How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S9, Ep6 How to Fail: Failosophy Special

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

***SPECIAL EPISODE KLAXON***To mark the publication of my new book, Failosophy, I take a trip down memory lane and share my favourite moments from the How To Fail archive, featuring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mo Gawdat, Alain de Botton and many, many more. AND I discuss the three personal failures that many lovely listeners sent in - they're funny and insightful and moving (best have a hankie nearby, is all I'm saying).Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to write in and to all of you for listening. I love and appreciate you more than I can say.*Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong is published on 1st October and is available here*I am doing a LIVE show at the newly Covid-secure London Palladium on 2nd October at 6.30pm UK time. It is also live-streamed online. If you'd like to buy tickets for either option, you can do so here.*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail] You can buy our fantastic PODCAST MERCH here.* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. This episode of How to Fail is sponsored by Misoma, my go-to jewelry brand. Now, I was introduced to Misoma by a very, very close friend of mine, and I have barely gone a day without wearing a piece of their jewelry since. They really are amazing. And Miss Soman know that every piece of jewellery a woman wears tells a part of her story, her successes, her celebrations, and of course, her failures. The earrings she bought with her first paycheck, the surprise pick-me-up present from her best friend after that rubbish

breakup, the matching bracelets they got on that wild holiday, refusing to take them off for months. As we grow, so too does our armour. From past loves to career milestones, morning to night, we wear our treasured moments, knowing they have shaped the person we have become. Misoma are on a mission to build a more confident, creative and collaborative world, starting a chain reaction, one link at a time. I'm thrilled to share to all listeners of How to Fail a very exclusive 15% off now when you use ElizabethDay15 on MissSoma.com. Thank you very much to Miss Oma. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning

how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Hello and welcome to a very special episode of How to Fail. It's special because, well, there are no guests, at least not new ones. We'll be hearing from some old friends and we'll also be hearing from the most important people of all, that's you. This is a special episode to mark the publication of my new book, Philosophy, a handbook for when things go wrong, which is out tomorrow. See what I did there? Philosophy, not philosophy. I will never, ever let a pun go unmade. Anyway, yes, it's out tomorrow and I can't quite believe that we're here because philosophy is the culmination of almost everything I have learned in the two and a bit years I've been doing this podcast.

And I've learned a lot because the best thing about my job is that I'm given the immense privilege of asking people about some of the most intimate, important and formative moments of their lives. I've interviewed Buddhist monks and award-winning actors and famous philosophers and former heroin addicts. I've met pop stars and reality TV alumni and Olympic athletes and best-selling authors. I've spoken to comedians and thinkers and publishers and broadcasters and mental health campaigners. And along the way, we've discussed everything from failed driving tests and embarrassing incidents involving apple pie, to sexuality, depression, miscarriage, suicide, and the incredible capacity human beings have for hope, for love, and for resilience. Some of you might already know that I started How To Fail in the wake of

a breakup. It's funny that I've chosen that word, wake, because although it shattered my heart at the time, that breakup was actually a wake-up call of some magnitude. It was three weeks before my 39th birthday, and the man I had been with for the previous two years suddenly ended things. birthday and the man I had been with for the previous two years suddenly ended things. It had been the first serious relationship I'd been in since my divorce. I looked back on the decade of my 30s and I realised that, personally speaking, my life had not gone according to plan. I had tried and failed to have children, two unsuccessful rounds of IVF, a miscarriage at three months, one round of egg freezing and and although I didn't know it yet, two miscarriages lay ahead of me. I had tried and failed to have a meaningful long-term

relationship, and now here I was, staring down the barrel of my 40s as a single woman without children, unsure of what to do next. So what did I do next? Well, I spent a lot of time lying in the bath in the middle of the afternoon and eating hummus straight from the tub. And I also started listening to podcasts, because as anyone who has ever been through heartbreak will know, you cannot possibly listen to music, because every song you hear will seem to bear a specific and peculiar relevance to your situation. And at the same time as I was eating hummus and listening to podcasts, I was talking to my closest friends about all those occasions in my life that things had gone wrong. I began to realise that every time I'd struggled, I had also survived. That every time I had failed,

I had also discovered my own reserves of strength. I began to understand that failure did not have to defeat you. That it could, in fact, be the making of you. That just because you fail, does not define you as a failure. Quite the opposite, in fact. It makes you kind of kick-ass. And often, it teaches you the lessons you needed to learn. I used to hate it when, in the depths of my heartbreak, well-meaning friends told me, you'll look back on the end of this relationship one day and you'll be grateful for it. But damn it, they turned out to be right. I look back now, three years later, and I am unbelievably, wholeheartedly, unquestionably grateful for it. I'm grateful because I don't think I would have launched this podcast without it.

I'm grateful because I know I wouldn't have understood true love without being confronted with what it's like to pretend you have true love when your gut is telling you something else. I began to wonder whether I could open up this conversation about vulnerability that I was having with my friends and in my own head to a wider audience. And because I'd been listening to podcasts, I wondered if that might be the best format. And because I'd been eating a lot of hummus, I decided to DM a hummus company on Twitter and ask them to be my first sponsor. Amazingly, they agreed, which meant I got to spend the entirety of the first season saying the word

baba ganoush. When I put the first season of How to Fail Out There in July 2018, I genuinely had very little expectation for its success. I simply knew that it existed in exactly the way that I wanted it to. I had relied on friends and contacts to agree to be my first eight guests, and I had drawn my own logo with felt-tip pens one night, tracing the central circle of the rosette around the bottom of a favourite mug of mine. I googled to find a sound engineer who could provide all the technical know-how that I lacked. Hi Chris, so grateful for you. I eBayed my wedding dress to pay him, and it was very much a one-woman project. But after the first episode went live, something extraordinary happened. Overnight, I had thousands of downloads. By the end of the first season, there were tens of thousands. One year later, I'd won a British Podcast Award and written a memoir on failure

