Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Francesca Rudkin and I'm Louise Area and this
Speaker 1: is season four of our New Zealand Herald podcast The
Speaker 1: Little Things.
Speaker 2: It is good to have you with us. In this podcast,
Speaker 2: we talk to experts and find out all the little
Speaker 2: things you need to know to improve all areas of
Speaker 2: your life. But you know what, You're never going to
Speaker 2: sort your life out. How's that to a positive tip
Speaker 2: away to start a podcast?
Speaker 1: Words, I love it, It's honest.
Speaker 2: It is not my line. It's the second line of
Speaker 2: a book written by an author we've waited a long
Speaker 2: time to bring you because he is in such high demand.
Speaker 2: The first line is this is a book about how
Speaker 2: the world opens up once you realize you're never going
Speaker 2: to sort your life out. So it's actually we're not
Speaker 2: taking a dark turn. It's actually a really positive statement.
Speaker 1: You know that The Little Things is dedicated to bring
Speaker 1: you all the best information we have access to to
Speaker 1: live a happy and healthy lifespan. But we don't live fever.
Speaker 1: We are mortal and we're not going to get to
Speaker 1: experience every little thing we may have on our mental list.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but as I age, I've
Speaker 2: found my mortality does creep into my thoughts more often
Speaker 2: than it used to, And of course that comes with
Speaker 2: those inevitable questions lou about what's the best way to
Speaker 2: spend my time? And even when I come up with
Speaker 2: the answer, I don't do it. I just stick with
Speaker 2: a daily routine.
Speaker 1: Well there's nothing wrong with the daily routine, but me too,
Speaker 1: And honestly, I'd rather have that epiphany now than in
Speaker 1: twenty years. And I'd say I've had that epiphany off
Speaker 1: and on over the years. But like yourself, and and
Speaker 1: then you do fall into sort of the same patterns.
Speaker 1: A common time waster I'm guilty of is just simply
Speaker 1: worrying about things, whether it's a kids, extended family, work, pets, health, wealth,
Speaker 1: my kiwi sav.
Speaker 2: I think that's perfectly normal.
Speaker 1: The pretty, you know, weird things that are going on
Speaker 1: in the world right now. But our guess philosophy has
Speaker 1: helped me gain some perspective around this and some other
Speaker 1: habits I probably didn't even realize. We're like holding me
Speaker 1: back from spending our limited time on the things I
Speaker 1: really care about. Thank good, Yeah, are you any good? Francisco?
Speaker 1: Being present in the moment, I have to work at it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. I've done mindfulness and I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot to it, and there's elements of that I
Speaker 1: really like. And that's the other thing I like from mindfulness.
Speaker 1: You take what works for you and you can leave
Speaker 1: the reason that's right. But I still have to work
Speaker 1: really hard at it. Yeah, me too, remind myself occasionally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of things to take us away from being
Speaker 1: in the moment. I think everyone would agree. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is, even in the face of all the
Speaker 1: evidence in the world, I tend to think that I've
Speaker 1: got more control over things than I really have. Are
Speaker 1: you a control No?
Speaker 2: But I know you like control.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: I mean we all like control. I like control because
Speaker 2: I just know that things are done, and then you know,
Speaker 2: things that's sort of done and taken care of and
Speaker 2: things like that. But I'm getting loosive with the control
Speaker 2: as I get older, because I'm a bit like, what
Speaker 2: does it matter?
Speaker 1: Well, I have a love hate relationship with it. I
Speaker 1: agree with you, it does mean things just get done.
Speaker 1: But also I get frustrated when I'm the one doing it,
Speaker 1: when it's taking time away from me. So I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that I've taken away from
Speaker 1: this book as well. Do you have any existential crisis
Speaker 1: about the about Mortelagy?
Speaker 2: I haven't. I never had never thought about it, and
Speaker 2: then it was really weird. It's such a cliche. But
Speaker 2: I hit fifty and I went, hang on, how much
Speaker 2: more time have I got left? What do I want
Speaker 2: to do with my life? I actually do have to
Speaker 2: real with you. That don't last long because there's something
Speaker 2: else to get all, you know. But I have been
Speaker 2: surprised at how I went from never really thinking about
Speaker 2: it to actually thinking about it a bit. I think
Speaker 2: that could be a midlife thing. Well, it must be
Speaker 2: my midlife thing for a certain even the food being
Speaker 2: a cliche, but it is. It's a midlife crisis. We
Speaker 2: know that there's probably hints I've gone and done pottery.
Speaker 1: We're finally doing my pottery courses. Cliche embracing cliche. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And look, I think the other thing is too. We
Speaker 1: need to be released from worrying or even thinking about
Speaker 1: or aspiring all the time to do all every single
Speaker 1: thing we always thought we might in a lifetime. I'm
Speaker 1: really learning to let go of that stuff. Because that
Speaker 1: was really interesting. You said to me the other day
Speaker 1: when we're out on a walk or something.
Speaker 2: We're in the bush and he said to Yep, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm really letting go of the stack that I might
Speaker 2: not even do an iron Man, and I might not
Speaker 2: get my pH d. And I'm just sort of walking
Speaker 2: on going. I had no idea that these were your
Speaker 2: that you had these sort of ambitions on your on
Speaker 2: your bucket list. I suppose you had a list of
Speaker 2: these things you can achieve. It's like, oh, I don't
Speaker 2: think I knew that. I hadn't Tom either.
Speaker 1: It was when I was challenged to think what really matters,
Speaker 1: and I went, ah, I probably have. It's more that
Speaker 1: I've wasted time thinking should I do some more study,
Speaker 1: should I try harder and do an iron Man, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah instead of doing instead of doing it. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, nah, And this is what one of the
Speaker 1: big lessons that I love in this book is it's
Speaker 1: time to stop planning to do something, thinking about doing something,
Speaker 1: and actually just start it, just do it or not
Speaker 1: or not. Because because after you sort of mention those things,
Speaker 1: I was, oh, gosh, I don't I haven't really thought
Speaker 1: about what it is I'm going to do you know
Speaker 1: what I like to do and the rest of my
Speaker 1: life and things like that, and then I mean, oh no,
Speaker 1: now I'm just going to think about it for ten years.
Speaker 1: And so that's one thing I've really taken from this
Speaker 1: book is you know what you're quite keen to do.
