In Conversation: Alain de Botton on Great Company with Jamie Laing

hi I'm Alan Deon and I'm great company what is the meaning of life what is the meaning of life um look I think it's always going to be your meaning and I think that's the Paradox in in that phrase that we think of the meaning of life as something that's out there rather than primarily in here and that we need to discover our own meanings of life and really what we mean is what are my deepest sources of satisfaction some of the most Pleasant people to be around are those who perhaps through lots of Trials

have understood what is Meaningful for them we recognize them of they have a little twinkle in their eye they're kind of you think this person is free they're inwardly free because they know roughly what they're up to it's funny I'm I'm in a real process with myself and I'm going to use this as more of a therapy session towards myself if that's right um I find it incred I not so much anymore I think I do okay fine let's be honest okay I'm going to be honest um I think a lot of us and maybe

lots of people listening we find it very hard to sit with ourselves we separate ourselves all the time and I'm in a real position now of trying to lean into um what I would describe as ordinary yeah I spoke to someone once who I said I just constantly am looking for exciting things and they said that's not a good thing you need to just you life is boring and it's important to sit with that and sit in that silence yeah and I still find that very difficult and I think it's getting worse and worse as

we get older because of social media and everything yeah I I mean I'm a big fan of the concept of the ordinary only because it's actually extraordinary you know and most of the time if we think you know an ordinary life an ordinary job people people recoil from that word we we we we have a sort of very hierarchical system of values really which is that the extraordinary is good and the ordinary is boring and and awful um you know I think that some of the most beautiful moments are those when people can accept the

ordinary if you think of some of your happiest moments maybe in childhood maybe you know in a relationship or with a friend they often are things that are very ordinary you know we we sat down at the kitchen table and we drew some sunflowers and it was nice you as a child maybe even as an adult um that can be a a beautiful uh moment some of the greatest works of art actually depicting very ordinary moments um we we're on a hunt for things that are you know ecstatic and though they have their place um

you know we can't live on the Summit we we you know we belong in the in the lowlands and um making ourselves at home there is you know is is one of the challenges um it's interesting you say about sitting with yourself I mean look I you know I think we all all listeners probably will have have this issue as well um you know sometimes we're sitting on a train and we think I can't bear to be here get me a distraction we want to put headphones on we want to read something Etc a thought

is chasing us and you know the the difficult thing is that when we say we're suffering from anxiety what is anxiety anxiety is often a worry that doesn't know itself that that we're we're fleeing and it gets worse and worse because we're running away so much and um the difficult but really important thing to do is to turn around and go okay I'm going to be brave I'm just going to think about what I'm actually worried about so where pen pen and paper can come in handy and just a quiet room and another very useful

exercise which a therapist taught me is automatic writing is you set yourself the challenge of was it word downloading your brain just writing whatever is in your mind for two minutes so you set up the task just get P paper anything just where you are now what is your mood now and you just write and what tends to happen is that you find out things about yourself if you told me to go write do automatic writing and just write down my thoughts and just just do it whatever came into my mind I would almost lean

into like oh I've to think about something so therefore I'm going to write how do you sort of separate yourself from not think cuz what you're saying is don't think but think so how do you do that that's right well most of the time we we become enemies to ourselves because we're so concerned with seeming normal to ourselves so um you know we're sitting there with our own mind and we think well I should be having this sort of thought because after all I'm a sort of normal person and but the truth is we're all

far weirder than than we can acknowledge and in that weirdness are some very important realizations so so take love and hate you know we don't love and hate as it's as as it's entirely in vertic com's normal to do so so um take our feelings towards our parents for example many people feel an incredible desire to be very loyal to their parents it's a very natural impulse you know but but actually people's true feelings towards their parents tend to be colored by a far wider range of emotions and we could say you know that's a

bad thing we shouldn't allow that into Consciousness but if we don't allow it into Consciousness sometimes there can be buildup of anxiety um you know the old thing that sometimes you catch yourself in a rage with a household object you know the drawer doesn't open and you think damn it why doesn't it open and you know you pull it with with with violence ETA and you think what am I angry about now it's unlikely to be the drawer you know it's probably not the draw or the milk bottle it doesn't open you get in a

rage with it and what tends to happen there is that somewhere along the way the source of your true anger has become foreign to you you you've you've lost touch with the anger that you actually feel why normally because you feel you don't have the right to that emotion now I'm not advocating for S random Fury with everyone and obviously anger does need to be contained but the acknowledgment of anger is a different thing and that is important you know you might find that someone at work really angered You by something that they said now

again I'm not saying you necessarily always have to tell them but for you to tell yourself is really important um similarly with with um sadness something sad sadden us and we don't know that they've saddened us and the thing that we know is depression if you look at it clinically what depression tends to be is a sadness or a trauma that has forgotten itself and so people are you know the opposite of a kind of the the opposite of a not the opposite but the the twin of depression is is what they call mourning so

in mourning something or someone has been lost and you go into a period of sadness that has a beginning middle and an end and you know it's over um in depression you're ALS so sad about something but you don't know what it is you you've literally lost touch with it and therefore it can be endless because it hasn't been found in by your own mind and this is a this is the mind-blowing thing our minds don't understand themselves I mean this is this is such a strange thing um our minds and our bodies don't understand

themselves and it's so odd because we have a name and we have an identity and I might say you you know what do you think about the and most of the time you'd be able to tell me but in many areas especially as the questions get deeper and deeper you won't actually know you'll think I don't know quite why I'm doing what I'm doing I don't know why I respond I don't know why I hate here and love here or desire here these things are actually quite foreign and the answers take months years decades to

