Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Charlotte Fox Weber on How To Unlock the Power of Desire EP 315

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

I am joined by psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber, who will guide us in unlocking the power of desire. Get ready to embark on a journey of self-discovery, conquering fears, and creating a future filled with fulfillment. Charlotte is a renowned psychotherapist and the author of the captivating book, "Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires." So, let's dive right in! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/charlotte-fox-weber-on-the-power-of-desire/  The Power of Desire: How to Create a Fulfilling Life with Charlotte Fox Weber In this episode of the Passion Struck podcast, John R. Miles invites psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber to explore the concept of desires and their impact on our lives. Charlotte shares her insights and experiences as a psychotherapist, shedding light on the tendency to postpone our desires and the consequences of feeling stuck. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/uAI7Twq53Ss  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Marshall Goldsmith on How You Create an Earned Life: https://passionstruck.com/marshall-goldsmith-create-your-earned-life/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network

Coming up next on Passion Struck. The 12 desires that I identify are going to vary for each person. And I think exploring the uniqueness is really exciting and endlessly worthwhile. And at the same time, a bit of provocation helps. So something like power, I think we all want power. But we often struggle with it. We struggle with even admitting it to ourselves. So sometimes a bit of a nudge, a bit of a prompt in therapy and in reading and in

life can push for exploration. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armeils, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators,

scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 315 of PassionStruck, ranked by Apple in the top 10 health podcast and thank you to all of you who come back weekly. To listen and learn, add a live better, be better, and impact the world.

PassionStruck is now on syndicated radio, and you can listen on the AMFM247 National Broadcast, every Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time. Links will be in the show notes. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this, the friends or family members, we now have episode stutterbacks. These are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize in a convenient topics. I give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do on the show. Either go to Spotify or PassionStruck.com slash stutterbacks to get started.

In case you missed it earlier this week, I interviewed Christina Maslack and Michael P. Leiter, the co-authors of the enlightening book The Burnout Challenge, managing people's relationships with their jobs. Throughout this engaging conversation, we explored practical strategies and insights, combat burnout, foster healthier work environments, and build stronger job-person relationships. Please check it out, and if you love that episode or today's, we would so appreciate you giving us a five-star rating and sharing it with your friends and families. Those five-star reviews go such a long way in promoting the popularity of the show, and most importantly, bringing more people into the passion start community. I know we, and our guests, love to see comments from our listeners.

Now let's talk about today's episode. At certain points in our lives, many of us experienced feelings of confusion and uncertainty. Not knowing how to achieve our desires, despite our unique situations, we all share fundamental human wants, including love, understanding, our attention, freedom, creativity, belonging, winning, connection, and control. And we often desire what we shouldn't. In today's episode of PassionStrike, Psychotherapist Charlotte Foxweber invites us into our therapy sessions where she guides clients towards profound insights and growth. Charlotte's clients come from different walks of life and face

diverse challenges, but they all share a common question. What do they truly want? In her new book, Tell Me What You Want, Charlotte delves into 12 universal wants and desires, providing a practical guide for understanding and articulating our desires to live well. During our interview, Charlotte discusses various topics including, how nostalgia can hold us back. The challenges of building and maintaining friendships, avoiding the present through, if only, in one day thinking. Self-sabotage,

the joys and perils of hiding, the duality of pride and shame, identity struggles, the loss of desire, the need for attention, and why play is essential throughout our lives. Charlotte is a psychotherapist and writer. She co-founded Exam in Life and was the founding head of the School of Life Psychotherapy. She grew up in Connecticut and Paris and now lives in London with her husband and two children. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and

guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely honored and ecstatic to have Charlotte Fox Weber on Passion Struck. Welcome, Charlotte. Thank you for having me. Today we're going to be discussing. I put it up here.

This great new book of yours. It was originally published in the United Kingdom and it is now in the United States and all around the world as well. So So congratulations on that. Thank you so much. And for the audience, because you couldn't see what I just put up,

the name of her book is tell me what you want. And I'm gonna jump into this. You start out the book by saying that you spent years in therapy and that shame and pride and golf to you. You were stuck like so many people are in their lives and unable to participate fully in your life. Can you describe for the listener the person you were then and what led you to take the steps to understanding your desires?

