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Fluke or Fate? Embracing Uncertainty to Live a Fuller Life with Brian Klaas

April 29, 2025 Leave a Comment

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In this episode, Brian Klaas explains the concept of whether things are a fluke or fate, and explores how embracing uncertainty can lead to a living a fuller life. Brian makes the case how randomness and chaos might be exactly what make our lives matter so much and how we tend to worship at the “Altar of Progress in the Church of Control.” We make plans, set goals, and these are good things, but we only have so much control. And Brian teaches that accepting this can be a relief, because the point isn’t to control everything, but to influence what we can.

Key Takeaways:

  • The concept of happiness derived from intrinsic values rather than material possessions and social status.
  • The importance of thoughts and actions in shaping our lives and experiences.
  • Exploration of chaos theory and the unpredictability of life.
  • The idea that we control nothing but influence everything, emphasizing the ripple effects of our actions.
  • Personal stories illustrating how random events can profoundly impact lives.
  • The empowering nature of recognizing the influence of our choices.
  • The tension between control and acceptance of life’s randomness.
  • The critique of societal values that prioritize material success over personal fulfillment and relationships.
  • Encouragement to embrace individual uniqueness and create for personal expression rather than external validation.


Dr. Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London, an affiliate researcher at the University of Oxford, and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. He was recently named one of the 25 “Top Thinkers” globally by Prospect Magazine. Klaas is the author of five books, including Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters (2024) and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us (2021). Klaas writexs the popular The Garden of Forking Paths Substack and created the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, which has been downloaded over three million times.

Connect with Brian Klaas:  Website | X

If you enjoyed this conversation with Brian Klaas, check out these other episodes:

What If You’re Wrong? How Uncertainty Makes Us More Human with William Egginton

How to Find Zest in Life with Dr. John Kaag

Unsafe Thinking with Jonah Sachs

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:00:00  Hey, friends. Eric here with some exciting news. I’ve been writing a book and it’s about to be out in the world in April of 2026. The working title is how a Little Becomes a Lot, and it’s all about how small, consistent actions, the kind that we talk about all the time on this show can lead to real, meaningful change. Right now, the book is in the editing process, and there’s still some shaping to do, which is where you come in. I’d love your input on what to focus on, how to talk about the book, even what it should be called. If you’ve got a few minutes and a couple thoughts on what would make this book most helpful for you, I’d be really grateful to hear them. Just head to one You Feed survey. You’ll also get early updates, fun giveaways, and a behind the scenes look at what it actually takes to make a book. Editing marathons, title debates, existential spirals, and me questioning all of my life choices at 2 a.m. over one stubborn sentence again, that’s one UFI survey.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:04  Thank you so much for being part of this. Your feedback really means a lot to me, truly.

Brian Klass 00:01:10  Often have written about ideas around what I call the false gospel of stuff and status, where the road to happiness is paved with more stuff and higher status. I have not found that to be true. I find personally that there are things that I care about in the world that are intrinsically valuable to me, that other people might not find value in whatsoever, and chasing those things has made me much happier.

Chris Forbes 00:01:37  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter.  It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:23  I’ve always hated the phrase everything happens for a reason. It’s tidy. It’s comforting. And to me, it feels completely out of step with the messy, painful, and often absurd reality of life. But after talking with today’s guest, Brian Klaus, I started to realize something. Just because life isn’t following a script doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. In fact, his new book, fluke, makes the case that randomness and chaos might be exactly what make our lives matter so much. We get into how we all continue to worship at the Altar of Progress in the Church of Control. We make plans, set goals, and these are good things, but we only have so much control. And Brian teaches that accepting this can be a relief, because the point isn’t to control everything, but to influence what we can. Brian also shares some wild stories, like how a cloud saved one city from an atomic bomb, and tells another. That hit me especially hard how a family tragedy led directly to his birth. Without that fluke, he wouldn’t be here and neither would this episode. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. 

Eric Zimmer 00:03:20  Hi, Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Klass 00:03:34  Thanks for having me.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:35  I’m excited to talk to you. Your book is called Fluke Chance Chaos and Why everything we do Matters. But before we get into that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Brian Klass 00:04:20  Yeah. So I think the bad wolf is a response to a perceived lack of control. And I think a lot of the worst impulses that humans have are lashing out. When you feel afraid of what you don’t know is going to happen next to your life, or you fear those consequences and therefore lash out to try to assert control. And a lot of what I’m arguing is that you have to change your worldview to accept that lack of control, to embrace the influence you have over the world. And that gets you closer to being the good wolf that you want to be.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:52  All right. There’s no way for us not to just dive into the deep end of the pool, I think, with this material. So let’s just go. There. You’ve got a phrase in the book we control nothing but influence everything. What do you mean by that?

Brian Klass 00:05:05  Yeah. So it’s riffing off a statement from the social scientist Scott Page. And what I think is the key takeaway here is that the world is an incredibly complex, uncontrollable entity.

Brian Klass 00:05:17  Right? There’s 8 billion interacting people. And all of those people influence our lives in small ways or in big ways, right? Some more than others. But it’s constantly changing. And the ability of any one person to control the world is minuscule. We simply don’t have that ability. And I think a lot of the misery that people have in modern life is that they keep trying to assert control over an uncontrollable world. And what I’m arguing is I’m taking the scientific concept of chaos theory, which we’ll dive, I’m sure, into more details, but it’s taking that notion of chaos theory and saying that even in a world where you don’t have control, small changes can have big effects, which means that your influence over the future of the universe and the future of your life is profound. And so it’s changing the framework from one of control to one of influence. And the influence framework is both correct. And also, I think, much more liberating and uplifting for us to navigate.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:12  Wonderful. All right.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:13  We’re going to go into that more because I think a lot about these ideas of control and influence and what’s out of our control. But I first want to start with a story. Maybe you could tell us about a mass murder that happened in Minnesota, I believe, some time ago.

Brian Klass 00:06:30  Yeah. So this is a story. It’s actually from Wisconsin, next door to Minnesota in 1905, and it’s the story of a woman named Clara, Madelyn Jansen, who has four children in a very short period of time for young kids. And by 1905, I think the oldest was five years old. And so she has a mental breakdown at some point. We don’t know exactly what happened, but she she snaps Apps and decides, in a moment of sort of tragic madness, to take the lives of those four children herself and then to take her own life. And she was alone at the house, but her husband came home and discovered this horrific tragedy. Probably the worst thing that a human being can experience seeing their entire family wiped out.

Brian Klass 00:07:10  And the reason that I talk about this, and I mentioned it early on in fluke, is because when I was 20 years old, my dad sat me down and told me this story about the man who came home, who was my great grandfather, and the woman who killed all of those kids and took her own life was his first wife. He remarried after the trauma subsided a bit about ten years later, to the woman that was my great grandmother. And so the first thing that I reacted to that story with was obviously shock, right? I mean, it’s just an unbelievably bizarre and terrible thing to learn about your family. But then the second thing that really hits you over the head is that your existence is completely predicated on this story, that if those kids didn’t die, I wouldn’t exist because the lineage would be different and it would not have led to me. Right. Right. And so this is the stuff where when you start to think about that, I think about how my existence is predicated on this horrible tragedy.

Brian Klass 00:08:03  But then I also say to everyone that I meet, right, that every conversation I have is also predicated on this mass tragedy, every podcast interview. People listening to this wouldn’t listen to it if those kids hadn’t died. So it really affected my worldview about how the tiniest things and the distant past even can really change the trajectory of our lives, even when we’re oblivious to them.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:24  It’s tremendously disconcerting to see this, right? Let’s stay with the stories for a minute, because I think the stories illustrate this point better than any other. Why don’t you tell us about Japan?

Brian Klass 00:08:36  Yeah. So this is a story from a little bit after the mass murder I talked about. This is from 1926 and 1926. There’s an American couple that decides to go on a vacation, and they end up in Kyoto, Japan, and they fall in love with the city. It’s one of the most charming cities in Japan, and they sort of get a soft spot for it the way that many people do when they go on holiday somewhere.

Brian Klass 00:09:00  And, you know, it’s the kind of banal story that is very, very commonplace in normal life. Except for 19 years after this vacation took place, the husband and the couple turned out to be America’s secretary of war. At the tail end of World War Two, a man named Henry Stimson. And so he ended up by happenstance, being in a very consequential place when they were deciding where to drop the first atomic bomb. And the target committee, which was a group of generals and scientists, picked Kyoto as their top location to destroy with the first atomic bomb at the tail end of World War two. And Stimson, largely because of his previous personal experience with his wife in 1926, twice met with President Truman and convinced him to take Kyoto off the bombing list, and so the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima instead of Kyoto. And the second bomb was supposed to go to a place called Kokura, which many people have not heard of because it was not bombed. And the reason it was not bombed was simply out of luck, which happened because there was a brief bit of haze or cloud cover over the bombing site when the B-29 arrived, and so it diverted to the secondary target of Nagasaki.

Brian Klass 00:10:10  And so this is a story of an estimated 180 to 200,000 people dying in two cities, rather than a different two cities, because of a vacation that happened 19 years earlier, and a cloud that was just at the right place at the right time. And so, you know, when we think about why things happen, we never think about these tiny details. We think about the big explanations, and we don’t think about certainly things that happened 19 years earlier. And the point that I try to make to people is that Henry Stimson had no idea he was changing the world. The people of Hiroshima had no idea that their fate hung in the balance over this vacation destination. But it did. And that’s the way that that sort of everything we do matters. Aspect of chaos theory is tied to influence. That every choice we make has ripple effects that we cannot foresee.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:54  So I think the takeaway here is your city’s tourism board is really, really important, right? Like when people come to your city, they need to like it.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:03  Right.

Brian Klass 00:11:04  I guess the flip side of that is if he really hated it, he probably would have loved to bomb the city.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:08  So again, this is a really disconcerting idea.

Brian Klass 00:11:11  You know, it’s funny. So almost everyone has that reaction to it. And I’ve never had that reaction. And I.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:16  Think never.

Brian Klass 00:11:16  I think the reason why I don’t have that reaction is because I think that the lie of control is one that constantly makes us disappointed, right? This this notion that we can just tame the world every single moment of our lives. We get evidence that we can’t. Right? Things happen to us, and they’re not always the things that we want to happen to us. Now, I think that the idea that every vacation choice you make, every conversation you have, every time you turn left rather than right, is reshaping the future of the world in ways that are small or big, and that you might not know. I think that’s the most exciting and uplifting idea I’ve ever come across, because it means that there is no throwaway moment to life, right? And so I swapped out when I was starting to do the research for this and starting to change my philosophy of life and researching the book, I started to swap out what I thought was a really empty and constantly disappointing framework of understanding the world, for one that is, on the face of it, really disconcerting because everything has influence, right? But also, in my view, really empowering and uplifting because there’s not a moment that we can just say is meaningless.  Personally, I find that latter viewpoint much, much more empowering than than the sort of false gospel of control.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:29  Well, I am not a believer in the false gospel of control, and this idea that every moment matters is empowering, except when it becomes overwhelming or frightening. Because it’s one thing to think every moment matters. Because I’m sort of shaping my destiny. And I can think about the fact that, like today, if I go to the gym, it’s probably more likely I’ll go to the gym tomorrow, which makes it probably more likely that I’ll be healthy in ten years. And I’m using the word probably here on all of these things. And so that my actions, I’m directing them in a certain direction with the belief they’re going to go a certain way, versus the idea that I have no idea what filling up my water bottle at home instead of here at the studio today is going like, what impact is that going to have on the world? And I think there are people who are anxious already who are thinking that everything they do is so important.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:26  And I think what you’re saying is just let all that go. So how does somebody who still wants to influence the world in a positive way change their life in a positive way? How do we work with these ideas of influence and control? This is like a nine part question. The last thing I’ll say is when we think about controlling nothing. The obvious question is, did I not control what shirt I put on today? So I’ll hand it over to you.

Brian Klass 00:13:53  Yeah. So, you know, I think there’s a few things that I would say to that. The first is that, yes, it is overwhelming. If you think about every choice and, you know, it could be paralyzing, right. The idea that any action you make is going to have an effect on reshaping your life, which I think is true. Yes. But if you have never come across that idea before, it can be very paralyzing. So there’s a few things that I tried to tell people. The first one is that you have to still think probabilistically.

Brian Klass 00:14:19  So what I mean by that is it is possible that if I went out and planted a tree tomorrow, that in 100 years a child could climb that tree and fall out of it and die? And I would have been part of that story. Right? Now, that does not mean I shouldn’t plant the tree, because most of the time planting trees is good, right? So it’s the same thing. Like, I could step into traffic and it could be an epiphany for me where I have a near-death experience that reshapes my life. But I’m not going to do that because most of the time you die, right? Yes, yes. So I still make choices in a way that is based on what mostly happens. But I also recognize that there is something liberating about accepting the limits of my control. So for me personally, I have become less anxious over time, especially since writing this book. And it’s I had not like anxiety in a clinical sense, but sometimes I worried about stuff a little bit more.

Brian Klass 00:15:09  I sweated the details a little bit more, and the way I feel now is I just sort of feel like there’s things that I can influence more directly, things that I can’t influence more directly. And you have to just sort of accept some of that limit and enjoy the ride. And that’s sort of, you know, the ethos of my life in a way, is, you know, I might get cancer tomorrow. I really hope I don’t. Yeah. But, you know, you sort of have to embrace that sense of enjoying the ride that you do have because you only have one. Right? Yeah. It’s something that you have to really grapple with. And I think some people I talk to really struggle with these concepts. And I’d like to sort of just pretend that you have certain aspects of life that are noise. But, you know, the interconnected nature of our lives is also really, really important. And even when you say the control aspect. So yes, you control what shirt you wear.

Brian Klass 00:15:53  You don’t control how somebody responds to it. Right? And like, how many times do relationships start because someone notices an item of clothing and then they say something nice to you, and then you either have a friendship or they becomes your partner. I mean, like all of these things where if you’d worn a different shirt. Yes. You know, this never happens. And so even in those details, yes, we control the little things where we can make choices and have agency and so on. But our lives are, you know, a symphony of 8 billion people, and some of them are much more important players in that orchestra. Right? Like, it’s clearly the case that the people around you in closer proximity matter more. But on the other hand, all of us were affected by a pandemic that started by one person getting sick in China, right? So, you know, that aspect of sort of the short term influence being more close to you, more visible, more seeming like the illusion of control.

Brian Klass 00:16:43  And then all of a sudden, our lives are upended by something that happens thousands of miles away with someone we’ll never meet. On a microscopic level of a virus. That aspect of life is the push and pull, where we get the glimpses of how little control I think we actually have.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:56  A couple thoughts on that. One is I often think of this stuff in terms of two games. One is the lottery. Like whether I get cancer between now and the end of my life is, to some degree a lottery by trying to do all the things that we know, that we think make you less likely to get cancer, to me, is like just buying more lottery tickets. The other game that I like to think about is backgammon. Backgammon is an interesting game because there is a certain amount of skill, but there’s also a tremendous amount of luck, like the dice roll. And if somebody rolls all good things, they will beat someone who’s far more skilled than them in backgammon, because they just will.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:37  And I think that is a model for me. That always makes sense. Like there’s an element of this that I can do something about and I should do that. I love your idea of thinking in probability, and there’s so much that I can’t control, and it brings to truth more clearly, the old Hindu idea of Arjuna and Krishna, where you’re just encouraged to do your best and let go of the results because you just don’t control those.

Brian Klass 00:18:04  Yeah. You know, the two things that come to mind, I think your analogies are excellent in terms of these different games, but the two things that come to mind to this. The first one is when I think about the most important things that have affected the trajectory of my life in the grand scheme of it. Right. And I think I controlled exactly zero of them. So I think this is what time period I was born in my life would be much shorter if I was born 100,000 years ago, right? Much worse. Also if I was born 200 years ago.

Brian Klass 00:18:30  Yeah. Also who my parents were. And you have issues of how my brain works, right? If I don’t have, I have a mental illness or anything like that, that would constrain me and also where I was born. So one of the places that I do some research in, for example, is Madagascar, where the average person lives on less than $500 a year. And I think to myself, if I was born in that society, I don’t care how skilled I am, I don’t care how great my parents are. I am in a rough position. I’m not going to be on this podcast, right? I’m still going to be in rural Madagascar, probably without electricity. So the things that I think have most affected my life trajectory, none of them were things that I had any influence over. So that humbles us in a way that I think gives you the freedom to take less credit for your success, but also less blame for your failure. And to me, that’s a much healthier way to live, right? I haven’t really sort of fleshed this out, and I didn’t talk about this in fluke, but the more I’ve thought about the ideas in the book, the more I think that we live in the most luck prone era in all of history.

Brian Klass 00:19:29  And the reason I say that is because if you take somebody who lives in complete isolation, right? So a hermit in the woods, luck has way less of an influence on their life because they’re completely independent from the rest of society, right? Like, maybe there’s some luck with what foraging they get up to or whatever. But like basically other people have a much lower influence on that person. If you take the modern world, in which it’s the most interconnected system that’s ever existed, where economics, politics, public health, all these things are affected by these massive numbers of people, and we have limited control over them. I think our lives are swayed by things we don’t control more now than ever before, precisely because of that interconnection. Right. And the logical conclusion of that is that we have less control over things that we did in the past, but more influence, because the ripple effects of our lives are much greater than that. Hermit. Right. The hermit might still have some influence, but it’s going to be probably smaller and probably less immediate if they truly are alone.

Brian Klass 00:20:30  Whereas, you know, you can really make an impact on the world as a single person today because the ripple effects can go global very, very quickly. I mean, whether it’s a social media post, a pandemic or just, you know, starting a movement, whatever it is, all these things are possible in ways that simply were not possible even 500 or 50 years ago. And so I think that the analogies you’re using, they’ve dialed up the luck scale, which comes with the influence factor.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:13  You’ve got some great lines in the book, like motivational posters tell you that if you set your mind to it, you can change the world. I’ve got some good news for you. You already have. Congratulations. Or you matter. That’s not self-help advice. It’s scientific truth, right? These ideas that everything happens. And I talk about this a fair amount that like we do a lot of things I think that put good out into the world and we never get to see it. Like it ripples in ways that we just don’t know.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:42  And I tell this story about somebody who went through one of my programs because I just love this little story. So this person heard a lesson I did on generosity. So they were at their local supermarket. They were in their normal line. There’s a woman who is the checkout girl. She never smiles. She always seems unhappy. And this woman goes up to her and says, hey, I always get in your line because you just get everybody through it so much faster. And this woman just lights up like a Christmas tree, right? And then she says, oh, well, would you tell my boss that? And so this woman goes and tells your boss, and the boss is like, that’s so great to hear. I’ve been trying to decide who’s going to be employee of the month. I’ll do that. It gives her a bonus. Now the boss is happy. The woman is happy. You imagine her going home to her family. All this stuff, these ripples that go, go, go, go. That example allows us to see the first couple of them, but so often we just don’t see any of them. But they’re there.

Brian Klass 00:22:33  Yeah, the two things. Well, there’s one of them is a story from the book. So there’s an amazing story that I came across, and I was like, this just illustrates this so perfectly, where a man went out to sea off the coast of Greece and he was swimming and, he got sucked out by a riptide. And so for 24 hours he was missing. And, you know, the overwhelming majority of times that people go missing in the ocean for 24 hours, the outcome is very, very bad. Right. And this guy, as he was about to drown a soccer ball, popped into view on the surface of the waves and he clung on to it. It’s still an acronym, and he was able to use it to float and survive. And so already this was one of these stories of like, wow, this, this amazing thing happened.

Brian Klass 00:23:11  The soccer ball arrived just the right time. But as they were covering this on the Greek news, this woman was watching it. And I sort of like to imagine her dropping her coffee or whatever, you know, when she sees this report. But the reason she was astonished by this is because she recognized the soccer ball and her kid had kicked it off a cliff ten days earlier, 80 miles away, and they had thought absolutely nothing of this because this happens every so often. You know, you lose a ball, it’s fine. They went out and bought another one. But it turned out that on the waves, it drifted at just the right moment and saved this guy’s life. Right. And so, like, these are the kinds of things where when people see this story, often what the takeaway they take is. What an amazing coincidence. Right. My takeaway is that is how the world is working 100% of the time. You just don’t know. And every so often you get these glimpses like this person did, where it’s just so obvious and it pulls back that illusion of control.

Brian Klass 00:24:04  The other very flippant thing that I sometimes say is, can you name Albert Einstein’s great grandmother? And everyone says, no, of course not. And I said, well, she didn’t realize she was very important, but she was, because if she didn’t exist, Albert Einstein doesn’t exist. Right. Right. So I think there’s this aspect where every individual matters. They might not know that they matter in the short run. They might not know they matter in the long run. But if it’s not you, it’s someone else. And that changes the universe in some way. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. But the idea of meaninglessness, which I think a lot of people feel in the 21st century, is, in my view, scientifically, nonsense. It’s just not. It’s not true.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:41  Yeah. You’re coming at this from sort of the scientific angle. A lot of things that I bring in are coming from more of a spiritual tradition angle. And if you look at Buddhism and even Taoism, which predates Buddhism, this idea is just baked in, right? This idea of Thich Naht Han called it inner being.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:59  And, you know, the classic story he tells is, you know, in this piece of paper I have here is also the sun and the rain and the clouds and the person who cut down the tree, and the person who made the lunch of the person who cut down the tree. I mean, I could go on and on. I don’t need to, but that all of that is right here. And to your point, that’s the universe all the time. There’s a line from someone who studies the Dao that I love, which is that basically life is consumatory relatedness, right? That’s all it is. It’s countless causes and conditions that we can’t even begin to imagine that have come together to create this moment. And what you’re pointing us at is that if you can let go into that, then you’re part of sort of a sparkling, mysterious, amazing thing.

Brian Klass 00:25:52  It’s funny because I think for a long time and, you know, without going too much in the weeds of the history of science, the Scientific Revolution had a very simple assessment of how things happened.

Brian Klass 00:26:03  Right? And it seemed like we could tame the world if we just got the right equation, sort of the Isaac Newton sort of idea. What I’m dabbling with is ideas of chaos theory and what are called complex systems, which actually are much more, I think, amenable to ideas that underpin a lot of the religions you’re talking about in eastern philosophy. Right? Yeah. And that’s because the central idea in complex systems is interconnectedness. It’s that one change in one part of the system affects another part of the system, which is very much at home in a lot of eastern philosophy. There are some, you know, more top down Western ideas in religion, especially when you overlay it on individualistic culture like the United States has in spades, which give you this idea of what I call the illusion of control, that if you just if you just do things to sort of bludgeon the world the way you want it to be, then you will eventually create the outcome you want. And I think a lot of the philosophical ideas that underpin things like Daoism are talking about the interconnectedness of literally everything.

Brian Klass 00:27:04  I mean, one of the problems is that when you start saying these sorts of words in traditional scientific communities, you sound like, you know, sort of a mystical figure. I think what you’re just trying to do is say, like, how do we apply these ideas in a context? From my perspective as an academic, where we can test them or sort of theorize about them. But it’s not a million miles away from the philosophical underpinnings of religions, certain religions. And so I think to me it’s also obvious, right? Like, I don’t think it is possible to truly believe that we are individuals who have control over the world. That idea does not make sense to me when you scrutinize it for more than a second. So. Right. Yeah. So I’m very amenable to the ideas you’re talking.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:42  About just on Substack. This morning there was a article by a psychologist, Paul Bloom, which was about another article by a psychologist, Michael Intellect. And the basic idea was you could perform some of these studies in a laboratory, but that doesn’t mean they translate in any way, shape or form out into the world itself.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:03  And it’s not that doing some of these things in the laboratory is always a waste of time. That’s not it. Because I think science moves forward in two ways, right? It moves forward often by isolating something, reducing it down, figuring out how this little thing works. And that can be valuable. And it only becomes more useful when you realize how that thing fits into a bigger System that, as you’re pointing out, is hopelessly complex.

Brian Klass 00:28:30  One of the hallmarks of science is replicability, right? That if you do the same experiment twice, it will produce the same results. And I think the problem when you get into a complex system is that is not always true, right? If Henry Stimson went on vacation to Osaka, Japan, that would not necessarily lead to the deaths of 100,000 people in one city versus another. If the timing had even been slightly different, if he was appointed the Secretary of War six months later, he would not have played this role right. So you can’t say that if we just replay this exact same sort of scenario, but we only change 1 or 2 things that it will play out in the same way.

Brian Klass 00:29:07  The idea of chaos theory is that if anything is even a tiny bit different, it can play a very, very big role. And so when I think about these concepts about how they fit in with science, the lab is not as interconnected, not as complex. Right. It’s deliberately designed to avoid all of those things that many people treat as noise. But actually, I argue, noise often is the stuff that dictates outcomes, right? These tiny little details of a split second change, or all of us have experienced this in our lives. I think at some point where you have these moments where you sort of realize, oh, if I had just done that one thing, none of this would have happened. And of course, the crucial point is not that you dwell on that specific decision. It’s that you’re aware that that is happening all the time and you’re just oblivious to it. Right. That’s the much more profound idea that I think chaos theory tries to convey in a scientific literature, but actually it applies a lot to humanity as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:05  When you were talking, I just had an insight or a thought that I’ve never had. I doubt that it’s new. New to the world. You’ve probably thought of it as you call yourself a disillusioned social scientist, is that if you try and replicate a psychological experiment, say, 3 or 4 years later, the whole culture and thought process of how people view psychology could be really different by then. And so there’s so many things that have changed in the broader world and about how people view the world, that of course, those things may come out differently.

Brian Klass 00:30:36  Yeah. And that is why it’s important. When they do replication studies in psychology, it’s important to have large numbers of people and also to do them repeatedly because the most solid findings do stay the same. Right. And there are there are some very solid findings that you can take 500 people in this place or that place. You do the same study. They have the same reaction, right? There’s a lot of psychology, literature, and I would argue a lot of social science literature where it’s not done that way, and it’s relatively small numbers of people relatively contingent on the context.

Brian Klass 00:31:06  And then we conclude that it is a big finding. And so the reason I’m a disillusioned social scientist is because I think there are some of these findings we have, which if you did repeat them and you did take into account context, you might find something different. And so it’s not to say that we shouldn’t do the research. It’s just to say that you have to be so careful about context and all those other parameters that might change.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:30  Yeah. It’s interesting, as a person who has done a lot of one on one coaching with people and run programs, part of my job is to help people make the changes in their lives they want to make. And early on in that. I thought, oh, okay, I just teach them x, y, Z, have them do A, B and C, and they’re on their way. And I quickly realized like, okay, that that clearly doesn’t work because people are so different. You just can’t apply the same thing to everybody and think it’s going to come out the same way.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:59  And that humility is, is important to recognize that there are things we can say probabilistically. I’m going to give you a better chance of this or that, but everybody’s different. And I’ve often said that one of the mysteries that haunts me, I’m a recovering heroin addict is why some of us get sober and others don’t. And I look for a reason or reasons. And after I read your book. Part of me just relaxed a little bit and went, maybe there’s not. I mean, it’s not to say that there aren’t any reasons or there aren’t contributing factors, but that in an individual case there just may be no answer. Like, you just never know. It’s not like if I got to talk to God, he would be like, oh, it’s because x, y, z a right? You’d have to unravel the entire universe.

Brian Klass 00:32:45  Yeah. You know, for me, that’s one of those areas where, again, I find it quite liberating because I think that sometimes people who have bad things happen to them.

Brian Klass 00:32:54  Sometimes it is comforting to try to come up with a reason. Yeah. But other times there is no reason. And the search for it is crippling because it’s just not going to. It’s not going to exist, right? Right. So I’ll tell the short version of the story. But basically, one of the people who I had the pleasure of meeting after I published the book and wrote about him a little bit, was a man who went to New York City for a conference, and he was delayed in his flight, and his coworker was supposed to meet him for dinner, and they ended up meeting for breakfast the next morning because he had gotten in so late, and she provided him with a gift that was a monet tie. So it’s a tie with a painting of a monet, and she knew that he loved this. So it was just a nice gesture from a colleague, right? And he decides that he’s so touched by this gesture of kindness that he’s going to go back to his hotel room, change his shirt so he can wear the Monet tie with something that isn’t hideously clashing.

Brian Klass 00:33:47  And so she goes up to the conference, and he goes to the hotel room to iron the shirt, and while he’s ironing the shirt, he sees out the window as the first plane hits the World Trade Center in New York. Right. Because the conference is in New York City and this is it’s held on like the 100th floor. And so in this moment, she dies as a result of this, and he survives because of this tie and changing his shirt. And, you know, I had written about this. I knew his story. He’d spoken a little bit about it publicly, but when I met him, the most profound thing he said to me was that the crippling guilt of survivor’s guilt that happened afterwards, which really upset him and affected his life in a very big way for a couple of years was because everybody said the same thing. Everything happens for a reason. And he said the burden that put it on him, that his co-worker Elaine was supposed to die and he was supposed to live was so crushing, right.

Brian Klass 00:34:37  It really upset his life. Whereas if you just say, look, you know, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, she did something nice for you and you survived by an accident. That in a way, you know, was liberating for him. And so I think to me, it’s one of those aspects I haven’t had, you know, such a close call with death like that. But I think for many people, they get that that sense of the constant search for explanations and reasons can really, really derail your life. And accepting that you are in some ways just an accident, the way I feel very much to be an accident because I’m derived from a mass murder. To me it takes a weight off my shoulders. You know, accidental things happen, arbitrary things happen. And that’s why I say, you know, the enjoying the ride mentality is, is sort of the best and most liberating way you can deal with that.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:23  That’s an incredible story. I was able to tell after like, talking to you for like two minutes, that you indeed had a mass murder in your family.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:31  It’s just in your personality, I think. I just I just kind of saw it.

Brian Klass 00:35:36  It’s funny you say that because, like, bizarrely, my my grandpa, who, you know, was more directly affected than this because it was his dad that found out the, you know, found the family. He had a very dark line where he said, you know, that branch of the family tree severed itself. So we’re not related to it?

Eric Zimmer 00:35:51  To that? Yeah.

Brian Klass 00:35:52  So, yeah, mass murderer gene would not have been passed.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:54  Down, not have been passed down.

Brian Klass 00:35:56  Yeah. The trauma that he experienced, I’m sure was horrific. So.

