The One You Feed - The Paradoxes of Self Improvement with Heather Havrilesky

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

In this episode, Heather Havrilesky delves into the complexities of modern life paradoxes. She shares her journey of self-discovery and acceptance, emphasizing the struggle of balancing the “good wolf” and the “bad wolf” within oneself. Heather shares her insights into the relentless pursuit of self-improvement and the societal pressure for perfection. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the secrets to navigating complex modern life paradoxes Learn how to find guidance in the midst of life’s challenges Uncover the path to achieving transformative self-acceptance Understand the keys to emotional well-being in today’s fast-paced world To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all want to see changes in our lives, in our minds, and in our hearts. So we read inspirational authors, we listen to podcasts like this one, and we get fired up to apply what we've learned. But then inevitably we fall back into old patterns, and it can be so frustrating and maddening. When we start to build habits that truly matter, we see real change. But without enough consistency, we barely scratch the surface. In my Building Habits Matter course, I apply behavioral principles to perennial wisdom so that you can experience the benefits on a deeper level. This is your chance to get accountability, ongoing support, and a

proven system as you journey towards a greater understanding of yourself. You start to bridge the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. And you do this in our group setting in which community connection and friendships are all created, which support you along the way. This program is open for enrollment until March 11th. Head to oneufeed.net slash wisdom to learn all about this opportunity for us to connect and dive deeper into how building habits that matter can transform the way you experience your day-to-day life. Go to oneufeed.net slash wisdom. I hope to meet you in this special program that starts very soon. There's such a transformation that happens when people

stop beating themselves up for falling into the same potholes over and over again. 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, 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, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknoworeally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No 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 Heather Havrileski. Heather is the author of the memoir, Disaster Preparedness. She has also written for New York Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, NPR's All Things Considered, and several anthologies. She was a TV critic at Salon for seven years. Her new book is How to Be a Person in the World, Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life. We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Hi, Heather. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I'm very happy to have you. Your book is

called How to Be a Person in the World, Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life. It's basically you write an advice column, right? I write an advice column for New York magazine's The Cut, and it comes out every week. It's called Ask Polly. Advice columns are a strange format, but the book is basically, we didn't really want to stray from what was working with the advice column. So it's about 80% new material, new letters and new responses, and then about 20% old classics from the column. The column has been running since 2012. So it's been around for about five years. Well, it is wonderful.

The column is wonderful and the book is wonderful. So many advice columns are, I mean, they're just, they seem kind of trite to me, but yours is, it's incredibly good. The writing is really wonderful and just the overall spirit and approach I just really love. So we'll get to that in a minute, but let's start like we usually do with a parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and 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 granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second, looks up at her

grandmother and she 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. Well, I love the parable. And I think that it's really interesting because it actually makes me feel a little bit conflicted to hear this parable. On the one hand, I feel like I go back to a position of telling people to feed the good things inside themselves and to encourage their belief in humanity and their

belief in other people to have compassion for themselves and thereby foster compassion for other people in connection with other people, which I think, I mean, one of the things that sort of works about my column is that the voice of the column is kind of a little bit harsh and it can be a little bit caustic at times, but I always try to lead with empathy. But a lot of the work that I feel like a lot of people need to do in their lives in order to be happier, um, like a lot of people need to do in their lives in order to be happier within their own lives, is to connect with other people and to see that everyone has weaknesses, everyone is vulnerable, and even people who seem to be coming at you with a lot of anger or hatred, they actually are in need of compassion and connection, if you can find that in your heart. So that's one side

of the parable for me. It makes perfect sense in just a very literal way. You don't encourage within yourself greed and hatred. You try to find the parts of yourself that are full of love and positivity and that are interested in connection. But on the other hand, creatively, lately, I'm in this phase, kind of like a bad wolf phase, I'd say, where I was a little blocked earlier this year, and I'm writing a new book. And I think partially, due to political reasons, things were frustrating to me and depressing to me. And so I was looking for some way to work through this. And I think that in some ways, I would argue that if you ignore the bad wolf, you can be shut down and kind of corked up and blocked if you don't acknowledge the good wolf, but you actually have to see and recognize and not blame yourself for the things that the bad wolf brings into your life. Does that make any sense at all? Totally. Yeah, it's one of the things I love about the parable is there's nothing about starving the bad wolf or putting them in a cage or any of that stuff, right? It's just like, look, you just got

