Stop Chasing Perfection: A Therapeutic Take on Success with Alain de Botton, Philosopher

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1:57landscapes with ambient sounds, lo-fi music, and binaural beats, all designed to help you focus, relax, and even spark creativity while you browse. We often think of ourselves as quite late on in history, like we've been around for ages. We're still getting going. We're still learning to know ourselves at a very basic level. One of the deepest wishes we go into relationships with is, love me for who I really am. What a difficult idea. You really want to be loved for who you actually are. So there's sometimes an investment in continuing down patterns of unhappiness, because it's worked well for you in the past.

2:35That is philosopher and bestselling author Alain de Botton, and he's here to fundamentally challenge your opinion of success. This is an eye-opening conversation. It's one that we loved having and one that I really want you to listen carefully to and hopefully share with a lot of people in your life because this is a fresh therapeutic take on what high performance actually looks like and one that's not about external achievement but actually realizing your own unique potential and finding peace within yourself in this episode we explore why it's okay to be average and why not being special can be the most freeing thought you'll ever have why the emotion of envy could actually be the greatest guide to your hidden potential How we learn to silence our true self by developing a false self and why this refusal, to be honest, can lead to a breakdown.

3:23And finally, we explore the radical idea that a crisis or even physical pain might be your body's search for health. This is a conversation that goes deep into the stories that we carry from childhood, the pressure to be exceptional and why so many of us fear failure, even when it might be the most human thing of all. And on a personal note, this changed a lot of how I think about success. Please hit follow on Apple or Spotify so you never miss a conversation like this, as we welcome Alain de Botton to High Performance.

3:58I think the ability to tolerate one's own averageness in many fields is the beginning of a certain sort of wisdom and the insistence always on specialness is a kind of malignant situation. At School of Life, we like a phrase that if you've done well as a parent, your child should have no interest in being famous. Nowadays, a lot of people want to be famous. It's a very common aspiration. That's a sign that something is failing us in our understanding of an ordinary existence. Say more about that. I believe that an exaggerated desire for fame, for distinction, is often trying to compensate for a feeling of invisibility.

4:49And the more invisible someone feels, the more they feel that they must be up on a stage of some sort or another in a spotlight. And scratch below the desire for fame. What is it for? What's it really about? And here I'm really talking about desire for fame rather than desire for distinction on the basis of something you're doing. It's really the desire that other people admire you. Strangers, the people who don't know you think well of you. And I think it often hides a sad story of some form of invisibility or injury. And I think that the more we create a society in which you don't really exist until you've achieved distinction, it becomes a kind of arms race.

5:31Then you have to achieve distinction because there is then no way of getting that distinction. What's the first question everybody gets asked in the modern world? What do you do for a living? And we work, of course we work for money, but we also work in order to have an answer to that question, which will deliver us that other thing we so want, which is a sense of being seen and of being respected. It's such a powerful human driver. You know, we speak of people feeling solid inside or not solid. What does that really mean? I think that a child who's had an extremely intense period of having felt at the center of the world grows up into someone who can tolerate not being at the center of the world.

6:14I think sometimes in our story of parenting, we exaggerate the dangers of giving children the limelight when very little. I mean, I'm talking, you know, one year old. There's a sort of feeling of like, oh, no, that kid's getting spoiled. You know, they've been on the earth of all of 12 months and they are spoiled i i don't see such a danger there i see a much greater danger in under privileging under spoiling if you like someone in the very early years which then sets up a dynamic that they have to be you know aggressively on stage thereafter so can you give us a bit of a master class based on your school of life work and and your numerous teachings i think there's something really special about your ability to lean into those uncomfortable emotions and create a space where you can scratch a bit deeper and say, what is this telling us?

7:04What is missing here? Or what is it a real insight into what really needs? I can imagine there's a lot of people listening to this, Alan, that are interested about how do they do it? So they might have children, they might have partners, it might even be for themselves, where they have this uncomfortable emotion, but they want to explore it. Can you tell us how you go about doing that? Look, I think the way the human mind is, we're not obvious to ourselves. It takes quite a while for us to understand truly what we're feeling and then let alone expressing that to other people. So it's a sort of life's journey to be able to know oneself and then communicate oneself properly to other people.

