Good Life Project - Good Life Jam: Parenting Burdens & Self-Help Book Burials | Leah Smart

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Today, we’re introducing a new conversation format that we’ll be working into the mix called Good Life Jams. These sessions take on 2-3 hot topics and go deep. Today’s conversation partner is Leah Smart, a senior editor at LinkedIn, a writer and speaker, and the host of Everyday Better.The topics we’re digging into: When women earn more, the physical housework shrinks. The mental load doesn't move at all. What’s going on there? And why are self-help books crashing, while coaching is taking off? In this conversation, you'll explore:Why the most common fix for an overloaded household leaves the heaviest part completely untouchedThe question Leah's husband asked her about the word "good" that quietly reset her entire standard for running a homeWhat the data leaves out, and why the scorekeeping it invites can erode a long partnershipSelf-help book sales fell roughly 25% in a year while coaching grew about 15%, and what people are actually paying for insteadThe one thing a human can do that no book and no chatbot can, which may be the real reason the advice stopped workingBoth halves of this conversation land in the same place, which is that the discomfort you keep trying to optimize away is usually the thing worth turning toward instead.You can find Leah at: Instagram | Everyday Better with Leah Smart Substack | Episode TranscriptCheck out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So here's a wild stat. Self-help book sales dropped nearly 25% in the last year. The steepest fall of any nonfiction category while fiction and romance climbed. In the same stretch, the coaching industry grew by 15%. People quit books and hired humans and paid a lot more to do it. What is going on here? Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing? This is one of the two topics that we're taking on. in a fun new format that we'll be working into the mix that we call Good Life Jam Sessions,

where two friends take on two hot topics and try to tease out what's going on, what we're missing, and why any of us should even care. My partner in this week's jam session is Leah Smart, one of the most thoughtful voices on living and working with intention, a senior editor at LinkedIn, and host of the flagship series Every Day Better. In addition to digging into the demise of self-help books and the rise of coaching, we also look into new Reefs. research from the University of Bath that shows that when moms earn more, the physical housework goes down, but the mental load, it doesn't budge at all. What is happening here? Why should we really look into this? And what are we measuring? And maybe are we measuring the

wrong things to start with? So excited to share this first ever good life jam session with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. And this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short brief. smart. It is so awesome to be hanging out with you. We've been, like, we started as, like, professional colleagues and then we've been friends for years now. We always have these deep, fun, rich conversations about life and, like, all these different topics. So, like, I know. Let's do this on tape this time. Why not? Yeah. Love it. We have a couple of topics that we're going to dive into today that I'm really excited. I'm so excited to just get your take on these and to really unpack them. So first up, and this is, this is a topic that

thing is going to land with a lot of people. And it's a curiosity, too. A study out of the university of that says, like, with looking at over 2,000 American parents, finds that when women earn more, they do less of the physical housework, but the mental load doesn't actually decrease at all, right? So, you know, like not with more money, it doesn't change this, not with more help. It doesn't change this, not with fewer hours. It doesn't change this.

The physical workload reduces, but the mental load, the burden, it doesn't go anywhere. It stays as high as it always was, which means a typical advice, you know, to outsource and delegate everything. It doesn't really solve the problem. So the question is, what's really going on here? You know, why is nothing moving even when we make these external shifts? So let's dive into this. There's a lot to unpack here. I know. I mean, so I'm... And also, we should say, you're a new mom, too.

Yes, I'm fresh in that. I have two little babies under two. I just came back from maternity leave. I have a son and a daughter. And the first thing I actually thought, as I'm hearing you talk about this and considering what's going on for me in this moment. And of course with parenting, it feels like everything's a phase. Everything will change. I love this phrase, the mother load, which like many people have used, et cetera, but in books and podcasts and all that. But what I was trying to figure out is, like, number one, I wonder what we'd like in, like,

a perfect world to solve for in this question of, like, who's running the household. When I thought about it, I thought about, and I do outsource some things. So I thought about the reason I choose to outsource those things, going from the doing to the managing of the doing, certainly doesn't fully remove the mental load or having to consider, you know, details and logistics around it. But my argument actually is that it does reduce my mental load personally, if it all goes well. So I would say, you know, I am someone who likes to, who does like to outsource things if it allows me more energy, more time or more focus on what really matters. So even though I'm going from doing to the managing of the doing and there's still work in that, I would rather spend six hours, you know, with my. children or thinking about what I'm doing with my work or going for a run or doing yoga,

whatever it is I'm going to do. I'm sleeping at this point because my kids don't sleep, then cleaning or, you know, doing things that I believe can be outsourced and need to be outsourced. So I actually, I actually would say that it does help. Now, the other thing I've been wondering about, and I don't know, I mean, I go like kind of deep on this. I'm like, what's the, what are we aiming for? it possible to achieve it? So like, is it, is it true that, um, perhaps as a mom, because I've just

had children and my biological wiring is to nurture and take care of them that, like, I am going to lean in further because of, and like even overcompensate because of this thing that's, like, innate? Like, I don't know. I'm like, is that true or is that not true? You know, and if it is true, then what am I trying to solve? for in the different phases of my kids' lives. Yeah, I mean, that's a big open question, right? And it's going to be so individual for every person. And it's so based on our values also.

You know, it's funny. I think of oftentimes when we think about, well, like, if you are a parent and you're working really, really, really hard at the same time, out of the house, working at a job out of the house, not as a full-time parent, which is the hardest part of my client. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Bless them. You know, like, why are you doing it?

