Dr. Martha Beck (Oprah's Life Coach): I Nearly Died, So I Stopped Lying! Why You're Anxious & How To Fix It! Fix Your Childhood Trauma!

49:20In the making it usually feels great. Yeah, like in the process of making actually me my partner when it did Last weekend we went and made some art And I was like stressed and stuff and so when we Went into this art. I'd like never painted in my life. Yeah, so we went to this like random loft and there was this guy there And yeah, these massive two pieces of cardboard and like let's just spray cans and paint and stuff and we just painted for Maybe three hours or something. Yeah, and I was totally lost in it. I mean that's the way people describe it They describe it as being lost in it right? Yeah And do you know that if people have been through a trauma and they're allowed to draw about it even if they can't draw You know professionally They have an 80 % lower chance of developing PTSD There's something about creating stuff and it could be a company or it could be a spray paint on a cardboard My partner started making bead bracelets a while ago.

50:17She's very busy She doesn't have time for this but it makes her so content and we're talking about how if you go into a Tumon Egypt from 5 ,000 years ago. What are you gonna find among other things? Beaded bracelets If you go to the Amazon rainforest and contact an uncontacted tribe what might you find? Beaded bracelets people are making beaded bracelets all the time and they serve no function They are precious pointless things She said that we make and all cultures make that we make music I mean, I think about the cultures in Jamaica one of the worst Slavery colonies in the history of the world it was just it made what was happening on the mainland look gentle by comparison And out of that you get these incredible art forms reggae Dance I mean like in the middle of Being crushed having literally everything taken from them people were still making art This is a part of the human spirit That is just it's indomitable and our culture pushes it to the fringes Okay, Steven you can do that on a weekend.

51:30That's nice But did you really make any money? You know get a real job. Yeah How does this link again back to the brain? So if I'm creating I'm making some art I was doing that spray paint thing with the paint and the I'll show you a picture of it after I actually think I'm gonna say Oh, I want to see it But how is that helping me to calm my anxiety? It's because of the way the structures on the left side They're obsessed with grasping material objects acquiring controlling other people always thinking about fear and There does seem to be this toggle effect that anxiety and creativity Just can't work at the same time So the moment you begin to create like when you said I could write this that's expressive writing that's artistic writing and all of a sudden the toggle switches off In anxiety and on in creativity.

52:27So I believe That there's another spiral on the right side of the brain, but it instead of spiraling tightly into fear it spires It spirals outward And Ultimately you get to the final thing. There's calming. There's artistry and then there's transcendence We're awakening When you're there sometimes we call it flow chicks at me. Hi, the psychologist who named it flow Really looked into this and it's a state of creating and performing at a level so difficult We almost can't do it. The exactly the way you were writing your names like Ah And you can have what's called the rage to master where you're just like I There I can't But when you get it and I'm sure you've had this with many things you've created in your life It's like flying it's heaven and there's a time in the process of creation creating where The sense of self falls away and the sense of control isn't necessary and what you feel Is creation itself sort of moving with you and through you And it's blissful And I believe that is the state in which we are meant to spend almost all our time And I think that would transform our consciousness This is a related but slightly unrelated Topic but there's a lot of people and certain demographic suffering in different ways at the moment Yes, there's like a conversation I hear a lot about men suffering with Meaning in purpose and those things and I hear this other conversation about young women suffering And depression anxiety being on the rise there When you think about those two groups so like men and young women What is it that you think is the cause causal factor of their suffering because their suffering is similar and different Yeah, well, it's it's conditioned by the way the brain works It works very differently in pubic ascent girls than it does and say adult men Young adult men their brains work very differently from Elders, that's why in traditional societies the young man would be Herded together and sometimes for example in some cultures their faces would be obscured They would leave their name behind they would leave all the possessions they had or burn them And they would be taken into the wilderness by the elders and the elders would proceed to scare the living daylights out of them making strange noises in the brush Putting them through a kind of trial And the result of this is it kind of disintegrates the ego and you still see it in like if you see movies about The army and how the tough but hard of gold sergeant breaks down the young soldiers Egos so that they finally say okay I am not the center of the universe I need my brothers to exist and I I bow down in the face of nature which is greater than I am And then the elders say all right now you're ready to be a man go back to the village and tell people your new name Which you get to choose Young girls at puberty go through the opposite experience in many cultures They are isolated in places away from all humans Because the primary psychological task According to some theories of males is that they're born sort of differentiated and very individual And they need to learn to integrate with other people to be whole Females tend to be born or people identified as female are born very integrated and the task of female maturation is to individuate So young girls who haven't they're just at the stage where they need to find out who they are as an individual And instead they're very integrated with networks of people Who are psychologically attacking each other In ways that are extremely harmful to They're psyche at that stage in a traditional culture they might be put And say a hut that was dark and given food every day But you're in there by yourself to until you learn I'm okay.

56:41I can actually go inside myself and find the truth of who I am And on the other hand the boys are out they're going ah I can give up thinking I am all that And I can kneel in reverence at The oneness of it all and then they come back together and they've got a lot in common That point because the men now realize they meet people and the women They're in Have independence. Exactly and so each can understand the other better I mean the wisdom of these cultural traditions is incredible and we just don't have it We don't have it The the internet in particular spins out the the Individuation of young men makes them feel like you know They do have bands of brothers, but it's like we're under attack man and I really I'm gonna try to I have to achieve.

57:33I'm gonna try it this way and I'm gonna try it that way And there's a lot of battle games and stuff but none of the humility that comes from the elders and These young girls are just caught in whirlwinds of social toxicity When they might be taught to meditate And we can still do all those things we can still access those things You talked about suicidal ideation early on being unique to humans When we think about suicide ideation it's particularly prominent in young men I think in the UK the status still the case that the single biggest color of young men is themselves under the age of 45 Wow So why is that you know we talked about meaning and purpose and stuff earlier why are young men killing themselves at alarming rates not because It is easier in the mind to take arms against the sea of troubles And like it it's hamlet speech You know, why should I stay alive in a world where everyone dies and We're all assaulted by the slings and arrows about rage is fortunate He's just watched his father die and he's like why would I keep going?

58:42I could just kill myself because men are taught Combat as a way of control If you're afraid every movie will tell you get a gun like the matrix where the guy learns he can control everything with his mind Everything he's controlling with his mind. So what does he do? He says we're gonna need a lot of guns you can control the universe with your mind You don't need guns Right, but there's just this obsession with weaponry and that's kind of in the DNA But when you get people in a spiral of fear it becomes Intense and military all the genocides committed throughout history have relied on like really toxic leaders Accessing vulnerable young men and militarizing them against other people Which is really easy and if they're on their own isolated and their Arnold elders taking them in groups doing things They turn that on themselves So what is the what is the solution and for young men?

