January 1, 2025 • 43 mins
In our first "How To..." guide of 2025, Dr Laurie is asking how can we stop striving for perfection and make peace with the idea that it's ok to lead messy and "half-assed" lives.
Oliver Burkeman (author of Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time For What Counts) explains how we can embrace imperfection and find liberation and joy in just doing our best.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners, Welcome to a new year
and a new series of this podcast. So many of
you have gotten in touch to say that what you
love most about The Happiness Lab is the practical advice
that you get from the show. So over the next
few months, we're going to make getting that practical advice
(00:37):
even easier. Will be bringing you an entire season of
how to guides, ones that we think will make your
life much happier in twenty twenty five. I've assembled a
cast of amazing guests. They're the premier experts in their
fields on topics ranging from how to live a richer
life each and every day to how to find valuable
relationship lessons from watching rom com movies. In each how
(00:58):
To episode, we'll be breaking down the key takeaways. Each
show will feature a half a dozen or so tips
for tackling challenges like stress, navigating negative emotions, finding your purpose,
and dating better. And today we're kicking off this how
To season with a topic that I struggle with a lot,
how to be imperfect. You see, I spend a lot
of time wanting to do the opposite of this. I
(01:20):
want everything I do to be perfect. I want to
throw the best dinner parties and the most effective lab meetings,
and to be the best friend and wife and podcaster
and professor. But there's a new book that has really
helped me gain a better perspective on this. It's called
Meditations for Mortals Four weeks to embrace your limitations and
make time for what counts. Its author Oliver Berkman, has
(01:41):
been on the Happiness Lab before. He helped me find
ways to fight the stress that comes from constant busyness,
and Meditations for Mortals tackles a related topic, how can
we start spending our time on the stuff that really counts?
And Oliver's book isn't talking about meditations like to clear
your mind and take deep breath meditations. No, his meditations
are short philosophical tips for embracing the fact that the
(02:02):
world is messy, that we're messy, and that striving for
perfection isn't an achievable or a healthy goal. But you're
based in New York these days, still right?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
No, I'm in North Yorkshire, so I'm just up the
East Coast.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I sat down with Oliver to tease out his top
five lessons for accepting our imperfection are the.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Two places where I've spent my life, Brooklyn and Yorkshire,
so it's not surprising me.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
But I began by asking him about the New Year,
a time when so many of us hope to turn
over a new leave shut our bad habits, and become
the perfect people we've always wanted to be.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I've often thought that the New Year is in some
ways it's almost the worst possible time to be trying
to implement major changes, especially I don't do this much
these days, but especially if you're spending New Year's Eve
at a sort of very high octane party, then January
the first is going to not be the day for wonderful,
virtuous new plans, whether it's a calendrical thing or not,
(02:54):
anything that piles on the pressure to kind of make
a complete fresh start from now forever more. That's a
problem because I think what's going to work instead is
the willingness to try things out, to experiment, to do
things for a little while, even just to do them
once without forcing them to be part of a very
very heavy and intimidating system of total transformation something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
And so in some ways your book is a guide
towards sort of fighting against that total system of transformation.
You talked about this idea of imperfectionism. What is imperfectionism
and why should we embrace it?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Imperfectionism is just my kind of umbrella term, I think
for the whole approach to life that starts from the
assumption that we're never going to be able to do
things as perfectly as we can imagine them, but starts
from the assumption that there's always going to be too
much to do, that we're never going to feel completely
ready for new life stages or for interesting and exciting
(03:52):
new projects, that we're probably never going to fix all
our massive personal problems that we have with procrastination or
distraction or whatever else it is, and then says, well, okay,
now what and how can we develop the willingness to
act and to really do the stuff that matters and
to hopefully most of the time enjoy doing a lot
(04:13):
of the stuff that matters. Now that that kind of
tormenting mirage is off the agenda.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So in your book you talk about some of the
tenets of imperfectionism, and I have to admit that in
some of these I felt really called out because they're
ones that I absolutely struggle with. The first of these
is this idea that there's never going to be this
fantasy day when everything is out of the way. What
do you mean here and why is important to get
rid of this notion?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, first of all, let me say that I'm confronting
myself as much as anybody else, that I'm calling out myself.
So you can come with this from many different angles,
but certainly, just when it comes to the volume of
stuff that we tend in the modern world to feel
like we need to do, there is always a bigger
amount that feels like it needs to be done in
any given time period, you know, by the end of
(04:57):
the day, by the end of the week. Then we
have the opportunity to do There are clear reasons of
technology and economic culture in which we live, and all
sorts of things that just make that inevitable. So if
you approach life with this very sort of understandable but
misleading notion that what you're going to do is first
of all, get all the little bits of stuff out
of the way, deal with all the things that are
(05:19):
kind of cluttering your mental world, and then you will
find these great expanses of time for the things that
really matter, the relationships or the projects that really count.
You're going to end up spending your whole life clearing
the decks, as it were, and never getting there. I
think it's really important instead to see that the skill
we're trying to develop here, I would say, is the
(05:41):
willingness to act on the important things right now, even
though the decks are not clear. It's kind of an
anxiety tolerance skill. I think it's knowing that there are
emails that will need your attention, but deciding nonetheless, to
spend the first hour of the day, say on some
things other than answering them. Of course, this will vary
massively by people's personal situations, and some people I know
(06:04):
are in jobs where certain kinds of emails have to
be responded to immediately or they might get it. I
think the underlying point here is there isn't this moment
coming later when you're going to have all the time
for the things that matter, and so on some level
you have to claim that time in the present instead.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I can tell you how important this insight has been
for me. I feel like my calendar constantly has these
moments of like, all right, I'm going to get to
a new month. Right, I'm going to get to January first,
and then I'll try to get everything done before January first,
and then I can begin, and January first comes around
and I have it, and then it's February first, or
it's my birthday, or it's whatever it is. There's always
this kind of trying to clear the decks before this
(06:45):
date with the ideas, and then you know, and then
dot dot dot dot, and it kind of never gets there.
I think part of this also is something else that
you've cautioned against, which is this idea of the spirit
of optimization that we might need to kind of reject
to this What is that spirit? And why is it
so important to.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Read yeah, or maybe even not say reject, but just
kind of sort of see through the alluring promise. I
think that's something that I'm often arguing for. It's just
a sort of gentle understanding that these things are not
going where we hope that they're going, and then it's
a lot easier to let go of them. In the
case of optimization and efficiency in general, right, there's certainly
(07:24):
nothing wrong with making a few time savings around the edges,
thinking about your daily routines, how you organize your house
or your desk in such a way as to eliminate
wasted time. You know, if it's taking you an hour
to find your clothes in the morning, there's probably something
wrong with how you have your house organized. But it's
a very low level at which that stops making the difference,
because I think the illusion, the thing that sort of
(07:46):
bewitches us is this notion that we might be able
to optimize ourselves to the point where we didn't have
to make difficult decisions about what to do with our time,
where we could say yes to everything that was thrown
onto our plates. We would never have to disappoint anybody,
we would never have to put any of our ambitions
on hold, we would never have to neglect something that
(08:06):
felt like it was crying out for our attention. I
want to say that it's just baked in to our
situation as finite humans, but that's not how it works.
That you're going to have to disappoint some people, that
you're going to have to put some ambitions on the
back burner, that you're going to have to not do
all the things that feel like they need doing, just
in order to do any things and to make a
(08:27):
difference to anybody's lives and to pursue any of your
most cherished ambitions. So optimization can be a real diversion
of energy and attention. It also has this very specific
hidden danger that if you are telling yourself that you're
going to make time for everything, somehow you stop asking
serious questions about things that arrive right, somebody asks you,
(08:48):
could you do this task? Could you meet this demand?
And say it's one that you are in a position
where you're allowed to say yes or no to it. Well,
if you think you're going to get everything done, you're
just going to say, yeah, sure, throw it in the hopper.
There's no problem here, I'm going to get everything done.
And so it's a very alluring thing. But what happens
is that your life gradually starts filling with more and
more stuff that you didn't really want to do, other
(09:08):
people's agendas, things you could have said no to in fact,
but felt like you were on the path to being
so powerful that you didn't need to, you know, so
all all capable, you didn't need to.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So I get the effectiveness of this approach of kind
of you know, loosening up on our optimization and recognizing
that we're never going to get everything under control. I
get how it might be functional, but I also find
it quite depressing. But one of the things that's interesting
in your book is you argue like this should not
be depressing at all, This should be incredibly liberating. Explain
it how that works.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Sure, I mean, I come across this objection. I understand
it right. There is definitely a kind of a defeat
that is involved here. I'm trying to argue that it's
a productive and energizing and empowering kind of defeat, because
it's the defeat of trying and struggling to do something
that was never on the cards to begin with. I
think that what you do, and I certainly don't claim
to be perfect at this, i'd sort of be under
(09:59):
reminding my own point if I did. I think, but
what you do when you get a little bit better
at this is you spend more of your precious time
doing things, things that make you feel more alive. I'm
partly talking about hobbies and recreational activities and meaningful work,
but even things that feel like duties in your life,
if you're doing them in this context of having chosen
(10:21):
them as against other things, they can become imbued with
greater meaning. There's a British born zen master who I
quote in the book, and I've always quote because the
quote means so much to me, whom Ju Kennet was
her name as she died a while ago now, who
used to say that her approach to teaching was not
to lighten the burden of the student, but to make
it so heavy that he or she would put it down.
(10:44):
And I still get goosebumps when I think about this quote,
because it really is the essence of what we're talking
about her. I think it's like you are struggling under
this impossible burden of trying to do everything, trying to
get your arms around it all, trying to make yourself
be perfect before you take the high stakes actions, and
it's just a lovely feeling to be able to set
that down on the ground, and it's a feeling that
(11:06):
leaves you more energized to go and do things, or
to keep climbing the mountain, or whatever the metaphor is
that we're dealing with there.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
So if Oliver's convinced you that rejecting the pursuit of
perfection is a liberating step, you should stick with us.