7:50What are the blocks to knowing oneself? Well, a lot of it is an anxiety about what you'll discover. You know those moods when you don't want to be alone? I think they're always very telling. You know moods when you just think, I'm calling somebody up. If I'm really honest, I don't really want to call them up. I just don't want to be alone with myself. That's often a sign that something is struggling to break through into consciousness that is quite disturbing. You know, imagine those moods when you go to sleep, but you wake up at 3am and something's bugging you, but you don't know what. I often think that insomnia is a kind of revenge for all those thoughts that you refuse to have in the day that are coming back to bite you.

8:30And, you know, as I'm saying, a lot about who we are doesn't fit our kind of mental models. There's a wonderful psychoanalyst called Donald Winnicott who came up with this theory of the true self and the false self. And he argued that in proper healthy development, a child is able to reveal and know their true self before they have to grow and sort of nurture a false self. He also thinks that you need both. You need both a true self and a false self. Now, a true self is going to include some difficult material. If you let a child express their true self, they'll say things like, I hate granny, I absolutely hate granny, or that person's fat, or why has that person got no teeth, or I hate school, or daddy's an idiot, or whatever.

9:16And these are going to be part of what the expression of a true self will be. And sometimes, you know, in the parenting role, you can think, oh my goodness, I'm bringing up a savage or a monster or something. I can't allow these feelings. I can't possibly reward the expression of this sort of emotions. And you shut that down. You basically say, you know, if you show me this side of yourself, I will not accept you. And this message can be delivered a bit too early. Particularly, you know, parents have so much going on. I mean, I don't want to blame parents. I've been a parent. I've been on the receiving end of parents, you know, it's complicated stuff.

9:48But if a parent, for example, is struggling with depression, they can't deal with a child's despair. So they might feel, you know, if there's any signs of despair and negativity in the child, you know, and then the child might feel the need to be very upbeat. You get that, you know, I'm sure we all know people who can't be sad. They're aggressively upbeat. How are you? You know, there's manic energy. And And I think mania is an interesting word. It's when you're running, running, running from something, from feelings, true feelings that you can't bear to face. And that often does have a story about how the true self has been locked out.

10:26And then you grow a false self, which has got to be whatever it is, very strong, very upbeat, or indeed very weak. I mean, you get these fascinating things where children have to fail because their success is a threat to somebody in the surrounding environment. fascinating kind of possibilities where, you know, often it's a father can be a mother too. You know, in order to protect their own position, they need the child not to do that well. And then surprise, surprise, the child keeps taking early retirement from things because they've been presented with an unconscious choice between either you succeed and you lose love or, you know, you fail and you can still be in the family circle.

11:00So all these very subtle messages are kind of passed down. So looking at your own life through the true self, false self model and almost saying, how much of my truth was allowed out and how much did I have to become somebody else in order to be loved and tolerated. Now, of course, in adult life, we always have to show a false self at points, at points, and one would be a very disturbed person if one couldn't. Give us an example of that. I mean, look, I think there's two extremes on this, the people pleaser and the manic rebel. So the manic rebel, we met them all, they're about to sit their GCSEs And they decide that that's the time to tell the teacher what you really think about them.

11:43And it's in the exam that you're going to have to write. It's in your English exam that you're really going to tell the examiners what you think about this book or whatever. And you can't stop yourself. And then later on, when your boss is there and it's your first job, again, the manic rebel thinks, I've got to have to tell the boss. The boss is an idiot. And they're going to have to know right now. And they get fired. Surprise, surprise. So this person keeps tripping themselves up. What's going on there? It's almost as though their sense of integrity is so fragile. They think, unless I'm constantly putting up a battle for my true self, I'm going to be a compromised human being.

