In this episode, Anne Lamott explores why waiting for the perfect community, the perfect version of ourselves, or the perfect moment keeps us from the very connection we’re searching for. She discusses overcoming perfectionism, quieting the inner critic, finding the courage to walk into unfamiliar rooms, and embracing the messy, imperfect relationships that help us heal. Along the way, Anne shares her signature blend of humor, wisdom, and honesty about recovery, self-compassion, and discovering that a more meaningful life begins when we stop trying to do it all perfectly.
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Key Takeaways:
- Why perfectionism keeps us from the connection we’re looking for
- How changing what we pay attention to can transform the way we experience life
- Why healing is a process of returning to who you were meant to be—not becoming someone new
- The difference between chasing validation and finding lasting serenity
- Why showing up to imperfect communities can change your life
- How to quiet your inner critic with awareness, acceptance, and self-compassion
- The relationship between shame, perfectionism, and emotional healing
Anne Lamott is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Dusk, Night, Dawn; Almost Everything; Hallelujah Anyway; Small Victories; Stitches; Help, Thanks, Wow; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; and Traveling Mercies, as well as several novels. Her latest book is Somehow: Thoughts on Love: Anne is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame.
Connect with Anne Lamott: Website | Instagram | Facebook
If you enjoyed this conversation with Anne Lamott, check out these other episodes:
The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober with Catherine Gray
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Episode Transcript:
Anne Lamott 00:00:00 Finding a way to have a bigger and more spacious life may involve community. May involve spirituality. May involve activism. Who knows? You have to somehow get the help to release some of the perfectionism, because not a soul here is going to do it perfectly.
Chris Forbes 00:00:26 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 00:01:11 Anne Lamott has a line about community that made me laugh. 80% of any meeting or gathering might be stupid and beneath you, but the other 20% will save you. Many times I’ve thrown away the 20 because I couldn’t get through the 80. I wanted it to be all good or all bad. And community is just never that. And when I talk about walking into new rooms, feeling too good to be there and not good enough at the same time, and why showing up anyway is the key. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi and welcome to the show.
Anne Lamott 00:01:49 Thank you Eric. Good to be here.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:50 I was mentioning you just a little bit before we started. How I have loved your work for a long, long time, and we both spent significant amounts of time in 12 step programs and in recovery. And so reading you is like hearing so much of my foundational thought just said really eloquently. So thank you for being here.
Anne Lamott 00:02:10 Oh, thanks.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:11 Well, mostly be talking about your book somehow Thoughts on Love. But I have questions kind of from all across the board.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:18 But we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable there’s a grandparent there 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. The grandchild stops and 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.
Anne Lamott 00:02:54 Well, I’ve been hearing this one in recovery for years. It’s beautiful and profound, but what it always makes me think of is the priest who helped Bill Wilson when Bill was forming AA in the mid 30s. And the priest said, sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses.
Anne Lamott 00:03:14 And so I think of those two really bonded because you have some choice. You know, I’m human. I’m going to have scary thoughts and bad thoughts, but I don’t need to feed them. You know, I can become aware that I’m doing them. You know, that they’re kind of a habit or they’re, you know, from a scary childhood. They’re in a certain way, kind of a toxic comfort zone to have anxiety or to have a situation that I think I need to fix. And so I feed it. And then the good wolf and the good pair of glasses are right there. And the miracle is that over time, over many, many, many years of sobriety. I catch myself feeding the bad wolf and I say no. And I turn around and I give the good wolf a really huge, delicious piece of meat.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:08 Yeah, yeah, I heard that too. The first time in recovery, I’m sure it was in some church basement somewhere, and it was relatively early in my recovery.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:19 And I remember thinking then and have thought since many times, like, I think I’m not even feeding the bad wolf. Yeah, I feel like the bad wolf is now eating me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but all these years later, it’s really different. I wanted to start by asking you to answer a question that you pose early in the book. Can you say even the darkest and most devastating times love is nearby if you know what to look for. So what do we look for?
Anne Lamott 00:04:50 Well, again, it’s the new pair of glasses. Instead of looking at all the things that are annoying. And for which I have an excellent eye and sensor. We look at all that is still beautiful and it still works. It is still sort of sweet that, you know, across the street, the neighbor who didn’t used to like me very much or approve of me, it was waving and asking how things are going, and we’d look for the daffodils and we look for just all of it is beautiful and sort of sweet, or surprisingly, okay.
Anne Lamott 00:05:22 Whereas before we thought it was all going down the tubes.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:25 I’ve heard you talk about the daffodils before. This is their season in a couple in Columbus, Ohio, and they are beautiful and they are everywhere. Makes me think of something that your husband said to you, which is that 80% of what is true and beautiful can be experienced on any ten minute walk.
Anne Lamott 00:05:44 Yeah. Right through the city or out the door into the beauty of the neighborhood or down at the trailhead, you know, anywhere. But it’s kind of a decision that you’re going to be looking for. What is just so fine or touching about life instead of all the things that are so annoying, which is that it looks like the neighbors might start doing another edition, or it looks like you know that car with a Denver boot on it is still there or whatever. It’s like anywhere you are. If you hit the reset button. I mean, you’ve heard in recovery that you get to start your new 24 hours whenever you remember to, and you hit the button and you start over and you decide to focus on the goodness that surrounds us.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:29 Yeah. There’s a program I teach called Habits That Matter. It’s about using habits to develop wisdom. And one of the examples I use when we talk about attention is very similar to what you just described. Like, we can take the same walk day after day, but that walk is radically different depending on where my attention is, right. I mean, it’s the same exact track. Same sites? Yeah, but I might not see a single one of them both. It’s so critical how we train our attention and kind of where we want it to be.