that turned out to be a bestseller. Two years later, and now How to Fail is in its ninth season and has over 12 million downloads. Ironically, it has turned out to be the most successful thing I've ever done. So it turned out we all really, really wanted to talk about failure. And I think it's because in this culture of curated perfection, where we are only ever as good as our last filtered Instagram post, where you can send out an ill-thought tweet one day and be publicly cancelled the next, there is vanishingly little space to admit to vulnerability. This is changing, and I hope PaxFail has played a small part in changing it, but there's still some way to go. We need to be empowered by our vulnerability rather than ashamed of it. We need to understand that although we fail, and although we can be sad about that failure, we do not have to live in that sadness. We can choose a different

way. We can find meaning in the darkness if only we know how. Because pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Because however bad things seem, there will always be a rising sun tomorrow. Because, as Zora Neale Hurston writes, no hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. We can weep, and we can know that weeping doesn't last forever. Failure is temporary. As the podcast matured, I noticed that the more interviews I was doing,

the more my life was changing for the better, as I applied the nuggets of wisdom I was being given by my guests to my own mindset. With each episode I researched and put out there, I started to distill all the information I was receiving into what I called the failure principles. At first there were five failure principles, but that didn't seem quite enough. So now there are seven. Ask me in a couple of years and I'll probably be 21. But for now, the seven failure principles seem pretty comprehensive. I've used them myself in times of personal crisis and they've worked. I hope that they work for you too. Because you, the listeners, the readers, the ceaseless adventurers on this planet of failure are the most important people of all. Lots and lots of you have got in touch following a call I put out last month for listener

stories and I'm so grateful to everyone who took the time to write in. I have such lovely listeners and many of you have been kind enough to say how much this podcast means to you. But I want to say in return how much you mean to me. When someone listens to an episode and sees themselves reflected in a passing comment or is helped through a difficult life patch by the wisdom of a guest or is moved and strengthened by an admission of vulnerability, it connects us. by an admission of vulnerability, it connects us. In sharing our failures, we become stronger. In sharing our failures, we realize there is nothing to fear from them. In sharing our failures, we become more human. So in sharing our failures, we share ourselves. I have a tattoo on my left wrist. Anyone who has read my previous book,

How to Fail, Everything I've Ever Learned from Things Going Wrong, will know that I contemplated getting it for years and was put off by the fact that the phrase I wanted was also the name of a popular TV quiz show. No, I don't mean Nevermind the Buzzcococks or countdown, that would be a rubbish tattoo. I mean Only Connect, which was originally EM Forster's before it got purloined by Victoria Corrin Mitchell for the quiz show. Anyway, I got the tattoo in the end and I love it because every time I look at it, it reminds me of the single most important thing we can do with and for each other. Connect, understand, empathise, love. And it reminds me too that the extraordinary, multifaceted, complex experience of being alive in this universe is actually very simple when you realise, as Gloria Steinem told me on this podcast, that we are linked, not ranked. And if we are linked, we are all part of the same endeavour, which means that in loving

others, we are loved ourselves. So I wanted to mark the publication of Philosophy in a special way, which was to share some of my most memorable podcast moments from the archive. There was a lot to choose from, and I've really struggled to whittle it down. Perhaps if you disagree with my selection, you can email us at howtofailpod at gmail.com, and you can tell me yours, and we can do another special episode further down the line. But for now, here are my top seven how to fail moments. Number one comes from the first ever episode I put out there on the 13th of July, 2018. It's with my dear friend, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who some of you might just have heard of. I don't know.

Apparently she did this little show called Fleabag or something, and she was in Star Wars and saved the James Bond franchise. Yeah. Anyway, her. The clip I've selected is what has generally become known as the Apple Crumble anecdote. I was really excited to meet Meryl Streep when I was doing The Iron Lady. Was she?

I was weird with her, though. I go weird around celebrities, and always in a very individual way for each celebrity. I should just not be around them. What did you say to Meryl Streep that was weird? Meryl Streep was doing The Iron Lady, and she was in this prosthetic, whole-body-face scenario. The lights were so hot, so whenever she was in this prosthetic sort of whole body face scenario the lights were so hot so whenever she was on set she didn't she couldn't really speak in between so much energy was taken

up and just like acting through this you know mask and everything so when the light so she would never say anything in between cuts and we always knew and she was always like I'm really sorry but I just can't I know I just need to like power down have a glass like sip some water through this straw but there was one day when uh the lights went off they called cut and then she just turned around to this room of people and went you know in her margaret thatcher voice and just went hey how's everybody's day and everyone just freaked out everyone's like froze in the room because they were like oh my god everyone at the same time like we were like vultures just like this is our moment to have to share words with meryl street

and uh so everyone sort of was being very casual. And the scene was like a drinks party or something, but edging towards her with this kind of wild look in their eye. And everyone was trying to have some personal bants with Meza. So she was just opening the conversation. And then it was getting like weirdly competitive. And we were like crowding around her. But everyone was trying to be very casual.

And then she started up this conversation about something. Anyway, I tried a joke and it landed and she laughed and she was like oh everyone else just looked at me with steel and an ashen face and fury and I was like I've won it she's mine she's mine so she was mine but after that I was like she's totally mine she's totally mine we're gonna have a day together we're gonna like like nod to each other respectfully in the corridors. We may even like, you know, graduate to a drink at some point. And then at lunchtime, I was sitting at this table with everybody and I was eating this apple crumble.