And some people will be really fortunate and blessed or I've organized your lives where they can say, well, I love what I do. We both know, you know, you've been in the career space for a long time. Like, that is far fewer people than we'd like to say. So the vast majority of people, their answer, if they're a parent or they have people looking to them, is some version of to provide for my family. But that phrase provide for can be interpreted so many different ways. For one person, provide for it means, I want to make sure that God willing, anything ever happens, like, there's money in the bank. Yeah. You know, another person, it's like, I want my kids to go to college, and I don't want them to have to take out loans.

I want to make sure that there's, like, we're investing and there's funds there so that, like, they're good. Another person, if you ask them, what does it mean to, like, provide for your family? It would be, like, just to be physically and emotionally present in their lives. Like, we'll figure out all the rest. really ambiguous, I think this is kind of what you're speaking to. It's like, what do we actually solving for? And I think everybody's, you're right, everyone's solving for something different. And I mean, I have talked to my husband about this a lot. His, the most important thing to him is to make sure that we have stability and security. How, I mean, that's financial, that's physical. I mean,

it's everything, right? How could I say that that's not equally as loaded, you know? And you He's an entrepreneur, right? So it's like he walks around with this, obviously, joyfully and excitedly, and he's building a business, et cetera. But he walks around with this thing that will never leave. So I guess I wondered too about like, you know, I'm, I, everyone's in different kinds of relationships, right? So like everyone has a different thing that tells them what to provide for. We're in probably more of a like conventional relationship where we've both been probably both conditioned in some ways to. care about specific things, but I don't see his load as lighter. I just see it as different. And I'll use an example of like, you know, I do dinner. I'm the person who's in charge of dinner. And I said to him once, I said, we were walking to daycare. And I said, oh, what do you want for dinner? I was taking, we were taking the kids there in the morning. And he said, I don't know. I mean, think about that. I was like, you don't think about what we're eating for dinner the day up. And he's like, no. And I was like, I think about what our kids are going to eat for dinner.

all the time. Like, it doesn't leave me because it's, it's, I want to nurture. And I also wonder like, as I'm talking about, you know, I want to nurture, I think that as a new mom, and I think for a lot of new parents, but especially for new moms, having a child is a really eye-opening experience about your own parents and particularly your own mother. What did they provide? What did they not provide? And so who are you going to be? So like when we talk about the load, the mental load, I'm like, my mental load also includes the equation of what I feel like I got a lot of good from my mom and what I felt like was missing and wanting to make sure that I'm super aware and present to give it to my kids. Yeah. And it's also, you know, like whose expectations are we living into?

That contributes a huge amount to the mental load we're carrying, right? Because if we just get to choose ourselves, like we may say like, oh, this is where we want the set point to be. But we don't. We don't. We don't. We don't. We get all the messages from the parents, from the community, from the grandparents, from everyone is sort of like showing us what we're expected, how we're expected to show up.

Yeah. Like the way that we're expected to raise kids, you know, like all these different things and what our values, quote, should be. And whether we realize it or not, whether we acknowledge it, we think we're independent, we're smart, we're making our own decisions. We're not. To a certain extent we are. But I think part of what we're talking about here also, and this is something that

you know, the study that we referenced probably didn't really tease this out. You know, we're comparing visible loads with invisible loads. That's a brutal, and within one person, and then when you try and do that with two people and you're trying to figure out, like, where's, you know, like the four quadrant chart here,

it's an impossible task. Yeah. Because you don't know, like, what you're, so, you know, like your husband, he's an entrepreneur, so there's an invisible burden that he's carrying all day every day, which is like his brain can never, ever, be off the business because as an entrepreneur,

you can't disconnect ever, right? And a lot of people with just full-time jobs, too, the nature of their jobs. It used to be you clock out at five or six o'clock and you're good until the next day. That kind of doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. You know, so like trying to quantify

the relative invisible loads and then compare is, I don't know if it's possible, and I don't know if it makes sense to even try and do. Well, and why do we know, need to do that. Like I guess, I guess my, that was my sort of thought as I was thinking about this question and, you know, putting in the perspective of my, my own household is like, why am I,

I love, Renee Brown talks about comparative suffering. You know, it's like, if you think about the mental load, it's like, why am I. No, I'm suffering more than you. Yeah, why do I need to do that? Like, why do I, we, why are we playing the numbers game of like, who's got it worse, you know, or must be nice for whoever has less of the load. And I wonder if we're, you know, it's of course related to the idea that like women at one point weren't expected to work, right? And so where does this stuff that we were supposed to be doing before, you know, women of the 1950s earlier, et cetera, my grandmother. It's like she didn't work. So where does the stuff that she had to do that was work, by the way?

I will very clearly say as a new mom, as a mother, I'm like, this work is. is no joke of taking care of a kid, of taking care of a household, etc. Like, I could not do it. And that's something I had to realize about myself was I can't, I could not do that. I do work full time. But if the idea is we liberated women by giving them, giving us the ability to go out into the world, to get jobs and to work as men do, what did we expect would happen with this extra kind of job, this full time job of taking care of children. And now are we trying to say the two need to be completely equal, men and women, because they're equal in the fact that they both go out into the world and work? Are we trying to solve for women who are feeling the, like, very real and intense burden of it all and feeling like their partner isn't doing anything? Like, what is, you know, again, individual, but what is it we need to solve for here? I have a great partner, but I don't know that I feel that that tension is a good, is the most important thing.

if that makes sense. Trying to figure out that tension. I agree. I think it's really interesting. I think we get sometimes obsessed with data and comparisons like this. And I'm trying to figure out, like, where does fair lie? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

You know, because we always want to, like, feel like everything is equal in all the relationships that matter most to us. Hey, I don't know how you do that, like, that evaluation in an objective way. Like, it just doesn't exist. And the invisible load. How would you ever, how do you ever? Right. And like the invisible load literally changes from second to second. Right.

