We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Break Up with Busyness & Let Go of Your To-Do List

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

304. Break Up with Busyness & Let Go of Your To-Do List Amanda delves into her relationship with Busyness and how she’s working through it. We’ll touch on topics such as the pervasive culture of busyness, productivity as a measure of self-worth, and the struggle to define personal boundaries and prioritize genuine happiness (after some hilarious banter between Glennon and Abby about how to deal with “disgusting” things in a relationship). Discover:  -Why Busyness is such a pervasive and oppressive cult for so many of us; -How to decouple your self-esteem and identity from your productivity; -The actionable tactic Amanda is using in her break up with Busyness; and -How your pets prove that the religion of busyness is a lie.  Check out these episodes, too: 281. How Amanda Finally Calmed Her Brain & Her Letter from Love with Liz Gilbert  261. How to Stretch Time with Jenny Odell 139. No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey 93. BURNOUT: Do You Feel Half Alive? with Emily and Amelia Nagoski To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everybody, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Super excited. We say that every time. We need a thesaurus. Because everyone were like, I'm so excited for this episode. Super. Okay, well how about I tell the truth? I'm just a little, I don't know. This has been a hard week. I'm so tired. I'm just like, I'm not excited to do this and I'm fucking sick. Welcome to We Can Do Our Things.

We are not excited. I think that's refreshing. Yeah, I'm feeling really heavy. I have my sinuses. I've got to clean out my sinuses with a neti pot, which makes Glenn and gag. I love a neti pot. I mean, they're amazing.

They're amazing. I wish I could neti pot my whole life and my whole body. Not charming though, the opposite of charming. I don't know. I have the beholder. I think it's amazing. You're just something with your zit popping. I am't know. I have the beholder. I think it's amazing. You're just something with your zip popping. I am a big person in that, but like, my face is all contorted and stuff's coming out and like, it's just not pretty. It's not my finest moment. In the morning when Abby gets into the bathroom, I call it the elephant refuge because it's just like, it's just these

noises that sound like trunks like, like that's what goes on in the bathroom for a long time. And when she has a cold, it just feels like many new elephants have been added to the refuge in the morning. There needs to be some clarification here. I, when I shower, I blow my nose. That's smart. Some people do, some people don't. Because it's really breaking that stuff, the steam. And when Glennon is near,

I do not elephant sanctuary myself. I do not honk this horn. And when I am sick, I give myself permission to do it in front of her because I'm sick and I get to do whatever I need to do. Right? Yes. And so theoretically you should be able to do whatever

you need to do all the time. Shut up. Not to ruin your sex. Shut up. Only when she's sick. No, I care about some of the things that I do. I acknowledge that some of the noises that I make could be perceived as not so charming.

And also crossing over into the lines of disgusting. And I don't want my wife to think that I'm disgusting. And so I am trying to protect our marriage. We have had long talks. I feel like this is a thing. We have had long talks. I feel like this is a thing. We have had conversations about where is the line between comfort in your own body and doing whatever you need to do

and allowing for bodily functions and keeping some sense of mystery alive. Some little mystery. Yeah, and I don't know why those two things are connected for me, and maybe that's my issue. I think it probably is. It's really, it's important to you. So I don't fart in front of you.

Right. And evidently, Glenen doesn't fart, period. So there's that. Except in her sleep. Oh God. Okay. Isn't that convenient to accuse him of? It's interesting.

It's, well, I agree you shouldn't find your partner disgusting, but I guess the question is whose responsibility is that? Is it the person to not be what might be perceived as disgusting or is it the receiver's job to not view whatever their partner is doing as disgusting? Right, exactly. That is what I am unsure of. In this house we have settled on, it is my problem.

I think that is so untrue. No, but I'm just- You know how much more comfortable I have begun to pretend I am? With all kinds of things. Yeah. Tell me about it. So are you ready to start farting in front of me?

