23: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking with Oliver Burkeman

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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am overjoyed today to be here in Brooklyn with Oliver Berkman, who wrote one of my top two favorite books pretty much ever, but especially that I read in 2015 as I was starting to think about Pivot and I was working my way out of my Pivot might have even read it the year prior to Oliver Berkman is a writer for the Guardian. He's been writing for them for 15 years, which is incredible. His Guardian weekly column is the thing I make a mad dash to as soon as I open my feedly account. It's called this Column Will Change youe Life. He wrote a book that came out in 2012 called the Happiness for People who Can't Stand Positive Thinking where he explores the upsides of negativity, uncertainty, failure and imperfection. I love how Oliver describes his column. He says I write about social psychology, self help, culture, productivity, the science of Happiness and make unprovoked attacks on the secret, which just makes me laugh. Oliver, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

When I read the Antidote.

I read a lot of self help for about 10 years and I always felt there was something missing because I fit in that 18 year, I mean, sorry, 18 month principle of someone who buys a Self help book has probably bought one in the last 18 months, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And when I read your book, I felt like jumping up on a couch and pounding my fists in the air like Tom Cruise talking about Katie Holmes.

Excellent. I'm glad to hear you had that much book.

I felt like finally I wrote a blog post once called Self Love Formulas are Bullshit. This idea that, oh, you have to love yourself completely before XYZ can happen. So we'll get into all that with your book. But I'm curious, what inspired you to write a book about happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking?

That's a good question. I guess there are two levels to it. The simple one is that I had been writing this column for a few years at that point, and I'd been trying to sort the wheat from the chaff with self help. Basically, my assignment in the column was to, and still is really to read those kind of books and look at that kind of research and figure out what, what made sense and what didn't. And I saw this pattern emerging, right, which is that everything that seemed not to work, either according to the research or when I tried it in my own life, had something in common, you know, with something to do with what I call positive thinking. You know, the idea of trying to make yourself feel the right feelings and sort of forcibly make your goals come true and sort of manipulate reality so that it all goes okay. Other people have other definitions of positive thinking. And the things that did work and seemed to have something to them again all seem to share this quality of.

Being more accepting of negativity, being more able to coexist alongside negative emotions, experiencing failure, all these kinds of things. So I noticed these patterns and I thought, there's something more than a column here, you know, that I want to write a book about it. I think the deeper answer is that most of us who write about this stuff are.

Sort of engaged in long term publication therapy, really.

And, you know, I never started writing about these kinds of issues because I've got them all sorted out myself. It's obviously because I haven't got them all sorted out myself. And you know, occasionally at events or something, someone will say, like, they think they've. They've finally, like, rumbled me. They'll be like, I think you're just interested in all this happiness stuff because you're. You struggle with these issues yourself. And I'm like, yeah, exactly, yeah. Why else would I be interested in the stuff? So I guess the deeper answer would be I would. I tried some of this other stuff. And I wanted to find something that worked better. I'd spent a good number of years, sort of in a futile fashion, trying to.

Implement.

Some of the ideas of what I call in the book the cult of optimism. And they haven't worked.

I was just going to say the cult of optimism is such a great moniker for it. You say that it's ironic because the cult of optimism ends up being self defeating. How so?

I mean, I think it's worth going right back just to get the idea straight, to go right back to that idea about not thinking of a polar bear. Right. Which I write about a little bit in the book. Famous old parlor game trick, whatever, where you ask somebody to not think about a white bear for a whole minute and you instantly see there that all you can do if you tell someone not to think about a white bear is that they're going to think about a white bear. And all that goes to show, I think, is that there's something very basic to how our minds work, which is that if you.

Tell your mind to not think about certain things or to only focus on certain things to eliminate certain kinds of thoughts or whatever it might be, this immediate.

Blowback, you know, happens, and all you can do is think about those things. And it's not just a game. I think it applies. It's been shown to apply, you know, to all sorts of psychological phenomena around happiness and other things. If you try really hard only to feel certain kinds of things, you'll get the opposite. So it's a very sort of stressful way to live, to be constantly trying to eliminate negativity, constantly trying to feel pumped up and psyched up about your goals. It doesn't result in what you want, which is to feel great all the time. It results in the opposite, which is like constantly scanning to see if there's any negativity or constantly worried that you need to be focusing on your goals even harder.

