The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Elizabeth Day Opens Up About Heartbreak, Miscarriage & Failure

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

This week I am joined by Elizabeth Day – an English novelist, journalist and broadcaster. She was a feature writer for The Observer for the best part of a decade and currently writes for You magazine. Elizabeth has written an incredible six books and is a fellow podcaster with her critically acclaimed podcast ‘How to Fail with Elizabeth Day’ where she interviews guests who discuss what their failures taught them. The Podcast has been celebrated by celebrities, literary luminaries and is listened to by millions of people worldwide. It is with no surprise the podcast has gone on to win Day the Rising Star Award at the 2019 British Podcast Awards. Being vulnerable is something we all find incredibly hard to do but in this episode Elizabeth was willing to be vulnerable open and honest about her truth, trauma and some of her most testing times. Follow Elizabeth: Twitter - https://twitter.com/elizabday Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/elizabday https://www.elizabethdayonline.co.uk Support after miscarriage - https://www.tommys.org/baby-loss-support/miscarriage-information-and-support/support-after-miscarriage Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. Elizabeth Day is a world renowned podcast host. She's a best selling author. She's a successful journalist. I felt like a failure, but I probably wasn't. It was what I'd been told to feel. I've had countless failed relationships, and it sucks. Like, heartbreak, there is no pain like heartbreak. I now realise that I learnt something very instructive

from each one of those relationships, and from the fact that they ended. It taught me something that I needed to know about myself. Infertility and miscarriage is not a mishap. For people who experience it, it's a tragedy over which they have no control. And the idea that I was exploiting it to make a full-time career out of it was so insulting

because I know how fucking painful and traumatic it is to go through. Being vulnerable, something I think we all find it incredibly hard to do. And after hearing my guest's story today, I had tears in my eyes maybe three or four times. And that's because she is willing to be vulnerable and honest and open about her truth, her trauma, and the things she's learned from her most testing times. Elizabeth Day is a world-renowned podcast host. She's a best-selling author. She's a successful journalist. Honestly, she's quite frankly one of the most wonderful, smart, lovely people I've ever had the privilege of doing this podcast with. In fact, today, one of the issues I had with this podcast was we agree on so much that it's hard to play devil's advocate with her. It was hard to challenge her views

because so many of them represented mine. It felt like she was reading out of my book. I think that's powerful because she helped me build on my ideas. And some of these ideas are controversial. For some people, maybe too controversial. It is remarkable how much societal expectations can cripple your chance of happiness. And I genuinely believe that if we had more people in the world like Elizabeth, who were willing to say what she says today, then maybe that wouldn't be the case. Without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if if you are then please keep this to yourself one of the things that i wrote recently which um after doing a little bit of reading about your story and your journey really really resonated with me um was this idea that the

society's expectations of how your life is supposed to be going will fuck you up and when i think about you know you've written this amazing book about called philosophy about failure i was thinking what is objectively like what is failure and um my conclusion was that failure is like a byproduct of social expectations, as is success. So could you talk to me a little bit about how social expectations have made you feel like a failure? Of course, yeah. I realised I had to define failure after I had launched a podcast called How to Fail and after I had written a book called How to Fail. And then I kept getting asked this very reasonable question. And I realized I'd never come up with a satisfying definition for me. So the definition I came up with in philosophy is that failure is

what happens when life doesn't go according to plan, which totally taps into what you've just asked me about. Because then you need to start to think, well, where does the plan come from? Is it genuinely my plan? Is it genuinely what will make me happy? Or is it what I've been told I should expect my life to be? Because when I looked at some of my metrics for how my life should be, and I put that in quotation marks, it kind of came from like 1980s rom-coms and patriarchal society and conditioning. And the idea that I'd been raised in the 80s to be a nice, pleasant, pliable girl, whereas boys were enabled to be mischievous. And that was seen as kind of cute and charming.

And that led to me being an inveterate people pleaser, which I know is something that a lot of people have in this kind of industry. And it also led to me imagining that I wanted to be married and have children. And that's what I tried to do. And in my 30s, I did get married to the wrong person. I ended up getting divorced and I tried but failed to have babies and went through various fertility treatments that were emotionally devastating in various ways. And it got to a point when I was 36, divorced, didn't have children, where I really did feel like a failure. And the reason I felt like a failure

is because that's what society had conditioned me to believe of myself. Because actually, after I'd got over the pain and the grief caused by that seminal relationship ending and by all of the IVF and coming to terms with my first miscarriage and all of that, I actually felt strong for having withstood it. And I actually felt kind of liberated too, because I had no plan for the future. And having no plan for the future can be terrifying. And it can also be this enormous opportunity to change your life and to redefine it according to who you really are once you've stripped back that pretense. So that's one way in which I felt like a failure, but I probably wasn't. It was what I've been told to feel. So I want to pick around this a little bit, because I can resonate

with this tremendously in fact that's why my book has the name it does is because i was conditioned as a black kid who was broke to believe that the thing that would make me a success was becoming this happy sexy millionaire with a range over and i mean that's what i wrote in the front page of my diary that you know that's a kid from africa who in had nothing, but was, you know, my family were happy. Bring that kid into a context or a con yeah. A context where the context is telling me that unless you're this, you should feel like shit. That's why as a kid,

I was like, well, I need to be happy, sexy. To be fair, if I'd wrote something else, it would have been white, straight hair, right?

I was relaxing my hair chemically from the age of about 12 till about 16 so my hair was straight but i want to i want to go back to this this point about society telling you um what you should want did you ever figure out what you actually wanted such a good question also thank you for sharing what you just did because i know that yeah you believe like i do that vulnerability is the source of connection, true connection. And that was really beautiful. I think I have figured out who I am now, but I sit here as a 42-year-old having only just figured that out. And the reason I figured it out is because of all of those things that went wrong.

Those relationships that ended, that imploded, the jobs that weren't right for me. That was what prompted me to do the soul searching. And I'm a big believer in things happening for a reason, the universe unfolding as is intended. Even if you can't make something meaningful as and when it's happening because it's traumatic and it's devastating, I tend to believe that there will be some meaning in there in the fullness of time. There'll be something that I needed to learn. I wish sometimes I'd learned the lessons more quickly because I believe I kept being sent the same lessons until I really, really learned the thing that I needed to learn. But I do think now that I'm aware of who I am because I've redefined my notion of success.

So in the past, my success was not necessarily being a happy, sexy millionaire, although I wouldn't say no. In the past, I had a very different contextual upbringing from yours. And I'm immensely privileged in many ways. And one of the ways in which I am privileged is that there was a lot of kind of creativity and cultural discussion in my home. Like I was surrounded by books. I was never taught to feel that that was odd that I read all the time or that I wanted to be an author even though there was no one in my family who did that so I had those kind of conversations and that's an that's an enormously wealthy way to be brought up and I even though we didn't have that much money that was very wealthy and so for me then success was about doing well at school it was doing well academically and I realized that when I did well at an exam, I got approval.

And that for me became a substitute for self-worth. So for a long time, I was on this feedback loop where I was like, if only I could just do better and do better at more things, eventually I'll feel I'm worthwhile. And I was on a hiding to nothing because actually I was outsourcing my sense of self to everyone else's opinions of me and to kind of external validation. And I've now realized, and it's taken me a long time to realize this, that my only validation that means anything can come from within and from my cornerstone relationships. So like the four or five people I love most in the world whose opinion actually means something to me, That's what it is. Now, having worked that out, how can I bring my authentic self into every area of my life?