You know, so it's like on Tuesday at 4.32 p.m. Like this is where the balance was. And then 30 minutes later, this is where the balance is. And how will I ever know what it means to be inside your mind, your body, your soul? And then how will you ever know the same about me? So how can we ever even get on the same scale as far as what the load is, how it's measured? And like my lens is like the reality of so my wife and I have been, will be married 30 years next year and together, like close to 35 now.

When you're in relationship for that long, like, there's no set point in the middle. There's no 50, 50 fairness set point of visible and invisible burdens where you just like, you nail it. And then for three decades, you just stay there. Like, it just, and to even pretend that that should be an expectation, I don't, I don't get that. Because there are times in our lives where, you know, know, the raising a kid burden has been fiercely on one side of that for one person. And at the same time, the providing financial support for the family has been fiercely on the opposite side for years.

Yeah. You know, and comparative suffering, there was a lot of suffering going on on both sides and a lot of joy going on both sides. for different reasons and in different ways. But like had we sat down and kind of said, okay, so like every Sunday morning, why don't we do a comparative joy and comparative suffering analysis and like re-even things out like for the next week?

Right. That's impossible. It seems bonkers to me. It's crazy. It's crazy. But at the same time, like you don't want to dismiss the human need to feel like at the end of the day, there's a sense of fairness that exists between us.

Yeah, I think when you have a, and first of all, so exciting. I can't believe, I mean, 35 years is insane. Congratulations. And almost 30. Every day, I remind myself I married up. Yeah, go ahead. There you go. There you go. Yeah. And to call my husband telling the same thing, if he's not already thinking it, I'm sure he is. There are certain circumstances where it's absolutely not fair. And I also think fair is a little bit objective, right, or subjective, sorry, in the sense that like, if I am someone, I have friends who are state-home moms and they absolutely love it and they kick ass at it. They have their kid, like, scheduled. The kid,

I mean, like, I see their children and I've seen one of them in particular, her daughter is the same age as mine. That kid was like walking, talking, and eating before mine was because she was so meticulous about what her daughter did. And I would go, oh my God, I had some envy. I went over to her house and was like, wow, she's already doing all these things. And, you know, it wasn't serious or heavy for me, but just interesting to go, I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that she is spending so much of her time and energy pouring into this. She's, it's hard, right? But she is finding meaning and joy in it. Her husband works full-time travels, all that. Is it unfair? I don't know, because she's finding meaning and joy and she's making the choice that this is what she wants to do.

So I do think fair can be subjective. And, you know, in the moments that someone feels like, I'm holding way too much of this load, there's too much going on, I hold the financial burden of this burden, to that burden, whether it's a new mom, a new dad, a parent of a 10-year-old, whoever it is, and however long you've had children, I imagine the most valuable thing you can do is talk about it. Yeah. And I think that's what it comes down to, right?

You know, because, and I think that the data here is really interesting also for what it doesn't examine. And again, maybe I missed it and sort of like reading the research, but I don't think I did, but I'll acknowledge the fact that, like, if this was covered and I'm just missing it, like, we can figure that out. but I don't think so. But, you know, you're looking at the invisible burden of one side of the relationship.

We're saying that, like, when a mom goes back to a career, like, the physical work can be minimized largely, but the mental load still stays there. And is that different than the mental load that partner? Yeah. carries is the, what is the nature of the partner's work? What is it like, are they an entrepreneur or a founder? Are they in work where it's extremely stressful and high stakes all the time? And what is the mental load also of the other person in relationship? And I want to assume this is a man. Um, feeling like they wish, they wish that they could really be so much more present in the lives of a child. But the nature of their relationship, the nature of their needs,

maybe the family is also supporting somebody else who's close to them who doesn't have resources, who, you know, is going through medical things. And like, it doesn't look at the invisible burden that is being carried by the other person who, because of circumstance, literally cannot be there for their child in a way that they would really prefer to be. Exactly. God. Yeah. You know. So it's, I think when we, when we see data like this, it's needed to kind of like raise an eyebrow. It's really get a little bit accusatory and be like, there's a, there's a real unfair year. We need to do something about this. Yeah. And I'm going to acknowledge,

in certain circumstances, there probably absolutely is some level of unfairness and inequity. Mm-hmm. But I think it's, it's just, it's a lot more nuanced and complicated than that at the end of the day, in my mind. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. One of the things I thought about is just as you were talking, I'm like, when someone comes over to my house and we're going to have a guest come over, I am the person who's running around the house making sure everything's clean and put together and, you know,

everything's ready for someone to come into my space. Why am I doing that? Number one, because I hear what people think. Right. Number two, because I like a clean home. But number three, because whether I'm aware of it consciously, which I obviously am because I'm telling you right now, but whether most of us are aware of it consciously or not, the world has told us that as women, that's our area to own. I mean, I remember a time where our friend was coming over to our apartment and I was like six or seven months pregnant. My husband was downtown doing something and the friend was coming over and I was on my hands and knees in our bathroom cleaning.

I stopped and I was like, what the hell am I doing? And when my husband and I talk about what good looks like, we have different definitions. And that's one of the things we talked about yesterday, actually. Can you unpack out a little bit? Yeah, yeah. I want perfect. The worst parts of me, or the most critical parts of me, want a home that is mostly spotless.

Want it to not smell like our dogs. We have two dogs. I love them to death, but they're dogs. Wants it to be able to cook a meal most nights of the week, put it on the table after I get home from work. These are, I mean, the list can go on. And if anyone's listing who experiences this, you probably know where the list continues to go.

It's laundry is always done. Beds are made. You know, we have a backyard. Backyards always cleaned up. Everything's, you know, all that stuff. And that's not great to you. That's just like good to you. That's good.

