A Day Well Spent with Leyla Kazim

About A Day Well Spent with Leyla Kazim

Conversations about self-empowerment, slow and sustainable living and personal fulfilment and growth. For people seeking pathways to purposeful living. By BBC presenter Leyla Kazim. Subscribe to my Substack here: https://leylakazim.substack.com/ leylakazim.substack.com (https://leylakazim.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Leyla Kazim

Category

education · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

21 Sept 2023

Latest episode

25 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

7 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   25 Oct 2026

   The Death of Patience: Why you suddenly can’t wait for anything anymore

   Every time you can’t wait, a billionaire gets richer. You make a Thursday 9pm impulse buy. Why not, it’s basically the weekend. It’s been a tough week. You deserve it. Five minutes pass and you’ve refreshed the tracker twice. It tells you it’s arriving in two days. You could put the phone down and get on with your evening. Instead, it slips out. ‘Two days..? For f***s sake.’ You catch yourself and wonder, what you have become. Welcome to what I call the Death of Patience i.e. the point in your life where you realise you need everything now, from deliveries to results. Not in two days. In an hour, max. You might think you’re just an impatient person. Or spoilt. Or one of those people who just can’t sit still. This is all false. What has in fact happened is your brain has been conditioned. And thank god for that, because conditioning can be reversed. The bizarre brain science of why 2 days feels like forever Let’s start with the science because none of this is about your character. Any brain will do this when you feed it speed all day. Your brain’s reward system has been working overtime. It runs on dopamine and the neuroscientist Kent Berridge says it’s about wanting the thing more than it is about enjoying the thing. All waiting is the gap between desire and getting. And in today’s world, this gap has shrunk to near non-existence. The psychiatrist Anna Lembke wrote Dopamine Nation and she says pleasure and pain work like a seesaw. When you get something you enjoy, like a mini Mars from a Celebrations tin, the seesaw tips towards pleasure. Then your brain pushes it back down the other side to level things out. It’s the push the other way that is the craving for another hit, when you say ‘oh, I want a second mini Mars — right now’. If you ignore the immediate craving, the seesaw will settle by itself. In Lembke’s words, ‘if I wait long enough, that feeling passes.’ But if you satisfy a desire the moment one arises, the seesaw never gets the chance to balance itself out. Lembke says that over time, it stays tipped towards the pain side. So you feel more irritable and anxious and you need more Celebrations just to feel normal. This is what never waiting does to us. It leaves us with a shorter fuse. Why most of us lose our patience in 25 seconds Think about how many gaps between wanting and getting you unconsciously minimise in a standard day. Stopping the microwave with three seconds to go. Jabbing ‘close doors’ in the lift. Switching queues. Skipping the intro. Paying extra for next-day delivery. Buying the plant already in flower. I’ve done, and still do, many of these things. In a survey of 2,000 British people, a red traffic light started to agitate after just 25 seconds. There’s a concept in behavioural economics called hyperbolic discounting, where you choose the smaller reward now over a bigger win later. It’s fine to sometimes do this. But what we don’t talk about enough is a world where every reward is now. After a million moments where our modern world has made it easier than ever to close the gap between desire and obtaining, something in your reward system gives. Your tolerance for any wait starts to collapse, because your brain was never built to have every want and whim met immediately, often with with zero effort. Don’t worry, your brain is fine. It has simply adapted to a world where there’s no waiting anymore. The forgotten joy of waiting a week for your holiday snaps Everyone’s capacity to wait is dissolving. But those of us who remember when all good things took time often feel the loss more acutely. And there’s a reason for this. I’m old enough to remember taking a film of holiday snaps to Boots and having to wait a week to pick them up. You had no idea what any of them looked like until you opened the envelope, usually on the pavement because you couldn’t wait another second, and at least 1 in 10 had your Dad’s thumb covering part of the lens. But it didn’t matter. Because opening that envelope was one of the best parts of the holiday. Waiting was built into normal life and the rewards were all the better for it. By the time you’re a fully fledged adult, you’ve had decades of this need-for-speed conditioning: * ‘Don’t miss out’ (translation: don’t take the time to decide) * ’Don’t cook tonight’ (translation: don’t spend an hour on a nourishing meal) * ‘Don’t put your plans on hold’ (translation: don’t wait until you can afford it) * ‘Don’t go anywhere’ (translation: don’t wait for the next one, it’s already starting) You’ve been living at the modern world’s breakneck speed for so long that it’s become the default. And you’re not even aware it’s happening. Until one day you wake up and suddenly realise, you’ve completely run out of patience. 4 sneaky ways modern life made waiting feel unbearable Several shifts in modern life have come together to make waiting for anything feel unbearable. Shortcuts everywhere. Everything now has a faster or easier version. My Gmail keeps trying to get AI to ‘correct’ my emails. Supermarkets sell pre-chopped onions. When there’s always a quicker option available, the slower one starts to feel like it’s broken. Even when it’s better. Results on demand. We expect to see results instantly. We work out twice then give up because the bingo wings are still there. I once tweeted about how cool I thought it was that I could have a fresh sourdough loaf within 48 hours of deciding to make it, and someone replied: ‘I could never wait that long for bread.’ I remember wondering if they were being serious or not. Two days was apparently too long for something slow-fermented, handmade and more delicious and nutritious because of it. Reward on tap. Likes, notifications, episode drops, express parcels on your doorstep. These arrive all day every day. So the slow rewards (fermenting bread, knitting a jumper, growing a fruit tree, reading the entire book) struggle to compete. Not exactly a fair fight. No more seasons. Who are these people buying strawberries in December? Asparagus is now available all year. We used to wait months for the first of anything in season and it tasted better for the wait. Now nothing feels like a treat because nothing ever runs out. Imagine knowing we would all live forever. Life would be dull as f**k. Why wanting to wait makes you seem strange (and who profits from this) The thing that makes clawing your patience back uncomfortable is that other people will find it weird. When you choose the slow, more effortful way, you’re stepping out of a system that profits from none of us waiting. And instead of asking why that system needs us all in such a hurry, it’s easier for people to instead question you. So you can be accused of: * ‘Living in the past’ * ‘Having too much time on your hands’ * ‘Having the wrong priorities’ If someone trains 18 months to run a marathon, they’re seen as dedicated. But spend a week waiting for a jar of pickles to perfectly sour, and you’re seen as a bit odd. People still ask me, ‘What’s the point in learning how to make sourdough that takes two days, when you can just buy sourdough?’ and ‘What’s the point in growing a tomato plant for six months, when you can just buy the tomatoes?’ These questions come straight out of the system, because why do anything for yourself when you can just pay to skip that part? It’s not your job to fix the discomfort of others. It simply illustrates how well the system works. Waiting has been made to feel so unbearable that most of us will happily pay to never have to do it again. And this is by design. The 4 fears that keep you paying for the quick fix But there is a complication. Which is that waiting feels risky. You’ve been sold the instant version of everything for much of your life. Same-day. Express. Ready in minutes. It creates a positive feedback loop. You want something, you get it immediately, you bask in the dopamine hit, and next time you want it even sooner. It’s a powerful loop and you’re about to break the f****r. So, you might be afraid that: * You’ll fall behind (e… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe (https://leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   15 Oct 2026