12:22So therefore, I've got to burn all bridges and generally make a big fuss all the time. Otherwise, I won't be real anymore. And that comes at a huge cost for somebody. But then at the other end of the spectrum, you've got the manic people pleaser. And they've got a problem too. because you ask them how they are and they're always fine. And in a relationship, how are they? They're absolutely fine until they no longer are. And it goes on and on until maybe they have a breakdown. A breakdown can often be a sign that you've not been bending very much to the truth inside you. And the only way of getting to that truth, that true self, is through an extreme breakage.

12:59And that's a very difficult psychological possibility as well. that sort of, you know, the truth can't come out without a crisis. Now, sometimes a crisis is a good thing psychologically, and there are some people who can only start to get well after they've broken down. I'll say more about it, because again, that's how society says, a crisis is something to be avoided. And that's an intriguing response to say it's a good thing. Well, it's a good thing because the alternative might be to keep going at too high a price. you know i think our bodies for example are fascinating instruments of honesty sometimes i sometimes think that the mind needs to get certain truths out and it will knock at our conscious door and say you know please i'm a little bit unhappy in this relationship in this work with with the way i'm living with you know my friendship group whatever it is and either the conscious mind listens at which point the symptom abates or it doesn't listen it's too difficult There's some kind of conflict around that.

13:59And then the symptom has to go somewhere else. And one of the areas it can go is the lower back and the shoulders and maybe other parts of the body, which are places that, if you like, there are a kind of bodily conscience where if something hasn't found a way of expressing itself, you'll be doubled up in pain and unable to cross the room because you're not listening to a signal from within. So sometimes our symptoms, and they could include the inability to get out of bed. There's sometimes moods and situations where people will find themselves moving from a so-called high-performance life where they're very busy doing all sorts of things, and then suddenly they can't get out of bed or they can't even speak.

14:43They might not be able to feed themselves suddenly. I mean, you get very extreme breakdowns where the basics of life kind of cease functioning. And I think those are interesting moments because they're a search for health via the medium of illness. And I think that in our society, which likes to give people a pill and then send them right back out again without exploring what might have made them ill in the first place, we often miss the opportunities that are afforded to us through a proper deep reading of our symptoms, which holds so many clues, I think. The other thing I'd like to expand on is that lovely quote that you say about so much of our life is done trying to impress people that we either don't know or don't even like or care ourselves how do we go about teaching both ourselves and others to be able to immunize ourselves against trying to impress others and instead focusing on impressing ourselves i think to to really absorb the lesson that you can't carry everybody with you in whatever project you're doing.

15:51You know, that you will, whatever way of life you lead, create a certain amount of discord and enemies. And that doesn't have to mean that the life you're leading is wrong. It's just the necessary price of making a choice. Every choice you make in your life will alienate in some way. You know, you could marry a person and that will annoy someone. Somewhere along the road, you'll have annoyed someone. You know, if you do this job somewhere along the line, And someone will think that's not right. It'll trigger them in some way. And we can panic a little bit too soon. Everybody creates envy and discord in others, not willingly.

16:30It's just an inevitable byproduct. And to not panic about that and to think, I don't need to carry the whole tribe with me, as it were. I can have my own smaller circle and not everybody needs to agree. I mean, there's something manic and paranoid in the notion that everyone has to agree, everyone has to approve. No, let it go. Let it go. Some people are not going to be with you. It doesn't mean to say you've made the wrong choice. It's probably a sign that you've made a rather determined choice. I love all of these things we're talking about. My fear, though, is that we can instill these thoughts into our children.

17:06We can have these conversations with our partner. We can discuss these things with our friends. But the truth is we live in a society that doesn't. a really good example i recently left my job as a football presenter not a single person came to me at a party or an event or you know a friend and said you must be so excited about freedom every single person had the same question but what are you going to do next what's your plan almost like i had to have something to define i was almost screaming inside to say why can't it just be enough to to be here why do i have to why are You're so obsessed with what am I going to do next?

