The One You Feed - Jessica Hagy on How to Be Fearless

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Jessica Hagy is an artist and writer of many books which have been translated into over a dozen languages. Her blog, Indexed, won a Webby award. She is a visual storyteller and her simple, brilliant drawings illustrate the connections between things.  In this episode, Jessica and Eric talk about her book,  How to Be Fearless: In 7 Simple Steps.But 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!In This Interview, Jessica Hagy and I Discuss How to Be Fearless and …Her book, How to Be Fearless: In 7 Simple StepsThat inside every fear is a hopeDwell on what you want instead of what worries youHow envy isn’t shameful, it’s powerfulHow her diagrams boil things down to their essenceWays we can build hope within ourselvesHow one small accomplishment motivates you towards your next Resourcefulness as finding treasure everywhereThat intense emotions aren’t a problem, they can be our powerThe importance of making plans to make progressThe relationship between isolation and fearJessica Hagy Links:Jessica’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramUpstart: The fast and easy way to get a personal loan to consolidate, lower your interest rate, and pay off your debt. Go to www.upstart.com/wolfIf you enjoyed this conversation with Jessica Hagy, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Jessica Hagy (Interview from 2014)Poetry in Every Day Life with Jaqueline SuskinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Envying and wanting and admiring things, I think, is something that we're told we shouldn't do, as opposed to something we should seek out and use for fuel for all of our endeavors. 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 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, 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 No 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, 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. What's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jessica Hagee. Jessica was, I believe, the third guest ever on the One You Feed podcast, hundreds of episodes ago. We're super happy to have her back. She is a writer and an artist with many books. They've been translated into over a dozen languages. She's also the winner of a Webby Award for her blog, Indexed, and everyone should do themselves a favor and look at these books and these diagrams that she makes, which are simultaneously hilarious, intelligent, thought-provoking. It's hard to explain exactly what she does, so go out and check that out. And today, Eric and Jessica will be discussing her book,

How to Be Fearless in Seven Simple Steps. Hi, Jessica. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. We are going to be discussing your book, How to Be Fearless in Seven Simple Steps. And we'll get to that in a minute. And we'll start with a parable in a minute. But I wanted to just say to you, thank you, because you were, I looked earlier, you were our third guest on the show. You were episode number three that we released. So I appreciate you being willing to come on way back then. It doesn't feel that long ago, to be honest.

It stands out to me. Even though it was a long time ago, it still really stands out to me. I just felt like we had a really great connection then. Yeah, and I'm really glad to talk to you again. I'm happy to talk to you again. Also, I've kept up with your work over the years, which is the other reason to me it doesn't seem like a long time ago. Conversations with you are a little bit interesting because you are a somewhat visual artist. You combine words and diagrams to make really great points. And so for us to have this conversation is I feel like we are getting one dimension of you, not all your dimensions. So for listeners, I definitely encourage you to go look at Jessica's

work because it's the diagrams and the drawings that really bring so much of this alive. It is always interesting to go onto podcasts and sort of try and describe what I do visually, because some people really get it when I talk about it, and some people are more like, what are you saying? So thank you for that intro. Yes. We will probably put like one of your drawings in the show notes so they're available, but even I don't even know that that will show up in all the podcast players. Anyway, folks, go check out Jessica's stuff. But let's jump in with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson. She says 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 grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandmother and he says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother 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. what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I have to say right now, the part of the wolf that I'm really trying to starve out is the wolf that is saying, everything's fine. Everything's normal. You can be,

you can go right back to everything else all as well. And the part that I'm trying to feed is you need to learn from the past year or so. You need to really metabolize that experience and not just go bolting out the door, pretending that everything is just as it was. Because I think we've all been through upheaval and not recognizing that and not letting it impact us is probably the wrong answer to going forward. What might that look like for you? Like, what are the things you need to metabolize? I think the things I need to metabolize are how my time is spent and where it is spent and who it's spent with and how I can best be my best self, not only to the work I do, which typically pre-COVID everything, I was doing work in my space on my own.