Anne Lamott 00:07:00 Yeah, exactly. If you grow up in a childhood house that was scary or stressful, which mine was, you get too attentive. You get what they call hypervigilant because you want to be prepared. You don’t want to walk on step on any landmines, you know, and and you tiptoe. And I saw a button when I first got sober in 86. It said, I’m not tense. I’m just very, very alert. And if you grow up in a dysfunctional or alcoholic or a family with mental illness or affairs or whatever, you get hyper alert because that’s how you can protect yourself.
Anne Lamott 00:07:37 And it’s a habit. And this side of the grave, I am probably going to go to some of these old sort of miserable ways of focusing on what might be about to go wrong, and more and more and more, as I get older and more sober and more relaxed, I noticed myself doing it, and I sort of pat myself on the shoulder and go, we’re okay.
Eric Zimmer 00:07:57 Yeah. You know, a theme of your work that I see again and again is you sort of tongue in cheek, a little bit of joking and not talk about how this whole self-improvement project is going way, way slower than you thought it would or, you know, I think it should. And again, the ways you phrase it often make me laugh. And yet that’s a very real way of criticizing ourselves. And it sounds like that’s mellowed over time in being more willing to sort of accept yourself and see your human foibles as just part of what it means to be exactly that human.
Anne Lamott 00:08:35 I don’t see it almost 38 years that I’ve been trudging the path of of spiritual living and destiny.
Anne Lamott 00:08:46 I see it really as a restoration project. You know, like with a really battered old house where a lot of the systems were just destroyed or put in so long ago that they’re really not very effective anymore and just ruin in what’s behind the walls. And it’s, you know, the rats are the mold. And it’s been about restoring the very precious being that I was born to be, and to grow into that and away from all of the personas and the ways of defending myself, or the ways of impressing the world and all the stuff that really didn’t serve me, but that I was taught and encouraged to improve on. You know, my friend Duncan Trussell, I think I mentioned this in the book and somehow said, when you first meet me, you’re meeting my bodyguard. And little by little, as I’ve grown in faith, both in life and in myself, I’ve been able to let the bodyguard go, take a break, or have a cigarette outside while I really get to see who other people and myself are, and that’s wonderful.
Anne Lamott 00:09:47 I mean, I really think that’s who we are is to become who we were born to be and not who we always pretended to be because we got so much affirmation for it, for doing better and better and oppressing and reaching higher and higher levels of whatever. But you heard, and I’ve always heard, that you don’t compare yourself to other people’s outsides, that actually everybody who looks so great is probably in exactly the same state of being human and kind of a little funky around the edges as you are. And you also hear that it’s an inside job, that the healing and the restoration aren’t out there. You’re not going to get such a great book review or whatever, that it’s going to do any kind of healing at all. It’s going to be a nice fix now. I love fixes. When I first got sober, my mentor Sharon S said to me every morning, you need to ask yourself whether you want the hit or whether you want the serenity. And I said, Sharon, I want the hit.
Anne Lamott 00:10:42 You know, I’m I’m a drug addict. But I really wanted the serenity. And all these years later, I still notice. I love the hit. I love the immediate fix of something that will mood alter me, either because I’ve achieved it or it’s arrived from Amazon or whatever it happens to be. But what I really want is a serenity, which is the very gentle self-respect and the radical self-care and getting out of myself to become a person for others. And, you know, maybe just taking some food over to the food pantry, maybe going around the neighborhood and picking up litter.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:18 Yeah, yeah. So I want to ask you a question in a little bit more detail. So writing is your thing. It’s what you’ve done for a long, long time. And it’s also the way that you get some of those hits we talked about. Right. You get a good book review. Someone that you respect says something good about it. You get paid to do it. All those things. Right.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:38 So talk to me about how you work with yourself, given that there are sort of like these multiple motivations in doing something like writing, you know, how do you work with yourself to stay on the more intrinsic motivations versus getting sort of really focused on the extrinsic pieces of it?
Anne Lamott 00:11:58 Well, that’s a good question. As I wrote a lot in Bird by Bird, when you’re a writer, you get fixated on the outside validation, and you believe before you publish that it will completely affirm you and validate your parking ticket. And it will last and it won’t. It’s just a fix. It’s mood altering, and I love it. Don’t get me wrong, but I get many, many, many bad reviews also. It’s this is my 20th book and they always get under my skin and I won’t lie and say I don’t even notice or care anymore because I completely do. But as you get older, you just notice it. It’ll pass. You know that it it was one person who doesn’t like your style of writing or talking and and, you know, you shake it off.
Anne Lamott 00:12:45 You learn little tools for shaking off. But what does work and sustain the soul and the spirit is any daily practice, whether it’s meditation or writing or a power walk or whatever, but with the writing. If you sit down at the same time every day so that your subconscious can kick in for you, which is where all the juicy stuff is, and you do the work even though you’re not in the mood, or you don’t have any confidence or or whatever, then it connects you to something umbilical and that is some sort of higher power, some sort of higher calling to decide to devote yourself to the writer’s life, whether or not you ever get published. It’s like a calling, like a monk would feel called to the monastery and the daily ness of it, and the miracle that you will get better and better and better, and then you’ll be able to help others. And just like in recovery, the beauty of getting to watch other people heal and get better and reach higher and higher levels of, you know, biting off trickier things to either write about or ways to write about them, or alternately, being able to write more and more modestly and simply and plainly and clearly.
