Speaker 1: A lot of people wait to do things until they
Speaker 1: feel ready to do them, and that's something that I
Speaker 1: would urge people to try to break away from, because
Speaker 1: it's very rare that we ever feel ready. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Debbie Millman, and she's
Speaker 1: one of those guests where I kind of im pulling
Speaker 1: its strings to cram a bunch of what she's done
Speaker 1: into a single intro, so I'll say this. She's a writer, designer, educator, artist,
Speaker 1: brand consultant and host of the podcast Design Matters. Debbie
Speaker 1: was named one of the most Creative people in Business
Speaker 1: by Fast Company magazine and one of the most influential
Speaker 1: designers working today by Graphic Design USA. She's the author
Speaker 1: of seven books, and on this episode, we'll discuss her
Speaker 1: most recent book, Why Design Matters, Conversations with the World's
Speaker 1: Most Creative People. Hi, Debbie, Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric.
Speaker 1: It's just a complete on her to be here. It's
Speaker 1: such a pleasure to have you on. You know, years
Speaker 1: ago I interviewed Krista Tippett and I said to her
Speaker 1: it was a little bit like cooking for Julia Child's right,
Speaker 1: And I feel that way a little bit interviewing you,
Speaker 1: because you are so good at what you do. I
Speaker 1: respect your work so much. We'll be talking about your
Speaker 1: long career across a lot of things, will be talking
Speaker 1: about your latest book, which is called Why Design Matters.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 1: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there's two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second and
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents says, well, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Oh, I knew this question was coming. Well.
Speaker 1: I feel like my whole life has been a battle
Speaker 1: between the two wolves in many ways. Not that there's
Speaker 1: necessarily two wolves active inside me, but I think that
Speaker 1: there's two wolves active in everything in the world. And
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of early experiences with the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: And I think when you have a lot of early
Speaker 1: experiences with other people's bad wolves that need to sort
Speaker 1: of feed on your wolf, good or bad, it sets
Speaker 1: you up for an expectation that that wolf is always
Speaker 1: going to be coming after you in some ways, no
Speaker 1: matter how old you get. I think if those neural
Speaker 1: pathways have been set at a very early age to
Speaker 1: expect to be attacked, you're always living in that fear
Speaker 1: and in that sort of heavy duty PTSD. So a
Speaker 1: lot of my life has been a out trying to
Speaker 1: deconstruct that wolf, understand how and why that occurred, how
Speaker 1: to try to find the path to let some of
Speaker 1: that trauma go, and also try to be continually feeding
Speaker 1: the good wolf inside me so that my expectations of
Speaker 1: both myself and others lean towards that arc, towards justice
Speaker 1: and peace internally and externally. Yeah, it's a beautiful way
Speaker 1: to think of it. And it was the first time
Speaker 1: I actually really thought of that idea of someone else's
Speaker 1: bad wolf feeding on us, you know, because certainly your
Speaker 1: background as childhood sexual abuse in it. So I really
Speaker 1: love that you brought that up, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you a question about that. It is that the
Speaker 1: first time you admitted sort of to any group of
Speaker 1: people that you had this was on the Tim Ferris
Speaker 1: podcast and he basically asked you, you know, why is
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing with the Joyful Heart Foundation,
Speaker 1: you know, why does that make your life make sense?
Speaker 1: And you had a moment where you paused and you went,
Speaker 1: I can either be honest here share my truth, or
Speaker 1: I can continue to sort of keep this wall up.
Speaker 1: And you chose to jump out there. Now, if we
Speaker 1: were to make a movie of your life, that would
Speaker 1: be a big, significant moment. But what I'm curious about
Speaker 1: is what was happening behind the scenes before that that
Speaker 1: allowed you to get to that moment, Because those moments
Speaker 1: don't arrive out of nowhere. They arrive as a culmination
Speaker 1: of other things. And I'm kind of curious if you
Speaker 1: have any insight into kind of what got you to
Speaker 1: that point. You had to make a courageous step, for sure,
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of other courageous steps you
Speaker 1: must have made to get to that point. Such an
Speaker 1: astute question, Eric, and not surprising given your talents as
Speaker 1: an interviewer. You know, I think it was a slow
Speaker 1: process of shedding shame. I think that my work with
Speaker 1: both the Joyful Heart Foundation and prior to that, my
Speaker 1: work with a New More Movement gave me a bit
Speaker 1: more clarity in the dynamic that had occurred, as well
Speaker 1: as a lot of therapy over the decades. And one
Speaker 1: of the earlier positionings of the Joyful Heart Foundation was
Speaker 1: about shedding light on the darkness that creates the conditions
Speaker 1: for any type of sexual violence to be hidden or
Speaker 1: perpetrated and or and because I began to understand so
Speaker 1: much more about that, I began to have less shame
Speaker 1: about my own experiences. And at that moment in time,
Speaker 1: when Tim asked me, and Tim didn't prepare me for that,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a conversation about what I did or
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk about. Where long term friends. I
Speaker 1: completely trust him that. It's also why in that moment
Speaker 1: I chose to sort of walk into the question as
Speaker 1: opposed to retreat from it. It's not a live podcast.
Speaker 1: I could have said, Hey, Tim, you know I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about that, or I could have retreated
Speaker 1: without fear of him being upset with me or any
Speaker 1: kind of disappointment on his behalf. But in that moment,
Speaker 1: I just chose to walk into it. I think because
Speaker 1: in many ways it was sort of the opposite of
Speaker 1: a perfect store My had been working so hard on
Speaker 1: understanding how I'd gotten to that point. I was so
Speaker 1: proud of the work that I was doing to begin
Speaker 1: to eradicate sexual violence and the rape kit backlog, which
Speaker 1: is a lot of the work we were doing and
Speaker 1: continue to do with the Joyful Heart Foundation. I had
Speaker 1: been friends with Michikan at that point for several years
Speaker 1: and really felt that her work in this area was
Speaker 1: so important to the world that I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, I don't know that I would
Speaker 1: say that I wanted to talk about it with like
Speaker 1: big raw ra, like let's let's do this Tim, you know.
Speaker 1: But it was definitely something I think I had prepared
Speaker 1: a long time to be ready for, and that moment
Speaker 1: was a place where I could do it with trust
Speaker 1: in Tim, comfort in he would never harm me, we
Speaker 1: would never do anything too ever create a more opportunistic situation.
Speaker 1: You know. It just it felt safe there, It is
Speaker 1: right there. I just got to it. It felt safe
Speaker 1: and I felt cared for and I just walked into
Speaker 1: that moment with him. Yeah, and then that moment has
Speaker 1: turned into him sharing his experience with that and I mean,
Speaker 1: he's got such a big audience, the number of people
Speaker 1: that are helped, you know. And I just think it's
Speaker 1: so interesting how things sort of can start really small,
Speaker 1: that they can just ripple out in really beautiful and
Speaker 1: unexpected ways. And we don't know when we're healing ourselves
Speaker 1: or when we're trying to do good in the world.
Speaker 1: We don't know where it's going to go or what
Speaker 1: it's going to turn into. It's often very difficult to nict.
