Speaker 1: I do think that too much focus on happiness is counterproductive.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Today we have the writer Oliver Berkman, who is a
Speaker 1: columnist for The Guardian and author of the excellent book
Speaker 1: The Antidote Happiness for People who Can't Stand Positive Thinking,
Speaker 1: which was recently released as a paperback here in the US. Oliver,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 1: It's good to be here. I recently just finished your
Speaker 1: book and have to say I genuinely enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: looked forward to, uh getting to read more of it.
Speaker 1: It's very refreshing in the I won't call it self
Speaker 1: help but for lack of a better word, self help space.
Speaker 1: It was very well done and very entertaining. Anybody who's
Speaker 1: gonna quote Marlow Stamfield from the wire, uh is is
Speaker 1: okay in my book. I'm very grateful for that, and
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not too offended by the self help label.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of problems I have with
Speaker 1: books that are in that category, but I don't think
Speaker 1: the idea of that category is a bad thing at all. Really.
Speaker 1: So our podcast is called the One You Feed, and
Speaker 1: it's based on the old parable where there's a Cherokee
Speaker 1: grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, ah,
Speaker 1: in life, we have two wolves inside of us who
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents kindness and joy and love and happiness, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents greed and sorrow
Speaker 1: and pain and pick your poison. Uh. And the grandson
Speaker 1: thinks for a minute and says to the grandfather which
Speaker 1: one wins, And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So that's really what our podcast is about. How do
Speaker 1: people uh feed their good wolf in life, whatever that
Speaker 1: means to them. Um, So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by just asking you, you know what, how does that
Speaker 1: parable apply to you and your life? And then also
Speaker 1: in the in the work and writing that you do well.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this and then and and I
Speaker 1: sort of got very confused at first, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll just let me just talk for just half a
Speaker 1: minute about the thesis of my book because it sort
Speaker 1: of reflect my own personal ideas about happiness, and then
Speaker 1: I'll try and connect it right away to to the
Speaker 1: to the story the book is is basically starts off
Speaker 1: being a critique of a very dominant idea we have
Speaker 1: about happiness these days, which is what I call loosely
Speaker 1: positive thinking, the idea that by trying really hard to
Speaker 1: focus on happy thoughts, think happy thoughts, set very clear goals,
Speaker 1: put a lot of energy and effort into creating success
Speaker 1: and happiness, that that's the way we're going to get it,
Speaker 1: and actually brings a lot of evidence to suggest that
Speaker 1: this doesn't work, that we should open ourselves more if
Speaker 1: we can towards failure and sadness and these feelings of certainty,
Speaker 1: not be trying always to eradicate them and and stamp
Speaker 1: them out. And so I sort of argue that it's
Speaker 1: much much more fruitful if we can learn to coexist
Speaker 1: with even embrace that that side of the coin. What
Speaker 1: it strikes me in the context of this of the
Speaker 1: story about the wolves is that maybe I'm partly saying
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't focus too much on feeding the good
Speaker 1: wolf because uh, maybe the maybe the analogy breaks down,
Speaker 1: because um, I do think that too much focus on
Speaker 1: happiness it is counterproductive. I've been waiting. I've been waiting
Speaker 1: since I sort of came up with the idea for
Speaker 1: the show. I've been waiting for h you know, I
Speaker 1: figured it would be somebody who was who who had
Speaker 1: studied Buddhism and was into Buddhism, who would say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's not all you know, you know
Speaker 1: it is, it is what it is, and you have
Speaker 1: to accept life and and you know a little bit
Speaker 1: more of the less positive thinking and and for me,
Speaker 1: it's really not about And that's why I was so
Speaker 1: excited to get you on the show, as I said
Speaker 1: in my email, because I don't want this to turn
Speaker 1: into sort of there's a guy named triple Anear. I
Speaker 1: think he calls it, you know, uh fufu, no bullshit,
Speaker 1: you know, or bullshit, you know, hocus pocus, And that's
Speaker 1: really not what we're what we're after here. So and
Speaker 1: we've had people talk about how feeding their good wolf
Speaker 1: for them means feeding the part of them that works
Speaker 1: on their art, because that's what that's what drives them.
