Speaker 1: The reason that we struggle in life more than we
Speaker 1: need to, or so I claim in this book and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: is that we're trying to sort of transcend our limitations.
Speaker 1: We're trying to get out of the condition of being
Speaker 1: human instead of entering more fully into and almost kind
Speaker 1: of harnessing in a sense, the condition of being fully human.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life forth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Oliver Berkman,
Speaker 2: a British author and journalist, formerly writing the weekly column.
Speaker 2: This column will Change your Life for the newspaper The Guardian.
Speaker 2: Oliver is also the author of three books, including the
Speaker 2: new one discussed here, Meditation for Mortals Four Weeks To
Speaker 2: Embrace your limitations and make time for what counts.
Speaker 3: Hi, Oliver, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much for having me back.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was saying to you before we started that
Speaker 3: you were one of the first few interviews we ever did,
Speaker 3: which was a decade ago, and I was so excited
Speaker 3: when you said yes because the title of your book,
Speaker 3: The Antidote Happiness for a Peace People who Hate Positive Thinking,
Speaker 3: sounded like the book title I wish I had come
Speaker 3: up with. So I was so excited to talk to
Speaker 3: you then. And you've been on a couple times since
Speaker 3: and I always enjoy speaking with you. We're going to
Speaker 3: be discussing your latest book, which is called Meditation for
Speaker 3: Mortals Four Weeks to Embrace your limitations and make time
Speaker 3: for what counts. But before we get into that, we'll
Speaker 3: start like we always do with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops thinks about
Speaker 3: it for a second. They look up at their grandparent
Speaker 3: and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd love to know how
Speaker 3: that parable applies to you and your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: While I hope in my book and in my work
Speaker 1: I have some sort of country intuitive interpretations of things,
Speaker 1: I feel like what that says to me, certainly right
Speaker 1: now is very feels very plain. It's just it's straightforward
Speaker 1: and right and true. Which is that where you focus
Speaker 1: your energy and your finite time and your finite attention
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it is the life that
Speaker 1: you create. I know from listening to the podcasts that
Speaker 1: people have a wide variety of interpretations of this story,
Speaker 1: But to me, that's just like, what could it mean
Speaker 1: by that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? On one level, it is very straightforward and very simple.
Speaker 1: And I don't say that as a criticism. Right right
Speaker 1: I feel like at the place I'm at, certainly in
Speaker 1: my career, certainly and probably life as a whole. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to shy away from the straightforward, obvious
Speaker 1: thing if that happens to be the truth thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. In your latest book, you're delving into something you're
Speaker 3: calling imperfectionism. And I can't remember whether that's a term
Speaker 3: you used in the previous book or you've started to
Speaker 3: use it, but it's a good encapsulation for what this
Speaker 3: book is about. What is imperfectionism?
Speaker 1: It really is, you know, an umbrella term for the
Speaker 1: things I want to You've got to have a proprietary label, right, Yes, yes, welcome.
Speaker 1: Gladwell would have got nowhere if you'd just said, like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a threshold sometimes and on one side of the
Speaker 1: threshold things behave different No, it's the tipping point. I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: but I think it does identify something real. I guess
Speaker 1: this book in terms of what it means for me,
Speaker 1: it's a book about addressing the challenge because I myself
Speaker 1: found myself constantly encountering this challenge of going from knowing
Speaker 1: very well how you want to be living a more
Speaker 1: meaningful life showing up for a more meaningfully productive, attentive, energized,
Speaker 1: enjoyable life and like actually doing it, And in some ways,
Speaker 1: even off the back of my last book, Four Thousand
Speaker 1: Weeks Right, I felt like I had really understood something
Speaker 1: as a result of writing that about what it means
Speaker 1: to be finite and what it means to have such
Speaker 1: limited time and limited ability to control the time that
Speaker 1: we do get, but discovering that that doesn't automatically add
Speaker 1: up to like, Okay, now you just live differently from
Speaker 1: now on successfully because you've developed this so the book
Speaker 1: and we can talk a bit about both the messages
Speaker 1: in the book and kind of the structure of the book,
Speaker 1: maybe because I think that's an important part of this
Speaker 1: whole idea of going from thinking about actually doing them.
Speaker 1: But essentially the answer to how do you go from
Speaker 1: knowing the right thing to do to actually doing it
Speaker 1: is the set of outlooks and techniques that I group
Speaker 1: under imperfectionism. It is an approach that prefers taking action
Speaker 1: right now, even if it feels like you don't quite
Speaker 1: know what you're doing, or you're not sure if you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to turn it into a long
Speaker 1: term habit, or if you're not sure that the quality
Speaker 1: of the work you produce are going to be any
Speaker 1: good over these kind of long term schemes of fixing
Speaker 1: all your problems, changing all your habits, setting up the
Speaker 1: ideal morning routine, and becoming a different kind of person.
Speaker 1: And I think that personal development and self help culture
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it, while it has a
Speaker 1: lot of useful stuff in it, can really end up
Speaker 1: making this problem worse. Right, embarking on a path of
Speaker 1: always being in the process of getting to the place
Speaker 1: where you're going to feel in control at last, You're
Speaker 1: going to feel in the driver's seat. You're going to
Speaker 1: feel like you know what you're doing, or like you're
Speaker 1: on top of all your demands and pleasing everybody, whatever
Speaker 1: version of it it is for you. And so what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do was really kind of zero in
Speaker 1: on this question of like, well, that's not working, so
Speaker 1: what does work right?
Speaker 3: And it is true that we face a lot of limitations,
Speaker 3: and those limitations are different from person to person, But
Speaker 3: I feel like one of the things that this show
Speaker 3: has done over the years that gets reported back to me,
Speaker 3: maybe more than anything else that's helpful is people realizing
Speaker 3: that it's okay that they're struggling, or that things aren't easy,
Speaker 3: or that there is difficulty in life, that that's just
Speaker 3: to be human. You don't get out of that, right.
Speaker 1: I think you know two opposite things are true here
Speaker 1: what you just said life is difficult, and then in
Speaker 1: a certain sense, life is easier than we make it.
Speaker 1: But they're connected because the reason that we struggle in
Speaker 1: life more than we need to, or so I claim
Speaker 1: in this book and elsewhere, is that we're trying to
Speaker 1: sort of transcend our limitations. We're trying to get out
Speaker 1: of the condition of being human instead of entering more
Speaker 1: fully into and almost kind of harnessing in a sense,
Speaker 1: the condition of being fully human. So, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: stake your self worth on being able to answer any
Speaker 1: number of emails and you're in a job where you're
Speaker 1: getting an impossible number, then you are going to feel
Speaker 1: very bad about yourself. If you can learn in certain
Speaker 1: ways to understand that that is an impossible situation, that
Speaker 1: meeting that sort of infinite demand is not on the
Speaker 1: cards for a finite human, then you can actually you're
Speaker 1: much more free to now focus on the important emails,
Speaker 1: feel better about yourself, make some time for other things
Speaker 1: in your life. So that kind of pattern repeats itself
Speaker 1: again and again. I feel like in what I'm writing about,
Speaker 1: it's the struggle to get out of our our built
Speaker 1: in limitations that causes the extra layer of difficulty. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the same point as saying that it's
Speaker 1: difficult and there are problems right with being a human.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oftentimes I just think of it as like, how
Speaker 3: do I not this sounds pessimistic, but how do I
Speaker 3: not make things worse? Right, like by thinking that I
Speaker 3: should be able to fix this, or I should be
Speaker 3: able to do this, and that there's something wrong with
Speaker 3: me when I can't right right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And that.