Speaker 1: So and Oliver uses an example and we'll probably talk
Speaker 1: about this when we talk to him. He's the example
Speaker 1: of a case. So you think you're going to pick
Speaker 1: up meditation, so you think about doing that, and then
Speaker 1: you get a book on it, and you read the
Speaker 1: book on it, and then you kind of go about
Speaker 1: doing it and realize two days later it was a
Speaker 1: book that's not really me. Maybe I won't do it,
Speaker 1: And all that time you spent thinking about it and
Speaker 1: building up expectations before.
Speaker 2: You actually finally got around to doing it. Don't put
Speaker 2: so much on it. Just try it one day.
Speaker 3: Do it.
Speaker 2: You might not do it the next time, but you
Speaker 2: might do the next day. Right, see how it goes.
Speaker 2: It's not a big deal. But just stop them ruminating
Speaker 2: over everything. Yeah, anyway, to bring his words to life,
Speaker 2: Oliver Berkman is going to join us today. Oliver is
Speaker 2: a British author and journalist. In twenty twenty one, he
Speaker 2: published four thousand Weeks Time Management for Mortals, and in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four he followed it up with Meditation for Mortals,
Speaker 2: four Weeks to Embrace your limitations and make time for
Speaker 2: what counts. Despite the title, he is unfazed by how
Speaker 2: long it takes you or how you read this book.
Speaker 2: It's simply an aid to a saner and freer life,
Speaker 2: served in bite sized chapters, and who of us would
Speaker 2: not benefit from that? These days, Oliver has a way
Speaker 2: of bringing our mortality home to us in a way
Speaker 2: that is genuinely liberating and far from depressing. So we're
Speaker 2: as you're delighted to have Oliver with us now. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Oliver, Thank you for inviting me so Oliver, the finite
Speaker 1: nature of life is central, seems to me central to
Speaker 1: your work. Many of us are too busy living to
Speaker 1: think about it, or maybe we just don't want to
Speaker 1: think about it. Why is it so important that we
Speaker 1: acknowledge our mortality?
Speaker 4: I think that's a big question. I think that ultimately
Speaker 4: it's sort of it's at the core of sort of
Speaker 4: almost everything that causes us stress, causes us anxiety causes
Speaker 4: us to not be as fully present for a vibrant
Speaker 4: life than we as we might be. Is this desire
Speaker 4: to not feel too intensely what it is to be
Speaker 4: a finite human. It's not so much about thinking every
Speaker 4: day about the end and about death. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't really end up writing all that much about death
Speaker 4: and dying per se. It's much more for me the
Speaker 4: idea of the sort of the discomfort that is involved
Speaker 4: in just sort of having only so many hours in
Speaker 4: the day, with an infinite number of things that feel
Speaker 4: like they ought to be done in the day, having
Speaker 4: only so much control over how time unfolds, or understanding
Speaker 4: of what's going on in the world, and still having
Speaker 4: to function, you know, in this intrinsically limited state. And
Speaker 4: I think we do all sorts of things, including all
Speaker 4: sorts of things about trying to sort of manage our
Speaker 4: time supposedly well, that are actually serving the purpose of
Speaker 4: helping us ignore these truths.
Speaker 2: One thing I love about the book is you've designed
Speaker 2: the book to be read one chapter a day for
Speaker 2: twenty eight days, or you know, however you want to
Speaker 2: read the book, you can dip in and out of it,
Speaker 2: which I still go back to and do Now, is
Speaker 2: this to let each lesson sink in?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean so, firstly, yes, it's certainly not a law
Speaker 4: that you have to read a chapter a day for
Speaker 4: twenty eight days in a book that is about releasing.
Speaker 3: Some of our attempts to control life.
Speaker 4: I feel like it be hypocritical to be trying to control
Speaker 4: how everybody read the book.
Speaker 3: You've got the book, it's your book, and you do
Speaker 3: what you like.
Speaker 4: But the sort of idea that I was chasing there
Speaker 4: is that I've always found with books of wisdom and
Speaker 4: self help, advice, whatever the right phrase is thinking one
Speaker 4: of two ways.
Speaker 3: Either it's kind of a big perspective shift.
Speaker 4: That then fades away, or it's like a list of
Speaker 4: tips to follow that kind of you never get around
Speaker 4: to really making yourself follow because you don't understand the
Speaker 4: emotional logic behind them. So I wanted to sort of
Speaker 4: see if I could make a book that got the
Speaker 4: best of both worlds here and kind of led people
Speaker 4: through a series of very small perspective shifts of the
Speaker 4: kind that would just sort of maybe hang around in
Speaker 4: the back of their mind during the day that followed.
Speaker 4: I didn't want this to be a book where you think, well,
Speaker 4: this is kind of good. I'm going to put this
Speaker 4: amazing new system into practice in a few months time
Speaker 4: when I finally get a free week with nothing to do,
Speaker 4: like because that never happens. So it's much more like
Speaker 4: something I hope could sort of just slide in under
Speaker 4: people's you know, right in the middle of too many I.
Speaker 2: Do love that description of self help books because how often,
Speaker 2: lou have you done that?
Speaker 3: Have you got one?
Speaker 2: You go, okay, just get me straight. I'm just going
Speaker 2: to skip these chapters, just get me straight to the
Speaker 2: list of what I need to do. But you've got
Speaker 2: no background or context for it, and you go, just
Speaker 2: get to tell me what I need to do, and
Speaker 2: then all the end, as you say, quite often you
Speaker 2: read a book and you might only come away with
Speaker 2: one sort of you know, light bold moment.
Speaker 1: And whereas for me, each day I go, oh, that's
Speaker 1: the one. That's the key one for me, and then
Speaker 1: the next day, oh, that's the key one. But I
Speaker 1: actually I haven't had a book for a long time
Speaker 1: that's been quite so it's getting a bit ratty because
Speaker 1: I'm just going in quite frequently back to things again
Speaker 1: to either refresh my mind obviously I was doing some
Speaker 1: research for this, but or to think that this is
Speaker 1: something that's come up even in the family of something,
Speaker 1: and I pull on that piece of wisdom for some
Speaker 1: timely advice. But let's just clear this up at the outset.
Speaker 1: You're not telling us through this to give up and
Speaker 1: become unambitious and resign to a quiet, unfew full life.