For tip number one, and his guide to how to
be imperfect It's coming up right after the break. Oliver
Brickman's simple philosophy is that trying to be perfect and
(11:35):
do everything is an impossible burden, a burden that weighs
us down and prevents us from dedicating ourselves to more
meaningful activities. And the first step on the road to
embracing imperfectionism is something that a perfectionist like me struggles with.
It's actually doing things, you know, actually bake that cake
or write that book, or travel to that destination. And
(11:57):
this tip kind of feels like being called out. I
never get around to baking the cake because I spend
way too much time trying to find the perfect cake recipe.
I don't take many vacations, but I spend a heck
of a lot of time researching the perfect travels spot.
In my attempt to set up everything perfectly, I really
get around to actually doing stuff. It's like I'm looking
for a method or a system to get perfect results
(12:17):
every time, no matter what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is for many of
us very alluring, right, The idea that there's some set
of rules or some way of doing things that if
you could only discover it or perfect it would make
everything work and actually, on a deeper, kind of a
subtler level, almost would live life on your behalf. Right,
It's like the deal is, I will follow all these
rules every day, and what I get back from it
(12:41):
is that I don't quite have to show up for
life and grapple with life in all its kind of messy,
muddy unpleasantness and difficulty and uncertainty and all the rest
of it. So I've got nothing against systems and rules
per se, And in fact, the new book has plenty
of sort of outlines of ways to build one. But
I think it's essential that we sort of put them
(13:03):
in their place. They are tools that we use from
our position here in the midst of life. They are
not things that can get us out of that situation.
So how is this relevant to the idea of just
doing things? I think that one way in which we
use systems in a counterproductive way is we want to
do something. We want to do more of something in
our lives, physical exercise, meditation, pursuing a creative hobby that
(13:25):
we've let neglect, or nurturing certain relationships that we've sort
of allowed to wither on something, and then we immediately
go to what's the system that's going to change me
into the kind of person that does this better? Right,
what are the goals, what's the morning routine I'm going
to do every day for the rest of my life.
What's the equipment I need? What are the ten books
I can read so that I really know how to
(13:46):
do this thing? Yeah, I'm totally still prone to doing
this sometimes. Right that. My first thought always like, find
a book, find a book, find a set of information
that I can build a system from. But firstly, that
is not the same as doing the thing. Secondly, it
can actually be counterproductive, I think, because it becomes a
much more intimidating or unwieldy thing. The prospect of having
to do something every day for the rest of your
(14:06):
life can really put you in the mind of not
wanting to do it at all, or you feel terrible
if you fall off the wagon one day, or whatever.
It might be. The really powerful skill to develop, I
think is the willingness to say, Okay, that might have
some role later. But what if I just meditative a
ten minutes. What if I just went for a brisk walk,
What if I just picked up the phone and talked
(14:26):
to the long lost friend. With no confidence that I
would do it well, no certainty that I'll do it
every day for the rest of my life, no guarantee
that it's going to turn me into the kind of
person who does that kind of thing all the time.
But it's still worth more than all those things combined
because it actually happened in reality.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Okay, can I share my experience that like fits with
this to a t. When I was reading your book,
I was like, oh my god, he's literally in my
head right now. So sometime last year I was watching
these documentaries about DJs and I was like, you know what,
I'm going to learn to do some turntablism stuff, like
I love records and so on. I immediately went to look.
I started researching books. I didn't even just buy books.
(15:04):
I spent like weeks researching like what's the best way
to learn about turntablism and stuff? And I bought these
books and I went to the what's the best possible way?
So I downloaded this syllabus from Berkeley College of Music
of the best ways to do this, and I spent
hours and hours researching how to how to learn dough
turntablism and then bought these resources and then completely intimidated
(15:25):
myself because I was reading from the best DJs and
people who are in music school, and I'm like, you know,
a professor and podcaster and have like four minutes a
week to do, and then I never picked up a
record or did anything, right, I just reading your book
is like I could have just like downloaded some app
and started playing some music and just kind of pretending
and messing around. And it wouldn't have been the perfect system,
but at least I would have done something and it
(15:45):
would have been fun rather than kind of make me
feel ashamed and like I'm never going to do it
in a huge waste of times.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, that resonates a lot. I think it's so interesting.
It's like we can learn a lot from young kids
in this regard. I think the DJ example is interesting
to me because our son often professes a desire to
be a DJ when he's older. I don't know, but
like and he just like dive into like assembling playlists
and setting up disco lights and whatever. Like you just
do it, and like you do it for twenty five
(16:12):
minutes one day after school and then you've done it,
you know, and then maybe you do it again and again,
and maybe you don't. Something about becoming an adult seems
to be associated with this idea that it's got to
be done in a very controlled sort of a scheme.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Okay, so that's idea number one. You just need to
do it, and the advice is really just like, whatever
you can do in ten minutes today, just do that
and it's probably good enough. The second tip that I
also struggle with a lot is you've argued that we
need to fight back against this idea of productivity debt.
Something I I'll pray to all the time. What is
productivity debt?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Productivity debt is my label for this sense that so
many of us have that we sort of wake up
in the morning in a kind of a debt right
that unless we produce a certain amount or do a
certain amount of things, we haven't quite justified our existence
as humans, we haven't quite earned the right to be
here on the planet. There's an important caveat which, obviously,
if you do any kind of work for money, there
(17:03):
is a sense in which you're in productivity debt. Right,
if you get paid at salary, you have to do
the things that you're job entails in order to get
the salary. I'm talking about this much deeper existential notion
that we don't get to feel okay as human beings
unless we have paid off this debt during the day.
And it's very depressing because obviously, to continue the analogy
with a sort of a debt in a bank account
(17:24):
or something, the very best thing that can happen is
that you get back to zero by the end of
the day, right Like, that is literally the very best
thing that can happen if you work in this kind
of deficit based mindset, And obviously most of the time
you're not going to feel that you even get there,
and then you're going to wake up the next morning
and it's all back again. You've got to like push
the rock up the hill for another day. So I think,
you know, just seeing that can be very powerful for
(17:46):
a lot of people because on some level we know
that that isn't how it is right. We don't really
believe that we sort of don't get to qualify as
adequate human beings if we haven't done a certain amount.
And then beyond that, I think you know, there are
all sorts of tactics like the very simple idea of
keeping a done list, keeping a list of things that
you have completed through the day as you complete them,
that can help us sort of, you know, to continue
(18:07):
that metaphor, what if you started each day at zero
and everything that you did was paying in and you
ended up like building your credit, and then the next
day you built your credit some more? Right? Is it
possible to think of the things that we do as
expressions of the fact that we already are adequate instead
of ways that we're struggling to try to achieve a
sense of valticalcy.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
You use this term in the book that I resonate with,
you know a psychologists sort of have a word for
people who fall prey to this idea, this idea of
insecure overachievers. I think I know what this term means.
What I'm going to have your articulate what it is
and how you've seen it in yourself maybe.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I'm always struck whenever I
use this term, like in a public event or something,
the ripples of recognition are there. I don't know about
sort of very formal definition, but for me, what it
means is, you know, we're talking about people who do
a lot of stuff, who are very driven, as a
word that might get used right, who probably have a
lot of accomplishments under their belt and maybe are to
some degree celebrated by their friends or admired by people
(19:03):
for doing it, but ultimately are doing it to kind
of shore up this in a sense of not being
adequate or okay unless they do enough. And this certainly
can take very toxic forms, but I think it's very
normal really for a lot of us who sort of
do a lot of things and get things done and
(19:24):
feel proud of that, to realize with a start that actually,
on some level we wouldn't do them, or we might
do different things. We certainly might do them in a
less grim faced way if we weren't starting from the
idea that there was some deficit that needed to be
filled or paid off or whatever before we could enjoy
ourselves in life. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
The reason I really loved this point is that for me,
it wasn't so much that I need to stop doing things.
It was kind of the way I do things right
Like even now, just before this, before I sat down
to record the podcast, I kind of was done my
other meetings ten minutes early, and it was like, well,
I have ten minutes. What can I do? I'm going
to water the plants, like, oh, the plants need watering,
Like oh, I'm to the dishwasher. And it was like
and I had this just moment of noticing what was
(20:03):
happening where it was like, my whole goal is to
tick as many things off as possible, and that's just
kind of a a miserable way to live.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I could have spent that ten meetings ten minutes just
being or noticing the world or relaxing.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Or doing something productive and constructive, but you would have
chosen it with some eye to enjoyment as well. Right,
Otherwise what happens is you end up living. We talk
a lot about living in the future in terms of
living for years from now, but it's very easy to
spend your whole life living about two hours in the future,
right that sense that like just when I've done that,
it's just when I've done that, it's the end of
the day. And when I get to bed and go
to sleep, there's always another thing, and it just it
(20:40):
almost makes whatever's happening in your life into a sort
of an unwelcome obstacle to getting to the end of
the day or whatever. And sometimes things are like that,
but other times they're not unless you make them, unless
you turn them into them.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So another tip that I think is especially relevant for
we insecure overachievers has to do with the information overload
that we all face. I imagine there were insecure overachievers
in the seventies and eighties, but they didn't face the
kind of fire hose of information and things to care
about that so many of us face these days. And
another tip that you've suggested is just to recognize that
(21:15):
we can't care about or find out about everything. You know,
why is this so essential to kind of give up
one trying to bring in as much information as possible?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
On some level, it's the same reason that sort of
underpins everything we've been talking about here and that I've
written about, which is that if the supply is effectively infinite,
then attempts to get through the supply faster or to
get your arms around the supply completely are doomed to fail,
and they're going to lead to all sorts of sort
of unintended consequences. So yeah, just in that simple issue
(21:45):
of too many things to read too many articles in
your read it later app that feel like they're probably
essential in some way, or could give you a really
good idea for your work, or could make you healthier
or calm or something. There's nothing wrong with collecting those,
but I think it's really important to treat them, as
I say in the book, as a like a river
rather than a bucket. In other words, not as some
sort of place where they all collect and your job
is to deal with them all until the bucket is
(22:07):
empty again, but just as a of a stream that
flows past you, and that you pick things out and
focus on them without feeling guilty about all the ones
that you let go by. And the point you alluded
to at the end of your question. More difficult, I
think for many people who feel committed to making the
world a better place is that this does ultimately have
to apply to good causes and the suffering of the
(22:29):
world as well. Right, if there is more of this
stuff than you can hope to address, even collectively, even
in groups, because they're still finite too, they are groups
of finite people. Then to make any difference to a
given cause or something like that, you're going to have
to be willing to neglect some others, not because you've
convinced yourself they don't matter, but just because that's how
(22:51):
it is for us. And you know that might mean
taking some instance of a cause, an important issue that
you feel drawn to giving your attention to, and saying,
I'm going to pick my battles and I'm not going
to choose that one. And it's not because it doesn't matter.