Speaker 1: So but I do think it's it's interesting because we
Speaker 1: you know, the the the way you represent this is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if you just the constant positive thinking is
Speaker 1: not a not a recipe for for happiness. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to jump into the book a little bit in
Speaker 1: a couple of couple of different places. Um. The first
Speaker 1: thing that I would want to talk about would be,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about Stoicism and the
Speaker 1: role that that kind of played in in in your
Speaker 1: book and in your thinking. Sure, so this is the
Speaker 1: philosophy from ancient Greece and then and then roam is
Speaker 1: typified by the work of Epictetus and Seneca and Marcus,
Speaker 1: the realists. Now I keep saying, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think I could take responsibility for this. But but I
Speaker 1: see more and more, uh, sort of people recommending it
Speaker 1: as a as a as an interesting way to um
Speaker 1: to to think about about happiness. I in my book
Speaker 1: quite openly and blatantly sort of plunder the bits that
Speaker 1: I think are most helpful for the for the for
Speaker 1: the direction I'm taking. It is a very broad philosophy
Speaker 1: with all sorts of interesting aspects and a sort of
Speaker 1: quite theological aspect that I don't really get into. But
Speaker 1: I think one very simple way of thinking about it is, firstly,
Speaker 1: it starts with an idea that's very familiar from positive thinking, actually,
Speaker 1: which is the idea that your beliefs about the world
Speaker 1: are what caused your distress, not not the events themselves.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a question of you know, emotions arise
Speaker 1: in a in a way that is dependent on thinking. Uh.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare has Hamlets say there's nothing either good or bad,
Speaker 1: but thinking makes it so, which is a really great
Speaker 1: statement of stoicism. But then the positive think it says, well,
Speaker 1: and therefore you've got to make all your beliefs as
Speaker 1: as upbeat as possible all the time, and and convince
Speaker 1: yourself that you're going to succeed in any every venture,
Speaker 1: or that nothing can go wrong. The stoics, it's more
Speaker 1: a question, I think the best way're putting it, it's
Speaker 1: just more a question of saying, once you know that
Speaker 1: that is how distress arises. Once you're aware that it
Speaker 1: is these beliefs about the world that cause your under stress. Well, firstly,
Speaker 1: that's just a much more calming place to be because
Speaker 1: you realize that it is to some extent self creative.
Speaker 1: You don't necessarily to struggle to be positive. You're just
Speaker 1: finding this this new level of awareness about where things
Speaker 1: come from. Secondly, you can then in certain ways learn
Speaker 1: to think more rationally about events in the world and
Speaker 1: and to render your beliefs more more proportionate and rational.
Speaker 1: This is a very abstract way of talking about what
Speaker 1: I do in the book, which involves things like, you know,
Speaker 1: embarrassing myself on public transports. Try to show that my
Speaker 1: fears about being embarrassed were were disproportionate to the reality.
Speaker 1: I can talk about it but if you want, But
Speaker 1: it's that's a rational rationalizing on some level your beliefs
Speaker 1: about bad things in the world, so that you still
Speaker 1: you don't have to pretend that they don't exist. You
Speaker 1: just have to see that they are in most cases
Speaker 1: not going to kill you. And the stocks will say
Speaker 1: even a few cases that they will. Then there's still
Speaker 1: a limit to the appropriate level of distress that you
Speaker 1: need to feel about. Have you heard of I've came
Speaker 1: across something on the Internet a couple of months ago
Speaker 1: called rejection therapy, which sort of cracked me up because
Speaker 1: it's very similar to you, you know, riding on the
Speaker 1: on the bus or the train and sort of announcing
Speaker 1: the stops. The goal of rejection therapy is to go
Speaker 1: out and get someone to reject you once a day
Speaker 1: for thirty days. You just gotta do something where someone
Speaker 1: rejects you. And and and the funny part of it
Speaker 1: is these guys will get out there, and you'd be
Speaker 1: amazed by how many things you get when you ask.
Speaker 1: They'll go ask something preposterous to get rejected. Then they'll
Speaker 1: get it, and so they're not done for the day.
Speaker 1: They gotta And so but when I was reading that
Speaker 1: part that in your book, I thought, I thought a
Speaker 1: lot of that, and and I the the inherent wisdom
Speaker 1: in that makes a lot of sense, which is those
Speaker 1: things seem being rejected or or being loud on the
Speaker 1: train or standing out seem like they're such mortifying events
Speaker 1: that in you know, but once you do them, you
Speaker 1: realize they're really you know, there, there's not that much
Speaker 1: behind them, and it is your thoughts about them that
Speaker 1: is far worse than the actual event themselves. Right. And
Speaker 1: it's a slightly subtle point because I think another thing
Speaker 1: that comes in here and uh, and it might be
Speaker 1: also part of the rejection therapy idea is just sort
Speaker 1: of exposure. You know, the idea that if you if
Speaker 1: you're scared of spiders and you spend time in the
Speaker 1: room with a spider, that you sort of numb out
Speaker 1: to the to the to the fear that you feel.