Speaker 3: Mobility, like you're saying to just embrace that doesn't make
Speaker 3: the difficult stuff go away, but it certainly stops us from,
Speaker 3: you know, at least in my case, compounding, right, the difficulty.
Speaker 1: It stops you from compounding the difficulty, and it sort
Speaker 1: of allows you to live in a way that honors
Speaker 1: all that stuff as a part of your life, and
Speaker 1: that makes it meaningful. Now it's easy to say, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'm always a wary of somebody listening who's
Speaker 1: you know, recently experienced a tragedy far greater than any
Speaker 1: I've experienced. Yet, so that was saying, you know, well,
Speaker 1: that's easy to say, but I think it is true.
Speaker 1: I think life can make it harder to accept or easier,
Speaker 1: depending on your situation. But it is true that once
Speaker 1: you're no longer treating life as a problem to be solved,
Speaker 1: that's when the problems that it will throw you away
Speaker 1: all the time unendingly can become sources of meaning instead
Speaker 1: of things that you have to somehow get rid of.
Speaker 1: And you're a failure because you haven't yet reached the
Speaker 1: part of your life that has no problems in it.
Speaker 3: You talk a lot about how if we try and
Speaker 3: control the world that a that's not a strategy that
Speaker 3: often works, right, because it just slides right out of
Speaker 3: our hands. Yeah, but that furthermore, the attempt to control
Speaker 3: dens us to our lives. You use a phrase, I
Speaker 3: don't know who it is, but the life loses its resonance.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is a think a German thinking called hartmut Rosa
Speaker 1: who whose work sort of blew my mind when I
Speaker 1: encountered it, especially because it's in such a sort of
Speaker 1: academic setting. You don't expect to be so incredibly useful
Speaker 1: and illuminating in a personal sense. But this is just
Speaker 1: from my own experience right as a kind of somewhat insecure,
Speaker 1: quite driven, slightly fixated on productivity and efficiency type person,
Speaker 1: you're engaged in this effort to make life feel okay
Speaker 1: by exerting more control over it, by feeling like you're
Speaker 1: on top of things, by feeling like you're keeping track
Speaker 1: of everything, or that you've optimized yourself so well that
Speaker 1: you can handle everything that's thrown at you. And sure,
Speaker 1: a lot of time it just doesn't work. And I
Speaker 1: wrote a little bit in my previous book about how
Speaker 1: getting really good at answering email just means you get
Speaker 1: more email and doesn't actually leave you more in charge
Speaker 1: of things at all. But also, yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: where hartmut Rose's work was so important. It squeezes the
Speaker 1: thing that makes life worth living out of life. It
Speaker 1: makes things feel less resonant. His term is resonance, and
Speaker 1: he's referring to the way that not that we should
Speaker 1: just sort of give up attempting to have any influence
Speaker 1: over life. That's taking things too far in the other direction,
Speaker 1: but that really organizing both our lives and our societies
Speaker 1: on some level as efforts to expand our control over
Speaker 1: things predictably has this unintended consequence of making them feel
Speaker 1: not enjoyable or meaningful anymore. So quick couple of examples,
Speaker 1: I might be helpful, you know. I know that I'm
Speaker 1: not alone in among sort of productivity geek people in
Speaker 1: having this experience of coming across some exciting new system
Speaker 1: for setting goals in life and coming up with like
Speaker 1: what you're going to do in the next ninety days
Speaker 1: or the next year, and making it all really specific
Speaker 1: and breaking it all down into the steps, and feeling
Speaker 1: so excited about it on like Monday, drawing up the schedule,
Speaker 1: and by Tuesday or Wednesday, this is like the worst
Speaker 1: thing in the world, right. It just feels completely oppressive,
Speaker 1: this prison that you've built for yourself in an effort
Speaker 1: to get control over your life, because now it feels
Speaker 1: like you've just got to follow these steps and there's
Speaker 1: no sort of real intuitive engagement with the moment anymore.
Speaker 1: It's just like carrying out all these these tasks that
Speaker 1: this jerk, namely me, two days ago, has instructed me
Speaker 1: to carry out, but right to the other end of
Speaker 1: the scale, just quickly. I don't know anyone has either
Speaker 1: got experience of working in or knows people who work
Speaker 1: in education, healthcare, sort of government, social services, things like that.
Speaker 1: And this is a heart Moros's point. In all these
Speaker 1: sectors of work now, people complain all the time that
Speaker 1: they can't do their jobs because there's so much documentation
Speaker 1: and paperwork around doing their jobs. They have to spend
Speaker 1: so much time accounting for themselves and recording things that
Speaker 1: they don't get to do those moments of human connection
Speaker 1: where the work really gets done. And he points out
Speaker 1: this is companies and governments wanting to make everything controllable
Speaker 1: and visible and predictable in a somewhat similar way to
Speaker 1: the productivity geek really and as a result, making it
Speaker 1: harder for a teacher and a pupil to connect, or
Speaker 1: for a social worker and a client to actually have
Speaker 1: a moment of you know, getting to the core of
Speaker 1: what the problem is or something like that, because of
Speaker 1: this fixation on control. So I was really interested in
Speaker 1: the way that seems to apply both to my sort
Speaker 1: of day to day routines and to whole swathes of
Speaker 1: society at the same time.
Speaker 3: So this new book, Meditations for Mortals, is four weeks
Speaker 3: of reflections that we can do to help us, I
Speaker 3: would say, internalize some of these ideas and as you
Speaker 3: said earlier, help us maybe live some of them out.
Speaker 3: Why that structure.
Speaker 1: I really wanted if I was going to write a
Speaker 1: book that was about this challenge of actually living differently
Speaker 1: instead of just thinking about it and planning to do it,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure that the book, as far
Speaker 1: as any book could and there are limitations there, but
Speaker 1: embodied that right that it didn't turn into some new
Speaker 1: system that you could read and store away in your
Speaker 1: head and then put into practice one day when you
Speaker 1: get a spare moment, because there aren't any spare moments.