And she came down the stairs. She was feeling lively this day, obviously outside of the prosthetic. She came down the stairs and she was walking towards me. I was like, oh my God, oh my God. Like she's going to come to the table and we're friends now because I was the one that made her laugh and she walked up to the table and she put her hand on my shoulder and she said uh oh what are you eating I have never answered why this I got so excited about the banter with Mel that I flung my apple crumble straight into my chest my costume chest and I and I literally squawked my apple crumble

and she went oh and then she went back into her American accent which she hadn't done for the whole time and she went I wasn't gonna take it from you and I was just holding this awful like dripping pudding over my cut my beautiful silk shirt and I was just holding this awful like dripping pudding over my cut my beautiful silk shirt and I'm just holding it there really tightly not letting it go I was just like oh my god everyone's doing like what was that that was the strangest response and then she was like okay and then she she moved off and then I had to go and apologize costume thing so just weird stuff like that you made her break character Meryl Streep break character Phoebe Waller-Bridge on the perils of apple crumble there I've lost count of the number of people who've messaged me

to tell me that they snorted out loud on public transport while listening to that anecdote and from the ridiculous to the sublime my second favourite moment comes courtesy of one of the most life-changing people I've ever met, Mo Gowdat. This is taken from his first interview with me back in season four, when he spoke to me about his algorithm for happiness and how he used it in his own life after the tragic death of his beloved son Ali at the age of 21 during a routine operation. Here, Mo introduces me to the concept of naming your brain. So there are a couple of major myths in the Western world about our brains. One of them is I think therefore I am. There is an interesting conviction, especially in those of us who grew in Western mentalities,

that the voice in my head speaking to me is me telling me what to do. Now, this is a really interesting reflection that I wonder why people don't do. I mean, ask yourself this. Your heart is a piece of meat, really. It's a biological function. It pumps blood around your body. Okay. Did you ever wake up one morning and tell yourself, I am the blood pumping around my body? No. Does anyone listening to us here think that they are urine? I apologize for the example, but do you ever wake up in the morning and say, I piss, therefore I am? Nobody does that, right? The truth is, the truth is we don't associate with any of the biological products of any of our organs other than our brain.

Somehow, your brain's responsibility, its biological function, is to turn concepts into words so that you understand them. Because as of the time when you started to learn to speak, the only building blocks of knowledge that you have are words. to learn to speak, the only building blocks of knowledge that you have are words. So your brain takes complex concepts, turns them into a simple, small number of words as it can, and it speaks to you. As a matter of fact, MIT did an experiment in 2007 that shows vividly that participants will solve problems in their brains first, and then take up to eight seconds using their verbal association engine, the part of our brain we use to speak out loud, before they actually hear the answer from their brain to themselves. Now, your brain is literally talking to you. If you don't believe me, ask yourself this.

If it was you talking to you, why would you need to talk? It's a third party. It's a biological function. Now, we glorify that biological function to the point where it takes over our entire life. Now, here's the trick. If you had a friend, I apologize if anyone listening to us is called Becky, I call my brain Becky. Okay, if you have a friend in school, Becky, who was so annoying, she showed up every seven minutes, told you awful things about yourself, made you feel horrible, and then left with no positive impact whatsoever on your life. Would you wake up the next morning, go to school and say, I miss Becky?

Would you listen to Becky when she speaks? What would you do with Becky when she starts to do that? You'll say, no, Becky, please don't do this to me. If Becky starts to tell you weird lies, you'll say, Becky, do you have any evidence to back this up? Right? If Becky doesn't, Becky is a third party, you would say, Becky, this is crap. You don't have the right to waste my life on crap. And that's exactly what our brains do. I stop in the middle of a conversation. I say to myself, Becky, what did you just say? Now, here's the interesting thing. It's not you talking to you. It's a biological organ talking to you. As horrible as that sounds,

it's a three pound lump of meat. Okay. The other interesting side of this is the following. If I give you a Ferrari, Ferraris are horrible cars. If I give you a really good car, okay. And you know, I tell you to go around the track that car, and you don't know how to drive, you're going to kill yourself and everyone else. Understand how that brain works. Now, we think there is one type of thought. As a matter of fact, there are three types of thought. The type of thought that makes us unhappy is incessant thinking. Incessant thinking is basically your brain sounding the siren. Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong. That incessant thinking doesn't lead to anything, doesn't change anything in the real world. It happens in the midline areas of your brain. There are two other types of thoughts that are

useful. One of them is insightful thinking, and the other is experiential thinking. Insightful thinking is when you solve a problem. Experiential thinking is when you observe the world as it is. Okay? Those happen mostly on the right-hand side of the brain, some in the prefrontal cortex, some in the insula and so on. Those kinds of thoughts are the thoughts you should allow your brain to give you. And by the way, that's the attitude we use at work. If someone walks into my office and complains, I don't let them complain incessantly. Midway, I say, is there any information we're missing about this? Should we look at this differently? This is insightful thinking, okay? And experiential

thinking. This is basically looking at the world as it is. Then I ask, what can we do about it? And that's exactly what I do with my brain. Ali, my son, leaves our world, okay? People think that I'm not given a choice. I am given two choices. One of them is to cry for the rest of my life. And then 27 years later, when I'm on my deathbed, Ali will still not be there. Is that a wise choice? The other is to do something about it. That doesn't bring him back. Nothing's going to bring him back.

It's the truth. He left, right? But what I can do is I at least can make my life a little better and his life and the life of a billion people a little better than the day he left. Isn't that a better way of doing it? Now, of course, I feel pain. I miss him tremendously. But pain doesn't dictate how my brain tortures me. Pain is different than suffering. Pain is I remember him, I feel that I miss him. Suffering is my brain telling me you should have driven him to another hospital. And my brain did, by the way. Okay? I allow my brain only two types of thought.

One is useful thinking, and the other is joyful thinking. Anything else, I say, Becky, stop, behave. Useful thinking. If my brain I say, Becky, stop, behave. Useful thinking. If my brain tells me, you should have driven him to another hospital, I basically say to my brain, I cannot do this right now. Do you have something you want to tell me that I can do?

I wish I could, but I cannot. Give me a useful thought. So my brain says, why don't we write the happiness model we learned with him, share it with 10 million people was the original target, and make 10 million people remember him and love him and send him a happy wish. That would be a good way to honor him. Great. That's a great idea, brain. Thank you. That's how we should think, right? Or a joyful thought. Until today, I promise you, three to four times a week, I wake up in the morning or I go to bed at night, and the only thought that comes to my head is Ali died.

