Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Toxic Positivity: What's Real vs. What's Forced? with Kate Bowler
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
- 0:08Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests
- 0:12Speaker 1: and I have conversations.
- 0:13Speaker 2: That put a new spin on pretty. This is pretty smart.
- 0:20Speaker 3: Hello, I hope you're having a good day. It is
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- 0:44Speaker 3: all to say, if you hear a few drip drops
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- 0:51Speaker 3: few housekeeping things before we jump in. I just want
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- 1:40Speaker 3: The other thing I wanted to tell you is that
- 1:43Speaker 3: I joined TikTok Shop, like it's like the shopping part
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- 2:06Speaker 3: But I wanted to throw that out there because if
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- 2:24Speaker 3: gonna post the link in the show notes.
- 2:27Speaker 2: That's what I'll do.
- 2:28Speaker 3: Okay, I have to tell you I'm really excited for
- 2:31Speaker 3: today's episode.
- 2:32Speaker 2: It was so great to record.
- 2:36Speaker 3: My dad used to say different friends for different reasons,
- 2:38Speaker 3: and I kind of feel like different guests and different
- 2:42Speaker 3: episodes for different reasons. But I'm always so excited when
- 2:47Speaker 3: someone is just so smart and really teaches us something,
- 2:51Speaker 3: and that's how I feel about today's episode.
- 2:55Speaker 2: So let's jump in.
- 2:59Speaker 3: I'm not sure if you remember this, but a few
- 3:01Speaker 3: years back, stand up comedian Whitney Cummings accidentally shared a
- 3:05Speaker 3: picture of herself that included a nip slip, so when
- 3:08Speaker 3: followers called it out, she responded saying this, I stand
- 3:12Speaker 3: by most of my nudes. Frankly, I'm way more embarrassed
- 3:15Speaker 3: by all the inspirational quotes that I've screen grabbed.
- 3:18Speaker 2: Those inspirational quotes.
- 3:20Speaker 1: We all know what.
- 3:21Speaker 2: She's talking about.
- 3:22Speaker 3: They are part of the happiness industry, and it is
- 3:27Speaker 3: an industry.
- 3:29Speaker 2: So let me dive deeper for a second.
- 3:31Speaker 3: Because if you've been listening to Pretty Smart for a while,
- 3:34Speaker 3: you know I love a quote. You know I'm an
- 3:36Speaker 3: optimistic girl, pragmatic with a side.
- 3:39Speaker 2: Of you can do anything you put your mind to.
- 3:42Speaker 2: De Lulu.
- 3:43Speaker 3: To be honest, I think every person needs a little
- 3:45Speaker 3: bit of that. It's kind of like hot sauce for
- 3:47Speaker 3: a dreamer. But there is a line, a line between
- 3:51Speaker 3: positivity and the relentless pursuit of optimism. DUB nowadays is
- 3:56Speaker 3: toxic positivity. So what's the difference in preparing for this episode?
- 4:01Speaker 2: I have thought about it a lot.
- 4:04Speaker 1: While a positive outlook can be empowering, toxic positivity veers
- 4:09Speaker 1: into dangerous territory, dismissing valid emotions and experiences as mirror inconveniences.
- 4:17Speaker 1: It's the difference between acknowledging pain and hastily slapping on
- 4:21Speaker 1: a forced cheerfulness when you're actually not okay, or the
- 4:24Speaker 1: difference between offering a sympathetic ear to someone when they're
- 4:28Speaker 1: in pain and spouting empty platitudes like well, everything happens
- 4:32Speaker 1: for a reason. Toxic positivity masquerades as a solution, when
- 4:38Speaker 1: really it's perpetuating a myth that one must always be happy,
- 4:43Speaker 1: regardless of circumstance or As our guests today Kate Boehler.
- 4:48Speaker 4: Said, mental health is not having positive ocean, it's having
- 4:51Speaker 4: the appropriate emotion at the right time.
- 4:54Speaker 2: The right time. Sometimes there is no right time.
- 4:57Speaker 3: There's no right time for a breakup, loss of a job,
- 5:01Speaker 3: a broken arm. Sometimes it's not good vibes only, and
- 5:06Speaker 3: that's okay. But where did all of these social media
- 5:09Speaker 3: and modern colloquialisms come from our guest today? Kate Bohler says,
- 5:15Speaker 3: they actually have deep roots in the business of religion,
- 5:19Speaker 3: the business of spirituality, and the business of happiness.
- 5:24Speaker 4: If you just think about two thousand and fourd it's
- 5:26Speaker 4: really the beginning of a lot of forms of social
- 5:29Speaker 4: media that made that so normal. So even just like
- 5:32Speaker 4: the word blessed went from being I mean, honestly very
- 5:38Speaker 4: rich multi thousand year tradition, but especially in the Judeo
- 5:43Speaker 4: Christian tradition of an act of spiritual noticing, in which
- 5:48Speaker 4: you would bless your people, or you would you know,
- 5:51Speaker 4: you can bless your house, or you would figure out
- 5:53Speaker 4: how to bless the day, which was a way of
- 5:55Speaker 4: just saying good and bad God, you are here, into
- 5:59Speaker 4: a kind of tag blast, which was like married my
- 6:02Speaker 4: high school sweet eye, hashtag blust, barely there Bhinija hostag blust,
- 6:07Speaker 4: which became a way of saying, look at me, And
- 6:10Speaker 4: even if it was I'm so lucky, it was like,
- 6:11Speaker 4: look at me. I put myself in the right place
- 6:14Speaker 4: at the right time. Here I am hashtag glust.
- 6:18Speaker 3: Kate is a very interesting narrator for the idea of
- 6:21Speaker 3: toxic positivity. She's a four time New York Times bestselling author,
- 6:27Speaker 3: host of the podcast Everything Happens, and a professor of
- 6:31Speaker 3: divinity at Duke. Her own brush with the subject of
- 6:35Speaker 3: toxic positivity came during a life altering moment in her
- 6:38Speaker 3: thirties when she was blindsided with a stage four cancer diagnosis.
- 6:43Speaker 3: Kate experienced a lot of people telling her there was
- 6:46Speaker 3: a reason that it was happening to her, and, as
- 6:50Speaker 3: she puts it, when someone is drowning, the only thing
- 6:53Speaker 3: worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is
- 6:56Speaker 3: handing them a reason.
- 6:57Speaker 4: Self help is got a lot a great tool, but
- 7:00Speaker 4: the problem is as a worldview, it tells you that
- 7:03Speaker 4: every single thing in your life is solvable with usually
- 7:07Speaker 4: like five steps.
- 7:09Speaker 1: Kate's most recent book is titled Have a Beautiful Terrible Day.
- 7:13Speaker 1: The title conveys exactly the message she is trying to
- 7:17Speaker 1: share with everyone. Things can be both beautiful and terrible
- 7:23Speaker 1: at the same time, and that is perfectly okay. You
- 7:33Speaker 1: are at Duke and Rabbi leader actually shared your Instagram
- 7:39Speaker 1: profile with me, I would say, almost like a year ago,
- 7:42Speaker 1: and I actually don't know this from our dinners. What
- 7:45Speaker 1: drew you to studying divinity?
- 7:48Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well, I guess I didn't really know I
- 7:51Speaker 4: would kind of end up like teaching at a So
- 7:54Speaker 4: I teach at a seminary at a university, which means
- 7:56Speaker 4: I'm at a place where people kind of teachretty much
- 8:00Speaker 4: every subject. But we're in the divinity school, which means
- 8:02Speaker 4: people take not just history but like religious history and
- 8:05Speaker 4: not just.
- 8:05Speaker 5: Theology, but like Christian theology.
- 8:08Speaker 4: And I grew up really wanting to be a historian
- 8:10Speaker 4: because my dad's a historian. So when that's what I
- 8:13Speaker 4: got into, I was like, well, this is an amazing
- 8:15Speaker 4: way of being nosey. You can ask anything and they
- 8:17Speaker 4: like have to answer in the name of research. So
- 8:20Speaker 4: when I graduated with my PhD in history, I thought
- 8:22Speaker 4: I just wanted to kind of study ideas for their
- 8:25Speaker 4: own sake, But this job meant that it was a
- 8:28Speaker 4: really fun way of.
- 8:30Speaker 5: Doing two things.
- 8:31Speaker 4: One kind of just giving the framework of like how
- 8:33Speaker 4: did our culture create these beliefs and how sort of
- 8:37Speaker 4: like how did they sort of build the sacred canopy
- 8:40Speaker 4: under which we live and believe things. But then I
- 8:43Speaker 4: was teaching people who kind of go out into their
- 8:44Speaker 4: communities and have to learn whether or not these truths
- 8:48Speaker 4: actually like will bear up the way to their lives.
