Speaker 1: How do you communicate that to somebody who needs to
Speaker 1: hear it, to say stay, to say hang in there.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important that we think about these
Speaker 1: things and how we could communicate them. Maybe it's not
Speaker 1: through cat posters. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Our guest on this episode is Jessica
Speaker 1: Lamb Shapiro, author of Promised Land, My Journey through the
Speaker 1: American self help culture. She has published fiction and nonfiction
Speaker 1: in the Believer, mc sweeney's, Open City, and Index magazine,
Speaker 1: among others. So, Eric, why did you decide to have
Speaker 1: Jessica on the show. Well, I think the theme of
Speaker 1: being skeptical about the self help world has been in
Speaker 1: in our show from the very beginning. We had Oliver
Speaker 1: Burkemann on before and and so Jessica spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time really going through the self help industry and
Speaker 1: writing about it in a really, uh skeptical but yet
Speaker 1: open way. And so I think she brings a lot
Speaker 1: of insight to the things we talked about here. But
Speaker 1: our show is kind of self help like as well. Right,
Speaker 1: he thinks she's gonna slam our show in the interview, probably,
Speaker 1: so okay, probably, So let's find out, all right, Hi, Jessica,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed your book. It was called Promised Land,
Speaker 1: My Journey through America's self Help Culture, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to start off by reminding you that today is the
Speaker 1: first day of the rest of your life. It is
Speaker 1: thank you, and it's also the first day of the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. So I hope you spend it well.
Speaker 1: Does your father still tell you that all the time?
Speaker 1: He does not still tell me that all the time.
Speaker 1: He does occasionally mention it, but it's not the everyday
Speaker 1: occurrence that it used to be when he had me
Speaker 1: in his grip every day and he can drop me
Speaker 1: off at school and pretty much be guaranteed a captive
Speaker 1: audience as a as a parent, I recognize that desire
Speaker 1: to sort of say something to your child to send
Speaker 1: them out into the world ready. But I resist making
Speaker 1: my son roll his eyes at me every single day,
Speaker 1: so I try and keep it reasonable. I think even
Speaker 1: if he does roll his eyes, it has an impact
Speaker 1: because I rolled my eyes every day. But I really
Speaker 1: feel like, over time, the accumulation of that saying in
Speaker 1: my brain did something I'm not sure what. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: our show is based on the parable of two Wolves,
Speaker 1: where there's a grandfather and he's talking with his grandson
Speaker 1: and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf and represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like hatred and greed and fear. And the grandson stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks, and he says, well, which one will win?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means do you sort of in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work you've done on your book. Um. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed thinking about the parable. When I first read it,
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, that's so simple, that explains everything. Um.
Speaker 1: And I kind of had that moment where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I get it now. Um. But when I actually tried
Speaker 1: to apply it to my life, well, what are my
Speaker 1: what's my good wolf? What's my bad wolf? Um? I
Speaker 1: started to get a little bit confused because in a sense,
Speaker 1: you know, the good wolf for me is having a
Speaker 1: positive attitude and making sure I get writing done every day. Um.
Speaker 1: And the bad wolf is sort of like fear, you know,
Speaker 1: where I don't go do things because I'm afraid or
Speaker 1: envy what other people have, or just laziness, you know,
Speaker 1: where I don't get writing done. Um. And And in
Speaker 1: some sense that makes sense. But you know, as I
Speaker 1: talked about in the book, having a constant positive attitude, um,
Speaker 1: sort of between my father and I didn't allow for
Speaker 1: discussions of negative things, and that became problematic in our
Speaker 1: relationship because my mother had died when I was very young.
Speaker 1: And we just it just seemed like inappropriate to talk
Speaker 1: about because it was a sad thing and we were
Speaker 1: very focused on good things and staying positive, you know,
Speaker 1: So that that is a bit complicated for me, that
Speaker 1: positive thing. Um. And also because as a it or
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like it's my it's my job
Speaker 1: to show up first and foremost, but my second job
Speaker 1: is to kind of explore, um, all of all of
Speaker 1: the states of mind that I have and that humans have,
Speaker 1: so that includes you know, really negative things, you know,
Speaker 1: anger and hatred and um. You know, I think if
Speaker 1: I showed up to work every day as a positive writer,
Speaker 1: my writing would be really boring, and it would also
Speaker 1: not be kind of fully human, you know, if like
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't allow for all those sides and all
Speaker 1: of the capacities that we have. So I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's it's something about finding a balance where the negative
Speaker 1: things don't take over. You know, I'm not feeding them,
Speaker 1: but I can still have some contact with them, because
Speaker 1: to me, it's it's just important to have that kind
Speaker 1: of balance and some paradox and complication in my life. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think we'll get into a lot of that
Speaker 1: because I think that there were a lot of themes
Speaker 1: like that that that ran through your book. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give a real quick synops us of your book
Speaker 1: for our readers who may not have heard it, and
Speaker 1: you can tell me whether I've mostly got it. I did.