What a great opening question. I have always been a confusing blend of honest and vulnerable and straightforward and then also riddled with self-doubt and anxiety and insecurity. I've always struggled with the split between what we show and what we hide. And by we, I always wanted to understand how someone really felt and why they were saying something one way, but actually turned out to feel another way. And I felt that kind of incongruence in myself. And I first had therapy when I was just six years old because I got heart surgery when I was four and a half and it left me with a lot of death anxiety.

And I was told I had to go to therapy for my worries. It felt like punishment. It was a really savage experience actually of feeling forced into this space and not particularly comfortable or at ease. And it's almost perversive me that I then went on to become a psychotherapist, but also I think that I really wanted a space where I could freely explore my mind and what it meant to be me. And I was profoundly disappointed by it and frustrated and didn't necessarily understand those reasons. But in hindsight, there was a real longing there.

Well, a question I'd love to ask is we all have defining moments or a set of them that lead us down the path we ended up taking. And interestingly enough, my sister recently went back and got her masters in social work and as a psychotherapist. But she did it in the middle of getting treatment for pancreatic cancer and felt the need to do it because she wanted to help others, especially others who were struggling to get through things like she was facing. I wanted to ask you what led you to becoming a psychotherapist? I always struggle to answer that question as honestly as possible.

And I love the question and it's something that I can answer it without full knowledge in a way, because there's so many reasons I became a psychotherapist or anyone might choose to become a psychotherapist. Something to do with curiosity and desperation to understand the human condition and the honesty that I imagined psychotherapy offered. I think I've been a therapy romantic most of my life and had a fantasy of what it could be and what it could invite and permit. And it's a privilege to get to delve deep into other people's minds. It's not all virtuous. So I think the part where I always want to be honest, it is to help other people. I go back to that and I love helping other people. That in itself is not always virtuous.

Certainly for me, anyway, I think definitely more noble for your sister, but for me, it's also sometimes a way of escaping myself by focusing on other people's stories, other people's issues and hiding from my own. Well, I know for me and the audience has heard me talk about this many times, but I'm a true believer in psychotherapy. And my experience is especially with prolonged exposure therapy and cognitive processing therapy have helped me immensely get through past trauma and adversity that I've faced in my life.

And so I think it is a really good thing to do. But one of the keys to doing it is you have to be vulnerable but one of the keys to doing it is you have to be vulnerable and honest with the person that you're working with. And I was hoping you might just be able to talk about why that's so important. I'm so glad you've asked, because I think it can be unfortunately superficial as a thing of we talk a lot these days about authenticity and vulnerability and those are two things I very much believe in so I use those words I love those words, but they're really demanding and it takes a lot and it's an ongoing struggle that a patient needs to say what comes to mind in order to have effective psychotherapy.

And it seems simple. Speaking freely, speaking honestly, I think often means acknowledging the moments of holding back. I loved it when a client recently confessed that he'd been looking at his phone underneath his laptop during our session and he'd been checking an email from someone he really wanted to hear from and he was also wanting to escape. Get away from the hearing now, emotions. What was such a breakthrough was that he said it. He taddled on himself. And it was like this moment of relief where I think we both breathed more easily.

It's often those moments of admitting something that is hard to say that leads to profound breakthroughs in therapy. I have a follow up question of that. And that is this podcast is all about the power of intentional behavioral choices that take us closer to living what I call a limitless life. And I'm going to quote something you wrote in the book, how does recognizing what we want help us face ourselves without flinching, and as you write, galvanize us to live a more

fulfilled and joyful life. I think that it is tremendously liberating and expansive when you acknowledge the depths of your own mind. When you can recognize that you desire something not totally appropriate. And you also desire something that is wonderfully fulfilling, just as an example, like wanting contradictory things, wanting things that maybe don't totally follow the rules. When you can allow for the kind of textures of your longings, you come alive in a different way. I think it's about widening your consciousness. So when we don't ask ourselves what we want, when we don't really understand

what we want, it's easy to go into autopilot and start going through our days where we're half asleep. And I think it happens to most of us. We have a routine of some sort and some maybe even self-carrying habits, but they're not necessarily that enjoyable. And then some self-destructive habits. And there's a kind of stuckness that happens. And you go to the same place, you eat the same foods, you have the same conversations, you might even tell the same stories and say them in a similar way each time. And it's amazing how we can get to these moments of impasse and realize that we haven't actually considered what it is we want. And we haven't actually considered what it is we want. And having that conversation with yourself

or with another person can be startling and I think eye opening and it's intensely personal and there's something about desire that is both universal but also always specific to the individual and it's what makes you who you are the stories of desire. So What it means for you to love what it means for you to have power For you to create whatever it is. It's so idiosyncratic and personal to who you are in your own interesting way

