Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How To Find Meaning and Purpose At Any Age with Dr James Hollis #641

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Do you believe there’s something inside you that knows who you really are? It knows what kind of life you're meant to live, the type of work that lights you up, and what your soul is asking of you? In this episode, you'll learn how to start listening to it. Dr James Hollis, an 85-year-old Jungian analyst and author of 22 books, has spent more than four decades helping people uncover what's really driving their search for something more. What he has to say is profound, practical – and potentially life-changing. I begin by asking a deceptively simple question: what is a life of meaning? James explains that it’s not something you go out and find. Rather, it arises when you start living in alignment with your soul’s agenda. He shares his own powerful story of achieving everything he thought he wanted by 35, only to be hit by a depression that forced him to look inward for the first time. That crisis became a turning point and informed the wisdom he shares so generously today. We discuss why so many people who’ve reached the top in prestigious careers end up in therapy rooms like James’s, questioning what they’ve done with their lives. And we talk about how the ideas and cultural conditioning we absorb as children can misdirect us as adults. We also speak honestly about depression and why I believe that medics are too quick to reach for diagnoses and prescriptions, when the real issue is a life lacking in meaning. And James and I connect over our fathers, both of whom made sacrifices for their families. We ask what their stories teach us about purpose and alignment – and James shares his advice on how we can help our children to truly thrive. James has a knack of simplifying complex psychological ideas into realistic advice. And he  has some useful ideas for reconnecting with your psyche. He describes his work as a therapist not to provide answers, but to facilitate ways we can find them ourselves – through creative pursuits, dreaming, or simply asking better questions. Whether you're in the middle of a career you're not sure about, navigating a restless midlife, or simply feeling drawn toward something you can't yet name, this episode will meet you exactly where you are. I came away feeling reassured and inspired, and I'm confident you will too.   Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com.   Thanks to our sponsors: https://onepeloton.co.uk https://dohealth.co/livemore https://vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://thewayapp.com/livemore   Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/641   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

I don't know what's right for a person, but there's something inside of them that knows what's right. We all have an appointment with our own souls. And the question is, are we going to keep that appointment? You pay a price if you live in violation of what is most deeply true inside of you. Hey guys, how you doing? I hope you having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rongan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast. Feel Better, Live More.

Have you ever felt that there's something deep within you that knows who you really are? That part of you would just remain constant throughout your life that knows exactly what you're meant to be doing even if you're not fully aware of it. Well, this powerful idea is at the heart of today's conversation. Dr. James Hollis is back for his second appearance on my podcast. James is 85 years old and a world-renowned psycho-exam. analyst who has been practicing for more than four decades. He's also the author offered incredible 22 books on personal growth, meaning and purpose.

James believes each of us has an autonomous inner guide. When we ignore it or can't tune into it, it manifests a stress, burnout, low moods, or a nagging sense that something is missing. And if you've ever found yourself thinking, on paper, my life seems pretty good, so why do I still feel empty, then I think this conversation is going to stop you in your tracks. Now, I want to make something really clear. If you've tuned in for some quick tips on how to improve your health, then in all honesty, this is probably not the right conversation for you.

But if you're looking for something deep, authentic and thought-provoking, that may fundamentally change the way in which you live, then you've absolutely come to the right place. James is regarded as a complete legend by so many people around the world, myself included, and for me, it was an absolute privilege to be able to talk to him for a second time. In so many ways, we have become a culture that no longer values the words and wisdom of our elders.

And I believe this has come at a time. a huge cost. As someone who spent a lot of time thinking about and finding meaning and purpose in my own life, I know what a massive difference it makes. This conversation was both humbling and inspiring, and if you're someone who's feeling a little bit lost and in need of some direction, I'm certain that what James has to share will resonate. This is a conversation that keeps on giving the more times you listen to it. As with each and every listen, you're likely to gain more insights about your life.

So settle in and open your mind to some big ideas and meaningful moments. This is my conversation with the one and only James Hollis. I guess where I wanted to start is with this. How do you define a life of meaning? This is a good question. I think meaning is not something we go out and find as if it's hiding somewhere in Brighton or something. Meaning rises out as an experience when whatever is going on within us or whatever we're relating to in our outer world is in accord with the agenda of our soul. Now, I know that's very vague, but to give I think an example, let's say I'm supposed to adopt a certain career or a certain athletic regimen or a certain ideology.

And that will, quote, make me happy or bring me meeting and perhaps it will to a certain degree. But in the long run, if I'm giving my energies to something that's really not in alignment with what's true within. me at the deepest level, a level which I may not know much about consciously. So I had my own experience of that. I think I told you the first time we met. I'd achieved all my outer goals in my mid-30s and then was hit with a serious depression. And it was an opportunity for me to sort of go within. It was a necessity, not an opportunity. It was a necessity to go within and to explore, why is the psyche autonomously withdrawing its approval and support from the places that I want to put it? Or the world tells me I ought to be putting it there.

And that was the beginning of a different kind of journey, of recovery of personal authority, and striking out in some very large and new directions. So meaning is something experiential. I think it's not conceptual. we may, from the conscious standpoint, assess things from time to time, of course. There's a place for consciousness here. But it's not like meaning is hidden somewhere and we have to go find it. Because, you know, many times, for example, people are in extreme circumstances,

but intra-psychically, they are well. They are in the right places they should be. As Jean-Paul Sart said, sometimes the person who, who is in prison is freer than the one who imprisons. And I think what he was getting at there is maybe the person who's the imprisoner is a functionary of the state, let's say, or he does it because it's his job, or even a certain ideology. But the prisoner has a sense, my being here is a statement of my values,

or my being here is an expression of my willingness to care deeply about some value. you. And so I can have a sense of great meaning, intracycically, even when my outer world is quite conflictual and even painful. So I don't think meaning is something we choose, although we can choose paths that bring us into that accord, it's something we can experience and we experience the loss of it. So many times, as we all know, people have achieved their goals and there's a dissatisfaction to it. There's a sense after a while of indifference or

