Sometimes we don't need to self improve. Actually, I think sometimes we need to do the opposite and say is how I.
Am 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.
Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Emma Gannon, a Sunday Times bestselling and award winning author. Emma's newsletter The Hyphen is the fifth most popular literature substack globally, reaching fifty thousand readers every week, and one of the first newsletters in the UK to have thousands of paid subscribers. Alongside writing, she hosts creativity retreats in the UK and globally. Today, Emma and Eric discuss her new book, A Year of Nothing.
Hi Emma, welcome back.
Hi Eric, Thank you so much for having me back anytime, honest day.
Yeah, it is such a pleasure to talk with you again. I can't remember when we did, but I feel like it might be like three years ago, maybe somewhere in there, and you've had a lot go on since then. And we're going to be discussing your book that's called A Year of Nothing, as well as various things I pulled out of your sub stack. But before we get into that,
we'll start, like we always do, with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second, and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
It's so funny. I knew you'd ask me this, but I didn't prepare anything. But we're just gonna go off the fly, which is probably the best way to do these things. Probably, So I've been thinking a lot recently around choice and having agency over our lives and the daily choices we make. So I think in order to feed the good wolf, I need to feel like I have choice, and then it's my choice. I don't know SA's making sense, but that's where I'm at the moment. Like I live by choice, I act by choice.
So something I'm going to be doing a little more often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. So before we move on, i'd like to ask you what's coming up for you as you listen to this. Are there any things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf that might make sense to remove, or any things you could do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing. So,
if you have the headspace for it. I'd love if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today or tonight to feed my good wolf. Whatever your thing is. A really useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges you back
towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been sending little good Wolf reminders to some of my friends and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two times per week that give them a little bit of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to you too. I do it totally for free, and people seem to really love them. Just drop your information at oneufeed dot net slash sms and I can send them
to you. It's totally free, and if you end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out. That's one youfeed dot net slash sms. And now back to the episode. You know, I find choice really interesting. I'm writing a little bit about choice and decisions right now, and you've wrote on substack recently, I think, or sometime in the last year about decisions, and I'm really thinking about how do we decide what we want to do
given that we are a tangle of conflicted motivations. Often, you know, the obvious one is I want to eat healthier and I want to eat ice cream, Right, got a motivational conflict. And then also, even when we're more clear, we get to the moment of choice, and what is it that causes us sometimes to make the choice to do the thing we set out to do? And what is it that sometimes causes us to choose the thing we don't want to do? Any thoughts on that for you? How that works?
Yeah? So sure? I mean, actually it came from a book I read a while ago called Unwinding Anxiety. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's really about getting outside of yourselves and really growing this awareness of your own thoughts and almost calling yourselves out while you're thinking something.
Yep.
And so this deeper awareness of do I want the ice cream or do I not? As long as it's conscious, as long as it's like, no, I actually do want the ice cream versus this like passive way of acting. That's I guess what I'm aware of now. Is so super aware of myself, which is annoying at times but good in the long run.
I think was that by jud Brewer.
That's the one. It's great.
He is great. He's been on our show like three or four times, and I find him incredible. There we goin his most recent book is about eating, and the core insight of it I thought was really interesting, which
was basically behavior change. You know, doing or not doing a behavior the way you want it to be has everything to do with reward value, meaning classic behavioralism would say that we learn what's a positive outcome and what's a negative outcome, and we will do the things that are positive and we'll avoid the things that are negative.
And of course we have the classic problem where our incentives are often not aligned time wise, right, like the cookie's great today, but the long term health issues are not great, but we discount those. But he talks so much about that. The thing you need to do is learn to update your reward value, meaning you pay very close attention to the choices you make, and then you pay close attention to how you feel after you do them.
And many of us don't do that or the way we pay attention afterwards if we make a decision we don't feel good about, is we just fall into a shame spiral about it, in which case we're not learning, we're not updating reward value. So I think, you know, it goes to a lot of what you were saying there.
And I think what's interesting as well is the self compassion around it, because when you start being really nice to yourself and when you deeply care about yourself, I feel like the habits almost fall in line because you just instinctively want to look after yourself. And that's something
I found. I think last time we spoke it was around my book Disconnected, and that was really all about just taking time away from this ambush as well of influence and getting very still and very quiet and doing things you actually want to do, which is so hard.
Yep, So let's talk a little bit about your latest book, A Year of Nothing. Tell us about how this book came to be in what it is.
Yes, well, this is one of the only interviews I'm doing about the book, So I'm very honored you're having me on because it feels so deeply personal this book that you know, it's a weird one to talk about, even though I'm out the other side now. But around October twenty twenty, I started having really out of body panic attacks, really strange like disassociative stuff, really scary symptoms
of something. I didn't really know what it was, and it carried on for a while, and I just knew I was at a fork in the road and sort of something needed to change. But on the surface, my life looked pretty good. It wasn't like, oh, it's this really obvious addiction I have or this really obvious thing I have. It was very subtle and so it took a lot of digging. But essentially I had this very strong, almost force like take me down, rerout me, and say
you need to close everything down. You need to close your podcast down, you need to not work with the team you're working with anymore. You need to seriously trim your friendship group, you need to clear your diary, and you're not allowed to do anything for a bit. And I am someone who really prides myself on my productivity and my work. I feel so privileged that this is my job. It's not like I hated my job. That was just that was the weird thing. But essentially I
really malfunctioned like I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even make myself a slice of toast. I couldn't go downstairs. You know. I did the lying in bed for a few weeks thing, but then I felt like a shell.
