0:05

Welcome to Unfuck Your Brain.

0:08

I'm your host, Kara Lowenthal,

0:10

Master Certified Coach, and founder

0:12

of the School of New Feminist

0:14

Thought. I'm here to help you

0:16

turn down your anxiety, turn up

0:19

your confidence, and create a

0:21

life on your own terms,

0:23

one that you're truly excited

0:25

to live. Let's go. Hello, my

0:27

friends. So, you're journeying back in time

0:29

in some ways today to the very

0:31

beginning. of my journey in self-development because

0:34

we are going to be speaking with

0:36

Oliver Berkman who is the author of

0:38

one of the first books that actually

0:40

made me think that a smart rational person

0:42

could also do some version of self-development

0:44

self-help philosophical work and so it was

0:46

very meaningful for me and so I'm

0:49

very excited and honored to have him

0:51

on the show and I'm going to

0:53

actually just ask him to introduce himself

0:55

and tell us a little bit about

0:57

who he is and what he does

0:59

before we get going. Welcome. Thank you

1:01

so much. Yeah, my name is Oliver Berkman.

1:03

I'm an author, trained as a journalist. I

1:05

wrote this book, Four Thousand Weeks, and

1:07

the more recent book, Meditations for Mortals,

1:09

and some other books, but I won't

1:11

go on and on and on. I

1:13

live in North of England, in the

1:16

UK now, after many, many years living

1:18

in Brooklyn, New York. All right, a

1:20

former Brooklynite, where you got out. So

1:22

I actually want to back up a

1:24

little bit in your career too, and of

1:26

course we'll get your newer work, but your

1:28

book, The Antidote, was kind of one of

1:31

the first self-development books I read, or I

1:33

don't even love that term. I really think

1:35

it was practical philosophy, what I

1:37

do in a lot of, not to speak

1:39

for you, but a lot of what you

1:41

do as well. But it was one of

1:44

the first, you know, I came from a

1:46

very, you know, a family of New York,

1:48

New York Jews, Jews, so like very, so

1:50

like very, very, very, very, you know, certainly

1:52

people who felt like they had a real

1:54

good evidentiary record for not kind of looking

1:56

at the bright side, not ignoring any dangers,

1:58

you know, and so... But I was

2:01

sort of coming out of that being

2:03

like, okay, I see the reasons for

2:05

that and this is also this way

2:07

of thinking is making me like deeply

2:09

anxious and unhappy all the time and

2:11

like, but I certainly can't swing over

2:13

to the like spiritual bypassing gasoline like

2:15

everything happens for some beautiful divine reason

2:18

and all, you know, like that's not

2:20

my my vibe either. So one of

2:22

the things that I really found so

2:24

powerful in the antidote is the sort

2:26

of logical case for self-compassion and somewhat

2:28

positive thinking and so first of all

2:30

I recommend folks read the book but

2:33

I think self-compassion is something women struggle

2:35

with a lot and they think that

2:37

they have a really logical case for

2:39

self-criticism right it's like no this makes

2:41

me better this drives me harder this

2:43

is like why I achieve and that

2:45

self-compassion is basically like being an indulgence

2:47

self-enabler or you know like so I'd

2:50

love to hear your kind of thoughts

2:52

about self-compassion why it's important and why

2:54

there is a logical case for it.

2:56

Yeah, I mean, I have totally struggled

2:58

with this myself and on some level

3:00

continue to do so. So, you know,

3:02

on some level I think a lot

3:04

of what I'm writing about can be

3:07

seen as some form of trying to

3:09

sort of reconcile with the things that

3:11

make us and make me anxious. And

3:13

I think that, yeah, that sense that

3:15

if you're sort of hypervigilant, if you're

3:17

hard on yourself all the time, if you really, really

3:19

make sure you're always doing your best to keep things on an

3:21

even keel, you sort of I guess what I have found so

3:23

powerful in terms of understanding the case for self-compassion is in seeing

3:25

that it is not a demand for special treatment of oneself. It

3:27

isn't a demand to treat yourself as sort of much more deserving

3:29

of kindness than anybody else or there may be senses in which

3:31

that could. be worthwhile, but it's just not being more like unpleasant

3:33

and mean to yourself than you would ever dream of being to

3:36

a good friend or even like a professional colleague or someone you

3:38

met in the street or something. So that idea

3:40

of sort of self -friendliness, I

3:42

think, was where things first began

3:44

to click for me. There's a

3:46

philosopher I've written about in more

3:48

recent books called Ido Landau who

3:50

makes this argument, he calls it

3:52

the reverse golden rule, right? Just

3:54

don't treat yourself worse than you

3:56

would treat other people. But I

3:58

think the sort of, in terms

4:00

of the case for it, apart

4:02

from just like fairness to yourself,

4:04

is something to do with the

4:06

idea that I have found, anyway,

4:08

as I've got a bit older,

4:10

certainly, that there's a sort of

4:12

trust issue here, right? Once I,

4:14

to sort of say, well, what

4:16

if I was just a bit

4:18

easier on myself? What if I

4:20

asked myself a question, like, what

4:22

do I feel like doing? At

4:24

least sometimes, instead of just what

4:26

do I have to do, what

4:28

are my obligations and how can

4:30

I get more of them done?