boredom or ultimately depression. And in those moments what you see there is there's an autonomy of something inside of each of us. That which I would also say knows us better than we know

ourselves. It has its own agenda. And you can call it the agenda of nature seeking to express itself or the will of divinity if you so wish to use that metaphor. And that's something transcended to ordinary ego consciousness. And when I'm in right relationship to that, even if everything else around me is troubled, then there's that sense of interiority that supports. You can put it this way. What supports us when nothing supports us? Now, I've learned the hard way. And I've learned the hard way. I know other individuals have as well, that even when our normal coping strategies or ideas

about self and world are no longer working very well, there's something inside that still can sustain us and pull us through those times in very meaningful ways. And it would be nice to be able to package that and merchandise that. But it's something autonomous. It lies wholly without my will to call it up. Although, as I said, I can use my will to perhaps make those sorts of choices. That might be difficult choices, but which bring me into that right relationship. Yeah.

I love this idea that there's something deep within us that knows us better than we know ourselves. this underlying force or energy that underpins everything that goes on in our life. Right at the start, though, I think we should define a couple of terms that you've used. You've used the term ego consciousness, you've used the terms psyche, intra-psychic awareness, and for people perhaps who are not familiar with those terms, could you give us a little bit of an overview so that we can follow along? Well, ego consciousness is my conscious awareness of myself and my environment. So I'm conscious at this moment that you and I are having a conversation.

So ego consciousness is that which we usually tend to think of as ourselves. The psyche is the Greek word for soul. And in analytic psychology, the psyche is the totality of the human being. It expresses itself through the body, through our emotion. our cognitions and so forth. But it's also a manifestation of that autonomous other. The psyche is properly understood a verb. If it were a noun, it would show up on an MRI or a CAT scan.

It's not. It's an energy system. It's the energy of life. It enters mysteriously at birth, at death. It mysteriously departs from whence's come, whither it goes, we don't know. We really don't know. speculate, we don't know. And it's understandable that one sort of identify who one is by one's

conscious world. So when people lose their job or they're forced to retire or an illness removes them from some activity, there's a great sense of loss, of course. But it's like, that's not who you are. That's what you've been doing. Or that's how you've manifested in the world. but that's not who you are. There is this autonomous other, again, that knows what's right for us. What the nature of that is is at heart a mystery. So to take an obvious example, you know, you as a physician didn't heal people, but you could bring about the conditions in which healing could occur.

Healing is something that occurs from within the organism itself. And learning how to live in accord with that is, is part of how one becomes a healer, not just a technician. So the intracycic means what's going on inside of me. You and I are engaged at this conscious level at this moment, but who's monitoring the death and rebirth of cells in us? Right? What agency, what governmental agency is digesting our lunch, you see?

What's growing our toenails? all of these myriad operations are going on autonomously. And out of that, there is a sense of a kind of nature that is expressing itself in the world. But that's the natural function, the epiphenomenal, which is to say the secondary function, is to be separate from that and to observe that. I can see on here I need to get a haircut, for example. Right? So that's consciousness paying attention to some detail, but I'm not growing the hair, for example. And underneath that, that's why the question then is, to what degree is my ego consciousness,

that is to say my ordinary awareness in accord with or aligned with? Now, early on as children, of course, were tiny, dependent and vulnerable. We know it's right for us. We cry when we're hungry. We sleep when we need to sleep and so forth. But that core vulnerability and the need for protection and so forth makes us dependent upon our environment. And the more we're dependent on the environment,

the more we have to engage in tradeoffs, which is how we begin to get separated from that presence within. Now, recovering a relationship to that is really about recovering of a personal sense of authority. We have it when we're born. It's called instinct. We get socialized and necessarily so, of course. But that socialization ultimately becomes costly

because again it's separated. So, for example, there is no one who hasn't felt shame of some kind or there's no one who doesn't have mixed messages about sexuality, for example. So those are culturally acquired experiences inevitably that can separate a person from his or her instinctual guidance system. That's why when there is a significant violation of the agenda of our own nature, it will always show up pathologically. Now, when I say pathologically, I don't mean that in any judgmental way. Pathos is a Greek word for suffering. In other words, it will be some form, it will cause some form of suffering.

You know, as I gave the example, a person prepares for a certain career, assumes this will carry me my entire life. And after a certain period, even if one has been productive, maybe one has been rewarded for that productivity, one finds it no longer quickens the spirit when you enter the office. Or no longer feels something that energize. In fact, it depletes. Yeah.

And then you see that other within us has expressed its intent. He's expressed its concern. And so it's typical for us to keep rolling to say, well, I'll take a pill for this or I'll go skiing next weekend or something like that, all of which may be useful at some point, but sort of misses the point. And I've learned the hard way, and I emphasize the hard way, over the years, that if I need to know what's right for me, it could range from the mundane,

like how to start an essay, for example, or what to deal with some emotional struggle, or how to approach a client's troubles. I sort of put it in there, speaking metaphorically. I put it in there, and something works on it. And it gets back to me. I can't explain that. it gets back to me, not necessarily in a predictable way, not necessarily having a report on my desk

by 5 o'clock in the afternoon, as I would prefer, but it'll come as a dream, three days of now. Or I'll be driving down the motorway and something suddenly clear to me. Or I wake up and I looked at the situation from a different angle. Yeah. And that tells me what is right for me. Then, of course, I have to mobilize whatever intentionality, sometimes including courage, to live that in the world. And if we do that, this is not narcissism.