And that's why the podcast has felt and the books about failure have genuinely been such a gift to me because they've enabled me to connect with a really big audience whilst being my true self whilst taking the risk to be vulnerable and that for me is success being my authentic self in integrated self so like professionally personally and when i'm asleep or in my friendship group or when i'm stroking my cat it's always the same me I talk in so I hate fucking plugging my own book but it's but the reason I'm doing it is because we very much think the same and one of the chapters in my book is about making your um your context smaller and healthier in an age of social media where I can compare myself to a billion people who are all filtering themselves and fake I implore like people to make their context which is what you've described these like four or five people much smaller like unfollowing me all the

toxic people in your like comparison bubble or whatever and make it tight and healthy that's so hard these days like so do you know like how like it's i almost i'd almost say it's impossible if you're on social media platforms and following like the Kardashians or whatever how does well how does one do that and also stay on social media like is well I need to ask you this so I'm gonna ask you this after I've tried to answer it because I'm I'm you have to deal with it on such a massive scale and I'm just like a micro tiny thing in comparison. But the way to answer that truly, honestly, I'm still a huge work in progress in that respect, because I have the capacity to be undone by criticism. I find I take it really, really personally. Tell me how personally, give me an example. So personally,

give me an example. Okay. Two recent examples examples one is that i went um a few weeks ago i went on a lockdown walk with a friend of mine who i hadn't seen for over a year socially distanced it was my daily exercise i was allowed to do with one person from another household and i posted a picture of us socially distanced in a park on instagram being like you know this was really good for my mental health such an enjoyable walk and someone commented saying I can't this is so irresponsible of you to post this because hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID patients and you're encouraging people just to like go out and about and I was like hang on a second I was like that's where I go with it I've done something

wrong and these poor NHS doctors who are working and I've just kicked them in the face metaphorically and I was and I had this process of like I've done something wrong I'm a terrible person I feel really bad about it what can I do should I reply I go through that that's the first place I go and then I tell myself, no, leave it 24 hours, leave it 24 hours before you say anything. And then I just feel I have this like harness that settles around me for a day of feeling unsettled and a bit worried and anxious. And are other people thinking thinking that is there a whole group of people out there that they're like meeting up behind closed doors to discuss how awful I am your

council campaign like oh yes and it's ridiculous it's one yeah it's awful and I saw other people have liked that comment I was like oh my god they hate me me too. And basically I just have to sit with it for a bit. And it helps me to talk about it, even though I sound completely doolally, but I do, I'm lucky enough to have an incredible resource in my husband who is just not on social media at all. And so it was a very kind of sane mind to bring to it. And my best friend who's a psychotherapist. And I spoke to her about it and she was like, okay, where I would go with it is what pain is that person in that they've lashed out in this way. And that's very helpful because it encourages you to feel compassion instead of got at and anger. I mean, that's one tiny example.

Another example was philosophy got reviewed in a couple of places. And I, you know, I am really proud of that book, but it's a physically small book. I mean, it's got a lot of good content in it, don't get me wrong. And as you know, it's hard to make big ideas accessible. But I did not expect it to get reviewed in the national press. But it did. And it got reviewed by people who wanted to find fault with it who did not like the fact that I seemed to be exploiting failure for my own success which is absolutely not the case like I want to share the stuff that I've learned that's all I want to do exploiting failure for your own success fucking hell anyway so that was that was just like I went down a rabbit hole of looking at the reviewers Instagram and all of that sort of stuff, which is terrible. Anyway, I know I shouldn't

go down these rabbit holes of self loathing. And most of the time, I'm able not to, but just occasionally, if I'm feeling low, or particularly sensitive that day, it will affect me and my tactic for protecting myself is absolutely if you said as you said to unfollow and mute to curate my feed to keep my phone on airplane mode in the morning so my phone is not the first thing I look at when I'm writing I put my phone on airplane mode as well and I find it a real relief and also to try and practice the art of generosity and to believe in abundance because I think a lot of my mindset around competitiveness or envy is because I believe in a scarcity of resources and I believe success is scarce and I believe money is scarce and love is scarce and we all have to compete for it yeah because

there are some game exactly and actually just flipping the switch and being like no the world is abundant and everyone's success can mirror your own like and if you give and if you come at life from a generous place then hopefully that will feed back to you so those are my tactics interesting how do you deal with it um so i think it's important to be honest as well i'm i've read a lot about this this topic i've spoken to psychologists i've sat here with guests and you know ask them about this and this is probably maybe a liberating but also a terrifying answer even i have exactly what you described it feels so much better do you know what's funny the reason when i was laughing you

when you said to me you went oh i know it sounds cuckoo i was laughing because it's you were you telling me my life oh you know what i mean like i will i will get one comment on one thing and i'll be like let's look at this jonathan davis and find out you know i mean i'll fucking find out who his family are it'll be just it's just like flipping comment surrounded by a thousand positive ones but i'm like i'm gonna find this guy's birth records and we're gonna find out you know what i mean like private investigator and the way you describe that feeling of like it bothers you you're like shall i respond sometimes i respond i'm like then i delete it super fast because i'm like you maybe rise above and then i've also felt in the bigger moments where

something more controversial has happened i've also felt that like thing around me for about like 48 hours yeah that feeling of like anxiousness yeah like you describe like wait does this does everyone you think all your all my friends that are quiet they all think that i've i'm finished you know i mean they're not saying anything am i adopted yeah exactly yeah so here's my here's my here's my productive conclusion though is one of the things we're not taught to do is to use social media in a conscious way so we like sign up and then we just go with the algorithm and the algorithm will be like be pretty or and they'll clap for you good good and it'll be like you do this and we cut and and then it will tell us to follow lots of people who we compare ourselves to and create this really

unhealthy context in which we our self-worth is clearly our you know achievement success and beauty is clearly less than all of these people and because it's so unconscious we become a victim to the algorithms and to this this like awful toxic experiment so the the answer for me is just to use social media in a much more conscious way. You've described it there, which is like unfollow people that are bad for you. Turn off your notifications. When I,

on Twitter, when I do a tweet and it goes like semi viral, I know that for the next 48 hours, I'm going to get all kinds of Twitter eggs and all. So I just mute it straight away. I did it last night. I did a tweet, start getting all these responses,

hit mute and it's disappeared. Yeah. I don't see any responses exactly what I do and this is the like conscious you know effort that I have to make to keep my context healthy and to protect myself yeah do you know I had a really interesting experience on Twitter recently and it's it's it's fascinating because I think I care less about Twitter because I don't feel as myself on Twitter. I suppose because I'm super conscious of how you can send out an ill-thought tweet one day and like lose everything the next. Instagram, rightly or wrongly, just feels safer. It feels more like a warm bath, whereas Twitter is like a kind of shower of hail a lot of the time.

And recently on Twitter, someone messaged me saying, oh, that thing that was in the Times Magazine about you was so unfair. And I hadn't read it. And I then went and looked at the article and it was an interview with another author. And the journalist had said, had compared this person to me and a couple of other people and said, you know, now there's this trend, I'm paraphrasing, for people to use their mishaps and exploit them and turn them into full-time careers with non-stop webinars and Instagram lives. And she said like, like Elizabeth Day with infertility. And I was like, that sits so badly with me because infertility and miscarriage is not a mishap. For people who

experience it, it's a tragedy over which they have no control. And the idea that I was exploiting it to make a full-time career out of it with non-stop webinars, and I've done a webinar in my life, by the way, was so insulting to me because I had a career apart from that and before that, and it's that I choose to use my platform to talk about something that a great deal of people feel a great deal of misplaced shame over. And that was one example. In fact, the only one I can think of where I did respond because it was so deeply, deeply personal to who I was. And I felt an attack on my integrity and a complete misreading of what I was trying to do. And I tweeted something that was really calm and that was like, you know, I refute this for these reasons. And it was an excellent lesson in how sometimes it is important to stand up for something.

I had an outpouring of incredible support from other people who I'd never met, which meant a great deal to me. The journalist in question had the grace afterwards to apologize, but they changed the wording in the online piece. And if I hadn't sent out that tweet, there would be no record of it having happened. And these things are really important to call out sometimes. So I think when it's an attack on the integrity of who you are and what you do then sometimes it is worth drawing breath and saying something calmly and just stating your position and in that case as well your the courage shall i say to speak about to have that vulnerability creates a culture where more people will speak out and it's that and that is so powerful and

helpful for so many other people who are going through that and can't and can't find um a voice that they can relate to and you know create that sense of um understanding by by hearing your stories same with the mental health um conversation over the last 10 years if people weren't speaking about it the place we'd be in is quite terrifying to think of and you wouldn't say those people have exploited it right so it's just a i mean it's such a nonsense thing for someone to write that I actually don't want to spend too much time talking about it so let's talk about people pleasing yeah you said you're a people pleaser yes well I'm a reformed people please okay so you used to now I don't give a fuck what you think okay I really do um yes so I like many women my age, was raised in the 80s and early 90s in a culture where

it was still very, very gender stereotyped. I mean, we've come so far in the last decade, I think, in understanding that. But as a result, I always thought that my worth as a person was predicated on keeping other people happy. So I got into a series of long-term monogamous relationships from the age of 19 to 36. The biggest gap between those relationships was like a month. Are you joking? No, because I was like, who am I unless I'm making someone else happy, unless I'm being someone else's perfect partner, unless I'm trying to second guess what they might want for dinner.

