How To Fix Your Negative Patterns - Alain de Botton on Chris Williamson

Alanda Boton: Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

Where do bad inner voices come from? Well, the way I like to think about it is that an inner voice is always an outer voice that got internalized. You know, we're very porous people; the way in which we're spoken to becomes the way in which we speak to ourselves. I mean, if that if that sounds too weird, think of language. Right, all of us, um, arrive in the world not speaking any language, and by the age of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, you know, we'll have learned a lot of words. But the fascinating thing about human beings is, um, we don't know we're learning, so we can be doing other stuff, like, you know, doing handstands in the garden or drawing buttercups in the kitchen, and we're becoming expert grammarians. Hundreds of words are entering our minds; complex, um, grammatical constructions are entering our minds.

Now, the way I like to think about it is that that language analogy, um, holds true for emotional life as well. So at the same time as we're learning a language of, you know, words and declensions, we're also learning a language of emotions. Um, we're learning things like what's a man like, what's a woman like, what happens if you give somewhat something to someone, what happens if you're vulnerable, what happens if you want to play, what happens if you say no, what happens if you say yes? All of these are the syntax; they comprise the syntax of our emotional lives, and um, it's an invisible syntax, just as our grammatical syntax is invisible, but it's there, and it will operate throughout our lives, and it will be immensely hard to change.

I mean, you know what it's like if you're, you know, if you grew up speaking English and then you want to learn a foreign language—you suddenly want to learn Italian—well, good luck to you; you're going to be learning a long time. It's not impossible; it can be done. But I think it's helpful to think of how hard it is, because sometimes people get very impatient in their attempts to change things about themselves. They go, "I, you know, I want to change how I relate to people, um, in relationship, say, uh, and I've read a book and I've I've been to three therapy sessions, and um, I'm really annoyed nothing works." You want to go, "Okay, imagine this was Italian. So you you you've looked at a book on Italian, you've taken three classes, and you don't speak fluent Italian, and you're complaining." So we do need some modesty here, just in order to be properly ambitious. I mean, as you know, you know, the the the root cause of sort of early Despair and early retirement from things is a false picture of what success demands in an area, and I think in the area of emotional Improvement or maturation, we sometimes let ourselves down by thinking it's going to have an ease which it won't have.

It's interesting thinking about how language shapes our experience of emotions and our experience of the world. That German, for instance, has a colorful number of ways to describe certain emotions that you can't in other—he said, "Well, does the fact that we have the word for it almost unlock that emotion in a way? It allows us to do self-investigation." Yes, I I think, you know, philosophers—philosophers watching this, philosophers of language—may have, um, arguments prone in it; it's it's a big thing. But I definitely feel that the more words we have, the more we can attend to what we feel, and in some cases, the more we can feel. Um, you know, I I remember I remember learning the word anxiety when I was a teenager, um, and thinking, "Wow, that's a really useful word." Probably nowadays people learn anxiety a lot earlier, but you know, in those days, um, it was a fascinating word to learn. And the more one's vocabulary stretches, the more you're able to put a flag in bits of your psyche that are perhaps painful. And I think if you think about why people go to psychotherapy or or even frankly what motivates a lot of friendship, it's somebody else helps to give you a vocabulary for bits of your mind and bits of your experience that have not till now, um, you that of eluded definition. And that definition is not merely, you know, it's not really a fancy thing; it's it's a life-saving thing, because the more you can Define, um, the easier life gets.

Freud speculated that the the the the origins of language lie in an ability to Bear frustration. So that if a child can think, um, you know, "I'm currently frustrated, but you know, Mommy's coming back, and I've got," and the person's got those words, then that can help you to Bear missing and and also bear excitement or, you know, all sorts of things. Things can become more bearable the more you can put them into language. And I think, you know, adults know this when we we go about journaling, right? You know, what why why is it so helpful to journal, um, to you know, because we we know it is; all research shows it; it is. Um, what is it about translating a feeling into a word for that feeling that's helpful? And I think it tames it, um, contains, and it Narrows the spread of difficult emotions. It's very ephemeral, right? You've got these thoughts up here moving around, floating about, and then they have to be concretized, and it right almost feels like it squeezes it through an aperture of some kind. You say, "Okay, this is what I meant by that. It's not this notion; it's not this sort of ambient—" Somebody shouted a a noise in the Next Room, like, "Oh no, it's here; I can touch it." You can see it.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And and you know, think of think of relationships, couples; the more their vocabulary for what they're going through increases, the more they can say, you know, "I'm feeling this; I'm feeling," you know, "when you do that, I feel this," etc. And the enemy, you know, the sort of normal word is people say communication, but it's really language; it's it's putting language to to feelings, and and so much goes wrong in life because we're unable to do it. It start it starts with ourselves; we can't do it with ourselves. Um, there's a useful phrase that psychotherapists use: disassociation. It's a fascinating concept. What would it mean to disassociate? And the way it's understood sort of therapeutically is that you could feel an emotion; it's so difficult, tricky in some way, and you then stop feeling it; you you disassociate from the feeling that's in you. It's still in you, but you're no longer registering it. Tricky, tricky. And the argument is always the more you can associate, um, and the less you can disassociate, the better off you will be. Um, but look, there are many bits of life that are unbearable to us; let's let's remember this. Um, you there's a wonderful quote in Middlemarch, George Eliot, big fat 19th-century novel, where she says, "If we could properly register the sound of the sounds, the full sounds of life, um, we would lose our minds from the full richness of existence." In other words, if you were sensitive to everything that's around you, would sort of go mad, you know. And I think if we think about what Madness is—soal you, what colloquially called madness—think of people with severe mental illness; very often what what has happened happened is that their ability to sequence thoughts is gone; everything is coming at them, and they can't grade thoughts; they can't say, "This thought must go away now," you know. So they'll go, "I made a mistake 15 years ago," and if you're balanced, you'll go, "Well, that was 15 years ago, and it's just it's not it's not a problem; we can we we don't have to have it pressing down." If your if your reason is is buckling, often everything that is alarming comes at you at once, everything that is difficult at once, and um, so in a way I'm I'm sticking up for the ability sometimes to take distance from our feelings. So you know, I started off by going, "It's really important to to know what you're feeling," but let's also remember at points the ability not to feel the full force of everything also belongs to health. So it's it's a double-edged sword there.

What's your advice for how people can heal a negative inner voice? We've got this odd artifact that we've carried with us, this inheritance of our life, but kind of almost some previous life of ours. Where should people begin if they want to have a more friendly inner voice?

Such a good question. I'd say you have to start by finding the inner voice, because it doesn't announce itself as an inner voice. So how are we going to, you know, we're not we're not talking here about literally hearing voices; some people do, but we're not talking about that here. What we're talking about is a way of speaking to yourself or way of, you know, way of conducting yourself in your own mind that owes more to something from outside than from inside, and that is more negative or you can put it this way: unfair to you and your chances, your hopes, etc. So how do we how do we detect this is even going on, because I don't think it's necessarily obvious? Here I think that it's quite helpful to get people to do what are call sentence completion exercises, where you start off with a sub sentence and then you have an ellipsis… So men are, women are, life is, I am, I want if… because…, and you say to people, right, "Here's a list; these things without thinking too much—very important, important prompt—without thinking too much, just say the first thing comes into your head: men are, women are, life is, I am," etc. Um, or or even beginnings of stories: story completion exercises. "When I meet someone, that…" die… just finish finish that sentence. And what people will come out with is fascinating; they'll go, you know, "Men are cruel." Wow, wow, wow. "Men are cruel," are they? You know, person might even be surprised that they've said that. Then you say, "Okay, why's that come from? Where what what led you to believe that?" And often what you'll find is a story that owes more to something outside there, something inside, you know, or um, you know, "when when I meet someone, what will happen is…" dot dot dot, you know, um, "they'll be very friendly to me, then they'll turn against me." Wow, wow. Where did that come from? It's it's going to be a specific story in the past that, you know, is is being carried forward. Isn't it interesting that we're talking about maybe the thing people identify with most, you know, the texture of their own experience, the landscape of their of their own mind, but you're then saying, "Well, this may not fully be self-generated; this might be something which you've absorbed from the past, from society, from Norms, from cultures, from the way that you've compensated for past traumas, etc., or just habits." Yeah, but it brings up an interesting question, which is, "Okay, so who are you? Where are you in this? Are you that voice?" In some ways you are, because you're inexorably linked to all of the experiences you've had. Yeah, but then we have this sort of transcendent us, which is better; it's the better us. Yeah, "If only I could…" It's the me without the compensation, the trauma, the etc.

Such a good question. You know, we're not—sometimes this idea of, you know, "the real me" that is separate from everybody else—we are penetrated by Society. You know, think of how we're speaking; right, we're using words as we speak to one another; every one of those words is both spoken by us and was made by other people long before we were even a rumor in anyone's mind, right? We are we are penetrated by Society; every one of the words that I am using is the result of generations and generations of people who've used those words, refined their meaning, etc., and then given them to me. So that's literally the language we're permeated by: social language. Um, even our biology, as we know, you our gut bacteria is, you know, both us and not us. So the the neat, you know, Chris Al—we are we are these sort of, um, you know, entities where where you can put a strict circle around—now we're we're we're interpenetrated by Society, biology, history, uh, you know, etc. So then the question comes, "Well, is there anything, you know, that's that's more me, less me?" And I think here, absolutely, absolutely. And I think that one of the journeys—you know, life's full of Journeys; one of the journeys that I think we all are on is to start to separate out a little bit—well, what I I can understand there's a lot in me that was just put there by Society, by the context in which I was born—which of those bits do I want to keep or focus on, and which of those bits do not fully represent, you know, my values, my considered choices, etc.? And this is where life gets interesting, because people start to say things like, "Where I come from, normal meant…," but the more I think about it, the more I'm reflecting on who I really am, the more I want to ditch that and that and that. It's a of editing process, self-authorship. Absolutely. And you know, I think that the more mature someone is—I'll use that word; I could have used others—the more mature someone is, the more what they do, what they think, uh, the values they hold are more to their own work, their own sifting, their own editing than it does to the context that they were born into.