Speaker 3: Are you no quite the opposite?
Speaker 4: And I know you're asking that in a spirit of
Speaker 4: devil's advocacy, but this has once or twice been leveled
Speaker 4: at me, and I get quite defensive in response to it,
Speaker 4: because I think in many ways, what I'm trying to
Speaker 4: suggest is that it is only when we really sort
Speaker 4: of get a bit better at embracing limitation and acknowledging
Speaker 4: the way that the ways in which we're limited, that
Speaker 4: you are then freed up to really like take the
Speaker 4: ambitious actions, do the things that count. It's like it's
Speaker 4: when you realize that the moment in the future when
Speaker 4: you finally feel in control of everything, on top of everything,
Speaker 4: it's when you finally realize that's never coming that you think, well, okay,
Speaker 4: I might as well take action on these things.
Speaker 3: Right now. I think part of what I'm.
Speaker 4: Doing here just as a sort of personal project, is
Speaker 4: trying to is trying to explore the possibility it might
Speaker 4: be possible to live a sort of less anxious, more
Speaker 4: peaceful life and also a very sort of active and
Speaker 4: ambitious one. I think mainly just because like I want
Speaker 4: both those things in my life.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I remember when I practiced, when I first
Speaker 1: out of practice mindfulness, mindfulness, and I came home I
Speaker 1: discussed it with the family and said, you know, just
Speaker 1: it's not about striving, it's not a bit and they
Speaker 1: were like, well, how can I how can life be
Speaker 1: bitter if you stop striving? You know? So I get
Speaker 1: what you mean having leave it at you. But that's
Speaker 1: that's like you say, it's actually the complete opposite.
Speaker 4: Well, and I think an important point here that that
Speaker 4: the word striving specifically reminds me of as well, is
Speaker 4: it's like, why are you taking action? And a lot
Speaker 4: of us, and certainly me historically and to some extent
Speaker 4: still today, are what the psychologists call insecure overchievers. Right,
Speaker 4: we do lots of stuff and it all that's great,
Speaker 4: and we sort of put ourselves out there, but on
Speaker 4: some level we're doing that because we feel like if
Speaker 4: we don't do it, we don't get to count as
Speaker 4: adequate human beings. So you're constantly trying to sort of
Speaker 4: earn your place on the planet. And the wonderful thing
Speaker 4: at least to aspire to, I think is the is
Speaker 4: the state of affairs where you don't need to do
Speaker 4: anything in order to feel like you have the right
Speaker 4: to exist. But then you do lots of stuff anyway,
Speaker 4: because that's a fun way to engage with being human
Speaker 4: on the earth.
Speaker 2: Right now, I'm all for living in the ruins. I
Speaker 2: love their life and the ruins. I love their expression,
Speaker 2: and I love what you talk about with sort of
Speaker 2: just embracing the imperfect life, because I certainly I can
Speaker 2: remember my kids are old now, they're teenagers, they're eighteen
Speaker 2: and sixteen. When they were little, I just had a
Speaker 2: personality where I just mean, I am no longer going
Speaker 2: to try to being mother of the year. I just
Speaker 2: and I'd like to thank Oliver, I've been a decent
Speaker 2: mother that you just just let go of all those
Speaker 2: expectations and striving to do everything perfectly to raise these
Speaker 2: perfect children and things and just kind of weird. Oh
Speaker 2: this is just too much energy, you know.
Speaker 4: And of course, yeah, I mean you'll have you'll have
Speaker 4: to tell me if this was your experience. But my
Speaker 4: guess is that, in fact, that kind of shift is
Speaker 4: associated with becoming better as a parent in the ways
Speaker 4: that really matter, because there is a kind of there's
Speaker 4: a kind of anxious self focus that goes along with
Speaker 4: like constantly checking in to see if you're doing things
Speaker 4: at the perfect optimal level that ultimately just doesn't help
Speaker 4: us do the things in question, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 4: not as important as parenting, but like I find this
Speaker 4: a lot in my writing, Like the perfectionist outlook applied
Speaker 4: to writing is not a good way to get good
Speaker 4: writing done. It's not like, well, it really is agonizing,
Speaker 4: but at least you get good results. Now, you don't
Speaker 4: get good results that way, You get more sort of
Speaker 4: pinched and self conscious and miserable results. Hmmm.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, I get what you mean about parenting, and
Speaker 1: I think you can, you know, apply it to the workplace,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you do. That is something we
Speaker 1: were all a little bit guilty of. If I'm going
Speaker 1: to be here for and doing this as I've chosen
Speaker 1: this as my career. I least I'd be doing it
Speaker 1: bloody well. But that might not be the way. That
Speaker 1: might not look the way we think it does. It
Speaker 1: might be that because I've noticed lately I've started doing
Speaker 1: creative and it's and I keep thinking, this is too fun,
Speaker 1: this is I'm really enjoying this, but they shouldn't be
Speaker 1: paying them for it?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: This goes so deep, doesn't it, Like if it's not effort,
Speaker 4: then is it?
Speaker 3: Is it worth it?
Speaker 4: And that is totally tied up with this kind of
Speaker 4: filling the in avoid approach to work and do. One
Speaker 4: of the chapters in the in the New Book is
Speaker 4: is exploring this idea of how scary it can be
Speaker 4: for some of us anyway to actually ask whether some
Speaker 4: project that we're embarking on, or some life chapter that
Speaker 4: we're embarking on, might end up being easier than we thought,
Speaker 4: Like what if this were easy? Is a really powerful
Speaker 4: inquiry because actually going into everything, going into the next moment,
Speaker 4: in the next moment of life, assuming that you're going
Speaker 4: to have some sort of grueling fight, it becomes a
Speaker 4: self fulfilling prophecy and makes it much less pleasant.
Speaker 1: I have a tendency to kia a lot about a
Speaker 1: vast array of things that I have no control over,
Speaker 1: and it can sit quite heavy, and I think probably
Speaker 1: a lot of us are feeling this in current times.
Speaker 1: What's your what is your advice on staying saying when
Speaker 1: the world's bit of a mess?
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't have a magic solution that.
Speaker 4: Makes everything okay at this sort of extraordinarily alarming phase
Speaker 4: in world fairs, But I do think it's really tant
Speaker 4: to become conscious of the sort of information environment that
Speaker 4: we live in and.
