Modern Wisdom - #263 - Reflecting On My Mental Flaws & Strengths

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Charlotte Fox-Weber is a Psychotherapist and an author. As a therapist of many years, Charlotte saw an opportunity to turn the mic around on me for once and ask some questions about how I see myself and why I do what I do. Definitely a change of pace today but I really enjoyed opening up. There are some takeaways in here which might illuminate your own mental state and thought patterns. Sponsors: Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Charlotte on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-fox-weber-aa287219/  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello beautiful people, welcome back. My guest today is me, kind of. Charlotte Foxweber is a psychotherapist, past modern wisdom guest, and she's been talking to me for a little while about turning the mic round and asking me some questions about my own internal state, what my strengths and flaws are, why I am the way I am, why I do what I do. And I thought, given that the end of the year tends to be an interesting time for us all to reflect on where we're at, that this could be quite a interesting and timely insight into someone that you listen to, speaking in your ears, a couple of hours a week. It was definitely a change of pace for me and there was sections of the podcast where I really had to kind of open up a lot, a lot more than I have done previously, but it felt really nice.

I'm more than happy to be the person who does this and opens up about vulnerabilities and flaws and strengths and all the internal monologue stuff because I think that it's very important for all of us to hear something on the internet that isn't just someone saying, look at how cool I am, look at how good and resilient and robust and indestructible and progressed from last year I am. So hopefully you'll take a lot away from today. I really enjoyed the process, Charlottes, like phenomenal at what she does. And we talk a lot about turning mental flaws

into strengths, about overcoming past traumas from our childhood. Yeah, it's a very different conversation to the one that I'm used to having on the show, but I really, really enjoyed it. And I hope that you do too. And also before we get into this episode, thank you. It's the end of the year.

2020 has been ups and downs globally, but an absolute success for what I care about most, which is this show. So if you've shared an episode, rated, subscribed, sent it to a friend or done anything else, that means an awful lot to me. Happy New Year everyone! Welcome back, you asked so much less super pregnant than the last time that we spoke. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm happy to not be pregnant, although I have a beautiful baby from it. You got a baby out of it, yeah, but you just like now half the size.

Thank you. So what are we doing today? You wanted to do this thing. You said I have an idea for an episode. I want to come on and. Thank you. So what are we doing today? You wanted to do this thing. You said, I have an idea for an episode. I want to come on and talk to you. Absolutely. I have a real interest in understanding the life of a podcaster. And you're a particularly good one. I shouldn't just generalize it as a life of a podcaster because there are so many and that doesn't narrow it down enough. You ask exceptional questions. You are constantly curious. I would say curiosity must be a driving force for you. What is it like to be a question asker, a seeker, a constant conversationalist?

I want to get into your mind. I'm curious for what it says about you psychologically. to get into your mind. I'm curious for what it says about you psychologically. I think that there are certain similarities between how you approach things and my work as a psychotherapist, trying to understand inquiring, probing, looking at what's underneath, engaging intensely, wholeheartedly. But it can also be a way of avoiding and not disclosing. So I'm here to challenge you in a way, because we've had some very interesting exchanges and conversations, and I just want to turn it around because that's what I do. That sounds good. Yeah.

I'm not sure what I'm in for today, but yeah, let's get started. Let's do this. Okay. You can always tell me when I'm pushing too much and you don't have to say anything you don't want to say. So what is it like to constantly ask questions? That's an interesting one. When I was in Dubai recently, we were a friend that I was out there with George. We were at a party that was very, very not socially distanced at a, around a pool with a few hundred people. And three different sets of people said the same thing to both of us. And they asked us separately, why are you asking so many

questions? In a kind of a suspicious way, the first thing that that identified was that we ask a lot of questions, because curious, the second thing was that in a place like Dubai, which is perhaps a little bit showy and to do with wealth, it's obvious that the game of tennis that people play when they converse is, I'm waiting for you to finish saying your things so I can say my thing. Being honest, I was probably quite a selfish conversationist for a long time and it's been trained into me that actually in a conversation the most selfish thing that you can do is ask questions because you don't know what the other person knows, you only know what you know. So by asking questions you will list it very interesting stories.

I tweeted something today actually about the fact that people who think their introverts might not be introverts, they might just have friends that suck. And I certainly notice, I ask fewer questions when I'm with people that I'm not really that interested in what they have to say, which sounds kind of terrible, but it makes also makes sense. You're not going to dig as hard in a gold mine that you don't believe there's any golden. So yeah, I certainly have cultivated that and I think weaponizing curiosity,

or that's not right, disciplining curiosity into a effective mode of discourse is something that I've really, really enjoyed doing and has kind of been stepped up especially this year. And I really feel that it's an art form, like the art of asking good questions without breaking the flow and without sort of losing where you're at and guiding the person that you're with has made for outside of the show. It's made for some of the deepest connections that I've ever had. Me and my friend again, George, we did this

flight out to Dubai and from Amsterdam to Dubai is seven hours on the nose and we didn't stop speaking for the entire way there. And it was just us asking, like we went from our sex robots ethical to what's the future of Bitcoin to, like everything. And there was this poor girl sat behind him who must have been the only British person probably within about three meters. And she didn't have any headphones in.