He's part of my heart. It's just I feel that part of me is missing. Right? I answer in a very simple way, and I say, yes, brain, but Ali also lived. Do you understand that? Ali died is a horribly painful thought. Ali lived is the same thought, but it's a beautiful thought. It's 21 years of joy, of wisdom, of learning, of insightful

discoveries, of memories of him taking care of Ayah, taking care of me, taking care of his mother that I wouldn't replace for anything. Honestly, even if you tell me, we'll take away your pain for losing your son, I wouldn't say, no, no, no, hold on. I want him. I want the 21 years. Don't lie to me, brain. Don't lie to me. But think about those. Because when I say Ali lived, I start to get memories that are all happy, all joyful, all things that we did together. That's me being the boss. That's me telling my brain to take charge so that if there is something we can do, we do it. If there isn't, then don't torture me because there is no point to torture me if there is nothing I can do about it.

Every time I listen to that, it moves me. And every time I learn something new. Thank you, Mo. And now we move on to sex and love. Firstly, here's actor Andrew Scott from season seven on so-called casual sex. I think that there's, personally speaking, a problem that I have with a lot of the language around sexuality. The idea that you come out, for me, implies a sense of critique or defensiveness, because actually, people are.

Absolutely. are. And so I feel like the questions I'm about to ask are probably going to be quite inelegantly phrased, but at what point were you aware within your family that you weren't going to have wife or kids? And did you feel that you needed to tell them or did you, what did you, how did you feel? Well, first of all, I just agree with you so much about the language. There are two other things that I absolutely cannot bear being described as openly gay yeah he's openly gay don't say so that person oh no that's just openly Irish it's it's it's as I say it's two steps from shamelessly or you know you know what I mean shamelessly gay openly gay he's not even embarrassed well as you know it implies some defiance that you know, it's also something

that you only ever hear in the media. Nobody ever says, this is my openly gay friend, Darren. So true. Nobody ever says it. You don't,

it's such a weird, weird expression. Anyway, I could go on for ages about that. The other one is casual sex. Right. I've never even thought

to question it, but now I... Well, I suppose there's a judgment in it in some way, which is the idea like, what is there, semi- now I well I suppose there's a judgment in it in some way which is the idea like what is their semi-formal sex and then there's black tie sex and the black tie sex is the one that you should be having because that's the most sort of meaningful one can you imagine smart casual sex it's not gonna be fun because what way you're gonna be

you're sort of you're a rose between two thorns. Exactly. Yeah, semi-formal. But yeah, like the idea that casual sex can't, you know, you can't extract any kind of meaning from casual sex. I think that's really dangerous because it invokes shame in people. And actually you get so much meaning if like both of us, I think,

have had quite similar experiences. I was in long-term relationships all of my twenties. And when I became single post-divorce mid-30s sorry parents I had loads of casual sex and it was incredibly it's meaningful important for me to do that it's really important and that's what I mean this idea of sex shaming people about this is about sort of categorizing what's important you learn from people it's not about the length of time you spend with somebody. In a way, that's what Fleabag is about, is that you can have incredibly potent, lifelong effects from

meeting somebody over two weeks, or one week, or, you know, three hours. You can go, oh my god, I was that broad, I learned something. I learned something. And I think if you're going through that situation where you're having casual sex with people, sometimes that's what you need to something. And I think if you're going through that situation where you're having casual sex with people, sometimes that's what you need to do. What was really important to me was to understanding around sexuality or who you are or what you like was such a taboo really. And you have to be able to make mistakes and you have to find out who you are because it's such an important part of who we are and it has to be talked about. And now here's the gorgeous Nigel Slater, cook and food writer from season five on why he doesn't want to fall in love. And I know you don't tend to speak about romantic relationships. No, I don't. So I hesitate to ask

you and you can just tell me to get lost. But have you ever been in a long term romantic relationship? you can just tell me to get lost but have you ever been in a long-term romantic relationship yes I have and I don't like it I'm one of those people that equates falling in love with having food poisoning please please may I never fall in love again that's amazing and it's funny when when I see so many people searching their souls, searching their apps, everything to find this love. And I think, oh God, no, please no. It's down to selfishness. I've probably fallen in love, I suppose about half a dozen times, I guess. And then I realised that it isn't for me. It's going to tread on my territory. It's going to make me change. I'm going to be a different person. What I've seen happen to my friends is going to happen to change. I'm going to be a different person.

What I've seen happen to my friends is going to happen to me. And also, I do have a very set way of doing things. And aesthetically, there are things I like and things I do not like. Things I don't want to surround me, things I won't have in the house. And I know that they might appear if somebody else is around. and I know that they might appear if somebody else is around. I also wonder whether we as a species prioritise romantic love above all other loves because you clearly have friendship love in your life and a profound love of and with food

and maybe we're all just hell-bent on this slightly panicked, frenetic notion of what romantic love is. And we should just seek out a sort of more stable contentment. Absolutely. Marry your friends and fuck everyone else. I don't know. Have people sat and thought about this? About, do you need romantic love? I don't know. I just know I don't. Or if I do, it's on a very part-time basis.

It's not going to be the most important thing in my life. Friendship would be the most important thing and the love of friends. And also I have to say the love of food. Doing what I want to do. It's all about Nigel, isn't it? I would quite happily have it all about Nigel forevermore. What a lovely man. I always get a bit choked up when I talk about Lem Sisay. Lem, a poet, playwright and author,

came on the podcast in November 2019 and spoke about being adopted by a white British family as a baby after his Ethiopian mother was forced to put him into care. Lem was renamed Norman by his new, deeply religious foster parents. They went on to have three more children, and after a series of rows, Lem was taken to a children's home and left there for the next five years. Lem takes up the story. At 12 years of age they sent me into children's homes and said that they would never speak to me or write to me or visit me in

fact. That wouldn't be so bad if they'd not said that they were my mum and dad forever and that they'd not taught me to say the words mum and dad to them, that they'd not said to me that my own birth mother didn't want me, that they were my family. If anybody could imagine just being left in a wilderness at 12 with every memory that you'd had before that taken away from you and all access to your memories closed and locked away from you. It was a very emotionally violent thing that they did to a child. But I went into children's homes then and my primary job was to make people smile and I could never have understand what they'd done to me. I thought they would come

back one day or I couldn't understand what I'd done but I knew that I'd been bad because I believed that I must have deserved what they'd done to me that I was somehow unworthy of their love if you can imagine that smiling child just like looking for somebody to make happy you know in a place where that wouldn't work. Everything you were built to be was not going to work here. You were not that relevant. In fact, your trying to make people happy was an irritant to an institution.

