Following Your Inner Pull

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Following Your Inner Pull"

Podcast: Bewildered
Hosts: Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan
Date: July 1, 2026
Episode Theme:
Exploring what it means to notice and follow the “pull” of one’s true nature versus the “push” of societal shoulds and cultural pressures. The hosts contrast instinctive, joyful living with the exhausting grind of externally imposed obligations, encouraging listeners to recognize, trust, and follow the “pull” inside themselves toward more authentic, wild, and fulfilling lives—even if it means looking a little weird to others.

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1. Main Theme Overview

• Purpose of the Episode:
  Martha and Rowan delve into the lived experience of feeling “pulled” toward things that nourish the soul, as opposed to being “pushed” by external expectations. Through humor, personal stories, and metaphors, they examine how to distinguish these inner currents, what it feels like to follow them, and the transformative (and sometimes socially disruptive) results of doing so.

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2. Key Discussion Points and Insights

A. The Push and the Pull—A Metaphor for Inner Guidance

[00:13–00:58]

• Push: Like trying to force two positive magnets together—exhausting and unnatural, fueled by societal “shoulds.”
• Pull: A mutual draw between person and experience, feeling magical and easy.

Quote:

“We can spend our lives because we’ve been told to by the culture, pushing toward something that repels us, and it feels like we repel it as well.”
– Martha Beck, [00:29]

B. Personal Anecdotes—Kids, Bears, and Cultural Comedy

[01:52–18:26]

• Rowan shares schoolyard stories about kids with “old souls” and her daughter Lila’s quirky personality—“she loves a turn of phrase.”
• Martha details moving to Bearsville and negotiating life among literal bears—serving as an analogy for living with constant background anxiety and adapting to new environments.
• Family dynamics, holidays, and classic “performance anxiety” around creating magical moments for kids (e.g., Easter egg hunts sabotaged by bear risk).

Memorable Moment:

“At night we open the windows so we can hear them [the bears] munching. Aw, isn’t that darling? ... The place is filthy with bears and everybody’s fine.”
– Martha Beck, [07:21]

C. The Pull in Everyday Work

[20:31–23:07]

• Out of nowhere, both hosts feel an unusual pull—even toward writing marketing emails, a task they usually dread.
• The experience felt qualitatively different than the normal obligatory grind.

Quote:

“That’s not a push, it’s a pull.”
– Martha Beck, [22:39]

• They reflect on how cultural conditioning positions us to value “pushing” through ennui, rather than listening for those small, inner pulls.

D. The Magnetic Flow of Life

[25:02–28:10]

• Rowan compares life’s pulls to jumping from rock to rock across a river—the river itself being a current you can’t see, but that’s nonetheless moving you.
• Martha equates following the pull to unknowingly allowing life itself to carry you to new places.

Quote:

“If you’re traveling along through your life and … an email comes into your inbox, or someone mentions something in passing... and you go, yeah. And I feel like that’s the rock… If you’ll follow them … you would actually see these peculiar little pulls… But we can’t see the river, we’re in it.”
– Rowan Mangan, [26:53]

E. Culture vs. Nature: The Tyranny of Pros & Cons

[28:10–31:49]

• Modern (Western) culture prescribes rational decision-making—pros/cons lists, calculated returns on investment—but these methods fail to capture the magic or unpredictability of following instinctual pulls.
• True fulfillment is often not found through projected calculations but through direct felt experience.

Quote:

“In terms of investing all your energy into this one wild and precious life, there’s no way of knowing how much joy you’ll get out of something... You cannot say ‘this is going to be more rewarding to me as a being’ and know it for sure until you get there.”
– Martha Beck, [30:51]

F. The "Third Thing"—Invisible Forces at Play

[34:13–36:29]

• Martha introduces the “third thing” from art composition—the space between things, which also shapes our experience.
• Rowan extends the metaphor: in love, work, and opportunity, there’s a gravity, a mutual pull, that isn’t visible but is palpably real.