And now I realize, oh, my family's here. How does this impact them? And their sort of Photoshop layer over everything else has really gotten, I think, thicker and less transparent. And embedding myself both deeper and smartly in that space is important. So I don't think I can just go back to working all the time and thinking about things in my own space, but it's more of the weft and the weave of how my time fits with other people's time. Yeah, I think a lot of people are dealing with definitely some, I think upheaval is a good word, as the world is opening back up. There are so many opportunities and requests coming at certain people to do so much. And they're having a really

hard time sorting out which do I want to do and saying yes, yes, yes, yes, because we're so eager. We haven't had opportunities to do much of anything. And so I know a lot of people are struggling with this and that there is some unease and hard to know how to discern. You know, we haven't had to discern what to do and what not to do as far as externally in quite some time. Yeah. And I think that sort of cleave between what is important and what is asked of us is something that we actually have to look at now, as opposed to, I have to do what I need to do. And now it's, what do I really need to do? Because those spaces have been sort of Tetris rearranged for everybody. And seeing like

what you need to do and where you need to be, those questions are different questions, and the answers are different questions than we had before. They are. I mean, I think being able to ask those questions is always fundamentally important. I think we've got a reset that allows us to ask them in fresher and newer ways, perhaps. Yeah, and I think everybody is kind of sensing a little bit more of their own sort of, my fate is more in my control. And I get to say yes to this and no to that. And again, it's the wolf feeding parable of what do I really want? And what can I do to make that happen? Because so many things that I don't want, I realized are not mandatory right now. Right, right. Yeah. If your life was full of obligations and things that you

didn't want to do, this was a lovely reset period. Because you can sort of see like, I guess the world doesn't end if I don't do that. Right? Isn't that a freeing moment where you're just like, Oh, huh? Neat. Yeah. Yep. So let's jump into your book, How to Be Fearless. And like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of drawings and diagrams and words. But I want to start with a line from pretty early in the book, which says that buried inside every fear is a hope. Say more about that. Yes, absolutely.

So what you are afraid of is what's stopping you from getting to where you need to be. getting to where you need to be. And what you are afraid of is something that is a barrier between you and where you're happy and comfortable and powerful again. And I keep going back to the idea of fear and researching this book and reading all sorts of psychological papers and documents and other books about the idea of being afraid, it all really came down to, you don't have to be brave if you're not fighting anything. And so just being focused on, okay, this is what I'm after. And this is what I'm going to do. All of a sudden, the things that are around it or behind it, or like getting in your own way, really disappear because you focus instead on the actual reason that you're trying to do something. Yeah. I've heard a different phrasing of that

from a teacher of acceptance and commitment therapy. And I think the phrase he used was our values and vulnerabilities sort of come out of the same vessel, Had a lot of alliteration to it, but it speaks to this basic idea that, you know, all vulnerabilities can tell us what's valuable to us, what matters to us. Yeah, it brings up the idea of the metaphor of the pearl or of a scar tissue that just because something has happened to you doesn't mean you're not stronger because of it. Didn't mean you couldn't build up a beautiful way to get around it and solve for it. And I think the solving for what bothers us is actually like a very foundational point of strength for most people. Because without any sort of challenge, we're never going to rise to an occasion of any kind.

So step one is to be focused. And you say dwell on what you want instead of what worries you. I love that idea. And it seems to me that it's a slight pivot of attention. It's not a huge pivot of attention. Those two ideas really are very parallel and enmeshed with each other. Because if what you're worried about is not getting to the next level and what you really want is that next level, it's really up to you to say, okay, I'm

just going to leapfrog that and say, this is the best I can do. And I'm not going to think about the things that might hold me back. I'm just going to go and really enjoy what I like to do or what I'm focused on. I'm not going to think about the people who disagree with me or will fight with me or will belittle me. I'm just going to like leapfrog them and do the things that I need to do. While keeping this framework of dwell on what you want instead of what worries you, how would you say, you know, that we clearly look at the actual obstacles in our path, right? Because we do need to be able to look at obstacles, create strategies, create plans around them.

Talk a little bit about how we do that without getting into, you know, dwelling on what worries us. Yeah, I think talking about this too, and thinking of this idea globally, and not specifically, I really just kept looking at anecdotes of things like, oh, there's a boss that I don't think will help me, or there's a monetary cost that I don't know if I can get around. And again, like there are always little creative ways that people will be like, well, I'm going to do it this way. If I want to learn this new thing, I have a library. If I want to be a better person to my spouse, I don't have to go out of my way.