Speaker 1: And that is a sort of part of psychological approaches
Speaker 1: to phobias and and all this stuff. But the really
Speaker 1: specific thing about stoicism, I think is that you can
Speaker 1: cut those thoughts down to size so that you you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that you don't it's not that you need
Speaker 1: to start thinking that it isn't embarrassing to speak out
Speaker 1: loud the names of the train stations on the subway train,
Speaker 1: which is what I was doing. It's that you need
Speaker 1: to it that you learn to have an appropriate level
Speaker 1: of worry about them, and then you suddenly realize that
Speaker 1: you're going through life half the time worrying about things
Speaker 1: like embarrassing yourself as if they were things like, you know,
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb dropping on your neighborhood or something you
Speaker 1: are sort of there's this sort of monochrome level of
Speaker 1: anxiety that we often go through life with that is
Speaker 1: just completely inappropriate to most of life, daily daily hassles
Speaker 1: and anxiety. And you into your point earlier if you
Speaker 1: you know, realizing that it's not the events but your
Speaker 1: thought about the events is such a if you you know,
Speaker 1: I think in your book you say, even just having
Speaker 1: that awakening for a little bit really sort of put
Speaker 1: some distance between you and that anxiety, and you can
Speaker 1: start to work from that. And you know, my senses
Speaker 1: and a lot of people never they don't see even
Speaker 1: that even that gap um where they're able to sort
Speaker 1: of realize that like it's you know, being stuck in
Speaker 1: traffic is not the bad thing, it's it's how I'm
Speaker 1: reacting to being stuck in traffic. And you've talked about
Speaker 1: how you've kept some of those stoic things going today
Speaker 1: even you know as you as you've gone on, how
Speaker 1: you've kept a little bit of things that you talk
Speaker 1: about sort of like being in the grocery line and
Speaker 1: when it's long, and how how you work with that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I I just you know, little phrases come
Speaker 1: back to me and I use them over and over again,
Speaker 1: even though I don't go and sort of deliberately embarrass
Speaker 1: myself on subway trains as a as a regular practice, UM,
Speaker 1: I do use that question, you know, what is the
Speaker 1: worst thing that could happen here? All the time. The
Speaker 1: positive thinking approach is all about trying to persuade yourself
Speaker 1: that the best thing is going to happen, or that
Speaker 1: the worst thing is not going to happen. And I
Speaker 1: think when you do that, that's the sort of dangerous
Speaker 1: flip side of reassurance. When you try and reassure yourself
Speaker 1: or somebody else that everything is going to be okay,
Speaker 1: you are implicitly affirming this idea that if things didn't
Speaker 1: turn out okay, that would be an absolute catastrophe. And
Speaker 1: it's much more empowering, I think, to remember that, actually,
Speaker 1: if they didn't turn out okay, you'd be okay. So
Speaker 1: so that question what's the worst thing that could happen
Speaker 1: is a really really helpful one. If you are getting
Speaker 1: um irritated by a long line in a in a
Speaker 1: store or something like that, that question just brings you
Speaker 1: right back down to earth because you realize that, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not that there's nothing going to happen
Speaker 1: as a consequence of this is that I'm going to
Speaker 1: be ten minutes later, or I'm going to not get
Speaker 1: to do ten minutes of whatever thing I plan to do,
Speaker 1: you know, with my evening. But you sort of see
Speaker 1: it for what it is suddenly, and you realize that
Speaker 1: the emotions that when they are not mindfully attended to
Speaker 1: what we're running wild and you were completely disproportionate to
Speaker 1: the real loss of the of the delay in the line.
Speaker 1: A sort of related line that occurs to me a lot,
Speaker 1: which is less from stoicism more from actually from Tolly,
Speaker 1: the New Age writer who I write about as well,
Speaker 1: is that question, do you have a problem right now? Uh.
Speaker 1: It's amazingly interesting to me how frequently the answer is no.
Speaker 1: I think you know, if you're in severe physical pain,
Speaker 1: it's possible to answer yes. But almost every problem that
Speaker 1: I think I have in my life is something that
Speaker 1: just happened or that I think is going to happen,
Speaker 1: and it's never actually afflicting me in the present moment.