Yeah.
It was very odd and very existential. And I've slowly come back to life and I took a year out.
Basically, And you sort of refer to it as at least it sounds like the diagnosis you came up with was burnout. Do I have that right?
Yes? That wears used a lot, so I don't really know if it encompasses the real story behind it. It felt more spiritual, I suppose, but when I spoke to a doctor, they sort of said, chronic burnout. That's the diagnosis we're going to use in a medical realm. So I went with that.
Yeah. And so you were, in essence forced into radically changing your life, and this book is you're writing about that. Before we go deeper into it, I'd like to sort of skip to today, which is where you've emerged from this phase to some degree. You've written this book, You're active on sub stack, you seem to be back in the world. How are you managing your life? Now, or what are you doing differently after coming out of that year, like what have you learned and what are you applying?
And maybe even then, what are you concerned about?
Great questions. I think about it a lot, because I think when you go through something almost quite traumatizing like that, like I don't want to go back there. I'm so cautious now. I think a few things. I think, first of all, I listen to my body, and I have a lot of respect on my body because it essentially, I mean, it almost went on autopilot and kind of got me through it. So I have a much better relationship with exercise and movement and nourishment and never thing's
changed in that department. I suppose I have a deeper respect for the resilience that we have as humans because I feel like, oh, I got through something really hard, like I can do hard things, and I feel good about that. I feel really great about coming out the other side, because you know, you think when you're in that sort of hole, that to you now, So I
now understand change a bit more. And then I guess the other thing is realizing I'm just in a new chapter and that I'm aging, like I know I'm still relatively young, but I don't do things I don't want to do anymore. And it's amazing. I didn't realize I'm like a kid that I'm like, I'm allowed to do what I want. Wow, that's a new feeling.
Yeah, yeah, you're certainly cognizant of and talk about how the privilege your work gives you to be able to disappear for a period of time or to be able to choose what you want to do, and yet we all do have some degree of agency. You write elsewhere about time, you know, and this idea that people will come up to authors all the time and say I would write a book like yours if I just had the time, If I just had the time, and you address this idea that says, well, hey, for most of us, again,
there are exceptions to this. Single mother with two jobs, you don't have time. Everybody else we have some amount of discretionary time. The question is what are we doing with it? And even more so, you say, the elephant in the room is that I don't have time for It really means I have to take time away from something else, you know. And I've noticed this and the coaching work I used to do with people, was like, we can't just think about adding behaviors to your life
if we don't think about what we're giving away. Now, all we may be giving away is an hour scroll in your phone, but that was serving some purpose in some way in your life. And so we don't manufacture more time, right, we simply allocate it differently.
Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about time, and I think the panic around time is a very existential panic. When we're worried about time, we're actually worried about death. We're actually worried about not having enough hours or days or weeks or months left on the planet. It's like fomo somo is just the fear of death as well. It all goes back to this greater fear.
And I think as you really do some questioning around time and to tell yourselves that you do have time, you know, even just the idea of I have time, like I have time on this planet, your shoulders drop. You feel like, oh, I do have time because none of us really know how long we've got, but we've got today or we've got the next hour. And so getting yourself into that sort of mindset change where you
don't rush around, and you really ease into time. You know, I'm not a scientist, but we know that time bends in certain ways, or time feels different in certain phases of life. You know, during my burnout, it was like going through tree call. The days were very, very long, and so just kind of meditating on time helps.
I think you link to an article about time and an Amazon culture. I can't remember the people are called. I'm sure I will pronounce this wrong, the Amandoa people who are an Amazon tribe, that they don't seem to understand time like we do. And I read that article. But the thing that really intrigued me about that article even more than that, was this statement that they changed
their names at different stages of life. I found this fascinating, Like when you go from a child to adolescence, instead of a name like little Bird, you might take a name on like rising Sun. I just loved that idea that in many ways, our identity is changing significantly enough that we're going to call ourselves something different.
Yeah, and there's a real respect there in the culture, but which I feel like is lost sometimes in the Western world we think, oh, you're getting a bit old, whereas in other cultures. It's like you're an amazing, magical wise elder, and I think we need more of that.
Yeah, So given that, I'm going to ask you what your name was before your year of burnout and what your name is now, just for whimsy's sake.
Wow.
Okay, it's a tough one, but it's fun, right, It's fun.
It is fun because before the burnout I felt closer to my child like self, and post burnout, I'm definitely seeling like my older self.
Uh huh.
I have no idea about names. It could just be I mean I always thought it was like performative Emma versus like the real Emma. Yeah, but that's not really going into age, but maybe it is.