I just have to listen to them or subtle little shifts that whatever is in the way, if you ignore it and really focus on, okay, what I want, then the obstacle itself becomes so much smaller. We usually use those obstacles as excuses, as opposed to like actual obstacles. And if we can kind of weave around them creatively with our own sort of greedy love, we can get to where we want to be better. with our own sort of greedy love, we can get to where we want to be better. That's a great phrase, greedy love, because it leads me into another of the ideas from this step one, which is to start with your envy. Envy isn't shameful, it's powerful. That's an interesting take on it.

Yeah, I've always seen people, especially in the art space, where they find something that's just absolutely gorgeous and wonderful. And they're like, I wish I had painted that. I wish I had written that. I wish I had done that already. And instead of getting angry about it, the really good artists I see are just like, I'm going to take my own methodologies and media and do something more like that. And that's that sort of motivation because you don't know what you can be until you see it somewhere else that gives you that next step up. And envying and wanting and admiring things, I think is something that we're told we shouldn't do as opposed to something we

should seek out and use for fuel for all of our endeavors. Right. You know, at least in my experience, there's a couple of, I don't know if the word I would use is caveats to that, but additional thoughts on that. You know, one is you've got a diagram somewhere in the book, and I can't remember where, but you talk about a culture that commoditizes us. And we live in a culture that commoditizes everything and a culture that markets relentlessly to our needs and our wants and very quickly makes us want things that don't really bring us happiness. And so it's funny, like I have often resisted watching television because for me, I feel like I am easily manipulated

into wanting something that if I didn't see it, I would never think I wanted it. But you show it to me on TV in this special light, and I'm all of a sudden like, oh, maybe I need that. And so I think that idea of envy, I agree, it is powerful in the right way. And I think it takes some real discernment to know what's real envy or to say it slightly differently, what's the real desire of my heart versus what I'm sort of sold into believing is the desire of my heart. Oh yeah. So much of advertising is telling us too, that we have flaws that need fixed. Whereas before we'd seen the advertisement, we're like, I didn't know that was something that could be even wrong with me. Like,

oh, what? But when we see something, I think that like deeply prompts us to be like, wow, that is magnificent. It tends not to be the things that we're like, oh, I could probably use a snuggie around the campfire or yeah, I could get that shampoo or something shallow like that. But the things that deeply trigger us aren't things that we can acquire. They're things we want to be. Yeah. And I think if really good advertising makes us think that if we have something, we'll be someone else and being someone else matters so much more to people than having something else. Yeah. I also heard a concept about envy, the type that you're describing. And it was basically when you think that you look at something, you're like, wow, that was, I really want to be like that. I want it. And it feels

like it's in range. Yeah. That sort of envy is empowering. And we go, yes, I can do that. And yet if it feels out of range, doesn't motivate us, it demotivates us because we look at and we go, yes, I can do that. And yet if it feels out of range, doesn't motivate us, it demotivates us because we look at it and go, no way, can't get there. Yeah. What's applicable versus impossible. And what is something I can be versus something that I've been told I can't be. I think too, is that's a level of fear, which is someone saying you should know your place and your place is not where you aspire to be. And if people can say, no, no, no, I'm going to do exactly what I think is beautiful and wonderful and helpful. And I'm going to go be that person. And that's important because so much of advertising and marketing and Instagram and Facebook,

this is your place. The algorithm has told you this is your place and this is what you should want. And when we really are moved by actual feelings and wants and needs, those don't align with that algorithm at all. You keep referring to being the person we want to be. referring to being the person we want to be. And I'm curious if that word is very intentional, because very often when I'm teaching about values or intentions, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the person I want to be, not necessarily what I'm going to accomplish. I might say, I want to be a person that makes beautiful art versus I want to be an artist

that has 5 million Instagram followers. Oh, those are totally different things. Which is better. I'm kidding. I think the person who makes the beautiful things, because half the time, even if you talk to the people who are super, super famous or wealthy or anything, they're still just looking for that satisfaction of the little flame inside me says, this is who you are. And if I haven't fed that flame,

if that little wolf is starving, then the rest of all of the exterior wealth and success doesn't matter at all. So yeah, we're really talking about qualities of being and what we do. Yeah. And doing this entire book, it was, I can get extremely academic and weirdly like old school philosophy. And like, how do I translate that? Or how do I take those ideas and put them into formats that everybody can understand? And I think part of the whole process was really saying, what are people feeling and how can I tap into that and pivot that a little bit as opposed to dropping all sorts of, okay, so this is the historical context for your need right now.