Yeah, well, I love that you brought that up because I have my own book coming out in early to who you are in your own interesting way. Yeah, well, I love that you brought that up because I have my own book coming out in early 2024 and in it, one of the chapters, thank you. And one of the chapters is all about this topic of subconscious living versus consciously loving. And I give the analogy in the chapter of pinball and so many of us live a pinball life where we're letting the game of pinball play us and we get consumed by all the distractions that are going on which is similar to life that we live it on autopilot and just let the bumpers play us, et cetera, as opposed to living it consciously, where we're mastering the game and learning the intricacies through the daily intentional choices that we make that take us closer to what we dream of becoming.

And I think you bring up a really good point that so many of us end up living our lives on autopilot, just doing the same things that we do day in and day out. And I think a big part of that is also we feel to put out our true desires to the world and we end up keeping these things hidden. So I think you have a lot of great points. Thank you and I love your points and I look forward to reading your book. I think you're so vividly describing the pinball scenario where it's as if life is just happening to us and I think, yes, taking charge and making a choice once you're aware as well, it gives you profound opportunities to make decisions. to opportunities to make decisions. It does.

And I love to have in the book you say that we put our secret wants and desires into a psychological storage facility that is our unlived lives. How do we end up stuck in the storage facility? I think that we're not very used to thinking about desire. So it's not part of our education in a way. We're uncomfortable with the subject of desire in various religions. In any culture, desire is a conflict. Desiring too much, desiring too little, desiring the wrong things.

So we're awkward about the whole thing. And society and civilization demands that we mute certain desires to a degree, like just to be polite and get along with other human beings. But we start following rules and keeping up with what we think we're supposed to do. And keeping up with what we think we're supposed to do. And that part of ourselves that wants unabashedly goes to one side. And I think we're given so many mixed messages about passion.

I realize that is core to you. And passion and desire that it's, yes, it's a temptation. And it gets put to one side. And I think a lot of us don't know what to do with that. And it feels unsightly, it feels embarrassing. It feels like something for a later point in time. So a lot of us have intentions to deal with what we want one day. And we'll have the dream life one day,

like once I get through this crazy work period, once I go through this stressful thing I'm going through, whatever it is, it gets put off and put on hold. And that's how storage facilities also get filled up. One day I'll have a big enough house so that I can unpack those boxes and use the furniture from a relative, whatever it is. And I think we put off doing the things that we want to do because we expect that there

will be a time period when it's possible. I like that analogy of the actual storage unit because especially in the United States, I'm not sure, and Great Britain, if it's the same, but so many people here have those and oftentimes they don't go into them for months, sometimes years, as you've said. But it is interesting how just as we leave stuff in those storage containers, we also leave our desires and these psychological containers that we get stuck in. A follow-up question for the listeners, if you had advice for them, what would be the first step that they could take to get out of this feeling of being stuck? My advice would be start immediately

by asking yourself the question in a really direct way. What do you want from a situation that you find yourself in? If you feel stuck, what is it that you want? If you hear that question and you have absolutely no idea, which happens all the time, sometimes people come to therapy, having just no sense of desire. Like they don't necessarily want anything or it's too confusing and dizzying. Then I suggest going through

a side door entrance of what is it that most frustrates you? What's really irritating you at the moment? What's so annoying and obstructive in your life. And I think very often frustration is an invitation to look further and see a hidden desire. So if the frustration is a friendship or a colleague, whatever it is, what is behind that? What would happen if you were to get past that frustration? I think the other way in is to ask yourself what you're most afraid of and fear and desire are eerily connected and we're often terrified

of what we most want and we want what we're most terrified of or it's the converse but there's going to be something there if you are terrified of something it's also a possibility to see what you really long for. The book is really about how do you uncover your secret self and in it you outlay 12 desires that you discuss in the book. What are those desires and how did you come up with them? I came up with them because there were recurring themes, regardless of circumstances and personal individual variety, which is everything in therapy. It's always about the individual more than theory. I think that there are recurring themes for all of us and it's helpful to have a railing

for discussing desire because otherwise, there is a boundlessness. Like railings in conversation, it's like time parameters or color theory of using three colors. I think that we need a framework for understanding how we can start right in. And it's paradoxical in the sense

that restriction opens up possibility. The 12 desires that I identify are gonna vary for each person. And I think exploring the uniqueness is really exciting and endlessly worthwhile and at the same time a bit of provocation helps. So something like power, I think we all want power, but we often struggle with it. We struggle with even admitting it to ourselves. So sometimes a bit of a nudge, a bit of a prompt in therapy and in reading and in life, I think, can push for exploration.