to give a little bit more focus to this one over here. And I think it, I like the parable because I think it, it normalizes, like we all have these drives and desires that are not our best self. And sometimes those are there. And again, you don't have to kill those, just try and be a little bit better. And I love that about your column. I think you use the word, you know, vulnerable. be a little bit better. And I love that about your column. I think you use the word, you know, vulnerable. And I love that you sort of normalize that life is difficult for people and not just for the people you're writing about for the people around them. And I just think there's so much help in understanding that life is challenging and we're supposed to be struggling in a lot of cases and that what we see in the culture around us is just perfection, and none of us feel that way. And that's one of the big things I really loved about your column.

One thing that I feel like I've struggled with all my life is this sort of overachievers mentality. It didn't mean that I was necessarily an overachiever. I have been an underachiever at times in my life. But I have this kind of perfectionist thing. And I think that I took the cultures, you know, our culture, uh, is very, uh, focused on self-improvement and living your best life and becoming better and better and better to infinity and beyond. And that's something that the more on the one hand, again, the, as I'm writing an advice column, I naturally push people to try to improve themselves and look at themselves closely and identify the things that are standing in their way or that might be seen as not functioning well or pushing people away from them, things that drag them down. But on the other hand, there's this feeling, I think, that I had, this sort of rebirth I had once I realized that the moment that I could look at my flaws and recognize them as the flaws of humanity rather than the flaws that just happened to be trapped

inside of me, I'm personally horribly bad, and the difference between me and the rest of the world is I'm messed up, and the rest of the world is good, and I haven't learned how to get there yet. I think that when you finally realize, oh, I do have hatred and greed inside of me, you know, I can be incredibly petty and insecure at times. It doesn't mean that you feed those things, as the parable reflects. It just means that you accept, to some extent, that you have a lot of darkness and a lot of turmoil on board. And without accepting that, you're kind of in a constant state of misery, because you can't completely, no matter how happy you are, tamp that down. And you can't become better and better and better to infinity and beyond. In fact, you can't improve forever. And in fact, if you have that expectation,

as our culture sort of makes us have that expectation often of ourselves, you find yourself disappointed a lot. Yeah. And I think you're really getting at one of what I think is the central themes that runs through this show over and over, which is that paradox of, well, I want to be better, I want to do better, and I need to accept myself as I am, where I am with my life the way it is. And how do you do both of those things? Because it really is a both. I think either one of those unchecked is unhealthy. Yeah, I mean, I think you go through stages of noticing that you're not

making forward progress and noticing that you need a push to like, I mean, for me, I'm a parent, I have two kids, they're 10 and eight years old, they're two daughters. And I also have a stepson who's about to turn 21. And lately, I'm noticing I worked against the whole mom thing taking over my entire life so strenuously that I realized that I actually, and this is going to sound terrible, but so zealously guard my professional life that I haven't really let my kids in as much as I could, if that makes any sense. in as much as I could, if that makes any sense. And so now I'm in this phase of, you know, it's not, it's not frightening to be a mother, Heather, just hang out with your kids. You know,

I was always concerned that I would apply my overachiever nature to motherhood and be, you know, try to be too much of a mother all the time, hover too much. So I've kind of done the opposite. And now I realize that, you know, my kids are, they talk and they're smart and they're interesting and they need someone to engage with them a lot of time. You know, they need my time and attention and I need them too. I need to show up and I'm kind of losing the thread. You can cut this. But no. So you realize at different points in your life what maybe you need to adjust. And sometimes you need to to say, wow, I need a kick. I need to do better.