And when they ask me like, where do I want to go for lunch? I don't know, where would you like to go? Like, that was my life. It was ridiculous. And it manifested itself at work as well. I was always the person who said yes to overtime, yes to the commissions that no one else wanted,

because I thought eventually I'll be rewarded. And I got a staff feature writer job at The Observer, a Sunday newspaper in the UK when I was 29. And I was the youngest feature writer there. And so I felt really intimidated. And so part of my constantly saying yes and showing willing was to try and fit in and be accepted. And actually you just become an easily exploitable asset. And I realized after eight years of that job that I was never going to be moved anywhere. I did ask. I asked for like different roles, different challenges. And the answer was always no.

And it was because I was I was doing too much where I was like why would they want to move me I was providing them with an excellent service where I was I was making myself too indispensable and I was absolutely refusing to complain that's what I was going to say you weren't going to complain never I never asked for a pay rise Stephen I mean which is actually makes me feel slightly sick now looking back, because I am a feminist and I do believe women should ask for the pay that they deserve. But I didn't. I was too intimidated. And ultimately, I think people pleasing can start from a desire to be nice and to think of others. And that's a really beautiful thing. But taken to its extreme,

which is where I would put myself, it actually becomes very selfish because you never take the time to know who you truly are. And that leads you into situations and relationships that you shouldn't be in because you're not fully giving yourself. You're giving a version of perfection to someone that is never fully real. So I never felt able to show who I really was. And that's the state of mind I got married in. And little wonder that it ended. Is that why you think it ended? Part of the reason.

I definitely found it very difficult to find my voice for a long time. What does that mean in a relationship? It meant that I was extremely conflict avoidant. So instead of saying how I felt about something, I would turn it inwards and be silent and then get mildly depressed. So that's a difficult person to be with. They don't seem difficult at all, because they're like, look, I've cooked you dinner, and I've got all your favorite things. And I've come up with this perfectly thoughtful gift for Christmas. But that's all like distraction. It's all like, just don't look at the mess I actually am inside. So I had to do

a lot of work on myself. It was part of the reason. It wasn't the whole reason. There was a whole pile of other stuff that I can't go into because it involves someone else. But that was definitely like, I do think that when a relationship ends, you have to look at yourself and be really honest about how you played into that dysfunctional dynamic to avoid making the same mistakes. I'm not in a relationship. I've actually really struggled with relationships. And I was thinking about this last night when I was working out. I was thinking much the reason why I've struggled

is because I think I'm probably too selfish, right? I think that I'm uncompromising as well. And it's something that I've tried over the last couple of years to really look like defeat in myself, which is in work, I'm required to be a certain type of person to succeed, which is like quite certain about the right approach focused hard working um a lot of things in the

professional environment that aren't actually democratic they're like the big decisions they they let you the buck stops with you um in relationships um communication and compromise and being more democratic in things and really trying to meet someone else's needs are the, I guess, the attributes for success. Yeah. Communication, let's talk about that. How important is it to, from your experiences in relationships that have, you know, done well by your definition and ended by your definition um to communicate how you're feeling what your needs are it's so important it's everything i'm very interested in what you just said there so i'm going to come back to that question you asked me the the fact that you have

that you believe you might need different modes of communication in business and in personal slightly different i and this is like super controversial because because people will think that so communication is incredibly important in my professional life yeah it's actually the things things like so in my in my professional life if i don't want to do something or if i think it's a bad use of my time i say no don't don't do it cancel it whereas in my romantic life you can't do that if i don't want to do i don't want to go down and walk walk in the park but i've got to be like fine yeah do you know what i mean and and i can be i'm super in my in my professional life i'm a radical about how i spend my time because i because you

get so many things calling for your time you have to be like nope nope nope cancel it move it nope no no in my professional life it's like what you want to do you want to cook for two hours fine you know and and i my brain's like waste of is that an efficient use of time you know so interesting because in your professional life as well you're in a position where you need to know the answer someone will come to you for a decision you need to know you need to be like a benign dictator and just be like right this that and and therefore do you think that in your personal life you don't think it's okay to say, I don't know. I don't know if I want to.

It's more just like a compromise of like not doing things I don't want to do. Just don't do things you don't want to do. This is so interesting. So my now partner, husband is amazing. And he's a CEO. And he said to me in the early days of our relationship, I'd never do anything I don't want to do. And I was like, selfish. I was like, I'm pleaser so in a way this is never going to work um but he's the knock-on effect of that basically what he was saying is i'm honest and i will tell you

if i don't want to do something so if i say yes that yes is really meaningful and that's such a weight like it's such a weight off my mind because i'm not having to second guess whether he really means it when he says he'll come for lunch with my family or whatever yeah i know that he's invested in that so actually i'm your husband for a second okay i go you say to me i'd love to go and walk in the park and i go nah i want to sit on my'd love to go and walk in the park. And I go, nah, I want to sit on my laptop and send these emails. And then five minutes and 10 minutes later you go, oh, I would love to cook with you. And he goes, nope, I want to watch YouTube videos about SpaceX. Okay. So I'm your wife. And I say, I completely understand that because you're having a really

heavy week at work. I'd really like to go to the park because I really want to spend quality time with you. And it would make me feel sad if we didn't do that. Then what would you say? I'd really like to go to the park because I really want to spend quality time with you and it would make me feel sad if we didn't do that then what would you say yes yeah there you go and do you think you'd want to say yes of course I would yeah of course it's just I don't know why I always fail on this thing I just think the amount of time and attention um my previous partners have um have asked of me I've not been able to deliver and I'm like I will go I'll text maybe once a day when I'm in my when I'm in like the tornado of the business yeah you're so like Justin is that really yeah and like it doesn't mean I don't love you it means that I'm in a mild crisis which I can't tell you about because I haven't got time to like divulge all of my bullshit

so sorry how you're really young aren't you how old are you 20 28 now and you're dating your age group I'm assuming typically a little bit younger like yeah you see that's younger that it's that's very difficult it's so difficult dating in your 20s anyway full stop but when you're you and you're basically living the life and you have the wisdom of a 45 year old that's very difficult because the other person hasn't had that life experience yet to know oh you're so right honestly you're so right i'll set you up but communication is the be all and end all for me and when i met justin who is now my husband

it was a really difficult learning process for me because he had a very different mode of communication because he is a founder and a ceo and he didn't have time to text me and i fucking love text i'm a writer that's what i don't I hate a phone call I've had to get used to it now in the global pandemic but I hate a phone call I always think I've done something wrong whereas Justin was always like why would I take time to text you when I can just call you and convey the necessary information necessary information honestly and he said this thing and I kept bringing it up and I was like if you if I don't hear from you for like three days that's really obsessing to me and it's not going to work if that continues he's like okay I hear that he's like for me text is a very cheap form of communication and it's something you do

when you don't really care and I do it a lot for work so for me it's much more important to spend time together anyway we've sorted it out and i think that's about having different love languages i thought we were gonna say yeah at some point and i made him take the quiz and it was really helpful he was acts of service no way but he was also my yeah there you go it's what you do oh that's so but he was also he wasn't interested in words of affirmation at all which is mine i just compliment me all the time. Was he touch? Yes. I thought so.

So am I. Oh my God. You're literally like the same person. Yeah. That's yeah. And I was, when he took that, I was really surprised. It was early days of our relationship and he hadn't given me the impression of needing touch.

And then once I, once I knew that, I was like, oh, that's lovely. Cause I like that too are you quality time and there's quality times one of them yes and words of affirmation yes I'm totally so I was totally words of affirmation when we took the test but I think that's because I'd come off a a really bad patch of relationships where I didn't feel safe in those relationships so I was constantly looking for something to paper over the cracks. And for me, that papering came in the form of compliments. That was like the easiest thing to ask for. And so that's what I thought I needed. But now actually

in my relationship, I feel really safe. So for me, it is quality time. It's still words of affirmation, but quality time is super important and and i now realize that justin is very good at taking feedback that's because that's the business brain isn't it yeah you have so i don't need to sugarcoat something i can say listen i need this or i feel this and sometimes he'll need time i hope he doesn't like me talking about this he's so private but sometimes he'll need time to like hope he doesn't like me talking about it. He's so private. But sometimes he'll need time to like think it through and sort of strategize it and like digest it. And I always know it's never that he's forgotten.