Bubble Up to the surface so selfawareness is one of the great greatest challenges um little children don't know themselves at all that's what that's what's funny about age but by the time you grow older um you think you should be beginning you know there's often insights that come very slowly but but the journey is never finished that journey of self-awareness and much of our mental troubles comes down ultimately to failures of self-awareness what are we really anxious about what are we really sad about Etc wow there firstly that was I I I'm so glad I

recorded that because I can play on a loop in my mind so I can hear there are so many things I want to break down here because um what's so interesting is I was talking about this sort of repressed feelings that we have if you were sitting here and you were to tell a story about how you made your parents proud or you did something with your friend or your family members something that would make me very emotional because I have an excuse to get emotional because you're allowing me to have that place yeah I

totally I don't allow myself to be emotional about things or anger for example I find it very easy to have road rage because I don't get angry m in my everyday life because I don't allow it to be a place I can't get angry at a friend a loved one a parent whoever because I don't I don't feel like I'm allowed to but I can get angry at someone I'm never going to see again on the road so I can swear back at them so so let's try little bit of light Psychotherapy in your past

MH you know it's in your childhood um what was what was anger like were you allowed to be angry was with you know were people people around you allowed to who's where where was anger allowed to be well I think that I was one of these children who um you I was like a bouncey you threw me into a room and i' bounc all over the place so I think I was dubbed a naughty child um and I was so frustrated I think that I couldn't communicate in the right way and I think my brain

was always all over the place so I think that I was always being told off so my anger came out in Tantrums but then when I threw a tantrum I was put into another room yeah so therefore I then couldn't make a tantrum scre or shout orpr emotion as much because I I was a nuisance annoying people would I remember I screamed so much once my brother threw up in the car cuz I was screaming so but but nowadays you would see oh that there's something maybe there's something frustrated with that child maybe something's going

on there with the child maybe they are ADHD or maybe they are anxious or maybe they are something right or one might say you know what what was it about the caregivers the adults around that made your difficult emotions um your Tantrums difficult for them you know why did they need you to be a certain way perhaps with quite a lot of force maybe your brother too you know that that who you were or needed to be was not quite allowed I mean you know a classic thing not sure this is you but no no

but you can be as by the way I said you be as open as you want I mean I me genuine I don't know but many entertainers um entertainment was not a choice it was a necessity they needed to entertain because someone around them maybe you know many people around them um couldn't quite bear certain things so so i' I've noticed just sort of empirically that people who are very funny often grew up in circumstances that were not funny at all uh and where the humor that they're excellent at deploying is essentially a way of

um diffusing the rage and the difficult moods of people around so it's not so much a you know just a skill like any other it's a survival skill um that that people have honed in order to manage the very difficult people around them so you know I mean that we kind of know that in popular way The Melancholy clown Etc but but it really does tend to have origins in humor being something that you learn um because because otherwise people are are a little too serious and often too angry um that's interesting you say that

because I I remember Jimmy Carr saying um um it's saying people always ask me if I'm depressed that's why I'm a comedian but actually you should ask if my parents were depressed perfect yeah exactly exactly I mean very often the wit the wit of the child is there to ward off the parents depression really listen people come into the children come into the world and all of us are honed by nature to figure out what do I need to do here to survive I mean literally that's that's that's how one should imagine every child what

do I need to do here to survive not necessarily survive physically though of course yes physically as well but psychologically mentally what do I need to do in some families you need to excel academically in some families you need to fail academically in some families you need to be very witty in some families you need to be invisible why would you need fail in some families oh well the classic one is Parental Envy I mean it's you know it's an awkward fact but parents are hu some parents are hugely envious of their own children and

they cannot bear that their child who they've put on the Earth should be happier than they've managed to be and so therefore the child has to take early retirement from various things and the child ends up you know thinking oh I'm bad at maths or whatever maybe or is there someone who would be rather frightened if you were better at maths so you know family is a difficult places and and Dynamics occur that really go Way Beyond what what we're ordinarily prepared to tolerate what does love mean if by you mean kind of adult romantic

relationships adult romantic relationships are a kind of litmos test of our emotional development and that's why very many of us find them very very hard they're also a real a moment where your past catches up with your present because the way in which we love as adults owes a huge amount to the way in which we experience love as children um you could say that what we're looking for in adult romantic relationships is often a sense of familiarity not so much happiness people go I'm looking to be happy steady Maybe not maybe what you're really

looking for is a sense of familiarity which might be it might be um that what you're really looking for is suffering neglect feeling that you're not that important to somebody feeling that somebody's got something more important to do other than be with you I mean this is why people make such as it were strange choices in relationships I mean I'm sure we've all had situations where you you recommend that a good friend of yours goes out with another good friend of yours to go on a date yes and you think these people really should should

match and you know both got so much to offer the world and you call up your friend afterwards you how did it go and they go uh really nice really nice person and you go is that a problem and they go no maybe didn't have that much to say to one another ET now maybe what they may perhaps struggling to say is this person I encountered is too nice to give me the feeling of suffering uffing that I need in order to feel I'm in love because that's slightly the way in which I may have