And playing with ideas on that spectrum of very difficult to very approachable was something that I really played with a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely on the very approachable side. I think that's the nature of some of your work. I think by boiling things down to diagrams, you cut through a lot of historical precedent and theory and all this different stuff and you boil it down to its essence. Yeah, if I can draw a diagram with three words that I think summarizes Lichtenstein, then okay, cool, got it. And then you would never know that that was the origin of the idea behind that. And I think that is my job is to make interesting ideas that I come across really, is my job is to make interesting ideas that I come across really, really approachable and palatable and metabolizable for anybody who reads what I put out. 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 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 spacewalk gives us the answer.

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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. Staying on this idea

of hope a little bit, you know, hope animates what fear paralyzes, hope builds what fear destroys. What are some ways that we build that hope? You know, we talked about one, envy, being one, looking at what we want. But what are ways to build that hope? Because sometimes that hope seems very fragile. Exactly. And I think hope as an idea is more of a directionality. So you can be in a boat and looking way out at the horizon and the horizon continues to move as you move. It's just a function of the physics of how we are, but looking out and saying, I will get there and having just a point somewhere to aim for gives us an anchor on what we're doing. If we don't have something that we're working toward, aiming toward, learning about, trying to get better at, then we'll just sort of paddle everywhere and it'll just be treading water and you'll want to sink because there's nowhere to go.

But as long as you do have somewhere to go, then all of a sudden there's a purpose to what you're working on. And that is a very animating feeling. Yeah. You have a line in there, make plans to make progress. You know, I would say a lot of the work I do with coaching clients is exactly that. We're making plans so that we can make progress. And there's a couple of really important points to that. I

mean, one is without a plan, like you said, I'm paddling everywhere. If I don't have a plan, it's hard to use my time. Well, there's a whole bunch of reasons. But the other is if I have a plan, and that plan has some milestones, I can sort of see like, oh, I'm making progress. You know, I started working with a coach again at the beginning of this year because I needed some of that. I felt like I needed some clearer progress points that I could say, yes, we're moving in the right direction because the movements, at least at the stage that we're at, they're harder for me to discern. Yeah. And I think too, even if you pick the wrong end point, you still go somewhere and you still learn something and you can change direction

at any time. But just having that momentum of, I'm going to read this book, I'm going to learn this idea, I'm going to figure out how this software works. Some small accomplishment motivates you to do more small accomplishments until all of a sudden you've done something huge and changed all sorts of things about your life. And it's just by making those like little steps, like I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to do that thing. I'm going to make this happen. And they don't have to be massive. They just have to be satisfying. Right. Step two is be hopeful. And I've been talking about hope all the time, way ahead of time. I'm completely out of order here, but you have a line there that I love

when fear tries to anchor you to a miserable moment, it's hope that will help you move on. Yeah. Yeah. I think when we do have those voices in our head and those recurring thoughts of you're trying to go to sleep and you think everything's fine. And then your brain's like, you know how badly you like totally screwed that up that one time. And you're like, oh no. And that's the thing that you keep thinking about as opposed to the hundreds of times since that you've done really magnificent things. And I think our brains, I don't know why, are just wired for that sort of maybe if we're aware of the missteps we've made, we won't make them again.

Maybe it's a protective mechanism. But the idea of no thinking of the other things you can do is so much more useful and kinetic. Yeah, not to turn this into a conversation about me. But I was having a conversation with my coach the other day about this very thing. And I was reflecting these concerns about the changing media landscape, the media landscape is changing and small independent producers are getting squeezed. People like us, you know, tons of money coming into blah, blah, blah. So I'm worried about that, which is a valid thing to be worried about. And he just said,

but why do you think you're not going to figure that out? You figured every other change out for the last seven years. You've navigated all the challenges that have come up. Why is it that you think this one you won't? And I didn't have a really good answer to that, except, you know, yeah, it's that human tendency to sort of look for what's wrong. I've become more and more clear on how that negativity bias that we're wired with really impacts us. You know, it's our nature. That's what the brain is doing. It's like a problem, problem, problem anywhere, you know, looking for problems. And so this idea of instead of when I'm looking at my doubts is to sort of repeat my hopes.

