The One You Feed - Emma Gannon on Community and Connection in an Online World

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Emma Gannon is a bestselling author, speaker, novelist, and the host of the number 1 creative careers podcast in the UK called “Ctrl Alt Delete”.  Eric and Emma discuss her latest book, Disconnected: How to Stay Human in an Online WorldBut wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Emma Gannon and I Discuss Community and Connection in an Online World and…Her book, Disconnected: How to Stay Human in an Online WorldThe belief that everyone is creative and need to feed their creativityThe joy and challenge when your creative work becomes your paid workHow our online and offline behaviors and interactions are often not alignedConnection and how she compares humans to treesThe power of community and connection, both online and in-personNoticing when spending too much time online leads to emotional disconnectionUnderstanding self-sabotage and noticing the feelings associated with that behaviorFinding the balance of striving to be successful and happinessHer thoughts on cancel cultureHer first novel, OliveThe shame and guilt that women often feel for their life choicesEmma Gannon Links:Emma’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Emma Gannon, you might also enjoy these other episodes:How to Become Unlonely with Jillian RichardsonHow to Find Joy and Community with Radha AgrawalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For me, staying creative is sort of like survival. I don't know where I would go if I wasn't making things. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor?

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Decisions Decisions is gonna be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Emma Gannon, a best-selling author, speaker, novelist, and the host of the number one creative careers podcast in the UK called Control-Alt-Delete. Today, Eric and Emma discuss multiple books of hers, but the newest one is called Disconnected,

How to Stay Human in an Online World. Hi, Emma. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. So good to talk to you. Thank you for having me. Yes, I am very excited to have you on. I have been looking forward to talking to you for a while, and we're going to talk about some of your books. We'll talk about a new book called Disconnected. We'll talk about a fiction book you wrote called Olive. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with a parable. There's a grandparent who's talking to their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's so nice hearing you say it. You know that I'm a longtime fan of the show. So I've listened to so many responses and obviously had mine prepared as you do in the bath listening. And for me, I would say what I've realized is feeding the good wolf for me

is synonymous with feeding my creativity. And there's something that I remember, I think Elizabeth Gilbert saying that if you don't feed your creativity, it will literally eat you alive and you will find other things to do in that time. And I don't know if that makes me sound like a bit of a workaholic, but for me, staying creative is sort of like survival. I don't know where I would go if I wasn't making things. And I think she compares it to a Labrador puppy that, you know,

if you don't feed that puppy, it will literally like poo everywhere, eat the sofa, ruin your every eat all the food out of your fridge, like it will cause havoc in your life. And I think that's true for me. Definitely. I'll first comment on saying that you had prepared a great answer in the bath, because I literally an hour ago walked out of the shower and said to Ginny, I need a shower recorder because I feel like I write the best or come up with the best ideas or articulate my ideas the very best in the shower. I get out and I'm like, that's not quite, I didn't quite get it. So I relate. I want to ask you a little bit about the creativity.

I am someone who thinks creativity is really important, but I think a lot of people would say, well, you know, maybe for you artistic types, but I'm not really creative. Is feeding my creativity important for me? What do you think about that? Yeah, definitely. I get asked that a lot and I am a firm believer that everyone is creative and everyone should be. I think it's helpful for our mental health across the board. I know a lot of people think they're not creative. I like to try and prove people wrong in that department. And I think it really comes down to as well a lot of the work I've done around side projects. I started talking about side projects years ago, and then it became the side hustle and got really popular and got really cool. And everyone was talking about it. And I got pushback. It was like, I don't want a side project. And why are you making me work more? You know, what is this whole millennial thing of like having a million different jobs and never taking a break? And for me, a side project has always been about the passion project. It's about coming home from your job and channeling a different type of

energy into something you love and I've got a really close friend actually who's gone through a really hard time recently with a form of depression and she has just started this little Instagram account where she's doodling every day it's like super chilled out she's just drawing and for her this is literally like she's doodling once a day in order to get through the day. This is like basic creativity to get back on track. So I think it's something that, well, I know that it is prescribed through healthcare and doctors, they do prescribe creativity sometimes and I can see why. Yeah. I think where a lot of times we get hung up is feeling like it has to turn into something. You know, it actually has to become a side hustle.

When we say side hustle, we assume, you know, that means we make some sort of money doing it. And there is this thing that we tend to do. Like if somebody is even a little bit good at something that they enjoy doing, we say you should do that for a living. good at something that they enjoy doing, we say, you should do that for a living. You know, I think it may have been in Oliver Berkman's recent book that I think you read and interviewed where he talked about, you know, the real benefit of hobbies, you know, and I've talked on the show many times about when I was able to return the guitar to something I did, because I love doing it instead of something that I had to accomplish and make things and have people recognize those things, boy, it brought a sense of joy to me. Absolutely. I feel the same. And actually,

I write about In Disconnected, the reason why I'm trying to get back to the hobby again, the lost art of a hobby, because I've got to admit, I did monetize and hustle and turn a lot of my hobbies into my job, which I feel grateful for. I love the fact that I earn money from writing. It's a huge privilege. But I really want to get back to that and do something that never makes it on the internet. But we're in a really interesting, really exciting time in history where the reason why side hustles have become so popular is because there is a gap in the market for new jobs. So many old businesses are crumbling. So many new ideas can come through. So many people can start something accidentally and actually start making money. I think it's

the great resignation we're in at the moment because of COVID. Everyone's quitting their job and starting again. And it's kind of amazing that you start something for fun and it can turn into a business. I mean, you know, firsthand that things can turn into things. So sometimes it's like sitting back and thinking, okay, this is running away from me and turning into a job. Do I want it to be? And just making that discernment, I think. I mean, I obviously turned this that I started out of a passion to do it into a business.

