Life Uncut - Does All Failure Lead to Lessons or Success? - Unpacking Failure, Friendship & Fertility Privilege with Elizabeth Day

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

This episode feels like a warm hug with our newest British friend who just GETS IT! It's a beautiful conversation with Elizabeth Day. Elizabeth is a journalist, podcaster and the author of several best-selling books, including "How to Fail: Everything I've Learned from Things Going Wrong.” In this chat we cover off 4 big F words: Failure - How Elizabeth's 'failed' marriage and attempts to have a child taught her so much about herself Finding purpose - How those adversities led her to seeking a different purpose for her life and how our purpose isn't always tied to raising children Friendship - Learning quality over quantity Fertility privilege - Having more awareness around people who may be struggling with fertility If you'd like to check out Elizabeth's podcast, books or Aus tour, you can find everything here! You can cast your vote for the Australian podcast awards here! GET TICKETS TO OUR LIVE SHOW HERE  If you have an question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xx  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollongong land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura, and this is our Wednesday episode, which still sounds weird, but it is. We're dropping every week our interview as a separate episode, and we have such a freaking amazing episode for you guys today.

We are interviewing Elizabeth Day, who you might know her from the absolute behemoth of a podcast, which is How to Fail. Now, I loved this chat so much, and it's not just because Elizabeth is possibly the most well-spoken interviewee that we have ever had. Yeah, but she's not even just a podcaster. she's an amazing journalist she's a best-selling author she's got books including how to fail everything I've learned from things going wrong the podcast in the UK is absolutely huge where she speaks to some of the biggest people in the world to unpack failure what does that failure

look like to them what has it done for them how does it change their life has it helped them be more successful has it been detrimental and I think it's a really incredible thing to look at these people that from the outside we think are really successful and just be reminded that everyone goes through failure and it's okay it's normal yeah but it's also not even just that it's okay I think one of the things that was so amazing about this chat is that it's not that it's okay and that it's normal because it obviously is but it's about your reaction to failure and it's about being able to use failure as a way to either learn from it to grow from it or like how you can change the trajectory of your life and I guess one of the parts of this conversation which I think for

anybody who has been through any fertility issues or maybe you've found yourself going through a breakup in your late 30s and you're like, holy shit, life has not panned out how I expected it to. That's what I think this conversation is. This is the candle in the dark for anybody who has found that their life is not where they expected it and they have felt like a failure because of that. Some of the things that we touch on in this chat is Elizabeth's experience with pregnancy and fertility and her not being able to be a mother and not by choice. And also she talks about something which was really freaking controversial at the time. She talks about her take on fertility privilege and explains why this is something that she feels so passionate about.

Yeah. And I don't think it's just why she's passionate about it. I think she explains it further as to why it's not as controversial as it was taken. I think there were a lot of headlines written about what she had said and taken out of context. So anyway, let's jump into the chat with Elizabeth. I'm very excited for today's guest because it's someone we've wanted on the podcast for a very long time. It is Elizabeth Day. Welcome to Life Uncut. Thank you so much for having me. Oh my god we've actually been trying to get you on for so long so this is one of those moments where I'm like yes we locked you down. Now before you get too excited we start every episode with an accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story. Elizabeth what do you got

for us my most embarrassing accidentally unfilled a moment was actually the moment I met my now husband so we got through it spoiler alert we got through it yeah we're gonna scoot to the end no but what happened was I was dating on the apps in my late 30s so I had got divorced and then I'd got into a relationship with a younger man because I'm a massive cliche so I'd done that on the rebound and then that had ended just before my 39th birthday so I was in the the unenviable position and if anyone listening is in this position now I see you because it is a jungle out there of just trawling through the apps trying to find someone to go on a few dates with and I matched with this guy on Hinge called Justin who seemed very nice but I wasn't sure that there

was any chemistry there and it's partly because I now know he is the least vain man you will ever meet and he just hadn't realized that the photos didn't do him justice but that is like a twist and a turn in an online dating story it never happens it's always the opposite yes you always go on a date and you're like this man is hideous in comparison to his profile exactly and that had been a hundred percent of my experience up to that point it had been the men who had posed with kids with captions saying not my own yeah like big dogs and bathroom selfies in hotel rooms so my expectations were sub-zero to the extent that that morning the morning of the date I had booked flights to move to LA full-time I was like I'll just get I'll get this date out of the way then