Anne Lamott 00:13:57 It’s a wonderful thing to see it in yourself, but even more so in some ways, to see it in other people. And so the daily ness of it, the habit of it, as you teach about the connection with yourself, with higher power and with the outside world, is really where the goods are.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:15 Do you enjoy the writing process? Some writers describe it as being like when they’re in it very, very difficult, and other writers describe loving doing it. What’s the experience of it like for you?
Anne Lamott 00:14:26 I don’t love it. Most days I don’t love first drafts. You know, I wrote a lot in Bird by Bird about how everything I’ve ever written that you might like derived from a really awful first draft. Any book I’ve ever read, even any poem I’ve ever read, has almost certainly begun as a really god awful first draft. So that part I find 20 books later just as hard. You know, like all alcoholics and maybe all writers, there’s kind of a ping pong game going on between this grandiosity and narcissism versus the, the, the pretty shaky self-esteem.
Anne Lamott 00:15:00 But once I have a first draft done, it starts to be more like Swiss watchmaking or something. Or I’m fiddling, I’m taking stuff out that I hadn’t been able to take out earlier. I’m moving stuff around, and the story is kind of revealing itself to me, like a Polaroid in a way that wasn’t happening in the first draft.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:21 So I have read my bird before, and I think I will be reading it a lot more because I am at work on my first book, not my 20th, my first wow. And I just recently got a book deal, and I’m really excited about it and sort of daunted at the same time. When you’re in that shitty first draft process, do you still have the doubt in there? Like, this one sucks. I’m never going to pull this one out. Or do you have the faith now that you’ve done it so many times that, you know, like, okay, this is just part of the process. You know, I’m in the part of it where it’s difficult.
Anne Lamott 00:15:56 This book, you know, it’s about love and there’s no word or theme or over used certainly in American culture than love. And so all the way through the first draft, I was thinking mostly what I write about is love, spirit, healing, soul, God. And I thought, talk about beating a dead horse. But I also had something that was guiding me, and that was that. I wanted to write a book for my son and grandson. That would be every single thing I know that has ever worked before. During really tricky times. hard times, rough patches, bad news. That will almost certainly work again when I’m gone, because I know that their future, just with the climate and who knows with democracy, is going to be really difficult and scary and untroubled. And so I wanted to say this all was work, no matter how awful my landscape was and how long it took. It will work, community will work, goodness will work, prayer and meditation and and getting outside and and 2 or 3 very, very best friends and this and so I started writing pieces and I think they’re sort of funny.
Anne Lamott 00:17:09 And I tried to do the deep dive into these different realms of love. But yeah, every step of the way, I would feel left to my own devices that I’d already done it. I’d done it better, da da da. But that is why, with my writing, why teach writing? I always say you need other people to read your stuff. I have my husband. I have two people who read my stuff for me before I send it in anywhere. My son has a website called A Writing Room. Com and it’s 500 writers who are doing that for each other. They’re either helping each other, not give up, and they’re helping each other know that the first page really didn’t work. I mean, you’re going to need this if you have an editor, but you need someone before you give it to your editor. Yep. Because you don’t want your editor to be worried about what they’ve gone and done and making giving you a contract.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:00 Exactly.
Anne Lamott 00:18:01 But at a writing room, they say things like, I’m going to love this, but I really feel, hypothetically that the first page, you’re just kind of clearing your throat.
Anne Lamott 00:18:11 But where it really takes off for me is the second paragraph on page two. That’s where I would start the whole thing. And then all of a sudden, I’m sure this is true for you. Eric, you go on too long and that the ending is 3 or 4 pages or 17 pages before the right ending, but without feedback. I’m literally hopeless because I’m going to send stuff in that I just think is just just so, so, so perfect. And it really needed another set of eyes on it. You know what it’s like? Your eye kind of glances off it after a while and you’re bored with it a little bit. You just want to be done, but then you give it like, I’ll send it over to my husband and he’ll print it out and he’ll really work on it and he’ll come over. And sometimes she says, I just love this. I had a couple of thoughts and other times he’ll come in and there’ll be this scary look on his face that, that more doesn’t work than I had hoped.
Anne Lamott 00:19:02 That he will have some really good ideas on how to get it to work. So I give a lot of talks at a writing room, and I don’t give it very many workshops. That’s mostly where I do my talking. Now. What I repeat over and over and over again is no matter how great a writer, no matter how many books you’ve had published, you need help from somebody who’s a good writer, who respects you. My students go to writing conferences and they just get torn to shreds sometimes when their piece is being critiqued and the group of 20 people. And that’s not helpful. What is helpful is to approach each thing as having already been accepted, and you’re either asking for help or offering help as to how to bring it up to its very highest quality.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:08 Community is something that comes up often in your writing. You just referenced it a minute ago when you were talking about what works in difficult times. You also just referenced it right in regards to writing, and you have a line that made me laugh.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:24 And I thought, how true is this? You said 80% of any meeting or gathering might be stupid and beneath you, but the other 20% will save you.