We could call you Fred Astaire before and after we could call you who's a wise elder? Desmond Tutu, Gandals, Gandalf. Okay, Freda Stair and Gandalf. There we go, all right?
Why Fred astea.
Use the word performing and I just think of Fred Astaire as a as a quintessential performer. It's probably on my mind too because I was listening to an English band James, and they have a song something about Fred Astaire. And so since that was in my mind. I'm sure it just was that association.
I think that makes sense, you know, because my pre burnout me was just tap dancing, trying to please everyone, trying to get the show on the road. And yeah, now it's slower, so it makes sense.
Yeah. So I was making the connection there between fine time in general with the statement we were talking about, which was not everybody has the luxury necessarily to completely turn off right or to decide what they do, And we all have the ability to decide what we do, often more or less. And you write a lot about what you say yes to and what you say no to,
and that that's a skill you've really discerned. And I wanted to ask you a question a little bit more specifically there, which is, you know, how do you think about things that you know you want to do right? Like, there's some things you get if you're paying close attention, you're like, don't want to do no, thank you, there's other things like that Actually sounds pretty cool, right, And yet I think the problem with a lot of this
stuff is we make those decisions out of context. Meaning I got this offer a while ago to go address a team of legislative aids about the opioid crisis. I was like, well, that sounds incredible. And then since I have a rule similar to you yours, which is like I give it some time, I thought about, well, what else do I have to do in those few weeks? And I was like, oh, individually, I want to do this thing. In the context of everything else, this will
be turned into a disaster for me. And so I said no, So how do you think about first knowing what you might even want to say yes or no too, and then secondly, how do you think about it in context? Yeah, with everything else that's going on in your life.
Yeah, on that first point about the privileged to take a year off, I write about that also in The Success Myth, my other book around how we are often told we need to do certain things to look successful, and I'm kind of questioning what we actually need on a basic level to be happy. And it might be leaving the big job and earning less money and all that stuff. But anyway, that's a different conversation because I had to sell a lot of belongings to take my
year off. But yeah, for me, it's about listening to my body, which is a new thing for me. Like really getting in the depths of like what is my solar plexus sort of compass saying, because there are plenty of things I would love to do. For example, if I get an email in and it looks really exciting, there's my first thought, which is this will look really good to the outside world. This will look amazing on my Instagram. I could put this on my LinkedIn and
get more work. That's like the first thought because that's my cultural social self that's been conditioned, essentially. And then my second thought is, Okay, let's reel this back. Do you actually want to do it? And that's the really exciting, juicy part for me because I get real and it's really surprising. It's like, oh no, I don't want to do that at all. Never want to do a Ted talk ever. Again, I hated it, and that I didn't
realize when I was in my twenties. I thought everyone wants to do that, And what I actually want to do is very clear now and I'm the healthiest I've ever been doing things that I don't really care if people find it impressive, and that's the difference. It's like what looks good versus what feels good.
So what was it about a TED talk that you hated so much? Because I know that you talk to audiences and you don't seem to be bothered by doing that. You seem to enjoy engaging with audiences, you do book events, Like, what was it about that thing that made it so painful that you're like never again?
You know, I'm still trying to unpick it because around that time, I think I was twenty seven when I did my first TED talk and I went out that night and got so drunk and I don't drink anymore, thank god, but I was like numbing out. It was really not good. But it's just not a good time for me. And it's because I hated it so much and I just didn't make that connection. But I think what it is now is what I'm realizing is I'm an introvert. I am a writer, and I don't want
to broadcast. I don't want to be famous, I don't want to be a guru. I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I simply want to connect and write about things I care about and take this strange view I've got on the not strange but sensitive, highly sensitive view on the world and a way to hopefully translate life's experience into life's lessons or whatever this is I've got going. I don't want to be thought of as someone who has the answers. And it always made me super nervous to be on a stage with a
little microphone pretending I know, I don't know anything. You know as you get older? What's the saying it's like you know less as you get older.
I still think that's interesting because in your books you are presenting a clear point of view. Maybe your books are just questions. I don't know, Like the success Myth is the sort of book that is taking a point of view. This actually isn't an important topic. I was going to ask you what your name was before the ted talking after, but I'm not I'm not going to make you do that. But you segeduayed there into somewhere
else I was interested in going, which was alcohol. I mean, obviously my story is one of addiction and alcohol recovery. I don't think yours is like mine. So talk to me about what led you to the decision to stop drinking, and whether you think that's a permanent thing or a thing you moderate, and what are the benefits have been Now.