I'm gonna start my fabulous new life anyway I walked into this hotel bar and I turned the corner and I saw this distractingly handsome man sitting there and I was like oh my gosh it's him he was so handsome I felt all a tizzy and it had been raining outside and I was wearing a coat and I had an umbrella and a bag and everything and I walked across to meet him and it was one of those modern hotel bars where the seats were sort of chrome and they had a very narrow base which fanned outwards it was really open plan so loads of people there and I sit down and I'm taking my coat off and I'm like oh it's so nice to meet you and like trying to give a good impression taking my bag off putting my umbrella to one side and the seat starts to wobble and I'm like that's

fine it will write itself as totally fine still trying to give a good impression being like I'm enigmatic and you'll want to be with me and then the seat just keeps on wobbling and at one point it just fatally hinges over and I fall on the on the bath floor or I everything goes flying my bag my umbrella my coat everything I'm wearing a short leather skirt because it's a first date and so my legs are like a kimbo and it's honestly one of the most embarrassing things everyone in that bar saw it and Justin just came rushing around and helped me up and he kept saying oh my goodness oh my goodness and he helped me up and then I was like the only way I can cope with this is just to style it out and pretend it hasn't happened so I just didn't mention it didn't

mention it from then on it sounds like it could be the start of a rom-com to be honest I know it was one of those things where I was like I know that if I make a joke out of this I won't be able to stop making a joke about it and it'll just be like relentless but what I really really liked about him was neither of us mentioned it after I sat on my chair until about one cocktail in I got up to go to the toilet and he just said quietly don't fall over and I was like oh he's got a sense of humor and that's when you're feeling loved literally fell yeah oh yeah literally yeah I didn't even mean that what happened then if you were booked to move cities that day what happened did you still go did you stay for love was this like the rom-com we all needed yeah I stayed for

love so I booked the tickets that day but I they weren't to leave that day so they were to leave in like three months time and that gave me enough time to realize that this was something really special but he's an amazing person Justin but he kind of left it up to me to decide which sounds weird because obviously it's you know I'm a modern woman so you'd expect that from a relationship of equals but what I mean by that was that I was at a stage in my life where I had been used to being in quite dysfunctional romantic relationships where I wanted someone I thought I wanted someone to say god I'm so in love with you don't leave let's just make a life together and actually he said I can't make that decision for you you've got to decide so whatever's best for you and I was a

bit like well that's no help to me is it but that's what happened I decided to stay and I'm so glad that I did isn't it so interesting that even you saying that like that to me sounds like it's almost apathetic like they don't like there's not enough care I would think that that wouldn't be enough of a commitment to derail my original plans yeah but maybe that is what you should be looking for rather than this like especially in the initial times of dating and the initial months of dating this like all-encompassing like oh my god please like don't leave without you because you don't even know what you're in for so totally it's overstating it to be like please stay for me I think you need like a bit of a healthy bit of a bit of b like I want someone to be like you are

everything I can't live without you but you're totally up to you if you want to also not live without me like I want someone to declare their love but like but you decide I think that was the subtext but no you're so right like I just it took me a really long time to understand that for me true love is it represents safety rather than you know passion is completely wonderful and obviously that's part of any long-term relationship but sometimes I was definitely guilty of confusing dysfunction and fuckwittery for passion it was like the unpredictability was just so exciting no unpredictability stresses me out I want someone to be where they say they will be and to reply to my text I don't want I hate playing games the bar was high Elizabeth

I know that we're going to get into unpacking sort of how you did go through a divorce and finding love again but also to me it's incredible how you have created such a career and to anyone from the outset you are so successful and so much of that conversation has been off the back of speaking about your vulnerabilities the irony in speaking about failure and how that can turn you into a success yeah but could you tell us a little bit about for people in Australia who maybe don't know your backstory about where you grew up what life was like kind of before you got into a big romantic relationship that didn't work out the way you expected sure so I was born just outside London my dad is now retired but he was a surgeon and he happened to get a job in Ireland when I was

four in the north of Ireland and so we moved out there in 1982 just to date myself and I don't know how popular Derry Girls is in Australia but I watch it okay I don't know if it's popular but I think it's hilarious and I think people have seen it like I think people know of it yeah yeah so Derry Girls was basically my experience we moved to just outside Derry and as you can hear I speak with a very English accent and it was a time of civil war essentially in that province and it was quite a kind of weird stage to move because there were bombs going off you know there was lots of infighting and to speak with an English accent in certain areas marked you out not only as an outsider but as the enemy and so it was a strange place to grow up and it was also

really beautiful like the landscape in Ireland is so stunning the people are so great when I was at primary school I had a really good time but at secondary school as you know as teenagers that's when you start to identify differences and you start to really want to belong to your tribe and I just never fitted in so in Derry Girls I was the equivalent of the weird English cousin James like that was me and I ended up leaving that school and getting a scholarship to a boarding school in England so when I was 13 I went to a boarding school in England and it taught me a lot about the importance of friendship and I went to that school absolutely determined to make friends and to be accepted and I've recently written a book about friendship called Friendaholic which

is about my addiction to friendship and I think my addiction started there because for me friendship was a place of acceptance and belonging and it felt safer but what it took me much longer to unpack was I was changing myself according to what I thought other people wanted so in the rush to be accepted I was sort of cutting myself to fit to size whereas actually now I realize in my 40s that true belonging is being welcomed exactly as you are and I think that also taught me a lot about failure and my compulsion to people please probably led to me being in a marriage that I shouldn't have been in because and I think a lot of people relate to this particularly women in my 20s and early 30s it felt like the most important thing was that other people liked me