17:46Really, of course, what one should say, it's hard to say, is why is my freedom so frightening for you? That's really what you should be saying to them. What an answer. Yeah. Why is, you know, what is it my freedom is triggering in you? Is that why you think they're asking that question? Of course. Of course they are. Of course they are. Because it's a massive threat. You know, they don't like the rigidity of their life, but they don't know how to get out of it. so somebody who's jumping out of the prison um is presents a huge threat so if you picked up a little bit of latent hostility or coldness um that's because you know you're you're posing a great challenge to them you're essentially saying why aren't you why aren't you jumping out the prison with me and that's yeah that's frightening for them so you know we're talking up here about a lot of uh symptoms if you like whether it's you know children that put fame high on the agenda whether it's adults or children caring what other people think more than caring what they think.

18:44There's lots of things happening here. I think the question that I'd be asking is, why is this happening? Why have we, you know, we've been around for thousands of years, we've evolved as human beings, why have we not evolved to the point where we're having these kinds of valuable conversations and reframing what failure is, what success is, what high performance is, what happiness is? Look, I'd say that we're still at the dawn. We often think of ourselves as quite late on in history, like we've been around for ages. We're still getting going as human beings. We're still learning to know ourselves at a very basic level.

19:19I think that the whole field of psychology is barely 100 years old, as we know it today. It's 100 years old only. You use a brilliant metaphor in your book, Alan, don't you, where you say that it's almost like our view of our understanding of our mind is like how we view 17th century doctors putting leeches on us to get blood out. It's still quite rudimentary. That's right. And I think one of the things that we're learning is our really perplexing and dispiriting sensitivity, if you like, over-sensitivity. When biology got going in the late 19th century, and when we really started to understand microbiotic life, people discovered extraordinary things like in a glass of water, there might be microbiotic life that could kill an entire city.

20:03And you couldn't see it. In a clear glass of water, there might be certain germs or living that could kill a million people. This seems utterly implausible. And I think we're, at the psychological level, still learning that so-called small things, very, very small things, can have an intense impact on our psyches, which is what makes modern parenting, of course, so fraught and so interesting as well. but I think that we are we're learning that we are very very delicate machines I think for most of human history we were looking to survive nowadays we're looking to thrive it's very different if you're trying to set up a human being to survive well you know you can give them a slap around the ear every now and then and you know they'll live they'll have a good life till they're 35 and then they'll succumb which is what human beings did for most of our history you know we were dead by 35 and all we were looking to do was just to kind of procreate the next generation and and survive until that time.

20:59We're now looking to live to be 90 and, dare I say it, to be happy and to develop our talents and develop our potential. So we're still working out what's the developmental path got to be for that. If that's our ambition, we may need to really retool how we're seeing development and massive implications. Yes, the family is the place where it all starts. I think we all know, you'll know, I know, people who will be in their 70s, 80s, and you'll talk to them at length. And they're not people who might otherwise moan, but it quickly emerges that what held them back for their whole life was something that happened when they were three or four or five or six or nine.

21:44And very often, it's what one might call a shortfall of love. It's quite a weird concept that love, which is a word we kind of too narrowly associate with going on a date and Valentine's and all that, but that love, intra-human love, is as important to our development as vitamins are to our healthy bodily development. And shortfalls of love lead to appalling deformations of character that can have lifelong consequences. I think we all wish it wasn't true. It's so daunting. What do we do with that information? It's such a terrifying piece of information. So what do we do with that information? I think one of the things we do is to look really very carefully at what a family is and how people are brought up.

22:37I mean, in the same way that people learn language, think about the porousness of a young child. A young child's in the age of, you know, nine months and four years is incredibly receptive to syntax grammar and vocabulary and and they learn they end up learning you know hindu finnish english korean whatever it is whatever's in the area they will learn that language and without anyone sending them to school yet it's just they absorb a language and i think while that's going on at a linguistic level at an emotional level a child is also learning an emotional language, the language of what's a man, what's a woman, what's tenderness, what's love, what's a reward, what's good, what's bad.