I find it fascinating the relationship we have with alcohol as a society and a culture. I find it's so bizarre that it's the one thing that people question you why you don't do it, Why you don't take a drug. It's bizarre, and it's something that I'm really interested in on picking and kind of see it everywhere now in
films and everything. But I think for me, my favorite people who have inspired me beyond belief really is like Elizabeth Gilbert, Junior Cameron, these incredible writers who are afraid of a bit of the woo woo, which I definitely am partial to. And Julia Cameron actually has written the forward for A Year of Nothing, which I'm so excited about. But their relationship with alcohol and the way they talk
about sobriety. And this might sound a bit out there to some people, but when I'm drinking, I can't hear what I'm listening out for, whether that's intuition, whether that's guidance, whether that's God. You know, I'm not religious at all, but it's like the universe, whatever we want to call it, I am in conversation with it, like it gives me ideas when I'm on walks, I am downloading something. Like when I write my books, sometimes I don't know where
it's coming from. It's not me, it's you know, like with poetry, it's like, oh, I didn't know I could write that. And so really, for me, it's why would I want to drown out something so amazing and beautiful as creativity and a gift? So I think that's really where I've got to you with alcohol is why would I want to mess up the chemical situation of my body and mind with something that takes me away from the beauty of life?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That relationship between drugs and I'm just gonna throw alcohol under that category because that's exactly what it is. Between drugs and creativity is really an interesting one, and lots of people report really different things. We certainly know lots of great art was made under the influence, there's no doubt about that. We also know that being under the influence killed a whole lot of great artists before they got to make more great art.
Right.
I think my relationship with it was that in some ways, well, Heroin did not make me creative. I think it just made me want to sit in a corner and be very happy with the entire world. But drinking and smoking pot things like that did make me in some ways
more creative sometimes. But when I summed up the whole equation, when I added the like, oh, I got a couple of ideas because I was stoned and wrote those down, and then I thought about how good those actual ideas were, and then how much time drugs took me away from being creative. When I summed up the whole equation, it was pretty clear that it was bad for my creativity.
Yes, well, this is so interesting because it's like I wrote my first novel in a little B and B with loads of wine, ye, and my second novel, I've been writing from a place of sobriety and it's been harder, and I'm annoyed about that, but it's been a deeper experience. And also, yeah, in the long run, it's not good for me. So I've had both experiences.
Yeah, And I think that's the thing about looking at substances.
We have to look at for me the whole picture. Now, I'm an extreme case, like I burn my life to the ground, so it's pretty easy for me to be like bad idea, right, But even in that context, I can be like, put me in a room full of like twenty five people and I'm expected in network I am certain in that moment that a couple of drinks would improve that situation, like I would be better at networking, I would enjoy it more, all of that, right, But that's like two hours out of all the rest of
my life, And I'm like, Okay, Well, that equation doesn't make sense. So when people sort of say that they don't miss drugs or alcohol in some way or in some circumstances, I often think that we're not telling ourselves the full truth there now. Oftentimes in the beginning we
really do have to break off the relationship. But for me, as more nuance creeps in, I have to sort of say, like, again, on the whole, this is a really good idea for me to remain sober, because if I were to add up the good and bad moments, the bad would outweigh the good by huge margin. And I think for anybody who's got substance, I'm just going to use the word issues, even if it doesn't mean that they have a problem.
There's this change that happens. I think in the beginning, which is substances are unilaterally good and the problems with them are very low. And then over time that that relationship starts to change, it becomes less good and the
problems start to increase. And then there's a point where you cross, and people who are maybe not with the same level of substance use disorder are able to say like, WHOA, Okay, this doesn't seem to really be working out anymore, and they step away, and then others of us that thing crosses, and for whatever reason, the reward value doesn't seem to update. To go back to jud Brewer from before, and we keep carrying on. So it sounds like for you, you sort of hit that point.
I did, But it was also the fact that if I want to get real and I want to get truthful, and I want to get really honest, I need to be completely aligned with what.
I actually think interesting.
Yeah, and when I'm reaching for a drink, like, for example, if I want to drink, it's because I'm uncomfortable or I don't want to be doing what I'm doing. That's just personal. So if I'm at a party and I want to drink, it means I don't like anyone there if I am. You know, it's like if I'm doing something and I don't like it, I want to drink. So if I'm living a life without alcohols because I feel strong enough, do not need a drink.
If that makes sense, it totally does. I mean I've often said that the turning point to me for anybody to give up any substance is when they are able to sort of recognize that whatever the situation, they can get through it sober, they can handle, they can cope with whatever comes I that's the thing. I love that idea of you dislike everybody there. I'm going to have to think about that. It's interesting to think about communities
and friendships. That's a different discussion, one that you actually write about often enough that I think is interesting. But that's not quite where I wanted to go right now. I want to go to a phrase that one of your friends said to you once, and I'm going to give you the phrase and then let you sort of talk about it. Which is but maybe that's just how you are.
Yes, this was a conversation I had with a friend. We were at swimming pool going for a swim. This is another thing that's really nice when you don't drink, because you actually do nice activities with people, you don't just sit in a dark and dingy pub. So I had a conversation with a friend who knows me very
very well. We've been friends for a long time, and she was just like listening to me reel off all these problems I was having, and I could tell by the way she was looking at me that she'd heard me tell this story a few times or made this complaint a few times, and things work out quite well. At the moment for me, things are okay, there's nothing
really bad happening. So I could tell she was just going through the motions with me, and she just said, maybe that's just how you are, And I just sort of looked at her and just felt this sense of peace, I suppose. And it was the first time someone hadn't tried to just rush and fix it or solve or offer things just sort of shrugged and said, I think that's how you are. And it made me think sometimes
we don't need to self improve. Actually, I think sometimes we need to do the opposite and say just how I am quite nice.
