Good Life Project - Matt Haig | Reasons to Stay Alive (and then some)

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

At the age of 24, living in Ibiza, Matt Haig stepped to the ledge of a cliff with the intention of launching himself to his end. But something pulled him back. That experience led him and his girlfriend, who’d eventually become his wife, back to his childhood home where Matt would begin the process of picking up the pieces of his life. A writer, he kept that season of profound darkness, revelation, and recovery within his family, while he deepened into a career as a novelist and children’s book author. But years later, a simple blog post that he never thought anyone would see effectively outed that experience, leading to a book a year later called Reasons to Stay Alive that became a massive bestseller and also expanded Matt’s notoriety into the world of personal growth. He’s since blended fiction and nonfiction, penning more novels, something exploring big existential questions, but in honest and accessible ways. His book, The Midnight Library, just hit 2 million copies sold, and Matt’s latest book, The Comfort Book is Haig’s life raft: it’s a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to his future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. You can find Matt at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Kate DiCamillo about writing, creativity, telling the truth, but always leaving readers with hope.My new book is available!Order Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive today!-------------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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So at the age of 24, living in Ibiza, Matt Haig stepped to a ledge on a cliff with the intention of launching himself to his end. But something pulled him back. That experience, it led him and his girlfriend, who'd eventually become his wife, back to his childhood home, where Matt would begin a process of picking up the pieces of his life. A writer, he has kept that season of profound darkness and revelation and recovery within his family. While he deepened into a career as a novelist and a children's book author, it was always there, but never let seem the light of day outside of those who knew him

best, not even his friends. But years later, many years later, a simple blog post that he never thought anyone would see effectively outed that experience, leading soon after to a book a year later called Reasons to Stay Alive that became this massive bestseller and also expanded Matt's notoriety into the world of personal growth. He has since blended fiction and nonfiction, penning more novels, sometimes exploring big existential questions, but in honest and accessible ways. In his book, The Midnight Library just hit to a million copies sold in the US. And Matt's latest book, The Comfort Book, is kind of like his life raft. It's a collection of notes and lists and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to his future self that things are not always

as dark as they may seem. So excited to share this 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 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. On 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. I'm looking forward to writing. Actually sitting down and writing something new because most of this year I haven't done that. What do you look for with that? I'm curious. Is there something that kind of lets you know it's time to sit down or do you just sort of say, I have a deadline, I need to start putting words on a page. Yeah, I've had to be quite strict with my UK publishers and PR people. And, you know, I've got auto responses and I'm sort of saying, you know, okay, we haven't got a book literally out now. So other than my prior commitments, I'm just going to keep my head down and get it. Because I'm someone who needs, I need a good run up with ideas.

It's not like I can just sort of like switch off, get on my computer and then just go. I need to really like take a while to get in that zone. And I haven't really had that time. There's always been something. But generally, like, you know, if I'm required to go to London for something, you know, it just totally froze me, froze me off.

So it's been good to actually be be strict because I've always been such a yes person in the sense that I feel grateful to be asked for things so I say yes yes yes yes yes and this these last two years have been the first times where I couldn't feasibly be yes to everything person so it's had to be more no's and yeses and it's been quite good to just have some sort of sense of boundaries and that feeling that you don't need to do every opportunity it's not you know there are other you know you still have to have a life too and you know there's certain things that you think well yeah that could have been big but you know you have to just sort of create some sort of space thing. Yeah. I'm curious. You're at a moment in your career at this point where you

have this ability to actually say yes or no to you. You have more things being presented to you or more opportunities than you have time and bandwidth to actually engage with. How do you discern what is worthy of your saying yes at this point? Well, you know, I think it's two things. I think one of them is, you know, is it something I would actually want to do? You know, you run a little checks and balances about how much time I'd invest in that and how much I'd get out of that. And, you know, for instance, my publicists know that I'm kind of allergic to writing pieces for people, you know, because that really, you know, that takes some mental energy to do it well. And it's never financially worthwhile. And it's also just, you know, that compared to sort of like 10 minutes on the phone to a journalist and you're answering a few

questions that's not about time consuming but also I've had to be a bit careful now even with interviews about saying yes to things because we're in this age now that um and I don't get it like a proper you know celebrity or something but people are all about the clicks now certainly in my country certainly in the UK where we have quite a negative press so if you're doing an interview I don't really get so much for puff pieces anymore it's more about me as a person and that you have to be so careful because you know you'll say one thing out of context that becomes headline. And that's the only thing anyone sees from it on social media. And I'm someone who's quite loose-lipped.