It could sound like that at first glance, but it's not. It actually calls the ego consciousness into service. Now, if the project of the first half of life is to figure out what they're at, of you out there. You know, what of my mom and dad want for me? What does the schoolteacher want from me? What is the employer one for me? What is the state one for me? Et cetera, et cetera. Those are all, again, adaptations to the world that fate has thrust us into. Yeah. However, in the second half of life, we have to ask, all right, now I've sort of created a provisional identity. Maybe I have a family, may have a home, may have a job.

et cetera, and that's how many people live their lives. You know, it's a kind of rote repetition. Yeah. But then to ask the question, so what is worthy of my service? What should I be giving myself to? I don't mean at the neglect of our honest relationships. You know, you don't stop trying to be the best parent you can and the best partner you can, the best citizen you could be.

But there's also something else that calls for your personal growth, attention. Now, at some level, it sounds obvious. At another level, it's pretty radical, because what it means is you step out into the unknown. You don't know what that means to you. You don't know where that's going to take you. At midlife, when I had that depression, I realized for the first time, I had to really start looking within. I thought I'd always been a thoughtful person, a reflective person, but it wasn't working so well. So I had to engage in some other kind of conversation around what's going on inside. And not so much to ask the question, well, how quickly do we get rid of that depression? That's understandable from the ego standpoint.

But rather, why did it come? Yeah. Why has it withdrawn it approval. What would it want for me? That's not a question that we normally think about. Yeah. Now, if you remember, the word psyche is also translated as soul, sort of asking, what does the soul want of me? Now, when I use the word soul, some people will shut down because they have complexes around, you know, whatever that word has meant to them in their cultural history. But we're using it in just in a sense of whatever is most deeply true within you, that timeless dimension within you, where you carry that spark of the human that is universal. It's in everyone, but rather few people have access to it or pay attention to it.

And it doesn't mean that one withdraws from the world. In fact, ultimately, it means when we engage in the world, we bring a different kind of presence into our relationships with others and with that exterior world. So this is a humbling process. It's not about becoming wealthy or powerful or finding abiding love out there, all of which could be important in a person's life, but it's about trying to track that mystery

that shows up in each of us. Another example, I'm sorry if I'm right, running on too much. Oh, this is great. Please. These are important questions, and they're not easily answered. In therapy, for example, I remember Marie-Louise von Frantz and Annalitz in Zurich. I had the privilege to cross paths with her briefly when I was in training there.

And she said, look, I'm not a God. I don't know what's right for a person. But there's something inside of them that knows what's right. And I try to pay so much attention to that process that the client or the patient begins to pay attention to. And then what is right for that person will emerge. You see? The therapist's role there is not to fix something or even offer five easy steps to this or 30 days to that. That's pretty superficial stuff.

Sometimes helpful, but often transient in its efficacy. So ultimately, this is about respecting what is wanting to enter the world through you. That's a different question. Yeah. It's not about ego aggrandizement. It's what is wanting to enter the world through me. So I'm 85. The one thing I, and I've had, you know, many medical issues, as a person does at this stage of life.

but one of the things that has always been meaningful to me has been learning and teaching. So I continue to teach classes. That's why I have these podcasts. I'm not building a career at this point. At times I would wish a lot of people would leave me alone. But I know it's also a medium whereby I can perhaps be helpful to people in looking at their lives in a different way. And that seems to me to be a calling.

That's not a job, it's a calling. And, you know, it doesn't have to eventuate in what we might call professional activities. Your calling is to be the fullest possible human being you can, you know, to share who that person is. When Young said the greatest burden a child must bear is the unlive life of the parent, I think what he was saying is,

We don't have to be perfect. Who's perfect among us? Be a rich and authentic human being. Live your journey with as much courage, fidelity as you can. And that includes serving relationships, for sure. Again, we're not talking about narcissism, isolation. We're saying that part of the arena in which this meaning can arise is through the quality of our relationships.

Now, when we look at it that way, you realize, all right, I have a duty here, a calling to my own soul, but also to be that in the world in as many places as I can, even if that's uncomfortable. So I'm a card-carrying introvert, but I've lived for a good part of my life, an extrovert. professional life. There's always an inherent conflict there. There's always stress. There's always anxiety. That just comes with the, that's the price of the ticket, so to speak. If you're going to do what you're meant to do, not everybody is going to like it. Not everybody's going to appreciate that. It may stretch you beyond the comfortable. And yet, and this takes us back to your initial question, you'll experience the richness of serving that which wants to enter the world through

you. Yeah. And again, I'm not talking about finding a cure for cancer or making some miraculous invention. It's about being who you are. That's the gift. Yeah. Thank you. I think much of what you have said there was beautifully summarized in one paragraph in the

conclusion of, I think one of your latest books, A Life of Meaning, and you wrote in that conclusion. Today's episode is sponsored by Peloton. Now, we all know that moving our bodies more is good for us, but despite that knowledge, many of us find it hard to actually implement. And that's where the new Peloton Cross Training Bike Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, can really help. It's built for fitness breakthroughs with real-time insights and endless ways to move,

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I think much of what you have said there was beautifully summarised in one paragraph in the conclusion of, I think one of your latest books A Life of Meaning. And you wrote in that conclusion, we know what the world wants, we know what our parents want, we know what the employer wants, we know what popular culture wants. But what does the psyche

want? That's a whole different question. It's not narcissistic, it's humbling, it will lead us to places that we may not want to go, but that's exactly where we're meant to be. It would have saved us a lot of time if you just read that

paragraph. Well, no, you, it's, it was funny as you were going through that and you were expanding upon it, I thought it's all kind of, it's all there isn't it? You know, the idea that, why is it that we are living through a crisis of meaning at the moment? Well, of course, one of the big causes is that societal and cultural conditioning. The stories we hear as children, the stories we hear from the world around us about what it means to be successful. So it's almost, It's a cliche now, but the amount of people who in midlife in their 30s, 40s and 50s, like you, James, you know, they think they've done all the things that they were supposed to do. Yet there is this inner emptiness, this longing for something more.