59:47I would say look to our ancestors, you know Let's take young men but the Coach Michael Trotter that I used to go with to make fire in the woods He originally worked with and probably still does work with groups of young men And he used to wear out he was he was a disciple of I think it was the Odawa tribe of Indigenous Americans And he always wore this shirt that said listen to grandfather And he would take these confused hurting young men out And he would put them through the trials that they would have had in a traditional society And they would have to learn to make fire together and they would have to learn to feed each other what they could find and Use their skills in hunting building all of that for the community And I just watched him heal boy after boy after boy and That's not that hard to do why is it he healing For them doing that using their skills hunting surviving because it's what we evolved to do Like the lives we're giving people now the lives most of us are living are so alienating it's such an abnormal this here is not normal Right, this is not a forest or a beach or a desert this is all man made It's full of right angles which don't even very rarely exist in nature only in crystals For people that are watching video she's pointing at the studio Yeah, I'm pointing at the studio which is lovely by the way absolutely state of the art but If you talk about human evolution and then Granable sophisticated nervous systems we have they evolved intimately for a totally different environment And this is scary So what do we do about it because you know the more I listen to I think maybe I should run away like maybe I should I have the funds to run away.

1:01:50I could I could go forever And I do wonder I can probably be happier maybe Maybe I'd start creating though and then this is what I said I'm I did a soda episode of my podcast recently I said if I ran away then I'd start creating and then you know I might start a podcast on the beach and Bali and then you would You would create stuff you can't help yourself and that's why you are Obviously like physically healthy you seem incredibly balanced and wise Like you've been making stuff so you're very much Like you're sorry to use California language, but your energy is very calm but also very exuberant Your story Is heartbreaking in many ways, but it's it's so evidently Shaped the person that sits in front of me today because you're At a very young age which you've not we've not really spoken about much you were part of the moment religion.

1:02:46Oh, yes, I was He came into that before 10 years old how that experience before the age of ten has shaped the person you are So I was born not just into a Mormon Family but a Mormon community where everyone shared the same beliefs you didn't call people Mr and Mrs It was brother and sister brother Smith sister Smith um and I was told from very young. I mean you're indoctrinated at 18 months you start religious training and they tell you things like um You know if men live well and they're part of the Mormon church then when they die they get their own planet and all the women they want I'm saying all right like you're three years old.

1:03:32What do you know right and Jesus is gonna come over the mountains and all the graves are going to fly open and all the bodies the literal bodies Of all the dead people are gonna rise up out and go join Jesus Which is why we don't cremate bodies we bury them because they're gonna come back to life and Um I would have nightmares of Jesus coming over the mountains the graves flying open all the people around me are rising up and I would run As a little kid this happened over and over again this dream where I was trying to jump high enough To go with the people who were being saved and I couldn't do it.

1:04:11I was I just kept coming back down So I lived in absolute terror all the time And I also didn't know what was real because none of it Nothing felt real So that was It's very disconcerting but because I'd never had any other experience. I just thought well. This is life So that was rough And at 28 years old you realized that you'd been sexually assaulted as a child Yeah, I think I had I had hints of it actually friends told me that I had told them about it in high school and I don't remember telling them So I had pretty much repressed it my father was a very very renowned scholarly defender of Mormonism his job was to take the claims of the doctrine and validate them You know academically But in order to do that I talked to many people who many of he had five people working with him to help him translate various documents of different languages And they said he would just make things up and put them as footnotes in different languages So no one was likely to check them um And it was called lying for the Lord Which is so weird.

1:05:32I mean it means you have a god who's fundamentally interested In helping people be like God by lying So yeah, I was twisted in knots um when I was Little and then I think it twisted my father into knots as well And I do have memories and a lot of physical scarring from sexual abuse that sort of blew up in my Into my consciousness right after I had that um The light experience that came to me in surgery and It actually told me during the surgery you're about to go through something very very difficult But I've always been with you and I'll always be with you never forget that And that's why I decided not to lie anymore and that's why when I started having these memories It didn't matter because I was Because connection with that light and never forgetting it Was the realest maybe the only absolutely true thing that had ever happened to me And I was not leaving again Abuse at the hands of your father.

1:06:49Yes. Yeah And you remembered that 28 years old. Yeah, we recalled it 20 years old. Well, it sort of exploded into my mind that They're called intrusive flashbacks I'd had a lot of Lot of symptoms of PTSD my whole life without knowing it but my oldest child got to be the age I was when the abuse started occurring five years old And she looked just like me at that age and it Every time I look at her I would just have these incredibly violent It's not like a memory. It's like it's happening. It's like You're completely overwhelmed by it um For a period of time and it was It was extraordinarily hard.

1:07:37I'm not gonna lie. It was bad And I called my mother and she said well, yes, that's what happened I was like what you agree with me and she said why shouldn't I I know him better than you And I said Okay, so like what do I just said well, obviously you have to protect church You called your mother to tell her you've been sexually abused and you realized and she said of yes She knows well, she called me and said what's going on? Why why are you not visiting us? And I said all right, I had taken a vow not to lie So I told her the truth Expecting her to go into a rage or something And she said well, yeah, that's how it is Um, she said well, yeah, that's how it is yeah, I believe you that's boom that sounds right that tracks Well, how did it track?

1:08:24What did she know she said I know him better than you do and I said I don't remember this was 30 years ago, but I said um He's really he's not an honest man and she said no He's not honest and Then she said you better come and make him a cake Which is Is Weird frankly to say yes, I believe you are raped by your father at the age of five And by the way the surgery I was in when I had the light experience was surgery To correct some of the scar tissue left by the abuse. I was it had ripped Internally, and I was bleeding internally and they just found all this scar tissue and Where it probably shouldn't have been And so for a mother to say oh, yeah, I completely believe that's true And what I think you should do about it is to make your perpetrator a cake Kind of sums up the way I was raised and I just I tried I made the cake I went down I served the cake and then I just couldn't go back.

1:09:31I just couldn't you confront him? I did yeah um I could front of him at first and then years later 10 years later or so when he was 90 91 here I was born when he was 52 and um Uh I wanted to meet with him after I'd forgiven him to tell him that I'd forgiven him So that he would not have to carry that because he was a very very miserable, strange disassociated human being like really really weird um people he was brilliant but very very broken and um I think he had to choose between his entire sense of reality and his religion and he chose the religion and He chose the job of talking other people into believing the religion and I think it just completely broke him and that plus um he was in world war two and saw a lot of action there and he was I forgiven you know By the way anyone listening to this you do not have to forgive your perpetrator Find a way to be in your own truth and your own integrity you will heal you will be happier Then you will notice that there is no more anything to forgive you're done.