Speaker 1: This story is one where we can see very clearly
Speaker 1: how it happens. But I think that sort of goodness
Speaker 1: and healing encourage ripples out all the time. We just
Speaker 1: don't often get to see it in as clearer ways
Speaker 1: as we can in this situation. Yeah. Absolutely. I asked
Speaker 1: him if you'd be willing to write a full word
Speaker 1: to my book that's out now, not only because he's
Speaker 1: a dear friend, but also because he's had so much
Speaker 1: impact on my work and what I try to put
Speaker 1: out in the world. And the first line of it
Speaker 1: is that he's my brother from another mother, and I
Speaker 1: think that's so true, or my sister from another mr
Speaker 1: kind of thing. That we are siblings in so many ways,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of one of the unexpected gifts of
Speaker 1: my life and this work. So what do the words?
Speaker 1: Play me, bluff me, beat me, tease me, but please,
Speaker 1: oh please let me win? Mean So that is wow,
Speaker 1: you really did your research. I had to do it.
Speaker 1: You did it. It's you're known for startling people and
Speaker 1: making them laugh, and so I had to do it.
Speaker 1: He just did it. Yeah, I love that. So many
Speaker 1: many years ago I designed I was invited to design
Speaker 1: a deck of cards for deck Starter, and I had
Speaker 1: always wanted to do that and I had a blast
Speaker 1: doing it. I designed fifty four original cards. The reason
Speaker 1: it's fifty four and at fifty two is because I
Speaker 1: did the two jokers, which was the best part. So
Speaker 1: I did the backsides, the number sides of all the
Speaker 1: cards and the jokers. But the other side, the side
Speaker 1: that always faces people when you're playing, the side that
Speaker 1: they see, was one piece of art that I had
Speaker 1: to create across all fifty four cards. And so those
Speaker 1: are the words that I put on that other side.
Speaker 1: I created them out of felt letters and felt fabric,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't repeat them bade him the way you did,
Speaker 1: because you must have had it in front of you.
Speaker 1: I don't have in front of me. But I just
Speaker 1: thought it would be a play a double or triple
Speaker 1: on Tendra on all the ways you can engage with
Speaker 1: any game of cards that's competitive. And I had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun with that. And thank you for talking
Speaker 1: about that. I just designed another deck of cards, by
Speaker 1: the way, just just just just designed another deck of cards.
Speaker 1: And this is wonderful because it's sort of taking some
Speaker 1: of the conversation that we just had about Tim and
Speaker 1: now taking part of the conversation that we have about
Speaker 1: cards and a card deck. So I've had so many
Speaker 1: different opportunities to take what I also talked about on
Speaker 1: Tim's podcast, the tenuere plan that I had done with
Speaker 1: Milton Glazer. I've had a lot of different opportunities to
Speaker 1: sort of codify it into a book, and I never
Speaker 1: really wanted to do a self help book in that way,
Speaker 1: but Chronicle asked me if I'd be interested in doing
Speaker 1: a deck of cards with prompts that would allow people
Speaker 1: to write their own tenure plan. And so I'm just
Speaker 1: looking at the proofs of it now, and it's thirty
Speaker 1: cards and a tiny little journal and an instruction deck
Speaker 1: that all fit beautifully into a box of cards that
Speaker 1: are thirty prompts to help people write their own tenure plan.
Speaker 1: And they're also now instead of fifty two pieces of
Speaker 1: art or fifty four pieces of art on one side
Speaker 1: and one on the other, I did thirty pieces of
Speaker 1: art with prompts, and then another thirty pieces of art
Speaker 1: that just are inspiring directions for that mentally out in October.
Speaker 1: So I'm super excited about it because it really is
Speaker 1: an art project as much as it is anything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that you've done a I think a great
Speaker 1: job combining art and essays in the past and different things.
Speaker 1: Your creative spirit is amazing. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I admire about you, and you talk about this very openly,
Speaker 1: is you know, there was a certain point early in
Speaker 1: your life where you thought, well, I'd like to be
Speaker 1: an artist, but I'm going to choose a safer route. Yes,
Speaker 1: And there's lots of reasons for that. You talked about
Speaker 1: your childhood. You know, there was a lot of insecurity,
Speaker 1: you wanted a little bit more security, you wanted to
Speaker 1: live in Manhattan. There were reasons you made that choice.
Speaker 1: But what I love is how you found your way
Speaker 1: back to your creativity. And I think that's a really
Speaker 1: inspiring thing for a lot of people. You know, we've
Speaker 1: made choices where we ended up in a place where
Speaker 1: we're like, well, Okay, my life is pretty good, but
Speaker 1: I abandoned some part of me back there a little
Speaker 1: ways where it was I used to make music, or
Speaker 1: I used to make art, or I used to spend
Speaker 1: lots of time hiking or camping or I mean, and
Speaker 1: that you found your way back to those things. What
Speaker 1: some of the input or advice you would have for
Speaker 1: people who were sort of finding themselves in that place
Speaker 1: where they're like, you know what I did leave, pardon
Speaker 1: me behind in the pursuit for success and security and
Speaker 1: all that, and I'm not sure I'm ready to just
Speaker 1: throw all that away and like, you know, become a
Speaker 1: bohemian artist, which is not the route you went, but
Speaker 1: you started to find little ways. And so what would
Speaker 1: you share with people, Well, Eric, I think it has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the name of your podcast.
Speaker 1: You know, what's the one you feed? What do you
Speaker 1: ultimately want to make and how do you feed that
Speaker 1: part of your spirit? And again, all of these decisions
Speaker 1: about which wolf to feed happened for me much later
Speaker 1: in life. I don't want to say that I was
Speaker 1: feeding the bad wolf by pursuing a corporate career, but
Speaker 1: I was definitely living trying to protect myself from the
Speaker 1: bad wolf. Because I was so afraid that the bad
Speaker 1: wolf would get me. I set my life up to
Speaker 1: have a lot of walls to keep that wolf out
Speaker 1: and to be as safe and secure as possible. And
Speaker 1: that meant self sufficiency, that meant body autonomy, that meant
Speaker 1: being able to be safe at all costs. And I
Speaker 1: mean that literally and figuratively. And you get to a
Speaker 1: point where you realize that you have a foundation of safety.
Speaker 1: Any higher foundation isn't going to make you any safer.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not going to make you penetrable. And
Speaker 1: I began to realize as I was getting older and
Speaker 1: older and older, and I'm talking about, you know, really
Speaker 1: at the age of fifty five, saying well, if not now, when,
Speaker 1: and at that point really how to make a decision. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be the CEO of this branding
Speaker 1: consultancy that I've been the president for for twenty plus years,
Speaker 1: because really, how much more security and power do I need?
Speaker 1: And at that point really made a very difficult decision
Speaker 1: at the time. Doesn't feel difficult now, but at that
Speaker 1: time I was like, Okay, you know, I do have enough.