Yeah, I agree. I think there's a classical tension there between self improvement and self acceptance. You know, when I was doing coaching work with people, this is one of the things I would really be sort of tuning into because people hire a coach because they want something to be different, right, and so it was really worth looking
at what they wanted to be different. Were they trying to erase partially who they were in a way that wasn't going to work, in a way that was going to just lead to more frustration, And so there were times where the answer was like, well, maybe what we need to be doing is accepting that, like, maybe that's partially who you are. I was interviewing Ellen Langer. She's
a Harvard researcher. She was writing about mindfulness before anybody else, was from a very different perspective, but in her book she talked about something I thought was really interesting, which is that I'm not going to get exactly right, but in essence, if you ask somebody to write down some of their best qualities on the front sheet of a paper, and then their worst qualities on the back sheet of the paper, you might find that there's a lot of
commonality there. Well, my bad quality is I can't be on time, But my good qualities. I'm really, oh, well, aren't we talking about various manifestations of something that's sort of core there? And her point was a lot of self improvement efforts don't work because you're trying to change something that is actually very beneficial to you in many other ways, which is why I always think when we're talking about any trait, what we're talking about is kind
of either. And this is not my idea, but it's the old virtue ethics that says, like any quality can have a excess or a deficiency.
Of right, Yeah, it's like a blessing and a curse.
Yeah yeah, well, I mean, like for me, I think one of my absolute paramount core qualities is just one of kindness, Like it just seems to be baked into me. And one of my core challenges is to not say the things I need to say to people around me that are bothering me. Right, they have a common element. Yeah, yeah, so I have to not try and be a different person, Like I'm not going to be the kind of person that just like says whatever I need to say, like
Steve Jobs style whatever. That's never going to be me. I'm always going to think about what I want to say, but also think about the other person and their experience and how it might land on them. And that's partially who I am. So if I'm trying to become this straight shooter, right, I'm gonna keep bumping up against myself. Doesn't mean that I can't get better at saying what I need to say and advocating for myself. But it's sort of that best characteristic worst characteristic kind of thing.
Yeah, But also, accepting who you are is how you go about making massive change. Like, yes, the first time you say it's just how I am. I have a weird relationship with alcohol. That's the minute for me anyway that I was like, Oh, what a relief to accept that I've got this thing. Now I'm going to go and make a positive change about it. Though it's like
it's not accepting who you are means no change. It's like accepting the way you are and your weird quirks is a good thing in the long run, I think.
So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder. Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. It can be transformative. To take a minute to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and be present, can't it. If you want to keep this momentum going that you built with this little exercise, i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life, and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
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and let's feed our good wolves together. It is that tension where any given situation you're going to be looking for what degree of self acceptance should I do here, or even acceptance of the situation. I mean this is internal and external. Right to what extent do I accept the situation? Or do I try and change it? Outside me molding the world to the way I want it, and the same thing inside. You know, to what extent do I try and change it? And what extent do
I go? Well, I might just have a slightly melancholic temperament like that just may be my temperament.
And not trying to be like other people, because I often look at people my age doing stuff like being very carefree, like in Italy with the glass of wine, like dancing, and I'm like, I want to be that, but I can't be that. Unfortunately, I have to keep a lid on indulgence. For example, like what we see, what we actually are. I think there is some acceptance there.
Yeah, yeah, Well, I also think that this goes back to that broader point around you talking about knowing what sort of things you really like or don't like. Because I can see those pictures the young beautiful people partying at the beach in Italy, right, And there's a part of me that's like, wow, boy, I wish I was like that. I wish I had that, But I also know my personality. I would not like it. I would be like, who are these people?
Like?
Can we do something besides party and drink booze? Like can we have a conversation about something meaningful? Like are we going to read it all? Like can we just sit down? And so we see these pictures and they look glamorous, and yet they're not really what we want, you know, or we wouldn't be well suited to them, maybe is a better way of saying it, Right, they wouldn't actually suit us exactly.
And I think that's why this quest for success it's so confusing to people, because we're just sort of bombarded, aren't we with other people's success, other people's stories, all the things we should be doing, all the places we should be visiting. And I think that's why I loved my year of nothing so much, is because it was very mundane. I was really just in my house a lot and going for walks and spending time in the garden.
And I've really felt great, and I thought, I think I'm someone who just really likes poodling about and just earning money and doing my work, obviously paying the bills. But I don't know, I don't want what I think I'm supposed to want. That's the kind of interesting place we're at, with this world of opportunity and so many options and so many things we can do. Is it almost feels odd to just want to do very little or something very simple?
Yeah? Yeah, I agree. So let's talk about that book for a second. It's called The Success myth letting go of having it at all. You say, something along the lines of my career had reached exciting heights, but I was spiritually confused when the success wasn't equally inner happiness. So talk to me about how you disentangle these things.
Because you clearly care about your writing being read still, right like, because you want to make a living and you want to connect to people, and so there's that element, and then there's also the doing it element, the intrinsic piece. How are you thinking about success differently now? And you know, maybe sum up a little of the sort of key insight that you took from that book.