including my romantic partner that I was quote unquote perfect for them so they would never leave And actually, in attempting to be perfect, spoiler alert, there's no such thing and it's impossible. I was effacing myself. I was negating my own needs and I wasn't really living authentically. I was outsourcing my sense of self to what I thought others wanted. And so my life has been a process of unpacking all of that. So before we scoot past the friendship and into relationships, what is your take now

on friendships as an adult woman that has a busy life? because I think when you're younger you spread yourself pretty thin and you want to be a part of all the groups and you want everyone like you just said you want everyone to like you but I guess I feel like I've always been the opposite to that and I felt like as much as I fit in with the small groups I have I've always had an unusually small amount of friends great question and Brit you'll be happy to know that you're incredibly enlightened great because that is exactly how friendship should be done according to a preeminent scientist in this field called robin dunbar who's a professor of evolutionary psychology and one of his areas of expertise is

friendship and he says that friendship done at its best in a way that feels sustainable for all parties it starts with having your core group of up to five key relationships there you go he actually says up to five and he says if you have a long-term romantic relationship or you have kids that will generally cost you two of those other intimate relationships because we just don't have enough time and for those friendships to sustain in quality we need to give time and attention to them and I think that's the thing that I've realized that time is finite and the pandemic was a huge waking up point for many of us and definitely for me in this regard because our diaries emptied overnight and it was very obvious to me who I really missed and the people that I

really missed were not the people I was spending most time with because my diary was filled with other obligations it was filled with work stuff or like acquaintances that I'd met in yoga and suddenly now I'm going for dinner with them and I think I've realized now that there's a difference between being friendly and actively wanting to embark on a friendship because friendship for me is one of the most profound elements of my life it's definitely the most consistent love of my life and so I want to commit to it and I can't commit to the same level to everyone so now I'm a lot more aware of those layers and my inner layer is slightly bigger than yours it's like probably about 10 or 12 but my husband is much more like you he's very discerning in you know

my best friend is also like you very discerning in who they allow in and it sort of means that they can trust those people beyond doubt so I think that's the main thing I've realized that there are different friendships for different reasons and different seasons of your life and that also I'm now of an age where some friendships have ended and they're no longer an active part of my life but they forever changed how I see life how I experience it and so in a way although I no longer see the friend in question for various reasons which we can get into if you want the friendship itself still has an impact so I don't think a friendship is a failure just because it ends. I also think that that relates to romantic relationships too this idea

that you know even if a romantic relationship ends and it can be challenging there are lessons to be learned from that and and it's not like it's not this idea of like I learned so much from being traumatized by my ex but you learn about yourself in the process you learn about the things that you do want or don't want in your future for you going through divorce at 36 I'm sure that that wasn't on your bingo card for that time of your life I'm sure that wasn't your plan what was that period of life like it was really really tough and thank you for asking about it so sensitively it wasn't on my bingo card it wasn't on my plan for myself and I felt an enormous amount of shame and failure because I had always thought and it was such a boring plan that I had it was a very

heteronormative conventional plan where I'd always thought I'd get married I'd have kids I'd live in a terrace house in Clapham with lots of Australians yeah yeah every other Australian of course that's what you think because that's the only especially for our age group growing up it was the only option that was shown yeah that was the normal and anything outside of that was kind of not done exactly and it's why today I'm so passionate about diversity of stories and using whatever platform I have to showcase different people's different experiences of life because you're totally right I grew up with 80s rom-coms and I love 80s rom-coms but they're not actually a blueprint for life sadly so I didn't meet Tom Hanks at the top of the Empire State Building

but you tried I tried and I ended up and it was no one's fault really well maybe it was my fault because I didn't know myself well enough but I thought I did but I ended up married to the wrong person and it took me a really long time it felt like a very long time to realize that and part of the reason I did realize it is because I had started to have unsuccessful fertility treatment and that process felt very very lonely and I realized that actually it was a priority for me to try and have a child and that priority wasn't necessarily shared to the same degree of importance but I always say you know some people ask me how do you know like how do you know that your marriage is over and how do you get the strength to acknowledge that and it's an instinct and I knew

that I had to leave it until I felt so beyond doubt like something had to change and I think that whole process took a year and one day it just got to a stage where I'd been communicating how I was feeling and nothing was really changing and it got to a stage where I felt like I hit a wall and I was like oh I can't stay in this because I will lose myself and it's actually if you know me it's a sort of very atypical thing for me to have done but I think I it's a mark of my desperation that I did it yeah so that's how it ended you just mentioned you were going through some unsuccessful infertility that did contribute to the breakdown of your marriage do you think the fact that your treatment was unsuccessful was what put the weight on the relationship

or was it his response to the unsuccessful fertility treatment that sort of attributed to the decline do you know what I'm saying is that because I know a lot of couples infertility can add so much extra stress to a relationship so I'm just wondering if that yeah on its own added to the breakdown yes that's such a good question and I have to be really careful here because I'm very respectful of my ex and he has his own version of events so what you hear the caveat is it's only my story and only my perception of course I love that yeah it was it wasn't the lack of success around the fertility treatment he already had children from a previous relationship it was more how the fertility treatment was approached and that feeling of

