Good Life Project - Glennon Doyle | Untamed

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

Glennon Doyle is the author of New York Times bestselling memoirs Love Warrior and Carry On, Warrior, and the powerful new book, Untamed. An activist and voice for social change, she is also the founder and president of Together Rising, an all-women led nonprofit organization that has revolutionized grassroots philanthropy – raising over $20 Million for women, families and children in crisis.Glennon originally appeared on the show in 2016, exploring her feelings about faith, family, public and private, art and service, love and leading. Glennon's wife, soccer legend and activist, Abby Wambach, also appeared on the show last year where we explored her powerful journey, along with many of the deeper motivations, struggles, moments of awakening, defining stories and so much more. You can find Glennon Doyle at: Website | Instagram-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.Coaches, Counselors, HR pros, Advisors, Leaders, & helping professionals - Become “Sparketype® Certified!” Learn how to tap the power of the Sparektypes to help others come alive in work and life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Glennon Doyle, author, activist, wife, mom, and founder of grassroots philanthropic movement and organization, Together Rising. So Glennon was first in our studio a little over three years ago when her book, Love Warrior, launched. And toward the end of that conversation, she shared something that I would learn later was completely unplanned. The marriage that she had written about in Love Warrior had come to an end. And what she shared in the studio was that she was in a new relationship, one that she had planned to keep private as she sort of navigated its becoming. Glennon had fallen in love with soccer legend and amazing human Abby Wambach. They would eventually get married and learn, alongside Glennon's ex Craig, how to really redefine family in a more expansive, inclusive, and dynamic way. And Abby shared her experience of this when she sat down with me in the studio last year.

In today's conversation, with the release of Glennon's beautiful and moving new memoir, Untamed. We learn more of the full story, the hard parts, the profound awakenings, the stories, the reframes, and the sense of liberation that comes when you stop living into the expectations of others and step into a deeper, more intrinsic truth. Is it easy? No. And Glennon, she makes that crystal clear in our conversation, but is it powerful? Is it valuable and ultimately necessary to live the life you want to live? Undoubtedly so. So excited to introduce and share this wide ranging, deep and resonant conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. We were just talking before we stepped into the room. There's this kind of interesting sort of relationship between me, you and Abby, your wife. Last time you were hanging

out in the studio, I feel like so much has changed in your world, in the world, because it was probably about three and a half years ago, something like that. And you came in, you were touring for Love Warrior, and there was a part of your story that was public. And then towards the end of our conversation, we started talking about, okay, so there's actually another relationship and you shared, not planned, that there was another relationship that you're in, but you didn't want to go any further. You're like, it's kind of mine from that point forward. And then last year, I guess about a year ago, Abby came in and we somehow ended up talking about that moment too. And she was like, and she said, you know, she said, I have listened to that like small segment over and over and over because it was, she's like, Glennon didn't use my name, but it was the first public acknowledgement

that I existed in her life. And it meant, and it was amazing. And now we're sitting here today. I know. I remember walking out of this room after having shared that. And you said something that made me share that. I don't know. You said you just look lighter or full of light or something. I don't know. You just said something that made me, I would, you know, when you're in love and you're just dying to share it, just

dying to, and I felt safe here. And I just remember walking out of this interview and calling her right away. I did call her right away and I said, oh my God, I just said it. I just said it. And yeah, so much has happened since then. Yeah. It's amazing. When you called her right away after that, what was her, do you remember what she said to you? Oh, she was so excited. I mean, just so excited. I mean, we just, you know, we, we, we had to share in layers because, um, because so many other people were involved in our, in our children and our family was still getting used to things. And, you know, when love is new, I kept thinking of it as like, it's just small and

growing. You know, it's just like a little sapling right now and back then. And sometimes after you share publicly and everyone has their opinions and feelings, it can feel like a storm. And I just remember thinking, I need to let this thing grow for a while before we invite the storm in. But, you know, we had lots of reminders that people are really good. Yeah. Which is really nice when that happens, because it doesn't always happen. Well, the other stuff happened too. Yeah. You know, it's just, you know, most of the people were, you just have to, you really have to decide who you care, like whose opinions you care about, right?

The people whose opinions I cared about were wonderful. Yeah. And there were these sort of like multiple layers, like you were just saying, because there's the relationship between you and Craig, your ex now, you and Abby, you and your kids, you and your extended family, and then you and your public. That's complicated. And to try and, for somebody who spends a lot of time living in their head, which it seems like you do. All the time. All my time. I got the smile on your face. It's just like, yes. My favorite place. To sort of think about, I mean, were you kind of thinking about like, okay, is there a way to do that what is true and beautiful for us, that what we want, is necessarily bad for our people.

