How to Be Fine

Kristen and Jolenta tell you like it is. Guided by the recommendations of different self-help books these incredible ladies debunk silly advice, stand behind those that work but above all bring their authentic selves to how they live by these books. Highly recommended.

This is such a great idea for a podcast. Every other week Kristen and Jolenta select one self-help book that has been causing waves, distill it down into a number of concrete action steps and then follow them to the letter for two weeks straight in order to evaluate what it did for them. At least that’s the idea and what a brilliant one at that! In practice the execution can be a bit hit and miss. Some weeks the ladies absolutely astound me with their creative ideas on how to put abstract ideas from a book into practice. Other weeks I get a feeling that they are liberally skipping over anything they don’t like. That’s totally normal, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the podcast, so I find those episodes pretty frustrating to listen to. For this reason I was originally only going to give 3 stars, but there are two things here that have won me over: 1) They’re funny. And this is a comedy podcast after all, not a self-development podcast. Though I guess it’s kind of morphed into a cross between the two over time?? 2) The honesty and vulnerability they both display on this podcast is an inspiration. They’re not perfect, but they’re willing to own up to it. They do their best to see things from every angle imaginable and are the first to admit if there’s one they overlooked and I can’t help but hugely respect them both for that.

Love to listen to this podcast when I’m out walking! Kristen and Jolenta are a tonic! Looking forward to more episodes!

Kristen shouts PRIVILEGE every five minutes. FIVE…FOUR…THREE…TWO…here comes the PRIVILEGE TAKEDOWN. White people suck. White people who write self help books suck. I don’t care what difficulties or tragedies white people have overcome, or what their inspiring message might be, or what I might actually learn here, because the author is white and privileged and that’s why they suck. Does Kristen know any decent white people? Does she know that not all white people are privileged? Does she realise that painting a group of people with the same brush is a problem? Is it cute to hate white people now? Kristen, if you must bring up the subject of privilege, could you please take the time to talk about it in a more nuanced and helpful manner. Your current approach does not enrich the conversation.