He'll come back and he'll be like, right, I agree. And this is the action that we're going to take. And it's amazing. And I love that. I really love that. I used to think it was unromantic. It's not at all. It's the most romantic thing

because I'm being taken really seriously. And I'm guessing, and this is a guess, but I do say it to him without too much like emotion because he sounds like a very pragmatic guy. So the way that I like to receive feedback like that from my ex was just very,

like without blame or like too much emotion and and just like here are the facts yeah that's the best way i like to receive you back you know yes completely but do separate to you getting feedback if your partner is emotional and is crying at a film or is sad about something so moved to tears or feeling anxious so they're fine yes that's fine exactly the same it's just the feed you know because you know what i mean you deal with judgment yeah and you in his business i'm sure he'll deal with people all day who give him feedback in a very practical pragmatic way and that's the way you could come used to it and he'll have the

same problem as me whereas sometimes in business you'll get feedback in a very quite unhelpful and a helpfully emotional way yes and now you're trying to deal with this you're not sure which issue you're actually dealing with right yeah when you present it without the emotion i understand what i'm aiming at here it's the same as me yeah i feel like a bit of a scumbag for having uh acts of service as my no that's a really lovely thing but doesn't it sound cheap it's like i would like you to serve me with you know what i mean yes i was going through that love language thing and i was thinking why is it that someone getting me something that they knew would help me doing something that they knew would help me

means so much to me because for me that because because my life is tough and challenging i see it as them showing an action which is action speak louder than words how much they cared about helping me yeah and for me that's like i'm like oh god you know and also probably because you've had to be incredibly self-sufficient yeah yeah you're like the definition of a self-starter you've had to rely on yourself so much that for someone else to step in and be like i've got this for you it means a lot it's so meaningful and you're carrying so much so if someone comes and says oh yeah i'll carry one of these bags for you it's like oh thank you yeah you know what i mean i totally get it interesting one of the things

you said was that you're you were i guess um scared of being lonely at the end of your life yeah oh my gosh yes that's my existential fear that and pigeons still do you know what maybe after this interestingly the global pandemic has been so tough and so much tougher for so many people than it has been for me in myriad ways one of the unexpected side benefits is that i've really got comfortable with my fear of loneliness because overnight my diary was totally empty. So I had no social engagements. I couldn't see friends. And it made me realize that I didn't really want to see the majority of people that I was going to see. Like I'd said yes to social situations that I didn't really want to go to, but I felt like I should. Like I'd said yes to social situations that I didn't really want to go to, but I felt like I should.

And I didn't want to offend someone by not letting them down. That's still the people pleaser in me. And having the freedom to choose who I wanted to invest time in was hugely beneficial for me because I realized actually that my core, my nucleus of people is very, very small.

And actually, if I've got Justin and my best friend, I'm good. I'm good. And beyond that, you know, my closest friends, like I actively want to see them. But I realized that I was just spending a lot of time not nurturing those friendships because I knew that I would be able to step back into them. And I knew that I'd be accepted because that's the level of great friendship, isn't it? Like you're just always welcome back. And I was spending a lot of time trying to nurture these other ones that were less meaningful to me that required more of it because they weren't as generous in their acceptance of

me. So actually my fear of loneliness has slightly lessened now. That's good news. Yes, isn't it? And although you probably can't tell, I am actually an introvert, but I've successfully learned how to be extrovert and how to pretend I'm confident when I don't feel it and all of that sort of stuff.

And I've realised that I'm also pretty resilient when my world shrinks so I think I'm going to be okay silver lining yeah on that point of confidence it's something that people ask me about all the time is confidence seems to be one of the great barriers of people pursuing themselves as you described pursuing their dreams pursuing who they are some people will know who they think they are but they don't have the confidence to take the leap per se are you confident um yes in certain things so i'm confident that i can write i'm now confident that i can podcast i can do a good podcast um you're a great talker i was thinking this as you're speaking i was thinking you i was thinking yeah i understand why she has a really good podcast oh thank you you're right you know you're very like articulate self-aware

but you're really good at you know talking it's like a strange thing to say to someone but you know you are well i think i'm good at connecting with people. And that's something that I really cherish because that's where all the good stuff lies for me. Like I love having a conversation like this on such a real level with someone and connecting. That's heaven to me. Like this is introversion heaven. It's like, I don't want to be at a big party,

like trying to have this conversation with you. That would be stressful. So I'm confident there. And you'll notice that those are all things that I do. I'm not hugely confident about myself in the sense that I still struggle with self-worth. And I realize that that probably sounds really nauseating for me to sit here in this lovely place being interviewed for this fabulous podcast, drinking my cup of middle-class green tea. Like it sounds absurd for me to say that

and also self-indulgent. But that's me being really honest. Like I've just got, that's something that I really struggle with. but that's me being really honest like i've just got that that's something that uh i really struggle with like just feeling that i'm enough interesting so the conclusive chapter in my book chapter 20 is all about this topic okay yeah yeah and i and i because i think i you and I spoke to some psychologists and stuff and I batted around with this idea of, this contradiction of how I could possibly be enough,

but ambitious. Yeah. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Like it feels like a contradiction. Yeah. And that's that thing that I always fear. If I, if I tackle my self-worth and I cure myself,

will I just have no drive? Okay. So this is chapter 20. Okay. And it's crazy. Cause you would have, you'll resonate with this. Yeah.

I actually started the chapters set out to answer the question and I answered it as I was typing. And, and so usually as you'll discover, like in the book is a lot of the time, it's just a shitty use of words that are holding us back. So one of the things like is, you know,

is he your soulmate that there's so many presumptions within that like that you that a soulmate exists you have one of them you'll be able to find them um and in fact if you ask yourself maybe the concept of a soulmate doesn't actually exist same thing with are you enough right so the the term enough this is what was my conclusion first assumes that we can become less and more. Yeah. How can we become less and more? That's a good point. Innately and intrinsically.

How can we ever, how can Elizabeth ever be intrinsically innate, like inside less or more? You're always going to be you. Same hair, same arms, same legs, same talent, same skills. You inherently, like intrinsically never change yeah you never become less more enough you just are the the reason why we have these metrics again

is because it's an external extrinsic comparison so i am not enough in my nokia is not enough alongside an iphone yeah so i thought in fact and then when you have that feeling of like being less or more of enough what you then pursue is the pursuit of becoming more but because it was driven by external factors your ambition becomes externally driven so for me i didn't think i was enough so i was trying to get a lamborghini and in fact it's the belief it's the knowing that you never become less more enough that intrinsic feeling that makes you pursue ambition the right things for the right reasons. So once I knew I was enough, I then went after things

I actually gave a shit about intrinsically. I stopped going after Lamborghinis and I started going after like, I would love to do a book. I would love to learn piano. And so my conclusive point is that in fact, it's the knowing that you're enough and that in fact, you'd never become less or more

regardless of what you achieve or accomplish. That is the foundation of real ambition real ambition is for you it's chasing what you want for your reasons that was my conclusion so the enough thing is actually bullshit which is just social which then causes bullshit ambitions like lamborghinis yeah and uh realizing that you never yeah you never become less more or enough intrinsically allows you to have intrinsic ambitions and that is real ambition that's that's my conclusive point which is so so mind-blowingly good and also connects to that whole thing that bullshit about soulmates yeah because there's that belief that a soulmate will complete you now what are you saying there

you're saying that you're incomplete in and of yourself yeah and that there's only one true way to like all of that i hate that yeah the question comes in a very innocent way it's like is he your soulmate and yeah the moment you accept it but you also accept seven other pieces of unintended bullshit which is like that you're incomplete now that you you've done you've a failure at not finding this person and all of these other pieces of bullshit it's the same with like i for me it's the same as like are you in love or have you found your passion have you found your passion is like a i posted about this the other day it's like another just really difficult piece of bullshit

um to to comprehend because found i've got to search for it my passion there's one of them and it's out there somewhere and once i find it it's gonna feel great passion what's that how does that feel you're you've said the word are we thinking of the same thing the same so many pieces of bullshit which i now have to accept so if there was one thing that i've learned in the last couple years it's just like question the question yeah as much as you possibly can because the question will fuck you when you accept it oh my gosh i could not agree more like also passion is such an unhelpful word it's that thing of like oh did you feel did you feel passion did you feel this sexual insane sexual chemistry did you fall in love at