It's because I want to have some effect in what I.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Do, strategies for kind of staying sane and self compassionate.
When you do that, when you say important thing, don't
got time for that?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Well, you know, I think above all it comes from
seeing and reminding yourself again and again that the reason
you are neglecting some things that maybe other reasons, but
one core reason that you will be neglecting some things
is because being human means neglecting some things. And there
are sort of ways of handling this in a more
(23:37):
practical sense. I've written in the past about this idea
of keeping two lists, one that is kind of endless
and has as many items on it as you like,
and then one which has a very fixed number of slots,
and you feed them through so that you've only ever
got sort of say, five or ten items on your plate,
but you're very well aware that there are five hundred
items calling out for your attention and just sort of
acclimatizing to that situation of that being more to do
(23:59):
than you ever could do. Another metaphor that works for
me is to understand that these kinds of lists are menus,
and in a strange way, the list of all the
suffering going on in the world, the list of all
the critical causes needing our attention or our activism or
our donations or anything else, are also a menu, because
a menu is any list that you're going to have
to pick from instead of get through. And there is
(24:21):
a possibility when you see it in that way of
approaching it with a lighter spirit, You know that sense
that you're doing something that counts, and you actually wouldn't
be doing more or better if you run around in
a frenzy trying to sort of make sure you touched
every single one of those items.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
So that's sort of trying to make sure you don't
do everything. But another tip is about how you deal
with the things that you have chosen to do. And
you've argued that we need to be much more comfortable
choosing not to whole ass stuff. As you put it,
I think I know what this means. But what is
whole assing things? And why should we maybe be gentler
with ourselves about that.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
This is a quotation I stumbled across in the comments
of a Washington Post article from a woman who says
that her parents always used to get on her case
about half assing things, but actually, now, as an adult
woman with an accomplished career, she realizes there are very
very few things in life that really require her to
invest her whole ass. Quite often half fasting them is fine.
(25:18):
This applies in lots of different contexts, right, because it's
all about the amount of attention, the amount of energy
that you're willing to give something, and being okay with
giving something less of your energy, less of your attention.
It's also to do with dropping that assumption that everything
we encounter in our lives that is important has to
feel difficult, has to feel very effortful. It's about allowing
(25:39):
the possibility that maybe there are some things that you
could sort of glide through and coast through. And even
this is a subtle point it's tricky to express. I
think but like even genuinely very difficult things can be
approached in the spirit of their being easy. I know
what I mean by this. I don't know that I've
conveyed it perfectly, But you can bring ease to a
process that is almost guaranteed to be at the very
(26:03):
least frustrating, Like you know, filing your taxes is the
classic ciche. And I think you can bring ease, ultimately
me to situations that are much worse and you know,
fraught and involve grief or sadness or conflict. You can
still not assume that it's got to be a question
of furrowing your brow, bracing your muscles and going in
(26:23):
for a fight. And you can absolutely assume that when
it comes to sort of creative work, for example, all
these context where we think like, okay, this is worth doing,
I'm going to come up against a lot of resistance,
and I'm going to have to punch that resistance in
the face. It's like if you walk up to someone
in the bar ready to punch them in the face. Right,
they may have had no plan to be in conflict
with you, but they soon will be. If that's the
attitude that you take to what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I mean, you're mentioning trying not to always whole ass
things in the context of things that are really hard.
But my own experience sometimes comes up for me, even
in things that should be easy, right, you know, friends
are like, oh, you know, should we get dinner? Like,
oh yeah, come over the house for dinner, and then
I'll be like, Okay, I'm going to make a really
great entree and there has to be deserted. I got
to like go to the wine shop to figure out
(27:06):
the perfect why. And now this thing that was supposed
to be kind of fun for me has turned into
this like stressful choice overloaded situation that in my brain
I have four different ideas about how to do perfectly,
and whichever one I picked, it's not going to be perfect.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Specifically, in the dinner party contacts, you've I argued that
we need to embrace this idea of scruffy hospitality, which
is one that I love. What do you mean by
this here?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, this phrase comes from an Anglican pastor in the
Tennessee called Jack King, and what he's talking about is
based on his own personal experience, which is precisely this
sense that when you make a big deal out of
it in the way that you describe being tempted to
do apart from anything else, in a very subtle way,
it slightly puts you off doing it again in the future,
right because it's like some part of your mind knows
(27:50):
it's going to be a whole thing, and even in
the doing of it, just that once you know, there's
a certain sense of being distracted by making sure that
the beautiful facade you are putting on for your guest
is intact and it's all going well. Jack King makes
this point. He talks in going through this himself and
deciding with his wife that they were going to just
start inviting people around in the mesha that the house
was in, to eat whatever they could cook with what
(28:12):
was in the cupboards, and finding firstly obviously that it's
a lot easier to have people around for dinner more
often if you allow yourself to do that. But also
there's a sort of depth of connection that comes from that,
and there is something about not just in the case
of dinner parties, but in life in general. There's something
about dropping the facade, owning up to the faults and
(28:33):
the imperfections that is very powerful in terms of forging
bonds with people. And I write in the book about how,
you know, even before I encounter Jackking's work, if we
were going to have friends around for dinner and I
saw like crumbs underneath the fridge or kind of mail
stacked on the toaster for no reason or something, I'd
be like, oh my goodness, like clean this up. It's awful.
We live in a pig style. But if I ever
saw that at somebody else's house, I wouldn't have that
(28:56):
reaction at all, and in fact, I would feel kind
of privileged to have been let in to their real lives,
just briefly. One of the things that it also always
reminds me of is when I'm writing my email newsletter.
You know, I try to offer insights and thoughts and
sometimes tips on how to do things in a certain way.
Times I get the most positive feedback is when I
sort of admit very openly to still struggling with some
issue and that I'm offering advice about. Because there is
(29:20):
a connection in just knowing that we're all in this
boat together, and nobody believes that the people who are
writing to dinner don't also have messy houses. Half the time,
we all know this stuff, and so there's a kind
of a barrier that we're putting up in a thing
we all have to go on believing and if we
just dropped it, we might actually connect better to each other.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, psychologists talk about this bias. That's called the beautiful
mess effect. Right, So we have this sense that, like
somebody comes over our house and they see the crumbs
on the floor. If we vulnerable you know in our professions,
that people will not like us or judge us, or
that will distance people from us. People will kind of
think we're too messy or something. But all the research
suggests that the recipients of that kind of crumbs on
the floor or a little bit of vulnerble, right, they
(29:59):
really like it. They feel much more connected to us,
They like us better. Right. Fascinating, This is the beautiful
mess effect, is that when we're messy, people actually like it.
They find it beautiful, they find it connecting. Like our
minds assumed that that we don't have to do this.
This came up really recently for me. My friend just
had a newborn baby, two week old baby, and I
was coming by to drop off food, and you know,
and I showed up and they have a two week
(30:20):
old baby, and you know, she was trying to nurse
and like somebody just trying to put and there's kind
of stuff all over the place, and they were really
embarrassed by this. But I'm like, no, this is cool, right,
Like I'm seeing like, you know, like what the nappies
are and getting like a real glimpse into what your
life is actually like. Like it felt I felt more
connected to him than when I kind of saw his
real life. Then I might have if you know, it
(30:41):
was all polished and perfect and pretend, or if I
just had to drop the food off at the door
because they were, you know, too embarrassed to let me.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
In, right right, And as someone with a very tidy
house in the week softer a newborn baby has arrived,
as is possibly callt wrong priorities right right, exactly, something's.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Really messed up. Yeah, thanks to Oliver, I now don't
mind admitting that my office can be a bit messy.
Don't even get me started about the inside of my car.
But Oliver's next tip really hits home. Why is it
that I can't stop worrying about the future. We'll find
out after the break here on the Happiness Lab, we
(31:20):
often extol the happiness virtues of mindfulness. Since making the show,
I've gotten better at nipping rumination in the bud and
taking my mind off worries from the past. But I
still struggle a bit with what's around the corner, because
let's face it, the future is really scary. It's full
of things I can't control and events I may not
be prepared to deal with. On days when my mind
(31:40):
gets going, it can feel like it's all going to
be a total disaster. Author Oliver Berkman dedicates a decent
chunk of his new book, Meditations for Mortals to our
fears about the future, and his tip for dealing with
that dread can be summed up by a saying that
he was taught as a child.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
The phrase I think you're referring to is just that
we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, right,
which I feel like has been said to me probably
thousands of times. By the time that I felt like
I really understood what a powerful thought it is, because
of course, you know, it's total logical in some sense.
You can only cross a bridge when you come to it.
