Chapter 1: What are the joyful moments helping Fearne through winter?
The disclaimer is, I love men. He said he doesn't have Instagram because he's got a garden to tend to, front and back. Let's face it, for a lot of us, January is shit. So what we're wanting to do is shed everything with a snake and get a fucking move on with this horse. Because I was a kids' TV presenter, I was infantilized for a very long time. Do people eat cress in a sandwich? I don't know.
I'm not massively on board with this one, but apparently it's meant to make us take ourselves a bit less seriously. Enough is enough.
Chapter 2: How can skipping help us reconnect with our inner child?
Don't sit there placating this person. Heated blankets are in and mansplaining is in the bin. I'm not giving you advice like I'm some fucking guru. I'm saying this to myself. I need to hear this more than anyone. Hello, everyone. This is very exciting.
This is the first of a brand new kind of episode that's going to be dropping in your feed every week because there's too much emphasis on we must find our happy place. I think most of us are somewhere in the middle trying to figure it out. So this is a gorgeous little safe space where we can get curious about whether we feel happy or not. Anything goes.
And today I'm going to be chatting about what is making me and Team Happy Place feel happy and what is not during this quite miserable grey month. One of them, you might not be expecting this, is skipping. Okay, so Basil, who works on Team Happy Place, is smirking in the corner. Not into skipping? I'm not even talking about skipping with a rope. I'm talking about like how kids skip.
So skipping instead of walking. I'm not massively on board with this one, but apparently it's meant to make us feel childlike, joyful. make us take ourselves a bit less seriously.
Chapter 3: What does transitioning to intuitive exercise look like?
I think I've got a bit of a hang up with this one because for years, because I was a kids TV presenter, I was infantilized for a very long time. So even when I was sort of like a home owning adult who had a mortgage and cats, people would still send me like stickers and like Hello Kitty t-shirts. I'm like, I'm a woman.
So I don't know if I'm on board with the skipping thing, but Amelia, who works on Team Happy Place, that's making her feel happy. The one thing I'll say... when we're talking about moving our bodies is what I am on board with is moving in a way that feels right to you. Because I used to be, back in the day, a real gym bunny.
I'd get in the gym, sprint on the running machine, do this cross training. Is it a cross training, that thing when you do that with your arms? Pointless, does nothing. And kill myself in there. And also with running, and I've got a dodgy knee at the moment, so I'm not running anywhere. I can barely walk up a hill. So what I'm doing is movement that feels more intuitive, a bit calmer.
Also, because I'm a lunatic, I am often like bashing my nervous system to the point of where like I feel fraught. So I know that at this point in age in my life, I need to do exercise that makes me feel calm and grounded and and just not like I'm jumping out of my own skin.
So on the skipping note, what I would say, if you're starting a fitness thing this year, do a fitness thing that feels right to you rather than just like, oh, I've got to go running because everyone else is running. Do a thing that's enjoyable. Life's too short.
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Chapter 4: How can gardening contribute to our well-being?
Life's too short. The other thing we're going to be chatting about, which you might not be expecting, is gardening. OK, now I've not reached the gardening era yet. Maybe I should have. I'm 44. Maybe I should have started like buying seeds or something. I'm not there yet. But Jack O'Connell, again, Amelia from Team Happy Place is in love with Jack. I think that's why he's getting a mention.
He said recently he said he doesn't have Instagram because he's got a garden to tend to front and back. I don't know. Is he talking about his actual garden? At this point, I don't know. But he apparently is big on gardening. I feel ashamed to say this, but I've got fake grass, which is not a great start, and very thin flower beds with not much in them.
When am I going to get into my gardening era? I understand the benefits. I know that I would probably wildly reap from the benefits of just being outside, getting my hands dirty. I'm not there yet. Maybe I'll start with, I don't know, like a tomato plant or cress, like I'm back at school.
Chapter 5: What strategies can we use to deal with mansplaining?
I'm going to go with cress. Is cress still a thing? Do people eat cress in a sandwich? I don't know. The thing that's making me feel happy at the moment, that's really getting me in my happy place, because let's face it, for a lot of us, January is shit. I know that is a cliche, but I am struggling. I am pulling myself through January.
The one thing that is guaranteed to put a smile on my face at the moment is a gift that I got for Christmas. And this gift... is an electric blanket. Okay, so maybe I bypassed the gardening era and went straight to octogenarian. That's where I'm at. I am, and also I'm not dissing people in their 80s because there are cool people in their 80s who are yet to get an electric blanket.
I am there prematurely and it, the feeling of, if you've got one, I don't need to sell this to you. But the feeling of getting under that electric blanket. The other day I was reading Hamnet because that was our book club pick for this month. And I had this blanket on so toasty and about 3 p.m. I blacked out. I was like fully in a deep REM sleep.