- 8:51Speaker 4: So that kind of like upped the stakes of what
- 8:53Speaker 4: I was doing. And once I got into that, I
- 8:55Speaker 4: got hooked.
- 8:57Speaker 1: What is your relationship with religion or spirituality?
- 9:01Speaker 4: Now I'm hilariously jesus y so like enough to make
- 9:04Speaker 4: it uncomfortable for people who are like I love everything,
- 9:07Speaker 4: I love something in particular, let me be specific. But
- 9:11Speaker 4: I two parents who kind of became Christians later in life,
- 9:14Speaker 4: and so they weren't very precious about it.
- 9:16Speaker 5: I think my mom.
- 9:17Speaker 4: Actually became a Christian because she got a pamphlet and
- 9:21Speaker 4: was like, sinners in the eyes of God, all right,
- 9:24Speaker 4: which I thought is genuinely the funniest way anyone has
- 9:26Speaker 4: ever changed their mind.
- 9:28Speaker 5: And my dad read a book and was like, yeah,
- 9:30Speaker 5: that sounds about right.
- 9:31Speaker 4: And what was lovely about that was I grew up
- 9:34Speaker 4: believing that ideas kind of have to carry water, like
- 9:37Speaker 4: they've got to do the work. And so I love
- 9:42Speaker 4: kind of taking the beliefs that I have and then
- 9:45Speaker 4: trying to figure out one how it shapes my own
- 9:48Speaker 4: experience of being a Canadian slash American, and also just
- 9:51Speaker 4: whether or not they can be there for me in
- 9:53Speaker 4: the hard times, which is why I think it's like
- 9:56Speaker 4: really the only good reason to believe in God or
- 9:59Speaker 4: anything else, as if like the love will be there
- 10:01Speaker 4: when you need it.
- 10:02Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you feel about the love, like pouring
- 10:06Speaker 1: into the love before you need it?
- 10:10Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 10:10Speaker 4: Well, because if you leave me to my own devices,
- 10:14Speaker 4: I am like an achievement monster who just wants to
- 10:16Speaker 4: climb a ladder until it goes so high that I
- 10:20Speaker 4: can congratulate myself on my many good stemps. But like
- 10:23Speaker 4: the truth is, my life hasn't been super lucky. I
- 10:26Speaker 4: just kind of keep falling all the way down. When
- 10:28Speaker 4: I was thirty five, I got a stage four cancer
- 10:30Speaker 4: diagnosis and that kind of broke most of my view
- 10:33Speaker 4: of life being a ladder. So now I just know
- 10:37Speaker 4: like it's certain parts of my life I'm always going
- 10:39Speaker 4: to have to be carried. And it's really transformed what
- 10:42Speaker 4: I think friendships are for, and communities for, and church
- 10:46Speaker 4: and anybody else is we do have to give back
- 10:50Speaker 4: all of the love that we know needs to carry
- 10:52Speaker 4: us because I'm going to need it about two seconds.
- 10:55Speaker 4: You feel that way, yeah, I feel unstructurally unsound. I'm
- 11:00Speaker 4: going to need somebody else to kind of step in
- 11:02Speaker 4: and shore it up.
- 11:03Speaker 1: Do you remember the date you were diagnosed.
- 11:06Speaker 4: Yeah, well it was early September, seven years ago. But
- 11:11Speaker 4: it was kind of all one day. It's like an avalanche,
- 11:14Speaker 4: like everything goes all at the same time. So I
- 11:16Speaker 4: was just kind of a normal person. I wore blazers,
- 11:20Speaker 4: I was in my office, I was certain, and then
- 11:25Speaker 4: I got a phone call that I thought was like
- 11:27Speaker 4: a wonky gall bladder was actually stage four cancer, and
- 11:30Speaker 4: that was it. I just kind of slid all.
- 11:33Speaker 1: The way down.
- 11:34Speaker 4: And sometimes in when I read descriptions of trauma and
- 11:39Speaker 4: they talk about how there's no landmarks anymore, you kind
- 11:43Speaker 4: of look around and you can't figure out where you
- 11:45Speaker 4: were before. But I also think that's just so true
- 11:48Speaker 4: about when you're kind of so completely transformed by an experience,
- 11:53Speaker 4: is there was a person you were before you just
- 11:56Speaker 4: can barely you can barely remember it.
- 11:59Speaker 1: I actually sort of fascinated by grief, so I interview
- 12:02Speaker 1: a lot of people who have dealt with different kinds
- 12:04Speaker 1: of grief. Yeah, and a lot of times when they're
- 12:07Speaker 1: retelling their story, they're they're kind of like saying it
- 12:12Speaker 1: with a lot of like gusto and facts once they've
- 12:15Speaker 1: gotten sort of over the initial hump. But when you
- 12:20Speaker 1: were just telling me, I could really feel you your
- 12:24Speaker 1: eyes were like a little bit watery. And do you, like,
- 12:29Speaker 1: are you still in that you can still it seems
- 12:31Speaker 1: like you can feel it so directly.
- 12:32Speaker 4: Still, Yeah, that's true, and it is You're totally right
- 12:36Speaker 4: too about these like especially about tragedy. Is there's a
- 12:40Speaker 4: strange sort of like fact clarity that you can hear
- 12:43Speaker 4: people go like it was Tuesday, I was here, Like
- 12:46Speaker 4: there's a police report, you know, yeah, and underneath, of
- 12:50Speaker 4: course there's like awes emotion. But I guess that's maybe
- 12:54Speaker 4: because it totally changed my way that I know how
- 13:01Speaker 4: to interact with the world. And before I thought things
- 13:04Speaker 4: were durable and there was certainty, and I just had
- 13:07Speaker 4: to I had to like understand the world and try
- 13:10Speaker 4: to kind of navigate it like an obstacle course. And
- 13:15Speaker 4: now I just mostly when I look around and I
- 13:17Speaker 4: see fragility, I see people who are not going to
- 13:20Speaker 4: put their lives back together, or if they are it'll
- 13:22Speaker 4: just be forbids. And that's me too, And so I
- 13:25Speaker 4: think every time I think about that, I guess that's
- 13:27Speaker 4: kind of what it brings me back to.
- 13:29Speaker 1: I read that I didn't know this. I read that
- 13:31Speaker 1: doctors gave you two years to live.
- 13:34Speaker 4: Yeah, at first it was like it was the fall,
- 13:37Speaker 4: and then I was supposed to die by June, but they.
- 13:40Speaker 5: Don't really tell you that.
- 13:42Speaker 4: You kind of like, I went through a surgery to
- 13:45Speaker 4: try to take out a lot of the cancer and
- 13:46Speaker 4: then but it had just really spread everywhere. So there
- 13:50Speaker 4: was a drug that was still in a clinical trial
- 13:53Speaker 4: phase that they thought might work, but I didn't have
- 13:56Speaker 4: access to it. And I also couldn't afford any of
- 13:58Speaker 4: the things it takes to get into, like to travel
- 14:00Speaker 4: and to do all that.
- 14:01Speaker 5: So it's kind of a they right away.
- 14:04Speaker 4: They kind of were like, well, people like you can
- 14:09Speaker 4: last somewhere of you know, they have like a fifteen
- 14:12Speaker 4: to eighteen kind of percent survival raid. I remember when
- 14:16Speaker 4: I walked out of the hospital, I remember feeling like
- 14:18Speaker 4: the crispness in the air, and I thought, oh, this
- 14:21Speaker 4: is like this is my last fall. And then like
- 14:25Speaker 4: I was thinking about, I was just about to celebrate
- 14:27Speaker 4: my son's like second birthday, and then I thought, like,
- 14:30Speaker 4: then this then this is his last birthday, and like
- 14:33Speaker 4: you try to figure out, you try to all of
- 14:34Speaker 4: a sudden do all the math first and lasts and
- 14:37Speaker 4: how it adds up, and you realize, like all at once,
- 14:41Speaker 4: like you can't possibly do the math to make it
- 14:44Speaker 4: add up to a full life. You're not if I'm
- 14:46Speaker 4: not going to get there, like it's that I would
- 14:48Speaker 4: have to learn to give up more quickly.
- 14:52Speaker 1: You're making me a bush. Now.
- 14:57Speaker 6: It's just hard because I love I love trying to
- 15:00Speaker 6: stack things up.
- 15:01Speaker 4: You know, and then when it goes, it goes.
- 15:05Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you before we jump into toxic positivity,
- 15:10Speaker 1: because I think you have such an interesting lens on this,
- 15:13Speaker 1: how do you feel now? Seven years out?
- 15:16Speaker 4: I guess it was such a long time of being
- 15:18Speaker 4: in the like am I okay?
- 15:20Speaker 5: Stage?