Yeah. And I think too, that we're so afraid of, because our world right now is so precarious that if you make one mistake, oh, you could fall off a cliff suddenly, or, oh, you could lose your entire career and everything you have and your home and your family and everything, like one mistake, instead of feeling like, no, everything you've already built is a really solid foundation. And you have friends and colleagues and work, and you're going to be more okay than you think because of all you've done and all the people you've already reached. And that sort of idea of safety and progress is really in complete opposite to what our brain tells us and what our culture tells us and what our economy tells us about what our trajectories could be. I'm going to get us through all seven steps here, believe it or not. Step three is be resourceful. And I'm going to

pull one line out from there. And then I'd love to just ask you what you'd like to talk about from that section. But the line that struck me is resourcefulness is the art of finding treasure everywhere. So the idea of resourcefulness is the idea of creativity for people who don't think they're creative. Resourcefulness is, oh, I know how to use these tools that I already have, or I know who to call to get this done, or I know how this supply chain works and I'm going to access this point to get what you need to you at what time. And people, when they hear the word resourceful, they say, oh, I can do that. I can tap into things. I can tap into resources. I can work with what I have. But if you say creative, people say, oh, I'm not an artist. I don't paint. And they're the same sort of words when we get into the idea of building anything, like building your life or building your project or building a goal. And resourcefulness really is that sort of, I'm going to observe and I'm going to apply and I'm just going to be the most human

human I can be. Because I think that's kind of the crux of what we are as creatures is we find things and we turn them into tools and we turn those tools into entire civilizations. And we've all got that going for us. Anything else about resourcefulness you want to add? Yeah. I think a lot of people will think like, I don't have anything. I don't have the privileges or the upbringings or the assets that I need to do what I want to do. But so much of finding your way out of that core of thinking is saying, I was raised by amazing people. I was put in this beautiful place. I can call up on this and that, and I can figure this out. And my brain itself is a magical, powerful computer, and I'm going to get this done.

And that sort of proud resourcefulness that is unexpected in so many of us is really what's going to propel us out of a fearful, frozen state and into a really active, impressive space. Right. And tying that back to hope, right? When we have hope, we are, I think, naturally more resourceful, right? If I have some degree of hope, I'm willing to sort of keep looking. Yes. I'm willing to keep looking for treasure. Yes. I'm willing to keep looking for treasure. Whereas if I'm believing all my doubts, it only takes the first roadblock for me to go, see, couldn't I told, you know, I knew I couldn't do it.

And so I never get the chance to be resourceful because the first block confirms the doubt that I am really living into instead of keeping my eye on, on the hopefulness and going, okay, all right, that didn't work. What, what about trying this? And okay, now let's try this. And all right, what if I, you know, looked at it this way? And there was a metaphor about a guy with a metal detector and it's like, well, he only has the metal detector because he thinks he might find something. And he only sweeps it back and forth 7,000 times across this beach every morning. And he hasn't failed every sweep he makes. But on that like 70th morning when he finds a huge piece of gold, was he wrong the other days and other thousands of sweeps? the other days and other thousands of sweeps? No, like you proved himself for doing it and keeping with it and knowing that if he kept up with what he thought he could do, he would get it done. Step four is be earnest. Do not be afraid to admit you care deeply. Your intense emotions

are your most precious power. Boy, I know a lot of people who think their intense themselves the truth of what they actually want to do or need to do or feel. And the repressing of I need this, I need to do this, I shouldn't do this is as scary as some like actual rage sometimes. Right. And as a person who has wrestled with depression, a lot of his adult life, which I think if I had to make a guess, has some roots in a constant repression for the better part of my, you know, my first 20 years. Strong emotion is an energy you can work with. It's a tool. It's absolutely a tool. Yeah. It provides energy. Whereas, you know, lack of emotion, deadness, my experience has been, has been a harder thing to work with and transform. Not that it can't be done. Not that there's not something there, but it's a much lower frequency vibration. And so it's almost like you have to amplify the signal,