So the 12 desires all have to do with recognition to a degree. The way that you ended up writing the book is that you have the different desires. And in each one of the chapters, you have a story about someone that you've worked with that kind of highlights the points in it. And I'm not going to go through every single one because obviously we both want people to buy your book, but I'm going to touch on a few of them today in the interview. to touch on a few of them today in the interview. And in chapter one, you discuss your first psychotherapy placement and a patient you had named Tessa. And this was a striking story

for me, obviously, as I told you before, my sister has pancreatic cancer as did Tessa. And I was hoping you could share the story of Tessa and some of the regrets and deepest desires that she longed for. Tessa was the first patient I ever had and she was terminally ill. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and I did bedside counseling psychotherapy with her. And she was remarkable and instantly charismatic and powerful and incredibly honest. And part of what was so impressive was her willingness to have a new experience

at the end of her life. So she'd never had therapy before and she requested therapy and she had this wonderful impatience. I think patience is sometimes not as much of a virtue as we think it is. I think we can be a little too patient and she was in a great hurry to get her house in order emotionally because she was dying. And she wanted to look at her life honestly. And it was staggering for me as a young person new to all of it wanting desperately to be helpful

to kind of come this close to the vitality of someone at the end of her life. And there is sometimes this enthralling sense of aliveness right next to mortality. And it's incredibly heartbreaking, but it's also really in-living. And that in itself was a deeply meaningful experience for me. I hope it was helpful for her and I actually think it was, but she had massive impact on me, not just then, but in all the years since for what it means to have a new experience and have that fresh possibility, but also for honesty. Because as she faced limitations, she faced regrets. She lay in this bed and wanted nothing more than to snuggle her two children who were now grown up. She ached for them and missed the opportunities she'd had for them and missed the opportunities she'd had to snuggle them and be closer to them. And I found it excruciating to bear witness to her suffering and her longing. And I wanted to rescue her. I wanted to make it okay and her children were now grown up. But they were still around. They were

children were now grown up. But they were still around. They were on their way to visit her the first session we ever had. I wanted to fix things and sometimes we also just simply cannot. But having that realization and being true to it for both of us was a big thing. Well, thank you for sharing all that. And in chapter two, you profile a gentleman named Jack who faced a situation that more and more people I think are facing in their marriages and that is whether or not they should stay in it. He told you he wanted more, which I think is something that a lot of people tell their partner when they're not happy. What more in his case was he searching for?

In his case, he really wanted desire itself. He wanted to feel desired. I think we want to be wanted. And that comes on many levels. It can be erotic, it can be emotional and about early attachments, early experiences. It can be both, but I think that feeling wanted professionally, personally matters deeply. And again, there could be a lot of shame in talking about these things because it's vulnerable. It feels childlike. It feels needy to admit that you want to feel wanted by someone, by place, by people who aren't available. And it was very painful for him, but also incredibly

consoling when he could come to terms with that realization. I had a recent interview with psychotherapist Laurie Gottlieb, and we discussed the huge need for self-compassion and the importance of understanding both our feelings and our desires. I want to ask you, do you believe that there are no good or bad feelings or desires? They're all signposts to help us find where we're going? I think that desire in itself is not a terrible thing ever. I think that what comes of it can be terrible.

You can have a murderous desire. You can have aggressive desire. I don't think it needs to be censored, certainly in therapy and certainly in your own mind. Acting upon it could be absolutely terrible. So I'm not in favor of just letting loose and trying to fulfill every desire, but I think that it's really interesting to go to the shadowy parts of ourselves and admit that we feel aggressive, we feel all sorts of fantasies that are not totally sightly. So, yeah, morality comes into our behavior, but I'm in favor of uncensored self-awareness. Okay, and I'm going to jump to chapter four, which is on power. And a few months ago, I interviewed another psychotherapist named Abby Metcalf, and I asked her because she's a specialist in relationships.