Quote:

“When you’re feeling pulled to something, let yourself imagine that it’s being pulled to you too, and that the third thing, what looks like empty space, is actually mechanizing the whole process.”
– Martha Beck, [35:14]

• The “third thing” becomes a metaphor for the mysterious connective tissue in life’s meaningful encounters.

G. Manifesting, the Law of Attraction, and Making Everything a Push

[36:29–39:06]

• Cultural attempts to formalize “manifesting” (e.g., The Secret) often devolve into pushing—forcing outcomes with mental effort instead of letting yourself be led.

Quote:

“We make everything into a push… The real thing is that we can live as if we’re a magnet being just pulled toward things.”
– Martha Beck, [37:49]

H. Recognizing What Pull Feels Like vs. Push

[47:18–54:50]

• “Push” feels heavy, grinding, exhausting—self-soothing (ice cream, shopping, procrastination) replaces genuine fulfillment.
• “Pull” feels light, surprising, energizing, with a sense of inevitability and serendipity.
• Stories of life-changing pulls (e.g., Martha leaving her previous life and religion; falling in love with Rowan) as moments of radical redirection.

Quote:

“There’s a sense of surprise. That’s my favorite part about it: ‘What is happening? I don’t want anyone else writing that marketing copy, I want to write it. And it seemed so fun…’”
– Martha Beck, [53:30]

I. The Cost of Following the Pull—“Change Back Attacks”

[58:24–60:33]

• Social/cultural blowback is nearly guaranteed when following radically different paths.
• Martha and Rowan’s own relationship and polyamorous family dynamic serve as examples—following their mutual pull disrupted their community and drew sharp criticism.
• Letting go of cultural should’s is inherently “seditious”—but also freeing.

Quote:

“You will get a bit of blowback.”
– Rowan Mangan, [58:24]

J. How To Practice Sensing The Pull

[44:23–54:50, 61:03–end]

• Tips for listeners:
  • Notice heaviness and exhaustion as signs of “push.”
  • Notice curiosity, surprise, delight—even towards the implausible or unexpected—as signals of “pull.”
  • Stay open, not just to what you “like,” but to unforeseen invitations.
  • Understand it’s not about impulsively chasing pleasure (“treats”) or avoiding all pain; it’s about recognizing deeper energetic alignments.

Quote:

“If you genuinely are doing stuff like online gambling to cope with your sense of being pushed, they will be able to say, ‘You’re a bad person when you’re not pushing.’ But you’re not a bad person. You’re self-soothing because the push is so painful. And then when you follow the pull, it’s a totally different feeling… it’s exhilarating and it’s beautiful and you say to your friends, ‘Something amazing has happened to me.’”
– Martha Beck, [59:00]

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What if people are just born like that and then, when they’re 54, you meet them?”
  — Martha Beck, on the topic of old souls in childhood, [03:14]

• “Bears would like this… we were going to cover the yard in chocolate… not really a smart move, thinking about it.”
  — Rowan Mangan, on the intersection of holiday rituals and bear safety, [15:52]

• “That’s not a push, it’s a pull.”
  — Martha Beck, epiphany about suddenly wanting to write marketing emails, [22:39]

• “Let yourself imagine that it’s being pulled to you too, and that the third thing… is actually mechanizing the whole process.”
  — Martha Beck, exploring the invisible “third thing,” [35:14]

• “We make everything into a push… The real thing is that we can live as if we’re a magnet being just pulled toward things… not as a series of tasks, but as a series of magnets.”
  — Martha Beck, [37:49]

• "When you follow the pull, you are on a wild ride and you feel it and it’s exhilarating and it’s beautiful…”
  — Martha Beck, [59:00]

• “It is a genuinely seditious plan. It is. Because it’s leaving all culture and saying, no, I’m gonna follow the third thing…”
  — Martha Beck, [60:33]