Anne Lamott 00:20:37 Yeah. That’s just so often true for me. It’s true at church. It’s true in my recovery workshops. It’s true in community meetings. All of us just talk so much and people just want their point of view really heard and in detail. And that’s not where the healing is. The healing is in the stuff. Once all the ego and all the blowhard and all the passionate need to be heard is stripped away, what are you actually trying to share with me? Well, I’m trying to share that just all I do one day at a time is not pick up a drink or a drug. All I do in my Sunday school classes is to try to help my kids know that they are loved and chosen and just precious as is. That this is a come as you ordeal, but yet there’s a 45 minutes before and then five minutes after, you know, so you can usually strip away about 80%.
Anne Lamott 00:21:37 And anything I’ve written you can easily strip away about a third of it. So it’s just human nature. It’s human nature. We care so deeply about the things in our life that are of the highest value, and we just want to get that across, you know? That’s why it’s good that we get a shot at second drafts.
Eric Zimmer 00:21:56 Yeah. I love what you wrote about community there about, you know, 80% of it being stupid and beneath us, right. And 20% being valuable because I’ve had a tendency to throw away the 20% because I can’t get through the 80%. Right. And I’ve learned that over time. But it was so helpful to hear it written that way, because my problem was I was feeling like, well, it’s either good or it’s not good. And the reality, like most anything in life, is there’s some of both. But I really love that idea. And, you know, the other thing that you said that just a minute ago that really resonates me with me, and I talk to people in group programs that I run about this, which is when you go into a new situation, you’re going to have one of two sort of reactions, and they may switch back and forth like every three seconds, which is, I’m too good to be here, right? Or I’m not good enough to be here.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:51 Right, right. You know, it just seems to be the nature of walking into a new situation where we don’t know people.
Anne Lamott 00:22:58 Right, right. Well, a lot of the book is about the shyness and discomfort that even extroverts would feel about entering a new community, whether it’s spiritual recovery or community activism, to try to stop, you know, the new construction from going up or getting the beaches claimed. It’s just human nature. You just you’re it’s like your little kid is entering the room and you kind of you feel awkward and it’s very sweet and touching. But of course, the way that I’ve always compensated for it is with this arrogance and this kind of feeling of these people just seem really nutty to me. Or these people, they’re sort of pathetic or or whatever, or, you know, like the famous Groucho Marx line that he wouldn’t want to belong to any group that would have him. But by entering into that room each time you do it and saying hello to a couple of people, it’s like Nautilus for the spirit, you know, and you build muscles to do it.
Anne Lamott 00:24:00 And then pretty soon you find yourself really, really looking forward to them. You know, there’s going to be people that are just going to see a weird or then it’s absolutely necessary. But at the same time, you build muscle in the same way, you build muscle to not pick up a drink or to not go back to smoking. You just know that you can do it and it’s going to be ever so slightly uncomfortable. And, you know, like the Nike ad, you just do it and you put out your hand and you say hello, and then there’s someone you know there, and either you gravitate toward them and go, oh my God, I’m so glad that you’re here. Or else you hide from them and you think, oh my God, I’ll never come back. But you just do it and you do it afraid, and you do it shy, and then you start to see what they’re about. And something deep inside of you, like this little Doctor Seuss character of your soul goes, oh my God, that’s exactly right.
Anne Lamott 00:24:53 And then maybe you come back a second time, which is where the miracle is.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:58 In the new book, you talk about walking in, you show up, you step inside. Maybe, like me, you feel like a walking personality disorder, but managed to say hello. Yeah, a lot of things start with hello very recently. So this is fresh in my mind. I’ve been part of an organization for quite some time called food rescue, and we basically go pick up food that’s about to be thrown away and drive it somewhere that can use it. But Food Rescue just opened a kitchen here in Columbus, where we’re taking some of that food and preparing it. And so I’ve been going and you know, what I know about myself is it takes about 3 to 4 interactions with people before I start to come out of my shell. So the first three times I’m there, I’m just kind of like, yeah, okay, I’m just focusing on the kitchen. And then I notice last time I’m making a couple jokes, I just know that about myself now.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:49 So I could be patient with myself. But I didn’t always know that. And I think it’s, you know, one of the reasons people have such a difficult time with community is we expect that right away. It’s going to be this magical thing.
Anne Lamott 00:26:02 Right, right, right. I know well, there’s so much of what I have to tell my writing students is that writing and living are about unlearning a lot of stuff we learned as children. And I was just talking about this at a writing room. We were taught. Don’t waste paper. And I tell them, please waste paper. Send money to the Sierra Club and then print your material out and read it. Holding it with a sharp pencil. You know, read it in a window seat. Read it in the corner of the house. You know, we were told not to space out. We were spacing out when we were children at the kitchen table or on the couch. Somebody came along and said, don’t you have something to do, you know? Is your homework done? Is your room clean? And I tell my writing students, space out, space out.