I don't think I've got too many controversial opinions or anything, but I'll just sort of like free flow, which is great on a podcast, obviously. But when it's a newspaper and people aren't getting your intonation or they're not hearing your voice,'s uh it can be a risky risky thing that whole media perception so i've learned the things to say no to i mean any any piece we a lot of our newspapers have pieces about your income or your house or you know what you spend your money on and things like that and that's just certainly among british people that that's just asking for a load of negativity to come your way so it's it's

just about doing things that you think are worthwhile sometimes it's because you like the people sometimes it's because it's media you yourself consume and you think it'd be cool to be in um sometimes it's just simply doing a favor for someone. And then there's clear things that doing that. I don't, you know, generally, if a lot of travel's involved or, you know, it's a speech, I'm not great at speeches. I don't mind interviews. I don't mind being up on stage and being interviewed by someone. But if it's me at the podium in sort of TED Talk mode,

I really avoid that. I have done it. I've done a whole tour like that before but i prefer to have a wing man or wing person um who will sort of be there as a support um to bounce things off but uh yeah it's just a feeling isn't it you know what you know you as you get older you you tend to know what you like doing and also if you really don't like doing something the chances are it's not going to be very good you're not going to be able to be your best self so it's actually you know a negative as with

writing books it's always good to actually write something that you're interested in it's always good to do things that you're interested in because then you'll have more to offer and more to say and more enthusiasm for it and i think that's what i i've learned too you know when it comes to podcasts obviously doing yours i'm very selective but you know it's good if it's a you know if you can chat about interesting things and um it's not always the case and um yeah sorry i don't know i'm going with this ramble but anyway anyway, yes, I'm becoming slowly more discerning. Yeah, and I think it's so interesting, you know, like what you shared. We're in this moment right now where if you like to say things that are honest and true,

but also may be perceived by some people in some way as provocative or polarizing if they're not received in context. And we're in this sort of like soundbite society where like, you know, people pick and choose what they want to actually focus on. It is a dicey window, you know, but at the same time, I know you're a fan of Twitter and there are things that, you know, there are moments where you kind of have to bring yourself to those, but also at the same time, you know, with you in particular, I'm fascinated by this because in what you just shared, so much of what you've written about and really sort of written publicly about since 2015 or so relates to a life of not sharing what was going on, not sharing your inner life, not sharing your thoughts, your struggles, your anxiety. And it's almost like

once you open that floodgate, I wonder, you know, is it almost like a mental health issue to try and figure out where you close it or where you like when you put it back up? 1999, continually ill for three years, then since then, had bouts, never quite as deep as that one. But I was not talking about mental health at all or writing about mental health until about 2015. So that was way over a decade of being quiet to everyone who wasn't my parent or wasn't my partner even most of my friends didn't really know um and I lost a few friends here and there you know not being able to do things and you know and not really explaining why yeah and now as soon as I started talking about it as soon as I started writing about it and then you get this kind of certainly when you start writing about it you come out there's a bit of a shock factor because people didn't know about you you get this sort of warm flood of support which for me was very welcome because you know I mean my

as for a lot of people one of my key defining memories of illness was loneliness you know of feeling like you're literally the only person on the planet who feels like this and it's melodramatic but you know depression tends to give you these melodramatic thoughts and um you know feeling very alone very isolated so when you talk about it and then the opposite happens and you hear from like thousands of people and they've all had similar experiences and so suddenly you feel like oh okay i i was part of something bigger and it's just something that lots of people go through these sort of invisible wars that lots of people go through and i found that incredibly comforting because you know when i was

first ill you'd go back 20 years and the mental health conversation was very different i mean if you thought about famous people people in the public eye who are mentally ill, or have been through mental illness, you tended to think of famous suicides. Sounds terrible. But you know, you thought of your Kurt Cobain and your Hemingways and your Virginia Woolf. And you thought, you know, the arc of mental illness was very sort of a tragic narrative always. Because often you only found out about it when people were literally at their lowest point so one thing i am thankful for in this day and age is but and through my own experience of writing about it is that's a very different situation now obviously

when we think of mental illness we don't automatically think it's a continual downward spiral and some sorts of people who are too creative or too sensitive for this world and you know they just can't and that sort of narrative that quite romanticized narrative has changed and we see it much more as a health issue among other health issues and you can think always now of living, surviving, thriving public figures who have had known, you know, sports people, singers, writers, whoever, who have gone through stuff, who still know good things in their life. So that's great.

And it was very addictive, really, for me to sort of come out and do that. I mean, I think in terms of my books, I'm at a point now where enough is enough i don't feel i'm qualified to say more than i already have said um because i've written now three okay relatively short but three non-fiction books about mental illness and suicide. And I feel like I've explored, in each of the nonfiction books, I found a different angle to sort of come at it. In the novel, obviously, that's a totally different angle to come at it. But I've kind of done it now. I will still talk online a bit about it, because it's often just in my head.

It's not an issue that goes away. But in terms of going deeper, in terms of book format, I feel like this is the time to step away from it. And I also want to sort of prove to myself and others, hopefully, that I have more in me than just directly talking about depression or drawing on that part of my personal experience. And I just get a little bit bored as well after a while. I love having a platform where at any point I can say something.

But also Twitter, it's very dangerous, you know, because certainly for someone like me, because when I'm talking, I often use very sort of simple words. As a writer, I'm just drawn to sort of monosyllables and making things as stripped down and kind of universal as possible. But it's a universality drawn from my own subjective experience.