I need to try harder. Like I've forgiven myself for being the not good enough mother. Like I will never really be the perfect mother. No one really can. Um, and maybe I will never be even an amazing mother, a great mother, like we all really want to be, but I need to try a little harder to be a better mother nonetheless. And I have to recognize that as much as I'm uncomfortable with that pressure, um, I'm at a point in my life where I actually have to try harder at that. With my writing, I've always pushed myself a lot. And there are times when I have to say,

you know what, you have kept up a pace of writing that is so strenuous. And you have to back off and relax a little bit. You can't keep up this pace forever. I think this has been a year that my mind and body have said, no, we're not going to work that hard. We're done with that. You know, you're going to have to live a different kind of life. Yep. Yep. So part of the challenge is just being in touch with what life is giving you on any given day. And it changes constantly. Yeah, it does. I think that's one of the wonderful and confounding if, if you don't let it be as it is things about life and is that things that worked for you last week, last month, last year are no longer, they don't work. They're not appropriate in the same way. It's, you know, it's never done. We're always evolving. And that's the wonderful

thing. But it can also be if you're one of those people that's looking for like, when is it done? The bad news is never. That's another kind of myth that our culture embraces. There's a kind of feeling that, and this is a seductive thing to sell to people, the idea that you work really hard, and then you take a vacation, and everything is amazing, and it's just restful and beautiful. I mean, it's hard not to, for me not to be fixated on those kinds of end point visions, you know, it's sort of like, imagine that experience of just being rich or being successful where you're, you're never like trying to be more. Um, and actually a big focus of my new book is, is kind of, I mean, I'm struggling with it.

It's not done yet, so I don't even know. But a part of what I'm trying to write about is achieving kind of the ultimate feeling of, and I say the ultimate kind of ironically here because to me, the big challenge is finding a place where it's enough where what you already have is enough and there isn't and you recognize the divinity of the current moment instead of always focusing on where you're going to land someday that is probably the other big you know if i said there were two themes in in the show that like and they're the themes of the show because i'm kind of always wrestling with them as my own personal questions is exactly that too. Like, I believe that there's some degree of striving and ambition and the desire to grow and change that's, that's innate in us in humans. I think it's part of who we are. And at the same

time, I believe exactly like you said, there's got to be a point where, you know, there's enough. How do you be a person who's growing and changing? And how do you also be happy with the moment right where it is? And we had a guest on recently, the episode came out, and he had a question that I just loved. And he said, he was talking about that future minded mentality is like, well, one of the things to do to get out of that is when you sort of envision like, okay, well, when I get to there is to kind of ask yourself, and then what, and really play that through, like, what's, what's that really going to be like, and tragedies in the news are a terrible thing. But, you know, it wasn't too long ago that we heard about Chris Cornell, the singer for Soundgarden, you know, suicide, right. And if we ever need the idea that being beautiful and rich and famous is what we need, that's where our happiness is. It's people like him that you go, no, it doesn't work. He's, he's incredibly handsome, incredibly successful. I mean, all those things. And yet the ultimate misery, you know, and so that for me is helpful when I start looking at that. Well, if I just had, you know, X or Y, I look at that or Robin Williams or other people and you just go, boy, that stuff doesn't do it.

I don't know that much about him, but I said to my husband, I said, God, it must have been really, you know, first of all, there's obviously something about that culture, you know, that kind of rock and roll culture that teaches you how to thrive in some ways and other ways kind of eats you alive. There's something about being famous at a really young age, being gorgeous, you know, having everything you've ever wanted at a young age can actually be horribly difficult over time as kind of ridiculously privileged as that sounds. good is happening when things start to shift and you start to see people who have a lot on the surface as almost being in danger more than people who just are living regular ordinary lives that most people would consider boring you know it's hard to put this stuff in a word sometimes but i feel like my sense of what a beautiful life is has shifted so dramatically in the past few years.