4:32

The terrible worry is that if

4:34

you took your surveillance system off

4:36

yourself for a couple of moments,

4:38

you just end up watching bad

4:40

TV and eating potato chips and

4:42

just doing nothing meaningful. And that

4:44

is a really kind of interesting

4:46

and strange lack of trust in

4:48

one's own person, right? And so

4:50

I do think that when you

4:52

find ways to push back against

4:55

that in just small ways, you

4:57

very quickly see that actually, to

4:59

be interested in this stuff in

5:01

the first place is to be

5:03

the kind of person who genuinely

5:05

wants to keep their commitments and

5:07

live by their values and not

5:09

break promises where you can avoid

5:11

it. So the idea that you

5:13

need to come at yourself with

5:15

this kind of position of baked

5:17

in distrust loses its foundations through

5:19

living a little bit in a

5:21

different way. Yeah, I think that's

5:23

why I think of this work

5:25

as being very deeply philosophical, because

5:27

really the question is like, what

5:29

do you think human nature is

5:31

like, in the absence of sort

5:33

of bullying, shame and coercion, which

5:35

is what you're using yourself, right?

5:37

It's like, is your assumption that

5:39

without those things, humans just lie

5:41

on the couch and don't do

5:43

anything? Or is your rate, and

5:45

anybody who's had a child knows

5:47

like, you'd sometimes like them to

5:49

just lie on the couch and

5:51

do nothing. But that is not

5:53

actually what humans do before they

5:55

can socialize this way. They actually

5:57

are constantly running around interested in

5:59

everything, want to know everything, want to

6:01

learn, want to play, want to create, want to grow, want to

6:03

discover, but we assume for us, like, right, we're just going

6:06

to turn into complete slots. Exactly, and

6:08

it's partly about human nature, I think

6:10

you're right, but it's also partly about,

6:12

there's almost like a, well I mentioned

6:15

it before, but there's almost like

6:17

a logical issue here. If you're the

6:19

kind of person who cares about not doing

6:21

those supposedly, you know, time wasting, pointless things.

6:23

then you don't need to worry that you

6:25

might be the kind of person who wants

6:27

to do those things. We can pick any

6:30

number of sort of appalling people in the

6:32

public eye and wonder whether they ever ask

6:34

themselves these questions and be like, well, they're

6:36

of course not. And so the very fact

6:38

that someone is invested in this in the

6:40

first place is a really good sign that if

6:42

they relaxed their guard a little bit, they would

6:44

live that way. Yeah, and it's such all-or-nothing thinking.

6:47

It's like, yeah, you might not move

6:49

at quite the frenetic pace you move

6:51

it. Why are you doing that? Do

6:53

you actually like how you're spending

6:55

your time? What are you actually,

6:57

what outcomes you actually producing

6:59

at that frenetic pace, right?

7:01

It's like, the people do

7:03

this with intuitive eating, right? It's

7:05

like, well, if I don't eat according

7:08

to these really rigid rules, then I

7:10

will only eat cupcakes and pizza

7:12

forever. Right. Right. Well, if I

7:14

don't eat according to these really

7:17

rigid rules, then I will only

7:19

eat cupcakes and pizza forever. the

7:21

future and whether we're going to be

7:23

able to respond appropriately in the future

7:25

and whether we would just become in

7:27

future these kind of terrible worthless individuals.

7:29

And yet, this is sort of belied

7:32

by the fact that we're doing well and

7:34

coping well to some extent in our lives

7:36

right now. So he has this line about

7:38

like, you know, don't let the future disturb

7:40

you because you'll meet it if you have

7:42

to with the same... weapons of reason or

7:44

whatever he's talking about, you know, you don't,

7:46

whatever, that you meet the present with, right?

7:48

So if you have inner resources that seem

7:50

to be getting you through life right now,

7:53

which sort of by definition you do, you

7:55

can assume that all else being equal, you'll

7:57

have them later on as well, and that can

7:59

be a really... counterpoint to too much anxiety,

8:01

I think. Yeah, I think that's so important.