I think, you know, it's interesting if if you look at the Arc of a life, right, a a very small child is often remarkably authentic, which is why we adults, in small doses at least, have such a great time with little ones, because they they come out with stuff and you think, "Oh my God, I can't believe they've just said that thing," you know, they've just said that Granny's nose is too big, or that this restaurant's boring, or this very expensive thing is a load of rubbish, you know, etc. They'll come out with stuff that is non-normative, and that's very interesting, because as an adult you recognize a kind of, you know, you recognize your own spontaneity that's been lost, normally. So it's kind of bittersweet; you think, "O," you know, you don't want exactly the child's version of it, as that would lead you into trouble, but you want an adult version, and it's very hard to get, and and and probably the high Watermark of the opposite is when you're 14 and a half and you're at school and your most fervent wish is to be like everybody else. You you want your parents to be like everybody else; you want your name to be like everybody else; you want your appearance, your Hair, etc. You cannot bear difference. And then slowly, slowly you you individuate, you know, um, and and that's a very exciting Journey. Seeing, I don't think anyone everyone anyone individuates in all areas, so I think the first choice is, "What are the areas that matter a lot to you?" I'm interested in individuation, but when it comes to clothes, you might have noticed, um, I kind of, you know, it's a really interesting area, but I just just that one for another time, you know, I'm just not engaging with that. Similarly, food: fascinating area, you know, very interesting—yeah, not quite on my radar yet. But you know, other areas: what I'm reading, very, you know, opinionated, very individual. So I don't think all of us can do it in all areas, but we choose, and that's also part of what makes someone an individual.

I love the idea of uh children being unencumbered by sort of expectation in that way, and uh yeah, trying to find the balance between what would the mature childlike version of ourselves do or say in this moment where we found ourselves too swayed by the opinions of others, by Expectations, by societal Norms, etc. Do you remember that story of Picasso who was going around an art school—like little kids were doing art—and some kid was s scrolling, you know, "Mummy," whatever, and and this kid was seven, and he Picasso said famously, "When I was this when I was his age, I was painting like Raphael," you know, one of the great Renaissance artists. And it was sort of true—I mean, young Picasso—um, and then he went, and it's taken me all my life to remember how to paint like this. Unreal. Um, now he didn't, you know, an adult painting like a child is not a child painting like a child; it's something different, you know, which is why when people go, "Oh, a child could have done that," well, when a child does it, it's one thing, and when an adult does it, it's another thing. And I think it's quite different, and I think that's why, you know, when you look at Picasso—and there are lots of artists and lots of figures you could sort draw that analogy with—but you know, when you're looking a a painting that Picasso did when he was 90, what 90, you know, at the end of his life, and it it's got elements of stuff that a child might do, but it's gone through, you know, that this guy has been doing so much other stuff, so he's got deeper reasons.

Did you ever read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman? No? Okay. Uh, of children's books, sensibly, I guess. This was my favorite series when I was a kid, uh, and in it the protagonist, Lyra, um, finds this truth teller, uh, it's called an alethiometer, and for some reason, uh, this particular device, it takes an entire lifetime of study to be able to read it, and as a child she can do it immediately. So it's this beautiful Arc, and it's the first time I ever thought about it, and Pullman takes you through unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence. And one of the final scenes of the entire book, at the very very end, uh, she goes back to the uh, alethiometer where she was being raised 5 years ago before the Story begins, and uh, she's lost the ability to read it; she hits puberty, and it's kind of this fall. It talks about kind of the awareness that her and her partner now have, and she says, "I can't read it anymore," and then Pullman turns to her, and she says, uh, "My dear, it's going to take you an entire lifetime, but the depth of knowledge you have will be greater than never was before." And it's that Arc: unconscious incompetence, unconscious competence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence. And that finishing side, something that's been earned; you found your way there through effort, agency, self-authorship, is um, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's special. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's it's interesting, isn't it, when when people who read a lot, thought a lot, etc., come out with stuff and it sounds very very simple. And I think our society gets a bit puzzled by that, because the the sort of obvious respect goes to people that speak in a very dense way, and you can't quite understand what they mean. So you know, philosophy, the discipline I started out in, you know, the heroes there are like Wittgenstein or um, Hegel, Kant, etc.—it's very very hard, not superbly accessible—to make Headway. And then, you know, you turn to the East; you look at Eastern philosophy; um, you you look at the Poetry of someone like Basho in, um, Japan, medieval Japan; it's so simple; it's, you know, it's four words on a piece of paper, and um, very easy to go, "Mumbo jumbo," or or or or "Child's Play," or whatever, and to be kind of mature enough to go, "Okay, I'm going to bear with the anxiety that this is very simple—sounding simple—sounding." In the East, the idea is that um, poetry, for example, can sound very very simple; the point is that it's an interaction between the reader and the work, so not everything is in the poem or the saying; you bring yourself to it, and therefore the ultimate impact of that work is a collaboration between you and the work. Fascinating. So the Western of you might be, "Go, there's not that much in there," uh, and it's the artist's fault, job, um, whereas in East views, "Well, it's a collaboration; so if you're not seeing anything, it's because you're not bringing enough of yourself." So very interesting to get, you know, lots of the Arts. I mean, think of that Eno, you know, in in in in uh, you know, just a circle—this is the whole of Life, whole of life—it's just, you know, you're just doing a circle with your your brush, and um, amazing, amazing—the the courage to say, "Okay, we're going to go with this; we're gonna," you know, "the whole of existence is this circle, and if you meditate profoundly enough on this, you will see the world not just in a grain of sand, but in a circle," etc. And we really meet a fault line here in the Western understanding of depth and profundity, where this takes a bit of time for the Western mind to kind of get grips of that. We're like, "Come on, is this a joke?" And they, you know, they're just pedaling us something. Yeah, probably not.

Why do you think we struggle to connect with our emotions fully? Um, come on, let's be honest here with the audience, and you know, we know what emotions are like; they're not just lovely, cuddly things; they're absolutely terrifying a lot of the time. Um, think of what it takes, think about love, right? So people, we think that people spend their lives looking for love, and half true—that's a half-truth—spend a good deal of time running away from love as well, in all sorts of forms. We are as assiduous in our Escape From Love as we are in our Pursuit, perhaps more so. Why? Because it's terrifying; it's especially terrifying if you come from a childhood, an A young world where there was some kind of disruption in your attachments, in your, you know, in your experience of Love. Um, the next time you then meet love as an adult, half of you is just wanting to run away, away. And I think people don't still not fully appreciate enough the the strength with which we are going to resist love if our earliest experience of it was in any way in any way difficult. Um, and this explains a great deal of the misery of the world. It's very interesting to think about how much we try and push away the thing that we're also wanting, like how we are implicit in creating the scenario that was so terrified of having happened.

Been thinking a lot about, um, second-order emotions, third-order emotions. So, um, you have a thing that happens; you feel agitated, and then you begin to tell yourself a story, and you become stressed at your agitation, and then you become resentful at your stress about your agitation, and then you become anxious about—and I—that additional layering—this, you know, kernel that we began with with regards to the emotion sort of explodes out, and before you know it, you're feeling an emotion that's not only the thing that started, but it's an entire Universal way.

Yeah, and this is now the problem, not this.

Yeah, that's right. And and I'm not sure if I understand you fully, but is it is it really the case that you are not accepting the the Primary Emotion? You know, so let's say, uh, you go somewhere; it should be nice; you're disappointed; you can't be disappointed; it's meant to be nice; you you can't accept that disappointment, and then you're angry with your yourself for feeling disappointed, um, and then, you know, and and on it. Whereas if one could just go, "Okay, maybe it's it's all right to be disappointed. I mean, it's not it's not brilliant, but but there it is," or "I'm feeling sad. Okay, well, that's not wouldn't be what I wanted, but let me not be sad that I'm sad, or angry that I'm sad." I think this is why we have certain signature emotions that feel like home base. Yeah, there's ones that we're intimately familiar with, and there's ones that scare us a lot more. Yeah, and uh, a unsatisfactory but familiar emotion is often more safe to us than a slightly novel, more exotic, but uh, scarier one. And and also I think happier one. I mean, you know, talking just a minute ago, people escaping love, people also Escape happiness. I mean, the way I think about it is that very often we're in a situation of—it's like being a prisoner; you've been in kept in jail for a very long time; your diet's been restricted; it's not been much fun; then the gate opens, and you're allowed to walk out. Um, it should be a great day; fantastic; you're free—nah, you know, we know what happens. Uh, let's say you've been on a calor-restricted diet; suddenly someone says, you know, "Here's a buffet; you can eat anything you like"—you don't want to eat it; you can't you can't digest it; you can't process it; it's too much. So you know, something similar goes on in our attitudes to to happiness, often. I mean, it's useful to say to yourself, ask yourself, "In the circumstan in which I grew up, what did it mean to be happy?" And for some of us, it meant upsetting a parent; it meant challenging the dominant mood in a household; it meant taking away attention from somebody else; it meant it meant danger. Um, and that's odd, because we think, "Why would it be dangerous to be happy?" Well, but there are all sorts of risks associated with it, and so in our deep Minds sometimes in adulthood, um, we simply cannot, um, accept the circumstances of our lives and and therefore go back spoiling them, um, so that they so that we put them more, you know, there's a wonderful paper called something like "A criminal psych," but "criminal in search of an offense," um, a sense that you've done something wrong. If you carry that from your past, and you think, "How am I going to get rid of that feeling? Oh, I know, I'll do something wrong, and then and then I won't feel that feeling anymore." Some, you know, it's a bit like that; it's like saying, um, "I'm feeling happy, but I shouldn't be happy; what should I do? Oh, yes, I'll make myself unhappy," or you know, "I'm feeling love; someone's offering me love; that's not normal; I don't I don't recognize that feeling; oh, what should I do? Oh, I'll drive them away; yeah, I'll I'll I'll go and be rude to them, or go and have an affair with somebody else, or whatever it is—something to spoil something that's nice." So the impulse to spoil is really deep; happiness and love are hard to bear.

I suppose if reality is not delivering our model of the world, our expectation of the world, our prediction of the world, we have discordance between the two, and there are two things that we can try and do: we can try and bring our model of the world up to reality, or we can try and bring reality back down to our expectation.

Exactly. Beautifully put.

Is there a danger of intellectualizing challenges of emotion for smart people? People that like to read and consume YouTube channels like yours or podcasts like mine and like to investigate ourselves; we want to understand ourselves and the world around us, and maybe we've even got the theory from evolutionary psychology that explains why this is adaptive and and and we ancestrally we are made up of blah blah blah blah. How how much is that a prophylactic against us actually having to feel things? And how can we better break through this intellectualizing of emotions and rationalizing of them away?