   I’m 41. If You’re Approaching Midlife, Read This.

   Aging causes problems. But one of the positive things about getting older is we also get wiser. This is the case for me. I even have a Staff of Wisdom stick I like to grasp during my moments of clarity. I’ve experienced my own fair share of bumps in the road – running away from home, failing my first year at uni, victim of fraud, a tragic family accident, rejected job applications, having my phone snatched (then chasing the guy through London’s Soho), existential crisis, rejected property bids, drops in income, quitting corporate with no plan, etc. I’m not special but these experiences have given me some important lessons to share with anyone approaching, or in, midlife (feel free to forward it to them as well). 1. When you turn 35 you’ll see the difference between those who did uncomfortable things and those who didn’t. How old you feel comes down to how much discomfort you seek out. Being comfortable means you don’t grow and this ages you faster. You live decade after decade exactly the same until you arrive at your later years and realise you never met yourself at your full potential. This is the ultimate modern day tragedy. If you’re reading this and not making yourself intentionally uncomfortable multiple times a day, wake up. Stay in the ice cold lake long enough to find out what’s on the other side of the shock. 2. Working for yourself isn’t the end of financial security, it’s the beginning. The freedom will fuel your future. People told me at 20 that working for yourself was a bad idea. ‘You will never be financially secure! You will stress about money all the time!’ B******t. Not having a boss and being responsible for your own income is hard. I spend most of my time working on my shop window so people can actually see what I do, often late into the evenings. But it’s also unbelievably liberating. I could never go back. I’m also never going to fire myself. Being responsible for my own income and funnelling my energy into my own growth makes me feel empowered and excited. Sure, I get stressed. But working harder and more hours on the thing I’m meant to be doing is far less exhausting than grinding the 9-5. Don’t rule out this option without thinking it through. Nothing worth doing was ever easy. Choose your hard. 3. Doing more for yourself is the fastest way to become fearless. I’ve felt a bit down recently. After interacting with hundreds of people online, I’m beginning to lose hope in society. It feels like everyone is drowning in fear. * They complain * Think narrowly * Don’t invest in their future * Stay stuck * Have a short-term outlook * Don’t learn new skills * Get sucked into a victim mindset * See effort as grind culture and convenience as their birth right * Chase a life with no friction But mostly I am noticing their mindset is just out of whack. It’s skewed to feeling powerless over many aspects of their life and future. I can make these honest observations because I’ve experienced each of them. The truth is, if you don’t figure this stuff out it will hold you back and keep you stuck. Which no one will care about. But it means you’ll feel like you never have enough time and have no say over your life. The only solution I’ve found is to go from being clueless about a lot of stuff to learning new skills at every opportunity. Which means doing as much as possible for myself. Worship the act of upskilling. It saved me and can save anyone. I believe that one of the main factors contributing to the sense of panic that often sets in... is the realisation that we no longer have many of the basic skills our grandparents took for granted... Very often in modern society people feel disempowered, such that even changing an incandescent light bulb for a low-energy one is too much effort. Your Great Reskilling should give people a sense of the power of solving problems, of practically doing things rather than just talking about them, and of the sense of belonging that comes from working alongside other people. Above all it should be fun. – Rob Hopkins 4. Raise your vibrational energy so high people assume you’ve joined a cult. Stuff being low vibe. When you reject being low vibe, people assume you’ve joined a cult. This is a coping mechanism. It helps them feel better about their day to day life. People tell themselves convincing excuses for not changing their situation and instead settling for the default. The bad news is the mind is highly skilled at deluding you. When you raise your vibrational energy the universe conspires to work in your favour. You are lead to doors and they open before you. Low vibe habits quickly become undesirable. So there’s little requirement to buy stuff you don’t need, count down to Friday and sit around waiting for life to just happen to you. As long as you commit to higher than normal vibrational energy, the positive side effects are guaranteed and they are major. More clarity, time, agency, energy, direction, purpose and fulfilment. 