That's how it should be. Interesting word. I know, right? God. Yeah. My therapy session starts now. Yeah, that's how it should be. It should always be that.

And it, or maybe not always, but it's like, you know, kids go to bed. We're picking stuff up. right away. We're cleaning. We're getting things done. And my husband yesterday said, well, you know, I think we would have to talk about like what our definitions of good are. Because if that's your definition of good, we're going to struggle. And you're going to struggle a lot. Because my definition of good is that our kids are loved and paid attention to. They get nurtured, that we're there to pick them up after daycare most days when we're not, you know, unless there's something else really pressing that we do bedtime. And those things, of course, are all things for me.

It's just the extra load is everything I just described. And so what I'm taking from that, I haven't figured it all out yet, but it's like, how do I meet him a little closer to the middle and still find satisfaction? And it's not about lowering my standards. It's about lowering my mental load. It's about giving, it's about choosing my energy and choosing where to put it and how to use it. And like, what is most, what's it most valuably put toward? Is it most valuably put toward the idea that I'm like, you know, spraying a rug going, oh my God, I got to make sure this doesn't smell like dog? Right. Or is it that I'm just like sitting with my daughter who loves to read now and just says, like she walks around with all of her books and says, sit down and she wants to sit and how you do. It's like, you're not going to say no. Never. Right. Especially not to reading. I'm like, nobody reads anymore. Yeah, and this gets back to what we're talking about also, right?

Because like, when you're like, okay, so me, good means this, this, this, this, and this, and your husband and it's like, well, it means something very different to me. It's like, again, part of the question in my mind is, and whose voices do you hear in your head when you're asking the question? Oh, God. You know? And then, like, it's really tending to judge. It's like, well, like my dad said this or I hear my mom's voice saying this, and I really shouldn't be, like, I need to, to just find what's, like, right for me.

But it's not that easy to do. Like, again, like, this is part of our conditioning for decades and decades of our lives. And don't you feel like you're living a different life than your parents lived? So even if your parents said something should be one way? 100%. How would they live in your life?

Yeah, I mean, if I look back when I was, you know, like a kid and, like, what our family dynamic was like and who they were as individuals, it's completely different. Different human beings, different culture, different time, radically different time. I mean, we were bouncing around the back of the Volvo without seat belts or everything. So it's like...

I was also bouncing around the back of a Volvo, but there were the seabot. Yeah. And like, you know, still so much of what we do is guided by, you know, like what we learned when we were so young and we just never really questioned it. But, you know, what's interesting to me about what you just said, too, is this idea that's like, okay, so you're good means like all the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All physical things in there. all actual physical labor in there for you,

which makes me curious, like, if you know that those things aren't getting done because you're just working really hard, maybe you're like at, you know, during your day job and stuff like that, it's getting really, really hard. Like, does the fact, even if you're outsourcing them,

even if you have somebody who's helping you so you can come home and, like, the vast majority of things are taking care of. Yeah. Like, and this goes back to the beginning of our conversation where you made this really interesting distinction about the cognitive load of managing, even subconsciously managing the work, like thinking about like, is this.

Managing the doing. Is this getting done that will meet my threshold of good without me there? That's, that's weight. Yeah. And I, listen, I also acknowledge that like there was a long time I did not have the resources to do any of this. I have friends who are right now considering being single and momming, you know, and they haven't met someone and they don't want that to get in the way of them being able to have a child. Resources matter so much. God. So I have to acknowledge that because there was a long time I didn't have those. And now that I have more resources, you know, you kind of just come up with more things to do, right? More things that have to be done.

And that is the danger. Yeah. The enough line just keeps pushing out and out and out. Exactly. Because it matches a level of resources. Yes. So, like, I mean, I, so I'm going to, I'm prefacing all that to say, you know, we, I have, I like to have someone came in to clean our home, like, once a month. I could do it. I don't know exactly when I would. So I've decided, like, this is something I just need to be able to have someone else do.

We've had different people come as we're sort of figuring out who the right person is. And the last time someone came recently, I. I didn't feel like it was up to standard, up to like what I would hope for what, you know, what I needed and even what I asked for. And I felt real, I feel even uncomfortable now, funny enough, talking about that. I feel uncomfortable saying that I have someone clean my house. I don't, even that. Like, I'm like, that's its own thing, the idea of having privilege and knowing that so many people don't and knowing that, like, it sounds like a first world problem. But I will, so I'm qualifying all of that.

But I'll say, like, I was frustrated. And guess what happened? I still have to go back and do the things that that person didn't do. And so was it worth it? No. Because it added to my mental load and it made me mad. You know, if, you know, if as far as food, for example, with nurturing and having things ready for children, you know, I mean, just another physical thing. If we've eaten out too many times in a week, yeah, I start to get really, I don't like that.

that. So I've been on a hunt for the last, I don't know, five months for the right, like, is there food delivery service? Is there something we can do where I can essentially take that physical labor off of me and make more decisions about like when I want to do that? If I want to cook, fine, I'll do it two days a week. But I want to be able to decide what those days are and then be able to lean on other things the other days that aren't just eating out. They're so healthy. Yeah. So, yeah, these are, I mean, these are all maybe feel like minute challenges, but they do add to my own thing. It's like they, any one of them on any given day is tiny. Yes. But then you add to the fact that you're working incredibly hard. You're, you know, like, and all the different things

are happening in your life and the fact that things will start to compound. And it's, it's a burden. As you're describing that, like there's, what came to me is really interesting, at least for me, curious if it's interesting to you, is this notion of, um, there's almost like there's a, entropy, right? There's a balance where, you know, the net burden between physical and mental load, it's almost like I wonder if you can change the net burden, because what it sounds like you're describing is you have a choice. I can either do the physical things myself and know that they're done, they're good, they meet the standard, I don't have to think about them, I don't have to worry about them, or I can offload one or two or three or four of those

if I have the ability to do that. But every time I do that, I gain back the 15 minutes it would take me to physically do it, but I lose the peace of mind of knowing that is being done in a way that will make me be able to breathe easily. Yep.