That what we want, our deepest desires, and what our people, our family, our children need from us are mutually exclusive. And I just think that's an old idea. And I don't, having personally gone through what I've just gone through in terms of telling, you know, reshaping our family and dealing with my parents and dealing with all the extended friends and the public, I just really don't believe that in the end that there's any such thing as one-way liberation. You know, I think once you free yourself, the beautiful thing is that over time you kind of free everyone around you to also embrace their truest selves. And I've seen that. I've seen that in my family. I've seen it in Craig. I've seen it in our kids. And that doesn't mean that it was easy. I mean, it was terrible. It was awful. Like anybody who's dealt

with a divorce is brutal, brutal for kids. And it was brutal for my kids. But after all has settled, I don't think that anybody in my family would say that they could imagine a more beautiful family than we have right now. I mean, it's complicated and messy and busy, but half the time Abby and Craig and I look at each other and say, how the hell does anyone do this parenting thing with only two parents? I don't know anymore. So yeah, I did kind of have this knowing the whole way through that if I did things steadily and carefully and with as much honor and honesty as humanly possible, that all would shake out in the end that all would feel that if I did what was true and beautiful for me, that eventually that would be what was true and beautiful for my kids and for Craig. I mean, Craig sent, gave me a card recently and it was so beautiful. It was a birthday card,

I think. And it just said, thank you for breaking all of our hearts. I'm guessing that wasn't sort of like an off the shelf card. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He wrote that. I'm sure it said like happy weather's day or whatever, but he wrote that and you know, what he meant was it sucked and it was right for all of us. Yeah. I know. Um, Abby actually first brought this up to me and then you wrote about it in your new book untamed. because this was it sort of like this complex thing um there was a moment where i guess craig i don't know whether it was specific conversation but he made it clear to to the kids sort of like that it's okay to love abby

and i remember abby shared with me she's like that was maybe the single greatest gift that he had given her. And it also had to have been so, on the one hand, incredibly liberating and powerful, but also really hard. Absolutely. So egoless. Yeah. And it's something that you write about, you know, as Craig has somebody who's in his life now also, sort of like navigating these feelings back and forth so that everybody feels like they have permission to love who they want to love and feel the way they want to feel. And you get the feeling that it is so much work, but it's so worth it. And it's also absolutely not the norm. No, it's not. And I think it's why one of the themes in Untamed, which I'm obsessed

with lately, which I feel like we touched on a little bit in our first podcast, was this idea of how do we create communities of human beings that have less of a pack mentality, that have less of a mentality where you toe the line of this group or you're out, right? I mean, that tribal way of thinking, we do it in our families. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I heard, you know, the worst thing you can do for your kids is to give them a broken family, right? And that means to divorce, right? That was in my growing up, my taming, that was like the ultimate failure. But, you know, when I stopped long enough to examine that belief that was planted in me, I started thinking, wait, like I know a lot of families whose parents are still married,

who are in their original structure and seem very broken, right? And I know a lot of families whose original structure has changed and shifted and are vibrant and whole and loving. And so I started thinking, wait, for me, the definition of a broken family is any family in which the people inside have to kind of break themselves into pieces to fit, right? And a whole family is any family, regardless of structure, in which all the people in it get to come to the family table and bring their whole selves and grow and change and not tow the family line and not fit into some, you know, cage that the family has decided its members must contort themselves to fit in and still belong, right? And so I think about that. If we can do that in our families, I mean, we are in a place right now in the world

where this way of thinking, this tribal way of thinking, this idea that we all have to toe the line of the pack or we will lose the protection of the pack is why we are where we are, right? It's why like Congress can't, you know, people are giving up their integrity to toe the party lines. It's why people of faith are not speaking up in institutions, even when people are getting hurt. It's why employees of companies are allowing, you know, world ending practices inside their companies. So it's just like, it's the way it makes sense because it's the way we used to survive, right? Like the evolutionary idea is like, you must toe the line of the pack because you need the protection of the pack. That's how we survived. But it feels like we're in a moment now where the survival of our families,

of our nation, of our planet is going to be resisting that urge, right? It's going to be to stop towing the line of the pack and to actually return to our full humanity and create families and create communities where people don't have to abandon their integrity to get belonging. And so that's what we're trying to do in our family. I mean, whoever, it's kind of like letting go of this idea of, I will have these expectations for these people and this structure and everyone must fit my expectations. And instead being like, I have these people, I have these human beings, right? I've got Craig, I've got Abby, I've got myself, I've got Chase, I've got Tish, I've got Emma. And we're going to just keep adjusting our expectations, our ideals, our shape, our structure so that every single one of these human beings all throughout our life together feels free, right? And held. Yeah. I mean, part of that also, I guess it is necessarily,

it's like the Buddhist idea of holding it lightly, you know, because you can't, you can't strive to say, okay, we've got it dialed in. Now let's just try and keep it exactly where it is because it feels good. It's sort of like, okay, so let's just create a container where everybody can continue to evolve. Everybody can become who they need to become, do what they need to do to certainly be their true selves and create enough safety and trust and openness so that people feel comfortable doing that and knowing that you're not going to get kicked out for doing that. Absolutely. It's not rigid. The second it's rigid, the second you think you have solid ground when it comes to human

beings. You're done. You're done. It has to be like, it's like a school of fish or like, or like liquid, you know, it's just this, you have to, you have to go with the beingness of it. We're talking about human beings and they're going to constantly shift and, and change. And, you know, I think about it all the times in terms of my sexuality, people are always like, what are you? Like, I don't know. I think we might in terms of faith and religion, what are you?