Yeah, I mean, I've always wanted to make a living from my writing, even when I was nineteen and blogging. You know, such a dream of mine to live and write,
and that's never changed. But I think when I got a taste of this sort of traditional success that we are sold on a daily basis in this kind of catchualst materialistic world where we've got young people, you know, wanting to take TikTok videos on yachts and be famous pop stars and buy lots of designer items and be in Dubai and you know, the sort of humble, bragging
culture that we live in at the moment. I suppose I found it really interesting that the times where I had access to that sort of success, like a massage in Claradge's hotel in the center of London, those were the days that I genuinely felt soulless and bordering on depressed. And this isn't like, oh, let's get a tiny violin out for people who are privileged. But I did think it was interesting because I like to go where I find things interesting. And there's a whole chapter called the
celebrity myth. I wanted to unpick the myth that having all these things magically makes you happy, and I was kind of worried maybe that they could get a bit of backlash, because it's like, you don't say these things out loud, you're just meant to be grateful. But I really wanted to go there and say, look, I've seen behind the curtain. It's not that great back there. We
as a society and culture and planet. Quite frankly, we're burning up all the resources is to have all these nicer and nicer and nicer things that we're getting more and more and more unhappy. And the more I shook off that stuff and realized that I needed to get back to nature, I needed to get back to what I really wanted to do. It's a trap, Like we know it's a trap. There's something called like the golden
handcuffs of people in big corporations who are trapped. This is not a fun life, this is a miserable life who have so many outgoings that they can't afford to do anything. And these people end up sometimes killing themselves. And so I'm not afraid to go there and say I don't think this is making us happy. We are sold some sort of dream that isn't reality, and having less is sometimes more.
Really, yeah, I mean I think these things are exacerbated by our cultural moment, the complete interconnection. I don't think people wanting nicer and nicer things is new, right. I think it's human thing that we've always wanted. And it's clear that that's absolutely not all there is to be happier content, and it may be a vanishingly small amount. I mean, there's lots of studies about how much money influences happiness, and the reality is that it does to
a certain degree. Certainly, if you don't have enough to make your basic income, it's stressful, and it even shows that even as that goes up, there is corresponding life satisfaction to having more money up to a certain point. Hey, so it's not that it's not real at all. But all we have to do is look at people who
have achieved everything that you think you would want. The one I always go to is Robin Williams and Kurt Cobain, huge success on a broad scale, and yet absolute adornment by the critics, like they got both those things, which is rare, right, you know, they got both of those things, they were rich, and yet they killed themselves. And that's a pretty clear indication that fame and money don't do it. I feel similar to you. I think that the goalposts
just keep moving on any sort of success, right. I mean I too, was like, if I could ever make a living doing the podcast, I would be happy. And I do that, and it is better.
Right.
I was in the golden handcuffs, right. I was in a corporate job and chose to leave it to do this, and it is better. It is certainly better. And it's not the end all be all to things. And it's very easy once you're in the comparison game. It's not one that can be one. If you're me, You're like, well, we are incredibly successful, but we're not as successful as
Lewis House School of Greatness. I'm just picking one, and Lewis House might be like, but I'm not quite as successful as Tim Ferris, and Tim Ferriss is like, well, I'm not as successful as Joe Rogan. Like, this game just goes on and on. And I wanted to use this to segue into something that you said. You said, there's a very thin, almost translucent line between comparison and inspiration. Say more about that.
Well, comparison is thinking you're not enough when compared to someone else, and inspiration is getting cited that someone else is doing something that you want to do. That feeling of envy can be changed into a certain type of inspiration energy, I think. But it's also realizing that none of this is new. I was reading Julia Cameron's memoir and she talks about how she spent most of her career being very jealous of Norah Evron. They were in
the same sort of age group. I'm reading a book at the moment by this woman called May Sartin, who she was eighty when she wrote her journal, but she is talking about being jealous of this other author called Betty Friedan who it was more successful and quite famous all the while, like having flowers delivered to her door by fans because people loved her, but she wasn't like
traditionally famous. And I was thinking, why are we so obsessed with these sort of traditional parameters of being on a billboard or being on the radio, or your parents being proud of you because you're on TV. I think there's something so lovely about this like quieter version of success, which is I get to do this job that I love and go to bed every night feeling like I'm doing the thing I want to be doing. And I'm like really interested why that's not enough for us, because
it's a very strange. It's like society has made these rules and then we have to stick into those rules. Like none of my books have been like on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Well, one was on the Business list, but I don't really have many like mainstream sort of like tick box successes for my books. But I know I'm going to be writing books for the rest of my life if I can. I think it's making peace with that.
Evolutionary psychologists would say a lot of this stuff is leftover evolutionary desire for status because status conveyed a survival benefit, and so we're obsessed with it. Yeah, that's not a sufficient enough explanation, but it's a partial explanation I think as well as like you said, it's cultural, like we want what we're taught to want, right, I mean to a certain degree. Like the phrase is mimetic desire. You know what you want because you saw what someone else wanted,
And our culture is very driven on mimetic desire. So I think all these things all factor into these different things, and yet if we buy into it, completely. We are perpetually dissatisfied. Yes, we are the classic hungry ghost from Buddhism, which is where you have a huge stomach in a little mouth and you can never get full.