Speaker 1: When did you lost get a spare moment? Ridiculous? So
Speaker 1: I wanted the book to be something that people could read. Again,
Speaker 1: you don't have to follow mine instructions, but the invitation
Speaker 1: is that you read one of these short chapters each day,
Speaker 1: take a few minutes, and if some of those sort
Speaker 1: of shifts and perspective or those suggested tools and techniques
Speaker 1: work for you, that's going to change, in a small
Speaker 1: way how you live that day. Not some big charactery
Speaker 1: invention that you're going to get involved in six months
Speaker 1: from now, but just on the day to day texture
Speaker 1: of life, and on the level of what I'm explicitly
Speaker 1: saying in those chapters as well, I'm sort of constantly
Speaker 1: pulling the rug I hope under away from any attempt
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, this is great, I'm going to note
Speaker 1: it down and have a whole new system of habits.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, just do this one thing today, because
Speaker 1: it's actually quite hard to do that for a certain
Speaker 1: kind of person of whom I am to just try
Speaker 1: it once, to just behave a little bit differently in
Speaker 1: a positive sense towards one person, without having any confidence
Speaker 1: that you're going to make this stick or keep it
Speaker 1: up as a regular habit or anything like that. And
Speaker 1: so that's what I'm really trying to d home every day,
Speaker 1: and then the four weeks sort of build on each other. Right,
Speaker 1: So there intended to be a bit of a journey
Speaker 1: from starting more philosophically, getting quite concrete, and then ending
Speaker 1: a bit more philosophically again.
Speaker 3: I guess the thing about habits is that we know
Speaker 3: repetition can be a very positive thing, right if we're
Speaker 3: pointed in the right direction, A habit can be beneficial
Speaker 3: to us because it just sort of allows a good
Speaker 3: behavior to happen a little bit easier, and at the
Speaker 3: same time they can be deadening, right, just go through
Speaker 3: the motions. It's sort of interviewed a guy I don't know,
Speaker 3: Michael Norton, who wrote a book about rituals. But the
Speaker 3: core idea, which is just that habits almost have the
Speaker 3: meaning sucked out of them. You don't think about the
Speaker 3: meaning because you just do the thing. And again it's
Speaker 3: good and bad. But a ritual is an action that
Speaker 3: you take that you're trying to imbue with emotions specifically.
Speaker 3: And so I love this idea that you're pointing at,
Speaker 3: which is you don't have to do something again and
Speaker 3: again and again and every day to have value.
Speaker 1: Right. That is absolutely right. And you know, the other
Speaker 1: thing I would add is that very often, I think, certainly,
Speaker 1: if I examine in my own life the habits that
Speaker 1: have stuck, what happened was that they emerged through that
Speaker 1: process of just doing it sometimes right. They They were
Speaker 1: not always these sort of top down willed efforts at
Speaker 1: exerting control over how I lived my life. And so
Speaker 1: I'm not even in some level making a point against habits.
Speaker 1: I'm just making a point about how habits can emerge.
Speaker 1: Everything has to start with a willingness to just right
Speaker 1: now do something that feels meaningful for ten minutes. You
Speaker 1: know one thing, and I guess part of this point
Speaker 1: of this book is is a reaction to seeing in me,
Speaker 1: as much as in anybody else, the incredible sort of
Speaker 1: seductiveness of not doing that. It makes you feel much
Speaker 1: more secure on some level to believe that you're involved
Speaker 1: in a process of reaching towards perfection but you're not
Speaker 1: there yet, than to say, actually, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: live a little bit differently today.
Speaker 3: Which is ultimately all you can do, because you can't
Speaker 3: live next Thursday. You can only live today, right, and
Speaker 3: you can only take action today. And it's overly obvious.
Speaker 3: But when I was coaching people, I would the same
Speaker 3: thing would happen. They'd be doing great with whatever it
Speaker 3: is that they wanted to do. But there is this
Speaker 3: constant but I just know next week I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be able to stick with.
Speaker 1: It right right right. That's interesting because that's not so
Speaker 1: much putting it off until later, that's saying it's going
Speaker 1: fine now, but I'm racked with anxiety about whether I
Speaker 1: can keep it up. And amounts to the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: which is that the real value, the real sort of
Speaker 1: payoff moment in life where you get to say that
Speaker 1: you did well or not is always in the future.
Speaker 1: And if you live too completely in that way, you
Speaker 1: just reinforce the idea that the meaning of life is
Speaker 1: in the future. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Day seven kind of talks about this directly. Let the
Speaker 3: future be the future. On crossing bridges when you come
Speaker 3: to them.
Speaker 1: I write in that chapter about the moment not many
Speaker 1: years ago when I finally felt like I understood what
Speaker 1: cross bridges when you come to them means. People say
Speaker 1: it all the time, is I will cross that bridge
Speaker 1: when we come to it. Of course, you will only
Speaker 1: cross that bridge when you come to it. There's no
Speaker 1: other time that you can cross a bridge. But I
Speaker 1: think that for the sort of habitually anxious and worrier
Speaker 1: people like me, a lot of what is going on
Speaker 1: with worry is this attempt to sort of achieve in
Speaker 1: the present the security that would have come from crossing
Speaker 1: all the bridges, from dealing with everything that could go
Speaker 1: wrong in the future. And you know, it's useful to
Speaker 1: prepare yourself for things that could go wrong. That's a
Speaker 1: sort of old stoic technique. Isn't it right to sort
Speaker 1: of think about what could go wrong so that you're
Speaker 1: sort of mentally girded for it, But you can't ever
Speaker 1: in the present have the security of knowing that you
Speaker 1: survived something that happens in the future. That's just not
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that humans get to experience because
Speaker 1: one of the ways we're limited is we're sort of
Speaker 1: temporarily limited, right, We're limited to this spot in time.
Speaker 1: You can't sort of like just look over the fence
Speaker 1: and see how it's going to be a weaker on
Speaker 1: thre a year from now. And like all the things
Speaker 1: I'm discussing in this book, or many of them, that
Speaker 1: is both incredibly sort of stressful and depressing and requires
Speaker 1: you to admit defeat in a way. And then as
Speaker 1: soon as you begin to do so, you realize that
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's liberating, and it's energizing and it's empowering
Speaker 1: because now you only have to care about the very
Speaker 1: next moment. Ever, which is not to say that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't sometimes use the very next moment to do some planning. Sure,
Speaker 1: like you know, definitely write, will you know, make certain
Speaker 1: kind of judicious plans in your life, but all you're
Speaker 1: ever doing is using the next moment in whatever seems
Speaker 1: like the most important, meaningful way. You're not sort of
Speaker 1: pinning down the future so that you know it's all
Speaker 1: going to be fine. And that's why worry is so repetitive, right,
Speaker 1: because we're constantly trying to get to this place of
Speaker 1: security about the future and then realizing like, no, we're
Speaker 1: not going to get there. That's not how it works,
Speaker 1: so we worry some more.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that you do well
Speaker 3: in the book is avoid the binaries, right, and it's
Speaker 3: really easy to be in. I think one of two
Speaker 3: binaries when people paint them right, one is just live
Speaker 3: for the moment, now is all you have, and the
Speaker 3: other is this idea of like make sure your future
Speaker 3: self is totally set up for success. And you've actually
Speaker 3: got one of the meditations that talks about your future self.