In the outer world. It doesn't work. Your goals are not best met that way either.

It kind of rejects the reality of the situation, the reality of life, really, which you talk about in the book. I developed what I started to call the personal development police. That something would start going wrong and I would not like it. And then I would go. The personal development police in my head would say, oh, no, don't think a negative thought. You're gonna manifest more negativity. And it would. All these books would parrot back to me in a way that was really.

Downward spiral, downward spiral. It's quicksand. Whatever. It's like, you know, the harder you fight in this kind of way.

The worse things get. And there's also this kind of weird moral layering as well, that if positive thinking is how everything works, then if things don't work out for you, it must be because you're not thinking positively. It must be your fault, which, you know, sometimes, sure, it's your fault that things go wrong, but sometimes it isn't. Often it's luck. The real skill, I think, is learning to surf that situation rather than. Rather than anything else. And yeah, it's just like this amazing. I mean, one way of thinking about it, it's just such a scam, right? Because you listen to a guru saying, think positive and everything will go. It doesn't go right, you think, I must not be thinking positively enough. So you go back to the same guru for more advice or to another motivational seminar. Whereas, and I made this comparison before, if you bought a TV for a manufacturer and then it broke, and then you went back to that same manufacturer, it broke again, you'd stop buying TVs from that manufacturer pretty quickly. But in the case of positive thinking, it locks you into the cycle. So I think it's. I think it's pretty bad stuff.

Yeah. The antidote that you offer is this negative path to happiness. Can you describe that at a high level? And then we'll get into some of the different threads of thought around it.

Sure, yeah. And I think I have to, right from the start, say that I don't necessarily think it's the solution to everything, because if I said that it was, I think I'd be doing the same. The same thing as the positive thinkers. So I'm trying to rebalance things, really.

Rather than offer a one size fits all. But what I mean, I guess in a general sense is this idea that various different philosophies and techniques that involve cultivating a friendlier, more open and tolerant attitude toward negative emotions is probably a lot wiser and more fruitful. So there are lots of different manifestations of that. But it's this basic idea that, you know, if something occurs either in your emotional world or in the world outside that isn't great.

Maybe the first instinct that we often have to try and stamp it out or run away from it or totally change it into something good, maybe that impulse should be resisted and something else can grow from taking a different attitude towards it.

You introduce first the stoics and their approach of calm indifference, which I really liked, examining beliefs and the benefits of worst Case scenario planning. And on the third point, I thought I actually talk about worst case scenario planning in the pivot chapter on finances. And my editor asked me to take it out. Someone had given the feedback that it didn't really belong and it was depressing. And I thought to myself, and I remembered your book, that that's the point. Like, we can't pretend that the worst case scenarios are not going to happen because they might.

Right? Absolutely. And I think it's not just, you know, different people's personalities are set up differently. So there are people like me, maybe also you, maybe a lot of British people I don't know, who sort like the idea of thinking about the gloomy side of things. But it's more than that, right? Because it has to do with how we reassure ourselves when we're stressed. And it seems very clear to me, and especially after doing all the reporting for this book, that.

When you're worried about something, so in the case of finances, it could be losing all your money and being extremely poor, the natural thing you want to do is reassure yourself or reassure your friend or whoever it is, it's not going to happen. It's not going to be that bad. If you do this and do this and do this, you can make sure that this worst thing doesn't arise. But every time you do that, even when it's well meaning, you're sort of.

Reinforcing this notion without really meaning to, you know, you're reinforcing the notion that if things did go terribly wrong, that this would be absolutely catastrophic and it would be death. Basically.

You'Re sort of inadvertently suggesting that whenever you say everything's going to be fine, you're saying, and it will be bad if they weren't fine. And to me it seems so much more relaxing and sort of anxiety dispelling to be able to look in and stare at this worst case scenario and say, okay, it would be bad if that happened, but I could cope. Or these are the actions I can take now to make sure I cope. You know, set up an emergency fund in the case of finances, whatever it might be.

And then I can. Not only am I going to be calmer about not having to worry that the worst case scenario would be calamitous, but I think I'm actually going to have more energy and focus freed up to experience success. Right. So it's not, I don't think it actually is a gloomy way of thinking about life. I think it's a really empowering way of thinking about life because you Know, if you can launch a new project safe in the knowledge that if it failed, it wouldn't be absolutely catastrophic or you could cope, you're going to be far more, far less inhibited about, you know, taking the risks, because it's not, you know, because you could live with it if it all came crashing down.