Let's start with compassion. You know, we are the way we are, you know, for poignant reasons; not, you know, we didn't get to be that way. You know, think of the think of the bookish child, you know, think of the child who's reading a lot. Um, often it's cuz life's life's quite difficult. Now, it's great to read; good to read, etc. But if you spend all your time in books, um, it's often a sign things are things are challenging. And so often the people who excel at intellectual Pursuits, etc., are in flight from an overwhelming situation. Um, I'd wish them well, um, in that in time the overwhelming situation could get a little less intense, and they could get a little more of reality into their intellectual world. I mean, I'm describing myself perhaps, you you know, you you want to try and see reality for what it is, and if you're warding it off with intellectual structures, um, you know, let's let's say thank you to those structures. I think I think it's really important whenever whenever you look at people doing stuff that seems a bit suboptimal or a bit strange—they're reading too much, they're jogging too much, they're trying to make too much—

Money. Whatever. Um, that they're feeling too much, they're feeling too little. All, all of these departures from so-called health, normality, etc. Always ask yourself, why are they doing it? And it's normally a defense. It is a defense against a situation that was very difficult at some point. They learned that defense, and even though it would be optimal now to let go of that defensive structure, they're still clinging on to it because that's what feels safe. It feels safe to make jokes all the time. It feels safe to be very serious all the time. It makes it feels safe to be depressed. It feels safe to give up. Um, it feels safe to try and win at all costs, including your own health, et cetera. All, all these are defensive structures that once kept us safe that I think in order to evolve, we almost want to say thank you. Thank you to your younger self for working this out, for finding a way of coping with reality. But, but could we learn to cope in a slightly different way?

So great. I'm interested in just taking that one step further, in the difference between knowing ourselves intellectually and knowing ourselves emotionally. Uh, I think even I, I've in my less equanimous moments, uh, when I do journaling, uh, I find myself writing more of an essay than a personal inquiry. And, uh, yeah, the difference between knowing ourselves intellectually and knowing ourselves emotionally. Again, for the cerebral-minded, praying at the altar of cognitive horsepower people, yeah. Um, yeah, it's a coping mechanism. It's a way to distance yourself from this. Yes. And I think, I think our minds, it's, it is much easier to, um, have the headline than the meat of the topic. And very often we, we reach a sort of, an uncomfortable state of half knowing ourselves, and we think, oh, I've covered it. I know in my childhood there was this, and you know then there was this, then there was that. And you, you've got to go to a headline, you know, tension with my dad, or you know, tricky with my mom, or whatever it is. And we think, oh, I've got that. I've got that. I know it now. Let's go back to the, the Eastern, you know, Enzo circle, right? And the East says, meditate for hours repeatedly on the thing that looks obvious, the thing that you know. So they're saying the whole of life is that circle. So look at that circle and keep coming back to it. And the more, more you look at it, the more you will see in it. Now the Western approach is bit, bit, it's too impatient. It'll say, all right, yeah, it was tense with my dad. I know that. And go, hang on, hang on, hang on. That's an Enzo of its own. It was tense with my Dad. We, you could meditate around that for, you know, an hour a day or an hour a week or whatever is, you can keep coming back to that. It's never, there are so many things still to be discovered there. It's not dead. And so I think I'd almost want to excite, you know, those who are listening to think, okay, I think I know something. Do I really know it? Might I go back there?

Um, our real experiences tend to be so much richer than our work-a-day sense of them. Um, think about, think about a holiday, right? Say, have you ever been to Greece? Oh yeah, I went to Greece. Um, oh right. Have you been to Santorini? Yeah, I've been to Santorini. Okay. So, so we think we covered that. One person's trip to Santorini. Really? Hang on. First of all, our minds are amazing mechanisms of capture, you know, we got cameras around, sound equipment, etc. Nothing beats the human mind for capturing absolutely everything. Um, often the time to explore this is, is sort of twilight, um, your mind is, you're going to sleep or waking up. If you say to yourself, yeah, Santorini, what was that like? What was it, what was it really like? And you realize, oh my God, I remember there was a tiled hallway that led to a blue door, and I actually remember there was a flower in a little vase, and there was a light coming in from, I think it must have been from the left. And actually, if I looked to the right, there was a little window. And it's all there. It's all in your mind, just waiting to be asked, waiting. This is the famous, can I talk about Proust? What muscle Proust? Great French novelist, 19th, early 20th century, etc. Came up with this fam idea of the Proustian moment. Some of you know it, some of you won't. It's basically a moment when you take something sensory, like a sip of water or a smell, imagine the smell of concrete after rain, or the smell of snow just after a snowfall, etc. And suddenly you, you, you get that sensory experience, and a world opens up. You think, oh my God, I'm 5 years old again, and I've just gone outside of the garden of the yard where I grew up, and there was a brick wall, and there was that exact smell, and I'm there again. And suddenly your world becomes so much richer. And these are just little moments of, of, of expansion around a topic like after a snowfall, or first of spring, or Santorini, or whatever it is. So in other words, many of the things that are in our minds in intellectually compressed forms can be expanded with the addition of, I mean, you know, the sort of fancy, trendy, modern word is meditation, but, but you know, some people don't get on with the word meditation. Let's just say, by giving it some time, by allowing an experience to assume its proper shape. And we, we do rush past our experiences. Things are very compressed. And that's why at the end of an average day, my goodness, how much we've seen, how much we've felt, how many little things cross consciousness. If we were able to give some of that space, how much lighter we would start to feel. But we, we live so much and we experience so little. We see so much and we notice so little.

What would you say to the obsessive person who wants to learn to let go a little more? A lot of what I see in the circles that I move in is a need for control, a desire to limit down the potential paths that the future could go down, to sort of constrain how unpredictable reality could be. And I think the optimization, life hacking, productivity world is very much a part of this, plus a denial of death. If I can fit more life into less time, then maybe, kind of like living longer. Um, but yeah, that, that need to control, that obsessive sort of, uh, requirement to be able to wrangle reality as you wish. Can people learn to take their hands off the wheel a little bit more easily? Well, I think, I mean, I think, um, the simple answer is that these people are running away from something, um, which is painful and difficult, etc. And they're not allowing themselves to think about it. They're not even allowing it inside. Ious. So think of the, think of mania, you know. But when we say so and so is in a manic mood, or so and so is doing something manically, what we really mean is that they're doing something in order not to do something else, normally not think about something or feel something. And we all end up in certain points in manic states where, you know, we're, we're scrubbing the kitchen just a little bit too assiduously, or we're jogging a bit too hard, or we're scrolling our phones a bit too much. And really the question to ask ourselves at that time is a very simple one, which is, if you weren't able to do what you're doing now, what might you need to think about or to feel? And the answer is there waiting for you, if you can, if you can bear it. Could be a very, very awkward question to ask yourself. In other words, you know, if you weren't able to clean the kitchen manically, or go jogging, etc., but you just sit with something, what, what do you need to sit with? You know the old saying, you don't just sit there, do something. Don't just sit there and think, do something. Well, imagine you don't just do something, sit there and think. You reverse it. You reverse it. And what is it that you need to think about? Yeah, yeah. Uh, the coping mechanisms that we have, and the inventive ways that we come up with, alchemizing and, and justifying. Well, a lot of the time, uh, people will say, better to be addicted to the gym than be addicted to drugs. I don't think that's a particularly controversial stat, if that's, if that's the binary choice. Yes, of course. Um, but then I realized recently, but maybe over the last year, so I spent a lot of time meditating toward the end of my 20s, and, um, trying to turn myself out of the adult infant into maybe an adult adolescent. And, um, most people would look at meditation, you know, sort of an emotion arises inside of you, you notice it, you release and allow, like that's, you know, a common sort of tempo that you have. Brilliant, you know, you, you, you are no longer as at the mercy of this particular emotion. Uh, but it was only when I started doing therapy, uh, as first ever suggested by Charlotte, one of your ex-staff from the School of Life, uh, it was only after doing quite a lot of that that I realized that even meditation, or maybe breathwork, or going to the gym, or whatever it might be, is still another way of not having to actually investigate where that emotion has come from. And meditation particularly, or, or something more like breathwork perhaps, is a not nefarious, but it's a, a very, it's, it's so close, it's internal, it feels sort of self-investigative, uh, it's mindful. This is brilliant. You go, yeah, but that is going to continue to come up, and you now have a coping strategy. It's not drugs, it's not even as obvious as you running 50 miles a week, but there is another strategy which is not forcing you to turn the eye back down to, where's this coming from? And why does it keep on arising? And if you have this very good strategy to release these things as they move through you, uh, that will, that cycle will continue. And I don't think, I think that, uh, those emotions are worthy of investigation.

So, so Chris, how do you define therapy, or how do you, how do you define what therapy might, might bring you that's bit different from meditation in this? I mean, my, my, I did, uh, twice a week psychotherapy for the last year or so, um, and it was, I've said this before, it, I learned more about myself in a year of twice weekly psychotherapy than I did in 1500 sessions of meditation. And if you could characterize what, what was different, how therapy operates, you have another party investigating your statements, the language that you use. I used the analogy that it felt like, um, living in a house your entire life, and then one day just inviting somebody else in, yeah. And they're walking around, and they start pointing out doors in a house that you know intimately well, every inch, and they start pointing out doors that you never even knew existed. And you go, what's that? Over there? You go, and you open the door, and you realize that the back of the kitchen actually leads into, I always wondered how those two things came together. And it's this sort of odd, it's very humbling. I found it a very humbling experience to see somebody else who knows me for 100 hours, yeah, point, yeah, and say, what about, yeah, what about that? That. But I think, I think one has to be really, I mean, that's a beautiful way of putting it, um, um, why should be totally relaxed about that, and just say, in the same way that you, you can't see the back of your head, it's just one of those things, um, it's not, it's not, you know, we just, we can't see some very obvious things. I mean, a therapist, a trained therapist can see within minutes things that have eluded someone for their whole life, um, very humbling, very humbling. But, but, but you know, someone can do it for the therapist as well. It's, everybody is like this. We're just, that's how we're wired. And the best thing to do is laugh. It's, it's funny. I mean, it's how inept we are, um, but as everybody's in on the joke, um, we can, we can laugh together.