Speaker 4 00:35:59  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:25  This everything happens for a reason thing always kind of drives me crazy too, because I don’t know people who have that belief I’m actually often jealous of because they seem to have a comfort in things. If I could believe it, I think I might, but I can’t, right? So I have no choice but to sort of operate on the other.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:42  What I think is interesting about this, there’s a companion phrase to Everything Happens for a reason, which is that everything happens for the best or something like that. Right? And I think that is also nonsense. I think you can invert that phrase, though, and get something useful out of it, which is that you can make the best out of everything that happens. Yeah, I don’t think it’s that the thing that happened has meaning in and of itself, but you can make it meaningful with how you choose to respond. I don’t know that me being, you know, a homeless heroin addict at 24 will ever. We don’t know why. There’s no there’s no real thing there. And I don’t believe it happened for a reason. Like I was appointed to some higher purpose. But I do believe that I was presented an opportunity in which I was able to give that thing meaning by what I did in an ongoing way. And I think that’s the more actually compassionate view of suffering, because as soon as everything happens for a reason, you reference the secret in the book.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:40  Which drives me crazy, because if you follow that thing to its end, everything happens for a reason. You have to come to terms with the fact that as you and I are talking right now, like some child is being hideously abused for a reason and the child somehow attracted that to themselves, I find to be sort of morally repugnant.

Brian Klass 00:38:01  I agree with this completely, and I think that my issue is also that it breeds complacency around questions of justice. Because if you look at something that’s a gross injustice, you can just say everything happens for a reason. If you say that some things are the culmination of an arbitrary set of forces, or that some people are inflicting harm on a child, and we need to stop that. Then those things don’t have some sort of grand moral arc to them, and they require action, right? That you need to save the child. One of the most interesting interviews I did around the ideas that I was grappling with in writing the book, was actually with a Christian podcast that I was talking to a person who’s a very devout Christian, and I’m personally not religious, but what was striking about this was that he was actually much more okay with some of the ideas I had said, because his idea of providence, in which everything does happen for a reason, because in his view, God was dictating things, meant that he would never know the reason.

Brian Klass 00:38:57  Right? And because it was completely unknown to him, he sort of just said, I have to just try to do my best in life, you know? And I was thinking to myself, like, okay, I have a very different philosophical framework from this person, but I’m thinking from chaos theory that due to the fact that these tiny little tweaks in life can culminate in really big changes over time. I will never know or understand some of the reasons why things happen to me. I also feel like I should just try to do the best in life because I don’t have control. And so there’s a weird sort of horseshoe, right where the origin for me is the Big Bang in physics. That’s where I’m thinking about the sort of framework of of how these things work. For him, it was a sort of divine presence dictating everything in the universe. But the acceptance of a lack of control ended up with us at the same point. Right. Yeah. And so this is where, again, you both operate probabilistically.

Brian Klass 00:39:48  You don’t know what the right strategy is necessarily going to be. Even if you think God is testing you. So you just try to do the thing that you think is best. And that’s what I do. I try to do the thing that I think would be best, and that I hope the ripple effects of my life play out in a good way, as opposed to a catastrophically bad way. But I will never know. And that’s the interesting aspect of accepting the limits of control. I think that can exist in multiple worldviews.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:12  Yeah, that’s absolutely fascinating that this person arrives at the same place, which is I, I believe it’s all happening for a reason, but I can’t know the reason. You describe this a couple of different ways in the book, sort of religiously, which I love. You say this makes us devoted disciples of the cult of because or we worship at the altar of progress in the Church of Control. Those are great examples of how that world view is almost religious in its belief.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:38  Say a little bit more about that.

Brian Klass 00:40:40  Yeah. You know, I mean, I grew up in the United States, and I think the United States has a very strong sense. And in some ways this has probably helped American economic growth and so on. But it has a very strong sense that you are the master of your own destiny. Right. The sort of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, this sort of aspect of if you work hard, you’ll you’ll get what you deserve and so on. And so as a result of that, you know, I was really hit over the head, I think, with messages that if anything bad happened in my life, it was my fault because I am the master of my own destiny. And if I just have a setback, I should just work harder. I also think that this discounts structural problems in society. Problems with things we can’t control, like mental illness, setbacks from other people doing harm to us, etc. that you continually sort of beat yourself up when something goes wrong.

Brian Klass 00:41:28  And so I do think there’s almost a sort of devotional disciple aspect to this. What I think is a myth that we’re masters of our own destiny, what I call the illusion of control or the delusion of individualism. And to me, it was liberating to get out of that mentality and to start to think about the things that I have influence over the role my life plays in changing the lives of other people, but also accepting that I don’t need to pretend that those things are true anymore. Something that you said before really made me think of this is that when you were talking about coaching people, right? I also look back at my life and all the things that I was told I was supposed to want, and then I could imagine that I was, you know, going to go to someone to say, how do I get there? And there’s been loads of times in my life were the things that I thought I wanted were not the things that actually were good for me, right? Yep. And so, you know, how did I discover that? Well, often by accident.

Brian Klass 00:42:19  Right. Like where? I didn’t try to do something. I stumbled into something and found that I loved it or that I was passionate about it. And, you know, I often have written about ideas around what I call the false gospel of stuff and status, where the road to happiness is paved with more stuff and higher status. I have not found that to be true. I find personally that there are things that I care about in the world that are intrinsically valuable to me, that other people might not find value in whatsoever. And chasing those things has made me much happier. So that’s the other flip side of this sort of disciple aspect of of searching for control is that it’s often what other people think you want. Yeah. And that is, to me, is just another one of the myths of that sort of cultural aspiration.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:03  Right. There’s two really big points that you hit on there that maybe we can go and order, although we’ll probably tangent off somewhere else if I know how I do things.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:12  But the first is this idea of how much agency or control do we have? And I think this is an important thing to think about, because we have some amount of agency and we have some amount of our lives are the way they are based on what has come before. And I think that it’s really tricky to get that balance because I use myself as an example, just because it’s the easiest thing to use. Right? But if I were to have believed that my genetics and my family and my upbringing and all that meant I was destined to die as an addict. That would have been a problematic view. At the same time, had I believed that I was just a bad person because I was doing this and didn’t see all those other factors would have also been a harmful belief. And so somewhere in there is this triangulation on this idea of, well, there is some amount of control in here. And to your point, there’s a lot that’s not under my control. And I just love the line that you’ve used a couple times, which is like, how do I do my best? But I think if you can hold both those views at the same time, it allows you to go a little bit easier on yourself to relax a little bit, but also stay in sort of the driver’s seat of your own life.

Brian Klass 00:44:40  I’ve talked several times about chaos theory and chaos. That word is the opposite of order, right? It’s the opposite of control. All of our lives lie between order and disorder. Everything that’s that’s the entirety of our life. There’s bits that are ordered and structured and that we have some predictability about. There’s other bits where just things just wallop us out of the blue, and we have no idea that it’s going to hit us. And the difficulty is that I think a lot of people respond to that middle ground. That is life, by thinking, if I just got closer to the order, then everything would be okay, right? But it’s never going to happen. That’s the point that I say is like, yes, you just you know, personally, I think that the times where I’ve felt the worst in my life are when I’ve been trying to impose order on something I can’t. And the times that I have felt sometimes the best is where I’ve sort of accepted that disorder and just enjoyed the moment.

Brian Klass 00:45:36  Yeah. You know, there’s an example. I took this from a very good philosopher. I like his work a lot, called Hartmut Rosa, a sociologist. He has this phrase called resonance, which I think a lot of people would sort of recognize this moments where you just feel sort of just wonderful in the moment and the point he makes, which he has a little line where he says something to the effect of, you know, even in life’s planned celebrations, it’s the unplanned flourishes that we remember the most. And so I think about, you know, those moments of celebration. It’s like everybody thinks about like their wedding day, the birthdays, anniversaries, all these sort of big milestones. And then you tell stories about them, and it’s usually the stuff you did not expect where somebody did something really funny or just really heartfelt and that stands out. Whereas if you just try to say that, you know, this is going to happen at 10:00, this will happen at 1005 and so on. It sucks the joy out of it because there’s no unexpected uncertainty.

Brian Klass 00:46:30  And so, you know, I think we would be utterly crippled as a species if we were fully certain. And if we were fully uncertain, both things would be terrible for us. But living in that middle space is actually where you have the best of both worlds. And and so that’s where I really do disagree with a lot of the people who just say, you have to control your life. I think a world of complete control would be dystopian. I think it would be horrifically terrible. Yeah, and I like the uncertainty that I have to navigate. Even though uncertainty brings tragedy, sometimes it’s the price of a life that I think is enjoyable and exciting.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:03  Precisely that life where you knew everything that was going to happen and you got everything that you want, would be a very dead life. And again, if we believe this idea that most of us don’t actually even know what’s best for us, it would be a problematic life, right? The same for me. Like if I’d gotten all the things that I thought that I wanted, my life would look very different.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:25  You know, this is obviously some bias, but who knows what it would be like, but it wouldn’t be like this, right? It wouldn’t be like this. And this is kind of what it is. And I think that’s a really good place to be. I want to go back to what you said a minute ago about, what’d you call it, the gospel of stuff and success.

Brian Klass 00:47:42  Stuff and status.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:43  Yeah, stuff and status. Okay. So let’s just take that at face value to say, okay, this idea that if we get more of this or we get more status, we’re going to suddenly be happy. Let’s just say that’s not true. Why do we continue to believe that. Like, I’ve heard that line and said it and thought about it a thousand times at least. And I’ve seen through that delusion a thousand times. And yet my first book is going to be published in a year, and I am thinking very much about how many copies it sells and all of that.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:22  Right? So I know that if it sells 10,000 copies versus 25,000 copies, I’m not fundamentally going to be a happier person, because if I sell 25,000, I’m suddenly going to be like, well, why didn’t I sell 50,000? So I see through this illusion, goodness gracious, it’s persistent, and it just comes roaring right back in. Why do you think?

Brian Klass 00:48:43  It’s a great question. My argument on how to deal with this is I coined this phrase after the book. So it’s one of the ones that didn’t make the cut because I didn’t come up with it until after it was published. But I try to argue in favor of people and passion rather than stuff and status, which is nice alliterative phrasing. Yep. And the issue with people and passion versus stuff and status is that people and passion, by which I mean relationships and things that you care about deeply, that are individual to you. Those are not easily quantified. They’re not easily measured. Right? Right. Stuff and status are extremely easy to measure.

Brian Klass 00:49:15  And there are also things that in a social community are very easy to have relative rank. Right. So you can understand whether someone has a bigger house than you. You can understand whether someone makes more money than you. You can understand if they are above you in the corporate hierarchy, you cannot understand whether someone has a better relationship with their son or their father, or, you know, a friend. You cannot understand whether they have a deep satisfaction from the fact that they really enjoy woodworking or walking their dog. Right. And so when I think about this stuff, like, I have had a tremendous amount of joy from going for hikes with my dog, with loved ones, etc. and there is absolutely no metric that is tied to that. Right? But I feel good. And so what does that culminate towards? What am I striving towards? You know, that’s the other aspect. We’re really striving creatures. We try to always embed our position and, you know, walking the dog doesn’t do anything on an objective level to quote unquote, better my position in society.

Brian Klass 00:50:10  It might fulfill me, but this thing is so funny about this to me, is that it’s so obvious when you put it in the framework of a finite life and the idea of death and so on, that you’re going to look back on your life. I mean, I have never, ever encountered someone who has been asked the question of like, what did you value most at, you know, in your life in old age? And they say, the moment I got the promotion and the Ferrari, you know what I mean? It’s just like those things are not if you if you really love them, if they make you happy. It’s not saying that you shouldn’t chase things that are important to you, it’s that you have to make sure that you’re motivated. In my view, intrinsically, which means that if there were no other people on the planet, would you still value this? And for me, a lot of the things that I’ve started doing more of the answer is yes. And a lot of the things that I’ve started doing a lot less of the answer is no.

Brian Klass 00:50:57  Other people care about that, but it doesn’t really make me happy. And that’s extrinsic motivation or external motivation. Right. So all of society is built around external validation. And all of what makes us happy is built around internal motivation. And that’s the paradox of how to navigate it. Because obviously the ability to do things that you like is tied to being able to have enough money, for example, that you’re not stressed. So it’s not that they’re completely separate. It’s not that it’s important to just jettison them. And all of us should live in the woods and be subsistence farmers. It’s that you have to calibrate it so that you understand which thing is a means and which thing is an end, right? And if your entire life is means where you’re trying to get somewhere and you never enjoy the end, then you’ve basically mortgaged your life for a goal that never comes. And and I worry that there’s a lot of people who are doing that because they’re on the gospel of stuff and status, and they never understand what it’s for.

Brian Klass 00:51:48  They’re just playing the game until they die. So it’s a bleak way of saying it, but I think there are people who are living that life.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:54  Back to some of our earlier points. We are creatures that are wired up a certain way. We are wired up to look at status and hierarchy. It’s embedded in us, so it’s not bad that we do that because I don’t think you can not do it. And I think we can also recognize, oh, that way is not the path of fulfillment and happiness. And I think it gets further muddled because so many things end up being both. You write a book, there’s a big intrinsic motivation in it. Whatever it is for you, you like writing or you have a message you want to get out to the world or whatever the intrinsic thing is, and you’re going to measure it extrinsic. I talk about this podcast all the time I can get caught up in. It’s not as big as X and it’s not as big as Y, and is it going to pay the bills? And because those are all realities, when I live in that world, though, I’m not happy when I reorient and say, oh, I do this because I get to talk to really interesting people, right? I just love doing this.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:54  I get to put something out there that countless people tell me has helped them. I get to interact with my friend Chris around. He’s our editor around something I love, and when I get back to that framing, the job comes alive in a different way. And so for me, it’s sort of I feel like I’m always sort of lured over this way towards status and stuff, and I have to keep turning my attention back to people and passion.

Brian Klass 00:53:18  If I’m being honest about this stuff. I’m not some guru who’s immune from these things, right? Like, there’s no there’s no way in which even if you say these things, that you are immune from these aspects of the rat race. And when the most recent book, fluke, came out, I was refreshing review sites. I have read every review of the book. I think that’s on the internet. There were times where people said some really mean stuff. Other people, the majority of them said some very wonderful things, right? Yeah, but some people said some really mean stuff.

Brian Klass 00:53:43  And the mean things sort of stuck with me, of course, and I had to sit with it for a little bit. And the two things that were important to realize that have totally made me immune from this. One of them is realizing That I would have written the book if no one read it, because I cared about it and I wanted to do it. And it was a profound experience and sort of understanding what I thought about the world. So that’s the first part, right? That I would do it if no one read it. That’s intrinsic motivation. And the second thing that I think is also important and does go to a lot of different domains, is you don’t write a book or whatever it is that you do professionally, personally, whatever. You don’t write a book for the person who hates it. You write the book for the person for whom it’s going to change their world. And if that person experiences this in a positive way, I will take a thousand people who think I’m an idiot and hate the book because I didn’t write it for them, you know? And so there’s an aspect to this where I think that parable really applies to lots of other parts of life.

Brian Klass 00:54:39  You can’t make something that is going to be universally celebrated or universally affecting in the same way as creative, whatever it is, but you do it for the people who it empowers and changes their worldview and makes them think differently. And that’s enough. And so, you know, I think there’s so much of that aspect where we’re trying to be universalizing. We want it to be 100% of people. It’s impossible, but it’s still it’s still worthwhile if those things make a difference, and also if you find them personally fulfilling. And it’s made me a lot more comfortable with the horrible comments that people make online when you are an author, because, you know, the majority of them are actually very positive, and those are the people for whom I was spending time, you know, sitting in front of a laptop and really trying to get this right.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:21  Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation where we’re going to see what we cover.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:27  We might cover the idea that probability theory works well in certain contexts, but fails catastrophically in others, understanding the difference between risk and uncertainty. And we may discuss the mating habits of spiders and why you might want to do more of this in your own life. So we’ll see what happens in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you’d like to get access to that conversation, all of the other post-show conversations, special episodes that I do just for you. And you want to contribute to the podcast because we can always, always, always use your support. Go to one you feed. Join. Brian. Thanks again. I’ve really enjoyed this. I loved the book. I think your Substack is outstanding. What’s it called?

Brian Klass 00:56:08  It’s called The Garden of Forking Paths. It’s an idea that’s also on fleek as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:12  Yeah, you’re a great writer across the board, so I encourage people to check that out. And thank you so much.

Brian Klass 00:56:17  Thanks for having me on the show.

Filed Under: Featured, Podcast Episode

The Bittersweet Truth About Beauty, Sorrow, and What Makes Life Worth Living with Susan Cain

April 25, 2025 1 Comment

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In this episode, Susan Cain explores the bittersweet truth about beauty, sorrow, and what makes life worth living. She emphasizes the transformative power of music and bittersweet emotions and also discusses how acknowledging grief can lead to deeper connections and creativity. This episode encourages listeners to embrace their emotions and seek beauty in life’s bittersweet moments, offering profound insights into the human experience.

Key Takeaways:

  • Exploration of the relationship between sorrow and beauty.
  • Discussion of the transformative power of music and its emotional connections.
  • Insights into the concept of bittersweetness and its significance in human experience.
  • The importance of acknowledging grief and its role in personal growth.
  • Differentiation between “moving on” and “moving forward” in the context of loss.
  • The concept of poignancy as a blend of joy and sorrow.
  • The role of creativity and art in navigating difficult emotions.
  • Emphasis on seeking beauty in everyday life, especially during challenging times.
  • The impact of personal experiences on understanding grief and longing.
  • Encouragement for listeners to embrace their emotions and foster connections through shared experiences.


SUSAN CAIN is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, and BITTERSWEET: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, which was also an Oprah Book Club selection. She has spent the last twenty years exploring a particular realm of human nature: the quiet, the sensitive, the thoughtful, the bittersweet. It has always seemed clear to her – and to her millions of readers – that this way of being can lead to a richer, deeper form of happiness. Susan has also been named one of Watkins’ Most Spiritually Influential Living People in the World. Her books have been translated into 40+ languages, and her record-smashing TED talks have been viewed over 50 million times on TED and YouTube combined. Susan is the host of the bestselling Audible series, A QUIET LIFE IN SEVEN STEPS, and the QUIET LIFE online community. Her Kindred Letters newsletter is read by people in all 193 countries and all 50 American states.

Connect with Susan Cain:  Website | Instagram

If you enjoyed this conversation with Susan Cain, check out these other episodes:

How to Embrace Your Authentic Self with Carmen Rita Wong

Faith, Identity, and Finding Your Voice with Dante Stewart

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:00:00  Hey, friends. Eric here with some exciting news. I’ve been writing a book and it’s about to be out in the world in April of 2026. The working title is how a Little Becomes a Lot, and it’s all about how small, consistent actions, the kind that we talk about all the time on this show can lead to real, meaningful change. Right now, the book is in the editing process, and there’s still some shaping to do, which is where you come in. I’d love your input on what to focus on, how to talk about the book, even what it should be called. If you’ve got a few minutes and a couple thoughts on what would make this book most helpful for you, I’d be really grateful to hear them. Just head to one. You feed a survey. You’ll also get early updates, fun giveaways, and a behind the scenes look at what it actually takes to make a book. Editing marathons, title debates, existential spirals, and me questioning all of my life choices at 2 a.m. over one stubborn sentence again. That’s oneyoufeed.net/booksurvey. Thank you so much for being part of this. Your feedback really means a lot to me. Truly.

Susan Cain 00:01:10  The same thing that can, when it’s not working right, predispose us to anxiety. And depression is the very thing that can bring us to our highest and deepest selves.

Chris Forbes 00:01:29  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:14  It’s technically sad music, but what I feel really is love. A great title outpouring of it. I’ve never had a good answer for why I find yearning music so strangely uplifting. Until this conversation. This week I talked with Susan Cain, author of Bittersweet and Quiet, about the strange alchemy where sorrow becomes beauty and longing becomes connection. We dig into why certain types of music make our hearts ache in the best way, and why that ache might actually be pointing us towards something sacred. Some spiritual traditions can seem to treat desire and longing like enemies. This conversation offers a different view That yearning can be a spiritual force in its own right. Susan also holds a special place in my heart, not just because of her work, but because she kindly introduced me to her literary agent, who later became mine. Susan and I talk Leonard Cohen grief, transcendence and how turning towards the bittersweet might just be the path home. I’m Erik Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Susan, welcome to the show.

Susan Cain 00:03:23  Hey, Eric. It’s so great to be here.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:25  I am really excited to have you on. You’re sort of a patron saint to introverts everywhere, of which I lean in that direction. And your latest book, where we’re going to be spending our time, is called bittersweet. How sorrow and longing make us Whole. But before we do that, let’s start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with a grandchild, and they say, in life there’s two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life and the work that you do.

Susan Cain 00:04:12  So I love that parable, and it actually seems to me to echo another parable that I came across while I was researching bittersweet, which I have found to be such a great guiding star and consolation of how to live.

Susan Cain 00:04:31  And I’ll tell you this parable. And I think you’ll see the parallels, but we can talk about them. So in this other parable, this one comes from the Kabbalah, which is the mystic form of Judaism. And in this parable, the idea is that all of creation originally was an intact divine vessel, but that the vessel shattered and that the world that we are living in now is the broken world following the shattering, but that scattered all around us still are the divine shards from when the vessel was still intact. And that one great way to live a life is to look around us and to notice the divine shards, wherever they have happened to land around us, and to bend down and pick them up. And you will notice different shards from the ones that I will. But we can all do our own gathering. And I love this. And it reminds me of the parable that you shared, because it’s acknowledging the pain and the tragedy and the evil that exists in the world, without feeling that we have to become a prisoner to them.

Susan Cain 00:05:41  So it’s not telling us to look away from them and pretend that they’re not there. Which is, I think, what our mainstream culture would, would tell us. It’s telling us they’re very much there, and we can admit that and tell the truth about that. And at the same time, we can turn in the other direction, in the direction of beauty and of love, and that we have the ability to decide to turn in that direction. I find that parable to just be such a relief, a relief to be able to tell the truth. Also just a great way to live, to know that we always have that option. So I think it’s very much what the grandparent in your parable was telling the grandchild, just with a different image.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:17  Yeah, it’s one of the things I love about the Wolf parable is exactly what you said, which is it just sort of says like, hey, we all have this in us. That’s the human condition. It’s natural. It’s normal. I’ve always liked that normalizing of it.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:29  And I love the parable that you told from Judaism, which is a beautiful, beautiful story. And as you were talking about it, I actually had another thought which was, not only are we walking around collecting the shards, we are ourselves the shards in some ways. And when we come together, we are putting them back together in a way that sort of flashed into my mind as you were telling that story?

Susan Cain 00:06:52  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that what the grandparent was saying also is that we can’t deny that these two aspects of ourselves exist at all times. With denying it comes a kind of blindness, but we can acknowledge it and then decide to turn in a particular direction.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:09  Let’s jump into the book. I mean, I kind of have to start close to where you start, which is by talking about music, and you start the book by really trying to find out why. Do some of us really love what would be considered sad music? And it’s funny. This is an interesting thing in my own household because I am that type.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:29  I listen to melancholy music, give me any chance and I’ll listen to it. My partner really doesn’t because it makes her sad, and I haven’t been able to explain to her why I like melancholy music very well. I haven’t been able to put it into very good words. I was reading your book and I just stopped and I said, I have to read you something, which is rare. I normally just interview prep and she’s always like, I wish you’d share more about what your interview prepping, and I just am kind of going on my way. But it was so good it stopped me and I’m just going to read it really quickly, if that’s okay. Yeah, sure. You said it’s hard to put into words what I experience when I hear this kind of music. It’s technically sad, but what I feel really is love. A great title, outpouring of it, a deep kinship with all the other souls in the world who know the sorrow the music strains to express. But the music makes my heart open, literally the sensation of expanding chest muscles.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:21  And I’ve been looking for that description ever since I started listening to melancholy music. So thank you.

Susan Cain 00:08:27  You’re welcome. I just got goosebumps knowing that you’ve been looking for that explanation as I had been to. I mean, it was only when I started writing this book that I actually like, put into words exactly what the sensation is and why it matters so much. The reason I put music at the heart of the book, I mean, partly just because it literally was the catalyst for why I went off on this bittersweet quest in the first place, but also because the way in which sad music is a gateway to love, because it unites us in our state of longing, our state of like exile from Eden. You could say that’s the power of Bittersweetness itself. Not just the music, but the bittersweet condition itself. Like the fact that all humans are united in existing in this state of what feels to us like a grand imperfection and impermanence and, you know, longing for the world to be different from the way that it is, you know, to see the joys and the beauties in the world and wish that they could last forever, and wish that they comprised all of the world instead of only a part of it.

Susan Cain 00:09:30  All those longings, the fact that we’re in that together is just this great uniting force, and the fact that we live in a world that tells us not to talk about any of that and not to talk about our sorrows and our longings, is like living in a world that is telling us not to love each other as deeply as we could.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:50  Yeah. And I really want to get to what you just said a little bit more in detail, which is about telling us not to love things as deeply as we do, because not only does our culture tell us that some of the spiritual traditions I’m most attached to almost seem to be saying that, and but we’re going to save that for a little bit later, because we got to talk about Leonard Cohen for a second. Who you talk about as your favorite musician and is mine. He was the guest I most ever all time wanted to have on this show, and it didn’t happen. I got close at one point. I was talking with a guy who knew him, who was a monk at the center that Leonard was at, and he said, you should know that Leonard’s monk name means great silence.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:31  So just to give you an idea of how likely you are to get a conversation with him.

Susan Cain 00:10:36  So that’s so interesting. And can I interrupt you to just say that? Yeah. He’s my guy. Artistically, after my book quiet came out, you know, which is all about introversion and the power of quiet. He actually tweeted out of the blue about the book and about quiet and how important it is. You know, that was like a glory day for me. And I can’t believe I can’t even find the tweet now, but I will always remember it.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:58  So yeah.

Susan Cain 00:11:00  Yeah. So you just had to share that.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:01  I remember where I was when I heard that he passed. I wanted to talk a little bit about a conversation. I think Adam Cohen was saying in an interview with Rick Rubin. But I loved this line at the end. He’s describing what Leonard Cohen’s music did. And Adam, his son, said he was giving you a transcendence delivery system. That’s what he was trying to do every time.

Susan Cain 00:11:23  Yeah. I love that. I mean, I don’t have the quote in front of me, but I think he was talking about that in the context of talking about how, you know, his music was famously kind of sorrowful and gloomy. And his record producers at one point were joking about how they should give out razor blades along with his, along with his, his albums and, you know, and that’s what he was famous for. But what Adam was saying is. Yes. And I mean, it wasn’t only about brokenness. It was about brokenness pointing in the direction of transcendence. The song that is best known of his and has been covered maybe more than any other song in music history, is Hallelujah and Hallelujah is about. I mean, it’s literally in his words. It is about the broken hallelujah, a cold and broken Hallelujah. So I think in all his music, he’s constantly expressing and wrestling with the bittersweet, the way in which everything is so fundamentally broken and so fundamentally beautiful.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:20  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:20  Yep I agree. So there’s one other thing I just want to talk about with music for a second. Something else that you said that I really love. You said this type of music, you’re talking about a specific song, but it doesn’t matter of the world. Don’t simply discharge our emotions. They elevate them. And also, you say it’s only sad music that elicits exalted states of communion and awe.

Susan Cain 00:12:41  Yeah, this is an interesting thing. I did a little bit of research and studying of the whole nature of sad music and why we love it so. And you and I are not the only ones who feel this way. Many, many people do. The people whose favorite songs are happy listen to them. 175 times on their playlist. But the people whose favorite songs are sad listen 800 times and they tell, yeah, you know, they feel this deep sense of connection, and they tell researchers that the music makes them feel connected to the sublime and the wondrous. And it’s not just because of, quote, negativity, per se, because this does not happen for music that expresses anger or disgust or, you know, any other negative emotions you can think of.

Susan Cain 00:13:27  It’s specifically something about sadness. And in fact, there is this one study done by an MIT economist. It was published in an MIT review under the title How are you, My Dearest Mozart? And in this study, the Economist, he took all the letters that Mozart, Beethoven and List had written throughout their lives, and he coded each of the letters based on the emotions expressed within them. And then he correlated the time at which those letters had been written and looked at what music the composer had produced at that time. And he found that the most and the only predictive emotion of all was sadness, that when the letters expressed sorrow, that was what reliably predicted the most profound and the greatest of their works. And again, not any other negative emotion. Just sadness. Just sorrow. So there’s something about this state of sorrow. And I think anybody who feels a kind of creative spirit in them, we all know this. We’ve we’ve been there. There’s something about a state of sorrow that puts us in mind of a kind of like longing and reaching upwards, wanting to transform the sorrow into something else, into something high, and to something sublime.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:43  Yeah, I think that’s really fascinating, that sorrow is the emotion that, as you say, can sort of lead us to these higher states of transcendence, of or of beauty. And it’s not the other negative emotions. And it made me think a little bit about the idea of neurosis, right? Neurosis being very often something we’re layering on top of to avoid feeling maybe the core emotion, which might be sorrow. And so these sort of more neurotic emotions, for lack of a better word, I’m going to use them. Anxiety or depression? I’m a depression sufferer. We’ll talk about that. These things actually are ways of avoiding what is actually most healing in some ways.

Susan Cain 00:15:24  Yeah, yeah. That’s right, that’s right. And it’s interesting that you use the word neurosis, because one of the things I did when I started researching this book, I basically was researching for years what I call the bittersweet tradition, which is all the religions, wisdom, traditions, Musicians, artists, philosophers, poets who have been talking about this bittersweet state of being for thousands of years all across the world.

Susan Cain 00:15:48  And I looked also at mainstream psychology. In mainstream psychology, there really is no word for this state, this state of, like, this beautifully piercing longing that I was trying to investigate. The only word that comes close is the word of neurosis, as you said. Except when psychology talks about neurosis, it’s only talking about the problem of it. It is a real problem when it goes too far and it descends into anxiety and depression. And for anyone who’s been there, those are not pleasant states. But there’s nothing in psychology or in this terminology that talks about the great transcendent longing that’s at the heart of human nature, and that is intimately connected. The same thing that can, when it’s not working right, predispose us to anxiety. And depression is the very thing that can bring us to our highest and deepest selves. And so a lot of the challenge of life is figuring out what to do with that thing and how to use its powers, its powers, which can be dangerous, but which can also be beautiful and transformative.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:57  You wrote this idea of transforming pain into creativity, transcendence and love is at the heart of this book. And when I read that, I was like, that’s as good a description of what we’ve been trying to do over 500 episodes, right? Which is, you know, I’m a recovering addict, I have depression, you know, my whole thing is, how do we take this difficult stuff that we all face every human life? You know, Buddha says we’re all brothers and sisters and sickness, old age and death. Right? So for all of us, how do we take that and create something meaningful and beautiful?

Susan Cain 00:17:28  Exactly. You know, in the book I have this quiz that we developed. It’s called the Bittersweet Quiz. I say we because I did it together with the psychologists David Eden and Scott Barry Kaufman. David Evans at Hopkins and the quiz basically asks a bunch of different questions. Questions like, do you draw comfort or inspiration from a rainy day? Do you react very intensely to music, art and nature? And there’s a bunch of questions.

