Speaker 1: Thanks for downloading the show. It's better than yesterday. Useful tools,
Speaker 1: useful conversations here to make your day to day better
Speaker 1: than yesterday. Every week since twenty thirteen. My name Josha Ginsburg.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're here. Every morning usually starts about the same.
Speaker 1: I shuffle out of bed, flick on the expresso machine.
Speaker 1: Have we grind my beans as I wait for the
Speaker 1: thing to heat up, which is good because my feet
Speaker 1: are cold on the kitchen floor. Flick open a news
Speaker 1: app the other day, as I'm grinding my beans, thinking
Speaker 1: about my cold feet, I read in very bold font
Speaker 1: us attacks Iran Now like you probably did. I had
Speaker 1: quite a physical reaction to this because I know that
Speaker 1: as a world, as a planet, we don't really come
Speaker 1: back from something like that easily. The last three years
Speaker 1: or so, though, has been a steadily escalating level of
Speaker 1: chaos in our news feeds, no matter where we look
Speaker 1: or try not to look, And depending on your algorithm,
Speaker 1: you're getting a perspective on death and destruction, calamity and
Speaker 1: chaos and fire and flood and horror and more and
Speaker 1: more and more and more and more and more and more.
Speaker 1: It can be a lot. The other day chatting with
Speaker 1: Sally Gould. She's a paramedic who's written a book about
Speaker 1: her job and the things she's learned doing that job.
Speaker 1: She talks about keeping a bucket empty and that there's
Speaker 1: only really so much space between our ears for all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, and you've got to actively work
Speaker 1: to keep that bucket empty, and that is really important.
Speaker 1: So the other day when a friend of mine who
Speaker 1: lives in Africa, she's Dutch, she lives out of there,
Speaker 1: she reached out to me the other day It's gone,
Speaker 1: how the fuck am I supposed to handle all of
Speaker 1: this at the same time as raising my door? I
Speaker 1: love to a voice note, but I thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: this might actually be useful. That's what I want to
Speaker 1: talk about today. Right after the break gooda, thanks for
Speaker 1: being here. Just really quickly. We have a live show
Speaker 1: coming up on the sixth of July. Phil O'Neil, Mary Watt's,
Speaker 1: Marley Silver, Nadia Townsend, Zoe Don't Lodge and myself will
Speaker 1: be telling stories at story Club. It's a live comedy
Speaker 1: storytelling show. We do it once a month, six point
Speaker 1: thirty on the sixth of July. Tickets are in the
Speaker 1: show notes it's a super fun show. It's really really great.
Speaker 1: I'd love you to be there. There's also a substack
Speaker 1: for that as well as that. In the show notes,
Speaker 1: there is a link where you can pre order my
Speaker 1: new book, So What Now What, illustrated by Campbell Walker,
Speaker 1: also Not as Truthless. It's an incredibly powerful book, and
Speaker 1: there's a little bit from that book. I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about today because I got a text
Speaker 1: the other day from my friend she lives in Africa, Osha,
Speaker 1: how are you are you finding ways to saying these days?
Speaker 1: It's all such a mess? And she and I kind
Speaker 1: of had a bit of a back and forth, mostly
Speaker 1: voice notes and stuff, But the core of what I
Speaker 1: was telling her is that, look, it takes work. It
Speaker 1: takes work to say sane in these days and ages,
Speaker 1: this day and age, these days and ages. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the grammatically correct way of saying this, but
Speaker 1: at the core of it is a willingness to be
Speaker 1: with how messy things are and still go about your
Speaker 1: day in alignment with what you value. You can notice
Speaker 1: those emotions, you can still enjoy the delicious cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: the call of a bird in the morning, the smile
Speaker 1: of your child, because when I was really, really sick,
Speaker 1: I know what it feels like. When I was really sick,
Speaker 1: I couldn't hear the giggle of a child. Or I could,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't do anything to me. I couldn't see
Speaker 1: an azua blue sky just peerless and just piercing. I
Speaker 1: couldn't notice the beauty of nature and physics and symmetry
Speaker 1: that exists in a flower. I couldn't appreciate how incredible
Speaker 1: each of those things is because I had such a global,
Speaker 1: catastrophic sandbag of doom stuck on my brain with just
Speaker 1: like ruminating anxiety and terrifying paranoid delusions. It was fucked.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be that bad, though, because there's
Speaker 1: a bit of a trap rolling around, And so I
Speaker 1: was telling my friend, there's a bit of oh, how
Speaker 1: can you blank when children in blank ah blank every
Speaker 1: single day, And that's a bit of a trap, and
Speaker 1: I would advise you to not fall into it, because
Speaker 1: there is a space to grieve the horror of the world,
Speaker 1: the horror of war, the horror of starvation, the horror
Speaker 1: of inequality, and there's also space to connect with the
Speaker 1: world around you and enjoy delight and joy in your
Speaker 1: actual life, the life you can touch, not the far
Speaker 1: away life that people are upset at you because you're
Speaker 1: not being upset. Because I think that is bullshit. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm done with that. It's a lie. It's a trap,
Speaker 1: and I don't like that. I don't like this trap
Speaker 1: because it does feel it's got a controlling element to it.