You said, uh, talking about the emotion thing just from before, and I think that this sort of comes into when you're regulating, opening up with someone, whether it be a therapist, friend, a partner, or whatever, the sort of need for, uh, comfort and reassuring kindness. Look, you can say these things, yeah, I, I'm not running away, I don't find you despicable, it's actually kind of interesting, maybe it's charming for you to do this. I mean, this is so, you know, this is really very much at the core of what we could understand by the word love, you know. If a, think of it in childhood, a loving parent, right? The, the child, a young child gets an experience that who they really are is acceptable to someone else. So you know, child, little child will go, I hate the teacher. And the parent, you know, good parent is able to bear that, even though it's not perfect. The parent is able to go, oh, okay, what, wonder, wonder why, what, what's, you know, why, why they upset you? Sounds like they might have upset you, rather than someone would go, don't be so silly, the teacher, the teacher, and they work very hard to give you an education, so don't complain. Wow, that's, you know, that's a tough comment. Your emotion is not valid. Your emotions not bad. I mean, you know, parents do their best, but goodness me, stuff happens in, in that crucible of childhood that is a bit suboptimal. Um, but you know, love, come back to love, what love is, is, is accepting, you know, um, I don't want to see Granny. Okay, you don't want to see Granny. All right. Or, or I really love you, or I really hate my sibling, or I really like the dog, or I want to live forever, or you know, all the stuff that little children come up with, or I'm terrified of Daddy. Actually, I don't like Daddy. Oh, okay, well let's think about that. You, what does that mean? So being able to accept, and then in later life again, having someone, it could be a therapist, it could be a friend, um, who's able to bear the really difficult bits of our psyches, which we all have. I mean, we're all so much weirder than we're supposed to be, so much sadder, so much more worried, etc. And to be able to have someone, you know, it might only be one person or two, if we're really lucky, and three if we're, you know, God's gift, um, who can bear, and who we've allowed into that sort of private, um, sanctum. That was one of the realizations that Charlotte first taught me, and then I learned through my therapy over the last year. One of the, the very unique, uh, parts of a therapeutic relationship is that you're allowed to be as small or boring or petty as you want. And those are areas that with a friend or a partner, it's really difficult to do, yeah, because you're managing optics in some way. You're thinking, well, it's my job to kind of entertain this person, even if they're there to, to sort of sit and listen with me, like, not that, not the fact that the way that the lady in the canteen ladled my beans today seemed a little bit disparaging or dismissive or something. And like, oh my God, how shameful for me to think that that's something that should play on my mind. So small, I, you know, the story, I tell the second, third, fourth order emotions coming. And, um, that is one of the very few, it's that and your mom are kind of, you know, not even your mom, because most, as you say, most relationships, it's all relationships, you have to manage, and you have to curtail the fear of being abandoned, you know. If you, if you are too honest, this again, the, the canteen lady and the beans again, this is the third time in two months. Think of how this plays out in couples, right? So people come together, um, because they're fed up with being lonely, right? You know, you, you, it's lonely, so you try and find a special person. And we, we dignify this concept by saying, I'm in a relationship, you know, I'm, I'm a special friend, I'm getting married, etc. We got these words, but really what this means is, I'm no longer so alone in a terrifying world. So you have a special person, and in the early days of love, it's thrilling that you can say stuff that you wouldn't say to anyone else. And it's so delightful, you can say, say things like, you know, I still long for my teddy bear. And they go, I long for them too. And then, you know, hug to the teddy bear. And it's so amazing because, you know, you're, you're the CEO, and you know, you're an important lawyer, doctor, banker, and actually you're clutching your teddy bear. And it's, it's amazing. Or you can go, I really want to put, you know, mayonnaise on the pizza. And that's great. And then, you know, you, you push it further, and, and, and then you go, I'm going to go to a museum, but I don't like any of the art. I don't like it either. Or I've never read that book, but I always pretended I did. And it's just thrilling. And you know, and then, and then sex gets invited into, you go, I, I like this strange-sounding thing. And they go, I like it too. I like this other thing, etc. And you, you're building a wonderful universe. But, um, you know, this is the, the challenging thing about love, because you know, let's imagine you're with this person, and you shared all this stuff, etc. And then you go to a, a cafe, say, and you, you say, waiter is hot. And then you look at their face, and they're like, look, really quite heartbroken that you've just commented on the, you know, visual appeal of waiting staff. And they, they feel hurt, and they feel jealous, and they feel upset. And suddenly you think, oh my goodness, there's a choice here between, you know, kindness and honesty. And I think that's what we're circling around, which is, can you be, you know, what, what moment does honesty run up against the limits of kindness, or the, the, you know, the requirements of kindness?

I think what you're saying about therapy is, you don't have to be kind to the therapist, because it's a 50-minute session, you're giving them money. And people go, oh, it's a bore that you're giving the money. Well, you know, Freud thought long and hard about this, about the role of money in therapy. And his view was, it's an agent of liberation. It's a good thing, you can pay the therapist. And that's why you want people to bring cash and leave the cash on the table, uh, at the end of every session. Now nowadays you might, you know, put your card on, but, but the point is, um, it's, it's a way of saying, um, I can be fully myself because I have earned this person's attention. Some people go, but they don't really love you, etc. And you go, maybe they don't really love you, but that's a liberation, correct. There's no obligation. No obligation. Obligation. Just lingering on that, uh, balance between transparency, emotional openness, and, um, you said kindness, but I think that there's other reasons to edit, too. Is there a place for editing yourself in a relationship? Should we not be open, honestly communicating all the time? This is how I feel. You want to see the inner texture of my mind, don't you? I mean, you're putting your finger on, on a big paradox. I, I think the idea that you should be yourself in a relationship is one of the most disastrous ideas, um, because the untrammeled self, uh, is a frightening spectre, um, best kept for, you know, you and your therapist, you in the mirror, you know, um, if you, if you have to confront your partner with your stream of consciousness at all times, um, you can't do this. You know, parents don't do this with their children. Obviously, our partners are not children, but it's telling us something about love. In a loving relationship, at points you edit yourself, you know, it's 11 at night, I'm not going to bring that issue up, they're very tired, I'm not going to bring that up, um, I'm feeling stressed and raw, I'm not going to start a subject that I won't know how to handle, etc. No, all of us fail at points, all of us fail in this area. But as I think, as an ideal, it's, it's a good ideal. I mean, I could stick up for a word which sounds very odd in the context of love, politeness, you know, it's, it's a good idea to try and be polite. I'm like, oh, that's fake, that's fake. Well, it's also kind, you know, to edit yourself, to, uh, put a veneer of civilization on certain things. Yeah, why not? There's a, a very slippery slope with that, though. A lot of people, especially if they have started doing therapy, some self-inquiry, some emotional work, then God, like, I, I, I should push the, uh, amount that I'm emotionally open, I should improve my transparency. For so long, I played a role, I was terrified of making my, my needs known, my desires, putting myself first, realizing I even have needs, and putting those out there. And now there's these odd bits of territory that I shouldn't stray into, yeah. What happens if I stray over there? And the tendency for you to overcorrect and go in the other direction, uh, Neil Strauss says, unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments, right? And you know, we have this, yeah, balance between the two. Yeah, you're absolutely right. There are some people who need to work on being more transparent, more communicative, and others who need to be less technical. Where I think for it is reactive, you know, they're not, you shouldn't come out with whatever it is that you, that you're feeling at all times in its full force. It just depends. I mean, you know, that classic anxious-avoidant attachment pattern, we might say that on the whole, avoidant people need to work on their communication skills, you know, and they need to, to be more transparent. And avoidant and anxious people need, on the whole, to contain certain feelings, you know. And it's just, yeah, horses for courses on this one.

What would be your advice to, uh, people in the classic anxious-avoidant relationship? The two polarities coming together. Understand, understand, understand where each one's coming from. I mean, why is someone avoidant? They're not evil, they're not mean, they're not, it, it, it can be pretty horrible to be on the receiving end of certain kinds of pattern of behavior. But let's try to remember why, why does this exist? Uh, someone becomes avoidant when they've grown up in a calorie, emotional calorie-controlled diet, uh, environment where they have had to get used to very little. The way they survive is, Mom's not so interested, Dad's not interested, no caregiver around, um, lot of disappointment. I'm just going to hunker down and get used to very little, literally like an animal that gets used to a very, very thin diet, um, that is what has happened to an avoidant person, um, and then when they get to, to love, and someone goes, I adore you, let's spend every evening together, let's, you know, um, you're, you're marvelous, um, they feel, and but often they don't even understand that they're feeling it, totally engulfed, they feel overwhelmed, they feel their very identity is in threat of dissolution by, by something that's lovely, but it's too much, too soon. And what they need is an experience of love titrated. They need the titration of love, um, but often they don't know how to ask for it. They don't even know, often they, they might smile through it and, and go, I'm, I'm not really feeling this. And then they can't bear, they can't bear, and then they run away, um, or just act, become weird or something, you know. So, so explanation, you know, hello, I'm somebody who had to get used to a very, you know, calorie-controlled diet emotionally, um, uh, you know, I really feel warmly, this relationship is matters a lot to me, but the kindest thing is not to be too kind to me in an overwhelming way. The most generous thing is not to be too abundant, not because I don't want this, but because I grew up in a situation of deprivation. So that's our avoidant friend. Anxious friend, similar kind of story of explanation. Why did people become so-called anxious? Normally because, unlike the avoidant person, they have had an experience of love. So some ways, the anxious person's had a better childhood, better journey through life, in a way, they have experienced love, but they've also experienced loss and the disruption of that attachment. So someone died, someone went away, someone had to go to, you know, the Army, someone had some, something happened to disrupt the bond. It was very intense, but it was disrupted. And, um, that person needs to understand that they are, you know, there's a wonderful sentence from Donald Winnicott, great psychoanalyst, who said, the catastrophe you fear will happen has already happened. And the key thing is, it's been forgotten. You forgot the catastrophe, and that's why you keep seeing it in the future, whereas actually it belongs in the past. So what you need to do is understand this structure and repatriate the emotion, um, and put it back where it belongs. So the avoidant person at dinner, you know, on an early date, needs to go, um, you know, I really want to believe in your love, um, but if you say you love me, I might not be able to believe it very easily. And what I will do is test it. And the person might go, oh, test, oh, fine, fire away. And the anxious person should go, yeah, this test can be quite healthy, quite, quite horrible, you know, it's, it's going to mean that when you say, um, I love you, I'm going to start to act up because I want to see if it, you really do. So I'm going to be really difficult around you, because not because I don't want you, but because I want to test whether your affection is really real. And the only way I know how to do that, see, I'm carrying this stuff from childhood, is to act up, play up. And so when we're in a nice restaurant and you tell me that, you know, things are great, I'm going to say, actually the food's not that nice, and I don't really like the clothes you're wearing, and I'm going to cause a drama. Why? To test whether the love is real. Very unfortunate. So the more the anxious friends can get on top of their anxiety, the more they can translate everything I've just said into something that sounds like it's been processed and can be understood by another person, then the better it can be. So, um, you know, anxious and avoidant people are walking wounded, and they need to be able to explain the nature of their particular wound so that appropriate care can be, uh, set up. Awareness, awareness, which is why, you know, it's great for people to go to therapy, it's great for people to explore themselves, um, it's not merely fancy, it's not really whatever, it's a serious indicator of an easier life with them. I mean, if you're, if you're with a partner who's able to go, okay, hang on a minute, I think I'm slipping down, I, I, I think I'm confusing you with my mother at the moment, uh, or I think, I think an anger that actually belongs to my father is, is weirdly in the room, because that's what happens when you start to explore your past, you see the intermingling of past and present all the time, um, and the more you're able to get a handle on that and warn your partner, the easier it is. I mean, we don't need people to be perfect, we need people to understand how they're imperfect and warn us of the coming imperfection, or retrospectively apologize for it in relatively civilized terms. That's what we need.