1:10:53Did he acknowledge that he had done it? No um He was very strange about it though He didn't say I never did that he said oh, but that was the evil one Meaning the devil and that was my family's story was that I'd been sexually assaulted by the devil as a child And that that's why I had scars and so on And so he said yeah, that was the evil one. I think meaning the devil but maybe he meant Part of him that was evil He never really talked to me my whole life. We never had like conversations He would switch languages. He would literally physically run away from me. It was very very strange Yeah, wasn't a normal childhood or an old And after that phone call with your mother where you confronted her about it and she said that sounds about right Um, I read that she then denied it after that.

1:11:49Oh, she totally retracted it. Yeah, I mean she had to live with him and She couldn't very well like agree with me in his presence. So um when I asked her I met with both of them in my therapist's office And I said why did you tell me that you agreed with me and that it made sense to you And she said oh, I just assumed you were joking Which was like nah That now So the Chiavon admit that she I said that no She never did I never saw her again and but actually I have to say If I had to as a child if I had to choose one of my parents to be around it would have been my father because my mother was Just a big ball of misery and rage and Never wants remember feeling safe around her why She I had the distinct impression she hated me Yeah, because Mormons believe that children choose to be born to specific parents And so and she had had Five children and one still birth and her body was Over it and she was done and she was sick and depressed and miserable and then she had three more children I was seventh of the eighth surviving children And the last Four of us she was really angry that we had forced ourselves upon her she did not want us And she was angry because we had been born And she was depressed right I was reading through your story about how she spent a lot of time in bed upset crying Yeah, like all the time I had a weird privilege of watching her funeral on um What do they call it closed circuit TV During the pandemic or just after Um one of my sisters had gotten back in touch with me over after 30 years of no contact and It was the strangest thing because I was gonna go do something that day and then I thought no I've got to go lie down in bed which I don't do and then I've got to watch TV which I never knew during the day And then I got a text from my sister saying our mom's funeral is on TV right now at this link So I sat there and I watched it and it was quite validating One of my brothers got up and started out by saying If you came here expecting to hear stories of motherly love you are at the wrong funeral Yeah, and My siblings said things like it's so much that she was depressed.

1:14:37It was kind of like depression is who she was You know it was I feel tremendous sadness for my mother tremendous compassion and empathy To the point I mean heartbroken About the life she lived in the lives that many other women live Sort of in crazy systems Feeling they have no power um It just destroyed me to To feel how much pain she was in But uh, yeah, she didn't like me Did you ever Figure out why your parents why they way that they were outside of The influence of their religion was there anything that happened to them? Oh, yeah tons of things like they were um my grandmother my mother's mother I think was a complete psychopath.

1:15:32She was pro -nazi in world war two She I like what what who does that she was Swedish and she just thought that was the right thing to do um Was there a suspicion that your dad was abused? Oh, he was definitely abused by his mother He was sexually abused by his mom. Yes. Yes, and that was known my mother had told me this before um Yeah, she would do horrible things she would put She would wound him and put be venom on his genitals and um You're very sexual toward him. I mean it was a mess. It was horrible The the things that happened to at that age they left Their fingerprints on you as you went through your teen years.

1:16:14Oh, yeah, I was listening to an interview You did where you were describing thing. I think 17 18 years old and you were Thinking about ending your own life. Oh constantly constantly. Yeah Like it was a daily struggle not to through through what period of your life I would say about 16 well started right around 13 but by the time I was 16 it was pretty constant 17 18 19 it was All I could do to not commit suicide and then um It kind of went on it went to a level of like I can hang on during my 20s But I think I was 32 the day I realized it was the first day I remembered that I hadn't wanted to kill myself Yeah Why why do you think that was So present in your life those thoughts because I was in tremendous amounts of physical and psychological pain And are the two linked They were for me.

1:17:17Yeah, they were very much um Psychogenic pain, you know, the body -mind interface is not there's not much separation and for me One of the things I talked about in the way of integrity is that when we lie our bodies get very weak So um like I could do a simple little hokey test with you where I could oh you want to do it. Okay So stick your arm out. Yeah, and hold it up. Don't let me push it down. Okay. They're leaving me pushed on Okay, no no, I want you to do that while lying and why I'd like you to say is I love to vomit Okay, I love to vomit Open your arm up. Yeah, I love to vomit. Why that's so weird now say I love fresh.

1:18:04Yeah I love fresh. I love fresh. Yeah I'm trying my very hard to say good. I love fresh. Yeah, now say I love to vomit. I love to vomit Why is that that's so strange? This is why polygraph machines work on everybody. It's like a mask Just for people that couldn't see that because they were listening when I don't know if I've just been like Messed with in some way, but when I said I love to vomit I she could push my hand down But when I said I love fresh air she couldn't push my hand down and it she was trying both times She's pushing hard both times and I would think that I'd be able to resist The fourth forces, but when I said I love to vomit It was like They knew I can describe it was I wasn't actually connected to my strength and my hand exactly.

1:18:52I wasn't in it was like I was inside my head So I couldn't also at the same time think about you you're about to push me right It was like there was two different systems. Yes, because the body lives in reality the body is honest only the mind and only the verbal mind Can lie to us and tell us things Um that we that we can believe even though they're not true So I love to vomit is a statement that says it's okay to for me to be feel horrible But a smaller version of this is I often speak to groups and often they're in like hotel ballrooms or in auditoriums And I'll stop right in the middle of the speech and say I propose nothing is everyone comfortable And they'll say yes No really truly is everyone are you genuinely comfortable?

1:19:43Are you really comfortable? And they say yes go on with your speech And then I say so how many of you if you were sitting at home alone if you were at home alone right now How many of you would be in exactly the position you're in at this moment? And nobody raises a hand And then I say why not And they have to sit and think For a long time before someone finally says I'm not completely comfortable this way And I would say well that's okay because humans can tolerate a lot of suffering And this is mild What concerns me and should concern you is that 30 seconds ago you swore to me in broad daylight that you were absolutely comfortable Well, you're you knew you weren't Your body knew you weren't comfortable and your mind Was doing this little This little trick where it goes very quickly through this Okay, in order to listen to speeches we sit in uncomfortable positions And that's okay because it's worth the benefit we get out of it.

1:20:45So given that I am tolerably comfortable But all you think is uncomfortable When you're not comfortable So people come to me and they're in jobs where they're not comfortable and relationships where they're like sometimes in Intense suffering in religions where they're not comfortable and all kinds of places and they think they're comfortable But they're getting sick They're getting physically sick or they're getting addicted to a substance because they're trying to numb the discomfort They won't acknowledge And so pretty much all I do is help people get in touch with a really really benevolent friend called suffering When you know what makes you suffer You're getting accurate information from your entire neurological system About what's working for you and what isn't and what would be better What would be more comfortable just a little bit And if you keep correcting I call them one degree turns I would be a little more comfortable doing this So I did it like run off a cliff method.