Speaker 3: To see that.
Speaker 4: We just through just through digital connectivity, let alone algorithmic
Speaker 4: social media.
Speaker 3: You know, we live in this.
Speaker 4: Environment now where anyone who cares at all about the
Speaker 4: world at large is going to be asked to care
Speaker 4: about everything maximally connected to every story, every alarming new
Speaker 4: story of human suffering or political outrageousness or whatever it is,
Speaker 4: and that even the most responsible media organizations, the ones
Speaker 4: who are never going to sort of lie about what's
Speaker 4: happening in the world, are just intrinsically motivated, incentivized they
Speaker 4: have to be to sort of push what they're doing
Speaker 4: into your consciousness by sort of phrasing it in the
Speaker 4: strongest possible terms and you know, getting it in front
Speaker 4: of your brain.
Speaker 3: So the result is the sort of arms.
Speaker 4: Race of requests to care about things that is then
Speaker 4: kind of turned into the kind of actions that are
Speaker 4: not actions at all. They feel useful, but they're not useful, right,
Speaker 4: Just doom scrolling on some level does feel like you're
Speaker 4: doing something, like you're engaging with the world or informing
Speaker 4: yourself or something.
Speaker 3: So I think it's really useful to remember that.
Speaker 4: Actually, not only does it a recipe for more sanity
Speaker 4: to sort of pick your battles, to decide to kind
Speaker 4: of make one or two issues your focus and do
Speaker 4: what you can.
Speaker 3: To let go of the rest.
Speaker 4: It's actually better for the world, right, You're going to
Speaker 4: have more of an effect on the world by doing that.
Speaker 4: In the book, I talk about this story this guy
Speaker 4: called Eric Hageman, who was the subject of a New
Speaker 4: York Times profile during the first Trump administration because he
Speaker 4: decided to sort of block it out from the world
Speaker 4: here that none of this was happening. He was politically
Speaker 4: opposed to it, so he pretended it wasn't happening. He
Speaker 4: didn't watch the news, and it consume the news. When
Speaker 4: he went down to his local cafe. He wore noise
Speaker 4: canceling headphones with white noise being played through them so
Speaker 4: that he didn't have to hear anyone discussing politics, and
Speaker 4: of course he was sort of eviscerated in the press
Speaker 4: online after this story came out for being terribly selfish,
Speaker 4: like how dare he just sort of check out of
Speaker 4: this extraordinarily fraught moment. But you read down this story,
Speaker 4: it turns out that what he's doing with his time
Speaker 4: is when he's not obsessing about politics, is like restoring
Speaker 4: an area of wetlands in his local neighborhood that he's
Speaker 4: then going to return to public ownership when he's plunged
Speaker 4: his life savings into it. And it's like, I read
Speaker 4: that story and I thought, actually, I think this guy's
Speaker 4: onto something, right.
Speaker 3: It's not clear.
Speaker 4: It's not clear that driving himself crazy with exposure to
Speaker 4: all that news would have helped, and it's fairly clear
Speaker 4: that the thing he did instead is helping. So I
Speaker 4: think it really there's really an argument now in the
Speaker 4: environment that we live in, informationally speaking, to know when
Speaker 4: to withdraw or attention as well as when to apply it.
Speaker 2: And it's also sort of dealing with what's going on
Speaker 2: in our own lives. Everyone's got this shit, as they say,
Speaker 2: and you're all dealing with you know, little issues and things.
Speaker 1: I think that was day fourteen when you announce it
Speaker 1: we won't even be in a trouble free phase. That
Speaker 1: was actually hugely liberating from me. I was like, oh, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are actually and we are actually really really good
Speaker 1: at solving problems every hour on the hour pretty much embracer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, absolutely, and I mean I need reminders of
Speaker 4: this stuff all the time. I think that's part of
Speaker 4: what motivates the structure of the book. I think like
Speaker 4: reminders is where it's at, and the idea that we're
Speaker 4: going to sort of plug this in and never need
Speaker 4: reminding again is not true.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I think obviously there are specific problems that you wouldn't
Speaker 4: wish on anybody, and you know, plenty of problems I'm
Speaker 4: incredibly privileged and lucky not to have in my life.
Speaker 4: But the sheer fact of having problems per se cannot be,
Speaker 4: when you think about it in detail, a bad thing.
Speaker 3: You're never going to get to a.
Speaker 4: Point where there are no problems in your life, and
Speaker 4: you wouldn't want to because a problem is just something
Speaker 4: that demands your attention, and a world in which nothing
Speaker 4: demanded your attention would be kind of.
Speaker 3: Nightmarish in a way.
Speaker 4: A good example in the job context, you know, is,
Speaker 4: like I mentioned in that book, a friend of mine
Speaker 4: who sort of was really have this sort of epiphany,
Speaker 4: getting very annoyed with all the problems she had to
Speaker 4: be encountering in her job, and thinking how well she
Speaker 4: could do her job if it wasn't for all these problems,
Speaker 4: and then suddenly just being struck by the realization that no,
Speaker 4: the problems were the job like that was why she
Speaker 4: was hired into the position in question, because she could
Speaker 4: deal with these problems. If you're in a job that
Speaker 4: can be complete routinized into problem free steps, I would
Speaker 4: have thought, you know, especially these days, that that job
Speaker 4: is maybe not not long for this world. It's the
Speaker 4: most sort of easily automate, automatable thing in the world.
Speaker 4: So actually sort of humanly confronting problems, especially sort of
Speaker 4: interpersonal problems, the things that we get so annoyed with
Speaker 4: having to deal with day and day out, it kind
Speaker 4: of is life.
Speaker 1: Well, you see, that's the thing. My attitude changed. I
Speaker 1: felt like I was wearing a bit of a I
Speaker 1: don't know, problem solving k class. I love that that
Speaker 1: problem sold.
