Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From How To Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right.
Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she?
She is not with us anymore.
Okay, great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God.
All the time. That's so funny. I know.
So I try to butch it up for kids so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up. It's basically like Doris Day. Right? No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What if mind control is real?
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Chapter 2: Why do we resist change in our 20s?
Research has shown that in an experimental condition where people are given 50 tokens to begin and they either gain 10 additional tokens or have 10 tokens randomly taken away, Later on, when they're asked to estimate, you know, what proportion, what percentage do you think you lost or gained in this situation?
The people who had 10 tokens taken away suggested they had lost almost 15% more than they actually had. Whereas those who had gained extras usually estimated it more accurately. They usually were like, yeah, around 10%.
around around five percent around ten percent whatever it was these people weren't just bad at math right what it's really showing is that our brains focus expand skew our perception of what we have to lose this means that when we encounter situations of uncertainty and change even good change
Our anticipation for what may go wrong will often be so much greater than our excitement for the possibility of what will go right. This contributes to what we know as the status quo bias. Basically, we'd rather stick with how things are, even if they're not amazing, because change feels too risky and too much of a burden. There's actually quite a famous paper from the 80s that explores this.
It was published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty and essentially in a series of these decision-making experiments where participants were given a default option. They disproportionately stuck with that option, even when the alternatives were objectively better. They could win $20. They could win prizes. They could also lose $10, but they actually went for neither of those things.
They didn't want to win $20. They didn't want to lose $10. They just did nothing. They stuck with what they had. Now, if we apply this pattern of behavior to our actual lives, Think about it. You might be in a job that's all right. It's okay. You know, it pays the rent. It pays for your car payment. You know, you sort of know what you're doing. You have colleagues you chat to.
But deep down, you know you're not growing. You know a part of you feels stuck. And then another opportunity appears. It's a different role. Maybe it's in a different city, maybe a different field. On paper, it's better. But your brain doesn't see stable job versus better job. Instead, it interprets this as loss of security, loss of familiarity, loss of routine, loss of competence.
and interesting job. It doesn't assess those two, what there is to lose and what there is to gain accurately. You know, those potential gains, more fulfillment, more alignment, more money. a more aligned path to our brain, to our present day brain, they're kind of abstract. They're in the future.
They're difficult to imagine because they're not in front of you the way that the potential losses are. The way that they're very vivid because the thing you have to lose is right there. That again is also why change feels so unstable because the losses are always going to be more visual and apparent versus the gains that haven't happened yet.
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Chapter 3: What psychological factors contribute to our fear of change?
Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh, my God.
All the time. That's so funny. I love it.
So I'm always like, hi. I try to butch it up for kids, you know, so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Dora's Day.
Right?
No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here's a pattern that I've noticed recently. I often think the decisions that are the most life-altering are the ones that actually you don't feel calm at the time about making. I think they're the ones that challenge you the most.
In my own life, that was like leaving my first long-term relationship, this person I thought I was going to be with forever, or quitting my job, leaving the comfort of a paycheck to work for myself, moving cities to a place I didn't know anybody. None of those decisions were easy. I actually put them all off much longer than I needed to.
I was in that relationship like for six months longer than I should have been. Same with the job. It took two years for me to move to London. I still don't feel 100% certain about that decision sometimes. This is because a lot of big decisions have what we call approach avoidance conflicts. We've talked a lot about losses and gains as if a decision is either going to create all loss or all gain.
The theory, this theory though, says it's probably going to be a mix. Undesirable and desirable things. Hopefully the desirable things win out. We don't always know. But what this means is that the closer we get to making a decision or a goal, the greater our anxiety, but also the greater our excitement.
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Chapter 4: How does loss aversion affect our decision-making?
essentially an increasing reality that things are going to change and that you're going to have to adapt not a possibility anymore a reality i often think you know the more fear the more pros and cons lists that you make the more you probably should go through with it the more you probably should do it scared because when you're scared it points to the fact that this
possibility and what is being offered to you or what you think could come from this strikes a real nerve. It strikes a nerve deeply with what you value. If you didn't care, if you didn't fear this as much, if you weren't as overwhelmed by the choice, I feel like you wouldn't secretly kind of know that this is what you need to do.
I don't think you'd be having such a profound emotional reaction if this thing wasn't right for you because you wouldn't be meaningfully invested enough to feel this way. What you're experiencing as anxiety and fear about change is your nervous system reacting to the magnitude of possibility and the unknowing, how unknown it is. And often we think that's just anxiety.
A large part of it is anticipation, knowing that this has to be our reality, knowing it's only a matter of time until we take the plunge, knowing that that things are going to be incredible. Don't let, you know, fear convince you that anticipation and excitement are the same as anxiety and that they're a bad thing and that they alone indicate that something is a bad decision.
Your emotions don't know anything more than you do. They don't know. They come from you. They originate from you. How do they know? I think the decisions you feel most intensely about just to nail this home, those are the ones, your soul, your heart, whatever it is you think it is, whatever label you give it, there is some deep part of you that is most drawn to them for a reason.