What is the number one reason that relationships fail? And she told me that it was because the partners compete over a desire for power. How does the conflict of this power play happen in our relationships and how do we avoid these secret rivalries and competitions and relationships. I think it's helpful not to avoid the secret rivalries and. Conflicts and actually to. I acknowledge them like envy and. Jealousy.

And. One upmanship I think that it happens and it's really about taking note of it and deliberately resetting to use your word being intentional about it. Because it can creep up into pretty much any dynamic where there's a weird rivalry and a weird threat of who's better and who's superior. And I think it's almost taboo yet incredibly prevalent that in couple relationships over time, one person can feel better than the other person, like just simply feel superior, whether it's about professional success or appearance or virtue who wins as a human being. And, and then it can feel, it can feel mean, and it doesn't always get talked about, but that's the sort of thing that I love to talk about. And hearing about, once you're aware of that, let's say you feel like you are simply better

than your spouse, like you sold out, you could have done better, you could have made it better choice, you are smarter, sexier, funnier, whatever it is. When you can admit that and work it through, in a safe enough way, I'm not saying you have to say all of those things to your partner either, but you can figure out where it's coming from

and what it means. I think the biggest trap is that we expect one person to be the answer and to be enough. And I know someone whose father said to her shortly before she got married. Is this guy enough for you? And she was really upset with him at the time. And she said, of course, dad, she was actually just incredibly offended that he didn't think

her husband to be was enough for her. 20 years later, she felt so strongly that actually, of course, her husband wasn't enough for her. And no husband would be enough for her, because one human being is never enough for another human being in all areas of life. That's not to say that monogamy doesn't work or anything else about marriage, but just the idea that one person could be enough, the end. I think sets up huge problems for comparisons and rivalries and frustrations. in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past.

And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past.

And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in the past. And in was beautiful. She was all engaged. She had to be the life of the party. She always wanted attention. But after a while, this constant search for attention ended up costing her identity.

And I wanted to ask, how does this desire for constant attention impact our lives? I want to know what happened to Susuke. She ended up developing breast cancer and coming out of that cancer journey completely turned her life around. She went through counseling and other things, recognized what her demons were and has completely turned the opposite page to now, she doesn't seek the attention anymore. Okay, I wrote about Chloe. I think that we are socially conditioned to want attention, to seek attention, but then not to admit it. So we've been given mixed messages. I do think that there is some gender social aspect to that.

I think it's not only women who want attention, we all want attention. You may absolutely disagree with me about this one. But I think women are conditioned to want attention for their appearance. And that is their currency. And then also act like they don't know it and they aren't supposed to necessarily be to vain. But then what? It's an identity that is full of loss over time and it's not necessarily a kind of safe rewarding attention that you get. And yet where do you go from there? So I think that there's a kind of identity crisis that occurs for a lot of people and almost should occur. I'm in favor of identity crises at different moments not forget where we've come from, but regroup and figure out next steps and okay if you have

saw attention for your appearance and you felt like the value you offer is based on your looks or based on your status or based on some other kind of social component in a certain way. What next, you can come up with next steps and adjust your sense of self, but it can be painful and takes considerations and a kind of thoughtful approach. And I think the attention is something that we're kinder about in children. And children are better at asking for attention.

Sometimes they can be just overtly demanding, but even then we are socialized to seek attention but be coy about it. So I like the idea of being able to be bold about it and actually admit it to those we trust, whether it's a therapist, a partner, a parent when you're grown up, if you're a 40-year-old and you feel like your mother is not paying attention to you and you really crave attention, what about having that conversation?

It may not result in utter fulfillment. I talked about Tessa wanting to snuggle her children and how it simply wasn't possible, but I think sometimes even just acknowledging it to yourself that you want attention from your mother, you're not going to get it, but it's understandable that you want it. They didn't always have it. Whatever it is, it's just such a relief to admit the truth to yourself. Thank you for sharing that. I just wanted to touch on something that you said earlier and that is I do think that there is a subset of women. I wouldn't say it was all due, high attention to appearance.