She must have been thinking just shut the fuck up. Because to everyone else it was just foreign language noise but to her she was probably hearing our sex robot Bitcoin, myriad discussion. So yes, that's it. I enjoy it. I enjoy asking questions and it's something that I wish I'd known a lot, a lot sooner that it makes for great connections, great friendships, and a wonderful conversation. Fascinating. How old were you when you really discovered the value of asking questions?

Only really since doing this show. You mentioned curiosity earlier on, which is the first of my five core values. And for everyone who hasn't gone and done it yet, Google, Taylor, Pearson core values and the exercise will take you a couple of hours, but it's been one of the most important things I've done this year, which is to identify what my life is built around in terms of values. Spiles out a word, the word is cases and the C in cases is curiosity. So curiosity, do you? Oh, as a therapist, I mean, there's nothing worse than a therapist to lack curiosity. Be interested. Can you be a therapist without having curiosity? I mean, you shouldn't be. Right. Yes. And it's a sign of something. It can be a real sign of burnout as well. I think curiosity is a huge energy source. Yeah, that's interesting. So tell me how you feel when people

ask you questions, does it ever kind of make you feel uncomfortable or turn the spotlight on you in an awkward way? Not really. I think for a long time, again, only child background and then coming into doing this sort of an industry, I've always been used to having at least some form of center of attention. And perhaps my desire now to kind of discipline my curiosity into questions is me casting off what was once. Me very much being kind of selfish when it came to these sorts of conversations it was all about me me me and now this is me almost going in the polar opposite direction and still finding joy in that. I don't find it awkward at all it's like a little bit of the old me comes out when I get to talk like this, where I get to indulge in it's my turn, it's me in the line.

But I genuinely do enjoy creating a platform that allows whoever I'm speaking to to be at their absolute best. Like a ton of things that I give as advice to other podcasters. Stuff, for instance, that the audience will never see like when I'm on a Skype call with someone, I'll nod all the time, just as they're talking, I'll just keep on nodding like this, like that Churchill dog in the back of the cart, like just constantly going away, because I want the other person to feel comfortable

and confident, like they know. You're encouraging. Yeah, I he you, This is what you're saying. Keep on going, mate. Keep on going, mate. That sounds good. That sounds good. Right.

So I love, I love doing that. And that has been a really interesting transformation. And then maybe I think it's perhaps something that young guys get a lot this sort of male posturing when you're, you know, you break out of your teens into your 20s. You want to be a, an alpha guy. You want to be attractive. You want to be confident and charismatic, and you can often mistake

brashness and over self-sufficiency for that. And I think, yeah, by far, whether it's trying to get laid or trying to make mates, like having curiosity, genuine curiosity and what other people say, it was enough that a bunch of different people at a party who are drunk highlighted like what the fuck are you doing asking questions? So do you ever encounter people who really don't open up to you and how do you deal with that?

Being honest, my sample size for how long I've been doing this is probably not that big. Right. How long have you been doing this? 18 months, I'd guess speaking like this consistently. Yeah. And yeah, I think that was definitely one of the things. And again, any sort of budding aspiring podcasters out there, if you're not used to asking questions, that's probably the first skill that you need to learn that it's your job to just get that curiosity, turn it into like a pharmaceutical nuclear grade weapon and fire it at the other person, which is possible.

Yeah, so sometimes people don't want to open up in person, but you kind of get that impression if you're not on the same wavelength anyway, if you're not vibrating at the same frequency you kind of sense that. But I think it's very hard. I find it hard as a therapist when people won't open up to me. It's something I've had to learn to how it is. Is that an infrastrating? It is.

And I also find it socially as well. It's something I've had to endure and respect because not everyone is open. And that's okay. I don't need to hit it off and connect incredibly deeply with everyone. But that's something I've definitely had to learn and be patient about. And I don't know if you find that as well

that sometimes you don't engage as intensely. You don't have a deep rapport with absolutely everyone. Absolutely, yeah. So do you ever ask people questions where they just kind of avoid or don't go further, don't take the conversation anywhere and you have to deal with that? Yeah, sometimes I think my capacity to deal with awkwardness is actually fairly low, and that's something I've had to learn to deal with as well, that sitting with silence and sitting with awkwardness as a podcaster or just a conversation list,

is something I really didn't like. I think it was born out of a rooted lack of confidence in my own ability, either as sort of socially or as a podcaster. And silence to me meant meant I'm not interesting or they're not interested in me or I'm not moving this conversation in the right direction or they're going to think this sucks or whatever it might be and yeah for a long time sitting with that silence was the most uncomfortable thing and then some episodes that we've done that silence was the most uncomfortable thing. And then some episodes that we've done, this guy called Daniel Schmacktemberger, who is a ridiculous polymath civilization engineer.