And that is wonderful in almost every way. And at times I miss the innocence of not having to care about it from a financial perspective. Definitely. And I've had it recently where I've realized that, and this is going to make me sound really ungrateful, and I'm not, I promise. But when I wrote my first novel, it was a hobby. I sold that novel, not knowing if anyone would want it. I took myself off to the seaside in Margate, which is like a little seaside town down here and wrote it for fun, genuine fun, like I was playing football or something like it was my version of fun. And I got a two book deal for that for that book,

which was incredible. But now I'm under contract to write the second book, there's something in my brain that does not want to do it. And it's so childish, but it's just like, oh, this is my job now. And it does take a minute to kind of readjust to that, I think. Yeah. And I think there's something to also the amount of time you spend doing something. When I left my last job, my corporate job, somebody said to me, and I thought it was very prescient. They said, okay, well now what's going to become your new side thing? Like what's going to be the little thing that you're going to pick up on the side? Because this thing that was on the side now occupies central space. And so you do it a lot of hours, which is wonderful, but you're

going to not want to do it all the time. So then he knew me well enough to know that I was likely to be like, well, grab something else, you know? And so I think some of what happens too, is it's just when we're doing a hobby early on, we're squeezing an hour in a day with it, you know, it's, it's fresh. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, now I'm doing this, uh, 50 hours a week. It's a different kind of animal. Anyway, I want to move on from that with talking about your new book, Connection. And I want to start with something you said that I heard it and I paused and I went, huh, hadn't thought of it that way. And you basically say that online and offline lives are not separate realities anymore. We used to talk about them. We still talk about them as if there's an online life and an offline life. And you say that's really becoming increasingly a false distinction. And I wonder, is it a helpful distinction? So I think it takes a lot for us to wrap our head around the fact that online and offline is the same, because I think we like to think of online life, or at least I do,

as a sort of playground or fairground or place to be a different self or a place to just play around. And I think what we're seeing is the person you are on the internet is who you are offline. They are the same. We saw that in the lockdowns, like we spent our whole lives on the internet. And I think for me, it was this conversation around being an ally. And, you know, if you call yourself an ally, which I know a lot of people don't, because it sounds almost like you're trying to wear a badge of honour, you know, your actions should speak louder than the words that you say. But if you're going to stick up for someone on the internet, you really need to be sticking up for someone on the street who's having

a hard time. And I just think, wouldn't it be nice to kind of bring some of that behaviour that you think is part of you on the outside onto the Internet, if that makes sense? So, for example, instead of scrolling past someone having a hard time, you know, if I see someone crying, which I do a lot, actually, on the train in London, I do say, are you OK? But they got to a point where I was scrolling past people who were sort of trying to sort of ask for help on Twitter, for example. And I just wanted to make sure that I was doing the same online and offline, if that makes sense. That is really interesting. And you talk a lot in the book about how the nature of online interaction has changed over time. We used to have longer form interaction. I was on the internet in 19, I don't know, 96 or 97 as part of an email AA group that was so profoundly transformational to me. I haven't been part of anything like it in years because we scroll now. We like, we don't engage as deeply.

Exactly. And I really miss the nostalgia of the past. And when I wrote Disconnected, it really is a bit of a walk down memory lane. I'm trying not to live in the past too much, because I do think, even though I'm not like old yet, I feel like sometimes I act that way to Generation Z, because I'm like, oh, you're all on TikTok. Why don't you sit down and write a poem? No, they don't want to listen to that. But I think what I mean is I loved the fact that you could write a paragraph or an essay on a Facebook wall, or you could write long emails to each other. I had amazing pen pal relationships. I struck up so many just incredible friendships with people over email, but on Twitter or in any sort of viral or very,

very short form internet platforms, you can get into fights more easily. You can misunderstand each other so much more easily. And we're just not hearing each other out. And I just think that's a really hard time to be in. Totally, it is. And I agree with you. One of the things I watch for in myself about getting old is when I start talking about how good it used to be. I'm like, that is a surefire symptom of getting old. It happens to everybody as they get older. And I'm like, I'm going to really watch that one in myself, you know, in my, in my desire to remain young in the useful ways as long as I can. Totally. And I read an amazing book recently by the New York Times editor of the book section, Pamela Paul. She's done a book called 100 Things We Lost to

the Internet. And it's like losing the Polaroid picture or losing, you know, the fact that we would have to read a real map and know where things are. These are things that I think we're allowed to be nostalgic about. There were some really good times about the early days of the internet and how we were all finding our way and we were discovering new music and we were making playlists for each other. And I don't know, that was just such a kind of magical time. And I think I wanted to mix that nostalgia with what we can actually bring to now. Because like you say, there's no point living in the past. But I think that something is a bit broken with how we use the internet at the moment. And we're all just on edge and we're not connecting. And you start off by comparing connection or talking about connection in the

context of trees. Can you share that? I just thought it was a beautiful analogy. I think it's an analogy. I always get my literary terms mixed up there, but it's a beautiful way of thinking about it. And I'm a big fan of trees. Me too. And by the way, this is sort of the first time I've spoken about the book, strangely, because I'm about to do all my press in January. So this is really exciting for me to talk about it. But yeah, I got very into trees. And I sort of start the book by saying, you know, I'm not hugging trees yet, but I'm close to doing that. But I did a bit of research into trees, I didn't realize quite how they were a like the oldest living organism on the planet. It's amazing when you look at a tree and you just think, God, that tree has seen a lot of things.