How malleable are our attachment styles? Are the foundations of them able to genuinely be moved, or is it a case that the best we can hope for is to just compensate for them in adult life? Um, I'm hopeful here that, you know, we can definitely make progress from wherever we start. We can make progress that, you know, a temperament where we're inclined to close ourselves off because we constantly think that no one will be able to understand us, once we start to think, okay, this is what I do, I feel very easily misunderstood, and

I go and essentially sulk once you notice that that's a big step, you know. And we're so good at marking milestones; it's somebody's birthday, let's throw a party; it's, you know, somebody's just run a marathon, let's uh give them a medal, etc. We, we need different kinds of medals, you know, the medal for the avoidant person who understood that they sulk rather than explain. Dong, let's put them on television, let's give a game show in their honor. These are major milestones; let's give a party, let's give a party to the person who's understood that that's going on, to mark. There's much more significant than their birthday, you know what I mean? Which might not be tracking anything significant—that's a significant milestone. So we, we should, you know, give more public, within our circles, public recognition of moments of emotional maturation. And how much is that, you know?

I think lots of people uh envy the other side. If only I could have a little bit of a little bit more of that anxiousness; if only I could actually lean in a little bit more; if I could feel a little bit more easily; if I could communicate; or God, if I could just be a little bit more distant; if I didn't need the reassurance in this way; if I didn't have this requirement to feel safe in order to be able to feel comfortable; I wasn't externalizing my own sense of self-worth onto somebody else quite in this sort of a way. Uh, yeah, I think it's a question. Attachment styles are kind of the the hot new girl in school, psychological emotional work at the moment, very trendy. Um, it's been around a while, in a good way, and it's based on very solid science, you know. It's, we've been going at this for 50 years. I looked at some really interesting stuff recently that um attachment styles, like everything psychologically, uh genetically predisposed, not necessarily predetermined, but predisposed. Uh, and given that you are raised in the environment which is probably the uh breeding ground for that very predisposition, it gets reinforced. Yeah, so not only have you got the raw materials to make this thing happen, but unless your parents have somehow managed to sort of pivot in the opposite direction, you then get this additional boost, which is, oh well, the environment uh nature came along and nurture then enhanced it. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's um it's interesting. It's going to be interesting I think over the next few years to see what sort of interventions we have to be able to help people to ameliorate.

Yes, and I think um not not trying to sound trendy and, you know, think, but I think AI is going to have a real impact on us uh in the sense that so often what happens is we lose sight in the moment of things we know but are no longer in our minds, right? And so people will have, you know, let's say a couple have a rather torrid time, difficult time, and then each one goes to therapy in in the week, and then they all come back and they're kind of they're starting to, you know, they're back on track, they can they can see things more clearly again, or they spent some time alone, they've journaled, etc. Um, I can imagine a world where we allow technology to nudge us in the same way that, you know, we've learned that technology can nudge us awake, nudge us asleep, nudge us to eat, this nud, you know, um, you know, imagine a little nudge for an avoidant, a little nudge for an anxious person, etc., a little reminder, hang on, hang on, hang on, what, you know, you're slipping, you're sliding. Um, and you know, talk about the window of tolerance, where it's a window in which you're you're in charge emotionally, or you're kind of in control, and you slip out of the window of tolerance into something, you know, you you lose command of of yourself. And and you can imagine a little AI helper just nudging you to stay within the window. Yeah, your attachment strap has piped up and said, notice you're a little bit stressed at the moment, this might be because of X, Y, and Z.

Yes, and you know, it sounds supernatural and strange, and you know, a lot of people would say things like, oh, it's it's not, you know, I don't want to give my data, blah blah. Okay, I grant all of that, and you know, it could be spooky, etc. It's no different from, think of the people who got their first were religions. Religions understood that if you want to keep people on track, you've got to get them repeating stuff. It's not enough to tell someone something once; you need rituals, systems of memorializing the important things. That's why, you know, if you're in Islam, um, if you're Muslim, you know, you'll be praying a num multiple times a day, you'll be saying the same words, because those words have, as it were, been forgotten, not intellectually, but emotionally; their full resonance has been forgotten. Um, in Judaism, uh, you're reading the Torah every Saturday in synagogue, you're reading the Torah, and you you just go back over it; you don't just read it once, you keep reading, you keep going back to to to to the same important text. We're very bad at that in the modern world; we think, oh well, I read this book on attachment, it was quite interesting, and and now that's it, I know it, now I know know it, now no, you don't; you need to go back, you need to read it all the time. That's why, you know, the idea of nudging is not as strange as it might sound, not as futuristic; it's a very old idea that you might give your life to.

One of the most uh shameful or humbling realizations of going down a personal development journey for a while is that the tool that you're looking for to the problem you're encountering now is not only something that you know, it's one of the first things that you ever discovered when you began this journey; it's maybe something you wrote about, it's maybe something that you practice for a very long time. And I often get asked, I was doing these live events recently, and one of the most common questions is, um, what advice would you give yourself 10 years ago? The interesting thing about that question, I think, is that the answer that you give, what you would tell yourself 10 years ago, is almost always invariably the answer that you right now need to hear as well, because the big problems remain the big problems, because they're so fundamental to who you are. If they weren't fundamental to who you are, they would probably not be the big problems; if you were able to detox that, it's it's the ancillary stuff, it's the extraneous outsides that you end up tinkering with, but the core, you know, the the middle of the cake is this chocolate, is it strawberry? Uh, that's really where it is. And um, yes, to think not only is this challenge that I'm encountering, you know, to uh break the fourth wall, I've used a number of videos from the School of Life over the last decade when I've encountered the same situations, like I already I I've not only have I watched this, there's been periods where I've learned entire passages from this as a little mantra that I can reflect on. I go, I'm going back to the same, but that you're right, this temptation, novel, new, there is a there is a better answer. Well, we're 5 years hence, there must be something that's come out in the last however long, and um I guess this is what art and heritage, history uh does, that it helps to sort of strip that away. Yeah, what's stood the test of time, what's been sufficiently Lindy that it's still with us now. Yeah, you know, it's TSL is in the four CeX is, you know, we return to the place where we started; it's the idea of that that's kind of part of every journey is you come back to the place where you started. The entire story of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Right, right, exactly. And so I notice also when you were speaking just now, you had a smile on your lips, and and that's not coincidental. I think the more you know one journeys through life, um the more there's really only one maj solution, which is a smile on one's lips at the sheer, let's put it bluntly, idiocy, absurdity, absurdity of oneself.

You at the School of Life, we we we did a class on confidence, and we wrote a little book about confidence. Great book, and thank you. And the I remember sitting with my co-author, great friend of mine called John Armstrong, and I said to John, cuz we we started the topic, she's like, okay, what what makes us confident, you know? And we we'd read a few books, each of us are like bestselling books, and you know, saying things like repeat yourself how great you are, repeat to yourself your potential, get in touch with you know what's, and I said, I've read all these books, and I'm starting to feel humiliated, I feel a bit depressed, like I know that I know that it's kind of wise, but I don't know. And then I remember John saying to me, okay, what makes you for confident? And I said, if somebody goes, it's okay, you can just be a total idiot, it's all right, you you're a bit of an idiot, and it's okay, not you're an idiot OT, but we're all idiots, that makes me feel I'm ready to play, I'm ready to have fun, I'm ready to take risks, removes the seriousness, remove well remove the an un an inhuman expectation of what a human life can be, pressure, and and accept that we're all of us blockheads who can't really make very much progress. And um and you know there's a wonderful painting which we put in the book by Bruegel, um this ship at sea. Yeah, well, the Ship of Fools, and and anyway, forget this exact title, but it's showing people doing mad things, silly things; one person is eating his foot, the other one's walked into a wall, the third one's jumping off a cliff, and it just shows human folly in all its exaggeration, and and you think, yeah, that's us, that's we humans, and that opens up such an avenue of compassion, you just think, okay, compassion for yourself, compassion for the other, uh we're all flailing about in the darkness, and if we can have a a relax relationship to our foolishness uh and our blindness, that's a huge confidence booster.

Yeah, I wanted I want to try and linger on that as well. I think um again the sorts of people that listen to the show, the sorts of people that that read your work, um they'll probably take life seriously; they think it's a a thing that you're supposed to apply earnest pressure to, perhaps a kind of sort of dynamic persistence, but maybe more persistent than dynamic. And um what's your advice for for people to try and embrace some more playfulness when it comes to life, serious serious things? I want to be taken seriously; I want to do things; I want to make an impact in the world; I don't want to grip too tightly; I know that when I grip too tightly it kind of ruins the entire point. Well, I think I think the way is not to not to say, oh, what you need is bit, you know, lighten up and and tell a few jokes, because I think that's not going to that's going to rile people up. I think the thing to do is to um push some pessimism their way, because it's actually, if you think about what a joke is, a joke is always basically a bit of pessimism wrapped up in in, you know, artfully wrapped, but it's basically pessimism. Um, one of my favorite sayings by the Stoic philosopher Seneca, he goes, what need is there to weep over parts of life? He says, the whole of it calls for tears, and everyone who hears that sort of gets a smile on their face, and you think the guy wasn't trying to tell a joke, he wasn't trying to make it funny, he was just trying to be bleak um and or say it how it is, and then it makes a smile out of relief, and the relief is it's not just me. Um, Arthur Schopenhauer, another great pessimistic German philosopher, said uh today it is bad, tomorrow it will be worse, until the worst of all happens, death. Um, you know, totally bleak, and you read that and you think, I feel a bit better about today already, I'm starting to cheer up. I think we really get it wrong, but we think we think the only way to cheer someone up is to tell them someone cheer something cheerful. I think the the Brits have understood this, you know, right, we you know, great, this country's got lots of problems, but one thing it understands is melancholy and the the relief available in dark humor. Um, and and you know, bless our American friends, but they don't get it um as as much, you know, if if you pitch up in LA and someone goes, how are you? And you go, you know, it's bad today, tomorrow be wor the worst of all happens, they have you sectioned; it's not, you know, your life in Los Angeles is not going to take off, you know what I mean? Yeah, I I've heard you refer to melancholy as tragedy well handled. Absolutely, tragedy well handled. I I adore that; I think it's so great. You know, Sam Harris has something, he says something very similar, you know, you you have to smile at the absurdity of life, these situations, just as things were smooth, something comes along and completely sideswipes what you had planned.