Speaker 3: But it sounds like you're trying to sort of split
Speaker 3: that difference between these. Maybe that's the wrong way to
Speaker 3: say it, but to find some place between these binaries
Speaker 3: that we often tend to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think as always when there's a binary,
Speaker 1: really it's like there's some sort of synthesis or transcendence
Speaker 1: of those ideas that can usefully take place. And in
Speaker 1: that context, yeah, I mean, I think live in the
Speaker 1: moment very often means, you know, put all this effort
Speaker 1: and self consciousness into trying to feel like all you're
Speaker 1: doing is just sensing the world around you and not
Speaker 1: caring about the future and not behaving in ways that
Speaker 1: society deems responsible, but just really soaking it all up.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, sure, that's an extreme, just as
Speaker 1: a sort of fixation with your future self is an extreme.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the fact that we always are
Speaker 1: only in the moment is just a brute fact of
Speaker 1: being temporal, finite human beings. So the question then is
Speaker 1: how much of those present moments you're going to use
Speaker 1: for things that really only get their meaning in the future,
Speaker 1: or whether you can make sure that there are things
Speaker 1: you're doing in your life that have meaning in themselves,
Speaker 1: perhaps meaning themselves and meaning for the future. And the
Speaker 1: point in the section that you mentioned there that I'm
Speaker 1: sort of addressing this directly is I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are sort of a t to
Speaker 1: ideas like this read books on personal development, spirituality. Even
Speaker 1: though many of them may pay a lot of lip
Speaker 1: service to the idea of being present in the moment,
Speaker 1: they're really focused on, almost to the exclusion of anything else,
Speaker 1: on sort of becoming a different kind of person in
Speaker 1: the future, on making sure that their future self thanks
Speaker 1: them for the decisions they're making now so you can
Speaker 1: it's quite easy, I think, from my experience and people
Speaker 1: I've met, to sort of adopt a path of meditation
Speaker 1: or non duality or you know, something that really does
Speaker 1: try to sort of in its content is all about
Speaker 1: being here now and just embark upon it as a
Speaker 1: completely future oriented, goal focused process towards becoming a kind
Speaker 1: of person that you like more than the person that
Speaker 1: you are right now. Is quote at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the book that I use from Marion Woodman. It's
Speaker 1: easier to try to be better than you are than
Speaker 1: to be who you are, which I think is is
Speaker 1: quite a powerful one. A lot of us, I don't
Speaker 1: want to group anyone else in, but certainly me are
Speaker 1: very prone to really deferring gratification too much, to saying
Speaker 1: if I'm going to have a time in my life
Speaker 1: when I can relax or just enjoy things, enjoy people,
Speaker 1: enjoy being alive, Like that's got to come at the
Speaker 1: end of this very long, arduous process of doing all
Speaker 1: the things I'm obliged to do first.
Speaker 3: At the same time, you also in another chapter talk
Speaker 3: about you can't hoard life like on letting the moment pass,
Speaker 3: and this really resonated with me. Say more about what
Speaker 3: you mean by that.
Speaker 1: I think this is really in keeping with that, but
Speaker 1: it is a different angle I'm writing there while I
Speaker 1: begin in that section with this awareness that I've had
Speaker 1: myself that even when good things are happening, to give
Speaker 1: the example in the book, even when I'm sort of
Speaker 1: living in a landscape I always wanted to live in,
Speaker 1: walking at a beautiful day through beautiful countryside that I've
Speaker 1: always loved, Like, there can be this thing that stops
Speaker 1: you fully enjoying it, which is a desire to sort
Speaker 1: of take ownership of it, or to convince yourself that
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to have lots more of
Speaker 1: this experience going on into the future, or really encode
Speaker 1: it in your mind so that you can always remember it,
Speaker 1: or just something that takes your way from the experience itself.
Speaker 1: Buddhism is especially good on this right, that one of
Speaker 1: the specific ways we make ourselves miserable is not just
Speaker 1: that we don't yet have what we think we want,
Speaker 1: or that we have things that we wish we didn't have.
Speaker 1: It's that we do have what we did want right,
Speaker 1: and cling so hard to it that it actually undermines
Speaker 1: the sort of the resonance of that moment. So that's
Speaker 1: what I'm referring to as hoarding life, whether it's busily
Speaker 1: taking photos of the place you are to try to
Speaker 1: keep it permanent, or if even just the thought that
Speaker 1: I was having there, you know, Okay, I've got to
Speaker 1: make sure that my life works such that I can
Speaker 1: carry on having this kind of experience like every day
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life or something. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not quite fully being in the experience.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's an experience. I've had so many times
Speaker 3: where it's like all right, yeah, let's say I'm getting
Speaker 3: ready to go on a beach vacation. It's like, I
Speaker 3: just got to get to the beach. I just got
Speaker 3: to get to you know, like when I get there,
Speaker 3: So the whole day just kind of waiting to get there,
Speaker 3: waiting to get there, and get there, walk out, have
Speaker 3: about thirty seconds of like, oh wow, that's really beautiful
Speaker 3: and amazing, and then in my brain immediately will say
Speaker 3: something like I wonder what houses around here costs it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Right, right, because I'm suddenly like I need to be
Speaker 3: here all the time. But there's another flavor of this
Speaker 3: that I get. You sort of talk about it by
Speaker 3: saying that you fail to savor a moment in nature
Speaker 3: because you're too focused on trying to savor it, which
Speaker 3: is that I often have this moment of like, what's
Speaker 3: the way to say this? It's the beautiful countryside there,
Speaker 3: and I feel like a more evolved version of me
Speaker 3: would be content with just what's right in front of me,
Speaker 3: and I don't feel quite content with what's right in
Speaker 3: front of me, So now I'm even further away from
Speaker 3: being able to enjoy what's right in front of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, you know, you can very easily
Speaker 1: get into loup where you're then writing yourself up for
Speaker 1: being like that, right, and it's like where before you
Speaker 1: know it, you're just a huge mess. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a twin process, isn't it, of sort of allowing yourself
Speaker 1: to enjoy that experience just for itself, but also allowing
Speaker 1: yourself to have all these kind of other parts of
Speaker 1: you that want to do this. This is not a
Speaker 1: unique argument at all, but I'm very big really on
Speaker 1: the idea that it doesn't help to try to sort
Speaker 1: of beat up or extinguish the parts of your personality
Speaker 1: that are causing these sort of ridiculous situations. I think
Speaker 1: what I'm sort of constantly hoping to indicate in the
Speaker 1: book is like, they are a little absurd, right. It's
Speaker 1: not that you should feel bad that you have something
Speaker 1: in you that wanders about house prices. There's a great
Speaker 1: power in being able to notice that that's quite funny
Speaker 1: because the place from which you're laughing at that is
Speaker 1: a very big and all encompassing space, right, And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: on some level, you'll probably always have that kind of
Speaker 1: thought anywhere that you're not living, that you go that
Speaker 1: you enjoy being in. I mean that comes up in
Speaker 1: another section, but that strategy that I'm borrowing from Bruce
Speaker 1: Tift the psychotherapist, is like, you know, what if the
Speaker 1: trait that you most deplore in yourself, what does it
Speaker 1: feel like to imagine that you would have some version
Speaker 1: of that for the rest of your life, never getting
Speaker 1: rid of it. You're always going to have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a tendency towards worry or being dissatisfied in
Speaker 1: beautiful places, or easily distracted by nonsense, you know. And
Speaker 1: I really find that a very relieving thought to imagine
Speaker 1: that I might not eradicate that kind of issue because
Speaker 1: it feels like, Okay, then I can give up that
Speaker 1: fight and just spend my time and energy on things
Speaker 1: that I care about instead of constantly struggling with something that,
Speaker 1: on some level is just who I am.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is one that I talk about on the
Speaker 3: show a lot, because I was diagnosed with clinical depression
Speaker 3: sometime in my late twenties after getting sober from heroin addiction,
Speaker 3: and have thought about myself in those terms a lot.