Speaker 1: And while it might never ever feel like enough in
Speaker 1: my heart, in my body, in my head, which is
Speaker 1: where I tend to live, I was really able to say, okay,
Speaker 1: if not now went and that was when I had
Speaker 1: to take that leap over the wall a little bit
Speaker 1: and let some more light in. Yeah, well, similar to
Speaker 1: what we just talked about with the way you eventually
Speaker 1: made what appears to be a big step with talking
Speaker 1: to Tim, like, Okay, we can see that as the
Speaker 1: big move. We can see the big move for you
Speaker 1: turning down becoming CEO of that organization and stepping out
Speaker 1: on your own as the big move that had been
Speaker 1: building for a long time. You had been doing a
Speaker 1: lot of work while you did that. While you were
Speaker 1: still working at that organization, you had been building your
Speaker 1: creative career, your podcast, you know, the work that you
Speaker 1: did with your brand institute, and so there was a
Speaker 1: lot of pre work that was done. And so when
Speaker 1: you made that jump, it was yeah, sure, of course
Speaker 1: it's scary, and it was a jump that had a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance of working out, right, because you had
Speaker 1: done a lot of work. And that mirrors my story.
Speaker 1: Right when I saw you in New York, right, I
Speaker 1: was still working a corporate job and it was on
Speaker 1: your show, and you know, a couple of years from there,
Speaker 1: I finally was able to start doing this full time.
Speaker 1: And of course there was a moment of stepping away
Speaker 1: from the steady paycheck, you know, the good, big, steady paycheck.
Speaker 1: But it was also a move that I've been building
Speaker 1: towards in a sane way for quite some time. And
Speaker 1: I see that sort of in you also, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think for your listeners this is a really
Speaker 1: important point, because people talk a lot about wanting to
Speaker 1: reinvent their lives, wanting to take a different path, and
Speaker 1: you and I both did something very similar, which I
Speaker 1: think is a really important thing for people to understand.
Speaker 1: We didn't just abandon one thing and do another. We
Speaker 1: created a Venn diagram of our lives in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. We can look back on it and see,
Speaker 1: you know what, I was doing all of that, and
Speaker 1: then I started to do something else. But I was
Speaker 1: still doing that other thing until I could take that
Speaker 1: middle of the men diagram and then expanded outward and
Speaker 1: do it on its own. And I think for anybody
Speaker 1: that's looking to pit it, anybody that's looking to take
Speaker 1: a different path, it isn't just to go from one
Speaker 1: to the other process. I don't know anybody that's done that.
Speaker 1: It's really a matter of setting yourself up for security first,
Speaker 1: while you're doing this other thing. And then do it
Speaker 1: at the same time, and it might mean doing both
Speaker 1: at the same time and really maybe for a little
Speaker 1: bit of time, burning the candle at both ends. But
Speaker 1: then you set yourself up to pivot into a place
Speaker 1: where then you can run with it. And I think
Speaker 1: that's super important for people to know. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think the other advantage of that approach is you can
Speaker 1: actually focus on the thing you want to do and
Speaker 1: do it in a I don't like this word, but
Speaker 1: it's the one that comes to mind a more pure way,
Speaker 1: because you don't have to make a living. Like if
Speaker 1: I had abandoned immediately I want to start a podcast, right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quit my job, right, I would have had
Speaker 1: to make all kinds of decisions about this show early
Speaker 1: on in order to have any chance of paying the bills.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad I didn't have to do that in
Speaker 1: the beginning. I was able to sort of pursue my
Speaker 1: vision a little bit more absolutely. And anybody that's looking
Speaker 1: to start anything new like that, especially with a podcast,
Speaker 1: I say, do ten episodes before you launch it. See
Speaker 1: how that feels. See what it feels to make ten episodes.
Speaker 1: How much work it is If you really love doing it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people love the idea of doing something more than
Speaker 1: they actually like the doing. You know, It's like when
Speaker 1: you say your eyes are bigger than your stomach when
Speaker 1: you're at a buffet. Really understand how much you want
Speaker 1: to do something before you just huh go into doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've had a bunch of coaching clients that I've worked
Speaker 1: with where what we're working on is like, let's do
Speaker 1: that thing you really think you want to do. I
Speaker 1: want to be a writer, Okay, let's get you right in.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes what people find is, no, I don't. I've held
Speaker 1: onto this idea that I want to be a writer
Speaker 1: because I thought that when I was twenty and now
Speaker 1: I'm forty five, and now I'm doing it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't even like doing that, And that can feel defeating,
Speaker 1: But actually I think it's a victory to set aside
Speaker 1: something that you've been thinking you should do because it's
Speaker 1: taking all this mental energy and space and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's not it. Set it aside, Okay, freeze up the
Speaker 1: space for what's next. Absolutely and knowing that, and I
Speaker 1: think there's something really important to experiment with the things
Speaker 1: you think you want to do, and so do those
Speaker 1: ten episodes, write the books, see if you really want to.
Speaker 1: I mean, whether it's a writing career or a podcasting career,
Speaker 1: requires a lot of solitary work. It's not just turning
Speaker 1: on a microphone and talking to someone. It's hours and
Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours of prep and research and
Speaker 1: booking and details and producing and editing. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so many things that go into it, and that takes
Speaker 1: time to understand whether or not you are going to
Speaker 1: like it, especially if you've never done it before. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no way of really knowing, and so experimenting with
Speaker 1: that I think is so important. I totally agree. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that you often ask your students
Speaker 1: as you say, what is keeping you from trying this
Speaker 1: or doing this? And I'm curious if for you, is
Speaker 1: there anything if you look at your life right now
Speaker 1: that fear is holding you back from Oh, Eric, with
Speaker 1: a tough question, you can always pass no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't really like doing that. That's a cop out,
Speaker 1: you know. Roxanne asked me this question yesterday, like what
Speaker 1: do you want to do that you haven't done yet?
Speaker 1: And there's so many things I feel like there's so
Speaker 1: many things, and I definitely want to work on an
Speaker 1: illustrated memoir and I'm really ramping up emotionally for that.
Speaker 1: Like I do feel like all the sort of ways
Speaker 1: that I think in in my body are sort of
Speaker 1: gearing up. All the gears are spinning of getting ready
Speaker 1: and preparing myself to do that in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: So I definitely definitely to do that. I want to
Speaker 1: write a play of sorts, and I'm not exactly sure
Speaker 1: what kind of play. I'm thinking maybe a one woman play,
Speaker 1: not that I want to perform in it. Don't like
Speaker 1: that at all, But I definitely want to do some
Speaker 1: type of performance piece for somebody else to perform that
Speaker 1: I write and maybe illustrate, you know, the sets. So
Speaker 1: there's there's so many things that I still want to do.
Speaker 1: There's no lack of ideas that I have. So I
Speaker 1: want to do a lot more traveling once it becomes
Speaker 1: I was. I was doing a lot more adventuresome traveling
Speaker 1: before COVID. I had gone on a National geographic expedition.