5. Never follow the default script. It’s full of unrealised potential and has the most monotony. Go to uni, fall into a job you don’t care about, get into debt, get married, have kids, work until you’re 65 before you can start enjoying your freedom. This is the default script. The way I discovered I was following this script was when I realised I was not fulfilling my potential. Time at my desk warped in both directions. City life felt stifling. I didn’t have the space to nurture my dreams. I would get mildly excited about a work conference because one night in a s**t Holiday Inn at least meant something slightly different to a typical Tuesday. It added a bit of variety (which infuriated me). The key is to resist the story we sell ourselves that the default path handed to us by societal conditioning, is always the right one. For a lot of people, it is not. 6. One of the truest forms of intelligence is designing the life that you want to live. We’ve been getting intelligence all wrong (me included). Fancy degree. High IQ. Letters after your name. This is what we’ve always been told smart looks like. But some of the traditionally cleverest people I know are climbing ladders they couldn’t care less about. Waking up and just going through the motions. Meeting other people’s expectations. Stanford lecturer Graham Weaver once heard a friend say the truest form of intelligence is designing the life you want to live. He calls it the truest thing he’s ever heard about intelligence. Agreed. 7. As you get older you’ll want to leave the city behind. It’s normal. When you’re young you want to be in the thick of the action. So you choose to live in Zone 3 and no more than a 15 minute walk from a London Underground station. Later in life, you don’t give a toss about getting the night tube home, so where you want to live changes. When I lived in the city I could get public transport all the way to the airport and hear the neighbour three houses away blowing his nose in the shower. But at 41 with a desire to be surrounded by nature literally all of the time, this type of location is now undesirable. The environment you want to be in changes in each phase of life. Still choosing your postcode based on its distance to a bakery selling £6 cardamom buns is one step away from re-mortgaging the house. It’s OK to move to a different location. It doesn’t mean you’ll never visit again. And you’ll often appreciate it more. 8. The more failures you survive the more unstoppable you become. I’ve had my fair share of failures. I failed my first year at uni. In my first year working for myself I earned £8,376. We spent years failing to buy land in the UK. I had always seen failures as bad. Now I see them for the valuable assets they are, data points to help you determine what to try next. These failures forced me to develop the tool of positive reframing and acquire skills most didn’t have. Being able to shrug off a failure with an ‘oh well’ and still get on with your life feels a bit like a superpower. What’s worse is not even trying in the first place (the default). 9. No one who tries to have it all is happy. It’s a trap. Choose enough. My friend Clara was hell bent on having it all. She thought she wanted the huge mortgage (sorry, house) in the right school catchment area, the senior job title, the toned physique, loving marriage and the perfectly turned out sproglets. Then she met women 10 and 20 years ahead already trying to live that life and realised it was not sustainable. They were not happy. She got a tarot reading and then legged it. I did the same. I spoke to women older than me about trying to have it all. Most of them wished they hadn’t even bothered chasing the fantasy in the first place. But after a while, because of sunk cost fallacy, it’s very hard to go back. You get so used to automatically levelling up every aspect of your life that it’s impossible to step off the comparison train. If you want to be happier, stop trying to have it all. Stop worrying about what other people think and all the shoulds and instead channel your energy into moving closer towards the life you actually want. When I did that, I figured out that enough was plenty and I had better things to do than meet the imposed expectations of society. 10. If you have 4 hours a day to watch other people live their lives via a screen, you have 1 hour to work out what you want from yours. The life you dream of is built in the hours you currently hand over to a screen. You’ll never be less busy, have enough energy, or feel ready. If you don’t start now you will never do it. Instead of prioritising entertainment, shift that priority to getting clear on your goals. It will fill your evenings with purpose and get you on the path towards taking action. 11. Enter a hard season. Embrace it. Let it undo you. Resist leaving for 3 months. Burnout, redundancy, and breakups are a gift. When you enter a hard season, resist leaving. Be at one with it. Stay for a while. Use the biting cold as motivation. Let the starkness break your limiting beliefs and patterns so you can transform into someone new on the other side. 12. Geeks are incredible. They teach you what curiosity and obsession can do. Here’s one that might surprise you. Before Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter spent years geeking out over funghi and drawing them under a microscope. Scientists dismissed her so she self-published a book, bought a Lake District farm with the money and lived on her own terms. She did it by being a glorious geek. Studying mushroom spores when women weren’t even allowed into scientific societies is pure rebellion. The level of competition, though, is close to zero because so few people get properly obsessed over things these days. Geek strategies work if you’ve tried everything else. 13. Avoid following trends. It means you don’t know how to think for yourself and it’s a sign of insecurity. Trend following is a flashing warning sign. Following trends in critical thinking terms is like saying in health terms that you lick Tube seats to boost your immunity. The key to life is to not follow trends so you can make space to think for yourself more. If you find yourself following trends, your free will has been taken out back, shot and sold for parts. Dismiss trending topics immediately and treat it as seriously as a friend telling you they’re driving home after six pints. Knowing everything that’s trending isn’t cool. It means your opinions have been hijacked and dumped at sea. 14. Some of the wisest people like David Attenborough are unapologetically unreachable. Try it. He joined Instagram in 2020, broke the internet by gaining over 6 million followers then quit 5 weeks later because, ‘I’ve got enough problems with post.’ Pretty much everyone can be reached 24/7 but barely anyone is alone with only their thoughts. You can learn a lot by having days where nobody can reach you. That’s how you finally hear yourself think and catch the ideas everyone else is too distracted to notice. 15. Bin the alarm clock. Ignore the 5am club. Then live by your own body clock with zero guilt. Being a late riser creates guilt. No one wants to be the slob still in their pjs at midday when the rest of the world is on its third flat white and second smug run. The easiest way out of the guilt is to stop setting your day by someone else’s clock. You will then see how this lack of guilt will completely change your life. All of the shame and need for permission will poof into thin air. Try it. You are welcome. (written at 1am, obviously) 16. Ambition is not evil. It’s the force that keeps you from getting stuck. People who think they have no ambition are lying to themselves. We tell ourselves ambition is icky because it forces us to change. Without it you have the perfect excuse to not bother changing anything and all responsibility for your own life goes out the window. Now you can blame the government or the economy or your dog or just say ‘it’s too late for me’. Fatalists are the worst. As are the must-be-nicers. Every life worth living requires ambition because it’s what moves you. Even if your dream is a coffee cart by the sea that shuts at 3pm (absolutely ideal), you still need ambition to get there. Be mature enough to admit you want more and you can change your future at any time by owning it, not pretending ambition isn’t for you. 17. If you don’t learn how money works you will stay in a b******t job until you’re 65. The money game is rigged. On the outside saving looks like common sense. You watch your savings account creep up each month and think your money is growing. It isn’t. The interest barely keeps up with inflation. In my late 30s, I didn’t even know what my mortgage rate was. This blew a friend’s mind so much that he wouldn’t shut up about it for the rest of the evening (we were at a wedding). Your financial illiteracy is deliberate. School doesn’t teach you compound interest because financially independent people don’t hang around in jobs they hate. Ronald Read was a petrol station attendant and janitor in Vermont. He invested small amounts for decades and died with $8 million nobody knew about. Investing should automatically begin with the first paycheck. The escape route is to learn all this yourself. Then you go from working until the government says you can stop to choosing when you stop. This is why I spent six weeks on an investment course. I wanted to understand how the game actually works. And it made me furious that I didn’t already know this stuff. 18. Read every popular book on food and farming and start buying from local farmers now. If you don’t want to become a food systems scholar, read the most popular books about food and farming. Books like Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken, Saying No to a Farm-Free Future by Chris Smaje, English Pastoral by James Rebanks, Sitopia by Carolyn Steel and Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino. You will start to see patterns. Like how * Just four companies control more than 60% of the world’s commercial seed sales * Synthetic fertiliser grew out of the same chemistry used to make wartime explosives * Our vegetables today contain less nutrients than they did in the 1950s * 50%+ of what the average Brit eats is ultra-processed food (UPF), 66% for teenagers * UPFs are engineered by clever scientist bods to keep you eating long after you’re full * Of the 6000 plants humans grow for food, just 9 make up 60% of everything farmed Food is a daily need for every single person on the planet. Once you understand the systems behind it, you will never look at a supermarket shelf the same again. And you will finally understand the value of food that has been grown well. The globalised food system is broken and ain’t no one fixing it from the top. So, fix it locally on your plate and with the farmers near you. 19. Keeping your drama addiction under control will help you more than any other mental health hack. Focussing attention is a struggle for most. Where you direct your attention will either energise you or leave you feeling hollow and numb. If you’re addicted to drama then cut back on celebrity culture, reality TV, soap operas, comment sections, true crime and anything with a villain. Shorter lessons * Turn off the news and tune out of politics to naturally increase your sense of peace. * Expose your skin to direct sunlight every day, preferably fully naked. A Swedish