Speaker 3: But where I wrestle with all that is sort of
Speaker 3: a version of what you're saying, which is like, what
Speaker 3: if this is just how I am. I've referred to
Speaker 3: it before as treating it a little bit like the
Speaker 3: emotional flu like, oh, when it comes here, I get
Speaker 3: it for a few days, and then it goes away, and
Speaker 3: then it comes back, and just like just letting it
Speaker 3: be instead of thinking that there should be some way
Speaker 3: to change it or fix it. And I don't know
Speaker 3: if you know. Andrew Solomon, he wrote a book called
Speaker 3: The Noonday Demon and half that's a depression. But he
Speaker 3: also wrote a book called Far from the Tree, and
Speaker 3: the thing that stuck out from that book to me
Speaker 3: the most was it's about children who often have some
Speaker 3: sort of difference from their parents blindness or autism, or
Speaker 3: if the parent knows that there's nothing that can be
Speaker 3: done to change that condition, they get on with the
Speaker 3: business of building the best possible life they can with
Speaker 3: a child. And if, on the other hand, they absolutely
Speaker 3: know it can be fixed, then they just focus on that.
Speaker 3: But everybody else is caught in this middle.
Speaker 1: Ground, not knowing if it can be fixed.
Speaker 3: Not knowing if it can be fixed, and getting your
Speaker 3: hopes up again and again because someone else comes down
Speaker 3: the street saying I know how to fix that. I
Speaker 3: can fix that. Maybe if you just date this way,
Speaker 3: maybe if you just and so they end up in
Speaker 3: this limbo where they're neither fully committed to changing it,
Speaker 3: and they're also not fully committed to accepting it. And
Speaker 3: I think a lot of things in life fall into
Speaker 3: that middle ground which makes them hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is fascinating because obviously there's a kind
Speaker 1: of a glib acceptance response to that that just says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, acceptance is always the way, But that makes
Speaker 1: no sense. If there's a really serious chance that you
Speaker 1: can relieve your kid of a serious issue, that's crazy
Speaker 1: to not try. So it comes down to that very
Speaker 1: sort of subtle position of saying that you accept how
Speaker 1: things are right now in this moment, including your desire
Speaker 1: to make changes, including the possibility that the changes might
Speaker 1: or might not work. There's a sort of level of
Speaker 1: acceptance that I only occasionally glimpse myself that includes non acceptance.
Speaker 3: Right in the book, several times you talk about this,
Speaker 3: and you just use a similar reference to it a
Speaker 3: couple of minutes ago, although I don't remember the exact words.
Speaker 3: I think you're talking about making more and more space,
Speaker 3: but you talk a lot about contraction and expansion as
Speaker 3: ways of thinking about these ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, one of these came up in four
Speaker 1: thousand weeks, and I returned to it in this book,
Speaker 1: which is the lovely line from James Hollis about asking
Speaker 1: whether a certain life path or choice enlarges you or
Speaker 1: diminishes you, instead of will it make me happy? Will
Speaker 1: this be enlarging? And that's just very powerful because it
Speaker 1: seems to connect intuitively to something a lot of people
Speaker 1: really do get. There's a certain kind of attitude of
Speaker 1: growth that you can take in life that will sometimes
Speaker 1: take you through very happy and enjoyable things, but sometimes
Speaker 1: through quite difficult terrain. And equally, there is a path
Speaker 1: of pure hedonism you could take that sometimes might be meaningful,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the time would be not meaningful,
Speaker 1: even though it was sort of fun on the surface.
Speaker 1: And so that question does this enlarged me or diminish me?
Speaker 1: Is quite important. I mean, I've seen so many different
Speaker 1: references to this all over the place from different sources.
Speaker 1: But just that idea that what I'm doing wrong or
Speaker 1: what I'm doing unwisely when I worry, when I feel
Speaker 1: like I need to get into more control over the
Speaker 1: world than I am, or anything like that is best
Speaker 1: understood as some kind of clenching and for me, and
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people actually is accompanied
Speaker 1: by sort of muscular tensions. That part of worrying about
Speaker 1: something is like tightening the muscles in my face, and
Speaker 1: that this is somehow girding me against the world in
Speaker 1: a way that will keep me safe. And part of
Speaker 1: worry for me certainly is always like in the bottom
Speaker 1: of my stomach. That's where anxiety lives when it comes,
Speaker 1: and it's all this kind of way of being braced
Speaker 1: against reality, which is both unpleasant and kind of makes
Speaker 1: no sense because you're just part of reality and you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to prevent events happening through
Speaker 1: sort of that sort of bracing. So I think the
Speaker 1: advice I'm giving in this book, which as ever, is
Speaker 1: advice to myself as much as to anybody, is like,
Speaker 1: maybe just relax in that very specific muscular sense a
Speaker 1: little bit and see what it is to go through
Speaker 1: life in that way instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned nonduality earlier, and I studied with a
Speaker 3: non dual teacher for a while by the name of
Speaker 3: Adi Ashanti, and he said two things that were relevant
Speaker 3: to this. One is he said that ego is nothing
Speaker 3: but contraction, which I think is just sort of an
Speaker 3: out there sort of phrase to contemplate, right. But the
Speaker 3: other one was he said, you know, his teacher told
Speaker 3: him at one point less of this, And I'm making
Speaker 3: a fist right now and more of this I'm opening
Speaker 3: my hand, and I like that because, like you said,
Speaker 3: when I do that, I feel some sense of what
Speaker 3: I'm trying to do psychically.