then transform it. Whereas if you've got plenty of signal, it's just about transforming it. Yeah. That numbness is a very frightening place to be because one, you're just like, is this, is this it? And am I trapped here? And it's just as a quick Sandy feeling where at least if you have something intense and powerful, that is, this is telling me something. I'm responding to a stimuli somehow I'm still here. I'm still, my body's paying attention somehow, even if my mind doesn't know what to do with what my body's telling it. And when I've got like something like intense, or if I really care about

something powerfully, I shouldn't be afraid to let that out and express it. Otherwise, the status quo continues on and all we do is just sort of suffer along with it. And that numbness intensifies. Right, right. And I think it gets back to that idea of buried inside every fear is a hope or buried inside every strong negative emotion is a desire for something. depressed and isolated, you need support and backup. And sometimes we're so in the gray of those feelings that we don't see the contrast there. If it is really dark, there must be a really light side of this. And thinking of it in that sort of like curious hero visual sense of what our feelings look like, we can almost like track or like filter our way through. Mm-hmm. The other thing with be earnest that you say is excuses, doubts, and procrastination are forms of fear. Let me rank these.

Excuses, I think, people might go, maybe. Doubts, sure. Yeah, that's a form of fear. Procrastination, I don't know. Is it? Yeah, I think when I was trying to figure out why do people sort of resist taking action or resist doing something that they think they might fail at. And we'll put up all of these sort of like really soft blocks around ourselves, like a puffy armor of, well, I'm really busy and I really can't and I shouldn't and I don't

do karaoke. But instead of just saying like, I really want this and going for it and saying, this is important to me because I think those admissions feel really arrogant and they feel really greedy and they feel really, who the hell do you think you are saying that? And a lot of us, if we do say it's important to me and I'm myself and I'm going to go get that and saying that to ourselves more than anyone else is what will get us into those spaces where we stop questioning. Is it okay for me to want this? people on procrastination and, you know, procrastination, some of it is, you know, back to your point earlier about make plans to make progress. I think we procrastinate when we don't quite know what to do and we're not sure the path forward when there's ambiguity, you know, so clarity is really important. But then the next element really is procrastination because we're

afraid we can't do it. We're just afraid we just don't have what it takes to do it. And do you find people are procrastinating out of a fear of failure or a fear of success? Because I think it's kind of like an equal balance half the time where you're just like, what are you really like putting off here? I think I see more fear of failure. That tends to be more what I see. But I think fear of success is nebulous because it's harder to name what exactly am I afraid of with success? What does that look like for you? Well, so even thinking about what an art project is going to look like at the end, I'm like, oh, it has to be this in my brain. And then I do it and it looks different. Did I fail

or did I succeed in a different way? And I think that's something that a lot of, a lot of us actually have to like, think about like, did I really fail at this or did I just do something else really well? And I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for, I did this absolutely different thing really, really well, because I kept doing something. That's a fear of success because you have to succeed in a certain way and anything else, if you're really, really, really just like zeroed in on that one little nebulous thing, all the other things just disappear and are worthless all of a sudden and refocusing on, oh, what I'm doing is actually really,

really useful and helpful. And it's okay that it's not what I thought it would be. You say, go to where fear cannot find you. Your happiest place is a safe harbor from fear. What do you mean by our happiest place? Do you mean literally go to a place I like to be? Do you mean imagine a innate to them. And for some people, it's with other people who understand them. It's with their found family. It's in a place where they feel safe and unguarded. It's in a workspace where they're supported. And when you think of what is your happy place, something will spring to your mind and you're like, yeah, I know what that, I know what that feels like. It could be an embrace. It could be a chair. It could be some park that only 10 people in the city know about, but everybody knows exactly quickly where their place is. Yeah. There's a type of meditation called I rest and it's been used with a lot of veterans, a lot of people with PTSD. And it really is an

interesting meditation protocol because it pulls multiple different what I would... 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 spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you.

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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. Consider meditation types together into one. But one of the exercises is sort of defining your happy place. And in it, it's actually you think of a place. It's a technique that you do in your mind to sort of ground and settle you. It's a retreat without having to go anywhere, in essence.