study found that avoiding the sun is as bad for your life expectancy as smoking. * Seek advice from someone already living the life you want so you can quickly stop guessing and start acting. * Read The Psychology of Money then start investing before you feel ready. * Write something with a pen every day, preferably what you’re grateful for, in a journal. * Avoid eating animals that eat other animals. Tuna, swordfish, pork. The higher up the food chain, the more toxins they contain. * Let your eyes rest on nature as often as possible: plants, flowers, trees, birds, insects. * Get a standing desk then get a walking pad. If you want to age faster, sit for hours every day. * Reject abstinence where you can learn to moderate. Sugar, social media, alcohol. They are not the enemy. Manage your relationship with them instead. * Lift heavy things every week. It will keep you sharp and independent for longer. * Spend more time with your parents than feels normal. You will never regret it. 31. Flow states are more important than discipline. Forcing yourself through a to do list will not leave you fulfilled. Losing hours and forgetting to even eat or pee doing something you love, will. Less hours forced, more hours totally engrossed. 32. The friends you had at 25 won’t all fit the person you are at 40. Let some of them go. You change too much at midlife to keep every friend from your 20s and still build the life you want now. In a world full of complainers, low energy is contagious. Your old friends mean well but if every catch-up leaves you flat, question whether you’ve outgrown each other. Surround yourself with people vibrating higher than you. It feels better, too, because you rise to meet them. 33. Be wary of middlemen. Most are costing you for little return. Years ago when we were house hunting in London, the estate agent didn’t do much more than open the front door to the properties. At one viewing the owner insisted on showing us round herself – I assume because she didn’t think the suit was doing a good enough job selling her house. She was right. Years later when we rented our house, we skipped the agent entirely and found our tenants using a website that connects landlords directly with tenants. Tiny fees. It’s worked brilliantly. The same shift is popping up in other industries. Authors are self-publishing and selling straight to their readers. I buy my vegetables directly from a local farmer and my flour from the mill that grinds it. When the person selling has a direct relationship with the person buying, it means more and costs less for both sides. Before you pay a middleman, question whether they are actually needed. 34. Science is a great place to start, terrible place to finish. I have a degree in astrophysics. Throughout my 20s my position on unexplainable things was basically: if science can’t prove it, it doesn’t exist. As a fully fledged adult, I’ve done a full 180. Every time we build stronger instruments we find even smaller particles inside the previous ‘smallest particles’. Atoms, then protons, then quarks. All we are really proving is that everything we deem to be solid is mostly empty space and the harder we look, the less we seem to know. No one knows what dark matter and dark energy are, even though they make up 95% of the universe. No one can explain consciousness i.e. how the brain produces the feeling of being you, even though scientists have been working on it for decades. In 1998 a neuroscientist bet a philosopher a case of wine that science would figure this out within 25 years. He lost. There’s something else at work. I don’t need to measure it to know it exists. Start with what science can prove. Then keep going. If you can’t change your mind, you can’t change your life. 35. ‘There’s no scientific evidence to support that’ is one of the biggest cop-outs in existence. Most of the time it just means there’s no money in it. In the old world, science was driven by curiosity. Darwin wasn’t attached to a university. He got obsessed, did most of his life’s work in his garden and paid for it himself. Questions got asked because someone couldn’t stop thinking about the answer. In the new world, science is a business. Research needs funding and funding needs a return. The questions that get studied are the ones that might make someone money. When I posted about this, one reader replied: ‘I worked in research for the last decade, can attest!’ No evidence often just means no one can be arsed to look. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And when a headline says science has proven something, follow the money to see who paid for the answer. It’s often the industry that profits from the result. 36. Understand that you’re capable of most things and you can change your life at any age. Self-belief is a skill. As is being courageous. Once you understand you are capable of most things, you can leave the job that drains you, become the healthiest you’ve ever been and wake up excited by life every morning. Most people who stay stuck are just underestimating themselves. Key: every skill you have now, you once didn’t. Remember that. I’m Leyla. I write about getting unstuck, doing hard things on purpose and building a life on your own terms. I send this to 11,000 readers — join them if you’d like it in your inbox. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe (https://leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Self-reliance is the only sane response to the modern world