Speaker 1: Also in my mid fifties, I decided that before I died,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to see as much of the world
Speaker 1: as possible, and so I went on a global expedition
Speaker 1: with National Geographic in and it was one of the
Speaker 1: most extraordinary experiences of my life. And I want to
Speaker 1: do more things like that. I also went on another
Speaker 1: mini expedition with Roxanne to Egypt, and then another one
Speaker 1: more recently to Antarctica. But I want to do more
Speaker 1: things like that. I'm gonna quote you here. You said,
Speaker 1: I once read that the definition of insanity is doing
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Speaker 1: I fundamentally disagree with this idea. I think that doing
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over and expecting different results
Speaker 1: is the definition of hope. I love that. And that's
Speaker 1: a phrase also that has been very much adopted by
Speaker 1: the recovery community that's set off and you know, doing
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over and expecting different results,
Speaker 1: like using drugs or alcohol again and expecting it to
Speaker 1: be different, is insanity. I love that there's another way
Speaker 1: of framing that as hope, because it strikes me that
Speaker 1: it could be both. It could be either or sometimes
Speaker 1: it could be hopes, sometimes it could be insanity. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how we
Speaker 1: might tell the difference between those two. Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1: I think that if you are working towards something and practicing,
Speaker 1: that's really where I think the difference is. I think
Speaker 1: if you are engaging in destructive behavior and expecting the
Speaker 1: result of that destructive behavior to be the same, actually
Speaker 1: I think it is never the same. It just gets worse.
Speaker 1: It gets worse. Whereas if you're practicing something in order
Speaker 1: to enhance who you are, enhance your health, enhance your life,
Speaker 1: those small steps, those incremental small steps, are really the
Speaker 1: definition of hope because you are continually getting better and
Speaker 1: that ultimately, I believe results in mastering. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a tremendous difference between doing something destructively and hoping
Speaker 1: for difference and doing something practicing and ultimately achieving better
Speaker 1: results over a long period of time. It's like playing
Speaker 1: the piano. If you play the piano every day and
Speaker 1: you practice, you're inevitably going to get better. If you
Speaker 1: are an athlete and you're practicing every day and you're
Speaker 1: running the same route or you're exercising the same muscles,
Speaker 1: over time, you are going to get better. And I
Speaker 1: feel the same way about life. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a great way to think about it, and I think
Speaker 1: some of it too is you know, what do we
Speaker 1: mean by expecting results? What is the result that we
Speaker 1: expect and how much of the result we'reafter can we
Speaker 1: make at least, you know, I think inter enzic versus extrinsic,
Speaker 1: you know, because I can't control exterior results, right, but
Speaker 1: I can more control intrinsic things. So like your example
Speaker 1: of the piano, for me, it's guitar, right. I practice
Speaker 1: guitar every day. I made a commitment, like I'm actually
Speaker 1: going to get better at this, you know, instead of
Speaker 1: just sort of fooling around. Now, if I'm expecting that
Speaker 1: that's going to take me to Carnegie Hall, I'm very
Speaker 1: likely to be disappointed. As not saying that it's not possible,
Speaker 1: but it's very unlikely, right, It's not what I'm aiming for.
Speaker 1: You know what, Eric, though, if you wanted to and
Speaker 1: did this for the next twenty years, you might That's true,
Speaker 1: you might be sixty five at Carnegie Hall. But if
Speaker 1: that was your non negotiable for the rest of your
Speaker 1: life and that became the focus of everything you did,
Speaker 1: you very well could. Knowing your drive, I wouldn't discount
Speaker 1: it but I do think it takes a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of commitment and it really does need to be a
Speaker 1: non negotiable where it becomes the one thing you want
Speaker 1: to do more than anything that's right. And I think
Speaker 1: that speaks to what we don't necessarily always tell ourselves
Speaker 1: the truth about, which is Okay, I keep saying I
Speaker 1: want X, I really need to think about what does
Speaker 1: that mean, like what would it take to get X?
Speaker 1: And then look at that and go, am I willing
Speaker 1: to do that? And if I am, then step up
Speaker 1: to the plate. But if I'm not. For me, it's
Speaker 1: always been refreshing to look at that and go, Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm not willing to work that hard for that thing.
Speaker 1: So I can stop feeling bad about not having that thing.
Speaker 1: I can stop feeling like, oh, I'm not good enough
Speaker 1: because they don't have that thing. It's more a priority
Speaker 1: thing I got to prioritize. I can't play Carnegie Hall
Speaker 1: and play in the NBA, right, If you want to
Speaker 1: be a master of one thing, you kind of kind
Speaker 1: of have to double down. And people like you and
Speaker 1: me to some degree, I think my interests are a
Speaker 1: little more broad. You know, I'm not necessarily interested in
Speaker 1: being the best guitar player. I love playing guitar, I
Speaker 1: want to get better at it, but it's not where
Speaker 1: I want to devote my life. There's other things I
Speaker 1: want to do, and so I think that clarity can
Speaker 1: be really helpful. Yeah. Absolutely, I think that for people
Speaker 1: that are solely focused on one thing for most of
Speaker 1: their early life achieve mastery at it much earlier. For people,
Speaker 1: I think, like us, that have a variety of interests,
Speaker 1: we still have to put in the same amount of time,
Speaker 1: just are dividing our time between so many more things,
Speaker 1: and therefore it takes longer to achieve mastery at any
Speaker 1: one of them, and often it might take well into
Speaker 1: our sort of seasoned years to achieve mastery at any
Speaker 1: of them because of that division of time and energy.
Speaker 1: My foundation in thinking about almost anything is always you know,
Speaker 1: from a branding perspective, given my background, when you're positioning
Speaker 1: a brand, it's really the art of sacrifice. You can
Speaker 1: only really own one or two or three attributes and
Speaker 1: only have one mission state, Otherwise it's going to be
Speaker 1: very confusing for anybody that is engaged with the brand
Speaker 1: and with people. You know, if you have multiple interests
Speaker 1: over multiple disciplines. It's going to take a lot longer
Speaker 1: to be known for any one of those things because
Speaker 1: you aren't willing to sacrifice. And sometimes it's willful lack
Speaker 1: of sacrifice, and other times it's just because you have
Speaker 1: this many things that you want to do and you're
Speaker 1: just doing them. I read somewhere you saying that you
Speaker 1: don't really believe in the idea of the personal brand.
Speaker 1: Say more about that, Well, I think that a person
Speaker 1: can own a brand. I think a person can direct
Speaker 1: a brand, you can manage a brand. But I think
Speaker 1: that when we start to aspire to be a brand,
Speaker 1: we run into difficulties. Brands don't exist unless humans make them,
Speaker 1: and so over the years, I've come to the realization
Speaker 1: that brands are really manufactured, meaning we manufacture are meaning
Speaker 1: around a trope, around a construct that wouldn't exist if
Speaker 1: we didn't make them otherwise. Brands don't grow on trees
Speaker 1: unless we determine that they become brands, like an orange
Speaker 1: and tropicana or a banana and chiquita. But they don't
Speaker 1: grow out of the ground unless we determine that that
Speaker 1: thing is going to be then manufactured as a brand.
Speaker 1: Brands are created by people. We tend to like when
Speaker 1: they're consistent. We tend to like when they are predictable.