Susan Cain 00:17:52  You can find it either in the book or on my website. And what we found is that people who score high on the quiz, meaning that they tend to this bittersweet state of mind, these same people, they have maybe exactly what you would predict in terms of strengths and vulnerabilities. Their strengths are that they also score high on measures of receptivity to wonder and awe and spirituality. That was a strong correlation. But then there was also a more minor but still significant correlation with anxiety and depression. It’s like the quiz codified. I think what you just said and what we’ve both been reaching towards, which is there is something in this bittersweet state, this state in which you’re aware of life’s joys and sorrows, and you’re aware of its impermanence, and you’re deeply connected to that and connected to its beauty. There’s something about that state that if you’re following it and you’re in your best self moment, let’s say it can. It can deliver you to states of great wonder. And if you’re not careful to manage it right, it can also deliver you to a place of depression.

Susan Cain 00:19:00  The question is how do you do it right?

Eric Zimmer 00:19:27  I’ve asked that question. I feel like hundreds of different ways, which is why do some people take pain and turn it into something beautiful. And I don’t only mean art, right. It could be. It could just be love. It becomes a creative force in their life. And I would say a good thing in the world. Why does that happen? In some cases. And in other cases we see people just broken by the difficulties in life, you know? And so what are the factors in there? And you in the book later on say there’s different pathways to the peace we all seek. You’re trying to sort of answer this question, at least it seems to me. And I’m just going to read the four that you came up with and let you kind of talk about them. First one was sort of, you know, let it go some degree of, you know, just letting things go. The other is to know how resilient we are to really lean into resilience.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:20  The other is non-attachment, right. And trying to aspire to a love that is bigger than possession. And then the last one you say, this is the one you’re going to need to explain is the way of even so carries a different wisdom, one that expresses the longing that many of us sense is the force that will carry us home.

Susan Cain 00:20:40  Yeah. So that last one comes from a poem that was written by Issa, one of the great Japanese Buddhist poets, and it was written after he lost his beloved young daughter to smallpox. And he says in the poem, basically he says, I know that this world of doo doo, like D.W., I know that this world of dew is just a world of dew. But even so, but even so. And he’s basically saying, you know, I get it that everything is impermanent. I get it that we’re just dewdrops. Who are we’re all of us going to evaporate any minute now. I understand that. And yet there’s something in me that doesn’t accept that there’s something in me that will insist on feeling sorrow and feeling grief for my lost daughter, no matter what.

Susan Cain 00:21:30  And I think there’s so much beauty and wisdom in that poem. He’s a trained Buddhist. He’s saying, even I feel this way. And implicit in the poem, because there’s a reader at the other end of that poem and he knows it, he’s not writing it to himself. So implicit is there’s a reader on the other end who feels the exact same way, who, no matter what, will feel a grief and feel a longing, and that we are united in that feeling. And there’s something about the uniting of that, the fact that all humans are in that state together. That is a great joy of its own. There’s one young woman who I quote in the book who calls this the union between souls, and she’s talking about how she experiences that at her grandfather’s funeral. At the funeral, there’s a barbershop chorus who sings a song in tribute of her grandfather, and she sees her father for the first time in her life, crying in front of her, crying, crying in public. And she says, what she remembers of that funeral is not the sorrow, but the union between souls that happened there.

Susan Cain 00:22:34  And I think that’s what is bringing to life when he says, I may be a Buddhist and I may understand it about the dewdrops, but come on, we’re all in this together.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:44  I love that idea. You say this is the ultimate paradox. We transcend grief only when we realize that we’re connected with all the other humans who can’t transcend grief because we will always say, but even so, even so, what I love about that poem, and I’ve tried to articulate this and listeners have heard this before. I try to articulate and talk about an experience I had when I had to put to sleep a dog that I loved deeply beyond all measure, and I had had to put down another dog like eight months before. And for whatever reason, I was able to sort of like say, you know what? Yep. This is a world of do. It’s a world of do we come? We go as creatures, we get sick, we die. This is what happens. So I sort of set down my argument with the universe, and I just was able to descend into the grief itself.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:35  And it felt beautiful. It was so clear to me that that grief was the parallel, the other side of the great love. You know, I was having great grief because I’d had great love. But in order to do that, I feel like I had to set down my defense against it. I had to sit down the. But it shouldn’t have happened. He’s too young, but I just had to put down another dog eight months ago that all my arguments with the universe, like you said. But even so, even knowing all that, I’m really sad. And yet there was a deep beauty in it that I had not experienced in other grieving situations where I had sort of grieved and argued my way through them. I don’t know if that resonates with you.

Susan Cain 00:24:15  Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that story. Yeah. It does, it does. I think there’s something about setting aside our grief too soon. Maybe that feels not human and deprives us Of the process the way it is, even for somebody who does get through grief with a great measure of resilience.

Susan Cain 00:24:37  And, you know, as I as I write in the book, the Columbia psychologist George Bonanno, who studies grief, has found that the vast majority of us kind of surprise ourselves by how resilient we end up being in the face of grief. It’s not true for everybody. Some people really get into chronic grief, but many, many people are more resilient than they expect to be. But that doesn’t mean they don’t pass through the moments of feeling it so incredibly intensely, and it doesn’t mean they might not feel it. You know, 50 years from now, 50 years from the day they’ve lost their beloved, it can come up upon them unawares. Yeah. So all of that is part of the same messy soup.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:15  I agree, I think there’s this idea that is in certain circles, and your book is part of this, which beautifully says, hey, difficult experiences can become really beautiful things. And we hear that and we buy into that. And yet they’re still brutal. When you’re in them, they’re still like, that’s a lovely idea.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:38  I find it helpful to hold a kernel of it in my mind some of the time when I’m in the darkness, like, okay, yeah, this is transforming, but you still got to go through it and it is not pleasant at certain moments for sure.

Susan Cain 00:25:51  Absolutely. And I also want to take a minute to acknowledge that I think there are, for some people, some griefs and some traumas that are so enormous and so horrible and so beyond what any human should be exposed to that, that maybe you don’t ever get to that place, or maybe you only get to glimpses of that place. And I’m thinking in particular, there’s someone I’ve come to know over the years who, as a child was just exposed to such a heart wrenching and horrible degree of abuse that you just can’t even imagine. Well, I guess you can say two things about him now as a grown adult. One is that his life is forever marred in a very deep way. I’m in touch with him every day. I don’t think I’ve seen him go through a single day without suffering emotionally as a result of what happened to him as a child.

Susan Cain 00:26:38  It’s also the case that he is an incredibly loving soul who writes poetry every day and does great acts of love for the people around him almost every day. And so both of these things are true at once. But I’m invoking him to say, I don’t think it’s easy, and I do wonder if there are some degrees of grief and trauma beyond which maybe a full healing isn’t possible. To me, the jury’s out on that question.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:06  I agree, I agree 100%. I believe some degree of healing is always possible, but how much is is up in the air? I yeah, I wonder about this a lot. You know, being a recovering addict and alcoholic, this is a question I think about a lot, which is we know that trauma is a huge indicator for addiction, and we know the more traumatic experiences you’ve had, the higher that relationship really is. And so we see some people who get sober and you’re like, well, my God, what they went through was just I can’t fathom, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:39  And yet they get sober and then you see other people that don’t even with much less trauma. So I think this sort of healing process, to me, it’s deeply mysterious. And one of my great mysteries of my adult life has always been, why do some of us get sober and others don’t? And for every answer I give, I can find people that contradict whatever answer I come up with. And I’m left with a mystery. Yeah, I don’t think we can fully articulate something as complex as healing. And the world is is deeply complex. And I think that’s what the bittersweet to me also takes into account. There’s some measure in it to me of this is all deeply mysterious, and that that mystery can be deeply both terrifying but also deeply beautiful.

Susan Cain 00:28:21  Yeah. That’s right. You know how in the book I give different examples of people who have been engaging with the bittersweet tradition all over the world, and one of them is the poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca, and he calls the longing aspect of the bittersweet, like that mysterious longing that so many of us feel.

Susan Cain 00:28:38  He calls it the great force that everyone feels, but no philosopher can explain. And I think that really embodies the mystery that you’re talking about.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:48  Yeah. In the bittersweet tradition, you actually say what I call the bittersweet is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy and sorrow, an acute awareness of passing time, and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. So I thought for a minute we could talk about those states individually. We’ve talked a little bit about sorrow, so I don’t know if we need to go back to sorrow. Maybe we’ll land there. That seems to be where I often, even without meaning to know I’m. I’m joking. Sort of. But let’s talk about longing, because this is a really interesting one, because I’ve seen longing as a deeply beautiful thing. And yet as somebody who studied a lot in Buddhism were also told to watch out for craving. And you stumble right into this in the book and talk about it. So I really wanted to talk about that for a little while, because I think that is such a big and confusing sort of distinction.

Susan Cain 00:29:45  Yeah, I agree with you, of course. And there is a state of longing, a state of yearning that exists across all the traditions. Right? There’s the longing for the Garden of Eden and the longing for Mecca, the longing to be united with God, the longing for somewhere over the rainbow. You know, in Homer’s Odyssey, like that’s a story of epic adventure. That’s the way we think of it. But really, that’s a story of Ulysses longing for home. The adventure happened because he was filled with homesickness for his native Ithaca that he hadn’t seen, I think, for 17 years or something like that. And he’s weeping on a beach with homesickness, and that’s what sets him off on the journey that ultimately brings him home. But this idea of, you know, I’m a poor wayfaring stranger, longing for that world of home. There is something about that, that this longing for home, this ultimate home, whether we think of it explicitly in terms of the divine or more metaphorically, in terms of like longing for perfect union, perfect love that is central to what human beings are, that is central to who we are.

Susan Cain 00:30:58  We are creatures who long for an ultimate union and longed for an ultimate home. And we come into this world crying, as psychoanalysts would say, well, it’s because we left the womb. But you know, going more deeply, the womb is the representation of that ultimate home for which we long and so many of the great theologians and mystics have taught across all the traditions that we should go deeper into the longing, because it’s the longing itself that brings us closer to that for which we long. Rumi says that, and he’s talking about God or Allah. He’s saying the longing you express is the return message from the divine that you seek. The grief you cry out from is what draws you towards union, your pure sadness that wants help. That is the secret cup. So all these traditions, and particularly the Sufi tradition, which is the mystic side of Islam, all these traditions speak of this divine nature of longing. And as soon as I started learning about all this and diving into these traditions, I felt like a kind of homecoming because I felt like, oh my gosh, you know, this is what I have been experiencing all my life and never really understood what it was.

Susan Cain 00:32:08  But then, like you, I had this big question of like, I mean, I’m not an expert in Buddhism, but I know something about it. And the way that Buddhism warns us against craving. And I thought, well, how do these teachings about the you call it divine nature of longing? How do these teachings square with Buddhism’s warning against giving into craving? So I went to ask a Sufi teacher about this. Actually, this is Llewellyn Vonleh, the great Sufi teacher who’s based in California, and I asked him this very question at a retreat that he gave the difference between longing and Sufism and Buddhism. And he says longing is different from craving. Longing is the craving of the soul. You want to go home, he says. In our culture, it’s confused with depression, and it’s not depression. There’s a saying in Sufism. Sufism was at first heartache. Only later it became something to write about. And then he said to me, if you’re taken by longing, live it. You can’t go wrong.

Susan Cain 00:33:05  If you’re going to go to God, go with sweet sorrow in the soul. And I say all this as an agnostic myself, and yet, like there’s such a deep truth in this message and one that I think coexists with the exhortation against craving, because this longing that we’re talking about is more about a longing for everything that is good and true and beautiful and love, and where’s the harm in that?

Eric Zimmer 00:34:04  I think that we find this paradox right in the center of Buddhism. I know I’ve talked about it with many Buddhist teachers, which is this idea of why are we even practicing if we don’t want something, like, what are we doing if there’s not some desire? Like we’re not sitting around meditating for no reason, we’re doing it because there’s something that we are after or we want. And even the Buddha talks about, you know, great determination. Determination comes when you’re like, well, there’s something I want and I’m determined to get it. So I think that even within Buddhism, we sort of just have to sit with this paradox that says, yeah, there are some things that we want and that longing is okay.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:43  I love the way Houston Smith in his book The Great World Religions, it’s a classic, but he talks about Hinduism and he paraphrases this. So I want to make sure I’m saying that it’s what he said, not what Hinduism said. But he said about Hinduism that basically what Hinduism is saying is your desire is great. You just are desiring the wrong things. It’s not strong enough, it’s not big enough, and that that’s the normal path through life, that when we’re younger, we desire the things of the world, and that’s natural and normal. And as we grow old, we start to go. Wait, there’s something more. The things of the world aren’t satisfying. So what is this bigger thing? So I just love this question, because it’s another one of the things that I feel like has been central to what I’ve asked people on this show for 500 episodes, which is this longing seems clear, it seems real, it seems true, it seems innate to human nature, and it feels right.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:40  And we also know that craving over attachment causes a great deal of suffering. And so trying to balance that paradox, I think, is really important work. It’s kind of similar to like trying to balance that thin line of, okay, I’m going to turn difficulty and sorrow into beauty, or I’m going to fall off the other side.

Susan Cain 00:35:59  Yeah, that’s a really good way of putting it. That’s a great way of putting it. Yeah. And I don’t know, I mean, do you think that the idea of saying that what we’re all ultimately longing for is love, by which I don’t mean like a new relationship kind of love. I mean, like Like love. Maybe that’s something that unites all the different religious traditions, including Buddhism. I mean, Buddhism would say a love without attachment.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:22  Yeah. Yeah. I’ve always loved the Joseph Campbell quote around, you know that we’re not looking for the meaning of life. We’re looking for the feeling of being alive. Yeah. You know, we could call that love.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:35  We could call that transcendence. We could call it connection. You know, when I think about spirituality and I’ve got a course called Spiritual Habits, right? So it’s a word I use when I think about what it means most deeply. It just to me is about connection to what matters. That’s going to be different for everybody, but it’s about connection to what matters. And so, you know, the words we use might be different, but I do think that that’s what we’re after. And as we’re talking, I’m thinking about early days of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Bill Wilson was the founder. And he got into a correspondence via letters with Carl Jung. And Jung made the connection that said, you know, what alcoholics are Hereafter is an experience of the transcendent. It’s in the word spirit, spiritus. You know, we call alcohol spirits.

Susan Cain 00:37:19  Yeah. That’s right.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:20  That’s what’s being chased. And the only thing that’s going to be a cure for that is something that addresses that need. Which is why A.A. became a spiritual program, very religious in its early leanings, and it’s diversified, but it’s pointing to that same thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:37  That there’s some connection we need to something that’s more than us and our little wants.

Susan Cain 00:37:43  Absolutely. Oh my gosh, that’s so true. You know, it’s funny as you say that. So I wrote most of my first book, quiet, in this amazing, beautiful little cafe in Greenwich Village. No longer exists, but it was called DOMA. And DOMA had this magical spirit about it. And it drew artists and writers and actors from all over the city. They would come and hang out there and work on their stuff and have conversations. It was such a magical place. I hung out there all the time for a number of years, and once or twice a week I would notice there was this group of people who would come in the evening to Douma, and they would sit together and talk, and I always noticed them because they seemed so alive and so full of spirit, and I wondered where they came from. And then at a certain point, someone told me, oh, there’s an AA group that meets down the block, and this group is coming from there.

Susan Cain 00:38:37  And it was such a striking group of people like you just noticed. As I say, you notice them immediately, and they had a kind of magical property about them, like even more than the usual denizens of DOMA.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:47  Yeah, absolutely. It can have that effect. And I think the other thing you talk about in the book is that sometimes the things that lead us most commonly to transcendent and exalted experiences is difficulty, sadness, a understanding that life is finite. You know, and I think a lot of people, particularly early on in AA, I mean, I was so close to death when I came in, you know, as a heroin addict, that I was just so aware of it that it made life sort of glow in a different way. Sometimes I wish I could recapture that, you know, a little bit more with the emotional maturity I have now, and the spiritual energy I had then would be perfect.

Susan Cain 00:39:25  Oh, interesting. Interesting. Yeah. And I mean, there are all those studies that I talk about in the book, like, David Eden at Johns Hopkins, the guy who I developed the bittersweet quiz with.

Susan Cain 00:39:36  He’s done studies where he has tried to track what are the conditions that cause people to experience the great spiritual and transcendent moments of their lives. And he’s found that one of the most reliable ones is being at moments of transition, including moments of great loss, including approaching death, and other studies that have found that if you ask people to imagine what are the emotions that they would feel upon approaching death, like people assume the emotions would be, you know, like feel depressed and angry and like that. But when you talk to people who are actually dying, it’s nothing like that. They’re reporting much more uplifted and much more spiritual emotions a lot of the time. So there is something about being open to these states of transition. Those are some of our great gateway moments, even the transitions that feel really difficult and that feel as if they’re full of loss.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:28  It certainly has been the case for me. Transitions of all different sorts have been big moments, and most of them have been ones that I wouldn’t have chosen.

Susan Cain 00:40:37  Yes, exactly. Exactly. You never choose it. You never choose it. This is a very innocuous one or a very mild one, but I, I went through an experience like this a little bit, just this past summer, my two sons went to sleepaway camp for the first time. Like, my husband and I really have devoted everything, you know, to our kids over these years. And and suddenly they weren’t home. And we knew they weren’t going to be home again for the rest of the summer. And that in and of itself was a kind of like foretelling of them going away to college and growing up and all the rest of it. And the first day or so, I just felt such a blue feeling, you know? Yeah, like a blue sense of loss. And then life went forward and I don’t know. My husband and I, we went to the beach, just the two of us, for the first time in so long. And it was such an incredible experience.

Susan Cain 00:41:28  And it was like a kind of second honeymoon, like, like we had only just met. And at the same time that we had known each other all our lives, it was just this great thing that would not have happened, but for passing through that blue moment of transition.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:41  Yeah, I mean, that’s a real one that children going away, as you mentioned in a small way, summer camp and then the big way in college like that is a big thing for people. That emptiness to me is a really real thing and it can be very difficult, but it’s also very fertile as as you sort of found and yeah, you just used a word in there that brings me to something else I wanted to talk about with you, because you talk about the author Nora McNerney. Am I saying that right?

Susan Cain 00:42:10  Oh. Nora McInerney. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:12  Yeah. She has a Ted talk and uses a phrase in the middle of it, which is she makes a distinction between moving on and moving forward. And you just actually used that word when you talked about what happened with you and your husband.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:25  You moved forward.

Susan Cain 00:42:27  Oh, that’s so interesting. I didn’t even really realize I was using her phrase, but it’s it’s such a helpful framework. Yeah. So Nora McInerney, she’s a writer who lost her first husband at a very early age and was full of grief and felt that the culture and everyone she knew was kind of sending her the message. After some period of time, you know, time to move on, move on, move on. And she said moving on was impossible, but what was possible was moving forward. Which is to say, she will mourn her first husband for the rest of her life. At the same time that she went on to remarry and create a blended family with her new husband. So she has moved forward with him and with her husband’s memory. You know, the person she is in this second marriage is not the same person that she would have been had she never known and loved and lost her husband. So she has moved forward with him and with that loss.

Susan Cain 00:43:25  And I think that’s such a liberating way to think about loss, because it’s like allowing us to acknowledge the enormity of it at the same time that we’re still living our lives. You know, I think there’s a feeling if you’re ever going to feel happy again, that that’s a kind of abandonment of the person who’s gone. But the idea of moving forward is telling you that there is no abandonment at all. You’re carrying them with you. You’re moving forward with them.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:51  I love that idea. It makes me think of another phrase around grief that I love. It was a guest we had on the show. Her name is Megan Devine, and she says some things can’t be fixed. They can only be carried. And I loved that idea too. to like, okay, you’re not going to fix the fact that you lost your husband or, God forbid, your child or your dog that you love deeply. That’s not fixable, right? But it can be carried. You know, there is a way to carry it.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:18  And as she says, move forward. You know, while you’re carrying it. That phrase is always stuck with me. And it sort of resonates a little bit with that one about moving forward versus moving on.

Susan Cain 00:44:28  Yeah, I love that. I’m going to have to remember that one. That’s that’s a really great image.

Speaker 4 00:44:32  So let’s talk about poignancy.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:34  That’s not a word that is used a whole lot. Talk to me about poignancy, what it is and how it ties into everything we’ve been talking about.

Susan Cain 00:44:43  The happy tears that we so often feel is poignancy. It’s like a grandparent watches a grandchild splashing in a puddle. The grandparent has tears in their eyes as they watch that child splashing. And why are they crying? Where do the tears come from? You know, this is like a beautiful moment. It’s a moment of incredible love and appreciation for this child. It’s also a moment of understanding, maybe not on a conscious level, that the grandparent may not be there to see the child grow up, and that the child herself won’t live forever.

Susan Cain 00:45:15  All of it is implicit in these moments when we cry those happy tears. You know, when you tear up at a beautiful TV commercial like that’s poignancy. It’s poignancy. It’s like the perfect blending of joy and sorrow.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:29  I am enormously susceptible to it.

Susan Cain 00:45:32  Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say, I think some of us kind of dance at the tip of that needle or whatever the expression is at every moment.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:38  Oh yeah. I’m just known for tearing up at nearly everything, from something that’s sad to something, like you said, that sort of poignant to something about an entire crowd of people cheering in the same way. There’s something about that. It’s even beautiful. It just gets me. I won’t bore you or the listeners with it, but there are a number of running jokes in my family about the absolutely preposterous things that That have made me cry. But yeah, poignancy is a great word for it. Also, the you know, the thing you said earlier about exactly what you said, what I feel really is love, a great title, outpouring of it.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:12  You know, it makes my heart open. There’s an elevation. Use that word about sad music. It elevates us all those things feel wrapped into what I’m feeling when AT&T makes me cry about calling your grandmother, right? I mean, I know I’m being yanked and manipulated in a very obvious way, but what’s happening inside me is still beautiful, I think.

Susan Cain 00:46:34  Yeah, well, the reason the manipulation works is because it’s pressing your an our deepest, most potent buttons. Throughout our whole conversation, I kept thinking of the two word phrase by E.M. Forster. Only connect, only connect. That’s what he said. And I came across that phrase when I was a young girl, and it just struck me. I was like, oh my gosh, that’s the the truth of everything. And every single one of those examples you just gave was a moment of only connecting.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:03  I love that phrase. I also love something you say near the end of the book. You say there’s the simple exhortation to turn in the direction of beauty.

Susan Cain 00:47:12  Yes. Yeah, that’s something I’ve really come to believe. And I also think it’s a way for people like us who exist naturally in this bittersweet state of being. And, you know, we were talking at the beginning about the great power of the bittersweet way of being is that it can deliver you to these states of wonder and awe and spirituality and transcendence. And the dark side of it is that it could deliver you to anxiety and depression. Well, one of the best ways of marshaling the powers of a bittersweet way of being is to proactively and consciously turn in the direction of beauty everywhere that you can. because it’s all around us. We think of it as being reserved for the moment. You take the family vacation to the Grand Canyon and you and Or, you know, you go to church and you see the light through the stained glass windows or whatever, but it doesn’t have to be confined to those specific moments. It can be daily and it can be constant and it can be proactively sought and even chased.

Susan Cain 00:48:12  I think we can chase beauty. So like during the time that I was writing this book, well, during part of it there was the pandemic and there’s been all the social and political strife, and I found myself waking up every morning and being tormented by my Twitter feed. And I ended up asking people to recommend to me their favorite art accounts. And I started following all these artists and my my feed now is just like one giant cascade of art. And then I started every morning posting a favorite piece of art onto my social channels and pairing it with a favorite poem or quote or whatever. And that ended up attracting this whole community of people who loved to start their days in that same way. And so it was like a whole group of people connecting around, turning in the direction of beauty. And I think that’s one of the best ways we have of channeling this bittersweet power.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:05  I absolutely love that I create an episode each week for supporters of the show. I call teaching song and a poem, and I talk about something that’s on my mind, and I play a song I love and a poem that I love.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:16  And what it does for me is it orients me all the time looking for that sort of beauty. So I think that’s a beautiful place for us to end, which is with you encouraging us that beauty is all around us and to look for it. You made a bittersweet playlist which people can find on your website and on Spotify. I could not help but match you and make my own bittersweet playlist.

Speaker 5 00:49:42  Oh my gosh, I’ve got to listen to it.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:44  I’ll. I’ll send it to you. Yeah.

Speaker 5 00:49:46  Please do.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:47  We’ll put links in the show notes to Susan’s website, to her playlist, to my playlist. On your website is the bittersweet test, which I scored, as you might imagine, very, very highly on.

Susan Cain 00:50:00  I’m shocked.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:02  Yeah. So where can people find you?

Susan Cain 00:50:04  So the best way to find me through my website at Susan Kane net. You can sign up for my newsletter, which will always keep you up to date. And I’m also on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

Susan Cain 00:50:17  And you can find the bittersweet book really anywhere you get your books. And I also have a bittersweet quiz that I’ve developed, which is so cool. We deliver text messages to you every morning with little sound recordings from me or art to look at written messages for you. So it’s just like a one minute thing that you get every morning, a kind of little uplift. Start to your day and you can find that on my website as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:40  Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Susan. You and I are going to go into the post-show conversation, and we are going to discuss some very specific songs that were on your bittersweet playlist, and maybe I’ll introduce you to 1 or 2 from mine listeners, if you’d like access to the post-show Show conversations to that special episode I talked about a couple minutes ago. You can go to one newsfeed. Susan, thank you so much. I loved the book. I’ve loved this conversation, and I’ve been wanting to talk with you for a long time, so I’m really happy we got to do this.

Susan Cain 00:51:10  Thank you so much. It was really so lovely to talk to you. I love the frequency that you’re on. It’s very different from many podcasts and I so appreciate it and admire it.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:20  Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode length to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.

Filed Under: Featured, Podcast Episode

Flaws as Fuel: Harness Doubt, Cynicism & Ambition for Real Growth with Claire Hoffman

April 22, 2025 Leave a Comment

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In this episode, Claire Hoffman explores the idea behind how our flaws, doubt, cynicism, and even ambition aren’t signs of failure, but can be used as fuel. She tells the story of Aimee Semple McPherson, a woman who built a religious empire and faked her own kidnapping. But this episode isn’t about scandal. It’s about the tension that we all carry between our light and dark sides. Claire says sometimes the bad wolf does good work. This conversation is about embracing contradiction and finding grace in the mess.

Key Takeaways:

  • Claire’s book: “Sister Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson.”
  • Aimee Semple McPherson’s duality of character, embodying both “good” and “bad” traits.
  • The impact of McPherson on American religion and her role in establishing one of the first megachurches.
  • The complexities of fame and its effects on personal identity and mental health.
  • The concept of “audience capture” and its implications for public figures.
  • Societal pressures and judgments faced by women, particularly in the context of McPherson’s life.
  • The significance of grace, forgiveness, and personal transformation in the human experience.
  • Reflections on authenticity, compassion, and the challenges of extending grace in a judgmental world.


Claire Hoffman is the author of the memoir Greetings from Utopia Park and a journalist reporting for national magazines on culture, religion, celebrity, business, and more. She was formerly a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. She is a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, and has an MA in religion from the University of Chicago and an MA in journalism from Columbia University. She serves on the boards of the Columbia School of Journalism, ProPublica, and the Brooklyn Public Library. Her new book is Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson

Connect with Claire Hoffman:  Website | Instagram

If you enjoyed this conversation with Claire Hoffman, check out these other episodes:

How to Embrace Your Authentic Self with Carmen Rita Wong

Faith, Identity, and Finding Your Voice with Dante Stewart

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:02:22  What if your so-called flaws, your doubt, your cynicism, even your ambition weren’t signs of failure but fuel? This week I talked with journalist Claire Hoffman about Aimee Semple McPherson, a woman who built a religious empire and faked her own kidnapping. But this episode isn’t about scandal. It’s about the tension that we all carry between our light and dark sides. Claire says sometimes the bad wolf does good work. And honestly, I get that as someone who’s had to make peace with parts of myself I used to run from. Whether that was addiction, cynicism, or even the days when solitaire felt like an emotional support animal. I found this conversation personal, moving, and honestly kind of freeing. This one’s about embracing contradiction and finding grace in the mess. I’m Erik Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Claire, welcome to the show.

Claire Hoffman 00:03:21  Thank you for having me back.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:23  Back? Yes, a long time back. I think you said nine years ago.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:28  It astounds me. I’ve been doing anything for that long. It’s a career anomaly for me, for sure. To have continued in one line for this long. But you have also been a writer since then. Your previous book, we talked about you growing up in a transcendental meditation community. I guess you would say.

Claire Hoffman 00:03:48  Yeah, we say movement, but the movement. Movement.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:51  Okay. A movement? Mint? Yes. And your new book is called Sister Sinner The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson.

Claire Hoffman 00:04:04  Yeah. It doesn’t seem related, but I think they are.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:08  Yes. And we’ll get into that in a moment. But we’ll start, like we always do, with a parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:31  And the grandchild stops. And think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Claire Hoffman 00:04:47  Thank you Eric. I mean, I had not heard that parable before we did the podcast together nine years ago, and I think it is just incredibly. Important and relevant, especially in terms of the ways that we sort of strive. And, you know, a big part of this new book is about a woman who had incredible ambition and incredible desires to do good in the world, you know, like a very powerful, good wolf. And she also had a really ferocious bad wolf inside of her. And I think for me, kind of thinking about my own journey and writing this book, I think that parable to me is about recognizing the value of both wolves. You know that the bad wolf does good work, you know, and sometimes you need a bad wolf.

Claire Hoffman 00:05:42  So I’m sort of interested in embracing the bad wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:46  What do you mean by the bad wolf does good work.

Claire Hoffman 00:05:50  I mean, you know, I think with my first book, we talked about how doubt and cynicism had kind of led me back to meditation. It had been this thing that had pulled me away, and it changed my perspective on the world that I’d grown up in and taken me away from the beliefs of my community. And then, you know, as a young mother, I was just so sick of the voice. You know, I was so sick of the doubt, and I was so sick of the cynicism, and I was really looking for something else. And, you know, that led me to going back to meditation. But in doing so, I also sort of accepted that that doubt and cynicism had played a really important role in getting me out, you know, and getting me into my own space and into, you know, a set of beliefs that were more comfortable for me.

Claire Hoffman 00:06:45  I would say.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:46  Yeah, I think almost any quality can have its good and bad uses, depending on how we use it, when we use it, how much of it we use. You know, cynicism in its original sense of the word is not a bad thing, right? It’s probably closer in its original use to what we would call skepticism. But skepticism is not a bad thing, and doubt is not a bad thing, right? It’s questioning. In Zen, we talk about the three essentials, and they’re great faith, great doubt, and great effort. And so right there, you’ve got faith and doubt right next to each other. You know, because the doubt, the question what is this all about is what drives a lot of the endeavor.