There's a certain relief in dismantling the fuzzy fear monster and actually saying, well, if it did, here's what I would do, right? Or following the thread and saying, well, I'd still be alive.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and sometimes, and maybe.

Not maybe that's ultimately the worst case.

We'Re not going to be alive. But also, you know, I mean, I haven't really thought about this thing so much, but your question brings it up. You know, you might sometimes determine that you didn't want to take that risk because actually the risk of, I don't know, alienating your spouse and children or something was far too great a risk to run it or whatever. But so you get to divide and sift.

Kind of dumb risks from really exciting risks.

And that's a very useful skill too, you know, to know that you could cope with certain things failing and to know that you don't want to cope with other things.

I might actually be British at heart somewhere, because when my friends will talk about relationships or kids and what will they do when they're 80 and I'm like, well, you might get hit by a bus before then, so, you know, you'd be lucky to make it to 80. Whether or not we're talking about this relationship or these potential kids, part of me feels like, you know, I'm just not gonna deny nobody's guaranteed anything, so.

Right. Well, there is that. There is also a chapter in my book about trying to come to terms with death as well. But I do think, you know, and we can talk about that, but.

Just on a very mundane level, I think we do tend to overestimate that fuzzy risk. That fuzzy worst case monster, you know, is much scarier most of the time because actually we're just exaggerating how bad a certain course of action.

And I think the cult of optimism says, don't you dare even entertain. I'll hear people's language. And I used to do this too. Oh, my God. I can't even say for a second that that might occur, let alone go into visualizing what you say the stove call negative visualization, because we have to do the positive vision. And I'm all for the positive vision statement. It's in my book as well, but that there's so much fear that by giving even a half a split second of attention to the worst case, we're somehow manifesting that or calling that out.

And you just build this thing up. And in a lot of cases, you know, some cases you might be taking a huge risk that would leave you in a very different situation financially, professionally, whatever. But a lot of the time actually you're not taking that big of a risk. And if you build it up through sort of telling yourself you're never allowed to think about failure, then it just becomes scarier. And I think that could lead to procrastinating on your stuff you want to do, you know. So, yeah, it's counterproductive in lots of different sort of cunning ways.

Speaking of failure, toward the back of the book you talk about failure for failure's sake, that in our culture now we have a lot of failure porn, like on Fast and Fast Company and Entrepreneur magazine, where it's like, look who failed and now they're a billionaire. And you're saying, can we learn to embrace failure as failure? It's not always needs to be some straw spun into gold. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, it's a really interesting distinction. I'm glad you brought it up because I think, you know.

As you say, the way we normally hear about the importance of failure these days is like, look at me, I'm a successful billionaire and I was willing. It's because I was willing to fail.

And you know, that might be true. I don't think it's nonsense. But of course the problem there is that you never hear from all the people who are willing to fail and didn't become billionaires and didn't write best selling celebrity autobiography. So, you know, it could be that being willing to fail is correlated with extreme success or terrible and terrible failure, and you just would never find out. What I tried to say in the book is that, you know, ultimately, if we're going to embrace failure, I think that it involves being able to think about being willing to just. To just fail, you know, for things to just, in a given domain of life, go wrong. Not go wrong en route to being right.

But just go wrong. Partly because I think the peace of mind and authenticity that you can demonstrate in your life if you really have this nailed, I'm not saying I do, you know, is a good thing. Secondly, because there is a sort of.

There's something very companionable and comradely about failure, you know, that there's something very isolating about extreme success and there's something very sort of. When there's something very open and I don't know how else to express it. I mean, I could tell the whole story of.

The Millennium Dome in the uk which was a sort of terrible, terrible failure. The British population sort of loved the fact that it failed, and it made us all feel very sort of.

Like a lovely community of people. It's hard to express in a brief way.

And, you know, also, let's take it to the max and say that, you know, ultimately our attempts to do anything forever in a permanent way are going to fail at the very end. And. And.