Yeah, um, and an interesting insight, I suppose, that the volume that you complain is probably proportional to the amount that you aren't that you're unable to see life for what it is, which is not at your whim; life is going to have problems thrown at you. Yeah, because let's let's not downplay complaining; I mean, it's one of the great pleasures; it's one of Britain's great pastimes. Well, you know, it's one of everybody, you know, and and you know, being able to complain to a loved one and and you know, you'll have to listen to their complaints too, but um to comp complain without expectation of a solution. I mean, the big complaint that every mortal uh you know, directs to the sky ultimately is, why do I have to die? And you know, and then you work your way down from that to why do I have to go to work, why, you know, all these things, but um yes, life would be a poor thing if we if we weren't allowed to spend a good deal part of it complaining. I've heard you say that uh adult relationships are a litmus test of our emotional development, that there um a moment where your past catches up with your present. How so? Why is that the case? So the way we love as adults always bears the imprint of the way which we were loved and we loved as children, and that hugely restricts how we're able to behave and explains the very peculiar, often nonsensical, often counterproductive ways in which we love. Um, we're not free to love just anyone, and and this, you know, I'm sure you all have had this in your life, met people, etc., who will say things like, I seem to have ended up with quite a difficult person for me, you know, they're really they're quite challenging for me; why can't I go in love somebody else? Why am I so in love with this person who's quite challenging? And often it's because what's challenging sits on the very area that was challenging in your past, and that's what makes them attractive. Now, before you know, we want to jump off a cliff at the pessimism involved, let's be a little optimistic here. Um, in a good relationship, um we are drawn towards people who yes, carry some of the puzzles, some of the knots, some of the challenges of a parental figure or figure of a a caregiver, um but they hold out the promise of a different ending. So whereas in the relationship with parent or caregiver it ended up with shouting and you stormed out of the house and you're no longer in touch with them, imagine the joy, imagine the sense of triumph over sort of adversity and non-communication if you are together as a couple able to move towards understanding and mutual growth. I think that explains why people hang in there with people who you might think, you know, take, you know, talk about um attachment uh theory, you know, an anxious person who who teams up with an avoidant one, you might want to go, why why are you with this avoidant person? You look at this other I'm going to present you with a perfectly securely attached person, and you go, oh, they're a bit boring, don't really want them. You think, why, what's going on is this pure perversion? Let's be generous towards that impulse; they're trying to find a different ending to probably a very painful early situation. Um, and to be able to do that, to be able to grow together, is literally I think one of the most exciting and lovely things; it's rare, which is why successful love is rare. Um, but yeah, to grow together away from your early attachment wounds powers a lot of the ambition of love.

Seems like deciding whether to stay in or leave a relationship can sometimes be a protracted decision, uh which might be surprising given that we have this short time on Earth and and we don't want to waste it. I think a lot of people have problems breaking up with someone even though they they might not make them particularly very happy. Yeah, why do people get stuck in unhappy relationships in that way? Um, there are, you know, I I think the the mood of the modern world, the mood of modern Instagram, I've observed, is all about ditch them, chuck them, run away; it's it's a pure pathology; you are you are sticking around someone's suboptimal for purely pathological reasons. Um, that's got to be true in some cases; it is definitely true in some cases, but because it's so well known nowadays that that's true, let's stick up for the other side. Um, sometimes it's hard; sometimes we we stick around very challenging situations because um we want to try and grow together, we want to try and make progress. Um, and sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. So, you know, it's a balance; I don't want to advocate, you know, an end as the unfulfilling relationship, but but good relationships will be marked by a heavy dose of what psychotherapists call rupture and repair, a break and a a repair. Um, and the ability to, you know, the thing crashes at night, but the next morning it's fixed, you know, our friends in the East, you know, the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, fixing that that bowl with golden lacquer, fixing the break; it's a very very important and satisfying part of all relationships. Um, yeah, yeah. What about the what about the people who are in a relationship but don't have the courage to leave? They probably have this, they feel stuck, sort of stuck in this unsatisfactory, not abusive, not terrible, but just they have that fear, pulling the pin, making that move. You know, you talked about primary, secondary emotions; let's not shame these people, right? Let's not add to their woes that they are deficient and ill in some way. Um, they're finding something very hard, and that's okay; let's bear with how difficult it is. You know, again, I it I I'm frustrated by the modern temper which is like, get out, shoot the awful person, you know, and and join the liberated uplands. Maybe, maybe, and maybe that is what they're going to do, but you know, let's be very thoughtful about why they've ended up there; let's not, you know, this might just be, they might find a hundred things in life quite easy; this is what they're finding difficult, and let's acknowledge that, m let's be very kind to that. Um, and let's hold their hands through it. You know, why what's what's difficult for them? Is it that they think that um they'll be judged by other people, right? What's the fear? What's the fear? I'll be judged by, okay, how does that fear stack up with what might really happen? Or I'll never meet anyone new. Okay, let's think about that; let's not immediately say, oh, you will, maybe they won't, you know, let's take it calmly, etc. I just I'm really resistant to some of this narrative which is, you know, get out, get rid of the awful, underperforming people, and get into that golden relationship that's been promised to you in heaven; it's not, you know, that may be the direction of travel, but let's just acknowledge the bumps. Yeah, I think it's unrealistic. You know, there's a lot of people who just don't want to make a fuss, that there's this sort of fear. This question is, is it fair to want what I want? You mentioned before, how do people that from the outside you go, why why her with him, m him with her, why why would that union happen? And um we don't get to choose what we love in many ways. You know, absolutely not; we are we are, you know, we we think we've done away with the arranged marriage; no, we haven't; it's just become an emotionally arranged marriage, internally arranged rather than arranged by our parents.

Yeah, I think uh again for the cerebrally uh predisposed, you kind of rail against that; why can't I, why if only I could, can you not get in line with you please, all of the things they're there in front of me, they they have the, and and we get literally irritated, and and just to be able to understand it, it's it's like saying, you know, why can't Mount Everest be small, or why can't the sky be less blue? Whatever, we're trying to change a constituent element of reality, and and I think we need to have as much respect for the inner architecture as we do for the outer architecture; you wouldn't look at a building and go, want to get rid of that wing immediately; you you'd understand that it was incredibly difficult; it's the same thing; just because it's intangible doesn't mean it's not incredibly stubborn and hard. You know, it's hard to change. Do we need to uh build, create the capacity to give up on people in that way? Does that help? Um, yes, I think some of us do, you know, the you know, again, it's life's all about finding what's the thing that what's the lesson that you need to hear. So there are some people, um not everyone, but some people really need to hear um a little lesson about how sometimes they should give up on people, that sometimes making excuses for people or trying to understand where people are coming from, etc., it can go too far, that that those very nice traits can go too far, and that the next best thing that you need to do is to be able to say goodbye without too much regret. That might be the lesson that you need to do. And let's remember the people who on the whole find it very hard to give up on people are people who couldn't give up as children, can't on parents who are very unsatisfactory. You can't expect a 5-year-old child to give up on a parent. So a parent can be beating the child every night, and the child will think, oh, maybe it's my fault, because the child cannot bear to give up on the parent and do the thing that would be natural to do, which is to say, I'm in the hands of an abusive parent. You can't do that when you're five; got no access to lawyers, you've got no money, you can't go anywhere; you are trapped, and therefore you become a world expert in not giving up on people, but some of adulthood requires is precisely the opposite, sometimes getting perilously close to people-pleasing here. Uh, and that sort of tendency to put other people's emotions y ahead of our own, make their emotional state our responsibility. If you're not okay, I'm not okay. How how can we better alchemize that and understand that tendency? I mean, look, let's remember, so the psychology of the so-called people-pleasing person is someone who no one tried to please for themselves, right? In other words, they were in an asymmetrical relationship, probably with a caregiver or parent who um didn't care about their feelings, they didn't prioritize their their needs, etc., and they had to adjust to to to them. So you know, if you've got a parent with a volcanic temper where anything might set them off, well, what you say or think is going to disappear completely, because all you're going to be doing as a child is managing the mood of a parent; they will be an infant essentially, and you will have to be in the parenting role, and you'll have to put aside your needs. And um children are great geniuses at reading the room and doing what needs to be done to survive; it's a survival strategy. I will become a people-pleaser, not in order to annoy people in later life, but in order to survive, in order to get to the next stage of existence, in order to reach adolescence, let's face it. And um the problem with in this as in so many other neurotic structures is a very good idea outlives its use, and so it's still operating in circumstances where it's no longer needed. So what we need to tell what the what the people needs to tell themselves is, it was amazing at the age of five, I cleverly worked out that I needed to people-please in order to cope with my intemperate father, but that situation's now gone, and if I keep doing this with my partner, with my colleagues, etc., it's going to annoy everybody, and it's going to create serious problems. Um, so what needs to be done is that person shouldn't feel shamed; they should be made to feel proud; there should be a little ceremony where they're able to say to their 5-year-old self, thank you, thank you, little whatever it is, um thank you for carrying me to a later stage um and working out something so clever. And this this applies for all defensive neurotic structures. I mean, let's imagine somebody who can't feel very much, who's invulnerable, doesn't open themselves up to other people, and in relationships that person may be shamed, oh, oh, so and so, oh, they they they're afraid of intimacy. You want to go, okay, shaming this person's not going to help; you have to ask a another question, which is, in what circumstances did their current behavior make sense? First question, and they it always will make sense; you go back in time and you say, right, in those circumstances, of course, it may, you know, your father was dying, your mother was absent, of course it made sense not to feel anything; you would have been destroyed by your feelings; therefore, very clever five, six-year-old you to work out that it's best not to feel. Problem is, you're now 35 or 45, and there's lots of reason to feel, because there's someone loving nearby, or there's you you've got children, or whatever. Um, and therefore we need to say thank you to the younger self, and then we can move on, but shame is not going to do it, to to wag a finger and go, oh, another one who's afraid of intimacy; there, no one ever changed like that.