Claire Hoffman 00:07:34  Yeah, I’ve spent six years on this biography and looking at Aimee Semple McPherson’s life, I think I see that she really bifurcated and divided, you know, the good and bad. I mean, at one point in her life, she said, I’m either you know, the most wonderful saint or I am a total sinner.

Claire Hoffman 00:07:54  It’s only those two choices. Yeah. And I thought, well, there’s your problem because you’re both. You know what I mean? They’re done. There’s your title and there’s the stories that you have created this division. And I think what I mean by saying embracing the bad wolf is instead of alienating that darkness, kind of seeing the functional side of those dark feelings, I would say.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:20  Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the reasons that I based this show around a parable that you might imagine. Now, I have read something like 800 times to people, I think. Yeah. Had I known you’re going to live with this for 11 years. I might have been like, well, is that the one I want to use? But here we are. But the thing that I really do like about it that I think stands up through any different interpretation of it to me is important, is it normalizes that both of these things are inside of us and they’re inside all of us. And that, to me, is the important thing, right? There’s nothing wrong with us because we have, quote unquote, what we might think of as bad or dark or negative thoughts, emotions, ambitions.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:07  Like, that’s just what it is to be human. And we have all these beautiful aspects of ourselves to. And that’s what I love about it is just unlike what Amy did, which is I’m either this or I’m that. It says we’re all both.

Claire Hoffman 00:09:24  Yeah. And I feel like, you know, I mean, since after I did my first book and I think this is why we have a shared landscape, I got so many letters from people who, you know, were former Catholics, former Mormons, former, you know, evangelicals. And of course, you know, lots of people who had been part of the Transcendental Meditation movement. I see this real appetite for a conversation around embracing the positive things about, you know, institutional or structured religion and the community of religion, and also recognizing all the kind of really shitty things that happen in these organizations and people really wanting to think that through individually. Right. This is the spiritual but not religious giant chunk of Americans that we are. And I think this question about that dichotomy really is fundamental to it.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:25  Yeah. So let’s talk about Aimee Semple McPherson. Who is she?

Claire Hoffman 00:10:31  I grew up in a sort of quasi Hindu meditation community, but it did mean that I became really interested in religion and after journalism school. I went to divinity school for a year. And, you know, I thought, oh, I’m going to study fundamentalism or, you know, these sort of an anthropological look at religion. But instead I was really drawn to the history of Christianity in America, because it’s actually I think it’s a shared story. And if you’re interested in these questions that we’re talking about, the story goes back 400 years and looking at the way that, you know, new faiths and religious beliefs are born and evolve and fight and die, you know, I mean, it’s fascinating. And when I was at divinity school, I learned about Aimee Semple McPherson, and I was kind of fascinated that I’d never heard of her because she was sort of celebrated as a 20th century pioneer of American religion. She did not start Pentecostalism, which is the evangelical Protestant faith that is the fastest growing religion in the world.

Claire Hoffman 00:11:42  A quarter of the world’s Christians identify as charismatic and Pentecostal. And, you know, it’s this idea of a living Jesus, right, that you have a personal relationship with Jesus, that Jesus connects to you and can provide, you know, the gifts of divine healing and speaking in tongues is really the signature Pentecostal faith. But Amy, you know, was a poor Canadian woman who felt called to spread the gospel. Her mother, since she was a little kid, kind of praised her as God’s promise. And, you know, she grew up in a religious household. She converted to Pentecostalism only like four years after the faith had started in 1906, in Los Angeles. And Amy, you know, just had this incredible appetite and drive to share her story and share her experience and try and help other people. Experience this kind of living. Jesus. And she endured unbelievable hardships. You know, I mean, she was a missionary in China. She lost her first husband. She had crazy health issues.

Claire Hoffman 00:12:54  And she kind of ended up living, you know, just before the World War, on the road with her mother and her young children. Preaching from town to town. And she just truly felt called. You know, I sort of imagined almost like a shamanic hippie or something, right? Like, she just is, like she just had this sense of, like, this was what she was supposed to do. And she comes to Los Angeles in 1918. It’s, you know, one of the century’s great success stories she shows up with, as she said, $10 and a tambourine. And within, you know, the span of five years, she builds the largest church in America. Like truly every like brick and pew paid for by altar calls that she raised with her mother. And she builds the Angela’s Temple in 1923, which is arguably the first megachurch in America. And she goes on to create kind of what was known as the best show in town. You know, I mean, 15,000 people coming on Sundays to see, you know, kind of Hollywood style entertainment.

Claire Hoffman 00:14:02  So she’s also considered sort of the founder of what we know of today as Christian entertainment. And she also started one of the first Christian radio stations. So she was like just this incredible pioneer. But most people don’t know about her because in 1926, at the height of her fame, she walked into the ocean and disappeared. And it was this national news story. Two people died looking for her. 40,000 people stood on the beach searching for her. Like true devotees style followers. And 36 days later, she walks in from the desert of Mexico in the middle of the night and tells a sort of unbelievable story of being kidnapped in broad daylight and held prisoner, and threats of being sold into sexual slavery. Just a totally bizarre story.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:01  Yeah, the book is incredibly compelling. Five pages in. Or maybe less than that. I was like, Holy mackerel. Right. Because you you very quickly set up how big of a deal she is, how famous she is, and then the fact that she just disappears and the rest of the book is sort of setting up how she got to that point and then kind of what happened after that point.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:24  And before we go into the trial and whether she actually was kidnapped or what actually happened, and maybe we don’t even know. I thought we could talk a little bit more about her before we get there, because there was one thing in the book that stood out to me a little bit, and it was that when she was doing what she seemed kind of born to do, right? She was just really good at it, right? When you get that famous doing something, it’s because you’re good at it. When she was doing that, at least early on, before fame became its own monster, she seemed like she was a pretty happy person. But there’s a point early on where she tries to become like a regular old housewife, and I mean, she just falls apart, right?

Claire Hoffman 00:16:16  Yeah. It’s incredible. A contemporary biographer of hers called her a flamingo in a chicken coop, which I think is like just the perfect description, right? On all accounts. I mean, she’s relatable, but she’s also like a once in a century personality, you know? And she was just this incredible force.

Claire Hoffman 00:16:35  And, I mean, everything that was happening was happening at a time when the expectation for women was essentially just to be a mother. You know? I mean, there was not a housewife. And, you know, I mean, when she started her ministry, I don’t think women could even vote in the majority of states or hold land.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:52  Or a bank account.

Claire Hoffman 00:16:53  Or have a bank account. It makes all of these achievements of hers. You know, you really have to kind of underscore it that it was just incredible obstacles. But yes, she tried to live life as a normal person in a little apartment with her second husband and her two young children, and it was as if she was physically destroyed by it. She ended up having a couple of, you know, what she called nervous breakdowns, hysterectomy, incredible, like internal bleeding, all these kind of awful things. And she sort of lost her mind. I mean, I guess that’s the definition of a nervous breakdown 100 years ago.

Claire Hoffman 00:17:33  But she writes about, like, all the smallness of everything drove her mad. And her neighbors, you know, would say like, oh, she was a nice, you know, blonde, but, you know, didn’t seem to take her housework seriously.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:45  Yeah. And then she gets back into preaching and seems to make sort of a miraculous recovery. And what captivated me about that was not just like her being a flamingo in a chicken coop, and that’s part of it, I think the smallness. But the other part of it, I think, is this being called by something that feels bigger. I know for me that when I am part of feeling like I’m contributing something to the world, like that was sort of the healing of my addiction to a large degree. And so I just was struck by that element of hers, where once she got back to what she felt like was hers to do, she suddenly all better.

Claire Hoffman 00:18:33  Yeah. I mean, I feel like Amy for all her ups and downs.

Claire Hoffman 00:18:37  There are some really instructional aspects of her life, and one of them is that she was totally unstoppable, and she really did follow a sense of mission. She did not make herself small. And I think that chapter that you’re talking about, it’s really instructional to me of like, you know, I think a lot of people make themselves smaller than they were meant to be. And for me, in some ways, I see religion as just the available runway for her at that moment. You know what I mean? She was a true believer. I’m not questioning her faith. Religion was a pathway for her bigness, and I think she felt called. She was somebody who was meant to be public facing, and she had put herself into a corner and into a small life, and it was absolutely unbearable. And, I mean, I find myself an introverted writer, but like, I, I sort of am like, okay. Like she got, like really weird. Like she did some really weird stuff.

Claire Hoffman 00:19:46  Sometimes she was rewarded and sometimes she wasn’t, but she would not be stopped. And I think that’s something really admirable to see.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:55  One of the themes in the book, and it’s one that you’ve explored through your writing a few different ways, is kind of the cost of fame. You’ve written about Amy Winehouse, you’ve written about Prince. There are others, but you’ve really looked at this idea of fame. And I’m curious, do you see a point for her at which fame began to become a problem, or is it really just much more gradual and nuanced than that?

Claire Hoffman 00:20:26  Yeah, I think it is gradual, but thank you for asking that question because this is like my favorite thing actually. You know, if there were fame studies, that’s what I would get like my PhD in, because I find this whole question of people who are treated as gods on earth as just endlessly fascinating. And for Amy, I start to see evidence of it in the early 1920s, before she builds her temple while she’s still on the road.

Claire Hoffman 00:20:58  But she’s getting a lot of attention for being a faith healer. and she travels around the country and she starts to attract just wild crowds, huge crowds. You know, people come from surrounding states and they, you know, wheel their children and their sick relatives. I mean, there’s a point in the book where people are like passing bodies through windows of a building to try and get their loved ones to Amy to touch. Right. She’s sort of treated as this like portal to, you know, another realm almost. And during that time, you know, I mean, it’s incredible pressure. She’s she’s working like 12 hours on the stage doing these healings. She kind of is dragged away at the end of the night, like covered in sweat and dirt. And I noticed, I mean, she wrote quite a few memoirs, as was her way. no personal letters, just lots of memoirs. She starts to write about herself in the third person in this kind of disassociated way. Right. And I found that really interesting, like where she starts to have trouble seeing herself as an individual looking out in the world and is just seen as this kind of she uses the royal we sometimes, but like how she’s seen by others, starts to confuse how she sees, if that makes sense.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:23  And you mentioned that you think that religion was a path for her, and not that she didn’t believe in what she did, but but that it was a way of, of sort of putting herself out there. Were there things in her make up, her personality that you’ve seen in common with other people who are famous as far as something that she needs from others?

Claire Hoffman 00:22:48  Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, you know, I mean, certainly she was an incredible talent. So there’s that like really, you know, completely unique, totally mesmerizing. Right? Like, she had an ability to capture attention. She was a showstopper. You know, she would get up on a stage, she’d stand in front of her tent, and people just stopped and were mesmerized. And, you know, I mean, you think about Justin Bieber playing his music on the street in Canada. They were actually from almost the same exact place, which is just a fun fact. Or, you know, Amy Winehouse as a young woman going into record and that voice just kind of stopping everything, right? Like these.

Claire Hoffman 00:23:31  There is fundamentally a talent, and I think there’s also part of that talent is the experience that you get in the room. These are people who have the ability to transport you. They have the ability to stop your mind, stop your thoughts and just capture your attention, so to speak, and everything that means, right? That’s why they call them spellbinding. Mesmerizing, showstopping, right. Like these these qualities where they just capture you, so to speak, in terms of, you know, what she got from it. I think, you know, she had a real desire for an audience. She had an insatiable desire to be loved. The back half of the book kind of explores that dark side. You know, where the negative view that the world started to have of her kind of destroyed her in some ways, because she was so attached to public perception of her.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:54  As I’m thinking through this and talking about it, it’s thinking about the role of religion or spirituality. And in its practice, it’s often intended, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, to make you seem less special in a way.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:12  right? It connects you to everybody else, and it ideally would reduce your ego, and it would help you see your place in the greater scheme of everything. Right? And so to me, it’s almost the opposite effect of that. But she is an example of where that certainly didn’t counterbalance the desire for fame. And we can certainly look at plenty of other spiritual communities where the leaders are clearly egomaniacs to some degree, and where whatever the religion or the teaching is, isn’t actually working on them in that way.

Claire Hoffman 00:25:47  Yeah, it’s an interesting question, because if you read about and I’ve included some of those in the book, her actual religious experiences, you know, I mean, she’s laid out on the ground, as you say, she’s slain is the term that they use, right? Like, she’s just laid out, laying in the dust, surrounded by others, weeping and crying. And it is that. Yeah. Like what you’re talking about that kind of religious experience of like, I’m nothing and this is everything, right? So that does seem to be an element in her own religious experience, especially early on.

Claire Hoffman 00:26:23  But at the same time, absolutely. She saw herself as divinely chosen. She saw herself as a selected vessel for God to bring the gospel. And so there is a sense of specialness. I mean, she said time and again, I want the largest microphone possible, and I want love, like I want to be in love. That’s what she wanted. So. Yeah. Do with that what you will.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:49  I’m going to take famous slightly different direction here because I want to get to what potentially is so corroding about it. One of the things I often wonder is, as we have all become internet personalities to some degree or other, right? Nearly everyone is on social media and is wanting to get more attention, more attention. Is there a connection to that and fame? Is fame corroding because of the way it causes you to seek out certain adulation? Or is it when you actually get it? Is when it becomes pernicious? Or probably both?

Claire Hoffman 00:27:32  In my experience reporting this book and reporting on famous people, what I have seen is a certain loss of self and even, you know, reporting on the Transcendental Meditation movement and our guru in reporting that book.

Claire Hoffman 00:27:51  You know, I’d always thought like, oh, he took advantage of us, right? Like he was constantly raising money. He had these crazy schemes like, you know, we were victimized by him. But in reading, you know, private papers and private recollections of him. I also kind of saw him as victimized, like. By our expectations of who he was supposed to be. And that really shifted things for me and definitely made me think about celebrities. You know, where they end up sort of caged by the audience. And I see that in Amy, and I worry about that for my 14 year old when she posts stories on Instagram, you know, of HoCo. like, I think there is this thing where you stop having the experience for the experience, you stop being yourself for yourself, and you start performing, and the performance takes over everything and the audience’s expectation of you. So whether you’re a guru and your audience expects you to be enlightened. Whether you’re a evangelist who people think is a living saint on earth, you know, whether you’re a 14 year old girl who’s supposed to just look hot all the time.

Claire Hoffman 00:29:18  You know what I mean? Like, I think I see the through line as, like, losing touch with your individual experience and having to just be projecting out and experience all the time.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:30  Yeah, there’s a term and maybe you’ve heard it. I don’t really even know where it comes from, but it’s called audience capture. And the idea is that someone starts out doing something and they get an audience that could be a huge audience. It could be a relatively small audience. And as you said, that audience starts to have some degree of expectation. And that person then finds themselves in that role, often not even quite aware of it, but oftentimes very aware of it, where they are living into the persona that they created. And as you said, they are not then. Being authentic to who they are and authentic to the ways in which they might change or develop different interests or be more complex than the simplistic facing story.

Claire Hoffman 00:30:22  Yeah. I mean, if I fast forward to the end of the book, at the end of Amy’s life, I see so many parallels with Amy Winehouse, with Prince, with Michael Jackson.

Claire Hoffman 00:30:35  I mean, particularly Michael Jackson, where, you know, he was living in sort of exile for reasons good and bad. And, you know, I was struggling with addiction and had a dream of coming back and being a star and having it feel the old way. Right. So in in the summer before Michael Jackson died, you know, he talked all the time about his comeback, right? He was getting ready for his comeback tour, and Amy had almost the exact same thing she was. She had been in conservatorship for years. Every aspect of her life controlled by her accountant. You know, she had a nurse who was living with her full time. And I’m guessing she was on quite a bit of medication. She was estranged from her family. And, you know, in the spring before she died, she got herself out of conservatorship, put her son in charge, filed papers to start. You know what would have been the first religious television? Making her the first televangelist. And she was getting ready for her tour to come back.

Claire Hoffman 00:31:46  You know, and there was so much energy and excitement and stress around that. And that’s really where I sort of saw these, like, modern day celebrities that I’ve encountered towards the end of their last chapter where they. They’re kind of trapped in a two dimensional place where they’re not who they were before, but they want to go back. And I think time is a bitch. I don’t know if you can say that on this podcast, but.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:14  You can absolutely say that.

Claire Hoffman 00:32:16  I could, I could say even more. But I think, you know, time is an aspect in all of this, right? Like we’re talking about ego. We’re talking about experience. We’re talking about, you know, the expectations of others. But time is a big piece of this, right? And in terms of change and transformation. And so I think, yeah, like these people get stuck in an idea of how they think things are supposed to be, but for a million reasons, they aren’t that way.

Claire Hoffman 00:32:44  And it becomes unbearable.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:46  Just to give people a little context on Michael Jackson, you wrote his obituary for rolling Stone.

Claire Hoffman 00:32:52  I did, yeah, I spent the summer that he passed away covering every aspect of his death and Rolling Stone’s big look back at what happened and investigating his death and the circumstances. So it really that surprised me when doing this book of like, oh my gosh, like this. You know, woman living in 1940s Los Angeles had such a similar story, you know, even down to the kind of the language of like, oh, I’m going to get ready for my comeback. And, you know, a love of downers.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:23  Obviously, things for her start to go wrong after the disappearance, right? She disappears, comes back, says she was kidnapped and then is largely not believed by an awful lot of people, including Los Angeles law enforcement, who consider putting her on trial. Talk a little bit about what this suddenly not being revered as universally starts to do to her.

Claire Hoffman 00:33:49  It drives her crazy, you know, and I think she had spent a decade up until this point, being a person who translated the world and the unseen and the unknown to other people.

Claire Hoffman 00:34:08  That was part of her gifts, you know, was like giving prophecies, articulating the divine, I would say. And so I think she had a real strength and palette as a storyteller. She came back to Los Angeles and, you know, told pretty much the same story over and over of, of her kidnapping. You know, it’s like a movie, like it’s a crazy story. And, you know, she escapes by sawing off the ropes on her wrists on a serrated maple syrup can and running through the desert through, you know, incredible heat and also darkness and rattlesnakes and, you know, I mean, it’s like she’s a she’s the star of a movie. And people just Immediately had an issue with it, and they could never find any evidence of the place where she said she was kept or the kidnappers. Yeah, it seemed like that doubt in her just just drove her crazy. Like, she she dug in her heels and she began to see the world in darker terms. Right.

Claire Hoffman 00:35:15  Her ministry up until that point had been very warm, very accepting, very heaven oriented, I would say. You know, there was not a lot of devil in Amy McPherson’s preaching. She was really about all the kind of beautiful, transformative, almost kind of feminine love aspects of Christianity and being born again. And yeah, after that, her sermons got like very dark. And, you know, she would have, you know, the devil depicted on her stage chasing her. And she called out, you know, the Catholics of the world for prosecuting her. And it really changed. My theory is that this had to do with her mother.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:00  Okay. Before we go down that you said when immediately people started to doubt her. There was very good reasons to doubt her, right? I mean, based on the evidence that was coming in, it sure seemed like she had made this story up. Now, she might have painted it as people were out to get her, and there probably were people who wanted to see her not succeed.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:22  Right. You talk about how the LA underworld did not want her to do well. There were other preachers who did not want her to do well. There were forces aligned against her, but she wasn’t blackballed for no reason.

Claire Hoffman 00:36:36  Yeah, I mean, it’s sort of why I love this story. You know, when I first started looking into her, I assumed that she was falsely accused. You know, I like any good kind of 90s feminist. I assumed that she had.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:50  Been believe the woman.

Claire Hoffman 00:36:52  Yeah, I believe the woman. I always believe the woman. Yeah. And when I, you know, started going into the court transcripts and all the newspaper archives, it was like, oh, like the evidence is really building up. But she also was right that there were people out to get her, and there were people trying to, you know, take her down and use this opportunity to destroy her. I just love that, you know, where it’s like she was a liar and she was right.

Claire Hoffman 00:37:20  You know, she and all of it’s a little bit of a world of her own making, which I think is just so incredible. You know, I mean, it was just like the biggest scandal. And, you know, all this drama ensued. And, you know, she was screaming from the rooftops. You know, and on the radio every night about being persecuted. And she was right. And they were also right. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:44  Yeah. In the midst of all that, there’s a really maybe it means a lot. Maybe it means nothing. You can let me know what you think. But there’s a point where someone is talking about identifying her in another city and saying, like, I saw her in this other city so she couldn’t have been kidnapped. All that. And how did you know it was her? Oh, it was because of her fat ankles. Based on the way you tell it, it’s almost as if she stops caring about being accused of lying of everything else, and is obsessed with the fact that someone thinks she has fat ankles.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:21  I was just struck by how we all can be that level of insecurity or vanity. It’s striking.

Claire Hoffman 00:38:29  Yeah, I mean, this is how I see her. Kind of like playing on different levels. You know what I mean? Like, she’s telling the story over and over, and I truly believe she began to believe it. Like, I think at some point, probably pretty early on, she did a version of it in her head and she lived it. And that was her story. You know, the angles is just hilarious. And this, you know, it’s a through line. It happens throughout that summer and fall. It happens in the courtrooms. You know, they ask her to show her ankles. You know, I mean, it’s it’s unreal. People are looking at their own ankles. It is, to me, kind of a perfect snapshot of the kind of ways that women were being judged and looked at and taken apart, and she was totally a part of that. So she resented it and was like, it’s unfair.

Claire Hoffman 00:39:19  But she was also like, wait, my ankles are actually not that bad. You know, I mean, it’s mind fuckery at its best in my mind.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:28  So, yeah. One of the things that’s also wonderful about this book is that it features Los Angeles in the late 19 tens 1920s as a fascinating place, which it obviously is. A lot of books that I love have come out of there, like the noir tradition of crime writing comes out of there like LA was like this amazing place and also a really dark underside to it. And so you’re seeing the underworld and you’re seeing how connected the gangs are in politics and how roped in the newspapers are. And it’s just a really great portrait of a particular time.

Claire Hoffman 00:40:27  I think that if you were going to make a the one you feed video game, you would make it in 1920s Los Angeles because they called it sunshine and Shadows. I mean, that is the definition of noir is a dream that is broken, right? I love those books. I love that time.

Claire Hoffman 00:40:47  There’s so much that comes out of it in terms of film and art and religion. It’s so fascinating. And I think it is this time where people came to Los Angeles, as they do now, to start over and to transform and to leave the past behind and become a new person. And whether that means economically or spiritually or cosmetically. You know, I mean, it’s the classic story. And she was completely part of that, and her followers were totally part of that. But there’s also a predatory aspect of that. First of all, you know, people act out, you know, they act out their addictions, they act out their dark side. And there’s also a lot of people who take advantage of, you know, these people who are trying to transform, you know, or inside their dream.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:44  You mentioned a moment ago. I don’t know what you say. It all came down to her mom. Was that what you said?

Claire Hoffman 00:41:50  Well, I think everything does.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:52  Doesn’t it? Always.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:53  Yeah. no. Mom ism. Mother’s out there. Joke. What do you mean?

Claire Hoffman 00:42:00  I think her mother saw her as prophesied from the day she was born. You know, that’s part of her story. And it was part of her success as her mother. She was an only child. And her mother, you know, took her when she was a baby to the Salvation Army and said, like, this child is chosen by God. And that was just part of her legacy. It’s how she opens, like all of her biographies, basically is this pivotal moment. And the book is reported, it’s journalistic. It’s it’s based on factual accounts. But if you’re asking me like what I think walking away from it. I think that she was a normal 36 year old woman at the height of her fame, who was interested in her former employee and decided that running away with him seemed like a great idea at the time and maybe immediately regretted it. Maybe they got in that house after like five days and she’s like, yeah, I’m good or whatever.

Claire Hoffman 00:43:02  Or she missed the fame and she missed the audience and she missed her world. She missed her family. And and she came back. And I think her commitment to telling that story, where she was kidnapped and victimized, where she hadn’t been a sinner, so to speak, was about her mother and this idea that her mother held of her as being this pure being.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:26  I didn’t research as fully as you. I’m not sure I would arrive at the same conclusion, only in that I think there are a lot of factors that go into her being in a cage, right? Let’s just say that before she disappears. She’s in a cage. Like she can do certain things and certain things. Only now she’s able to do all kinds of things that other women at the time aren’t able to do. But she’s still kind of by painting herself, whether it was because of what her mother put into her head. As a as you said, a saint, not a sinner, gave her no room to move when, as you said, she sort of fell in love with someone outside of marriage and didn’t know what to do about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:08  Okay, with all of that? You spent a lot of time in her world. You jokingly emailed me that you told me in 2021, you thought you were almost done with the book, and then you email me in 2025. So you were with her for a long time. Did writing about her change anything in you?

Claire Hoffman 00:44:27  I would say, you know, in researching the end of Amy’s life and kind of where her legacy ended up, I feel like grace is a really important concept. And as I said, you know, I didn’t grow up Christian like that’s not an idea that I grew up with, I would say, or have an attachment to. And who knows if I’m even thinking about it. Right. But I really kind of loved this idea and wished for more of it for her. To me, Grace is like this beautiful notion of forgiveness and acceptance of our humanity. And I think it’s it’s missing in that way that a lot of religions and, you know, society kind of divides us, right? Like this divided self.

Claire Hoffman 00:45:11  And I feel like grace is, you know, just this beautiful concept and Christianity of like, love and acceptance and embrace of the lightness and the darkness. And I’ve tried to give that to myself, you know, because I think that when we see the world that way as so divided or we see ourselves that way. Like this is good behavior. This is bad behavior. It perverts, you know, for want of a better word or deforms. You know, I think that it starts to cage us in a sense. And I see, I mean, again, as somebody who did not grow up Christian, who is not Christian, I find that notion of love and acceptance that is at the core of Christianity so beautiful and that that love and forgiveness and that grace can kind of release us is just beautiful. I think it’s really beautiful. You know, I mean, part of writing about a, I mean, as a sort of quasi Hindu married to a Jewish person, like Christianity is like not part of my life, so to speak.

Claire Hoffman 00:46:22  But so I feel like I can kind of admire it from the sidelines. I would also say like, I mean, I am a person who lives in the world and reads the newspaper every day. You know, I mean, Trump’s pastor is a Pentecostal preacher and is working in the white House every day. And there’s a part of me that I think it’s important to look at what the predominant narratives are. You know, there’s a majority of Americans identify as Christian. And I think it’s really important to understand that faith and to think about these ideas and in a way that is empathetic. I would say.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:04  Yeah, I love the idea of extending grace to other people. I think it’s a beautiful idea. And I also find it hard to extend grace to people who are not doing the same thing at all. I’m not naming anybody here. I’m just saying in general, it gets hard to extend grace. I think it’s why when a spiritual leader falls, they fall so hard is because they’ve often really like.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:30  They’ve done part of the painting of themselves as this way. But I do agree. I mean, I’m obviously somebody as a recovering heroin addict. Right. Like I’m glad there was grace in the world for me, right? I mean, I was not a good person at one time or. Let me say that differently. I did a lot of things that were that were not good, that were bad, and that were harmful. And so I’m glad that parts of the world extended grace to me, and that I was able to extend it to myself. And because I do believe in second chances, and I do believe that people make mistakes, and we shouldn’t let a single mistake or a couple mistakes that people make be the entirety of their story.

Claire Hoffman 00:48:13  Yeah. I wish that the conversation in Christianity in America was more about these ideas, and I think there are ways that Christianity has been so fundamental in the world of recovery. You know, I mean, I have a friend who is a recovering alcoholic who went and did rehab in the basement of Amy’s church like three years ago.

Claire Hoffman 00:48:36  And I mean, he grew up in that tradition. So it was a world that he connected to and made sense to him. You know, he sees her church as fundamental to saving his life and saving his family. I feel like Grace is so beautiful. I mean, I say this as a person who got kicked out of high school for fighting, like, I’m not like that. Like I’m not that nice. Yeah, but maybe that’s why I like, sort of romanticize it. Like I love revenge. I love revenge just the best. You know? I’m hateful. You know, when you think about forgiveness for when we do bad things, there is like, that kind of soft wash feeling of, like, letting go, you know, and moving on. Yeah. And, you know, I think that’s beautiful. As a non-Christian, it’s something that I’ve taken away and I’ve thought a lot about in terms of Amy’s story, because I don’t think she was extended a lot of grace.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:35  Yeah, well, that is a great place for us to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation, because I would be deeply remiss in my duties to my friend Chris, if I did not talk about you and your limo ride with David Lynch because he’s a huge David Lynch fan, I would be letting him down as a friend. I’m not going to do that. So you and I and the post-show conversation are going to talk about David Lynch, Transcendental Meditation, your experience with him. Maybe we get to Eckhart Tolle, I don’t know. But listeners, if you’d like access to this, what’s going to be mesmerizing? Post-show conversation, special episodes I create just for you, and most importantly, to support us because we can use your help. Go to one you feed join. Claire, thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to have you back on. And in another decade when you have another book. No, I’m teasing you and me. I probably will not be doing this in a decade.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:33  And you’ll write another one in less than ten years, I’m sure.

Claire Hoffman 00:50:36  I hope so. I will be back, and I hope it won’t be so long.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:40  That was not a very graceful way to end the interview, now, was it?

Claire Hoffman 00:50:44  I deserve it. You’re speaking right to my soul there.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:48  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.

Filed Under: Featured, Podcast Episode

The Midlife Makeover: Redefining Success and Happiness After 40 with Chip Conley

April 18, 2025 Leave a Comment

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In this episode, Chip Conley defines a midlife makeover and how to redefine success and happiness after 40. He shares how the most difficult stretches of his life ended up being the start of something completely new. Chip also explains the pull of the ego, the search for identity and how letting go of traditional success can open the door for something more meaningful. If you’re in a season of life where things feel uncertain, or if you’re wondering what this phase of life is really for, this episode will help you feel a little more hopeful.

Key Takeaways:

  • Personal experiences and challenges faced during midlife, including burnout and loss.
  • The importance of perspective on aging and reframing societal perceptions of midlife.
  • The concept of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset in personal development.
  • The relationship between time management and personal autonomy in midlife.
  • The physical and emotional changes associated with aging, particularly for men.
  • The role of purpose in maintaining energy and engagement in life.
  • The significance of gratitude and specificity in practicing gratitude.
  • The idea of positive commitments versus commandments in guiding life choices.
  • Navigating disappointment and expectations during midlife transitions.


Chip Conley is on a mission. After disrupting the hospitality industry twice, first as the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second-largest operator of boutique hotels in the U.S., and then as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, leading a worldwide revolution in travel, Conley co-founded MEA (Modern Elder Academy) in January 2018. Inspired by his experience of intergenerational mentoring as a ‘modern elder’ at Airbnb, where his guidance was instrumental to the company’s extraordinary transformation from fast-growing start-up to the world’s most valuable hospitality brand, MEA is the world’s first ‘midlife wisdom school.’ Dedicated to reframing the concept of aging, MEA supports students to navigate midlife with a renewed sense of purpose and possibility. A New York Times bestselling author, Conley’s 7th book Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age is about rebranding midlife to help people understand the upside of this often-misunderstood life stage and he was asked to give a 2023 TED talk on the “midlife chrysalis.”