So like the net burden doesn't change, which is so interesting if you think about that. Yeah. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's just like the visual. pops into my mind. Well, yeah, I mean, I know how I like things cleaned. Could I, you know, I, I, my husband, he's like, we don't need a cleaner. And I'm like, well, then how is it going to get done? You know, that's the constant back and forth. How do we, how do we get it done? I think that's the

ongoing challenge is that you don't, we don't know, I don't yet know or have the exact equation for how something could get done exactly how I'd want it to be done without me doing it. So if I am choosing to offload something physical, it needs to be able to, like, as you were talking, I was like, it actually, we've recently found a food delivery service that we all like. I'm like, great, it takes the two, actually two burdens off of me. What are we having for dinner? And then the physical of doing it and hoping it turns out well, right? Because for me, cooking is also performative. So, like, I do actually think there is some performative, there's performative pieces to this that add to the mental load, right? To have a clean home.

when someone comes over is slightly performative. We're all kind of performing, right? We're performing ourselves. We're performing our homes. We're putting our children on display to perform our children. I'm the type of person who shows up in this way. Yeah. His home shows up in this way.

Yeah. His home shows up in this way. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I want you to think of me. Because we're always comparing. Exactly. Because exactly.

We're always trying to get external validation. Even when I am someone absolutely who is, you know, who wants external validation. and I don't even feel like I'm at the high end of it. It's like, but I still, there's still parts of me and parts of my husband, you know, that we all have this. So it's like, how do we manage that? Is it my standard that I'm holding myself up to? Or is it the standard that I believe someone else is going to hold me up to if they walk into my home and see, you know, something's out of order or they come over for dinner and, you know, the chicken isn't moist enough. Yeah.

So here's what's popping into my head, which is kind of surprising. me a little bit, which is this exact conversation unfolds in a way that is completely unrelated to family life and parenting. It's if you have an idea of how anything should happen, if you're working in a job and you're leaving a team or you're on a team, you know, and there's six people, and you have a very clear sense of how something should unfold, what it should look and feel and taste and smell and be like what the deliverable is. And you know, like, your taste tells you this is the level that it should be done. It's kind of the exact same thing.

And there's a knowing in you that says, I am capable of making it happen this way if I do it myself. Yes. It's the same thing. Yeah, it is. Yeah, if I do it myself, which is like, then why not just do it myself? Right. Which is where every team gets destroyed. And we get destroyed.

And every leader gets destroyed. Right. And also everyone around us gets really frustrated because we never allow anyone to, A, to help us, which is really frustrating for other people, but B, to also have the experience in stumble and and have the conversations and learn so that we can all kind of get to a place where, like, okay, like, now I get it. And I've developed the skill and the understanding we have the communication channels to be able to say, like, a little bit like this, a little bit like that, a little bit like this.

And we're stumbling and fumbling. It's uncomfortable and awkward. But then six months later, like, actually, now it's able to, like, everything that I, like, the way that I want things to happen, is happening. It's happening. And I don't have to be the one in there anymore. So, like, the impulse probably shows up a lot in parenting. Yeah. But it's a much bigger thing. You know, there's, like, the grind of that first maybe, like, period of a new phase. You know, it's like, I want things done in a specific way, so I'm just going to do them. Then it's like, okay, if you can come around to the idea that perhaps someone else could learn how to do something kind of in a way that you might like, and you're willing to go down

that road, then you're going to have to go through this, like, grinding phase of, I have to watch this person not do it the way I want. I want it done. For some period of time, I have to watch this thing happen in a way that's not, it's like, I don't know why it comes up for me as like a fluffy phase where it's just like, you're in this cloud, you know, going, I know if I just took myself out of this damn cloud and did it myself, none of this would be here. But I'm sacrificing this discomfort, giving this discomfort or giving over to the discomfort so that in six months, this team member or this team or this person who's

supporting my family in whatever way or this partner. Or your partner, right? Yeah, is can actually get to where I would hope they would get to. And I'm also releasing the idea that maybe my way is the perfect way. It's like they, someone I noticed it's the narcissist dilemma. I'd love people more if only they were just like me, you know. And we've all got a little bit of that. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah, that all really lands. You know, and I think, you know, like where we're landing with this is this idea of, yes, there's just really interesting continuum between it's really the physical work that we do. The, the mental burden when we're not doing the physical work of just, it's still weighing on us, especially if we have high expectations about how we want it done.

And our willingness to both communicate and have open conversations about our expectations and our interests and our desires and where they sync with others around us. And then our openness to investing in running experiments and relinquishing. a little bit of control to, and knowing that there's going to be a whole bunch of stumbling and fumbling along the way to try and find a place where, I don't know forever,

like that magical fairness line we talked about earlier, it doesn't exist, but at least get back to a place where we feel like the pendulum is swinging comfortably back and forth through it where like on the whole, when we look back,

like we feel like we're good. And there are times where we feel like the burden is really heavy and there are times where we feel like it's really light. But aspiring, like you said earlier, to sort of like

really getting clear on what are we also, what are we measuring and what are we optimizing for? Yeah. And do we have to optimize for anything? Right, at all.