I think any of us who are prone to anxiety
(32:17):
or worry. I think what worry is, you could even say,
is the attempt to sort of think our way over
every possible bridge that we could come up to and
reassure ourselves that we can successfully traverse it. But of
course you can't ever find that kind of security about
things that are in the future, because they are in
the future. And so I think that explains the sort
of compulsive quality of worry. Right. You go around and
(32:38):
around and around, hoping this time you'll get the reassurance,
and you never do because you can't be reassured in
that way about the future. And when you start to
really feel into how absolutely inevitable and unavoidable this situation is,
I think there is where you can actually let the
future be the future a bit more. If you think
(32:58):
it's very difficult to cross bridges before you come to them,
then you'll keep doing it and struggling. If you think
it's impossible, you might unclench a bit, and you might
rely in the present about the future. And there's a
quote I mentioned there from Marcus Aurelius, a great Stoic
philosopher and emperor, who says, basically, don't worry so much
(33:19):
about things in the future, because you'll meet them with
the same in the resources that you meet the things
within the present. And I often want to say this
to people and to myself as well. Right, it's like
you got to this point. Every single time you thought
you couldn't handle something in your life, turns out you could.
So there's at least a reason to err on the
side of thinking that the future things you think you
(33:40):
won't be able to handle you actually will.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
But also jumping into the future now also messes up
these times when like you're really worried or horrified about
some future event that's like not even going to happen
in the way you think. This came up for me recently.
I just recovered from COVID about a couple weeks ago,
and I had this new variant where I completely lost
my sense of smell. And on day one of losing
(34:03):
my sense of smell, I was like, oh my god,
my smell is gone forever. I'm never going to be
able to cook. What can I do with this? I
ordered these like smell kids online so I could start
training my smell. I read all these neuroscience papers on
like how do you get your smell back? If it's
gone and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I complained to my poor producer who's listening right now,
but I was never gonna get my smell back, and
how could I deal with this? And then like two
days or three days after my stuff he knows, cleared up,
it kind of just came back. But like those three
days were spent in utter horror, like complete planning, Like
my whole life was built around like what can I
do to live life normally given that I'm just never
(34:38):
going to be able to smell again? And that was
like utterly futile because like it kind of just came
back in a way. But at the time, it felt
like the only thing I could do would be to
anxiously try to plan and for this terrible future. Yea,
And so any advice for how to stop the rumination
and stop the worrying and future planning when it feels
like like how do we take the sort of marcus
orreliest breath and be like it's got to be all right?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Well, I find a lot of the benefit to me
comes from encounter, and I know exactly where you talked about,
you know, a lot of the benefit does come from
pondering these kinds of phrases, and part of idea for
this new book of mine is to kind of create
a structure in which those kind of perspective shifts can
sink under your skin, as it were. There's another lovely
insight from the spiritual writer Michael Singer who says reality
(35:22):
doesn't need you to help operate it, which I think
is a very powerful insight.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Now one resonates with me too. Feel really called out,
thanks Mike Singer.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
In terms of something more practical, I mean, one thing
that I think can be surprisingly useful in the context
like you talk about there is sort of I expect
this is called something like worry postponement, but I don't
know if it really is right, which is place a
market in your calendar, on your year, planet, whatever it is,
on your phone, that in two weeks or three weeks,
(35:52):
you will allow yourself once more to really like freak
out about that thing, so as to just create a
little island of calm right now, and also to remind you,
as you will find again and again and again, that
by the time that that period has elapsed, the thing
is no longer an issue and it didn't matter. I
do do this to this day with certain things. If
(36:12):
I'm sort of particularly concerned about some aspect of parenting
or aspect of household finances or something, I'll be like,
first of all, if I'm doing this really badly, and
I've been doing it really badly for years, like two
more weeks isn't going to make a difference. So for now,
let me just put something in the calendar two weeks
ahead from now and see what it's like. If I
just postpone it and it's not perfect, you still worry
(36:33):
a bit, but it does create space, and it enables
you to see two weeks later than actually the thing
doesn't feel so bad.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I was laughing at those examples because my producer, Ryan,
who's on the line, who's often the one that helps
me postpone my worry, literally sent me a text when
I was in this COVID situation where he said, why
don't we wait at least twenty four hours till you're
testing negative to freak out that you're never going to
be able to smell again? And so, but I think
this idea of sort of being kind to ourselves when
(36:59):
we're in the midst of worry, I think gets to
the last tip that I love so much in your book,
which is this idea that we all need to follow
the reverse Golden rule, which is very consistent with a
lot of advice we talked about in this podcast. So
what's the reverse golden role?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
The reverse Golden rule, in the version I know, comes
from the philosopher at O Landau, and it's just the
idea that you should not treat yourself in ways that
you wouldn't treat others, specifically other friends. I think I've
definitely struggled with the whole notion of self compassion, right,
there's definitely this whole world. I think it's fairly obvious
that this is a good thing, but I have always
(37:33):
had a sort of an aversion to it. That probably
is a sign that I really need it, because that's
what those kind of pringe reactions usually are. But a
big moment for me in understanding this was to realize
how common it is to sort of beerate yourself in
a voice, in a monologue through the day or whatever
it might be, in ways that you just would never
dream of doing to a colleague or a friend. I mean,
(37:53):
you probably get fired if to a colleague. There's a
quote in the book from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, who says,
if you met this person in your head in a
social context, you just think there was something wrong with them.
He says, he would just be boring and cruel, which
I think is brilliant. And so what I take from
this is for those of us who are reverse to
any idea that we're being asked to think of ourselves
(38:14):
as incredibly special and as the center of the universe
and showering ourselves with love, it's like, no, it's just
don't be more mean and less friendly to yourself than
you would be to other people. And this feels very
manageable to me. It's like, oh, okay, yes, I'm a
nice person. Basically, I think I wouldn't do that to
(38:35):
anyone I cared about, So how about I don't do
it to myself too. And of course it's just a
matter of catching yourself in the act of pulling yourself
an idiot or whatever it is. But I think that
idea of just self friendliness really sort of cuts it
down to a manageable concept.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
And I love that you've made even this concept of
following the reverse Golden rule one that you just called manageable. Right,
It's not like being perfect to yourself and compassion all
the time. It's just like not treating yourself worse than
you would treat another reasonable.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Right, and the way that you treat other people in
a friendly way. It does not always need to be
self indulgent. Right. There are times when you might decline
to buy your friend another drink at the end of
the night or something like that. Right, there are times
when firmness is called for, so tough love has a
space here, but it's clearly done for friendly reasons, as
opposed to what we're often doing to ourselves, which is
(39:21):
just sort of screaming and yelling at ourselves.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
And another thing we shouldn't scream and yell at ourselves
about is the idea of imperfectionism. You earned your book,
I think with one really important tip, which is, like
we've just talked about all these ways you can become
more imperfectionist, but you can't take a perfectionist attitude towards
your own imperfectionism, which I'm glad was a tip that
you had in the book because it was one that
I needed because I was ready to just as to
(39:46):
jump in to imperfectionism in the most extreme drill sergeanty way.
So any advice for how we can try to be
imperfect in it imperfect?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Well, I think, you know, just seeing it, reminding yourself
right exactly. It is so easy to take any useful idea,
even ideas which seek to push back against that sort
of absolutist perfectionistic stance, and turn them into new things
that you'll going to try to do perfectly and won't
allow yourself to fully show up in life for until
(40:14):
you've done them.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
You are now kind of an expert on imperfectionism, but
you're the kind of person who has these insecure, overachieverer tendencies.
How have you kind of become an imperfectionism guru but
not gone too far with it?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Well, you know, I think I'm often in danger of
going too far. But I think that the answer to that,
such as there is one, is to find ways in
your life to keep returning to these ideas and this material,
so you know, not to self promote too much. But
the structure of Meditations for Mortals is a four week
structure with a day's chapter for each day of that
twenty eighty period. Is designed to feed into that to
(40:46):
counter the risk of thinking that this is something that
you can get once and for all. And as you
say right at the end, I say, don't actually expect
to completely transform your life in four weeks. If you've
been following what we're saying, I hope you understood this
point that was not the goal. Another aspect of this
for me that I think is really important in my
life is just any form of journaling. Right So, morning
pages is the one habit that has really stuck with
(41:07):
me decades now, not because I decided I was going
to do it every day and mark it off on
a schedule, but because it was so useful for me
that I just naturally wanted to do it. So I
never have to sort of make myself do that. Sometimes,
especially since becoming a parent, I don't necessarily get the
opportunity to do it. But that's a different point. And
anything where you're just sort of reflecting your thoughts back
(41:29):
to yourself in that way, to me, has the effect
of sort of keeping you on this, keep you on
a straight line here, and making you realize when you
are running away with the idea of oh, this is
a new thing, you're going to make into a perfect thing.
Even that is almost too much right or even there,
I don't want to. I don't want to give people
the idea that if they just do morning pages every day,
it's sorted. I am deliberately attempting anyway to sort of
(41:49):
constantly pull the rug from under this notion that there's
a system that will do it for you, and then
you get to not really show up. It's precisely working
the muscle of not doing that and coming back and
back and back to the real, messy, imperfect reality that
we're always in.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Oh, everybody's a work in progress. I suppose so.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
And whatever happens, we'll meet that moment and that moment
and then that moment.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I think that's a nice and comforting sum up of life.
It's a series of moments that will meet much as
we've handled the moment that just passed. Will never be perfect.
We'll always be messy, but will be okay. In fact,
if we can embrace imperfection, I think we might even
be more than just okay. I think we might just
wind up becoming happier. So that's your first how to
(42:38):
guide in this new season, And just to recap here
are Oliver's Tips one more time. First, you got to
do things. Don't get stuck in that perfectionist fantasy plant phase.
Dive in and get going. Tip number two fight back
against productivity debt. You don't need to justify your existence
by getting through some huge to do list. Tip number
three is to remember that there's a cost to information overload.
(43:00):
So resist the urge to stockpile all the knowledge possible
and the urge to care about everything. You've got to
just let some important things go. Tip number four to
reject the urge to always whole ass stuff, shoot for
eighty percent and remember the benefits of scruffy hospitality. Tip
number five. Let the future be the future. There are
lots of bridges we'll cross when we get there. Tip
(43:21):
number six. A little self compassion goes a long way.
