I'm Paul Muldoon, a poet who over the past several years has had the good fortune to record

hours of conversations with one of the world's greatest songwriters, Sir Paul McCartney.

The result is our new podcast, McCartney, A Life in lyrics.

Listen to McCartney, A Life in lyrics on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeart radio.

Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast Podcast.

Today's tip is to recognize that sometimes things are easier than you think.

Sometimes of course they are harder than you imagined.

But when we guess wrong, sometimes we guess in ways that make things seem more difficult

than they turn out to be.

And so we can maintain some optimism, because we won't know how hard they are until we try.

At some point this fall, I realized after some research that the chronic sore throats

and congestion I'd been experiencing might be a reaction to dairy products.

So I thought I would try cutting them out for a while.

And some parts of that seemed easy.

I like yogurt a lot, but there are other snacks.

I like cereal with milk, but there are other breakfasts.

My morning coffee ritual, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.

I have been putting milk in my coffee, since I began drinking coffee at age 15, which

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