Anne Lamott 00:26:47 Like stare off into the middle distance like cats do. You know, saying you can walk out there and so your mind can kind of float around and and go peek into corners that you hadn’t even known were there. And so much for me personally, has been about unlearning what I was taught. And of all the crippling, destructive things I was taught as a child. Was this perfectionism you know that you can and really need to do things that are beyond reproach, that also you need to know what you’re doing and then you should stick to that. And as a writer, that is never true, because a I usually don’t know what I’m doing until I’ve done it, and b I don’t need to stick to it. I’m going to take out huge chunks or I’m going to introduce a whole new character, whatever. So with finding a way to have a bigger and more spacious life, which may involve community, may involve spirituality, may involve activism, who knows? You have to somehow get the help to release some of the perfectionism, because not a soul here is going to do it perfectly.
Anne Lamott 00:27:54 Because we compare our insights to other people’s outsides. We see other people go, oh, I wish I could do it that well. I wish I looked that well, I wish I had this wish like that in their insides feel justice, you know, self-critical or worried as others do. It’s just they have a better persona or bodyguard for me. Boy, that has been the deepest dive I’ve had to do was into this belief that if I did things that were beyond reproach, they were just really nearly perfect, that that offered some kind of validation of protection. And it didn’t. It’s an inside job.
Eric Zimmer 00:28:32 Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight? Breath shallow? Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday, I send weekly bites of wisdom, a short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show. Things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose into bite size practices you can use the same day it’s free.
Eric Zimmer 00:29:00 It takes about a minute to read and thousands already swear by it. If you’d like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at one you feed net. That’s one you feed net newsletter and start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right, back to the show. The thing that keeps close company with perfectionism is shame. And you said something that I really resonated with, and it was that I learned once again, that just about the worst part about shame is the shame of still having it.
Anne Lamott 00:29:38 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:29:38 Say more about that.
Anne Lamott 00:29:40 Yeah, well, that’s in the most painful piece. And somehow of being rejected by a very, very close friend. And of course, the human response would be a devastation and be the shame, because I think we secretly believe that when anybody criticizes us or finds flaw with our work or our being, that they’re seeing something that’s true, that everybody else is either politely not saying anything about or hasn’t even noticed because of your dazzling and seductive persona.
Anne Lamott 00:30:11 But when somebody criticizes you or says something as if they are pointing out something that’s true instead of it being their opinion, there’s no way that you’re not going to have shame. The gift is that maybe you don’t have it for part of a year. You know, maybe you have it for a few days because you call your best friend, you call your partner, you call your your mentor or your sponsor or your whatever, and you work with it. You go into it and realize that it’s something from 50 years ago when when you were a child, and this used to come up from your very stern dad or your very codependent mother or whatever, but that piece is so painful. I actually didn’t think people were going to like it. It’s called camellias, and I thought people were going to just kind of recoil because it’s so painful about what I went through. And thinking this friend Tim had just nailed me finally, for once, that I was a two time where I was a backstabber, or that he didn’t want to be like me.
Anne Lamott 00:31:11 And it seems to be the peace that in certain ways resonates most for people. Because you know what? Anything I write that is really intimate is something that I’m pretty sure is universal. I’m pretty sure you, Eric, when you read that, you dropped it. Totally got it. Yeah, right. Yeah. You have been there and you kind of went, oh, you cringed. But in that way, that’s exciting to cringe when you think somebody is telling the truth. And it’s maybe reading your mail a little bit.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:40 Yeah. Yeah, that I don’t know if you call it essay or chapter or whatever in the book is really powerful. And I think the other reason that things like that, people really like, there’s a tendency to put people who can write well or speak well, you know, up on a little bit of a pedestal, write and think, oh, you know, since they are able to articulate these ideas, they must really have them figured out. Right.
Anne Lamott 00:32:04 Right.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:05 Right, right. And so I think it’s a real powerful thing when people get to see like, oh, no, even somebody who has all this wisdom still goes through this stuff. Right? And it’s sort of back to that idea about shame. We think we should be beyond something, right? I mean, I know that’s become something I’ve had to really work with is I’ve had close to 25 years in recovery and lead these group programs and this podcast and all this stuff is when I’m really struggling, there’s that voice in me that goes, you should know better, right?
Anne Lamott 00:32:36 I know you should, you should, you should, you should yourself. You should all over yourself. Right?
Eric Zimmer 00:32:42 Yeah, yeah. And it’s so destructive. Right. Because it’s I can’t get on to the work of really processing and learning from the experience and grieving or whatever I need to do like that. I shouldn’t be allowed to feel this way. Thing really shuts the door on that deeper work.
Anne Lamott 00:32:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Anne Lamott 00:33:01 But, you know, I don’t know if you’re allowed to say this, but what we say in recovery is it. Shoulds are shit. You know, if you could have done better at the time, you would have. Yeah, you definitely would have. You were feeling really stressed and pressured or inadequate, and you did what at the time felt like the best you could do. You know, and that’s all we can do on any given day. The best we can be as humans or as writers or as parents or as children. But that perfectionism is just so deadly. And my husband has written a book. His name is Neil Allen, called Better Days because his work with people is on The Inner Critic, and he points out to his clients that the inner critic is from childhood. It kept us from running out into the street when we were five years old. It kept us from swimming out beyond our ability to stay afloat. But it’s a parasite. The way he describes us. It’s not part of us.