1:21:56Don't do my way do the one degree turns If you're in an airplane and it turns one degree north every half hour Over 10 ,000 miles you won't even notice your turning but you'll be in a completely different place And that's just noticing Oh, I'm this isn't very comfortable for me. I would rather do this You know my girlfriend is anxious I could Break my back trying to figure out what's going on and getting her enough presents to make her happy or I could go in the other room sit down Be gentle with myself Maybe do a little writing about how I feel That would be a little more comfortable It almost feels like we've been trained not to listen to how we feel 100 % 100 % as Sir Ken Robinson says you know we're trained To think of our bodies as mechanisms that take our heads to meetings You know that the meetings are all important and our heads are all important and all of the rest of our evolution is meaningless to us That's a very left hemisphere dominated way of thinking And that's why Ian McGillcress says we live like people with right hemisphere strokes We're not even in our bodies I think maybe you are more than most people The way you talk about it and the way you've made decisions really It speaks to me of a person who finds what's right for him very And with a lot of integrity Yeah, well, I think um, I think yeah, one of the things I the reason I say that is because I've been saying on stage And I wanted to see if you thought it was true this idea because people ask me all the time They ask me about meaning and purpose and what decision they should make and should they quit their job or quit their Relationship and my response for the last I'd say 12 months has just been to try and impress upon them They were born with this thing inside them Which is how you feel and you you've learned not to listen to it because your mother's opinion of which universe Do you go to as like superseded it in Instagram has but I know it's there because I know like evolutionarily You wouldn't be here if your body didn't have signals to take a run to take it be scared to take it move away from this person So I know it's there, but you just probably tuned it out.

1:24:13Yeah, and um I say that to people and I've almost never asked them if that resonated with them But I just just been saying it for a while So I don't even know if it's like true, but it's just how I experience that Because my decision like the reason why I'm saying here now is because of just I quit a lot of stuff Yes So like and I quit people go you so young you is like actually it's not that I made great decisions It's just I think the skill of quitting was one that just came naturally to me So like I don't like being at school. I stopped going. I don't like university. I left after the first lecture I started business did it for two years quit that business out the police started another business Did down for six seven years quit that one out of the blue.

1:24:49I love it and um It's it was all like the I didn't need to have a Place to go to I didn't need to have like a better option. It was just this doesn't feel good I love that but that's kind of running off the cliff Yeah, it is a bit and everything is the the costs are high and the rewards are high Yeah, if you go gradually you're gonna get a smaller amount of gain, you know by the year If you run off a cliff you can have a really rough ride But you might come out with a lot of positives and your skill of quitting it reminds me If people come to me I try to give them every all the value in one session like Hear this and go away all right Take notes If you don't really want to do something And you don't really have to do something Don't do it Give me my money and go Because that's the whole thing if you don't want to do something and you don't have to do it don't do it And that's a really quick way to find out what you do want What if you don't want to do it but There's something telling you that you have to So it could be like a horrible work meeting all that that you've been invited to With that person which you don't particularly like anyway that baby.

1:26:07Shall you don't want to go to So I like you have to get more and more Attentive to what's going on inside and I I think some form of meditation whether it's expressive writing Or painting or just sitting Still is very helpful at noticing these fine details and and there's I'm kind of joking when I say if you don't want to do it you don't have to do it But ultimately that's true and the way you decide there are things that you don't want to do But you actually do have to do them not because people Want you to but because you have to do them and the way I experienced that um I like to describe it with something the Buddha used to say a lot and that was Wherever you find a body of water You can know if it's the sea because the sea always tastes of salt And wherever you find Enlightenment awakening your own truth your path You can always recognize it no matter what form it takes because enlightenment always tastes of freedom He did not say happiness.

1:27:18He did not say benefit. He did not say You know mania true love. He said freedom And when you know like I did not want to meet with my parents For example in my therapist's office. I was terrified of both of them um And of the whole community my therapist could have been run out of business in the town we lived in um But if I had not done it I would not have been as free So I had to do it But that's a really different. I have to do it then My mother really really would be happier if I became a doctor Hmm Freedom Yeah, what is freedom in that definition of the word The point I asked you what your body felt when you started paying attention to it and you said it relaxed It's a sense of I also mentioned flow um, which is the sense of being completely Almost the sense of self -disappearing and being in complete harmony with something that is moving through the world Um my undergraduate degree is in Chinese and so I know I found out about dauism earlier in my life And it's not really a religion the way we would think of it It's the sense that there is an energy that flows through nature And that if you don't fight it you will Live the life you were meant to live In the sense of letting go of everything else Except letting that thing work with you and through you That to me is freedom When it comes to food I trust my gut and I trust Zoe a business I'm an investor in and today's sponsor of this podcast all the nutritionists I've spoken to have highlighted Just how misleading information is out there when it comes to food take healthy halos the claims you see on packaging That say things like low sugar and nothing artificial or often a sign of foods to have Have you ever noticed a health claim on fresh fruit you probably get my point Understandably there's loads of distrust out there.

1:29:33Who should you turn to for accurate information? I use Zoe which is backed by one of the world's largest microbiome databases and most scientifically advanced at home gut health tests Zoe gives you proven science whenever you need it as a Zoe member You'll get an at -home test kit and personalized nutrition program to help you make smarter food choices that support your gut To sign up visit Zoe .com and use my code Bartlett 10 for 10 % off your membership that's Zoe .com code Bartlett 10 trust your gut trust Zoe From the person you were at what 32 years old just before 32 years old you're saying oh well through it through your teenagers Teenagers the person you are now How radical is the difference so if I met that 19 year old Teenager and she sat down here I just went back for the first time in years I had a gig in Boston so I went back to Cambridge which is next to it and I went with my wife Something that couldn't have happened when I was 17 I had the sense of tapping my younger self on the shoulder and saying I am I am from your future and I can tell you with 100 % certainty That it is possible for you to live in a state of almost continuous joy and that you can get there without dying You can get there in fact your job in this world is to find a way to live in a state of continuous joy without dying And if she turned to you and said Dr.

1:31:14Martha back What is step one? What would you say to her? I would say Sit down with yourself And find a part of you that can say to your suffering which is huge I love you. It'll be okay. I'm right here And that's something I call it kind internal self -talk I mean acronym is kissed and I didn't tell anyone about it for decades because it's so corny sounding But that one thing in Tibetan Buddhism they might call it the basis of loving kindness For years sometimes the monks who are trained there and the nuns Will sit in meditation for days and days and do nothing but offer kindness to themselves Themselves.