Connect with Chip Conley:  Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this conversation with Chip Conley, check out these other episodes:

Life Transitions with Bruce Feiler

Successful Aging with Alan Castel

The Happiness Curve with Jonathan Rauch

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:02:18  Midlife has a way of sneaking up on you. I know because I’m in it, and it’s not without its challenges. But talking with Chip Conley shifted something in me. In this conversation, he shares how the hardest stretch of his life. Burnout, personal loss, and near-death experience ended up being the start of something completely new. We talk about the pull of ego, the search for identity, and how letting go of traditional success opened the door to something more meaningful. His idea of moving from return on investment to ripples of impact especially struck me. If you’re in a season where things feel uncertain, or if you’re wondering what this phase of life is really for. I think you’ll hear something in this episode that helps you feel a little more hopeful. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Chip, welcome to the show.

Chip Conley 00:03:14  It’s great to be here, Eric.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:15  I’m really excited to talk with you. Your book is called Learning to Love Midlife 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:24  And what a great topic. And is somebody who’s squarely in the middle of midlife. I’m your target audience. We’ll get to the book, though, in a minute after we start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second, and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Chip Conley 00:04:09  As is true for so many things in life. I’m not sure it’s binary. There’s nothing that says we can’t feed both, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you want to feed both, but it does mean that we do possibly feed both.

Chip Conley 00:04:21  And there’s certain parts of our life. In my life, I’ll just speak for myself. Certain parts of my life are that have a voracious appetite. So there’s certain times in your life where your ego wants to be fed incessantly and frankly, as is true with the hedonic treadmill, the psychology theory that just when you thought the thing you wanted was good enough. Once you get it, you want something more. Yeah, I think that that is very true of the ego, as is true for many things. The ego in moderation is wonderful. Feeding your sense of accomplishment, feeding your sense of having an identity in the world that differentiates you is very important. But it’s when it gets out of balance and you realize that there’s never enough. That’s when you got to be very careful with, with with feeding that wolf. The other wolf, you know, often isn’t asking for anything. It can get along on a steady, small diet. It’s quieter. It’s not demanding. And that, wolf, though in the long run, is what nourishes you the most.

Chip Conley 00:05:32  And so for me, in my life, just to sum up, I was very, very focused on ROI, the return on investment as an entrepreneur for much of my life. But I have come to see that the ROI that I really appreciate these days is ripples of impact and the return on investment mindset I had sometimes meant that I was feeding the ego and feeding the greed. Greed. I’ve never been very greedy, but. But certainly feeding the desire for accomplishment. And today, what I want to feed is that part of me that really is giving back and having a profound impact on other humans as my primary way of feeling success in life.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:17  Wonderful. Let’s start with maybe setting up how you got to the place where you wrote a book about midlife. You have the Modern Elders Academy. Let’s talk about how you got there, and you describe it in the book as the tale of two midwives, one very bad, followed by one very good. Talk to me about that.

Chip Conley 00:06:38  Yeah, I went to college and graduate school at Stanford a couple of years out of Stanford Business School.

Chip Conley 00:06:44  I started a boutique hotel company at age 26 called joie de vivre Vive joy of life! And French ran that company for 24 years, based in San Francisco. We had 52 boutique hotels around California, became the second largest boutique hotelier in the US. But I really was struggling in my late 40s. At the time, I had never heard of the You Curve of Happiness, which shows that the low point on the U curve is around 45 to 50. And yes, that was the era I was in, but I didn’t know anything about that. What I thought was, oh man, I’ve hit my midlife and I’m having my crisis. But it was not just the internal feeling like something wasn’t right, but it was also externally I had I had friends committing suicide. I had an adult foster son going to prison wrongfully. I had a long term relationship ending. I was running out of cash during the Great Recession with my boutique hotel company, so it was both internal and external. And then I had an NDE near-death experience due to an allergic reaction to an antibiotic.

Chip Conley 00:07:40  And that was the hotelier wake up call. That was when I finally said, like, I’ve got to make a transition in my life, but I just don’t know how to do it. You know, I felt now a deep sense of a catalyst from that NDE over the next two years, with some help from one of my best friends who was a coach, I, between age 47 and 50, pretty much changed everything in my life. Some of it was not at all easy. It was in fact very difficult. But by age 50, I sort of hit the reset button and I was ready for something new. And then my 50s were spectacular. So the tale of two midlife were late 40s was rough. My 50s were spectacular. And, you know, I spent from age 52 to 59 helping the founders of Airbnb take their little tech startup and turn it into the world’s most valuable hospitality company, which is where I earned the title Modern Elder. I didn’t like it at first, but then they said, Chip, you’re as curious as you are wise, and that’s a modern elder.

Chip Conley 00:08:40  And I was like, okay, I like that. And next thing I knew, I was ready to create the Modern Elder Academy, the world’s first midlife wisdom school. So I would just say midlife is a complex time. It’s a time that hasn’t been given a lot of attention. Part of what I’ve been doing as a midlife activist now is to help to demystify and elevate and and maybe operationalize. How do you go through midlife differently? And what are the tools that are available to you. And the key themes that are often going on in people’s lives during this time? And that’s why we have 7000 graduates from 60 countries who are part of the MBA alumni crew.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:16  So let’s define midlife real quick. Like, what are we talking about here? What years, what characteristics? How do you think about determining yep, somebody’s in midlife or they’re not in midlife.

Chip Conley 00:09:28  Well, technically, midlife is the life stage. That is a bridge. So think of it as a bridge between early adulthood and later adulthood.

Chip Conley 00:09:36  Make sense? Right? I mean, the middle age is between early and late. So early adulthood was originally conceived as 18 to 30 and now 18 to 35 by some sociologists. So you could say that maybe midlife early midlife starts around mid 30s. Let me be clear that my definition of midlife, which is defined by a lot of sociologists, is at odds with the historical definition, which has been 40 to 60 or 45 to 65. But I’m saying maybe mid 30s, it starts to creep up on you, and then you have this very long bridge, because later adulthood, if you’re going to live till 90 or 100 later, it might start around 75. It’s when at that point probably retired. Although a lot of people are still working in their late 70s still. So it’s possible that the bridge of midlife lasts 40 years, from 35 to 75, with three stages in it early midlife, 35 to 50, the core of midlife 50 to 60, and then later midlife 60 to 75. And each of those three stages has a different flavor to it.

Chip Conley 00:10:39  But we didn’t have this worry in the year 1900 because the life expectancy in 1900 was 47. So midlife really didn’t exist.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:48  That’s amazing when we think about that. Let’s first talk about what our perspective on aging is and why it’s important. You know, you referenced just a second ago, 1900 age of 47, right. And I think many of us of my age, I’ve noticed recently we’re looking at pictures of our parents at our age or even more, our grandparents at our age. And we’re like, goodness gracious, I seem very different than that. And I think some of that is we’ve begun to have a different perspective on what it is to age. But talk to me about why our beliefs about aging are so important.

Chip Conley 00:11:31  Well, our beliefs about aging are in the US. Culture’s just pretty toxic. Let’s just be honest. If there was a bumper sticker that defined our belief of aging, it would be just don’t do it. And yet, if you don’t age, you’re probably dying or dead.

Chip Conley 00:11:45  So long story short, is because US culture has defined aging, often by the physical side of aging, which does over the course of your life, you show physical deterioration. People are scared of it. And yet our emotional aging process, we actually get better at emotional intelligence as we age. We get better at social relationships as we age. So the social side of aging can be better culturally. Not everybody, but a lot of people actually get more interested in culture as they age. They get more interested in spirituality in certain pursuits. Intellectually, they are more adept as they age because of crystallized intelligence as opposed to fluid intelligence. So, long story short, is the society perspective on aging is pretty negative. And yet the U curve of happiness research shows that, you know, after age 50, people get happier with time. And Becca Levys work from Yale has shown that when you shift your mindset on aging from a negative to a positive. Around midlife, you you add seven and a half years of extended longevity.

Chip Conley 00:12:49  So part of my role, part and part of MEAs mission is to help people own their age, feel good about the upside of aging and what gets better with age. And then look at how you can not just be youthful, but useful as you get older.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:06  Well, being useful is one of my favorite ideas and core values. Have you ever read The Cider House Rules by John? Oh yeah. Of course. Yeah. Doctor Wilbur Larch and, you know, always be useful. Very influential on me when I was a teenager. So as we look at people aging, I think many of us will see people who have become what you’re describing as wiser, kinder, better people as they’ve gotten old. And then there’s the stereotype of the grumpy old man who doesn’t want a kid on his lawn. And hardens and ossifies in some way. What to you shapes the trajectory from one of those outcomes to the other?

Chip Conley 00:13:51  It’s really the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset. So Carol Dweck at Stanford popularized this idea of mindset.

Chip Conley 00:13:59  So mindset is the way you see yourself and the world. And if you have a fixed mindset, you tend to think you have a fixed amount of luck or money or time, and you optimize that and you define success as winning and you’re trying to prove yourself. But if you have a growth mindset, you’re open to something growing with time. But that’s time or money or luck or knowledge or skill. And so your job is to actually not win and optimize, but it’s to actually learn and get better at something. And therefore it’s not about proving yourself, it’s about improving yourself. Often when someone only wants to play games that they can win, their sandbox gets smaller and smaller and they get more bored. And when you get bored, you can get cranky. And the reason you get cranky is because the world is passing you by and you don’t understand things anymore because you haven’t really been open to learning something new. There are a lot of people who fit this profile. I mean, let’s be just honest.

Chip Conley 00:14:58  It’s a profile that defines a lot of people who are older. So the growth mindset is really important because it helps you to realize you’re open to learning something new. When I joined Airbnb at 52 years old, average age in the company was 26. I had never been in a tech company before, and I was supposed to be the modern elder. I was supposed to be the one who’s, like, helping the founders figure out what to do with this business, this little growing tech startup. And yet at times, it felt like I was the dumbest person in the room. So I had to be open to not just being the oldest, but being the most clueless. And that wasn’t easy. But that required me to have a growth mindset, say, you know what? I’m going to get better. I’m going to learn about tech. I’m going to learn about, you know, DSCC, digital intelligence. I had a lot of EQ to offer, but I had to learn some DCPS. So long story short, is the people who tend to get ossified and calcified and get cranky are often people who have gotten very fixed in their perspective of the world and themselves.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:55  Yeah, it’s so interesting because I observe this in myself, the desire to become more certain that I know the way things are, you know, a certain skepticism of the way things are being done today versus when they were done before, a certain amount of less openness to new experiences. Like, I feel some of that happen and I’m very committed to actively countering those things. Yeah. You know, actively making myself take on new things, new challenges. I found myself really trying to anytime my brain is like, well, it was better back when. Is to really take that as like a chance to stop and pause and go hang on a second. Like that’s a reactionary way of thinking. Yeah. Not that it may not be true in certain cases, but it’s also true that some other things are better. Like you said, it’s this openness.

Chip Conley 00:16:55  Well, I think there’s a couple things. Number one is in our 40s in particular, we are so busy that it’s really hard sometimes to have the time and space to be curious. Curiosity is the opposite side of judgment. And so in many ways, learning how to judge things quickly. It’s a super skill because when you’re really busy, being able to make a quick judgment on something allows you to sort of say no to something or to edit your life accordingly. You know, that’s a coping skill during a busy time. So let’s know that there’s an upside to that. The other thing is you could say, well, gosh, you know, as I get older, I’m more discerning, I have more wisdom. And that’s probably true as well. Yeah, but wisdom is not about just what you can say no to. It’s also what you can say yes to. It’s also what you can learn. Wisdom is not about knowing everything. It’s about learning everything. Back to Socrates times. He laughed when people said, you know everything. It’s like, no, I’m still learning. And it’s that learning perspective that really makes the most difference. Being willing to become a beginner at something in your life at every time of your life.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:08  Yeah. Like you, I have taken up surfing later in life. Unlike you, I don’t live anywhere near where that’s a reasonable hobby. It’s a stupid hobby for me.

Chip Conley 00:18:18  Where do you live, Eric?

Eric Zimmer 00:18:19  Ohio.

Chip Conley 00:18:20  Oh.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:21  It’s a dumb place to take up surfing. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense, but, you know, I do it as often as I’m able. But I’ve also taken up, like, rock climbing and just different things that keep me a little bit more limber. You say in the book, you’ve got a line that I really like. You say time can be a dictator, but it can also be a liberator. Say more about that.

Chip Conley 00:18:41  How we look at our calendar has a lot to do with how we live our life. I mean, it makes sense. How we spend our days is how we spend our life. That’s a wonderful quote. And so for me, it’s a really interesting part of my life. I am very focused on my calendar.

Chip Conley 00:18:59  And so in some ways it dictates my life. It dictates, you know, how I’m spending my time with you today. You know, I got ten minutes extra time at the start of what was supposed to be our meeting, which was nice because I needed it. And I appreciated the fact that you needed to start ten minutes later. And that was. But when I say that, it’s like, oh my God, time defines and dictates my life. Similarly, during Covid, when my life got really spacious because, you know, I spent most of my time running MBA, teaching classes, etc. and all of a sudden we were closed for a period of time because of the pandemic. I put on my calendar three hours a day on Monday and Wednesday and Friday afternoons spying on the divine, and that was my opportunity to go into nature with my dog, Jamie, and to just be offline, not listening to a podcast, which is what I usually do when I hike, and just noticing things, being curious.

Chip Conley 00:19:54  I was doing what’s called an hour walk or what sometimes people call forest bathing and it was just really beautiful. So in that way, my calendar could be a liberation. Yesterday I thought I was going to go spend three hours with somebody who’s who’s a healer here in Santa Fe just for fun, not necessarily even healing session, but it didn’t turn out that I did, but I blocked four hours of my afternoon yesterday for that. And the reality was I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday. So that was fine ultimately. And I got to spend that time just relaxing, taking a bath and taking a nap and that’s what I needed. So we have more control and volition over our calendar than we think we do. But the language we use around time and counter is like, it’s almost as if we’re in prison.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:59  I think it’s some version of what you just said, which is like, I’m just so busy. I’m overwhelmed. I have no free time. I, you know, there’s there’s different ways of talking about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:09  I think it’s an interesting concept of time being potentially a liberator. You mentioned like being really busy in your 40s and then maybe in your 50s, a little bit less busy. And as time goes on, and I think time can be a liberator if we learn to use little bits of it better. I can say I don’t have time to do x, Y, or Z, but if I examine my life, then I’m like, but I spent an hour doing that and 35 minutes doing that, and there are little chunks there. Even in a very busy, dynamic life for me, there are places that without making radical changes, I can begin to claim some more autonomy.

Chip Conley 00:21:52  No doubt about it. Just being able to sit for a moment, maybe even five minutes and close your eyes and meditate and lose track of time is really valuable. I mean, there’s lots of social science research that shows that. I think, you know, one of the things that I find interesting is when you can get into a flow state.

Chip Conley 00:22:10  I was lucky enough to spend some good quality time with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who popularized the idea of flow. And what’s interesting about being in a flow state when you’re doing something that has timeless awareness, meaning you’re so engaged in it that you lose track of time. There’s starting to be some research that shows that when you lose track of time in a state of flow, it is possible that you’re not aging during that time. So finding time in your life where you can lose track of time is not just joyful and make you feel nourished, but it also may extend your longevity.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:48  I want to change directions here for a second, and talk about one of the things that we all know about aging is that your body changes in often ways that are less than desirable. And you say men are not spared the bodily indignities of aging and that women talk a lot more about it. We talk about menopause, we talk about perimenopause, and we could argue whether we talk about it enough, I don’t know. I’m not I’m not a woman. I’m not going to weigh in on that. But I certainly hear people talk about that way. More than I ever hear people talking about men and aging. Outside the context of, you know, an ED commercial, right? Like outside of that, it never gets mentioned.

Chip Conley 00:23:33  Bob Dole selling Viagra.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:36  Talk to me about this. And how might we as men better support each other in this?

Chip Conley 00:23:42  Yes. You know, it’s beauty or brawn when it comes to women. It’s beauty and the fear that you lose your beauty with time. Just as you get comfortable in your own skin, it starts to sag with men can be brawn. You know, the physical virality, the feeling virile. There’s a word to describe the men’s version of menopause, and it’s called andropause. What’s different versus menopause is menopause obviously has a huge fertility element to it. In terms of you no longer having menstruation and therefore no longer able to have children. and it’s huge. I mean, it’s a very important part of a woman’s life.

Chip Conley 00:24:23  For men that you don’t have that kind of sort of functional change, but you have a lot of things that are happening. One of them is the gut. You are actually gaining a fat in your gut. That can be actually very dangerous and remarkably stubborn. It is. It’s really hard to do. It’s very hard to get rid of. I gained a bunch of pounds when I was doing some cancer treatments the last two years, and, cannot get rid of that gut. You know, my gut is not huge, but it’s it’s something. So there’s that there’s the reduction in testosterone that really starts in your 30s, and it actually declines over time. And it can really accelerate for many men in their 50s and be more noticeable in terms of the lack of both appetite for being sexual or even capacity. So that’s happening. Obviously, you’re losing your hair, maybe losing your energy. There’s a lot of elements to this. Many of them sort of relate to men feeling a little bit less masculine.

Chip Conley 00:25:25  And that can be interesting. That’s a some of the crankiness that some men get into in their 50s and beyond is just trying to mask the lack of masculinity that they’re feeling internally. My father’s an interesting example of this. My father is 87 years old. Both my parents are 87, and my dad was a marine captain and a real hardcore, you know, masculine dude. And when he got into his 50s, 60s and 70s, he all of a sudden started to soften a little bit. And I don’t know how much of it was really the physical or hormonal side, but emotionally he started to, you know, read poetry occasionally or just be open to having an emotional conversation. And so I do think, you know, there’s a real beauty in seeing men start to become a little bit more soft, seeing women become a little bit more vocal and strong willed in their opinions, as opposed to just a people pleaser. This is one of the reasons why I say that as we’re growing old, we’re also growing whole.

Chip Conley 00:26:25  And what that means is we’re learning the alchemy, the polarities inside of ourselves, you know, whether it’s wisdom and curiosity. Introvert. Extrovert. Masculine. Feminine. Gravitas. Depth and levity. Humor. I think that one of the things that I really admire about an 85 year old person is when I spend time with them. They are so present. They’re not compartmentalized in any way. They have alchemised their polarities into this sort of integrated whole. And I think that’s really what we maybe should aspire to.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:59  I’m going to take a moment and ask a more personal type question here of my own interest, which is you mention energy dropping in people as they age. And one of the things I’ve talked to a number of men in their 40s and 50s about this, and it is a drop in energy and trying to figure out what is it? Is it, you know, lack of engagement with something that you’re doing? Is it diet or is it this? And one of the questions I sort of ask myself is like, what is a reasonable amount of energy for a 55 year old person? How have you thought about that question? You know, have you noticed an energy decrease and how have you thought about it and contextualized it?

Chip Conley 00:27:43  Well, I mean, just on a personal level, for two years I had to take hormone depletion therapy because I was dealing with prostate cancer.

Chip Conley 00:27:52  Okay. That went from stage one to stage two to stage three. And so to actually, in essence, inhibit my testosterone so that it was running around 8 or 10 instead of 500 meant that I was struggling with not a lot of energy at a time. When I had a book tour and I was launching our second MBA campus and all kinds of stuff. So dark chocolate. I was feeding on that. I think that you can feel the lack of energy inside you, and you need to respect that. And look at what are some of the root causes. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating well? Are you drinking too much alcohol? for a lot of people. A lot of men, they’re drinking more in their 50s and 60s than they did when they were younger. And the truth is that, you know, alcohol is problematic. And actually, it’s even more problematic for older women in terms of how you metabolize it. It can mess with your sleep as well. So some of the reason that there’s a lack of energy could be just physical issues, but sometimes it’s also not feeling the sense of purpose.

Chip Conley 00:28:56  And when you have a sense of purpose, it’s like a North Star that you are aspiring to get to. And, you know, you keep walking in the desert to see that North Star. You’re never going to catch the North Star because it’s just like a rainbow. You’re never going to catch the rainbow. But it is what drives you forward. So I think for some men there’s that. I actually think the physical side also of when you start getting some weight and you’re not exercising as much, there’s that going on as well. You’re carrying around a little bit more of a load. You don’t have the cardiovascular program that you used to have. I mean, I think it’s multifaceted. I will also say that as someone who is running on a treadmill in my career, that actually getting off the treadmill allowed me to slow down a little bit and realize how completely fatigued I was. And sometimes you just need that, that space to get some sleep and to just and slow down a little bit. And that’s okay.

Chip Conley 00:29:55  As long as in the long run you feel like you’re regenerating yourself. There’ll be a renewal as a result of that. Yesterday I was not feeling well. Last night I went to bed early. I had no alcohol, and the night before I had had small alcohol. I fasted last night, I didn’t have dinner, and I took a bath last night and I just felt so good when I got up this morning. I felt very different than I did yesterday and I have a lot more energy. So I just on a personal level, I can say like that is just two days for me of very different feelings.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:30  Yeah. Let’s talk for a moment about gratitude or being grateful for our lives. And you have a line in the book that I think is really interesting, and I don’t remember who you were talking to or who said this to you, but here’s the line that you wrote. It was the particular ness of his gratitude that shielded him from either envy or pride. Talk to me about gratitude and particular ness of it.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:55  What does that mean?

Chip Conley 00:30:56  I mean, there’s a lot of social science evidence showing that gratitude and happiness have a lot. They’re like kissing cousins. If you’re struggling, the best thing you can do is to find gratitude. If you want to feel happy, go write a gratitude list. But what’s been found is that just a generic gratitude list is not necessarily as helpful as being quite specific about what you’re feeling gratitude toward. And so the specificity, if someone wants to do a gratitude journal or a daily gratitude list. The specificity is what’s important, you know. And because what it does is from a neurological perspective, it’s like there’s a precision that you’re sort of saying, honing in on. That’s what I want to feed, you know, is back to, you know, the one you feed. I want to feed that. If you said, you know, like, I’m feeling gratitude because I feel, you know, love for my family. Well that’s great. Okay. what’s specific about that today? Yeah.

Chip Conley 00:31:51  Could you say I feel love for my family? Because my daughter today just told me how much she loved me, and I could see a twinkle in her eye. That’s much better than just saying I feel love for my family. Because the love for your family could be generic across any day, But actually when you say, because my daughter said she loved me and I could see that twinkle in her eye, it’s almost you can visualize it and your brain is sort of saying like, oh, more of that, please. And when something’s generic, it has less visceral impact on you. And I think when it comes to gratitude, feeling the gratitude and visualizing it is really important.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:31  That makes a lot of sense. I know for me, if you’re just listing the things that you intellectually know, you should be grateful for my family, my health. Those things tend to. If you’re doing gratitude as a regular practice becomes the the gratitude version of the hedonic treadmill, right? It no longer does anything but the specificity that you’re talking about does.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:58  I also think it tunes us into the granularity of our experience more, which is a really positive thing. For a while I used to do a gratitude list and have a couple pictures with it, and my dogs were always on it. Like when I looked back, I was like, well, I appear to be ten times more grateful for my dogs than any other person in the world, which seems funny in retrospect, but taking a picture of what they were doing that I found so adorable was a way of getting that specificity.

Chip Conley 00:33:30  Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And you don’t want to get bored with a gratitude list. Yeah, let’s just be really blunt. Yeah, it will be boring if it’s generic.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:39  So a lot of people talk about here are the things I’m not going to do and is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. I think that there have been some very clear things for me that it’s like, I’m not doing that, I’m not doing that. But you talk about creating something you called the Ten Commitments, which is a play on the Ten Commandments.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:57  Tell me about that.

Chip Conley 00:33:58  Yeah. You know, I grew up learning the Ten Commandments. And I remember saying to my parents, you know, like, it’s all about do not, do not, do not. I think eight of the ten are do nots. And so for me in my life today, and while I do have a spiritual practice and belief system, it’s not so much the Ten Commandments, which I do feel are helpful, but it’s really more about what are my proactive, positive commitments I can make in my life. And those are not going to be hard and fast and say like, okay, those are the only ten I’ll ever have. But you know, having ten that makes sense to me and are working for me, you know, today are important. And they become sort of the guardrails of my life. And so that’s, that’s a that’s a good thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:44  What are a couple of them. Can you share a couple of your commitments?

Speaker 4 00:34:47  I, I.

Chip Conley 00:34:48  I don’t have them in front of me right now.

Chip Conley 00:34:52  They changed. So I like in the book I had my ten. And I think one would be just being less focused on my resume and more focused on my eulogy. And how do I show up and create the conditions in my life such that I am, after age 50, more focused on my eulogy than on my resume? And I think that’s one that has lots of catalytic effect in terms of what? What does that mean? It means less egocentric. It means I’m less focused on my accomplishments. It means I’m more focused on the small things I do in life that are impacting other people. That’s an example of a commitment as opposed to a commandment.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:50  That’s back to the the ROI, the ripples of impact, which I absolutely love. I think that is such a a great phrase in a way of thinking of it. And I love the idea of ripple. Right. Because I think that’s the way our impact generally is. Sometimes we get to see it directly, but most of the time I don’t think we actually see the good that we put into the world.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:15  It ripples out in this very gentle way, and it takes a certain amount of faith and belief that indeed, that is happening.

Chip Conley 00:36:24  Yeah, there’s Kip Tindall, who I always thought of as a role model for me. He started the Container Store Company a long, long time ago, and he talked about your wake, you know, in the context of your life, sometimes you don’t know what the wake is that you’re like in a boat. There’s there’s a wake behind you as you’re focusing forward on the boat, especially if you’re driving it. You don’t necessarily know your wake behind you. Yeah. And the truth is, the bigger you are in an organization, the higher you are an organization. The more power you have, the larger your wake. And as a water skier who knows what it’s like to ski across the lake, I know that, you know, having a huge wake can be hard. It can be very disruptive. So the ripples are sort of a form of wake. There’s a wake also.

Chip Conley 00:37:12  What you really want to do in life is to have a really positive wake and recognize that the more senior you are, the more contagious your emotions, the more contagious your character, in essence, the bigger your wake. I think metaphors are often very helpful for people to sort of visualize how the world works.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:31  You have a question in the book that you say to ask, am I frustrated or disappointed? What’s the difference and why does it matter?

Chip Conley 00:37:40  So when you’re frustrated, there’s still the opportunity to change something. And so frustration can relate to anger. It can relate to a lot of sort of combustible emotions that can propel you forward, to take action, to make it different. Disappointment, which some people could say they’re the same, but they’re not. Disappointment is an energy that actually is a shrinking. Frustration is a growing. Disappointment is a shrinking. Partly because you’re beyond frustration. Disappointment is when you come to realize that there’s not much you can do to change something. Yeah, now. And regret is one step further, which is a sense of responsibility about that disappointment.

Chip Conley 00:38:23  So, you know, a regret is actually more painful than disappointment because you actually feel like you had some fault in leading to the disappointment. But disappointment could happen in all kinds of ways, and often it’s outside of your control. Therefore, there can be a sense of like, okay, oh, well, I’m gonna have to live with that. When someone has too much frustration in their life, it can lead to anxiety and high blood pressure and a deep sense of urgency and stress. When someone has a lot of disappointment in their life. It can lead to learned helplessness and depression and a sense that, you know, oh, woe is me, or there’s nothing I can do. So they’re very, very different in terms of emotional affect. And yet sometimes people talk about saying I’m frustrated and disappointed. It’s like, well, which one is it? 

Eric Zimmer 00:39:14  Yeah. Well, it’s another version of the Serenity Prayer, right? The things I can change, the things I can’t change, and the wisdom to know the difference and wisdom is a big word with you.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:27  And I think that’s a really important thing to know. Right. Because the response is very different. You talk about expectation in the book. So you say, you know, when you’re faced with disappointment, you can either improve your reality or lower your expectations. So improving my reality would sort of throw me back over on the maybe not frustrated side of the court, but that energy, right? The energy of change. If, on the other hand, I’m on the disappointment sighed. Then lowering my expectations. Talk about how we do that in a wise way.

Chip Conley 00:40:00  So one of the reasons that people often feel not great about age 45 to 50 is because of disappointment equals expectations minus reality. In your teens, your 20s or 30s, you build these expectations. They sort of propel you forward. And then by the time you’re getting starting to flirt with 50, you’re at an age where like, yeah, I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen. Yep. You could believe it’s going to happen in your 30s still.

Chip Conley 00:40:25  But by the time you get closer to 50, maybe not. And that’s really hard. And, Brené Brown calls it the midlife unraveling. And the midlife unraveling is unraveling your expectations in such a way that you are no longer feeling so wrapped up in something that there’s no space for anything else. So the key, the wise way to deal with that is to rejigger your expectations and get clear on what’s important to you. For a lot of people around 45 to 50, they are in a stage in their life where they they are running on a treadmill that was defined by their parents or their spouse or their community, but not themselves. And so it’s around that era of life that sometimes people wake up and say, like, I want to be a firefighter. I don’t I don’t want to be an accountant. We see those people come to me or, you know, a woman recently who was like, I don’t want to be a litigator. I want to be a pastry chef. It’s like, okay, you can do that.

Chip Conley 00:41:25  You know, at 20, it was hard for you to do that because your parents were sort of saying, you got to go to college, you got to make money, and then you end up getting on the treadmill and you say like, oh, I’m getting married. And now I have kids. It’s like, oh, and for some people, they wake up around 45 to 50 and say, like that David Byrne song Is This My Wonderful Life? And it’s not their wonderful life, it’s the life that you know. Somebody else wrote the script for. So finding the agency, and then the autonomy and the clarity of vision is part of what we help people with. At me.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:57  People coming to me, is there a guiding idea of what’s bringing them? There are people coming there largely because they are feeling unmoored in middle age, and they’re not quite sure what to do.

Chip Conley 00:42:12  For some people it’s something abstract like that. It’s like, okay, I feel sort of a little lost in middle age, and I’m feeling not good about aging and I want to improve on that.

Chip Conley 00:42:22  And sometimes it’s like, I feel like I’ve got to get clear on what my purpose is or what my wisdom is I’ve built, and that’s also important. But the number one reason people come to me is because they’re going through some kind of transition in their life. Maybe they’re in the sandwich generation, but they’re about to lose a parent, or they’re becoming an empty nester. The kids are leaving or they’re getting divorced. They’re selling their business. They’re changing their career. They have a cancer diagnosis. They’ve stopped drinking. They have decided that they’re going to move to a new place. They have a new spiritual curiosity that’s leading them back to Catholicism. There’s lots of things that are happening for people in midlife, and there’s menopause. There’s so much going on and so little in the way of social infrastructure to help support people during this time. So that’s the number one reason people come.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:14  That makes a lot of sense. I mean, we we tend to seek out extra support and help when we are facing something that feels acute.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:22  You mentioned in the book, Bruce Feiler, who’s been a guest for us, you know, a couple times and wonderful guy who talks all about that sort of life quake idea.