The longing is there for a meaningful life. And one of the things that's become quite clear to me over my medical career, And I'm sure like you in your psychotherapy journey, me and my medical journey, my viewpoint on health and the wider world has evolved significantly over the years. And the way I see things today, James, is that 80 to 90% of what we see as doctors is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. But the real learning for me is the life, the life. The life lifestyle behaviors that people are engaging with that are resulting in all of these problems, a huge amount of them come from a lack of meaning.

Well, I concur. In my life, I was invested in academia. I was a professor of literature and philosophy, which I still treasure. But I also realize that there was, A, a deeper conversation occurring in the psychiatric hospital where I worked than on the academic campus. So that tells you something. And B, I had to address from whence do these things come. Where does this originate? Well, it's within the human psyche, within the depths of the human soul. And I fully agree with you that analytic psychology, unlike behaviorism and cognitive psychology, which have their contribution to make, tend to be more topically oriented to better adaptations to the world we live in, but what if the world that you're living in and investing all of your energy in

is really inimical to your well-being, or in the end is delusional, it won't take you where you think you want to go, that the biggest issue is the issue of meaning always. And Jung has said, when you discover the meaning of your suffering, then you have a deep sense of purpose. then you have a deep sense of the rightness of it. We can't be free of suffering. That just comes with the human condition. We are sensitive creatures, and life hurts at times.

But, you know, he said neurosis is the flight from authentic suffering, which I think is a profound distinction. Can't avoid suffering. Because let's just say you say, well, you abandon yourself to the career track and so forth. Well, in the end, you have. have a paycheck and a gold watch when you leave the company or whatever right of exit occurs. And then he sort of asked, then it's a little late to say, I wonder if this was my path. You know, again, that was a story of told stories, the death of Yvonne Eulich back in 1885.

Ivan, John Johnson, in Russian, so to speak, so on every man kind of guy, did everything he was supposed to do. Spouse the right values, married the right person, lived in the right neighborhood, pursued the career track. And one day, there's a pain in his side that doesn't go away. And he goes through the stages of death and dying that Kubler-Ross identified, you know, of, you know, just trying to ignore it and then being angry at the interruption in his life and then depression and then depression and all kinds of searches for magical cures. and ultimately worked his way through to ask this question that had never troubled him in all of his life. Namely, I wonder if my life has been wrong.

And no one around him wants to talk about this because they're busily involved in their various agendas. It's his problem, not theirs. And his only truly profound conversation, and it's a very simple one about life and death, is with an illiterate peasant who's assigned. to his care. And then he dies. And one gets the sense that only in those last three days

did he become a deeply human creature, a profound moment in his life. Because all the rest have been playing the role. Not evil roles, well intended, but at the same time, keeping him in some way diluted that this is what his life was about. And I think to some degree, we all do that.

Yeah. Because careerism, finding the right person to marry, of course marriage is important. Of course, relationships are important. It matters with whom you spend your time and energy and what you invest in in in terms of your values. At the same time, you know, we all have an appointment with our own souls. And the question is, are we going to keep that appointment?

Mine occurred when I had that depression. Yvonne Ilich is in his dying moments. Yeah. So, you know, this is the human story. It's always been this way. But the more so today, I think, as people have gotten away from, you know, village life, agrarian life, the great rhythms of death and rebirth in nature, and live in increasingly artificially constructed realities,

such as economics, and increasingly, artificial intelligence and so forth. And, you know, this tool that we're using right now that allows us to communicate across the ocean is astonishing. Our ancestors couldn't have imagined such a thing. I have trouble imagining it. And because I'm old enough to remember when the milkman came with a horse-drawn buggy, believe it or not.

And here we are talking to each other lives. And I treasure that at the same time. You know, we increasingly live in a world that's an artificial construct, you see. And does that, it can link you to people and ideas and learning experiences, and I love to learn through the Internet. On the other hand, as we all know, it's mostly used for diversion. The chief treatment plan of modernism and a modern culture for our existential dilemmas is diversion. you know, 24-7, just turn on something, plug in, and it takes you away from whatever your

distresses are. Or buy something. Or, yeah, consumerism, exactly. When the going gets tough, the tough goes shopping, you know. Blaise Pascal recognized this. He said, our chief difficulty, this is 17th century, is being alone with ourselves in our private chambers for just an hour a day. And he said, that's why the court had to invent a jester.

Because even the king and queen with all of their abundance, if they reflect on self, on their souls, will grow miserable. Hence, we have the jester. Now, that was in the 17th century, and he recognized that tendency. Today, it's ramped up. the more so as we are disconnected from the tribal myths that when they were functioning, linked people to a bigger story, you know, our link to the gods, our link to questions like, well, what happens to us when we die, you know, what is the will of the gods for us and so forth,

that linked us to nature. How do we live in harmony with nature rather than as a predator? Thirdly, the mystery of tribal identity, who are my people? Yeah. I believe it's in the UK, and I know in Japan as well, there are cabinet-level ministries today on loneliness. And for all of this connectivity, loneliness is growing and growing and growing. And the Surgeon General of the United States said,

in a previous administration, that one of the chief causes of mental illness and physiological problems, as you were just alluding, comes from loneliness. Well, this is the problem, James, with the medical profession the way it is today, or one of the problems, is that, you know, you mentioned your own depression, okay? And we know that the diagnosis of mental health problems is rising rapidly in many countries. Now, if you take a step back, or if I take a step back and give you my perspective, I've actually always had a problem with how we deal with depression in medicine.

First of all, I'll be honest, I don't really like the label depression because you could have 10 people coming into your consultation room all who have symptoms that are consistent with a diagnosis of depression and they could have 10 completely different causes. Right? So I find a label quite reductive personally And once you label someone, that can often become their identity, and then once it's their identity, it can be very hard sometimes to break out of that.