Speaker 1: That that is a really good one. You as we
Speaker 1: talked about the you riding on the trains, that was
Speaker 1: that was from I think it was Albert Ellis who
Speaker 1: pointed you towards that. And and he had a he
Speaker 1: coined a word that I had never heard of before
Speaker 1: the end in the book that just made me laugh.
Speaker 1: And and I want to hear more about which I know,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm going to say, which is called musturbation. Right,
Speaker 1: So what is musturbation? It was meant to make you laugh.
Speaker 1: I think that was part of his sort of vigorous
Speaker 1: approach to psychotherapy. He died a few years ago. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: he was He was tremendous personality and swore an awful
Speaker 1: lot as a routine part of his public performances and
Speaker 1: and his writing. The The idea about musturbation is this
Speaker 1: idea that we that we plague ourselves with with musts,
Speaker 1: with demands that things must be a certain way, that
Speaker 1: we must perform to a certain level, that other people
Speaker 1: must treat us in a certain way, or that the
Speaker 1: world in general must be a certain way. And he
Speaker 1: makes a very very very critical distinction between demanding that
Speaker 1: things must be a certain way versus having a strong preference,
Speaker 1: even a very strong preference, that they be a certain way.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of binary distinction there between really really
Speaker 1: wanting something to happen in a certain way, which is
Speaker 1: totally fine, and and and and demanding that it absolutely
Speaker 1: must be that way. And he would say that if
Speaker 1: you can learn to relax those musts into preferences, you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to give up all desires, which is
Speaker 1: one interpretation of Buddhist psychology in this in this area,
Speaker 1: but you have to relate to them in a different
Speaker 1: way such that such of their preferences rather than demands,
Speaker 1: because it is those demands, ultimately that that cause a
Speaker 1: huge amount of suffering because plenty of times they will
Speaker 1: not be met because the world does not have an
Speaker 1: inbuilt reason. Country to what that says in the Secret,
Speaker 1: you know that the world does not have an built
Speaker 1: reason to go the way you you demanded it goes.
Speaker 1: And I think that's another one of those things, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of you know, a thread that that weaves
Speaker 1: through your book. But one of the challenges I have
Speaker 1: with the the over the top positive thinking and and
Speaker 1: and I'm a proponent of it to some degree, the
Speaker 1: over the top motivational speaking, is that it paints this
Speaker 1: idea of a life that should be so perfect, and
Speaker 1: when your life doesn't mean measure up to that, it's
Speaker 1: very easy to feel like you're getting the short end
Speaker 1: of the stick, You're doing something wrong, you know. It's
Speaker 1: it paints this picture of perfection that's, to your point,
Speaker 1: simply doesn't exist, and and trying to achieve it is,
Speaker 1: as you talk about, frequently makes people feel worse. Right,
Speaker 1: There's two interesting issues that I think. One of them
Speaker 1: is what counts as the perfectly happy life, you know,
Speaker 1: and whether actually immense wealth and uh sort of material
Speaker 1: benefits and things like that are actually the real path
Speaker 1: to happiness. And then whatever your definition of happiness, there
Speaker 1: is a question about the path you take towards it.
Speaker 1: And it's there I think that I try to focus
Speaker 1: and say that, you know, even if actually you think, yeah,
Speaker 1: millions and millions of dollars is what I want in
Speaker 1: my in my life, struggling vigorously and directly focusing on
Speaker 1: that alone is not the right way to to achieve
Speaker 1: it because of various things we can talk about about
Speaker 1: how the human mind works. You know that that this
Speaker 1: kind of it's not a machine that can be programmed
Speaker 1: with an action that it will then fulfill and you
Speaker 1: are constantly they're always kind of feedback effects. That mean
Speaker 1: that if you're thinking all the time about trying stamp
Speaker 1: out negative thoughts, for example, just to give the most
Speaker 1: obvious example, you'll be thinking about negative thoughts all the time,
Speaker 1: and therefore you won't be you won't be free of them,
Speaker 1: you'll have more You sort of led into it there
Speaker 1: a little bit, and I'm not quite sure how to
Speaker 1: pronounce it, uh, goalidacy. Yeah, well it's sort of a
Speaker 1: made up word by bio scholar or Christopher k So, yeah,
Speaker 1: got goal odyssey. It's sort of derived from the odyssey,
Speaker 1: which is which is a religious theological term. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: and you describe in your book, you talk, you give
Speaker 1: a bunch of examples, you know, and basically ideas. You know,
Speaker 1: if you focus so insanely on goals, you often make
Speaker 1: really poor decisions and and things don't turn out as
Speaker 1: you like. And and you talk about the the Evert tragedy.