I could definitely live my whole entire career being miserable and bitter because many of my friends have been like number one on Amazon. I could go to bed every night and be like, well, I haven't been number one on Amazon. And I think that would be such a miserable existence because you're setting yourself up for this lifetime of disappointment. Whereas it's like the cognitive bias thing, isn't it of Well, look at the amazing things that have happened to me. Maybe I'll write a list about those.
Right right, Because by any measure, both you and I are getting to do the thing we love and make a reasonable living doing it. That is like, it's incredible. What's that old phrase, like something along the line of think about how happy former you would be if it got the things you had? You know, how many of the things we thought we wanted did we get? And
yet we just move the goalposts. And I mean I think about this a lot because I think there's no getting away from us having sort of motivational complexity around things, meaning I'm writing because I want to write, but I'm also writing because I want to make a living, And there's a little part of me that's writing because I
want to have people look up to me. I mean, like all of it gets sort of in there, you know, But for me, it's a matter of, like it's back I guess to the wolf, parable right, Can I feed the intrinsic parts of that motivation, the parts to me
that feel more real and important. Yeah, to pretend those other things aren't there, or to shut them off, But it's simply just to say, like, let's turn our attention from download charts to the fact that I love reading people's books for an interview, or I love talking like I'm having a great time talking to you. Can I continue to orient towards those sorts of things.
And doesn't that feel so much more sustainable and enjoyable on a day to day basis than chasing the bad wolf? For which I would say, is is this sort of insatiable ghost thing. It's like the ego, I guess, versus the sort of soul work. But also I'm interested in how I don't think it looks very fun being at the top of the charts all the time, because there's
this maintenance there. You know. I've interviewed a lot of people who have won massive awards like Oscars or Bafters or you know, they've won a gold medal at the Olympics, and guess what, they don't feel happy for that long because they're like, oh God, I've got to go and get another one, right, And so there's something really really enjoyable actually about just sort of doing your thing and doing it well enough to get to do it again. That's all really I want to do.
I have a coach I work with sometimes. He's mostly a business coach, but I don't think you can have a business coach who isn't also deeper than that, at least in my case. And he talks about an idea about a book written by a guy named I think it's Carse. Car Se is his last name. It's called finite in infinite Games, and the idea is a finite game is a game you're playing to win. An infinite game is the game you're playing so that you can keep playing. And that makes a lot of sense to me.
The infinite game is the one where I get to continue to do the sort of things that I like doing and love doing, and so orient to that. Not that there isn't a place and a time and a need for finite games.
I like that because that makes me think of how traditional success is actually very limited. It's like, here's the ladder that everyone before you has ever done, boot boot, boot up, you go up the charts or whatever, Whereas this other side of it that is using all of your imagination, which is like, what can I do outside that? That excites me more. I don't want to just do what everyone else has been doing. I kind of want to carve my own par and that means doing things
people haven't done before. But that means I can't really compare myself to anyone, and it just feels more freeing.
Yeah.
Yeah, this all makes me think about something else you write about, which is finding a hobby. But first talk about what made you think you need a hobby and why this originally really sort of stressed you out.
Yes, I mean I always thought hobbies were for other people, because I have my hobby, which is writing and reading, but it's also my job, so I don't think I could really call it a hobby. And I was in a bar actually of all places, and the person with the clipboard was just asking me for my information, you know, ailments or illnesses or whatever. And then at the bottom
it was like, what are your hobbies? And I just didn't fill it out or I pit a little squiggle and she was like, oh, you haven't filled out your hobbies. And I just did feel a bit strange about it because I just sort of shrugged it off, like I don't have any hobbies. Who has hobbies? And yeah, I
just didn't really think about it. But during my year of nothing, I did acquire some hobbies, and I understand now why they're important, because I'm quite good at monetizing things, like I'm good at like finding something I really enjoy and then making money from it. You know, I've got multiple income streams the things I love doing. I'm so lucky.
But there was nothing in my life that I did just for me, and I think that is actually what made me burn out, because you can't do a creative job and not nourish yourself and give yourself the juice and the like nutrients really to create for other people. And so I discovered swimming, which has just been this joy because no one gets anything out of it but me. Everything I do, other people benefit from and just this idea of doing something that is for no reason has
absolutely thrilled me. It's a new thing for me.
Yeah, I think it's interesting that idea that you can monetize anything, which is another way of saying you can turn anything into a job. And I think think that things do get interesting when your hobby becomes your way of making a living. It does get a little muddy, you know, it does get a little a little tricky. But I mean I'm capable of turning a hobby into
a job. And I don't mean a monetizable job. I mean something that I have to work at and get better at and strive at, Like I have to watch out for that with any hobby I take on, because I suddenly.