And the final Tip number seven is not to bring
a perfectionist attitude towards imperfectionism. And so our next Howtoo
episode will build on what you've just heard. It's a
guide on how to be enough. That's all. Next time
on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos
Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners, Welcome to a new year
and a new series of this podcast. So many of
you have gotten in touch to say that what you
love most about The Happiness Lab is the practical advice
that you get from the show. So over the next
few months, we're going to make getting that practical advice
(00:37):
even easier. Will be bringing you an entire season of
how to guides, ones that we think will make your
life much happier in twenty twenty five. I've assembled a
cast of amazing guests. They're the premier experts in their
fields on topics ranging from how to live a richer
life each and every day to how to find valuable
relationship lessons from watching rom com movies. In each how
(00:58):
To episode, we'll be breaking down the key takeaways. Each
show will feature a half a dozen or so tips
for tackling challenges like stress, navigating negative emotions, finding your purpose,
and dating better. And today we're kicking off this how
To season with a topic that I struggle with a lot,
how to be imperfect. You see, I spend a lot
of time wanting to do the opposite of this. I
(01:20):
want everything I do to be perfect. I want to
throw the best dinner parties and the most effective lab meetings,
and to be the best friend and wife and podcaster
and professor. But there's a new book that has really
helped me gain a better perspective on this. It's called
Meditations for Mortals Four weeks to embrace your limitations and
make time for what counts. Its author Oliver Berkman, has
(01:41):
been on the Happiness Lab before. He helped me find
ways to fight the stress that comes from constant busyness,
and Meditations for Mortals tackles a related topic, how can
we start spending our time on the stuff that really counts?
And Oliver's book isn't talking about meditations like to clear
your mind and take deep breath meditations. No, his meditations
are short philosophical tips for embracing the fact that the
(02:02):
world is messy, that we're messy, and that striving for
perfection isn't an achievable or a healthy goal. But you're
based in New York these days, still right?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
No, I'm in North Yorkshire, so I'm just up the
East Coast.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I sat down with Oliver to tease out his top
five lessons for accepting our imperfection are the.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Two places where I've spent my life, Brooklyn and Yorkshire,
so it's not surprising me.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
But I began by asking him about the New Year,
a time when so many of us hope to turn
over a new leave shut our bad habits, and become
the perfect people we've always wanted to be.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I've often thought that the New Year is in some
ways it's almost the worst possible time to be trying
to implement major changes, especially I don't do this much
these days, but especially if you're spending New Year's Eve
at a sort of very high octane party, then January
the first is going to not be the day for wonderful,
virtuous new plans, whether it's a calendrical thing or not,
(02:54):
anything that piles on the pressure to kind of make
a complete fresh start from now forever more. That's a
problem because I think what's going to work instead is
the willingness to try things out, to experiment, to do
things for a little while, even just to do them
once without forcing them to be part of a very
very heavy and intimidating system of total transformation something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
And so in some ways your book is a guide
towards sort of fighting against that total system of transformation.
You talked about this idea of imperfectionism. What is imperfectionism
and why should we embrace it?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Imperfectionism is just my kind of umbrella term, I think
for the whole approach to life that starts from the
assumption that we're never going to be able to do
things as perfectly as we can imagine them, but starts
from the assumption that there's always going to be too
much to do, that we're never going to feel completely
ready for new life stages or for interesting and exciting
(03:52):
new projects, that we're probably never going to fix all
our massive personal problems that we have with procrastination or
distraction or whatever else it is, and then says, well, okay,
now what and how can we develop the willingness to
act and to really do the stuff that matters and
to hopefully most of the time enjoy doing a lot
(04:13):
of the stuff that matters. Now that that kind of
tormenting mirage is off the agenda.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So in your book you talk about some of the
tenets of imperfectionism, and I have to admit that in
some of these I felt really called out because they're
ones that I absolutely struggle with. The first of these
is this idea that there's never going to be this
fantasy day when everything is out of the way. What
do you mean here and why is important to get
rid of this notion?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Well, first of all, let me say that I'm confronting
myself as much as anybody else, that I'm calling out myself.
So you can come with this from many different angles,
but certainly, just when it comes to the volume of
stuff that we tend in the modern world to feel
like we need to do, there is always a bigger
amount that feels like it needs to be done in
any given time period, you know, by the end of
(04:57):
the day, by the end of the week. Then we
have the opportunity to do There are clear reasons of
technology and economic culture in which we live, and all
sorts of things that just make that inevitable. So if
you approach life with this very sort of understandable but
misleading notion that what you're going to do is first
of all, get all the little bits of stuff out
of the way, deal with all the things that are
(05:19):
kind of cluttering your mental world, and then you will
find these great expanses of time for the things that
really matter, the relationships or the projects that really count.
You're going to end up spending your whole life clearing
the decks, as it were, and never getting there. I
think it's really important instead to see that the skill
we're trying to develop here, I would say, is the
(05:41):
willingness to act on the important things right now, even
though the decks are not clear. It's kind of an
anxiety tolerance skill. I think it's knowing that there are
emails that will need your attention, but deciding nonetheless, to
spend the first hour of the day, say on some
things other than answering them. Of course, this will vary
massively by people's personal situations, and some people I know
(06:04):
are in jobs where certain kinds of emails have to
be responded to immediately or they might get it. I
think the underlying point here is there isn't this moment
coming later when you're going to have all the time
for the things that matter, and so on some level
you have to claim that time in the present instead.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I can tell you how important this insight has been
for me. I feel like my calendar constantly has these
moments of like, all right, I'm going to get to
a new month. Right, I'm going to get to January first,
and then I'll try to get everything done before January first,
and then I can begin, and January first comes around
and I have it, and then it's February first, or
it's my birthday, or it's whatever it is. There's always
this kind of trying to clear the decks before this
(06:45):
date with the ideas, and then you know, and then
dot dot dot dot, and it kind of never gets there.
I think part of this also is something else that
you've cautioned against, which is this idea of the spirit
of optimization that we might need to kind of reject
to this What is that spirit? And why is it
so important to.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Read yeah, or maybe even not say reject, but just
kind of sort of see through the alluring promise. I
think that's something that I'm often arguing for. It's just
a sort of gentle understanding that these things are not
going where we hope that they're going, and then it's
a lot easier to let go of them. In the
case of optimization and efficiency in general, right, there's certainly
(07:24):
nothing wrong with making a few time savings around the edges,
thinking about your daily routines, how you organize your house
or your desk in such a way as to eliminate
wasted time. You know, if it's taking you an hour
to find your clothes in the morning, there's probably something
wrong with how you have your house organized. But it's
a very low level at which that stops making the difference,
because I think the illusion, the thing that sort of
(07:46):
bewitches us is this notion that we might be able
to optimize ourselves to the point where we didn't have
to make difficult decisions about what to do with our time,
where we could say yes to everything that was thrown
onto our plates. We would never have to disappoint anybody,
we would never have to put any of our ambitions
on hold, we would never have to neglect something that
(08:06):
felt like it was crying out for our attention. I
want to say that it's just baked in to our
situation as finite humans, but that's not how it works.
That you're going to have to disappoint some people, that
you're going to have to put some ambitions on the
back burner, that you're going to have to not do
all the things that feel like they need doing, just
in order to do any things and to make a
(08:27):
difference to anybody's lives and to pursue any of your
most cherished ambitions. So optimization can be a real diversion
of energy and attention. It also has this very specific
hidden danger that if you are telling yourself that you're
going to make time for everything, somehow you stop asking
serious questions about things that arrive right, somebody asks you,
(08:48):
could you do this task? Could you meet this demand?
And say it's one that you are in a position
where you're allowed to say yes or no to it. Well,
if you think you're going to get everything done, you're
just going to say, yeah, sure, throw it in the hopper.
There's no problem here, I'm going to get everything done.
And so it's a very alluring thing. But what happens
is that your life gradually starts filling with more and
more stuff that you didn't really want to do, other
(09:08):
people's agendas, things you could have said no to in fact,
but felt like you were on the path to being
so powerful that you didn't need to, you know, so
all all capable, you didn't need to.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So I get the effectiveness of this approach of kind
of you know, loosening up on our optimization and recognizing
that we're never going to get everything under control. I
get how it might be functional, but I also find
it quite depressing. But one of the things that's interesting
in your book is you argue like this should not
be depressing at all, This should be incredibly liberating. Explain
it how that works.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Sure, I mean, I come across this objection. I understand
it right. There is definitely a kind of a defeat
that is involved here. I'm trying to argue that it's
a productive and energizing and empowering kind of defeat, because
it's the defeat of trying and struggling to do something
that was never on the cards to begin with. I
think that what you do, and I certainly don't claim
to be perfect at this, i'd sort of be under
(09:59):
reminding my own point if I did. I think, but
what you do when you get a little bit better
at this is you spend more of your precious time
doing things, things that make you feel more alive. I'm
partly talking about hobbies and recreational activities and meaningful work,
but even things that feel like duties in your life,
if you're doing them in this context of having chosen
(10:21):
them as against other things, they can become imbued with
greater meaning. There's a British born zen master who I
quote in the book, and I've always quote because the
quote means so much to me, whom Ju Kennet was
her name as she died a while ago now, who
used to say that her approach to teaching was not
to lighten the burden of the student, but to make
it so heavy that he or she would put it down.
(10:44):
And I still get goosebumps when I think about this quote,
because it really is the essence of what we're talking
about her. I think it's like you are struggling under
this impossible burden of trying to do everything, trying to
get your arms around it all, trying to make yourself
be perfect before you take the high stakes actions, and
it's just a lovely feeling to be able to set
that down on the ground, and it's a feeling that
(11:06):
leaves you more energized to go and do things, or
to keep climbing the mountain, or whatever the metaphor is
that we're dealing with there.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
So if Oliver's convinced you that rejecting the pursuit of
perfection is a liberating step, you should stick with us.