Speaker 1: I kind of need to model it over a bit more.
Speaker 1: But this is what I was telling my friend. It
Speaker 1: feels a bit controlling, a bit. No, no, no, you
Speaker 1: have to be upset and mad and sad or outraged
Speaker 1: at this thing, and if you don't, you are just
Speaker 1: as bad as those people over there. That's fucking bullshit.
Speaker 1: Don't fall for it. We can feel sad, we can grieve,
Speaker 1: we can be present to enormous tragedy, horror, sadness, unfairness, inequality,
Speaker 1: and we can also giggle and enjoy the sound of
Speaker 1: a rainbow lorikeet twiddling by. It's not a zero sum
Speaker 1: game to be able to hear the giggle of a
Speaker 1: child enjoying something and feel that joy. Because you can
Speaker 1: feel that joy, that does not mean that you do
Speaker 1: not care and feel sad and grieve and be aghast
Speaker 1: at the horror of the tragedy of a stranger's child
Speaker 1: who is suffering on the other side of the world.
Speaker 1: You can have both of those things. I've been a
Speaker 1: funerals where people laugh their ass off at the same
Speaker 1: time as having just buried their child. As humans, we
Speaker 1: have the capacity to do both. We can do both,
Speaker 1: and it's okay to do both. And you're not betraying
Speaker 1: one or the other by doing both because we can
Speaker 1: do both. So don't believe that bullshit, all right, don't
Speaker 1: fall into that trap, because it's just going to rob
Speaker 1: your life of fucking joy. To be honest, what good
Speaker 1: are you to anybody if you get stuck in that place.
Speaker 1: If you get stuck there and your kids like, come on,
Speaker 1: let's do this thing, or your partner's like, come on,
Speaker 1: let's do this thing, and you're like, but I can't.
Speaker 1: I've got to read and scroll more about this horrible thing,
Speaker 1: because if I'm dit, I'm going to be and people
Speaker 1: looking upset at me that I like, fuck off. You
Speaker 1: can be upset and sad about one thing and still
Speaker 1: connect with other people with joy and happiness and enjoy
Speaker 1: watching the football team when or your kid dance or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if that position sounds familiar to you and you
Speaker 1: find yourself stuck there, how do you get out of
Speaker 1: that spot? Well, I'll take a leaf out of my
Speaker 1: new book and I'll chat to you about it in
Speaker 1: just to mate. So, what's a way that you can
Speaker 1: get unstuck when you're trapped in a spot where staying
Speaker 1: sane and trying not to be crushed by all the
Speaker 1: negativity in the world is staying to feel beyond your reach. Well,
Speaker 1: it starts by understanding the part of your brain that
Speaker 1: is trapping you there, and then using that part of
Speaker 1: your brain and the thing that it does very well
Speaker 1: to help you get back out of the hole that
Speaker 1: you're in. Let me explain. So, our brains evolved to
Speaker 1: survive in a world where avoiding death was the priority.
Speaker 1: You and me and everyone you know. We are pretty
Speaker 1: much identical to fossils found three hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Nothing really has changed about us. We are exactly the
Speaker 1: same as these human beings that lived, and so when
Speaker 1: we have this fight or flight thing, it's a very
Speaker 1: valid evolutionary response because unlike your appendix, or if you're
Speaker 1: a man, your nipples fight or flight was really important,
Speaker 1: and it kept us alive. We evolved in a time
Speaker 1: where death was all around us every day, not just
Speaker 1: from other humans who wanted our food as shelter, but
Speaker 1: creatures that would stalk the earth, that would eat us alive.