Speaker 1: I did read it. Um. But in the book, you
Speaker 1: you you immerse yourself in the self help culture and
Speaker 1: you write about it. Um. You know, over the course
Speaker 1: of the book, you attended a seminar on the Rules,
Speaker 1: which is like a dating guide for women who want
Speaker 1: to get married. You walked over hot coals at some
Speaker 1: sort of New Age gathering for teens. Uh. You follow
Speaker 1: your dad as he strangely becomes an expert on um,
Speaker 1: a teenage fad called the choking game in a vision board,
Speaker 1: joined the Fear of Flying group, work as a volunteer
Speaker 1: at a grief camp for kids who have lost a parent.
Speaker 1: And along the way, you're describing the childhood you spent
Speaker 1: with your father, who is a self help author himself,
Speaker 1: and you work the way through. Uh. You work your
Speaker 1: way as the book goes on, through the story of
Speaker 1: your mother's death that happened when you were very young.
Speaker 1: Have I covered most of the bases yep, you got
Speaker 1: most of them. I mean, you know, I for the book,
Speaker 1: I really immersed myself in the culture. But in a sense,
Speaker 1: I consider myself of as always having been immersed in
Speaker 1: self help culture because my father was a psychologist and
Speaker 1: a self help book and so we always had books
Speaker 1: around like I'm okay, You're okay, you know, and those
Speaker 1: sort of seventies self help air books. And I think
Speaker 1: just having them on the bookshelves and seeing their titles,
Speaker 1: even though I didn't read them, that has some influence
Speaker 1: on you. Um. And he espoused you know, so many
Speaker 1: of the ideas of uh self esteem and positive thinking
Speaker 1: that that was just always a part of my life. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I really started thinking about it, I realized
Speaker 1: that just by living in America, I'm immersed in it
Speaker 1: because self help has bled out of books into so
Speaker 1: many areas of culture, television shows, all those extreme homemakeovers
Speaker 1: and Oprah and Dr Phil and you know, Doctor Oz.
Speaker 1: And it's almost unclear to me, like what, what isn't
Speaker 1: a self help show? You know, It's just I feel
Speaker 1: like it's really bledded into so many areas of life
Speaker 1: that we're all very immersed in it, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that it's one of the things in your book
Speaker 1: that's interesting, as you talk about you can trace self
Speaker 1: help all the way back to the Egyptians, UM, and
Speaker 1: and that it's so it seems that there is a
Speaker 1: common thread in us as humans to do better, to
Speaker 1: improve ourselves, to want more than we have. And so
Speaker 1: I think call it self help or whatever you want,
Speaker 1: that's sort of consistent with our with our makeup to
Speaker 1: some degree. Yeah, it does seem that as soon as
Speaker 1: we were able to think about how we wanted to
Speaker 1: live our lives, um, we became kind of obsessed with that.
Speaker 1: And you know, from the Stoics, the Ancient China, Um,
Speaker 1: the Bible, you know, all of those old books are
Speaker 1: about self improvement and the best way to live. So
Speaker 1: I think that's always been a major concern for us.
Speaker 1: So in the book, getting back to what you talked
Speaker 1: about saying that it's sort of a balance between the
Speaker 1: two wolf theory, you have a quote that says, as
Speaker 1: it if thinking can look a lotful awful lot like
Speaker 1: old fashioned denial. Yeah, and you know that that is
Speaker 1: so true for me, um, And I think that in
Speaker 1: the case with my father and I, it was both
Speaker 1: you know it was it was positive thinking, and it
Speaker 1: was also denial. Um. And from the outside it would
Speaker 1: look pretty much exactly the same. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of interesting that the attitudes that we
Speaker 1: put on don't necessarily have only one function. Um. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they can function in a variety of ways. And some
Speaker 1: of them were not really aware of um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think we we did know that we were very
Speaker 1: positive people and we were trying to be that way.