Chip Conley 00:43:31  Bruce has taught in our online programs, and I have a lot of respect for his work and his writing. In his book, life Is in the transitions, he talks about when you’re having multiple transitions at once. Yeah. He calls that a life quake. And I think the thing that’s really helpful to know about transitions is you can go through multiple of them at once, but each transition sort of has this anatomy or a framework, and it’s usually the ending of something is the first stage. The second stage is the messy middle, and then the third stage is the beginning of something new. And there’s coping mechanisms for each. And once you understand that three steps ending, messy, middle, beginning, you can realize that in one part of your life you’re having a transition, but you’re at the ending of something and another one. You’re in a transition where you’re at the beginning of something and another one, you’re at the messy middle. And so there’s a different coping mechanism for each. And once you have that sense, it really helps.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:24  Wonderful. Well, I think that is a great place for us to wrap up. Chip, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. You and I are going to continue for a little bit longer in the post-show conversation, because I want to talk about something that you write about, which is this idea of basically wanting what we have, you know, how do we get to that because that’s a you know, what I have is all I need. So, listeners, if you’d like access to the post-show conversation to hear Chip and I continue, as well as ad free episodes, a special episode I do for you each week called Teaching Song and a poem and Other Benefits. We’d love to have you as part of the community. And that’s at one you feed. Join Chip. Thank you so much.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:07  Oh thank you Eric, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom. One episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.

In this inspiring and deeply human conversation, Eric sits down with bestselling author and Modern Elder Academy founder Chip Conley to explore the wisdom, challenges, and surprising gifts of midlife. From redefining success and navigating transitions to embracing aging with purpose and curiosity, Chip shares raw personal stories—including a near-death experience—that reshaped his entire approach to life.

They dive into the “U Curve of Happiness,” the liberating power of a well-used calendar, and why “ripples of impact” might matter more than ROI. Whether you’re in the midst of a midlife reset or simply wondering what’s next, this episode offers profound insights and practical tools to help you feel more hopeful, useful, and whole.

Midlife has a way of sneaking up on you. I know because I’m in it, and it’s not without its challenges. But talking with Chip Conley shifted something in me. In this conversation, he shares how the hardest stretch of his life. Burnout, personal loss, and near-death experience ended up being the start of something completely new. We talk about the pull of ego, the search for identity, and how letting go of traditional success opened the door to something more meaningful. His idea of moving from return on investment to ripples of impact especially struck me.

In this episode, Chip Conley defines a midlife makeover to redefine success and happiness after 40.  He shares how the most difficult stretches of his life ended up being the start of something completely new.  Chip also explains the pull of the ego, the search for identity and how letting go of traditional success can open the door for something more meaningful.  If you’re in a season of life where things feel uncertain, or if you’re wondering what this phase of life is really for, this episode will help you feel a little more hopeful. 

Filed Under: Featured, Podcast Episode

How to Nurture Creativity in a Noisy World with Maggie Smith

April 15, 2025 Leave a Comment

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In this episode, Maggie Smith explores how to nurture creativity in a noisy world. A lot of people think creativity is something you do with a paintbrush or a poem but Maggie challenges us to think differently about creativity. It isn’t about what you make, but how you live. She dives into what it really means to be creative, even when you’re overwhelmed, unsure, and not feeling particularly inspired. And we tackle a bigger question: How do we keep creating when the world is so loud and we’re so tired?

Key Takeaways:

  • Insights on creativity and the challenges of staying inspired in a chaotic world.
  • The role of intuition in the creative process and the significance of listening to one’s inner voice.
  • Balancing the need to stay informed with personal well-being and mental health.
  • The concept of hope in creativity and the idea of being a “possibilist.”
  • Practical advice for overcoming creative blocks and finding inspiration.
  • The value of feedback and community in the creative process.
  • The relationship between restlessness and creativity, and how it can drive artistic growth.
  • Embracing playfulness and curiosity in creative endeavors.


Maggie Smith is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of eight books of poetry and
prose, including YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL, GOOD BONES, GOLDENROD, KEEP MOVING, and MY THOUGHTS HAVE WINGS. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. Her new book is Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

Connect with Maggie Smith:  Website | Instagram

If you enjoyed this conversation with Maggie Smith, check out these other episodes:

The Lost Art of Living Creatively with Austin Kleon

Creativity as a Cure with Jacob Nordby

Writing for Healing with Maggie Smith (2021)

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:02:17  A lot of people think creativity is something you do with a paintbrush, or a poem, or a perfectly arranged Instagram grid. But what if creativity isn’t about what you make, but how you live? In this episode, I talk with Maggie Smith, poet, author, and champion of the messy, meaningful, creative life. We dig into what it really means to be creative, even when you’re overwhelmed, unsure, and not feeling particularly inspired. And we ask a bigger question how do we keep creating when the world is so loud and we’re so tired? This is one of those conversations that doesn’t just give you advice, it gives you permission. I’m Eric Zimmer. And this is the one you feed. Hi, Maggie. Welcome to the show.

Maggie Smith 00:03:02  It’s good to be back.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:04  It sure is. It’s nice to see you again. We’re here to discuss your latest book, which is called Dear Writer Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life. And we’re going to get into all of that in a moment.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:16  But we will start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says, what? Which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Maggie Smith 00:03:54  I love that I’ve gotten to answer this question more than once, and I have to keep coming up with a different response for what it means to me. Eric, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about intuition, which is maybe like sort of a woo woo concept, but I’ve been thinking a lot more about it. And like the way that we can listen to that sort of voice inside ourselves that tells us what is true and good that we should be perhaps pursuing. And then there’s probably another little voice inside of ourselves that says, yeah, but this might be more lucrative, or this might be an easier path, or this would be less of a hassle. And so I’ve been thinking about those two wolves and a kind of intuitive sense these days, which is how do I tune into that inner voice inside me and ask it like, what is true and good that I should be pursuing right now? And what can I let fall away? Because as we get busier and as the news cycle gets more insane. Yeah, right. I mean, there are just so many little hooks in the world that are grabbing at us and competing for our time and attention. And so being able to kind of, I don’t know, tune in to that kinder, clearer frequency and just know what to do with oneself on a daily basis seems essential right now. So that’s what it kind of brings up in me at this particular time.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:22  Yeah, I think about that question of intuition a lot, and about the inner voices and knowing which ones you want to listen to and trust and follow and which ones you want to let go. And I think that in many ways, this path of becoming more in touch with who we are and living a better and more meaningful life is just primarily about hearing those things and sorting them out. And for me, sort of say the beginning. Like when I got sober as a as a beginning. Right? I couldn’t trust any of those interior voices. They were all bad wolves. Now, there’s a lot of good wolves in there, too, and I can trust it a whole lot more. But I do need to be a little bit more quiet. And I’ve been thinking about what you’re talking about, like just the clamor. Like, I’m a big fan of Substack. I know you’re on Substack, I love Substack, and even Substack feels so noisy to me now.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:23  There’s so many great writers I’m feeling in a way I’ve never felt before, like a full retreat from online anything, because it just seems to be in some way, ratcheting up something that I felt like I had some sort of grip on. I feel like now I’m back in the midst of the real struggle. Yeah, and I don’t do any social media even.

Maggie Smith 00:06:48  Well, then don’t add that to your repertoire, because that’s a whole other wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:53  Yes.

Maggie Smith 00:06:54  It’s a no. You’re right. It’s a whole pack. You’re right. I think we could talk for a long time about all of the sort of negative stuff that’s coming at us constantly that we’re having to weed through, because you have to pay attention to it and be informed in the world and not bury your head in the sand. But in order to sort of survive and thrive and make things and be useful to yourself and others, you can’t be completely consumed by the news cycle. But it’s not just that it’s even good stuff is overwhelming, right? Like if you wake up in the morning and you have 50 Substack notifications in your email of things that you really would like to read.

Maggie Smith 00:07:32  Yeah, and engage with, but you actually just don’t even have the bandwidth for the incoming. Good, worthwhile stuff. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. Like, how do we pare down? Because that seems really essential right now to just get to a place where, okay, here are the things that really matter to me? And how do I kind of like weed through the rest of that static, even if it’s good static?

Eric Zimmer 00:07:57  Yeah, yeah, I heard some writer, I don’t remember who it is who said, you know, it’s not a problem of like, trying to find the needle in the haystack anymore. It’s basically a haystack full of needles at this point. Right? And that is so true. Let’s jump to the book for a second, because in the book you have, I don’t know, you could tell me how many what do you call them? Capacities. You’ve got attention. Wonder what do you call those?

Maggie Smith 00:08:21  I don’t know, I think I call them elements of creativity.  Or if I were coming up with a recipe for creativity, I think of them as, like the ingredients in the secret sauce.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:31  Great. Okay. So in the ingredients, one of them, I believe the last one is hope. Yeah. And I thought we could go there because you just referenced the news cycle. You referenced this idea of needing to be informed. And I’m struggling with this right now. I don’t think I’m alone. Right. Because I’m having a desire to tune out in a way I never have, because I feel so thoroughly overwhelmed and that overwhelming this leads to nothing. Whereas when I withdraw myself to a certain degree, then I can at least do what I feel like I can do in the world. And I’ve been questioning that statement of like, it’s good to be informed, you need to know what’s happening. And I’ve been wrestling with the idea of, is that true? Is it moral to be informed, or is there actually virtue in that? Or is there only virtue in what you do as a result of being informed? I’m struggling with this question personally right now.

Maggie Smith 00:09:30  That’s a really interesting question, because what good is the information if it doesn’t impact your behavior or the way you move through the world? I mean, knowing bad things are happening is one thing, but if you just know that the bad thing is happening and then you just go make yourself a sandwich, how is that useful?

Eric Zimmer 00:09:48  Or you just read more and more and more and more bad things that are happening, right? And you never get to good. I’ve been wanting to go back and read Candide because I don’t really remember all of it, but I do remember this core idea of like ten year garden. Yeah. And I’ve been feeling a deeper need to, like, tend my garden, I guess. Anyway, you know what I’m trying to say.

Maggie Smith 00:10:09  I do, but I also think part of that is that our garden is in our control. Yeah, or at least it’s more in our control. It’s not fully in our control. Right. But when the world feels like it’s complete chaos, which at least to me, it does.

Maggie Smith 00:10:21  Right now, the thing that I can do is take care of my family, make decisions for myself, donate my time and money to causes that matter to me, write my poems or essays or novels or whatever those things are. And so bringing it back to self is a way of feeling like you’re in control, in a world that feels like it’s completely out of control. And yet I think it is a sort of moral imperative to be informed, because even voting comes from that, right? Even protesting comes from that. If we all bury our heads in the sand because we’re all so overwhelmed and we’re not aware of the sort of machinations, then they continue. But it’s a balance. If I spend too much time in that world, I’ll stop making things because my nervous system will be so overwhelmed I won’t be able to. Right. Yeah. So, like, what is that balance between tending my garden, which is important and necessary, and that’s my work, but also not tending my garden as a way to escape the world.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:26  Yep. Yeah. It’s an ongoing balance. You say, though, in the book, if hope is imaginative, then pessimism is a failure of imagination. You still feel that? Talk to me about where you are with that today.

Maggie Smith 00:11:40  I still feel that way, even with things happening now. And honestly, we could copy paste that sentence into any time in history.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:48  Exactly.

Maggie Smith 00:11:49  Or the future? Exactly right. I mean, that’s like one of the questions that people ask of poets forever is like, how is poetry important in these harrowing times? And I’m like, well, in these harrowing times, I could also be copy pasted into any time in history. Like if ten years ago wasn’t harrowing for me, it’s because of my like, location or privilege.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:15  Precisely because the world is always harrowing to some people. Somewhere, always.

Maggie Smith 00:12:20  100% of the time.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:21  There’s this Buddhist story that I love about a woman who’s chased by a tiger, and she comes to an end of the cliff and she sees a sturdy vine, and she climbs partway down and it describes, she says, there’s tigers above, there’s tigers below.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:34  Mice come out and start, you know, gnawing at the vine. And I’m like, that’s life in perpetuity. Always.

Maggie Smith 00:12:42  Yeah. Tigers above, Tigers below. Yeah. That is. That’s the shorthand for that. So it’s no different now, really. I mean, does it feel a little different? Sure. But we’ve always lived through difficult times. We are going to live through difficult times, and we keep making art. Yeah. And if that’s not a hopeful endeavor, I don’t know what is. And yes, I can’t make things, nor can I parent. As a pessimist, I don’t know. I mean, it’s actually like irresponsible, I think, for me to be doing either of those things. Like, someone would have to take the keys from me. Yeah. If I say I’m driving the car like this, that’s not okay. So that doesn’t mean saying, don’t worry, guys, everything’s going to be fine. I’m sure this is all going to, like, the pendulum’s going to swing back and everything’s going to be cool.

Maggie Smith 00:13:34  And this is all going to be erased. No. Like some of the things that are happening, particularly in the United States now, we’ll be feeling the repercussions of this for centuries. Like, none of this is small time stuff, but that doesn’t mean we give up. Like, what’s the alternative? Right. I don’t get it.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:52  There was a book that was written, I don’t know how long ago now by a guy named Hans Rosling. It’s called fact fulness. And basically what he’s trying to do in the book is show that the world is getting better on a lot of measures, right? We’ve all heard this by now, right? Like childhood literacy, rising, worldwide, poverty following, you know, all these sort of things, but life expectancy.

Maggie Smith 00:14:11  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:12  The thing he says in that book, though, that I love, is he’s talking about optimism and pessimism, and he refuses to be considered either. He’s like, people call me an optimist because I show them all this progress.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:22  He said, I’m not an optimist. I’m a possibility. And I love that idea because that’s what you’re getting to with hope, being imaginative, being a possible list. You know, there’s a way that we can make things better. We don’t know how much better. We don’t know what the scope of that is, but we can’t. We do have that ability.

Maggie Smith 00:14:41  Yeah. And what is the point of the future if we think that it’s already written right? I mean, if we actually think we can do nothing to impact what happens in the next five minutes or in the next day or the next year. Yeah. I mean, we’re just playing with blocks. I mean, we have to believe that our actions and even our thoughts have an impact in the world. That feels hopeful to me. And I like the idea of being a possible list. Maybe I’ll I’ll use that from now on. I used to say I was a recovering pessimist. I don’t say that anymore because I actually feel like I’m.

Maggie Smith 00:15:16  I’m pretty optimistic. Yeah. But from like, a realistic standpoint. Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:22  So in the book you have these different ingredients. We talked about them, one of them being Hope. I want to talk for a minute about the role of creativity in the average person’s life. Right. This book is written. It’s got a lot about how to be a better writer in it. I was saying to you before we started, my book is due to the publisher in ten days. I wish I’d read this book like three months ago because I would have been like, oh, I can do that, and I should try this, and now you know. So now I’ve got all kinds of things because I’ve been a little bit like, well, the draft’s done. I’m not quite sure how to make it better. So as a book about writing, it’s outstanding in that. And I know that’s a big thing to you. Teaching writing, teaching craft. Some of our listeners are going to be writers.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:08  And so they’re hearing this, and I’m hoping they will go get the book because it’s great in that way. But I want to broaden creativity out from just people who would be considering themselves a writer or artist. Talk to me about the role of creativity in just life.

Maggie Smith 00:16:26  Yeah, it’s funny to me how many people think they’re not creative because they don’t make art, which I find sad. We’re all creative. Anyone who does a job doing anything, anytime you brainstorm something. Yeah. Anytime you try to solve a problem. Creative anytime. My son has soccer practice on one side of town and my daughter has work on the other side of town, it requires creativity. I’m not even being facetious. Like I think in our daily lives, every relationship we start or end, every time we change our minds about something, every conversation we have with someone that is unscripted, like this one, I don’t know what you’re going to offer me, and you don’t know what I’m going to offer you back. This is creative time that we’re spending together.

Maggie Smith 00:17:09  It’s something that I feel kind of evangelical about, frankly, that that like, we are all creative people. And even if you think you’re not, you’re just wrong, actually, and that it has something to offer all of us. And the other thing I would say is that even if you’re not making art, I hate this as a verb, but you’re consuming it, right? You’re engaging with it is perhaps warm or less capitalistic way to say it. Even if you’re not making art. You’re engaging with art. You’re listening to music. You are watching films or television. You have probably art in your home. And so what does it mean to you to be engaging with that piece of art on a daily basis? Perhaps? For me, I feel like we can’t engage with art, whether we’re making it or looking at it, listening to it without being different. On the other side of it. And so part of what we want as humans is to grow, which I think it is for me why I make art.

Maggie Smith 00:18:16  And part of why I listen to music as often as I do, and why I want to go see bands as often as I do, and why I want to see the movies that people say are making them cry or scream or whatever is because I know that on the other side of that record or concert experience or film, I will not be exactly the person I was before. Yep. And like, we can argue that that’s true of anything. Right. Like, you go on a hike. You’re not the same person after the hike. But I think there is something sort of built in to, like the DNA of art made by human beings. Which I have to say, because AI is making me crazy. But when a human being makes a piece of art and then we spend time with it, that’s the kind of creative connection that we’re making, and it transforms us and we exit that a little different on the other side. And I think we’re all kind of craving that, whether we’re consciously craving it or not.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:13  There is something you talk about in the book. It was under the element of vision that I wanted to talk about, because I found it kind of inspiring. And you talked about a way to get unstuck when it comes to a poem. And you say, when I pack my bag to go somewhere to do writing, I’m paraphrasing here. I always take a notebook with me and at least one book, and I begin my writing time by reading pen in hand, because I know what is likely to happen. A word or phrase, sentence or idea will open a door for me. And then you talk about just like making a list of words that you pull out of the text. How might you combine those words in unexpected ways? I just love this idea because it talks about how to actually go from reading something that feels inspiring in some way, but I don’t know how to engage with it differently, how to give it my own thing. And I just love this idea of just like writing out words or a sentence and then trying to follow a sentence.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:07  You talk about making something. I’d never heard of this before. A cento tell me what a cento is.

Maggie Smith 00:20:13  I joke that a cento is the laziest poem you can write. It’s actually not. But a cento requires no writing. That’s the secret of the cento. So it’s an Italian form. It’s a collage poem. So basically, a cento is a poem in which each line has been pulled from another writer. And so your job is basically assembling these lines to make a new hole. So if you find a line in a poem you love and it ends with a preposition, then you find a line and some other person’s poem that begins with a noun phrase and kind of makes a new weird, interesting sentence, and you build that way. And so it really is like cutting images and making a collage from someone else’s art.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:56  Yeah, I just think that’s such a approachable thing to do. Yeah. If I sit down to write a poem and I know I’m creative, I play guitar, I’m writing a book, even though it’s sort of a certain type of nonfiction book.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:07  But when I sit down to try and create, you know, with a capital C, I often just feel flummoxed. But the idea of this is a way in. Yeah, really. Like I was like, oh, that’s easy. I’ve tried to find other ways in, like my friend Chris and I, we did it religiously for a while, and now we don’t do it so often. But we would do a daily haiku together in the morning via text. I’d send the first line, he’d be responsible for the next.

Maggie Smith 00:21:31  I remember that you.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:32  Guys did that. Yeah. And then the next day he’d have to send the first line. And it was just like a way of creating that was easy in comparison to what it feels like for a lot of people when they stare at a blank page.

Maggie Smith 00:21:44  Eric, that’s what staring at a blank page feels like to me. If you told me, go write a poem right now, I couldn’t do it. And I’m a poet. Like, that’s not how it works.

Maggie Smith 00:21:55  I don’t create on demand. Like, it’s not something you can just order up. Like going through the drive thru at a fast food restaurant. I have to give myself starters to get myself going too. I mean, the other thing I do is go back to something I’ve already written that isn’t working, and I’ll just kind of like noodle around in an old draft. If I don’t have an idea for something new. Right. Like, that’s always a good way to get started, because you might end up in some direction you never expected. But if I have time to write, I have to give myself a way in. And often it’s with someone else’s work, right? Like pulling a line from a poem and using it as the epigraph at the top, and then maybe mimicking the sentence structure, or pulling a sentence from a novel or an essay and rewriting that sentence exactly syntactically, but using my own words. Yeah, but using the container of their sentence structure or. Yeah, I have done word banks before where I will read through, particularly a collection of poems, but like a science article would be really interesting for something like this to, you know, pulling vocabulary from something that you might not have in your repertoire and making a word bank list and then thinking, okay, how can I combine these words in unique ways to make images or metaphors or asunto like going to my bookshelf, pulling up a bunch of poems, and trying to cobble something together that way that I get to call mine, even though I’m using other people’s words.

Maggie Smith 00:23:25  I think one of the most pernicious myths about creating anything is that it? Just like the muse visits you and it just comes through you and comes out fully formed. And it’s fast and easy. Yeah, I hope we’re like, doing a good enough job of dispelling that over time, but it’s usually incremental. It’s more of a trickle than a rush and it takes a lot of work.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:50  Yeah, I think that we do have these two sort of extreme ideas sometimes of art. One is, like you said, the muse just descends and something just comes out. The other is this extraordinarily laborious. You sit down at the same place at the same time and you just grind. Right. Like that is what’s been used to counter that other myth. And I think what you’re doing is you’re striking sort of a middle ground between those. I love this line. You can’t force a poem, but I think you can prepare for one. I think that’s a great line for poems and just for a whole lot of life in general.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:25  Right? There’s a lot of things in life you cannot force, but you can prepare, you can set the stage for you can influence.

Maggie Smith 00:24:32  Absolutely. Yeah. I do not consider my writing life a grind, but I also don’t sit down at the same time every day and stare at a page until something happens. I try to live my life and move through the day, and as things come to me, I’m like a little magpie looking for the shiny bits. So I collect them as I can and then eventually they accrue into something, if I’m lucky. But that’s that kind of like setting the table, right? Like if I haven’t set the table, there’s a less likely chance that the thing’s going to show up ready to go. And so preparing the table for me can look like a lot of different things, but it certainly doesn’t look like it doesn’t look like work. Yeah. In the way that we think. And it also doesn’t look like being struck by lightning and having something come through me.

Maggie Smith 00:25:20  It looks like getting an idea, writing it down, and then maybe coming back to it in a week when some other idea wants to Velcro itself to the side of that idea?

Eric Zimmer 00:25:29  Yep. You’re very realistic, though, in the book because you mentioned, like as a working writer, sometimes you’re on deadline, right? And you do you sit down and you just kind of. That’s how I felt with this book, right? It’s like I got the book deal, and I had a year and I was like, okay, you know, if I don’t want to end up in a mad rush at the end, which apparently always happens no matter what you do. It’s true. Just kind of made myself sort of write and follow a schedule, but in another creative endeavor for me, like guitar, it follows no shape like that, right? It’s far more able to be what it is. But I also do give myself I set the stage often enough by sitting down with the guitar.

Maggie Smith 00:26:10  Yeah.

Maggie Smith 00:26:10  Well, this is why I was saying I like to go away and kind of give myself retreats when I really have to write. Yeah. Whether I’m on deadline or not. There’s something for me about getting out of my home office, out of the place where my laundry and dishes need to be done, right out of the place where my kids are asking for a ride someplace. If I can get out of my daily life, sometimes that even just means going to a coffee shop for a few hours where I’m not reachable and I can’t do chores, frankly. But if I can go to a cabin in the woods for four days, something happens and it almost feels like turning on a faucet and things just happen. And it’s like, I think I’ve been doing that long enough. That sort of intuitively, my mind knows that when I get into that environment, it’s writing time. Yeah, it’s like if you have good sleep hygiene and you go to bed, if you’re doing it right, your body is like, oh, this is it’s sleep time, right? Like, this is what we do before sleep.

Maggie Smith 00:27:10  And now I’m prepared for it. I actually don’t think that that writing or making things is is that different. You can kind of give yourself cues. And for me, being among trees happens to be one of my mental cues for time to get some stuff done.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:51  We’ve talked about this before, I believe, when you were on the show, but we talked about this idea of seeing the world as a poet, and I mentioned why I love to read good poetry because I feel like it teaches me how to look differently than I normally look. You call it poets eyes and say that, you know, we all have them, particularly as children. But you also talk about how there’s both a loss and a gift in being a writer. Share more about that, because I resonate with that a lot.

Maggie Smith 00:28:23  Yeah. I mean, I think When you’re mining your lived experience for art. And maybe it’s not that different from a photographer who, whether they’re walking through the world with a camera or not, is framing things with their eyes.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:40  Or a musician. When I go see a band play, I’m watching what they’re doing with the chords, and I’m thinking about like, there’s a part of me that’s processing it as a fan, as a lover of it. But there’s a part of me that’s processing it as a musician, and it causes a little bit of a split.

Maggie Smith 00:28:55  Yeah, I think that’s true. And I think as a writer it’s funny, like, can I take a walk and have it just be a walk? Or is it a walk in which I’m also mining that walk for imagery, sensory detail, metaphor? And it’s sort of I mean, I say in the book, it’s sort of a loss and a gift. There’s a part of me that is always standing a little bit outside of the present moment because I’m grasping for language, a framework, a container, a way in. Like I’m looking for the door into the piece of writing about the thing that I’m experiencing in the moment. So it’s like when you hear people say, oh, I have like present tense nostalgia, you know, like I’m kind of like missing this moment as it’s happening because it’s so good.

Maggie Smith 00:29:44  I’m already sad about this beautiful experience because I know it’s going to end. I feel like there’s a kind of a bit of that where if I’m kind of meta processing. Yeah, as a writer, I’m not able to just fully surrender. Yeah, to the lived experience in the moment. And it sounds like you have that happen to.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:06  I do certainly with music, but in general, I think I have to work on it within myself that I don’t constantly think, as you’re saying, that every moment is supposed to produce something out of it.

Maggie Smith 00:30:22  That’s so important.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:23  Because then all of a sudden life becomes all about instrumentality, right? Like versus life. I just think, like you said, it’s a loss and a gift. And so for me, anything that’s that sort of double edged sword and lots of things in life are I just have to kind of pay attention to how I’m holding the sword a lot in order to not, you know, slice myself into a thousand pieces.

Maggie Smith 00:30:44  I think that’s really smart.

Maggie Smith 00:30:45  I love the way you put that. I remember my mom asking me once. I told her about some great day I’d had with the kids, like just at Hocking Hills or at the zoo, or just, you know, some just really joyful day and just spending the day together. And she said, oh, you should write about that. Probably because she was thinking, all of your poems are so melancholy, right? Like, that’s so uncomplicated and accessible. You should write about that. And I remember being on the phone with her and saying, I don’t need to write about it. I just enjoyed living it. So I know, I know the difference. Yeah, I can go to like, an amusement park with my kids, and I’m not like, what’s the roller coaster a metaphor for like, I know I’m able to pull myself out of that. It’s like a trap I can fall into, and I’m very susceptible. Like, my kid says something interesting and I’m like, ooh.

Maggie Smith 00:31:33  And I think they can see it happening. Like when I kind of leave the present moment and they can kind of see this like, oh, she’s an art mode right now. Mom just left the chat and the writer has entered the chat.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:46  Yeah, they probably also really like it too, though, because they feel like they’ve helped create something or they’ve said something interesting.

Maggie Smith 00:31:54  I hope so, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know, I guess we’ll we’ll see. Like, who knows what one’s legacy will be with their children. But yeah, we’ll see.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:02  One of the other things that happens when it comes to creativity for people on any level is that you are able to see how you may not be, quote unquote, very good at it, right? And again, I don’t think this ever actually goes away for anyone. No, but you talk about being an amateur and I did not know this until I read it, that the root of amateur in Latin means to love. And that is so beautiful.

Maggie Smith 00:32:29  I’m a total word nerd, so my kids get really annoyed when they say something and I’m like, do you know the Latin root of that is this? And it means this. They hate it. But I look up words and I want to know their origins all the time, because it actually changes the way I think about the concept. So to know that the root of amateur is to love, I think we use that word as we either use it as a self-deprecating term, or we use it as a criticism of others if we’re being unkind, that’s amateurish, right? But if we think of it about it as like an amateur is not somebody who’s not good at something, which is, I think, how we use it a lot. But an amateur is someone who is doing something out of the love for the thing, rather than trying to professionalize. Perhaps the thing it actually speaks to what we were just talking about, like experiencing versus mining. Everything is material. I would like to be more of an amateur in that way.

Maggie Smith 00:33:27  I mean, courage to the root of courage is core, which if you think of Spanish Corazon, its heart. So it makes me think of bravery differently to think about courage in that way. We should all be brave. Amateurs.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:42  Yes. Yes. Right.

Maggie Smith 00:33:44  Just like boldly trying things. Failing a lot of the time. Picking ourselves back up because it’s fun to try. Not because we are expecting to get some guaranteed result from it.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:58  Before we dive back into the conversation. Let me ask you something. What’s one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it’s there. You’ve tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You’re not alone in this. And I’ve identified six major saboteurs of self control. Things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here’s the good news you can outsmart them. And I’ve put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control.Download the free guide now at one Eufy Net e-book and take the first step towards getting back on track. 

Eric Zimmer 00:34:37  This is another one of those things that I have to wrestle with myself, which is not turning things I love into a job or or something that I have to get good at. Now I’ve gotten much better at this as I’ve aged, thankfully. Yeah, I just need to watch for that tendency. But it’s true. At the same time, that improving does feel good. Yeah, right. Like there’s something in it that feels good. So I’m trying to sort of do both those things. I’m like, all right, I don’t want to turn this into a chore. But yet I do know that I want to improve because that just feels good. And trying to hold all of that for me with the things that I do like with guitar, I firmly embrace amateur. I do because I love it. I don’t do it for any reason anymore except that I enjoy doing it. I have no, I have no expectation of anything coming out of it at all. You know, not getting the girl, not getting in a band, not getting paid, none of it.

Maggie Smith 00:35:53  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:53  I feel like after years of that, I was given the instrument back. In a way.

Maggie Smith 00:35:58  I love that, honestly. It’s when people ask about my work, I’m like, oh, I’m a poet, and I’d be doing it for free. I’m not anymore. But I would be. Yes, because it’s the thing I love to do. And sometimes I’m like, don’t tell anyone I would be doing this for free. But this is the thing I love to do. And even if nobody else wanted to read anything I was writing, I would still be doing it for myself. And yes, improving and working on my craft. I feel like I’m competing against myself. That’s all I’m doing. I’m competing against the writer I was yesterday. Not other writers. It’s just me. Be me. And for some reason, I find that really invigorating. And it makes me wonder if some of these people who were like, oh, I’m not creative.

