Welcome to UnFuck Your Brain. The only podcast that teaches you how to use psychology, feminism, and coaching to rewire your brain

and get what you want in life.

And now here's your host, Harvard Law School grad, Feminist Rockstar, and Master Coach,

Kara Loyenthyle.

Hello, my chickens.

So I am recording this podcast the day before my 41st birthday and my birthday also comes

exactly a month after my anniversary and my relationship.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about how to use thought work to kind of commemorate

anniversaries or how to use it to mark the passage of time.

I think that one of the reasons that religion provides such grounding and structure for people a part, like regardless of what you believe about God or deities or anything else, is that it provides ritual and structure.

I think that we have a pretty deep ritual and

structure I think that we have a pretty deep desire to kind of mark the passage of time

to create meaning and narrative out of our lives and ritual is one of the ways that we help do that, right?

We celebrate the same thing year after year and it gives us a touchpoint through our lives

and through the seasons. It gives us a way to measure time, to think

about our experience, to categorize it. And so I really like to use anniversaries or, well, they're always called an anniversary, I guess, but a birthday, an anniversary of a relationship or of the end of a relationship or of someone passing away or of starting your business or kind of whatever else right to use those

anniversaries as a way to create an opportunity for ritual and reflection.

And you can always use the preset opportunities.

I always think during the Jewish New Year holiday

is that, I think one of the reasons it feels a little less meaningful to me is that so much of the

liturgy is like setting aside this time for people to reflect on like what they did the year

before, what's coming in the next year, right?

...