So instead of calling it depression, for me, it was always like, well, what's going on? Why is this person showing these symptoms? Have they moved away from their family and friends for a job in the city, and they're lonely? Are they doing a job that they can't stand so they feel empty inside? You know, are they not getting out enough in nature and eating well and they're just stuck indoors and artificial light and on screens? Maybe their symptoms are completely appropriate responses

to the inputs that are coming into their being. Like for you, you know, James, I don't know the ins and outs of your story, but from what you're saying in midlife, you had a very successful career as a tenured professor, good income, guaranteed job for life. Everyone around you saying, what a great job, but you knew inside that wasn't what was meant for you. So maybe your depression was simply your body saying, hey, James, you can't keep going like this. That's a problem here. The depression was there to alert you. And the truth is, James, I've always found that approach very, very helpful with people

because it really empowers me and empowers them to start figuring out together. well, what might be going on in your life that may be causing this? I don't think that's how most doctors are trained to look at this, unfortunately. We're trained to say, you've got depression, here's an antidepressant. And I think, well, what on earth does that teach an individual? How do they learn about their life then? What happens if this happens again 10 years? What are going to go back on that pill?

Well, what if we could teach people the life skills, the learning, so that they then, you know, have these tools to progress through life. Hence, my comment to you before that I find more and more I'm interested in psychology as opposed to what I was taught at medical school. Sure. Well, in the last few paragraphs, you've exhibited a lovely psychological attitude, and that's what's missing. part of what's happening to mainstream psychology, ironically, has been the medicalization

where you think about disease and cure or disease and treatment plan, which from time to time has its usefulness. But you're right, it's often missing the big question. But we need to distinguish depressions. There are biologically driven depression, such as bipolar, for example, and major depressive disorder. And I wouldn't rule out medication for certain individuals. I also know for the great majority of people, the antidepressant is not really addressing the issues in their life.

You just gave some good examples of the dislocation that has occurred in their world. And out of which their psyche, again, I put it this way, has withdrawn its approval and support, which is a way of saying, hey, something here within you is being violated. Why don't we pay attention to that? What is it asking of you? That's a different kind of question, which is wholly ignored in most medicine and most psychology, as a matter of fact. So there are times when there are appropriate reactive depressions. If my wife dies, I will be depressed for a while.

That's appropriate. Where all of the energy invested in that now comes rushing back and inverts. I'll carry on. in time it will lift a little bit, but that will always be. And attendant to that is, of course, appropriate sadness and sorrow and loss and grieving. So, and I'm depressed at times by the injustices of the world. I should be. I'm also angry about some of those, and I should be, you see.

But that, again, has an identifiable cause, most of which, and you are. suggesting this is again that something that wishes to live or something that wishes expression through us is being ignored, suppressed, repressed, violated in some way. Find out what that is. You know, just to ask yourself, what happened to that creative, spontaneous, bubbly little child that most of us were. How do we get civilized? You know, how do we get so much of that good juice pushed it down? The joy of learning. You know, children are busy learning. They're, you know, they can be frightened by other big people or big events, obviously, but at the same time, at heart, they're saying, hey, this is interesting. This is marvelous. This is, this is, look at this over here.

that's who we are as an animal. It's like the curious animal. And I think as long as we can give some genuine energy to pursuing what stirs our curiosity, we're going to be living a vital life, even with these peripheral so-called depressions on the side. There are things to be depressed about in this world that's quite, rational and humanitarian. But that doesn't make you a depressed person. And throwing pills at that, or simply saying, you know, here's the three or four point step here. It's ultimately delusional and doesn't work over time.

It's interesting that earlier on in our conversation, James, you mentioned that you had to learn these truths the hard way. So I guess the follow-up question is, is it possible to learn these things that even easy way. Well, I would like to think so. I don't tend to meet people who have had that privilege. And of course, maybe they don't show up for therapy. Yeah. But I think if people, I mean, look, it goes a long way to, or if the child felt reasonably safe, secure, and truly valued for itself. That's a huge advantage. That sounds so obvious, but I don't see that that often. We, you know, we have to remember who makes babies, young people, struggling with their own

issues, trying to break away from their own issues of their history and not really knowing what they're doing. And that's why sometimes grandparents or aunts and uncles can be people who are playing a more positive role in the life of the child because they've had some maturation go on. They've had some distancing. They intuitively know what that child needs, which is affirmation and support. So it would be, life would be easier. You know, it's interesting, I was being interviewed about, I want to say two years ago, maybe three now, by someone in London who said at the end of his program, we always ask people, who would you wish to speak to in history if you could talk to anyone? Well, I grew up in a town that was the home and burial place of Abraham Lincoln.

So the first thought that popped up on my inner screen was Abraham Lincoln. I wanted to show him what had happened in the world, you know, because I could imagine he'd be curious. But then I thought, and this was happening in just a few seconds, I'd like to go back and talk to myself as a 10-year-old. And say that 10-year-old, you know, it's going to be all right. Don't worry so much. Things are going to work out. A lot of things that you are curious about are you're going to find out about these things. You're going to have an interesting life. You're going to have the opportunity to travel and meet some interesting people and learn some interesting things. And you know, you're not here to please everybody, which was the message I got.

You're here to find your path and live it, and that will work best for you. In other words, what I'd want to do is affirm to that child. What you think, feel, and believe is right for you. Treat others with respect, obviously. At the same time, trust your own journey. I think that would have been revolutionary. Yeah. I wish we could say that to every child at some point. So, let's talk about parenting. Today's episode is sponsored by Vivo Barefoot.

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I've been using it most mornings for many months now, and I absolutely love it. I find it a fantastic way to start off each day, and it has really helped me feel calmer, relaxed and more present. In fact, I love this app so much that I recently decided to invest in the company and join them in their mission to get more people meditating. I believe that more people meditating will help create a more compassionate world. And as a Dalai Lama himself said,

if every eight-year-old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation. Meditation has been shown to have all kinds of benefits, reducing stress, increasing calm, improving focus, and over time has even been shown to result in positive structural changes in the brain in areas linked to memory, focus and emotional regulation. But of course, you only get those benefits if you actually do it. And that's one of the main reasons I love the way so much.