developed that being loved and and giving love is not an uncomplicated process in as I say in in many families for example um you're only loved if you do something you know if you achieve something if if you prove yourself in a certain way it means that in adult relationships we're often looking to recreate that conditionality um and therefore well you know the ick why why does the ick sometimes descend it it very jzy of you I know I know I've been I've been taught by younger folk um the ick can descend in in contact

with a level of kindness and sympathy which doesn't feel warranted and earned it's simply unfamiliar and so this is why relationships are often so complicated because we're on a track to recreate patterns of suffering that we don't understand we're interested in recreating and which we're unconsciously repeating so um this is why relationships are so strange you know we used to be we used to we used to get into relationships because our parents would fit the in or society would arrange marriage now we have marriages and relationships by Instinct we get drawn to people but those

instincts are so much more complicated than we like to think because we're not merely pulled by a desire to be happy we're pulled by a desire to rework many of the challenges of our past I mean Freud put it you know at its best he his view was that we're looking to um recreate painful situations that we experience at the hands of our parents but give them A better ending so for example someone might be let's imagine a woman who finds herself very often um getting together with angry intemperate slightly out of control men you

say okay why is this happening might discover that the past of this person includes a father who was very much like this now we might say goodness this sounds this sounds like awful this is ever going to end the hopeful psychotherapeutic answer is yes because what the person is doing is not looking to suffer forever what they're looking is to understand the pattern and solve it ideally with somebody that they can go on a journey with which is why you know if you had an angry father and you have and you come acoss a completely

calm person that might not be that interesting you come across somebody who feels the temptation of anger but wants to work it through with you in your company and that together you might heal from this problem that can be deeply satisfying for people so you know if we wanted to be optimistic about the patterns people are involved with I don't think people are invested in suffering forever they're interested in finding a way out of the pattern but they need to be close to that pattern in order to feel that thing we call Desire that desire

is often ignited by proximity to a pattern of pain that was experienced in the past I love that idea I don't love that idea but that we we actually we we're not trying to be happy we're looking for familiarity which is wild because well it's so paradoxical right well no it is paradoxical because because okay take I look at my my wife for example so um she her parents loved her she her dad used to come home and she would get onto his feet and dance on his shoes and she was she had all this

and so she has this immense inner confidence I ever asked her if she ever been heartbroken I've well no I've never been heartbroken ever yeah and I was like really you've never been heartbroken no I've never experienced that me on the other hand um I quite like I think um to May I'm drawn to that rejection yeah because I went to barding School 8 years old divorced parents y that classic abandonment probably yeah so I understand from my side why and Sophie who is just the greatest thing to me I think she's the greatest thing

that walks on this Earth um she's quite you know if I could try and kiss her and hug her get off you know all all you know she doesn't need it when I wanted all the time and so that that's kind of why we work I would say and I think feel very happy but from her side if she's experienced love then what is she looking for what do I offer her really if she's have I just made this about myself do you well look I'm interested in what you're saying it's interesting you say she

received warm love from from her dad and dance on his shoes Etc but when you come close to her she goes no and pushes you slightly away so that suggest a pattern of avoidance on her part and even though she may have at some points had love maybe there were complexities there and maybe you picked her you said you were quite interested in you know rejection and whatever and maybe um she rejects you just as much as you need to be rejected in order to feel you're in love if she rejected you too much you

might flee um if she didn't reject you at all you might think oh I'm not sure I can get that feeling exactly so it's possible that you've worked out between you a happy medium where you know in the classic attachment Theory you are just anxious enough for her love and she is just avoidant enough um that it works and that it's it's you know the great Trick In Love Is Where are people standing too close or not close enough if people can find the right distance from one another it it can work but but I

would be interested to you know if she were here to ask you know what was it about her relationship with her parents and her early experience of love that means that when you hunger for her love it's a bit much and she feels the need to go away and keep you at Bay well she said that her dad used to smother her the kisses and that used to annoy her and I do the same okay so maybe there was a way in which she experienced love as a little bit invasive yes you know not because

we think of love as you know true love is is correct Attunement to somebody um if somebody wants to be alone you let them be alone somebody's a bit sad you allow them to be sad there's a more cartoonish Vision of Love where it's just hugs and kisses and joy that's you know it's it's you know the sort of parents who goes up to child goes who's a pretty boy now you know and always wanty to make fun when actually the child might be in a Melancholy mood let that child have that sad mood let

the child have their their distance it's possible who knows that your wife you know experienced her her father as forcing out of affection but nevertheless forcing her to inhabit a certain emotional band which didn't necessarily always respect what she was actually feeling and therefore she maybe has grown up with a f sense of needing to to to push away at moments when she might not be on the same page and that's okay so she mean yeah I I'm honestly never been more fascinated my brain is going wild with questions how does an individual then how

do we make sure we're picking the right partner and is life about finding a partner or isn't isn't it um extreme modesty is probably a good starting point in other words we probably have to acknowledge that we'll we'll almost certainly make some mistakes and we need to go steady and therefore when we get married you know celebrate if you like but also cry a little bit because preemptively because you know you're going to be in for some pain because few of us are without error in our love choices you know this is a very imperfect

and very demanding business and it's good just to lower the temperature you know the perfect relationship does not exist the more you insist that it does the more you're going to have an imp perfect one so to go easy on one another a relationship is always an encounter between two very broken people who are just trying to get by and you know the other person's not trying to do you down the other person is just struggling with their own issues ETC so if that's the starting point of a relationship it's much more helpful than you

know we are two Paragons of uh you know Beauty and Perfection and we're all you know whatever I mean at the school of life we always recommend that when people go on a date one of the first questions they should ask is relatively early question was how are you mad um to the to the partner um to the prospective partner in other words the utility of that question is we're all mad question is just do you have any insight into what your Madness is um and and it's fine to be mad I'll tell you how