For tip number one, and his guide to how to
be imperfect It's coming up right after the break. Oliver
Brickman's simple philosophy is that trying to be perfect and
(11:35):
do everything is an impossible burden, a burden that weighs
us down and prevents us from dedicating ourselves to more
meaningful activities. And the first step on the road to
embracing imperfectionism is something that a perfectionist like me struggles with.
It's actually doing things, you know, actually bake that cake
or write that book, or travel to that destination. And
(11:57):
this tip kind of feels like being called out. I
never get around to baking the cake because I spend
way too much time trying to find the perfect cake recipe.
I don't take many vacations, but I spend a heck
of a lot of time researching the perfect travels spot.
In my attempt to set up everything perfectly, I really
get around to actually doing stuff. It's like I'm looking
for a method or a system to get perfect results
(12:17):
every time, no matter what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is for many of
us very alluring, right, The idea that there's some set
of rules or some way of doing things that if
you could only discover it or perfect it would make
everything work and actually, on a deeper, kind of a
subtler level, almost would live life on your behalf. Right,
It's like the deal is, I will follow all these
rules every day, and what I get back from it
(12:41):
is that I don't quite have to show up for
life and grapple with life in all its kind of messy,
muddy unpleasantness and difficulty and uncertainty and all the rest
of it. So I've got nothing against systems and rules
per se, And in fact, the new book has plenty
of sort of outlines of ways to build one. But
I think it's essential that we sort of put them
(13:03):
in their place. They are tools that we use from
our position here in the midst of life. They are
not things that can get us out of that situation.
So how is this relevant to the idea of just
doing things? I think that one way in which we
use systems in a counterproductive way is we want to
do something. We want to do more of something in
our lives, physical exercise, meditation, pursuing a creative hobby that
(13:25):
we've let neglect, or nurturing certain relationships that we've sort
of allowed to wither on something, and then we immediately
go to what's the system that's going to change me
into the kind of person that does this better? Right,
what are the goals, what's the morning routine I'm going
to do every day for the rest of my life.
What's the equipment I need? What are the ten books
I can read so that I really know how to
(13:46):
do this thing? Yeah, I'm totally still prone to doing
this sometimes. Right that. My first thought always like, find
a book, find a book, find a set of information
that I can build a system from. But firstly, that
is not the same as doing the thing. Secondly, it
can actually be counterproductive, I think, because it becomes a
much more intimidating or unwieldy thing. The prospect of having
to do something every day for the rest of your
(14:06):
life can really put you in the mind of not
wanting to do it at all, or you feel terrible
if you fall off the wagon one day, or whatever.
It might be. The really powerful skill to develop, I
think is the willingness to say, Okay, that might have
some role later. But what if I just meditative a
ten minutes. What if I just went for a brisk walk,
What if I just picked up the phone and talked
(14:26):
to the long lost friend. With no confidence that I
would do it well, no certainty that I'll do it
every day for the rest of my life, no guarantee
that it's going to turn me into the kind of
person who does that kind of thing all the time.
But it's still worth more than all those things combined
because it actually happened in reality.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Okay, can I share my experience that like fits with
this to a t. When I was reading your book,
I was like, oh my god, he's literally in my
head right now. So sometime last year I was watching
these documentaries about DJs and I was like, you know what,
I'm going to learn to do some turntablism stuff, like
I love records and so on. I immediately went to look.
I started researching books. I didn't even just buy books.
(15:04):
I spent like weeks researching like what's the best way
to learn about turntablism and stuff? And I bought these
books and I went to the what's the best possible way?
So I downloaded this syllabus from Berkeley College of Music
of the best ways to do this, and I spent
hours and hours researching how to how to learn dough
turntablism and then bought these resources and then completely intimidated
(15:25):
myself because I was reading from the best DJs and
people who are in music school, and I'm like, you know,
a professor and podcaster and have like four minutes a
week to do, and then I never picked up a
record or did anything, right, I just reading your book
is like I could have just like downloaded some app
and started playing some music and just kind of pretending
and messing around. And it wouldn't have been the perfect system,
but at least I would have done something and it
(15:45):
would have been fun rather than kind of make me
feel ashamed and like I'm never going to do it
in a huge waste of times.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, that resonates a lot. I think it's so interesting.
It's like we can learn a lot from young kids
in this regard. I think the DJ example is interesting
to me because our son often professes a desire to
be a DJ when he's older. I don't know, but
like and he just like dive into like assembling playlists
and setting up disco lights and whatever. Like you just
do it, and like you do it for twenty five
(16:12):
minutes one day after school and then you've done it,
you know, and then maybe you do it again and again,
and maybe you don't. Something about becoming an adult seems
to be associated with this idea that it's got to
be done in a very controlled sort of a scheme.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Okay, so that's idea number one. You just need to
do it, and the advice is really just like, whatever
you can do in ten minutes today, just do that
and it's probably good enough. The second tip that I
also struggle with a lot is you've argued that we
need to fight back against this idea of productivity debt.
Something I I'll pray to all the time. What is
productivity debt?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Productivity debt is my label for this sense that so
many of us have that we sort of wake up
in the morning in a kind of a debt right
that unless we produce a certain amount or do a
certain amount of things, we haven't quite justified our existence
as humans, we haven't quite earned the right to be
here on the planet. There's an important caveat which, obviously,
if you do any kind of work for money, there
(17:03):
is a sense in which you're in productivity debt. Right,
if you get paid at salary, you have to do
the things that you're job entails in order to get
the salary. I'm talking about this much deeper existential notion
that we don't get to feel okay as human beings
unless we have paid off this debt during the day.
And it's very depressing because obviously, to continue the analogy
with a sort of a debt in a bank account
(17:24):
or something, the very best thing that can happen is
that you get back to zero by the end of
the day, right Like, that is literally the very best
thing that can happen if you work in this kind
of deficit based mindset, And obviously most of the time
you're not going to feel that you even get there,
and then you're going to wake up the next morning
and it's all back again. You've got to like push
the rock up the hill for another day. So I think,
you know, just seeing that can be very powerful for
(17:46):
a lot of people because on some level we know
that that isn't how it is right. We don't really
believe that we sort of don't get to qualify as
adequate human beings if we haven't done a certain amount.
And then beyond that, I think you know, there are
all sorts of tactics like the very simple idea of
keeping a done list, keeping a list of things that
you have completed through the day as you complete them,
that can help us sort of, you know, to continue
(18:07):
that metaphor, what if you started each day at zero
and everything that you did was paying in and you
ended up like building your credit, and then the next
day you built your credit some more? Right? Is it
possible to think of the things that we do as
expressions of the fact that we already are adequate instead
of ways that we're struggling to try to achieve a
sense of valticalcy.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
You use this term in the book that I resonate with,
you know a psychologists sort of have a word for
people who fall prey to this idea, this idea of
insecure overachievers. I think I know what this term means.
What I'm going to have your articulate what it is
and how you've seen it in yourself maybe.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I'm always struck whenever I
use this term, like in a public event or something,
the ripples of recognition are there. I don't know about
sort of very formal definition, but for me, what it
means is, you know, we're talking about people who do
a lot of stuff, who are very driven, as a
word that might get used right, who probably have a
lot of accomplishments under their belt and maybe are to
some degree celebrated by their friends or admired by people
(19:03):
for doing it, but ultimately are doing it to kind
of shore up this in a sense of not being
adequate or okay unless they do enough. And this certainly
can take very toxic forms, but I think it's very
normal really for a lot of us who sort of
do a lot of things and get things done and
(19:24):
feel proud of that, to realize with a start that actually,
on some level we wouldn't do them, or we might
do different things. We certainly might do them in a
less grim faced way if we weren't starting from the
idea that there was some deficit that needed to be
filled or paid off or whatever before we could enjoy
ourselves in life. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
The reason I really loved this point is that for me,
it wasn't so much that I need to stop doing things.
It was kind of the way I do things right
Like even now, just before this, before I sat down
to record the podcast, I kind of was done my
other meetings ten minutes early, and it was like, well,
I have ten minutes. What can I do? I'm going
to water the plants, like, oh, the plants need watering,
Like oh, I'm to the dishwasher. And it was like
and I had this just moment of noticing what was
(20:03):
happening where it was like, my whole goal is to
tick as many things off as possible, and that's just
kind of a a miserable way to live.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I could have spent that ten meetings ten minutes just
being or noticing the world or relaxing.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Or doing something productive and constructive, but you would have
chosen it with some eye to enjoyment as well. Right,
Otherwise what happens is you end up living. We talk
a lot about living in the future in terms of
living for years from now, but it's very easy to
spend your whole life living about two hours in the future,
right that sense that like just when I've done that,
it's just when I've done that, it's the end of
the day. And when I get to bed and go
to sleep, there's always another thing, and it just it
(20:40):
almost makes whatever's happening in your life into a sort
of an unwelcome obstacle to getting to the end of
the day or whatever. And sometimes things are like that,
but other times they're not unless you make them, unless
you turn them into them.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So another tip that I think is especially relevant for
we insecure overachievers has to do with the information overload
that we all face. I imagine there were insecure overachievers
in the seventies and eighties, but they didn't face the
kind of fire hose of information and things to care
about that so many of us face these days. And
another tip that you've suggested is just to recognize that
(21:15):
we can't care about or find out about everything. You know,
why is this so essential to kind of give up
one trying to bring in as much information as possible?