- 15:20Speaker 4: It was about two years of like red alert, and
- 15:24Speaker 4: then it was another couple of years of a lot
- 15:27Speaker 4: of watch and see, and then I started doing like
- 15:30Speaker 4: kind of really pretty well. And and that's and that's
- 15:35Speaker 4: kind of been strange to sort of like try to
- 15:39Speaker 4: adjust the dial on fear as things have been really
- 15:42Speaker 4: gradual and not at all obvious, partly because my drug
- 15:45Speaker 4: has it's not it's just never had a sample size
- 15:49Speaker 4: of human beings it's been into, so no one had
- 15:51Speaker 4: anything to.
- 15:52Speaker 5: Compare me with.
- 15:53Speaker 4: So I feel pretty. I mean, I great in so
- 15:59Speaker 4: many ways, but I just get I get a lot
- 16:02Speaker 4: of scans, and I get a lot of like nervous doctors,
- 16:05Speaker 4: and but I think I just feel so much gratitude
- 16:08Speaker 4: to be able to let my guard down because I
- 16:10Speaker 4: really had so much hypervigilance for so long.
- 16:14Speaker 1: I still feel that in you.
- 16:16Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I'm like, you know, always cagy
- 16:19Speaker 4: right is like and never say like, I'm great, our
- 16:22Speaker 4: remission is amazing. I'm like, hey, well I've got a
- 16:24Speaker 4: scan in a month. Like that's how I answer. And
- 16:26Speaker 4: I think that's that gets back to that, like that
- 16:30Speaker 4: feeling of fragility that I don't I don't know when
- 16:33Speaker 4: that goes away.
- 16:35Speaker 1: I've read a lot of your work, but there's this
- 16:37Speaker 1: Daily Mail article I actually really love, and you wrote
- 16:41Speaker 1: it is the dominant commercial messaging for every glittering Instagram
- 16:45Speaker 1: influencer in the multi billion dollar health and wellness industry.
- 16:49Speaker 1: We can heal our lives by mastering our minds. Just
- 16:51Speaker 1: believe that the universe has your back, but what if
- 16:54Speaker 1: the universe stabs you in the back. One day, I
- 16:57Speaker 1: had my dream job as a professor at a top university,
- 17:01Speaker 1: hilarious toddler and a loving husband, and the next doctors
- 17:04Speaker 1: were slicing me open in a search for invading tumors
- 17:06Speaker 1: and suggesting that my life expectancy could now be measured
- 17:09Speaker 1: in months rather than decades. There's this other line that
- 17:13Speaker 1: you say, Kate is very sick and no amount of
- 17:15Speaker 1: positive thinking will shrink her tumors.
- 17:22Speaker 4: It was probably one of the most surreal experiences to
- 17:27Speaker 4: be an expert in the idea that positive ideas create
- 17:31Speaker 4: positive realities and then be the person you know, like
- 17:35Speaker 4: there's always the one person who's kind of too young
- 17:37Speaker 4: for the problems that they have, and it was me
- 17:39Speaker 4: like the person at parties where they're like have you
- 17:40Speaker 4: heard about? And like have you heard about? And it
- 17:44Speaker 4: was like the expert of the idea that good things
- 17:46Speaker 4: happen to good people has not been just like devastated
- 17:50Speaker 4: by tragic illness. And that was It was especially weird
- 17:54Speaker 4: because I started writing really fast because I thought I
- 17:58Speaker 4: had so little time and then I was like, extremely honest.
- 18:00Speaker 1: About being Hamilton.
- 18:04Speaker 5: Hy Alexander Hambleton did hard. That's perfect, Yes, that's exactly right.
- 18:11Speaker 4: Also, cancer is simultaneously incredibly boring because you sit in
- 18:15Speaker 4: the hospital all the time just looking around be like,
- 18:17Speaker 4: oh this please smells weird.
- 18:18Speaker 5: I don't want to do this.
- 18:20Speaker 4: So I wrote and wrote and but the first thing
- 18:22Speaker 4: I wrote that became public was this op ed for
- 18:25Speaker 4: the New York Times that was like, Hey, it's really
- 18:27Speaker 4: hard to die in a culture that believes that everything
- 18:30Speaker 4: happens for a reason, and people keep explaining me and
- 18:32Speaker 4: apparently everybody knows why I'm dying except me. And then
- 18:36Speaker 4: in response to that, my email was like really readily
- 18:40Speaker 4: available online at the time, I have like all of
- 18:44Speaker 4: my information. So I got straight up like thousands of
- 18:48Speaker 4: letters and emails that came to me that were like, hey.
- 18:52Speaker 5: Thanks so much for saying let's have a fewer reasons.
- 18:55Speaker 5: So I have a couple of reasons. I just want
- 18:56Speaker 5: to run by you.
- 18:57Speaker 4: And so I really start started like, I mean, it's
- 19:01Speaker 4: the one thing to study it academically. It was very
- 19:04Speaker 4: different to have your name at the top of the letter,
- 19:06Speaker 4: where it's like Kate com surely God is just to
- 19:09Speaker 4: let you die.
- 19:10Speaker 5: You're like, thanks, Gary.
- 19:13Speaker 4: So that really kind of gave me a very different
- 19:16Speaker 4: perspective on what we all hear all the time if
- 19:20Speaker 4: you've kind of gone through something is the types of
- 19:24Speaker 4: explanations became not just like one off, so they became
- 19:27Speaker 4: sort of like categories of like, Oh, you're the one
- 19:30Speaker 4: that's going to start every sentence with at least at
- 19:34Speaker 4: least you're at a great blah blah blah hospital, And
- 19:36Speaker 4: I wanted to be like, at least does not stage.
- 19:37Speaker 5: Five cancer, Like where are we going with this?
- 19:40Speaker 4: Yeah? So it was helpful in a terrible way that
- 19:45Speaker 4: I could start to see that most of the things
- 19:47Speaker 4: people say to suffering people was because of these stories
- 19:51Speaker 4: about positivity that kind of filtered down and made people
- 19:55Speaker 4: unable to offer empathy because they were so busy trying
- 19:59Speaker 4: to force the solution, and the solution is you and
- 20:01Speaker 4: a better mindset.
- 20:02Speaker 1: Well, you said that the only thing worse than failing
- 20:06Speaker 1: to throw someone a life preservers handing them a reason.
- 20:12Speaker 1: What are the things that you should absolutely not say
- 20:14Speaker 1: to someone going through a life altering experience?
- 20:18Speaker 4: I think we do this weird thing where, and it's
- 20:22Speaker 4: related to the best thing we do, which is that
- 20:24Speaker 4: we always want to relate to other people. Oh, I
- 20:26Speaker 4: also like blue sweaters.
- 20:28Speaker 5: But then it.
- 20:28Speaker 4: Really becomes quickly. Oh my aunt also had specifically the
- 20:32Speaker 4: thing you had, and like the ants of the world
- 20:34Speaker 4: are doing very badly and.
- 20:36Speaker 5: So no one nobody's story. It was like that turned
- 20:40Speaker 5: out great.
- 20:42Speaker 6: So there's a lot of.
- 20:43Speaker 4: Like desperate attempts to relate which have catastrophicg innings. A
- 20:47Speaker 4: lot of solutions people who really want you to try
- 20:50Speaker 4: a very little research. But recently Tik talked health trend.
- 20:55Speaker 4: Oh no, I remember one lady straight up and I mean,
- 20:58Speaker 4: these are wonderful smart people. Lady with a PhD straight
- 21:01Speaker 4: up handed me a blender and a juicing recip pay book.
- 21:04Speaker 4: She was like, I heard you have go and cancer.
- 21:06Speaker 4: Go and cancer means that you are nutritionally blah blah blah,
- 21:09Speaker 4: this is your fault. Boop.
- 21:11Speaker 5: It's like, so.
- 21:12Speaker 4: Solutions people are so well meaning and wearying, but the
- 21:17Speaker 4: problem is usually that you kind of probably you're just
- 21:20Speaker 4: gonna listen to your doctor and thanks so much, or
- 21:23Speaker 4: drybrushing probably won't do it for me.
- 21:25Speaker 5: This time.
- 21:26Speaker 4: I remember a lady who handed me prevention, she handed
- 21:28Speaker 4: me prevention magazine, and I remember it being like, oh, sweetie,
- 21:31Speaker 4: we're a little late for prevention magazine.
- 21:33Speaker 1: We're a little too far down the road for that.
- 21:36Speaker 5: So there's solutions people.
- 21:38Speaker 4: There's like minimizers who really want you to know that
- 21:40Speaker 4: somebody else actually probably has a worse And then sometimes
- 21:43Speaker 4: there are people who just like you can just feel
- 21:47Speaker 4: that they really want you to give them the out
- 21:50Speaker 4: because listening to the story.
- 21:51Speaker 5: Will be too painful and so, and you can.