23:23All these lessons are kind of pouring in while people are eating animal-shaped pastas in the kitchen and drawing pictures and doing handstands in the garden. It's all being absorbed. And I think we need to really reflect very carefully on that. We're all going to get it slightly wrong in the parenting role. Thereafter, I think we need to acknowledge that all of us will have tumbled through the kind of sort of whitewater rafting of childhood and probably be slightly hanging out the raft and lost the limb and be scratched all over. And we need to work out where are our wounds? Where are our particular wounds?

24:00What's particularly difficult for us? What are the ways in which We're not doing justice to reality because all of us have some pretty strange ideas about life that are bequeathed to us by our complex early histories. You know, we'll have odd ideas about, you know, anger, envy, kindness, success, or slightly in one area or another. Think about everyone you work with, everyone you were at school with. You know, imagine a group of 10, 20 people. Quite quickly, you'll think, well, okay, that one always does that thing. that one always does the other thing there's that one who just can't get that thing straight or whatever all of us are the kind of legacies of these of these complex upbringings and we're all and i say this with with love we're all a bit strange we're really all of all that's great though right let's be strange yes let's be strange but let's also find a way i mean there's good strange and there's tricky strange there's tricky strange which actually um trips you up and and stops you from being the better version of yourself now but one of the problems we we tend to have as humans is feedback.

25:03Now, feedback is so hard to receive. And we know this in an office context. And we know this also within a relationship context. I mean, one of the deepest wishes we go into relationships with is, love me for who I really am. What a difficult idea. I mean, really? You really want to be loved for who you actually are? In a way, yes, we want to never be criticized. We want just someone to welcome us as a full, you know, wondrous creature. And of course, no one can because that is asking too much. But we're so bad at hearing feedback and we're so bad at giving feedback. Normally this happens at 12 o 'clock in the kitchen when the dishes need to be done and people are a bit tetchy and they throw vicious words at one another because they're frustrated.

25:46And then those vicious words give birth to other vicious words. And you get into these terrible cycles. Often you'll get couples who are trying to teach each other really important lessons, but they're not speaking them properly and they're not listening to them properly. So major opportunities to grow are our myths and our pride gets in the way. So tell us how we do give a missing feedback better. I think one of the things we do is to accept that it is entirely legitimate to see relationships as arenas in which we learn about ourselves and deliver knowledge to the other person about who they are.

26:23But we have to do it very, very carefully. But there's nothing illegitimate about that. Because I think the notion of, you know, I had to break up with my partner because they didn't accept me for who I am. And normally people will clap at this point and go, brilliant, you got out of a terrible relationship. And, you know, I'm not discounting that. That could be a difficult relationship. But it could also be that the non-acceptance captures something important that needs to be listened to. To be endorsed for everything one is isn't love. I mean, that's, I don't know, a kind of euphoric demand for approval that breaks all respectable boundaries.

27:00It also means we're rigid. Accept me for who I am. It means I'm not going to change for anybody. How unsafe and toxic is that? Absolutely. So two people need to accept that they are flawed. I mean, the ability to go through life, and we're big on this at the School of Life, to actually say, I'm a flawed human being. Christianity used to emphasize this point, but because it was associated with lots of things about Christianity that were then quite dark and discounted, etc., it's not a way of thinking that's popular in the modern world. But the notion that we are all sinners, right? You say that nowadays.

27:30People go, oh, how do you mean sinners? I'm not a sinner. I'm fine. I'm okay. I'm beautiful. It's quite a good starting point to go, you know, look, we're all a bit broken in some way. And that's okay. It's okay to be broken. We're just trying to fix ourselves. And that's okay. So it's a better starting point. And it's particularly useful in relationships because it breaks what could otherwise be a kind of cycle of defensiveness. and I think defensiveness is the great enemy of communication growth in friendship and in relationships so can you take us through the steps then Alan about how if you're listening to this you're thinking in my relationship I want to start to explore I want to receive and to give feedback and to accept each other yeah tell us how we do that I think a really useful question to ask on a date, you know, you go out on a date with your partner and you say, it could sound a bit odd, how have I annoyed you recently?