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4. Important Timestamps

• The Push vs Pull Metaphor: [00:13 – 01:00]
• Bearsville & Hidden Easter Eggs—Living Among Bears: [07:21 – 18:26]
• Sudden Pull for Marketing Copy—Main Episode Theme Begins: [20:41 – 23:07]
• The River Metaphor for Life Pulls: [26:53 – 28:10]
• Culture’s Pros and Cons, ROI Mentality: [28:10 – 31:49]
• Introducing the “Third Thing” Metaphor: [34:13 – 36:29]
• Manifesting and Why It Becomes a Push: [36:29 – 39:06]
• Recognizing Push vs Pull (Practical Exploration): [47:18 – 54:50]
• Change Back Attacks & The Cost of Authenticity: [58:24 – 60:33]
• How To Practice Sensing The Pull: [44:23 – 54:50; 61:03 – end]

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5. Tone & Takeaways

The episode maintains a warm, playful, and deeply sincere tone—blending spontaneous laughter, gentle teasing, and serious reflection. Martha and Rowan are self-deprecating, endlessly curious, and insistently idealistic, rooting even mystical ideas in the humor and hubbub of daily life.

Final Invitation:
Listeners are encouraged to drop the exhausting grind of “push,” pay attention to the surprising, light, and joyful direction of authentic “pulls,” and let these guide them from the inside out—be it in love, work, creativity, or community. The journey is wilder and, ultimately, more rewarding.

“When you follow the pull, you are on a wild ride and you feel it and it’s exhilarating and it’s beautiful.”
– Martha Beck, [59:00]

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Episode Structure

• Opening: Banter, life updates, metaphors of push and pull
• Middle: Personal stories (kids, bears, holidays), segue into the core discussion of inner pull vs cultural push, exploration of metaphors
• Core Segment: How to recognize, trust, and live by the pull; community anecdotes; practical advice
• Closing: Reflections on the difficulty and magic of following your inner current, addressing likely listener objections (fear of indulgence, risk of backlash)
• Call to Action: Stay wild, trust your pull, join the community if inspired

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This summary is intended to capture the core insights, heart, and humor of “Following Your Inner Pull” for those who haven’t listened. It highlights the hosts’ unique voice and the episode’s invitation to re-enchant and reclaim one’s own compass for living.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[B]

And I'm Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people trying to figure

[A]

it out like us. And today we're talking about something I think we've all experienced but rarely articulated.

[B]

Yeah. And we're talking about it as the pull and the push. Yeah, the push. When for some reason, like with a magnet that is positive, positive, it's pushing you, you're pushing back against it. And for some reason, we can get into quite a.

[A]

We can spend our lives because we've been told to by the culture, pushing toward something that repels us, and it feels like we repel it as well. Very much like those two magnets deflecting each other.

[B]

And if we stop fighting that, we are susceptible to the pull. And that's when things that do want us are drawn towards us or we're

[A]

drawn towards us, drawn towards them. It seems to be mutual. Yeah, it's quite magical.

[B]

And that's what we're talking about today, the push and the pull. Let's talk about it on Bewildered. We have a lot of conversations about finding our own true nature, and we enjoy that a lot. But talking ultimately can't compare with the lived experience of sharing space and time with kindred spirits and actually doing it. Every year, Mari and I bring Bewildered to the Costa Rican jungle for our pure wild self retreats. We call them a culture cleanse where you can wash off all the shoulds, learn directly from Martha how to hear that wise voice of your true nature. And we laugh and play and eat amazing food and make lifelong friends. If this sounds like something your soul longs for, listen to it. You can learn [e-mail] hope to see you in the jungle.

[A]

So what are you trying to figure out, Ro?

[B]

Well, Marty, I hope this is okay to say, but I'm a little bit freaked out by someone in my daughter's kindergarten class. There's, like, this one kid, okay, in her class who is, like, I want to say an old soul, but not like an old soul. Like, I've been around for thousands of years and seen many lifetimes, many lifetimes. She's more like, I'm 54 and I work at the dentist's office. And my name's Sandra.

[A]

You know, Is it really Sandra? Okay, just to be clear, it is not Sandra.

[B]

It's not Sandra. That bitch.

[A]

No, no, I'm kidding.

[B]

But, yeah, she's. She's very quiet and thoughtful, and she has a really deep voice. It's a little tiny thing And. And she just kind of. And she mutters to herself under her breath. Breath in a way where you think she's probably like judging your car or something. You know what I mean?