So when you're actually sort of making a statement about mental health, I'm not meaning it applies to everyone but i'm trying to sort of make it readable and accessible to everyone and then it goes out there and then someone obviously because everyone does have a different experience of their mental illness and then they think oh are you trying to tell me how i should feel about and it's I'm not, but I can see how on Twitter these misinterpretations and tensions happen. So I'm being a bit more careful of how I talk about it, on Twitter at least.

I feel like Instagram, there's a bit more elasticity. People are willing to cut you some more slack and be more supportive and understand context. Whereas in Twitter, I almost think the opposite tendency is true. You're over-pleased. And it almost stifles your free expression of what you want to say or think. And obviously in a mental health context,

I'm very pro people being able to talk about their own experience. I just think when you start to have a reasonably big platform on there, then you have to be aware that not everyone is going to like what you say. And some people are really not going to like what they say. Even if it's only 5% of the people who are negative, then it's still, it can still still get in and it certainly if you're feeling depressed yourself the negative stuff is actually more likely to get in because it's sort of so I think there's another dimension with mental health where you have to sort of be aware of your own self-care and I haven't always been in the past I feel I'm getting a little bit better

I think I got into a little bit of a scrape in January where I was sort of getting back to people I shouldn't have been getting back to and the moment you do that you're just drawing attention to negativity and like putting a microscope on it so I'm getting better if I really want to say something I think it might not go down with everyone I either don't say it or I say it with confidence and then walk away from it um and it's just it's just about using social media in the right way for me for years because i was quite an early person on twitter i used it almost as a like a lot of people did back then i used it almost like a uh it was just an impulse there was no impulse control it was just like it was whatever I was thinking was there.

And that was the sort of joy of it. And you can do that when you've got a few hundred followers. But when you've got thousands of followers, it becomes a little bit more tricky and you have to be a bit more accountable for what you're saying. So yes, I think Twitter has changed. Certainly my experience with Twitter has changed. I'm having to be a little bit, I mean, I'll never be full professional, but I'm having

to be a little bit. Yeah. I mean, it is really interesting because on the one hand, you've got this platform that allows you to connect with other people and realize you're not alone, which I think is one of the most powerful parts of it. And at the same time, it can become this mechanism for just becoming, you know, like a full scale assault. And each platform has its different culture.

It's funny. I was also one of the very early people on the platform, I think back in late 2007, 2008, when on any given day, you actually wouldn't know whether the platform was going to be up or not. It was South by Southwest would happen and Twitter was down because a couple thousand people were on it. And it's like, that was it. But it is interesting how the conversation has changed in a really powerful way.

If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash futuremba. That's uvic.ca slash futuremba. 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 8 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 gonna 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. You've referenced a couple of times this moment back about 20 years ago. And I know that you end up in Ibiza basically working in the club scene as bartender slash promoter slash whatever it is that everyone does down there. But it's interesting to me because you described this three-year window that led you to a place where you came very close to taking your own life.

And that became a catalyzing moment to step back and really step back into a process of figuring things out. But I'm actually curious what landed you there in the first place, because you, undergrad, you study English literature, and then you end up in Leeds doing a master's in English. And then the next move out of that is Ibiza. And I was curious, how does that decision get made? Well, I first went to Ibiza in 1996. Me and my girlfriend went on holiday to Barcelona. We'd spent a lot of time in Barcelona.

And then in the middle of the week, we were young and we wanted to party. And then we met these Spanish guys in a bar who said, oh, you want to get the ferry to Ibiza? So we got the ferry to Ibiza. We had the best sleepless three nights of our lives. Went back home and then said, said oh next year we'll work at in abeva and then so we did that for three years and so i'd have my winters and you know nine months of the year in in britain we have a nine month winter so it's basically most of the time

was in this cold northern climate you know know, in the north of England. So even colder and wetter than London, in like Leeds and Hull, which you may not have heard of in the north of England. And, you know, studying. And then we had this sort of opposite existence in bright sunshine, you know, loud music fun and I think I think penduling between that especially that year I did my master's degree because you had a an option where you could do the degree in one year or spread over two years and do a bit more part-time I did it every one year and for the first few months hadn't really buckled down so I had this really intense period about four months I was trying to do this whole potentially

two-year degree course and you know reading about Byron and the romantics and um you know critical theory and all these French post-modern philosophers like Baudrillard and Derrida and it was sending me a little bit insane and I just needed I just felt like I wanted almost brainlessness. I just wanted to sort of like go out and just sort of lose myself in the opposite. So I'd have those two unhealthy extremes of sort of like overthinking and then unthinking. And yeah, the year of my breakdown actually was the summer after that because what happened after my master's degree is we moved to London and I was working

in dead-end jobs I'd have a job for about three weeks and then either I'd get fired because I was useless at the job or I would dramatically as if I'm in a movie version of my own life I'd walk out one lunchtime and um you know never be seen again. That happened twice, actually. So I was obviously having some kind of mental troubles that I wasn't recognising and masking by going to the pub every night and drinking beer. And I feel like Ibiza was just like an extension of that, an extension of the escape into the pub.