28:28I probably annoyed you. How do you think I've annoyed you? And to be able to listen to the answer without going, that's not true. That's not true. But you've annoyed me, you know, not to do any of that, simply to listen. And, you know, therapists are good at teaching us this, to reflect back. So someone goes, you know, I'm annoyed because every time I mention a friend, you somehow find something wrong with a friend. and rather than going, that's not true, I really like all your friends, to go, okay, so I'm hearing that you don't think I give your social choices enough approval and the person goes, wow, I've actually been heard, I've actually been understood, brilliant, you just rephrase what they've told you without butting in and saying, you know, I'm a good person.

29:10You allow yourself to tolerate the notion that you've made a mistake, that, you know, this is difficult for you. So what do we do to warm ourselves up to be able to hear that and to reframe it without letting our own ego get in the way or our own fragility, wanting to defend ourselves. Look, it's partly a leap of faith. And of course, once you've done one round of this, and so they've done it for you and you've done it for them, that becomes very much easier to do the second round. And then, you know, another useful exercise is to say, for each person to say, what is it about my background that's made something difficult for me?

29:44What's made it difficult for me that the duvet cover is never properly on the bed? What's made it difficult for me that you come home late and I get angry? Try and explain because so often we're not very generous in our explanations, both to ourselves and to the other person, about why difficult behaviours occurred. But there's almost always a poignant backstory. But we're unable to deliver it properly to the other person because we're so on edge and we're so angry. So to be able to give that backstory is another gift both to ourselves and the other person. And, you know, at the end of the day, the more backstories are shared in a calm way, the more everybody emerges as worthy of love.

30:26Of course they do. Of course they do. It's the lack of a backstory that always brings out, you know, anger and cruelty. Why are we not teaching people to have these conversations earlier on? I've been married, well, I've been with my wife. We met very young, so nearly 25 years together, no one's ever said to me, try asking your wife, what have I done that's annoyed you? What about me isn't great? You know, those sorts of conversations, this work on our relationship, the fact that marriage and, you know, long-term relationships take effort and time and care. I'd say the answer is that we haven't valued, as a society, good relationships and flourishing highly enough.

31:06And, you know, we really value that people don't have car crashes. And that's where there's an enormous industry around trying to prevent car crashes. We don't have such precautionary views around, you know, relationships. We just don't. So I think that, you know, slightly cynically, we don't care enough. And because we don't care enough, we don't put enough effort in. So there are some people, your listeners, you know, others who do care very much, and they'll be starting to invest in this area. Maybe we don't know how amazing our relationships could be as well. I think that's true. I think that's true.

31:37I think there's maybe almost a kind of sunk cost fear that, you know, I'm 20 years into this. It's been really difficult. The thought that it could be better is actually, you know, quite frightening. And let's not forget that, you know, if you've had a life where your safe place has been, people don't understand me, I'm isolated, and there's a lot of conflict. If that's what you know, and you're built to handle that situation because you throw yourself into your work, you have quite a cynical view of others, you don't put much trust in it. You're built for that. You're built for that kind of conflictual situation.

32:12Somebody comes along and goes, you know what? You could be close to another human being. You could let them in. You could lower your guard and it could be okay. One level you think, brilliant. Another level, it's a disaster. It's like, well, I've been leading the wrong life. So there's sometimes an investment in continuing down patterns of unhappiness or a kind of angry defensiveness because it's worked well for you in the past. After all of the things that we've spoken about, I think what I need to know from you is should we be aiming for happiness? My fear with happiness, if that's what we're aiming for, is that it's inevitable that happiness comes and goes.

32:52I'm trying to find acceptance rather than happiness because I think that whether you're happy or sad, whether you're up or down, acceptance might be the thing. You see where you're coming from? I like the word fulfillment. Because fulfillment, you could have a fulfilling life, but be in a pretty bad mood quite a lot of the time. You have a fulfilling life, but actually things have gone wrong today. Because it suggests to me a goal that is quite compatible with reversals, with difficult moves, with difficult stages. There is something about the word happiness that is maybe a little bit brittle.