Like in my mind, I'm saying you're going, we go back to the original conversation of like, who's running the household and the burden maybe of motherhood is part of this. Motherhood and womanhood

I feel like has been performative for the last 80, 90, however many years since the vacuum became a thing, you know, like since a woman was expected to be at home, taking her of her children, making sure the house was clean. So when a man got home, he felt that he had food on the table, the home was clean and the children were nice and cleaned up and ready for dinner. It's been performative. So I believe that I think part of the mental load or releasing the mental load is the question, what am I willing to release? Like so much of what I've, told you is performative. And if I really were to dig a bit and go, well, what really matters to me? I could probably release some things that would allow me the space to have the energy I wanted

to put it where I wanted it to go. And so I think the big question, for me at least, even, you know, walking out of this therapy session with you is, what am I willing to release? Yeah. That's like, I want to take a big deep breath now. Yeah. I love that. It feels a good place to land on that topic too. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Second topic. Yes. Is, and this is a big shift here, but I think it's really fascinating.

You and I have both existed in sort of a world. To this day, I hate the phrase self-help. I can't say it. I can't even say self-re written. And there's some, there's some alternative phrases. And I kind of like, I don't like any of them. So it's like, but there is this industry. which is built around

adult development, personal development, whatever I call it, and a core part of that industry for decades has been books. You love books, I love books, so many people in our community,

we love books, I love reading them, I have a love, not hate relationship with writing them, I do like writing them. Most of what I have written up until very recently has been some version of prescriptive.

You know, like here are some things that I've learned. And, but there's an interesting stat that came out. Self-help books sales fell close to 25% in the last year or so. It was a huge, huge hit in the industry, the steepest drop of any nonfiction category. Meanwhile, a lot of other book categories, and you could say, well, aren't books, like people just aren't reading anymore. Aren't all book sales just like, let me, the answer is no. Yeah.

Actually, most other categories are growing. You think fiction was up. Fiction is up. Yeah. And it's like a big time. So this is a true anomaly. And it's not just like a little bit. It's a lot of it.

At the same time, when you look at the data about coaching, we're not talking about athletic coaching, you know, like personal coaching, executive coaching, life coaching, things like that. Over the last couple of years, that data shows that that industry has grown about 15%. I think more than six figures of new coaches have been minted and are out there offering services now. So people quit the books, but then hired the human. There are a lot of different ways that we could go with this. And there are probably a lot of contributors. But start me off here. I hate self-help too. And yet, here we are. Not the world, but the word. No, no, no. I love the work.

I was just going to call it the work. The inner work. You know, so I, yeah, I don't love the phrase, But I use chat GPT all the time for different things. And what was already happening prior to this burst in the AI movement is that information has become democratized, which is fantastic. Like the reason I have the show that I have and the reason I feel so much passion for it is that I'm willing to go out and have the conversations and read the books and do the work so that I can't. share. It's a cyclical kind of thing where it's like I want to learn in order to share. I have to complete that cycle to feel like I'm doing what I what's best. So I love the democratization of information. I do not like the democratization of false information or half baked information. But I actually do think as a whole, we are better equipped than we were when it felt like the only people

who could tell us what was going on with us were our therapists if we could ever talk to them if it wasn't already ridiculously stigmatized, which it was in many different cultures and environments. So I think about the idea that like it may not mean self-help books not selling may not mean we don't care about self-help. It may mean that number one, sadly, I think we're getting a little lazier in some ways. Number two, there's a lot of self-help out there in social media. You can go down that rabbit hole. I have it on my phone just to, I don't really use social media that much, but like just to kind of keep up with what's going on,

see how many people are out there saying, telling people what to do prescriptively, right? Yeah. I think it's out there. I also think, I don't know if there's a full connection between the two, between self-help books, sales going down, and coaching going, you know, increasing,

the amount of people becoming coaches, becoming coaches, and then hiring coaches increasing. But, there's nothing quite like another human being. I think that's it. Like, I recently started working with someone who's helping me with my social media. I'm not good at it.

I don't want to say that. Let me reframe. I don't know if I want to be good at it. How about that? So I asked someone to work with me because there's nothing quite like another human being. Now, is she writing my stuff? No, I'm writing it because I love to write. But is she holding me accountable?

Is she asking me the right questions? Is she sharing the right information? Yes. And is a coach that kind of person? Yes. They're in so many ways just a mirror. You know, it's like they say it's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. Right.

You know, so if that's what a coach does, then I fully understand why there's nothing quite like another human, even if you can get everything you want off off of social media. There's something really, like, awesome and beautiful about having someone that you can have connection with. And I think that's what we are deeply lacking right now is human connection. So I can scroll through all the self-help I want. People want to have good lives. Most people want to be, and I hate using the word happy, but let's use it for like the, I'd say content. Most people want to be content with their lives. And we all have different definitions of what that means.

And if we want that, then all of us are people who are potentially, you know, self-help consumers. And I think at a time where we're not connecting so much with each other anymore, there's a sacredness and perhaps like a little bit of a privacy and something really powerful about having someone else sit with you in the way that you need them to to help you become more of the person that you believe you'd like to become so you can be content. Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. And then I do really wonder, like, is there a connection be, because it seems like these two phenomena are happening sort of like at the same time. Yeah. So the question is, is it just correlation or is there something that's actually, like, is one influencing or causing the other?

You know, like the rapid, rapid drop in people buying and reading self-help books and the pretty rapid increase in people actually paying for self-help support, like actual people, which is, you know, like, depending on who you're going to, like a large multiple of what it would cost to buy a book. Yeah. Let's start out on the book side, right? I completely agree. I think AI has radically changed a game. You know, to me, what do people want most when they're in pain, when you have a problem that needs to be solved, when that problem is causing you a lot of pain, the single biggest need that you have is to get out of pain.

but the second need that fuels that is to shorten the path to get out of the pain. You're like, you're like, okay, so what is the fastest possible way for me to solve this problem and stop feeling the feeling that I don't want to feel anymore?

