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When Information Becomes Harmful, Not Helpful · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: When does information become more harmful than helpful?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because paying attention to what we consume via our technology is just as important as what we consume off of our plate.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in my commitment to honouring simplicity and turning down the volume on those challenging thoughts and emotions, today I want to invite you to share a conversation with me about when it's time to step back and trust that you know enough already and that you're doing enough already.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if that sounds like a bit of you, grab your cupper and let's dive right in.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Seeking Simplicity Podcast.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And today I want to talk about information.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because as somebody who battled for probably three quarters of our life with feelings of not being adequate, of being insufficient, of always feeling like I needed to be doing more, achieving more, or having more, I found the struggle with information a real battle.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to start with step number one or point number one is I understand that there is a great or there are a great deal of blessings around the fact that a touch of a button at the end of our fingertips is an infinite amount of knowledge.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge that can guide our decisions, knowledge that can help us in hard times, knowledge that can transform our lives for free.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just there, you know, just readily available.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I get that, and I've used it, and I still use it today, particularly for my business.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think that we need to be having a look at some of the potential harmful effects.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, one of the things that I see is that it can perpetuate insufficiency.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: When you're being told that you should be doing this, or you need to eat this, or you need to stop doing that, or you need to have that to be happier, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you suddenly start to feel like, actually, well, I'm not doing enough.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have this, I'm not doing that.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've I just, you know, and and we can start to get triggered.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna talk about that in a second.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you can start to think about, I'm not doing enough, I'm not doing the right things.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in a world where so many of us are already at capacity with our time, we're already at emotional and mental capacity, juggling these thoughts of all these other things that you should be doing to get the result that you want just turns the volume up.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: On a similar sort of lateral line, it's there's an element of reinforcing that we're not enough as we are, that we should always be in some stage of growth, that we should always be developing, that we should always be aiming for something more or wanting something different.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as a coach, this was something that I found really hard to reconcile.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's that saying, if you're not growing, you're dying, but there's an implication there that growth is about a forward-traveling journey, that it's about moving away from where we are.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: What I've come to feel and see and honour is that growth is deepening, it can also be deepening self-awareness.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It can be shedding layers that don't belong to you anymore, it can be tapping into a different kind of joy or simplicity.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Growth isn't always something that looks like forward momentum.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I've noticed for myself, and so I'm interested in your opinion on this, is that I think it promotes kind of like a one ideal, not necessarily as a collective, like so this is one thing you should aim for, but for a while my Instagram feed was completely full of podcast clips from experts saying you must fast for 24 hours, you must lift the heaviest weights humanly possible, you must not eat more than 20 grams of carbs.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to stay functional in your 80s, you have to do this weird thing with your feet.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you need to do this, you need to do that.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what I came to think about was that again, information research is amazing, but not when it's taken out of context.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me give let me give you a little bit of context around that.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that really got me thinking about how I digested and sought information was I watched the incredible Netflix series called Blue Zones.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that a lot of that research is relatively old now, but it's still that it still stood the test of time.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't watched it, I think it's on Netflix.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Please go watch it.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I took from that was that they were researching, interviewing, sharing time with people that were well into their 80s, 90s, and 100s in these pockets of the world, and finding out like what's different over here.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what you never saw, apart from the fact that you never saw a residential care home, okay, you never really saw them in hospitals.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: What you didn't see was any one of those going to a gym to deadlift their body weight.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't see someone doing farmers carries with dumbbells half their body weight.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't see them counting their macros.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't see them completely avoiding alcohol, you didn't see them sort of, you know, stressing themselves out about like, were they getting enough vitamins?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Were they doing this?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Will they do that?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: These people, they walked a lot, they did a lot of living off the land, they ate a lot of their homegrown food, but their food was natural, often very plant-based.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: They had community, they had a sense of purpose, they looked after each other, they were naturally active in their life.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what that made me think was how much of this information that we get now becomes, and I'm gonna put this in you know, inverted commas, do we need because we live a lifestyle so far removed from how we were created to be?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: We sit around a lot at laptops, we use, we don't use our legs as much, we've can be very sedentary.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: There is more food in the supermarket that is not food that we eat for convenience for time because we're so time compressed.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if we just got back to more of that, would a lot of this information it it will still be true for the for the research, but does it become somewhat obsolete?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I say with that is, you know, um, yes, alcohol may have that effect on the brain, and yes, you might research those people, and and that gives you more muscle mass, which makes you feel more functional when you're older, and that does this, and this does that, and that does that.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: But when you've got some really amazing research that also says, but hang on a minute, you can live happy, healthy, and functional well into your 90s by honoring the land, by doing simple things, you know.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying this from a perspective of we've all got to go sell our houses and go live off a homestead.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I just want to offer that I think there's a way for this is a way to filter the information that we get that research is incredible, but we want to understand where that research comes from, we want to understand how credible it is.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: We also want to understand how does it fit into that bigger context of the kind of life that we live.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you re I'm gonna just I'm gonna just throw this one out there.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if you research somebody who drinks alcohol as an example, who has a predisposition to diabetes, who has a very stressful life, who is very sedentary, et cetera, et cetera, versus somebody who lives in the Mediterranean that has a glass of wine at nighttime with their family, eating nourishing food, it's part of their kind of like more slow lifestyle.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're talking about two different impacts, in my opinion.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm aware, and we're all allowed to have different opinions here, okay?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we've all so let's just put that one out there.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: The second point around information is it's not always equal.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about in terms of credibility because you know, the one that I've come across recently is um the war on seed oils.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know enough about it, so I'm not going to get involved, but I just remember hearing all and seeing all these things about you shouldn't have seed oils and hearing it all on social media, and then seeing a clip from a researcher who was on Stephen Bartlett's podcast, saying there is actually no credible research at all to suggest that seed oils are bad.