I'm mad you'll tell me how you're mad and we won't make such a taboo of it so that helps I think when when embarking on a relationship also you know it it does help to go and have some therapy um go and look into yourself have a basic grasp of attachment Theory you know attachment Theory worked out 40 years ago now um very useful who's avoidant who's anxious who's secure what makes you avoidant what are your triggers um we don't need people to be perfect in relationships but if they have some grasp of the areas

in which they go a bit mad um that's tremendously helpful to be able to give your partner a rudimentary but nevertheless fairly accurate map of the bits of you that are a little wonky um this is very generous this is a hugely generous act to say you know in this area I'm you know I'm fragile when it when it comes to how I might behave about the fact that you have lots of friends or that you're often down about something or that you're not punctual or whatever these things are difficult and the reason why relationships

get so bitter is that people fail to remember the complicated in a way very understandable reasons for why their partner is as difficult as they are you know if you can remember okay okay what I'm dealing with is not some an enemy who's trying to ruin my life but someone who really struggled with their father when they were five that's why it's so hard for them to do that thing in the kitchen that I'd like them to do they're not they're not trying to ruin my life um they're just trying to cope in their own

way and we we forget this it's so hard but you know there should be a patron saint of this and there should be reminders before and after the news that this is what we all need to do I love that that you should look at relationships as we're both broken individuals and we're just trying to figure this out together so if you are in an argument with your partner or your loved one or whoever it is then how is the best way to communicate with each other um look the number one way to unwind um

a particularly tense standoff is always to give your partner or friend colleague whatever a sense that you are listening to what it is that they're saying you don't have to agree but you have to listen and very simple way is to go I hear you but an even better way this is what they teach you in you know class 101 when you could try and train in Psychotherapy is you reflect back to them what they're saying so they're saying you know um it's all terrible because of this that and the other and rather than going

okay yes I hear you you say okay so I'm hearing that when you went to work your boss did this and then they did that and you felt this and that way it's left you feeling and they go yes yes you understand me because you've paraphrased their feeling and I can't tell you how satisfying that is so paraphrasing what someone has just said to you asking them what it is and then you massively lowers the the temperature because immediately someone feels heard and the moment they feel heard they're then ready to hear you so if

you do this for somebody they will then do it back to you and then you're on a virtuous circle and off you go fighting far far is the worst idea isn't it of course of course love can be really painful though and I think a lot of people listening or um in this room or maybe yourself I know have we've experienced heartbreak and it's an awful pain I remember when I was 16 years old experiencing heartbreak I honestly didn't know what shoe to put on it was was the worst thing in the world how do

you navigate your way through heartbreak first of all to acknowledge that it is one of the worst things that can Beall you proper heartbreak and of course the people who break our hearts really badly are not horrible people I mean if if they were just the horrible people we we'd be fine um the the the thing you really have to worry about is Heartbreak by nice people the people people who are really kind to us for a long time they they get under our skin they understand our pains they're truly sweet um they you know

they sit with us through our crisis they are our best friend and then one day for whatever reason they go elsewhere this is this is the devastating thing it's you know the ones who the ones who come and go and you know blow hot and cold for for a few minutes you know we'll get over them it's it's the nice ones um you know that old expression grief is the price we pay for love well there'll be a lot of grief if there was a lot of love so it's it's kindness that undoes us it's

really kindness and ultimately what happens I think in in heartbreak is that um we lay ourselves bare to somebody we we give ourselves to someone and then when they go we are no one anymore because as it were the the we who lived with them and was with them um is no longer viable and we have to kind as it were recreate ourselves we have to go back through every experience and and unpick it and create new and parallel memories and unwind all the things that we shared it is it is a sort of rebirth

and it it is one of the most devastating things and most of us will probably experience heartbreak proper heartbreak only a few times in our lives um but but when we do we need to you know pull up the white flag and go I'm not going to be well here for a while you know and and give ourselves time I mean the great thing you know in the Jewish tradition when somebody dies you're allowed to mourn for a year official mourning period is a year and during that year it's acknowledged that you will not be

entirely yourself you'll be you might be wailing you might be wanting company all the time you might be wanting company another time you might be eating too much too little whatever it is you're going to be heavily unbalanced and the key thing is everybody knows it and we need a sort of similar version of this because it is also a death when we lose someone who who really matters to us that that we're we're not going to be ourselves and it you know it could be 6 months 3 months it could be a year could

be more it could be more depending on what the relationship meant to us have you ever experienced heartbreak I have I have and and as I say one wouldn't wish it upon one's worst eny it is it's horrendous because it is a destruction of oneself yeah there are two questions I really want to ask but the first one I want to give you a quote which I think is um about self-awareness and I think self-awareness is the biggest superpower you can have 100% um the quote is everyone thinks of changing the world but no one

thinks of changing themselves it's so true we go through life wanting to change create sweets create a podcast create a business um be the most popular whatever it is we never think about oh what can we do to ourselves because actually what we should be doing throughout our lives is um uh becoming the best version of ourselves that's actually what life really is about it's about and because when you become the best version of yourself you can give as much love and as much I don't know you can give it education money you you can