It makes it really easy to establish a meditation practice that sticks. If you don't believe me, I would encourage you to give it a try and find out for yourself. In fact, to help you do that, the way are offering my podcast listeners an incredible 30 free meditation sessions to get you started with your practice. So you can try it out and see if you like it, completely free of charge. To take advantage, all you have to do is go to thewayapp.com forward slash live more to get started and begin your journey. towards peace, calm and purpose. So let's talk about parenting, because as a father myself,

I would say that one of the biggest motivators for me to excavate my inner world and make peace with it was becoming a parent. Because I didn't want my conditionings, and I'm not blaming any. anyone for these, to be clear, my parents were amazing and did the best they could for me based upon their childhoods and their understanding of the world, right? But I also recognize for all the benefits of the way I was parented, there were some things that I would probably

choose to change for my own children. And so, you know, like many Asian immigrant families, there is a huge pressure put on us for academic achievement. And it's a little bit of a cliche, but I'm sure you've seen many clients over the years like this. You know, it is not an exaggeration to say that you're often given three career options, doctor, lawyer or engineer. And it completely makes sense when you think about your parents' lives. They've had struggle, discrimination, they've come to a new country. Of course, in their head, the way that their children don't face those struggles

is to be a straight-A student and get one of these so-called respectable jobs. But, you know, I remember from our first conversation, James, you said the... I think you said greater than 70% of doctors and lawyers who've come into your therapy room over the last 40 years

have told you that they never, ever had any calling for those professions. So, as a parent myself, one of the things I've tried my best to do is to make sure my children feel safe, secure, and that they feel that they are loved, irrespective of their achievement. From your decades of experience, for any parents listening, what would you say are the key things that we should be thinking about to increase the chances that our kids are going to live,

meaningful lives, and I guess therefore happy lives. Well, first of all, your example is a beautiful illustration of the logic that our grandparents and our parents served. There's no question. Out of their experience, they did what made sense to them, their world at that time, which is, again, depending to some degree on their environmental circumstances, rather than what's inherent to their son, you see. Now, that was inadvertent.

You know, they can love the child and still want to impose on them, whatever that template may be. And by the way, part of what we can communicate to our children is sometimes if you want to open a door, you'll have to pay your dues. Don't expect. This is about sitting around and waiting for someone to show up and give you what you want.

You may have to go earn it. So, I mean, this is not about trying to make the path easy. The path will be whatever it is. And part of what we can do is be realistic about that. But the biggest issue is most of us don't have permission to really feel what we're feeling, desire what we're desiring, and make the choices necessary to try to honor that. My parents were working class people. my father, this is before child labor laws, was pulled out of grade school, primary school, sent to work. At age 13, his life was over. He worked in a factory, the rest of his life. My mother was an orphan, and her Swedish father was killed in a coal mine. She barely knew him. They grew up in abject poverty, and their message to me was well-intended. They had felt crushed by the circumstances of life, and their message was quite different.

than yours, but it was coming out of their real experience. Don't go out there. It's just too much. Stay here. Circle the wagons and we'll try to take care of each other. And their advice was, rather than work in the factory, which was dirty and dangerous and hot, literally, and I worked there when I was going through college, shards of metal flying everywhere, building tractors and graders. Try to get a job at the telephone company, because there you can wear clean clothes. It's safe. And most of all, security,

because they've gone through the Depression. And we'll always need telephones. So that's going to be a job that's there for your lifetime, you see? And that was good advice based on their experience. And it would have killed me, right? And so something in me knew I had to leave. And I don't know that this is a heartache for me. I don't think they ever understood why,

I left. They knew I cared for them. I knew they cared for me deeply, but I had to leave. And for me, I happened to be born into a culture that allowed a poor child to go and get an education. For me, the ticket was education, as it was for you in a quite different context. And for that, I'm very grateful. So in some way, if a parent could say, in so much many words. Who you are is terrific. Who you are is what we value and love. You're here not to please us. Now, not many parents can really say that. Love becomes conditional. I want you to grow up and by and large espouse my values. This is sometimes communicated overtly, many times it's covert. I want you to grow up espousing my values.

maybe live in this neighborhood, maybe somebody that we would approve of, and have a lifestyle, maybe religious values, cultural values that are consistent. In other words, we would love to have a replication of us, right? That's the unconscious narcissism of the parent. We'd like you to become something like us, which is, of course, our issue, not you.

And can you be explicit, James, because there'll be many people listening who probably fall into that trap. What are the consequences do you believe on that child if that's the messaging they get? Well, the consequences are a huge burden. Either I succumb to that, and most children do, or if I break away from that, there's a significant price, up to and including alienation from those parents.

you see and I mean I've known people who well for example if you're young and gay many parents have said you're not welcome in our house well this is something that's innate in their nature and you're saying your soul doesn't matter to us you have to conform to our cultural values

and their limitations or let's say you marry outside your religion see these defining bonds have diminished somewhat over the last few generations, which is a good thing. For example, my parents and certainly my grandparents were hugely governed by gender role expectations. Right there is an example. If you're a man, this is what you're supposed to do and be, and you step outside of that, there's going to be a price for that ridicule or shunning of some kind. If you're a woman, this is your role.

And that's totally constrictive. Now, we've challenged those definitions. Those are cultural contrivances. They are cultural constructs. And we've deconstructed some of them, but they linger. Yeah. And so it's the conditionality that the child has to face. In other words, if I want your love and support, parent,

I have to meet your conditions, or I have to spend my life struggling against them. Every child needs to hear, and more than once, who you are is terrific. You're not here to please me. I'm addressing that issue in my life, child. Know that I always have an opinion. You want my opinion, you know, I just ask. You'll get my opinion.