And it's nice because it's kind of more internal in some ways. It's really about how are you processing your life and how are you taking in what's happening around you? And it's almost like you meet people who you can tell are really present and take in what they have and enjoy it and savor it and know how to show up and savor things. Seeing people who can show up, that is becomes the, a form of luxury to you. You know, when you see that emotion, you say, now that looks like vacation, you know, like that, like true, you know, meditative, peaceful, happy living. Um, and it, I mean, it's easy to be cynical about it,

because when you're younger, you see people like that. And you say, God, what's wrong with that hippie? You know, like, you don't, you don't quite process it the same way. But I think that it really is that constant balancing between am I being too easy on myself or too hard on myself? Do I need a little push here? Am I just being lazy? Or am I trying too hard to fix something that, you know, I mean, this is another thing, figuring out which things in your life actually can't be fixed, shouldn't be fixed. And your energy to fix them is dysfunctional energy. You're just, you're just doing something you've always done. I'll fix it. I'll fix it. I'll fix it. Um, it's interesting to actually identify the things that fall into that category. Sometimes there are parts of your career, you know, that are just, wow, this part

of my career is kind of just in a compulsive, I want to pat on the head and I want to be a good student thing. Um, and it's not actually felt or driven by anything inside of me. Not like everything is just a, you know, Dionysian fest of my feelings guide everything I do. But I think what actually brings me joy or what brings me satisfaction in my day and how can I make my day more satisfying for me? And of course, for the people around me, and also for the wider world? How do I, you know, because once I mean, that's really another layer of luxury, right? Because once you actually have the capacity to say, I don't just care about the people around me. I have to find some way to serve humanity before I'm gone. Because if I can't do that, what real purpose do I have? Is my whole goal in life just

to, I'm going to arrive at that luxury place and be that rock star whose life is beautiful, and then I'll be done. And like you said, what comes after that? I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know 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 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. Bryan 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. the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I've always been a fan of the serenity prayer, right? Because I came up in a recovery culture because I was a drug addict at a pretty early age. And a lot of what I learned in that culture has kind of, I think for me, has sort of faded away. But that seems like the penultimate point of wisdom of like, what can I change and what can I? And I always remember we had a guest on very early on, a guy named Andrew Solomon, who's a wonderful writer. He wrote The Noonday Demon and he wrote a book called Far From the Tree about children who have what we might call disabilities and also the gifts that that brings them. And he was talking about something and I was really struck by this. He was saying, you know, the people who have children where you just know, like, this is the way they're going to be. And you just go about accepting them the way they are. And then there's other cases where it's

very clear that you can improve the situation and you should. He's like, the torture is the in-between state. It's like, well, yeah, maybe I could make it better. I mean, I hear that this would help and I hear that that would help, but maybe I should just accept where I'm at. So for those parents, it's so hard. And I think that just applies to our lives in general. It's very easy when we can sort of see, oh, there's nothing I'm going to do about that. And in my case, I actually consider it an accomplishment that not only do I know that in certain cases, I actually stopped doing it even when I know it. So I think there's something to be said for even getting to that point. But then to get into the subtler pieces of, is there really anything I can do here or not? And maybe I can, and is the,

you know, somebody said recently, I don't know if I like this phrase or not, but you know, is the juice worth the squeeze? Yeah, it's funny, because as you encounter less of the old problems that you used to have, you also, even as you're kind of trying to make yourself a more balanced, open person, sometimes create problems for yourself from that process. And I kind of think what you're talking about is sort of, I can walk myself into a space of forgiving myself for my failings and forgiving other people for their failings. And then I feel good and I feel like, God, we're all just muddling through and it's fine. And there's no reason for any strife. You just have to shower your compassion on others and have them meet you.

on others and have them meet you. And then the fix it part of you will say, you know, I could fix all of these damaged relationships. All I have to do is pick up the phone and give, you know, a few people a call and say, you know what, I love you. I just want you to know. And there's no reason we shouldn't be able to work this out. That's not really how it works. And also, you can be tempted to call, you know, it's like, you're not thinking of the person that it wasn't that problematic to begin with. I mean, I think there's a kind of sensitive, locked in, disordered person. I mean, I consider myself sort of a former addict in my own way because I relate to a lot of the personality issues that addicts have. And I think there's a kind of person that sort of, it's just hard not to touch the same flame over and over again. And even as you grow, you know, enlightened and better, you come back and you say, now that I'm more Jesus-like, I can touch the flame. And the answer is no, you actually still can't. You're not going to change that.