- 21:55Speaker 4: Hear when you're trying, you're that person because when I
- 22:00Speaker 4: I can tell that nobody wants to hear that thought,
- 22:01Speaker 4: I can hear my voice get like super high and weird,
- 22:04Speaker 4: like a plane taking off where I'm like and anyway,
- 22:07Speaker 4: it was fine, and I'll just put up because you
- 22:09Speaker 4: just like don't know how to land it. So in
- 22:12Speaker 4: those moments, you mostly feel like people accidentally like, despite
- 22:16Speaker 4: all our best efforts, have like a bizarrely low threshold
- 22:20Speaker 4: for sitting an uncertainty.
- 22:22Speaker 1: I think so many of us have this deeply held
- 22:25Speaker 1: spiritual belief that karmak rewards are real. Yes, but we
- 22:29Speaker 1: see it all the time. I've seen it in with
- 22:33Speaker 1: my loved ones, that terrible things happen to good people.
- 22:36Speaker 1: You had to absorb that idea in a way that
- 22:41Speaker 1: most people don't end very quickly. So, as a deeply
- 22:45Speaker 1: religious person and a spiritual person, how did you make
- 22:49Speaker 1: sense of that?
- 22:51Speaker 5: Right?
- 22:51Speaker 4: Well, because we want so much to do the thing
- 22:54Speaker 4: which we're all trying to do, which is we want
- 22:56Speaker 4: to make meaning of our life, like we want to
- 22:58Speaker 4: see the golden thread that goes through everything, right, And unfortunately,
- 23:01Speaker 4: the easier way is to maybe do one of two things.
- 23:05Speaker 4: One is to say everything is always adding up to
- 23:07Speaker 4: something else. So then we're back to math. There's no setbacks,
- 23:11Speaker 4: just set ups. And in that version you kind of
- 23:14Speaker 4: imagine a universe in which it's either ladders are sort
- 23:18Speaker 4: of just the feeling that and this gets to like
- 23:22Speaker 4: a very emotional hope is that like that nothing is
- 23:25Speaker 4: lost and like, of course we feel our own efforts
- 23:29Speaker 4: hemorrhage all the time, we lose somebody, we love, the
- 23:32Speaker 4: wrong person, somebody doesn't, you know, just a million kinds
- 23:36Speaker 4: of losses, but in our minds we're like, gosh, I
- 23:39Speaker 4: just need to feel like it added up. And the
- 23:42Speaker 4: other tendency then is to really try hard. Then if
- 23:47Speaker 4: it's not adding up, well, at least it's a lesson.
- 23:50Speaker 4: And then and end of the celebrity interview, it made
- 23:53Speaker 4: me who I am today. I'm like, and that's why
- 23:57Speaker 4: that doping scandal was.
- 24:00Speaker 1: What's sort of interesting about your story too, is that
- 24:04Speaker 1: you lived, and so a lot of the people giving
- 24:07Speaker 1: you that everything happens for a reason, I'm sure came
- 24:11Speaker 1: back and emailed again saying, look, you're a New York
- 24:14Speaker 1: Times bestselling author, and you're like, I did you mute
- 24:17Speaker 1: yourself because you're giggling but I don't hear noise.
- 24:20Speaker 6: I'm sorry, it's like it seems so hysterical.
- 24:23Speaker 5: It's exactly right.
- 24:25Speaker 4: I felt like very trapped in that because I remember,
- 24:28Speaker 4: like if I remember thinking, gosh, if I die, people
- 24:32Speaker 4: really want me to die in a really inspirational way,
- 24:35Speaker 4: like very politely, and I was grateful for the life
- 24:37Speaker 4: I had and thank you so much, and Heaven's going
- 24:39Speaker 4: to be amazing. I mean, there's all kinds of ways
- 24:41Speaker 4: to die heroically, or if you die kicking and screeping,
- 24:45Speaker 4: I think like I was.
- 24:46Speaker 5: Robbed, which is absolutely how I felt.
- 24:48Speaker 4: People are like, wow, she didn't quite learn the lesson,
- 24:51Speaker 4: but you can never get out of the lessons model.
- 24:54Speaker 4: And then, of course, if you do really well and
- 24:58Speaker 4: you find that healing has come to your doorstep, then congratulations,
- 25:02Speaker 4: you now learned the lesson, and now you're spreading that
- 25:04Speaker 4: lesson to other people, Like I can't get out of
- 25:07Speaker 4: the paradigm no matter what I do.
- 25:10Speaker 1: So I think that there is no one I like
- 25:13Speaker 1: to hear about toxic positivity from more than you because
- 25:16Speaker 1: of your unique experience. So you're a professor of religion
- 25:21Speaker 1: at Duke Divinity, you're diagnosed with stage four cancer, you
- 25:26Speaker 1: go through this whole experience and you live. Yeah, what
- 25:31Speaker 1: is toxic positivity? Can you define for me?
- 25:34Speaker 2: Yes?
- 25:35Speaker 4: And forgive my It was the late nineteenth century, but
- 25:37Speaker 4: it was the late nineteenth century and ideas about the
- 25:40Speaker 4: power of the mind became incredibly popular in American culture.
- 25:44Speaker 4: People started experimenting with the idea that what if there
- 25:47Speaker 4: was kind of a lever that you could pull that
- 25:50Speaker 4: would force either God or the universe or causality kind
- 25:55Speaker 4: of bend toward you. And so they theorized that actually,
- 26:00Speaker 4: if you could just use your mind and harness your
- 26:02Speaker 4: thoughts and then use your words, that all words acted
- 26:06Speaker 4: then kind of like a boomerang that whatever is good
- 26:08Speaker 4: goes out and we'll come back to you, or conversely,
- 26:11Speaker 4: whatever is bad, we'll come right back to you.
- 26:15Speaker 1: Okay before we I've kind of figure out like how
- 26:18Speaker 1: to phrase this, But I think that I might be
- 26:20Speaker 1: toxically positive.
- 26:22Speaker 4: Oh love you, But there's so many kinds of positivity,
- 26:25Speaker 4: so I want to argue that you're not because I
- 26:27Speaker 4: know you.
- 26:28Speaker 1: Okay, here's I think there's okay, Like there is. I
- 26:33Speaker 1: pulled up the statistic because the opposing idea to this
- 26:38Speaker 1: is that there is a certain amount of mental toughness
- 26:41Speaker 1: required when people are going through a hard time with anything.
- 26:45Speaker 1: They say, people that are optimistic live to be eighty
- 26:48Speaker 1: five or older. Like, there's all these studies.
- 26:51Speaker 4: And they're just it's weird. There's a person with a
- 26:53Speaker 4: clipboard right at that moment hearing their final words.
- 26:55Speaker 2: Are you okay? How do you feel about this?
- 26:57Speaker 4: He's so grateful? Yes, I'm sure these are amazing studies.
- 27:01Speaker 4: This is part of the struggle with these like positivity barometers.
- 27:06Speaker 4: I keep hearing, especially as part of the happiness industry.
- 27:10Speaker 1: Is there is an industry.
- 27:12Speaker 4: It is a straight up world because it. It dovetails
- 27:16Speaker 4: very nicely into the American genre of self help, and
- 27:19Speaker 4: self help has got a lot of great tools. But
- 27:22Speaker 4: the problem is as a worldview, it tells you that
- 27:25Speaker 4: every single thing in your life is solvable with usually
- 27:29Speaker 4: like five steps or but it's a brand of inspirational
- 27:33Speaker 4: literature that imagines that if you just kind of raise
- 27:36Speaker 4: your own estimation of what you can do, that all
- 27:38Speaker 4: the solutions are already inside of you. And we, of course,
- 27:41Speaker 4: because we know that structural racism, inequality, poverty, injustice, we
- 27:46Speaker 4: know all those things exist. Then we know of course
- 27:48Speaker 4: that individualism is yeah, a sham. But we get stuck then,
- 27:53Speaker 4: But when we feel despair, what we really want is
- 27:56Speaker 4: to figure out like what is in our control? And
- 27:58Speaker 4: then I think the problem is is people say, well,
- 28:01Speaker 4: what is in control is our how we respond or
- 28:06Speaker 4: there is some wisdom in trying to find flexibility and
- 28:10Speaker 4: equanimity in our emotion. But just like want to repeat
- 28:13Speaker 4: how absolutely Bananda it is in like the history of
- 28:16Speaker 4: emotion that we are in this high water mark of
- 28:19Speaker 4: like every emotion should be crowded on the positive side
- 28:22Speaker 4: of the spectrum. It is genuinely nuts, like an emotionally
- 28:26Speaker 4: healthy person. And this is the very wonderful reasonable argument
- 28:30Speaker 4: for Lisa D. Moore the psychologist, that like mental health
- 28:33Speaker 4: is not having positive emotion, it's having the appropriate emotion
- 28:36Speaker 4: at the right time.
- 28:37Speaker 5: So it's like when you love that, when is this sad.