It's just been here for so long looking down at all of us. And the way that trees are connected, the way their roots are all connected to each other, the fact that older trees have more knowledge, the fact that newer trees kind of get wisdom from older trees, the fact that they send nutrients to each other the fact that older trees have more knowledge the fact that newer trees kind of get wisdom from older trees the fact that they send nutrients to each other and they send goodness to trees that are ill and they can really sort of heal each other but they can also compete with each other and they can also kind of leave other trees out like this is all just so fascinating to me and i was like well we are we we are the trees and we, us, you know, billions of us on the internet, all connected to each other. We're like that. And we have the power to heal each other, or we have the power to basically ruin the whole network and sort of

kill off everyone. So yeah, I just wanted to get back to nature. That's a big theme of the book is getting back to nature. And I'm not someone that cared much about nature. I grew up in the countryside and ignored it for my whole childhood. I just, I couldn't wait to get to the city. I would Google pictures of Soho in London. I wanted to be in the concrete jungle of just life. And I'm realizing now that, yeah, I want to get back to the seaside. Yeah. You say like trees, whether we like it or not, we are all connected, even more so now through our screens and social media networks. The harsh reality is like the trees, we actually have the power to make each other sicker or stronger. I just loved that. Did you read the book, The Overstory?

No, I haven't. I haven't read that. The author's name is Richard Powers, and I think he won the Pulitzer for it. But it's a great fiction novel, just a good story, really. But through it, he is weaving in all kinds of tree facts that are really real. So the trees are characters in the book, but they're characters in a real way. It's an amazing book. So one of the things I am always interested in is the extent to which we're able to build community and connection online. I have a podcast that hopes to connect to people. I do virtual coaching work with people.

We've got a spiritual habits group program where we try and bring people together. And I'm always looking for ways to do that better or more. I'm curious, to what extent do you think that community online can be as connecting and powerful as community offline? Well, I think it can be everything to some people. You know, I talk a lot about the positives of the internet being the fact that if you are someone with a chronic illness and you literally can't leave your bedroom, your laptop is your community. And I've been in situations where it has been a lifeline and you just think, thank God for these people. What fascinates me

and what always has, and especially in the podcast world, for example, is the fact that you can build community over the smallest, seemingly smallest thing. You know, the fact that you're all fans of, I don't know, collecting a certain type of vintage book, or you're all into Harry Potter, or you love plants. Like this really is just an amazing time where you can bond with people over literally anything. And that is the one good thing about the internet. And that is the one good thing about Google and where it can lead you. But I think we are crying out for community more than ever at the moment. I know that during the lockdowns, it brought people back together again in their local communities. For example, I moved house now, but I lived in a massive block of flats during the first lockdown. And no one had said hello to each

other, basically, in the like three years I've been there, people would avoid getting in the lift, they didn't want to talk to you, they would scurry out and like get their takeaway and run back in, they just no one wanted to talk to each other. And I was probably guilty of that sometimes. And I just remember everyone just really needing each other suddenly. And we had this Facebook group that suddenly came alive. And we were borrowing tools from each other. People were making soup for each other. People were really there for each other for the first time in ages. So I don't know. I kind of wanted to write the books. I feel like maybe we're at the start of that coming back, which is kind of exciting. Yeah. So let's talk about some of the

ways that we can be more connected on the internet. I mean, some of the book is about connecting offline and moving offline, but a fair amount of it is also how we engage online in better ways. And one of the ways that you talked about that I really loved was you said, some days I give myself a day off from having an opinion. Yes, that is very crucial for me to remain sane. I think, you know, I'm lucky that part of my job is to have an opinion. I don't think I'll ever delete Twitter because I want to be involved. I want to have a finger on the pulse. I want to write books. I want to have opinions. But it's so freeing sometimes to just kind of take that hat off and just sit and watch and let the world go by. And also, I know you talk a lot about Buddhism and having

this sort of mind that is sort of free of any sort of thought, you know, you just you're just living in the questions. And I really want to live like that more. So yeah, I think it's funny to kind of put a little ring fence in your diary and be like, I'm not going to have opinions today. I'm literally just going to watch. And I really recommend it. have opinions today. I'm literally just going to watch and I really recommend it. Yeah. You quote someone, Tom Chatfield, who says the least viral thing to say is, I don't know, which is so true. But boy, I love saying, I don't know too. I really do. Me too.

I'm a big fan of, I don't know. It's funny because I actually tweeted out that quote and no one retweeted it. So I was like, this is such an example of this just not being something people are going to retweet. But you know what, that's okay. And I guess in the book, I want to say that this stuff is actually quite hard. And that the reason why we're quite lazy with things like this is because it is easier to be kind of very opinionated, get a lot of eyeballs, get a lot of traction on something you don't even really think. But some of it is super hard. And there's something that I did last summer, which I really recommend, but I know it's difficult and I don't know if people have the time for it necessarily, but I got into a little bit of a Twitter spat with someone. Well, not really, but we were just

both a bit like, we're not seeing each other here and it's really frustrating. So I actually think we want to have a connection on this. And so I dm'd them and i said would you be up for having a google hangout with me i'd love to talk to you about this i actually can't get my point across in these character limits and i'm really fascinated with what you're saying because we were getting quite sharp with each other because that's the way the platform's set up right you know the way that we the way that the refresh button and the slide down button is literally like a slot machine. It's designed in a way to make you come back and to make you angry and to make you not want to leave. So yeah, we had a call and we had such a good conversation and we're friends now.