you can give but if you aren't the best version of yourself you can't yeah do first do you agree with that um yes partly I mean yes yes and I think in a weird way what comes to mind is the word love because what makes this possible you know how do you become the best version of yourself um you have to you probably need the help of other people you know it can't just be done alone that's the you know working on yourself actually requires other people I agree um and and it requires an attitude

of love I don't mean romantic love I mean care um attention uh sympathy compassion all of these things that can get wrapped under the word love um and a lot of the time we know we don't have it and we don't have enough of it we're we're raw um from you know the word trauma is much overused but but it's a useful word for describing what many of us go through and have been through which is experiences that have not been properly digested pains that have not been overcome and that impede our our development so

look I I I do agree with you um if we were able to radiate um to those immediately around us the the care the love the sympathy that that they are owed and if we were able to do that reliably of course the world you know would would hugely improve big question then if you suggest that lots of who we are is because of what we were what happened to us as kids and childhood is it then is nature is it nature or nurture um I think to a huge extent it it is nurture and

you know if you look at people and the strange or difficult things they're doing as adults a really useful question is to ask oneself perhaps them um subtly um you know in what way was this at some point useful for you to behave like this CU most of the logic of people odd or difficult Behavior Uh is rooted in childhood where it once made sense so for example take somebody who in relationships finds it incredibly hard to connect with anyone and and you know we call this person closed or avoidant or whatever and for people

who trying to get involved in relationships with this person this could seem like a real bore why they like this why can't you know why are they always elsewhere in their minds Etc a lore of Psych ological nature would say um look for a moment when in their life that pattern of behavior made sense and it might be that they lost a parent really early on and it's really helpful if you lost a parent early on not to feel anything it's really really helpful it's really clever of their younger self to have worked out that

not feeling is a wonderful survival strategy the problem is that our survival strategies tend to outlive the original situation for which they were devised they they go on to have an afterlife which is huge destructive so someone can't stop not feeling even though the original circumstances where that not feeling was necessary have gone or you know we're talking about funny people um imagine somebody who grows up in a in a in an environment where humor is really important for survival you know they've got a depressed parent they need to cheer them up Etc so they

crack jokes um but then in adulthood you meet them and you think this person can't be serious they are constantly cracking jokes but they can't access anything more sincere or authentic and this book of person becomes maddening and really frustrating to be around but again if one asks when did this make sense and the goal of psychotherapy is can we can we help a person to go back to when that pattern made sense and if a person realizes it they can be free for to to realize why they're doing what they're doing most importantly they

can start to look at their pattern with compassion because often what happens is and what prevents people from changing is people are made to feel guilty or ashamed for doing what they do oh you're an avoidant person what a bad person you are or or you can't be serious what an awful person no one ever changes to about change no one ever changes when they're Hector and bullied and feel you know Under Pressure we tend to change when we feel in the presence of a loving audience that's when we feel ready to change because you

know change requires an incredible acknowledgement of mistakes and you know wrong byways Etc we don't tend to do we get defensive if somebody is attacking us we're defensive if somebody's loving towards us and says you know you deserve compassion for that thing that you do um even you know even frankly why did you start drinking you know why why are you addicted to alcohol if somebody's hectoring us it's going to be very hard if someone says you know you learned to numb yourself because at a cruy early age you encountered things that were unbearable that's

you know that can provide a backdrop against which someone can go okay maybe maybe maybe that's how it started and then you know um that can be the beginning of something you know we were talking about the difficulties of acknowledging feelings um you know there is a moment when people take to drink right they just did by the way this is water to the audience um there there is a moment there is a moment where people you know if this was alcohol where you think I need that drink if if you said to the person

what would you do if you couldn't drink what might you need to think about what might you need to feel if you know instead of that thing that you're trying to run away from and often the answer is waiting for us it's actually waitting and we might surprise ourselves by how directly that answer is is there um you know in in there's these wonderful psychotherapeutic exercises where we're invited to complete sentences I don't know if you ever done those why don't we try it can we try it yeah sure well it's hard to try but

but let me give you some examples yeah men are dot dot dot women are dot dot dot life is dot dot dot I dot dot dot if only dot dot dot if you're asked to complete these sentences without thinking too much in other words without letting your conscious brain impede your unconscious difficult trickier more complicated truths weird and wonderful stuff comes out you know if only you know my father could still be alive um men are untrustworthy uh women are good what whatever it is we we might find answers waiting for us um and then

and then if you pause and go why did you why did you say that is are you aware of still thinking about your dad you know he died a long time ago used you know and then that could be the beginning of a fascinating conversation so these are all ways of getting our minds to unclench in order to release their more sincere but often more complicated and awkward sides and can I ask you a personal question yeah we we talk about nature and nurture earlier and how our sort of early experiences lead us to where

we are today you have written more books than I've read you um are fascinated by people in the world and questions and lots of different things why what has led you in your life to be doing what you do now okay so let's take the principle it's not just me but everybody tends to do stuff not because you know they totally have choice in the matter but because there's something driving them to do it um and very often people are either compensating or reacting to certain things so without going too much into my own life

but you can just see like someone who's going someone who's spending all their time trying to work out you know what on Earth's going on emotionally Etc um it's probably a reaction to some to the opposite which is a sense of you know chaos Etc um just like the person who makes a huge amount of money is probably at some level escaping a feeling of poverty you know it's it's always tends to be or you know someone's cracking jokes all the time trying to escape you so it tends to be some kind of compensation so