1:32:01Yeah, it has to start that way So you sit with your miserable self and you say I would sit with her and I would say maybe well Maybe happy Maybe free from suffering Maybe feel safe and protected May live with ease And as I offer her those wishes I become the part of myself that is real Because the suffering is the part of the dream world And the reality is infinitely loving I mean An intelligent beyond so far beyond our silly monkey minds And we can align ourselves with that and it's like a life line that I could throw my younger self Sometimes I wonder if I did The suffering is part of the dream world.

1:32:56Oh, yeah When you say that you're referring to the the anxiety spirited and those kinds of things. Oh, yeah But also the whole Thing about we're all gonna die and everything's awful and What point is there to it anyway? You know you suffering is certain and death is certain. Why don't we just get off the bus now that kind of thing That's that's the dream, you know that that everybody who's had the awakening experience Dante said at Shakespeare said that they're like we are such stuff as dreams are made of Dante in the last part of the divine comedy which I believe is his description of his own enlightenment He looks back at the earth once he's learned to love himself And he calls it the little threshing floor that so incites our savagery It's nothing compared now.

1:33:48He's with the source of love In paradise and he describes it as a rose unfolding and unfolding and producing light and in Asia that It's a load of same thing a many peddled flower that keeps opening and opening very similar imagery and That's I kind of feel that way when you mentioned the part of me that used to be so unhappy. It's like Oh, yeah Yeah, she thought that was real But I haven't And it is real the way a video game is real It's something that we I believe that our consciousness projects this life of misery and and even materiality I happen to think that Matter is not consciousness is not made by matter matter is made by consciousness and consciousness is primary And nobody has the vagus clue what consciousness actually is But we have it so it must exist and that was that was what Descartes said he actually we say He said cogito air goes on.

1:34:57I think that therefore I am He actually said I don't know anything But I doubt everything and the fact that I doubt means that I'm thinking so I must exist He said do be told cogito air go some I doubt Therefore I think Therefore I am So when you get to this place where you're willing to let your mind go wide open Not closed around oh, there's an afterlife where we sit on clouds and Now I have no idea what happens when we die but my mind is open and The mind we were the minds we are taught to have by this culture aren't closed like fists whether it's around a religion or A sort of atheistic science because real science has to be open to the mystery people experience that you can't just rule that out So Yeah, I think that what we're experiencing is a real projection of consciousness But I think consciousness is something much faster and more Infinite and enduring and matter One of the things you talked about was when you saw the light Um during that surgery like when people who you say you saw a light during surgery people think well you're unmoffy or something Yeah, we are morphine I don't remember exactly which anesthesia they is but I asked So I'm in surgery They're operating on me.

1:36:32I look around I sit up and then I think why am I sitting up? I'm having surgery I look down. There's my body. They're operating on it. I was like this is weird So I lay back down and there were bright surgical lights and the light that appeared Between them was just small at first Like a golf ball and it was they they tell us we only see a trillions of the available light spectrum uh Well, let's see the the a trillions of the colors that we could that exist and I think I could see trillions more colors than I'd ever seen before and it was absolutely mesmerizing you could not you would never want to look away from it And then it got bigger in my case and it touched my body and the this feeling of absolute exquisite joy just coursed through me and um And it was the realest thing I'd ever seen so much realer than the body that was being operated on and um It was laughing with joy and I was laughing with joy and I started to cry because I was It was pure relief pure happiness and the surgeons noticed tears Coming out of my eyes and they thought I could feel the surgery and then the anesthesia wasn't strong enough So they were like oh my god.

1:37:59Oh my god. She's feeling this and the anesthesiologist was freaked out um And then I really didn't notice the rest because I was Busy with other things But the moment I woke up I was like bring me the anesthesiologist. Please actually I couldn't stop crying for hours Because I loved everyone so much and I was like everybody that was there. There was a janitor I was like I love you so much um So they brought me the anesthesiologist and he was He seemed terrified which I didn't understand now I do He was afraid that he'd done something wrong because so I said why did you give me one of the side effects?

1:38:38What happens to people under this surgery what goes on and he said He said just tell me what happened And I said what do you mean? And he said well, I was going to give you more Medication and then a voice said don't do that. She's crying because she's happy And he said I just listened to it and I don't know why I And he was like did I do the right thing? And so I told him a little bit it was still I never thought I'd tell anyone this story I have ended up telling her over and over um And the memory of it never fades at all. It's not like a typical memory And and he said Do you know how many times this has happened to me in 33 years of giving people anesthesia?

1:39:22I said how many and he said once And then he gave me a kiss on the forehead and went away So I don't think it was a drug effect Why truth emerged from that because you say from what I've understood that you you vowed not to lie Yeah in any way like not with my actions not with even my facial expressions And the reason was I had heard the truth will set you free. I had studied so many wisdom traditions looking everywhere for a reason not to commit suicide I mean I had really looked I knew a lot of religious texts philosophical texts. I had done my homework and Over and over and over and over it said the truth will set you free I was like In Mormonism they said the truth is what we were written down here and it was bogus and phony and it I was like no um, but the light was far more true Than anything else I'd ever experienced it was far more real So I was like okay if truth takes me there and it told me It not verbally, but it said look you've been thinking That you could kill yourself and feel better and I am telling you that You are meant to learn to feel this way the way you feel with me now When you're alive always so go and do that and what I really did was I made it wasn't even a choice it was a It was an absolute obsession I would not live in such a way that I was not conscious of the presence of that light And that meant Every time I lied you felt how weak you got when you just said something that wasn't true I felt it withdraw or myself it you can't withdraw from it.

1:41:16It's everywhere I believe but I felt myself less conscious of it I was like okay, that's not gonna work So I decided what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna say what's real do what's real If a thought comes in that feels like it's pulling me away from that light I will question that thought it can't be real. It doesn't set me free. It doesn't Bring me into that. I'm gonna. I'm gonna just investigate everything Until I find what feels true as to me knowing by the way That is one of my favorite Indian sages says The only true statement the mind can make is I do not know Because we could be dreaming all this we could be fed misinformation we could be deep fake I don't know any I mean with this little monkey brain I don't know But in Asia they have this concept of don't know mind where the mind is wide open And not clenched around anything and then you can experience a sort of It's the humility of surrendering your primacy the primacy of human intelligence To something so much bigger And still being human and having that be a good thing But just not mistaking it for godhood As part of you stepping in when you step into your truth so you the body Knows from what you said the body has a lives in a better state alas anxious state I imagine oh yeah, you know what it is when people think about stepping into their truth They the reason that they probably don't is because there's consequence to that or at least there's a parent oh my goodness Yes, I'm short time apparent consequence.