Speaker 1: And you know another one, my dad always liked the
Speaker 1: glass half empty, glass half full, you know thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of this sort of mantras
Speaker 1: and CLIs just sort of floating around, you know, the
Speaker 1: daily conversation. Um. But they also kind of performed other
Speaker 1: functions which were much more subtle, um, you know, as
Speaker 1: the things that we weren't talking about basically. UM. So
Speaker 1: I think it's it's just very complicated. It is very
Speaker 1: complicated because I think that that positive mental attitude can
Speaker 1: be I agree, it can be denial, it can be
Speaker 1: avoidance of a lot of different things, and yet it's
Speaker 1: a slippery slope into unnecessary rumination or habitual negative thinking
Speaker 1: or anxiety. And it's so hard to find that that
Speaker 1: right balance that I think is is one of the
Speaker 1: things that I've been interested in and with the with
Speaker 1: the show in general, is how do you strike that
Speaker 1: balance between all right, I'm in touch with my feelings,
Speaker 1: I'm acknowledging how I feel about this thing, and yet
Speaker 1: I'm also to some degree controlling the way I am thinking,
Speaker 1: so that it's it's moving in a positive direction. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm really interested in figuring that out too.
Speaker 1: And if you do, let mean, yeah, I'm sure. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing that you talked about back there, you
Speaker 1: just you just it's it's on the same theme. But
Speaker 1: you said in the book that the self helped Lexicon
Speaker 1: had offered me a way to hide. As the daughter
Speaker 1: of a psychologist and parenting expert, I had learned to
Speaker 1: parrot the language of emotion. I could talk about feeling
Speaker 1: sad or scared without feeling sad or scared. Well, my
Speaker 1: avoidance may have looked like fortitude to others. It was
Speaker 1: the easy way out. What's hard is honesty, confrontation, and vulnerability.
Speaker 1: And that really really rang true with me. I seem
Speaker 1: to have this ability to tell you after the fact
Speaker 1: how I was feeling about something oh, I was upset
Speaker 1: or I was sad, but it's very hard for me
Speaker 1: to access that in the moment with any other people around.
Speaker 1: And yet it appears that I'm very emotionally literate because
Speaker 1: I know those words and those sayings. I was, I
Speaker 1: was really struck by what you said there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that you know people around us that the psychology
Speaker 1: is very much part of our culture, and so to
Speaker 1: some extent, we've all become familiar with UM, you know,
Speaker 1: making eye statements and certain ways that we're supposed to
Speaker 1: talk to each other UM. And I knew that as
Speaker 1: a ten year old. I was like, I know that
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to say you did this that I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to say. I feel like you know this when
Speaker 1: you do that, And it's so freaky that I knew that.
Speaker 1: And you know, it may be quite strange and probably
Speaker 1: still quite strange because it UM. But in a sense
Speaker 1: I sort of used that as a shield where instead
Speaker 1: of just showing up and saying I don't know, I'm scared,
Speaker 1: I'm freaked out, I would have this very um rehearsed
Speaker 1: speech that I would give about Yes, my mother died
Speaker 1: when I was very young, and it was very hard
Speaker 1: for me, and but I really tried to be positive,
Speaker 1: and you know, I try to focus on these things
Speaker 1: and not these things. And it was it was so
Speaker 1: subtle that I didn't realize I was doing it. I
Speaker 1: was not trying to fool anyone, you know. The person
Speaker 1: I was fooling was myself. I believed all those things
Speaker 1: said to some extent they were true. Um. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until I got older, um, and I sort of
Speaker 1: had a more mature capacity to think about these things, UM,
Speaker 1: that I could look back and say, you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't feeling any of those things as I talked about them,
Speaker 1: and I made them look so seamless, you know, as
Speaker 1: though it was something I had figured out in the past,
Speaker 1: you know, at thirteen or fourteen, which is ridiculous. I'd
Speaker 1: be like, yes, yes, my mother died. I resolved all
Speaker 1: of that, you know, Um, you know, because it just didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to kind of show up unformed
Speaker 1: and and a little bit messy, if you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, I I totally know what you mean.
Speaker 1: One of the things we talked about that seems to
Speaker 1: come up on the show a lot is this idea
Speaker 1: of being comfortable versus pushing yourself into being into some
Speaker 1: level of discomfort, and that's where the growth goes. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a really interesting way to what you're saying.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting way to sort of think about that
Speaker 1: as you're having the conversation. Is am I really the here?
Speaker 1: Am I really feeling a little bit uncomfortable? Am I?
Speaker 1: Am I stretching myself in what I'm saying or revealing?
Speaker 1: Or am I kind of in pretty comfortable territory? Right?