Maggie Smith 00:36:45  And they sort of like, shake that off. Maybe they feel that way because they’re not professionals at something. Maybe it’s this sort of like, well, I’m just an amateur, like, oh yeah, I like, I play guitar, but I’m not, I’m not that good or yeah, like I can paint, but it’s just for me and I don’t really show it to anybody. Like it doesn’t count. It absolutely counts.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:07  Yeah. And I think a big part of it is just being like, it doesn’t matter if I’m good or not. That’s not the point of the thing. right? That’s not the measure, but that’s what most of us do. And it kind of goes back to what you were saying in the beginning. We’ve got these multiple voices inside of us, and one of those voices is just naturally, you should be good at this if you’re not good at it. Don’t do it. There’s a lot of places that comes from we don’t need to deconstruct all the various places it comes from, but I think it’s pretty deeply embedded in a lot of people.

Maggie Smith 00:37:38  I agree.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:38  But that willingness to just say doesn’t matter.

Maggie Smith 00:37:41  No, it doesn’t matter. I think part of what aging is helping me do is crave experience instead of perfection or even mastery. Like, I’m just so excited at my age to get to do new things that it matters less what the output is or the outcome. It’s just like, oh, I get to do that. Great. Like, I feel a lot more playful now than I did even about what I consider my work in air quotes 20 years ago, because the stakes don’t need to be that high. We can actually do things because we enjoy them and that they don’t need to be side hustles. They don’t need to be things that we’re doing for recognition. Maybe no one else even knows that we do them. I won’t even mention it because I have sworn myself to secrecy. But I started learning how to do something new this year, and like, three people know about it and I don’t want my kids don’t even know I’m learning in complete privacy and secrecy because it’s just for me.

Maggie Smith 00:38:48  And I want no one to ask me, oh, what are you going to do with that? Or are you going to do this with that? Or what’s your goal? It’s like when I started like running that people are like, are you going to do a half marathon? I’m like, no, I’m not doing this for any reason. And the fact that you have expectations for this makes me want to not tell anybody when I want to learn how to do something new. Like, it can just be because I crave a new experience.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:14  First off, now I’m dying to know.

Maggie Smith 00:39:15  But I’m not going to tell. I’m not going to tell you.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:20  I get it, I’m just letting you know.

Maggie Smith 00:39:22  I like that you’re curious.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:23  You’re trying to pique my curiosity. You did okay. I, like you, have found myself really in the last five years craving new experience. And I’m going to use that to segue to one of the elements or ingredients that you have in the book. Most of them you look at and you’re like, okay, that makes sense.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:42  Yes, play. That’s important. And I can see why. Vision and wonder and attention and tenacity. But one of them was restlessness.

Maggie Smith 00:39:50  I knew that was the one you were going to say.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:52  Of course, it’s so strange because that is a word I have a negative connotation to. Yep. I think generally I had that and then in 12 step programs in the AA Big Book, there’s a line that actually says, you know, the alcoholic who’s not drinking but not in recovery will feel restless, irritable and discontent. And I was like, well, that pretty much sums up me when I just let myself kind of go, yeah. So I loved this idea of restlessness reframed in a positive way. Tell me about that.

Maggie Smith 00:40:25  I think I have this long list of words. And then as I was winnowing it down, I realized that of all of the ten ingredients, that was the one that was going to be the one that people would be like, wait, how is this? Yeah, an element of creativity, because that sounds incredibly problematic.

Maggie Smith 00:40:42  Like, why would anyone want that? But to me, it’s the opposite of first thought. Best thought is restlessness. It’s the feeling of when you’ve made something, you aren’t immediately satisfied with it. You have this sort of needling, slightly uncomfortable feeling. And that’s restlessness, right? Like that little bit of a sort of like itch you can’t scratch. Jittery feeling that, you know, there’s something else. The potential of that thing that you’ve just drafted or made or built or thought up, you have not realized it yet. I think of when you’re on the tube and they say, mind the gap. I think there’s the version of the thing that you’ve made, and then there’s the version of the thing you think it can eventually be in your mind. The shining example of where you think that thing could go. And there’s a gap between the thing you’ve built, right. The book you’re working on and the book you hope it will be when it’s done and published. The painting you’ve been toiling over and the painting you can see in your mind’s eye.

Maggie Smith 00:41:50  And you need to have a way to use your skills and techniques and imagination to narrow that gap as much as possible. I don’t think it ever closes, at least in my experience, it never closes. I have never made anything that I was like, well, that’s perfect. That’s the shining example that I thought it would be. But I have worked really hard to narrow the gap to a livable. Kind of step over a bowl. No one’s going to fall into that crevice down and just be like, lost forever. Space and restlessness. That kind of goading on of the self to do better. Try harder. Push yourself a little further. Take a bigger risk. Get weirder with something. That’s what helps you narrow that gap, I think, is not being complacent. It’s the opposite of complacency.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:49  And how do you work with that in a way that doesn’t turn into perfectionism, or constantly believing that what you do isn’t good? Again, we’ve been we’ve been talking about double edged swords, right? I feel like this could be another one.

Maggie Smith 00:43:06  Yeah, it can be. I think there’s less a risk of creating terrible things if you push yourself a little harder than if you think that your first draft is great. I mean, I think, yeah. You know, I tell my students all the time. Time never made anything worse. A lack of time definitely has. Like, I have rushed and done things that I know. If I had more time, it would have been a better. Fill in the blank, whatever that thing was, you know? And I think, can you overdo it? Can you over revise something? Yes, you absolutely can. Like it’s a balance. Yeah. I mean, I say all the time, if I had known my poem, Good Bones would go viral, I never would have finished it. Yeah, because it wouldn’t have ever, in my mind, been ready for millions of eyeballs. Yeah. And so, yes, part of this is like, it’s a very delicate dance. We have to know our potential, push ourselves as much as we can, have fun with it.

Maggie Smith 00:44:06  If it stops being fun, stop doing it. I mean, I believe that wholeheartedly. If I’m really pushing myself in a piece of writing and it stops being fun and interesting to me, I put it away. I don’t abandon it. I put it away. I like, give it a time out. Yeah. And I’ll come back to it later. But I think, you know, we have to be careful not to worry so much about making a thing perfect that we never actually get it out the door, because that’s that’s a problem, right? But also not just being so self-satisfied with our first attempt. Yeah. That we end up sending a bunch of half baked stuff into the world and then can’t figure out why it’s not doing the work and the world that we thought it might do. And I think there’s a lot of sort of growing in the art and maturing in the art. I don’t know that I knew this when I was 20. Right. But I think we find the balance between doing our best and also understanding that we’re just human beings.

Maggie Smith 00:45:08  Yep. And that if I gave the same materials to a different writer, they would come up with a totally different poem than the one that I had written, and maybe one I would even enjoy more than the one I had written, or that readers might enjoy more than the one I had written. But that’s not my poem. So it’s like a little bit like, well, I got to stay in my lane and and again, like, tend my own. Yeah. Garden. That’s my territory.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:02  I am right in the thorns of this because I’m in revising the book. Now. When listeners hear this, I’ll probably already have turned the book into the publisher, which again, is not the end, but it’s a big milestone. I’m ten days away from that, so I’m fully in revision, restlessness, and I already made one part of the book worse by my insistence that I’m going to improve it.

Maggie Smith 00:46:27  But how do you know that? I’m so curious.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:30  Well, because the two people that I let read it said I was trying to infuse a little more emotionality, and I think I infused a certain degree of melodrama instead.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:41  Got it. And so a couple people said, I’m not sure. And when I went back and looked at it, I was like, I think you’re probably right. However, what I will say is that I shouldn’t say I made it worse because I actually made it better. It was better than where it started. Yeah. So I was here, and then I shot way over here.

Maggie Smith 00:46:57  Past the target.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:58  Past the target.

Maggie Smith 00:46:59  We do this all.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:00  The time, and then I cut a few of those things out. And then. Then I had a better target. So I guess that statement was inaccurate because I did improve it well.

Maggie Smith 00:47:08  And you brought up something important to which is having outside counsel. Yeah. And I think, you know, the sort of myth of the artist who works alone is another thing. Right. I mean, I still send my poems to the same person I’ve been sending my poems to since I was 22 years old. And she sends her poems to me, and I don’t take every bit of advice she gives, and she doesn’t take every bit of advice that I give.

Maggie Smith 00:47:32  But I think it’s another sort of important thing is that we don’t live in a vacuum, we don’t create in a vacuum. And so inviting other people in as we’re comfortable to our process, like those trusted people, we can just like, hey, would you take a look at this and tell me, like, am I way off base? Or do you understand? Or do you have questions? Or are you curious about things? Or are there other things you would like to know if you have people who you can do that with? I think that’s what a gift.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:59  Yeah. I always read the acknowledgements in books, and the reason I read them is because it does shatter that myth of the individual artist, for sure. You just read. I mean, sometimes I end up being like, how do people have this many great people in their life? And then I end up feeling bad about myself. Exactly. I couldn’t get anybody to read this damn thing. But seriously, you just realized, like, even a book, that at least parts of it are a solitary endeavor.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:29  You’re by yourself. Writing is ultimately a collaborative process. And I think that’s beautiful to see. And that’s why I do it, because it reminds me of that. And it reminds me that what I sit down and come up with, because I can look at it objectively and be like, this is not yet good. Yeah. I don’t think that’s being hard on myself. I think that’s just objective, and I don’t quite yet know how to make it better, but I can get other people involved who can help me with that. And one of yours is about connection. And so this is one way of thinking about connection. The other people in our communities that can support us. But you talk about connecting in some other ways, some other aspects of connection. You want to talk about that for a second?

Maggie Smith 00:49:14  Well, I mean, speaking of the solitary artists, I don’t think any of us create alone, do we? I mean, everything that you have written in your book is because of experiences you have had, conversations you have had with other people, other books you’ve read, teachers and mentors who have guided you.

Maggie Smith 00:49:33  And the same for me. It’s like when I sit down to write, even if I’m writing about my own experience, literally by myself, I’m not. Yes, because I’m having a conversation with me five years ago. I’m having a conversation with me as a child. I’m having a conversation with the books that I read that kind of paved the way, or gave me permission to structure my book in this way, or to tell this kind of vulnerable story. I have my mentors and my teachers sitting on my shoulders whispering like, no, don’t say it like that. Say it like this in my ear. And if I’m lucky, I have other people to bounce things off of. So I think whenever we’re making things, even if those things aren’t art, even if those things are relationships or opportunities or whatever it is in our lives, none of that is happening in a disconnected way. I know you enough to know you absolutely agree with that.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:30  Yeah, yeah, I think it’s great to remember it though.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:34  Yeah. And consciously call it to mind because even as you were just describing that, it made sitting down in front of the page and working on it feel less lonely. Yes, it’s absolutely true. You know, none of us in anything we do are not infinitely woven into the fabric of everything that is right. That’s just the way things are. And it’s comforting to remember that. I also love how you talk about a different type of connection, which is that in creation you are connecting things. Yeah, you’re building bridges, you’re creating metaphors, but it’s a connective process.

Maggie Smith 00:51:11  Yeah. Especially for people who are like, oh gosh, metaphor. Like I think other than line breaks, that’s the part of poetry that makes people uncomfortable. They’re like, oh, how am I supposed to know how to build a metaphor? That seems like such an odd thing to do. First of all, it’s so baked into our language. We’re doing it all the time. If you’re giving a talk in front of an office full of people, and you think of a sea of faces, that’s a metaphor.

Maggie Smith 00:51:35  So we’re doing it constantly. But I’m always telling students, like, pretty much writing anything that has to do with building bridges or making connections. It’s a two step process, and it’s incredibly basic. And breaking it down like this, I think, takes some of the fear out of it. It’s a sensory experience. Be comparison. That’s all it is. Like if you could boil down, like, the magic of metaphor in a poem to that. That’s what it is. You go outside and you look at a sycamore, and you notice that the bark of the side of a sycamore tree looks like little blobs of different colors. You know, it’s kind of mottled a little green and a little white and a little gray. So you’re making a visual connection and you describe it for yourself, and then you make the leap to a simple question, which is, what does that remind me of? That’s it. What does that remind me of? For me, it reminds me of a paint by number painting where every one is green and every two is gray, and every three is ivory, and every four is yellow.

Maggie Smith 00:52:32  And so I have a poem that describes sycamore bark as paint by number bark. It’s not rocket science. It’s looking at something, describing it, and then taking it. The extra step to ask yourself, what does that remind me of? Like what does that look like sound like? Oh, that bird’s making a weird noise. What does that remind me of? Oh, it sounds like someone striking the key of a manual typewriter. Oh. There’s that. So it’s not the muse coming down in a lightning strike. It’s noticing things which we all have the capacity to do. Noticing things, having a sensory experience in the world. And then just asking yourself the question, how can I connect this to a prior experience or another image or another sound? And then just tying those little two things together. And maybe that makes it seem a little less. I don’t know. Tricky or academic?

Eric Zimmer 00:53:28  I want to explore that, but my brain just got stuck on something, so let’s just clear it out.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:32  And this is a total only for me question. You and I both love sycamore trees. We’ve discussed this in the past, and you told me one time on a walk that it’s not only sycamore trees I’m seeing, it’s something else that is like a sycamore. And every time I see a sycamore, this question comes in my mind, like, what was that other tree? So I have to know now can just please solve my problem.

Maggie Smith 00:53:57  It’s called a London plane.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:59  A London plane? I knew it had something to do with Europe.

Maggie Smith 00:54:02  They’re cousins. I think they have slightly different seed pods, but their bark looks the same. One is typically found in parks and forest. One is typically found along city streets. If you call it a sycamore, it’s a London plane. Probably no one’s going to call you out.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:18  I get it, it’s just been eating at me for like a year and a half now.

Speaker 4 00:54:23  I love that, I love that that I’ve been doing. I’ve been living rent free.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:28  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, so we were talking about connection, metaphor. You also another connection that you talk about making in the book. And I thought this was another beautiful one and you sort of said it, but you’re having a conversation with your own mind. That’s a type of connection to write a connection to ourselves. And that’s one of the great things, I think, that art can help us do both other people’s art and our own is make that internal connection to ourselves.

Maggie Smith 00:54:56  Oh, totally. I mean, again, when I’m writing, I’m usually technically alone, but I don’t feel alone. I feel like I’m kind of catching up with an old friend. And that old friend is me. And if I haven’t had quality time with myself in a while, I can find my way to that person by picking up a pen and sitting down with a piece of paper, because I know she’s there, kind of waiting for me to have my hangout session with her. So, yeah, I mean, I, I don’t feel alone when I’m writing.

Maggie Smith 00:55:30  I feel like I’m having a conversation with my mind on paper. I feel like I’m having a conversation that is contextualized by all of the other art that I have engaged with. That is like kind of informing what I’m making. I feel the other people who have informed the way that I do things With me. I mean, the way that I describe it is writing for me is like coming home to myself. That’s the best way that I can describe it in like the quickest shorthand. If I’m feeling stressed, if I feel just like a little self estranged. Yeah, that’s like a weird way to say it, but you know what I mean?

Eric Zimmer 00:56:09  It’s a beautiful turn of phrase, I get it.

Maggie Smith 00:56:12  Yeah. When I’m feeling a little self estranged, or maybe the circumstances of my life feel very busy and hectic and there’s a lot of clamor, and I can’t kind of find that person I know is there. Writing brings me home to the sort of core me of me. Yeah. And even if I’m working really hard and I’m frustrated and it’s not coming out the way that I want, it’s still a really pleasurable experience for me because it is that kind of homecoming.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:47  That’s beautiful, and a wise person might end on that really high note.

Maggie Smith 00:56:51  But but I am not.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:52  But I am not. because, well, I think this is going to take it to a higher note, but I could be wrong because.

Maggie Smith 00:56:59  No, pressure.

Eric Zimmer 00:57:00  You share. Not on you. you share a word. Apparently, we both love Sycamores and London Plains and several musical acts, but we both also love the word shenanigans. Oh, I’ve never met another shenanigan lover. Well, Chris is. We both love that word. Why is that a great word? And what about shenanigans do you love?

Maggie Smith 00:57:22  Okay, I love that you and Chris both love shenanigans. And knowing you both, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, just, frankly, that makes a lot of sense. I have no idea. Like why I love that word so much. That’s probably why I like the word bamboozled. Like, there are some words that are just like they feel good in the mouth, they’re texturally interesting.

Maggie Smith 00:57:44  And there’s a kind of playfulness to the word itself. Like it’s almost like onomatopoeia. Like shenanigan. Sounds like what it is. Yes. Doesn’t it sound like a little mischievous trouble? But like. But fun. Mischievous trouble?

Eric Zimmer 00:57:59  Yes.

Maggie Smith 00:58:00  Like it sounds like what it is like. Like buzz for a bee. Shenanigans. I don’t know, maybe it’s like growing up in a family that was, you know, mostly Irish and and full of shenanigans. But, yeah, I just love that word. But, I mean, Eric, I love words.

Eric Zimmer 00:58:17  So before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn’t quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that’s exactly why I created the Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It’s a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them if you’re ready to take back control and start making lasting changes. Download your copy now at  oneyoufeed/ebook. Let’s make those shifts happen. Starting today, oneyoufeed.net/ebook. 

Eric Zimmer 00:58:51  Yes, it’s a great word, but talk to me about why this is important. In what we’ve been discussing, both the creative life and life in general.

Maggie Smith 00:59:13  Yeah. Play. Right? I mean, just loosening your white knuckled grip on what you’re doing. I know a lot of people who love to read, and I know a lot of people who love to write. And even some of those people are scared of poems. And I think it’s because they seem like, oh, I don’t know if I’m like, I don’t understand what’s going on in there. It feels like a riddle. It feels like something I have to solve. I don’t know what the author quote unquote really means. Like there’s like a trapdoor under the poem and the meaning is hidden, but I don’t have the code. And I think approaching Writing and particularly poetry, with more of a sense of fun and play and sort of creative mischief.

Maggie Smith 00:59:54  It helps make the act more fun, but I think from the outside, I think it helps readers engage with the work in a different way. Like, if you come to a poem, the way you come to a song. Wouldn’t that be better? Yeah. Like when we’re listening to the records we love or seeing a band that we love. You’re not thinking, oh, what is that deep sea diver song? I mean, what does that song mean? What you’re thinking is like, oh my gosh, I love that. Or those I love the words or I love the melody, or that reminds me of writing in the car with the windows down when I was 16 and x, Y, and Z. I mean, we’re able to kind of let it wash over us, and we have an experience that is emotional and intuitive and like visceral, bodily, and has nothing to do with being tested on what it means or having to explicate it. Right? Like, yeah, we can have all kinds of shenanigans with songs, but I would advocate that we should be engaging with particularly poetry, because I think that’s the genre that has the image problem.

Maggie Smith 01:01:07  I think we should be engaging with poetry at the same level that we’re engaging with music, which is letting it wash over us, having a sensory experience, asking ourselves what it makes us remember. Think about what to do, who you might want to share it with, and know that you don’t have to get it. Yeah, you don’t have to know what it means. I don’t even know what some of my poems quote unquote, mean. I wrote them. I know what they’re grappling with. I know what their concerns are. No, I could not summarize them for you in CliffsNotes style. And nor is that required. So why can’t we just, you know, have some shenanigans when it comes to poetry? That’s my infomercial, Eric.

Eric Zimmer 01:01:53  It’s a good infomercial. You talk about coming to the page, to the canvas, to the stage, to the studio. I would say to life with trickster energy and a sense of daring. And again, back to where I started. I wish I had read this book a while ago, because that is a great frame to come to. Something that I’m working on like this. Right. It’s a it’s a there’s a mindset to it. It’s why I love the word shenanigans, because it does give me just that sort of trickster energy and a sense of daring.

Maggie Smith 01:02:22  You’re wrestling with something alive, but it’s not your adversary. Yeah, it’s not an adversarial relationship. You and the thing that you’re making, you are co-creating this thing with this idea. And so it’s like a beautiful wrestling with this other thing. Yeah. And it should feel good. And if it doesn’t feel good, something’s wrong. Yeah, I think that. And and hard work can feel good. I don’t mean it should feel easy. That’s not at all what I mean. Yes, it doesn’t necessarily have to feel easy, but it should feel invigorating.

Eric Zimmer 01:02:55  Yeah, well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up. Thank you. Maggie, I love talking with you on the show, and I’m happy that you were able to come back and much success with the new book.

Maggie Smith 01:03:03  Thank you so much.

Eric Zimmer 01:03:05  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.

Filed Under: Featured, Podcast Episode

From Loneliness to Belonging: Small Steps That Change Everything with Jillian Richardson

April 11, 2025 Leave a Comment

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In this episode, Jillian Richardson discusses the journey from loneliness to belonging and shares the small steps that can change everything. She delves into why friendship takes more effort than we expect and how we can actually get better at it. Jillian also explores what gets in the way of connection, why it’s not just about putting yourself out there, and how real community is less about finding perfect people, and more about staying when things feel a little uncomfortable.

Key Takeaways:

  • Challenges of forming friendships as adults
  • The impact of loneliness on social interactions
  • Importance of intention in building connections
  • Strategies for fostering deeper relationships
  • Role of vulnerability in authentic friendships
  • The significance of consistency in maintaining friendships
  • Practical advice for initiating and nurturing friendships
  • The influence of societal factors on feelings of isolation
  • Encouragement to engage in uncomfortable conversations


Jillian Richardson is one of LinkedIn’s top ghostwriters and the Amazon best-selling author of Unlonely Planet: How Healthy Congregations Can Change the World.   She has written more than 400 articles on everything from the future of AI to the neuroscience of changing your mind and how female executives can find pleasure in their day-to-day life. Jillian has been published in outlets like NBC, Quartz, AdWeek, and The Content Strategist. She’s also been the voice of brands like MOO, Ellevest, Convene, Percolate, Trello, and ExecOnline. Outside of being a writer, Jillian has grown her own personal brand as a community builder and coach. Her thought leadership has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR. Her work has also been shared by luminaries like Esther Perel, Priya Parker, the founder of Meetup, and— somehow— Chris Voss, the famous FBI investigator.

Connect with Jillian Richardson:  Website | Instagram

If you enjoyed this conversation with Jillian Richardson, check out these other episodes:

How to Find Joy and Community with Radha Agrawal

Belonging and Connection with Sebene Selassie

By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

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If you enjoy our podcast and find value in our content, please consider supporting the show. By joining our Patreon Community, you’ll receive exclusive content only available on Patreon!  Click here to learn more!!

Episode Transcript:

Jillian Richardson 00:00:00  So many people share the struggle and just don’t necessarily realize that they don’t have a tolerance for having any sort of uncomfortable conversation.

Chris Forbes 00:00:17  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:02  Have you ever noticed how making friends is an adult? Feels weirdly complicated. We say we want more connection, but then we don’t go to the thing. Don’t follow up and decide that Netflix just sounds easier.  In this episode, I talk with Jillian Richardson, author, coach and creator of the Joy list, about why friendship takes more effort than we expect and how we can actually get better at it. We explore what gets in the way of connection, why it’s not just about putting yourself out there, and how real community is less about finding perfect people, and more about staying when things feel a little uncomfortable. I’ve seen this in my own life. I say I want community, but then I wait for it just to happen. It doesn’t. Connection takes practice. You build it, you show up, you go to the event, you send the text. And in Jillian’s case, you even start a monthly dinner party. I’m Eric Zimmer. And this is the one you feed. Hi, Jillian. Welcome to the show.

Jillian Richardson 00:02:03  Thank you so much for having me.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:05  I am really happy to have you on. We are going to be discussing your book, which is called UN Lonely Planet, and you do a lot of work around connection and building friendships and lots of things that I think are really important. We’ll get to all that in a minute, but we’ll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there is a grandmother who’s talking with her grandson, and she says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Jillian Richardson 00:02:54  For me, what that parable means is who you choose to focus your attention on. I find it really interesting that there are the sorts of people who genuinely believe that people are good, and then there are other people who genuinely believe that most people are bad. And I often think about what the difference is between those two types of people. And I’m really fascinated by the moments when I kind of can get stuck in that headspace of just like, dating is terrible or people are bad, these kind of black and white statements. And I find that the more caring energy and attention I give myself, the more caring and attentive people I magnetize in my own life, and also the media that I consume, kind of what I choose to put my attention on will then also reflect in my experience of the world.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:54  I love that and it makes me think of something that you talk about in your book. You were quoting a study I don’t remember who it’s from, but basically says protracted loneliness makes it difficult for us to evaluate other people’s intentions. Lonely people often feel attacked in situations that are actually neutral. I thought that was a really interesting insight. Like the more often you’re alone by yourself, the more you almost start to do what you said, which is we start to look at other people’s intentions more suspiciously.

Jillian Richardson 00:04:26  Yeah, like you’re at a party and someone just glances at you from across the room and your brain might think, oh my God, that person was giving me the side eye because I look bad or because they’re judging what I said, when in reality they might just be looking at you. But you’re so alert and looking out for signs to confirm you’re already biased, that people don’t like you or people are judgmental, whatever that inclination might be.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:52  Yeah, I just thought it was interesting that the more lonely you are, the more that exacerbates itself. You know, we talk a lot about upward and downward spirals on this show. And that’s a definite downward spiral. Right. So I’m somewhat lonely, but I’m like, all right, I’ll push myself to get out there. And I get out there and I interpret everybody as negative. So I want to do it less. So now all of a sudden I take another downward cycle towards like, all right, I don’t want to go back out. Nobody likes me.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:19  Then I push myself. Finally I get up the moxie to do it another time in similar experience. And so all of a sudden you go, all right, that’s it, I quit.

Jillian Richardson 00:05:27  Yeah. And that leads to so many people saying, oh, it’s impossible to make friends as an adult. For example, how many times I’ve heard people say that when in reality I know so many adults who are yearning for deep friendships, but they’re just not matching each other.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:46  Let’s go right into that, because I think that’s the heart of what, when you and I met and we started talking, I was most interested in because I’m really interested in this idea of loneliness. I’m really interested in the idea of adult friendship, and I think it is harder to form friendships as an adult than say it was when you were at college or as a fourth grader. But to your point, it’s certainly possible. So let’s talk a little bit about what are some of the barriers that get in the way of making adult friendships.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:15  And then maybe we could go into some of the strategies for how to do it. And I know this is something you, in addition to writing about, you actually coach people on. So I’d love to hear some of you know what you find first getting in the way and then secondly, some strategies we could use.

Jillian Richardson 00:06:30  Yeah, well, I think the biggest thing is having the intention and sticking to it. Yeah. I think in one of your earlier podcasts, you mentioned how no one gets fit by accident, or maybe it was one of your guests that you didn’t just wake up one day and you’re super fit, like you’re putting conscious intention and energy into it every day. And I think the same thing goes with making friends as an adult to actually set that as a goal. And it’s so interesting to me how many people find that really strange that someone would set that as a goal, because a lot of people can tell themselves, it’s just something I should know how to do. I should just have friends.

Jillian Richardson 00:07:14  I shouldn’t have to put this much thought into it. There’s something wrong with me because I’m trying to make friends. It feels embarrassing, almost like cringing. And it’s the same as anything else to say. You know, I’m going to go to a new event two times this month, and I’m gonna have my awareness open for people. I might want to be my friend.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:39  Yeah, I think you’re right. You hit on something really important there when we’re young. It’s I mean, not for everybody, but for a lot of people. It’s easier to make friends because everybody is in a similar circumstance. We’re all arriving at college together. Okay. We’re. By and large, we’re all looking for friends. Yeah. So it seems to happen somewhat more naturally when we get older. And it doesn’t happen. Like you said, I often think we think there’s something wrong with me or that it shouldn’t take this much work. So I think that’s a big barrier. I think the second thing I was thinking about this recently, I was like, it seems like there’s a lot of mismatch among adults.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:14  And what I mean by that is, again, when we go to college, we are all roughly 18 years old. And I didn’t go to college, but I’m I know people who did.

Jillian Richardson 00:08:23  I hear you’re I.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:24  Heard about it. I watched my son do it. I’m just using it as an example. But we could say the same thing for fourth grade, right? You show up, you’re all roughly the same age. Your lives all look roughly the same as in, like, your primary responsibility is going to school, hanging out, you know, not everybody, but but most people. But when you’re an adult, you can run into real mismatches. Like, I go to an event and I meet somebody and that person is 15 years older than me and our life circumstances might look very different. They’ve got three kids and a full time job, and I am underemployed and no kids. It’s not that those circumstances are unbridgeable, it just means that sometimes there isn’t room in the same way for friendship, for both those people.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:12  Right. Like, I’ve seen this happen a lot. People are like, I can’t make friends. People don’t like me. And I’m like, well, it might be just that some of the people you’re talking to just don’t have open social calendars. So I think as we get as we get older, it gets harder to find people who social needs meet ours, as well as the basic things that go into making what a friendship would be. So I do think it’s harder as an adult, but it’s certainly not impossible by any stretch of the imagination.

Jillian Richardson 00:09:38  It’s not impossible. And I think also all those factors you just said of how many things need to be in alignment for you to become deeper friends with someone, to hold that in mind. And then when you find someone who actually has the space to deepen friendships, get excited about that person. I think people really hold themselves back from being earnest in friendship, and if it’s okay, I would love to give an example of some friends that I recently made.

Jillian Richardson 00:10:07  Yeah, because I talk to people about this stuff all the time, and I know how magic it is when the things actually line up. So what happened was I had someone he reached out to me on Instagram and said he was doing a storytelling show. I went to the storytelling show and we talked a little bit, and he invited me to a party that him and two friends host every month. I go to the party, I love it, I love the energy of the people there. It’s just this really warm, sweet group of people. I decide I’m going to go to this party every month. After the party message both of the hosts and explicitly say, I had so much fun at your party. I think the energy of the people at parties matches the hosts. So I didn’t really get to talk to you about that much, but I really enjoyed being in your space, which is vulnerable to say that. It’s like kind of putting myself out there a little bit. That’s right. And it’s just a whole long process of I keep going to this party every month.

Jillian Richardson 00:11:08  Start to become friends with the hosts. Say just explicitly say, I would like to hang out with you. Start hanging out with them at their house and start to kind of meet their friends. And we’re all having dinner this Sunday, and I’m so earnest, like, we just started a group chat and I literally said, oh my God, I’m so excited we’re in a group chat. Yeah, this is so sweet because most people don’t want to seem too excited, like it’s lame to want friends. But I think it’s really brave to say to someone that you’re excited about getting to know them more.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:45  I think so too. And you mentioned three sort of relationship strengthening tactics. The second one is we really have to practice positivity, the reward and enjoyment of each other. You know, we did a episode recently where Jenny interviewed Chris and I, and Chris is the editor of the show, and him and I have been friends for, I don’t know, a long time. 25, 2830. I don’t know, a lot of years.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:11  No. Yeah.

Jillian Richardson 00:12:12  Wow.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:12  32, 33 years. Something like that. Best friend.