   I make my own laundry detergent out of conkers I forage from the park. I do this because every time I learn to make, do or grow something myself, I feel high. Like flying all the way to Jupiter high. It started with a tomato. The day I grew my first was the day I stopped trying to control the future. I’m on the balcony of an apartment I’m sharing with a friend in southwest London. It’s 2008. I notice a tiny green ball has appeared where a small yellow flower had been days before. It’s my first ever tomato and I’ve grown the damn thing entirely by myself. It feels huge, at a primal level. It made me feel like I had more control over my wellbeing and my future. That I was better equipped to provide for myself and my community. It made me feel less fragile. That cherry unleashed something I’ve been unable to put back in its cage since. A slow burn obsession to find out how much of my own life can I actually look after, myself. Because increased self-reliance is one of the most empowering feelings that exists and getting that first hit changed my life forever. (fair warning: it’s addictive) And it’s a feeling people are desperately searching for right now. The things you can’t control are stealing the things you can I may be crucified for saying this but your actions are never going to: * fix the economy * end war * pull the planet's climate out of the toilet * make governments accountable Accepting that is strangely freeing. Letting go of the huge things you can't affect is the only sane move because they are not yours to fix. If you don't do this, a problem will form. You'll be left trying to blindly feel your way out of a thick cloud of helplessness. And like the iodine dye injected before a CT scan, this feeling floods the entire body. It spreads to every other part of your life and the most dangerous place it infiltrates are the small things within your sphere of influence that you can actually affect. The result is you adopt a victim mindset and become paralysed by the 'it's all out of my hands!' rhetoric, shovelling ice cream while binging Netflix instead of doing one small thing actually within your power. So I'm here to convince you of something that's embarrassingly small, something you could do this exact week to claw back a bit of control while everything else seems to spiral. I want to convince you to grow a fruit tree. Even with no garden. And that doing so is a radical act and a more serious answer to all. the. dread. than it may first seem. The thing almost everyone is getting backwards When the future feels uncertain, the instinct is to make yourself more useful to the system. Work harder, get more qualifications, stay employable, climb to higher ground. Basically make it more difficult for someone to ‘let you go’. Which means you get yourself tangled even tighter into the system's web as a defence mechanism. This is the complete wrong direction to go in. Because the most effective way to future proof yourself is to depend less on the system in the first place. I'm not talking about cutting yourself off from the outside world and surviving in a desert island bunker and fashioning your shoes out of tree bark levels of self-sufficient. I'm talking about self-reliance. Which is depending a bit less on the systems that don't really serve you and a bit more on yourself. Building what I like to call pockets of self-reliance, small corners of your life that answer to the self-directed actions of you only and no one else. Empty supermarket shelves were a warning, not a one-off There's a principle from how systems are built that explains why depending less on them actually makes you stronger. You can tune a system for efficiency or you can build it for resilience. More of one means less of the other. Tuning for efficiency strips out every bit of slack and buffer. It means no back up and no spare parts. But what you do have is something extremely lean, cheap and it runs beautifully. Until it doesn't. A good example of a system tuned for efficiency is our globalised food system. When conditions are optimal it's extremely impressive and few people ever stop to think about how it works. Huge supermarkets are always piled high with food from all corners of the planet. The logistics are wild. We take it for granted. But chuck a spanner in the works – pandemic, war, extreme weather event – and the system's lack of resilience is laid bare. It runs 'just in time' meaning every lorry and warehouse is tuned to carry the precise amount of food exactly when it's needed. And nothing more. The UK imports 80% of its fruit and almost half of all its vegetables, much of it from countries more exposed to climate change than we are. – The Food Foundation (2026), drawing on Defra and HMRC data. A small wobble in how people behaved during the pandemic was enough to empty the shelves and make headlines. If you build in some reserve from the start, the system bends instead of breaking. It costs more, but it also survives more. Growing some of your own food is putting a small piece of slack back into your own life. Obviously, you’re not going to be replacing Tesco anytime soon. But you will be slightly less dependent on a system you can neither control nor fix. Skills will become the new currency For most of our lifetimes the safest and most secure work was the kind detached from the physical world. The person with a spreadsheet and immaculate mani was considered higher status to the one with a weather beaten brow working in the fields who could actually grow, build and fix. They were also better paid. I think this is going to flip. The robots are now terrifyingly good at abstract work like analysing, coding, summarising, writing. Entire careers that were built around sitting in front of a screen are starting to buckle. The skills that will be most highly valued in the future are those rooted in a real body and in a real place. And once you learn a skill, it cannot be taken from you. No one can fire you from knowing how to grow food. No one can replace your knowledge with a younger and cheaper model, or restructure the wisdom out of your brain, or decide on a random Friday at 3pm that it's been automated and you're no longer needed. Skills are capabilities and they live within you. ‘The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.’ — B.B. King Even if the machines do end up doing 99% of what we currently do, the person who knows how to meet even a few of their own basic needs is in a fundamentally different starting block from the person who doesn't. And this is largely psychological. Because there is a deep and grounding power in knowing you are not completely reliant on a tangle of complex, inter-dependent and brittle systems to keep you alive. That you can step out of them, at least to some extent. That some small but essential part of being responsible for yourself answers to you only and not an algorithm or an employer or a supply chain. This is a seismic psychological shift and more valuable than a handful of cherry tomatoes and three radishes. You have fewer excuses than you think When I first got my small London garden one of my dreams was to be able to pick fresh raspberries on a summer morning to add to my granola. I couldn’t think of anything more amazing. It was a life goal. So I bought a handful of canes and shoved them in the ground in different spots to see what would happen. I watered them. I talked to them. Three quarters of the canes died. I was kind of devastated. I thought about filing this under ‘cannot grow raspberries’ and sulking in a corner for the reast of the growing season. But one spot survived. An east facing corner by the house that stayed cool and never dried out, which turned into a patch that bestowed upon me literal kilos of perfect raspberries year after year, fed on nothing more than used coffee grounds. I didn’t even water it. That scrappy patch was part of the reason a BBC Gardeners’ World crew came to film my postage stamp of a wildflower meadow, wildlife pond and the romping raspberries. Not bad for someone who killed most of her canes. The experiment made me realise there is no such thing as having or not having green fingers. There are only people who find the right plant for the right place and people who give up after the first failure. It also reminded me that failures are just very informative data points. So you don’t need land, or a big garden, or any experience. To grow a fruit tree you’re fine with just a pot, some sun, and a bit of patience. There’s a fruit tree for every space, including the ones you have assumed are too small. And when everyone is anxious and it feels like there’s little left to rely on, nurturing a living thing that feeds you for years, regardless of the latest political scandal or how the markets are performing, is one of the most radical and reassuring acts available to you. Fast forward 17 years from that first tomato to 2025 and my husband and I did something that still sounds bonkers when I say it out loud. We quit our London lives to embark on a more land-based life in rural Portugal, where we have just started building an eco-house on our three acre plot and intend to produce much of our own food. I even wrote my debut book, Pathways, about the whole thing. I present The Food Programme on BBC Radio 4 and I’ve done a two week Permaculture Design Course at the spiritual eco-village Findhorn in Scotland. Meaning, I’ve met a lot of people who grow a lot of things. And yet I still had no idea which trees would actually cope with a hotter and drier Portugal. So I decided to find out. A botanical garden you can eat Citrus trees are drug dealers. The nectar in their flowers are spiked with caffeine to ensure the bee remembers the exact location of the flower and comes back for another hit, even if there’s a better bloom next door. I don’t make the rules. I learned this at Orchard of Flavours (https://www.orchardofflavours.com/), the only botanical garden in Europe devoted entirely to the food trees of a warming world. It’s a non-profit near Tavira in the Algarve founded and run by the very passionate Miguel Cotton. It’s part living collection, part research centre and part open-source school with 1000 food trees on less than two hectares. And it catalogues every success and failure from its experiments, publishing everything for free. But I was there for selfish reasons. We’re building our life on hot and dry Portuguese clay and I needed to know which trees will feed us in an increasingly unpredictable world. So I signed up for their 7-day course. What struck me was their honesty. The first thing I was shown was the ‘cemetery of failures’ because everything they teach comes from what they’ve actually trialled there, not sweeping generalisations from a book. Only 1% of olive flowers ever become fruit. Photosynthesis stalls past 32C. Bees are addicts. The knowledge and detail was as captivating as the company. My fellow students included a shaman, a raw vegan, and a guy who had just bought a huge parcel of land to start an eco-community. I felt like I’d found my people. But the real gems I left with were insights from the Dry Orchard Experiment, their hunt for the trees that, once established, can feed you on little more than a prayer and the rain that falls there. The resilient all star cast includes carob, jujube, mulberry, mesquite, argan that defies the desert and chañar, a South American tree whose fruit tastes of toffee, to name a few. It changed how I see growing. The future of food isn’t about tech that lets you grow anything, anywhere, at any time. It’s about choosing the plants better, the ones that are generous and better built for a future we cannot predict. So thank you to Miguel, Dror, Milan, Lucas and the rest of the team, for the trees and the trials and the invaluable data so generously shared. Do take a look at their online database for an encyclopaedia of insights. What growing one thing does to you You can't fix the economy. You can't stop AI. You can't call off the next shitshow. None of that is within our reach and believing it could be is exhausting and keeps dread in the chat. But you can plant a fruit tree. You can choose one that suits your light and your soil, water it, and watch it do that insane thing trees do — turn sunlight and rain and air and soil into food for you, for years. It won’t change your shopping habits. But it will change you. Because the first time you eat something from that tree, a small and stubborn thought will take up permanent residence in your mind: If I can do this, what else can I do? That question is the opposite of the helplessness that seems to be sweeping through humanity right now. It comes from proving to yourself that you can rely on yourself for one real thing. And then another. And then another. A fruit tree can be your first pocket of self-reliance and if you let it, it will be the first of many. I went from one cherry tomato on a rented balcony to three acres in Portugal that I’m turning into a food forest. So just start where you are and see where the high takes you. I’m Leyla. I write about what increased self-reliance actually looks like and why it matters more than ever, amongst other things. I send this to 11,000 readers — join them if you’d like it in your inbox. If this one landed, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And hit the ❤️ so Substack shows it to more people. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe (https://leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