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, you know, it's useful sometimes
Speaker 1: to be able to talk about your emotions without feeling them. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, for instance, now talking about it, it's useful
Speaker 1: that I'm not about to burst into tears because you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing a podcast, and you know, sometimes I would
Speaker 1: be in school or in a professional setting, and you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of control of your emotions is kind of
Speaker 1: useful to be able to talk about negative things and
Speaker 1: not always be about to lose your mind. But I
Speaker 1: think I have gone so far in that direction that
Speaker 1: I didn't I had lost the capability to in private,
Speaker 1: you know, experience those feelings as I was talking about them.
Speaker 1: So one of the things in The book that you
Speaker 1: you talk about is The Secret, which is a very
Speaker 1: popular popular movement as of late, the Law of Attraction,
Speaker 1: and and I think there are a couple of things
Speaker 1: I really like that you said about it. One was
Speaker 1: when you said, well, it's not really much of a secret,
Speaker 1: because self help authors and have been saying this sort
Speaker 1: of thing for years and years and years that if
Speaker 1: you just think positively, good things will happen to you. Um.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what you find challenging in that notion. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think what I find challenging in it is that
Speaker 1: it's partially true. Um. You know, positive thinking does breed
Speaker 1: positive effects, um, at least in the very least of
Speaker 1: the sense that negative thinking negative thinking will not bring
Speaker 1: about positive effects. You know, if you think you can't
Speaker 1: do something, you're definitely at a disadvantage and it's extremely
Speaker 1: unlikely that you will achieve something if you're sitting there
Speaker 1: thinking you can't do it. Um. And I think that
Speaker 1: so in a sense, the fact that there is this
Speaker 1: real grain of truth there um makes it difficult to
Speaker 1: discount entirely. But I think some theories and it has
Speaker 1: you know, over the past hundred and twenty years, a
Speaker 1: lot of people have talked about the law of attraction.
Speaker 1: They've called it different things. Um. You know, this is
Speaker 1: our most recent term for it. Um. And some of
Speaker 1: them are pretty modest about the claims they make. You know,
Speaker 1: they basically say, if you think positively, there's more chance
Speaker 1: that you know, you'll be open to things and you'll
Speaker 1: recognize them when they see them. And then some people
Speaker 1: go really far out and they make claims like if
Speaker 1: you think of a car, you'll get a car, um
Speaker 1: and to that, you know, when it gets to that
Speaker 1: extent um, I just I just don't believe that. I
Speaker 1: just can't make myself believe that that's true. Um. So
Speaker 1: I like to kind of there's a spectrum and I
Speaker 1: like to kind of dial it back so that you're
Speaker 1: in a more reasonable territory. And I get irritated. Why,
Speaker 1: you know, people start extending something that is generally true
Speaker 1: um to something so specific and outrageous that it starts
Speaker 1: to become a lie. Yeah. You use the word magical thinking,
Speaker 1: which is one that I use a lot, which is
Speaker 1: this idea that if I just think a certain way things,
Speaker 1: I'm going to manipulate things in the world, which I agree,
Speaker 1: I also think is is is silly. I think anything
Speaker 1: good in life that comes is a comes through effort.
Speaker 1: And I do agree that positive thinking can can make
Speaker 1: us more attractive to other people, It can make us
Speaker 1: more friendly, more open to things, and good things can
Speaker 1: happen as a result of that. But to think that
Speaker 1: there's some magic out there that that is occurring, the
Speaker 1: idea that the universe only wants good things for us,
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical of because the evidence out there is is
Speaker 1: really that for a lot of people, that's not what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and that that's actually another really troubling part about
Speaker 1: the law of attraction for me is that if you
Speaker 1: have the positive side, where positive people attract positive things,
Speaker 1: you also have the negative side, where negative people attract
Speaker 1: negative things. And there are some really horrible things that
Speaker 1: happened to people, um, and it bothers me to think
Speaker 1: that those to to basically blame those people, to blaming
Speaker 1: the victim and say, you know, well, those people must
Speaker 1: have attracted it because they weren't thinking positively enough. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, and as somebody who had you know, some
Speaker 1: amount of tragedy in my life, certainly on the grand
Speaker 1: scale of tragedy, not the worst thing that could have happened. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of resent that, you know, I
Speaker 1: was a baby. I don't know how how negatively I
Speaker 1: possibly could have been thinking, or you know, my dad