I've always found it an interesting idea. I was reading about habits like that. I was reading about habits like that. And one of the things was when you know, when you are truly embodying or like feeling your way through a a little bit, it really is like, oh, even my heartbeat changes when I think about different locations where I could physically be. And it's a super powerful thing to put in your brain. Absolutely. Step five is be connected. Connections with others are a powerful defense against fear. Say a little more about that. Yes. The one thing that I kept coming up on when I was reading about why are we afraid?

What are we working against? How does fear manifest in us? And isolation was a key component of it triggers all the fear and all the like deep depression and terrible just I don't know what to do because I can't talk to anyone about it. And I don't know how to be because I don't have anyone to echo off of. And being out and about and learning of different places where I could exist or different communities where I could join in. That really sort of, again, it's an anchoring system of I belong here. I can do this in this space. And again, just even going through all of the, okay, this is what COVID is doing to

people. This is what lockdown is doing to people. This is how isolation is affecting people who age out of friend groups because all of their friends pass away. How do we work with the very elderly or the very isolated? And all of those ideas really where just one person can totally change how you react because you have one connection, you have one bullet point, you have one anchor. And finding those anchors just is amazingly powerful. Yeah. I heard a statistic the other day that I thought, can that be true? And then I said that to someone else. I said, I heard this statistic and can that be true? And they're like, oh yeah, it's true. So again, I don't know if it's true a hundred percent, but a couple of people validated it now is that for the first time in history, the loneliest age group is like 16 to 23. It was always the elderly. It's been the elderly for as long as anybody knows. And now it is the people that you would

think of as having the most opportunity for connection and yet still being really lonely. So I don't know if they're more lonely than the elderly, but even the fact that it's that close, if it's even close, is worrisome. I think reading a lot of, I have to do a lot of schoolwork to get into college. College is so important. If I don't do college, what do I do? I can't go and hang out with everyone because everyone's already doing their things, but I'm connected to everyone on social media, which is just making me feel more isolated because everyone's doing things that I can't tell are real or not. And the other people that I don't really know on social media are doing things that don't even seem real at all. Who are you? Like, you're just trying to grow up and meet people and become who you are. And

you're bombarded with, you should be this and that and the other thing. And meanwhile, there's no one in real life to bounce it off of and say, is this true? Is this, is this who you are? Like, what am I doing? What are you doing? What are we doing? Are we somebody? And I can totally see that that statistic rings true. Yep. Yeah. I find this idea. I think anybody who pays attention knows that loneliness, isolation is incredibly bad for us. We're told it's worse than smoking three packs of cigarettes and whatever. I don't know if it's three packs, but it's not good. Yet, it's one of those things that I think if you're in it, it's really hard to find your way out of. I think the loneliest I've ever felt was when I was surrounded by people at work, at school,

at everywhere, but I didn't have anyone that was my deep, true friend. And finding someone that gets you or even being out in the world and not having to perform a role that you've been told you have to perform, then you can connect with real people who will be like, oh, it's you, of course. That's a strangely freeing thing is to just leave everyone who makes you feel lonely and find people who don't.

And that is a strangely accidental process I found almost the entire time. And the idea of being open to the serendipity of others is half the battle. If you walk into a room and you say, I'm going to just be myself and hopefully that works and other people do the same. That's how you end up with like really goofy, weird conversations. And Oh, hello. It's you. Of course it is. Yes. Let's be friends. It goes against all of the,

you must behave yourself and look exactly right at all times sort of advice, which I don't think has ever worked for real connection. No, no. Real connection takes some degree of, like you said, being yourself. Yeah. And the vulnerability of going against all the training you've taken from, from everything that's made you lonely, the Instagram and the performance and the professionalism aspects of our lives and just shedding that and being, I'm a human being. Hi. Yeah. We have this spiritual habits program. It's a group program. And we take the big group and divide it up into smaller groups.