33:23It suggests that unhappiness means that one has failed. And I think that the human mind is, we are glass half empty creatures. And we shouldn't beat ourselves up about that. There are good evolutionary reasons why we're glass half empty creatures. The glass half full ones all got eaten somewhere thousands of years ago. So we are the heirs of the great warriors of our species, the ones who did wake up in the morning noticing things were difficult. And that's all right, so long as we're properly focused and we have a kind of philosophy where problems can be contributing to a good life. I think none of us need a perfect life.

34:01We need a life where the difficulties we run into make sense within our wider conception of what we're doing here on earth. That's what we need. We're now going to move to our quickfire questions. And the first one is the three non-negotiable behaviors that are important to you. Kindness has to be top of the list. Thereafter, thoughtfulness, because that's so reassuring in oneself and in another person, thoughtfulness. And thirdly, laughter, which is a sign that one's properly understood how absurd one is within the broader context of things. What's the greatest piece of advice you've ever received and why?

34:41I think the best piece of advice is probably around the necessity of choice and every choice requiring sacrifice. So whatever you choose, it means you're not choosing something else. And therefore you can't have it all. And therefore regret is not some personal curse. It's part of the human condition. You will be regretting certain things. That's okay. Welcome to the planet. That's all right. Are we adding to the toxic narrative around success by calling our podcast the high-performance podcast? I think if you quickly nuance it, it can be the starting point for a really interesting conversation.

35:24So to use a slightly cliched or aggressive phrase but then turn it is, I think, quite a clever thing to do. If you could go back to one moment of your life, what would it be and why? Look, I think the adolescent me was very troubled and very alone. And I think more than trying to remove the problems, to simply say, these problems have a long tail and a long future, and it's all right. You'll learn to put these to use. The trick is not to have a problem-free life. It's to have a life where your problems contribute to something interesting. Are you happy? today yes tomorrow no yesterday probably not but i'm broadly on a good day fulfilled what's your greatest strength and your biggest weakness um my greatest strength is my ability to unpack feelings i think give me a feeling and i'll get to work on it try and work out what's going on in it so i think that's probably my greatest strength greatest weakness um anxiety and behind anxiety, fear.

36:34Yeah, too much of that. Everything. I'm a catastrophist and everything is always on the verge of turning into the worst version of itself. I am that as well, but I actually have worked out in my head that maybe that's actually a positive thing and it's probably kept me safe. If you were a true catastrophist, you wouldn't think that. You'd think it was just a catastrophe. That's true. so i think i think you're not a jedi level are you at jedi level yes 100 100 100 100 how does that manifest itself in your life and how how do you control it or manage that emotion um kind people around me have tried to point this out to me i think i don't trust situations i don't trust that that things can be okay i'm learning to and i know how to do this for other people but find it hard to do for myself.

37:30And I think that it can lead to cutting yourself off unfairly from possibilities. And, you know, there is something about a dark prognosis that, you know, you can end up making it happen when it didn't need to happen. I think that's actually a really powerful thing, though, to admit that you're still searching for answers at the age of 53, because there'll be a lot of people that listen to this that think, wow, I wish I was Alan de Botton. He's got it all sorted. He knows the answers to everything. No. And I think it's important to say that that's not... Of course, yes. And I think, absolutely.

38:04I mean, hopefully, is it something that emerges from your show? Maybe. I think it perhaps is something you could need to bait right into it. I mean, if anyone claims to know what on earth's going on, they need their head examined. I mean, it's a sign that they're not really wrestling with enough of the problems or they're not being honest with you. Of course. We're all still at the very beginning of trying to work out what's going on. And our final question, your one golden rule that you would like to leave our listeners with for living a high performance life. kindness to yourself and to others and really what i mean by that is um kindness to accept that you may be stranger and more complicated than you bargained with and uh you're going to be kind enough to the world to make an accommodation for that and you're gonna you're gonna work on yourself so that you are uh you know not going to cause too much damage to those who have to come into contact with you and that's again for everybody work in progress i don't thank you so much what a fascinating conversation thank you