Speaker 1: You talk about corporations, And I've done a fair amount
Speaker 1: of work in the software development space, and I have
Speaker 1: a phrase that says, anytime somebody tells you that failure
Speaker 1: is not an option, you ought to prepare for a disaster,
Speaker 1: because you know, nobody says that unless your back is
Speaker 1: so far up against the wall, um, that you're just
Speaker 1: never going to get there. And so I resonated a
Speaker 1: lot with with that. Is there anything else you you
Speaker 1: want to add about the UH? You know about sort
Speaker 1: of goals and and you know, how do you strike
Speaker 1: the right balance between planning and having goals and um,
Speaker 1: you know, doing it to the point where it has
Speaker 1: a negative effect on your life. Well, it's it's fascinating
Speaker 1: part of the of the thing, I mean's part of
Speaker 1: the book. I really really enjoyed UH and benefited from change.
Speaker 1: There's lots of different reasons why too much focused on
Speaker 1: the end point is a problem. Partly to narrow a goal.
Speaker 1: You know, the person who determines that at all costs,
Speaker 1: they're going to be a millionaire by age thirty five, say,
Speaker 1: you know, and some people will fail at that, but
Speaker 1: others will succeed. In exactly the wrong way. You know,
Speaker 1: you will succeed and alienate everyone you know, and and
Speaker 1: your relationship will have collapsed and everyone everyone will hate you,
Speaker 1: and but you will have achieved this goal. And and
Speaker 1: so that's an example I think of too much narrowness
Speaker 1: in goal setting. There's sort of a deeper spiritual aspect
Speaker 1: here there as well, isn't there about the problem of
Speaker 1: always uh postponing happiness, fulfillment, whatever word you want to
Speaker 1: use to some point in the future, to the extent
Speaker 1: that every bit of present moment time that you have
Speaker 1: on the earth is actually only there instrumentally for some
Speaker 1: other point. And then, of course, you know, you fulfill
Speaker 1: your I year plan and then you just have to
Speaker 1: start another one because because you're not um present to
Speaker 1: to to the to the moment. So I think that's
Speaker 1: sort of that's slightly corny. You know, it's the journey,
Speaker 1: not the destination thing. When you really take account of
Speaker 1: what it what it says is it's quite a powerful uh.
Speaker 1: Side of this goes beyond just setting bad goals or
Speaker 1: pursuing them in the wrong way, to this idea that
Speaker 1: actually some of your focus should just not be on
Speaker 1: the goal at all. Right, It's that it's that sense
Speaker 1: that happiness is still always out there somewhere, and when
Speaker 1: you achieve whatever that thing is and you don't feel
Speaker 1: that happiness, the the you know, following the way that
Speaker 1: the mind has been trained to work, you just set
Speaker 1: it out, well, it must not be this thing. It
Speaker 1: must be that thing. You know it's not. And you know,
Speaker 1: I I that phrase the grass is always greener. Um.
Speaker 1: I heard a great quote the other day that said,
Speaker 1: the grass is greener where you water it. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: really good. Yeah, it's kind of relating to the wolves
Speaker 1: as well. Right, Yeah, Yeah, there was another part in
Speaker 1: the book that I really resonated with and it's something
Speaker 1: that that I have, um, that I've really worked to
Speaker 1: deal with. And you talk about, you know, procrastination and
Speaker 1: habits and rituals and sort of the idea that a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't do something because they think they
Speaker 1: need to feel like doing it in order to do it.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was incredibly powerful for me. It was not It's not
Speaker 1: only in the book, but it also sort of why
Speaker 1: I ever got the book finished in the first place.