That sort of coming back down to earth in this way is, I quote Natalie Goldberg, Buddhist writer who talks about failure being like, bringing us back down to the ground into the nitty gritty to life as it really is. I'm not counseling, like, you know, go for this, try and make all your projects a disaster, but that sort of willingness to think that in some areas and ultimately in all areas, you just might not succeed, and that would be okay. Again, it's really empowering. It's not the Council of Despair. It's the exact opposite.

You also cite J.K. rowling, her Harvard graduation speech, where she talks about life was really hard. And in that speech, she's not saying, oh, I look back and I'm so glad it was really hard. And she'll say it still to this day, and good things have happened since, but to not try and pretend that failure is some wonderful, most magical experience, that actually, in the moment, it's really tough, Right?

And I think that she says, if I recall correctly in that speech, that, you know.

Once she had hit the bottom there, once she knew that there was nothing to lose and that she might as well do this thing that was creatively so close to her heart. There is a real sense, obviously it's easy, but there is a real sense in which it wouldn't have mattered what happened to it, you know, at that point, which is very creatively freeing to get to the point where you. Where you say, you know, I have failed. I have experienced failure. I might as well at this point write the novel that I want to write. And firstly, she claims it wouldn't have mattered if it hadn't been a massive worldwide bestseller. But secondly, I want to suggest that maybe it was more likely to be, you know, once it was written, from that truly disinhibited, not trying to game the system, not trying to, like, check the boxes that make a bestseller, but just, like, might as well do this now.

And it really is that vulnerability of people sharing failures. I think the talks, the TED talks that resonate are when someone shares a story of adversity and failure. So at the same time that we reject it, you know, this almost brings us. It's like the ego version of being able to go without all of our things, like the Stoics would practice. And you quote Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts saying, just because you've experienced a failure in your life has actually nothing to do with who you are as the person underneath that.

Right. There's a fascinating work also that I do mention about, by historian called Scott Sandage, about.

When the word failure came to be attached in American history to people rather than to events. And it's pretty recent, right? Like, it's only in the last couple hundred years, that hundred years, that, you know, the idea of thinking of a person as being a failure as opposed to, you know, they tried something and that venture was a failure. And he connects it to the rise of the credit ratings agencies and the way that banks need to be able to. To say, this person's a good risk, this person's a bad risk. And maybe it's okay in the context of banks, but this idea of a global rating that because you did something and it was a disaster, that means you as a person are a disaster, is totally unhealthy and no good.

It kind of reminds me of what's happening with social media. So first we have the credit scores that only the banks can see, but now everybody can see how many Facebook friends a person has or how many followers or how many likes.

Yeah.

Out of control.

Right. And it's fine as long as you're not investing your identity in it. And it's hard not to invest your identity in it. It's very hard to do anything on Twitter without sitting and waiting to see who. See who likes it, and then, you know, concluding something about yourself on the basis of that, which is clearly ridiculous.

But we all do it, right? Let's talk about goals. I underlined an exclamation mark where you talk about that. The Yale study of goals is BS pretty much. Or at least no one can trace.

That as far as anyone can tell. It's made up.

So for all of you listening, and I think I quote this in my.

First book.

You'Re forgiven. It's so widespread.

It's like one of the first personal development stats I ever read in probably the first book I ever read 10 or 15 years ago. And it's that I'M sure you've all heard it, that they did a study at Yale and the group who wrote down their goals like 3% of them were richer than all the rest combined and everything had come true. So ever since there's been this trend of write down your goals, write down manifestation lists. So first, what did you find when you looked into this Yale study? And then what's the anti goal approach?

The Yale study is so funny because you've encapsulated it. Well, it's just got this status as like the linchpin or the keystone or whatever of popular writing on goals. I spoke to archivists at Yale and people at the Harvard Business School where it's occasionally also attributed. And you know, they, they've encountered it before but they, they've never found any record of this study, not in a different year than the one that's given. You know, it really doesn't exist. There was a reporter for Fast Company many years ago who also got onto this and did a very funny set of phone calls where he, you know, he went to ask one of the big, one of the big people, I know that Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins office were both involved in this and some others and asked each of them like can you tell where you got it from? And one of these guys would say, I think you should ask that guy. So they go to that motivational speaker and say, you keep mentioning this, where did he come from? And eventually it's a perfect circle. They're just recommending each other. So literally, you know, nobody knows where it comes from. Obviously the made upness of the Yale study of goals doesn't on its own show.