Speaker 1: We tend to like when they're easily understandable. Humans are
Speaker 1: the opposite. Humans are messy and complicated. Brands don't breathe,
Speaker 1: they don't bleed, they don't have a consciousness, they don't
Speaker 1: direct themselves. Humans do all of those things. Why would
Speaker 1: anybody aspire to be a brand when brands don't direct themselves,
Speaker 1: don't have a consciousness, and don't have a soul. So
Speaker 1: I feel like anybody that aspires to be a brand
Speaker 1: is limiting the possibilities of their lives. Develop your character,
Speaker 1: develop your reputation, but always aspire to keep your humanity.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. So your latest book is a it's gorgeous,
Speaker 1: which I'm not surprised by. Right, You're who you are.
Speaker 1: Design is a is a big part of you. But
Speaker 1: it is a book where you pulled out a bunch
Speaker 1: of interviews that you love and excerpt some of them
Speaker 1: and put it all together. And the title of the
Speaker 1: book is why design Matters? And this feels like a
Speaker 1: cheap and easy question, but I'm going to use it anyway.
Speaker 1: Why does design matter? Well, design is intention and decision
Speaker 1: making about everything. How do you want to live, how
Speaker 1: do you want to organize the way that you engage
Speaker 1: with the world. That's design. And so I feel that
Speaker 1: while my original podcast was all about designers talking about design,
Speaker 1: over the eighteen years now it's evolved to really be
Speaker 1: about how people create the arcs of their lives, how
Speaker 1: they consciously create, what they make, how they live, the
Speaker 1: decisions that allow them to be who they are. And
Speaker 1: so that arc of life that they create and make
Speaker 1: for themselves is something that I'm really endlessly fascinated by.
Speaker 1: And it's all a process of design. It's a process
Speaker 1: of decision making, it's a process of determining how and
Speaker 1: why they want to live the way they do. And
Speaker 1: that's what I'm interested in understanding, and that's all about design.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about rejection for a minute. You write
Speaker 1: very much about rejection. You talk about how early part
Speaker 1: of your life there was a lot of rejection. Tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about what you would say to
Speaker 1: people as they're dealing with rejection. Well, I think rejection
Speaker 1: is only a failure if you accept the defeat. Rejection
Speaker 1: is one person or one organization or one entity saying
Speaker 1: thanks but no thanks. That is a mean that everybody
Speaker 1: else in the world is going to say that too.
Speaker 1: And when I was experiencing rejections all through my twenties
Speaker 1: and into my thirties, I misrepresented that rejection to myself
Speaker 1: and thought that if this one thing is rejecting me,
Speaker 1: this one person, this one entity, this one institution, this
Speaker 1: one organization, whatever it was, that was a determination of
Speaker 1: my value and my worth, and so I would retreat.
Speaker 1: I would apply to one school or one job, or
Speaker 1: one thing, and when that rejection occurred, would then abandon
Speaker 1: my hopes of ever being able to do anything in
Speaker 1: that realm. And I think that a lot of people
Speaker 1: do that, and they take that rejection as a stamp
Speaker 1: of unworthiness or not being good enough. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just one entities decision. It's not the decision of
Speaker 1: the world. But it's very hard to see that and
Speaker 1: feel that and experience that is just one dean in
Speaker 1: what could be thousands. When you're experiencing it, you know,
Speaker 1: I always have felt mortally wounded in those rejections, only
Speaker 1: to find that they were not mortal wounds. They were
Speaker 1: just profound wounds, but they didn't stop me in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things. But I can say that now,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty years later, after multiple more tries, and
Speaker 1: I think most people stopped trying. From what I've read,
Speaker 1: they stopped making attempts at things after two or three rejections,
Speaker 1: and for those of us that do persevere, that just
Speaker 1: increases the odds of our eventual success. I don't quite
Speaker 1: know what the cognitive behavioral therapy term or the cognitive
Speaker 1: bias for this is. I think it's something like generalization, right,
Speaker 1: which is where I take one specific instance of something
Speaker 1: and I apply it out to everything. I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember early in my life in my my dating career,
Speaker 1: if if if one woman wasn't interested me, I just
Speaker 1: assumed that meant they're all not going to be exactly
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, which is profoundly not true, but it seems
Speaker 1: so true in the moment. The other thing that you
Speaker 1: say that I love is what I would say is,
Speaker 1: don't accept the first rejection ever, give yourself options. The
Speaker 1: timeliness of those options or the timeliness of those retries,
Speaker 1: do it your own pace. And I keep going back
Speaker 1: to one of the early questions about The conversation you
Speaker 1: had with tim about where you were finally able to
Speaker 1: do that was you had your own timing for when
Speaker 1: you were finally ready to come forth with some of that,
Speaker 1: and you gave yourself the ability to, as you say,
Speaker 1: control my own timing on these things and how frequently
Speaker 1: I redo these things. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of people wait to do things until they feel
Speaker 1: ready to do them. And that's something that I would
Speaker 1: urge people to try to break away from because it's
Speaker 1: very rare that we ever feel ready, that we ever
Speaker 1: feel confident enough to do something. I think that confidence
Speaker 1: comes after you do it multi couple times, and because
Speaker 1: it's really unlikely that anytime we try something brand new
Speaker 1: we're going to be good at it. I mean, who
Speaker 1: picks up a guitar, you know, maybe start from Joney
Speaker 1: Mitchell and Bob Dylan and and could immediately start playing
Speaker 1: those of us us mere mortals take time to be
Speaker 1: able to learn how to do something, and then we
Speaker 1: developed confidence over the years of practice. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: want to have a concert for your friends after your
Speaker 1: first guitar lesson, but you might after your one thousand
Speaker 1: and So the confidence comes from this successful repetition of
Speaker 1: getting better at doing something over time. Do you ever
Speaker 1: get your guitar back out? Your reference in somewhere? I
Speaker 1: don't where it was that you had put your guitar
Speaker 1: kind of under the bed or in the closet. I'm
Speaker 1: curious if it's ever come back out. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: actually in the little room right next to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a little room right there, and that's uh what
Speaker 1: I call my craft closet. And so I have all
Speaker 1: the things that I love to make with things in there,
Speaker 1: and my guitar is in there, and I have an accordion,
Speaker 1: and I have all my felt and paint and yeah,
Speaker 1: all their accordion all right? Not an accordion, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: uku lately okay, not an accordion uulately another instrument that
Speaker 1: starts with a vowel ule okay okay, and it's a
Speaker 1: little bit closer to a guitar and the way you
Speaker 1: approach it exactly exactly. Just had this visual of trying
Speaker 1: to play the accordion and it's just cracking me out.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the next thing, you know, maybe you should
Speaker 1: add it to the list. Along the same lines with that,
Speaker 1: you also say I expect things to be hard, and
Speaker 1: I expect things to take a long time, and I
Speaker 1: expect things to be messy. And I love that because
Speaker 1: I don't know where so many of us got the
Speaker 1: idea that things should be easy. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you expect something to be easy and it's not, that's
Speaker 1: a very easy way to give up. Absolutely, And I've
Speaker 1: I've just come to discover that very little in my
Speaker 1: life has ever just been easy from the beginning. The
Speaker 1: only thing that I can really point to is my
Speaker 1: relationship with Roxanne, which always there was always an undercurrent
Speaker 1: of my feeling like this was it, this was meant
Speaker 1: to be. Everything else has been just arduous. Well even
Speaker 1: that though, right you talk about how you emailed her
Speaker 1: and tried to get her on the podcast and she
Speaker 1: said no, and you know then you got a serious
Speaker 1: forgot that series of one syllable responses from her, And
Speaker 1: so even that, I mean, maybe once you guys finally
Speaker 1: got in a room together, it was clear and it
Speaker 1: was easy. But but getting to that point you had
Speaker 1: some work to do, you had some perseverance. True, yep,
Speaker 1: thank you for pointing that out. And how a cow
Speaker 1: convenient that I've forgotten that. It's so lovely to see
Speaker 1: you happy in that way. It's so great, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. I do feel very lucky, very very lucky.