It was just like four four months of drink drugs very little sleep loud noise unhealthy food and just a mess really but it was a there were such moments of escape and freedom within that like you live those little moments and i feel like i had to i had to reach the point I reached in the beef I'm almost scared it sounds strange I'd almost be scared to know the version of me who didn't have that breakdown because if I hadn't got that extremely ill and I have to have to say as I always say but I get bored of saying it but I think it's important because when people think oh you went wild in a beef event obviously the breakdown was because you took loads of drugs and then you fell apart and had a bad trip or

something actually by the end of our third summer in abifa and we had actual day jobs there i was relatively bored of that stuff and and on the day i actually broke down and it was a day a specific day it wasn't like a gradual thing I broke down suddenly and had a panic attack that sort of didn't end about 22 years ago today actually and you know I hadn't drank a drop of alcohol I hadn't smoked a cigarette it was 11 in the morning so I hadn't well I hadn't done drugs for months actually at that point and I feel like what happened to me was partly because in two weeks after that, I was due to go back home, go back to London, get a real job. Me and Andrea had sort of decided this was going to be our last summer in a beefer. We've got to sort of grow up. I was 24 years old, didn't want to grow up. So I feel like the breakdown for me was like that brick wall I was sort of hitting, where even the link between doing a master's degree

and going to the nightclubs of Ibiza, for me, was both of them were ways not to actually grow up and face the real world. You know, I'd stay at university forever. I'd stay going to nightclubs forever. I would, you know, stay going to the pub forever i just anything that put off becoming a responsible adult and so you know smashing into that mental breakdown of panic disorder depression generalized anxiety disorder bits of ocd that were never properly

diagnosed but you know my main diagnosis was panic disorder, because it was just in a state of sort of terror. That for me was how I grew up in a strange way. And I overuse sort of metaphors and cliches about depression. But I think one of the reasons people turn to metaphors with depression is because you go through this invisible thing that's hard to get people to understand and i do kind of see like i love talking about caterpillars and butterflies because of the cocoon phase when the caterpillar is in it's dissolving in its own enzymes two weeks in the cocoon and then it's transformed into something else the caterpillar is in a very physical sense breaking down and sort of dissolving in its own sort of acids. And, you know, I do genuinely think of my breakdown as a kind of cocoon in a sense, you know, I literally, because I became agoraphobic with the panic,

I was literally cocooned back in my childhood bedroom back in England. And I very rarely went out on my own I was in these sort of dark rooms under grey skies that winter and going through absolute hell but I look back on it now as a kind of transformative necessary step obviously obviously if I could have gone back to be a teenager to be a young adult to be a 20 something person and actually say hey you've got issues here you just need to grow up you know as myself now you know you've got to get physically healthy you've got to start addressing some mental things then you know it could have been different and but to reach that point of awareness for me i think would have been quite difficult without having to reach a point of rock bottom so even though I'd never want to go through a full blown, full blown maddening breakdown like that, I wouldn't actually want to switch to the timeline

where that hadn't happened. Yeah. I mean the, the, the result of it, um, you stepping into a place of saying, okay, I need to figure this out and unwind it and, and figure out how do I move forward? How do I step back into a life that's more healthy and constructive? I've had this conversation with so many people who have had moments in their lives where they have been profoundly brought to their knees. And that led to some really, really big change in the way that they stepped back into their lives or the way they slowly got back up from their knees. And I've asked this, you know, so many of them, if not every one of them, like, do you feel like you can get back up and be in the place that you are now, like later in life without going to that place? And to the one, almost everyone has said, like, I don't invite

it. I didn't want it. It was horrendous. And I don't see how I would be here now, the way I am now without having brought, been brought to that place, which is not never an, never an invitation for people to say, oh, let me like, you know, like push hard and it's like, see if I can get there. You know, that is absolutely not what we're saying, but I've always been curious, you know, can you reach that point? Is there a, is there a way to get through to a place of recovery and stepping into a healthier place without going through that sort of dark night of the soul? I think there is, but it takes,

you have to be kind of in tune with yourself. And the problem with me is I wasn't at all in tune with myself. I was trying to continually escape myself, you and always escape you know with travel going to different countries but you always take yourself with you don't you so it's that old cliche and i'd reached a point where i couldn't escape from myself any longer and then i broke down i can remember a real turnaround point for me. It was a few months after my actual breakdown back in England. And I was having another dip and I was in a supermarket and I was a mess. I was hiding tears. I was a mess. I was sort of imagining. I had these kind of hallucinations, which weren't what people think of as hallucinations. I wasn't literally like on a

NASA trip where I'd see giant chocolate bars walking around i'd be tortured by a lot of mental imagery every time i sort of close my eyes and the more as with all sorts of anxieties and fears the more you are scared of it the more it comes to you so i was at that point and i was terrifying myself and then terrifying myself some more and get into the cycle but then i was at that point and I was terrifying myself and then terrifying myself some more and getting to the cycle. But then I was at this point in a supermarket and no natural lighting. It was sort of an underground supermarket and just, I was so sensitive to everything. I could really feel that, you know, if there was no natural light. I was at a point and I thought, you know, I'm as low as you can feel, but I realized at that point, I'm still going to live.