I just, I don't know. I feel deeply that we're getting beyond that, you know, that we're talking about when we talk about faith or we talk about sexuality, we're talking about energies. We're talking about forces, you know, that are greater than we are and we're, that are fluid and constantly moving and we're trying to contain them in these little teeny categories, right? So, so I don't know. I just feel like we just have to have some more faith in the beingness and the ever-changingness of people and just realize that we're the water. We're not the glass. Yeah. And that freaks us out. Freaks us out. Because we want to lock down. Like we get, we think about the future,

not being certain, at least on some baseline level, like not being able to touch stone in the areas that matter most to us and be able to identify this is what it feels like, this is what it looks like. And I'm always going to know that this is what it feels like and looks like. Forgetting the fact that that is impossible and will always be impossible. But I feel like we're so driven, we yearn for it so deeply that we create so much suffering in our lives and then in the lives of those who we seek to lock down to make us feel better. That's right. It's just trying to freeze. You know, but I think that we do need security. You know, we are people who, you know, we want to be free. We want to be

held. We want to be free. We want to be held. We want to be free. So there's no, you know, there's no full, full freedom down here. There's no, we're always going to need each other. But I do feel that we are capable of moving past the rigid cages we put in people so that they can earn their belonging, right? I mean, you know, I have so many friends who in their heart of hearts, in their inner self, in their wild self, right? So like in the book, I would say that we have like a wild self and a tamed self. And the tamed self is the self that we put on the outside. We perform certain roles, certain identities so that we can stay in the pack, right? I have so many friends who are in religious groups, in religious packs, who tell me they

don't believe half the crap that's being spewed by the zookeepers of that particular faith. But they don't speak up. And the reason they don't speak up is because the second they, they step out of line, they just get skewered. You know, the idea of, of this shaming that comes from the pack when you dare to, um, to admit what you feel or, you know, or imagine. It's different than what the... That is, I think, what we can move away from. I think that we are always going to need each other. We're always going to need groups, but we might be able to figure out a way to create communities where people don't have to lose their integrity to belong.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's sort of like what mutual friend of both of ours, Brene Brown, sort of speaks about when the distinction between fitting in and belonging. Like we think we have to change ourselves to be accepted by the group. And what's interesting is, because I don't think it's that clean. To me, it's, we all do need to belong to something. Like there is a primal need. And like you said, this has been in us for generations and generations and generations, probably originally because it was a survival instinct, but it's still there. And there's plenty of research that shows that we suffer mightily when we don't feel like we belong. So I feel like there's this fine line that we dance between participating in a group

or a community or a culture on a level that lets us feel like we truly are seen and heard and accepted and embraced for who we are, yet also surrendering just enough of identity or autonomy or something so that we feel like we are part of something bigger than us at the same time. And it's really delicate dance. It's like you said, there is no absolute freedom. I feel kind of similar, like there's this dance between freedom and belonging that we're constantly trying to figure out, like, where is my place here? I mean, it's interesting that you said identity. Do you think that's, I think one of the things that I would love to get away from is this idea that your identity determines your pack.

Yeah. Tell me more. Well, I am a, you know, we're born, right? We're born and we have these potentials for individual selves, right? We've got this inner individual innate self. And then, and then we start our social programming comes. And what happens is that we are given all of these identities. You are a girl, you are straight, you are a Christian, you are an American, you are a Doyle, right? And so these identities then lead us to our pack, right? The identity, I'm a girl. And so in order to be accepted and seen and belong in this group called girl, I have to do

these things, right? I have to stay pretty. I have to stay small. I have to not be too ambitious. I have to not be angry. I have to be objectified, all these things. I'm a Christian. I mean, that means different things for everybody, right? Every person who wears that label tells me that it means something different to them. But I just think that if we could figure out a way to have groups where your belonging did not depend on your identity, right? I'm losing faith in that idea that I can tell you exactly who and what I am anymore. That's why I ended the book with the I am, I am, I am, right? Because, I mean, I started thinking about this in terms of sexuality. When I first told the world about me and Abby, anyone asked me for months, every interview, everything was,

what are you? What are you? And all I can tell you is I don't know. I didn't look at Abby when she walked into that room and think, I'm gay. I just looked at Abby and thought, oh, there's my person. Right? It wasn't an identity thing. So I don't know. I just think that one of the things that happens is we have this idea that people tell us who we are. And then we have to perform those rules out. Right? And that fixed identities lead to fixed pack, fixed herd of

people. And then that leads to fixed ideology. And then that leads to war. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I feel like the identity side of it is something that maybe other people want from us more than we need for ourselves to flourish. Because the brain wants to file us somehow. It makes it easier to understand how to relate to you. But as you so eloquently have said and have written, easy doesn't necessarily mean right. It doesn't necessarily mean that's the path that's going to like let everybody be who they need to be and the world become what it needs to become. Yeah. And it also keeps us from, I should speak for myself. What I think that giving us certain identities does is it keeps us from figuring out who we truly are on the inside, because all that's happening when we, when you're getting

an identity. So you're a girl, you're a Christian, you're a Doyle, you're an American, what comes along with those are all of the expectations that a girl, a good girl does, that a good American does, that a good Doyle does, that a good Christian does. So no longer, so very early in life, no longer am I trying to figure out who I am. I'm just trying to match my behavior, my beliefs, my words, who I am to these expectations that somebody else has put out for me, which is why. And then over time, we just forget. We just think we are this performance, right? I mean, that's why that moment when I first saw Abby and she walked into a room and my entire being just said, there she is. I mean, at first I thought those words were coming from me, coming to me

from on high. And it took me a long time to figure out, oh, that was hearing from the self that was beneath all of these layers of expectations that i've been performing and not living right and so that was a really cool experience for me because the reason i knew that i was finally hearing from my true self is that i wanted abby and it was the first time i had wanted anyone beyond who i'd been expected to want. And I loved her and it was the first time I loved anyone beyond the people I'd been conditioned to love. Right? So that's when I figured out, oh, what else in my life is not true to me at all? It's just shit I've been performing. What about my faith has nothing to do with my true relationship with the divine? It's just an act of what people of faith are supposed to do based on what people told me, right?