And we did this two hour long episode where there was 30 second silences in there. And I just perfectly find just sitting and letting him think. And he's thinking and thinking because that's the pace that he moves at. And that was really beautiful. And people commented on how nice it was to have that silence themselves as listeners. And I'm like, hang on a second, like there's two people in this conversation and neither of them felt uncomfortable with it. And you don't even get to choose as the listener when someone starts speaking again and you felt comfortable with it. So that really taught me a lesson about how silence is an important element of talking to people too,

and it can actually be used as a feature rather than a bug. Yes, absolutely. So do you find that applies in social situations as well? A little bit more difficult. Often because it's not one-on-one, and in a big group, especially the sorts of circles that I'll sometimes traffic in, there will be varying degrees of sort of brashiness, charisma, outgoing extraversion. And that doesn't, those sorts of people don't tend to allow for a 30 second pause, you know, for someone to consider what the future civilization looks like or whatever it is.

It's rare, rare, rare. Should I say? Do you find that when you can hold back, you can actually learn a lot more? I think so. Again, talking and not asking questions is on agredation and further down from that is asking questions too quickly and not giving me the person time to speak. I'm sure that you what's it called the use of silence or whatever it is in therapy that you guys use? Sure, the use of silence.

Yeah, well it's just that I know that sitting and just letting the what do you call it, client, patient? Client. Client, okay, a patient makes it sound a little bit dodgy, doesn't it? Let me- Well, some therapists say patient, I say client. Cool.

There's no, there's no perfect term. I don't really love either actually, person. Person, let the other person just sit and think and then whatever comes to the forefront of their consciousness is what they say next, without you guessing what they want to say or something. Without rushing things along or crowding, and I think silence sometimes gives space, but it's about dosage because you don't want to give someone so much space. I went to with Airbus once who was just horribly withholding with the silence and it made me feel very uncomfortable.

So I think it's about finding what fits, but letting things emerge. And I guess if you're kind of crowding someone conversationally, I know for me, when I get too nervous, I go into question mode where I use questions as a defense. Not in therapy so much, but in social situations where I just start kind of firing off questions and it can be a way of hiding. So I'm really, really interested

in what questions say about ourselves. And as a question asker, I'm now turning it on you. So I'm doing the same thing. I'm very aware, but I'm owning it. And I feel like we have that in common that we that we inquire, but where are we in all of that? What does that say about us? And what's it like to be asked questions, it's given take. So it's interesting just to think about where you are in all of this and what emerges from it.

And how you kind of find your sense of self by constantly turning to others, like where does your voice come through? Yeah, again, I honestly think that this last year or so, last 18 months, particularly, which has been shaped by this project, you know, again, for all that I say to people to try and find something that they love to look at what they did when they were a kid between the ages of eight and 14 and then consider that that some sort of evolution of that might be their passion as they get later into life. What is it that you can do for just unencumbered joy?

For all that I say that it's this kind of bottom up, emerging way that you should try and find passion. This show very much has top down affected the person I am in what I would say is a very positive way, but it's like it's dictated or it's influenced the path that I've gone in terms of my own personal development. I walk away from the show and I take so much of this with me. I take so much of the way that I operate and hopefully that comes across. I want to be, I think this is one of the beauties of having long-form conversations that people listen to regularly.

You know, it's three or four hours a week of me doing this, although it's not usually me talking so much. And it's very hard to hide you in that. And for a very long time, as the listener's probably will be familiar with I was living this kind of metacognisant, playing a role, egoic game and it shines a very bright light on you when you have to speak this much and it forces you to really think like, okay, if I'm going to do this, if I try and play a persona, I'm going to be exhausted, so I just need to be rigorous and truthful. So yeah, it's interesting. But again, there's

kind of two juxtaposed Christopher's here, one of them being the one that was probably very selfish up until maybe specifically five years ago, and then tapering up to like the last sort of two years or so. And then this one, which is very different, at least in terms of conversation. Mm-hmm. Do you ever get really tired of asking questions or being curious to get bored and feel like, wow. I must never.

So what supplies you with curiosity? How do you keep that source alive? I'm not sure. That I just don't see any other joy. There is no great joy to me than linking together two concepts that I didn't previously realize worked. Like I'll find something out about the way that social media algorithms work

or the way that this particular star gravity time dilation happens when it goes into a neutron star or whatever it might be anything whenever I learn any of this stuff or a little pithy aphorism about life or anything I adore it and it makes me incredibly happy and I think makes me incredibly happy. And I think, I wonder how much of that, so here's something that I was going to bring up with you, obviously, with your insights into psychology, was that how much do you think of the personal development world, the personal growth, self-development movement

that we're seeing at the moment is people using that to hide from a person that they don't like deep down. So if you say, I don't like me as I am now, but if I continue to grow every day between now and the day that I die, perhaps the person that I turn into might be acceptable and worthy of love, How often do you think it is that you come across people like that? I really interesting question. I like to think that Karl Rogers was right in saying that it's a paradox.

We have to accept who we are in order to make changes. So I think that self-acceptance is often a part of growth. And it's the same conversation in a way. If that makes sense. Yeah, get it. It's something I've been thinking about so much this year that I have some friends that I think their desire for growth comes from a really good place.