Anne Lamott 00:33:59 It’s this misguided effort to keep us safe. But I’m 70 and I have very good traffic safety understanding. And I would never swim out past the breakers. You know, I’m not stupid, but with my work, when I hear that inner critic, it says to me, oh my God, I just think that is too sentimental. I think it’s over. I think it’s this. I think it’s that. Or when I come off stage after presentation, the inner critic. But what I’ve learned to do mostly I’ve known my husband for seven years. He taught me to just be aware of it and to say, oh, it’s you. It’s not truth. It’s not who I am. It’s not truth. It’s just parasite. It kept me alive. I’m grateful for that. But it takes practice. And again, it takes that Nautilus of the soul to get used to. You know, there’s something I know in Ohio. You come upon in these secret groups of recovery, which are the three Rs.
Anne Lamott 00:34:56 The first day is the awareness. It’s my inner critic. It’s belittling me. Its job is to keep me small so it can control me and keep me from doing something that might either be fatal or humiliating in the public realm. But you get the awareness. I’m doing it. Oh, I’m just jealous. Oh, I’m just I’m just sad. I’m just. And that’s why I’m being mean to myself. That the inner critic keeps me small and afraid. And so the awareness, oh, I’m doing it again. And Neil teaches people to say, oh, it’s you. The second thing is acceptance. Of course I have it. When I give you Eric, my book to read, and when you give your book to us to read down the road, it’s your very best effort, your best self. It’s your heart, it’s your soul, it’s your education, it’s your experience, your strength, your hope, your all the best you could do. And if somebody says in a newspaper or at the dinner table, I’m just really surprised that you didn’t go into that more deeply, or I’m surprised that you spent so much time on that.
Anne Lamott 00:36:01 It’s going to be devastating, but you have to accept it. This is what I got as a child and this side of the grave. I’m going to have it. The miracle and I accept this is that I’ll have it, and I can come through it in a couple of hours instead of, in my case, my 20s at the height of my my drinking and choosing. And then the the after the acceptance, of course, I have this this is how I was raised. You know, I was raised to be very self-critical. I was raised at a B-plus, wasn’t a good enough grade. Was there time in the quarter to bring it up? And then the third thing that recovery teaches that the church and the mosque and the synagogue teach is the action, and the action is love. The action is self-love. The action is you touch your own shoulder and you say, it’s okay, Hymie, you know, let me get you a cup of tea, or you said, let’s just go take a hot bath.
Anne Lamott 00:36:53 Or you say, let’s just put that down for now. I think you’re tired. You know, I think maybe you want to lie down with a kitty for a while and just read people magazine, whatever the radical self-care is. Is the action. And so I do that a lot because I hear the inner critic. I hear it more and more softly. I heard it yesterday, and I was crushed by it, by what it was telling me about myself. So what did I do? I went and got Neil and he said, oh, that’s your inner critic. That’s not truth. And so what do we do? Well, why don’t we ask it to go sit in the library and find a nice book to read while I try to get this project finished? I don’t need it sitting on my shoulder telling me how disappointing it finds me. How much better I could have done and how much more quickly. And so I did. I said, you know, there’s a great lamp in the library.
Anne Lamott 00:37:47 Anything you might ever want to read in any realm, Tolstoy or self-help or Mary Oliver. Why don’t you go reach for wildlife? Finish up here. Because I’m older. I have a number of tools in this battered old toolbox. And the awareness helps me remember that I can get one out. Might be it picking up the £200 phone, right? It might be that you need to cry. And actually, I needed to cry yesterday. I had an English mother from Liverpool and I was taught you don’t cry, stiff upper lip and carry on. And my father was the same thing. And so if you cried or were angry at the dinner table, you got sent to your room without eating. And I learned not to cry. And I was very sensitive and I couldn’t help it. I just came this way. That’s why I’m a good writer. It’s because I’m sensitive. But that’s back to what I talk about with my classes or my talks. Is that cry, cry, cry. There’s nothing except crying that will help that child’s grief inside of you, and it will bathe you.
Anne Lamott 00:38:45 It will hydrate you. It will baptize you. You know, it’ll water the seeds at your feet that you don’t even know what they are. Because birds flew by and drop them. Buckle up. Because something really incredible might spring from that. So again, it’s about unlearning what we were taught we should do, and instead finding out who we really are and how to live in a way that’s freer and flow, dear, and maybe a little bit sillier.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:34 I love that idea of sending your inner critic to the library. If you could get the inner critic really interested in the collected works of Tolstoy, you could keep it occupied for a while. There’s some long books in that catalog, for sure. I thought for a minute we might talk about prayer. I mean, you wrote a book called The Three Essential Prayers, which were. Hello. Thanks. Thanks. Wow.
Anne Lamott 00:39:58 Wow.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:59 In another book, you write that one prayer you would say, you know, has helped me start walking in your general direction.
Eric Zimmer 00:40:06 And the greatest prayer helped me not be such an asshole, right? Yeah.
Anne Lamott 00:40:11 Yeah, yeah. One day at a time. My father was an atheist and an intellectual and just had contempt for people who prayed. But he had one moral value that he agreed to. We were taught to remember people’s names no matter what their station in life, no matter if they work in the back room at the Mobil gas station or whoever they were. Remember people’s names and don’t be an asshole. And you know, those two rules have served me well.
Eric Zimmer 00:40:37 In the latest book, you talk about something that a man told you about a prayer, right? You said that instead of reciting some standard flowery recovery prayer. He said whatever, right? And at night, when he turned off his light to go to sleep, he said, oh well.
Anne Lamott 00:40:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:40:55 What does that signify to you? What about that resonates with you?