Maybe there's a placebo effect that is working.

Yeah. And it's just one study. It doesn't show that, it doesn't show that goal setting is nonsense. And I actually don't think, I argue that goal setting is to be completely dispensed with. What I'm trying to talk about, based on a whole bunch of recent research, is this idea of the over pursuit of goals that to question this assumption, that's very deep, especially in the sort of popular self help literature that there's no degree of intense focus on your goals. That is a bad thing, you know, that you should, that you can, you know, you should write them down, you should pin them to your mirror, look at them while you're shaving or putting on your makeup. You should, you should repeat them to yourself 20 times before you go to bed. There's no, you know, it's Always a good thing. And there's plenty of evidence now to suggest that it really isn't a good thing. For lots of different reasons. The most obvious, I guess, being that it creates tunnel vision and prevents you from seeing all sorts of other opportunities that might actually help you in a more fruitful way. But you're so focused on the endpoint. And secondly, there's a lot about the way that focusing on the outcome instead of the process sort of induces procrastination. It makes the endpoint very intimidating. It's much harder to actually just put in the work that you need to put in to write the book, launch the business, whatever, when you are really fixated on the end goal. So when I talk about the sort of anti goal approach, firstly I'm just talking about maybe having a mindset of holding your goals a bit more loosely and not obsessing about them so much.

And secondly, focusing on process, sometimes, you know, you can set a process goal that is a way. Right. You know, I think as a sort of compromise situation, when I was writing this book, I tried to say, you know, I'll write 800 words, 900 words every morning and I will do that, but I will not set any quality expectations for it. And I won't be thinking about how this book's going to be really great or, you know, huge bestseller or something.

And that enables you to actually do that work, right? Because it's sort of value free and anyone can just go and put that process in for a day. And also the moment you've done that for your day, you've succeeded like you've met your aim and you do it every single day. And otherwise you're sort of waiting until the point at which the whole thing's finished or published. And until then you're constantly like, you know, on edge about whether you're going to succeed. You succeed every day that you write 800 words because your goal is to write 800 words. And then also there's some stuff.

That'S in there about just sort of reconceptualizing life a bit and not thinking about a professional career as climbing. Climbing, climbing up to one summit where you then, you know, sit back and rest and dominate for the rest of your life. But more in the analogy of, you know, frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad. And maybe the goal is to just do a whole lot of interesting, meaningful things and some of them will be higher status than others and some of them will pay better than others.

And you won't be sort of Constantly in the state of. None of it counts until I get right.

And it kind of brings in the discussion. You bring in Buddhism and attachment. I feel like we have certain soul goals, like writing a book, kind of so much work. It really kind of has to come from a soul level place of commitment. Yeah. But then the attachment that might follow by creating too many specific goals and parameters around what's gonna dictate success. That's where it seems to create more of an issue. And like you said, waiting to celebrate till, okay, three years out. Cause then what happens a lot of time is then there's the next goal right there. There's only a flash second of being happy.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I don't. I mean, I think if you mean goals as in the sort of values that steer you in the life, then I am not for one moment gonna talk against those.

But it's a question of, you know, so, yeah, thinking in terms of writing, which is, you know, what we do.

It's hoping to build. Again, not saying I've succeeded completely or anything, but hoping to build a life where like every day by working on books, I get to express and embody a value that is important to me rather than that thing is only embodied or, you know, expressed once it's finished or once it's a huge success. You know something.

Speaking of writing, you talk about the difference between feeling motivated and just doing the work. And I always find this a very interesting debate among creatives in general. You cite. I forget who he was, Casey or Chuck. Someone where he says, yes, Chuck, close. Inspiration is for amateurs. And that a lot of the, you know, when we say a motivational speaker, it's like motivated. So people feel motivated to work on a creative project.

Now I kind of wait for inspiration, but I also know the rigors of work. What did you find when you did the research on feeling motivated?

Well, I mean, there is a well known finding that.

Too much, sort of too much motivation, too much psyching up and sort of.

Arousal in the broad physiological sense of the word is detrimental. So you can, up to a certain point it gets you going. And then after a certain point it just like.

That reminds me of like the writer's retreat where it's like, I'm gonna go to the woods for three months. And I tried to do that once for a week. Didn't write a thing. Probably because of all the pressure.