I think it comes from a place of just wanting to be better without feelings of insufficiency that's driving it. But I also think that there is a huge group, perhaps even the majority, maybe not, but perhaps even the majority of people who are tumbling down the personal growth rabbit hole in a desperate attempt to try and find a person who they are going to be proud to look in the mirror and be. person who they are going to be proud to look in the mirror and be. I read this quote the other day about how people who have a low sense of self-worth can sometimes find in development a hope for a better future. Basically. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense and I think that you're on to something really important, which is especially

prevalent during the pandemic. There's a huge amount of pressure to self-actualize and the wellness industry, the wellbeing industry suggests that we have to constantly be updating, improving, progressing, growing, and actually what about self-acceptance? So I think there is that sense of coming to therapy thinking fix me and that can hide as I want to develop and grow but actually sometimes celebrating where you are already is a profoundly important thing and I think people can come to therapy and discover that actually what they thought was a flaw turns out to be a strength. So well, I'll give you one example. Although you're totally doing your thing and turning this around on me. I see how you did that.

But if you if you can see, I'm wearing a necklace, which is a ram with horns, a therapist I went to one said to me, and I think quite an unkind way, you are like a ram with horns. And I think she meant it as an insult. It was an intervention. And I decided to take it as a compliment. And I began collecting rams with horns. And I love rams with horns when I was in Italy. Recently, I saw rams with horns and I related to them and felt like we were one. Recently, I saw Rams with horns and I related to them and felt like we were one. One of the things I took from that therapy was accidental. She didn't mean for me to take it. It's not what I thought I would get from it, but I arrived in therapy thinking, I need

to let go of this aspect of myself. And I left thinking, actually, that's part of who I am. I don't really want to change that. What is a Ram? What is a ramp with horns? It means that I can be quite attached to certain things and I probably get very asi-jewis about certain certain issues and and struggle to let things go and a ramp with horns. I mean, it can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing. So there are times where I absolutely need to let go and not fix it and not obsess. So there are times where I absolutely need to let go

and not fix it and not obsess. But there are times where I think I'm very passionate and conscientious and I will go above and beyond for something and that's part of who I am. So it's a strength and a weakness. But it's not just one or the other and I've decided to kind of embrace that aspect of myself. So I think sometimes celebrating our flaws

is a massive victory and it can take a lot of work to get there. It's a kind of journey for many. I know it's an overused term to say journey, but I didn't always realize that I liked being a ramothorans and actually when she said it to me, I probably felt initially quite offended and hurt, but no longer. Well, I mean, a perfect example of that is I think I would have

probably been called nosy as a kid. There you go. So same here, totally, totally relating to that one. And what's nosiness? Like you roll that forward and then you discipline it down, you make it a little bit, you put a bow on it, you make the rough, the rough edge is a little bit less rough. And you've got well-crafted questions. I really do think one of the things I'd love everybody to take away is the barbell or the two-sided coin paradox that is strength and weakness, that you know, being nosy as a kid or being a gobb shite, which would be someone who kind of talks a little bit too much. Can I add to the list? Yeah, absolutely.

Let's make it longer. Drinks and weaknesses. Let's make it longer. Okay, so being nosy definitely one. Sensitive. Definitely another. Be sensitive as a kid. Of course, and most therapists are, I think, somewhat insensitive maybe.

But yeah, I was told I was sensitive and that felt like a weakness and now it's a strength absolutely. Empathy is one, I know it's very trendy now for children to be taught empathy. I don't remember thinking that it was an advantage because I felt things acutely and I would hear about an upsetting story and it would really get under my skin and stay with me and I would hear about an upsetting story and it would really get under my skin and stay with me and I didn't know how to kind of process it and And now I've managed to make use of it because actually caring is a really good thing in my world, but I sometimes carried in a way that felt disproportionate as a child and do you cry it's like

Romantic Christmas movies and like beautiful sort of sad? I felt it all. I still feel a lot. Yeah, but understanding that that strong feelings can actually be a wonderful life-enhancing thing has taken time for me. Yeah, there was a question asked by an audience member when I went to go and see Jordan Peterson live in Manchester a couple of years ago and the question boiled down to the depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer. I'd prefer to be ignorant like my dog than have to, it's both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply. Oh yeah. And I understood the question and I really sort of empathised with the question as well, but we don't have that luxury, we don't have that choice. It's like the allegory of the cave, you know that played as allegory of the

cave. So I advise anyone who doesn't know what that is to just go on YouTube and learn about it. It's basically taking the red pill that once you see something, you can't unsee it, once you learn something, you can't unlearn it. And that's the beautiful thing about having a conversation that when someone convinces you of something, it's like, it's literally like a parasite in your brain, but hopefully one that's good. Someone convinces you of something you can no longer be unconvinced. And yes, I think that the depth of experience giving you that richness in life

is something that can cause people to have turmoil, right? Like it can hurt. It hurts to feel things that you know other people probably don't even notice that way that that person glanced at you, that slight shoulder turn or the fact that they hugged everybody else and just gave you a handshake when they left or whatever it might be, all of these little things. And even just the fact that I noticed this stuff, like these are all examples that I've seen not on me, but in other people in the last month, because I've been around, I'm not used to being around so many people, I was just like hyper social for four weeks. And all I'm doing is observing, just looking at stuff. But what's that? That's the nosiness coming through again. That's the curiosity. That's the hyper vigilance, I would call it too. Yeah, perhaps. Perhaps. I'm trying to think

about some of the other things. So certainly coming from a working class town in the north of the UK, I don't have the accent. And again, at the time that was a weakness, it was something that made me stand out at school in definitely a suboptimal manner. But that has led now to me having an accent that can be understood by Americans, like you, which is useful. But so next up on my list, for things that felt like a weakness that are now strength, I'm really loving this list.