[A]

I want to hear what she's muttering.

[B]

I want to hear really, really short

[A]

something like, you can't microwave my food in a restaurant. I'll send it right back. Spin your head. I'm gonna snap you silly.

[B]

Yeah, but she'd sort of do it in a more passive aggressive way than that. You can see her just being kind of like, what if.

[A]

What if people are just born like that and then when they're 54, you meet them? What if the 54 year olds we know who are acting like 54 year

[B]

olds have always been that way?

[A]

Who are like, always that way.

[B]

Maybe that they've just hit their moment.

[A]

Yeah. So you could say, you know, my child has an old soul. He's about 47, you know, like. Or 82. There could be a lot of 82 year olds running around that kindergarten going, oh, my knees hurt or something.

[B]

I don't know. That's just our kid. Because she doesn't look where she's going.

[A]

Oh, that's true. And it must be said, Lila has her ways as well. Like, she spilled ginger ale on the table the other day, said, oh, put her face down, sucked up the entire pool, like, moving her head around, and then sat back and said, huh, I should do that more often. What kind of soul does she have? Like some weird, aberrant.

[B]

I should do that more often.

[A]

I should do that more often.

[B]

She. She went to school and her teacher told me. She was like, I got to have some really good time hanging out with your kid today. It was really fun. She's quite a character. She kept saying, drum roll, please, between sentences.

[A]

The other day she said, to be fair, most T. Rexes were red. Like, what? What are you talking about?

[B]

To be fair.

[A]

To be fair. Or she said, she told me the other day, muffy, I hate to say this, but I just have to. I'm really warm. I hate to say this, but I really have to.

[B]

The thing is, she very much enjoys an idiom.

[A]

She loves a turn of phrase.

[B]

She loves a turn of phrase.

[A]

Well, she's even getting these. Not from kids tv. Nobody in kids TV says, to be fair, most T. Rexes were red.

[B]

Maybe it's my friend, quote unquote, Sandra at school.

[A]

I have to say, I never, ever, I hate to say this, but I really have to. I never take Lila to school or pick her up you and Karen do all that? Because I. I had a shift earlier in my life, to be fair. To be fair. But, yeah, I think maybe your exhaustion is making you a tiny bit hypersensitive to the other kids in the room as you drag yourself in there in the morning, and no human being should be awake at that hour.

[B]

I don't know. I just think Sandra's judging me.

[A]

Well, yeah, for sure.

[B]

I'm like. I feel like maybe we're each other's nemesis, too. Because I can't say that I'm not a little bit muttering under my breath about her now at this point.

[A]

True. Like, publicly.

[B]

Yeah. I've said this before, but you have friends whose sickest burn when they're talking about people who aren't there is that they're a young soul. And I enjoy that so much. It's like. And you have to say it with that slightly, you know, it's not that she's just a young soul.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

I mean, you know that. Samsara for you.

[A]

Right? Right. Right now, she's 103, but her name is still Tiffany.

[B]

Oh, man, that's so deep. Hey, Marty, what are you trying to figure out?

[A]

Well, you know, with me, it's always about the animals.

[B]

Yes, always.

[A]

And I fully knew that we were, like, moving into an area renowned for its bears. Yes. And I talk about bears often, but it's because it's a real issue for me. Yeah, it's a real shishu. What were you gonna say?

[B]

I was gonna, like, reveal the name of the town.

[A]

Well, go ahead. Bearsville. We live in Bearsville. So. So we.

[B]

You know, what I'm saying is there. There were clues that we were gonna come into this situation.

[A]

The traffic signs, the yellow signs that have the black silhouette of a bear crossing the road, name of the town

[B]

signs, the fact that the first day we moved in, a bear was there.