The institutions got progressively worse, each one that you were sent to. And I wonder how scared you were. I don't know whether I was scared. It's a really good question, actually. How scared was I? It's a really kind question to ask. I was aware of being in a place where people didn't care. They said they cared,

was very different to the action of caring. It's like somebody who says they love you and you know they don't. It has quite a deep effect on you, that, because you think, well, this person's very close to me. They say they love me. I know they don't. Who are they? And also, who are you and what is love? And if somebody's lying to me about loving me, then what is my worth?

So I felt in many ways I was being taught how to feel worthless. And I was being taught that I was slowly becoming invisible because I wasn't seen. I would be punished if I did something wrong, but I wouldn't be congratulated if I did something right. So for example, the first thing that I wanted in the children's home was a hug and I didn't get hugged. I stopped being touched at 12. But if I did something wrong, the police would be called or if I ran away, the police would be called, etc. wrong the police would be called or if I ran away the police would be called etc so I found myself in an institution that was based on whether I followed the rules but in so doing I was invisible it's like no you follow these rules but there is no end game there's no love at the end of that

there's no hug without love for a child to be told to follow any rules, it's like an emotional fascism. I wasn't scared. I was learning that I was in a trap. And the moment I realized that fully, the moment I was physically imprisoned, is when the click went off in my head when I was 17. I was like, I was right. These people do not know what they're doing. They have no reason to imprison me. They're giving no reason to imprison me. And they know that I have no family, so nobody's going to come for me. So they can do anything they want to me.

And now they're proving it. I was right all along. Something is fundamentally wrong with these people around me. I wasn't scared. I was like, of course. How do you keep your love for the world in that context? Well, I knew that they were only looking after an idea of me and that actually the freedom that I had was that they didn't care who I was. Therefore, I had to look at who I was. And I remember thinking as a child, I haven't done anything wrong here. What is all of this? They know that I've not done anything wrong. I'm not intrinsically bad.

Incredibly, Lem started writing poetry in the children's homes. He went on to become one of our best-loved, most acclaimed poets, and if you want to read more about his story, I highly recommend his memoir, My Name is Why. Each chapter is introduced by a short verse of poetry. The one at the beginning of chapter 9 is my favourite. It reads, Chapter 9 is my favourite. It reads, Look what was sown by the stars at night across the fields. I am not defined by scars, but by the incredible ability to heal.

In season six, someone came on the podcast and decided to rip up the usual format. Instead of talking about three personal failures, the philosopher Alain de Botton wanted to talk about failure concepts that could apply and potentially be helpful to everyone. It became one of the most downloaded episodes of all time. Here, he explains why breakups are not a tragedy, a concept so mind-blowing to me that it became one of my failure principles. We tend to imagine that the only viable relationship is one that lasts forever, so that the real success of a relationship is its longevity, which is very peculiar. I mean, we wouldn't apply that standard to other things. You know, the best holiday is one that goes on forever, or the best meal goes on forever. There are obviously things that can be valuable but more short-lived. And I think one of the ways to look at relationships is that they are opportunities for

us to learn from another person. And we tend to believe that that means that that lesson's going to go on forever. And the notion of outgrowing someone is again seen in very dark terms. If I say, you know, I've outgrown my partner, people say, oh, how awful. But there's also something potentially rather beautiful and liberating about the idea that someone could be immensely important in one's life and yet not there forever, that they might not be the central person forever. Because in the same way that a child outgrows their family, now that's not a tragedy. If a parent, the whole basis of parenthood is, my child's going to outgrow me, and that's okay.

They should outgrow me. There will be a time when my 10-year-old or 12-year-old or 17-year-old is going to find another kitchen to sit in, another group of friends to be with, and that's the way it should be. They'll come back, and we'll always have what we had, but they won't be quite the way it is today. And that's not a tragedy. So I think that we can apply the same view to romantic relationships. And there are so many people who torture themselves unnecessarily going, I spent 22 years with somebody, and then awfully, it just ran out of steam.

then, you know, awfully, it just ran out of steam. And you want to say, hang on a minute, 22 years, that's an awfully long time. Most people, you know, for most of human history didn't live longer than 22. You spent 22 years with someone, that's amazing. Presumably you saw and you learned and all these things. Yes, yes. So does it need to be, again, a tragedy in the terrible sense? And it doesn't need to be. So much of what we define as a failure is an interpretation of facts. Psychotherapists love this phrase, fear. Your fear is not a fact. It's a way of saying that if somebody's terrified of something, just check in. Does that actually have to be, you know, that noise that you're thinking is a burglar? Is it actually a burglar? That argument, does it necessarily mean the beginning of the end or whatever? And I think that we too often apply to situations, interpretations which are really punitive and

make us feel terrible for no particular good reason. So when it comes to relationships, we tend to say, that relationship was a failure. They were only together for X time, or they never had children together, or it didn't work out in the end for whatever reason. And that's too punitive. So let's stop torturing ourselves. So much of what we define as a failure is an interpretation of facts. Just let that sink in for a moment. Because really, when we truly think about it, failure and success are judgment calls. They are a different way of telling the same story. Yes, I failed my driving test the first time around, but that knocked my confidence, ultimately made me take the next test more

seriously, and I think made me into a better driver. Still can't parallel park though, but that's for another day. For my final favourite how to fail snippet, I hope you'll forgive me if I indulge in a personal highlight, which was when I recently got to interview one of my heroes, the feminist icon Gloria Steinem. Careful-eared listeners might have been able to tell that I was extremely nervous during that interview, because it's not every day you get to speak to someone you've admired from afar for so long, Every day you get to speak to someone you've admired from afar for so long, whose work has indelibly shaped your life,