No. Do you want me to start farting in front of you? Absolutely not. Okay, what about pooping? What about it? Like you want me to poop in front of you? No, who wants that? No.

Okay, and then what about, you know, my noises? I don't wanna pop your zits. Oh God, I just need somebody to get back there. I can't reach them. I can't reach them on my back. I know. We have this ongoing conversation that basically she's like,

if you loved me, you would do this for me. And I'm like, if you loved me, you would do this for me. And I'm like, if you loved me, you would not ask me to do that for you. Where is the answer of that, time squad? I'm just like so uncomfortable. I just need it to be popped, like get it off my body. And I'm so uncomfortable even having to talk about that. I think that crosses over the boundary.

That is not a, I am a passive bystander in your sneezing or coughing or whatever, but you're actually asking me to participate in something and use my hands in a way that makes me uncomfortable. So as much as I don't understand why you don't want to pop a zit, I agree that that falls into your personal bodily autonomy. That's true. And Abby can grieve the fact that she doesn't have a partner that wants to pop her zits, but I'm willing to bet Emma would do that for you.

She does. And also it's just like, it's literally one inch on my back. That doesn't matter. Across this middle part of my back that I can't reach either way. Yeah. So I just like, I just need a little bit of reprieve for the one inch.

Yeah, it's a real humdinger when that happens. I wanna hear how do people negotiate this? That's what I would like to know. Like are you disgusting? I don't want you popping my zits if you don't want me popping zits. Or am I overly sensitive about disgusting things? I mean, honey, I am not disgusting. Like what the fuck?

First of all, I could throw that back at you if needed, you know? Okay, all right. You are definitely dirtier than I am. For sure. That's 100% true. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's gross things we all do, and it's whether the person can metabolize our grossness and still find us lovely, or whether... I think you just have a really slow metabolism that's good what are we talking about today well apparently And why we are all so busy. Why everyone feels overwhelmed or underwhelmed,

but so rarely do we find thewhelmed. That's good. How did we get here with all this overly busyness? Why do we wear it as a badge of honor? Why do we say we hate it and then we don't choose other things? Can we choose other things? Are we in a world that requires us to busy ourselves until we're dead inside? And what are the costs of living that way or stopping? What do you think? Can we tackle this today or are we too busy? I think we should do it. Okay? I think we should do it. Okay.

I think we should do it. Do you want to start, Sissy, because I just have a hunch that you have some thoughts about busyness. Do you feel too busy, overly busy in your life? What is your relationship with busyness? busy. I do feel overly busy in my life. Okay. And I think that there's a lot of personal psychological things that go on with busyness, but I also think it's important to say that there is a major structural situational reality of people that are busy? Yes. There's both. And some of us have both of those things together

and then it's kind of a perfect storm. Some people just have one or the other. So, I mean, it is just true that we spend more hours doing more things than we used to. I mean, working moms spend more hours on childcare right now, even though they have full-time jobs than stay at home moms did 30 years ago. So there's just like the hours that we have just slowly decided go to things are real. People often have to work two or three jobs and if people are trying really hard in this economy to make things work, that's the reality of their

lives and it might not have anything to do with psychological stuff. I think mine also has to do with psychological stuff because I think that I just continue to gather things to do. I think there's a lot in that. I've been thinking about it a lot, about what it means and why. What does it mean? Okay, so first of all,

so today I think it's such a helpful distinction. Let's just talk today about what you're talking about is almost choosing busyness. I think that's an important distinction between like you are just you know a duck in water and you are just trying to keep your family afloat and you have to have those three jobs and you have to like we're talking about a kind of chosen busyness. What is your definition of busyness? Well I would also just say that some people who have whatever affliction I have also have

situational busyness. Like, we live in a world that requires more of us, that our work is all consuming, there is no distinction between home and work, there is no time in which we are inaccessible. These are all factors that were not chosen by us. They just kind of seeped in and became normalized. factors that were not chosen by us. They just kind of seeped in and became normalized. And so I think you don't have to be struggling to make ends meet to, if we were looking at 10,000 feet, be like, all of this is insane.