Speaker 1: was thinking. You know, it just seems to pat an explanation, right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it is, really, it's it's pretty difficult to
Speaker 1: stomach the idea that, you know, a genocide, that the
Speaker 1: entire group of people brought that on themselves. Or I've
Speaker 1: seen people who think that they you know, they believe
Speaker 1: so strongly in that that the cancer they have they
Speaker 1: have to think their way out of it somehow, And
Speaker 1: if they think at all negative, the cancer is going
Speaker 1: to get worse. And it's just a it's just a
Speaker 1: bad spiral. Yeah, you know. And I'm sure there is
Speaker 1: some correlation between thinking positively and you know, medical health
Speaker 1: and even know maybe even being a cancer. But it's
Speaker 1: not again, it's that spectrum. You know, it's not going
Speaker 1: to cure your cancer. To think positively. It just might help,
Speaker 1: but you also need to avail yourself of all these
Speaker 1: other things that are available, you know. And an interesting
Speaker 1: thing about the love attraction is that it doesn't allow
Speaker 1: for the element of surprise. Um. It's sort of this
Speaker 1: idea of putting on a poster or some poster in
Speaker 1: your mind everything you want, you want this car, you
Speaker 1: want this partner, you want this house, you want these kids,
Speaker 1: and then even if it were true, the fact that
Speaker 1: then all those things just happen to me, if there's
Speaker 1: something very kind of lifeless and boring in that, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of like when maybe I have set a
Speaker 1: goal to do something and then it turns out that
Speaker 1: something else happens. It's also kind of delightful, and then
Speaker 1: I'm happy about but that I actually couldn't even have
Speaker 1: imagined or anticipated for myself, you know. In some sense
Speaker 1: of this book followed that trajectory because I thought I
Speaker 1: was writing a book about self help, and in the
Speaker 1: middle I kind of surprised myself by realizing that I
Speaker 1: was going to be talking about my mother's death, and
Speaker 1: you know, I really had not seen the connection there. Um.
Speaker 1: And to me, those surprises they're always good. They're always
Speaker 1: good surprises because, um, I don't know, I think that
Speaker 1: the world has so much greater capacity than we're capable
Speaker 1: of imagining. Or putting on a poster. It's nice to
Speaker 1: be open to that. Yeah, we had a guest on.
Speaker 1: One of our earliest guests was Oliver Berkman. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're familiar with his book. He wrote a
Speaker 1: book called The Antidote Happiness for People who Hate Positive Thinking,
Speaker 1: which was a great book. And but he gets to
Speaker 1: the same point at a certain at a certain idea,
Speaker 1: which is that if you knew everything that was going
Speaker 1: to happen in your life, even if it was all good,
Speaker 1: you've you've drained the mystery out of life, and that
Speaker 1: that mystery and that sense of awe and wonder is
Speaker 1: a key part of uh healthy healthy mind. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, if you know everything that's going to happen,
Speaker 1: just die now, Like what's the point you want something
Speaker 1: to find out? Um? Yeah, I actually that book is
Speaker 1: on my list of things to read now that I've
Speaker 1: done with my book. I had to avoid it while
Speaker 1: I was writing because I didn't want to unduly contamination
Speaker 1: cross contamination. Yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely a really good read.
Speaker 1: You hit on. Also, I think there's so much paradox
Speaker 1: throughout your book and so much contradiction in trying to
Speaker 1: balance these two different things. And and you near the end,
Speaker 1: you really hit on the question that runs through my
Speaker 1: mind all the time as we as we think about
Speaker 1: these sort of things. And and you said, to what
Speaker 1: extent should you accept yourself for who you are? And
Speaker 1: to what extent should you attempt to better yourself? And
Speaker 1: I think that is such a fundamental um. You know,
Speaker 1: I refer to it as like my my co on,
Speaker 1: you know, my zen coon of life, which you know,
Speaker 1: how how do you strike that balance of of accepting
Speaker 1: yourself versus better in yourself? Since you've written that, have
Speaker 1: you gotten any clearer ideas on that? No? I have
Speaker 1: no idea. I mean that was such a genuine, non
Speaker 1: rhetorical question. I really don't know. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that obviously there's a limit to self improvement, you know,
Speaker 1: I do think that there's such a thing is too
Speaker 1: much self improvement. Um. It's sort of like being on
Speaker 1: a never ending treadmill where you never get to rest
Speaker 1: and something about you know, Okay, well I've improved this
Speaker 1: part of my life and I have to move on
Speaker 1: to this part and I've never done. You know, there's
Speaker 1: something that I find exhausting about that, and it just
Speaker 1: seems a little bit too much like work and not
Speaker 1: very fun um. But Yeah, on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: don't think that we should accept everything about our lives.