How much of my gender, how much of my womanhood is just an act that I'm performing because somebody told me that this is what a girl looks like. How much of my sexuality, how much of my mothering. I mean, Jesus, I remember thinking, I can't, I can't do this. I can't follow my heart. I can't be true to myself in this love for Abby because I'm a mother. You know, I'm a mother. Like mothers are martyrs.

Mothers bury themselves. Mothers deny their feelings and their dreams and their desires because that is what is best for their children, right? That's what I was trained to believe. And then one day in the middle of all of this, I was looking at my little girl and she was looking in the mirror and she looked past the mirror at me and she said, mommy, can I do my hair like yours? And something about the way she said that made me realize, oh my God, every time this little girl looks at me, she is asking

me a question about life. She's, she's looking at me and she's thinking, mommy, how do I do my hair? Mommy, how does a woman love and be hair? Mommy, how does a woman love and be loved? Mommy, how does a woman live? And I realized, oh my God, I am staying in this marriage for her, but would I want this marriage for her? Which is when I realized, oh my God, this idea that I have been sold that mothers are martyrs is horseshit, right? It's a false belief that's been planted beneath me to control me. What a burden for children of martyr mothers to bear, to be the reason that their mother stopped living, right? To know that one day if they become parents, they too will have to die for their children because children will only allow themselves

to live as fully as their parents do, which is why young said that the greatest burden that a child can carry is the unlived life of a parent right so that's when i realized oh this is just this this bullshit mother thing i've been doing just hiding myself i'm just performing i'm performing the act of the, the identity of motherhood that patriarchy passed down to me, right? I'm just playing it out and it's not what's best for me. And it's not what's best for my daughter because the call of motherhood is not slowly die for your children and call that love. The call of motherhood is to show your children how to bravely live, right? Until the day you die, right? So the call of motherhood is not martyrdom, it's modeldom. It's like parents cannot settle for anything less

true or beautiful than what they would want for their children because their children are looking at them saying, what do I have permission to want and to experience in my life, right? So that's when I figured out my kid doesn't need me to save her. My kid needs to watch her mother save herself. So I don't know. I just think, I guess when I say that I think it's important to throw out the identity stuff, maybe that's not what I mean. I think it's important to examine the ideals and expectations that were given to us along

with our identities, right? We need to do what Whitman suggested, which is re-examine everything we've been taught in a book or in church or in school and dismiss whatever insults our own soul, right? We need to plant our own beliefs about what a mother is, about what a wife is, what a woman is, what a person of faith is, what sexuality is beneath us, so that our root beliefs aren't keeping us from growing as strong and bold as we were born to be. Yeah. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. One of those beliefs also, which seems like a touchdown around the same time you were grappling with all of this is that you can break a child's heart without breaking the child which is something that you write which i i think when that switch gets flipped at the same time you're sort of like awakening to all these other things about you and the way that it's important to live your own life. And also that the idea that the primary role of a parent is, it's not to keep your kid safe from everything, but to teach them that it's okay to take risks, that it's okay to go out and risk who you are going public with that. And it's

bravery over safety, right? But that's not easy because I think as parents, I think a lot of us, like the first fear that we all have is like, dear God, let my kid not be hurt. Like I just want to keep them safe. I'm sure they can take risks up to a point. Right. Take risks, but only while I'm watching. Right, right. Exactly. Only when they're wearing their shin guards. Yeah, exactly.

You know, like social risk up to a point, like physical risk up to a point, emotional risk up to a point. And yet it's the skills and the ability and the mindset that will let them push past that point, feel the pain, and then understand how to process it. That turns them into everything that they yearn to become. And you deeper than that really hope that they become. That's right. And I think, I think the hard part of becoming, I mean, to be fair, this is what our parenting generation, the memo we got, right. It was just don't let anything ever happen to your child. Like when you bring your baby home, your life ends and your job is to make sure that your baby's life never

begins. That's the memo we got. So we can all be forgiven for being a little helicopter-y for a while. But I think that what it takes for a parent to actually trust pain, to let their kids have pain, is to become an adult who trusts pain in your own life, right? I think I, as a recovering addict, spent most of my life avoiding pain at all costs, right? So man, do I get that. And it took getting sober and realizing that staying with myself, not abandoning myself by numbing out, even in the most painful parts of life, is what made my life magic. Hands down, that's it. I mean, for me, every bit of it comes back to sobriety. And sobriety to me is just a way of life that is a refusal to abandon yourself ever at all, right? So no matter how bad it gets, you just

trust that whatever is breaking you is making you and that you will survive. And I think that it just takes a while to get to that point where you start to trust the process of pain. And once you do trust it in your own life, you can let your kids have it. But it's not easy. It's definitely not easy for me. I mean, nothing hurts worse than watching your kids in pain. But, you know, I'll never forget. I was doing this speaking event a while back and a woman stood up and she was crying and she said, Glennon, my little boy is in so much pain. Our family's crumbling

and I can't fix it. And every day I just look at my little boy and I think I had one job to protect him from this pain and I couldn't do it. And I feel like such a failure. And all the other parents and it was just so interesting. Cause I said, okay, tell me your name. And she said, Joni or something. I said, okay, Joni, can you just give me three words that you would use to describe the kind of man you're trying to raise? And she said, I want him to be wise and I want him to be kind and I want him to be resilient. And I said, okay, then please tell me what is it in a human life that creates wisdom and resilience and kindness? It's pain.