39:06damien jake an incredible amount of things to pick out from that i think the overall um sense that i had was are we spending enough time asking the questions that matter like in all honesty i don't remember the last time you and i had a conversation about things other than sort of high performance like real how are you like what's what are you happy about what you're about what you stressed about i certainly have come away from that conversation that i'm gonna speak to harriet later and basically just say like i don't think i've loved you enough like we've existed really nicely and we've done some good things and been for some nice meals and whatever but like really like loving you do you know what i mean i don't i'm not sure i don't think i've done that well that's really powerful and very honest jake i think i think you're right i think what i've taken from that really incredible conversation was the power of emotional literacy just leaning into emotions whether that's good or bad emotions and learning rather than let them wash over you sometimes and stay with them and explore them you know so many of our guests i think of the conversation we had way back with steven gerrard when he spoke around the emotions of that moment when he got sent off against manchester united after 40 seconds and he said to us that if somebody would have just said to him how are you feeling how are you really feeling and he'd have felt safe and had the language to be able to articulate his disappointment his frustration his anger and explore all of those rather than let it manifest itself in such an explosive way he could have been even better and I think we can all be even better if we can learn to lean into these emotions and and understand and articulate them rather than sometimes deny the more uncomfortable ones even just the idea he spoke about just sitting around as a family and saying what's around the corner for me like what am i holding on to at the moment what is derailing me what does tomorrow look like what's the future feel like what am i feeling like and just do it as a as a family as a group like the simplest thing that takes maybe five minutes a week but done every week it would not just transform a family but it could genuinely transform society it would just change the way we feel and the way that we interact with each other.

41:24Yeah, you know, again, the best time to fix a roof is when the sun is shining. So rather than wait for these emotions to explode in anger or recrimination, that question of what have I done that's annoyed you recently and put yourself in a position to really listen to it is a really incredible way to fix a relationship or to make sure that you stay on track rather than ignore it and hope that it disappears or fix itself naturally. So I think that willingness to go and explore and lean into emotions is what Alan's teaching us there that can be revolutionary for myself and hopefully many other people.

42:01Would you be brave enough to ask Geraldine what you've done that's annoyed her recently or would you be concerned the answer would go on for so long? Yeah, well, I sometimes think about like, I remember a conversation with Geraldine once when I came home and she said, is this how you thought married life was going to be? And it was like, you obviously don't, so I'll let you go first. And she opened up with some of the things that I was doing that I thought I was working away a lot. I wasn't around as much. And to her, it was a frustration that she needed to be able to give me that feedback. And I remember thinking it was a really elegant way in which she chose to open it by, rather than attacking me, just asking me what I thought married life was going to be and whether I was acting in accordance to it.

42:48So yeah, I think I will go back to that and invite it. I'm not sure I like the answers, but as Alan said, it's unless we explore these, we don't actually get a chance to live a fulfilled life. Well, I enjoyed it and I know I'll take a lot away from it. I know you will as well. And actually one of the really nice things is that I think that everyone that's listened to it will take something very different. it's not a it's not a clear manifesto of do this and life will change that so many small nuanced topics were covered there that people can pick up on a tiny thing that was said by alan who i really loved by the way and they can just explore that as deeply as they want in their own life yeah to me it's like a kaleidoscope where you look at it and you can see any pattern that you wouldn't i think listen to it with an open mind and i'm sure you'll take away something that makes sense for you in your life.

43:40Incredible author. Fascinating guy. Thanks, mate. Thanks so much for listening to this, well, profound episode, right, of High Performance with Alain de Botton. If the conversation helped you reflect differently on success, on happiness, or maybe parenting, please pass it around the people in your network and it might just help them as well. And remember, you can get early access to future episodes on the High Performance app. Coming up, motorsport megastar Susie Wolfe and football legend Joe Cole. Check them out right now. and we'll see you next time.

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