Speaker 1: And if there's something that you don't like and you
Speaker 1: want to change it, I think that's a valuable thing.
Speaker 1: So that's a really tough call. I I do not
Speaker 1: know the answer. Yeah, it always is, and I think
Speaker 1: it goes beyond self help and self improvement to just
Speaker 1: life in general. It at what point do you are
Speaker 1: you able to be happy with what you have and
Speaker 1: accept what you have? And at what point are you
Speaker 1: settling yourself in yourself short And it's a really big dilemma.
Speaker 1: I heard a quote the other day that I loved it,
Speaker 1: and it was I think it was some hip hop
Speaker 1: artist and he said, let me see if I can
Speaker 1: remember it. Uh, never satisfied, but always content And I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because he's always wanting to get better,
Speaker 1: and yet there's an underlying contentment to it all, which
Speaker 1: is a sort of sounds like some sort of magical
Speaker 1: formula that seems really hard to achieve. Yeah, was he
Speaker 1: saying that he had achieved that that's why he just
Speaker 1: actually he just wrote those words. It was a it
Speaker 1: was a Twitter feed and he just wrote those words.
Speaker 1: I was really struck by him. Yeah, I mean for me,
Speaker 1: you know, in a sense of the answer to that
Speaker 1: question is the question, um, just being aware that you
Speaker 1: need to find a balance and that there is such
Speaker 1: you know, there's too much of a good thing, um,
Speaker 1: and to be constantly asking yourself that question is I
Speaker 1: think the way that you find that balance in the
Speaker 1: book you you have a real um. You talk a
Speaker 1: lot about the language of self help books, and you're
Speaker 1: clearly a very good writer, and some of the writing
Speaker 1: there is not so good. And I think the cliches, uh,
Speaker 1: get get tedious. I'm a member of a twelve step
Speaker 1: recovery program, and the cliches driving me crazy, except for
Speaker 1: the fact that they're absolutely true. Um Man. I was
Speaker 1: struck by the cover of your book has a picture
Speaker 1: of a kitten hanging paris perilously from a branch, and
Speaker 1: it it comes from a poster that says hang in
Speaker 1: there on it, which is such a one of those
Speaker 1: things that we all look at and think it's kind
Speaker 1: of silly and it's kind of cute and kind of meaningless,
Speaker 1: but I was really touched when you went a little
Speaker 1: bit further on that and talked about how you wish
Speaker 1: that's what your mother had been able to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean definitely. You know, when I first wrote that passage,
Speaker 1: it started almost as a kind of thought experiment because
Speaker 1: I was I am really interested in cliches. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't like to just dismiss them as stupid. UM. I
Speaker 1: think that they are around for a reason. They do
Speaker 1: mean something to people. UM. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: they can become meaningless through too much repetition, you know,
Speaker 1: like today's the first day of the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: You get used to hearing it, you stop thinking about it.
Speaker 1: But if you do, if you can stop yourself and
Speaker 1: really think like what that means and appreciate it, you're
Speaker 1: bringing some of the meaning back to the cliche. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of what I was interested in doing
Speaker 1: with the phrase hang in there and that poster to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, you know, I thought, you know, what
Speaker 1: is the most kind of ridiculous, um manifestation of this
Speaker 1: problem that I'm having with the language, and hang in
Speaker 1: there and the kitty cat was it? So I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna think I'm going to just think my way
Speaker 1: through this until I figure out where the meaning Isn't
Speaker 1: this because to me that had just totally lost me.
Speaker 1: And he was like, you have a cat hanging in there.
Speaker 1: It's cute, it's fluffy, it's hanging you know, it's so
Speaker 1: many times it was just completely boring to me and
Speaker 1: cliche ade um. But when I really forced myself to
Speaker 1: think about what what it was saying and really the
Speaker 1: meaning of hanging in there um and the fact that
Speaker 1: in life there are times that are really difficult and
Speaker 1: that we don't want to hang in there um. And
Speaker 1: you know, my mother committed suicide, and in some sense
Speaker 1: she was in that kind of moment. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what her state of mind was, obviously, um.
Speaker 1: But once I really put my attention on it and
Speaker 1: thought it through, I mean I was in tears by
Speaker 1: the end of writing that passage like that. I was
Speaker 1: kind of so moved by the sentiment um. And and
Speaker 1: that was really surprising and fascinating to me that, you know,
Speaker 1: I was able to kind of take that phrase and
Speaker 1: and put some meaning back in it for myself. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so interested in in the way that language
Speaker 1: can kind of get emptied out and then get filled
Speaker 1: in again with meaning. It was a very very touching part.