first sight and i'm like hang on a second what you're saying there is did you feel deeply unsettled and chaotic because that's what passion it's like a disruptive force i'm like i don't want to feel i don't want to feel unstable and chaotic i want to feel safe yeah and known that for me is like true romance and a relationship or a business is not a failure because it ends again like you could have learned so much you could have learned what you needed to know and therefore you can evolve and grow and as you say the act of finding something what if it's like inside, you don't need to... It should be, shouldn't it? Yes, something you love to do should be something you love to do

without having to like go on this quest. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. But that's what you were saying earlier about ambition being an external driver really feeds into one of the most profound things I've ever learned from doing all this stuff about failure. I met this man called Mo Gowdat. He used to be the chief business officer of Google X, but he wasn't happy. And he has a lot to say about expectation versus

reality. So if we can manage our expectations of life, so if they're equal to or less than our perception of events and how they turn out, then we can be happy or contented. And he was the one who really brought it home to me that we are not our worst thoughts, that our thoughts are produced by our brain as organic matter in the same way that blood is pumped around our body by our heart. Like we wouldn't think we were defined by our blood. So why would we think that we are our thoughts? Actually, as you know, the premise of all meditation is that you can observe your thoughts. Who's doing the observing? That's you. That's you. Why would you need thoughts? You don't need to communicate yourself. So your thoughts are just being produced by your brain constantly. And I found that really helpful. The idea that once you realize that you can train

your brain to think differently and to replace negative thoughts with positive ones as much as you're able. So he gave this incredibly moving example. His son, Ali, died at the age of 21 during a routine operation. And in the aftermath of Ali's death, Mo would wake up every morning with tears streaming down his cheeks. And his first thought would be, Ali died. And it was an unbelievably oppressive, grief-stricken thought. And after a few more weeks of it, he was like, I just can't live like this. I can't live like this. And so he challenged his brain to come up with a different thought.

And each morning he would wake up and he would still think, Ali died, Ali died. And he'd still be crying. But he added something to that sentence. he added yes but he also lived and in that differently expressed sentiment was 21 years of memories of a father and son who were best friends and that was what enabled him to carry on living and if he can do that in that situation i sure as hell can do it when someone criticizes me on Instagram. It was a really helpful lesson. We're never really taught to challenge our thinking, right? As you say, we think it's reality. We think it's true. And we're taught to think we need to use it to be good at exams,

to get ahead, to get a good job. Like that's all thought, isn't it? That's like the exercise of your brain and don't get me wrong i like love my brain and i'm happy that i have thoughts but it's that thing of understanding when they're running away with themselves when they're in control of you hard it is the exercise of a life yeah it like it really is trying to rise above your own thoughts it's like yeah or at least analyze them hold them out in front of you and examine them for validity i mean

you mentioned working out earlier i definitely find exercise as a helpful way of doing that yes like and that's something again i never i never thought i was good at sport and i translated that wrongly as being like someone who doesn't like exercise until my 30s really until I went through all this stuff divorce all that sort of stuff and I needed to feel strong in myself that started with feeling strong in my body and I realized that it was just an incredibly helpful way of being in my body and being out of my head and it was just such a relief to find that isn't it nuts the the way that your brain thinks while you're exercising versus when you're just yeah in it you know in your normal life it's just it's bizarre it's like a

different different person shows up and can suddenly see clearly totally and also for me it feels like i'm not really thinking when i'm excited but i am i will have like processed something that has been bothering me for days so fascinating i wonder why that is bet somebody knows. Just the like monotony of doing a task or the, you know, whether it's a running machine or just lifting weights for some reason. I don't know. The brain just seems to go to a different place.

Most of my good ideas, if I have any, come from the gym or walking or the shower sometimes. Yeah. Well, that's why people sometimes are kind enough to ask me for writing tips, like how to write. And one of the things that I say is like, don't feel guilty for not actually

doing the writing sometimes. Like sometimes you literally need to take a walk and be around people or be on the top deck of a double deck of bus and look out the window because your brain needs rest, but it also needs like a creative fallow period where the field is left fallow and then it becomes more fertile in the future and all of that feeds into your inspiration it's so true i you know people don't appreciate that it's one of the real upsides of of exercise they think it's to make themselves look pretty but i think the benefit i've had to my mind through exercise is hard to put into words I want to talk about failure yes now which seems like a good thing to talk about and in your book

philosophy you you list uh seven failure principles so I'm sure you've done this a million times but I think it's a good good place to start so the seven failure principles. Yes. Number one, failure just is. Yes. So that actually just feeds in with what we were talking about, which is the idea that failure is a fact. It's inevitable. It's going to happen to all of us. No matter how much we try to avoid it, I guarantee that it will happen. And that can feel scary, but it can also feel liberating because once you've accepted it as a fact, there's no point in trying to avoid it. So you might as well take the risk. So acceptance of failure starts with the observation of it. Failure is a fact, but how you respond to it is within your control. Whether you decide to feel like a failure for

many years after the thing that's happened, or whether you think to yourself, okay, well, that's taught me something and I'll do it differently next time I guess the risk there is one bad failure and people stop trying exactly and then I was thinking this is very similar to confidence in the way that like if you have one bad failure your performance next time you get an opportunity if you actually don't manage to just avoid it completely will probably be worse because of nerves and that, you know, the memory of I'm terrible. And then that's going to increase your chances of failing again. And then the kind of like self-negative reinforcing cycle

kind of continues and your confidence and your sort of, yeah, your guts kind of cascade downwards. And can, for some people work in the other direction where you have a success, your confidence builds, you walk on stage to do that, you know, public speech next time around with a bit more confidence you do a better job which increases your chance of success and it cascades upwards how failure works from your experience it can work like that i mean to take the example you've just given one of the ways of looking at that if you're then stuck in a downward cycle and you're failing and you're trying the thing is that you're

therefore in the wrong situation so you're in the wrong workplace, for instance, that isn't generous enough to like make you feel okay after your failures or doesn't make you feel like you can be your true self. In which case, I would argue you need to remove yourself from that situation and find the place that does suit you. Or it can be a question of mindset and a question of applying that mindset that we've just talked about, which is, okay, I failed. I'm feeling in a downward spiral. How much of that is fact? That's a very difficult thing to do on your own when you're a very low ebb. And that's why I'm a huge advocate of therapy. And again, I know that I come from a privileged place where I can afford therapy. But even if it starts with reaching out to your

friend and talking about it or reaching out to your work helpline and talking about it or texting, shout the mental health charity or calling the Samaritans, that's a really valuable step. And the other thing that I would say there is that I'm very aware that my definition of failure, which is what happens when life doesn't go according to plan, has a fatal flaw, which is that sometimes there are failures that are totally cataclysmic, that we couldn't possibly have predicted, that go against any plan whatsoever, like a global pandemic, like a terrible illness that you contract, like the death of a loved one, it would be monstrous for me to sit here and say, those failures are as easily assimilated or learned from or dealt with as fading or driving test. And so I'm not saying that at all. Those kind of failures

will require a process of mourning and coming to terms with the thing that you've lost. And that's absolutely right and as it should be. My only thing is the way that I choose to live my life is I mourn, but I don't have to constantly relive the pain. I can still feel sadness about something, but I don't need to live in that place of reliving it constantly becoming a victim yeah and becoming defined by that i can choose to be defined by something else i can choose to be defined by my response to it i can choose to find some kind of meaning in something that was meaningless at the time and that's how I choose to live my life because that makes it less sad. And I think that that choice is available for most of us.