loneliness that and actually I don't think you should feel lonely when you're going through something like that because it should be about you as a couple as a unit expanding your family and that to me signaled that there was a deeper issue here so in a way it sounds odd to say I'm quite grateful for that very dark period of my life now so this was 2014 I had two rounds of IVF unsuccessfully and then I got pregnant naturally and I had a miscarriage at three months and that all happened in one year it was horrendous to go through I'm grateful for it now because it highlighted things that we needed to address and that I specifically needed to address within the parameters of that relationship and I don't know if I hadn't had that whether I would have thought

in those terms and whether I would have found the courage that I needed so actually it all works out in the end. I mean, I don't actually mean that. Sorry. That was such a trivial ending. No, it's the sort of thing that you're like, I don't know. I don't want to say. But it often, it often does. That's the thing. I think sometimes you can be so in it and you can be so sad because you're so deep in the fog of failure that you can't ever think like, how the hell could my life be better from this point? Or how could this make my life better? And I think it's why highlighting failure as a concept something that we're all going to experience in some way in our life you know we're going to have our own individual journeys but how do you

use that to be able to move on to have a happier life or a life that's still fulfilling even if you don't get to have the things that you think you always wanted I guess for us like we've had many conversations around fertility on this podcast we've spoken about miscarriage many times we've spoken about IVF we've spoken about infertility and I think often we've spoken about childless by choice this idea of new age of women who are being able to choose not to have children but we've also spoken to women like yourself and it's not been by choice I can only imagine that that must be a very difficult process to go through the acceptance phase of that what was those years of your life like or how did that when did you come to the decision that you were like

it's not going to happen for me yeah very recently in answer to that at the beginning of this year I'm now, as you know, married to a wonderful person. And we found out that I was pregnant naturally, completely out of the blue, just after my 41st birthday. And very sadly, that pregnancy ended in miscarriage. And then I got pregnant again, and that one ended in miscarriage. and throughout it all I was also undergoing various interventions surgical interventions and like trying new treatments and we decided to have a sort of cutting-edge fertility treatment at the beginning of this year and I'd put a lot of hope into that and it was one of those situations where it felt like the universe was sending you signs saying it was all going to work it was so weird and it didn't and that was also one of the lowest points but this time I had someone by my side and it felt like we were sharing it and walking through our pain together

and that was actually part of my realization I feel so lucky to have the relationship and the love that I have with my partner and many people don't have that and many people who don't have that will experience a quality of love with their children that is incredibly special but I realize that so many people don't experience that kind of love and I already have that and that could be enough and I'm now at peace and have let go of the trying to have a baby and I never thought I would be at this point and it has taken me many months actually I had dinner with a friend last night she was like it's taken you nine months and I was like oh that's so true because this whole thing happened in January it's really nice to hear that you've gotten to that that place because you don't

want anyone to struggle do you feel like and I'm in my fertility journey right now so only a couple of weeks I'm 36 only a couple of weeks ago I went to freeze my eggs and I got none like I just had nothing to freeze so it was I'm so sorry it's okay I froze my eggs too and I only got I got like two but they froze three just to throw me one in yeah like just for good yeah like we're just in case yeah they were like this hasn't developed but we'll put it in anyway well that's what I got actually I got one that wasn't developed and then we ended up with none because it just wasn't it wasn't good enough I have done this so many times in terms of this conversation with other people so I know psychologically what the answer is and how we should feel and what we should think it's

not our fault and it's not failure but one thing you just said you know you felt really lonely and I have a beautiful partner but he lives on the other side of the world so there is a sense that I'm going through it with him, but also alone. But I, even though I know the answer is it's not failure, I feel like I'm already failing and I'm so early in the journey. I haven't done any actual IVF treatments yet. Did you feel like that? And was that a big driving force towards these failure conversations?

Yes, constantly. First of all, I want to say thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you to both of you for having these kinds of conversations. And I'm so sorry for what you've been through, because the thing about egg freezing is that it is like an IVF cycle without the bit of the end where they hopefully put an embryo back in and it's a lot to go through because you are on all of the hormones and it is a lot of money and then to get to the end and to feel like you haven't got the result that you wanted and that you were sort of semi-promised is so difficult to handle and yes I constantly felt like a failure

and I actually think a lot of the medical language seems designed to make women specifically women feel like failures and obviously I know on one level it's not my failure but it felt like my body wasn't doing what so many other women could do and what so much of historical society expected me to do and all the time that I was going through all of these various procedures I was told overwhelmingly by male consultants that I was failing to respond to the drugs I'm sure you heard that right it's unsuccessful that just the terminology yeah exactly like my friend was told she had an incompetent cervix another person I know was told she had an inhospitable womb but this is all language that is just accepted yeah it is quite it's used quite frequently and