I realized that if I wasn't going to live, if I was going to, you know, do something reckless and stupid, I would have done it. And I hadn't done it. And from that point on, I thought it gave me a little bit of power over the depression and over the fear. Because I thought, well, literally over the last few months my mind had thrown everything at me and I was still there and it was almost like and I'm not a particularly religious person you know typical British kind of somewhere between atheism and agnostic but there's that point where I thought you know if I had been a religious person, I would have felt, I'd sort of touched my soul here.

It's kind of like there's a part of me that couldn't be broken down person, that couldn't be, you know, got up. There's all kinds of stuff that I'd crumbled away. And it is called breakdown for a reason. You do feel like yourself breaking down. But there'd been a part of me, and i suppose it's a part of you uh you know when i've been reading about buddhism and stuff it's very much about watching yourself you know there's always two versions of yourself there's the self that's feeling and then there's the self that's experiencing the feeling and being aware of your experience so there's always a separation even in the midst of total pain.

There's a person experiencing the feeling and then there's another person observing you. And so I'd reach that point where I realised, okay, well, that person, that person who's observing all this, then they're going to survive. There's a sort of, you know, I think we say rock bottom for a reason because you reach rock bottom

and you find something solid granite hard and that i thought okay it's not going to be easy there's going to be loads of dips but i really always held on to that moment where i thought okay i can't be broken down further and that was always you know people always say to depressed people i'll remember remember the good times remember good times before and that was always you know people always say to depressed people i'll remember remember the good times remember good times before and that has a value you know it is important to remember that you haven't always felt this way and you'll feel better again but there's also kind of about you can turn reframe things where actually if you've been through some bad times that can have a value because that's how you measure your progress

because you can actually think well that day in a b- you know i've had a horrendous day today i've had three panic attacks but it wasn't as bad as that day so you can actually you can actually have a bad day then that feels like progress and even if you're having the worst day imaginable then you can sort of like put it into a bank of bad days and think well okay this day actually is going to have some use in the future because it's going to be a marker i'm not going to so i i kind of became my own um therapist and sort of taught myself how to sort of measure progress and all of that and because um the nature of my depression was coupled with panic disorder. It gave me a lot of invisible deadlines. Like it would say the most ridiculous stuff.

You know, you won't be alive by the age of 25. Or if you're alive, you'll be in a straitjacket somewhere. Or, you know, your partner will leave you. You'll never get a job. This, this, this. Gives you a big list. And obviously some bad things do happen in your life. No one's life is a bed of roses.

I've had lots of bad things happen to me but that world view that depression gives you of ultra catastrophe all the time that doesn't happen so what happens is time slowly disproved the voice of depression I get to my 25th birthday and my 26th birthday and 30th 40 40th birthday, and you're still there. So time is kind of the one thing that's bigger than depression. And another sort of happy side effect of that is that as being a young person, I can remember always worrying about aging. I can remember being a hypochondriac, worrying about physical illness. It totally reframed my view of time. I'm always sort of like so grateful to have reached an age

I'm so proud of being older you know I'm actually like that distance between my 24 year old self you know I've got no I'm I'm so glad I'm not one of those people who spends their life nostalgically saying oh when I was in my early 20s, that was the best year of my life, because it really wasn't. And I have got progressively happier as I've got older. And yeah, so basically, it's good to have that sort of measure of progress and actually, you know, embrace getting older. It's a kind of little triumph for me. Yeah, I love the notion of time being this sort of slow, deliberate provider of evidence that controverts the storyline in your head. And eventually you start checking all the boxes that you thought would never be checked. And you're like, oh, so then all those things I was telling they actually can't be true because time is showing me like that, that they were all wrong,

but you got to be around for that time. You know, If you're at a point in life, when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The university of Victoria's MBA in sustainable innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true change makers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges from healthcare and the environment to energy government and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So you have this moment, you have this season, late 90s, very early 2000s. And at the same time, you start writing novels, kids' books, building a reputation, starting to build a career. And 2014, I guess, is when you first... But all the mental health stuff for you is happening in the background. This is not a public part of your conversation.

You're not writing about it. You're building your chops more in the world of fiction. And this is just what's going on in your personal life. And then 2014, you write a blog post basically talking about that moment in Ibiza where you step to the edge of a cliff and then step back, which creates a tremendous response. The next year that turns into the book, Reasons to Stay Alive, which is received incredibly. It becomes a huge hit. It reveals a lot of what we've been talking

about right now. But what I'm curious about is you have up until that point then built a career, like a dozen or so years, more than that as a writer and as a novelist. And in the world of writing, so often people kind of say, you know, you have your lane, you have the thing that you're known for, you know, keep doing more of what you're going to be successful at, what you've proven to be successful at, especially your publisher saying that to you. When you decide to come out