4. 

   26 Mar 2026

   The Pound Project Live: Leyla Kazim x Natalie Lue

   On Wednesday 25th March, JP Watson, founder of independent publishers The Pound Project (https://substack.com/profile/112938502-the-pound-project), interviewed myself and Natalie Lue (https://substack.com/profile/10167494-natalie-lue) about our powerful titles from 2025: Pathways and Let Go. We discussed the origins of our books, how a pitch and idea became a reality, our writing process and where our ideas are taking us next. And in case you missed either of our limited edition books when they were on sale, JP is kindly re-opening the chance to purchase copies again — which is a real treat. Because they are otherwise totally unavailable to buy anymore. Just drop him an email at editor@poundproject.co.uk if you’d like a copy. All three of us would love to hear what you thought about this conversation! For those who are new around here Let me tell you a bit about my two-part debut book Pathways, that sold out in just three weeks back in June 2025. After spending my entire life living in London — the only city I had ever called home — I began to feel the pull towards a radically different life. Modern living makes us anxious, exhausted and physically unwell. I craved something my bones knew deeply: to grow my own food, to live in harmony with Nature, and to be guided by the sun and seasons. As opposed to strip lighting and spreadsheets. So, my husband and I spent years searching for land, until we found it — a 3 acre plot in the Portuguese countryside, 40 minutes north of Lisbon. We moved to the region in August 2025 and are currently living in rented accommodation. We will soon start building our eco-house in the footprint of an existing ruin and cultivating the land to produce much of our own food. It’s a long game. And whilst we’re still right at the start of this journey, so much has happened since the book came out. Book 1, Pathways: To The Land Consider any aspect of the current human experience and there’s a very good reason for doing things differently. This book is an honest look at the absurdities of modern life and why I quit the only way of living I’ve known, to pursue a very different one in rural Portugal. Book 2, Pathways: To Purposeful Living A series of mini essays and thought exercises to help us face a simple question: how can we cut through the noise to identify the things that make us feel good and fulfilled? I’m Leyla. I write about becoming aware of the systems that do not serve you and reclaiming your energy, amongst other things. I send this once a week to 9000+ readers — join them if you’d like it in your inbox. If this conversation landed, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And hit the ❤️ so Substack shows it to more people. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe (https://leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

5. 

   29 Jan 2026

   Welcome to A Day Well Spent (a Substack Bestseller with 8000+ readers)

   If you’re ready to design what happens next — instead of letting the rest of your life just ‘happen’ to you — I’m glad you’ve found this. Hello and welcome. I’m Leyla Kazim. Let me explain everything you need to know about my newsletter ‘A Day Well Spent’ as quickly as possible. Get full access to A Day Well Spent at leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe (https://leylakazim.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

6. 

   11 May 2025

   Why I'm leaving the only life I've known

   Leyla Kazim discusses her decision to leave her current life and become a small-scale farmer in Portugal, exploring themes of modern life and pursuing a more fulfilling existence in this interview with Rosie Birkett.

7. 

   21 Sept 2023

   🎧 'If you met yourself at full potential, it would feel like divine guidance'

   Leyla Kazim interviews Charlie Morley, a lucid dreaming teacher, about lucid dreaming, its potential for personal growth, and how individuals can learn to control their dreams.

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