1:42:59I might lose my job But yeah, when people think of truth They think of like speaking your mind and in the modern world you speak your mind you might lose everything Well, you you ask yourself is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary? So you don't say every little thing that crosses your mind and you don't do it in ways that are unkind But yes, you may feel that you know I felt I had to formally leave Mormonism which to my entire community of Of childhood and young adulthood was The sin worse than murder. I was going to outer darkness It was absolutely I used to walk down the street once I'd done this and people would physically turn their backs friends, right so but I had to So that was a place where yes, there was a huge consequence And there will be I sort of position it as your true nature versus culture and my culture I mean anything from a couple's culture to a family culture to a religious to ethnic national whatever If you serve your true nature, there will come a time when you become countercultural You do something that is not what your parents approved of or it's not what your religion taught um How do you know what your true nature is?

1:44:13Is there such an exercise one can go through to figure it out? Yeah, the absence of all suffering psychological suffering Okay, so okay, so The absence of all psychological suffering is my true nature Yeah So is my psychological suffering caused by being Not in my true nature Yeah, it's caused by innocently believing Lies you were taught by one of two forces Socialization or trauma Trauma tells you oh my god everything's dangerous all the time and it gets lodged in the brain and socialization says things like You're not good enough. You should try harder. That was a bad choice You've got to please your mother all kinds of things we all have them and if you want to please your mother and you have that It's great If your true nature and your culture go together, there's no conflict like I loved school my true nature fit that culture but then My oldest child who's brilliant it did not fit that child's culture and yet I forced my kid to go through school And we've talked about a lot since I wish I hadn't done that I was young I had my kids young and I've forced my child to conform with a culture that went against her true nature and It it caused a lot of suffering do you suffer oh still Yeah, I know I was really really kind of as deeply sad after the last American election um deeply sad, but never afraid anymore Not anxious and and even You know the grieving process when you lose someone You're gonna grieve deeply and that's a sequence of you know, not all anger bargaining sadness.

1:46:05There's kind of a They put them in a list Elizabeth Cooble Ross put them in a list of things you experience when you lose someone or you're gonna die and It's actually more like being in a cement mixer. It just all happens at once But I actually wouldn't count that as suffering. It is a process a Peruvian shaman once told me Compassion is the evolution of consciousness in the healing of trauma And the healing of trauma is the grieving process So if you're grieving I would sit with you and I would bring you You know warm drinks and put a blanket around you and I would cry with you and feel with you and love you But that's not the same to me as psychological suffering, which is that anguished feeling of I just don't want to be here.

1:47:02This is bad As part of you stepping into your truth you Realized that the relationship you're in with your husband at the time. Mm -hmm Was not the relationship you wanted? No um He was gay and trying so hard not to be gay And when he was Mormon so it was very convenient for me because I was I was in love with him very much in love I then I think he really really loved me too. I know he did We got married when I was 20 we were we were delivered by the same obstetrician like we had a very similar life path And then we both went to Harvard which was very unusual for people from our hometown So we had so much in common and we were best friends and um loved each other deeply And he was trying desperately not to be gay.

1:47:50I wasn't conscious of being gay because I wasn't conscious of anything much. I was so disassociated because of sexual abuse that I didn't know where I stood. He just made me feel safe and I loved that um But then when we started questioning Mormonism and the sexual abuse came up and everything. I was just Even before that it was really obvious that I said When I was pregnant with my son I started having psychic experiences. I'm sorry. They just happened. I had to allow them as Getting my doctorate at Harvard and now I was having psychic flashes. What do you do with that? You either throw it away which means throwing away the evidence the data or you blow your mind open and One of the things that happened was I started to be able to see what was happening with people I loved when I wasn't there just in flashes But very I'm verifiable.

1:48:47I could call them do it and when that would happen my husband was traveling a lot and I just knew he was gay and I knew that's what was right for him and then his joy was Part of homosexuality and and he was still quite religious and Wanted to be a good boy the way he'd been taught to be and so I think he went there a lot of anguish I know he did we talked about it And it wasn't until we both left the church that I said, you know I'm gay your gay why don't we just be gay and um and so he Started dating men and I fell in love with a woman and I'm still with her and Eight years ago As I said you go into counter cultural things when you follow your truth um Another woman who was visiting us at the real place where we were living the three of us started hanging out And we could not stop hanging out with each other and it's very weird for three people to all fall in love with each other But that's what happened eight years ago and it was so It's a good thing we were living out in the forest because the cultural pressures against that are huge But I we were living in a national forest.

1:50:07There were no people around and it was just like Well, okay then this feels awesome And eight nine years later it still feels awesome There really is something to that there really is something to this idea that when you follow your truth your live a counter cultural life Yeah, do you know how embarrassing it is for me to sit and tell people yet and not only am I gay but who I have two partners I don't think it's embarrassing. I've got friends that I've got a good friend of mine that some uh That is in married, but also In love with another couple so they're they're like a four And they like raise the kids together and stuff and yeah, I mean There's nothing it's it's this answer strange to say but for me to me it's actually quite inspiring because it must take a lot of Something to accept that people are gonna be judgmental and to do it anyway.

1:51:02Yeah Yeah, so me I'm like, oh god, I wish I had the I mean, that's how I felt would I be the type of person that would be strong enough to follow that feeling If that's like how I thought or would I just back the feeling away I actually think I'd back the feeling away and I don't like that about myself Hmm Because because of consequence and the consequence for me would be in my head it would be quite grave Yeah, because you're a public figure Yeah, so it's gonna be written about everywhere and people think they're gonna tweet me all day saying that Steve's dating No, five people or whatever. Oh when this happened when I realized when the three of us realized we were actually fun for for several weeks We were like this is normal right?

1:51:36It's very normal for three people to sit very close together on the same couch and talk for hours Um, and then finally I was like oh my god I'm in love with both of you and they were like yeah We're all in love with both of each other and I said it's fine for you too I wanted an integrity cleanse and I have to tell the truth all the time to a lot of people um But the it was like being hit by a train the joy that came with that I remember Karen My original partner who'd been with me for like 22 years at the Um, she came to me and she sat me down and she said I've been I've been spending a lot of time with Rowan Um, who's this other lady?

1:52:20Yeah, this this writer from Australia who had come to do some work in the US And she was staying with us for a while But not with us with some other people on a neighboring property And Karen said yeah, we've been hanging out and I just um, I'm having very very strong feelings It's like it's kind of like a fire hose of love and I don't know if it's like maybe spiritual or I did And I remember just smiling at her the way you do with your friends when they were in love. I'm going You're in love with her and I looked inside myself for any Fear any anger any jealousy nothing there was it was like An explosion of pure joy just Joy beyond joy beyond joy and I was like this is amazing does she feel the same way about you bring her Tell her come here.