8:03

A lot of the coaching I do ends

8:05

up being around like, okay, but how could

8:07

we practice believing that we will be able

8:10

to handle what comes? Because there is not

8:12

like, right, like you now are handling things,

8:14

but you somehow imagine future you is going

8:16

to be a total basket case with

8:18

no resources, who's unable to cope anything. And

8:21

I think that sort of, it speaks to

8:23

that like thread that runs through a lot

8:25

of these things, like thread that runs through

8:27

a Right, and I know, you know, perfection

8:29

is something that you talk about in a variety

8:31

of ways. So I'm curious, what do you

8:33

think drives our kind of society's perfectionism? Do

8:35

you think it's worse now that it used

8:37

to be, like, do you think this is

8:40

a sort of constant state of human kind

8:42

over the ages, or do you think it's

8:44

gotten worse? I think all of the above,

8:46

you know, I tend to slightly evade these

8:48

sort of causal questions, because I just think

8:50

it's so, as they say, as they say

8:52

over- as they say, over- as they say,

8:54

over- as they say, over- technology and social

8:56

media and the culture of comparison to inaccurate

8:59

images of the best bits of other people's

9:01

lives or AI versions of people that aren't

9:03

really people at all. It is also capitalism

9:05

but it is also human nature and I

9:07

think you know if you really want to

9:09

get down to the core of all this

9:11

it is a response to what it is

9:13

to be a human which is to

9:15

be kind of in this vulnerable situation

9:17

of just being kind of thrown into

9:19

life. in the historical period and with the

9:22

resources and the parents that you had,

9:24

don't get to choose any of this,

9:26

with time sort of running away under

9:29

your feet, no matter what you do,

9:31

it's all a very vulnerable situation, feeling

9:33

like the psychotherapist Bruce Tiffany has,

9:36

you know, it's very intense to

9:38

be fully present or even somewhat

9:40

fully present in reality, and

9:42

so control seems to offer this... way

9:44

of being, well, maybe I could just sort of

9:46

get out and on top of life somehow. I

9:49

could sort of control it from a safer position.

9:51

And yeah, it's hugely, there are huge

9:53

numbers of cultural and economic forces that

9:55

exacerbate that, but right at the bottom

9:58

I think it is that sort of. dis

10:00

-ease with just the situation that we're all

10:02

in. Yeah. I mean, if I think

10:04

about Jewish religion thousands of years ago, it's

10:06

just a very complicated system of things

10:08

that you're supposed to follow perfectly, and then

10:10

everything will be okay. Right? So, here's

10:12

like the 700 different rules that you need

10:14

to follow. I mean, it's like a

10:16

form of perfectionism. And what is religion often

10:18

promising is a sort of like, if

10:21

you can be good enough. Yeah. It's so

10:23

interesting because I think religion is so

10:25

often like a big culprit here and also

10:27

is where a lot of the initial

10:29

responses to that were sort of generated. So,

10:31

I feel, you know, a few hundred

10:33

years ago, literally every thought anyone had and

10:35

every philosophy anyone discussed was done in

10:37

the context of religion. So, of course, religion

10:39

has it all. But yeah, absolutely. That

10:42

idea that if you just do all these

10:44

things exactly or with a more sort

10:46

of Christian emphasis about that this will lead

10:48

to sort salvation and all these different

10:50

emphases are all having common this, at least

10:52

they offer the temptation that if you

10:54

could just figure out the thing you're supposed

10:56

to be doing and do it perfectly.

10:58

Like your side of the deal is, I

11:00

will follow this rule perfectly. And the

11:02

other side of the deal is that in

11:05

return, I don't quite have to take

11:07

full responsibility for my life. I don't quite

11:09

have to show up in all the

11:11

vulnerability of it. And yeah, it would be

11:13

a nice bargain. But I don't think

11:15

it actually works that way. Yeah. And I

11:17

want to talk about the alternative. I

11:19

think that I'm curious about your experience because

11:21

I work so much with women and

11:23

I focus a lot on women's socialization. And

11:25

a lot of what I see is

11:28

that women are socialized to see themselves as

11:30

people who need to follow the rules,

11:32

who shouldn't trust their own discernment or their

11:34

own authority. They need to know what

11:36

the right answer is. And so that, of

11:38

course, even they come into coaching that's

11:40

explicitly advertised as feminist coaching, but then there's

11:42

this instinct to want to be like,

11:44

okay, what's the right thought I should think

11:46

instead? I just want to know what

11:48

I need to do to get the A.

11:51

And it's so early. I see this

11:53

in my stepdaughter. There's a lead man of

11:55

like, how do I just tell me

11:57

what to do so I can do it

11:59

right so I can get reassurance essentially,

12:01

so I can feel safe. But I'm curious,

12:03

do you think that that is universal and maybe I'm just saying it

12:05

I think some of it comes from women's socialization but everybody's running around with this

12:07

thought about it. I mean it's interesting I don't want to

12:10

be glib or to suggest that I do

12:12

not have all sorts of advantages and privileges

12:14

through being through being a man but I

12:16

also think that very often when I

12:18

read accounts of the experience of being

12:20

socialised in this way and it's and

12:22

it's described in an article or somewhere

12:24

as being something specifically for women I sort

12:26

of append in my mind like women and British men.