And I think unfortunately, social media and the technology and I wouldn't say it was all due tie attention to appearance. And I think unfortunately, social media and the technology that we're surrounding ourselves with has further compounded this issue because that's what seems to sell likes or views or whatever you want to call it. So I think it's only making the issue worse. Being a parent of a daughter, I'm lucky to say

that I have one who I think values her identity to be more one of intelligence and of being fulfilled than she does appearance. So that has been refreshing, but I know it's probably not easy on her, has been refreshing, but I know it's probably not easy on her, also given the way that society puts so much pressure on things like beauty and outward appearance and things like that. It's really not easy, and I think it's wonderful that your daughter is starting young to think about the different components of her self-worth. I think it should start as soon as possible for where you derive your sense of self. I'm in favor of diversifying resources of meaning

across the board. The same way I think that in marriage, expecting one person to be enough forever in all ways is unreasonable. I think in your sense of self-expecting appearance to be enough in all ways is unreasonable. For so many reasons, it's hard to think about because, as you say, we're in a culture, we're in a moment that is incredibly appearance-based in a lot of ways. So you're going up against something and having to constantly deal with reminders

of glittery distractions. Absolutely. And those distractions are all around us as we touched on earlier. I wanted to jump to chapter 6 and I want to discuss it in this way. I interviewed last year, psychotherapist John Kim and Vanessa Bennett, a couple who wrote a book together called It's Not Me It's You, which is all about breaking the blame cycle. all about breaking the blame cycle. And they told me a lot of this blame cycle comes from a feeling of being trapped or stifled

in a relationship and that there needs to be more, they called it a foundation of soil, meaning people have the ability to create safe places and freedom to be themselves. And I wanted to ask you, how do you recommend creating those safe places? to ask you how do you recommend creating those safe places? I think that I'm just going to use your word intentional as much as possible.

I think that when you're aware that you need that safe place, you can create it whatever resources you have. This will sound like a strange tension, but a little bit like Bauhaus artists who went to dumpsters and got broken glass bottles because they couldn't afford art supplies. And out of those glass bottles created beautiful stained glass and collages and found objects. I think that even if you are incredibly busy and you have no time to do yoga, to go to therapy, to kind of spend hours and hours with a friend

or going on a retreat, you might dream of those things, but if you are time impoverished, you can go to the dumpster metaphorically and you can find five minutes. It might just be truly five minutes walking down the street where you are so deliberately giving yourself permission to feel safe in that way with your own mind. And it's amazing how you can be in charge of yourself internally in those ways, not in some absolute way, not like you will empty your mind and have kumbaya, but you can take charge. And I don't know if that's what you end up saying about the pinball metaphor, that you can be specific and intentional in directing it.

Well, I just use the example of Abraham Lincoln. And if you think of Abraham Lincoln, what many people think of is the end state of his life and being the president, being this person who took on this huge challenge of slavery, but for the vast majority of his life up into the point that he was in his mid-30s, he self-described himself as a piece of driftwood floating from one side of the stream to the other and through life on autopilot. And it wasn't until he found his true meaning and became so passionate about it that he went on what you would say is this hockey stick of escalation into the

White House and taking on something that forever has changed society here in America. So, yeah, I think that's a great example of it. And even in your own country, you're living in now, Winston Churchill, you could look at the same way. Winston made tremendous mistakes in World War I and in some other areas of his life, but he became so intentional about saving Britain from all out war that the steps he took during that phase of his life forever changed the trajectory of not only Great Britain, but much of the world as we see it today.

I'm American by background, but I've lived here for a long time. And I'm wanting to be American with your Abraham Lincoln reminder. I feel like, yes, we are all in charge and can make adjustments, even if it's on a much more modest scale as well, even if it doesn't have ramifications for millions of people, small shifts can be transformative at just making an adjustment and how you view something and what your perspective is. It can go a long way. That's absolutely true. Well, one of my favorite chapters in the book was chapter seven. And a few years ago, I wrote this article that I put on medium about the importance of adult play. And I have to honestly tell you, I don't think it's the best piece of writing I've ever done. But that

article has now gotten somewhere between 15 and 20,000 reads, which tells me it's an important topic. And I recently did an interview with a psychologist, Mike Rucker, who came out this year with a book called The Fun Habit. And Mike Shed's light on the emergent scientific evidence, supporting the idea that creativity and fun is a fundamental component of our evolutionary heritage.