Speaker 1: But for everybody that might be listening, I didn't meet
Speaker 1: Roxanne until I was fifty six years old. So there
Speaker 1: you have it. Yep. I am extraordinarily fortunate with Ginny,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I met her till I was
Speaker 1: pretty six. Maybe so a little bit younger than you,
Speaker 1: but certainly not. It was the one area of my
Speaker 1: life that I thought, this is the area I'm not
Speaker 1: going to figure out me too. I'll figure out career,
Speaker 1: i'll figure out creativity, I'll figure I'll get all the
Speaker 1: rest of this stuff, but that area I'm broken eric
Speaker 1: same same. I felt like it was my achilles heel.
Speaker 1: I would often say that to people. I'm like, no
Speaker 1: relationships in my Achilles heel. I'm never going to get
Speaker 1: it right, never amazing. Yea somewhere you wrote if all
Speaker 1: else fails, like, try to obey this message I got
Speaker 1: in a fortune cookie, which I've sent taped to my
Speaker 1: laptop avoid compulsively making things worse. Yeah, this is something
Speaker 1: I actually I didn't think of that specifically but I
Speaker 1: was thinking about the sort of tenants of that when
Speaker 1: you were talking about generalization. And I have often had
Speaker 1: the tendency to what I call catastrophies. So if one
Speaker 1: thing is wrong, everything is doomed. And that is what
Speaker 1: I think that fortune Cookie was warning me of, you know,
Speaker 1: away compulsively making things worse, because when we think something
Speaker 1: bad has happened, we then will extend that to our
Speaker 1: whole lives. I'm doomed. I'm never gonna be happy, I'm
Speaker 1: never going to get it right, I'm never gonna whatever.
Speaker 1: And I always have to tell myself in those moments,
Speaker 1: stop globalizing, stop catastrophizing. And I do that with my friends.
Speaker 1: I do that with Roxanne. You know, we're constantly trying
Speaker 1: to help each other. You know, Roxanne says, Okay, pull
Speaker 1: this back now, or pull this back, or pull this
Speaker 1: back se because we recognize that tendency in each other
Speaker 1: to globalize catastrophize that somehow we're so damaged that any
Speaker 1: evidence of wrongdoing or bad things mean that we're never
Speaker 1: going to be able to escape it. And I think
Speaker 1: that comes from trauma. I do think that comes from
Speaker 1: those neural pathways being wired in a certain way, and
Speaker 1: it takes real effort to push your out of that mindset,
Speaker 1: but it's well worth trying. I sometimes jokingly say so
Speaker 1: much of the work that I do with people is
Speaker 1: about just how to not make things worse, which is
Speaker 1: about the least exciting marketing phrase you could ever come
Speaker 1: up with. But when you have the capacity to make
Speaker 1: things worse that many of us have, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: profound thing to stop doing. It is just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can live life as it is without making it worse.
Speaker 1: It's a very important step I hadn't experienced a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. My brother had picked me up from
Speaker 1: the train station, is visiting the family, and he got
Speaker 1: a work call, and you know, he's like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I have to take this. And he took the call
Speaker 1: and something wasn't going well with one of his clients,
Speaker 1: and after he finished the call, he went into that catastrophizing.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh my god, I do exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe this is how we were taught to respond.
Speaker 1: It was such a profound moment, Eric I can't even
Speaker 1: really fully articulate what witnessing that observation did, because suddenly
Speaker 1: I saw how genetically attached we were, and his doing
Speaker 1: that gave me such a perspective on how I do
Speaker 1: it too, and wanted to forgive myself for doing it
Speaker 1: and also share whatever I learned in that process with
Speaker 1: him so that he could do the same thing. How
Speaker 1: personally he took that situation and how compelled he was
Speaker 1: to see it as a marker of something much bigger,
Speaker 1: which it wasn't was profound. I don't know your brother,
Speaker 1: but I have an appreciation for him because you talked
Speaker 1: somewhere about coming out to him, and you say that
Speaker 1: he threw his arms up in the air, turned at
Speaker 1: his wife and was like, I told you so. And
Speaker 1: there's just something so sweet and lovely about that moment.
Speaker 1: To me, it's beautiful. It was a beautiful moment. I
Speaker 1: have several brothers, so I could be talking about any okay,
Speaker 1: but but this one, this one actually happens to be
Speaker 1: the same brother. But yeah, that was a beautiful moment.
Speaker 1: I was so worried, you know, looking back at our histories,
Speaker 1: our joint histories, you know, I was worried that he
Speaker 1: would reject me because I've experienced so much rejection from
Speaker 1: my family in so many different ways that sharing that
Speaker 1: with him was was terrifying. And then you know, he
Speaker 1: proved me wrong and that was that was a beautiful
Speaker 1: moment for me. I don't even know if he realizes
Speaker 1: how beautiful it was for me, but it was. I
Speaker 1: would love to hear about you pouring through the racks
Speaker 1: of Leewards in search of a crocodile patch to stick
Speaker 1: on the front of your shirt to share that younger
Speaker 1: Debbie so Lee Awards. I don't even know if it
Speaker 1: still exists, but Leewards was a craft store on Long
Speaker 1: Island about him, not even a mile away from where
Speaker 1: I lived. And when I was in middle school, which
Speaker 1: at the time was then referred to as junior high school,
Speaker 1: so that was seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, I didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of what would be considered to be
Speaker 1: cool clothes. My mother was a seamstress and taught me
Speaker 1: how to sew from a very young age, and so
Speaker 1: I made a lot of my clothes in an effort
Speaker 1: to be fashionable. They weren't particularly fashionable, but nevertheless, the
Speaker 1: big fashion statement at the time were three things a
Speaker 1: La cost Polo shirt, a pair of levines, and some
Speaker 1: type of either Nike, Puma, or Adidas sneakers. The sneakers
Speaker 1: didn't intrigue me all that much. I've never been a sneakerhead. However,
Speaker 1: I did up the costume, and so I really wanted
Speaker 1: a pair of Levi's and a Lacost shirt. My mother
Speaker 1: could not understand what the difference was between what were
Speaker 1: then called dungarees, so sort of a standard pair of
Speaker 1: dungarees that you could buy at Model's or wherever you
Speaker 1: were shopping out on Long Island, the walt Women mall,
Speaker 1: and the pair with the little red tag on the
Speaker 1: back pocket. She didn't understand, and so she offered to
Speaker 1: so many a pair of dungarees and so a little
Speaker 1: red tag on the back, and she didn't understand how
Speaker 1: that would actually be worse having a fake pair. So no,
Speaker 1: that wasn't gonna work for me. And then she suggested, well,
Speaker 1: all the Lacost shirt is is a standard polo shirt
Speaker 1: with a little embroidered emblem above the breast boat. And
Speaker 1: so she suggested that I go to Leewards and look
Speaker 1: in the embroidery section to see if I could find
Speaker 1: something similar. And I actually thought you could, so I
Speaker 1: rode my bike up to lee Wards looking for a
Speaker 1: embroidered animal of sorts, hoping for a crocodile or an alligator.