Speaker 2: And then you go and now it's ten, and I'm
Speaker 2: done for the day. I've got to ten, I am, and
Speaker 2: I've solved enough for today. Do I really need to
Speaker 2: do anything else problems today? I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of things, Oliver, that pull us in all lots of
Speaker 2: different directions. We've got lots of distractions everywhere too. And
Speaker 2: you mentioned that the natural state of mind is to
Speaker 2: bounce gently around, which creates a lovely image. It's a
Speaker 2: very endearing notion. So maybe we shouldn't seccate on controlling
Speaker 2: our week, the day, or even the hour in front
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 4: This question is such a fraught one for me, because, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm definitely someone who, historically speaking anyway, you know, has
Speaker 4: often wanted to try to kind of schedule my day
Speaker 4: down to the moment and then within a certain time
Speaker 4: period that I've allocated to some piece of work, to
Speaker 4: have kind of relentless focus in that time and be
Speaker 4: completely undistractable. And in various chapters of this book, I'm
Speaker 4: sort of exploring the idea firstly that there are limitations
Speaker 4: to how much we could ever expect to achieve this
Speaker 4: level of control, but also that it's kind of right,
Speaker 4: it's not the most effective way to live. Human attention, naturally,
Speaker 4: is not something that has this kind of quality of
Speaker 4: being absolutely focused. And then it's only because of pesky
Speaker 4: digital devices that anything ever interrupted. Actually it has this
Speaker 4: kind of, as you say, some gentle flowing motion from
Speaker 4: one thing to another. And then when it comes to
Speaker 4: scheduling the day, I mean, it's so easy to create
Speaker 4: more disruption to your day by trying to control it
Speaker 4: too much. Example, I given the book. You know, if
Speaker 4: I'm working at home one afternoon and it's not my
Speaker 4: day for school pickup, and I'm working, and my wife
Speaker 4: and my son are somewhere else in their house, and
Speaker 4: my son sort of bursts in to tell me excitedly
Speaker 4: about something he's done at school that day, that's.
Speaker 3: A wonderful thing. And if I'm following some.
Speaker 4: Productivity system that has said that four till six is
Speaker 4: a deep focused time and therefore this is a terrible interruption,
Speaker 4: and I've just turned it into a problem by trying
Speaker 4: to exert more control than I really should over my day.
Speaker 3: I have just actively.
Speaker 4: Turned an instance of serendipity into something that's gone wrong
Speaker 4: with my day. I think this is an unfortunate way
Speaker 4: to live.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the little things, and at least on
Speaker 2: the pod cast, today's journalist and author Oliver Berkman talking
Speaker 2: about his fabulous book, Meditations for Mortals, we'll be back
Speaker 2: after the break.
Speaker 1: We've talked about distractions. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: I've noticed myself repeating on the mostly on the most
Speaker 1: least decisive of my children, is that the only thing
Speaker 1: that they need consider is the consequence of their decision
Speaker 1: or of not making a decision. I found this concept
Speaker 1: particularly engaging because it's kind of like the reverse of
Speaker 1: what I've probably been doing for the first fifty years
Speaker 1: of my life.
Speaker 3: Can you explain the club?
Speaker 1: Explain their little more for our listeners.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So in this chapter, in all these chapters, I'm
Speaker 4: sort of starting off with a quote from somebody else
Speaker 4: that really sort of shifted my perspective, And in this case,
Speaker 4: it's from a therapist called Sheldon cop who very memorably wrote,
Speaker 4: You're free to do whatever you like, you need only
Speaker 4: face the consequences. The way I think about this is
Speaker 4: you know, any decision that we make in life, any
Speaker 4: direction we choose to go, has downsides. Right, there's no
Speaker 4: situation when you're trying to deal with some sort of
Speaker 4: significant moment in your life, a career, choice, relationship issue,
Speaker 4: whatever it is, where the choice you make won't have
Speaker 4: a downside. The only question you have to deal with
Speaker 4: is like, which downside you're willing to shoulder and take
Speaker 4: responsibility for which price you're willing to pay. A lot
Speaker 4: of us, I think, get mired in kind of paralyzing
Speaker 4: indecision for very long period of time because what we've
Speaker 4: secretly are looking for is a way to make the
Speaker 4: decision without negative consequences. So either we tell ourselves that
Speaker 4: we don't have any freedom of choice. We've just got
Speaker 4: to do things a certain way and we've just got
Speaker 4: to do it and it's not.
Speaker 3: Up to us.
Speaker 4: Or we sort of tell ourselves that we ought to
Speaker 4: be able to make these choices in a consequence free
Speaker 4: way and we resent the idea that there's going to
Speaker 4: be downsides to them. But actually it's neither of these, right,
Speaker 4: It's just that it's just that you move through life
Speaker 4: and you make decisions.
Speaker 3: And there are upsides and downsides to each one.
Speaker 4: So on a I give some examples in the book
Speaker 4: of sort of momentous decisions, leaving marriages, things like this,
Speaker 4: But just on a very down to earth level, if
Speaker 4: you have a certain amount of flexibility of your working day,
Speaker 4: you might have the choice of continuing to spend another
Speaker 4: hour answering emails between six and seven pm, or going
Speaker 4: home and spending more time with your family between six
Speaker 4: and seven pm. And it's not that there's a right answer, right.
Speaker 4: There could be phases in your career and aspects of
Speaker 4: your job where actually it was worth staying and answering
Speaker 4: emails and sacrificing that other time with your family. But
Speaker 4: it's incredibly useful to see that, like that's the trade off,
Speaker 4: and all you're doing is deciding which trade off to make.
Speaker 4: You're not there's no point sort of beating yourself up
Speaker 4: and not being able to be in two places at once.
Speaker 4: There's no secret system that you just haven't discovered yet
Speaker 4: for managing to eliminate the disadvantages of a choice you make.
Speaker 4: It's just that we just navigate through life choosing which
Speaker 4: downsides to.
Speaker 3: Accept. And when I can convey this.
Speaker 4: Way, I don't know if I've done it, that's not
Speaker 4: for me to say, but like, there's something really freeing
Speaker 4: about this. This is like no longer being free from
Speaker 4: the constraints of reality, but being free in the constraints
Speaker 4: of reality, which I find really really powerful.
Speaker 1: Definitely, And I think I wonder though, if it is
Speaker 1: a little bit like when you practice mindfulness. And I
Speaker 1: remember my teacher saying it's a muscle, just keep practicing it.
Speaker 1: And I think that there might be one that the
Speaker 1: more you do it and the more you reflect on it,
Speaker 1: but not overly, but you know, consider that, consider that
Speaker 1: you are just making a choice between one or two
Speaker 1: or even three options in front of you, that you
Speaker 1: get better at doing it. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean I think so.