Topic of conversation that I liked having on this podcast, as you're alluding to there, is about like personal responsibility. And, you know, we all have different starts in life and different, you know, quote unquote advantages and disadvantages but um how important do you think personal responsibility is even in times where something happened and it's really not your quote-unquote fault yeah i think it's tremendously important i want to caveat what i'm about to say by saying i'm very aware that certain people are given more opportunities to fail because of the elitist society in which we live because of the racist society in which we live because of a society which marginalizes entire groups of people through no fault of their own i'm aware that i as a white middle class woman have been given shit loads of opportunities to fail so so i'm totally aware of that that there's

a sliding scale you have to say that right yeah of course i have to say that because because i don't want people to think that i haven't thought about it and i also think that it's important to have the discussion it's crazy how many caveats we've got to do before we say anything these days like i don't care that much so you're gonna get me into trouble i find it when i when i sit here and i i speak to guests and I watch them have to caveat something they're going to say I just find it so funny because I'm like I personally do that to some degree but I also I'm like what are you gonna I don't know it's interesting it's interesting because this is a growing thing because you're right if you hadn't have done that someone would have

yeah and someone would think oh well it's all very well for her to say that and like it's just it's just a kind of acknowledgement that it's been easier for me in certain respects which is fair and it's been hard in other ways like everyone has their own lived experience you know like i'm talking from a place of you know i wrote a book called how to fail which was part memoir part manifesto like a memoir by its nature cannot be intersectional like i'm speaking from my own life and i'm bringing in voices of other people who can part memoir, part manifesto. Like a memoir by its nature cannot be intersectional. Like I'm speaking from my own life and I'm bringing in voices of other people who can speak to those experiences because it would be delusional

and offensive for me to try. Has anyone ever taken that shot at you and been like, well, it's easy for you to say? Oh yeah, loads. How does it feel? Be honest. How does it feel? Well, okay.

It did feel, before I'd done the thinking, like an attack. It did feel like, well, hang on a second. I have worked hard to be where I am. And actually, if you only knew, like there are things that I never talk about or write about that will never be in the public domain because they involve other people. Okay. So I just can't, I choose not to go there. And then I read more about it and talk more about it. And it's absolutely true that I have had massive advantages in my life. And that's a fact, as is the fact that I've worked hard as well. But I did have those advantages. So for me to deny that feels really wrong and actually irresponsible. And now I feel like there's a certain dialogue that is had around women

where I feel women are more often challenged for talking about their personal experiences than men are and maybe you can tell me that i think you're telling the truth i think i would agree okay and i don't like that that's crazy that's so true yeah it's so true like i don't like the fact that i feel as though i constantly have to say, I constantly have to show my battle scars and my wounds and my sadness in order to earn the right to a platform from which I can speak and write as a woman. Now, there are certain white middle-class privately educated men out there who never have to do that apologizing they never have to do that caveating people just like oh they're quirky but they will say it with their they will like the quote is like

say it with your chest they will say it with their chest they'll talk about their success they'll give advice they don't caveat anything it's like this is how you do it and it's funny because i sat here with um maybe shouldn't say their name but i sat here with a young lady who's very successful yeah and she was educated at maybe the best university in the land grace beverly yes i heard it i listened to it yeah and i thought she dealt with it very elegantly and why she got to deal with elegantly i sit here i think like the point i was trying to make to her is like why is it that you and grace have to have to do this, like a salt course of words and caveats? Because you will,

someone will say in the comment section, oh, it's very easy for, but with my male guests, no, they don't do that. And they don't have to, and they don't get attacked. Can I ask you an off topic personal question? Yes.

About race. On the record. On the record, totally on the record. So I felt really conflicted on social media around black lives matter and the horrendous tragic to my mind illegal death of george floyd and i was like but i don't i felt like i don't need to post on instagram that i think killing black people is bad like surely that's a given no no no elizabeth silence is violence i'm taking the first one i know but i do so i would love to hear from you like what's my responsibility because i did post a black

square because i was like if i don't post a black square then that I don't that feels wrong to me as well I mean but this is just like this is a huge issue with society because um we're thinking in such binary bullshit ways about these really complex sensitive systemic issues it's in that moment and the reason I did this post on Instagram it went viral and like everyone's seen it and I've talked about this podcast multiple times mainly because I just had antlilton on so i've talked about it there but obviously when uh we watch a a black man get killed for nine minutes asking for his mum any sound sort of morally sound human being on planet earth will feel a bunch of emotions i watched it and i didn't say anything for three days because i just i just didn't want to see that fucking clip again no I didn't want to talk about it I watched that clip and just thought oh I felt sick to my stomach and I was angry and I was sad and I just didn't want to and then my dms in my

dms I've got all these dms from people black people going you've not stood with us you fucking but and I'm just thinking oh fuck off like yeah I mean this isn't and and in those moments what social media in the world will try and do is it will try and make you fit exactly into a camp that think in one way, that act in one way, or everyone and said, listen, people process things in their own ways. And that's normal, obviously. Do you agree with that statement? People process especially traumatic things in their own, everyone agrees with that sentence. And some people might be thinking, they might be reading, they might just be listening. And that's okay. And also my last point here is I'm going to be black forever for my entire life. My kids will also be, have a little bit of black in them too,

maybe a quarter black, depending on who I marry. And so if you actually give a shit about changing things, your response isn't a black tile. Your response would be something much more systemic. Your response might be educating yourself and your friends, virtue signaling on social media. For me, that's a sign that you probably don't really care yeah if anything and like you can't say that unless you're black i'm the only person that

can say that like i'm not the only one i mean there's more of us but i mean like i'm in my friendship group i'm the only one in this room because you'd be all of you'd be finished off every single one of you would get finished if you said anything like that so and and that it's a sad world we live in because i know everyone in this room agrees not one of you can say it and that's a sad place to be where this isn't a war of ideas this is a war of like virtue signaling at like we're not it's not competition of the best ideas it's a it's a competition of like who is correct and who is incorrect cancel accept cancel accept and man oh what a sad place can't even have a conversation without

someone's fucking gonna lose your job i'm fortunately unemployed so no one can find me and i don't really need the money either so like you know what i mean like the podcast sponsors if they if they thought i was immoral or whatever they could pull out but no i think thank you because that's i think you're right and I think compassion and nuance can't be fitted into the binary world of social media a lot of the time. Never. I'm really sorry, because I've completely like, taken a detour here. I'm so annoyed at this. And the thing that annoys me more is I don't think it can be fixed. I don't know. I don't know how it can be fixed. I know the way that algorithms work. And I know that they create echo chambers

where everyone thinks like you. So the minute anyone in your echo chamber is not thinking like you, the way that they reinforce and reward your thought using these algorithms, you're not gonna get rewarded. You're gonna get attacked. And so it's fighting against, it's fighting a losing battle.

At some point I'll probably be cancelled or something. I'm like pretty aware of this because I refuse to, I like to think in nuance. I like to think, I don't think left or right. I think usually the truth is somewhere in the middle often. Yeah.

More so than it is on the far left or the far right. And that is a dangerous way to think it's a crime. And for me, that's a form of imprisonment, which is the inability to think and speak for yourself. that's a form of imprisonment which is the the inability to think and speak for yourself that's a form of imprisonment in the same way putting someone in a cage it's and for me also not allowing people to express themselves we've seen the harm that does we've seen when people can't express their sexuality they kill themselves more so i will i was thinking i was like i will not allow myself to be imprisoned my thought to be imprisoned

and my expression to be put in prison because i actually think the net impact of that is much worse than just someone there's some writing some shit in the comment section about me i'd like to be a free thinker what do you think of pierce morgan sometimes he hits sometimes he misses he's got he's a bit of a narcissist in some ways sometimes he's like right sometimes he's wrong sometimes i agree sometimes i don't yeah shouldn't be de-platformed we can all scream at him but um he's not hot he's not like he's not a racist he's not um doing it he's not like encouraging people to like hurt each other he's not encouraging harm or violence he has an opinion which some people disagree with sometimes talking about sharon sharon osborne she's been chucked off her show for defending Piers Morgan and I

watched the clip last night of um what she said and all she goes is you know what has he said that's racist and the host responds to him it's not what he said he hasn't said anything racist it's just his you know basically his attitude towards the situation oh come on fucking hell but do you think so do you but do you think that because we've had millennia of things one way the transitional phase is always going to have to be extreme as the pendulum swings to one to one end and so that it can then stabilize in the center and we're just living through an age of transition i like to think that sometimes but then i know how algorithms work and i think that the algorithms are reinforcing our echo chambers every single day my algorithm is telling me if i'm right

or if i'm wrong and it's based on groupthink it's like these pockets of groupthink and the other thing is like just when i think about it logically i think you know i read this quote one day and it was like if your opinions and beliefs almost identically resemble the people around you then they're not your opinions and beliefs i thought about that a lot and it was like if your opinions and beliefs almost identically resemble the people around you then they're not your opinions and beliefs i thought about that a lot and i was like no this is true yeah if we want to get like really deep about this yeah most of our beliefs and opinions come from the society we live in and you've only got to go back 5 000 10 000 years and see the barbaric things we did that we thought were morally sound and okay, to realize that in fact, our opinions and beliefs are mainly given to us by society. In fact, good and bad, if you look at what we did 100 years ago, if you look at what