Anne Lamott 00:40:58 Well, you know, a lot of us in recovery say these sort of beautiful prayers that are common to all of us who are staying sober or not binging or not being anorexic or gambling addicts.
Anne Lamott 00:41:12 There are these beautiful, profound, meaningful prayers. And they ask that we be relieved of our obsession with ourselves and that we be there for others, and that we learn to forgive a tiny bit better than we’re able to currently, or whatever. And they’re very beautiful. But the old timers that I talked to, this is, you know, July of 1986 said, in the morning when I wake up, I just say, whatever. Life is going to be very lively. That goes without saying. And whatever comes, you know, I have the tools to deal with it. If I’m not being a pig and then at night when you might be looking back over your day and thinking about how many blessings there were, how many things there were, were you definitely could have done better, or given the person a little bit more of your time or patience, or you could have made this decision or whatever, instead of like holding a flashlight on himself, with with judgment or with this concern, he just goes, oh, well, you know, still sober, still seeking union with God, still trying to be friendlier to myself.
Anne Lamott 00:42:26 Oh, well, whatever. It’s fine.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:28 Yeah, I love that. It makes me think of something that came to mind a couple of minutes ago when you were talking about the inner critic, and I think it’s the subtlety here of something, which is that the inner critic is a, to use your husband’s word, a parasite. Right. We might say it’s an exaggerated version of something, but being able to be critical of ourselves, to look at what we’ve done, you know what we might want to change. What we might want to be different is a useful skill in the same way that, like in AA, they talk about doing a nightly inventory, right? You know, looking back at the day. So how do you balance those two things? Right. Which is on one hand, we learn by reflecting on what we’ve done, and we see where we could do something better and different that’s healthy. But then taken too far, it’s the perfectionism and the shame that we talked about.
Eric Zimmer 00:43:19 How do you think about balancing those things?
Anne Lamott 00:43:21 Well, here’s what I would say. If you and I are sitting together and you’re telling me some stuff on your inventory that you were impatient with somebody today, or that you were secretly very judgmental of them and it made you feel really toxic? I’m not going to say, oh my God, Eric, you what? Like you’ve got 25 years of of being on this very deep, profound spiritual path. You know, I don’t talk to you that way. I would say, oh, honey, you know what? We all do that and it’s a drag. And it says in our literature that no human power could relieve us of that. And, you know, you need to be a retired higher power because you’re not a good higher power to yourself because you’re so mean to yourself. And I would say that to you now, where I talk that way to me.
Eric Zimmer 00:44:13 Yeah.
Anne Lamott 00:44:13 With me I might go, oh my God, I did that again.
Anne Lamott 00:44:19 I don’t know how many times I have prayed and written and God boxed it about. I did it again. God, you know, that’s how I talk to myself without intervention and without many, many years under my belt of the three A’s. Again, the awareness, the acceptance, the action. Of course, I talk to myself. That’s how my parents talk to myself. You did that again. But you. Last time you did it, you got it, you know. Awareness. Acceptance. Action. And the action for. For me with you would be to put my hand on your shoulder with permission, gently, and say. You know what? Same. You know. And God box it, and then you get more aware of it and you start to do it next time. And you grab yourself by the wrist and say, stop, honey. So that’s where I would differentiate between an inventory, between the harshness that we bring to our own judgment of ourselves, and the gentleness with which we listen to a brother or a sister share something that is very troubling for them.
Eric Zimmer 00:45:23 That’s a great way of really framing it up. It seems to me that for you, recovery is what brought you, to a large degree, to the faith that you have, the Christian faith that you have today. Would that be a semi accurate statement?
Anne Lamott 00:45:38 No. Okay. I think recovery kept me alive for the work that I had been doing for all of my life, really. But I had found this funny little church that was mostly black and a lot of people from the Deep South who’d come up during the Great Migration and were basically secretly Baptist, although it was a Presbyterian church. They took me in a year before I got sober, and I was I was the way we are, you know? Yeah, I was a little smelly and, you know, just devastated and freaked out sometimes. And arrogant. Right. It’s that beautiful combination. Yeah. And they kept me alive. And they set me on the path that ended up with me converting and becoming a Sunday school teacher. Not long after then I was a year later, I got the miracle.
Anne Lamott 00:46:26 I mean, the central miracle from which all blessings flow, which was that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. But my church didn’t keep me sober. Sobriety didn’t give me what my community of believers of left wing, progressive, hardcore Christians could give me. So. And it’s all of a past. It’s all of a weave, you know? It’s all the drugs. Really got me someplace. I’m not sure anything else would have all over. The unfortunate part was that I was probably going to die. Yeah. And then it wore off. That was the thing with the drugs or with the acid or the mushrooms or the whatever it was that it wears off and that, you know, the elevator’s going in one direction, which is down, and you don’t know if you’ll be alive when the elevator stops at the next floor.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:12 Yeah, yeah. So the reason I asked that question is because for me, recovery sort of pushed me into caring more about a spiritual life. I’d already had those interests in leanings.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:25 Right? But it kind of it pushed me in that direction. And then conversely, what it ended up doing after being somebody who tried to sort of get with the God program, right? It was also finally recovery. That was the thing that ended up driving me sort of out of that paradigm and framework more into a Buddhist framework. And the reason was, and I’m just curious how you reconcile this with yourself, because I’m sure you do in probably a great way. Is it the idea that God was what was keeping me sober?