one of the things that I have been passionate about in terms of having these sort of conversations is attacking that language because I internalized it so much for so long that it was really difficult to separate my feeling about myself and the baby I was trying to create and so it felt really sad a lot of the time and having conversations about it and writing about it made me feel better because that loneliness that we've discussed was really the antidote to that was understanding that other people had these stories too. And for a long time, particularly women, but also men felt a misplaced sense of stigma about fertility issues and didn't feel able to share. And I'm so glad that those conversations are opening up because I feel

less alone as a result and I feel more validated. And now I really understand being on the other side of it. My life has tremendous purpose, even if being a biological mother isn't going to be part of it not only are there other ways that we can parent and I don't necessarily just mean having other children in my life I mean in the way that we podcast or the way that we create like that in some sort of way is an act of mothering or parenting or sharing or connecting and I just want anyone who is listening to this who might be in the grip of a fertility journey right now and might not be able to see light on the other side I never thought I would feel as at peace as I now do and I promise you that it is possible and that you will know when the time

is right for you it just occurred to me and I know I said earlier that we've spoken to so many people who've been on their fertility journeys but we've actually never spoken to someone who has been on their fertility journey and made peace with it yeah it's always been people who have been still in the throes of it and they're still in their head that's the only goal that's going to happen for them. And so I'm so grateful to have that different perspective and to be able to show that there is peace that can be achieved as well. You mentioned something earlier, you said how men have failure around fertility, but it is often very different to women. Do you think, and from the research that you've done and the conversations that you've had, that men and women experience

failure differently or we prioritize failure differently? Yes. First of all, thank you for saying that about being a voice for those people who are child free not by choice because I think I realized one of my fears was what is my purpose going to be what is going to bring my life meaning if I'm not going to have a baby because that's how focused and obsessed and myopic I have become and actually now I firmly believe that part of my purpose is to provide that voice because you're so right we hear increasingly thank goodness from people who are going through it or we hear from people who have their baby and have their quote unquote happy ending. So I'm really happy to be that person. So when I started How To Fail, it was July 2018. And I definitely noticed a real

difference between how men and women viewed failure then. So when I approached my first eight guests, because it was a new podcast, I didn't really know what I was doing. I relied on friends and contacts that I built up through years as a print journalist. And from those eight, every single time I asked a man to be on how to fail their response would be I just don't think I have failed so not sure I'm going to be right for this and every single time I asked a woman apart from one she would say oh god I failed so many times I can't just whittle it down because I asked guests to come up with three failures and it was fascinating because when I persuaded those men to be interviewed it turned out of course that they had failed but they hadn't

categorized it as such and I think there were two reasons for that one is if you are lucky enough to be a cis white man you are still overwhelmingly born into a world made in your image so if you encounter failure you think of it as an overcomable obstacle on your path to eventual success but the second reason is that actually some of those men probably did feel like failures but they didn't feel able to admit it because they had been socially conditioned to be quote unquote manly and not to show their vulnerabilities so I think both of those things were sort of disservice to the sort of conversation that I was trying to have and actually they opened up and were really beautifully vulnerable in each episode whereas when I had the women on or when I had

someone who didn't fit that category of a cis white man when I had someone who was maybe marginalized in some way, who was a person of colour, who lived with a chronic illness, who had endured spells of homelessness, whatever their lived experience was, they were more likely to experience failure as something that they internalised and thought was a definition on who they were as a person. But that has changed massively as the podcast has grown. And as I think we've all started having more conversations around failure, and now I have people of all genders who are only too happy to open up and who understand sort of how I define the concept as something that we can learn from but it is really interesting for everyone to ask what their attitude to failure

is because a lot of people still feel scared of admitting to it. I'm curious as to what you think is the healthiest way to approach looking at failure because when I'm trying to think of my failures I have failed many times but there's a part of me that likes to look at it the same way you just said the men did which is they're just obstacles because I guess they are one in the same in a sense but I still know deep down that it's a failure but for me maybe it's a psychological thing is to think okay that was one big obstacle that sent me back a little bit but I'll keep going do you think there's like a healthy way that we should be approaching it do you think owning failure is a driving force to success to further success I do but I define success as living your

authentic life rather than being driven to a private jet in a limo which would be really nice also nice yeah yeah I suppose I define success slightly differently off the back of what I've learned about failure and I agree with you that all failure if we learn how to handle it can be treated as data acquisition it can be treated as an opportunity to learn and what you learn might simply be well I got through that I survived that the failure itself might not have any meaning it might just be one of those awful cataclysmic things that happens and there is no explanation but my firm belief is that you can live alongside that failure and the true test of your character is not the failure itself but how you respond to it and in responding to it I guarantee you that

you will learn something meaningful in the same way that I have learned so many meaningful things from my self-perceived failure to have my own children and then there are your common or garden failures like failing your driving test or failing an exam or failing to get a job promotion and they can definitely teach you something it might be that they teach you that you are applying for the wrong job or it might be that it teaches you to prepare slightly differently next time or to really focus on your handbrake turn your three-point turns not your handbrake turns you don't want to be doing those in your driving test but no I do believe that all failure can be a portal to greater learning I think this is such an I mean it's such a wonderful take because we