Being an outsider, feeling like an outsider in my childhood was very uncomfortable and I wanted to fit in. And now I take pride. I don't necessarily have to match everyone else. That doesn't mean I have to be kind of provocative and make a point of always being an outsider. It's also great to connect and feel like I belong, but actually accepting difference can be a wonderful thing. And I kind of wish I could say that to my younger self. I don't know if you ever

feel like, absolutely, like want to go back probably one of them the most important things if I could send a you know like a couple of sentence email. It would be to embrace weirdness. Yeah. Your weirdness is your competitive advantage. I've said there's a million a million a million times and your previous business partner Mr. TheBoton, he has this fantastic video, why we're fated to be lonely. And he says that loneliness is a kind of tax.

We have to pay to a tone for a certain complexity of mind, given the choice between honesty and acceptability. Most of us choose the latter. But that very much is your unique route to never being competed against. And that comes to, within business, career, it comes for personally everything. If you decide-

But no one else can ever be you. No, no one can beat you at being you. And the sooner that you can embrace that, as not just a nice sort of pithy aphorism that reminds you if you're feeling a little bit cast out that it's okay mate, like that it genuinely is the truth that as I've embraced my weirdness and the fact that I don't necessarily fit into an archetype, as tons and tons and tons of people do, they all feel this and they nerf the edges, they round off the edges of the interesting stuff that they do in life to try and make

themselves fit into the bell curve of what normal is. But as George McGill, the buddy that I went to Dubai with said, if you're trying to be normal by definition, you're regressing to the mean, normal people get normal results, extra ordinary people get extra ordinary results. Like, we all want somehow, everybody wants to both be the most popular, most liked person on the planet, and also Elon Musk, or Elon Musk, or one of the Kardashians or something. And you think you don't get it both ways. Those people have ridiculous

outcomes because they have ridiculous inputs. You can choose one, but you can't choose both. Right. So let's go back to you if we can. Tell us something disturbing, something's surprising. Take a risk. It doesn't have to be the big trauma with the capital team, maybe trauma with the lower case T. So I've certainly sort of realized a lot, it kind of following on from what we just said there, realized a lot that the sort of insights that I've got by by being an outsider, are very liberating and very enjoyable. But at the time, just felt like such a curse. Like I just didn't fit in.

I couldn't, I remember I used to think about how other people dressed or find bizarre quirks in how groups of people that I wanted to them to like me, what I thought it was they were doing that was binding them together as a group, it's like, oh, it's because they were all wearing like skinny jeans and I was trying to lose fit in jeans or it's because they all walk this way to school or I walked that way to school or whatever it might be. And I think that for a long time I was just confused by a lack of acceptance, especially as a young kid.

And again, without necessarily a brother or a sister or someone who's kind of either always got your back and or can teach you the common rules of socializing, that was, that's really only something, kind of like realizing the impact that my childhood had on me is very, very much only something that I've come back to. And in a way, it's really, I find it fascinating. I really enjoy tracking the line, tracing the root,

the different elements of me as walked, and everyone that's listening can think the same. Everything that you are now is the flower that's grown out of a seed of something that was planted when you were much younger. Again, another School of Life video is where they talk about bad inner voices and they say, all bad inner voices will once a bad out of voice. And when you hear the way that you criticize yourself for underachieving an X or not being good enough at Y or the shame that you feel when you make a blunder sort of socially, whatever it might be, a lot of those voices, if you listen closely enough, they're spoken in a cadence of someone that you can remember from when you were much younger.

Sure. So for you, let's get specific, let's get personal. I don't know, being honest like, this is why I asked you to be my therapist and you said that we know each other too well and you won't do it. But being, I haven't done this work. There is a, but there's work to be done. Oh, yeah, there's tons. And I find it interesting, like a genuine, you have embraced the opportunity to delve into the, into these sort of deeper areas of myself. But I don't know, like I can listen, like I can listen quietly enough to know that it's a familiar

voice, but I don't really know what the amalgamation of everything is. And yeah, but that was an interesting insight. You know, I've got a lot to thank your previous job at the School of Life for these insights that have sort of rolled forward and allowed me to see this sort of stuff. But yeah, I don't think that I know, I can't pick it apart.

It's like a very messy sort of soundtrack at the moment and the texture of my mind when I try and get to that place is something that requires more work. It's like a glass ceiling and a glass floor that I can't really get past just yet. But see what what you've done is really brave actually because you have said, I don't know, which is a really honest part of any emotional discovery, but there is that bit of mess and uncertainty and kind of unknowing that's part of learning and growing. So that's that's a really genuine aspect of this process. And and of course this is not therapy and direct, I won't be your therapist, but we can have intense deep

conversations, of course, but I think I think it's really important to not have it all be tidy and resolved. There can be a sense that emotional epiphanies happen overnight, and it's a creative process. Any creative process requires stages and steps and a bit of mess and experimenting. Given that we're talking about questions at the moment, have you got any of the favorite questions that you like to ask your clients as like opening questions that people who are listening can ask themselves and maybe to sort of take away from this

and ruminate on over the next while? Sure, I mean, I don't encourage ruminating, but sure. Tell me about a time that you thought you couldn't survive and tell me about what got you to the other side or if you have gotten to the other side. That's a cool question. It's not a question I always ask, but I am asking you. I can definitely take one from this year that's going into the, I ruptured my killies three and a half months ago. And as someone who sometimes has catastrophic thinking, I just presumed that it would go badly. I didn't think I had a particularly good constitution to be resilient in that sort of a situation.