How do you suggest that we embrace this creativity and fun in adulthood? Oh, I'm so glad that you're asking the questions you're asking, because I think it's paradoxical. I think we have to plan spontaneity. In fact, I had a friend at university. I've been in England for too long, that I say university, not college, but she used to imitate me saying, can we plan something spontaneous? I, in defense of my 18 year old self,

I think I was onto something that you have to protect playtime. So you have to be serious about silliness or it doesn't happen. It's the thing that goes because it's considered non-essential. So recognizing that it matters, firstly, is step one. How we go about it and be so wonderfully varied person to person. But it's something I wrote about it in my book. There's a lot of playfulness that can happen in therapy. It's something that can come up in surprising ways. It can be a playful conversation with a stranger, a playful approach to cooking a

meal that you're used to cooking a certain way and changing your approach to it. It can be a conversation with a friend where you take that risk and say something slightly unusual that might be completely whack-a-doodle and it goes somewhere hilarious. I think there's always risk required for playfulness, just a little bit of risk, like the rules and sometimes rules make a game possible. But also, you're gonna test something out in a slightly new way to see what it's like

and to have the experience of spontaneity. And I will read your article after this conversation so I don't know what your approach is to play. But I think that playfulness does really well with a combination of boundaries, but also uncertainty within those boundaries. What's interesting, I just interviewed billionaire, David Rubenstein, and I asked him after being around

all these successful people that he has and writing about so many of them. What was some of his biggest observations and he said that oftentimes too many people gear their lives towards pleasure instead of the service of others. He said, you cannot think that you're going to accomplish what you want in life without having pleasure. So he said, it's the right balance between the two that is so important. And I think that's an important lesson because life is really about balance and you're going to find yourself completely burnt out if you don't allow yourself to have pleasure and time for play and time to relax and be out in nature and be with your family and do things that live in your soul. So I think it's an extremely important point. Yes, and also to enjoy

what it is you're doing and be sometimes being mischievous is part of that as well. I just loved learning and I think I put it in my book that Mozart would make scatological jokes a lot. He loved fart jokes and you can always be silly, you can always be playful. In fact, it can just be a kind of expression of who you are, but it also loosens things and makes it possible to get through your day. So no matter how serious your work is, no matter how big a responsibility you carry, I think having some child-like mischief is also a way of

not being crushed by responsibility. Yes, thank you for that. And I'm gonna jump to chapter 10 where you talk about the desire to be wanted and to be fit in. But I'm gonna ask the question through this lens. I recently interviewed Bob Waldinger, who's at 70 plus became a New York Times bestselling author

recently of the book The Good Life, which discusses his role as the current head of the Harvard study on adult aging, which found that human connection is the greatest key to not only longevity, but also happiness. And I also did, what I found was a pretty important episode with Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunsted, who is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young.

But more importantly, she is maybe the foremost expert in the world on the topic of social isolation and loneliness. Now, I wanted to ask you, we all desire to be wanted and fit in. How do you deal with deprivation and emptiness? I think it's an incredible relief to admit when these things are not going well. I've followed that research about friendship and loneliness.

There's a lot of talk specifically since the pandemic started about the importance of friendships and acknowledging loneliness. I think there can still be incredible shame when friendships go wrong. So it can be really important to say in therapy or to yourself or to read about it or hear about it on a podcast like yeah I value friendships and I feel completely messed around by all my friends at the moment. I feel friendless. I feel all alone in the world.

Like having those moments happen to all of us and also can be embarrassing and uncomfortable, but are survivable. So I think any discussion about loneliness needs to acknowledge how it can happen when we're in crowds as well, how it can happen, especially at those moments, when we're sitting next to someone, sitting across from someone and feeling far away from our partners, from our children, from our friends. I also think disconnection happens and should be part of the conversation about connection. So it's allowing for the dualities, allowing for the polarity of everything in its opposite.

Yes, friends are great and also friends are the worst at times. I don't know if you've ever had that feeling. But there's nothing better than them. And it's also really hard. And I'm of course making a very extreme abstract comment. But these are things that are tricky for us. And it's great when you can recognize the nuance and the setbacks. And the people I wrote about in my book, they might think that they want one thing and then there's this kind of element of surprise

when it turns out that actually something is not the way it seemed or a relationship is not as it seemed. Oh, that's absolutely true. And I enjoyed the way that you wrote the book and these stories. I thought helped amplify the points that you brought up around it. One other chapter I wanted to discuss before we end was chapter 11. And I find so often that so many people say no to life-changing opportunities and relationships, but on the other hand, yes, is also a complicated word. And in chapter 11, you discussed this through the lens of trauma. And I had on another psychotherapist, Elise Hallerman, last year, who was at the pinnacle of her career.