How did we get here? So I think mine is both. So it's not as easy to opt out as any of this kind of like psychological dive would suggest. But I think for me, the way I've been thinking about it recently is that I think it's a really deep fear. I learned a lot from the Letters to Love exercise that we did with Liz Gilbert, that was episode 281. And in that, where I was trying to figure out how to turn my brain off and turn my love voice on.

And I feel like that's sort of an analogy for the brain is kind of the doing and the heart is the kind of the being. And in that, one of the things I realized is that my compulsive scorekeeping, so keeping score of like what I do, how hard I'm working, the things I'm getting done, etc. And then the way that that poisons my relationship by also having to keep scores of everything else. Like they're not trying hard enough, they're not doing the things, why aren't they pushing as hard as I am, etc. Then the letter from love thing was basically

the message was like, no one is keeping score other than you, and there's actually not a game, and there's actually not winning. And that part, I think, goes to the busyness because if you are doing, doing, doing, and doing your things and getting your things done is the way you determine if you are okay, then in the absence of that, you need another way to determine that you're okay. And if productivity is your God, then this world that we live in is happy to oblige productivity being your God. And then you will follow a vengeful and mean God. Ah, okay, stop there.

If productivity is your God, then of course, busyness is your religion. Yes. In your discipline, you are a disciple of productivity. So it would make sense that in any capitalistic culture, productivity is the God. And that's like pumped into our veins from the time we're born. So it would make sense that if our worth, we're all trying to figure out our human worth down here.

If we are told from the pulpits of every commercial, every speech, every whatever, that our God is productivity, then busyness will be our discipline. And it's scary because, I mean, anyone who's paying attention can know that that is a losing battle. You are never going to please God because it's never going to be done, because you're never going to be able to be like, I did it, I'm done. And so that is scary. But I think that the thing that is even scarier than that is being your own God. Because then you have to figure out what, if not that, makes me okay. Yeah. How with, in the absence of having something that I can look at that's a scorecard that

says I am enough, I've done enough, then I have to decide something that is off grade that only I determine and being your own God is scarier than following a mean God that at least you have something to measure yourself against. Yeah, it feels untethered. I feel like I want to dig in more sister because I'm really curious as to like a If there's a time in your life that you can pinpoint back to when this part of you came online or like you developed and then be What is the fear and also just saying this is about everybody? Yeah, what what it's helpful to go into yours, too It's I mean, this is of course our whole culture's God.

100%. Right? I mean, it's so tied, I won't get into that because I always do it, but it's so tied to the eating disorder thing. Like figuring out that my God was this basically, just in a different form. Do you remember learning this lesson from any pulpit?

Are there crystallizing moments? I mean, I think it's probably just a mixture. It's tricky because it's double-sided. It's like baby in bathwater. Like you can't throw it all away. I mean, people getting things done and people leaning into hard things is the way that we've made a lot of progress and freedoms come to us. So it's not all bad. It's when it is at the expense and neglect of your own humanity that it's happening. I don't remember exactly inciting moments for this. I do remember the only time in my life I didn't feel this was between when I graduated from undergrad and I got accepted to law school and I deferred for a year, deferring means they accept you and you say, I'm not coming this year, I'm coming next year.

And it was the one totally bizarre time of my life where I was like, it doesn't matter what I do, I will be in the exact same place a year from now. Like I know what I'm doing a year from now. I will be in the exact same place a year from now. Like I know what I'm doing a year from now. And so whatever I do between now and then has no impact on where I end up. And that was incredibly liberating to me because it kind of took off that sometimes fiction, sometimes reality that we can build where we're going.

And I already knew where I was going, so that was weird. But I do remember there's a couple of books I've read on this that really made sense to me. And one was Devin Price's Laziness Does Not Exist. And they were talking about how we think of working hard and busyness as morally superior and we think of laziness as bad and inferior. And they talk about the three core beliefs of that whole culture. And all three of them, I was like, oh, that's true. That's true. But they're all lies. What are they? They are number one, your worth is your productivity. Mm-hmm.