Speaker 4: And I think one of the things that happens that's
Speaker 4: very useful, especially for sort of inveterate people pleasers, you know,
Speaker 4: is you get a lot of feedback, right you take
Speaker 4: an action, and in fact, the sky doesn't fall in.
Speaker 4: You do something that's going to annoy somebody because you've
Speaker 4: got to choose one of two people to annoy in
Speaker 4: a certain context, and you.
Speaker 3: Know it's okay, and they're less annoyed than you.
Speaker 4: Thought or their annoyance doesn't sort of cause you a
Speaker 4: huge disadvantage. So again and again, if you sort of
Speaker 4: can act in this way, you get quicker feedback from
Speaker 4: the world that it's okay in that sense.
Speaker 3: Certainly, I think you get better, and.
Speaker 2: You're also not wasting energy and stressing about trying to
Speaker 2: justify your decisions.
Speaker 1: That's right or wasting someone else's.
Speaker 3: Time right, absolutely, I mean completely.
Speaker 4: And the sort of the irony of a lot of
Speaker 4: this is that the efforts we go to to avoid
Speaker 4: making anybody cross with us or to avoid causing anybody
Speaker 4: pain often just end up causing more of that annoyance
Speaker 4: or pain than being more decisive about it would have done.
Speaker 1: I've definitely said to people, if you can't do this,
Speaker 1: just tell me no. And it's more this year than
Speaker 1: any other year.
Speaker 2: A lot of something that I really took out of
Speaker 2: the book very early on is the idea of just
Speaker 2: doing and I this was absolutely fantastic for me. It
Speaker 2: was it was it was stop thinking about things, stop
Speaker 2: planning to do something, stop researching doing something, just actually
Speaker 2: stop and do something. I mean, this is it's such
Speaker 2: an easy thing for us to incorporate into our lives
Speaker 2: that concept.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I think it's on another level. It's difficult
Speaker 4: because what we commonly want to do are the kinds
Speaker 4: of things that make us feel more in control of
Speaker 4: the situation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We want to educate ourselves or get the system up
Speaker 4: and running, or buy the special equipment or whatever. All
Speaker 4: these things have in common is that, like they're all
Speaker 4: about feeling more and more and more in control, whereas
Speaker 4: actually just doing something for ten minutes today, actually just
Speaker 4: going for a run, or actually just sitting down and meditating,
Speaker 4: or actually having a go at writing the thing you've
Speaker 4: been wanting to write, or making the call, whatever it is,
Speaker 4: that requires some surrender of control. Right, that's the opposite
Speaker 4: of trying to get into a place of control. It's
Speaker 4: actually sort of a leap of faith. So yeah, I
Speaker 4: sometimes have done, you know, interviews or events where people
Speaker 4: say like, Okay, what's one thing that we could do
Speaker 4: today to really sort of live in this way? And
Speaker 4: the secret agenda is really, what's one technique we could
Speaker 4: practice every day, or what's one thing we could incorporate
Speaker 4: into our morning routine or something like that. And I
Speaker 4: try to sort of forestall that and say, like the
Speaker 4: one thing you could do today is just like ten
Speaker 4: minutes of the one thing that you know would make
Speaker 4: your life a bit more vibrant, you know, creative practice,
Speaker 4: nurturing a relationship, being out in nature, whatever it is,
Speaker 4: and to find a way to do it, however badly,
Speaker 4: and with however little confidence that you're going to do
Speaker 4: it every day for the rest of your life or
Speaker 4: anything like that, to find a way to do it today.
Speaker 3: So, you know, pick a cliched case. If it is
Speaker 3: just like.
Speaker 4: Wanting to be in nature, it's like finding ten minutes
Speaker 4: to go to the tiny park at the end of
Speaker 4: the street today, much more than it is like getting
Speaker 4: ready for the big trip into the wilderness in six
Speaker 4: months time. I mean, I tend to feel that where
Speaker 4: you are there's sort of astonishing wilderness just just down
Speaker 4: the street.
Speaker 3: So maybe the analogy doesn't work. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh, we get out to the wilderness most Saturday mornings,
Speaker 1: don't We can do. And that's another that's a perfect example.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to go early for other responsibility
Speaker 1: in your days, but we just get up and we
Speaker 1: do it and coming up whilst we do it, and
Speaker 1: we're chatting and we're in nature and it's all good
Speaker 1: and I'm always going on how it could be anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world. So yeah, that doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: the big trip in the wilderness. Six months and a
Speaker 1: year down the line.
Speaker 2: Love the chapter twe on minding your own business. That's
Speaker 2: one I also felt like was a really easy one.
Speaker 2: But maybe we're not quite so good at doing this,
Speaker 2: you know, Will you advise us to allow other people
Speaker 2: the problems?
Speaker 3: I think it's incredibly easy.
Speaker 4: We're talking just before about, you know, bearing the consequences
Speaker 4: of choices, and I think there's a very common behavior
Speaker 4: I've certainly suffered plenty from it that says, well, okay,
Speaker 4: that might be okay so far as it goes. But
Speaker 4: the one thing that I can't ever do is risk
Speaker 4: making people cross with me, or risk disappointing people, and
Speaker 4: this leads to all sorts of you know, it's a
Speaker 4: very stressful way to live.
Speaker 3: It also doesn't even please people.
Speaker 4: Pleasing doesn't actually please people because they get annoyed with
Speaker 4: you're not giving them straight answers to questions or saying
Speaker 4: so know when they can't do something, as you just reference,
Speaker 4: And I think it can be incredibly useful to understand
Speaker 4: that you know other people's emotional responses to the things
Speaker 4: you do or don't do are ultimately their business and
Speaker 4: their problem. This doesn't need to mean that you don't
Speaker 4: care about how people close to you are feeling, or
Speaker 4: that you don't you can just sort of go through
Speaker 4: life being a huge jerk and making people feel terrible
Speaker 4: and saying that's not my problem. But it does mean that,
Speaker 4: like the risk of displeasing somebody is not some kind
Speaker 4: of like joker card that instantly means you can never,
Speaker 4: never do that. It's got to displace all other considerations.
Speaker 4: It's just one more thing to be weighed in the balance.
Speaker 3: And you know, to.
