solidarity that comes from that and such a sense of community. And that in turn makes for a far more successful business.

19:31We'll be right back.

19:36Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

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