Speaker 2 (21:24):
On some level, it's the same reason that sort of
underpins everything we've been talking about here and that I've
written about, which is that if the supply is effectively infinite,
then attempts to get through the supply faster or to
get your arms around the supply completely are doomed to fail,
and they're going to lead to all sorts of sort
of unintended consequences. So yeah, just in that simple issue
(21:45):
of too many things to read too many articles in
your read it later app that feel like they're probably
essential in some way, or could give you a really
good idea for your work, or could make you healthier
or calm or something. There's nothing wrong with collecting those,
but I think it's really important to treat them, as
I say in the book, as a like a river
rather than a bucket. In other words, not as some
sort of place where they all collect and your job
is to deal with them all until the bucket is
(22:07):
empty again, but just as a of a stream that
flows past you, and that you pick things out and
focus on them without feeling guilty about all the ones
that you let go by. And the point you alluded
to at the end of your question. More difficult, I
think for many people who feel committed to making the
world a better place is that this does ultimately have
to apply to good causes and the suffering of the
(22:29):
world as well. Right, if there is more of this
stuff than you can hope to address, even collectively, even
in groups, because they're still finite too, they are groups
of finite people. Then to make any difference to a
given cause or something like that, you're going to have
to be willing to neglect some others, not because you've
convinced yourself they don't matter, but just because that's how
(22:51):
it is for us. And you know that might mean
taking some instance of a cause, an important issue that
you feel drawn to giving your attention to, and saying,
I'm going to pick my battles and I'm not going
to choose that one. And it's not because it doesn't matter.
It's because I want to have some effect in what I.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Do, strategies for kind of staying sane and self compassionate.
When you do that, when you say important thing, don't
got time for that?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Well, you know, I think above all it comes from
seeing and reminding yourself again and again that the reason
you are neglecting some things that maybe other reasons, but
one core reason that you will be neglecting some things
is because being human means neglecting some things. And there
are sort of ways of handling this in a more
(23:37):
practical sense. I've written in the past about this idea
of keeping two lists, one that is kind of endless
and has as many items on it as you like,
and then one which has a very fixed number of slots,
and you feed them through so that you've only ever
got sort of say, five or ten items on your plate,
but you're very well aware that there are five hundred
items calling out for your attention and just sort of
acclimatizing to that situation of that being more to do
(23:59):
than you ever could do. Another metaphor that works for
me is to understand that these kinds of lists are menus,
and in a strange way, the list of all the
suffering going on in the world, the list of all
the critical causes needing our attention or our activism or
our donations or anything else, are also a menu, because
a menu is any list that you're going to have
to pick from instead of get through. And there is
(24:21):
a possibility when you see it in that way of
approaching it with a lighter spirit, You know that sense
that you're doing something that counts, and you actually wouldn't
be doing more or better if you run around in
a frenzy trying to sort of make sure you touched
every single one of those items.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
So that's sort of trying to make sure you don't
do everything. But another tip is about how you deal
with the things that you have chosen to do. And
you've argued that we need to be much more comfortable
choosing not to whole ass stuff. As you put it,
I think I know what this means. But what is
whole assing things? And why should we maybe be gentler
with ourselves about that.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
This is a quotation I stumbled across in the comments
of a Washington Post article from a woman who says
that her parents always used to get on her case
about half assing things, but actually, now, as an adult
woman with an accomplished career, she realizes there are very
very few things in life that really require her to
invest her whole ass. Quite often half fasting them is fine.
(25:18):
This applies in lots of different contexts, right, because it's
all about the amount of attention, the amount of energy
that you're willing to give something, and being okay with
giving something less of your energy, less of your attention.
It's also to do with dropping that assumption that everything
we encounter in our lives that is important has to
feel difficult, has to feel very effortful. It's about allowing
(25:39):
the possibility that maybe there are some things that you
could sort of glide through and coast through. And even
this is a subtle point it's tricky to express. I
think but like even genuinely very difficult things can be
approached in the spirit of their being easy. I know
what I mean by this. I don't know that I've
conveyed it perfectly, But you can bring ease to a
process that is almost guaranteed to be at the very
(26:03):
least frustrating, Like you know, filing your taxes is the
classic ciche. And I think you can bring ease, ultimately
me to situations that are much worse and you know,
fraught and involve grief or sadness or conflict. You can
still not assume that it's got to be a question
of furrowing your brow, bracing your muscles and going in
(26:23):
for a fight. And you can absolutely assume that when
it comes to sort of creative work, for example, all
these context where we think like, okay, this is worth doing,
I'm going to come up against a lot of resistance,
and I'm going to have to punch that resistance in
the face. It's like if you walk up to someone
in the bar ready to punch them in the face. Right,
they may have had no plan to be in conflict
with you, but they soon will be. If that's the
attitude that you take to what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
I mean, you're mentioning trying not to always whole ass
things in the context of things that are really hard.
But my own experience sometimes comes up for me, even
in things that should be easy, right, you know, friends
are like, oh, you know, should we get dinner? Like,
oh yeah, come over the house for dinner, and then
I'll be like, Okay, I'm going to make a really
great entree and there has to be deserted. I got
to like go to the wine shop to figure out
(27:06):
the perfect why. And now this thing that was supposed
to be kind of fun for me has turned into
this like stressful choice overloaded situation that in my brain
I have four different ideas about how to do perfectly,
and whichever one I picked, it's not going to be perfect.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Specifically, in the dinner party contacts, you've I argued that
we need to embrace this idea of scruffy hospitality, which
is one that I love. What do you mean by
this here?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, this phrase comes from an Anglican pastor in the
Tennessee called Jack King, and what he's talking about is
based on his own personal experience, which is precisely this
sense that when you make a big deal out of
it in the way that you describe being tempted to
do apart from anything else, in a very subtle way,
it slightly puts you off doing it again in the future,
right because it's like some part of your mind knows
(27:50):
it's going to be a whole thing, and even in
the doing of it, just that once you know, there's
a certain sense of being distracted by making sure that
the beautiful facade you are putting on for your guest
is intact and it's all going well. Jack King makes
this point. He talks in going through this himself and
deciding with his wife that they were going to just
start inviting people around in the mesha that the house
was in, to eat whatever they could cook with what
(28:12):
was in the cupboards, and finding firstly obviously that it's
a lot easier to have people around for dinner more
often if you allow yourself to do that. But also
there's a sort of depth of connection that comes from that,
and there is something about not just in the case
of dinner parties, but in life in general. There's something
about dropping the facade, owning up to the faults and
(28:33):
the imperfections that is very powerful in terms of forging
bonds with people. And I write in the book about how,
you know, even before I encounter Jackking's work, if we
were going to have friends around for dinner and I
saw like crumbs underneath the fridge or kind of mail
stacked on the toaster for no reason or something, I'd
be like, oh my goodness, like clean this up. It's awful.
We live in a pig style. But if I ever
saw that at somebody else's house, I wouldn't have that
(28:56):
reaction at all, and in fact, I would feel kind
of privileged to have been let in to their real lives,
just briefly. One of the things that it also always
reminds me of is when I'm writing my email newsletter.
You know, I try to offer insights and thoughts and
sometimes tips on how to do things in a certain way.
Times I get the most positive feedback is when I
sort of admit very openly to still struggling with some
issue and that I'm offering advice about. Because there is
(29:20):
a connection in just knowing that we're all in this
boat together, and nobody believes that the people who are
writing to dinner don't also have messy houses. Half the time,
we all know this stuff, and so there's a kind
of a barrier that we're putting up in a thing
we all have to go on believing and if we
just dropped it, we might actually connect better to each other.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah, psychologists talk about this bias. That's called the beautiful
mess effect. Right, So we have this sense that, like
somebody comes over our house and they see the crumbs
on the floor. If we vulnerable you know in our professions,
that people will not like us or judge us, or
that will distance people from us. People will kind of
think we're too messy or something. But all the research
suggests that the recipients of that kind of crumbs on
the floor or a little bit of vulnerble, right, they
(29:59):
really like it. They feel much more connected to us,
They like us better. Right. Fascinating, This is the beautiful
mess effect, is that when we're messy, people actually like it.
They find it beautiful, they find it connecting. Like our
minds assumed that that we don't have to do this.
This came up really recently for me. My friend just
had a newborn baby, two week old baby, and I
was coming by to drop off food, and you know,
and I showed up and they have a two week
(30:20):
old baby, and you know, she was trying to nurse
and like somebody just trying to put and there's kind
of stuff all over the place, and they were really
embarrassed by this. But I'm like, no, this is cool, right,
Like I'm seeing like, you know, like what the nappies
are and getting like a real glimpse into what your
life is actually like. Like it felt I felt more
connected to him than when I kind of saw his
real life. Then I might have if you know, it
(30:41):
was all polished and perfect and pretend, or if I
just had to drop the food off at the door
because they were, you know, too embarrassed to let me.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
In, right right, And as someone with a very tidy
house in the week softer a newborn baby has arrived,
as is possibly callt wrong priorities right right, exactly, something's.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Really messed up. Yeah, thanks to Oliver, I now don't
mind admitting that my office can be a bit messy.
Don't even get me started about the inside of my car.
But Oliver's next tip really hits home. Why is it
that I can't stop worrying about the future. We'll find
out after the break here on the Happiness Lab, we
(31:20):
often extol the happiness virtues of mindfulness. Since making the show,
I've gotten better at nipping rumination in the bud and
taking my mind off worries from the past. But I
still struggle a bit with what's around the corner, because
let's face it, the future is really scary. It's full
of things I can't control and events I may not
be prepared to deal with. On days when my mind
(31:40):
gets going, it can feel like it's all going to
be a total disaster. Author Oliver Berkman dedicates a decent
chunk of his new book, Meditations for Mortals to our
fears about the future, and his tip for dealing with
that dread can be summed up by a saying that
he was taught as a child.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
The phrase I think you're referring to is just that
we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, right,
which I feel like has been said to me probably
thousands of times. By the time that I felt like
I really understood what a powerful thought it is, because
of course, you know, it's total logical in some sense.
You can only cross a bridge when you come to it.
I think any of us who are prone to anxiety
(32:17):
or worry. I think what worry is, you could even say,
is the attempt to sort of think our way over
every possible bridge that we could come up to and
reassure ourselves that we can successfully traverse it. But of
course you can't ever find that kind of security about
things that are in the future, because they are in
the future. And so I think that explains the sort
of compulsive quality of worry. Right. You go around and
(32:38):
around and around, hoping this time you'll get the reassurance,
and you never do because you can't be reassured in
that way about the future. And when you start to
really feel into how absolutely inevitable and unavoidable this situation is,
I think there is where you can actually let the
future be the future a bit more. If you think
(32:58):
it's very difficult to cross bridges before you come to them,
then you'll keep doing it and struggling. If you think
it's impossible, you might unclench a bit, and you might
rely in the present about the future. And there's a
quote I mentioned there from Marcus Aurelius, a great Stoic
philosopher and emperor, who says, basically, don't worry so much
(33:19):
about things in the future, because you'll meet them with
the same in the resources that you meet the things
within the present. And I often want to say this
to people and to myself as well. Right, it's like
you got to this point. Every single time you thought
you couldn't handle something in your life, turns out you could.