You know, if I can get sad and upset when there's ostensibly nothing wrong, when there's really something wrong, just how fucked am I gonna be? And I think I just presumed I was a lot more fragile than I was. First knitting. Yeah, it was interesting.

I found in myself a room, it was like living in a house for your entire life and finding a door to a room that you didn't know existed and you open it. And it's like a fucking bunker. And it's lead lined and there's a shotgun in there and you can take on a lot. It was very endogenous. It came out of somewhere inside of me. And I think that that's reassuring for people who think that maybe they don't have the resilience. They see people who go through much, much worse things than I do. You know, people who've been like human traffic or captured by terrorists.

So, you know, lost both of their legs have been terminally ill, all of these sort of things. There is certainly something inside me and presumably other people as well. Because I heard these stories, right? You hear about this person had his arms stuck under a rock in the middle of the desert for 72 hours with no water, any survived and then did an ultra marathon back to whatever. And you see people like David Goggins getting after it, and you think like, well, like what on earth is wrong with these people? I'm never going to be like them. But kind of when reality comes a knocking, there is something that answers. And that for

me was, um, those are really interesting insight this year. That's probably one of the things I'm proudest about out of this year. Obviously, I'm happy with how this project's gone and other bits and pieces, but certainly my response to what they responded is one of the things I'm most proud of. So just to recap, you thought you were less capable, less resilient, less robust. Precisely. And actually, you've gone to the other side and when something really did go wrong, you were able to handle it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm encouraging. Yeah, very much so. I'm bolstering. But it makes me think like what on earth was going on? Why was there periods during my 20s where I wouldn't be able to get out of bed for days on end, just crushed under the

weight of existence when there was nothing wrong. So sure, I mean, it's really interesting how there are times in life when stepping in a puddle is traumatic and other times when you have a true disaster and you can actually deal with it. And I think sometimes it's harder when things aren't going wrong and you're just feeling a kind of despair. So I feel for the person in you where everything was ostensibly going okay and you were really suffering, just carrying the weight of existence, that's still hard in some ways harder, because the world couldn't even see what was wrong, and you didn't even have any explanation

for what was happening. Yeah, the shame around depression was something that I took, it took me an awfully long time to deal with. The, especially because of the asymmetry we see online now that we are, we all now not only have to live up to other people's ideals But the ideal that we've set for ourselves and our own social media channel, right? Like you put yourself across as X, Y and Z and then one day you're fucking the Batman symbol and you think oh hang on like I'm supposed to be XYZ here and You have to try and compensate and yeah, I was so ashamed, like the fact, why am I in bed? Like, why can't I get out of bed? Why can't I feel good about life? I haven't

gotten any problem. So it's gotten very meta. Oh, yeah, hugely. And obviously, those thought loops kind of make everything worse. And I can rationalize, you know, I've got advice, I've given advice to tons and tons of people of how I tried to try and deal with depressive episodes. But at the time, it just feels like drowning in thoughts. Like that's what depression feels like. It feels like you're drowning under the weight of your own consciousness. And it's such a, it's such a heavy situation to exist in that it really doesn't surprise me how getting out of bed

can feel like it takes a superhuman effort. Opening the curtains requires a world strongest man to give you a hand with it. Totally. It's really interesting in the course of five minutes, I feel like you've already changed gears in your attitude towards that time in your life. Because first you said, and first you kind of made light of it, and you said, you couldn't really cope with life at the time, but then you were able to cope with your Achilles. I feel like you've now become more compassionate to that inner self. Yeah, maybe. I think there's probably a bit of defense mechanism that goes in there that if you can be

flippant about a situation that once gave you trauma that you kind of don't remind yourself of that. But one of the one of my favorite episodes that I've done on the show is my experience with depression a few years ago now. And that I continue to get messages all the time from people who listen to that. And the insight, I think, I haven't heard many conversations from people where they've dealt with depression and it's been just because, you know, it's not the grant needed to go to rehab,

overdose on drugs, cheated on my girlfriend, got kicked out of the house, got found by the police. No situational stressor. But not even that, just that it's not, there's no glory or grandeur or even narrative behind it. That, to me, is the real that it's not, it's not, there's no glory or grandeur or even narrative behind it. It, yeah. That, that to me is the real pain, I think, of depression in the 21st century, that it can be so comfortable, it can be so unremarkable, unremarkable depression.

And you just think, why do I feel bad? Why do I feel this way? What is it about me? Why am I not strong enough to be able to get past this? Why am I dealing with these thoughts? Why am I thinking? I'm just thinking the same thing over and over and I'm the more that I think it, the more that I spend this time here, the more that I hate myself, the more that I wish that it wasn't the case. And it's a level of depression that doesn't end. It's not got suicidal ideations in it. It's not got that level of regret. It's less eventful.