And not only that, but it doesn't serve you to think about the flame at all. You can analyze every layer of what do we need and what don't we need. But there are certain pockets of the puzzle, let's say, the corners of the puzzle that set off things inside of you that are dysfunctional as a person. And you kind of know when you're in there because you're trying to, you know, I'm going to wriggle through this. It's like working on a Rubik's Cube as the world ends. And on one hand, you can get a lot of professional satisfaction and a lot of creative enjoyment out of solving those kinds of puzzles. The things that, you know, I love writing about the things that make me angry, the things that make me feel shame. I figured out when I was blocked with my book earlier this year that I had to go back to the places that really, the things that really bothered me.

I needed to know what was bothering me in order to make some creative progress. But if you go back to some things over and over, you know, it can almost be like a fix. You know what I mean? It serves some strange, either an ego need or some strange escapist inability to be in the moment and just be taking in the things that are actually in your life, especially when it's someone who is not in your life and you want to go back and like, let me fix things with that person. Or you're imagining that person and how they live a little too much. And it's like, why am I displaced from my own experience? Obsession kind of works this way too. Competition with other writers, competition with other women, competition with other people who do what you do.

These things can fill the same strange place where you're actually working out something else by fixating on them. And you think you're telling a story that's about, no, there's a problem there. But actually you're telling about yourself and your own insecurities and your own inability to stop touching that fire. Yep. I think we all have some things in us that are like that. And this makes me think a little bit of one of the lines from your book that is sort of to this conversation in general. And you say, I think it's really easy to see your life as a series of problems instead of seeing it as a patchwork of things to savor. Yeah. Yeah. Like as if everything just needs to be solved and put out of the way until

there's nothing left. Do you want to live in an empty room? When I was a kid, the scene in, I think it's Yellow Submarine with Nowhere Man. Do you remember that scene where in the Nowhere Man is walking along and it's all, I mean, I remember it actually being more dramatic than it actually is. Cause I saw it recently and I was like, I remember it being much more depressing than this, but he used to freak me out that there was nothing there. I think having been raised a Catholic, um, there was something about an imaginary man in a place that's just white and everything disappears and he has nothing. It just felt so threatening and terrible to me. Um, but that's when you're fixing everything to get it out of the way, that's kind of what you're aiming for is like, you think that it's, you're kind of just aiming for death, right? Because there is no rest. There's no real peace where

there's just nothing. There are always more problems to solve, right? And also, what you said about the kids, I think is interesting, kids with different issues. It's the waiting for a diagnosis somehow, or not really knowing how much help you should be giving, and how much you should be, you know, accepting what you have. I think that's a nice metaphor for where we all end up with ourselves sometimes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely, like I am this way, you know, I am personal example for me is it's very easy for me to become sort of very withdrawn and quiet. And that can be difficult in in relationships. It's also just a, it's, you know, part of who I am in some way. And so there's

this always this question of, well, how much do I work to improve that versus how much do I accept it? And, you know, I've been thinking of things sort of on a scale more lately and realizing it's not about not being a certain way. It's about being the right amount of a certain way, like that, that tendency of mine to kind of go off in my head and think about things is in one hand, very bad for me. And also one of the one, you know, one of the best things about me, it gives me some of my best strengths. And so instead of trying to be a different person, and have different characteristics, how do I how do I dial those characteristics to levels that are more skillful for my life versus trying to be a way that I'm not. I think that personally, I have sort of started to

put aside the idea that there's some objective, good way to be about anything. And it's actually legitimate, especially as when you're older, and you're talking about within the context of a partnership or a marriage or a friendship, um, it's not about anyone would agree that you're crazy or, and you know, anyone would agree that you don't talk enough. It's actually just two people defining for themselves what works, uh, separately and what works together together and it's about asking for okay i understand that this silence you have going on works for you i'm gonna need more you know but then also examining do i compulsively always need more am i attracted attracted to silence? I mean, most of us do end up with people who just, there's spark there because we need a little more from that kind of person.