12:28

You know what I mean? I feel like any

12:30

marginalized group. Yeah, right. The compulsion to

12:33

apologize for oneself, for example. Yes, the

12:35

American men don't have that. So that may be a

12:37

British thing. I love my husband duly. He has

12:39

many of the thought patterns I work on. Or I

12:41

may have unusual thought patterns for a guy

12:43

or anything. Whatever. I do think that

12:45

I'm always, and this is not just

12:47

about the gendered part of it, I'm

12:49

always sort of negotiating negotiating negotiating in

12:51

my work between what is universally true.

12:53

and then what is conditioned by demography

12:55

or time and history or social

12:58

economic status and all the rest

13:00

of it. So I think that

13:02

this sort of antipathy towards vulnerability

13:04

and this desire to have a

13:06

feeling of security and control is...

13:08

easily sort of demonstrable through history

13:10

as being universal. The difference is

13:13

in the style of the response,

13:15

right? The difference is in whether

13:17

you respond by looking for the

13:19

rules you're supposed to follow and

13:21

apologizeing for your existence or whether

13:23

you respond to it by sort

13:25

of like launching wars basically. Right, are

13:27

you trying to control yourself? Have you

13:29

internalized the control or are you trying

13:31

to control other people? Right, and I do think,

13:33

you'd have to ask my wife for the full version,

13:36

but I do think I am basically an

13:38

internalurnal controller person. So I think

13:40

that is a difference. But yeah,

13:42

so obviously very obvious differences in

13:44

how different people go about trying

13:46

not to feel vulnerable in this way.

13:49

But I think that the trying not

13:51

to feel vulnerable may be pretty universal.

13:53

Here's a thing about me. I

13:55

own multiple copies of the books

13:57

that have been the most important to

13:59

me. especially when they are self-help books

14:02

or books that I'm trying to learn

14:04

something from. Because I like to read

14:06

the hard copy of the book, but

14:08

then I like to listen to the

14:10

audio book as well. Because I pick

14:12

up on different things when I listen

14:14

than when I read with my eyes.

14:16

And I hear things differently, my brain

14:18

processes the information differently, and audio books

14:20

are something I can listen to on

14:22

the road, doing things around the house.