It's just totally unremarkable. What would you say to that time in your life, to that person you were? It was a long time, you know. Like it doesn't, I still don't. In the cold light of day, as we are now, it's very easy to think with the comfort of rationality, right? You are so illogical in that situation, so unbelievably detached from what's actually happening. Sometimes it can be triggered by something so small. All of the practical implications that I have, which are a couple of

step process that you need to break down the things that you need to do in steps or small that even you can do them, which is, I need to get out of bed. First off, I need to pull the covers off me. I need to put my right foot on the floor. Then my left foot on the floor there. I need to stand up. So you can break things down in that way and that's a practical way. A warm shower, a walk, a call of friend and have a big glass of water.

Like those things will fix so much of the way that you feel. But when you can't get out of bed or when you feel like you can't get out of bed, and you just want to hide under the covers from reality or existence, that feels very, very far away. So I don't really know. I don't think the solution is the rationality. And giving yourself a aphoristic cerebral psychological solution to this also doesn't work because you're not thinking sufficiently clearly to be able to lean on that.

George again tweeted something that said, telling someone to think the way out of overthinking is like telling someone to snort the way out of a cocaine addiction. That's very smart. I like that. So disputing it really doesn't help. Because it feels like that. And that's the thing, I think, as well, that even with a drug addiction, people can see from the outside in, you know, like they can see that there's some sort of physical dependency going on here. If they took me in a lab and they measured me, they'd know there was something wrong. If I was actually skinned or I would run out of money, if I was actually broken

a bone or, you know, a destitute, whatever it might be, it would feel more legitimate. I think it's the lack of legitimacy. This bizarre bourgeois fucking. You don't feel you have the right to do that. Who am I? Who am I to feel sad? And yeah, that, um, that was something that I think was difficult to swallow as well, because even the stories that were given of depression are these ones of grandeur. I had this conversation with a buddy, one of the very early episodes, a guy called Mike Cashew, and I asked him whether or not he thought he was addicted to heroin and cocaine by the age of 14.

He was an alcoholic by the age of 16 and he bounced back to now be the CEO of this hugely successful company, won the CrossFit Games twice. But I asked him if he hadn't hit rock bottom, whether he would still be there. And it's this not good, not great, not average, but just sort of ambient dissatisfaction with life, sort of vacillating between just okay enough to think that life's alright, down to kind of existential bit of pain and then wobbling back up again. That really doesn't give anyone the activation energy to bounce out of the bottom. And I wonder whether sometimes a breakdown can actually be quite useful in that way. Oh, I think you're also really onto something that the kind of scolding that goes on internally.

The telling off for you don't have a right to feel this way. It's so persecutory, it's so self-loathing on top of everything else. And I think it sounds like anger turned inwards. It really does. There's a, it's probably very quickly, it becomes the majority of the weight that you're trying to bear. I think there's self-referential, the narrative about the narrative.

Yeah. Because the first thing only exists, whatever it is that kicks off the bad mood, that first thing only ever exists for just, you know, a fleeting conversation, meeting, day, concern, whatever it might be. And then after that, it's the thoughts about thoughts that are possible. And the feelings about feelings, I often see this in therapy. You have the primary emotions, which just happen for various reasons, and they're fine, whatever

they are. But it's often the secondary emotions that are so tricky. So I'm feeling angry at yourself for feeling sad and kind of coming in with the judgment. So it's often looking at the secondary emotions that can be really helpful for then just accepting the primary emotions, if that makes sense. So you said, think about a time when you thought you couldn't survive and then think about how you did. What's another one?

Another question. People can not ruminate on that people can enjoyably think about. What would you say to the most fragile part of yourself? Oh, that's a good one. I think I take things very seriously. I take life very seriously. It's a function of someone who thinks a lot because small incidents get magnified up to take up more room than they deserve. I've certainly noticed this, and other people who spend a lot of time in solitude, in fact, probably everybody throughout 2020 will notice that small incidents, whether good or bad, will have probably had a disproportionate effect on them Because they've had the time to ruminate

Probably totally that's why I when you said ruminate it I had to come in reflect yeah, but because ruminating is just so huge right now Um, and and we're in the kind of zoom gloom and we don't have the normal camaraderie and the incidental banter that helps to fuse things and we feel paranoid, we get a weird email, we get a weird text, and then it just grabs hold and takes a residence, and it's really powerful. That power of diffuser-y humor is something that I've almost totally forgotten about,

which sounds stupid, but especially this year, the number of times where something something's happened and you can just laugh it off. Like I was talking to a SAS operative a couple of weeks ago, and he was saying that the use of very dark humor in the special forces is one of the ways that they deal with bad situations. That makes total sense. He's been next to guys who've been taking fire and one of them's been shot in the arm and he'll start laughing and everyone will start laughing. And you think I mean, I, I, I, I, Gallo humor. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, very much so.