I um I think I experienced a world which didn't seem to make much sense to me and therefore I've been trying desperately to find the sense ever since and to you know calm myself down um through untying knots really we're all going to die having only scratched the surface of who we are let's be realistic here totally we will we will go to the you know on most gravestones you rather than going you know this here lies whatever you know like here lies a person who who barely knew who they were at points they sometimes

had a flickering awareness that they might be their own name but most time they didn't know what hell hell's going on you know they were just like steering blind I mean that is you know most of the time you know there's this old medieval idea that that life is like a a bird that comes in from the cold flies through a great hall with an illuminated fire in the middle and then flies out the other end of this great hall and it's an instant of Illumination and warmth and but it's Blackness on on both sides

and it is that we have a flash of Illumination but most of the time um we're really in darkness about what's going on I always I whenever I think about life I um there was this amazing person who I I don't know where I've seen this clip and I've mentioned it before where she's terally ill and she's young and um she's asked the question are you not annoyed at life are you not angry and she said well the way that I look at it is this is that if someone told me that I could go

to a place called Earth and I could experience love and happiness and hate and cuddles and getting drunk and going to the park and I could experience all these different things but only for a short while would you want to do it of course I would want to do it 100% so even if though my time on this place is short at least I've experienced those things and I thought that's an amazing way to look at life absolutely and you know we are obsessed with longevity which we which which we associate you know with more

and more years but what we also know we know that Paradox about experience which is um that it's really the intensity of an experience that that marks it out and this is where you know we have this odd odd view of time that not all time is of the same length there's hour and an hour it it does does depend and that blows my mind sure blows my mind and it tends to be of course you know we we we know that there's people called artists and they seem to make more of time than other

people so they'll you know they'll look at a flower and then they'll paint a picture of it and you think wow that P that that flower was really significant to them they saw a lot in that um children are also great at deepening time you know they go on holiday and there's a bucket and a spade and they will make something special of that moment and that moment stays throughout life so you know one of the tricks is is not so much to lengthen your life is to deepen your life I've had bouts of really

bad anxiety right in my life like many people have and the the really scary thing about that is you think it's never going to end and so when you first have it which I did when I was 22 years old and I had it from a panic attack I thought I'm like this forever and that is a um dare I said it's sort of a um so it's a very scary place to be yeah because you don't want to live like that forever yeah why would you so how do you then cling on and keep

going and you have to because you have to have that belief so what do you say to people who are potentially feeling a certain way or they don't want to go down the route because maybe they sit in that uncomfortable space but it might be a year 2 years 3 years four years you know what I mean look I think what can be tremendously helpful is to broaden the sense of what is normal yeah because often what happens well exactly it's far broader than what we think and what tends to happen is that people get

a double layer of sort of punishment or self punishment they think you know not only am I anxious but I'm anxious that I'm anxious you know not only am I angry I'm angry that I'm angry you you add punishment upon punishment if you broaden the picture of what's normal and you say you know a lot of us even though it's not you know it's not generally spoken about many of us are a lot more anxious than you know we we we we discuss many of us are a lot sadder than we discuss um and I

think you know that's why good friendships deep friendships are often forums Arenas in which people are able to broaden the kind of the sense of what what it's normal to to be and do um so you know good friends will go uh anyone else been you know weeping on the floor um you know thinking it's all over uh anyone else been sort of you know raging at the bathroom mirror whatever it is that that suddenly there's a sense of we know life's more complicated than the adverts say we know we're all madder stranger but also

more beautiful more ecstatic more you know more more interesting but but but the picture is broader and that's what a good friend should be that's what a good friendship should be it's not you know how's everything oh great know it's no things are Wilder and weirder but but here's someone that I can share that with and that's an enormous relief and you know you mentioned about anxiety um one of the most relaxing things I find you know in a moment of anxiety is to find somebody else else who is similarly anxious in order to share

the basic normality and the fundamental legitimacy of the anxiety that one is going through because the most frightening thing and that's why anxiety often happens in situations If You observe it where other people are not anxious so so or or don't seem to be anxious so in other words I'm going to the party everyone else is normal at the party I'm the anxious one so you pit yourself against you know an an an a presumed opponent or companion who does not have the vulnerability you have the way to Winder is to go imagine if seven

other people at that party were also extremely anxious that starts to lower the temperature it's like ah okay um imagine if we thought you know I mean the conversation has really broadened 10 years ago no one talked about mental health 20 years ago they didn't nowadays there's more of a sense that we have something called physical health and we have something called mental health now what is mental ill health you know we used to picture it as craziness something abstract something strange we can't even talk about it it's you know it's it's it's for lunatics

something it's going on somewhere else and it can't be put into words now what we're realizing is that mental ill health has a lot in common with what everybody knows about mental ill health is just states that we all know about without the breaks being applied in other words it's runaway it's runaway anxiety it's runaway sadness it's runaway self-hatred so you know an ordinary person will go I don't much like myself today a mentally unwell person will go I can't stand myself today not only today but also yesterday and tomorrow and the next day and

frankly I want to do away with myself in other words it's ordinary self-hatred without the breaks on so that's something that we should all um get to grips with you know when you think oh so and so's got mental health problems what we really mean is they're probably a bit like you when you had that wobble about whatever they just can't stop it there there's no pause but it's something we all know it's just without a pause so that kind of humanizes it and helps to correct the otherwise s of mysterious Mystique that surrounds um