Speaker 1: Not just saber tooth tigers, but all kinds of horrific,
Speaker 1: bloody beasts. Not just that there was no CPR, there's
Speaker 1: no antibiotics. A cut could kill you dead, all right.
Speaker 1: We as humans evolved with everyone around us dying horribly
Speaker 1: all the time, so we were rightly quite averse to
Speaker 1: that happening to us, and anything that might possibly give
Speaker 1: us clues that this sort of thing was coming towards us,
Speaker 1: that a death was coming for us. We wanted to
Speaker 1: get out of there, all of us. We're all the
Speaker 1: descendants of the most jumpy and the most frightened of
Speaker 1: our ancestors. This evolutionary survival trait, this fire or flight thing,
Speaker 1: also gave us a wonderful gift, the negativity bias, which
Speaker 1: is the thing our brains do. It's really great for
Speaker 1: survival and it delivers fantastic results for reactionary news outlets
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Speaker 1: another victim with police powers to stop it. How you
Speaker 1: can protect yourself and your children. Next, here's an ad
Speaker 1: for some shit that you didn't realize you need until
Speaker 1: just now, But now that you know it's there, you
Speaker 1: can't sleep at night until you own it. It's a
Speaker 1: good business model, man. Here's how it works. The more
Speaker 1: we see terrible things happening, the more we get this
Speaker 1: false view that we live in a world where terrible
Speaker 1: things happen everywhere and all the time. But that is
Speaker 1: not actually true. Yes, it is true. The most awful
Speaker 1: things you could imagine are probably happening as we speak.
Speaker 1: And at the very same time, somewhere there is a
Speaker 1: basketful of labrador puppies making little cooing noises, waggling their
Speaker 1: tails because a little family of toddlers have just walked
Speaker 1: into the same room as them and they're starting to
Speaker 1: pick up these little puppies. Both of those things exist
Speaker 1: in our world at the same time, and they can
Speaker 1: exist at the same time, and they have to exist
Speaker 1: at the same time. Now, we shouldn't eliminate this negativity bias.
Speaker 1: It's quite useful. We do need to manage it, however,
Speaker 1: we need to manage it so we don't make poor
Speaker 1: decisions that are based in fear. But when that negativity
Speaker 1: bias is really hammering us, it can be almost impossible
Speaker 1: to see the beautiful things and the good things all
Speaker 1: around us. So when we start to believe that all
Speaker 1: the world is terrible, we become susceptible to a thing
Speaker 1: known as the frequency illusion. This is the idea that
Speaker 1: this is a bad thing, and that's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, there's bad things everywhere. Now you know
Speaker 1: the frequency illusion. There was a time where as far
Speaker 1: as you were concerned, there was no one anywhere on
Speaker 1: the street ever that ever walked anywhere with a stroller.
Speaker 1: And then you peed on a stick. There were two
Speaker 1: stripes on that stick. And now everywhere you look you
Speaker 1: are being stalked by the upper baby two point oh like.
Speaker 1: It's a terrifying monster from a Stephen King novel. It
Speaker 1: follows you everywhere. It's in every car park, over, every shoulder,
Speaker 1: every left and ctinema whatever. It's called a frequency illusion.
Speaker 1: Now we can deliberately exploit this thing. Abrain does this
Speaker 1: frequency illusion to get a brain to start to see
Speaker 1: more of the wonderful things around us and start to
Speaker 1: get things back in balance. And it's all got to
Speaker 1: do with getting lucky. And I'm not talking about the
Speaker 1: Pharrell Williams Daft Punk getting lucky. I'm talking about luck.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing I wrote about in the
Speaker 1: new book. So what now what? It's a very simple trick.
Speaker 1: I do it at nighttime when I put Wolfgang to bed.
Speaker 1: Just try to notice three times every day when you
Speaker 1: got lucky. I don't know, you caught a green light,
Speaker 1: you got an excellent casp Today, Audrey and I got
Speaker 1: a bang shotgun Rockstar park right in front of the
Speaker 1: Vinnie with us bootful of stuff. We did a big
Speaker 1: toy clean out. While Wolf is at school. He doesn't
Speaker 1: notice yet that the do blow's gone. Well that's fuck
Speaker 1: off park right in front, like amazing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You heard a moment where two magpies were having a
Speaker 1: conversation from two different trees. And there's beautiful melody in
Speaker 1: the morning, like little lucky moments like that, just beautiful moments.