Speaker 1: This whole idea that is central to motivational the culture
Speaker 1: of sort of motivational speakers and motivational events and everything
Speaker 1: is that, um uh, doing great things in the world,
Speaker 1: whatever they are, is a two stage process. First, you
Speaker 1: work up the right mindset and then you're just so
Speaker 1: excited to do the thing that that the the action
Speaker 1: follows automatically. And the problem with this, of course, is
Speaker 1: that it's actually a lot harder to work up the
Speaker 1: right mindset about certain important tasks that you know are
Speaker 1: going to be very meaningful to you than it is
Speaker 1: to just you know, move your limbs in the way
Speaker 1: required to complete them. Um So, So this this particular line,
Speaker 1: which is a sort of way of putting into practice
Speaker 1: the Buddhist idea of non attachment, I suppose, is that
Speaker 1: this idea that you don't have to feel like doing
Speaker 1: something in order to do it. You can say to yourself,
Speaker 1: as I did many days in writing this book, and
Speaker 1: do another context today, you know, I don't really feel
Speaker 1: like doing this thousand words today. I'd much rather in
Speaker 1: a in a short term hednistic sense, you know, not
Speaker 1: bother and serve the internet, or go and get another coffee,
Speaker 1: or go back to bed. But I also know that
Speaker 1: I want to achieve this thing, and so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to try and get rid of these negative things.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try and stamp them out and
Speaker 1: replace them with tremendous excitement for the task. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to say, Okay, I don't feel like doing it,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, I'm also going to open
Speaker 1: the laptop and load up the file and do five
Speaker 1: minutes on the outlining or whatever it might be. And
Speaker 1: and it's obviously what happens a lot of the time, then,
Speaker 1: is that a good feeling follows, you know, motivation follows
Speaker 1: the action. But even when it sometimes doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: you've you've them, You've you've done something that is meaningful
Speaker 1: to you without having to sort of get yourself into
Speaker 1: this psyched up into this into this state. And I
Speaker 1: think things like the motivational seminar that I went to
Speaker 1: and write about in the first chapter of the book,
Speaker 1: they are fundamentally about, you know, too often, they are
Speaker 1: not about providing people with interesting cognitive tools for their lives.
Speaker 1: They are about whipping people up into a sort of
Speaker 1: physiological state of excitement for an you know, last a
Speaker 1: few days, and then it fades away and you have
Speaker 1: to go back to another motivational seminar, which is a
Speaker 1: great business model, I suppose, and so in something yeah,
Speaker 1: now it certainly is. And it it gets to the
Speaker 1: point that in order to accomplish anything, you have to
Speaker 1: have a certain mood. And moods are really a tricky thing.
Speaker 1: You know, people have different set points for their mood.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff there and and this was
Speaker 1: one of the things that you know, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of different ways I've heard it phrased. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't act your you can't think your way into
Speaker 1: right action. You have to act your way into right thinking. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got uh I call it the now rule,
Speaker 1: which is that if there's something I need to do,
Speaker 1: I just I try and do it immediate. You know,
Speaker 1: I try and do it immediately, but I allow myself
Speaker 1: to do it for like five minutes. That's what I
Speaker 1: tricked myself. I'm gonna do this for five minutes, and
Speaker 1: nine times out of ten, getting started, you know, gets
Speaker 1: me over the hump. But I'm going and it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I always I always think about how much momentum is
Speaker 1: involved in in sort of all these things and in
Speaker 1: being productive and doing different things is once the ball
Speaker 1: is rolling, it's much easier to keep it going. Yes,
Speaker 1: I can, I I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. We had
Speaker 1: a we interviewed a guy a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: who's uh got a website called the Value of Simple,
Speaker 1: and he had something that I thought was really great.
Speaker 1: He says, I plan out my week and then when
Speaker 1: it comes time at three o'clock on Tuesday to do
Speaker 1: the thing that's there. I believe that old old Joel,
Speaker 1: the one who made the schedule on Sunday, knows better
Speaker 1: than new Joel, the one who's sitting here today. And uh,
Speaker 1: which I thought was really interesting because it points to
Speaker 1: and I think you talked a little bit about it,
Speaker 1: habits and rituals, right if you, if you, and that
Speaker 1: sort of takes the the emotion out of it and
Speaker 1: the other thing and you and you phrased it really
Speaker 1: well just there, And it was the first time I
Speaker 1: ever heard it was a rabbi and I cannot remember
Speaker 1: his last name. He wrote something, uh, the forty eight
Speaker 1: Ways to Wisdom, which is really pretty interesting. But he
Speaker 1: talks about making the distinction between what you feel like
Speaker 1: and what you want and that's exactly what you just said.
Speaker 1: You want a book. What you feel like is doing nothing.
Speaker 1: But if you focus on and so many times I
Speaker 1: think we say to ourselves, I don't want to write today.