1:53:13Let's let's all get to know each other. This is awesome And I'll move into the guest room and you guys can have the master bedroom and there will be more love in this house And that's just how it felt And that's how it's felt to me ever since And that's my alternative to feeling suicidal I wrote calls it um feeling good by looking weird Hmm and is that How it's been how many years now four years did you say eight eight years well Is it difficult? It's like if now I just think about how do couples do it and it's like a two -legged stool. How would that even work Like you need the balance of three Like if somebody gets in an argument who's the referee and a like how do you even do that with two people So it very quickly it felt so natural You have to communicate a lot and there is One of the things is none of us is capable of lying We just we're out of practice.

1:54:19I don't think either of there ever had a tendency to lie to themselves or anyone else So you're always telling each other the truth and there's not There's a weird kind of harmony among people who are forming community With total authenticity and and openness We talked earlier on about meaning and purpose you said the billionaires when they come to you But really anyone that comes to you is all trying to figure out their Their path in life their their meaning their purpose It's a big big question What are the lies we're sold about finding our purpose because I have a lot of kids in my DMs that DM me and say Steve I can't find my passion or I can't find my purpose or I can't and I never really know what to say to them um I think one thing I wrote in one of my books a long time ago was that I realized this when I was pregnant with my son and I realized he would have Down syndrome and be intellectually delayed And I thought what is the meaning of his life?

1:55:20What is the purpose of his life? And then somehow I realized Because of my love for him that the meaning of life is not what happens to people The meaning of life the purpose your purpose in life is what happens between people So it's in the meeting You have a home in South Africa, so you know about Ubuntu, yeah, bought the house this year So I mean I've been working a lot and It's only really the end of the year that I get to go there. So I don't I don't really know South Africa Well, yeah, well the concept of Ubuntu. I think is is dominance throughout a lot of Africa Um, and it meet there's no English translation and it is completely The opposite of our cultural individualism and the meaning of Ubuntu is basically I am me because we are us I am fundamentally different because I know you And you matter to me and I used to Be confused in South Africa because I knew there were a lot of AIDS orphans and I never saw them on the streets or anything And then I realized that Ubuntu is a real practical thing there and that the children Who are left are absorbed into community by people who may have nothing except Ubuntu and Ubuntu the um There's a Chinese proverb that says if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together So we've been going really fast in this culture fast toward our own destruction I am me because Because I am because we are is the closest thing you can say to it, but conceptually it means The The space between us so that's another thing you can do an exercise you can do to get into your right hemisphere So we're looking at each other But if you look instead of without moving your eyes look at the distance between us Look at the openness between us Feel how it changes your gaze yeah how it changes your heart beat This is how people Like Carl Jung the psychologist had a dear friend who was a Pueblo Indian and he said What do you really think of us anglos and he said we think you're insane And he said why and this guy's name was chief mountain like he said You're always staring at things and yet You never see each other you never see what's between you And our eyes are soft and yours are hard And when you and I just did that my whole body went into a state of It's like the light you know, it's like that light is more is I'm more conscious of it when I'm looking at the space between us And I feel you I don't just see you I felt like my heart rate dropped yeah, so it might sort of how I just felt really calm Yeah, I was thinking about that's trying to look at the space in between yeah So I'm trying right now to start building communities of who boom to I started while online just To foster people's creativity and help them move into this state of being and It's called wilder because when we were wilder That's how we look at each other that's how your dog and your cat look at you That's why we love being with them because they look at us and they look at the space between us and their eyes are soft And if there's a fly that goes by they'll get sharp And that's the hunting instinct, but then when they're looking at something they love they're looking at the whole space And feeling each other So someone sends me a DM and says I can't find my purpose in life What do you suggest I respond?

1:59:16It's safe first of all Sit down and offer love to the part of you that's in so much stress because you can't find your purpose. That's a horrible feeling You know your purpose But you can't find it because it's being drowned out by what you've been taught and that hurts And I'm really sorry because I know that pain Go and sit down or find a friend find someone trustworthy find community and Tell them what Mary Oliver says tell me about despair yours and I will tell you mine And she talks about the wild geese Announcing your place in the family of things when you can communicate your despair and feel heard and feel connected And what happens between people will fill in The gaps in your knowledge and you'll realize My purpose is where my deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet And I can feel that when I love when I and it love is not like goopy gippie.

2:00:28It's my deep gladness Yeah, that's from Fred Boitner who was a theologian German theologian He said your mission is like in life is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet So what you just described a young person reaching out to you and saying what is my purpose and you Are asking yourself what do I say? So you're looking at the relationship between this young person and you and you are in a boom too You're looking at the space between you and your deep gladness is to heal the scars and wounds In this person you've never met But who is deeply hungry for something the culture is not giving him or her or them That's your deep gladness and their deep hunger And you've been serving that really well like so much Better than most people I've met in my life And by deep gladness what how I interpreted that was the thing that makes me happy or the thing that makes me feel good Yeah, that's kind of it's kind of People could take that a number of different ways.

2:01:44This is a deep gladness It's something you feel in in your viscera. It's something it's like The most Here's another way to get into it imagine a time when you were with a creature you loved and it's probably easier if it was an animal Than if it was a person it was a person and it has to be a baby. So somebody who couldn't talk My son can't really talk so I get this with him a lot And remember a time when you relaxed completely into the presence of this other being And the cat was purring on your chest or the dog had his head on your lap and there was no pressure to do anything You're being human With this other being in a space that you have created that we've all created with our consciousness for the joy of its beauty and its darkness and its light and there's just It Psalm 46 Eckhart tolis says it says the name of God like six different ways be still and know that I am God be Is a name for God stillness is a name for God No Is a name for God I am Is a name for God And God is a name for God and when you When you feel all of that as what you fundamentally are And it's connecting with another person the Gladness doesn't even touch it no word can touch it But it's Two aspects of a consciousness that thought they were separate joining hands and meeting each other again and the reunion is overwhelmingly beautiful relief joy Gladness light all of it How is the internet mess this all up?

2:03:50It's messed it up and it's made it possible You know like it's messed it up horribly By feeding on our culture's obsession with those left hemisphere what bleeds leads right? We have that negativity bias and what people want to do is monetize their position on the internet And the best way to monetize your position is to get the lion's share of attention And whatever gets the lion's share of attention is a cobra versus a puppy. So there's Uh There's a psychological and monetary pressure always pushing the internet to frighten us more Or to make us more angry than each other to divide and polarize us It's like this left hemisphere weapon that has just gone berserk And so like in America there these pockets have such extremely polarized political Belief systems that all have their own information sets and I don't know what the hell's true Um, but they all believe absolutely the way the left hemisphere believes there's no open mind On the other hand You know when the brain wakes up when it has the awakening experience it the fruit ripens and ripens and then it falls Okay, so that I think maybe this epigenetic switch going on in the brain and it flashes to the whole brain and changes everything And I like to think of fractals the different units of nature that tend to reproduce at larger sizes Like a twig is like a branch is like the trunk of a tree So our brains may be like us this Our neocortex is very thin is just this thin surface of cells around the surface of the brain very very interactive and We are kind of like that.