That's it, right? Like it's, it's not, not having anything to overcome. It's overcoming and overcoming and overcoming and overcoming. And so I think that because of the terrible memo our parenting generation got that we are protecting our children from the one thing that will allow them to become the adults we dream they'll be. Right. And so, and so brave parenting, wise parenting is about letting your children go through some fires so that they can find out that they're fireproof. Because otherwise they just become fire avoiders their whole lives. And we all know those.

Yeah. Well, I think there's such a tendency to dissociate. I think when we feel physical pain, we dissociate into our brain. When we feel psychological pain, we dissociate into our brain. When we feel psychological pain, we dissociate into our body. Like the difference being we dissociate into our mind in almost chasing distraction. We dissociate into our body, chasing dominion. We want control. And that manifests in all sorts of like bad physical stuff.

But at the end of the day, either path keeps us from what we really want, which is freedom. And it's so great if we don't allow ourselves to do that. If we don't find our way back and rather than dissociate, but associate, and then seek out the resources, the help, the support, the skills to navigate our way through it. Not only do we never get to that place where we're a step closer to freedom or a heartbeat closer to it, but to then expect our kids to find our way there when we're not willing to go there is a little delusional. So delusional. And so much of parenting is delusional.

Well, 100% agree. Right. And some of it's purposeful and I will remain in much of my delusion because it's survival. And I'm raising my hand saying, yeah, I'm not there yet. No, totally. But like we can see it from the outside. Right. And when you talk about freedom and pain, like the idea is not, I mean, we are never going to be free from pain.

I know there's theories that way. I don't believe it. I don't believe that we're ever going to. But what I have learned at 43 is that I can be free from the fear of pain, right? The paralyzing inability to go out in the world, to take risks, to love, to be seen for fear of the pain that will inevitably come. I am not delusional enough to think that I am free from that pain. I know it's coming.

It's always coming, right? It's either tomorrow or next Tuesday. It's always coming. But what I do know is after you sit in it and survive it enough times, you're just free from the fear of it. And that's just has to be good enough for me. And that's what I've seen with my kids. I mean, they went through the worst. Like for them, their family, their little family breaking up was the worst. It was the worst that they could imagine. And I watched them carry on. What else can we do? Carry on, you know, shift their expectations, be a little less idealistic, a little more street smart.

Some of that's sad. Some of that's amazing. Do you know what they are now? They're kids who aren't, you know, those people, you know, that it's like, no, the shit hasn't hit the fan for them yet. So they're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And that causes this like manic, like they aren't that anymore. And they used to be the other shoe has dropped for them and they survived and they're just braver and calmer. And I think more ready for what life will bring to them. So, you know, I don't know. I just think that we could think about pain the same way with our, with our kids.

Like it will come, it's coming and we don't have to protect them from it. You know, I feel like my job is just to hold their hand through it over and over again so that when I'm gone, they can walk through that fire themselves. Yeah. Something you referenced a couple of times is the word wild. Cause it seems like this is the other narrative that's been running through this whole window of time for you. And it's reconnecting to something primal, something essential. Use the phrase in your book, the golden ones, which if I read it right, it's sort of to describe people who are performing. Perfectly.

We're performing perfectly. Right, right. It's like, this is what the world expects of me and I'm going to be this and I'll be anointed to the golden one. It's funny, as I was reading it, I had this immediate flash in my mind of the movie, The Outsiders. And this one line where it says, stay gold, pony boy, stay gold, which was the exact opposite meaning.

Like it comes from a Robert Frost poem, which says, don't lose that like essential self that you had when you were really little. And it's interesting that there's the golden ones performing expectations, but the real gold underneath that is that true nature. Which is why the book is covered in gold, which is why I describe the knowing as liquid gold, because the God in you, the divine in you, the knowing in you, the wild, the inner self, that is gold. It's different than golden. Gold is liquid, right? Golden is frozen. It's, it's, it's, it's the essence was there and then it froze. I think that what I mean by that wild, I think the word is so beautiful. And I think when people think of wild, they think of like bad and dangerous, you know, but I think that wild is good and dangerous. It's beautiful and dangerous. And what I mean by wild is just, it's just that we're born with this self, right? And, and when we get tamed, we get tamed with through social programming. But, you know, the way you know that you're tamed, it's not complicated. It's just, you know, if you've ever been in a conversation where something

horrible or racist or misogynistic or something was said, and you feel the wild in you knowing that you should say something, and then you don't say it. That's your two selves. That's your wild self inside and your tamed self outside, right? If you have ever been in a relationship where you had needs, right? Where you had needs, where you had feelings that were bubbling up inside of you, but you don't say them on the outside, that's how you know that you have two selves, like a wild self inside and a tamed self outside that is afraid to say the thing.

So, you know, all I mean by that, by the wild safe, I don't mean something bad or something that people should be afraid of, right? I think it's, it's this truest, this true and beautiful inner self that all of us know it's beyond words. It's inside of us. It's what, it's that knowing that you get when you're still right. I don't, it doesn't matter what you call it. Like some people call it God. Some people call it intuition, spirit, source. I have a friend who calls it Sebastian, like who the hell cares, but it's this thing inside of you that, that just knows, right? And the more separate we get from that to the, to our performing self, to our tamed self, that's the distance that makes us feel lost.