happened in certain parts of the world and, you know, history, those people thought they were good and that was the right thing to do. so what are my opinions today the majority what social media and the world has told me is the correct thing to do how moral are we if we felt completely moral when we used to like behead people and kill black people and chase we thought that was good go on crusade so yeah it's a lot um maybe a topic from anyway what was i in this book i'm so sorry point number two of fail philosophy i like lost my way in this quickly yeah got the list here as well so point number two in your book is you are not your anxious brain i think you've talked about that so we'll move on almost everything feel feels they almost everyone feels they have failed in their 20s i mean not you

okay so steven barlow i'm pretty sure do you think you failed in their 20s i mean not you okay so steven i'm pretty sure do you think you failed in your 20s probably personally sorry no no no it's a good question actually multiple times yeah started my first business at 18 it was clearly a failure left that when i was 20 years old failed in loads of relationships fail every day in business not the big like momentous failures other than my business like one would assert but no i felt probably more than anybody to be fair i think that's so great to hear yeah and also i think that a lot of people struggle in their 20s particularly in this day and age because of the curse of comparison and because we live in a

culture of curated perfection where you're constantly comparing yourself to your peers filtered appearance on instagram and the life that they seem to be living. So we're comparing our insides with everyone else's projection of their outsides. Exactly. Yeah. And for many people, although I know not you, but for many people, it's the first time that they've come out of full time education, and come out of a system of exam and reward exam and reward and there is no exam that you can sit to show that you're being a good grown-up so you feel quite lost plus piling on top of that the pressure to find your passion to like make a career for yourself but also to earn

enough to pay your rent living in house shares like just trying to make your way and trying to forge your identity in this day and age. It's just so hard to do all that at once. And then you're like, oh, and I should be having like a thriving personal life. And I should either be in a long-term relationship or having one night stands and making footloose and fancy free and drinking loads. And then at the weekend making vegan brownies because I got to watch what I eat and all of that sort of stuff. And it's exhausting. And so really what I wanted to say in that failure principle was that so many people come on podcasts and say that they feel they failed at their twenties. And I think a lot of us fall into the trap and I did too, of believing that we had to have our life sorted out by then. And actually your twenties are a

decade of transition of discovering who you are of grinding up the spices of life in your pestle and mortar and the older you get my experience has been the more you know yourself and the more you know what you want to do and that's where success lies I've had so many more opportunities after leaving my 20s behind in the rearview mirror wow everything else you've really thought about that um number four breakups are not a tragedy your ex-partner has taught you something yeah one of the things you said which i which i it was really really powerful is that um a relationship ending doesn't mean that it failed that's it in a nutshell like I've had countless failed relationships

and uh and they and they and it sucks like heartbreak there is no pain like heartbreak I hate it it's the worst isn't it it's the worst it really I yeah I totally relate and I now realized that I learned something very instructive from each one of those relationships and from the fact that they ended. It taught me something that I needed to know about myself. And I realized that love that was ready for me, I didn't need to fight to convince it. Like it would meet me where I was and it might not come in the package that I expected. And it didn't. I met Justin on a hinge date that I almost didn't go on. And it doesn't immediately feel like the thing that you thought you wanted, because actually that hasn't worked out for you. So it's always better to make a different choice, I think. So yeah, it's just about how,

although relationships feel that they might be life-ending at the time, they never, never are. When they end, they never, never are. And often someone has been sent to you whether it be a friendship a work colleague or a lover to teach you a lesson that you needed to know and when a relationship ends it's because you've been taught that lesson god it's a shitty lesson to learn and also like when you when you go through a breakup as you've described there um not letting it end is part, in my experience, of the reason why something new doesn't start. Yes. Oh, that's so, yes. That's what Oprah would call a teachable moment. Is it? Yeah. You need to create the space for the new thing to come in, which means leaving something behind.

What I talk about a little bit before about quitting being just as much of a skill in an art form as starting. We glamorize starting, but there's a real talent. There's a real skill to knowing how to quit, how to move forward. Because starting is great, but the thing you do before you start something is to quit something else. And that is, I mean, just from reading your books and stuff and listening to the interviews you've done, not appreciated enough because it involves uncertainty. You're throwing yourself off a cliff sometimes and building the paraglider as you fly. Yes. And we're also taught to avoid feelings of sadness, like good vibes only. And you're like, no, actually, sometimes you need to be in that sadness. You need to feel that discomfort to

understand what life really is. Life is texture. Life is all sorts of emotions. And when we feel grief because the relationship has ended or because we've lost someone, that, as that famous quote says, is the price you pay for love. And in a way, it's a beautiful thing to feel because it's a signifier of how much you love. It sucks though. I know. It just doesn't, it just suck. Like I i just giving people advice and heartbreak i feel like it's such a for me when i'm like in my dms and someone sent me something about i've just broken up with this person and whatever yeah it's such an intoxicating force like heartbreak yeah i'm

like my words aren't going to help you you just basically have to tough it out and to and to try as much as you can in believing that your future will be better. Yeah. You'll get past this. And believing that rejection is protection. If you're rejected, that person is not for you. Either because they've been stupid enough to fucking reject you, or because action is character. And if they've dumped you, it's like, well, do you really want to trust that person for the rest of your life?

No. I'm going to, is that is that, is that true? And I'm playing devil's advocate here intentionally because I'd actually know the answer. If you get rejected, is that person not right for you? It, I mean,

yes, I think, but I, I suppose it depends on the nature of the rejection. Like it has to be a serious one. Um, it can't just be an unread whatsapp message like that you're interpreting as a rejection they like full-on rejected yeah i think that's listen i don't know

if it's true or not but it's what i choose to believe because it makes me feel better about life to believe i think by the definition you gave of like well they didn't appreciate you yeah what about like how if we think about taking responsibility in those situations and we say okay my relationship with this guy that i loved ended because i have problems because not when i say problems like i have jealousy or i have things that i haven't dealt with is that also you know that's hard for people to do that yeah blame is super easy and heartbreak you're so know, that's hard for people to do that. Yeah. Blame is super easy and heartbreak. You're so right. And that's where personal responsibility comes in.

Yeah. And so in the immediate aftermath of a breakup, you're going to probably feel heartbroken and really sad. Once you've processed that, then your responsibility is to understand what part you played in the dynamic but for those first few weeks do whatever you need to do to get through and if you need to blame someone and just keep saying rejection is protection and like what a loser do it because you just need to get through that initial phase of awfulness actually, my last serious breakup, I was in such a dark place. I googled how long

does it take to get over heartbreak? It's like, actually, that was a really good six weeks. I did feel better. It was a good, it was like a manageable length of time. And I was like, okay, I'm going to feel miserable for six weeks. And once you commit to the acceptance of that, it becomes a lot easier to deal with because you're not struggling against feeling it. You're like, well, I'm on track because I'm now week four. So yeah, I'm still feeling miserable.

That's okay. And it somehow makes you feel better. No, I get that. Yeah. Are you post breakup right now? Not post breakup. No, I'm post something ending. Okay. I'm sorry. No sorry no no it wasn't it was it was um i consider it to be a choice that i made okay yeah so that's not necessarily the

best example for me the the real significant heartbreak moments i had were all when i was when i was younger really and uh yeah and it just always sucked um but obviously i've got a lot of friends that are going through breakups and stuff and it's always difficult to give them advice because you're they're so their head is gone like there's no way i can describe it there's no sense there when in matters of love it's just all so yeah just asking them to tough it out i think is is all i've ever got in terms of well now you can give them a copy of philosophy. Well, there you go. Point number seven. When we choose to share our vulnerabilities is when we feel most satisfaction. Most connection, I think, is what I said.

Why does it say satisfaction on my list? I don't know, I like that too, because you probably do feel personal satisfaction. It's like, but when we choose to be open about our vulnerabilities, that's paradoxically when we find the most strength and the source of the most real connections with other people. Amen. Yeah. And that's something that I have genuinely learned through the podcast. The first season of the

podcast I did, I was very much, I came from a very traditional newspaper journalist background. So for me, it was like, I'm interviewing my guest. I will ask the questions and I will listen and then I will ask another question. And it was only as time went on that I felt more comfortable sharing my own experiences. And whenever I did that, I had such an incredible feedback loop of like just amazing people sharing their stories and their vulnerabilities and also saying that they felt less alone because I shared mine. And really that's what my entire life is about ultimately is connection. And so I really want to encourage people not to be scared of opening up about the things that they perceive as their weaknesses, because so often what you think of as your most personal shame turns out to have most universal resonance. And that was certainly my experience talking about fertility and miscarriage and divorce.