2:05:39We're running around the surface of a sphere being very very Interactive in teaching each other ideas and if just one person Awakens, you know, Buddha was awake. Jesus was awake And Buddha never tried to save anybody but himself, you know But other minds caught that That configuration they switched on and because Because we have the internet What used to take a whole national government to do to communicate with everyone in the world could happen from Like a poor kid and Malawi who suddenly awakened and was able to put that into a message Um or You know Malawi, you said like everyone knows what this 15 year old girl went through Even though the information would have been suppressed by the Taliban if they could have done it but they can't do it anymore So one awakened person now has the potential to touch the lives of literally everyone Virtually for free.

2:06:52Do you interact with the internet much? I do Um, and I know that I am shaping an algorithm that is totally unrealistic because My my world online is primarily otters I love me in order and but like it's It's all the examples of love and joy that occur between people and I and then I look at the headlines and I'm like Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know when I first went to Africa I'd heard it's the dark continent everything is bad Ebola war the Congo all these terrible things the heart of darkness And Then I went there and realized that for every horrible thing that legitimately does happen in that place There are maybe a thousand acts of completely selfless love I I would walk around I every time I go there I think I look at the people Who've been colonized, you know the original people and I think I'm white If I were you I'd be really mad at me like white And yet I was there.

2:08:00Oh, we had my wife had a little girl A few years ago. She's a bit younger than I am And she got sick in the airport in Johannesburg really sick And she was barfing everywhere and we were just pushing the stroller from one tourist store We'd got a bunch of t -shirts and she'd throw up on that and we'd put her in another one and throw the first one away and people Came running to us from the different stores And they were from you know, there are 11 different national languages there. There are people from different tribal legacies And instead of running away from a vomiting child They ran toward us with everything they could find to help someone let a fire and sterilize to spoon Someone ran down the airport to the only pharmacy to get the right medication and ran back with it People were holding the vomit stained plow.

2:08:53I mean These are people we had never met And this was the place I'd been afraid of Because I had let myself believe the stories that polarized me and said oh, that's a dark scary place. It Every place is dark and scary and everywhere there are human beings. There is the capacity for a boon -to and What there is to love The part of us that loves is infinitely more powerful than the part of us that doesn't Amen What is the um what is the most important thing in your new book beyond anxiety curiosity creativity and finding your life's purpose that we haven't talked about yet I would say It's I wish I could I don't know how to get it How to say this clearly enough and I've said it here But what is the most important thing that Anyone listening to this you specifically right now Wherever you are and I just mentioned Mary Oliver's the wild geese one of the things she says No matter who you are no matter how long no whoever you are no matter how lonely The world offers itself to your imagination And you're a part of the family of things.

2:10:25So whoever hears this you specifically In your essence you are safe No matter what it looks like you are Fundamentally going to be okay. I promise That's it Dr Martha Beck we have a closing tradition on the podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving the question for okay And the question that has been left for you is This is a tricky one And you can interpret this however you wish okay What do you think separates a great story From just a good story easy And a good story bad things happen to good people and a great story bad things happen to heroes Because There's always conflict and there's always suffering and That can be just like oh that was awful But the great stories the ones we keep telling Are the ones where the person who would be a victim becomes a creator Who says I'm not going to stay in fear.

2:11:57I'm going to make something from this And they flot they stand up And they go out on an adventure And what looks like it could have been a tragedy becomes an adventure That's what Shakespeare did at the end of his life I was taught at Harvard That he wrote the four great tragedies where everything ends in horror and Nile Annihilation that was his high point And then he started writing these romances which are so stupid because they have like magic and forgiveness and Happy endings and I was actually told he did that because he was seen. I'll use 50 You know The tragedies are amazing stories and the romances Those are the great ones as far as I'm concerned Because That's where the tragedy becomes an adventure that ends well A good story is when bad things happen to good people But a great story is when bad things happen to heroes heroes Because the good it's when they what the good people do with that Do they suffer it or do they make it the material of invention?

2:13:05Do they let it be a weight of lead or do they perform an alchemy that turns it into gold And all the great stories that last forever are the ones about alchemy We're suffering turns to something wonderful Is this a choice that we have? I do believe it is not always Like if you're a little kid or if you're a young person out there If you're at a working mom or someone in poverty or someone who's just had a terminal diagnosis Of course you're going to feel You're not just going to want to jump up and do something heroic Be kind Be kind be kind be gentle to yourself And if you're gentle for just a while You're going to start to say instead of what am I going to do about this you're going to say What can I make from this?

2:13:54And that shifts you into the mode of the creative And as you start to make something of your situation you become part of the creation And That's when you wake up from your nightmare And to me that's the best ending in any story You clearly have a great story Because you're clearly someone that is a good person that bad things happen to um Now you're a person where bad things have happened to someone that me and many others consider to be here Because of all the wonderful things that you've done but you're It's interesting because I thought I understood the subject matter of anxiety And I think I was of the mind that it's something you attack You throw things at you know as much of society says the key to curing anxiety is just you through a pills at it or something else But you've given me a whole new perspective on what it is and also how to navigate in a world that's increasing More anxious.

2:14:53I'm sure you've done that for many other people in a way that's really really honest Really rooted in science and really accessible I hope so thank you so much That's what that's a genuinely the words that I that I mean. I'm not lying. Change. Thank you I highly recommend anybody who's resonated with any of this conversation. Please go and get this book. It's fantastic It's it has these wonderful areas where um You can engage with the book and there's some like sections that you can write in But it's just a wonderful book and I think it's a wonderful book for anybody that's struggling and I say struggling or suffering in all your forms That's trying to understand what that means and how to channel it into your own heroes journey of sorts So Dr.

2:15:34Martha Beck. Thank you so much. It's been such an honor and privileged to meet you and um I hope we have more conversations in the future. I hope so the honor is all mine. Thank you so much Isn't this cool every single conversation I have here on the diavis here at the very end of it You'll know I asked the guest to leave a question in the diavis EO and what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the diavis EO Into these conversation cards that you can play at home So you've got every guest we've ever had their question and on the back of it if you scan that QR code You get to watch the person who answered that question.

2:16:17We're finally revealing all of the questions And the people that answered the question the brand new version two updated conversation cards are out right now at the conversation cards Dot com they sold out twice instantaneously So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards. I really really recommend acting quickly You Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead And over the course of my career I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places one which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite They're also a sponsor of this podcast.

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