mental illness that is a a beautiful way of putting it it's a it's amazing it's a runaway feeling it's not being able to put pauses between thoughts so do you think you can then teach yourself to put a break on to put a pause on whether it's depression anxiety OCD insomnia there are ways to tackle that because there's this argument that you know always sort of comes up where people sort of say Well they're clinically depressed or you're clinically anxious or they're just an what's the difference then look this sounds you know boring and I

wish there were a simpler answer but look think about ill physical health yeah um you have a bad back Etc let's say you went to a back expert you got a bad back or you've got you know flabby muscles your muscles not not in order you not done any training Etc you went to a personal trainer they would say it's going to take a long time you know it might take six months it might take three years you might need to do this four times a week you might need to do certain exercises four times

a week it's very boring you know we'd love a quick answer but it took a long time for us to get unwell it's going to take a long time for us to get well so we have to start putting in place certain practices now what are those practices for the mind um you know anyone who's been through this will end up with a relatively personal list of things that work but there are obviously themes um one of the themes is finding yourself in the presence of a helpful other person who can listen who can contextualize

um who can help you you know one of the things that happens when we get out of out of order is that our brains we we stop being able to think properly but we don't know we're not thinking properly so we'll get completely wound up and we'll we'll forget that we have lost the thread and it's tremendously important to have another person whose Brain still works if I can put it bluntly and who can say hang on a minute no you didn't do that thing that you become obsessed by you actually did something slightly different

so it's going to be okay or even if that thing does happen there is still X Y and Z that you can try Etc and that's why the middle of the night is tends to be a very bad time we're alone our neocortex switches off um what is the neocortex the part of the brain that is more sophisticated required for planning for reason for for you know what we would Loosely call Our Kind of rational faculties um when we wake up at 3:00 a.m. those things are knocked out and so that's why people feel a

purity of panic and fear and regret that doesn't exist in the day because in the day there's always a but remember the other thing now that's gone in the middle of the night so all you're up against is raw fear you know regret whatever it is anger um and that's why emotions tend to be so hard now if we know that if we know that we're not likely to be thinking straight we'll put a bit less pressure on our own thoughts we'll think okay I'm probably a bit mad because it's 3:00 a.m. um and I'm

just going to bracket my thoughts I'm not going to take it as seriously as you know I might do um and you know I may need for to wait for Dawn to return so yes so we need we need sympathetic others to help us keep steady we need time I mean the other thing is time for ourselves time to catch up with the thoughts that we've been running away from is tremendously important you know and and the less time you make for yourself the more the backlog of unthought thoughts presses against the door of consciousness

and gives you more anxiety which makes you run faster which gives you more of these unthought thoughts and on and on it goes until often there is a breakdown and a breakdown is really the mind saying to you uh enough there there is too much that has not been thought about and I can't take it anymore so you know that's why breakdowns can be breakthroughs if they handled properly because there are moments when an important piece of knowledge has a chance to articulate itself that you you've been keeping at Bay and it could be something

like I'm intolerably sad that my mother died 15 years ago that's an odd thought you you never even knew you had that thought but it's there well that can H that can happen during a sort of breakdown period where totally totally totally or or I'm sick and tired of this aspect of my life I'm sick and tired of this happening but you didn't allow yourself to know that or you know this relationship is not working or I want to try yet again with somebody else a relationship that you know that I I gave up I

I want to try and have another go or whatever it is these are very difficult thoughts and often we will think of anything else the news the weather alcohol what whatever it is in order to avoid that thought and then it boom it breaks it breaks through at a moment of acute crisis and it can be a beautiful thing we suddenly think oh okay it it's awkward but you know whatever it is my sexuality is not what I thought my romantic life's not what I thought my professional life's not what I thought whatever it is

that can be the beginning of something it's so true about at nighttime as well I always remember my dad giving me um a bit of advice he said he always said never ask anyone to marry you at nighttime very good very good very good and indeed and indeed can I add something to your dad's advice never ask anyone to divorce you at night time either because because both become very tempting after 9:00 p.m. I mean no no significant decisions no significant decisions at of this sort should be taken after you know after daylight um we

should be extremely careful can we talk about your new book just for one second so um when you do start to write a new book where what do the stting Point well look let me tell you basically this book is about everything we've been talking about it's about mental health it's about happiness it's about the meaning of life it's about all these things and it's a selection of essays originally written for the School of Life put together into it's it's sort of the greatest hits and um so anyone who's enjoyed this should enjoy that anyone

who absolutely hated this probably won't like that so make make your own mind up but it yeah it's it's a meander through all sorts of things about the mind and psychology really um and it's called a therapeutic journey and if someone is thinking about going on holiday or perhaps they want some reading for the tube or whatever it is why would should they pick up your book I'll tell you what not so has nothing to do with the content it just has to do with the style um it's qu everything's quite short uh it gets

the point quite fast and it's quite fun to read um which I know that sounds kind of weird but we we do live in a very distracted age and when I write I spend an awfully long time thinking I'm writing for a very very busy doctor who doesn't have that much time because they're saving lives and doing urgent things get to the point and try and get it to it directly without making it too painful so that's what I spend a lot of time doing yeah everyone's nodding their heads they're all going that is the