and who is renowned worldwide for her phenomenal intelligence and insight. No pressure! Gloria was full of extraordinary wisdom. But selfishly, my favourite bit came at the very end of the interview. Gloria Steinem, I cannot thank you enough, not only for finding the time to come on my podcast, but for spending a life shaping my ideas and challenging me to think and writing the most brilliant things. And you are one of my heroes. And it's just been such a privilege for me to talk to you so you have lived up to every single expectation if not exceeded them thank you so so much well and I just want to say that I feel about

you that I just had to wait for some of my friends to be born so oh oh my god that's the most beautiful thing you could say so I'm so grateful for your work, for your words, for writing, interviewing. Thank you so much. Thank you. I don't know if you could hear it, but I was about to cry when she said that to me. Still, just about held it together. What a woman Gloria is. And from one friendship to another, my friendship with you, the listeners.

I asked you to get in touch with your own three failures and you responded with your customary brilliance, warmth and empathetic insight. Thank you, every single one of you, for your wonderful emails and DMs. I read them all and although I'm not able to reply individually because I'd have no time left over to record this podcast or eat, I want you to know how much they mean to me and how much you mean to me for writing them. I've selected a few that I'd like to talk about in more depth because I think they have such profound resonance that goes beyond just the failure itself. So here goes. just the failure itself. So here goes. I had a couple of listeners get in touch explaining their fear of failure. Emma chose that because it prevented her from being fully herself.

She wrote about a spurt of what she described as mini failures a few years ago. She wrote, highlights or lowlights include blatantly sobbing in our open plan office when my boss announced he was leaving, dating and moving in with a diagnosed narcissist. Yes, you really can be diagnosed. I googled it. And losing my handbag, including phone and keys, on a work night out and being put in the Malmaison Hotel at 3am by my very kind and luckily discreet male colleagues. I would laugh off these incidents, but underneath I felt embarrassed and afraid. I moved out of London, limited my social interactions and began a relationship with a man I knew wasn't right for me. Lockdown gave me the

chance to re-evaluate my mini failuresfailures as just, well, experiences. Perhaps it took having very few new experiences when working and living alone to appreciate how precious those moments can be, even those I deemed failures or mistakes. Looking back now, I see the crucial failure as not having the courage and humility to accept myself and move on. I've since moved back to London and for the rest of 2020 I plan to re-embrace life for all of its uncertainty, obscurity and texture. Oh Emma, I feel my work here is done. You are so wise and you are so right to have learned from those failures and to have been able to recategorize them as learning experiences that are pointing you in the direction of being

more fully yourself at a girl. Another anonymous correspondent told me she has had alopecia since she was 14. I've spent most of that time feeling like a failure as a female, as a woman, sexually, she writes. I felt less than other people and like I was pretending or being someone I'm not if I wore a wig, but also feeling like I needed to do that so as not to draw attention to myself. If I was my friend, I would think I was pretty amazing, coping with losing my hair as a teenager, severe endometriosis and several surgeries as a result. I have a child with autism who I'm doing a great job with and I have anxiety and depression and you wouldn't know any of these things unless I chose to tell you and yet I think I'm not enough and that I have to justify myself.

I think I'm not enough and that I have to justify myself. Beautiful woman, you are perfect because of what you have been through and the strength you continue to show. You are perfect because of all the things you fear make you less than. Your experience gives you insight, empathy, wisdom and fortitude. You never have to justify yourself ever again. Start today. Please know how strong you really are. And if you don't believe yourself, then believe me instead. A listener from Singapore emailed to say that she has never broken a rule or gone through a rebellious phase. I've always been the good daughter, the obedient student, the model employee, and I truly regret it. A bit hard to go off the rails in your mid-30s. I just want to do something crazy, just once. First of all, it is never too late to do something crazy. I, like you, was dutiful and good and an inveterate people pleaser until my late 30s.

That's when I had my rebellious phase. Although I have to question how rebellious it really was when I scheduled it into my life plan, because I knew that if I didn't cut loose a bit, I'd end up regretting it. So yes, I did all the cliches. Got a tattoo, slept with inappropriate men, moved to LA, and you know what? It was brilliant. Now I know from your email to me that you're 36 and that one of your failures is that you've never been kissed or been on a date or in a relationship with anyone. You joke that you're on your way to

becoming the real life 40 year old virgin. But by the, you weren't the only person who wrote to me with this failure. So what I want to say to you is that life is not a race, that you must progress at your own pace, that your path is your path and no one else's. Besides, the whole concept of linear time is a thing humans have invented to feel like they're applying an illusion of control on the random chaos of the universe but that's a different podcast the point is you could be 18 in a parallel universe forge the friendships you want and find the love that brings you joy all of it will come to you when you're ready if you want it and on the subject of tattoos i I want to shout out Sarah S., who shared with me one of the funniest tattoo stories I've ever heard. After her most recent breakup, Sarah S. decided to get a tattoo of the pause and play symbols to serve as a reminder, in her words, that when things get too much, we have to just pause. She writes,

get too much, we have to just pause. She writes, the tattoo artist stencils it onto my skin to make sure I'm happy with it before it's etched onto my body for life. I take a selfie, send it to my friends. I look in the mirror in the shop. No, I say, it's the wrong way round. So he changes it. I look in the mirror and approve. He tattoos it on me. Afterwards, filled with excitement, I ask him to take a photo. But wait, when he shows me the image, I'm confused, perplexed. Why does it look like that, I say? Because that's what it looks like in real life. In a mirror, it's flipped like it is in a selfie. Mortified to admit that I'd not taken this into account I paid and scurried out I then spent at least an hour trying to draw triangles look at them in the mirror take photos from a million different angles trying to work out what the hell was on my skin and so when I look in the mirror

my tattoo is correct it's pause and play but when other people see it, it makes no sense at all. I suppose the learning from this is that we all see things in different ways. I actually like that it's all such a muddle. I know what it means to me and it's a good story to tell at dinner. You're right, Sarah. It's a great story. Thank you for trusting me with it. There was a fantastically beautiful failure courtesy of another Sarah who defined it as failure to dream. My realistic approach to life saw me dismiss creative dreams as simply that. They wouldn't facilitate the financial stability I would need to build the life I was encouraged to pursue. I'm still discovering the roots of this, part familial, part systemic,

and trying to replant those seeds. Well, Sarah, as Gloria Steinem said to me, dreaming is a form of planning. You can't be the thing if you can't conceive of it first. And perhaps what you're saying to me is that your failure to dream is your failure to believe you're worth dreaming for. You are.