You know, that's how we end up living lives of quiet desperation. That quiet desperation is the wild self inside not doing the thing that it would do if it could, but it can't, right? It thinks it can't, right? It thinks it can't. And I just, I have to believe that right now more than ever, it is time, right? For us to stop abandoning our inner selves. Like I feel like we're at a moment evolutionarily. So for so long, it was how we survived to hide that self, to stay in the pack. And now at this moment in history, I think the way we survive is to separate from the pack, right? We have to, we have to imagine a world where politicians were actually honoring their integrity instead of their party

lines, right? Imagine a world where people of faith were speaking out when abuse was happening inside of their institutions instead of towing the party line. Imagine a world in which white women were breaking from white supremacy and speaking up. Imagine a world in which men were breaking from patriarchy and speaking the truth. I think, imagine a world in which we were saving the planet by not towing corporate lines. It feels like right now there's never been a more important time for us to stop honoring the pack and stop start honoring ourselves and let the pack evolve yeah when i was reading that and just hearing you now also um it's funny my when i was a kid my mom was a dancer so i was sort of like exposed to ali and one of the people i was exposed to was Martha Graham. And over the years, I've sort of like, I'm fascinated by dancers. And so as I was reading what you're saying,

another word came to me and it was because it was a quote from Martha. So I quickly like ran to the internet and I was like, what was that again? And I pulled it up and I printed it out. And I was like, this is kind of like how it landed with me. I actually printed it out. So I kind of wanted to share it with you. So she wrote, there's a vitality, a life force and energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there's only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is,

nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even need to have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. No satisfaction, whatever, at any time. There's only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. Yeah, that lands. Right? Yeah. And I love the more alive. I mean, I'm so over the, how do we be happy? I'm trying to be happy. I'm trying to be happy. Like the self-improvement shit. I'm just so, I'm not happy is so fleeting and so ridiculous. I just,

I'm no longer asking myself what makes me happy. I'm just asking myself, do I feel alive? Do I feel alive? Is this alive? Is this person, is this relationship, is this job, is this, is it, is it, is it that vitality that you can feel inside of you that life force is this bringing me to life right because you know what sometimes when i'm really alive when i'm really in where i'm supposed to be it hurts you know it's not always but it's an aliveness you know it's like that that that thing that you're born with that she's talking about. It's just, I just think we owe it to the world. I think we owe that thing that we're born with to the world.

And when we spend our entire freaking life performing, that's the block. Yeah. And like she says, there's only one of us. I so agree with the happy thing, by the way. And I feel like a lot of, a lot of people are moving away from that too. Um, you know, I look at happiness as the snapshot and meaning is the movie. Um, and the idea of, you know, you said feel alive. Um, but before you can feel alive, you got to feel. And I almost feel like that is the bigger barrier to so many of us. We've sort of like stopped ourselves from feeling that,

but we're at a moment where I agree. I think it's so necessary. The idea of stillness is something that you talk about also and having something happen to you and then rather than just, okay, so what's my instant reaction and move on, pausing, being in this stillness and how that changes you and maybe what you do next and who you become and how you become. Yeah. I mean, I think that the stillness is everything. I don't, I don't, I don't think there's any untaming without the stillness. I don't know how you would begin to figure out who you are not and who you are until you are able to be quiet enough or long

enough to hear your own voice. I mean, every message that we get on the outside is programming us, is taming us in one way or another. That's one of the reasons why we're all obsessed with happiness, right? That's all capitalist stuff. That's people selling us stuff, right? You get on the consumer hamster. You're not depressed because life is depressing. It's because you need these new countertops, right? And then you buy the freaking countertops and then you need the jeans because you can never get enough of what you don't really need. So the thing is, if we stay plugged in constantly to all of those messages, we will never have time to go inward and feel for the gold to realize that none of those other voices are right or true, right?

I mean, for me, it took, I found, this is a little bit humiliating, but I found myself one night trying to decide what to do about my marriage and Googling. Okay. I Googled at 3am Ben and Jerry's in bed, Googling the question, what do I do if my husband is an amazing dad, but is also cheating on me? Enter. Okay. This was like a spiritual rock bottom for me. Okay. I had actually asked a conglomeration of trolls and bots what to do with my one wild and precious life, right? This is a night where I looked at that question and thought, why do I trust everyone on earth but myself? Why do I only look outward for answers, right? All I used to do was, what do I do? What should I do? What would you do? What do the experts do? What would 49 quizzes on BuzzF I do? What should I do? What would you do? What should, what do the experts do? What would 49 quizzes on Buzzfeed do? Like everything was outward, outward, outward. And it was at that

time where I realized that everyone was telling me that there was a different right thing to do. Right. So in the face of infidelity, you know, the feminists were telling me that a strong woman would leave. The Christians were telling me that a good wife would stay. The parenting experts were telling me that a good mother would use it all as a freaking learning experience, whatever. But it was awesome because I realized that, oh, if there was truly a right and a wrong or a good and a bad that was objective, all of these people wouldn't have different right and wrongs and good and bads, right? It was so awesome because I was like, oh, these right and wrongs, good and bads, should and shouldn'ts, they are not pure.

