Lemonada.

Hello and welcome to Happier, a podcast where we talk about strategies and suggestions for making our lives happier.

This week we'll talk about why it's helpful to do a no spend February,

and listeners share a nicer term to replace the word squats. I'm Gretchen Brubin, a writer who studies

happiness, good habits, secrets of adulthood, human nature. I'm in my little home office in

New York City, and joining me today from Los Angeles is my sister

Elizabeth Kraft. And Elizabeth, we are gearing up to not spend in the next month. That's me,

Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer living in L.A. And yes, Gretch, if you want anything,

you have to buy it now. Yeah, go on a spree. Not in the spirit of no spend February, certainly. But before we

jump in, we got a few updates. In a previous episode, we talked about noticing when we have the thought,

I can do this task better myself, and using that realization as a prompt to take action. And we got

some interesting examples from listeners of

when they had that thought and what they did. Yeah, Jenny said, I loved your segment on I could do

this task better myself and wanted to comment on it. That is the exact thought I had when I decided

to change careers. I had been working as a customer support manager at a tech company, which meant I

had to put out fires whenever there was a bug in the software that would cause user issues.

I looked at what our software engineers were doing and thought, I really think I could do this

better. So I went back to school, got a master's degree in computer science, and I have been

working as a software

engineer ever since. It turned out to be a great fit. What a great example. I love that. Yes.

And Debbie said, more than a year ago, I participated in a historical walking tour of the main

historical area in my hometown. While the tour guide was pleasant and seemed to

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