with a new book, when in 2015, you're like reasons to stay alive is coming out. And this is a complete and utter departure of what you've ever written about and also ever talked about, because this is about you. I'm curious about that decision and that moment and how it felt to you, like the day before all of this comes out, or even stepping up the year before, the day before you hit publish on that initial blog post that reveals this. Yeah, no, it's, it's, well, the blog post was written with, you know, the blog post was going to be an end in itself. That was going to be my first and last word on it. The blog post, I've been writing these blog posts every week

for a charity called BookTrust. I was a writer in residence for six months. And for a lot of that time, I've just been writing the generic stuff, the writing tips, different things about being a writer. And I was feeling a bit dry. I hadn't actually got much to say. And so out of sheer necessity of a deadline looming, it must have coincided with me feeling a bit more relaxed

about my experience. I was just like, wow, this is a good kind of safe space to test the water because not many people have been reading this blog and I can just sort of like put it out there and see what sort of the response is. And I put it out there and it was the only blog that I'd written for that charity, which, you know, had any kind of traction. And the response was amazing. Loads and loads of comments.

But I still don't think I would have turned that into a book without a meeting. I'd met a woman called Kathy Rentenbrink who's um she's a writer herself and she's experienced depression and a lot of trauma in her own life and she's she knew a lot about publishing in London she'd worked from the sort of main trade magazine called the bookseller she'd been high up there and she she'd met me a couple of times and we'd got on and then we had a meeting with her and she said Matt you need to write a book about depression it would go down so well I've got a good publisher in mind it would work you know I think I think the time's ready and I was like I was a bit hesitant because I thought well you know I've done reasonably well with my last book which was a fiction book but I should really capitalize on that by writing another fiction book. And the book, she was quite persuasive. And then I got into the idea and then I put it to my publishers and they weren't, they weren't that into it,

my UK publisher, they hate me saying this, but they really weren't that into it when I first went to them about it. My publisher himself, he said, you know, the head publisher, he said, Matt, you've got good imagination. Just turn it into fiction, you know, make it universal, make it fiction. And I was a bit stubborn with him because I actually remembered when I was depressed. And what really helped me was when finally you heard of people who'd gone through something. I can remember going even to a homeopath. I didn't particularly believe in homeopathy. My mum wanted me to go to a homeopath, and I was reluctant to go.

And I was so glad I did, not because of the tinctures I was given and homeopathy stuff, but the woman, her sap had been through this ordeal and had depression and panic disorder, and she was telling me there in front of me what she'd been through. And there she was smiling, happy and, you know, with a job and able to cope. And that was so inspiring to see people who've been through absolute hell, been suicidal, come out the other side. So I thought, if I wrote this as a novel, you're going to lose all that. You're not going to have the sort of authentic thing of someone saying, this is me, I've been through this, you know, here you are. So with Reasons to Stay Alive specifically, I didn't know quite what I was writing, but I knew it had to

have that sense of authenticity. It had to be nonfiction. And that was my only guiding upwards. And I talked the publishers into it. They paid me very little money for it. I would have got four times as much, put it that way, if it had been a novel, if I'd have fictionalized it. But sometimes in your career, you have to take what looks like the smaller move or you have to have a bit of faith in yourself and um I went away I wrote it I ignored terms like self-help book memoir things like that I just thought I'm not I'm gonna ignore the fact it's even a book I'm just gonna try and put some words on the page that would communicate to someone like me on a metaphorical and literal cliff edge in a bee for 24 years old how would

you get into that person's brain what would you for 24 years old how would you get into that person's brain what would you say to that person what would you say to that young person going through that and that that was what I was doing with that book and I definitely look back at it now and there's parts that I cringe at parts of it I get the terminology wrong part I talk about being a depressive a lot and I don't really like doing that because although I'd talk now about someone you know having depression or me having depression I feel like when you label yourself as a depressive that's a that's a comes a whole lot away but I'm still very proud I wrote that book because um it has apparently been useful

you know people say it's been useful to them and it's been useful for people who haven't had depression understanding their son their partner their parent whoever it is what we've been going through so i was very glad certainly in this country to add to the mental health conversation at that time um it was certainly the most personal thing i've written because even though i've written uh two more non-fiction books, one's called The Comfort Book, which is just a very, it's not necessarily aimed at someone with mental illness,

it's just about ideas and things that have always comforted me. And then there's another one, a bit more negative called Notes on a Nervous Planet, which is about all the ways the modern world is slowly making us insane. So that was more of a social look. But Reasons to Stay Alive was the one that actually sort of came from my own sort of flashbacks and experiences

and stuff like that. And writing it actually was such a joy and such a release, even though it was about this heavy stuff, because, you know, people ask, you know, what's it like going back to the worst experiences of your life? But the thing is with worst experiences

of your life or worst experiences of anyone's life, they're always kind of kind of there you know they're always defining us in some way so often when you actually let them out and you talk about them and you write about them it actually feels more of a release than a sort of going back to so it kind of wrote itself as much as a book ever writes itself it was was a short, yeah, I think it's something like 35,000 words. It was probably the shortest thing I've ever written, but it was the most meaningful at that moment. It's always interesting to me when somebody decides to step out and not only share something about themselves, but also takes a risk in offering