And I really want to do more of that. Yeah, I have had some of the best conversations I've had with people who have written me what start off as really angry emails about something that was said in the show. And, you know, I just try and share my perspective in a kind way. And very often, it leads to a deeper connection and a conversation that's useful. And they might see things in a different way. I might see things in a different way. But it's nice that way, that sort of ability to disagree civilly. And even if you're not disagreeing civilly, it's okay to ask to try to do it, right? Like, hey, this conversation isn't going the way I want. Can we take it down a notch? Because I'm really interested in what you have to say. Like, I love that you did that. That's so brilliant. It's true. And I think that's why we need to make an effort. This is why I wanted to write the book. And it's like full of tips as well to say, come on, we can change things. Because even for example, the rise of the voice note, so leaving someone a voice note

is so much more beneficial to our mental health and our kind of connection with each other. You know, I have friends who will leave me a long message and I'll think, okay, I don't really know how they are, but they're checking in on me. And then I'll have that same friend leave me a voice note and just hearing their voice, I'm immediately happy. I immediately feel connected. I feel thought of, I feel loved, I feel seen. And it's these little things because body language and the way we sound and the tone of our voice is everything. And that static little profile picture that is on twitter or that little avatar is like a gamification of being human and that's why we dehumanize each other because they're just a little little profile picture we don't know that they're a real person but they are you know they're

a living moving being as we as we all are so i think we we do have to make an effort i hope we will you talk about how the more we spend time online, I'm sure some of this depends on how we spend time online, but you say the more time we spend online, the more emotionally disconnected we feel. And the more emotionally disconnected we feel, the more time we spend on quick fix digital connection. So it's sort of this, we talk about these all the time on the show, upwards or downward spirals. That's sort of the classic downward spiral. I know I wrote a book about sabotage, self-sabotage, and I had to spot all these signs in myself. But my sort of internet addiction was one of those things where I really had to notice my eyes glaze over that moment of, oh, I'm in a loop now. I'm in a cycle and I can't get out of it. And it's almost like seeing myself from a bird's eye view and being like, God, you're in the trance.

You're in the trance. Get yourself out of it quickly. And it's exactly that. It's like the more disconnected you feel, the more you go on there and you just feed this endless cycle. What you really need to do or what I need to do is get off my phone, go and talk to someone, pick up the phone, go for a walk. You can connect through your phone. But for me, and this is a personal thing, but I've heard from other people that it helps, your phone really should be the tool and the vessel to improve your offline life at the end of the day. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column.

Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. First off, I could only read two books of yours in preparation for this interview, which is more than I normally do. And I really wish I had read sabotage, because I would love to talk about that. And I may make you tell me about it here in a couple minutes. But that digital thing, I notice it sometimes in myself. And I just when I can

catch it, I'm like, Oh, and I just say to myself, what you're looking for is not on this device. Like, I notice it when I'm grabbing the device a lot. That's my sign. If I keep sort of grabbing it, I'm like, I'm looking for something because I keep grabbing it, which says I'm grasping. And then after I do that a little while, I'm like, oh, wait, I'm locked in that cycle. And what I'm looking for is not on this device is a helpful one for me. Definitely. And I do like to think about it in terms of the same sort of patterns as if you were sabotaging in other ways. For example, for me, it's like, why am I drinking that bottle of wine the night before a really early start where you know you've got an important meeting? Why am I therefore scrolling for hours before a big thing I need to do tomorrow? To me, it's the same.

It's the same sort of endless search for something that's not really working. And you know, when you see someone sometimes and you see them smoke, for example, and you think, oh, that really doesn't look very nice. And I've smoked in the past. I know why people smoke, but I've seen people as well next to me on the train or whatever, going in between Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever, like on repeat for about half an hour thinking, oh my God, it looks like smoking. And I then see it in myself and try not to do it. So when you see it for what it is, it's kind of scary what we're

doing. So when you see that a pattern like that, whether it's I'm about to drink a bottle of wine the night before a early morning, I'm locked in my internet cycle or other ways that you talk about sabotage. Can you share a little bit about some of the wisdom from that book about what you do to get out of that or to try to limit the damage from that? Yeah. So I think first of all, it was really discovering how to talk to myself in a kinder way. That was like the first step of the self-compassion thing of, okay, right. Self-sabotage sounds very dramatic. It's not a bad thing. You know, it's not a blame game. I just don't want to go down that route of I'm a bad person. I self-sabotage, I'm this, I'm that. It's not that. It's a friendly voice. It's like a frenemy. And I think someone was on your podcast recently talking about this, but that route of I'm a bad person, I self-sabotage, I'm this, I'm that. It's not that. It's a friendly voice. It's like a frenemy. And I think someone was on your podcast recently talking about this, but that sort of guidance that's looking out for you. Self-sabotage really is self-protection. It's your brain going, okay, there's a little problem here, but we can fix it. It's all going to be fine. So for me, yeah, I wanted to talk about it in an accessible way. I actually read that amazing book that I know you've read called On My Own Side by Dr. Aziz. I can't remember his surname.