Anne Lamott 00:48:00 Oh,
Eric Zimmer 00:48:01 And then seeing that, like all sorts of people I loved were dying, right? People who came to meetings, who did the same things I did and yet they were dying. I really had this very difficult idea that somehow, by the grace of God, God’s grace kept me sober. But God’s grace didn’t keep you sober or keep you alive. And I eventually couldn’t reconcile that. And I’m curious how that is reconciled in your life.
Anne Lamott 00:48:25 Well, you know, I just don’t overthink things.
Anne Lamott 00:48:29 that’s I mean, I do, but it leads me nowhere. You know why. It’s not a useful question, in my experience, and everyone I know who’s sober, who has some kind of higher power sees it very differently. They might see it as when we live near a mountain called Mount Carmel Pious at the Coastal Miwok worship, and some people have turned to that, to the beauty and majesty of that mountain as a power greater than themselves or a lot of Buddhist friends. And so there’s a line in the literature of recovery that says that instead of a personal god or, you know, Casper the Friendly Ghost or the fairy dad and the clouds with a long beard, that there’s an unexpected inner resource. Hey. And I find that very touching. And with the people I’ve tried to be there for to help them get sober over the years, a lot of them don’t want anything to do with God, per se, but they can. The Buddhist thing is sort of good, orderly direction. Yeah.
Anne Lamott 00:49:31 Or the group had drunks, or the great outdoors, or the grace over drama. But people, if they’re desperate enough to want to give up this one thing that they love more than anything else, but that is killing them and has destroyed their family. There’s a way. Yeah, but a lot of people actually don’t want to. They want to not like me for years. I mean, I was a hopeless drunk for years. I just believed that I could figure it out, you know, and that I could break some sort of code so that I could stop after 5 or 6 social drinks every single night. And the non habit forming marijuana that I smoked on a daily basis for 20 years, and at some point I’ve heard in 12 step programs that step zero as this shit has got to stop. And for me, it kept not stopping. I kept working with it. I kept thinking, okay, it’s tequila. I don’t do well with tequila, okay? Meth does not work. The third day is really a problem, you know, and for some reason, and I have to say, it was the movement of grace in my life I ran out of any more good ideas? Yeah.
Anne Lamott 00:50:38 It was the dark night of the soul where I’d been many, many, many times, as all alcoholics have been, and I had run out of any more good ideas. Yep, I was done. Yep. And that’s my prayer. That’s my prayer for people that I know that are still drinking, or binge eating or anorexic or gambling. My prayer for them is they reach that place where they run out of any more good ideas.
Eric Zimmer 00:51:04 It was interesting for me because I got sober as a homeless heroin addict, and I stayed sober for about eight years, and I really sort of did my best to again, this is 1994, in Columbus, Ohio. And so when people talked about a higher power, we didn’t have the California vibe going, right. You know, higher and higher power had a fairly specific meaning that long ago. And. Right, right. And so I tried really hard and it worked and I got sober. But like I said, what I described is that question about, you know, why or some of us.
Eric Zimmer 00:51:35 And then also a couple really difficult things in my life happened. And I realized I didn’t have a faith that truly made sense to me. And then I went back out and I drank. I never used heroin. It’s funny you say that about like, crystal meth not working, because that was basically my rationalization was like, well, you know, heroine’s a bad idea. We all can agree on that. I just won’t do that. Right? And when I came back then I was like, okay, I’ve got to figure this higher power out. And I did.
Anne Lamott 00:52:02 Well, you know, there’s a sister program for alcoholics in which people with tiny, tiny control issues who think that they can save and fix and rescue the alcoholic or the drug addict gather. And one of their battle cries is figure it out is not a good slogan. You know, when I was done July 7th, 1986, I didn’t have a beautiful moment of being done. It was a nightmare that I might have to give this up.
Anne Lamott 00:52:31 I had no other way to get through life and I wanted to stay alive. I felt like my life force was still tugging at my shoulders, and what I basically said to God at that moment was with my arms crossed was what, you know, find what? And it was just what. And I already had. I had like this big Jesus. He like had a church. But the problem was that the God of my understanding and I thought I was a piece of shit because of the way that I’ve been living all those years, what I’ve been doing, what I’ve done to women, what I’ve done to just, you know, the drill. And so what sobriety brought me into was a way of life where my higher power and the group of drunks and good, orderly direction of staying sober one day at a time, help me understand that God thought I was fabulous, you know, and that God was teaching me. When I teach my Sunday school kids, which you are loved and chosen and I adore you as is.
Anne Lamott 00:53:32 Come as you are. I want you. So that was about the most radical change that could ever be in a person’s spirituality. You know. Right. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
Eric Zimmer 00:53:42 Yeah. Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly Bites of Wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection, and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose and habit change. Feed your good wolf at one you feed.net newsletter again one you feed.net letter. I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up on that idea that you are wonderful and loved as is. You and I are going to talk a little bit longer in the post-show conversation, where I’m going to unveil my single favorite line that I’ve come across in your writing, and we’ll talk about a couple of things. Listeners, if you’d like access to post-show conversations and ad free episodes, and joy of supporting something that means something to you. Go to oneyoufeed.net/join. thank you so much. It is really such an honor to have you on.
Anne Lamott 00:54:45 Oh thank you, I love being here.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:47 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. Share it 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.