Speaker 1: And uh, one of my sons had a classmate who
Speaker 1: committed suicide recently. I've got fifteen year old boys, and
Speaker 1: I was just really struck by that idea too. Of
Speaker 1: I think the word in my mind was like just stay,
Speaker 1: just just wait, because as you say, things change, things
Speaker 1: will get better for a period of time. And that's
Speaker 1: such a permanent solution to to what's a temporary problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm really sorry to hear that, um. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is how how do you communicate
Speaker 1: that to somebody who needs to hear it? Right? You know,
Speaker 1: to say stay, to say hang in there, um if
Speaker 1: you want to so badly. And it's such a powerful
Speaker 1: message that I think it's really important that we think
Speaker 1: about these things and how we could communicate them. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not through cat posters, but maybe it is.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but like that, we really want to
Speaker 1: communicate these things to people, and we want to hear
Speaker 1: them ourselves. Um. So there's a real life or death
Speaker 1: importance in it, right. So throughout the book, you talk
Speaker 1: about your father and we we touched on earlier. Father
Speaker 1: is a self help author, he's a parenting expert, and
Speaker 1: you guys, yet were pretty much unable to ever broach
Speaker 1: the subject of what had happened with your mother throughout
Speaker 1: throughout your you're growing up in your life. And there's
Speaker 1: a really another touching scene at the end of the
Speaker 1: book where you and your father finally go and visit
Speaker 1: your mother's grave and your father starts to cry, and
Speaker 1: you realize you start to feel in you that that
Speaker 1: uncomfortable feeling of, oh, here's emotion. This feels uncomfortable. I
Speaker 1: don't really want to be you know. You start to
Speaker 1: try and distance yourself, and and the thought came into
Speaker 1: your mind of pull yourself together, which we typically think
Speaker 1: of as a pull yourself together, you know, stiff upper lip,
Speaker 1: you know, keep keep yourself together. And in that moment,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was in reflection later, that phrase twisted
Speaker 1: again talking about how language has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with how we interpret things, and you came to pull
Speaker 1: myselves together. The part of yourself that wanted to run
Speaker 1: so badly from that moment and the part of you
Speaker 1: that wanted to hang in there and be present to it.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was really a powerful metaphor. And
Speaker 1: the scene sort of ends with you and your father
Speaker 1: and your mother, and it sounds like you've crossed the
Speaker 1: bridge there. Have you and your father been able to
Speaker 1: talk more about that stuff now that you had sort
Speaker 1: of that one seminal moment, Yeah, definitely. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think to his credit, you know, he also really wants
Speaker 1: to talk about it, and we just didn't really know
Speaker 1: how um, And it is something that just came up
Speaker 1: naturally from writing the book. UM. And I did end
Speaker 1: up talking to him about it, and he seemed very
Speaker 1: happy to talk to me about it. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: been a really interesting new chapter in our relationship where
Speaker 1: we're changing the way that we relate to each other
Speaker 1: and how we talk to each other. Um, which is
Speaker 1: kind of great. Yeah, your father sounds like such a
Speaker 1: great guy. He's a the There was a couple of
Speaker 1: stories you told about some funny things as he did
Speaker 1: as a kid when when you were a kid. Can
Speaker 1: you maybe share a couple of those with us so
Speaker 1: the listeners can get a sense of your dad. Well,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that every morning when he dropped me up
Speaker 1: from school, he said, today is the first day of
Speaker 1: the rest of your life, he also wants. And he's
Speaker 1: going to be sad that I'm tellaying the story again,
Speaker 1: but it is in the book. Um. He showed up
Speaker 1: a dressed as a gorilla. Um he had a guerrilla
Speaker 1: costume for some My dad was always kind of a
Speaker 1: practical joker, and his dad was a practical joker. And
Speaker 1: part of our positive thinking was actually humor, you know,
Speaker 1: making jokes and being silly. Um. And he feels he
Speaker 1: feels so much worse about this than he should, because
Speaker 1: apparently the look on my face was just complete trauma.
Speaker 1: Because you know, like a man shows up in a
Speaker 1: gorilla suit and you know it's your dad. That's already weird.