spend so much of our life trying to avoid it like the reality is no one wants to feel like they've failed at something no one wants to be a failure in any aspect of their life and even sometimes across social media you know we've had this kind of success reel that everybody else is killing it in different ways and then that only then goes to highlight those moments when we feel like we are truly a failure how important do you think it is for people to be able to learn to lead into those moments and to almost be in flow with it so that you can instead of fighting this idea of failure instead of internalizing it all but actually learn from those moments in life that are almost unavoidable I think the first thing to remember is that failure happens to us all it is genuinely

what makes us human. And the greater failure for me is allowing your fear to stop you from taking the adventure. So it's always better, I think, to have tried something new and to have failed at it because you'll have gained something along the way. There'll be some useful knowledge along the way. And the other thing to remember is that we live in a society where you're right, there is this constant Instagram reel of curated perfection and we are getting better on social media as showing up as ourselves but still when you're comparing yourself to a bikini shot of Kim Kardashian looking absolutely incredible on holiday in Costa Rica and you've just got out of bed and you're about to get your period and your cat needs feeding and you're already late for work

like you're going to feel less than and I want you to remember that we compare our insides to everyone else's outsides yeah so we all know what neurotic messes we feel inside we all feel at some point in our lives like we're an imposter we don't deserve to be here we're not good enough and yet we're constantly comparing that to everyone else's external presentation and what we believe about them. And so very often we project and we think that other people have it all sorted. And so we're making that feeling of comparison worse for ourselves. The chances are that the person you're comparing yourself to also has messy neurotic insights and also has a private battle that they're fighting. And I found that just a really helpful mindset because it reminds

me that we're all human and fallible and that's what makes us interesting and actually when we're open about our vulnerabilities that's the source of all true connection Elizabeth you have interviewed some of the biggest names around the world we're talking Stephen Bartlett who we recently had on the podcast Bear Grylls Brene Brown Jamila Jamil it's a good guess you've done Jerry Halliwell, Elliot Page like I mean just to name a few these are huge people with what I can only assume are huge stories and huge lessons and huge failures to get to where they are is there a standout guest or a standout moment or story where you've really learned something that's stuck with you? Yes actually it's so interesting you mentioned Elliot Page I just

found him one of the most moving individuals and it's such an honor to me i record has failed in this tiny little studio that's basically like a cupboard we feel you good acoustics and good soundproofing though i like that but it's up like three or four flights of stairs and so have these extraordinary people just schlep up these stairs and sit down opposite me on these tiny slightly rickety uncomfortable chairs Elliot Page Bernie Sanders has been in that room it's just it's so surreal and amazing I never take it for granted and that was a very special conversation with Elliot but I think if I had to choose one it would be a really early one actually it's an episode that I put out in 2019 it was season four and it was a man called

Mo Gowdat who has gone on to have all of the success that he's always deserved actually Stephen Bartlett has interviewed him now a couple of times and he was the former chief business officer of Google X and he had written a book that claimed it could make anyone happy he had developed an algorithm for happiness because he had applied all of his engineering and statistical research skills to the problem of human happiness and come up with this equation which I will totally mangle so just go and listen to the episode because he'll explain it much better but it's essentially about managing expectation it's about your perception of life and the reality of it and not having overhyped expectations and the way that he spoke about these very profound

ideas was so mind-blowing to me it was a massive light bulb moment in my own life and it changed the way that I live my life. And the thing that most stuck with me and that I practice still every day is this idea that you are not your worst thoughts. So Mo explained the human brain and explained that sometimes the human brain gets stuck on an anxious narrative loop and it's constantly pointing out the things that might go wrong, scanning the horizon for danger. It's constantly misinterpreting the smoke alarm going off because the toast is burning by saying that your house is on fire. And he was like, you need to interrogate your brain because unless you suffer from a neurological condition, your brain does what you tell it to. So if you tell your

brain to raise your right arm, your brain does that for you. So when his brain gets stuck on this anxious narrative loop, and it's telling him awful things like you're a failure, you're a terrible parent, no one likes you. He stops himself and he calls his brain Becky. And he says, Becky, i would like you to give me objective evidence for that assertion and if you can't give me objective evidence for that assertion i'd really love it if you could replace that negative thought with a positive one thanks so much becky i'll see you in a few minutes it's like speaking thank you it's so funny you say that because just yesterday we were recording because we're recording in our home studio at my house and long story short we were recording here and we both