But you're not here to agree with it. You're going to be cared for regardless. You always have a home here, someone who cares and loves you, but you're here to live your own journey. Sounds so simple. Parents tend not to be able to give that to the child when they don't have it themselves. Only when you've been able to find your path,

can you really see the importance of that freedom for your own child. Or as you've said before, your relationship with others can only ever be as good as your relationship with yourself. Absolutely, absolutely, yes. And then there's this wider point for me. me, James, which I was thinking about this morning, if you or me were born in a different country, right? Maybe I was born in Ethiopia and my parents were farmers. My viewpoint of the world,

my belief system about who I am, what I need to do, what constitutes a meaningful life, will be, of course, influenced by that environment. So when we think about our psyche, and what is our psyche calling us to do, asking us to do, surely to a certain degree, my life of meaning is going to be dependent on where I live and where I was brought up. Absolutely. Now, that's why I make the distinction between the self, capital S, which is that sort of the driving energy that is seeking its expression in the world, and it's a verb, again, it's the self is seeking something. It's solving. It's not an entity.

It's an energy system. And our sense of self. So if you're born in Ethiopia in an agrarian society, your sense of self is going to be quite different. Now, the question is, to what degree does the sense of self, the cultural message, line up with the interior reality of the person? So could it be, James, that let's say the essence, of my psyche could be, I don't know, creativity or curiosity or, you know, looking to seek

answers to important questions. And that essence can be lived here in my job, here in the UK, and what I do, now let's say on this podcast, I get to express those things each week on this show. but let's say I was brought up in Ethiopia. You're basically saying the essence of who I am would still be the same, but perhaps I would express that essence in a different way. The self is still the same no matter where you're born. It's just how do you express that self? Is that what you're saying?

That's correct, but I have to add another element to that. it may well be that if you're born to that agrarian village in Ethiopia, maybe in another century, where these other pathways are close to you, they don't even exist, there would be a terrible deformation to your soul. Something would always mourn within. Something would always be full of yearning within. And maybe you would never have any clue as to what that was about. That's more likely the case for most people. So therefore, is a life of meaning, in many ways a privileged thing to think about?

Do we need to live a certain quality of life and have certain avenues open to us before we can possibly think about that? Well, it's being thought about in our bodies and our psyches regardless. And I would never want to forget that or denigrate that. I'm just saying what happens to the soul when the social conditions or the psychological conditions or the political conditions suppress that individual. You know, that's why I was saying gender roles were good examples of people's understandings. And it gave them a certain security and it gave them marching orders. So there was a certain cohesion to that society, but at what price to the individual talents and yearnings of women and men along the way? So, you know, in Thomas Gray's poem on the graveyard, you know, there's some village Milton who never, never even got to go to school.

My father was one of them. He wanted to be a physician and never was allowed to finish the eighth grade, eighth form. And his life, as he understood it, was over at 13. And he never complained. But I know. I grieve that. And I think about it all the time. And I think of the privilege I had that he didn't have.

And so many are the souls that were extinguished or crushed or at least profoundly constrained. Yeah. conditions of the world around it. Yeah, so maybe that's the job of our time. Maybe we can look back and go, well, listen, the soul's calling is always there, but many of our ancestors have lived in times and environments

where they were unable to express their soul's calling. But perhaps the task that lies before all of us in the 21st century is, can we evolve? Can we evolve humanity so that more and more of us can, first of all, listen to the voice of our souls and then try and express that meaning in our lives? Because you mentioned your dad. I think about my dad's death a lot. You know, dad's work basically ended up killing him because he slept for three nights a week for 30 years. He did two jobs basically. A day job. and he'd come home and he'd work all night. And I don't know if he enjoyed it. If he was alive today, I'd ask him, you know, Dad, was it worth it? And I don't know. Part of me is like, no, I don't think he was living a life of meaning in some ways. But in other ways he was, right?

Because my dad's main focus in life was to provide for his family back home in India and to give me and my brother the best start in life that he could. So you can kind of look at meaning through multiple different lenses, can't you? Oh, absolutely. Yes. And again, our lives are quite different, but very parallel. My father would have said, you know, to be a man in my time is to support your family at all costs. Live your life. Are you kidding? I don't have an opportunity to do that. I'm here to take care of everybody. And he did without complaint. And I admire. And I admire. him for that. There's something to that code that gave a sense of purpose. I also know it was a huge cost to him. That is what I grieve. I appreciate his loyalty and love and I cherish it. I also

grieve the loss of his own journey. Both are true. Absolutely. Yeah. In your latest book, there's a beautiful section called asking questions that matter. And in that section, you write, the path of personal growth and development is not found so much in finding the answers which we all certainly wish for as youths because the answers we do find at best serve only for a little while or are someone else's answers.

Life is forever evolving and yesterday's truth is tomorrow's prison. I really love that. I love this idea that you focus on people asking questions instead of giving them the answers. So, let's say James, as someone who's listening to our conversation, who is in midlife, let's say they're in their 40s, and they have realized throughout this conversation

that they're in the wrong career. Maybe it's one of those doctors or lawyers who end up in your therapy room. They're like, I'm here, I've got used to earning this amount, and that's what pays for the mortgage, and my lifestyle, but the truth is my soul feels empty. And so I compensate for that lack of meaning by getting drunk on Friday and Saturday nights. Or some version of that. What kinds of questions could that person ask themselves to start changing things?

Sure. And you're right. The moment you start probing, then they'll say, but, you know, I've got the kids two the orthodontic braces. Well, I've got to pay off the mortgage. All of which are factual. But that's, again, binding us to the choices that we made at an earlier stage of our journey. You see, that's the self-imprisonment that we all walk into.

The single most important thing I learned in my years of analysis in Zurich, and I've learned it through many repetitions, is what you've become is now your chief obstacle. and what we've become is this provisional personality operating in the world as best we can, given the information we have, the pressures we feel, the context in which we find ourselves, and we do the best we can, you know, but something inside knows better. So you're right, the moment you start probing those questions, then all of the good reasons not to make any changes. And then you're in a position of Yvonne.