14:24

even in a bathtub. So that's why

14:26

I'm so excited to tell you that

14:28

the Take Back Your Brain audio book

14:30

is available now wherever audio books are

14:33

sold and it is narrated by yours

14:35

truly. So even if you've already gotten

14:37

the book in hard cover, if you

14:39

really want to make sure that it

14:41

all sinks in, especially if you have

14:43

a little trouble focusing or paying attention

14:45

sometimes as we all do these days,

14:47

really recommend that you also get the

14:49

audio book, listen to it in the

14:51

background, your brain will actually learn biasmosis,

14:53

and it will. all sink in and

14:55

stay in even better. I'd love to

14:57

talk more about that because I think

14:59

one like logical error, whatever we want

15:01

to call it, one thing that I

15:03

see a lot in women, especially because

15:06

women are socialized to believe that they

15:08

are very, they're more emotionally astute, they're

15:10

more emotionally a self-aware, right? That's like

15:12

a story we have, is that we

15:14

think that they're very good at being

15:16

vulnerable, when they're actually not good at

15:18

being vulnerable at all. They are good

15:20

at... They're good at saying that they're

15:22

upset, which is like what they equate

15:24

with vulnerability, but they are not good

15:26

at sitting with a lack of control

15:28

and a sort of like true openness,

15:30

right? So there's a like, like, this

15:32

comes up in dating a lot with

15:34

women who are like, wow, all these

15:36

men are so emotionally unavailable. I'm like,

15:39

you are also emotionally unavailable because you

15:41

were trying to control this whole process,

15:43

use this other person to validate your

15:45

self-worth, like... You have all these standards

15:47

and criteria and people need to meet

15:49

them and then you're beating yourself up

15:51

and like actually none of that is

15:53

actual vulnerability. So I'd love to hear

15:55

your take on vulnerability. Yeah, I mean

15:57

again, I don't know how much this

15:59

is sort of exactly distributed differently. between

16:01

the sexes, but I do think that

16:03

you can, like, trying to achieve a

16:05

feeling of security and not feel vulnerable

16:07

can be done either by kind of

16:10

developing an abhorrence towards emotion, or it

16:12

can be done sort of using emotion

16:14

in a way. And so, you know,

16:16

I always feel one, I'm not sure

16:18

this is quite an answer to the

16:20

question, but let's see, I'm always interested

16:22

in the ways that... Stoic philosophy has

16:24

sort of been passed into the modern

16:26

world, certainly sometimes in the context of

16:28

what gets called broicism, the idea of, you

16:30

know, which has it, it is worst, you know. I

16:32

don't want the bros to ruin the stoics for

16:34

me. Some of them are great bros, but

16:37

there is an extreme that this goes to,

16:39

which is this notion that like you ought

16:41

to be able to be emotionally unperturbed by

16:43

anything that is happening to you. And at

16:45

that point, it becomes pretty clear that this

16:47

is a sort of quest to become

16:49

invulnerable to become invulnerable. There's

16:51

another way of thinking about

16:53

that though, which is the

16:55

idea that you could accept, as I

16:58

think very gradually and incrementally are

17:00

getting better at doing, that like

17:02

moods and feelings are things that

17:05

come and that are there, and

17:07

that you don't necessarily need

17:09

to let dictate your actions or

17:11

spiral into them, but there is

17:14

a sort of, there's a way of

17:16

being stoic. that I think is at

17:18

least in tune with the original philosophers

17:20

that would absolutely involve really feeling your

17:22

feelings, but being, I guess, to switch

17:24

to Buddhism, non-attached to them, right? Having

17:26

this stance of being able to sort

17:28

of let them be and also act

17:30

alongside them. And I kind of feel

17:33

like that would be useful medicine for

17:35

both, you know, the emotion deniers and

17:37

the emotion uses when it comes to

17:39

vulnerability. Yeah, I'm curious to hear how

17:41

you would kind of define vulnerability. I'm

17:43

trying to think... that the way that

17:45

I think about it is actual

17:48

vulnerability is like being honest about

17:50

your experience without an attempt to

17:52

control like the response you get

17:54

or the other person's experience about

17:56

it or this it's sort of like

17:59

a sharing without a attachment to outcome,

18:01

maybe, but I'm curious how you... I

18:03

mean, I think that's really a great

18:05

way of putting it. I think it

18:07

also highlights how tricky this can be

18:09

because you, a person, can certainly do

18:11

what might look to a third party,

18:13

like just sharing, and that in itself

18:16

be a form of kind of putting

18:18

your things on to other people in

18:20

an attempt to relieve your own anxiety

18:22

about being vulnerable. Yeah, no, absolutely. And

18:24

it's, you know, it's sort of, there's

18:26

a sort of a feeling or a

18:28

move, I guess, like an inner gesture,

18:30

which I've written about in different forms,

18:32

and I'm always trying to put words

18:34

on. But in a way, one of

18:36

the ways that I've written about it

18:38

that seems to work for me anyway,

18:41

maybe for some other people, is, you

18:43

know, that moment in a, if you're

18:45

in a rainstorm, and you haven't brought

18:47

an umbrella or proper waterproof waterproof gear

18:49

or proper waterproof-proof gear or proper waterproof

18:51

gear or whatever, or whatever, or whatever,

18:53

and you're, and you're, you're, you're, you're,

18:55

in a some futile way trying to

18:57

keep yourself dry by sort of like

18:59

tensing your body or hunching or something

19:01

like freeing. Right, and the moment that

19:03

can happen when you're so unmatched to

19:05

that situation, the situation is so not

19:08

avoidable that you just sort of relax

19:10

and get drenched and realize that there

19:12

is nothing terrible about the getting drenched

19:14

and that the suffering of the situation

19:16

was in the bracing against it rather

19:18

than in the getting drenched. It's not

19:20

a perfect analogy because obviously there's real

19:22

pain in lots of experiences in life,

19:24

but I think there's something powerful in

19:26

that notion that vulnerability is, for me

19:28

anyway, is the willingness to not brace

19:30

against reality in that sense, and the

19:32

discovery that obviously has deep roots in

19:35

all sorts of philosophies and therapies that

19:37

a large part, anyway, of the awfulness.

19:39

is thereby reduced and that there's some

19:41

mysterious way in which you can experience

19:43

even grief, even anger, even sadness in

19:45

a way that... is not a problem.

19:47

I mean, language really runs out here,

19:49

but. No, I actually love that metaphor

19:51

for, I mean, I spend a lot

19:53

of time trying to explain what it

19:55

means to accept a feeling and not

19:57

resist it, right? I mean, that's like

19:59

an always the sort of, it's so,

20:02

whether it's some form of innate plus

20:04

that's our current cultural whatever, just the

20:06

like, the resistance to negative emotion and

20:08

the availability of distractions from it and

20:10

how easy it is to just kind

20:12

of constantly trying. get away from it.

20:14

So I'm always trying to explain like,

20:16

okay, what do I mean when I

20:18

say like to allow the feeling to

20:20

not resist the feeling? And I think

20:22

that's a great metaphor for that as

20:24

well, or maybe these things are the

20:26

same thing of the same thing of

20:29

like the difference between, of like the

20:31

difference between, and I would add, maybe

20:33

these things are the same thing of

20:35

like, of like the difference between. And

20:37

I would add the sort of story,

20:39

like the difference between, like, the sort

20:41

of story, like the difference between, like

20:43

the sort of like the sort of

20:45

like, like, like the difference, like, like,

20:47

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

20:49

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

20:51

like, like, like, It's okay. It's not

20:53

going to be the end of the

20:56

world. I love that release. Like just

20:58

kind of circle back to your book,

21:00

4,000 weeks, which I really loved, because

21:02

I think for me existing in the

21:04

sort of, you know, life coaching industry,

21:06

I see a lot of coaching around

21:08

time that it's sort of a combination

21:10

of several problematic strains, which is like,

21:12

one is sort of like, the coaching

21:14

is sort of like, don't stress about

21:16

time because... There's plenty of time for

21:18

everything. There's always enough time. It's like

21:20

you don't need, it's sort of like

21:23

you don't need to think about how

21:25

you spend your time because like just

21:27

believe there's enough time. And then that's

21:29

particularly problematic I find for people socialized

21:31

as women because again, at least in

21:33

my cultural and social context. They're over

21:35

functioning for everybody in their lives, right?