- 28:41Speaker 1: Experience having a positive emotion? It's about having the appropriate
- 28:44Speaker 1: emotion at the right time.
- 28:46Speaker 4: I like, if it is sad, have the acknowledgment and
- 28:51Speaker 4: the honesty to be sad if it is delightful. But
- 28:54Speaker 4: it's about emotional dynamism. And so when we learn not
- 28:58Speaker 4: to just stay on the kind of top end the
- 29:00Speaker 4: roller coaster, but we learned to ride the roller coaster,
- 29:03Speaker 4: that's when we're talking about what resilience means and mental toughness.
- 29:06Speaker 5: It's not this obsessive.
- 29:08Speaker 4: Like either a man who's recently discovered stoicism or a
- 29:13Speaker 4: woman who got handed one of the bajillion like wellness
- 29:17Speaker 4: brochures in her essential oils class. But like all of
- 29:21Speaker 4: these versions are trying to pretend that the bottom register
- 29:24Speaker 4: of our emotions is what's actually is not pathologized, and
- 29:29Speaker 4: that is its own kind of madness.
- 29:31Speaker 1: So your new book is called have a Beautiful Terrible day.
- 29:35Speaker 1: And I've also heard you say that your life motto
- 29:37Speaker 1: is life is beautiful. Life is so hard. Most people,
- 29:40Speaker 1: like you mentioned the ones we see online, are really
- 29:43Speaker 1: uncomfortable holding contradictions. Yeah, you live in the contradiction. What
- 29:52Speaker 1: is your outlook in terms of acknowledging both at the
- 29:55Speaker 1: same time, how have you gotten so comfortable.
- 29:57Speaker 5: With that if we refuse to say the hard stuff.
- 30:00Speaker 4: Yeah, we've usually bought in accidentally to that belief that
- 30:03Speaker 4: our words are creating reality. It is a kind of
- 30:06Speaker 4: magical thinking we get we all get stuck and like,
- 30:09Speaker 4: we need to just let that go.
- 30:10Speaker 5: That is it.
- 30:11Speaker 4: That is not our responsibility because it will it will
- 30:16Speaker 4: force us to lie to other people and to ourselves.
- 30:19Speaker 4: And I I just can't afford not to live in reality.
- 30:24Speaker 4: I have to live in reality because I gotta stay like,
- 30:26Speaker 4: I gotta stay frosty, you know, I've got to like
- 30:29Speaker 4: But I want to be as awake to the beautiful
- 30:32Speaker 4: part because when I was sick, I was so scared
- 30:34Speaker 4: of missing it, and so like, I don't want to
- 30:36Speaker 4: miss the like gorgeous and the dumb and the funny
- 30:40Speaker 4: and the like wasted night. I don't I don't want
- 30:43Speaker 4: to miss any of that because and I need all
- 30:45Speaker 4: of that like a battery recharging, because maybe the next
- 30:49Speaker 4: week the battery is going to go way down because
- 30:51Speaker 4: I want to I want to be the person that's
- 30:53Speaker 4: there for somebody else, or I'm going to manage my
- 30:55Speaker 4: own you know, perennial dramatic problem. So I guess, like,
- 31:01Speaker 4: because I can't stop the bad thing from happening, I
- 31:03Speaker 4: need to learn to how to switch gears faster instead
- 31:06Speaker 4: of just trying to crowd my way back to the
- 31:08Speaker 4: like super cheerful.
- 31:16Speaker 1: Can you guess the number one most common complaint after
- 31:19Speaker 1: any first date, first meeting, or interview, I wish they
- 31:23Speaker 1: had asked me more questions. I've studied the art of
- 31:27Speaker 1: conversation for a decade, and I know one thing for sure.
- 31:32Speaker 1: The most interesting thing is to be interested. But sometimes
- 31:37Speaker 1: it can be awkward to enter a conversation or you
- 31:40Speaker 1: just don't know what to ask. Here's the solution, two words,
- 31:45Speaker 1: question everything. This game is like a super power in
- 31:49Speaker 1: your pocket because questions are an accelerator.
- 31:53Speaker 2: There are way in I put together a.
- 31:56Speaker 1: Deck of cards of fifty two of my favorite questions,
- 32:00Speaker 1: ones that have sparked some of the most meaningful and
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- 32:11Speaker 1: more reflective. These fifty two questions will build any relationship, trust, intimacy, connection.
- 32:20Speaker 1: It all starts with curiosity. Get your deck today at
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- 32:30Speaker 2: In my bio.
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- 32:42Speaker 1: these cards for a friend's dinner, party, a birthday, or
- 32:45Speaker 1: a date, just know question.
- 32:48Speaker 2: Everything is not a game. It's a game changer.
- 32:54Speaker 1: I was never an excitable person, Like I always joke
- 32:58Speaker 1: my mom it's like her first time on Earth, and
- 33:00Speaker 1: I've been here one hundred and fifty times, so like
- 33:03Speaker 1: if she goes to Hawaii, it's like the best trip ever.
- 33:05Speaker 1: And if I go to Hawaii, it's like that was cool.
- 33:11Speaker 1: But I find that the more comfortable, and I I
- 33:15Speaker 1: think it's happened a lot through therapy, the more comfortable
- 33:18Speaker 1: I am with the bad, the more excited I've been
- 33:22Speaker 1: able to be about the good. It's a weird sort
- 33:25Speaker 1: of paradigm because sometimes.
- 33:27Speaker 4: We get in a more sort of reluctant headspace around
- 33:33Speaker 4: things being wonderful because we're trying to pre disappoint ourselves
- 33:37Speaker 4: or manage our expectations such that it creates a kind
- 33:39Speaker 4: of like a different sort of rigidity. And I have
- 33:43Speaker 4: a Mennonites. I'm a come from this religious tradition that is,
- 33:47Speaker 4: you know, furniture makers and castle enthusiasts of all kinds.
- 33:52Speaker 4: But they're like, they're already disappointed. You can't like there.
- 33:56Speaker 4: You don't try to disappoint them, they're already there.
- 33:59Speaker 5: But what they have then.
- 34:00Speaker 4: Is this reflexive I mean, it's it's it's realistic pessimism
- 34:05Speaker 4: is what it is.
- 34:06Speaker 5: And I can't live there.
- 34:08Speaker 4: Because I hate I hate the know it allness of pessimism.
- 34:13Speaker 4: I genuinely don't know what's going to happen, and I
- 34:16Speaker 4: hope it is lovely and and I can't but I
- 34:19Speaker 4: can't tell myself that I should brace myself now for
- 34:23Speaker 4: the inevitable bad thing, because in the meantime, like I
- 34:26Speaker 4: would really, really really like to visit like Minnesota's world's
- 34:31Speaker 4: largest ball of twine or something really dumb. Hey, right
- 34:35Speaker 4: near you is this huge thing of ramen noodles. I've
- 34:38Speaker 4: were a hazmat suit to see it, and I'd actually
- 34:40Speaker 4: really like it if we went.
- 34:43Speaker 1: I think you need a different friend to go to that.
- 34:46Speaker 6: Look, you look super cute and it has that suit.
- 34:48Speaker 6: They seal you right up.
- 34:50Speaker 1: I wore one of those when I flew during COVID
- 34:53Speaker 1: for the first time. I scared everybody at the airport.
- 34:56Speaker 1: I cannot wear.
- 34:57Speaker 5: Another one, like a space suit.
- 34:59Speaker 1: I did it was I have photos. It's horrible anyways, Okay,
- 35:02Speaker 1: phrases like good ViBe's only hashtag, blessed, losing my best life.
- 35:08Speaker 1: If you can put on your historian hat for a moment,
- 35:11Speaker 1: where did these and I kind of after reading your work,
- 35:14Speaker 1: consider these mythologies. Where did these mythologies come from?
- 35:18Speaker 4: That's a perfect word. I think that's exactly right. I mean,
- 35:22Speaker 4: best life now is a phrase that was coined by
- 35:26Speaker 4: televangelist jol Ostein in two thousand and four. It was
- 35:29Speaker 4: the name of his biography with his big toothy smile
- 35:31Speaker 4: on the front, and almost overnight, everybody from Oprah to
- 35:36Speaker 4: Hallmark Stars to you know, your annoying neighbor started using
- 35:40Speaker 4: it to describe like the feeling of a rival that
- 35:44Speaker 4: you weren't just living and it wasn't okay as life now,
- 35:47Speaker 4: which is what I want to put on like every
- 35:48Speaker 4: single T shirt.
- 35:49Speaker 5: It was best life now.