So next question, what would you say to your 102 year old self? What, what has worked in your life? What has success meant to you? That's still something that I think is I'm working out. I think that when you do a ton of self work, which I've done over the last few years, and hopefully as more people listen to this show, they kind of get dragged through that world as well. I would find it difficult to work out a trajectory for me, because I think I'm still quite an

inflection point. I get really jealous. That's one thing that I do get interestingly jealous about is whenever I meet people that have very concrete senses of where they want to be, longer term. I was talking to this guy while I was in Dubai who said, should I do this man, like he's an architect, he's doing all of these different things, making a ton of money, like very successful young guy as well. He said, should I do this man Like, I'm loving what I'm doing at the moment, but I just can't wait to own a bar on a beach

with my wife and my couple of kids in somewhere home. Totally clear plan. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, how, how, I was like, and I had to call it out. I was like, dude, that's an incredibly precise, well-defined plan. And I didn't think that he was postulating or I didn't think that this was inputting on a facade.

Like he just said it, like it was a fact, like drop the apple it falls to the floor. And I was like, holy fucking shit, I'm so jealous of that. Like I've never been, I've never been certain about sort of long term what that is. So lots of question marks. Yeah, for sure. Which is beautiful and great. For my 100 and 2 year old self,. So lots of question marks. Yeah, for sure. Which is beautiful and great. For my 100 and 2 year old self, there are lots of question marks. There's some qualities

that matter for a good rich life, but it's not too specific. I think it's good to keep these things loose and and allow space as well, space for surprise, discovery, growth. I think you're right. You used a word that brings us to our next question, jealousy. When was the last time you felt incredibly jealous? It certainly comes to mind that incident that I said there with someone who has this super-sort of tight trajectory. I think everybody feels envy on

a normal second-by-second basis when they look at social media, right? Like, I've come back to the UK now and all of my buddies that I was out there with are still out in Dubai and I think, oh, like, it's so nice and warm out there. But this is something I've certainly realized that the grass is always greener for us as humans and this stems from evolutionary psychology that humans aren't built to be happy, they're built to be effective. Well literally wired to be, to find life unsatisfactory because if the first time that you had sex, you'd never had sex again, if the first time that you ate, you'd never hunt food again.

You need to eat the deer and it just not actually be quite as nice as you thought. You need to have sex and it just kind of be quite as nice as you thought. You need to have sex and it just kind of make you feel a little bit less fulfilled than you thought it was going to be. This quote I can't remember who the philosopher is and he says after copulation the devil's laughter can be heard and the concept is a medical diagnosis for men that get brief acute existential crises after they've come and to the men who are suffering with that, they're listening like it's not just you, but it's just a really hilarious way

that our genes influence our emotions because it's adaptive. It means that we're more likely to survive and reproduce, which is really all the way here for. So yes, I think that jealousy pops up fairly consistently for me when I see things. Another part of it I think is stems from an insecurity around not being all that I could be that you think it's almost a jealousy for an imagined world in which I was fulfilling my potential. So you're self-envious. Yeah, very much so. I think I'd like look at the

world I could have if only I wasn't spending as much time on my phone, not getting up until seven, I could be getting up at six or I could be going to bed at whatever, I should be reading rather than watching TV or actually.'re you're competing with your ego ideal. Precisely. That's a really interesting and insidious competition that happens all the time. Then we don't talk about enough where you are constantly looking at the kind of activated, potential you and falling short. And it plays out all the time, I think, in life. I don't mean you specifically. I just mean human beings.

Yeah, it does. So thank you for offering that up. You've been incredibly open today. And you have actually spoken quite bravely and vulnerably. Thank you. Can we try and recap the questions for people so that they can remember what we went through? Yeah, absolutely. So question one, can we list some traits that felt like flaws in our childhoods, but actually turn out to be strengths? So identify those weaknesses and turn them around into sources of success.

Second question, can you think of a time in your life that you didn't think you could survive, that felt traumatic and maybe unbearable, and what helped you get to the other side? Third question, what would you say to the most fragile part of yourself? Fourth question, what would you say to your 100 and 2 year old self? Fifth question, can you describe a time when you felt incredibly jealous? That's cool. Okay, thank you so much for being so open and brave and and walking the walk. Well, thank you for being here. I'm glad that you bullied me into doing this. It's completely blindfolded. Let me into the room and then decided to do this.

decided to do this. Do we know when you're going to complete writing your book? Oh, I'm handing it in in May. Okay, and how long is that like six months from then until publish? It'll be published early 2022. Well, depending on how brave you managed to get me over the next year, we may be back on to do a similar episode and then you will absolutely be back on to talk about that. I really appreciate your friendship. I absolutely love the fact that we met each other a year ago and I'm very very glad that you pushed me into doing this today. Same year. It's such a pleasure. I did want to tell you what led me

to want to ask you all of these questions as well, which was an A-SOP fable. I could have said this at the beginning. It's one of my favorite fables, and I was actually reading it to my six-year-old son the other night. And there's a mother crab who is lecturing her baby crab on the importance of walking straight. And the baby crab says, but mom, you're walking sideways. And I think it's a really beautiful, powerful story. I think of it as a therapist all the time. I'm kind of doing as we say, practicing what we preach.

So it just made me think. You're constantly asking questions. You're very good at digging deep. I've been on the receiving end of that. You bring out interesting quirky idiosyncratic encounters all the time. And what is the life for you of being that question, asker? I wanted to just have a sense of your interior, bro. So thank you for allowing us to

see it. Thank you. Okay.