And in couples, I think also one person really does end up being more, a little more withholding and the other person ends up being a little more, give me a little more, give me a little more. I don't think that's actually a pathology or a dysfunction. It's kind of just the way it is. Like you can put the same two people in a different couple and they'll start doing the opposite things based on what the other person, you know, how the other person's trying to solve the puzzle of them. So lately I've been kind of feeling my way into this new place where it's sort of like, I might be an objective lunatic on anyone else's scale, or maybe our culture, which is crazy. Our culture is completely mad. But maybe our insane culture defines me as

insane. Am I going to take that to heart every day of my life? I live in the suburbs. The suburbs are a strange place. Am I going to navigate my entire existence around the norms of the people around me in the suburbs? Or am I actually going to just say, Bartleby the Scrivener, I choose not to. Like Bartleby, I choose not to. Um, I prefer not to, that's what he said. He doesn't say I choose not to, I think letting go of the notion that there's some objective form of healthy person is so important. Um, and especially between two adults in a relationship. I mean, I ended up saying to my husband often, look, you don't have to apologize just because you're a weirdo in this or that way. All that matters is whether or not it makes me, you know, angry or insane,

and whether or not the things I do make you insane, and whether we can just talk it out. And, you know, we can work it out, we can work it out, you know, we can compromise and find a way of each getting what we need. We're just here to kind of help each other and to get what we need at the same time. And it doesn't matter what the if the entire world says their thing that they have going on is nutty. There's something wrong there. It doesn't matter. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know 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 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. Bryan 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. I'm going to read something that you wrote that's very similar to this idea. And you say, my guess is that at least some of the shit you're taking for being out of step with the mainstream is related to your perfectly understandable urge to shove all of humanity into one of two clean categories, odd and normal and vibrant and dollsville, unique and average. But first, you're going to need to relax your grip on your worldview a little and accept yourself for who you are once and for all. And while you're at it, accept that the so-called ultra normals out there are far more complex than you give them credit for. I like letters where people bring me their perceptions of what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable.

And even what is daring and rock and roll and what's just milquetoast and boring. And sometimes people have these, I got something recently from someone who was talking about being into, you know, freaky sex and SNL, you know, BDSM. And she was saying, I won't settle for anyone who isn't open to the freaky things that I'm open to. And I mean, I struggle with exactly how to answer this because a part of me feels like who defines what bland sex is and what freaky sex is sex is two people deciding together how they're going to communicate or take part in this kind of physical party you know so why is there somehow um a lot of cachet around putting on

black leather versus just having missionary style sex. It's just an arbitrary distinction that places the alternative in some rarefied realm in your mind when you could be turning your back on someone who is just, you know, the energy that you seek might not actually have translated itself into sex for this person, but you'll still find it with this person. And saying straight out of the gate, I'm going to need this, that, and this cuts you off from a lot of kind of forms. You know, it's almost like a way of never being vulnerable to come into a relationship saying, here's my laundry list of what I desire. And I understand it at the level of, I need an egalitarian partner. I can't be with someone who doesn't see me as an equal. I mean, that's a very basic thing. But when the laundry

list is very detailed, I'm going to need Kellogg's cornflakes every morning, tea without sugar. every morning. Tea without sugar. It's a challenge to kind of loosen up other people's grips on what they think are the parameters of what they're dealing with and their assumptions. I mean, we have so many just really dumb, flat, simple assumptions about what categories of people are okay and what categories of people are messed up and weird, keep them away from us. You know, we have these ideas about weakness and how if someone says too much, that means they're weak somehow. Whereas it's someone who can perfectly, you know, ape the successful dude in our mainstream society is somehow really getting, you know, hitting on all cylinders and everyone else is just fumbling. So being able to put that into language is a

challenge because you're kind of taking apart everything that people know and trying to challenge. I mean, you end up saying, what, what is this? Where does this come from? Does this serve you? If it serves you, if you're happy in that, fantastic. I'm not trying to change everyone's perception of what's normal, certainly. God knows I don't know what normal is. But people really let themselves be guided and fenced in and put in a corner by these dichotomies that don't really serve the fullness of what we are as human beings inside. don't really serve the fullness of what we are as human beings inside. Yeah, they don't really exist in a real way. And I think that is probably one of the biggest things that's happened to me as I've gotten older, similar to what you sort of said in that piece, is that I stopped sort of dividing people into categories of, like when I was in AA, or 12-step program, supposed to be anonymous. You know, there was this idea that there were like normal people and then there were us.