Speaker 1: Just look for three. Find another person at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, tell them this is the three you know,
Speaker 1: ask him what three things happened to you? Here's three
Speaker 1: things happened for me is where I got lucky, because
Speaker 1: by starting to notice when things go well, we start
Speaker 1: to notice when things go well, and overtime, our experience
Speaker 1: of the world changes because when we get stuck in
Speaker 1: that negative version, oh my god, we just start to
Speaker 1: see how terrible the parking is, and how magpies are
Speaker 1: terrible and they swoop everywhere, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But to make it happen, you've got to do it regularly.
Speaker 1: And to do it regularly you need to make it
Speaker 1: a habit, which is why I do it. At night,
Speaker 1: when I'm putting Wolf to bed, I either ask him, Hey,
Speaker 1: what went well for you today? Or you know, did
Speaker 1: you get like you did? I got really lucky today.
Speaker 1: This happened. It was incredible. And by doing that every day,
Speaker 1: it starts to help remind us that, yes, while terrible
Speaker 1: things do happen in the world, I'm not saying they don't.
Speaker 1: They absolutely do. The world in itself is not all terrible.
Speaker 1: In the words of Hans Rosling from the brilliant book Factfulness,
Speaker 1: it's this great line, things are bad, but they're getting better.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that the bad parts are bad. They
Speaker 1: are bad, but it's not all bad. There's good everywhere,
Speaker 1: And that's the part that we can actually have some controlling,
Speaker 1: Because when there's everything bad and there's far away, you're
Speaker 1: looking on the telly, you're looking on your phone, and
Speaker 1: it's it's often very far away or not immediate to you,
Speaker 1: and it feels so uncontrollable and you can't do anything
Speaker 1: about it. The only part of all this that we
Speaker 1: can control is what we choose to put into the
Speaker 1: world around us, the immediate world we live in. Worrying
Speaker 1: about things we can't control and can get us caught
Speaker 1: in a loop that's very hard to get out of.
Speaker 1: What we can control is how much good we put
Speaker 1: into the world around us. Are we giving the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt to our spouse? Are we being kind
Speaker 1: making sure we're calm around our kids and trying to
Speaker 1: understand that the air they're tired, their brains are growing,
Speaker 1: they don't have any impulse control. Are we holding the
Speaker 1: door open for a stranger. Are we offering to grab
Speaker 1: a coffee for somebody when we're heading down the shops?
Speaker 1: Are we helping out the people around us because helping
Speaker 1: other humans and being kind to other people. That really
Speaker 1: is the only thing that we can control. It puts
Speaker 1: good into the world that we live in, that we
Speaker 1: exist in, and makes the world that we exist in
Speaker 1: a better place to be. And also it unlocks things
Speaker 1: inside us that make us feel good. Helping another human
Speaker 1: really is one of the only things that helps bring
Speaker 1: sustainable happiness. That's another wonderful evolutionary trait we are wired
Speaker 1: to connect. It's survival of the friendliest. In the words
Speaker 1: of Richker Brickman, like I said, I'm not saying terrible
Speaker 1: things in this world need be ignored. That's not the
Speaker 1: case at all. But I am saying it's no good
Speaker 1: to get caught in a trap of like cyclical morning
Speaker 1: and then feeling your pressured to write something a comment
Speaker 1: or a post or whatever, and you get stuck and
Speaker 1: like trying to one up yourself on how bad can
Speaker 1: you get and scratching that itch, and it's like ex
Speaker 1: mera and blur. It's a fucking trap. Man. You are
Speaker 1: capable of having something good and something hard in your
Speaker 1: brain at the same time. You are. You have the
Speaker 1: space inside of you. The more we practice it, the
Speaker 1: better we get at it. The better we get at it,
Speaker 1: the less the news can destroy us. And that's the
Speaker 1: long version of what I sent to my friend in
Speaker 1: a voice note far far away in Africa. I hope
Speaker 1: it was helpful. If you want to get that book,
Speaker 1: where a Little Better is from The Getting Lucky Trick,
Speaker 1: you can find the link in the show notes. If
Speaker 1: you want to come and hear me tell a story
Speaker 1: about my neighbors when I was fifteen, because that's the
Speaker 1: theme of our next Story Club show, Everybody Needs Good Neighbors,
Speaker 1: you can find that link in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1: Get on substack. If you need to email me, send
Speaker 1: us your email at gmail dot com. I'll see you
Speaker 1: back here on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.