Speaker 1: Totally, I really feel. I mean, I'm only at the
Speaker 1: beginning of a journey of the sort of embodied and
Speaker 1: somatic part of these ideas. But it's it really is
Speaker 1: where the rubber hits the road. And I've even found,
Speaker 1: you know, just to give a completely sort of self
Speaker 1: absorbed example from writing and wanted to promote a book,
Speaker 1: right it's like just what I'm doing in my life.
Speaker 1: It really is true that the more I can just
Speaker 1: enjoy myself, the better it goes for everybody, including the
Speaker 1: readers that I'm addressing in my newsletter, including the I
Speaker 1: hope the host of the podcast so who I'm talking
Speaker 1: to right now, you know, just including book sales. Just
Speaker 1: like all of it is not helped by this sort
Speaker 1: of excess of furrowing one's brow and clenching one's fist
Speaker 1: and trying to make it work out. And it's a
Speaker 1: real leap of faith. The glibway of talking about is
Speaker 1: it goes better when you don't really care about it,
Speaker 1: and that makes it sound like you're being sort of irresponsible,
Speaker 1: but actually, yeah, it goes better when you stand up
Speaker 1: on a stage and mostly you're dedicated to just having
Speaker 1: a good time, it goes better for other people.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life. Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 3: i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 3: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 3: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 3: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't
Speaker 3: like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 3: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 3: from the one you feed community on the list, and
Speaker 3: we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on
Speaker 3: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 3: our good wolves together. Let's turn in the next twenty
Speaker 3: minutes or so to a couple more practical things that
Speaker 3: are in the book. We've kind of been philosophical to
Speaker 3: a large degree up till now, and I want to
Speaker 3: get some of the great practical things that are in
Speaker 3: the book out. And the first that I wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about was this idea of too much information on
Speaker 3: the art of reading and not reading. We are like
Speaker 3: obsessed with getting more, knowing more, learning more, remembering more.
Speaker 3: What are some ways to navigate this that are saying?
Speaker 1: I love this topic partly because you know, it's just
Speaker 1: a big deal in my own life, the feeling that
Speaker 1: there's too much that I need to read or should consume,
Speaker 1: or that would be useful for me to digest, but
Speaker 1: also because I think it really is a good example
Speaker 1: of a much wider phenomenon. When it comes to being
Speaker 1: a finite human. We are convinced that there must be
Speaker 1: some way of getting to all the most important stuff,
Speaker 1: and we feel bad because we haven't done so. So
Speaker 1: it might not be that we get to read every
Speaker 1: book that we think of, but it certainly is that
Speaker 1: we should be able to at least make the right
Speaker 1: choices and then make sure that the books we do read,
Speaker 1: or the articles we do consume, or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: are the ones that we really needed to consume and
Speaker 1: the rest didn't really matter. Of course, the real problem
Speaker 1: that we have in the modern world is that there's
Speaker 1: far too much interesting, compelling, important stuff that does matter.
Speaker 1: It's not that with a really good filter, you know,
Speaker 1: with really good discernment, you can get rid of all
Speaker 1: the stuff that you don't need to consume. It's that, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, if you had forty eight hours in each
Speaker 1: day and nothing to do but consume books and articles
Speaker 1: and podcasts and videos, there would be enough good stuff,
Speaker 1: important stuff to fill that time. And in that context,
Speaker 1: the only sane way to approach the glut of information
Speaker 1: is the metaphor uses to treat it like a river
Speaker 1: rather than a bucket, right, So it's not something you're
Speaker 1: trying to drain, it's not something you're trying to go
Speaker 1: through every single item and at least consume the stuff
Speaker 1: that really matters until the bucket is empty. It's just
Speaker 1: this endless river of infinite stuff, and you're just picking
Speaker 1: a few things that seize your interest and attention as
Speaker 1: they go by, and you're not feeling bad about all
Speaker 1: the things that flow by without you ever seeing them.
Speaker 1: Because to feel bad in that context, to feel overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: although it's very understandable and I don't want people to
Speaker 1: beat themselves up for it, it is ultimately to believe
Speaker 1: that you ought to have the capacities of a kind
Speaker 1: of infinite being of a god. It really is a
Speaker 1: sort of denial of what it actually means to be
Speaker 1: a finite human, especially in the modern world, which is
Speaker 1: to be just surrounded by so much more interesting stuff
Speaker 1: to read. And that's just one example, right, could be
Speaker 1: places to go people, to get to know, obligations, to
Speaker 1: fulfill ambitions, to realize there's so much more that we
Speaker 1: could ever get to do that. Actually, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of liberation to be there's a separate section of
Speaker 1: the book where I talk about how like it's so
Speaker 1: liberating to realize that these things are worse than you think.
Speaker 1: Because if you think it's really bad, how many emails
Speaker 1: you've got and that's going to be really hard to
Speaker 1: answer them all. Or you think it's really bad, how
Speaker 1: many books you feel you need to read, it's going
Speaker 1: to be really hard to get through them all. That's
Speaker 1: very stressful. But when you realize that it's worse than that,
Speaker 1: and that it's completely impossible that you're never going to
Speaker 1: make it through all the things that feel like they
Speaker 1: need your time and attention not even close, then you
Speaker 1: can just give up that fight and you can use
Speaker 1: your time and your energy and your attention in ways
Speaker 1: that really matter, which is going to be to make
Speaker 1: some good enough choices about what to focus on and
Speaker 1: move forward. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I love that River analogy. I think that's a
Speaker 3: great one. And I think the other thing that comes
Speaker 3: in here is also losing a belief that if we
Speaker 3: just get the right book or the right article or
Speaker 3: the right whatever, as you say, we're going to be
Speaker 3: on top of it right, We're going to be fixed,
Speaker 3: We're going to be fine, we're going to arrive at
Speaker 3: some place. We just need to find the right one,
Speaker 3: which is not really true because it doesn't matter what
Speaker 3: we do. Is the point of the book being, You
Speaker 3: never fully feel on top of it or complete, or
Speaker 3: that you know everything's under control, because it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Right. What we're trying to do in all those moments, however,
Speaker 1: forgivably and understandably, is sort of get up and out
Speaker 1: of the situation in which we all are in as
Speaker 1: finite humans, limited time, limited control, limited ability to know
Speaker 1: what's coming next, or to even to understand other people. Right,
Speaker 1: We're looking for some secret to sort of master the
Speaker 1: situation of being a human, and we don't find it.
Speaker 1: We spend a lot of our lives struggling to find it.