They're not from the gold. These are all culturally constructed, right? These are different tribes telling me the should and shouldn't that are the expectation of that tribe, right? They're made up. They're the barking sheepdogs that keep the herd in line. So that's when I realized, oh, I have to go inside, man. I cannot allow other people's ideas to control this one life that I have. And that's when I started promising myself that I would be

still. I think it was like 15 minutes a day in the beginning. And it was a freaking nightmare. I hated every minute of it for a good long time. It was just, I think that's why nobody does it. It's so hard. It is so hard to be left alone with your own shit for a little while. It's just, we will do anything. Like give me a phone, give me the pantry, give me anything, but this time alone. But everything that you need to know is in the stillness. I learned that over and over. Even when I don't want to know, I will avoid getting still when I'm not ready to know what the next right thing is for me because I want to keep doing the wrong thing for a while because I know it's always there waiting for me in the stillness. And it's free. It's not about freaking self-improvement. I'm so exhausted by all that shit. It's not about improvement. It's just about returning to yourself, to who you always were.

Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. If you look at modern personal development, it's about change. If you look at thousands of years old explorations of philosophy like Buddhism or a lot of Eastern thought, the Sanskrit word that is commonly used is Jivanmukti or Jivanmukti, which like deconstructs to not transformed being, but liberated being.

Because a fundamental assumption is you're not changing into something else. Like all you're doing is like, you're scraping away all the stuff that has stopped the thing, the person, the essence that's always been there from being the thing that is front and center, from being present, from being the lived expression of who you are. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm talking about. It's not becoming something different. It's getting rid of all the cages so that you can be who you were meant to be in the first place, right and wrong it's about being integrated you know having that inner self having what you what you know and what you feel and what you imagine on the outside become the words and the deeds that you do on the outside it's just integrating both into one life and the cool thing is though, is that I think it's a little bit deceptive because what

I have noticed in my life is that the more you liberate your real self, your wild self, lots of shit does change, right? It's like, it's not like, oh, it's, you just returned to yourself and then everything stays the same. Like nothing stays the same. You are just returned to yourself and then everything stays the same, like nothing stays the same. You are just returning to yourself. But the more that you liberate your real self, that self that you've been hiding out of fear, your life does transform, right? Because you're no longer acting out a self anymore and your relationships change and your job changes and your community changes because you have finally showed up as yourself. So there can be, I'm just trying to say there, there can be some scary shit that goes on.

Yeah, no doubt. It can blow up everything around you just the same way as if you like, yeah, change into something else. Yeah. Let's create, I mean, and I think that's what, isn't that why so many of us don't actually engage in any process of either liberation or transformation is because we know deep down inside that a lot of stuff is going to blow up or change. And there's stuff that we kind of want that to happen with and we're okay with that. But then there are other pockets where we're like, I don't want to rock that boat. But there's something inside of us that knows it's going to be rocked and maybe even sunk so that a new one can be built that will allow you to

sail somewhere beautiful. But still, I think that's so much of the fear. I think so many of us will dip our toes in the process. And then even if we don't know what going into it, like we get a couple of steps in and we're like, oh, so this is what's coming. Yeah. But I think you get to the point where you start to understand deeply that there is a cost either way. I agree. Like there's no, there's no getting out free.

Either you rock the boat on the outside or you abandon yourself on the inside. And over time, there's a war either way, right? There's either, you either start conflict on the outside in your relationships, in your dealings, in your community, or you start this conflict on the inside, which is this self that's slowly being ignored and slowly losing that vitality and the gold is dulling. And that's, so there's a price to pay either way. And I don't think that it has to be this, this liberation of self, this untaming. It's not, it doesn't have to be, I don't think that everyone should leave their husband and marry an Olympian. okay? I mean, I definitely think most people should, but I'm just serious. But I do think that it doesn't all need

to be blown up that way. I'm talking about like in conversations, right? I'm talking about, you know, at the dinner table, saying the thing that you think you can't say. I'm talking about sharing with your partner, like your deepest innermost needs that you're afraid to say. I'm talking about sharing with your partner, like your deepest innermost needs that you're afraid to say. I'm talking about these like little ways that we abandon ourselves over and over again. And then we look at our lives and we wonder why we don't recognize them. And that's

because we haven't brought ourselves to them, right? So it's not all about the huge changes. It's just about allowing that inner voice to speak on the outside and just seeing what happens. Yeah. It's about being brave at the end of the day. But in sometimes testing the water. And I don't think that brave is what, like, I just been thinking so much about the word brave and that word makes me a little bit annoyed sometimes because because i feel like somewhere along the line somebody posted a meme or something that said brave means being afraid and doing it anyway which is so then we were all just like okay brave means being afraid and doing it anyway right Right. We just all like adopted that as our belief, but I stopped thinking that recently. So I was, my two little girls wanted to get their

ears pierced and I took them to the freaking pagoda at the mall. And I have this youngest daughter, her name's Emma. And she just is, she's just the youngest. And I just got tired of parenting. So we call her a free spirit. That means kind of unparented, which means that she's just, she's wild. She's awesome. She just does what she wants to do. And she says what's on her mind. And she ran right up to the pagoda and jumped in the piercing chair and said let's do it and the lady looked at me i was like is this your are you her mother and i was like i'm trying to be and um and so she did it she got both her ears pierced right away she you know had a little bit of tears but she wiped them away my older daughter tish is more. She's a more cautious kid. And she watched this piercing