Yeah, no, I've had similar experiences.

The thing that was so powerful for me, and I write about it in the book, but it also Helped me write the book. You know, is this idea, as you say, that you don't have to feel like doing something in order to do it, that you.

When you tell yourself you've got to feel motivated and psyched up or inspired or whatever it might be, you think you're helping yourself get things done, but you're setting up another barrier, really, because you're now saying, not only do I have to do all these things, like open up my computer and load up a file and add some sensors to a thing, I also have to feel like doing those things. And that is way harder. Mainly because the human mind is a much more sort of, of crafty and idiosyncratic and perverse machine than your computer and your physical actions. So you're really setting up this big hurdle, which is, you know, I'm going to demand the right mindset as well as.

Doing these actions. And as soon as I was able to sort of think, okay, it's Monday morning, it's raining, I've got a long way to go with this book. I'm going to get to my desk and I am going to feel like I don't want to do it. And that's fine. I'm not gonna. I don't mean I'm gonna like, power through those feelings or like, you know.

Beat them up. Which is why I get slightly have some reservations with some of these ideas in some books about, about sort of, you gotta fight resistance. Every bit of your body is like.

Yeah, you know, or like the ego is evil. Like he's this evil monster. Yeah, I agree.

And you know, in general, in life, you know, they always, they always make resistance sound like the sort of force that you've got to like, punch in the face. But if you go up to, you know, if you go up to humans in the street and they're just in your way and you punch them in the face, they tend to get more aggressive and like, punch you back. Yeah, I mean, I haven't done it, but I'm assuming so in the same way, you know, I think if you launch yourself a resistance and procrastination and say, I'm going to destroy you, it just comes back even more up in your face and is even harder to get over. But if you just say in that sort of friendly way, okay, well, you're, you know, this feeling is going to be here today. And meanwhile, I'm going to do this. Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Big Magic, which I'm sure you've encountered, has a nice analogy of like, you know, fear. She's talking about fear as an impediment, creativity. But you could think of lots of other things, you know, all sorts of other negative emotions. And she has this idea of that, like, you know, okay, you're gonna let it come along for the road trip, but it's not getting anywhere near the steering wheel. And I think that's a really nice kind of like, okay, it's in the passenger seat.

Yeah, I think she, she had it even in the back seat. And she was like, see, I dog eared that because I actually thought it was somewhat condescending how she talked to her fear still. And I remember, and I was. I kind of felt like she's now talking to it like this little petulant child. And I don't know, can we have our fear sit in the front seat? Can we, can we be even more cordial with it than having to say, I know, I'm just curious.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting. It's a really interesting distinction because on the one hand, I sort of want to say that condescending is the right attitude to have to those negative emotions, but you don't actually know. I mean, you're right. It still has an edge of, I'd really like to get rid of you.

Yeah. Like you're this little petulant child that can sit in the backseat. So I don't know what fear as a peer looks like.

Fear as a peer. I love it.

It's my new motivational space.

That's the main thing.

Yeah, exactly. But so what? Okay, now how can we help people distinguish? Because there is stuff in the cult of optimism and even the career space, I might even be guilty of it. That's if you don't feel like doing the work. How does one know when it's not the right work anymore or not the right job or career?

Yeah, this is really, really.

This is really, really interesting. I'm not sure I have a clear answer, but it is.

Yeah. I think that there is a level of gut feeling and a level of intuition that is different to, you know, oh, I just don't want to do this kind of.

Petulant feelings. I think partly it comes, you learn the distinction over time. I mean, I just know that every day producing certain pieces of writing that I have been totally pleased by in the long run and really happy that I did. I know that I felt really reluctant to do them. So there. I see it as a sort of immediate response that needs to be put aside.

I can think of Other situations where, you know, over the long term you get the feedback from the thing going out in the world or you get the feedback from whatever it might be, relationship place you're living and it doesn't have that effect. You don't learn in the long run that actually this is just you being.

Sort of self defeating at the moment and that it actually is a reason to switch course. And I also think, you know, there's something that.

Susan.

Paiva, the Buddhist teacher writer says about how that Chuck Close idea can turn into beating yourself up. Like it can turn into it's 9am and I've decided I'm going to work on my project between 9am and whatever and I'm just relentlessly going to.