Speaker 4: Pick a another cliched example, like if there's an email
Speaker 4: from the boss in your inbox and you're wondering whether
Speaker 4: to reply to it now or to go and do
Speaker 4: something more fun and reply to it later, Like there
Speaker 4: are contexts where not making your boss impatient with you
Speaker 4: could be the right strategy for you, and there are
Speaker 4: context where it might be the sacrifice you were willing
Speaker 4: to make, and it will depend on everyone's individual position.
Speaker 4: But that kind of weighing things in the balance about
Speaker 4: disappointing people, letting people down, not meeting expectations of parents
Speaker 4: or internalized parents or whatever. Very different to look at
Speaker 4: it as something to be weighed in the balance than
Speaker 4: it is to just think of like I've got to
Speaker 4: go through life making sure that nobody has ever cross
Speaker 4: with me about anything, which is completely impossible. It's trying
Speaker 4: to do somebody else's job, really, the regulation of their emotions.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I think I don't know whether or
Speaker 1: not we're more guilty of it as we age, but
Speaker 1: I think, certainly from a middle aged woman's point of view,
Speaker 1: that can be something we get tripped up on. Another
Speaker 1: thing that we women. And actually everybody I've talked about
Speaker 1: this with the mean of my life too, they met
Speaker 1: that they sometimes have imposter syndrome. I mean, why is
Speaker 1: it that imposter syndrome is a real waste of out time,
Speaker 1: isn't it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, although in a way that might not be immediately evident.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is part of the idea that I
Speaker 4: keep coming back to in this book, is that there's
Speaker 4: a lot of liberation in seeing the ways in which
Speaker 4: the human condition is worse than you thought. If you
Speaker 4: think that getting on top of your to do list
Speaker 4: is really difficult.
Speaker 3: You're going to spend all your life struggling to do it.
Speaker 4: But if you see that it's actually impossible because the
Speaker 4: inputs into it are sort of basically infinite, then suddenly
Speaker 4: that's not so awful because it's not even on the table.
Speaker 4: An imposter syndrome works a little bit like this too.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: Implicit in imposter syndrome is the idea that, like, if
Speaker 4: you get a lot more experience thunder your belt, or
Speaker 4: if you changed your personality in some way, or if
Speaker 4: you learned all the right skills, you two could finally
Speaker 4: reach this place of being as confident in what you're
Speaker 4: doing as all the people surrounding you. But there's great
Speaker 4: liberations saying that it's actually worse than that, right, that
Speaker 4: you're never going to feel ready to laun to do
Speaker 4: sort of new life chapters or new projects in life,
Speaker 4: because by definition they're new, right, and you can't be
Speaker 4: ready for them. All the people you think are confident
Speaker 4: are just a little bit better at hiding it, or
Speaker 4: a little bit better more reconciled to the fact that,
Speaker 4: like everybody is winging it all the time. So the
Speaker 4: answer to imposter syndrome, if you do it if you follow.
Speaker 4: The general outlook of this book is not that you
Speaker 4: should sort of tell yourself that actually you know exactly
Speaker 4: what you're doing, but that you should see that kind
Speaker 4: of nobody knows what they're doing, and that that is
Speaker 4: a very very good reason not to wait until you
Speaker 4: feel like you know what you're doing to make sort
Speaker 4: of bold, ambitious moves in your life, but to make
Speaker 4: them now, because why wouldn't you.
Speaker 1: Francis has been in the media for your whole career.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for a couple of years. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't ever have started. I mean, she does know what
Speaker 1: she's doing, so that is good. But it's been really
Speaker 1: fun for me and it's soon me something though that
Speaker 1: I at the beginning was like, oh, I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing this, you know, And it's crazy because I felt
Speaker 1: like I had something tough and me personally, I was
Speaker 1: just experimenting with all of the great advice.
Speaker 2: We're getting to prove my life you belong to wse Oliver. Finally,
Speaker 2: how might we choose to live in the easy world?
Speaker 3: I think that.
Speaker 4: For a lot of people, including me, there is this
Speaker 4: kind of conditioned assumption from childhood, from the culture wherever
Speaker 4: that if something is meaningful and work doing, then it's
Speaker 4: going to be grueling and take a lot of effort.
Speaker 3: And sort of be a big challenge.
Speaker 4: And if it isn't, when maybe you didn't do it
Speaker 4: properly or you made the wrong choice about what to do.
Speaker 4: There's an even worse flip side to this, which is
Speaker 4: like the idea that if something was effortful, then it
Speaker 4: must have been meaningful.
Speaker 3: Right if you spend the whole.
Speaker 4: Day like exhausting yourself and busy work, then that must
Speaker 4: have been a good thing to do. So it's actually
Speaker 4: quite a challenge for such people to consider the possibility
Speaker 4: that something they're preparing to do might actually be easier
Speaker 4: than they are, assuming that it might be possible to
Speaker 4: approach a lot of life in a greater spirit of
Speaker 4: ease than you might think. And that idea of easy
Speaker 4: world comes from an old book by a writer called
Speaker 4: Julia Rodgers Hamrick called Choosing Easy World, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: at first I didn't think was going to be my
Speaker 4: kind of book. Is a little bit sort of new agey,
Speaker 4: I suppose, but she argues that she makes the case
Speaker 4: for sort of telling sort of moving into each new
Speaker 4: challenge in life by saying to yourself, I choose to
Speaker 4: live an easy world where everything is easy. And I
Speaker 4: sort of chuckled in a hopefully not too hostile away
Speaker 4: when I first came across this thought, but then I
Speaker 4: kept encountering it in other places as well, and I
Speaker 4: went back to that original book, and there's actually something
Speaker 4: really powerful about this idea of just sort of deciding
Speaker 4: to move into experiences and move into the next moment
Speaker 4: in the expectation of ease. And it even turns out
Speaker 4: that difficult experiences because I'm not claiming that there are
Speaker 4: no difficult experiences, but like even those go a bit
Speaker 4: better when you're moving into them with this sense of ease.
Speaker 4: I think there is something in our sort of desire
Speaker 4: to control experience that really really ends up kind of
Speaker 4: moving into each new moment race for a fight. And
Speaker 4: the analogy I give in the book is like, you know,
Speaker 4: if you go up to somebody at a bar looking
Speaker 4: for a fight, like you get a fight, right, even
Speaker 4: if they had no intention of that in the first place.