Gazapura. and quickly kind of have some tips on how to kind of dig deep on why it might be happening. And it's really about self-discovery. You know, what is it? What is your trigger that is making you feel these things? And how can you flip it so that it might be, for example, your inner critic actually being a voice from the past, you know, even just noticing that that voice isn't necessarily you, it's come from someone else. The main main thing though is something that blew my mind and it has changed my relationship with self-sabotage is noticing the exact feeling you are having every single time you sabotage because it's the same feeling it's like when you're you're watching a crime movie and the detective needs to go back to the scene of the crime and be like, what happened? You need to almost walk back the steps to that point where the murder

happened. And what I do now is every single time I reach for the wine, every single time I'm refreshing Instagram, it's exactly the same feeling. And to me, it's like a self-loathing feeling. That's what it is. It's a,

I'm not good enough. And it's, it's that cloud of yeah. Self self-loathing. And once I notice it, I'm like, aha, the self loathing is back. I actually can skip past the self sabotage. which is first let's get conscious about the behavior, right? Because a lot of times we don't even know that like we're refreshing Instagram because there's anything emotionally going on, right? We don't even know that. So it's first sort of starting to recognize that. And then like you said, what is it? What's happening?

Can we zoom in on that moment? Yes. And really look at it. What is it? What's happening? And my partner, Ginny, said something so wise, I've quoted on this show many times, but she was talking about for her a tendency to eat emotionally. And she said, you know, when I zoomed into that moment and I saw what was happening was I was bored or I was lonely. She said, once I did that, there were lots of cures for boredom. There's lots of cures for loneliness. There were lots of cures for boredom. There's lots of cures for loneliness.

When I thought that I wanted a cupcake, there's only one cure for wanting a cupcake. It's to have a cupcake. And I just love that analogy because it says once we know what's going on, as you said, we can find other ways to give ourselves what we emotionally need because that's what's happening. You know, I would call it an emotional regulation failure, right? There's some emotion that you can't handle. Absolutely. Absolutely. And boredom, I've realized, is a part of anxiety. It's a version

of anxiety, boredom, and loneliness, and lots of things. And it's honestly been quite crazy just how much once you realize this stuff, and you do your own crime scene detective route on yourself, you realize that actually most things you're craving is the emotion of being peaceful or the emotion of feeling content. That's what I'm searching for at the bottle of wine. That's what I'm searching for on Instagram. That's what I'm searching for when I want more money or I want more X, Y, and Z. I actually don't want any of those things. I literally just want to kind of be less anxious. Yeah, it's such an interesting way of looking at things when you sort of look at everything you want. And you go, well, why do I want that? And then you might say, again, well, why does that, you know, you get to the point where you're like you said,

these things just represent something to us, we believe they're going to cause some emotional change in us. And it's that emotional change that we're after. Absolutely. The one thing for me that I've really started to unpick is this crazy thing. And you know, I'm all for reaching your goals and wanting what you want. And of course, I want to make a living and I want people to read my books. And I want all of those things. Of course I do. But what I had to sit down and look in the eye is this thought I had, which was, I'm going to take this job and I'm going to do all this stuff for X amount of money so that I can then take some time off. And I thought that about five years ago, I've never really taken any time off. So it's everything I'm trying to do is

so I can relax. Well, I could relax right now. What's stopping me? And so now I'm realizing that I'm realizing that it's all about present moment. It's not about in the future, I will do this. That's been a huge thing for me. Yeah, one of the things I was going to ask you about, because I see this emerging in you and your work, which is this starting to become aware of what I think is a paradox that I've asked a lot of people about on this show, which is, how do you balance the paradox of being ambitious, of striving to be better, of doing work that you love, right, with being able to accept kind of right where we are in life and enjoy it? There seems to be, in some ways, an inherent tension or balance there. And I'm curious how you're thinking about that these days. Definitely. I mean, the work of Seth Godin has been a huge influence on me. I've been

reading and referencing his work for over a decade. And he just transformed everything for me because he really believes that you are doing a really great thing. And you're actually being quite generous. If you want your work to reach more people, if it's work you think will help people, it's like this think will help people it's like this idea of being in service this idea of being an artist or a writer that yes you want to be successful etc but more than that you do actually want to help and you do want to contribute to society and you do want other people to get inspired and make things and you're part of something you're part of a bigger picture you're not just in your room like making money and living alone and being alone like that to me sounds really

miserable and I don't want to be successful if I'm lonely I would rather be less successful and have lots of friends and colleagues that like me I I'm you know that that's hopefully the goal so for me it's sort of well what ladder are you climbing and why? For me, I actually do want to climb a ladder in terms of if we're going to talk about traditional metrics of success, which is more people reading my books, it's because I genuinely believe in them. But when it comes to wanting shiny things, that's something I'm really stepping away from. And Martha Beck, the incredible life coach, she talks about Dante's Inferno and Mount Delectable, which is climbing this mountain of sort of, you know, the glamorous things of going on the Oprah Winfrey show and having millions of pounds. And she really breaks it down that that stuff

genuinely doesn't make you happy. And I don't think we're there yet in society where we believe people who say that we think, yeah, yeah, you're a celebrity, you're gonna say that. But you know, anyone that's watching the show succession, I mean, none of those billionaires are happy. I really, I just really don't think they are. Yeah, it is so true. In psychology, they would call it effective forecasting. And we're terrible at it. We think we know what will make us happy in the future. And we the intensity with which it will make us happy. And it is just so true. And as someone who has gotten many of the things that I would have said I wanted, you know, I don't have a million dollars, but I work for myself, right? I mean, I do work I love.