Speed is a huge driver in this equation that oftentimes we don't acknowledge. And look, if you're really deeply, deeply suffering, of course it is. You don't want to be in that spot any more than you have to. Completely understandable, right? So where do we go?

Well, for a long time, the thing that was available to us was therapists, family, friends, people. But, like, if you wanted to actually study something or learn something, it's books. Like, that was the thing that was just everywhere all the time. So we turned to books, right? So if we go, like, to the shorten the path, like side of things, well, it takes maybe, you know, I'm a slow reader, so it probably takes me eight to ten hours to read a book. Yeah, exactly. You know, the typical self-help book is 240. pages plus or minus. So it's going to take me eight to ten hours to actually sit down and read that.

Right. And if I've got a busy life or a busy job and there's other stuff going on, it may take me a few weeks to even get through it. Yeah. Right. So for a lot of people, that's just really hard. The vast majority of people who start books don't ever get past the first chapter or two also because they just life, life's on them. That's in the way. Yeah. You know, and it's not a judgment. That's just the nature of things. I've literally been told as an author within publishers, just write the hell out of your intro in first chapter because no one's going to read past it. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

But that is part of the unfortunate reality of that particular sort of like subgenre, prescriptive nonfiction. Then AI comes. I just type the exact question. And AI goes out and it pulls like all the data, all the resources, all the studies, all the luminaries in the field and digest it into a short and simple intro. Now, getting into whether that's right, whether that's fair use, whether it's accurate, that's a whole different conversation.

But is it satisfying? That's actually what I thought. And I'm like, I don't know that it is. I think if the primary drive is I have a problem, I'm suffering deeply. The most important thing to me is to stop feeling this way as quickly as possible. And if you can get something and a single idea or a thing to do right now in six minutes versus 60. versus six weeks on a book maybe. I think there's a lot of satisfaction there.

I think that's why a lot of people are defaulting to that. And my sense is that's what's going on with books. Is that the thing that is truly going to be most of service to us long term and keep us out of pain? That's where things get really thorny. Yeah. And I almost wonder if part of what's happening here is people are default. into the shortest possible answer to a question or a problem they have. And they're doing the thing and they're realizing maybe sometimes actually really makes a

difference, but a lot of times it doesn't at all. And then at that point they kind of like, I just need somebody. I need somebody to sit down across from and ask them a question and be there and like walk beside me through this. and the fascinating thing about coaching is that the vast majority of coaching methodologies and you know this, right? You're trained not to provide answers.

Right. You just ask questions. You refine the questions. Yeah. Right. So people are going from, I have a question, I want an answer to like long time to get an answer,

short time to get an answer, almost instant answer. The answer actually isn't giving them what they need to go into a question to then revert into a person who's just asking them more questions. Right. Yeah.

The thing you're caught as a coach is people are naturally creative or sourceful and whole in my program at life. So it's like, well, if they are, then who am I to give Jonathan answers to his own problem? Yeah. So it's complex and fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, I wonder about, I think your point is a really good one, that the speed with which, you know, in the same way that if I bang my else, elbow on the wall and the way out of here and it starts to swell and I can take a photo and put it into, you know, chat GBT and say, what happened? What do you think I should do? It could provide a

pretty quick thing that I need to go do. I do think there's a lot of satisfaction in that. If I go, hey, I'm really in pain. I'm suffering. What could I do? And chat GBT is like, listen, journal this out, do this and do this. The satisfaction does come from doing the work. there is satisfaction in doing the work even if you're in pain. And there are all sorts of ways this unfold. So I also, again, don't want to generalize. But I think about the times that I've been struggling in pain. And there were practices that allowed me to see clearer.

But then what I really wanted was to go deeper. And so I think one of the things we've done with self-help in general is it's gone from, you know, a book, 240-page book, to the three ways you can figure out. to change your life, read this quick article in three seconds and skim it because we know you're not going to read it. Here's the TLDR at the top. Right. So like if that's what people have not been trained to believe, then yeah, they're going to go try these things and they're going to be like, this didn't really all work.

This wasn't as, this didn't have maybe the depth. This skim the surface, right? So I imagine that like the desire for someone might be, how do I go deeper? how do I go deeper? And I don't know that it's a book. And maybe it's not a book because we aren't all as connected as we used to be. And so like having a human is a really nice thing. But there's also something amazing about being witnessed. You know? And it's so true. Like that's a book can't witness you. AI can't really witness you. I mean, I know we have this whole conversation of like, is AI human conscious? Is it consciousness? Is it whatever? I don't even want to go down that road. But I'm like, today I believe it's not. not. So it's like I want, if I want to be witnessed, like that is a really powerful and incredible thing if I'm willing to be. And even if the person doesn't have the answers, sometimes you just get off the call, the therapy call or the coaching call and go, oh, I just got to tell someone what I was going through who didn't have a vested interest in

all the characters in my play, my play, you know. And there's something really awesome to that. Yeah. It's such a great point. I think, I still agree with you. you. I think it's probably also important to distinguish between we're not talking about folks who are in extreme mental health crises. Right. We have, like, neither of you are qualified to talk about that. A book is not going to help that. Like, that is somebody, like, if you are in deep crisis or if you're in, like, clinical depression, if you're unable to function, if you're really struggling, those are moments where, like, to whatever extent, you can find the right pal, find the right people.