Speaker 1: Well not really, that's not really the reframing of I
Speaker 1: do want to in the grand scheme of things, I
Speaker 1: just don't feel like And that really helps me. Transient
Speaker 1: moods are so you know, all you can do is
Speaker 1: be aware of them. I don't think you can. I
Speaker 1: don't think there are all that many ways to sort
Speaker 1: of deal with the mother than just being aware of
Speaker 1: them and acting alongside them. But you know this is
Speaker 1: the this is the way in which you can be
Speaker 1: sort of You can get into some funk on some
Speaker 1: afternoon and feel like everything in your life is is
Speaker 1: really isn't working out and and and and you know
Speaker 1: everything's gone wrong and you need to have some huge
Speaker 1: overhaul of your life. And then you suddenly realize, I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lunch. That's it. You know, they are
Speaker 1: affected by the tiniest things, um and you know, just
Speaker 1: being a bit too hungry or not having slept well
Speaker 1: the night before can put a completely different frame on
Speaker 1: on everything. Unless you stop and realize that I actually
Speaker 1: that those are the things that caused those those things. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I often wonder that, you know, how many wars have
Speaker 1: been started in world history by you know, someone not
Speaker 1: having had enough coffee that morning or something like that.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to get into another Another big chapter
Speaker 1: you had is around Buddhism and and I also have
Speaker 1: been to the Insight Meditation Center, UM, although I only
Speaker 1: went for three days versus versus the whole week. But
Speaker 1: can you share a little bit about what that experience
Speaker 1: was like for you and and and how meditation had
Speaker 1: still impacts your life today and how you use it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was actually just under a week, I think,
Speaker 1: but it was. But it was a silent retreat at
Speaker 1: this place, Insight Meditation Society in western Massachusetts, UM and
Speaker 1: in the middle of you know, very isolated countryside in
Speaker 1: the middle of a forest. UH, and forty of us
Speaker 1: were doing a really quite entry level meditation retreat. You
Speaker 1: can do. You can go for you know, you can
Speaker 1: go there for three months if you're if you're really hardcore.
Speaker 1: This involved. So we're sleeping in the dormitory, would be
Speaker 1: woken up at sort of five thirty I think I's
Speaker 1: in the book I can't quite record, but you know,
Speaker 1: very early in the morning by a by a bell
Speaker 1: and spend about nine hours of the day in alternating
Speaker 1: forty five minute periods of seated and walking meditation, with
Speaker 1: a few breaks and a few uh you know, chores
Speaker 1: you have to um complete around the around the meditation center.
Speaker 1: You you'll you'll know all that um and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a completely I had meditated a little bit
Speaker 1: before in sort of twenty minute portions, but but spending
Speaker 1: your whole day for multiple days in that context is
Speaker 1: is completely eye opening. It For the first couple of days,
Speaker 1: as I write in the book, I just had like
Speaker 1: bad pop lyrics going around in my head for ever,
Speaker 1: and it was can you sing those forms? No, that's
Speaker 1: what I immediately wandered as which bands? It was Barbie
Speaker 1: Girl by Aqua, which is a terrible, terrible song. You
Speaker 1: might remember that I had never liked, never bought, never
Speaker 1: seen performed, but then came from somewhere exactly exactly terrible.
Speaker 1: And gradually this sort of faded away. But what really
Speaker 1: changed for me in the middle of that process was
Speaker 1: seeing that I wasn't actually there to try to calm
Speaker 1: my mind down, because when you're putting that beautifully silent,
Speaker 1: serene environment, the first thing you notice is how non
Speaker 1: beautiful and non serene is your internal old It's a
Speaker 1: complete cacophonous racket of you know, Danish pop song lyrics,
Speaker 1: but also, you know, just petty irritations. You get very,
Speaker 1: very irritated with the tiniest thing, like someone breathing wrongly
Speaker 1: a few feet from the order, you know. And and
Speaker 1: it's once you realize there not atually trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of all that stuff in a sort of eradicatory way,
Speaker 1: that that you learned then to let go of it,
Speaker 1: and that's when really interesting things start start happening. I'd
Speaker 1: be interested in your experience because I don't think three
Speaker 1: days would have been enough for me in that context.