something to the world, which is so close to the bone and also so profoundly different than what they've offered before. But I'm wondering actually if that's really true, because if you look at your writing, even your fiction, your kids' books, there's an interesting thing that often happens. It reminded me a little bit of, so Kate DiCamillo, who's been on the podcast in the past, writes these fantastic children's books. And I remember she once, she told me, she said, always tell the truth, but give them hope. And that's kind of what you thread into your writing, even in the fiction, even in the kids books. It's like, you're not pulling punches. You're not saying, and everything's going to

be awesome. And here's the story. You're kind of saying some hard stuff is going to happen and you're going to be okay, which is the fictionalized version of this. So when I first was thinking about it, I was like, oh, this is a huge departure. But is it really? The departure is really just saying, look, this is a true story and this is my own experience. And even the stuff that you've written since then, the kid stuff, the truth pixie, you know, it's, it's all weaving into the same texture, you know, in the way that you, it feels like you're bringing yourself to your writing, but you're doing it in ways which that are sort of context appropriate for different types of readers.

I think, I think that's true because I always worry. I always think, oh, what genre is sort of right now? And, you know, it's nice to have freedom but there's also the sort of anxiety of having freedom where you don't know which path to take and i always sort of sometimes envy like a thriller writer who has like one central detective and they write 37 books with that detective and it'd be so nice to sort of sit down on the sofa and to know precisely the book they're going to write but i I think with me, what I try and write, it requires lots of different angles.

But yeah, you're right, within it, I'm always trying to offer something. So even though when I'm writing something totally fantastical, like that children's book you mentioned, which I wrote, incidentally, straight after Reasons to Stay Alive, I sort of wanted to go into an opposite world. So I went into North Pole, Santa Claus, Father Christmas.

It's a book called A Boy Called Christmas. It's going to be a film now. And that, even though it's got pixies and elves and reindeer and trolls and all kinds of things, it's really a story about grief. There's a death. Spoil it for anyone who wants to read it, but there's a death that spoil it for anyone who wants to read it but there's a death that comes halfway through the book and it's about trying to find some kind of hope within that

darkness so i thought so i never want to write you know pure rainbows and unicorns out of context i want to actually go to some kind of i normally start with some kind of authentic hopefully authentic pain or struggle and then try and find the light within that because i think that's how you offer hope to people because if you just sort of like say you need to do this or you need to just sort of smile and be happy then no one's going to take that you need to actually show that you've some experience of it yourself or your fictional characters have some experiences of it and it feels true and i think one thing that stories can do is they can actually give us that kind of nourishment and strength by you know you're

going through a hard time in life and you're reading about someone who's going through an even worse time in their life. I used to be obsessed as a teenager and I was going through a hard time as a teenager. You know the film Papillon with Steve McQueen? Yeah, of course. Dustin Hoffman.

I used to be obsessed with that film. People warn teenagers not to watch that film because it's so sort of, and there's been a remake recently, because it's so sort of and there's been a remake recently because it's so sort of like intense and got so many scenes of torture and prison and stuff but that was a comforting film for me to watch because it showed what human beings can survive you know i suppose you know shawshank redemption's another obvious one but those sort of prison films they show what life is like and if you cannot because ultimately Papillon is a kind of story of hope and it's seen as a bleak prison drama but yeah you have to offer

something which has some resonance some truth to it but you can take some sort of like positivity from it and it's not always in an obvious way as it isn't in Papillon you know it's not always obvious the hope but sometimes things that help you aren't always the most obvious things or helpful things but yeah I mean with the Midnight Library my story the Midnight Library I was very keen at the start to to make sure the reader knew that Nora is in this horrendous state of mind and um you know she's really really um feeling low and i i knew that that was going to put some would inevitably put some readers off because you've got quite a hard sort of 30 pages of suicidal despair to get through at the start but i think

you know and very much uh me trying to sort of borrow some of the techniques of things like It's a Wonderful Life and stuff. I think if you start in that low place, you can end up in a much, much more hopeful place than if you'd have never gone there. You know what I mean? And I feel like that in life too. That's why I'm sort of thankful for having known so many periods of rock bottom, because you are, you end up more grateful for the neutral moments. You know, as a young, quite selfish young man, I always felt that to be happy, you needed extreme experiences. You needed to get out of your head,

or you needed to watch the most violent Tarantino movie, or you needed the loudest music up to 11, or this, that, and other, you know, all quite typical young man cliches. And afterwards afterwards after sort of falling apart i just appreciated neutrality a bit more i appreciated not always doing you know and actually just sort of you know what i was most scared of was just sort of sitting on a sofa with my own thoughts or just sort of lying in bed with my own thoughts i never i wanted to sort of like stay out all night i think partly because i just when i. I never, I wanted to sort of like stay out all night. I think partly because I just, when I hit the bed,