You know, like go find the person who's qualified to help you or the group or the team or whoever it may be. Without question. And whether in your case it's a mental health provider or a pastor or a parent, whatever it is. Go do it and fight for it. You know, fight for yourself. But I think what we're talking about and what the vast majority of the self-help industry and books are about and podcasts and now, you know, like AI, is it's sort of like the

day-to-day discontent with life. You know, it is the, like, the melancholy that kind of comes and goes. It's the dissatisfaction. It's the lack of meaning and purpose. It's the sense of disconnection from people. And there are lots of tools and things that flood into this world that can be helpful. But the point you're making, I think, is so important and often so ignored, which is at the end of the day, I think so much of what we really want.

is just to be seen. Like, we don't care if, if, like, the problem that we're solving for is it would become invisible, not just to others, but to ourselves. And to simply, like, know that somebody's paying attention to you, somebody's giving you the gift of their attention for a moment in time, even if you're paying them for that. You know, like, to have that in your life, it's become, we're so divorced from that and the way that just like culture and life runs these days, that when we get it,

and I think a lot of times what we don't realize is the suffering is coming from simply the fact that we are so rarely seen and embraced and using your word again, witnessed. And even if we have other things going on that we can point to as the clear sources of suffering, there's an underlying fabric of becoming invisible that can only be able,

be relieved when you're interacting with another being. Yeah. Is that, is it that? Yes. That's kind of what you're talking about. Yeah. I mean, I think so. I mean, even, you know, I have a coach right now and she's, it's not even in person.

We're on, we're virtual. I can't tell you the number of times we've gotten off of our calls. Unfinished. Fully unpacked. Unraveled and unpacked and not button back up. Like, where I walked away and went, wow, that's, I haven't, I don't, I don't, I don't have an answer. But I felt so much relief. And I just can't get that from not from from from something. I'm getting that from someone. I think the part of the someone is that I believe, you know, we all are here. We're all

souls having a human experience. And so I think there's something really beautiful about being witnessed. I also think that when you're in pain, you don't want to be alone. Even if what you're doing generally is maybe maybe you are alone. I've had those. many of those times where I'm like, I just want to go for runs and da-da-da. But if you're with the right person, for me, it's like I would choose that person over a loneness a lot of times. And I want that option. And so the right person is really important, right?

And that's the right person for you and for what you need. You know, we all go through different experiences where the person who maybe has always been there for us is no longer the right person for this. experience that we're going through. Like I have friends who've lost loved ones, lost partners, et cetera, and it's like the best friend isn't the one they went to. They went to the like random kind of like friend over here that we all knew, but didn't realize they'd be so close, but this thing bonded them. So I do think there's something to being witnessed. And I think for many people who might not have a higher coach, there's something to be witnessed by people who

understand, relate, and have been through your experience. And I also wonder. And I also wonder, coming back to the self-help piece and all of this is like is the speed. You said speed and I had never thought about that. I think we've conditioned ourselves to believe as a culture that pain is bad and that we're not supposed to be in pain. We're not supposed to suffer. We're not so, well, let me, I mean, the Buddhist phrase right is like the, you know, pain isn't optional suffering is. But it's like, can we first get on the same page that life is going to include all. all a myriad of like beautiful tapestry of emotional experiences of ups and downs and transits.

And if that's the case, how can we accept without, you know, necessarily like diving in and staying there, how can we accept that we're going to go through all these different things? Yeah. If our expectation is to never suffer, speed becomes really even more important, you know, outside of clinical piece and all that, it's like the general daily, you know, challenges the malaise or the melancholy, like if I feel melancholy or I feel lonely or whatever it is, that's a negative emotion and I immediately in my mind go, that's not supposed to be happening, what am I telling myself about the human experience and what I'm supposed to expect of life? And then how does that

impact the need for the need for speed, the need for how fast I can alleviate it. If I think I'm not supposed to suffer, then yeah, chat GPT answering your question in five seconds is awesome. You know, I can't call Mel Robbins on the phone and ask her, you know, what I should do. So yeah, I want to get to something quickly, but can we change our definition of what it means to be alive? Yeah, it's such, it's an interesting question because it's kind of touching to all of our lives. And it's not, what I understand you to be saying is don't go looking for suffering. That's not the thing here. But the truth of life is it is going to be a part of all of our lives in varying ways at varying moments in time and various levels of intensity and duration.

And sure, it's not pleasant. And we want to do things to move through it. But rather than trying to chase just constantly a life where, where it never touches down, saying, like, this will be a part of my life. Who are the people that I want around me and the tools that I want to be equipped with if and when it does happen, which it will? And maybe spending more energy on that than trying to avoid it entirely. Yeah, I think we're in such an interesting moment with all of this right now.

And I feel like maybe if there is a shift in emphasis that's happening from, information to interaction at the end of the day, that's probably a good thing. Yeah, I agree. I think we've unpacked the way that we can unpack these two topics. So great to be in conversation with so fun. Yes, thank you. Let's do it again. Yeah. So let's talk about some of the takeaways from this one. One thing I'm sitting with is a question that Leah asked near the end of our first topic. What am I willing to release? Start with the difference between doing and the doing and managing of the doing. You can hand off the physical work and still carry the entire weight of making sure it gets done the way you want it done. Then there's the fairness thing. In a long

relationship, there's no set point. The balance moves constantly and trying to score it objectively, it costs more than it returns. And on the self-help book side, a book can't witness you. And neither can AI for that matter. Speed gets you an answer, being witness. is what gives you actual relief. So maybe one thing to try this week. Pick a single task that you're carrying and ask whether the standard behind it is actually yours or whether you inherited it from maybe someone

whose life looked nothing like yours. And then say it out loud to the person you share a home with. And hey, before you leave, do me a quick personal favor, a seven-second favor, share this with one single person. Maybe someone that you know who's carrying more than they have admitted out loud. It helps us get discovered, and it brings more people into these conversations. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox, and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young and Alejandro Ramirez, Chris Carter crafted our theme music, and of course,

if you haven't already, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcast, so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Thank you.