Speaker 1: We beat ourselves up for not having found it, We
Speaker 1: get sort of angry or jealous or envious of people
Speaker 1: who we think have found it, and it's just not there,
Speaker 1: because what it really is is a desire to renegotiate
Speaker 1: the terms conditions of the human condition. And that's what
Speaker 1: all those lovely zen phrases mean. When you know, Jockobeck says,
Speaker 1: what makes it unbearable is your mistaken belief that it
Speaker 1: can be cured. And when mel Weitzman says, our suffering
Speaker 1: is believing there's a way out, the problem is not
Speaker 1: the problems. The problem is thinking that there ought to
Speaker 1: be a complete solution to the problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's some version of a story where I don't
Speaker 3: think it's an actual Buddhist tale, but it's this guy
Speaker 3: who comes to the Buddha with all these problems, right,
Speaker 3: it's just this list of problems, and the Buddhists found,
Speaker 3: you know, like ninety nine problems, which is basically saying
Speaker 3: infinite problems. He's like, I can't help you with any
Speaker 3: of those, yeah, And the guy gets very frustrated and thinks,
Speaker 3: why am I talking to someone so wise? And again
Speaker 3: there's not an actual Buddhist story, but it's attributed that way.
Speaker 3: Not think it is. And the Buddhist says, well, I
Speaker 3: can help you with one problem, which is that you
Speaker 3: think you shouldn't have problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And there's a section in the book on
Speaker 1: this idea of giving up hope of getting to the
Speaker 1: problem free phase in life, which I contend you would
Speaker 1: not actually want to be in if you did reach it,
Speaker 1: that it would be kind of a death to have
Speaker 1: a life with no problems. There are obviously very bad
Speaker 1: problems that one hopes never to have to experience, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing good about but that idea that a problem
Speaker 1: is doubly problematic because there's the problem itself, and then
Speaker 1: there's the fact that by this stage in my life
Speaker 1: I ought to have figured things out so that I
Speaker 1: don't have problems. You know, it's like an extraordinary recipe
Speaker 1: for unnecessary self hate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a conversation with I don't know how
Speaker 3: it happened. My partner, Ginny, will just start conversations with
Speaker 3: people wherever we go, and they go very deep, very quickly.
Speaker 3: I'm like, how does she connect with these people like this?
Speaker 3: But one of them was with this twenty five year
Speaker 3: old American woman we were in Paris at the time,
Speaker 3: who's living in Paris and feels like she just doesn't
Speaker 3: know what she's doing, or that all of her friends
Speaker 3: are ahead of her, or all these different things, And
Speaker 3: a big part of the conversation was just like, I've
Speaker 3: got bad news, which is that feeling it's not necessarily
Speaker 3: going to go away. You're not like two years away
Speaker 3: where you'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've got some disconcerting news to give you,
Speaker 3: which is and I love you. Just sort of used
Speaker 3: a phrase about renegotiate. I feel like we're always renegotiating.
Speaker 3: We have to be the terms of reality, right. We
Speaker 3: think we're going to get to a place where we
Speaker 3: strike a deal and that's it, but it's not. Life
Speaker 3: is an ongoing negotiation with reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the example that you give there, it's a
Speaker 1: classic case of the liberation of seeing that it's worse
Speaker 1: than you think, because yeah, it's a tormenting thing to
Speaker 1: feel that imposter syndrome or you know, not that youthful
Speaker 1: idea that other people understand life if they're a little
Speaker 1: older than oneself. It's tormenting because you think it's somewhere
Speaker 1: that you can get and you haven't got that yet.
Speaker 1: But when you really let it sink into your bones
Speaker 1: that no one ever gets there, or maybe that the
Speaker 1: few people who really do think they know what they're
Speaker 1: doing in life are the most dangerous and deluded on
Speaker 1: the planet. That's kind of worse than you think because
Speaker 1: it turns out it's not possible. But that's wonderful because
Speaker 1: then you're just you're free you're free to just like
Speaker 1: try things now because you don't need to postpone them
Speaker 1: to this point at which you know what you're doing. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure that those statements to her were
Speaker 3: initially consoling. I think she's got a little bit more,
Speaker 3: a little bit more of wrestle with that. That Oh, no,
Speaker 3: you got to be kidding me, I'm going to was
Speaker 3: not instantly liberating.
Speaker 1: I don't think, no, no, none of this is instant
Speaker 1: in my experience. Whatever certain zen masters say.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I'm just going to jump around at a
Speaker 3: couple here set a quantity goal on firing your inner
Speaker 3: quality controller, which is day twenty.
Speaker 1: This is part of a week of reflections on the
Speaker 1: ways in which sometimes what we really need to do
Speaker 1: is not make things happen in our lives to build
Speaker 1: more meaningful ones, but just to let them happen, to
Speaker 1: stand out of the way. And you know, born of
Speaker 1: seeing this tendency in myself over and over again to
Speaker 1: make things harder than they need to be, I'm coming
Speaker 1: at it in this case through the lens of creativity
Speaker 1: and talking about how difficult it is to in my
Speaker 1: case write good stuff. When you're trying to write good stuff.
Speaker 1: And this was an experience totally born out by this book,
Speaker 1: because my last book had done a lot better than
Speaker 1: I expected, and so naturally I had this predictable reaction
Speaker 1: of being like paralyzed and thinking like, oh no, I've
Speaker 1: got to read the same standard and if I mess
Speaker 1: it up more people will see my humiliation or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the first step through that was to let myself.
Speaker 1: And it's not easy, right, it's sort of unpleasant at first,
Speaker 1: but sort of let myself put quality to one side,
Speaker 1: at least at first. Just write. Just do free writing
Speaker 1: exercises where you said a time of for twenty minutes
Speaker 1: and fill the page with words, all these things that,
Speaker 1: to be quite honest, I had always deeply disdained. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, free writing exercises are for like amateurs. It's
Speaker 1: like such bs, right, I just sit down and I
Speaker 1: write them down. Not perfect, but it makes sense, you know.
Speaker 1: And actually behind that kind of attitude there is something
Speaker 1: a bit perfectionistic. It's not perfectionistic in terms of the
Speaker 1: quality of the sentences, but it is perfectionistic in terms
Speaker 1: of what mood I ought to be able to bring
Speaker 1: up whenever I want to. And you know, This is
Speaker 1: in the book, right, that seemingly great quote from Chuck
Speaker 1: Close that's so famous, Like inspiration is for amateurs, the
Speaker 1: rest of us just show up and get to working.