go down with Emma and she changed her mind. You know, she said, no, mommy, I'm not ready to do that. Actually, I changed my mind. I don't want to. And I said, are you sure? And she said, yeah. And I said, okay, go ahead and tell the lady. And Tish said, excuse me, I'm actually not going to get mine done today. And the lady looked at her and said, oh, come on, honey, be brave. Be brave like your sister. Look at your sister. She's so brave. And a couple of the other moms started saying similar things and I got so pissed. But of course, I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't put it into words in the moment until I was driving home. What I figured out is that brave is not what we've been saying brave is. Brave is not being afraid and doing it anyway. Emma was brave because she wanted to get her

ears pierced and she said she wanted to get her ears pierced and she got her damn ears pierced. Tish was brave because she didn't want to get her ears pierced. And she said she didn't want to get her ears pierced. And she didn't get her ears pierced, right? Brave. And in fact, I would suggest that Tish was even more brave than Emma in that moment because Tish's knowing was telling her something that wasn't going to get her the applause of the people on the outside, right? Her brave, her knowing was saying no when everybody

else was trying to get her to say yes. And that often requires more bravery. So I do not think that brave means being scared and doing it anyway. And I think we might want to stop teaching our kids that because it sounds cute when they're seven, but when they're 13 or 16 and they're leaving our house in the car to go to the kegger down the street, are we going to say be brave? And by that, I mean, if your instinct is telling you not to do something and you feel scared, I just want you to do it anyway. Just plow through and do it. It doesn't mean that. Brave means a brave person is a person who knows herself, who can hear her inner knowing and speaks her inner knowing on the outside, regardless of whether people are going to cheer for her decision or not. Yeah. I love that. Be true to yourself,

even when it's hard. That's right. That's right. It's kind of a reclamation of the word. Yeah. Because otherwise it's just all the crazy brave, bold people are brave and no one else is, but brave looks different all the time. It cannot be judged on the outside. Yeah. And for introverts like us, brave could be being in a room with more than two people. Thank you. Right now I feel like this is so brave of us. It's like, yes, we did it.

Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. It also feels like a kind of like a fun, interesting place for us to start to come full circle. And it ties in with something that you finish the book with. Can I ask you to read something? Yeah. Awesome. So it's a page and a half towards the very end of your book. I feel like it's probably like a nice place for us to wrap. It's the luckiest chapter. Do you need glasses or anything? No, I actually, it's funny that you said that because I'm getting there, but I think I can do it. I am there. Are you? I have them in different rooms,

readers in different rooms in my house now. Oh God. Okay. Luckies. When Abby and I first fell in love, we had hundreds of miles and a million obstacles keeping us apart. The facts laid out in front of us made a future together seem impossible. So we'd tell each other about the true and beautiful unseen order we felt pressing through our skin. Our imaginings always included each other and the water. Abby wrote this to me from the other coast one evening before she fell asleep. It's early in the morning and I'm sitting on our dock watching the sunrise. I look and see you in your pajamas, still sleepy, walking toward me, holding two mugs of coffee. We just sit there on the dock together, my back against the piling, your back against my chest, watching the fish jump and the sunrise. We have nowhere to be but together. The harder things became, the more often we'd return to that

morning Abby had imagined for us. That doc, her, me, two steaming mugs of coffee. That image became our unseen order, guiding us forward. Last week, Abby made dinner for all six of us, the kids, Craig and me. We all sat down to eat on the back porch of the home on a canal off the Gulf of Mexico that Abby and I bought together. It was a gorgeous evening, the sky all purples and oranges and the breeze steady and warm. We ate and laughed and then cleared the table together. Craig left for his Sunday evening soccer game and the kids finished the dishes and then sat down on the couch to watch a show. Honey, our bulldog, snuggled up on Emma's lap and Abby walked outside to our dock, the Doyle Melton Wom dock. I watched from inside as she

sat down with her back against a piling and looked out at the water. I poured two hot teas and walked out to join her. She looked back toward me, and by her smile, I knew she was remembering. We sat on the dock together, my back against her chest, her back against the piling, and we watched the fish jump while the sun set and the sky celebrated in deeper and deeper purples. Before we went back inside, I snapped a picture of us smiling with the sun setting behind us and later I posted it. Someone commented, you're so lucky to have each other in this life. I replied, it's true. We are terribly lucky. It is also true that we imagined this life before it existed and that we each gave up everything for the one in a million chance that we might

be able to build it together. We did not fall into this world we have now. We made it. I'll tell you this, the braver I am, the luckier I get. I love that. Me too. How does it feel reading that? It feels, I know that so much went into getting to where we are right now, but it feels like magic. It feels like, holy shit, like we did that. Like we did. It is true. It is true that you can imagine and then work beautiful things into existence, that we actually become the worlds we believe that we deserve and we show up and build. It makes me feel hopeful for not just

for my family, but for all of us. So last time you were here, I asked you this very same question, and I'm curious if and how it's changed as we sit in this container of the Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes up? Be true to yourself, is what I would say. Yeah, I believe that the freer people are, the better they are. And I believe strongly in what you read before, that each of us is here. Each of us is fresh, is brand new. We are each experiments that have never been tried before, right? We each, we're all down here asking other people for directions to places they've never been. You know, there is no map. We are all pioneers. And what I believe is that I have no answers for anybody else. The only advice I have to live a good life is to return to yourself and trust yourself.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link

in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required,

charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. and actual results will vary.