Number two, you cannot trust your own feelings or limits. Mm. Number three, there's always more you could be doing. Mm. And I was like, yep, yep, and additionally, yep. Those are kind of like the principles I've lived my life by, but they're all lies. Yes. Hi, I've never been more excited about an advertisement. This is about Handsome,

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Go listen to Handsome wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube. New episodes of Handsome every Tuesday. Are you beginning to OK, because when I lost my evangelical Christian religion, the way that started, the way the journey of leaving that religion started was me starting to suspect that I was starting to build evidence that they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. Like when I started to hear anti queerness from the pulpit, this is long before I knew I was queer, and like

starting to gather evidence that I was seeing in the world that didn't match or in my life that didn't match what they were telling me. Are you starting to have a crisis of disbelief in the religion of busyness and productivity and why? Let me just give you an example from my life. productivity and why. Let me just give you an example from my life. A piece of evidence that makes me challenge or question this idea that my worth is in my productivity, that the more I dedicate myself to productivity, the more successful and happier I will be, is what I notice is that what I say is most important to me, which is my relationships with my wife, with my children, and I'm gonna throw this in,

even though a lot of people will think it's weird, my dogs. They do not blossom more, the more I follow the religion of productivity. When I constantly feel like I have something else I can do, I can see it happening in real life. I remove myself from the moment with my family to do whatever, to check my phone again, to check my computer, to make up something else to do.

I can see it actually breaking the things that I know in my heart make me happy. I can judge how well I'm doing in terms of my worth and my peace by how connected I am to my dogs. My dogs are the only beings in my life who love me more the less that I do. They want me to be with them, still, snuggled. They love me more.

When I see my dogs and I think, oh, I haven't checked in with you for two days, that's how I know I'm on the other God train again. Do you have things like, what's making you question this? Because religions don't start to crumble until the people inside them go, hold on a second. The evidence from my life is not matching what you're telling me. Yeah. I mean, I think it's in, I think it's multi-part. It's kind of like when I was studying feminist theory in undergrad and it was like, oh, this is all a fucking scam. I can educate myself enough

to know that we have been duped and this is intentional and I see what's happening here and so I need to be aware of what's happening to know that this isn't personal and I feel like some of the reading that I've been doing is like oh of course it's like that it's like learning about patriarchy or it's like learning about white supremacy where you're like, oh, that's why I think those things. And so intellectually that helps me because it kind of places it historically and I'm like, that makes sense. I also think that it got to such an extreme that I really wasn't being a human. Like when you say, I can tell I'm even being happier

by going towards things, for a long time, I wouldn't even have related to that. Like that there is no happiness. Everything on the to-do list is equal. There are just things that need to be done. And building the relationships with the kids is the same thing as getting the things done at work, is the same things.

Like when everything is something to do, then the thing isn't feeding you. It becomes math. And then when you step outside of that fake math and realize that there is this kind of magic math that happens where you might be wasting time and it fills you up in such a way that you have more life. And I think that I got really scared when I felt like my life force was diminishing and I felt like a robot.

I don't want my life force to be gone. And so I've actually started like my, I have a couple of practices that I've been doing. And one of them is just a very simple, like I don't know what I want. I don't know what makes me quote unquote happy because getting shit done off my to-do list makes me happy.

Relief equals happiness. And when you're constantly under so much stress, being relieved of some of that stress feels exactly like happiness. So I've just started to be like, is this thing magnifying my life force or is this thing extracting my life force? And those are the ways, the only ways I can really think about it. Because sometimes doing work magnifies my life force.