I just wanted to collapse and just not have a moment of thinking of it. So to try and have a life of not thinking. And you can't do that. You eventually have to come to terms with yourself and you have to sort of, you know, not necessarily going around in a state of thinking you're amazing all the time,

but you have to come to some sort of, some kind of place of kindness towards yourself and tolerance of yourself and that's kind of what my recovery was for me it was actually accepting myself when I was feeling lower accepting like you know not beating myself up for having a couple of labels here and there that have been diagnosed to me and just sort of like total acceptance and once you reach that point it helps you even when you're better it helps you appreciate things and understand things um one one very interesting thing i think about anxiety which again is kind of hellish to go through is you you're very much in tune with what makes you feel better and what makes you feel worse like often when we're just sort of running normally we're not always aware of you

know how little things affect our states of mind but when you've got mental illness those little things become massive things you know like the sun goes behind a cloud and you sort of feel a weight and uh or some you feel some sense of relief about something and it's like hallelujah chorus going off in your head. So you actually learn about yourself, what you kind of need to be happy. And you build up a, while you're still little, you build up a little toolbox. You sort of know.

And it changes. I'm sure the toolbox changes from person to person. There are some overlaps for me very much you know going out into the open air running every morning doing things like that um getting interested in stuff getting interested in anything that wasn't my own brain um was so important to me that last thought you just had a as you're sharing that something that um a guy named chip connelly once told me, actually, I think it was in a book that he wrote. He said, you know, people think the opposite of depression is happiness, but it's like the opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's curiosity. Yeah.

Because that ceases to exist. And he kind of said, you know, like he knew that he was starting to turn the corner when he started to be curious about things again, including himself and his own life. Yeah. Find the passion as large as your fear, you know, find something that will fill that space. And I definitely, you know, I don't want to romanticize mental illness in any way because it's no fun at all. But I do think there's something about when you've experienced any kind of grief or pain in your life where it takes over a kind of space of you but it sometimes expands that space so when that pain leaves or retreats slightly you're left with the space so you you you can fill that space with other stuff and you actually feel in some some sense kind of like a bigger person because

of it like you actually that sense of gratitude that sense of love that sense of appreciation of whatever it is of cooking or you know going out to a concert or whatever it is you have the greatest sort of sensitivity to that stuff and yeah it's not always worth the price, obviously, but if you can take that silver lining, then it is quite a therapeutic thing. One of the things you shared, you talked about the comfort book, which is the most recent and which is interesting book also, because it's, you know, this is just sort of a book of thoughts. It's almost like, you know, you can flip to any page, any given page and just like, oh, here's anything from a sentence or two to, you know, like a couple of, a little bit longer. And it's just, it's, it's almost like, you know, a daily meditation type

of thing. Look here, here's an interesting little thing that's going to plant a seed. And let me just noodle on it. You know, like as I move through the day, one of the things you share is that happiness occurs when you forget who you're expected to be. That landed in a really direct and powerful way with me. Yeah, I think so. When I think back to the times I'm happiest, it's always when you're at your least self-conscious, when you're kind of like, you're not even trying necessarily actively to be happy. There's no sort of try in it. There's no kind of effort in it.

It's moments where you just kind of lose yourself whether you were laughing with family or friends or you know you're just sort of like feeling happy you it can happen just walking the dog it can happen just it can be just those little moments that feel like the universe is suddenly in harmony and you're part of this great cosmic order and everything just feels right and it just kind of happens but it often happens when you're not trying to be a certain way you're not worrying about your next deadline you're not thinking of yourself as in my case like mr writer or mr mental health spokesperson whatever else you know whatever labels people attach to you you're just sort of free of all that you You're not drowning in those expectations.

And often they're very much self-expectations. And yeah, just being, you know, a human animal in a sort of positive sense. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out in this international container of the Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I think gratitude is the first thing that comes up. Just appreciate, you know, there's so many things we have in every life to complain about and to be down about, but that we can actually forget the things we have to be grateful for. And I noticed early on with myself that a lot of the things I dreamed of, I'd imagined happiness would come

if I only got whatever it is, a steady relationship, a book deal, something like that. When you get that, it's so fleeting. You have about three weeks and then then it's on to the next thing the goalpost shift and there's got to be like a best-selling book there's got to be you know we've got to be married got to have kids there's always a next little goalpost and i think you know if we can kind of resist that urge and actually want you know some of those things that we always did want, but now we have them.

You know, keep that sense of wanting and gratitude towards it. If we can want what we already have along the way, rather than continually looking for it. I think a good life is just sort of a gratitude for where we are, what we've got, and not that yearning that we're often encouraged to feel and to just sort of like yeah accept accept ourselves and accept the miracle the messy miracle often of being alive on this fragile beautiful planet of ours thank you thank you very much hey before you leave if you love this episode safe that you'll also love the conversation that

we had with Kate DiCamillo about writing and creativity and telling the truth, but always leaving people with hope. You'll find a link to Kate's episode in the show notes. And even if you don't listen now, be sure to click and download so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so,

go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work we're doing here on Good Life Project, please go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things to you about what makes you come alive, about the fundamental nature of work that lights a fire inside of you. And it'll show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning and purpose and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your

favorite bookseller now. Till next time, I'm Jonathan Fields. 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 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10.

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 gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.