Speaker 1: Didn't find anything of the sort, so I came home
Speaker 1: glumly without anything. And then finally, finally, finally, she did
Speaker 1: buy me a pair of I think had to be
Speaker 1: in the triple mark down section, a pair of Levies.
Speaker 1: They were lime green corduroy bill bottoms, but I wore
Speaker 1: them all the time and felt that I was potentially
Speaker 1: considered cool by having these. You shared the closest thing
Speaker 1: you could find. The crocodile was Tony the Tiger, and
Speaker 1: I just so deeply wished you had a polo shirt
Speaker 1: with Tony the Tiger on the chest. I think that
Speaker 1: would be great. It's so funny, though, we must be,
Speaker 1: you know, close in age, because when I was in
Speaker 1: elementary school, it was Levi's you know, polo shirt like that,
Speaker 1: same shoes, and my mom insisted on buying me Sears
Speaker 1: tough skins, which were essentially the same gene. But I
Speaker 1: mean still to this day, it's like a star, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not there was the opposite of Levi's, the opposite,
Speaker 1: you know, by the time I got into my later
Speaker 1: years of high school and started babysitting and earning some money.
Speaker 1: I do have a look for it. I have a
Speaker 1: photograph of me wearing a pair of Levi's and a
Speaker 1: Lacost shirt, and I just remember feeling like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is it. This is like the best moment of my
Speaker 1: entire life right now. Somewhere in my teenage years, I
Speaker 1: crossed over. Well, I know what happened. I listened to
Speaker 1: the sex pistols and suddenly I was like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a punk rocker and abandoned all that, which
Speaker 1: was easier because I could just go to the thrift
Speaker 1: store and buy something awful and cut holes in it
Speaker 1: and put safety pins in it, and I was suddenly
Speaker 1: I thought I was cool. So that's how I got
Speaker 1: around that one. For me, Oh yeah, for me, it
Speaker 1: was being a deadhead when I got to college and
Speaker 1: then just hearing like loose Indian shirts. Yeah. Now, there
Speaker 1: was a time, I don't think it was that long ago,
Speaker 1: where you were asked to review a couple of books
Speaker 1: in a competition against each other for a website. One
Speaker 1: of them was The Water Dancer by Tana sheet Coats,
Speaker 1: which I think I pronounced that close to correctly, and
Speaker 1: you wrote a last well, it may have been for
Speaker 1: Oprah because Oprah thought it was one of the best books.
Speaker 1: You said, this is not one of the best books
Speaker 1: I've read in my entire life, not by a long shot.
Speaker 1: The reason I'm bringing that up is has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the book or the author. What I'm curious
Speaker 1: about is was it hard for you to write a
Speaker 1: review for a book by somebody who's a cultural figure
Speaker 1: of that prominence, who's endorsed by Oprah, who everybody loves
Speaker 1: that book, and you to come out and say I
Speaker 1: really didn't like this. Was that hard for you or
Speaker 1: were you just sort of naturally like I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I'll just say I don't like it. It was very
Speaker 1: hard for me. Tona has Coats is a cultural icon,
Speaker 1: writing a national treasure. But I also knew that I
Speaker 1: was being asked to review two books and pick one
Speaker 1: in a competition to move forward, and felt like I
Speaker 1: owed it to the readers to be honest. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of why I cloaked the review with all of
Speaker 1: that fear of what I was doing. I didn't just
Speaker 1: review it and say I don't like it because of this, this, this,
Speaker 1: and this reason, as if that's enough, I had to
Speaker 1: sugarcoat the review with the trepidation that I felt in
Speaker 1: doing that. So it's funny thinking back on it and
Speaker 1: looking back on it now, that was the really weak
Speaker 1: thing to do, because I didn't have enough confidence in
Speaker 1: my own opinion to be able to just state what
Speaker 1: I felt emphatically. I had to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a book that overloved and Tangas Coats is
Speaker 1: a cultural treasure and I but I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: So I think that that was, maybe, in looking back
Speaker 1: on it, kind of disingenuous, interesting because I thought it
Speaker 1: was very straightforward and I was like, wow, she's really
Speaker 1: just sort of saying what she thinks here, very honestly
Speaker 1: and in a very straightforward way. And I was just
Speaker 1: struck by it because I was thinking, like that, that's
Speaker 1: a gutsy thing to do kind of in some way,
Speaker 1: given like you said that he's considered by people that
Speaker 1: you and I would both like and respect to be
Speaker 1: a national treasure, and for you to say this isn't
Speaker 1: my thing, do you trust yourself with artistic judgment like that? Like,
Speaker 1: I just don't like this or do you always feel like, well,
Speaker 1: do I just have bad taste? Do I not understand?
Speaker 1: Do I need to learn something kind of curious? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of confidence in certain areas.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of confidence in what I think
Speaker 1: about design. I have a lot of confidence in what
Speaker 1: I think about art. I have a decent amount of
Speaker 1: confidence in what I think about core. But I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of confidence when it comes to more
Speaker 1: intellectual hidie pursuits. But you know, in the case of
Speaker 1: the competition that you were just referring to, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I was very tentative and nervous about my opinion
Speaker 1: of Tanahussey Coates his book versus the book that I
Speaker 1: was reviewing that and and decided was better, which was
Speaker 1: Maria Gains this book called Optic Nerve. And as the
Speaker 1: competition continued, because I had judged the first round. So
Speaker 1: if if anybody's thinking about this competition, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a fantasy football kind of competition where you are
Speaker 1: putting one book against another, and then it seeds and
Speaker 1: it goes to the next round. It goes to the
Speaker 1: next round. So I had that choice in the very
Speaker 1: first round Maria Gains his book versus Tanahassi Coats his
Speaker 1: book picked Maria Gains his book. Her book went all
Speaker 1: the way to the final round. So it went through
Speaker 1: it would it almost did. And and then this is
Speaker 1: why I think it's so interesting, because I'm very opinionated
Speaker 1: about what happened in this final round. It was reviewed
Speaker 1: against Sally Rooney's Normal People, which is a book I hated,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying that with a tremendous amount of confidence.