Speaker 1: It's like you just know it. Couldn't see his face
Speaker 1: but me, and I was like, that's obviously my dad,
Speaker 1: because my dad owns a grilla suit, and my dad
Speaker 1: would do this, you know. And I ran into the
Speaker 1: bath room and hit until he left. And I think
Speaker 1: he felt so terrible. He said he thought it would
Speaker 1: be funny, and then when he saw my face, he
Speaker 1: just knew he'd made a terrible mistake. And it was
Speaker 1: not very traumatizing to me. You know. Now, I think
Speaker 1: it's a really funny story, but he still feels so
Speaker 1: bad about that. How old were you? I think it
Speaker 1: was in third grade, so eight nine really a very
Speaker 1: like prone to humiliation age. Anyway, Yeah, he should have
Speaker 1: waited till you were fourteen. I think that really would
Speaker 1: have been the perfect age to do it for maximal humiliation.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's like a school dance
Speaker 1: or something. And you talked about how he insisted on
Speaker 1: pain at all the toll booths with us with the
Speaker 1: sock puppet of some sort on his hands. Yeah, different
Speaker 1: sock puppets that he kept in the car for this purpose,
Speaker 1: I mean, And it made me laugh hysterically. I thought
Speaker 1: he was so funny. Um, you know, it's just looking
Speaker 1: back on it, and I think that was a strange choice.
Speaker 1: And you said that only one total agent, and all
Speaker 1: this time ever thought it was funny. Was there anything
Speaker 1: particular about that toll agent or did he just kind
Speaker 1: of laugh? Um? You know, it might have been the
Speaker 1: hand puppet that actually broke the total agent because this
Speaker 1: one was a dinosaur that was in a cage, and
Speaker 1: so it was a complicated hand puppet because it was
Speaker 1: like the hand was in the cage, and I mean
Speaker 1: it was just like this really elaborate hand puppet. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just like a sock monkey or something. Um And
Speaker 1: I think that total agent just said like, I don't
Speaker 1: even know what this is and just started laughing out
Speaker 1: of maybe confused him, or you know, some kind of delight,
Speaker 1: you know, having the monotony of being a total agent
Speaker 1: broken up, but mostly just annoyance from total agents confusion,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know. Maybe they thought he was
Speaker 1: making fun of them. I have no idea. I'm still
Speaker 1: not even totally sure why he didn't myself. Well, he
Speaker 1: sounds you know again, throughout the book, even though you
Speaker 1: may say that your father feels uncomfortable with some of
Speaker 1: the things, I think you painted a very um sympathetic
Speaker 1: picture of a really, really kind man who really loved
Speaker 1: his daughter. I mean that was very really did I
Speaker 1: mean anything he ever did, he was trying so hard
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. So I have to really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. So what's next for you? Do you have
Speaker 1: any idea what your next writing writing project is or
Speaker 1: what what you're interested in now that the self help
Speaker 1: world is is not the focus. I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: give away all my self help books, stacks and stacks.
Speaker 1: If you want some, let me know. Um. I'm working
Speaker 1: on a novel that is partly autobiographical. Um, but it's
Speaker 1: in the very early stages and it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with self help. Well, I think that's about all
Speaker 1: I had a question, Wise, is there anything else you
Speaker 1: wanted you want to talk about on the theme of
Speaker 1: the two Wolves? Uh? No, I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: really did have fun thinking about it though. Excellent. Well again,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the book. Will have information on the
Speaker 1: web site where readers or listeners can get links to it.
Speaker 1: And thanks so much for taking the time to talk
Speaker 1: with us. Thanks, it was a really interesting conversation. Great,
Speaker 1: thank you, Bye bye. You can find out more about
Speaker 1: Jessica Lamb Shapiro and this podcast at one you Feed,
Speaker 1: dot net slash Jessica Lamb Shapiro. Normally Chris does the
Speaker 1: end part here, but I wanted to be the one
Speaker 1: to say goodbye this week, and I mainly just wanted
Speaker 1: to say I know there are a ton of podcasts
Speaker 1: out there, there's a lot of choices, so um, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for listening, appreciate it. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: star from the beginning. I was bummed, but I didn't
Speaker 1: get to get to this all right, you gotta hit record.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. Chris is normally the one who says goodbye,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to be the one to say goodbye
Speaker 1: this week. Um, and I mostly just wanted to say,
Speaker 1: there are a ton of podcasts out there. I know that,
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot to listen to, so I
Speaker 1: really do appreciate you listening to us when you have
Speaker 1: so many other choices. And I wanted to give us
Speaker 1: special thanks out to Mommy, Michelle nine, hooked on Birds,
Speaker 1: Savasava Sign and if Mama ain't happy for really nice
Speaker 1: iTunes reviews this week, So thanks bye,