21:37

They and so to like be completely

21:39

in charge of the household and over

21:41

function for their husband and over function

21:43

for their children and do all the

21:45

unpaid committee stuff at work and do

21:47

all of there's like so many social

21:50

expectations of women being of service to

21:52

everyone else. And so the part that's.

21:54

important which is like well let's back

21:56

up what actually matters to you and

21:58

how do you want to spend your

22:00

time is a big piece of this

22:02

and so there's something for me very

22:04

bracing about even the title of your

22:06

book just being like hey this is

22:08

a limited resource and this is how

22:10

much you have and let's have a

22:12

serious conversation about what you're doing with

22:14

it I'm curious kind of how did

22:17

you even how did you come to

22:19

that book and like what were you

22:21

really hoping to kind of get people

22:23

to face with it Yeah, I mean

22:25

this is all totally obviously from sort

22:27

of personal grappling with with all of

22:29

this too and I again maybe this

22:31

is one of those women and British

22:33

men situations I don't know but there's

22:35

a that feeling of obligation has always

22:37

been a very sort of serious issue

22:39

with with me and the sense that

22:41

like if you feel that something is

22:44

an obligation then it's on you to

22:46

find a time to do it and

22:48

and also even more sort of basically

22:50

that there must be time, there must

22:52

be a way of finding time to

22:54

do it, otherwise it wouldn't feel like

22:56

an obligation, right, which is a mistake,

22:58

but it's a persuasive one. And I

23:00

think that the sort of process that

23:02

I have gone through or begun to

23:04

go through that I'm trying to write

23:06

about and pass on in that book

23:09

is that the answer to this or

23:11

the sort of path forward on this

23:13

is not necessarily to convince yourself that

23:15

things you felt or obligations are not.

23:17

do not feel obliging anymore. It's not

23:19

just to be like, you're fine, don't

23:21

worry about those things, just focus on

23:23

yourself. It's also not this kind of

23:25

really stressful. You've only got so much

23:27

time, so you really wouldn't better pick

23:29

the right things, and if you screw

23:31

up, you're a loser. It's actually to

23:33

say, yeah, that there is too much

23:36

to do. There is too much that

23:38

feels meaningful. That's a real situation. But

23:40

you're so outmatched just by being human,

23:42

not because you're particularly rubbish, but because

23:44

that's what it is to be human,

23:46

that there's a kind of relaxation to

23:48

be found there, right? It's like you

23:50

are never going to get close to

23:52

doing all the things that weigh on

23:54

you as an obligation. especially in a

23:56

society that makes so much feel like

23:58

an obligation, especially for women in the

24:00

sense that it's unevenly distributed that way.

