How to Be an Adult

In this conversational episode, Kate and Luke discuss how to overcome procrastination, based on their personal experience, as well as professional work with hypnotherapy clients.

• Procrastination originates from the Latin word procrastinus, meaning ‘of tomorrow,’ highlighting the tendency to defer actions to a future time.
• Living with the knowledge of future consequences (e.g., dirty dishes, laundry) can motivate ...

If you’ve accomplished enough with your life, and you’re very self-critical at the same time, you will probably feel at some point that you’re an impostor or a fraud. This is a pretty good sign that you aren’t. In today’s episode, we’ll explore why, and what to do about that awful feeling:

• Imposter syndrome is common among intelligent, high-achieving individuals who feel like frauds despite...

On November 5, 2025, the tranquility of our hypnosis office was broken by a clash between two student groups, Students Supporting Israel and Students for Justice in Palestine, from Toronto Metropolitan University. After a window was broken and the protesters were forced out, five arrests were made, and the police chief says that more charges are coming.

If you’ve seen the videos posted on social media, you might have seen ou...

Chances are, there isn’t a revolution coming, and you’re going to be living in a capitalist society for the rest of your life. Now what? In this solo episode, Luke shares eight principles for adapting to (indeed, thriving in) the economic system that our listeners live in:

• Capitalism is a system where private property and corporations own the means of production, and winning at it means accumulating enough capital...

In this episode co-hosted by Luke Chao and Kate Voss, we discuss how we might maturely relate to time. It’s less about time management, and more a philosophy of how one might make the most out of your 16 waking hours in a day:

• Time management is crucial for adults to balance work, leisure, and personal growth, with each person having about 16 waking hours a day to allocate.
• Elon Musk’s time management strategies, ...

Most of our anxiety comes not from what actually happens, but from what we imagine might happen in an uncertain future. In this solo episode with Luke Chao, he speaks about how to face the future with clarity:

• The things you’re stressed about today will likely be handled by your future self with the maturity and experience of that age.
• Life’s uncertainties are like driving on a winding road; you don’t need t...

Kate is the newest member of our team at The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis, and in this episode, she and Luke discuss some of the hallmarks of a successful relationship. We offer suggestions for listeners at every stage in their relationship journey:

• Successful relationships begin with a positive relationship with oneself, characterized by self-love and self-respect.
• The “four C’s” of relationships—clarity, c...

The questions we ask ourselves determine which thoughts subsequently enter our minds. If we ask ourselves about counterfactual scenarios, our mind floods with counterfactual scenarios. If we ask ourselves about reassuring truths, we find reassuring truths, almost as though we were typing a query into a search engine. This episode is about how to ask yourself the second type of question.

• Good questions can lead to productive t...

This timely episode tackles an important topic that I’ve tried a few times to speak about. For the half of the population who are male, how are we supposed to “be a man”? In this episode 23, I make an attempt to answer this question using the same analytical lens through which I’ve dissected how we are all supposed to “be an adult.”

• The concept of masculinity is evolving, and traditional de...

We all know that we should forgive ourselves for our mistakes, but until somebody teaches you how, the path to redemption isn’t always obvious. In this episode, I’m going to break down what it means when you’re feeling guilty or ashamed, and what to do about it.:

• Remorse serves to reflect and improve oneself to avoid repeating past mistakes.
• Guilt arises from specific wrongful actions, while shame is a deepe...

This episode is for all the recovering people-pleasers out there. If you feel like it’s hard to say “no” in an unfair situation, I’m going to give you a moral framework that lets you to speak your mind and simultaneously feel like the hero in the story of your life… at the same time!

• We start by recognizing the false morality instilled during childhood that suggests being agreeable equates to bei...

We’ve recently heard of a trend of young people avoiding the news entirely to preserve their mental health. In our view, this is unnecessarily self-defeating, because it’s possible to be informed and happy at the same time. In this episode, we share how:

• It is possible to stay informed about world events while also prioritizing mental health, debunking the notion that one must choose between the two.
• Each person c...

In one of our most focused episodes to date, Luke deconstructs the notion of perfection and suggests achiveable standards, such as authentic self-expression, that are still worth striving toward:

• Perfection is an unrealistic and unattainable standard that no one can truly achieve, even in simple tasks like drawing a perfect circle.
• Holding yourself to a standard of perfection is unnecessarily cruel and prevents you from being...

In the eternal debate about whether the proverbial glass is half full or half empty, both arguments are often presented as equally valid. In this solo episode with Luke, he makes a case for why the glass being half full is the correct answer:

• A glass half full perspective encourages individuals to appreciate what they have rather than lamenting what they lack, fostering gratitude.
• Acknowledging and appreciating what one has c...

This episode of How to Be an Adult, the second of two parts, features a very special guest: Marc Lewis, Ph.D., psychologist, academic and bestselling author of Memoirs of an Addicted Brain and The Biology of Desire. Marc joins Luke in our studio to discuss how popular models of addiction are flawed, and how we can better serve those who are suffering:

• Shame is a major obstacle in addiction recovery, as it can exacerbate the p...

This episode of How to Be an Adult, the first of two parts, features a very special guest: Marc Lewis, Ph.D., psychologist, academic and bestselling author of Memoirs of an Addicted Brain and The Biology of Desire. Marc joins Luke in our studio to discuss how popular models of addiction are flawed, and how we can better serve those who are suffering:

• The medical model of addiction as a disease disempowers those it’s sup...

Not every relationship lasts forever, and it’s when a relationship ends that all your self-loving and self-caring will really matter. In this episode, Luke and Pascal draw from their own personal heartbreaks to discuss some ways to cope with a breakup:

• Experiencing a breakup is a normal grieving process, not a sign of being “broken.”
• Acceptance is the inevitable end point.
• Both parties can walk away from a b...

When you keep hearing that you need to love yourself, and nobody gives you instructions in how, it’s easy to feel stuck (and not any more loved). But self-loving people are not a different breed of human being: they’ve just internalized certain lessons earlier in life. In this episode, we’ll do our best to articulate what these lessons might be, so that you can adopt them in adulthood for the decades-long timelin...

If you’ve had an experience that overwhelmed your ability to cope, or when you’ve been in an environment where you were regularly unable to cope, you’ve experienced psychological trauma. In this episode, we share seven principles for living well with our wounds and speeding our journeys toward healing and recovery.

• Trauma is common. Depending on how you define it, around 75% of people experience some form of...