Speaker 1: There was actually only after about three days that something
Speaker 1: different change. By the end of the week, I was
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, I'd quite like to live here forever.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think I would have done, but
Speaker 1: it thought did occur. You talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: Pemma Children, who is among the top three guests I
Speaker 1: ever want to get on this show. So Pemma, if
Speaker 1: you're listening. He's not listening. He's on retreating Nova Scotia,
Speaker 1: isn't I'm sure she is not listening. Um. Nonetheless, I
Speaker 1: would love to have her on there. But you talk
Speaker 1: about that the the idea of insecurity and and that
Speaker 1: you know, trying to cling to security in a safe
Speaker 1: life is a ultimately sort of pointless or fruitless. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work. But you sort of end the book with
Speaker 1: an idea and maybe we can we can wrap up
Speaker 1: sort of talking about this because I thought it was
Speaker 1: really uh interesting and profound um where you talk about
Speaker 1: if you get that level of security, which again doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: but the cost of that is sort of the loss
Speaker 1: of the mystery of life, and you sort of describe
Speaker 1: that that mystery, that sense of awe, that sort of
Speaker 1: thing as a fairly passable definition for happiness for you,
Speaker 1: which I thought was really interesting. It's that learning to
Speaker 1: be with the mystery, the uncertainty, the the fragile feeling,
Speaker 1: the tender feeling that that is somehow non mus with
Speaker 1: with being alive in the in the fullest sense that
Speaker 1: you can have in certain contexts. I don't think psychologically
Speaker 1: in life as a whole, you can have a great
Speaker 1: deal of security and certainty, but it is sort of
Speaker 1: akin to not living at all. Um, that that that
Speaker 1: sort of openness, and this idea from from from John Keats,
Speaker 1: you know, negative capability, the idea that maybe the real
Speaker 1: happiness talent, the skill we need to try to learn
Speaker 1: is to remain in a situation of not having things
Speaker 1: finished off and sorted out and concluded. The question I
Speaker 1: asked in the book, which I borrow I think from
Speaker 1: Susan Jeffers, the self help writer, is you know if
Speaker 1: somebody could hand you a list. Actually maybe it'still in
Speaker 1: the book. If somebody could hand you a list tomorrow
Speaker 1: that had every single event that was going to happen
Speaker 1: in the rest of your life to the day guy
Speaker 1: listed on it, and you're absolutely certain that it was correct,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want, I don't think, to receive that list,
Speaker 1: even if every single item on the list was a
Speaker 1: good thing. I mean, that's the crucial point. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to know about the bad things that
Speaker 1: are probably going to happen to me. But even if
Speaker 1: there was nothing bad that was going to happen to
Speaker 1: me from now until the day I died, at a
Speaker 1: very very old age in perfect help in my sleep,
Speaker 1: there would be something about the knowing that would have
Speaker 1: sapped the point out of life. And I think there's
Speaker 1: something really profound in that. And it does basically entail
Speaker 1: being open to the to the negatives as well as
Speaker 1: the positive, because if you're only open to the positives,
Speaker 1: you're not really open at all. Excellent, and I think
Speaker 1: you've got a lot in there. I think is it
Speaker 1: am I did I paraphrase? Or is it a is
Speaker 1: it a quote? Positive thinking of horrors and mystery? Right?
Speaker 1: I think it's a kind of it's a kind of
Speaker 1: refusal to accept that there are mysteries. It's it's an
Speaker 1: attempt to shut everything down and know that everything is
Speaker 1: going to be really happy and exciting and motivating all
Speaker 1: the time, that you're going to definitely hit your goals.
Speaker 1: It is um. Yeah, it's really intolerant in a sense,
Speaker 1: in that sense of of half of what it is
Speaker 1: to be alive in the world. Is there anything that
Speaker 1: you would like to cover that we haven't haven't talked
Speaker 1: about anything you think that's relevant to our our theme?
Speaker 1: I have to say I think we've covered it all
Speaker 1: in some great questions and some great, great, great discussion.
Speaker 1: How much and how this applies to the to the
Speaker 1: wolves question is something that fascinates me. I will be
Speaker 1: thinking about that for a while longer. Maybe it's to
Speaker 1: do with being okay with the bad wolf as well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, or not assuming that bad things are
Speaker 1: the bad wolf, right? And does one wolf have to win?
Speaker 1: Can't they just kind of get along? You know, there's
Speaker 1: lots of fascinating we can really take this place. It's
Speaker 1: I know, I know, Like I said, I've been waiting
Speaker 1: for somebody with the Buddhist perspective to give me the
Speaker 1: you know or you know, give me the whole you
Speaker 1: can't have light without dark argument um, which was which
Speaker 1: was inevitable. However, I do think that the uh it's
Speaker 1: a it remains a semi useful metaphor if h one
Speaker 1: that falls apart under too deep of thought. No, I
Speaker 1: think even if you, even if the process of engaging
Speaker 1: with it is such that you begin to think that
Speaker 1: it doesn't add up in certain ways, that then it's
Speaker 1: done its job as a story. Absolutely. Yeah, well, Oliver,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. This has been a great, great talk.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I genuinely enjoyed the book, and uh,
Speaker 1: thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks very much,
Speaker 1: indeed for inviting me one thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: One You Feed. You can learn more about Oliver Bergman
Speaker 1: and his work in our show notes at one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash Oliver