24:03

And like if you really grasp that,

24:05

if you really grasp how finite we

24:07

are relative to this sort of effectively

24:09

infinite pool of things we could be

24:11

doing, in an important sense the pressures

24:13

off, right? Because it's no longer possible

24:15

to hope to meet the kind of

24:17

perfect outcome. Obviously one response to that

24:19

is like why do anything, everything likes

24:21

terribly depressing, but another response is like

24:23

oh okay maybe my job is only

24:25

to do to sort of curate a

24:27

handful of things that really matter to

24:30

me and some of those might well

24:32

be pro-social and selfless but some of

24:34

them also might not be because there's

24:36

no chance of doing all the things

24:38

that belong under any of those headings

24:40

and I always come back to this

24:42

I mean I've said it before and

24:44

I've said it before and I've written

24:46

about it but it but it just

24:48

seems so apt here. British then master

24:50

Huenjiu Kennet who said that her approach

24:52

to teaching students was not to lighten

24:54

the burden of the student, but to

24:57

make it so heavy that he or

24:59

she would put it down. And I

25:01

think there's something really beautiful about that

25:03

notion. Like if you just really see

25:05

how bad things are about the situation

25:07

of being a finite human, it's like,

25:09

okay, cool. Now we can just roll

25:11

up our sleeves and do the things

25:13

that we can do as well as

25:15

we can do them and not be

25:17

tormented by the fact that we can

25:19

do an infinite. number of things that

25:21

will always be there and that will

25:24

still be on your mental to-do list

25:26

the day you die. Yeah, I think

25:28

you can have both those reactions sometimes

25:30

in sequence. Like I definitely have people

25:32

who are very high achieving, who have

25:34

really based their self-esteem and their self-esteem

25:36

and their self-worth on that dopamine of

25:38

like taking the things off doing the

25:40

things, and then when you get to

25:42

this point they sometimes do go through

25:44

a few weeks of like, well, what

25:46

is the point of anything then? other

25:48

ways of essentially feeling good or self-validating,

25:51

but like you can. So if you,

25:53

I don't want anyone listening to think,

25:55

well I had the first response, so

25:57

I should just keep trying to do

25:59

all the things. control all the things

26:01

like that's sometimes the first phase but

26:03

so much of this back to that

26:05

control right it's like and resistance it's

26:07

like the pain and the suffering

26:09

is the like ever more frantic

26:11

attempts to control an uncontrollable thing

26:13

yeah the phrase I'm sure I'm misusing it

26:15

because it's like you know real hard

26:17

science which is not my domain but

26:19

like it's like something has to metabolize

26:22

and When you stop to think about it, like

26:24

I'm being sort of jovial in my chiding of

26:26

people who have the first response there, but I'm

26:28

not, I don't want to actually be mean, but

26:30

like if you honestly think life is a terrible

26:33

thing because you can't do all the things,

26:35

it's like that is such a strange definition

26:37

of the meaning of a well-lived life, right?

26:39

To say that as one human in this

26:41

infinitely complicated world, with a limited amount

26:43

of time and energy and attention, like

26:45

if you can't do everything, you might

26:47

as well not do anything, it's like, it's

26:50

like, no, no, clearly, clearly. by any

26:52

definition what we're here to do. Even

26:54

people, even, and this is totally consistent

26:56

with being really ambitious in career or

26:59

anything else, but even at the really ambitious

27:01

level, clearly what we're here to do is

27:03

a fraction of all the things that could

27:05

be done and a fraction of the things

27:07

that we could think of that would feel worth

27:09

doing with our time and probably only

27:11

to a certain level of the standard

27:13

that we could conceive of, right? That's

27:15

just baked in to finite humans doing

27:17

things in the real world. So to say

27:20

that anything that met those criteria

27:22

wasn't worth doing, it's just makes

27:24

no sense. Yeah. I think this is where

27:26

the self-friendliness comes in, because

27:29

this is something people can

27:31

grasp intellectually, but emotionally if

27:33

the way they have been taught to think

27:35

is that they're not worthy of

27:37

love or acceptance from themselves or

27:40

anyone else, unless they are doing

27:42

the impossible all the things, that

27:44

sort of that relationship with yourself

27:46

has to be the foundation of

27:48

that, right? Talk to yourself about that process

27:50

because for so many at least the kind of

27:52

women who come kind of to me It is

27:55

you know I've been praised since I was little

27:57

for my accomplishments and doing

27:59

everything and you know, we have, you

28:01

know, it's like we call working moms super

28:03

women. It's like all of this sort of

28:06

like, you know, that's what you're getting pretty

28:08

simple. But as you say, it's impossible. I

28:10

mean, I have this metaphor I use when

28:12

I'm coaching people about work, which is like,

28:15

because people are constantly, I'm just, I'm

28:17

always behind. I'm never going to get on

28:19

top of it. I can never get it

28:21

all done, right? And I talk about work

28:24

being like a river that never. until the

28:26

day you die there will be things

28:28

on your like to-do list that you wanted

28:30

to do whether you're like professional working or

28:32

not just being a human being alive right

28:35

you'd be like you're not supposed to

28:37

like get to zero and then just like

28:39

well the rest of your life right and

28:41

you wouldn't want to either by the way

28:44

right right that's what have people get

28:46

retired and then they're like their death incidents

28:48

goes up right if they like aren't doing

28:50

anything if they don't have those full lives.

28:52

So I think that's sort of, I

28:54

love the, it's sort of like, positivity through

28:57

nihilism. It's like, nothing matters, so choose what

28:59

does. That's a fair way of describing it.

29:01

And as various people have, you know,

29:03

I'm not the first person to suggest this,

29:06

but there's something very interesting about sort of

29:08

asking yourself, just allowing yourself to be the

29:10

most about yourself in your personality or

29:12

anything else that you're sort of... always see

29:14

your life as a fight against and just

29:17

sort of allow yourself to wonder what it

29:19

would be like if you knew that

29:21

you were always going to have some degree

29:23

of that for the rest of your life

29:26

and you knew it for real. Like can

29:28

you see how that opens up some

29:30

amazing possibilities? You could be like oh okay

29:32

I can let that be and get on

29:35

with some things that matter and get on

29:37

with some things that matter right? I

29:39

mean you can be like oh. Maybe I'm

29:41

always going to have a tendency towards avoiding

29:43

like important actions. Okay, well somehow putting that

29:46

to bed means that I can just

29:48

get on with some important actions. It's a

29:50

very strange thing. This is the thing that

29:52

I think breaks people's brains the most when

29:55

they come to coaching because they're like,

29:57

but I came here so you'd fix this

29:59

and I'm like, but what if I never

30:01

do? What if this is with you forever?