Yeah, the uh realization that doing that internally, being a tyrant to yourself, also isn't necessarily the best way to encourage you into behavior change, whipping yourself into submission. Yeah, it's it's it's missing the logic of of why you're doing what you're doing. As I say, so much of what we do as adults makes no sense even to us. You know, why am I worried every morning again? Ask yourself the question, a key question for your viewers, listeners, um when did the current behavior which now doesn't seem to make sense, when did it once make sense? In what circumstances did this pattern develop? This pattern that is now in verom is mad or destructive or boring or counterproductive; when did it make sense? And if you you can start to see a logic again, there always will be one; I I would suggest there almost always will be one; there will be a moment when to feel anxious every morning was bound up with your safety and your survival to the next stage of life. So if you can recover contact with what that stage was, you'll then be in a position to honor the defensive strategy, but also say goodbye to it. What are some of the uh best and worst ways to tell somebody that it's over in a relationship? H Um, look, one of the worst ways is not to explain at all why something come to feel necessary; in other words, just running away and leaving someone no sense, because that then leaves the person to imagine everything, and most of our imaginations are dark places in this regard; in other words, we think that someone hates us boundlessly or is trying to humiliate us or deliberately wanted to be cruel to us or etc., and in many many cases, I

I venture to say that in most cases, when someone leaves someone, it isn't those things. It's the truth. The truth is better than we think. It's still tough, you know. It's very, very tough. Um, you know, those attachment ruptures—uh, in everyone's life, there are some of the most painful things we will ever have to go through—to, to, to build a life with someone and then see that life disappear. I mean, we need we need space to mourn. You know, in Judaism, when someone dies—you lose a um, a spouse—you you're allowed a year of mourning. You're allowed—you wear black—and you're allowed a year of mourning where not too much is expected of you, both professionally and personally. You can go a bit mad, and that's all right. Everyone looks after you; they know you're in mourning. We kind of need that when we're heartbroken, when we're seriously heartbroken, because we're dealing with something that is, from an emotional point of view, as serious—this is as serious um, as a—as a—I mean, this literally is a loss; someone has died, you know. And um, so we need we need that space. So, so to come back to your question, how to break up—um, to to be able to explain diplomatically, kindly, generously, some of the real reasons why—and as the person who's leaving, not to feel that those reasons—not to be ashamed of those reasons. You know, people feel relationships don't have to go on forever. Sometimes relationships have a sell-by date. They are there; they were formed for a particular purpose, unconscious—to to carry us to an next stage—and maybe that stage has come to an end for for someone—and we can explain that; we can try and, you know, verbalize that. Um, but also clarity. And sometimes people try to be kind in ways that end up being very, very cruel. Um, “I want to leave you, but but let's go on holiday together.” Really? Is that is that a wise thing? Or um, “I won’t leave you, but you know, let’s be in touch every day,” you know, “and I’ll just still call you what I used to call you,” you know, when we were very intimate. Tough. That’s tough. So we may, you know, couples may, out of kindness, out of mutual respect, go—you know, there’s still a lot of love, there’s still a lot of affection—but probably shouldn’t be in touch that much for a little while. You think it’s a bad idea for exes to try and be friends? Um, look, it depends, but I think I think, you know, there needs to be healing, doesn’t there? There needs to be um, a break that’s marked and honored so that two people can um, recover.

How do you come to think about the balance between fixing our patterns, investigating them, and and dwelling on them? It seems like a lot of criticism is thrown at sort of reflecting on our past as akin to indulging in it in a way—uh, not allowing us to move forward.

Yeah, this is a a common debate that I’m seeing online at the moment. Yes, some people, I think, are very afraid about responsibility here, aren’t they? They’re very afraid that someone will go, “Oh, I’m sorry I did that thing,” but the thing is, it’s childhood, and that’s why it, you know—and the people will evade um, basic responsibility. So I think one can take full responsibility, full ownership, while still explaining it. People are also very worried about blaming parents; often that’s another one that comes up a lot. You know, people will go, um, “If I start to investigate patterns, etc., the only solution is then to get angry with my parents.” Well, again, there’s a real—you know, people are lied—was like anger, blame, etc. You can you can say, “This happened because of childhood dynamics. No one really wanted it; maybe no one’s evil, but it definitely happened,” and you know, we can’t evade that. Um, you know, is the result anger, fury? It doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it could be um, uh, yeah. So look, it’s so many of these lessons; it’s it’s horses for courses. We we we need broad strokes; are very difficult with stuff like this. I understand that, but yeah, I think um, dealing with an unhappy childhood retrospectively—not resenting things that happened to us then—and we’re now at the mercy of uh, wanting to be able to investigate why we are the way we are whilst not allowing that to define us. Um, I don’t know; there’s there’s an interesting movement at the moment almost towards denial. We’ve got, you know, the horseshoe’s horses shoed back around it; it’s been rotated a couple of times, and uh, I wonder whether this is just a a requisite push back to some of the over-pathologization of normal human emotions, you know, the use of therapy language online—that somebody hasn’t been mean to me; they’ve caused me trauma; that that person isn’t selfish; they’re a narcissist. Exactly. And um, yeah, I I’m starting to see now a little bit more of a lean away from reflecting on why you are the way you are—uh, and again, it’s very much this is just one cohort of people saying that cohort of people over there, their strategy doesn’t work for me, and vice versa. Yeah. Um, look, I mean, we’re a car that needs different gears, you know. Some we need to go forward; some we go backwards; we need to turn right; we need to turn left; we we need full maneuverability, right? And I think when people discover an exciting idea, the great tendency is to go, “Well, this toolkit will explain absolutely everything, and and this will be the only thing I need,” and you know, this is why we need the whole history of ideas; this is why a well-stocked mind has got in it, you know, some some books on the Stoics, as it were; some ideas from the Stoics; some ideas about, you know, resilience and about shutting down emotion and about turning towards pain and all that. We need that. Sometimes we need an aristocratic side; we might have read Nietzsche and his aristocratic sense of, you know, needing to overcome—and you know, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, etc. Sometimes we need Nietzsche, but if you’re only dieting on Nietzsche, you may also need, you know, John Bowlby’s attachment theory, but if you’re only snacking on John Bowlby, so we need a well-stocked mind. And I think that um, as I say, I I appreciate that people fall so in love with certain ideas that they think that’s all they’re going to need. It’s rather, you know, it’s it’s monotheism—um, you know, only one God, correct? And you know, the great thing about paganism, you know, ancient uh, Roman or or or or Greek religion, but you know, finally in India too and other parts of the world, there were many gods; there was the god of the river, but there was also the god of the sky, and there was the god of the cloud, and there was the god of rain, and there was the god of sunshine—God, many, many gods—and we need many gods. Um, and uh, just as in our social lives, let’s remember um, you know, total monotheism doesn’t—you know, it’s like, “I need one lover, and they will answer all my needs.” That’s quite tough on the lover. Um, you may also need a friend who’s brilliant at that thing, and there’s a friend who’s also good at this. So we need a um, a paganism of ideas.

Yeah, my friend Ginda has this idea called the golden hammer—when someone, usually an intellectual who has gained a cultish following for popularizing a concept, becomes so drunk with power, he thinks he can apply that concept to everything—thing. Exactly. Exactly. We think it’s the—yeah, the hammer—that the one-size-fits-all. Yeah, this is—everything looks like a nail—slots into your very specific, very fancy, gilded—yeah—uh, piece of work. Look, you know, we can forgive it; it’s it’s very exciting when you come across an idea that you think, “ex,” and does explain a lot of the world. I—this is what happens when people discover Marxism; they think, “Oh, my goodness, this model explains everything,” and then—no, it’s really good at explaining certain things—and then they discover Freud, Freudianism; it explains everything—and no, go study. We need multiple tools. I wonder whether this helps to constrain some of the complexity of the world as well. Well, if I have one book—if it’s Meditations, or if it’s if if if it’s some ancient Chinese text—if if we’re looking at some Lao Tzu or something—and you think, “Well, that one thing answers everything; I don’t need to look elsewhere.” Yes. And the the problem is that we’re finite creatures surrounded by infinite complexity, so the the battlefield is stacked somewhat; the deck is is offset against our favor. And if we can constrain down the complexity that we’re fighting with, we say, “Well, we’ve got this one person, and he’s got all of the—one guy has all of the answers.” Why? I don’t necessarily—and you know, we see it in religion; we see it in politics; one person has got, you know, it’s got everything—and and it can’t be true. But you’re right; I mean, we’re drowning in inputs, and that leads us to a certain kind of um, yeah, remorseless quest for the one input. Um, and I remember—remember there was a—reading a book; there’s a line—say something like, “All of us are going to die with a book half-read on our bedside.” May not literally be true, but there’s capturing something important there—that um, our exploration will be unfinished. It’s quite daunting; it’s very sad—very sad thought, you know, that we won’t—and of course, the book that we really won’t have finished reading is the book of ourselves; we won’t have understood more than a a share of ourselves. That’s that’s very frightening. We all have—you know, on an average gravestone, it should say, you know, “Here lies—do you know who—half understood who they were; they only half understood.” That’s very weird—like you have—you’re you’re on your deathbed, and you don’t really know who you have been. Was it Goethe that on his deathbed pronounced, “Nobody really knows me; I don’t really know anybody else; nobody knows anyone really”? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that kind of despair—surrounded by friends and family—what a way to—see you later on.