Speaker 1: Really great about that, but there's also something really bad
Speaker 1: about it, which is that implication that it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how you feel. You just get there and you write
Speaker 1: good stuff or you paint good paintings or whatever, because
Speaker 1: you're a professional. And actually, I think that what we
Speaker 1: need to do very often in those situations is to
Speaker 1: relax the quest for quality and the standards that we
Speaker 1: hold ourselves to. And a very simple, down to earthway
Speaker 1: to do that is, as I say, to set a
Speaker 1: quantity goal, right, to make your creative practice about the
Speaker 1: number of one hundred words you're going to put onto
Speaker 1: a page or the number of minutes that you're going
Speaker 1: to work on something for, and really to be careful
Speaker 1: that that doesn't turn into I'm going to spend this
Speaker 1: many minutes and do something really amazing, but that actually
Speaker 1: completion for the day, the state of being done, the
Speaker 1: state of having done what you showed up to do,
Speaker 1: is measured totally, at least at first in those quantities,
Speaker 1: because it really has a wonderful way of taking the
Speaker 1: drama out of it, and it sort of obliges you
Speaker 1: to trust processes that are bigger than you or or
Speaker 1: beneath your consciousness. You have to say, look, I really
Speaker 1: am going to write five hundred words a day, and
Speaker 1: if I think the five hundred words I've written are terrible,
Speaker 1: I'm going to write another five hundred words. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to spend the next six months finessing that first
Speaker 1: five hundred words. Now, I feel honor bound to add
Speaker 1: that by the time I was actually writing this book
Speaker 1: and editing it, I wasn't just free writing nonsense onto
Speaker 1: the page. I don't think. I don't think it's full
Speaker 1: of nonsense now, but it's absolutely critical at the beginning
Speaker 1: to not really mind and to see that that sort
Speaker 1: of little taskmaster inside you that is barking that this
Speaker 1: isn't good enough and that you need to do better.
Speaker 1: Like I'm sufficiently familiar with sort of internal family systems,
Speaker 1: therapy and stuff to know that he does want the
Speaker 1: best for you. He's not evil, but he really needs
Speaker 1: to be sort of indulgently chuckled at rather than abade.
Speaker 3: I think the headline out of this is Berkman thinks's
Speaker 3: latest book not much better than free writing exercises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great positioning.
Speaker 3: Yeah you call them quantity goals. I refer to them
Speaker 3: as effort goals. For me, I've been in the midst
Speaker 3: of this with trying to write a book for myself. Now,
Speaker 3: I've had the problem of having read a decade's worth
Speaker 3: of books like this by many people who are extraordinarily
Speaker 3: good authors. So I would consider you in that camp,
Speaker 3: and that I know that what's coming out of me
Speaker 3: isn't that good. And the phrase that I'll use is
Speaker 3: yet And I have no idea can I write five
Speaker 3: hundred words a day? Should I be writing with that?
Speaker 3: I have no sense of any of it. So for me,
Speaker 3: it's number of thirty minute sessions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just that.
Speaker 3: And if I get that done at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, I do everything I can to just shut
Speaker 3: off all the voices of doubt. And it's not good,
Speaker 3: nothing good came out, and just be like I did it,
Speaker 3: like I showed up and did my best for this
Speaker 3: window of time. And that's just going to have to
Speaker 3: be good enough for now.
Speaker 1: And the crazy part is I totally agree what is
Speaker 1: represented by that attitude which is really engaging with reality,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, putting aside perfectionistic fantasies in favor
Speaker 1: of action that really matters. Like that will be in
Speaker 1: the book just as a result of having approached it
Speaker 1: in that way, right, right, separate from which words you
Speaker 1: end up writing in the final draft, Like the book
Speaker 1: will live and exude that in a way that I
Speaker 1: don't even understand, right, I don't know how it works.
Speaker 1: It seems a bit supernatural. But that sort of down
Speaker 1: to earth approach I firmly believe will be reflected in
Speaker 1: the sort of usefulness and ability to connect to people
Speaker 1: that will be in the end product. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I imagine my editor is probably going to be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we've got the idea that writ in this book has
Speaker 3: made you nervous, like we don't need it in like
Speaker 3: every fifth sentence. Right.
Speaker 1: The other reason not to submit a perfect book is
Speaker 1: you've got to give your editor something to do. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: where's the meaning in your editor's life? Right, You've got
Speaker 1: to give them something to get their teeth into and
Speaker 1: send back and say do this differently.
Speaker 3: All right, let's end with a phrase that I really liked.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to read a couple of sentences and
Speaker 3: let you talk more about it. Striving towards sanity is
Speaker 3: never going to work. You have to operate from sanity instead.
Speaker 3: What does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that whatever counts for you as the spirit
Speaker 1: of the kind of life you want to live, and
Speaker 1: when I think about myself, it's calm and energized, focused,
Speaker 1: attentive and available for other people and sort of getting
Speaker 1: important things actually done. All of that call that sanity
Speaker 1: by my standards here in some sense, you have to
Speaker 1: live from that identity right now and sort of manifest
Speaker 1: that in the world, rather than viewing it as something
Speaker 1: that you're working towards but that you can't have yet,
Speaker 1: because if you define it in that way, that will
Speaker 1: become a self fulfilling prophecy and you will never get
Speaker 1: it because you're defining it as something that has to
Speaker 1: be in the future. So that sounds very, very vague
Speaker 1: and abstract. I think to make it a bit more concrete,
Speaker 1: if you feel that at this point in your life,
Speaker 1: as I do, a certain amount of more like rest
Speaker 1: is probably appropriate than you've been granting yourself up to
Speaker 1: this stage. Striving towards sanity would be saying, Okay, I
Speaker 1: need to rest. I'm gonna take a sabbatical in a
Speaker 1: year's time, and until then, I'm gonna you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: say it consciously to yourself, but right until then, I'm
Speaker 1: going to work really really hard so that I've got
Speaker 1: everything running and you know, the business is self sustaining
Speaker 1: and everything's working. Out of your intuition that you need rest,
Speaker 1: you start doing the exact opposite of resting, and reinforcing
Speaker 1: all those parts of your psyche that think that what
Speaker 1: you have to do in life is strive harder and
Speaker 1: harder and harder. Starting from sanity, would be allowing yourself today,
Speaker 1: maybe only for twenty minutes, maybe it doesn't feel very
Speaker 1: great at first, but allowing yourself to take that a
Speaker 1: little bit of rest, a little bit of enjoyment and
Speaker 1: savoring of the world right here now. And there's lots
Speaker 1: of other examples that don't necessarily apply to rest per se,
Speaker 1: but it's that idea of finding some way to embody
Speaker 1: the life you want to have now instead of working
Speaker 1: towards some kind of amazing, full spectrum, perfect manifestation of
Speaker 1: it that only comes later.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that is a great place for us
Speaker 3: to wrap up. You and I are going to continue
Speaker 3: in the Post Sho Conversation. We're going to talk about
Speaker 3: distraction and interruption, what it means to be a good
Speaker 3: person in this world, and answering the question of do
Speaker 3: you really have to do that thing that you're convinced
Speaker 3: you have to do. Listeners If you'd like access to
Speaker 3: the Post SHO Conversation AD free episodes special episode I
Speaker 3: do each week called Teaching Song and a Poem. And
Speaker 3: you want to be part of supporting something that's important
Speaker 3: to you, go to one u feed dot slash join
Speaker 3: and we'd love to have you as part of our community. Oliver,
Speaker 3: such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you again, Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it.
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