best way to sell a book I that is amazing doesn't matter what it's about just just hopefully it's not too boring short it gets to the point that's that's important in this earth and I honestly I I am I know how busy you are and truly to sit down with you and to um steal your mind for an hour and and a half has been um pretty special so I I thank you for that we'd like to end the podcast with eight questions okay you can be as long as you want or as short as

you want because I would like the long answer but you can also give the short answer what's the saying or phrase that always makes you smile or cheers you up so I love a very dark phrase pessimism as we know always cheers us up no one wants something optimistic um there's a lovely quote from the Roman philosopher stoic philosopher senica uh who says what need is there to weep over part of life he says the whole of it calls for Tears so other words the whole thing is a bit of a mess um and you

know isn't there a quicker way uh there isn't a quicker way to kind of feeling of lightness than to think you know it's not the exception the whole the whole thing's a veil of Tears anyway so that's my favorite quote I really like that what's the best compliment anyone's ever given you um uh the best compliment uh I I you got to say you got you've got to say it yeah um why do I want to say I don't mind that you've got no hair I that isn't the worst thing yeah it's it's really for

all bold people out there it's not an you know it's a difficult condition people everyone I'm heading that way you're not I am I I really am I really am you've got many years left every you no one laughs about people who've eaten a lot um and you know that's a very serious thing but you know somehow the Bold is still a fair Target everyone everyone loves to mock at but anyway it doesn't matter that's compliment and as we've evolved and we've grown to survive surely having hair on our head is the best form of

survival I can't understand cuz you know if you got no hair you're spending all your time with Hats there's almost no day of the year when you not got the sun hat or a wooly hat so it's ridiculous but anyway there we are what scares you most about yourself um my capacity to get things wrong to to fall into you know to get it wrong get it wrong in big ways so error error but isn't that a good thing no error is error and you know if we're talking about errors they're real real big errors

yeah so yeah probably look it's probably what frightens everyone about everyone you know that's that's what we do do you live with the regrets or have any regrets sure I mean I think do you think it's important to live with the regret hugely someone who doesn't have regrets is dangerous I mean of course of course one has to regret and mourn and think God I I did that stupid thing or that cruel thing or that mean thing or that shortsighted thing if if we're ever to have a chance to to to grow um you know

if you're not embarrassed by at least 15 things that you did last year you're not learning enough you you're stuck you know you should you should be thinking oh my goodness I'm so sorry about that thing you know because because you're thinking right I'm trying to get a bit better and that's why I think we should allow people uh to get better and that's what that's what the word forgiveness is all about trying to allow people to have their mistakes but you know but but move on from them I love that because I think we're

conditioned to say we don't have any regrets but I always go well maybe kind of do some way I should have done something differently there or changed it or not said that of course when was the last time you cried and why well I think very beautiful things make me cry more and more as I get older you know sweet things um children's books where you know bunny rabbit gets reunited with Mommy and Daddy rabbit it's just you know makes you floods of Tears because because as life as you get older and life you inducted

into more and more awful things and cruel things the contrast with what's beautiful and what's kind and lovely still becomes really acute and that's I think what brings on the tears it's the you know you're finding in that lovely children's book whatever a sort of that's where your true home is that's where Paradise is but you you're so far away from it you've drifted so far from innocence and and joy and all those things and then you you see an image of it and you think oh what you're really crying is for your own Lost

Paradise and that's why often you'll get little children and adults reading to them at bedtime and the adult is in floods of tears and the child is know what's going on they fallen asleep or what whatever and the adults like why because the adults recognizing the cruelty of life and if you wanted to design a robot that would cry when reading children's stories give it some painful experiences that's what will make it cry when some when they encounter Something Beautiful what's something you can't let go of can't let go of um like a good thing

or a bad thing or anything you want whatever way you interpret it um um albums from the that I keep listening to I should have moved on from but they just have a a Savor mentioning no names spise CS mentioning no names I'm going to change this question because um this next one because I want to ask you something I think everyone has a superpower I really think they do what would you say your superpower is superpower um look I think I like to Chomp through a problem and try and think my way out of

it people exercise their way out of things they act their way out of things I'm not particular good at exercising good at acting Etc but but if if I've got any power it's to try and take things apart to take a thought apart so give me a thought and try and unpack it and that's probably where I come to life what turns you off um people who are too certain about things you know I I like a touch of hesitation I like people who add maybe into things or perhaps uh at least that's what I'm

thinking at the moment kind of thing I like I like a touch of hesitancy to me that's not weakness that's being properly open to the complexity of things and I think that's that's often a lovely thing what turns you on other than that thing um um I think people who are willing to be introspective um and and and part of that means thinking I may not already know so someone who says let me let me take that away that's been rather thought Pro let me take that away and give that some thought that's a lovely

thing to say it's a very generous thing to say and last one but I sort of asked this what do you like most about myself what do I like most about myself um that sometimes I can be very silly and um just have some fun um and I think fun is quite underrated very difficult to do but again coming back to you know why things make you cry fun becomes more important the more the more serious life gets you know what I mean so a light-hearted afternoon has a value at 54 that it doesn't have

when you're five because when you're five so much is light-hearted if you manage to pull off a light-hearted moment when you're older then it has a depth to it well it's quite fitting because our bonus question is your favorite swear word obviously I can't say it on air but um I I grew up speaking French and and oddly um uh a lot of them are in French they come they come back in French which is quite good because then some people go I didn't know what you said and you think good good that's fine it's

it's in French and then thank you so much for coming on great company that has been amazing thank you so much la