Not all work is bad and not all work is good. And then I have tried as hard as it is to really pay attention to what Devin said about that second lie of your limits cannot be trusted. That's the second lie of the laziness. That is something to be overcome in your quest towards what will prove you worthy, as opposed to when my body is telling me no, or I'm having dread, or I'm having anger, then I'm trying to identify whether that is a limit that's trying to come up in me. And then I have to be honest about whether I'm overriding that limit. And if so, why?

That's got to be so difficult to recalibrate. This reminds me a lot of stopping playing soccer and the whole idea of suffering because you are an elite athlete in the world of suffering. You've been doing it for so long. No, for real. And so like I think that building some sort of model for yourself so that you can figure out, oh I actually have reached a limit. When you do, how does that play on your self-esteem? Because I derive so much of my productivity and my effort and suffering, that was very much linked to the way that I felt about myself.

So like in this process, are you having difficulty with any of your self-esteem because you're trying to be honest with yourself about some of these limits that you're finding? For me, I think it's like a layer below self-esteem. I think my identity is so firmly ensconced in that and I'm not making such radical changes that I don't think it like impacts the way that I view myself or the way that other people view me at which point I might have a self-esteem issue. But I think it's the layer under that, which is there is a great

discomfort. It's kind of like if you are a people pleaser and you try to stop doing that, it is deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Even if people pleasing is making you miserable, you often prefer that misery to the misery of feeling uncomfortable in the feeling of you're pleasing yourself, but making other people upset. Yeah. It's a much deeper feeling of disquiet and discomfort that I have to sit with.

And I will sometimes have to, if I know there's 14 things that need to be done before bed, I have gotten to a place where I intellectually am honest enough to be like, these 14 things, it doesn't fucking matter because there's going to be 35 of them tomorrow. Exactly. I have got to just say what is enough at some point because I'm living in a fiction as if I do these 14 things every night. Eventually one night there won't be those.

Yeah. Nope. Till you die. So I think for people who are listening, this is reminding me very much of, there's this line in an Indigo Girls song, I think it's in Closer to Fine, or it might be least complicated,

but it's like some long ago when we were taught that whatever kind of puzzle you got, you just stick the right formula in, a solution for every fool. Okay, so it's like everybody gets a puzzle. Yours might have been religion, it might be an eating disorder, it might be people pleasing, it might be productivity, but none of us know how to be. And so we get a puzzle. People give us a structure or a plan or a discipline or a way of being and they

say to us, if you just solve this puzzle, you're gonna be okay. Yeah. And the puzzle, whatever we got, whatever kind of puzzle you got, makes you crazy and insane all day. And there's only one thing that is scarier than spending every day of your life

trying to solve that unsolvable puzzle. And that is packing up the puzzle and putting it away. So it is less terrifying to just spend your entire life trying to complete a puzzle that has no last piece than saying, oh my God, there's no puzzle and putting it away. So imagine yourself putting that puzzle away and just sitting on the couch and staring into the abyss.

That is why we all continue to do our puzzles. And we would rather try to do that puzzle than put the puzzle away. And that's what I was trying to express with the God thing. Like it is easier to serve a God that will always be displeased with you and that you will never satisfy, then to claim yourself as your own God. Because that's what you're doing when you make your own puzzle. That's right.

What you're saying is, I am the one who's going to decide if my life is enough, if I am worthy, if my life is enough, if I am worthy, if I am good, if my people are okay, if I'm okay. I think that at the end of the day, this all comes down to all of us just desperately trying to know we're okay. Yes. And the religions of, whether it's Christianity or productivity or whatever,

at least give us something to strive for in that process. Yes, and a measure. And a measuring. It's the score. Yes. That's what the love letter is about. It is a score book. And when you put away the score book and you're like, there isn't one,

I am doing my own score, then you have to have this kind of unshakable sturdiness to know that like, I am creating the criteria myself to know if my life is okay, to know if I am creating the criteria myself to know if my life is okay, to know if I am okay. You just described what eating disorder recovery is. Every day, at the end of every single day,