Speaker 1: And had I been given Maria Gains's book and Sally
Speaker 1: Rooney's book in that first round, I would have eliminated
Speaker 1: Sally Rooney's book at the outside and Maria Gains and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have written I don't have the capacity to
Speaker 1: judge da da da da da. Whereas with Tanahasi Coachs
Speaker 1: his book, I absolutely felt like I had to be
Speaker 1: very clear about how we made the decisions. Whereas if
Speaker 1: I had been reviewing Optic Nerve against Normal People, I
Speaker 1: would have been liked, no question. Interesting, very interesting. There's
Speaker 1: another book that lots of people love. I have not
Speaker 1: read it, but I mean it has loved buy so
Speaker 1: many people. I liked the first half and then it
Speaker 1: lost me. I find that ability to sort of have
Speaker 1: our own opinion about things interesting. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I find just looking at myself with things like that
Speaker 1: is that, particularly with music, I will often listen to
Speaker 1: something in a time or two and be like, I
Speaker 1: don't think I like it, But if I listen to
Speaker 1: it a few more times, I start to like it,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, is that that I'm starting to
Speaker 1: discover it and understand it. Particularly with an artist that
Speaker 1: I love something new of theirs, I'm almost always like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't like it as much as the last thing,
Speaker 1: and then I'll listen to it enough and I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Yeah, you know what. I have a tendency
Speaker 1: that I hate, and I try every time i'm in
Speaker 1: this mindset to remind myself that this is what I
Speaker 1: hate about myself, and that is if I don't know
Speaker 1: about something and then begin to learn about it, whether
Speaker 1: it be an author, artist, whatever, my tendency is initially
Speaker 1: to not want to like it. If I don't know it,
Speaker 1: I don't want to like it. And I know that
Speaker 1: enough about myself now to say, wait a minute, but
Speaker 1: I don't know why that is the case. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's because of my not knowing it. It's
Speaker 1: sort of ignite something in my reptilian brain which makes
Speaker 1: me feel less secure or inferior or I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is, but it's a tendency that I have
Speaker 1: that I really loathe. It's probably the thing I loathe
Speaker 1: about myself the most, aside from my thighs. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because I think so much of our reaction to art
Speaker 1: of any sort has to do with where we are
Speaker 1: at the time. So, like, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: long time I did not like Bob Dylan. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't understand it. It made no sense to me. And
Speaker 1: then something clicked and I was like, oh, this guy
Speaker 1: is an absolute genius. And there's been so many things
Speaker 1: like that. I'll listen to something, i'd be like, I
Speaker 1: don't really like it, but then there'll be another time
Speaker 1: where it will be the right time, or something will
Speaker 1: have happened in my life the lyrics will be about
Speaker 1: that thing in it. And so it causes me to
Speaker 1: always take all my judgments about art fairly lightly, because
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know if this is good or
Speaker 1: not good. I just know it doesn't resonate with me today,
Speaker 1: and that's extraordinarily subjective. Absolutely, I think that certain things
Speaker 1: are an acquired taste. That's sort of the way I
Speaker 1: feel about egg plant. I would agree with you about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a taste I've tried, and I haven't tried that hard
Speaker 1: to acquire those. I don't like mushrooms, and that seems
Speaker 1: to be among many people a crime. It does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I only like Mataki mushrooms or hand of the Woods mushrooms.
Speaker 1: I would urge you to try those. They're the most
Speaker 1: un mushroomed like mushroom there is, and it's just absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Anything called hand of the Woods too, has got something
Speaker 1: going for it. I think that's true. I think that's true.
Speaker 1: On a Creative Mornings article a few years ago, you said,
Speaker 1: there's some things you'd like to do less of, and
Speaker 1: I'm just curious how you're doing. This is your check
Speaker 1: up on things? Remember what I said, So tell me
Speaker 1: what they were, and I will review my process. The
Speaker 1: first is worry trending in the right direction. Yeah, trending
Speaker 1: in the right direction, but still not completely absolved. And
Speaker 1: you know what, I was looking at some journals that
Speaker 1: I had written when I was in the middle school
Speaker 1: back in the day when I was a pining for
Speaker 1: my lacost T shirt. Um, I was a constant warrior,
Speaker 1: and I was so much a worrier that I actually
Speaker 1: worried about how much I worried. And I do think
Speaker 1: that it is definitely better than it was when I
Speaker 1: was that age, you know. But I also noticed a tendency.
Speaker 1: One of my nephews was was really worried about a
Speaker 1: grade that he'd gone and he was waiting for the
Speaker 1: grades to be posted, and he's like, Oh, I might
Speaker 1: be up all night worrying about this. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's also something that was a learned
Speaker 1: behavior from an early age that we then genetically pass
Speaker 1: on because I was so concerned about him worrying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still worry, just not quite as much. Well, worry
Speaker 1: does seem to sort of fall under the personality trait
Speaker 1: of neuroticism, which the research on personality trait seems to
Speaker 1: be that you know somewhere around of that is inherited, right,
Speaker 1: but then you have to assume since it's inherited, your
Speaker 1: parents have it. So not only did you inherit it genetically,
Speaker 1: you probably inherited behaviorally, environmentally, right, it's it's a double
Speaker 1: dose of it, right, and so absolutely okay, feel insecure
Speaker 1: and or doubt myself is number two? Constantly, constantly still
Speaker 1: going on. I would say, it's it's it's it's plateaued
Speaker 1: and that plateau continues, and do you suffer from it less?
Speaker 1: Or let me ask that question slightly differently, not does
Speaker 1: it occur less? Are you able to take it a
Speaker 1: little less seriously as it happens at any point? Yes,
Speaker 1: I would absolutely say, yes, absolutely, Okay, so you can't
Speaker 1: turn it off, but you've learned to relate to it differently. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's an improvement. That is an improvement I will I
Speaker 1: will give you that one sit on the tarmac and airplanes.
Speaker 1: This is probably a yes. Given where we've been pandemic wise,
Speaker 1: I would imagine, yeah, definitely improved, without a doubt. I
Speaker 1: would assume maybe we were traveling a lot for work
Speaker 1: at that point. Absolutely, I was a business traveler. I
Speaker 1: was traveling every week, and yes, that just came with
Speaker 1: the territory being sitting on tarmax and smelling other people's smells. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't miss the business travel. It it sounds romantic,
Speaker 1: and in the beginning maybe it is, but by that
Speaker 1: wears off pretty quickly. And the last one is to
Speaker 1: feel afraid of what I want. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to backtrack what I said at the time, but
Speaker 1: I think in thinking about that wasn't so much about
Speaker 1: being afraid of what I want. I think it was
Speaker 1: about being afraid to admit what I want. And I
Speaker 1: do think that that has improved. All right, Well across
Speaker 1: the board, then things are looking up definitely. All right, Debbie, Well,
Speaker 1: we are at the end of our time. I love
Speaker 1: talking with you any time I get the opportunity. I
Speaker 1: love your podcast, I love your writing. Your new book
Speaker 1: is amazing. So thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more in the post show conversation about therapy. I'd like
Speaker 1: to talk about your experiences with therapy, how often you
Speaker 1: go to therapy, and maybe some things that people can
Speaker 1: do to get the most out of it. And so
Speaker 1: we'll do that in the post show conversation. Listeners. If
Speaker 1: you'd like access to that and add free episodes and
Speaker 1: all kinds of other great goodies, go to one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net, slash joint. So Debbie, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: It's always such a pleasure. Eric, your Prince, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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