- 35:51Speaker 4: And it had a way of describing the feeling that
- 35:57Speaker 4: your life is a kind of show and tell. And
- 36:00Speaker 4: I mean, if you just think about two thousand and four,
- 36:02Speaker 4: that's really the beginning of a lot of forms of
- 36:04Speaker 4: social media that made that so normal. So even just
- 36:08Speaker 4: like the word blessed went from being I mean, honestly
- 36:13Speaker 4: very rich multi thousand year tradition, but especially in the
- 36:19Speaker 4: Judeo Christian tradition of an act of spiritual noticing in
- 36:24Speaker 4: which you would bless your people, or you would you know,
- 36:27Speaker 4: you can bless your house, or you would figure out
- 36:29Speaker 4: how to bless the day, which was a way of
- 36:31Speaker 4: just saying good and bad God, you are here, into
- 36:35Speaker 4: a kind of hashtag blest, which was like married my
- 36:38Speaker 4: high school swedearn Ho's tanglest barely there Bhinisia, I was
- 36:42Speaker 4: tang blest, and which became a way of saying, look
- 36:46Speaker 4: at me, and even if it was I'm so lucky.
- 36:49Speaker 4: It was like, look at me, I put myself in
- 36:51Speaker 4: the right place at the right time. Here I am
- 36:53Speaker 4: hashtag glust.
- 36:55Speaker 1: Are those messages in validating gaslighting? I couldn't really pinpoint
- 37:02Speaker 1: the right word.
- 37:03Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I guess I guess the problem is is
- 37:07Speaker 4: there the wrong kind of gratitude? Like we should all
- 37:11Speaker 4: feel like we can soften our little hearts and get
- 37:15Speaker 4: ourselves into a place of noticing where we say, like
- 37:19Speaker 4: where is all the light filtering into this beautiful room?
- 37:22Speaker 1: You know?
- 37:22Speaker 4: And that kind of noticing does really help us, especially
- 37:27Speaker 4: when things are hard. It is not the gratitude police
- 37:30Speaker 4: that's like make a list.
- 37:32Speaker 5: It's like I can't, But.
- 37:34Speaker 4: I still made lists on my worst days because I
- 37:37Speaker 4: needed to practice noticing that. Actually I had an unbelievably
- 37:41Speaker 4: funny nurse who let me pretend that he was a
- 37:45Speaker 4: vampire and that when I left that he would use
- 37:48Speaker 4: my blood for.
- 37:48Speaker 5: His own purposes, and like that made my day.
- 37:51Speaker 4: Like the creepiness with which he would like stroke me
- 37:54Speaker 4: inside of my elbow.
- 37:55Speaker 5: Is like, sir, I'm so uncomfortable. I'm so into this
- 37:58Speaker 5: thinking for making my dad.
- 38:00Speaker 4: But if I don't pay attention, I will miss a
- 38:03Speaker 4: cancer kick kink. It really is, it is, it is,
- 38:09Speaker 4: And I really I guess like I was going to
- 38:12Speaker 4: have more bad days than good, so I had to learn.
- 38:15Speaker 5: I learned something.
- 38:16Speaker 4: But the wrong kind of gratitude has a way of saying,
- 38:20Speaker 4: look at me, look at all that I've accomplished, and
- 38:24Speaker 4: it has an accidental comparativeness that is really that's really
- 38:28Speaker 4: hard for people.
- 38:30Speaker 1: I was watching a David Letterman Obama interview a few
- 38:33Speaker 1: years ago and they were talking about luck, and Obama
- 38:39Speaker 1: has this really deep belief that a lot of luck
- 38:42Speaker 1: played a role in his life. And I know a
- 38:45Speaker 1: lot of successful people that don't believe in the idea
- 38:47Speaker 1: of luck either.
- 38:50Speaker 5: Yeah, they would.
- 38:54Speaker 1: Well to me, the idea of hashtag blessed is like
- 38:57Speaker 1: a sort of symptom of that, like I made the
- 39:01Speaker 1: right decisions and now I'm here. Yeah, I get to
- 39:05Speaker 1: go to Hawaii, I get to be married to my
- 39:09Speaker 1: high school sweetheart, whatever that is. Is there any of
- 39:12Speaker 1: that wrapped in there?
- 39:13Speaker 4: Yeah, Because what we're really like framing around, especially with luck,
- 39:18Speaker 4: is the role of agency, like the role of being
- 39:20Speaker 4: able to try, okay, and how much people can try
- 39:24Speaker 4: and then it changes their life is the source of
- 39:27Speaker 4: like endless philosophical debate how much control do we have
- 39:31Speaker 4: over our lives? And when you try to eliminate the
- 39:35Speaker 4: idea of luck, what you're trying to eliminate is the
- 39:38Speaker 4: idea of randomness and get back to a total framework
- 39:41Speaker 4: of control. What they're saying is I actually had most
- 39:43Speaker 4: I mostly had control over my life and it worked out.
- 39:46Speaker 4: Or because then they'll say the harder you try, the
- 39:48Speaker 4: luckier you'll get. Right, they're trying to put it into
- 39:51Speaker 4: a paradigm of like, yes, I got knocked down, I
- 39:54Speaker 4: got back up. I got knocked down, I got back up.
- 39:56Speaker 4: The problem with those frameworks for luck is we really
- 40:02Speaker 4: all inside of the limitations of our context, what we're
- 40:06Speaker 4: born into what Simon before calls our facticity, like just
- 40:10Speaker 4: the luckiness or unluckiness of the zip code we were
- 40:13Speaker 4: born into and all the facts. Inside of that framework,
- 40:17Speaker 4: there is a small window of opportunity, but how big
- 40:22Speaker 4: or narrow that window is is so variable based on
- 40:28Speaker 4: one thousand factors, And so for people to say, well
- 40:32Speaker 4: I solved the problem of randomness is it's cheap. But
- 40:37Speaker 4: the deep, I think totally necessary, difficult way that we're
- 40:43Speaker 4: trying to live lives, awake, alive. But then whise is
- 40:48Speaker 4: to figure out exactly what is in my control. And
- 40:50Speaker 4: that's why alcoholics anonymous have like found that beautiful, priceless
- 40:55Speaker 4: like peace in the serenity prayer where they're like, God,
- 40:59Speaker 4: give me the wisdom to know the difference between the
- 41:02Speaker 4: things I can change, you know, and the things I can't.
- 41:05Speaker 4: But if we pretend that life is just a system
- 41:10Speaker 4: we set up and now we're living at, we've lost
- 41:13Speaker 4: most of the drama, the tragedy, the action, and then
- 41:16Speaker 4: the just shocking beauty of it all.
- 41:21Speaker 1: You've coined the term the gospel of hustle, and I
- 41:25Speaker 1: think it ties into a lot of what you just
- 41:26Speaker 1: said in terms of like I got I worked hard,
- 41:30Speaker 1: I got knocked down, I got back up. Yeah, how
- 41:33Speaker 1: does the the hustle porn of it all? They know
- 41:38Speaker 1: toxic positivity because and.
- 41:40Speaker 4: I love watching people try, like I I'm the person
- 41:45Speaker 4: that gets misty.
- 41:45Speaker 5: I had watching a woman do a pull up at
- 41:47Speaker 5: the gym. I'm like, it's really hard.
- 41:50Speaker 1: If you're over seventy and you're doing a pull up,
- 41:52Speaker 1: I'm crying. I have my all my Instagram videos are
- 41:57Speaker 1: older women being physically strong.
- 42:01Speaker 4: It's like watching someone try. What it feels like is
- 42:06Speaker 4: you're watching a miracle. You're watching it's like a baby
- 42:10Speaker 4: being born. You can't even believe it because they didn't
- 42:12Speaker 4: have to, or maybe they almost didn't, and you're watching
- 42:15Speaker 4: sort of like if you're you know, driving stick and
- 42:18Speaker 4: you see a gear catch and then you're in a
- 42:21Speaker 4: new place, and like it creates awe and it should
- 42:24Speaker 4: because when any of us find it in ourselves to
- 42:28Speaker 4: try to get back up again, it is a miracle
- 42:31Speaker 4: and like clap, clap, clap.
- 42:33Speaker 5: It is is beautiful and I.
- 42:35Speaker 4: Love and I love the feeling of it. I mean,
- 42:38Speaker 4: the second I was better enough to try, I just
- 42:40Speaker 4: could feel the like Catharsis of what it teaches us
- 42:45Speaker 4: about ourselves, like well we're even good at like where
- 42:48Speaker 4: our gifts meet the world. There's the joy of being
- 42:51Speaker 4: tired because you wanted to do something. Looh, it's it's
- 42:56Speaker 4: my favorite thing. But when we pretend that it will
- 43:00Speaker 4: be based on endless you know, like endless effort, endless,
- 43:05Speaker 4: we've accidentally gotten ourselves caught up in a form of
- 43:10Speaker 4: capitalism that pretends that like with just what the right
- 43:13Speaker 4: kind of attitude that every single person can try, and
- 43:17Speaker 4: they can't always. Sometimes we just need to like lean
- 43:21Speaker 4: in the arms of those we love and that's it.