I could tell you how many calories I ate, what I did, I had math. It is so impossible to know how to be as a human being. I had a ledger, like your list. I don't know how to report how I did as a human being today, except that I have the math that says there's some formula that I stayed inside the lines today. Okay, so anorexia recovery, what the last year has been

for me has been putting away the puzzle. Cold turkey. And like, it's not unshakable. It's not that what you're left is unshakable. What you're left with is every single day, these different feelings and trying to trust yourself and trying to like actually live inside your body and not on a list. A list of things to do is no better than a religion, a dogma. That's busyness to me. It's, I will wake up in the morning

and I'll list a piece of paper, a book, a list, a schedule. Somebody else will tell me how to spend every hour, how to be. It's outsourcing your entire being to something outside of yourself. So yeah, there's off grid and there's off grade. I am going off grade. I am making my own thing. And that's scary because guess what? The world is still going look at you funny and every time they do or anytime they say anything you have to reaffirm for yourself that you're not going by that grade. You're going by your own thing and that's scary as shit. Because you're leaving a congregation. You're leaving a congregation. The whole world is your congregation. Everybody's in the religion of productivity. So you'd be like a lone wolf.

And you're really not leaving it. To be honest, in the world of productivity, you're not leaving it unless you're really going extreme. I think to ground in like practical, real terms, a lot of people aren't going to quit their jobs. They're not going to stop volunteering at their thing. If you are where I am, it is just these interstitial moments of realizing that the mass that you've been sold is a lie. It's not that you're not getting that shit done because you're not efficient enough, because there's some missing piece that if you just learned this trick to do it faster or better or whatever, that you'd be able to accomplish those things.

You're not going to fucking do it. It's set up that way in order that you will never not be without a thousand things to do. So the moment is when you reach that, if you can get honest enough to be like, there is always going to be more to do, I am not going to get it done and get comfortable with the discomfort of that. That is what I'm actually trying to do. At the end of the night, I feel very uncomfortable because there are things that are left undone.

And I have actually started saying to myself, two things, if I'm really, really anxious about it, like if I'm getting super anxious and I can't stop spinning of the things I have to do, I look around my house. Often it's like when I'm putting my kids to sleep, so I'm like in bed with them and reading or whatever, but my head is swirling with the 47 things

and I'm not gonna be able to go to sleep and all the things. And I will touch them and be like, my kid is here. My kid is okay. I am here. I am okay. My dog is here. Actually, the fear that I'm having about this monster isn't here. This is what's here and we're okay. And then I will just say these things are not finished and yet you have done enough. It is okay and you are okay. I have to say that to myself.

It is okay and you are okay. And after I was saying that to myself for like a month, I realized, holy shit. The inverse of that, if I have to tell myself it is not done, it's not going to get done even so it's okay and you're okay. The inverse of that is I must have always believed that since things are done, it is okay and I am okay. Therefore my okayness is attached to the getting done of things, which is such a fucking insult to how powerful and interesting I am and this life is supposed to be. Like we're actually fucking humans.

We were not sent here with a to-do list. We got to get some shit done, yes. And we should get shit done for people. And also, we're exacting all the humanness out of ourselves. That is actually a birthright of what we are. I started thinking about this later. Have you ever thought about this? Probably.

The phrase is as follows. Earn a living. Oh my God. Yup. Earn a living. That says everything. Earn your right to live. Earn your right to exist. You earn that. Yes. You

better earn your right to live. And earning in that context means producing, making money. And we don't even think about that phrase. We still have politicians who say with their very own mouths on the television without being confronted about it, phrases like the deserving poor. What the fuck? There are people who deserve, and what does it mean to deserve?

It means you're trying your damned hardest to be part of the productivity hamster wheel. That's if you deserve to get helped. And that isn't just with the poor. I mean, look, it's like the Martyr Olympics around here. Spend 13 seconds with your average suburban soccer mom and what are those first 13 seconds and the seven minutes that follow? It is a competition of busyness. It is a, and then we do this and then we have that, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. It's about a worthiness. It's about a deserving. It is, I am worthy of this life because look how much I'm hustling for it.