You know, if you told me me 20 years ago, this is where I would land, I'd have been like, I'll take it 100%, sign me up, I will be happy every day of my life. And of course, I'm not happy every day of my life. I have to do other things if that's what I'm after. Yes. And the consumerism culture, I mean, it's so out of hand, isn't it? Around Christmas, for example. And I just think we should be able to see through this. No, we should be able to see through the fact that the new pair of boots you got last year made you so happy. But you've got another pair of boots on your Christmas list this year. You want more, we all want more. So what is at play there that we're not satisfied? And there's some research that I'm really interested in. Emma Hepburn, a psychologist, told me about a while ago, which is the mathematics of it. So

if you have a blanket and a warm fire and a new pair of shoes, you're going to be ecstatic. But if you have five blankets and five fires and five pairs of shoes, you're not five times happier. Yeah. You're actually just as happy. So I think it's not about not having things. To me, it's about not having excess. Have a lovely house. Do you need five houses? Maybe you want that, but just know it won't make you happier. Yeah, I agree. I think that the reason why it's so hard to see through that next pair of boots is because there is a little bit of pleasure in doing it and getting it. And it's the thing that's always amazed me about addiction, right? Because people who have addiction, I, I, you start off with like, this thing is awesome.

You know, this drug is drink is awesome. And for people who ride the train far enough, is awesome. And for people who ride the train far enough, it's pretty damn destructive. And yet, there's just a whiff. There's just a whiff of that old pleasure that's there. And that just seems to be enough sometimes, you know? Yeah. Or as you've said, it's a distraction, right? It's a distraction from something else we're trying not to feel. Totally. I mean, it's scary for me how now I notice it. Now I notice how short the high is. I'll get something new. And the time that I feel good about it is less and less and less and less to the point where I'm probably, it's probably going to be five minutes. And I'm like, oh, and so actually I'm grateful for that feeling. I'm grateful for the fact that I can pinpoint it now. And I've course, we've got a caveat, the fact that, you know, we are talking about privilege and we're talking about

going above a certain level of excess. We're not talking about having money that will make your life better because there is research around money will make you so much happier, you know, paying your bills on time, having a better night's sleep, feeding your family, being able to literally have a better quality of life. But the research says that that's up to a certain level. I think it's up to like 50,000 pounds. That's like $70,000 a year. So that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And that can change people's lives. But I think there are a lot of people in this world who are so lost and have so much. So something's gone wrong there. That's a very good point and a good caveat. Let's talk for a minute about sort of circling back to your book, Disconnected. You say in that book, you talk about cancel culture,

you know, canceling people. I wonder if you could share a little bit about this. I know you've had some people on your show. This is something you've explored in some depth on your podcast, in your writing. I was wondering if you could share a little bit about it. Yeah, definitely. It's something that I'm super interested in at the moment. The fact that I think even about a year ago, we were on board for cancel culture, it seemed. It seemed like the internet, you know, we were happy about it. We were happy to publicly shame people for getting things wrong it was a very tense time and I remember even sort of you know looking at myself as a sort of social animal in that situation I was going along with all sorts of things and jumping on bandwagons and pointing the finger and I think even a year on we're starting the tide is starting to turn and we're starting

to look at that and think that's really extreme. We're dehumanising people on the internet. Of course, you're allowed to ask a question. The minute that you don't ask a question or asking questions is banned, is a really pretty scary time to live in society. We should always be open to discussion and questions. So I'm interested in looking at that area of how we're censoring ourselves and how it's damaging our art and how it's damaging creativity. This idea that if you don't say the right thing, you're out and you're cancelled. And, you know, we laugh about cancel culture a little bit because it sounds, you know, so kind of extreme. But it's actually a really valid concern.

Anyone really could be kind of cancelled, you know. I could say the wrong thing tomorrow and genuinely be up all night, you know, fending for myself and my career. I hope that will never happen, but you just don't know. So it's a topic that's quite heated still, but I think we're ready, I hope, to talk about, you know, making the online world human again, having uncomfortable conversations, getting into that discomfort of arguing and still liking the person you're arguing with. And that nuance, I think, I think we're stepping into a new time where we can have these discussions that we couldn't have even a year ago. 🎵 I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a floor? We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your

dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really.

No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You say in the book that we're talking about very different things here when we cancel somebody who worded something incorrectly versus saying in the same breath, someone like Harvey Weinstein, right? Who was canceled for a very good reason. So it's not that there's never a reason to say like, you know, like done, but as is so often the case on the internet, the nuance is just often gone. Yes, definitely. So I make that distinction in the book about how it's actually

really damaging to have an umbrella term for all those things. How can we have the same umbrella term that is Harvey Weinstein being in jail to, you know, someone putting something on Twitter when they were 14 that, you know, doesn't sound great now. I think this is like such a wide topic. And that's why cancel culture, the phrase I'm not a fan of. I don't think it's helpful. I don't think we need to use it anymore. Let's just talk about what it is, which is trying to make progress in society. And, you know, something that I, you know, I'm finding a bit uncomfortable as well

is this sort of trend to cancel books, for example, that came out like seven years ago because they're just not really that up to date anymore. And I'm not talking about offensive language. I'm not talking about, you know, really kind of awful, hateful speech. I'm talking about like a business book from 2013 that is now mocked publicly because it feels so outdated. And I just think, well, we should be celebrating those things being outdated. Time moves on, we move on. The fact that we can laugh at some feminist book from 2014 means that, thankfully, we don't really need that version of feminism anymore. And isn't that great? So I just think like, it doesn't matter what you intended.