You are worth your dreams. Many of us dream of having children. I heard from two women who both chose IVF as one of their failures. Charlie wrote, Much like you, I went through IVF as one of their failures. Charlie wrote, Much like you, I went through IVF, three cycles. I got pregnant on the first, but was told the baby had died at our 12-week scan.

We tried two more times, but they failed. At that point, I was approaching 40, and we had been trying everything for six years. I never wanted to be that woman in Bella or Reveal talking about how they'd spent a hundred thousand pounds on IVF and still were not a mother. I felt my body no longer belonged to me. My thighs and lower back were numb for two years after my pregnancy from all the injections. So I stopped, put my body and my mental health first and started running and put myself into therapy. Charlie, I'm so, so sorry for

your losses. And I'm so, so proud of you for deciding to stop. Because the worth of a woman is not defined by her ability to bear children. Because you have so much to give and so much to share from your own lived experience of infertility, I'm proud of you for understanding that your mental health needs care and realising that this isn't selfish. Quite the opposite. By doing the work on yourself so that others don't have to deal with the fallout of unchecked emotional baggage, that's actually an act of selflessness. And I'm so proud of you for running. I went through a phase of running after my own cycles of IVF, my first miscarriage and my divorce. It suddenly seemed integrally important to be reminded of the power of my body when so many medical professionals had made me feel like a failure. But although I ran on and

off for a year, I never quite got to the point where I actively enjoyed it. So I'm proud of you for doing what I couldn't. Lizzie described her experience with IVF this way. Failed IVF. Three rounds left me completely destroyed and my chances were so low that there was no point in continuing. Taught me a lot about resilience, depression and how depression really needs to be dealt with immediately rather than leaving it to fester, accumulate and explode. Also taught me how to work on a marriage that almost ended. Lizzie added that she had moved to a small town full of mums after failed IVF. This has been a nightmare, she wrote. Mumpreneurs, six-week socials, mum markets,

every fucking mum group you can imagine. Smug mom town would be a more apt name. Do I sound bitter? Lizzie, you don't sound bitter. You sound human. You sound like you're grieving. I found after my own infertility experiences that I had a new sensitivity to parents who complained about parenthood. I understand that it's a really difficult thing to raise human beings, especially during lockdown,

but at the same time, what the rest of us wouldn't give to have that same opportunity. A lot of the time, it can feel as though people who don't have children live in a world where our decisions are dictated by those who do. We're expected to fit in around sleeping and changing times and routines and school days and babysitters, as if those of us without children are in a constant state of irresponsibility, knocking back martinis and nightclubs. I'm lucky that I have amazing friends who understand this. Sometimes I actively have to plead to see their kids. I hope you have some of these people in your life too, Lizzie. It's a lonely place to be, but I want you to know that I stand with you, I hear you, I see you, and as lonely as it feels you are not alone. In fact we're all so much more connected in our insecurities than we think. Richard, a successful academic, describes his biggest failure being my constant battle to get over myself. There is a gaping vacuum where my self-confidence should be and I don't know why.

Richard, from another person who has one such gaping vacuum, I don't know why either. But I do know that a lack in self-belief often means an increased sensitivity to the fact other people feel like this too. I bet you're a lovely person to be around because of your empathy. The more you believe in that, the more confident you might become. Because when you're being truthful about who you are, you don't have to pretend. And then there's less tension between the real you and the public you. Good luck. you and the public you. Good luck. One of my favourite emails came from Anup, who wrote movingly and humorously about his self-described failure to be masculine enough. In his words, here's a little secret that isn't a secret. I'm gay and I'm Indian. That in Indian society is a

failure, but we'll save that for another day. Growing up I was pretty much the ugly duckling in a sense that my brother the middle child always knew what he wanted to be an architect. He played a lot of sport mainly football and he always fancied whoever the it girl was during our childhood. He crushed hard on Alicia Cuthbert for at least six years thanks thanks to The Girl Next Door. But for me, I was always dancing to Britney Spears and Bollywood music, pretending to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid whilst dressing up as Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. I hated football. I still despise the sport.

I remember my father saying to me at 11 years, I don't quite understand you. Unlike your brother and sister, you're confusing. That hit hard for me as I knew from then on I was different, the ugly duckling. From that age onward until university, I tried my very best to become as masculine as I possibly could. I took part in rugby and football at school. Side note, a complete and utter failure. I got hit in the face with the ball far too many times and I rugby tackled a fucking massive guy who ended up not actually carrying the ball. So actually I tackled completely the wrong guy. I did everything in my power to come off as masculine. I then went to university where I discovered gay culture. However, I didn't quite understand the culture nor the concept of being gay. So for the first

two years of university, I was fairly ordinary. I would make a few jokes about being gay here and there, but I'd never fully be myself. Up until the final year and thereafter, I really began to open up. I essentially gave zero fucks to what people thought of LGBTQ plus people because we are who we are. No opinion is going to change that. So to quickly wrap this up, fully aware this is way over 200 words, I embraced being this super campy, witty, stylish, if I do say so myself, 24 year old Indian gay man. And I'm finding more about myself and taking away the masculine label because really what is masculinity? It's something society has created which doesn't actually exist. We're all human and all very much the same, but some of us choose to hide the bits