Like actually, that's where I've had the greatest impact, I think. And I'm so grateful for that. Why do you think that is? Why do you think vulnerability, in terms of like why it has such wide resonance? Why do you think that is? Because I think that when we're vulnerable, we're being real and we're letting our masks slip and you'll see a glimpse of who the authentic person is. And there's something just absolutely quintessentially human about that so it's a human recognizing another human

it's a human recognizing another human beneath the pretense and I think it also reassures people because as we've been talking about in this culture that we live in which is so defined by social media and how you appear and the currency of perfection again it's such a relief it makes you feel like you can breathe if someone's like oh god i'll tell you about today i sat in bed in my pajamas eating hummus direct from the tub because i felt really down that's an act of singular generosity to someone else who can then have the space to talk about how they're feeling is there any such thing as too vulnerable or oversharing there's yeah there's i don't think there's any such thing as too vulnerable i do think there is such a thing as oversharing

and i only say i i say i make that distinction because oversharing is about telling your story to others. And obviously there are right and appropriate times and places to do that. I'm not advocating that someone goes into work and just starts sobbing at their desk. There's, there's definitely a time and place for that, but I wouldn't suggest doing that every single day. Like to protect yourself, you need to find a safe space that you can share those vulnerabilities with and then build up your strength and your confidence and realize what it is that you do want to speak more publicly about because I don't think that you can share with everyone immediately after you've experienced pain like that's too soon and also you can't trust everyone to honour what you're sharing. So I don't think

you can be too vulnerable. But it's a question of choosing the things that you then take your vulnerability and share from and who you share them with. That was such an ineloquent way of saying that. It's basically about boundaries. No, yeah, no, I completely, I completely, I was thinking when you were saying it, because I remember having a conversation with one of my team members in New York one day where I was trying to, you know, the issue you have when you're a CEO is someone might have some struggles, some mental health issues, or they might have some problems going on at home. to to not broadcast that every day to their team yeah below them but also knowing the importance of speaking and expression is part of the cure so i remember having a conversation with one particular person and just saying to them like the key thing is like knowing the right outlet for that yes and you described it as like the safe space exactly and that can be a different safe space for

different people it can be your therapist it can be your sibling it can be a different safe space for different people. It can be your therapist, it can be your sibling, it can be the in-house therapy that your workplace hopefully provides. But I also think that it goes back to what we were saying earlier. If a team leader is in that position, I think it's about being able to bring your authentic whole self to work, but being able to show that you're not defined by the things that have gone wrong. Or if you are defined by it, you're defined in a good way in that you're choosing to lean into this particular feeling because it's going to teach you something that you need to know. That's the sort of responsibility of a leader, I think. It's not to pretend that everything's fine and to wear this mask of the perfect boss. it's to be someone who acknowledges that life can be tough

and who shares what they're going to do about that I think we need to have confidence in our leaders that they have an idea about what to do with it when they're sharing it in the workplace and this is the problem with Matt Hancock being such a robot isn't it oh my gosh don't even get me started on that I don't know if the experience is emotion i should probably shouldn't say that because that's unfair but i just i look at this guy and i think do you understand what people are feeling i don't think you do it's a problem with so many politicians i was so inspired by angela merkel recently because she apologized for having overturned a lockdown ruling over easter she's like i'm really sorry i got that

wrong i was like oh my gosh thank you thank you just quickly to go back to oversharing and jacinda oh my gosh jacinda is i mean we both need to get her on our respective podcasts we really do um oversharing as it pertains to women just very quickly i think women are often shamed into silence. And I've definitely experienced that someone being like, why do you talk about all this stuff? Why don't you keep it private? And I'm like, precisely so that I attack that kind of narrative, because I feel that so many people feel shame and stigma over things they don't need to feel it for. And it's because people stay silent. So I think it's also a bit of a stick with which to beat women I completely agree yeah is there anything you wouldn't share that doesn't involve someone else oh that's a great question because every time I

every time you hit a wall in terms of what you're willing to share it's because you say well that involves someone else so I won't share but is there anything about yourself that you wouldn't share that doesn't involve anybody else I am still determined to be a mother um when I get pregnant, I will have, I don't think I would share that publicly because I would feel fearful and anxious. And also because I have such respect for women who are going through fertility issues that I would just never do that but that involves another person the one that I'm carrying so I'm not sure whether the parameters your question really fit around but that is one thing I've thought about yeah so that's quite a heavy answer that's really interesting point there about the you wouldn't want to share it because you've probably um resonated well of course you are fucking probably you've

resonated with a lot of women who are going through that same experience and you've probably got a lot of those people in your audience so for some of those people it might i mean you know humans are humans the news that you know when you have your your own child might feel like shit to them definitely and i respect that because i've been there and I felt it and I feel it still and and I totally understand that I feel it as in it's like a jealousy of it's like an envy yes or like a yes of women that have a child or that yeah I mean it's it's never personally directed it's just a sort of um envy or yearning would be a better word for an experience that thus far has been denied me and I think lockdown and the pandemic has been so hard for all women and it's been incredibly hard for people homeschooling their children but for people who don't have children and desperately

long for that for people who are going through fertility treatment that's been delayed by the pandemic, for people who've experienced miscarriages during lockdown, as I have, it's incredibly painful to see parents complaining about homeschooling and how difficult that is to have these children that they have to homeschool. That's a very difficult thing. Now, no one is to blame for that. I take personal responsibility for my reaction. And that's where I need to curate my social media feed. That is absolutely not the fault of the parent question. They should totally do that and lean into it. And that is completely right and appropriate.

That's up to me to take that responsibility on. It's just that I know I wouldn't feel comfortable shouting it from the rooftops because I know how fucking painful and traumatic it is to go through I really do listen so your um your vulnerability and your honesty is is really moving and it's very very rare and you know I can't I can't even begin to imagine how many um people women you've helped because of your vulnerability you probably don't even get to see it so i want to thank you on behalf of all those people as i was reading about your story and your journey i was like really taken aback by how open and honest you're

willing to be because you don't need to be right um i'm sure that you know as you've described in some of the things you've written you've discovered that it's actually really almost paradoxically quite a selfish thing to be so selfless in that way but um yeah i think you're just remarkable and i think um what you've written and the work you've produced is phenomenal and i just wanted to thank you so much for coming here today and being as vulnerable with me as you have been across all of your other work it's um it's truly uh you know we're we're it's it's a fortunate we're fortunate as a society to have people like you in it you're willing to help so thank you thank you for giving me a safe space and for making me feel like i can be vulnerable with you i have loved this conversation so much i really truly have

and i love that i've been able to swear but i also love what you do and what you stand for and honestly your Instagram page I don't know how you have so much wisdom at such a young age but we will find your perfect match please please do your book philosophy it's um everywhere I actually went down to St. Pancras yesterday just to get it got it off the shelf I think uh excellent yeah um where else can people find you and what else are you working on that they should check out the podcast as well how to fail yes that's a smash hit book sunday times bestseller yes uh I wrote another book before that called how to fail originally everything I've ever learned from things going wrong which is my memoir part memoir part manifesto the podcast available on all podcast platforms um i'm on social media at eliza b day

and i've got a novel out my new novel is out in september and it's called magpie and um it is okay i have to be a bit vague because there's a massive twist in it okay and it's a sort of psychological twisty novel but it's about a lot of what we've been talking about today it's about dysfunctional motherhood and what happens when you think you know what you want and then your dreams come true and then it just turns out to be a total illusion have i sold it is it a thriller yeah it is it's basically a thriller driven by kind of warped characters okay interesting and i'm obsessed with magpies. That's why it's called magpie.

Okay. Do you salute magpies? Sorry? Do you salute magpies? I don't know. I don't think I know. No one ever told me that tale. But thank you so much again.

And it means a lot to me that you came and made the time for this today. And I'm sure that you've imparted a ton of important inspiration on our listeners. So thank you. Thank you for having me.