It matters what the impact was. I understand and agree with that to a degree, but I actually do think intention matters. I think where someone's heart is and what they believe and what they care about and who they are, they may not know how to express that well. They may express that poorly. They may have some ideas that need updated. But I do think that that's another area where I feel like we've gone too far and we've said, well, intention doesn't matter at all. And I'm not sure I agree. I think I can understand where that comes from. If someone is hurt by something and then it's sort of used as an excuse, I can understand why that can be harmful. That's right. Yes. But I completely agree that we need to be more curious with each other and really understand that someone is genuinely trying to learn when they are. And I think it's all in the action as

well, isn't it? You know, I have these arguments with family members who say they're well-intentioned, which I'm like, you absolutely are. But if you say these things without learning or act like you're learning, then you don't get to say that anymore kind of thing. So I think you can tell when someone's good intentioned because they listen and then they apply that. And I think that's really good. You know, around the time of the George Floyd situation, I had several conversations with people who were, you know, very strong in the anti-racist community. And I have to admit, I approached those conversations with a bit of trepidation because I was like, I don't know if I know how to say things the right way. Like I'm learning,

you know, so I'm going to, I'm going to be willing to sort of step out there and perhaps say something that isn't the right thing to say. Cause I'm a 50 year old white man, but I kind of was like, I just hope that people will see the spirit and the intention underneath that is to learn. And we talked with Ibram X. Kendi, and he said something that was so important for me in that evolution. And it was to be able to say, I made a racist remark, not I am a racist, but I made a racist remark. As long as I think if I say something racist that makes me a bad person, then I'm going to defend myself against that allegation. But if I can just say, yeah, okay, I said that it was racist and I apologize and I don't want

to say anything like that again. It opened me up for a freedom a little bit, I think, to not feel the need to immediately go into defense mode. 100%. And that is an exercise I also did, where I would acknowledge the racism. And it was, again, an open hearted journey, which was led by Nova Reed, her book, The Good Ally, She takes you through step by step looking at these things. And yeah, it's incredibly powerful to step into that space of I'm in such a place of connection that these things can now be said. And what an amazing time to actually be connecting again, rather than shutting each other down all the time. be connecting again, rather than shutting each other down all the time. Yep. Let's change directions again and talk about your fiction book, Olive. I'm not going to give

the whole book away, but there are some clear themes in the book. And, you know, the big theme that sits in the center of the book is that Olive is a woman who does not want children and all her friends are having children. And it talks about what her experience of life is like trying to be a person who doesn't want to have children. And I think it does a beautiful job also of showing the way her stance affects the women who did have children. And I'm wondering if you could just share a little bit about that topic and why that was something that was important to you to write about. Yes, definitely. And thank you so much for reading it and for saying that because, yeah, it's very close to my heart, the topic. And I'm really proud of it as a novel because

it's my first novel. And, you know, I could have maybe explored it through a nonfiction lens, or I could have written it as a magazine article, or I could have been a podcast series, but I just really wanted it to be a novel because it was just such a meaty topic that I wanted to explore from all angles and sort of imagine this world where we could all just say what we want to say without it being me saying it. And yeah, I realized that in pop culture, you know, especially we don't have really any child free sort of not role models. I don't really like that phrase, but sort of these sort of poster women of what that is and what an amazing life that can be. You know, we've got Eat, Pray, Love, or we've got Sex and the City and Samantha Jones, or we've got a few things, but we don't really have a main character who knows they don't want children. So yeah, Olive is a story of four

friends, Olive being the main protagonist who just knows, you know, she's not someone who isn't sure. I mean, she kind of goes through that, but she knows, she knows deep down it's not for her. And her friends are going through, you know, motherhood in their own separate ways. There's a pregnant friend, there's a friend struggling and going through IVF. And there's another friend with, you know, three kids and a kind of chaotic household. And it's just this feeling of drifting away from your friends a little bit, because it's a huge part of our lives. And even women who don't do it are sort of defined by that a little bit. Yeah, I think that's the thing that I found so interesting is even if that's the choice that you make, as you said, you're defined by, you know, whether or not you have a child,

it becomes a defining factor for a woman. And, and Olive just seems to kind of want to be like, well, can I move out of that? And you create spaces in the book, and maybe they were based on real spaces, but you create spaces where she can sort of step into that role, but that in most places, it's just not there. Yeah, I loved writing that book, because, you know, I am obviously partly Olive, you know, she is a part of me. I, you know, she's not me, but she's like a ramped up version of me, I would say. And I wanted to really get to the heart of how alienating it can feel sometimes. And this isn't like a woe is me. It's so annoying when people ask me if I'm going to have kids at a a party thing because we all make small talk and there's nothing wrong with someone saying do you have kids

it's a question like you know it's such a normal question that's fine but I think what can be alienating is if you're a woman who literally has no interest in it like to the point where you're kind of bored by children and you don't really want to be around them and you just want to be with your friends and you want to talk about adult stuff and you you kind of want your friends to like put their kids to bed so you can talk to them you know what does that feel like as a woman it kind of makes you feel a bit weird because you're not feeling maternal and and there are many women who feel like that that's the thing like I interviewed so many women for this book because I wanted it to represent a lot of different women, not just like my thoughts about my own desires not to have children. So I interviewed women of

all ages, of all backgrounds, like different reasons why they don't want kids. And there's so many of us out there. So it's been quite an amazing thing, actually, to, you know, get emails off the back of the book and people getting it and also getting the other women in the book. You know, lots of parents love this book, I have heard, which is nice. Yeah, I loved the way you portrayed the four friends, each of them, and was really able to show how the behavior of one friend or the things that one friend would say, how it could be hurtful to another friend without meaning to. It leads me to the last thing I wanted to read from that book, which is you say, each woman I know carries it. Shame. But it's a different shape for us all. There's always a hidden shame related to motherhood, whether you want a baby or you don't, or whether you hate being a mother, or whether you love it more than anything else in your life. Say a little more about that. Well, I think this goes for everyone. I don't want to make it just a gendered woman thing, but I think shame is a massive part of being a woman. It's like a huge part of our existence because we're sort of always made to feel like we're doing things wrong or

we're not having it all. You know, the kind of Helen Gurley Brown book that was meant to say that women are meant to be all these things. You're meant to be a mother, you're meant to be a career woman, you're meant to be this, that, wife, sister, mother. And also, you know, the diet culture, the way that women are pitted against each other in the media still, the way that we're just meant to be all things to all people, that we should sort of put ourselves at the bottom of the pile and sort of serve our families or serve the people around us.