She was one of the top talent agents in the world and represented people like Ben Stiller, Ben Spahn, Jamie Lee Curtis, but she had a secret side of addiction that was significantly hampering her life. And she told me that what she really faced was an existential vacuum of meaning. The belief that one's life, especially their personal professional life, is meaningless. And she said that substantially led

to her feeling blame for the issues of violence, addiction and despair. Do you find that plays a role in how people play yes or no to things in their lives? Everything you've just said resonates deeply. Yes, and personally, yes and no have been very hard for me. I think there are two really tricky words. And while I was writing this book, I was grappling

with the after effects of severely traumatic relationship from many years earlier and the reverberations of that where I had not said no when I wanted to but I wanted to be wanted. I mean, there's so many ways that trauma can mess with our sense of self and our sense of sacrifice and working through that and repaturning is healing, but it takes a lot of care. So I think that we can repeat and reenact aspects of trauma in all sorts of sneaky ways. And I think that's what chapter 11 is about, like holding onto the trauma, almost looking for reminders of the trauma. It can be hard to let go of a trauma in part because

one side, if you might not want to, certainly that's something I've struggled with personally, wanting to hold on to something. Oh, absolutely. I think it's something we all struggle with and is such a huge desire that we all face. So I thought that was another important chapter as well. Thank you. Well, Charlotte, the last question I'd love to ask authors is for the listeners today or reader of the book, what would you hope that they take away from either today's episode or reading your book?

I think that the word that comes to mind is liberation. I hope that people listening to this, if you buy my book, if you listen to my book, it's really about emotional freedom and allowing yourself to liberate yourself from shame and fear and permit yourself to have these discoveries without the absolute terror of feeling entirely alone. Well, thank you for that. And thank you so much for taking the time to enlighten our audience on your amazing book. Yes, let's get a move on.

When you ask what I hope readers and listeners will take from this, it's do not put this off. Something is possible immediately. It won't be perfect fulfillment because perfect permanent fulfillment doesn't exist anyway, but it'll be something fresh. Well, and as I'd love to quote Robin Sharma saying, it's the plethora of individual microchois that we make, leading to where we want to go in life that ultimately creates our tsunami of greatness. And so it's so important to take that first step and then follow that with just repeated execution.

It doesn't even have to be huge actions. It can be small ones, but take them closer to where you want and desire your life to be. The smallest shift can free up something. It absolutely can. Just look at a ship at sea and a slight course correction and even if it's an aircraft carrier, it may take it a longer time to do it, but eventually it will shift that course and carry forward. And I think the same thing with intentional choices

that we make. Yes, I'm wanting to know what happened that made the shift for Abraham Lincoln of going from driftwood to everything he became. You have to read my book. I will. Well Charlotte thank you again for joining us today. It was really a pleasure. Thank you so much such a pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Charlotte Foxweber and I wanted to thank Charlotte atriahbooks and Shadakar for the privilege and honor of having her appear on today's show. Links to all things Charlotte will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show.

Videos are on YouTube at both John Armeyles and Passionstruck Clips. As I mentioned at the beginning, we are also now on syndicated radio on the AMFM 247 National broadcast, where you can tune in Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Eastern time. Links will be in the show notes. Evertiser deals and discount codes are in one community place at passionstruck.com slash deals. I'm on LinkedIn where you can sign up for my newsletter or you can also catch me on all the social platforms at John Armiles.

You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview with Scott Miller, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author who has spent over 25 years at Franklin Covey where he was most recently a chief marketing officer for over 10 of them. And he is now the executive vice president of Thought Leadership. Scott is the author of the new book, The Ultimate Guide, The Great Mentorship. 13 roles towards making a great impact. Leaders don't create engagement. Mentors don't create engagement.

It's not true. What they can do is they can create the conditions where your employee, your team member, your mentee chooses a higher level of engagement because you've ignited a spark in them. You've given voice to them. You've validated specifically some unique genius in them. It's why the validator is my favorite of all the 13 roles done with the right intention and the right preparation and the right words.

You can transform someone's confidence in them. Remember, we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those that you love. And if you found this episode with Charlotte Foxweber useful, then please share it with somebody who could use the advice that we gave on today's show. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear in the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, go out there and become Ash and Strut. you