These things are the best, best thing I've been given ever, actually, not just last year, ever.
Chapter 6: Why is it important to stop people pleasing?
It's amazing. So Team Happy Place are really keen to chat about the whole year of the horse, year of the snake thing, because that's not happening until Feb, by the way, because obviously I'm a Chinese calendar expert, but we've just done year of the snake. which was all slithery and dreadful. I'm making this shit up.
And February onwards, year of the horse, which is like charging forwards, a galloping handsome steed. Again, I'm making this up, but not the horse snake thing. So what we're wanting to do is shed everything with the snake and get a fucking move on with this horse. And I am, I massively subscribe to that. There's loads of stuff that I want to leave in 2025. A big one for me is people pleasing.
And it's definitely on my mind at the moment because I've got a new book coming out in March called A Likeable. And it's all about how so much of my life has been completely centered around and informed by people pleasing. And some of it, you know, is whatever. It's everyday stuff that we all do. We say yes to parties we don't want to go to.
We say yes to doing a job for someone we don't want to do. But actually, the extremes, I think, are quite severe for many of us and we don't take it seriously enough. And the extremes for me have led me into some real like dark patches of having extreme anxiety because I'm frazzled and overwhelmed and dipping into self-loathing because I'm sort of resenting the people around me.
It's some serious shit in there that I want to really, really get rid of. So that means that for the year of the horse and for 2026 in general, I need to be more assertive and I need to say no more
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Chapter 7: How can treating yourself to a gift improve your happiness?
And I find saying no so hard still, even though I know the implications, even though I know that saying yes a lot is going to lead me down a really tricky road. So I'm practicing it at the moment and it's uncomfortable. And I think that's the thing I need to talk about is the discomfort we feel is fine.
We're allowed to feel uncomfortable and recognise it, but we shouldn't then go back on the no that we've just said. And that is the big test for me. And it might be for you too. For example, I'm going to do a disclaimer before I say what I'm about to say, because I feel a bit nervous saying it. The disclaimer is I love men. I've got loads of great men in my life. Basil's here.
Basil's great, by the way. He's wearing a green hat. He's got long ginger hair. Absolute legend. I've got loads of great men in my life. Friends, my brother, my dad. But this week, on two occasions, I had something mansplained to me.
And it fucked me off so badly.
And I think the old me in 2025, a couple of weeks ago, would have gone, okay, thank you, great, and played along with it.
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Chapter 8: What are Fearne's thoughts on the significance of January?
And I just thought, I've not got time for this. And I went, no, I know, I get it, I know. I know what you're talking about. I know what you're trying to tell me. And I think the feeling I had was not just my own irritation that I was being slightly patronized, but it was also perhaps the voice of many generations of women before me that are like, enough is enough. Enough is enough.
Don't sit there placating this person, going along with it for the sake of it because you don't want to rock the boat. Just say bluntly, you don't need to carry on. I know. Thank you. And stop it dead. You don't have to be rude. You don't have to be an arsehole. But you equally don't have to waste time. Because I think what I would have done before...
is sat there listening to the sort of patronising, almost like someone, like they were talking to a child, basically. And then later on, I would have felt a deep rage burning within me and felt really pissed off that I'd allowed that to happen. So that one for me is out. And it's not just mansplaining. As I said, love men. This is not a rant about men. It's just two men last week. This is
generally about people either talking to you in a way that doesn't feel right to you, asking too much of you, telling you something about yourself that you don't want to hear. My God, I have had that so many times. And again, before I would have just sat there and taken it and then felt wretched later.
I think many of us now feel like we don't want to do that anymore. And we want to bin it. So should we bin that one together? Should we jump on our trusty steeds and ride into the sunset with no more people pleasing? That is the big aim for me. Also, can we put in the bin just January? Can it go in the bin? Just really over January now.
And I think January feels particularly hard for many of us in a cliche way because Christmas, although Christmas isn't all, you know, amazing fairy lights and joy. I had a kind of good one with bumps in the road, but I do love Christmas. Just the smells and the sounds and the fact that I was very lucky. I got a couple of weeks off work. So I really became quite sloth like actually.
And it was heaven. So that's behind us. And then summer is summer might as well be 50 years away. It's so far out of reach, especially if you're listening to this in the UK. We might have shit weather until June. like July. That is too bleak. It is too bleak. And I saw Rob Beckett talking about this on Instagram this week, and he had a great idea.
Can we do September, October, November, December, March? It's a fucking great idea. Shall we just do that? I don't know how we do that, like what the inner workings of that are, but I'm very on board with that idea.
So what I really want for these happy place pending episodes is for us to have a bit of a two-way conversation because otherwise this is just me sat in this really nice fluffy chair talking at you, which might be fine, but I would love this to also include you. So if you've got...
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