And one of the most satisfying things for me has been watching some of those small groups form and become real friendships that endure over time. I think the element there is, yeah, somebody takes a chance. You know, somebody was just telling me about, we did a breakout group in one of our Sunday sessions and somebody said, we got into this breakout room and like right out of the gate, one person just shared this incredibly vulnerable thing and boom, the whole room lit up and came alive. And I feel like I have four new friends, you know, because one person was willing to do it. That's beautiful. That's one of those magical sort of, oh, this is maybe how civilization started, right? Like, oh, it didn't happen because we called a meeting on Zoom and we had five people talk about three bullet points. No, it was more just, hi, I'm here and this is part of me. And other people are like, oh, I'm here and here's a part of me too. And those parts are sticky. Yeah. And you talk about be connected as a way of helping with

being fearless. And, you know, one of the things I found really helpful about connection is that I've had the opportunity to interview lots of really amazing people. And what's been really great for me is I've realized, like, they're all afraid sometimes, no matter how successful they've been. They're like, I have written five New York Times bestsellers, but this time I'm going to fall flat on my face. Yeah. And it's very normalizing. You go, oh, yeah, even these people I look up to have these things. And so that's what, you know, connection can be so powerful. You say fear isolates, shames, segregates and weakens us. Fearlessness is togetherness.

Yeah. And like you said, like knowing that people you look up to are human and fragile as well, that fills in the gaps in you. And it lets them say, I have gaps and I don't have to pretend I don't. Because people who put off that sort of, I'm an expert, I'm infallible, that feels automatically doubtful, you know, because you're like, no, you're just, you're somebody, right? Like, where's your somebody-ness? Yes. Having that bit of, no, we're all just silly. And we think that we're flukes. And we think that everything good that's happened to us has been accidental and unearned. And, oh, no. And everyone, when everyone's like, oh, me too, imposter syndrome in academia is a big thing. And so we had a workshop on imposter syndrome and they came in and they asked us to take this quiz, you know, rank yourself on imposter syndrome, right? The person who scored the highest was the head of the department with all the published papers that everybody looked up to. And I just found that to be such a telling story of like, I'm sure everybody else in the room was like, I'm the imposter. He's the real deal.

Yeah. Right. And he still felt the same thing. And what does it tell us that all of the messages that we're receiving can contradict our own absolute bullet points on a resume truths of ourselves. Like if everything out there is saying like, you don't matter and you're wrong and you're faking it and you haven't earned this, like we have to give everybody that we meet like so much slack for being everybody, because we've all been told that we're not enough. And if we just assume that everybody else is fantastic, we're probably going to be right.

If we just assume everybody else is fantastic, we're probably going to be right. I don't know who it was that the quote, I feel like it was Nelson Mandela, like it never hurts to believe the best in someone will often be proved right. Yeah. Or no, I think it's they'll often act the better because of it. Right? Like you're I mean, if you're going to go into a room and set up some expectations, why not just assume everything's great? And then no one feels ashamed or worried. Like that's a huge gift to give to somebody. Totally. And you know, what you just said there reminds me of this, this general idea that so much of what we're talking about here are the stories that we create. I can do it or I can't do it.

No one knows the future is not written. So by nature, if I say I can do it, I'm making up a story. And if I say I can't do it, I'm making up a story. It's not there's no fact, there's no reality, there's no truth. And so if we're making it up, you know, if I walk into a room full of people, I'm like, those people are jerks. That's a story. If I say they're all wonderful people, same thing. Why not pick ones that empower us? probably going to build us a better foundation of whatever it is we're trying to do than assuming people are stupid out to get us bad. And it doesn't do us any good. It just makes us more terrified of everyone else as opposed to just saying, oh, I got six people in this room. We've got this. I don't need to know what they're capable of, but there are six of us. We've got it done. Yep. Absolutely. Well, we did not get through all seven points. Matter of fact, we got through five and a half. So we're going to finish the last two points. We have two and a half points to get through. We're going to do it in the post-show conversation. And these are two of my favorite points, be aware and be curious. So we'll do that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to that post-show conversation to a special episode I do each week called A Teaching Song and a Poem, ad-free episodes and other member benefits, as well as the joy of supporting an independent podcast, go to oneufeed.net slash join, and you can get all those details there. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a real pleasure.

I was so happy to have you on 400 episodes or something ago, and I am so glad to have you back. Congratulations on 400 episodes. That's stunning. I hadn't realized it was that many. It's an awful lot. It's something like that. Anyway, thank you so much for coming back on.

We'll have links to your information in the show notes. And again, listeners, if you don't see your diagrams, you're missing a huge portion of the genius of her work. 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. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like

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