Illish. Okay, well, on your deathbed, will you look back on this stage and say, well, I could have made some changes there, but I didn't, did I? And what's the price of that? So I would ask questions about, you know, what fired your imagination as a child? Has that totally gone away, or is it something that still speaks to you? what do you find spontaneously energizing to you? And many times it will be, I mean, I'll give you a quick example. Many people I know have found through music a deep calling. And it doesn't mean they have to be musicians,

although in some cases they learn the guitar or the piano or something like that. Or people who say, you know, I always wondered if I could write something. Well, you know, writers are people who write. Don't write something. Don't, you know, shackle yourself saying, well, it has to be publishable. Yeah. Well, publishing is driven mostly by economics these days, not quality. And write because something in you wants your attention. You don't know what you think, feel, and believe until you start writing about it. And somehow out of that dialogue, something emerges. That's one of the reasons I keep writing is it's a form of self-discovery.

It's a form of developing. Sometimes I look back on something I think, oh, that's interesting. And it's to realize it's my own writing. It's like, where did that come from? I don't know, but there was something in there that was responding to this in a deeper way. So in a way, it means recovering a sense of the depth of your own journey in a new way. Yeah. Just to sort of respond to your music point that you just mentioned, I can remember a patient of mine a few years ago who was a doctor actually and was burning out in their 40s.

and very much, you know, to cut the story short, it wasn't their calling, but they felt trapped that, well, this is my life, you know, I can't not work because we depend on my income for the mortgage, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember chatting to him saying, well, okay, well, what else did you used to like? You know, you guys, well, I've always, I love music. I love being in a band when I was at school, but, you know, part of me thinks I could have been a musician, right? And I remember, and it deeply resonates with me because I'm a very keen musician.

And I remember saying to him, I said, well, maybe you don't need to quit your job. Maybe you just need to start playing your music again. And over the next few months, they got back in touch of the music. They joined a local band, and he would then perform, I think maybe once a month at the weekends they would perform. And that's all he needed to do to almost rebalancing. Sure, medicine wasn't the right job for him, but just by getting enough music in in other parts of his life,

it seemed to make his job as a doctor much more tolerable. What's your take on that? Do you see that quite a lot as being a sort of halfway house where people can get that life of meaning without quitting their jobs? Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, I know many examples of that And it's not necessarily, if people say, well, tell me about this meaning thing.

How do I find it? Well, you know, as far I said, just move to Brighton and it'll all be there for you, right? That's not the point. It's about various pieces of your life, maybe that need to be moved about on the chessboard of your life. And, you know, maybe include some things that, such as what we were illustrating, is that are missing in your life, that feed the spirit. Because in some way, the cash account of the spirit is being drained on a daily basis. What replenishes it?

Yeah. You know, what spiritual cash, so to speak, comes back into the account. And many times people, because there's going to be routinization, there's going to be institutional values that legitimately have to be served, that there are bills to be paid. That's part of the reality. I shouldn't want anybody watching or listening today to think we're being. idealistic. We're being utterly realistic, you know. You pay a price if you live in violation of what is most deeply true inside of you. You know that intuitively. You may be afraid of looking at that.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to drop all here and move to Madrid or Berlin or whatever. It means you need to take seriously the valuing of those aspects of your personality that have been left on the roadside behind, possibly necessarily so, in terms of certain developments that you had to attend. But then, again, there is a price. You wouldn't say, well, you know, let's get rid of these fingers, or I can get rid of my left leg, you know,

because I haven't been using it that much. Well, right, you are a whole person. We never achieve spiritual and psychological wholeness, but in some way that's the goal. And that's never going to be one, this because there's always this over here that is also calling for our attention. A good example of that is the balance between privacy and being engaged in your society or your relationships. You know, too much of one side will diminish the other.

What would you say in your multiple decades of practice has changed the most? That's one question. And the second question is what have you found to be the most helpful tools, or some of the most helpful tools, that people can use to better understand themselves and get a better sense of what they should be doing with their lives? First of all, in my relationship to the client, when I began, I was, shall I say, trying to be too helpful,

making too many suggestions. what I've since discovered, along with colleagues, that I'm really there to pay attention, to listen, to contain, to hold, and allow the conversation to grow and develop. I think my awareness of the mystery of the process has grown, and again, what is right for that person needs to emerge. And that's quite different than the notion that the therapist has somehow answers for what ails a person.

And then the various tools of dream work, of journaling and that sort of thing, all are designed to evoke a more respectful conversation with the other. You know, the word therapy means to listen or pay attention to from the Greek. So it's like, and psyche, of course, a soul. So it's like listening or paying attention to the soul. Yeah. You go about doing that. Well, there are venerable techniques that are age old that whereby people have engaged in that kind of conversations.

And for me, it happens in our conversations. It happens in my client's conversations. It happens when I write. It happens when I dream. You know, Yates said once, The world is full of wondrous things waiting for our senses to mature enough to be able to discern them. So this is about a discernment process over time. The psyche is always speaking to us, and the question is, are we listening and what is it trying to say to us?

And then can you mobilize enough insight and courage to address what that means in the concrete details of your life? Yeah, James, I love that. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation like I did our first one. And for people who want to stay in touch with you or I guess go deeper into your work, you do have 22 books out there. Are there a couple you would direct them to start on their James Hollis journey? Well, that's a tough choice. If they're in midlife throws, you know, the finding meaning in the second half of life, which is the publisher, title, not mine. And if they're in the middle of some difficult times right now, maybe swamp lands of the soul. And if they're dealing with relationship issues, if you can bear handling it, look at the Eden Project, which calls us back to a personal accountability and so forth.

James, thank you so much for coming back on. And yeah, we'll talk again soon, I'm sure. Thank you very much for the conversation. I've enjoyed both of them as well. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember when you teach someone, it only helps them. It also helps you learn and retain the information. Now before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I'd be consuming and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many, if you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign it

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