And that drove me up a wall after a while. I was like, that is just not true, right? There is not normal people and then there's us. Like I may struggle with this thing, whereas you struggle with that. And we had Glennon Melton Doyle on the show a long time ago. And she said something that just always, I go, I've said it on the show 15 times because it blew me away. And it speaks to this, she said, if you stay on the surface with people, you know, you don't connect with anybody, because everybody's got different surfaces. But if you

take the risk to go deeper with people, you connect with a lot more people, because as you go a couple levels down, we're really all the same. And I just thought that was so wise. And that's kind of what we're talking about is you're you're saying don saying don't cut somebody out of your life because their surface doesn't look exactly like what you think it should. You know, the hard part, I think, is that we don't know how to negotiate how to get down beneath the surface with people. Every person is different. Very hard to do. And I do think that this is something kind of interesting that ties back to what we were talking about before. My only interest in not being jarring

to other people, because I kind of like being a weirdo now. I go through stages, of course, where I don't like it. And I try to just, you know, let me just fit in. I don't want to be obtrusive. Just let me, you know, fade into the background. But I'm in kind of a phase of like, okay, this is what I'm wearing, everyone. Look, look. You're letting your freak flag fly. A little bit right now. I don't know what exactly is going on. But the only level at which I find myself returning to this place where I am concerned with what the dominant language is, is I don't like the idea that I cut off relationships, because I assert my weirdness, you know, and I don't know how to, I don't always know how to navigate with some people in order to

just really connect with them um i think what i was gonna say is it's sort of like um i dislike the fact that and maybe this is just like an assertive woman thing but i people have trouble trusting me a little bit in some ways some people trust me with everything and other people just it doesn't matter how long i know them they'll never quite trust me and maybe i mean maybe i'm deeply untrustworthy at some level i'm open to that too maybe there's some energy that's you know it could be like a competitive energy that i have which i do have a competitive energy um or maybe it's just, I mean, writers sometimes are, you know, package the things they say and a lot of different angles of like,

I have trouble just saying I'm proud of my work without saying, but I'm a dope, you know, but I don't know what I'm doing. Um, I can't just rest on one thing. I have to give a complicated, I can't just rest on one thing. I have to give a complicated, conflicted answer as you can see. Right. But I think it's interesting when you see people like preachers and ministers and teachers who can meet people where they are without pushing them away naturally. I think if you spend a lot of time needing more from people, you also push people away because you're in that battle. And this is a very recovery kind of thing of like you want more, but you're also I don't need you.

I don't need anyone. And, you know, watching I'm kind of fascinated by people who minister to other people and know how to find them and just be solid instead of putting too much. Their ego doesn't come into the picture. It comes in in a way that just makes a lot of room around it somehow. Yeah, I think that's what it is. And I mean, I have times where I think I'm able to be that kind of person. Like I can just be there for people. And then I have other times where I simply cannot. And for me, the difference really is, is how much am I focusing or preoccupied with myself? You know, whether that be how my stomach feels or how you see me or am I going to get paid for this or whatever the various things are, it really is the times that I'm able to do

that is when there's just less of me in some sense. That's not exactly what I want to say, but less of that. It's less self-consciousness. I'm not thinking about myself. I'm genuinely looking at them and going, wow, okay, what's happening there versus my normal mode, which is I'm a little bit curious about you. And I'm also incredibly thinking about how I feel and what's happening. And that's gotten better. And I don't know whether to give myself credit for that or just to think I just have gotten older and it's helped. I think it's a little of both. Yeah, I mean, I think I think sometimes, even if you have the best intentions,