Laura and myself had to leave to do separate things for the day we're done and it was only about 15 minutes and I get a call from Laura she's like are you still home and I said no I've gone out she's like oh I feel like I might have left the straightener plugged in oh my god and I said I said you didn't I was like no I'm pretty sure you didn't because I think I popped my head in and also I think it's got a timer where you know it turns itself off she's like no I'm gonna have to come back and I was like it's okay don't come back and she was like I'm not being responsible for having your house burned down she's like my anxiety around if I left that on and then if I did leave it on and you don't come home from now and it starts a fire and it burns it down and then

it's exactly what you just said where your brain gets stuck in a loop that you you can't get out of it can't break it and Laura drove back she drove back to check it and was it off I didn't find out yeah it was off and unplugged that is so me but we do it to ourselves and especially if you're someone who has any sort of anxieties anxious attachments for me it was triggered post having kids I have a much more heightened anxiety around danger and I don't know why but it's debilitating at times like I'll get up and check the oven a few times and it's like almost like a compulsion now that has definitely gotten worse as I've gotten older in life well you have other people that you're protecting now so I guess that's an inbuilt almost mechanism I also think

it's not just that I think it happens to people as we get older we become worriers we worry more and yes you know when you're in your 20s you don't care about anything you don't worry about your mortality you don't worry about your life you don't you just kind of go and jump off those cliffs and do crazy shit and then you get into your 30s or your 40s and you have been exposed to bad things and so those things sit in your mind and if you're someone who struggles with anxiety you can exactly like you said allow your brain to go on this loop and like for me it's definitely an episode i need to listen to because it's something that i struggle with once i get into these spirals i find it hard to break that pattern i totally understand where you're coming from and

i do think that episode would help you i've actually had him back on the podcast twice since then because he always has such amazing profound insight i've always been a worrier and it's interesting because in the era that i grew up that was the language right so you were a worrier rather than you had anxiety but you're so right that the older i get the more aware i am of the things that could go wrong and the more aware I am that life is fragile and that I'm halfway through it probably if I'm lucky and my closest examples of that is airplane turbulence I used to be fine flying and now I just I hate I just hate turbulence and I get very illogical and irrational about it and that's always quite difficult to talk yourself out of in that very

rational way that Mo says and my life hack for anyone who struggles with airplane turbulence is to imagine that you are in a car or in a horse and cart and you're going along a cobbled street and there's something about the image of the cobbled street I don't know if you have cobbles in Australia because like some countries don't it sounds so English there's like one place in Sydney that might have a cobbled street but you know Laura genuinely like one of the things that I'm grateful for not having children is that I think I would be so anxious. I totally, I completely understand why that would happen and why you're feeling it. And it must be really horrible sometimes. So yeah, listen to Mo Gowda and read his book. I mean, touching back on this idea of

kids and it was something that you have spoken about before that I would love to unpack a little bit and it was fertility privilege. I would love to understand what that means to you and why it's important for people who, you know, do have the privilege of being able to get pregnant to be very cognizant of what they're doing. Yeah. I'm so glad you asked me about it because I think when I coined this term, it landed in some quarters without nuance. What I'm not saying, let's start with that. I'm absolutely not saying that I have an issue with parents who have children. I think it's absolutely fantastic you have kids. I'm not saying you're not allowed to post pictures of your kids on social media and celebrate what parenthood is or complain about

how difficult it is and share I'm absolutely not saying that all I was trying to get at was that if you know someone someone is in your friendship group or perhaps a relative is going through fertility struggles and you have been able to have children just to be cognizant of what you expect from that person and how you communicate with them in the same way as I'm so lucky that I have a roof over my head and a house if a friend of mine was struggling or homeless I wouldn't constantly be complaining to them about how the boiler was broken or how I've got to pay my council tax and oh it's a bit of a nightmare but my bed's really comfortable it's just about being aware of what other people are going through and I think fertility privilege has been overlooked

for so long. And so many people have felt silenced because of it. And the people without children have felt very marginalised by a society which for many decades has fetishised and elevated the idea of parenthood. So I was struggling with my fertility at a time when the mummy blogger, terrible phrase, was like really coming of age, when we had this incredibly popular internet forum called Mumsnet here in the UK that it just felt like all of the conversation was built around families and children and it felt very very exclusive and it also felt like the rest of us weren't able or couldn't find the space to share our stories so it's really about being aware of that and trying to correct it slightly in the same way that we have awareness of other privileges

but we're trying to correct that and restore the equilibrium so it was a way of starting conversations was to talk about it and to name it you know and also with these things I like how the way you described it when you're like it didn't land in other people's camps like the thing is is sometimes people will take a little bit of what's been said or or interpret something that's been said and then they have their own flavor on it though they you know are offended by it like what do you mean I can't I'm not allowed to post that I'm pregnant I'm not allowed to do xyz and it's like you can do all the things that you want to do it's just navigating it with kindness for other people who are in and around you people who you probably care about

who are your friends and your family who might be experiencing something else a lot of people are very open and talk freely about their fertility and where they're at but also a lot of people who may be your friends don't speak about it because we have been conditioned that it's a private thing so you're never especially with social media being so public like you may not be aware what somebody else very close to you is physically going through at that time exactly that all of that I just want to bottle that up and claim it as my own yeah you've explained it so perfectly exactly that that term might not have landed with some people and that's fine it's not for you I'm not I know that I speak to and for an audience who understands what I'm saying totally and they're very often the