Really yes, because I with swimming, I found it really, like metaphorically lovely that I was in the slow lane. I'm never in the slow lane. I'm always wanting to do things. I'm really fast writer, I'm quite a fast worker. That's just something that has actually enabled me to do what I've done over the last decade, and that was just this sort of symbol I guess of you get to be in the slow lane, where like this ninet year old man overtook me the other day because I'm
so slow and I'm terrible at swimming. I'm really bad at swimming. I'm just sort moseying along terribly. And there's just something lovely about that, because we don't allow ourselves to be bad at things or you know behind you know, I like that trying to celebrate that.
That's exactly it. It's allowing ourselves to be not good at something and which seems to be an area of work for me to continue to do. It's a balance for me. Like rock climbing is the best example. I've started doing indoor rock climbing, and periodically I think I have to get a coach or I have to start training, and I generally fight that off because I'm like, no, you don't like, don't turn this into a job, don't
turn this into something. You like get frustrated because you didn't climb well that day, Like what possible sense could that make? And yet I think some of that's culture. I certainly learned it from my dad, Like he loved to play golf. But Lord, did he dislike himself and me when the shot wasn't good. You know, I loved playing golf with him and was equally terrorized of playing golf with him all at the same time. But there is a satisfaction in getting better at something. There is
an innate satisfaction to me of getting better. So I'm trying to back to well, maybe that's the way you are, right. I'm trying to sort of balance like there is some it feels fairly innate part of me that likes getting better. There's a good feel to it, and I don't want to let that get out of hand where my hobbies start to feel like a job. Question for you about swimming, do you have to stop often and take breaks? Like I tried to learn swimming. I can swim, but not
well and not for very long. And I wanted to do like a mini triathlon last fall, and so I had to learn to swim to do it, and I got better, but I cannot swim very far without being like, Okay, I need a break. So it doesn't even matter if I'm in the slow lane. I'm going to be in the slow lane and I'm going to do like one lap or two laps. I'm gonna be like, Okay, I need a break. Is that you or did you find that you were good enough at it you could just kind of keep going.
I mean, I can keep going. But I also enjoy breaks because I think it allows you to take in the scenery. And it's so interesting hearing you say that, because I genuinely, hand on heart, have no interest in getting back, Like it's really a lovely, mindful thing where it's like this quite lovely feeling of being in nature and like meeting the water and the water like holds you.
And a lot of people when they're grieving, they go swimming, or they like scream underwater, or they let out some things and it's like the elements understand you, like the elements understand your pain, or like you can cry in water and no one notices. It's really about for me who I see, Like, I love people watching. There's always someone interesting. There's always someone as well talking to their friend while they're swimming in pairs and talking about something interesting.
And then I like the fact that there's ducks that land on the water and sort of join you. And I love the fact that there's trees and there's like the sky and you can look at the weather, or it's about being present. I suppose it's like meditating for me. So it's not at all about how well I did. And I think that's why I like it so much. It's an experience.
I think it's great. I'm all in favor of it, and like I said, it's something I have to sort of work at to achieve.
Yeah, I'm surprised at it because I had to have essentially a big breakdown to find something I enjoy. Yeah, yeah, that's what came out of it.
So listener and thinking about all that and the other great wisdom from today's episode. If you're going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be? Not your top ten, not the top five, just one? What is it? Think about it? Got it?
Now?
I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little thing you can do today to put it in practice, or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive heroic effort. If you're not already on our good Wolf reminder, SMS list. I'd highly recommend it as a tool you can leverage to remind you to take those vital baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed dot
net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently shared to give you an idea of the type of stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining,
remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you want to get in, I'd love to have you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms. All right back to it. I took up surfing a couple summers ago, not intentionally. I was just in a town where there was surfing and I thought, well, I'll just try it, and then it turned out I loved it. I was like,
Holy mackerel, this is incredible. I think that's one where I'm not actually that interested in getting better, except just getting good enough that I can stand up on waves.
Which is quite good. Surely you have to be quite good to even stand up, I would say.
I think a lot of people try and surf by themselves the first few times and can't stand up because it it's nearly impossible to do. Like you need someone to really walk you through and help you. And if you have that, I've seen a lot of people stand up relatively quickly. Now they may not stay up, but anyway, it's one that I don't feel the need to improve in particularly. I just am like when I'm there, I just want to be out and do it because it's
just really lovely to be out there. Well, we are at the end of our time, amazingly, We're going to continue in the post show conversation for a few minutes where we are going to talk about perfectionism, not in the sense of perfectionism in our work, but perfectionism in how happy we think we maybe should be or how good we think our lives should be. And we'll also talk a little bit about jealousy. We'd hit on envy a little bit, but I kind of want to talk
just a little bit about jealousy. So listeners if you'd like access to the post show conversations, to the ad free episodes, to a special episode I do each week called Teaching Song and a Poem where I share a poem I love, a song I love, and I talk about something I'm interested in and being part of our community, which we now have community meetings we'd love to see yet you can go to oneufeed dot net slash join Emma.
Thank you so much for coming back on. I just love talking with you, and is evidenced by the fact that an hour went by with me only looking at my notes like once and not even noticing. So thank you so much, Thank.
You so much. I love, honestly such a great interview, and I listened to your show through the whole of the lockdowns that I feel very connected to it. So thank you.
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