Speaker 3: And if you move into.
Speaker 4: Reality being like, Okay, I'm going to have to really
Speaker 4: pummel the day to get my to get my things done.
Speaker 4: There seems to be a sense in which like that's
Speaker 4: what you'll get, and it's very educational to sort of
Speaker 4: move through the day doing things that feel easy, or
Speaker 4: going through with the minispirit of ease. People get worried
Speaker 4: that they're going to sail to do all the things
Speaker 4: that really matter if they just take this attitude, But
Speaker 4: it's not what happens. Like, you don't secretly want to
Speaker 4: just do nothing. You secretly want to do the important things.
Speaker 1: And I don't. I don't think it means that you'll
Speaker 1: be horribly surprised if something's harder than easy. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 4: It's no, it's much right, it's much more sort of
Speaker 4: a bodily kind of Yeah. It's braced is the word
Speaker 4: I keep coming up again. It's like it's just not
Speaker 4: moving through life braced against life.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean that there isn't going to be pain
Speaker 3: and suffering in it. It just means.
Speaker 4: That you're not going to be sort of working on
Speaker 4: the assumption that anything worth doing is deeply unpleasant.
Speaker 1: I also too, I have I don't know about you, Francis,
Speaker 1: but really really enjoyed all the quotes at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the chapters. They set them up beautifully and also
Speaker 1: just shows the amount of research that you did too
Speaker 1: to help us with these daily intentions.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yes, no, those quotes were I mean, I just collect
Speaker 4: these things, like I don't know what the right similar
Speaker 4: is there, but anyway, I collect a lot of them
Speaker 4: and come back and back to them because they really
Speaker 4: are great for sort of shifting refreshing my perspective.
Speaker 2: Oliver, thank you so much. Thank you for the book.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your time, because I know that you're
Speaker 2: in very high demand all around the world. We really
Speaker 2: really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us
Speaker 2: here at the Little Things.
Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: Where would you like to start, Louise, Well, I think
Speaker 1: I said to you when I gave my dad this
Speaker 1: book that he said to me. He read it and said,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been telling you this your whole life.
Speaker 1: He has a saying, don't have too many expectations and
Speaker 1: you'll never be disappointed. And I used to take the
Speaker 1: negative side of that, or.
Speaker 2: My mother was ninety five percent of life is all anticipation.
Speaker 1: Oh god, a completely opposite. That's gorgeous. So what I
Speaker 1: really like and I to really want people to take
Speaker 1: away is that is that very same thing that he
Speaker 1: said we've talked about at the artset of the interview,
Speaker 1: was that this is not telling you not to have expectations.
Speaker 1: This is not telling you to live a quiet life,
Speaker 1: will not have any ambition. It's trying to sort of
Speaker 1: harness that we are finite and we best will use
Speaker 1: our time wisely, happily, joyfully.
Speaker 2: And that life is messy and we're all going to
Speaker 2: have problems, and the world's going to have problems, and
Speaker 2: there needs to be a level of acceptance in that
Speaker 2: and finding that boundary as to what you take on
Speaker 2: and what you don't do. You know what, I was
Speaker 2: too embarrassed to tell him, what's that When we were
Speaker 2: talking about how I just loved this whole idea of doing,
Speaker 2: not thinking about or preparing and things like that. The
Speaker 2: revelation I actually had was I thought I was doing
Speaker 2: when I was doing the prep and thinking about it
Speaker 2: and reading the book and mapping out the run and
Speaker 2: things like that, as opposed I thought I was doing,
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm just procrastinating. So it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: that's lovely frinches get you spend all this time finding
Speaker 2: all these lovely walks and runs to do around a
Speaker 2: Actually just pack up your shoes, get in the cat,
Speaker 2: drive to a bit of abortion, and go for running,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So that was the funniest
Speaker 2: thing for me. It was like, oh, you know, I
Speaker 2: just I thought I was doing. That was the revelation.
Speaker 2: Well it's different.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. I think we're all guilty sometimes
Speaker 1: of sitting s the goal and then and then somehow
Speaker 1: magically thinking we're going to reach that goal. And that's
Speaker 1: what I mean about the not doing the PhD or
Speaker 1: the iron man. It's like, oh, I even set that goal,
Speaker 1: I'm not prepared to do what I'd have to do
Speaker 1: just to get to that goal. I'm prepared to do
Speaker 1: a lot of other things, but I'm not prepared to
Speaker 1: do the things that would get me that goal. So
Speaker 1: just be real about it. Doesn't mean I'm a loser.
Speaker 1: I do lots of other great things.
Speaker 2: You're not a looper. You're not a loser, Louise. I
Speaker 2: love the way you go from one extreme to the other.
Speaker 2: I'm either going to be that, so I'm going to
Speaker 2: be a loser. No, that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: No, No, oli Us taught me that it's all good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the great thing about his book is and
Speaker 2: this is what I really want to get across people.
Speaker 2: It is something And I do this all the time.
Speaker 2: You know, I read it because I actually interviewed him
Speaker 2: on the Sunday Session a while ago. But now I
Speaker 2: just pick up I just pick it up and read
Speaker 2: a chapter just randomly one day and go, I shouldn't
Speaker 2: have to think about that this week. It's nice.
Speaker 1: And we had a quick chat with him after we
Speaker 1: spoke to him, and I would not say you don't
Speaker 1: have to go out and buy this book for your
Speaker 1: teenage and think it's going to change their life. Maybe
Speaker 1: leave it lying around Live by example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you can't tell teenagers anything, right, They have
Speaker 2: to stumble across these things on their own.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: But every time I read a list and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: one of my kids would really benefit from that. But
Speaker 1: I do think living by example is the best thing
Speaker 1: you can do. I think you're absolutely right most of
Speaker 1: the time. Louise, thank you for joining us on our
Speaker 1: New Zealand Herald podcast series Little Things We Hope You
Speaker 1: Share this podcast with the women in your life so
Speaker 1: we can all just chill the fuck out. You can
Speaker 1: follow this podcast on iHeartRadio or where either you get
Speaker 1: the podcasts. And for more on this and other topics,
Speaker 1: head to insiet Harold dot co dot
Speaker 2: Inset, and we'll get you next time on the Little
Speaker 2: Things