Yeah, speaking on that, do you think it’s inevitable for deep thinkers to be more lonely? Is the the deep or sensitive thinker kind of fated to have a bit of distance? You know, it’s a ticklish topic, isn’t it? Because to say um, you know, “I’m I’m not doing so well in life; I’m a bit isolated from think because I’m so marvelous,” you know, could go, “Come on,” you know. However, let’s face it—um, you know, look, it’s like imagine imagine you had a very sophisticated diet, and you walk through—we’re in London now—you walk through an average street of London—um, there would be fewer restaurants and eating places and and supermarkets that you could go into to get the food that you need because because your dietary needs will be quite complicated. There’s a version of this around social ability. Um, if you only need to talk about certain things, you know, if you are—I don’t know—let’s imagine you’re Brian Cox. We don’t—I don’t know Brian Cox personally—and you really just really love interplanetary phenomena—um, you’re not going to meet that many people who who will—who will really be able to meet you on on those topics—I mean, or even be that interested. They might go, “Oh, Brian, I loved your show, but just—you know, enough of the black holes; enough of the black holes,” you know. And so he might find himself a little bit lonely. I mean, who knows about his life? I’m sure he’s—you know—but—used to be a rock star, you know, that—yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, or or or imagine if you are—I don’t know—imagine if you were Freud—and um, Freud was—you know, he had some collaborators, but he also fell out with a lot of them and um, didn’t get on with—you know, a lot of people. So one might argue that complexity of mind um, militates against um, easily finding um, few people like you. You’re going to have to work harder. In order—that’s fair enough; that’s fair enough. Yeah. I—we mentioned—we sort of touched on it earlier on; I think it’s maybe worth just revisiting a little bit—trying to—the deeper thinker, the more serious person, the earnest person—how can they find more fun? Inject a little bit less of that um uh, loneliness in—they’re in an area where maybe people don’t resonate quite so much; they don’t have quite so—so many of the conversations that they can—I ask a slightly different question just because—look, I think it’s really important to think that the deep thinker, the the earnest person, etc.—I want to—I don’t want to suggest that there are these people called geniuses wandering around the world, and they’ve got—they’re so different from everybody else. I love this quote from Emerson where he says—says, “In the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts.” So key—in the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts. I think what he was saying there was—geniuses don’t have thoughts that are categorically different from the ones everybody has. What’s different is they hold on to them; they look at them; they feel them. Um, you could say, “In the minds of artists lie feelings that—you know—lie our own neglected feelings.” In other words, artists, geniuses, etc., they’re just paying more attention to the stuff that’s in everybody’s mind. It’s not that their stuff in their mind is completely radically different, which is why often when you when you hear a great song or a great um, piece of poetry or whatever—or read a great book—sometimes you think, “I kind of knew that; that was already in me; that I’m merely being put back in touch with something that’s in me already.” Because what the so-called clever person has done is just pay it more attention. So let’s not deify these people, and let’s also open up—you know, quickest way to become a genius—pay more attention to your own neglected thoughts.

I’m interested—you know, having followed your work for a very, very long time—and it’s been one of the most reliably influential things, I think, on my intellectual journey—so I want to thank you for uh, parasocial guiding me through an awful lot of of situations—uh, I’d like to say that I remind myself of your work when things are good, but it does tend to be sort of thing that I go to when I need a little bit more guidance—uh, but I’m interested in what drives you—the sort of primary motivating forces that are behind your studies and sort of thinking over the years.

So it’s brutally and horribly simple—just to help me get through the day. It it is um, extremely personal um, and motivated entirely by, you know, a desire for self-help. Um, if it helps anybody else, I mean, people—some—to say things like, “Gosh, did you—you must have studied a lot—how did you know that about me?” And I’m like, “Frankly, I have no clue; it’s just—I was just doing my stuff,” and it’s beautiful and lovely that it should echo into somebody else, but that’s not how I started. It started always with me. Um, and you know, I became a writer; I wrote my first book when I was 22, and it was not—you know, it it was a—it grew out of writing a diary; it grew out of trying to solve my own confusions; it was um, a way of trying to stay afloat uh, emotionally, psychically—um, and it had nothing to do with a career in that sense. Later on, became some of the accoutrements of a career, but uh, as I say, it began, and it still is to this day, an an emotional necessity. I would say it’s a way of coping. I am—I’m an intellectual—not a fancy—fancy thing—but I’m intellectual in the sense that I intellectualize pain. I, you know, if something horrible happens, my immediate impulse is not to jog or drink or or do all sorts of things people do, but it’s it’s to try and think about, “Well, what is this thing? What can we—what—what lesson is there here?” Um, and that lesson is is being fished out for me. If it helps anybody else, fantastic, but I do it—I do it anyway. That’s how I operate.

I’ve found an odd resonance with what I’ve done with the show as well. Um, you know, in many ways, there is a a temptation to do what may be popular or trendy or accumulate the most exposure or status or make you look good, and that’s always there—and uh, neither of us are immune to uh, those incentives—um, but I think one of the reasons that I resonated with your work—and hopefully some microcosm of people resonate with mine—is it very much—very much is me searching in this situation—and the fact—you’re right—how could you have seen—the human experience has been really sort of shown to me; it’s like you’ve turned the mirror around on myself. That’s—it’s almost like you’re speaking to me. Well, because there’s broad buckets of people that sort of fall into similar kind of cohorts, and it would appear that perhaps me and you are in a not-too-dissimilar cohort, and this—I think—it’s a reason for confidence uh, in our own work and in listening to our instincts um, rather than trying to work out what the market, the audience, the reader wants. Yeah, just saying, “Okay, well, what would be useful to me right now? What would have been useful to me previously?” Especially given the fact that the thing you need to hear right now is probably the thing that you would tell yourself 10 years ago. So it’s still—it’s the same lessons over and over; it’s—what—looking at that circle—um, and I think it is a—it is the best justification for selfishly following your instincts when it comes to an intellectual investigation of yourself, of the world around you—uh, because if you think a thing, if you feel a thing, if you’re challenged with a particular issue, it’s probably reliable that some non-insignificant—absolutely majority—perhaps—of other people are feeling the same. How [ __ ] narcissistic do you need to be to—the only one—me—me—this is—because that’s too mean; that’s too mean—because we don’t think of it nastily; we think of it shamefully. We think, “I’ve been singled out for a particularly personal curse.” Yeah. We don’t think, “I’m so great, and I’m alone.” We—oh, god, “I’ve been cursed; broken.” Yeah, yeah. “I’m uniquely broken.” Yeah. And and you’re absolutely right; it’s so important to bear that in mind. By the time you’re feeling it, other people will be feeling it too, and it’s so hard to hold on to that thought because we—what—frankly—because we see no visible evidence of it; we don’t see people talking about it in our vicinity—in the in the hundred people we know and move around; no one’s talking about it openly. They’re feeling it, but they don’t talk about it. And um, and and so we have to hold our nerve, and you know, there’s a there’s a uh, a lesson here about um, capitalism here and business, you know, which is fascinating. I mean, it’s not naturally an area to fall into—more—you know, you’ve talked a lot about this, but so many great businesses start precisely like this—that somebody thinks, “There’s this thing I really want and need,” or or “that thrills me,” and it sounds quite weird to everybody else, and the person just sticks with it and just has a hunch about it—just as many, many business failures are all about someone going—someone doing something—and then if you if you say to them, “Do you want this? Does—would you buy this thing?” And then they go, “Actually, no, I wouldn’t.” You know, so why are you making it for somebody else if if it’s got no resonance with you? You know, careful, careful. You know, the biggest business disasters are people making stuff that they haven’t asked themselves, “Would I really want this?”

Yes, the word uh, “grift” is thrown around on the internet a lot, and I was—I’ve asked people to define it, you know, “This person is grifting or shilling for a particular product or company or or ideology,” whatever it might be, and um, I ask—the best definition that I’ve ever heard—one that I actually accept—I don’t like the word because I think it gets patent-matched incorrectly almost all the time—but the best definition is uh, “somebody promoting something that they themselves would not use or believe,” right? I think. And that’s good. And and there’s an intellectual version of that—when someone reads a book, etc., and they’ve lost touch—and they—and they’re spouting Kant or Hegel or Wittgenstein or whatever it may be—or attachment theory—and it’s not fitting them—and therefore there’s something, you know, wrong. But I think many hours ago now we began in in this place, which is how difficult it is to hone that authentic muscle—where you feel something; you hold on to it; you think, “No one else is talking about it, but let me let me stay with that because I think it’s a thing for me, so it may be a thing for somebody else, even though no one’s mentioning it.” It takes a lot of courage.

How much better have you become at understanding yourself over the years? How much have you been able to nudge those fundamental physics of of your system?

I made some progress. Yeah, definitely made some progress, and I’d say that I understand myself more than I’ve been able to change myself. And one could go, “Oh, so nothing’s really changed.” Well, understanding is a thing as well—that is its own legitimate thing. You know, do I always make, you know, wise choices now? Am I always, you know—no—but I do understand things better. Yes. I think I’ve um, also better understanding my unconscious—and by that, I mean, you know, it’s also what people call their gut instinct. Um, I do think that there are things we know without fully knowing why we know them or how we know them—and to allow a little bit more for that slightly mysterious form of knowing—um, you know, we’re talking about sentence completion exercises where you’re completing a sentence—just letting something bubble up from your unconscious—um, I try and do that more and more—um, but I ask myself simple questions like, you know, “What’s—what’s—what am I really feeling here? Don’t don’t overthink this; what’s really going on?” You know, “You’ve met this person; what do you really feel around them? Just say it—say it to yourself; don’t—you know, what do you feel?” And then—and then holding on to that—that something quite important’s gone on there—that your answer captures something that a more thought-laden answer might not—um—and and trusting that a bit more—in love, in work, in friendship, in in areas of daily life.

I would say that one of the biggest contributions—at least that I’ve seen from your work—for me personally—is that stark assessment of the human condition—a very sanguine—some would say British—slightly self-deprecating, honest admission of how flawed, how insane, how irrational uh, how silly, shameful we can be a lot of the time—and uh, yourself—Oliver Burkeman—if you’re familiar with Oliver as well.

Yeah. Again, you know, sort of really embracing that British melancholic sort of tragedy—well-handled type thing. Yeah. Uh, you know, I—this has been a very long time coming; I’ve wanted you on the podcast since before I began it. Uh, I went back and looked at my first ever set of notes that I had that has your name in—I’m sure there’s stuff that’s a little bit earlier than that—and that was 2017, so it’s late to the party perhaps in the broad scheme of things, but very early to the party in my intellectual trajectory—and uh, making people feel less alone in the challenges that they face—the day-to-day mination—this personal curse—that—huh—“I didn’t know anybody else felt like that; at least I’m not—at least it’s not just me; at least I’ve not had this thing sort of thrown down on me from above”—and uh, yeah, I definitely—when I find myself embracing that with the show uh, with the content that I create—with the thoughts that I have—with the way that I try to direct things—with the way that I try to uh, push people forward—um, especially in my age—I’m 36—and this is—there’s a number of different directions that I can kind of go down—um, and the one that’s pulling me the most at the moment is a much more stark assessment of the silliness and irrationality and shamefulness of the human condition—and I just want to say thank you very much for helping to be a uh, a role model for me to be able to do that more.

Thank you so much, Chris. Lovely words, so generous. Thank you. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with more of the stuff that you’re doing?

Um, so uh, The School of Life—organization that I started—um, if you if you follow our stuff—every every day I’m writing stuff for the for our website, for our app, etc.—so there’s content coming out all the time—and we’ve got a lot of books. I’ve written 15 books under my own name; I’ve written about 70 books uh, under The School of Life uh, together with my colleague John uh, so we’ve got a lot of stuff out there. Um, yeah, I appreciate you so much. Thank you, mate. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.