Force myself to do it regardless of having any passion for it. And I think once it comes to the point where you're doing some kind of, of psychological violence to yourself on a daily basis, that is another way of reading.

That it's not quite right. I think one other thing that sort of comes from that idea as well is if you have the freedom of your schedule and I'm well aware that most people don't, it's interesting to see what happens if you just sort of don't try to do anything at all and sit around and watch TV and eat potato chips and like at some point in that process, like I'll just get so bored with that that I want to start reading some psychology books and going and you know, looking into some topic. And I think that's a good evidence that I'm into that for real rather than trying to force myself. But yeah, it's a subtle tricky distinction between that gut feeling that says this is no longer juicy and the one that says, well, no, it is. It's just that on a day to day basis I'm a bit childish about producing it.

Well, I love that you brought in gut instinct and intuition because that's something I talk a lot about and it is more intangible. But I agree with you. I think there is a gut feeling of whether it's worth pushing through in those moments of not feeling motivated. In quotes, let's talk about meditation.

I love how you say in the book that it has become the new stereotype of meditation is not that it's some path to ecstasy, but that it's gonna lead us to a trance like calm. And even since your book was published, meditation has exponentially taken off.

Oh yeah.

So what's the myth of the trance like calm? And what did you find in your Research in this area.

I mean, I think there's even newer myths that are starting to build. So I'll say that about that as well. But the calm myth is this idea that it's always in the stock photography, right? It's either a man or woman in business attire, but they're cross legged on a beach or something. And it's like this is how to feel totally Zen in the middle of your busy, stressful life. And it's all about this idea that people who meditate a lot are going around in this state where there's like no thoughts in their head and nothing troubles them. And like, firstly, I don't really think that there are many people even who have meditated a lot who are really in that state. Secondly, I'm not sure you want to be and I'm not sure it's what is sort of suggested in the. If you go back to the source with meditation. So basically what I encountered when I was went and did that meditation retreat and when you look at the Laurie's research is that you know, what this is really about is learning to be less attached to your feelings and your thoughts, not to not have them. So the analogy that the modern teachers always use is like weather patterns, right? So it's being able to see that your mind is the sky and clouds come and go and the sun comes and goes and rain comes and goes and you don't need to get stressed out about it. But that's not the same as eliminating all weather so that like nothing ever happens. And it's like living in, you know, Palo Alto or something. Right, Sorry.

That is where I grew up. Did you know that? So I went to middle school and high school.

Yes. And of course even they have weather, right? It's just that. It's just that it's the same weather every day.

Trance like calm weather.

But I do think that, you know, that is an important distinction because otherwise you set yourself up a failure. You sit down on a meditation cushion for 10 minutes, your mind is full of buzzing things and then you think I'm no good at this because I ought to be able to eliminate thought. And you know, it's just.

It'S just not true.

Yeah, yeah. I like how you say even five or 10 minutes of meditation that you manage most mornings is sufficient to feel as if I've applied a squirt of WD40 to my mental machinery. It's great. It doesn't have to be the cure all. It's just a squirt of WD40.

Right. And you can take it further, of course. And I'm trying to. But even then, you don't get to.

The trance, like, calm. I don't think you get to a sort of way of being in the world that precisely enables you to be in busy situations and sad situations and stressful situations and not trying to sort of positive think your way out of them or numb yourself to them or something like that. So.

You know. Yeah, do it for five minutes. But even if you do it for much longer and go on lots of retreats and things, I don't think that what opens up to you as a possibility is really.

Monotony. It's something much more alive than that.

Yeah. And that really takes us to the crux of the book, which is what all these different philosophies have to say, and that it sounds like you discovered in the process, is that.

This is who we are. This is what life is. We're all gonna die. We have insecurity. Life can be chaotic, it can be sad. And that, as the Stoics say, it's the calm indifference, as the Buddhists might say, it's equanimity, that it's just even meditation. Now in the media, it's all about the benefits and the focus and the this and the productivity, and we're selling it so hard, and that creates all that attachment to those results.

Very good point.

What you're really saying is that's why I love this book so much. Standing ovation. But that. To embrace the uncertainty and the wisdom of insecurity, and that when we can recognize that there's nothing to fix and be okay in that state, that's freedom.

Yes, absolutely. And again, I almost feel guilty talking about it because it implies that I've sort of totally sorted it out in my own life.