- 43:25Speaker 1: I did a paper in college on the myth of
- 43:27Speaker 1: the American Dream. Yeah, and they say nowadays that only
- 43:31Speaker 1: eight percent of kids raised in the bottom twenty percent
- 43:36Speaker 1: moved to the top twenty percent as adults. So like,
- 43:40Speaker 1: we have very small class and financial mobility in America,
- 43:44Speaker 1: even though it is greater than other countries. So I
- 43:49Speaker 1: do think the idea of possibility is a little bit
- 43:54Speaker 1: outsized here. It's also kind of what makes America and
- 44:00Speaker 1: the idea of America incredible, and it's like what makes
- 44:04Speaker 1: people want to try in some ways. Why have you
- 44:08Speaker 1: found that Western culture is so specifically obsessed with positivity
- 44:13Speaker 1: and talk positivity?
- 44:15Speaker 4: Well, and I think that's a perfect that's a perfect
- 44:19Speaker 4: window into the beauty and the tragedy of the American
- 44:25Speaker 4: dream is I mean, being Canadian, it is very difficult
- 44:30Speaker 4: to fall all the way down because, unlike in the
- 44:34Speaker 4: United States, we don't have medical bankruptcy, which is the
- 44:37Speaker 4: number one cause of bankruptcy in America. So it's not
- 44:40Speaker 4: a story about people failing because of their own whatever
- 44:43Speaker 4: it's a feeling. It's a story about people having everything
- 44:47Speaker 4: cut out from under them after the worst day of
- 44:49Speaker 4: their life. So there are parts about the American system
- 44:53Speaker 4: that are so anathetical to the idea, but people can
- 44:56Speaker 4: keep trying because the stakes are so high and low. This, however,
- 45:00Speaker 4: got so much more social fluidity in terms of the
- 45:03Speaker 4: ability to like, you subsidized. I'm just gonna say you.
- 45:08Speaker 4: You subsidize debt, which other countries don't, which means you
- 45:11Speaker 4: can take on greater loans, accept greater risk, and so
- 45:14Speaker 4: no wonder there are these mythologies of risk that say,
- 45:19Speaker 4: don't worry, you'll never fall all the way down. As
- 45:21Speaker 4: long as it's up to you, you'll be okay. And
- 45:24Speaker 4: what's funny about risk is if we are I remember,
- 45:28Speaker 4: so I used to study a lot of this with
- 45:30Speaker 4: the story about the Prosperity Gospel that I was writing.
- 45:33Speaker 4: Is what makes people more tolerant of taking a chance?
- 45:38Speaker 4: And what they found was if you tell a story
- 45:41Speaker 4: of what we would say like a higher anthropology, a
- 45:44Speaker 4: higher estimation of what people can do, people find that
- 45:48Speaker 4: they have a greater willingness to and I say this
- 45:53Speaker 4: a nice way gamble with their lives, and so I
- 45:56Speaker 4: think the problem is is that they're then told that
- 45:59Speaker 4: they're not gambled. And I think that's where that's where
- 46:02Speaker 4: we are. We're in a strange optimism delusion cycle that
- 46:07Speaker 4: benefits some people and is radically punitive to others.
- 46:12Speaker 1: Why is it big business now?
- 46:15Speaker 5: Why?
- 46:15Speaker 6: Oh, good vibe good vibes?
- 46:18Speaker 4: Well, it's probably the bedrock belief of the twelve billion
- 46:22Speaker 4: dollar wellness industry, which wants us to want to be good, better, best.
- 46:27Speaker 4: It wants to demonize mediocrity and by that I mean
- 46:31Speaker 4: looking like a normal human woman at any time. It
- 46:34Speaker 4: wants us to also believe that it's entirely within our control,
- 46:39Speaker 4: which also means entirely within our purchasing power. It is
- 46:42Speaker 4: also like, if you think about entirely how our content
- 46:47Speaker 4: is packaged, it is so much easier to tell a
- 46:49Speaker 4: short positive thought in a sixty second Instagram reel than
- 46:53Speaker 4: it is to tell a more nuanced, realistic thought, because
- 46:57Speaker 4: you've fallen off the you've just like fallen off our
- 47:00Speaker 4: ability to package and accelerate thoughts. So really, like most
- 47:05Speaker 4: of our mediums accelerate the spread of false optimism far
- 47:12Speaker 4: greater than they give us something a little truer that
- 47:14Speaker 4: we can hang our hat on.
- 47:16Speaker 1: I thought a lot about the deepness of that for women.
- 47:20Speaker 1: I haven't thought as much about it for men. How
- 47:24Speaker 1: do you see it affecting men?
- 47:25Speaker 4: They don't think that they're positive thinkers. I think they
- 47:28Speaker 4: think that they're part of this stoic masculinity in which
- 47:35Speaker 4: they are just they're learning to be impassive, they're learning
- 47:38Speaker 4: to let it go, they're learning to the problem is
- 47:41Speaker 4: is just reinforcing this kind of heroicness that men have
- 47:47Speaker 4: already been socialized into. And so now now we have
- 47:51Speaker 4: to talk about the Roman Empire all the time and
- 47:53Speaker 4: pretend that our best beliefs come from like the leaders
- 47:56Speaker 4: of a slaving empire.
- 47:57Speaker 6: Like it really is nuts if you think about it carefully.
- 48:01Speaker 1: There's this quote that Glennon Doyle gave one of your
- 48:05Speaker 1: books that I love and I love it regardless because
- 48:09Speaker 1: it's high praise, but I love it because I know you.
- 48:12Speaker 1: And she said, Kate Boehler is the only one we
- 48:16Speaker 1: can trust to tell us the truth.
- 48:20Speaker 6: She is so sad at parties, she doesn't care what's
- 48:22Speaker 6: going on.
- 48:24Speaker 1: Well, you do know how to make people feel weird
- 48:30Speaker 1: with not what's the opposite of small talk at a party?
- 48:34Speaker 1: You do do that really well. I appreciate it because
- 48:37Speaker 1: I small talk, But why do you think it's so
- 48:40Speaker 1: hard for people to accept your honesty? Because you wrap
- 48:44Speaker 1: it up in a lot of humor. So I don't
- 48:47Speaker 1: find it hard to accept, but I know you feel
- 48:50Speaker 1: like people sometimes can't internalize all that It.
- 48:54Speaker 4: Was maybe just the loneliness of having the same problem
- 48:57Speaker 4: for too long, especially to a lot of people find
- 49:01Speaker 4: it easier to accept a truth once, but it's a
- 49:03Speaker 4: little hard the twelve time when it makes us feel helpless.
- 49:07Speaker 4: So I guess that's partly why I'm so invested in
- 49:10Speaker 4: letting us all and really primarily me let go of
- 49:16Speaker 4: like a framework of control. I do need in my
- 49:19Speaker 4: life to really learn to try to try. So I
- 49:22Speaker 4: love thinking about agency and like, gosh, how to like
- 49:27Speaker 4: how to have that lovely sprinting feeling, but I need
- 49:31Speaker 4: to be able to learn to do it while simultaneously
- 49:33Speaker 4: knowing when to run and when I genuinely like have
- 49:37Speaker 4: to stop.
- 49:38Speaker 1: One of the things I really appreciate about your work
- 49:41Speaker 1: is that there are people who talk about toxic positivity
- 49:47Speaker 1: or ideas like giving yourself permission to rest, and I
- 49:50Speaker 1: feel like the TikTok idea of soft Girl era. Part
- 49:55Speaker 1: of me loves that I maybe want to be a
- 49:58Speaker 1: little softer, and part of me feels like, if you
- 50:00Speaker 1: want anything, you got to run after it a little bit. Yeah,
- 50:04Speaker 1: and you do. You're super ambitious, and so that's what
- 50:08Speaker 1: I really yeah today again, Yeah, I.
- 50:11Speaker 4: Love I love being ambitious, and I thought maybe I
- 50:13Speaker 4: wasn't supposed to.
- 50:14Speaker 5: Be ambitious, but I love it. Yeah.
- 50:17Speaker 1: Well, it makes me excited about your work because I'm like, Okay,
- 50:20Speaker 1: this is applicable, right, Like you can be both of
- 50:23Speaker 1: those things. Kind of is you living in that contradiction
- 50:26Speaker 1: once again?
- 50:27Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess the ambition just has to be bubbled
- 50:30Speaker 4: by the fact that it's going to have to also
- 50:32Speaker 4: look like interdependence that it's not. It's not radical individualism.