30:03

But because it's that resistance, right? It's

30:05

like, and of course paradoxically when you accept

30:08

it, usually it lessens, you do figure out

30:10

how to change some of it. Like none

30:12

of it is black or white, but

30:14

it's sort of the same, it's like, it's

30:17

sort of the same, it's like people will

30:19

grasp that they can't change other people, but

30:21

then they think everything about themselves needs to

30:23

be malleable and changed and fixed. And

30:25

it's like, And then I'm like, okay, what

30:28

are you doing for the rest of your

30:30

life? Like, how bored? Like, what are you

30:32

just gonna, you're just like, coast in

30:34

your perfection as the Buddha from 45 to

30:37

the grave? But like, that's, that's how we're

30:39

thinking about it. Yeah, no, absolutely. There's a

30:41

sort of secret benefit to thinking that

30:43

you're still in the process of fixing yourself

30:45

and you're not quite real. Like, I've got

30:48

to do all this fixing first, finish all

30:50

the coaching, find the right productivity techniques

30:52

and everything, and get the right job security,

30:54

whatever. That's when real life begins. That's really

30:57

depressing, but it does have a payoff, right?

30:59

I mean, there's a reason we do

31:01

it. Yeah. We'll do this with things like,

31:03

these things I see in my practice the

31:05

most are like, wait, finding a partner. getting

31:08

a certain job. Like those are the

31:10

three big things that are sort of like,

31:12

well, once I lose weight, then I'm going

31:14

to be able to do all these things.

31:17

Or like, well, I don't want to

31:19

go to Paris YX, I want to go

31:21

with a partner. I'm like, go to Paris

31:23

now. Like, you can't. Yeah, right. And making

31:26

that shift in attitude will in no.

31:28

Yeah, right. And making that shift in attitude

31:30

will in no. Well, in no. Yeah. Yeah.

31:32

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think

31:34

people, it's like when they imagine, it's

31:36

like if you go to Paris now, you're

31:39

just a human in Paris or having an

31:41

experience where like some of it's fun and

31:43

some of it's annoying and sometimes you

31:45

get stomachache and whatever else. But when you

31:48

hold off on all those things, you get

31:50

to imagine that they're all going to feel

31:52

like fantasies, right? relationships always going to

31:54

feel good. Paris is going to feel like

31:56

you're in a movie. They're all these like,

31:59

I call them the, we're always searching for

32:01

the exit ramp off the human experience.

32:03

Exactly, yeah, great. And there's no harm in

32:05

a little bit of that kind of fantasizing

32:08

as part of one's life, but you really,

32:10

it's a tragedy ultimately to let it

32:12

mean to accept it in lieu of going

32:14

to Paris with all its. with all its

32:16

annoyances. Yeah, I think that's a beautiful place

32:19

to bring this conversation, but I do

32:21

want to ask what I, well, not always,

32:23

what I often ask, which is, is there

32:25

anything you wanted to share or you would

32:28

want to communicate to people that I didn't

32:30

ask you about? No, I think we've

32:32

really focused on at all. I think one

32:34

of the phrases I've written about in most

32:36

recent, but that I find quite useful to

32:39

sort of sum this up, it's about

32:41

sort of starting from the values, towards that

32:43

are off in the future. You know, it's

32:45

about like figuring out what matters to you

32:48

and as another writer is written, acting

32:50

from that identity immediately in some way, however

32:52

stumblingly, however badly and incompetently, because like 10

32:54

minutes of action done in that spirit is,

32:57

you know, invaluable compared to all the

32:59

greatest hypothetical action in the world that never

33:01

actually happens. Yeah, I love that. And for

33:03

everybody listening, if you're thinking, but I don't

33:05

even know what my values are. Literally,

33:07

practically, go Google a list of values. Circle

33:10

10, take it down to three, you don't

33:12

have to marry them forever. Right. Like you

33:14

do know, just because of words are

33:16

coming to mind, like when you look at

33:19

these lists, I've done this exercise, things stand

33:21

out to you and things that aren't really

33:23

your values. And you can try one

33:25

for a week, then try another one. Like,

33:27

like, don't turn this into a perfectious, Okay,

33:30

I just got to like read 12 books

33:32

and do a year of journaling and

33:34

then I'll know what my values are and

33:36

then I can act from them perfectly for

33:39

the rest of my life. No, just like

33:41

try something to get in the habit

33:43

of connecting to something you care about and

33:45

using it as a guide to make decisions.

33:47

Absolutely. Where can people find you? They can

33:50

find your books probably wherever books are

33:52

sold. That's right. Certainly the best way to

33:54

support I'm doing. My website is Oliver bertman.com

33:56

and that's where you can sign up for

33:59

my newsletter. Thank you so much for

34:01

coming on. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

34:03

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