if you go into an interaction thinking, you know, okay, in a situation like this, we're talking to each other, it's an interview, it's sort of like you want to get in the zone where you're kind of building a conversation together that has a lot of ideas in it, and you want to like really, you know, collaborate and make something. Sometimes if you bring that energy to interactions with just people in your life, you're basically end up being kind of controlling. You're trying to pull things out of them. Let's really get down to the nitty gritty. And they're like, God, get out of my kitchen. I'm not interested in this. So in some ways, for me, learning how to relax in the presence of other people has sadly been a big part of the last five years of my life. And now I notice the people who don't know how to do it. I know. And I mean, I'm not judgmental

of it. I lived there for, you know, 40 years. But figuring out how to just, you know, people show up at your house. We had a series of guests this weekend and people show up and they bring a lot of different things and you never really know which person you're going to get from, you know, an old friend who you've known for 20 years can show up as 15 different people based on how their day went or how their week went or how their year went. And you try to greet the person that's there and work with whatever you have, you know, which takes being okay with who you are, or at least being able to put yourself aside a little bit, like you said. And we do the same thing. We show up as 15 different people. So we are very much at the end of our time. This is one of those great conversations

where I've looked at my notes, almost none. Yeah, because we just look at your notes. Yeah, it's just been easy. So but I think I want to I want to wrap up with reading one thing, you know, you're an advice columnist. And so I mean, that's not all you do. But this book is about that. And I'm going to read one piece of advice that I think is so great. And there's probably 10 that I could do. And I can't stress enough to listeners of this show, if you like this show, you will love this book and the column. So I strongly encourage you to seek it out. I'm going to read a piece of advice. And then maybe you could say a thing or two about it. And then we will, we'll wrap up. Almost every single person who writes to me is trapped in his or her head and wants to

break free. You really can't be reminded to step back away from the little trivial puzzles of life enough. You need some kind of a process that connects you to yourself, to your feelings, to a brilliant full color world that you deeply deserve, but can't touch or taste yet. you deeply deserve, but can't touch or taste yet? Yeah. You know, the one thing that I love about writing, um, and my, you know, my advice column is very long, which you could have gathered from this interview. Um, but it's, you know, 2000 words, usually my, my responses, but the thing that I love about doing this is there's such a transformation that happens when people stop beating themselves up for falling into the same potholes over and over again and start just accepting that these are the potholes that i fall into you know and and and

start to forgive themselves for the way that they naturally move through the world. We are all clumsy in one way or another. And when you finally realize that your clumsiness doesn't set you apart, it actually makes you a human being and connects you to everyone else who's alive. It's like you can see color for the first time. It's like you can feel your emotions for the first time in a pure way because you don't have judgments about what it means that you're feeling something, a so-called negative emotion or just any emotion. I mean, so many of us are cut off from our emotions because we've just been taught to associate emotion with being out of control but when you can feel your emotions when you can forgive yourself for having emotions and for

having a human body and for having a brain that works in certain ways and sends you into that pothole over and over again the whole world blossoms in front of you it's not that your life is a never ending epiphany. It's just that you have this, I don't know, it's like an ability to touch the divine somehow, you know, and to and to feel right with the world in a really deep and kind of measurable, palpable way. And the ability to kind of put that into words. I mean, it's the challenge of every column I write is to put that feeling into words and also to nudge someone and make that turn. You know, it's just so satisfying and so difficult,

but I love it. I love it. And that was, thank you for reading that. It's really, really nice. There's so many I could read and you do a wonderful job of putting it into words and nudging people. This has been a great conversation. I feel like I could do and you do a wonderful job of, of putting it into words and nudging people. This has been a great conversation. I feel like I could do it for another two hours effortlessly.

So we'll have to have you back. We'll have to have you back another time. Um, but thank you so much for coming on again. Uh, listeners, I can't recommend the book, how to be a person in the world, uh, enough, and we'll have links in the show notes to her work. And you can find it there. And thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, Eric. I enjoyed it so much. I'd love to come back.

It was so nice talking to you. Okay. Take care. Okay, you too. Bye. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.

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 what's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really no really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead. The really no really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.