So there's at least a reason to err on the
side of thinking that the future things you think you
(33:40):
won't be able to handle you actually will.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
But also jumping into the future now also messes up
these times when like you're really worried or horrified about
some future event that's like not even going to happen
in the way you think. This came up for me recently.
I just recovered from COVID about a couple weeks ago,
and I had this new variant where I completely lost
my sense of smell. And on day one of losing
(34:03):
my sense of smell, I was like, oh my god,
my smell is gone forever. I'm never going to be
able to cook. What can I do with this? I
ordered these like smell kids online so I could start
training my smell. I read all these neuroscience papers on
like how do you get your smell back? If it's
gone and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I complained to my poor producer who's listening right now,
but I was never gonna get my smell back, and
how could I deal with this? And then like two
days or three days after my stuff he knows, cleared up,
it kind of just came back. But like those three
days were spent in utter horror, like complete planning, Like
my whole life was built around like what can I
do to live life normally given that I'm just never
(34:38):
going to be able to smell again? And that was
like utterly futile because like it kind of just came
back in a way. But at the time, it felt
like the only thing I could do would be to
anxiously try to plan and for this terrible future. Yea,
And so any advice for how to stop the rumination
and stop the worrying and future planning when it feels
like like how do we take the sort of marcus
orreliest breath and be like it's got to be all right?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Well, I find a lot of the benefit to me
comes from encounter, and I know exactly where you talked about,
you know, a lot of the benefit does come from
pondering these kinds of phrases, and part of idea for
this new book of mine is to kind of create
a structure in which those kind of perspective shifts can
sink under your skin, as it were. There's another lovely
insight from the spiritual writer Michael Singer who says reality
(35:22):
doesn't need you to help operate it, which I think
is a very powerful insight.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Now one resonates with me too. Feel really called out,
thanks Mike Singer.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
In terms of something more practical, I mean, one thing
that I think can be surprisingly useful in the context
like you talk about there is sort of I expect
this is called something like worry postponement, but I don't
know if it really is right, which is place a
market in your calendar, on your year, planet, whatever it is,
on your phone, that in two weeks or three weeks,
(35:52):
you will allow yourself once more to really like freak
out about that thing, so as to just create a
little island of calm right now, and also to remind you,
as you will find again and again and again, that
by the time that that period has elapsed, the thing
is no longer an issue and it didn't matter. I
do do this to this day with certain things. If
(36:12):
I'm sort of particularly concerned about some aspect of parenting
or aspect of household finances or something, I'll be like,
first of all, if I'm doing this really badly, and
I've been doing it really badly for years, like two
more weeks isn't going to make a difference. So for now,
let me just put something in the calendar two weeks
ahead from now and see what it's like. If I
just postpone it and it's not perfect, you still worry
(36:33):
a bit, but it does create space, and it enables
you to see two weeks later than actually the thing
doesn't feel so bad.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I was laughing at those examples because my producer, Ryan,
who's on the line, who's often the one that helps
me postpone my worry, literally sent me a text when
I was in this COVID situation where he said, why
don't we wait at least twenty four hours till you're
testing negative to freak out that you're never going to
be able to smell again? And so, but I think
this idea of sort of being kind to ourselves when
(36:59):
we're in the midst of worry, I think gets to
the last tip that I love so much in your book,
which is this idea that we all need to follow
the reverse Golden rule, which is very consistent with a
lot of advice we talked about in this podcast. So
what's the reverse golden role?
Speaker 2 (37:11):
The reverse Golden rule, in the version I know, comes
from the philosopher at O Landau, and it's just the
idea that you should not treat yourself in ways that
you wouldn't treat others, specifically other friends. I think I've
definitely struggled with the whole notion of self compassion, right,
there's definitely this whole world. I think it's fairly obvious
that this is a good thing, but I have always
(37:33):
had a sort of an aversion to it. That probably
is a sign that I really need it, because that's
what those kind of pringe reactions usually are. But a
big moment for me in understanding this was to realize
how common it is to sort of beerate yourself in
a voice, in a monologue through the day or whatever
it might be, in ways that you just would never
dream of doing to a colleague or a friend. I mean,
(37:53):
you probably get fired if to a colleague. There's a
quote in the book from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, who says,
if you met this person in your head in a
social context, you just think there was something wrong with them.
He says, he would just be boring and cruel, which
I think is brilliant. And so what I take from
this is for those of us who are reverse to
any idea that we're being asked to think of ourselves
(38:14):
as incredibly special and as the center of the universe
and showering ourselves with love, it's like, no, it's just
don't be more mean and less friendly to yourself than
you would be to other people. And this feels very
manageable to me. It's like, oh, okay, yes, I'm a
nice person. Basically, I think I wouldn't do that to
(38:35):
anyone I cared about, So how about I don't do
it to myself too. And of course it's just a
matter of catching yourself in the act of pulling yourself
an idiot or whatever it is. But I think that
idea of just self friendliness really sort of cuts it
down to a manageable concept.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
And I love that you've made even this concept of
following the reverse Golden rule one that you just called manageable. Right,
It's not like being perfect to yourself and compassion all
the time. It's just like not treating yourself worse than
you would treat another reasonable.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Right, and the way that you treat other people in
a friendly way. It does not always need to be
self indulgent. Right. There are times when you might decline
to buy your friend another drink at the end of
the night or something like that. Right, there are times
when firmness is called for, so tough love has a
space here, but it's clearly done for friendly reasons, as
opposed to what we're often doing to ourselves, which is
(39:21):
just sort of screaming and yelling at ourselves.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
And another thing we shouldn't scream and yell at ourselves
about is the idea of imperfectionism. You earned your book,
I think with one really important tip, which is, like
we've just talked about all these ways you can become
more imperfectionist, but you can't take a perfectionist attitude towards
your own imperfectionism, which I'm glad was a tip that
you had in the book because it was one that
I needed because I was ready to just as to
(39:46):
jump in to imperfectionism in the most extreme drill sergeanty way.
So any advice for how we can try to be
imperfect in it imperfect?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Well, I think, you know, just seeing it, reminding yourself
right exactly. It is so easy to take any useful idea,
even ideas which seek to push back against that sort
of absolutist perfectionistic stance, and turn them into new things
that you'll going to try to do perfectly and won't
allow yourself to fully show up in life for until
(40:14):
you've done them.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
You are now kind of an expert on imperfectionism, but
you're the kind of person who has these insecure, overachieverer tendencies.
How have you kind of become an imperfectionism guru but
not gone too far with it?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
Well, you know, I think I'm often in danger of
going too far. But I think that the answer to that,
such as there is one, is to find ways in
your life to keep returning to these ideas and this material,
so you know, not to self promote too much. But
the structure of Meditations for Mortals is a four week
structure with a day's chapter for each day of that
twenty eighty period. Is designed to feed into that to
(40:46):
counter the risk of thinking that this is something that
you can get once and for all. And as you
say right at the end, I say, don't actually expect
to completely transform your life in four weeks. If you've
been following what we're saying, I hope you understood this
point that was not the goal. Another aspect of this
for me that I think is really important in my
life is just any form of journaling. Right So, morning
pages is the one habit that has really stuck with
(41:07):
me decades now, not because I decided I was going
to do it every day and mark it off on
a schedule, but because it was so useful for me
that I just naturally wanted to do it. So I
never have to sort of make myself do that. Sometimes,
especially since becoming a parent, I don't necessarily get the
opportunity to do it. But that's a different point. And
anything where you're just sort of reflecting your thoughts back
(41:29):
to yourself in that way, to me, has the effect
of sort of keeping you on this, keep you on
a straight line here, and making you realize when you
are running away with the idea of oh, this is
a new thing, you're going to make into a perfect thing.
Even that is almost too much right or even there,
I don't want to. I don't want to give people
the idea that if they just do morning pages every day,
it's sorted. I am deliberately attempting anyway to sort of
(41:49):
constantly pull the rug from under this notion that there's
a system that will do it for you, and then
you get to not really show up. It's precisely working
the muscle of not doing that and coming back and
back and back to the real, messy, imperfect reality that
we're always in.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Oh, everybody's a work in progress. I suppose so.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
And whatever happens, we'll meet that moment and that moment
and then that moment.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I think that's a nice and comforting sum up of life.
It's a series of moments that will meet much as
we've handled the moment that just passed. Will never be perfect.
We'll always be messy, but will be okay. In fact,
if we can embrace imperfection, I think we might even
be more than just okay. I think we might just
wind up becoming happier. So that's your first how to
(42:38):
guide in this new season, And just to recap here
are Oliver's Tips one more time. First, you got to
do things. Don't get stuck in that perfectionist fantasy plant phase.
Dive in and get going. Tip number two fight back
against productivity debt. You don't need to justify your existence
by getting through some huge to do list. Tip number
three is to remember that there's a cost to information overload.
(43:00):
So resist the urge to stockpile all the knowledge possible
and the urge to care about everything. You've got to
just let some important things go. Tip number four to
reject the urge to always whole ass stuff, shoot for
eighty percent and remember the benefits of scruffy hospitality. Tip
number five. Let the future be the future. There are
lots of bridges we'll cross when we get there. Tip
(43:21):
number six. A little self compassion goes a long way.
And the final Tip number seven is not to bring
a perfectionist attitude towards imperfectionism. And so our next Howtoo
episode will build on what you've just heard. It's a
guide on how to be enough. That's all. Next time
on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos
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