It's, you don't have to be mad at me or jealous of me or whatever. Cause look, I'm miserable too. And as long as we can connect in that misery, we are going to be okay with each other. But have you ever seen anything so offensive as a carefree woman? It is offensive to us. You have to signal to us that you are suffering for us to accept you. And the signal of that is busyness. Is busyness.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We have so much more to talk about because it strikes me that one cannot quit their religion or change their religion until they have a new God.

Because otherwise you're just rearranging chairs on the Titanic. You're trying to control yourself. You're trying to diet your way out of that thing. Which is the same as the thing as the religion you're trying to control yourself. You're trying to diet your way out of that thing. Which is the same as the thing, as the religion you're trying to leave. You're just creating another like sect. Right, you're just like in the religion and trying to like, I did that for a while.

It's so funny that you said the diet and the math. The other book that like, if you're struggling with this and this resonates with you, you absolutely have to read Oliver Berkman's 4,000 Weeks. It's called 4,000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. And FYI, that's what we get. 4,000 Weeks. And the entomology of the word busy is anxiety. Really? Yes. It's anxiety. It's like the idea that you will not feel anxious if you stay busy and you will feel anxious if you stop being like, we've got it all backwards. Yeah.

So I want to add to that book recommendation, Trisha Hersey, rest is resistance. Black women have been telling us this for so long. That episode is 139. You should go back and read that. No more grind. Really amazing. I mean, the way she talks about it's a colonization, that is exactly it. The last thing that this should be in the world is a shaming ourselves for fucking it

up. No, it's liberation. Like this was, as Percy says, you have to be gentle with yourself because it's a de-programming. Yes. It is the same as colonizing with their religion. It's the same as colonizing with patriarchy. It is something that we need to slowly unlearn and not berate ourselves for doing what we were trained to do. No, it's scary to wake up and realize you've been in a cult your whole life. And that is

what this is, cult in terms of culture. This is the culture that we were raised in, is productivity culture. And so of course we are disciples of it. And so when you wake up one day and you realize it's not working for you anymore, like every single person who's woken up and left a fundamentalist place or an eating disorder or whatever your puzzle was, it is a destabilizing, difficult time. And the only way through it is to have a vision, is what I think. I think that's what I'm trying to say.

Like, if this God is suddenly not God, what kind of God do you want? What is your higher power going to be? Actually, that if you're questioning the idea that all of your worth as a human being is in productivity. What are you replacing that with? If you could create a God, what would God decide is your worthiness? I have a question. Why do we need to create something big and beautiful outside of ourselves?

Like a God outside of us. Why can't we think of God as our own sense and this God that lives within us? Like why are we so knee-jerk, oh we cannot think of our own selves as a God? I know that that might sound weird but like why are we giving away so much of our own divinity? I think that that might be the problem. Because we want a puzzle. We don't want to trust our own limits and feelings. We just want a new puzzle. Let's come back and keep going. Okay? We love you Pod Squad. We can do hard things. Tell us what you think about this. We'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things, first, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then just tap the plus sign

in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle

in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz. Also by Allison Schott and Dina Kavanaugh. I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlin. I came out the other side I chased desire, I made sure I got what's mine And I continue to believe That I'm the one for me

And because I'm mine, I walk the line Cause we're adventurers in heartbreaks on map A final destination we lack We stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain that our lives bring

We can do our hard way I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start I'm not the problem, sometimes things fall apart And I continue to believe The best people are free And it took some time But I'm finally fine But I'm finally fine Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that Our final destination we lack

We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been. And to be loved we need to be known. We'll finally find our way back home. And through the joy and pain that our lives bring we can do hard today We're adventurers and heartbreaks on map We might get lost but we're okay with that directions to places they've never been. And to be loved we need to be known. We'll finally find our way back home. And through the joy and pain that our lives bring, We can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things. I think