- 50:36Speaker 4: I'm not going to do this. I'm going to do
- 50:38Speaker 4: everything in my power, but I'm going to come to
- 50:40Speaker 4: the end of myself fast and other people need to
- 50:43Speaker 4: be there. So I have to still have to stay
- 50:46Speaker 4: in the bubble wrap feeling of other people. And if
- 50:50Speaker 4: I'm too far out of that, then I'm probably not
- 50:52Speaker 4: paying attention. And so to my own needs or the
- 50:56Speaker 4: needs of other people. So that's kind of maybe more
- 50:59Speaker 4: of the start stop feeling.
- 51:02Speaker 1: So live in the idea of community. Yeah, while simultaneously
- 51:06Speaker 1: doing everything you yourself can do.
- 51:09Speaker 4: That's right. Get in there, girl, I really like that feeling. Yeah,
- 51:12Speaker 4: and you're so scary fun you really you really get
- 51:15Speaker 4: in there?
- 51:16Speaker 1: Thank you? You want to give permission two people to
- 51:22Speaker 1: feel like human beings? Really do you give me the
- 51:31Speaker 1: permission to be messy? Which I had great parents, but
- 51:37Speaker 1: I didn't get that, and not a lot of people
- 51:42Speaker 1: I have met in my life make I have like
- 51:44Speaker 1: maybe one or two friends that give me that. So
- 51:47Speaker 1: I'm really grateful for you for that. I think you
- 51:50Speaker 1: probably give a lot of people permission. Thanks Is it
- 51:55Speaker 1: because you yourself are comfortable with the feeling? It's like,
- 52:01Speaker 1: how do you go about like it's a gift? I
- 52:03Speaker 1: wish I could give people? How do you give people permission?
- 52:07Speaker 4: I guess maybe just keep living at the edges of
- 52:10Speaker 4: what you know how to do, because you're gonna and
- 52:12Speaker 4: then then people can see the edges and that's either
- 52:15Speaker 4: going to make you feel really embarrassed, and I feel
- 52:17Speaker 4: embarrassed a lot, and not just like it's cute, like
- 52:21Speaker 4: kind of shame sometimes because I'm not going to be
- 52:23Speaker 4: able to be so polished. Yeah, but at least it
- 52:27Speaker 4: also to me still feels like the edges of trying,
- 52:29Speaker 4: and that's what feels really good about it too.
- 52:32Speaker 5: So I want to be there. I want to be
- 52:33Speaker 5: there with you. I'll be there with with the.
- 52:35Speaker 4: People who feel it too.
- 52:37Speaker 1: Do you think negativity serves us at all?
- 52:39Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, yeah, I want to live in reality.
- 52:42Speaker 4: I want to live in reality. Reality.
- 52:44Speaker 5: I can do something with delusion.
- 52:47Speaker 4: It's just you threw glitter in my eyes and now
- 52:49Speaker 4: I have to clean it up and do more work.
- 52:56Speaker 1: What do you feel like your relationship is now with hope?
- 53:03Speaker 4: You know, it's kind of also how I feel about
- 53:05Speaker 4: friendship really is like hope is the beautiful Like spiritually,
- 53:11Speaker 4: I think that hope is like the anchor thrown in
- 53:14Speaker 4: the future that God pulls us towards.
- 53:16Speaker 5: And like it.
- 53:17Speaker 4: And it is like, but I can feel like the
- 53:20Speaker 4: learning to kind of like keep pace with hope or
- 53:23Speaker 4: like set the dial on it. That's the thing where
- 53:25Speaker 4: like you want people to live in exactly the right
- 53:27Speaker 4: amount of hope with you, like they push it too.
- 53:30Speaker 4: Far and then you're back and like I don't know,
- 53:32Speaker 4: I can't reach for that, and you turn it down
- 53:34Speaker 4: too low and you're like, wait a minute, Like how much.
- 53:37Speaker 5: Do you expect from me? It's kind of insulting.
- 53:39Speaker 4: It's like, really, just live in that right little place,
- 53:42Speaker 4: and like that gets us back to like the like
- 53:45Speaker 4: the feeling that a little like the good things can
- 53:48Speaker 4: catch you know, that lets me puts me back in
- 53:51Speaker 4: a place of possibility. It is it is the opposite
- 53:54Speaker 4: to despair, and despair is on the edges of every
- 53:57Speaker 4: day from me at the beginning of the end. But
- 54:00Speaker 4: like hope is the place where like something beautiful is
- 54:03Speaker 4: going to happen, not just could happen, but it will.
- 54:08Speaker 1: Through cancer, through the ups and downs, through your work.
- 54:14Speaker 1: Where do you stand today on the mindset or the
- 54:18Speaker 1: idea that God has a plan?
- 54:22Speaker 4: If God has a plan, I have not yet been
- 54:24Speaker 4: made aware of most of the variables, and it.
- 54:27Speaker 5: Might just be a huge surprise later.
- 54:30Speaker 4: But without knowing what's going to happen, it's my job
- 54:36Speaker 4: to learn how to live in uncertainty. And to do that,
- 54:39Speaker 4: I've got to learn to ride the roller coaster of
- 54:41Speaker 4: the good and the bad. That to me feels like
- 54:45Speaker 4: the only way I know how to stay awake to
- 54:51Speaker 4: the world as it is beautiful and terrible.
- 54:55Speaker 1: I read a CNN article of yours and you said
- 54:58Speaker 1: God is not protecting us from this, but being with
- 55:01Speaker 1: us during the storm. I really liked that.
- 55:05Speaker 4: Thanks. Yeah, I do believe in a wftness of what
- 55:09Speaker 4: God and other people not, so you know it. Just
- 55:12Speaker 4: it'll feel a lot like love.
- 55:15Speaker 1: Okay, rapid fire, real quick before you leave me. Yeah,
- 55:17Speaker 1: tell me what is the best thing you've ever quit?
- 55:20Speaker 5: Oh, tennis. I'm not smart enough for tennis.
- 55:23Speaker 6: You got your brain works too fast and really bad.
- 55:26Speaker 1: An important lesson motherhood has taught you.
- 55:29Speaker 4: You can throw things directly at your kid's head. If
- 55:31Speaker 4: it's soft, he'll think it's very funny. You won't look
- 55:34Speaker 4: like a great mom in public, but it's hysterical and
- 55:36Speaker 4: you'll both love it.
- 55:37Speaker 1: What is one small thing that always makes you smile?
- 55:40Speaker 4: I love this thing called noodling where you just don't
- 55:44Speaker 4: expect something to be like useful, and you set aside
- 55:47Speaker 4: a bunch of time and then you just kind of
- 55:49Speaker 4: and other people and just you don't you get to be.
- 55:51Speaker 5: Bad at whatever you're doing. And I'm really into you
- 55:55Speaker 5: like that.
- 55:56Speaker 1: Okay, you have an amazing podcast that I love called
- 55:59Speaker 1: Everything Bins. What is one episode people should start with
- 56:03Speaker 1: if they haven't tuned in yet?
- 56:05Speaker 3: Oh?
- 56:06Speaker 4: I remember the I had a great conversation with Stanley
- 56:08Speaker 4: Tucci about who was thinking about food and taste, but
- 56:13Speaker 4: also like how it taught him to kind of win
- 56:17Speaker 4: and lose in life, especially it taught him how to lose.
- 56:21Speaker 1: Do you have a copy of your book by you?
- 56:24Speaker 5: Oh?
- 56:24Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, I like to keep a real inspirational snack.
- 56:33Speaker 1: Can you read me one of your favorite blessings? Oh? Yes?
- 56:37Speaker 4: All right, this is not your best self. Okay, God,
- 56:42Speaker 4: I can't tell which person I'll be today, kind and loving.
- 56:45Speaker 4: Turn the other cheek and I'll be right there, soft
- 56:48Speaker 4: but strong. I will keep no record of wrongs. I
- 56:52Speaker 4: might be someone else entirely brittle and judgmental. I'm taking
- 56:56Speaker 4: my share, and you deal with it alone. Hard but weak.
- 57:00Speaker 4: I will keep every record, damn it. I'm an accountant
- 57:04Speaker 4: in a world that does not give me what I'm owed.
- 57:08Speaker 4: God bless these multiple selves you know, of course, you
- 57:11Speaker 4: know are parts of a whole. You send the love
- 57:15Speaker 4: I have to give you grieve the pain that causes
- 57:18Speaker 4: me to withhold. You send your spirit every day not
- 57:21Speaker 4: to stitch us back together, but to heal every tender
- 57:24Speaker 4: part from the inside out. So in the meantime, bless
- 57:28Speaker 4: this generous self, Bless this breakable self. Bless these many
- 57:32Speaker 4: parts and make them whole.
- 57:35Speaker 1: That was so beautiful.
- 57:37Speaker 4: Thanks Love, Thank you so much for having me.
- 57:39Speaker 5: This was ridiculously fun.
- 57:45Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day.
- 57:49Speaker 1: To have a good day.
- 57:50Speaker 2: I'll see you next week. Shop