that make us different because society doesn't accept it. But times are changing rapidly and here's to a better and gayer future. Anoop, some of us choose to hide the bits that make us different. That is so accurate. That is what Oprah Winfrey would call a teachable moment. We choose to hide the bits that make us different until we realise that what makes us different is our superpower. Anoop, I adored your email. You told me you studied sports rehab at university, but I feel you're a natural writer. Also, thank you for introducing me to the idea of a chapati slap. He says, yep, chapati slapping is a thing. My family and I invented it. A key to the slapping. Use the very last chapati in the stack. It's always the warmest and slightly

wettest. Totally gross, I know. Chapati slap. You learn something new every day. Also a great name for an indie band, by the way. Some of the moments when I felt most chapati slapped by life have been breakups. I've been through six serious breakups in my life, including a divorce, and every single one of them has well and truly sucked. There's a specific kind of grief that comes with the end of a relationship, especially if it's one that has been ended for you, with the breakup seemingly coming out of the blue, with little to no logical explanation. I've had some of the darkest times of my life in the aftermath of a breakup,

and it's why I devoted one whole failure principle in philosophy to the notion that breakups are not a tragedy as much as they might feel like them at the time. Jo wrote to me to say she had just been left by her partner of over 20 years. She said, much of how I saw and valued myself was, apparently, predicated on being in a couple, and how fabulous I thought we were. Clearly he didn't. I know you've been through breakups, and I think listeners often find solace in hearing others' recoveries. So how do you think you turn it around from a perceived failure to something better and acquiring hope? from a perceived failure to something better and acquiring hope.

When everything in your life seems to disappear or no longer have the worth you attributed to it, how can we see that failure positively and with hope? Jo, first of all, I want to say how sorry I am for what you're going through. But I'm not sorry about the end of your relationship. And I don't mean that to sound cruel or unfeeling. What I mean is that if someone breaks up with you like this, without warning, without tenderness, without having communicated their feelings, then I guarantee you that this person is not worthy of you or your love. Actions are character. When someone acts like this, they are giving you necessary information about their character. The story

you were telling yourself about who this person was might not have been wholly accurate. You might have wanted to think the best of them and made excuses for things because you're probably a nice person. And often we so desperately want things to work out that we ignore our gut instinct. That persistent but quiet voice telling us there is an issue that needs addressing. I always remember talking to Mo Garandat about this. And he said that the first thing he says when someone's relationship has ended is congratulations because he says he can guarantee that whether that person knew the breakup was coming or not they were already unhappy. If they could sit down and be truly honest with themselves the chances are they were unhappy because they were unfulfilled on some basic level.

There are two other things that I found very helpful to think about when going through a romantic heartbreak. One is the idea that relationships are not a failure simply because they end. I quoted Alain de Botton talking about this earlier, where he explains that a parent would not think they had failed when their child leaves home. On the contrary, that's the mark of success. Could we apply the same sort of thinking to our romantic relationships, the idea that we can move on once we have been taught what we need to know? A person can come into your life to teach you a lesson you need to learn, and then they can move on.

As much as it feels like loss, you have gained something far more important than the relationship itself. You have gained greater knowledge of yourself. In the wake of my last breakup, the one I started this episode by talking about, my friend Daisy sent me a poem by Nayira Wahid, which I would love to read here in its entirety. It goes, someone can be madly in love with you and still not be ready. They can love you in a way you have never been loved and still not join you on the bridge. And whatever their reasons, you must leave because you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have

never seen out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready. Jo, you deserve love that is ready. Be kind to yourself in your search for it. Go strongly and have faith. So that brings us to the end of this special episode. Thank you so much for listening. brings us to the end of this special episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy my new book, Philosophy, where I talk about all this and much, much more. It's out tomorrow, or it's already published, depending on when you're listening. Either way, there's a link to order it in the show notes, where there's also a link to buy tickets to my safe, socially distanced, COVID-secure live event at the London Palladium on the 2nd of October. You can dip into philosophy as and when you need, or you can read it in one

sitting. It's specifically designed to be helpful rather than intimidating, so it's not long, and it's packed full of brilliant quotes from past podcast guests, plus copies of some of the emails they've sent me outlining their failures, which I never get to share in full on the podcast. So you'll hear from Andrew Scott, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mabel, Marian Keyes, Nigel Slater, Kush Jumbo, Mo Gowdak, Kelly Holmes, Fern Cotton, Malcolm Gladwell, and many, many more. I should add that Philosophy is beautifully illustrated by the artist Paul Blow, who I requested because he once illustrated a short story I wrote for a magazine, and the picture alone was so moving

and encapsulated so much feeling in such a few pen strokes that it reduced me to actual tears. His illustrations for philosophy are also a thing of beauty. Before I stop my endless spiel in an attempt to make you buy the book, let me also just say that none of this would have happened without you, my listeners. I am so eternally grateful for your support, so unbelievably touched by your belief in this podcast, and so inexpressibly moved by the stories you share with me on a weekly basis. Thank you, from the bottom of my failure-ridden heart for reminding me every single day that connection is what makes us human. Love you all. Goodbye.

This episode of How to Fail is sponsored by Misoma, my go-to jewellery brand. Now, I was introduced to Misoma by a very, very close friend of mine, and I have barely gone a day without wearing a piece of their jewellery since. They really are amazing. And Misoma know that every piece of jewellery a woman wears tells a part of her story, her successes, her celebrations and of course her failures. The earrings she bought with her first paycheck, the surprise pick-me-up present from her best friend after that rubbish breakup, the matching bracelets they got on that wild holiday

refusing to take them off for months. As we grow so too does our armour. From past loves to career milestones, morning to night, we wear our treasured moments knowing they have shaped the person we have become. Misoma are on a mission to build a more confident, creative, and collaborative world, starting a chain reaction, one link at a time. I'm thrilled to share to all listeners of How to Fail a very exclusive 15% off now when you use ElizabethDay15 on Misoma.com. Thank you very much to Misoma. If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently, it helps other people know that we exist.