people who haven't spoken publicly you haven't shared and it's who haven't told their own family and it's completely understandable because it's so so traumatic so much of it is so traumatic that you want to keep it private but they're the people that I get private messages from and they're the ones who say we appreciate this and please keep doing what you do and they're the people that I'm passionate about speaking up for as someone who is an investor over sharer I really don't mind I really don't mind talking about it and I think every if we're talking about the world of social media, we all have our own audiences, our own communities, and we know who we're speaking to. And that's a really beautiful thing. And sometimes, as you say, it's just about

navigating that with awareness. Because if you are a social media influencer with many, many hundreds of thousands, even millions of followers, I guarantee you that within those followers, there will be people who struggle with fertility. And if you are posting your successful baby scan, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it that's a wonderful thing to celebrate but maybe to do it as you say laura with awareness that someone following you or someone who knows you that will land differently for them can i ask you elizabeth because i don't think we touched on it earlier but did you ever find out the reason for your infertility or did you have unexplained infertility unexplained baby unexplained do you feel like that's more frustrating than not like

Yeah. Are you more like, tell me why I can't do it? Yeah. Like I want to make peace with that. Yeah, exactly. Or if you are someone, which I was, who felt like the solution was to work harder and to try and have control over things. It's like, well, if you tell me what it is, I can work harder to rectify it. But it was ultimately unexplained. There was one thing, I was born with a bicornuate uterus, which is a heart shaped womb with a septum at the top. and women with those kind of wombs have successfully gone on to have full-term pregnancies so they've never done enough research into it but there are some schools of thought that believe that that can trigger early miscarriage and then there are other schools of thought which is like

well might not though and as ever with things that are wrongly termed women's issues there just hasn't been enough medical research devoted to it of course but i i did one of my many procedures was to have that septum removed and it still didn't work sadly so yeah it's it's unexplained but actually that's it's been quite a good lesson for me as someone who did believe that the solution was always to work harder there are some things I cannot work harder for and ultimately what makes the universe beautiful is that it is mysterious and there are bits of it that are unexplained and that that is part of life and so sort of living alongside that has brought me peace actually and alignment rather than an attempt to control the chaos you speak

so well on the topic and as someone that's going through it at the moment it's I really appreciate the chat and the honesty and you definitely make me look at things in a different light and I know that you're helping so many people out there and not just I mean I feel like we spoke a lot about fertility in this chat because I think it's something that does affect obviously so many women but failure as a whole is something really important that I think people can definitely take a different perspective on and um you're you I mean you've got it all covered you've got the podcast you've got the books you're doing the you're doing everything so you're definitely putting out to the world and helping a lot of people so we can't thank you enough for your

time today oh I cannot tell you how much I have loved this conversation it is so nice being interviewed by two exceptional women like I really loved your questions and the thought and the care that you put into it and I felt like it's the conversational equivalent of a a warm understanding hug so thank you so much for having me and I hope I get to see you when I'm in Australia in February at the Sydney Opera House and in Melbourne surreal surreal the Sydney Opera House is amazing it's amazing that you get to do shows there tell us the dates and everything so people where they can get tickets how they can get tickets okay so the dates I'm so excited to be coming to Australia because since day one Australia has been I think my second largest

international audience for the podcast and i feel so loved by your people so i'm really happy that i get to come over so on monday the 26th of february i know taylor swift is playing sydney but if you haven't got tickets come and see me we're going to taylor swift a lot of people don't have tickets we're going to one of the shows i don't know which one we're going to i think we're going to different ones i think you're going to the first one i'm going to the one the second one of us can come to your show one of us okay okay great great so one of you can come on monday the 26th of february at the sydney opera house and you can book tickets via the sydney opera house website and then on the 28th of february i'm going to melbourne and i will be at hamer hall

and again you can get tickets on their website so thank you so much for having me and allowing me to talk about all the things that i really love getting deep into well so that was the nicest thing anyone's ever said to us by the way like like we're probably going to take that and use it as the grab yeah that's it thanks again and we're going to put all your podcast links in our notes for anyone that wants to go and check you out okay guys we're gonna get out of here because we have got to go and catch a flight to the other side of the world or the country perth we're coming in hot for the live show which will be tomorrow night thursday night if you haven't got your tickets yet there's still a couple left oh my god so many people from perth have messaged us and

been like no one ever comes to perth thanks for coming to perth we are pumped so excited i mean It does feel like a little bit of a whirlwind trip for what could be an international flight. We're only there for one night. We could have been in Bali. We could have gone to Bali for the same amount of time, but honestly, we could not be more excited. This is number two, live show, baby.

And now we know what we're doing on stage, so it's going to be even better than the last one, which was still really good. But you can get your tickets at lifeuncutpodcast.com.au and that will be Thursday night. And then on Sunday night, we have Sydney show, so it's all happening. It's a wild week, isn't it?

Anyway, guys, that's it from us. You know the drill. Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends and share the love because we love them. We'll be right back.