You look like a Zen master.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Yes. This is natural baldness.

Wearing a hoodie.

It's good you guys can't see it. I haven't shaved my hair off. It just fell out. No, but it's that.

You.

I mean, it's two things. Firstly, it's that struggling to not accept those realities makes them worse. Right. So the point about the Wisdom of Insecurity, which is a title of a great little book by Alan Watts, is that trying to get secure makes us more secure. So more insecure. So actually, you know, relaxing into it is just a happier way to live. But, yeah, it's also just this incredible relief of this is the way life is. These are certain things that can't be eliminated. I can let go of that burden of struggling and I can do some really interesting, cool, fun things instead, you know, because I'm not trying to sort of feel better all the time. So it's this big irony that, you know, if you stop focusing on trying to feel better, you will actually, I think, probably feel better, but you probably don't want to do it in order to feel better. It's just like a back door. But, yeah, it's liberal.

I forget who I'm borrowing it from. But I mentioned somewhere, you know, that it's just this question, like, do you want to get to the end of your life and think and be able to say.

That you successfully managed to eliminate 70% of the possible human emotions and to not think about 70% of the things that happen to us? Or do you want to say, you know, I was there for the whole ride, you know, on the high bits of the roller coaster and the low bits, and as well as I could, I was present for the whole experience. And I think, you know, ultimately it's pretty easy to answer that question.

Do you think working on this book and integrating the lessons to whatever extent will change how you approach your next book?

Yeah, I think it is doing. No, it really is doing. I mean, and the thing about this book was, it was I really was going on a journey.

In writing it, and it changed me. And I. You know, I think you can tell, actually, if you look closely. I feel like I'm talking about how to achieve happiness at the beginning. And by the end, I'm like, maybe we shouldn't be thinking about happiness. Maybe we should be thinking about authenticity or meaningfulness or something. So I have just literally, totally changed my philosophy from one end to the other. And, yeah, I'm in that situation.

It's helpful at this point in this book above all, because it's inevitable that you don't really know exactly where you're going in the early stages of project.

And it would be, I think, and hope, fingers crossed, a worse book if I did know exactly where I was going and I was just like, you know, going through the motions of removing it from my head onto a piece of paper. No.

It'S alive rather than dead.

I hope that's really cool. That's a great analogy, like Book as Life, because it relates to so many people's pivots as well, which is actually. Maybe we wouldn't want to know the whole thing. We'd be bored, right?

Absolutely. I can't remember whether I quote her in the book or whether it's elsewhere. But Susan Jeffers, who wrote Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, which is a great book, seems like one of those cliche self help books, but actually if you think about the title, it's great. You know, it's not a positive thinking book at all. She says in one of her other books, you know, if someone handed you a list of, of all the events that were going to happen from now until the day died, would you want to receive it? And some people might say, well, you know, as long as all the events on it were good events, I want to receive it. Which, you know, they're not all going to be. But even if they were, I don't think you want that list because the moment that you know what's going to happen all the way through, even if every single one of those things is brilliant.

The life has gone out of life at some fundamental, in some fundamental way.

It's really very profound.

I thought it was very profound when I encountered it.

And then I love that, you know, Oliver's just starting work on his next book that you're saying, not only do I not have to know all the specifics of it, but I don't even know if I want to. And that instead of aiming for certainty or happiness, that these qualities of vulnerability and authenticity start to rise. And I think that's just really, really cool and inspiring.

Thank you. I hope it turns out to have been wise. We'll find out. I don't know yet, but that's sort of the point.

Awesome. Well, Oliver, thank you so much. This has been so fun and thank you for writing one of my favorite books. Everyone should read it.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

Where can people find you if they want to read more of your work and keep in touch?

My website is oliverbirkman.com B U R K E M A N and a lot of my stuff is on the guardian site theguardian.com and you can put my name in.

Excellent. And I will link to everything we mentioned in the show notes at JennyBlake Me Podcast and if you enjoyed this show, I would be very grateful for a rating and or review on itunes. Thank you everyone for listening and to Oliver for being here today.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. To learn more and get in touch, visit JennyBlake me where I blog about systems at the intersection of mind, body and business. Or find me on Twitter ennyblake. And remember, build first. Then your courage will follow as in it always ra.