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So who knows?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this is another, this is another way we can just beat ourselves up because there's so much contradictory information and it's blanketed as a general rather than being made personal for each person because that would be too difficult.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm talking about here, in terms of not all information is equal, is that as we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are, we receive information as we are.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody who hears something around food as an example, who is living in fear.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use the example of um Anita Morjani.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Anita Morjani wrote the incredible book called Dying to Be Me.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she's I listened to her podcast recently with Dr.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Chatterjee, which was absolutely amazing.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll try and remember to put it in the show notes, but do go check it out.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what she said was she had a friend who got diagnosed with cancer.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in her effort to help this her friend heal, Anita began to do all the things.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So she was eating all the right things, she was doing all the right things, and she was meditating, all the right things that you should be doing, but she was doing it out of fear.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: She was so petrified of being diagnosed with cancer that she was doing these things and she ended up getting diagnosed with cancer.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm saying is, is that again, our energy, our intention, our where we spend our focus, it really matters.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're if we're digesting information through fear and lack, we're gonna digest or here, digest that information very differently if we're in a place of hope and sufficiency.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you feel like you're not doing enough, you are not enough, you need to be doing more, you need to be achieving more, that's what you're going to see.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So not all information is equal.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really important because you need to be able to discern why I am receiving the information in this way.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: This also has to chop in and change all the time and not being able to commit to something.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we think that something might get us a result easier with less pain and more quickly, we're going to keep jumping ship, we're going to keep going to the next thing.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the question really becomes, as I said at the beginning, when do you know it's time to stop?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: When are you at a place where you go, I'm I'm I'm reducing my consumption of information?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: As an example for me, after my dad passed away, um, I, as I was an avid reader and I used to consume podcasts and you know, and I and I read, I don't think I picked up a book or listened to a podcast for two years.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Part of that was I didn't have the mental capacity for it.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: But there was also a part that I just wasn't ready, I didn't need to hear anything.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to be in my situation.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be with my emotions.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to be with my emotions, but I was with them anyway.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I just didn't have the capacity.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was also at this point completely uh dysregulated.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to get overstimulated very quickly.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is still a bit of a thing for me.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So too much sound, too much light, too many people, it was just too much.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I found podcasts, too much in my ears, and I just found reading, I just couldn't, I couldn't digest it, I couldn't take it in.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: When I started to step back into books, I started with fiction.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to read development, I didn't want to read learning stuff.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to lose myself in some fiction, and that was a real blessing.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'd really stopped giving myself the gift of reading and going into a different world because I thought I always had to be learning.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even now I'm very mindful of my consumption.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, how like you say, when when is enough enough?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you I want you to think about what's your intention behind the behind the consumption?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you looking for something?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there is more information?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're somebody that hears it and wants to implement it straight away and you're already feeling overwhelmed and unavailable, I'm gonna suggest that reducing consumption is gonna be really helpful for you.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you do it because you are genuinely in a season of your life where you want to learn and you want to grow and you're curious, and it doesn't make you feel like you're lacking or that you feel like you've got to keep adding more to your plate, then keep filling your boots.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is about tapping into your self-awareness and understanding what's my intention for the listening.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, can you be a little bit more um can you be a little bit more choosy about the information that you take on?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So for myself personally, I find myself going to more conversational podcasts rather than listening to experts talking about something.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because right now, in the season that I'm in, I'm feeling pretty sufficient.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I've got my own little plan and I'm really happy with it.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to risk being knocked off center by hearing something and any remnants of insufficiency in my body go, oh Louise, we need to do this thing, we need to add more.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want more complication in my life now.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want more simplicity.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that I want to say on that as well is that, like I said before, when we're looking for an ideal and we're being offered an ideal, and if everybody in the world did this one thing, we would all X, Y, and Z, we stop realizing that we are unique human beings with a unique energetic signature, a unique purpose, a unique life experience, and we are all going to react to things differently.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: We want to, in my opinion, deepen our level of self-awareness and say, actually, what is it that I need in this season of my life?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: What information will support me?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I want you to totally own it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a season of your life where information is not serving you and it's harming you, where you need to come back to a place and say, I'm enough right now, I'm doing enough right now.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to focus on creating more space in my life, more space around my emotions, more freedom in my brain, less chatter, less choices.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just loosen like the decision fatigue.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let me lessen the fatigue of decisions and just reduce what I'm doing.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want you to tap into yourself today, into your self-awareness and get clear on what's your intention behind the reading, behind the podcasting, behind the you know, what you're following on social media.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I confess that what I did on purpose on Instagram was started following crafters, homesteaders, hamper banners, cookers.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now I get way more of that in my feed because the algorithm's always watching you.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I get far more stuff that makes me feel good than I do far more stuff that makes me think about what I could be doing differently.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I guess that's the ultimate.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anywho, I hope in some way that you have found this information helpful, the conversation opening and perspective shifting.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I always love to hear your perspective because we've all got our opinions.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you'd like to have more of these conversations with me, please feel free to come and check out the Seeking Simplicity Facebook group.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have a free book club in there, and you'll also find out about a super special program that I'm just about to start running.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to hop on that before it sells out, head over to Seeking Simplicity now.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to find out, I will speak to you again in the next episode of the seeking simplicity podcast.