You know, historically, that's sort of what women did and the roles in society being carers or being, being that sort of nurturing sort of person, I guess, can make you feel guilty for wanting to do your own thing and wanting to put yourself at the top of the pile and wanting to go traveling and being a career woman. Like these are things that have like historically kind of been looked down upon, you know, if you're not the mother figure. So I wanted to look at that that I wanted to look at the fact that so many women in my life who are mothers feel guilty all the time they're guilty if they're not at home they're guilty if they're in the office like it's just a thing and then for me

I'm guilty I feel guilty that I don't want kids but I wanted to unpick where that comes from because I think you know child-free women are sometimes called selfish. Obviously, that is like an extreme thought on a lot of child-free by choice women that were selfish because we want to just live our life on our own terms. But for me, I think being selfish would be having a child and not being 100% on board. So, yeah, it's a meaty topic, and I love talking about it. It is a meaty topic and i love talking about it it is a meaty topic i was going to say and you could very easily now with the state of the world and population say choosing to have a child is a selfish gesture i mean you could play that card either direction but i love the nuance

that you talk about it and i agree i'm a man but every woman i've known and women that i've worked with in my coaching and i talked to you're right there this either, I'm a stay-at-home mom, I should be working, or I shouldn't be working, I should be at home, or I should have kids, or I shouldn't have kids. I mean, it's just such a heavy, heavy topic. And I love the way you explored it through the book. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's a real thing. And especially for women my age, I think, because I'm in my 30s. So it's like the peak time where I'm asked all the time if I'm going to have kids. And it's just, it's an interesting one. But, you know, if anyone listening here feels the same as me, feel free to reach out because, you know, it's my community.

I feel like I found a community, which is very exciting. That is wonderful. Yeah, you say in the book, and then bam, even though I should have seen it coming, babies are suddenly on the brain. There's an abrupt tap on the shoulder from friends, family, society, and suddenly it's the number one topic of conversation. Babies, babies, babies, when, when, when? It really does happen like that, though. It's like suddenly there's a flip and I got married this year. So it's like, it definitely is the question. Oh, boy, it's ramped up, right? I was curious about that. And I don't want to go into your personal life. But I was curious, knowing you had written Olive in the past, and then gotten married, what impact getting married had on the way you viewed the topic or the pressure or any of that stuff? Yeah, it's's funny because it really is a next step in the grand picture of society like that is you get married and then why'd you get married? You

get married to have babies, surely. So it's quite funny. I was actually in a taxi the other day and somehow we got onto it and they were like, oh, you know, you've just got married. And they were like, oh, it's going to be so exciting. You're going to have kids. I love my kids. And I was like, oh no, I don't think it's for me. And then she sort of said something which unfortunately is slightly offensive. And I don't think she meant it, but it was this sort of, oh, but you must, you must have kids. You'll never know what love is. And I just had that feeling of like, oh, there it is again. So that really is why I sort of wrote this book and wanted to talk about it is again. So that really is why I sort of wrote this book and wanted

to talk about it is because it's not like strangers on the internet saying this stuff. It's like everywhere. It's just everywhere. Yeah, totally. Yes. Everywhere. You also say that like almost every time if you say I don't want kids that it's followed up with some version of, well, if you change your mind as if like it's natural that sooner or later, you're going to come to your senses. Yeah, I had that actually, when I was doing the press for Olive last year, did a lot of interviews, and I loved it. But there are quite a few ones where the interviewer said, Oh, Emma, I thought that your age, I've got two kids now. And I was thinking, that's so weird and patronizing. But also,

and this is a really, really important thing. I think this whole conversation around having kids, we need to sort of address the elephant in the room, which is a lot of people can't have children who want them. And I just feel like, oh, we've got to stop doing this to each other because you can get in that territory, you know, like the taxi driver saying, oh, you're going to have kids next. It's a well-meaning thing to say, but it's also like, you don't, they don't know what I've been through. Like I could be someone who has tried and failed. So I think that's another part of the conversation I wanted to talk about, which is there's child-free like choice women like me, who is like waving the flag of like, don't want them. And then there's women who are like in a lot of pain around this topic.

So I think it's making that distinction as well. Agreed. And I think in general, just more sensitivity around how we discuss that and what assumptions we make. And it just, to me has always felt like an area that like, I would not wade into with someone I don't know. I would just not make it, try not to make any assumption one way or the other or say anything just because it's like, like you said, you just don't know. I would just not make it, try not to make any assumption one way or the other or say anything just because it's like, like you said, you just don't know. Totally. Yeah, totally. Well, we are at the end of our time. You and I are going to keep talking in the post-show

conversation because I could talk to you all day. And listeners, if you'd like access to that, as well as other post-show conversation, ad-free episodes, special episodes I do solo. You can learn all about that and the other benefits of membership at oneufeed.net slash join. Emma, thank you so much for coming on. It's really been fun. I was so honored to be on your show and I'm so happy to have had you on and us get to deepen our connection. Thank you so much, Eric. I love talking to you. And honestly, I discovered the one you feed last year, I think early, early last year, and it really helped me through a really dark time. And I love your show so much. So thank you. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support.

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