Jillian Richardson 00:12:15  Longer than I have been on this earth.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:17  Oh my goodness. Yes. But we talked a little bit about how, for whatever reason, when we first became friends, like we were so excited about being friends and we talked about how excited we were to be friends. And we share. I mean, we’ve just always shared this positivity, which I think is part of what has contributed to making it such a close friendship for so long.

Jillian Richardson 00:12:40  It’s so nice to know. And it’s really a skill I think, to be able to do that with people. For me, when I when I meet someone who’s able to also offer that vulnerability and say, you know, I had a lot of fun hanging out with you tonight, I would love to do that again. I know, like this is a person I really want to spend time with, because I’ve looked at friendships long enough to realize that’s a really special quality in somebody.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:06  You talk a lot about vulnerability. That was kind of the first in these relationship strengthening tactics. You know, in order to feel seen, we have to practice vulnerability, the sharing of who we are. Is there a line for you where vulnerability crosses into neediness? We’ve all had an experience of somebody who is so desperate to be liked that they’re hard to like. Yeah, and there’s a difference between that and being vulnerable. And I’m just curious if you have any thoughts on what that difference is or how you navigate that.

Jillian Richardson 00:13:37  I can’t give a one size fits all answer, but what I would invite people to do is check in with themselves about their intention behind sharing something and to say like, okay, am I sharing about some really traumatic childhood experience super early on with this person so they feel bad for me? Or just to be honest with yourself about what? Why are you sharing this thing? Because that’s something I’ve definitely done before of kind of oversharing and then afterwards feeling embarrassed. I’m like, why did I say that? Why? Why did I say that to this person? And I think underneath it is just a really strong desire to connect.

Jillian Richardson 00:14:22  Yeah. And but at the same time, by sharing too much too soon, I’m kind of creating a power imbalance and I’m putting too much on the other person in a way that isn’t fair.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:36  Yeah. And it seems to me that if we think about this, it’s probably good to know your tendency and to be aware of it and correct for it. So yes, in the Spiritual Habits program we talk about the middle way. It’s one of the core ideas and principles. And it basically says, look, any virtue so to speak, is a middle point between two vices. Right. Courage is a middle point between being, you know, rash and idiotic and a coward. Right. So knowing which of those sides do I have a tendency to just sit back and be way too stoic when I meet new people and not share and not be vulnerable and not express that I’m excited to be friends with them. If that’s my tendency, maybe I want to work on course correcting a little bit more towards the vulnerable side.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:20  If, on the other hand, I have a tendency of, you know, ten minutes after meeting somebody, telling them about, you know, my deep, dark abuse secrets and saying, I love you. I hope we spend every day the rest of our lives together. Right. I might want to dial that tendency down a bit. And so it’s useful to know, like what is my tendency and to correct for it. But my experience with most adults is that our tendency is to be much less vulnerable. To not take a chance of deepening a conversation, of deepening a relationship. That’s been my experience of, you know, being an adult for 30 years now, almost as long as you’ve been on the planet. I suppose you’re about to tell me again. I know from your writings you believe in cultivating the voices of elders, so I’m glad I can. Glad I can fill that role. But my experience with most adults is we’re more on the whole back side than we are on the be vulnerable side.

Jillian Richardson 00:16:14  Totally. I find there’s a specific type of person who is craving this more open, vulnerable friendship and who also has the capacity to foster that. And I find that when we meet each other we’re so stoked. Yes. I heard someone recently say it’s like we’re in the same graduating class. Like we understand each other’s kind of just way of being in the world. And I loved that way of phrasing it so much.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:41  Yeah. And while I don’t specifically coach people on creating friendship in the way that you do, that has been something that a number of my clients over the years have said, you know, they would they would like more of and and we talk a lot about that basic idea of like, at some juncture somebody has to take quote unquote, the next step. In the same way in a dating situation, somebody’s got to sort of say, all right, I’m going to I’m going to take a chance of seeing where does this go if I take the next step. I think the same thing happens in friendship for sure, where even if that next step is just to drop one level deeper in intimacy of conversation, to say, all right, we’ve been hanging out here on the surface.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:24  I’m going to take the chance to go one level deeper. And I’ve shared this on the show before. I used to do that at work all the time. Like, I mean, I just in the beginning, after I got sober at 24, I would just walk into a room and be like, hey, I’m a, I’m a heroin addict. You know, I got sober six months ago and I, you know, over time I was like, all right, we need to dial that down a little bit. But I always had that tendency of I would just go a little bit deeper than most people would. And I just found that over and over that paid dividends for me in that it made me much better at my work. A because people trusted me more. And b, I just made more friends that way, more authentic friendships that way, by simply just being willing to be a little bit more open about what mattered.

Jillian Richardson 00:18:07  Yeah, because I imagine the people who are really uncomfortable with you sharing those parts of yourself weren’t comfortable with the parts of themselves that were struggling.

Jillian Richardson 00:18:16  And those aren’t people that you want to be friends with.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:18  That’s right. Yeah. You’re just like, well, I mean, I never really found it to be that damaging. I mean, maybe I had good enough self-esteem that I was just sort of like, well, not everybody has to like me.

Jillian Richardson 00:18:27  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:28  But yeah, I just I think that is such an important piece is to sort of just recognize, like, if I want this relationship, I’ve met somebody that seems like I like them. How do we take it to the next level? And I think your suggestions in the book of being more vulnerable, practicing positivity. And then the third one you talk about is consistency. Share a little bit more about that.

Jillian Richardson 00:18:48  Yeah, I think especially if people live in a big city, it can be difficult to find the time to see someone consistently. This is a problem I will still run up against of having so many people I really, genuinely love and want to spend time with, but then we just don’t have the time and energy to coordinate our schedules and figure out the spot and do the whole thing.

Jillian Richardson 00:19:08  And so to have these kind of central meeting places, for example, it could be a dance party or a house party or a meditation class that you go to or a yoga class say, okay, I’m doing this thing every week or every month, and I know if you want to find me, I will be there. Or if I want to find you, you’ll probably be there. And it’s a great way to just consistently see people be around the types of people who value the same things that you do, and also to start to deepen those relationships a little bit.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:39  One of the things that I’ve noticed we may be working with slightly different demographics, potentially, as we’ve already sort of laid out, the the age difference between us, right, is that a lot of people that I work with say they want more community, but their lives are very, very full and they just tend to not make time for it. That’s something that I found very interesting. And somebody who’s trying to build a community is that people say, yes, I want that, yes, I want that.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:07  But then they don’t show up that often for it. Totally. A lot of the people that are sort of in our communities are going to be people who are deep in career and deep in family, so that’s part of it. But do you see that also where people say, I want friendships, I want community, but then they just simply don’t put the effort or the time in. They just default to Netflix and hanging out.

Jillian Richardson 00:20:31  Totally. And I think it’s especially that people don’t want the uncomfortable parts that come with community, which is there’s going to be conflicts and there’s going to be maybe some people you don’t like, or you’re going to be jealous of someone, or someone’s going to mirror something in you that feels awkward or uncomfortable. And it’s so easy to just be like, well, I guess I’m never going to hang out with these people again. Or I guess I just won’t communicate what’s going on. And then I feel disconnected from these people, and then I kind of just drift away and I tell myself, oh, we just drifted apart.

Jillian Richardson 00:21:08  But really, I haven’t been communicating the truth of my heart and I’ve been creating this distance myself. That was a lot. I had a lot of energy behind that, but it really feels very annoying to me because I think so many people share this struggle and just don’t necessarily realize that they don’t have a tolerance for having any sort of uncomfortable conversation.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:57  I am not a good group joiner. I think I’m decent at fostering individual relationships, but I’ve never been a group joiner, particularly over the last five years. I’ve gotten clear that a lot of it is what you were just saying. I’m looking for the perfect community. I’m looking for the community where I like everyone. So if I’m thinking of a Buddhist community or a spiritual community, I’m like, yeah, those couple people seem all right, but I don’t like those three people, so this isn’t the place for me.

Jillian Richardson 00:22:24  Yeah. So I’m never coming here again.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:26  Yeah. Which is what I would do over and over and over. And so I heard somebody say once and use words a little bit.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:32  I don’t remember exactly which ones, but you alluded to it a little bit, which was that part of the point of community, is to rub off our rough edges, that by interacting with these other people, it smooths us out and allows us to integrate more harmoniously into a group. And I thought once I heard that, I went, oh, that makes a lot of sense. The point here isn’t that I like everybody and they’re all my best friends. The point is, I’m interacting with a variety of different people and that there’s benefit and beauty in that.

Jillian Richardson 00:23:01  Totally. There’s benefit in me being around people who I wouldn’t choose to be my friend, but the sheer nature of our differences is actually good for us just to be able to be in that.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:11  Yeah. How do you work with people who are saying, yeah, I want community, but aren’t putting the effort in to get it? It’s very similar to somebody who says they want to be in shape, but they’re not putting the effort to get into it.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:24  What sort of things have you found helps unblock?

Jillian Richardson 00:23:27  I think the biggest thing is to start by asking questions around their fears, say, well, okay, there’s clearly something that’s preventing you from doing this, because if you are 100% in, you wouldn’t need anyone to help you. You would just be doing it. So a lot of times I’ll ask people, what’s been your experience with communities in the past? And oftentimes something really awful will come up like, oh, I was part of this group and a girl in the group, like cheated on my boyfriend. You know, I’m trying to say that. Yeah, my boyfriend cheated on me with this person in the group. There was a terrible experience, or I got bullied or I didn’t feel like I fit in there. Anything along those lines were unconsciously there thinking, well, I had a really bad experience in a community before, so why would I want to put myself through that again? But just don’t take the time to reflect on it, because I think even in the world of personal development, where we reflect so much on all these elements of ourselves constantly, rarely think about our relationship to group and kind of in-group outgroup.

Jillian Richardson 00:24:28  What’s my experience with community? Because culturally we don’t care about it very much. So why would we think about it consciously?

Eric Zimmer 00:24:35  Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So if I am a person and I say, okay, I’m lonely, I want to change that. Where do I start? You know, what are some things I can start doing? Let’s just say I’m like, well, I’ll give you a little bit more than that to go on. I work from home. I have 3 or 4 other people that, you know, I interact with in my company, and I’ve known them for a while, and they’re fine. But we’re not going to be great friends. I don’t have a church that I want to go to. I’m lonely and I’m not sure where to start. What are some initial steps I can take? And you can tailor this answer to ways you can tailor it towards New York City, which is, or a big city, which is where you are.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:13  And you’ve created something called the Joy list, and lots of great things. But we could also talk about people who are in a place that’s not quite so vibrant.

Jillian Richardson 00:25:19  Yeah, I’ll go a little more general. Okay. And I feel very excited about this question. The first question I always ask people is, what kind of person do you want to be? Who do you want to be just in life. And also, how do you want to exist within the place where you live? Could be New York City, could be somewhere else. Because you might not want to be a group person. You might say, you know, my ideal vision for my friendships and my community is maybe I’m kind of the hub for parties in my neighborhood. I have dinner parties, people come to me, I have an awesome backyard. I’ve got a core group of ten friends, and we host stuff once a month. That might be your vision for yourself, and that’s awesome. Like already having just a vision for what you want, and especially the qualities you say, I want to be around people who care about spirituality.

Jillian Richardson 00:26:14  I want to be the kind of person who’s a generous host. I want to care for my body, even say, okay, what types of people care about those things? Where can you meet those types of people? Because if you want to meet spiritual nerds who love working out. Just go into the bar every Friday night. You’re probably not going to meet those people. Or if you do meet those people, you don’t know that you’re meeting those people because you’re not in that context.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:42  Yep. Let’s run with this example. So let’s say I live in a mid-sized community somewhere in the US, and I’m like, yeah, that is what I want. I just moved to this new town. I’d like to have a small group of friends. I do have a wonderful backyard and I’ve got a great patio. I love to cook dinner. I just love to have a group of friends that gets together once or twice a month in my backyard, and we hang out and we have dinner and we just have some nice conversation.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:06  Like, that would be amazing for me compared to where I’m at now. What do I do if someone came to you with that’s what I want.

Jillian Richardson 00:27:12  So I have some friends. They are nomads and they’re constantly traveling, but they’re somehow also always hosting things themselves, even in countries where they don’t really know people. And it’s wild. And I ask them, how do you manage to pull this off? And they’ll say, okay, well, I know three people in this town, and I tell them I want to host a dinner party. Can each of you invite three people? And you could even say, can you invite three people you know who might love spirituality? If you want to get a little more specific, suddenly you have a ten person dinner party, and then at the end of that say, you know, I’m going to do this again next month, same day next month. Would love it if you guys could invite some people. I want to make this a monthly thing, and even having the next day and saying to people, I’d love for you to come again.

Jillian Richardson 00:28:00  I have two friends who do this every month, and they have an incredibly vibrant community that comes to them. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:07  Yeah. So you take whoever you know and you use those people to sort of network out from there.

Jillian Richardson 00:28:14  Totally. And even if you wanted to be as vulnerable as saying, I want to create a deeper community for myself here, it’d be so helpful if you guys can invite some folks that’d feel really good for me, because I find when people know why you’re asking them something, they’re more likely to do it instead of you just being like, oh yeah. Invite some friends if you want. Like there’s a reason why you’re asking them to do.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:35  That, right? You’re taking that step of being a little bit vulnerable and asking for what you want.

Jillian Richardson 00:28:41  Because it’s like, oh my God, who doesn’t want to say like, oh yeah, let me invite my three coolest friends so you can meet them. Yeah, this is great.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:46  So what if I’m not even in that place where I know much of anybody in that town? So, yeah, I moved here for my job.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:54  I’m a shy person. I just don’t really know anyone. Where do I start? There.

Jillian Richardson 00:28:59  So something that I recommend that is very simple but definitely not easy is posting on social media if you have it, or sending an email and saying, hey, I just moved to wherever you live. I’m looking to meet people who are interested in blah blah blah. Who do you know? And this is something that is so simple, but folks love this kind of post on the internet because all they have to do is tag somebody and they get to feel great about themselves. And it takes two seconds and you might have three, five, ten people who all of a sudden you can reach out to. And all you had to do was just let people know that you’re looking for that.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:37  That’s a great idea. What about starting to attend gatherings or volunteer events? All right. I’m willing to put myself out there a little bit. Yeah. In order to meet some new people. What does that look like? How do I go about finding things? What do I do when I get there? When I attend them? Again, if you’re in New York City, you get on Jillian’s joy list.

Jillian Richardson 00:29:58  Yeah you do.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:59  I see that joy list every time I’m like, I am jealous. That is so cool. So much great stuff there.

Jillian Richardson 00:30:05  Lots of weird stuff going on in New York City.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:07  Totally. But what do I do if I don’t have that? Where are some places I can turn to that are more broadly accessible ways to find gatherings, things that I’m interested in, etc.?

Jillian Richardson 00:30:18  Yeah. So first of all, I would start on Meetup and Eventbrite. On Eventbrite, there’s a filter that you can look for. There’s there’s different event categories, and there’s one called community. There’s literally an event category called community. So you can say, okay, what are the community events happening in my neighborhood this week? Or you could filter for fitness events. You could filter for religious events. You can even filter by a keyword. You could look for a women’s circle, for example, or the word sober and just see what pops up. And to then commit to yourself to say, okay, I’m going to go to this group at least twice.

Jillian Richardson 00:30:56  Like, even if the first time I don’t like it very much, or even if the first time I feel so nervous and I don’t talk to anyone and I feel really weird to go twice. And also, you said the magic word before, which is volunteer. I think, honestly, this is the biggest hack for making friends in a new place is to go to an event that has the kinds of people that you think you’d like. Like, for example, in New York City there’s this big meditation event called medi club, and I would volunteer at this event every month because the people who volunteer are more likely to want to make new friends. That’s a big reason why people volunteer. But also, it gives you direct access to the organizers of the event, and the organizers of events are usually community hubs who are more than happy to introduce you to whoever you want.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:09  So find events and if you can volunteer at them. And I think the other thing you said there’s really important is to go at least twice, you know, if not more.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:19  Right. I’ve started recently doing this thing in Columbus. I love doing so. Volunteer is called Food Rescue and it’s basically there’s an organization there all around the country, but they basically find food that’s going to be thrown away somewhere, whether it’s from a restaurant, a grocery store or whatever. And then they match that up with a place that needs it, and you basically go get it from one place, take it to another. But they’ve had this thing where they distribute these like thousands of boxes of produce every Friday. And so I was like, all right, I’m going to start going. And I am not actually very good at plot. Me in a new environment with a bunch of people I don’t know. I don’t do well in that environment. I am sort of shy. I’m sort of quiet. I’m sort of withdrawn. And it’s interesting. It’s not even that I notice that I’m shy and withdrawn. That’s part of it. But but what’s interesting is my defense mechanisms kick in enough that I don’t even feel like I want to get to know anybody in that environment.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:12  It’s so interesting. It’s like, if you ask me on Wednesday night when I’m going to this thing on Friday, would you like to meet some new people there? I’m like, of course I would. That would be great. Put me there Friday. And all of a sudden I’m like, my phone is really interesting to me right now.

Jillian Richardson 00:33:25  Right. You’re like, look at my shoes. I’ve got really cool shoes.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:28  Oh, man. Maybe I should just sit in the car and listen to this book on tape. It’s so interesting to me the way that happens. My defense mechanisms rise up so quickly, I don’t even see them. And then they’re like, you don’t really? Who cares? You don’t need to make anything so interesting anyway. I’ve been going to this thing on Fridays, and, I mean, I think it took like five times before I started actually getting into conversation with people like I was there. We were friendly. Hey, how are you doing? Good. Let’s load these boxes.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:55  Like. But after about the fifth time, something in me just shifted and I naturally started to just sort of emerge from my shell a little bit. And so I just know that about me, that it takes me a little while. And so I know if I’m going to embed myself in something like that, I’m going to have to go multiple times. But I imagine there are things that I could do if I wanted to accelerate that process. What might be some ways of getting into the conversational flow or meeting somebody or again, just going from sort of standing there to engaging a little bit more.

Jillian Richardson 00:34:28  Well, I think you are definitely not alone, or I know you’re not alone in your experience of going to an event that’s not facilitated and not being sure how to go deeper with people because you don’t know the norms of the space, you don’t know what’s acceptable there. You don’t really know who these people are. It’s like going to a giant happy hour. That’s a networking event where no one tells you what to do, and you’re just like, yeah, we’re supposed to connect with each other.

Jillian Richardson 00:34:53  What the hell is this? Like, this is awful. Which is why and I’m such an extroverted person, but I hate things like that with a passion, because it’s such a draining environment for me to be in, where there is no understanding of what you’re supposed to do in the space. You’re kind of just thrown into this giant room of people talking over each other. So the biggest thing I would say is that if you can find an event that has facilitation, try that. So for example, in New York City, And this is a very New York City thing. But there’s this thing called vulnerable AF that this woman named Veronica runs. It’s like a great name. And now she she goes on tour and she does it, and it’s so great, but it’s essentially just facilitated conversations where she’s giving you prompts to say to strangers, and there’s some group exercises, and there’s no way you’re not going to leave that event without having had a deeper conversation with someone. And the people who show up at that event are obviously looking to have deeper conversations with new people.

Jillian Richardson 00:35:53  So you’re kind of already all in the same space.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:55  That’s a great event, and I think that’s really good advice. Go to something that is sort of facilitated. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve always been grateful to have been a member of AA. Yeah, I’m not real involved now, but I’m like, if I move to a new city, like, how easy is it? I just start going to meeting the meetings, have conversations that are already structured. You get to hear a bunch of people talk and be like, I like what that guy had to say. I like what she had to say, okay, those are the kind of people I got my eye on. It makes it happen so much easier than what you described, which is like this food rescue situation where I show up and again now, this organization is not designed to help people meet each other. It’s designed to get food to the places it needs to go. So if my food rescue friends are listening, none of this is criticism.

Jillian Richardson 00:36:40  It’s like no shade, you guys, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:36:41  Like, yeah, it’s not what it’s about. But you describe this sort of event that a lot of us show up to. We go, all right, I’m going to volunteer somewhere. And I think you make a really good point that where we’re volunteering puts us in proximity to the people, but there are no real rules for interaction, and there’s no guided interaction. It kind of falls all on your own moxie. And again, what I’ve learned about me is that my moxie will grow over time. You know, there’s just something that naturally thaws in me if I’m around the same people enough times. But I love that idea of going to things that are facilitated as a way of that naturally happening in our Spiritual Habits group program. I think we break the big group up into small groups that meet every week, and there’s been a lot of really great deep relationships formed there. And I think to a large extent it’s where we train the facilitators. But secondly, there is a facilitated conversation about things that matter to you right away.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:37  So immediately there is a way to engage and make deeper connection because it is, as you said, a sort of facilitated event. Questions are asked. There’s conversation. It happens.

Jillian Richardson 00:37:49  Yeah. I think this is why these question card games have suddenly blown up in popularity. Like, everyone under the sun has a set of question cards that they’re selling.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:58  I don’t.

Jillian Richardson 00:37:59  Because.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:59  I think I need some question.

Jillian Richardson 00:38:00  You should make some question cards. Esther Perel just came out with a game based off of her podcast. That’s entirely questions that increase in vulnerability, and they’re all questions about storytelling so that you tell a story. You should have her on your podcast. She she’s promoting this new game right now, but I’ve had a few friends say that at their dinner parties. They’ve actually played her game. Interesting. And it’s so great because I find that when we’re around the same people a lot, we lose curiosity about them. Like they kind of just become something that they’re just they’re like, oh yeah, this is my friend I’ve known since I was five.

Jillian Richardson 00:38:38  What else is there for me to know about this person? And then you ask them a question like, oh, what’s one of your favorite memories of being with your grandma? Like, when have you ever talked about that with them before? Probably never. Never. And so you’re gonna get this whole new thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:50  I’ve been friends with Chris, as I said, for a really long time. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about his grandparents.

Jillian Richardson 00:38:55  Yeah, I find grandparents is a really interesting thing, because most adults that would never come up in conversation. But there’s so much you can learn about someone’s family and their culture from talking about that.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:08  With Chris, it’s probably going to end up being a conversation about like, drunk uncles or something if I if I know anything about that family. But yeah, same thing. My family too. No, not not.

Jillian Richardson 00:39:19  I mean, that’s a family culture for sure.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:21  Total family culture. I have a uncle who who died from alcoholism, so I am just in it myself.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:26  Before we maybe change directions a little bit for for the last few minutes. What else about making friendship, creating community? What else should people know? Or what are some really important things from your coaching practice that you would share with people?

Jillian Richardson 00:39:39  I think the biggest thing is to really be kind to yourself in this process. Folks can be so brutal to themselves and so judgmental just being like, man, it’s pathetic that I don’t have friends. Like, what kind of loser doesn’t know how to make friends? Like, these mean vicious things people will say to themselves when in reality, the average American hasn’t made a new friend in five years. Wow. And 75% of Americans are not satisfied with their friendships. So more likely than not, any person you meet is looking for new friends and is looking for deeper connection. And the people who have really rich friend groups are in the vast minority, and that’s so important for people to keep in mind.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:27  Yeah, that’s a really good point. And you say early on in your book that loneliness is systematic.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:33  It’s not an individual problem. It’s systematic. Right. So to your point, if we don’t have as rich a friendship or community life as we want, we are like you said, we are far from alone. Matter of fact, we are in the majority and the way our society is set up makes it harder and harder to do that and have that. And so it’s not an individual failing.

Jillian Richardson 00:40:53  Totally not an individual failing at all.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:55  I think the second thing there is kind of what I just did a little bit not to be like, oh, look how great I am. But if you know it, hey, you’re great. I’m great. No, but but when I talked about going to this food rescue thing, right, like 15 years ago, I’d have been really hard on myself. Like, why are you not talking to people? You’re not meeting people. What’s wrong with you? And now I’m just a lot more kind with myself. And I go. I know my process.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:19  Yeah, it takes me a few times, so. Okay. Yeah, that’s the way I am. So I know I just need to go a few more times. I’ll get there instead of being like walking in the first time and being like, if I don’t walk out of here with three friends, I failed. Yeah. And I think that’s how a lot of us orient towards this. I want more friends. I’m going to go to this event. I walk out, I don’t have any friends. I failed, and so I’m not going to do it again because who wants to keep failing?

Jillian Richardson 00:41:42  Totally. And how many people have that mindset in all sorts of things, like a job interview or going on dates be like, well, this one was bad, confirms what I already thought. So I’m just not going to do this again.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:55  Yeah, that’s a really good point. You had some funny things I saw on social recently. You know, I think you’re dating and you and your friends were riffing on reasons that somebody might not be getting back to you.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:06  the different reasons. And I was laughing because because the interpretation is they’re not getting back to me because they don’t like me. And you’re like, well, they might be tripping on LSD. They might be high AF, you know. They might. I thought it was funny, like just riffing. Like, here’s all the different reasons.

Jillian Richardson 00:42:20  Yeah, I was talking to a female friend because we’re both dating. And how funny it is that if, like, we’re at a party and someone’s being kind of weird with us or they’re not responding to our text, our assumption is, well, they think I’m gross and bad and I’m just awful. And that’s why they’re not asking me out or whatever. And then we started talking about actual reasons when we’ve misinterpreted what was going on. And she told the funniest story of how this guy was sending her text that didn’t make sense, and she thought that he was trying to avoid going on a date with her, when in reality he was just tripping super hard.

Jillian Richardson 00:42:58  You know, it was like the best story. That’s so great. Like, keep your phone off. That’s right. Your phone on airplanes might not be making. Maybe they’re drunk or maybe they’re high or I don’t know. I also thank you for supporting my internet life. It feels good.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:14  You know, you’re in the middle of the psychedelic renaissance when you have to be like, well, we’re no longer talking about drunk dialing. We’re talking about tripping, texting. Don’t do it. I want to shift directions for a second and talk about something that you have done. One program you did was called Allied, although you’ve done several others. Allied was a seven week training for white leaders to skillfully engage in conversations about race, and we’ve had a bunch of conversations around race on this show. We’re primarily a white audience. I’d love to know some of what you’ve learned through those various trainings you’ve done. I know I’m asking you a huge topic with, you know, like four minutes left in the conversation.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:54  So but yeah, but any any things that really stood out to you that gave you like, okay, as a, as a white person, if I want to be a better ally, here are some of the things I’m going to do.

Jillian Richardson 00:44:05  Yeah I can quickly say so. Allied was led by this teacher named Harry Pickens, who is a black man who wanted to work with white leaders, and the biggest thing I got from that was, how can we train our nervous systems to be okay in conversations where we are not comfortable, especially with people who do not agree with us? And a case study we were looking at a lot is Darryl Davis, who is a black man who famously befriended members of the Klu Klux Klan and then actually got them to leave because he was in relationship with them. And the process took a very long time. And, of course, that’s not an approach that a lot of people agree with, but it’s one that is really interesting in that that’s the ultimate example of being comfortable across lines of difference and being with people who might not like you at all.

Jillian Richardson 00:44:59  And so I have really tried. And of course, as I’m saying this, I’m judging myself for not doing better, but to be with folks like who are white conservatives, for example, to talk about their beliefs or to be comfortable, because I can really fall into people pleasing, to be comfortable enough to challenge people. And just to say, just having these sentence stems in my back pocket like, oh, why do you think that? Or oh, has that been your experience? And to just give people the space to kind of talk out this thing they might think of without without questioning it? So that was one thing. And the second thing I’ll quickly say is that I did this training called Bridges and Boundaries, which was three days. primarily white folks, but there are also some black folks in the room. And it was a very intense, super in-your-face training about looking at your own racism. And really, the main point that I got from that was that white people are racist. And we do think that we’re better than other races, and we have to acknowledge that in ourselves in order to move forwards and to just.

Jillian Richardson 00:46:11  And I feel hot even saying that out loud. But to be like I think I’m better. I have to tell myself that I’ve been so programmed my entire life, and our country’s been programmed to think that I’m better. And people of color know that. We think that. And if we can’t say that to ourselves, we can’t do any work. I mean, that weekend kicked me in the face. It was not fun.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:36  I bet. You know, it makes me think my initial like instantly that uncomfortableness raises a defense in me where I want to go, but people of other races think they’re better than that. There’s an in-group outgroup thing, right? But the difference, of course, is that our race is controlling everything and is in in charge of everything. Yeah, we interviewed Ibram X. Kendi on the show, and one of the things that he talked about that I found so valuable was to move away from saying, I am or I am not a racist, or you are or you are not a racist.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:11  And instead to say I have some racist thoughts. I have some racist beliefs. I did a racist thing, and I found that a really interesting switch, because it’s a little bit like the difference between shame. I am bad. I am a racist too. I do think racist things, oh, I have behaviors, actions, etc. that are that way and thusly I can work on changing them. For me, that was a way of sort of being able to walk into the ground you’re talking about and go, yes, I do. I have racist thoughts. I think things that are racist, I have done things that are racist, thoughts that run through my head was really helpful, because then I was able to sort of, again, step out of the shame of, I’m this awful person to I have these behaviors, right? Which is sort of the difference between, I think healthy guilt and shame. Shame is I’m bad. Healthy guilt is I’m doing things that don’t match my values. I want to change.

Jillian Richardson 00:48:10  And I think a part of this training that was so impactful of having it be a mixed race group, was to realize, okay, it’s so uncomfortable for me to look at these racist parts of myself, and if I don’t, I’m going to keep unintentionally hurting these other people in the room. Yeah. So which which one am I going to choose? Because we’re we’re being forced to choose, like look at ourselves and say, okay, if I don’t examine this stuff, which I have the full power to never examine and never look at and never think about because it’s deeply uncomfortable, I will, for the rest of my life, hurt people more. And of course, I’m still going to do racist stuff for the rest of my life because it’s just I’m a human, but I’ll probably do it a little bit more. Or at least I’ll be able to apologize more skillfully in the future. If I look at this stuff.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:59  That’s really powerful and and really difficult work. We’re at the end of our time.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:04  You and I are going to go into the post-show conversation, and I actually want to explore something you said a few minutes ago in more detail. You talked about challenging people or having open conversation with people who think different things than us, particularly maybe around a topic like race. As we head into the holidays, many people are going to about to get some great opportunities for this. Yes. And so let’s talk about some skills, because I do think there’s there’s a difference between term, my Thanksgiving dinner table into a nuclear war versus actually engage in dialogue with people who think differently than me in a hope of increasing understanding. So we’ll talk about that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you’d like access to the post-show conversation, you can go to one you feed join. You’ll get this post-show conversation. You’ll get ad free episodes. You’ll get a special episode I do every week called Teaching Song, and a poem where I share a song I love, a poem I love, as well as a teaching and lots of other great benefits of being a member.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:04  When you feed, Net join. Gillian, thank you so much for coming on. I have really, really enjoyed this and and it’s been a pleasure to get to talk with you for everyone.

Jillian Richardson 00:50:13  Thank you for having me. I feel super energized.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:31  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.

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