With that being said how do we take the leap? When do we know that we're ready? When do we know it's time to jump? If you've spent most of your life treating change as this big scary dramatic threat you're probably not going to wake up one day and be like cool I suddenly love this I'm ready to go.
A more realistic goal is just to change the story you tell yourself about what change means or about how emotionally ready you are for it. One theory that can help here that I found is the early 2000s broaden and build theory from somebody called Barbara Fredrickson. Broaden build is fantastic and it essentially suggests that
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Chapter 5: What is the paradox of wanting to grow but fearing change?
counteracting limiting emotions like fear, pessimism, hopelessness with More positive emotions like curiosity, interest and hope widens our attentional focus and lets us see more possibilities.
When fear and anxiety narrow our focus to the threat or what we have to lose because that is what they're meant to do, curiosity and hope gently just let you see beyond that pinpoint or see beyond the worst case scenario. Let yourself feel that first wave of like, this is going to go terrible, what am I doing?
And then send in the second wave, send in the deliberate judgment, one of curiosity and excitement. For example, you might think I'm terrified to move, I'm terrified to start over, but also I'm slightly curious. I'm really excited for who I might become. You might think leaving this relationship is going to absolutely destroy me. My life is going to be over.
But also, I'm a tiny bit hopeful about the opportunities I'm going to have to meet new people on the other side. Even better, if you want something super practical, you could do this literally right now, super practical.
For every way you think that change, for every way you think this is going to go wrong, for every bad thing you think change is going to bring into your life, write a list of the five ways it could go right or the five reasons that you'll be okay even if it doesn't.
literally counteract it as much as you physically can with an overwhelming kind of wall of optimism and positivity and just possibility as well you know why i love this tip i love this tip because it proves that you can overthink the good stuff as well you can overthink the positives as much as you can overthink the negatives
Another tip on top of this that I also swear by is when I am at like the precipice of a change and I'm like, oh my God, should I do this? Should I not do this? I just imagine telling the story of this very moment where I make the decision in five or 10 years time. And I imagine telling it as a success story. I imagine it.
as me sitting around a dinner table being like this was the beginning this is where i this was my origin story this was the rise this moment right here the one i'm most afraid in is the one i'm going to come back to time and time again there's a lot of research on post-traumatic growth and also on major life transitions that suggest that we cope better with upheaval we cope better with
things going wrong or with change, when we can place it into a story about what our lives are for and the purpose we are living and the journey we are taking.
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Chapter 6: How can we build a positive mindset around change?
Somebody had told me all the steps were going to be complete. Nothing was going to go wrong. I could swear up and down that that was the case. All I needed from you was commitment. Commitment to the time it would take. If that was the situation, what outcome in those circumstances would you desire the most? What is the path you're going to pick if I said it was all going to work out?
That's what you want. It's as clear as day. Now, tell me why all the steps won't work out. Tell me why that's going to happen. Tell me why exactly you believe it's not going to go your way. You don't have any proof. You have no proof. You have emotional reactions to what you think is going to happen. You have fear. But you can't give me any concrete evidence that if you tried...
that it would go terribly. You literally couldn't tell me a single thing. Maybe past experience still doesn't count for anything. It's all just fear. And again, your fear doesn't know anything more than you do because it comes from you. And you don't know anything right now. You don't know what's going to happen. That's why you're here in the first place. That's why you're so afraid.
You have to approach it as if it's all going to work out. And under these conditions, if that was the case, what's the first thing you do? What's the first step you'd have to take? What is baby step number one that you would have to do? Just focus on completing that. Baby steps literally can't hurt. That's why babies do them. That's literally in the name. They are there to feel.
They are there to trust. They are there just to progress slowly. If you want to start a business, registering a business name can't hurt you. Baby step. Start the Instagram page. That's not going to hurt you. It's a baby step. Researching the opportunity, even if you're not acting on it, is a baby step. It's not going to hurt you.
If you want to move to a new city, looking at visas, you don't have to pay for them. Like just starting to save for them. Baby step is not going to hurt you. These are all steps, all things you gain from. You will continuously gain from regardless of if you go all the way through with it. You introduce change and you introduce the steps towards change on your terms this way.
You microdose change. I think also our intolerance for uncertainty also becomes more manageable when it's named, when we're planning for it. This is something I always say when I'm overwhelmed by things shifting in my life. I'm stressed by the process. I'm excited by the outcome. I'm scared by the process. I'm excited by the outcome. Two things can be true. Then you can go that final step deeper.
I'm scared. I'm scared. Why? I'm scared of the process. I'm excited by the outcome. Why am I scared? What is the human insecurity this is secretly, unconsciously manipulating in me to make me feel like it's all going to go wrong? I'm scared if I move, I'm going to hate it. I'm going to feel trapped in What you're really scared of is losing control, not actually of moving.
I'm scared I'll leave this relationship. I'll never meet anybody else. You're not scared of leaving the relationship. You're scared of being lonely. But there's no, you don't have any proof that that's actually what it's going to be like. That is just your deep human personal fear. Then you can reinforce again that maybe this isn't the case. Again, use that five by five method I mentioned before.
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