[A]

A bear was there in the driveway.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Just going, I'll take those leftovers now. He was so sweet. Well, that's the thing. Is there. The place is filthy with bears and everybody's fine. I have a friend who I've known forever, but she lives up here. So we've had. It's been really fun, like, getting to know her better. And she was telling me she doesn't live in Bearsville, but she lives very close by. And she told me that they have on her property these trees that have buds in the spring, or maybe it's another time of year. Anyway, they're delicious to the bears. And she said, we have bears that just go up one tree and stay there for a week. And at night we open the windows so we can hear them munching. Aw, isn't that darling? Anyway, so I shouldn't worry. They're so innocuous, these bears. But then we had an incident where you and I were hanging out. Carrie coo. Sound asleep, zonked fast asleep. And we ended up talking till two in the morning, which is what you do when you really like somebody. And Karen was there, just asleep. She was. She really likes us too.

[B]

Anyway, you're painting such a word picture.

[A]

I am. And then I went out and I always do the same thing. I take my little bag and my flashlight and I walk out to go to.

[B]

Heading to your annex.

[A]

To my ANNEX, which is 50 steps away. And I say, hey, bears. Because that's what you're supposed to do.

[B]

No, come on, let's be fair. You open the door and you say, with a kind of world weariness that always amuses me a little bit, hey,

[A]

bears like you again.

[B]

You're kind of like Sandra going Mondays.

[A]

Am I right? All the people that I know named Sandra go through my head. And then I remember Old soul. Okay. And I think you may even mention this, but it's a daily occurrence in our life. And so I go out at 2 in the morning, and I said, hey, bears. And a bear said. A bear said, like, there were two very heavy footsteps. And I thought, no. And then I thought, why is a very large man standing on our property at two in the morning in Bearsville? And then I thought those were some very heavy steps. And then I heard very low.

[B]

That was me.

[A]

And I pointed my flashlight. I tried to get to see. And I think that's why he went. He didn't like the flashlight. And then it started to move, the sound. And I was like, okay, I'll just

[B]

go to my room.

[A]

But at the last minute, I couldn't. So I ran upstairs. You were finally zonked out, asleep in your room. And I, like, jumped on you went, there's a bear outside. There's a bear out there. There's a bear out there. And you walked me home bravely. And then you tried to walk home alone. But I wanted to walk you because of bears.

[B]

Yeah, we almost got ourselves in quite the pickle.

[A]

She's running back and forth like some sort of failed logic problem all night long. We would have had to wake Caricou up.

[B]

Lucky for you, I have a. Like, I was born with a very low sense of like physical danger. I'm just, I never worry.

[A]

Born of complete naivete, I think.

[B]

Oh, completely. No, I don't deny you should be

[A]

afraid of anything that moves. Oh, but we're not in Australia. So when you're not in Australia, the threat level goes down so far.

[B]

Well, and it's like bears are teddy bears. In Australia there are no bears. Well, there's drop bears. There's drop bears, but they only really go for foreigners. Honestly, look it up. So the idea of a bear who I like, I still have my bear that I got when I was three. It's like, it'll be fine, Marty.

[A]

I'm like, please, you should have heard those footsteps. Anyway. And I went and looked at the footprints. The next day there were. And it was a big bear. It was like a 350 pound bear or that. Or a very small bear with really huge feet. Like a Bigfoot. A bear. Bigfoot, where the bears around believe in it but never see it.

[B]

Maybe it was like six deer with some bare feet.

[A]

So here's the thing.

[B]

Go on.

[A]

Then it became Easter, it became Easter, it became Easter. And we had all these plans and all three of us had plans. All three of us went shopping for Easter. Candy, chocolate, eggs to hide.

[B]

Can I tell, Can I confess something?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I have a lot of anxiety around things like Easter and Christmas and Tooth Fairy and all of those. Like, I have a lot of performance anxiety. And so anyway, I just need to put that in because she's being really nice. But I bought most of the excessive amounts of chocolate. You think, what do we need to do something about the Easter Bunny? The Easter Bunny brings the.

[A]

Well, we were just supplementing it the way you buy presents at Christmas time. Even though there's a Santa Claus. Yeah. And talk about performance anxiety with the tooth fairy. When my third child, Ellie, lost her first tooth, we put it under her pillow and said, there will be a quarter, a nice shiny quarter for you.

[B]

And.

[A]

And we opened it, we put it in a plastic bag. Then we pulled it out, my ex

[B]

husband and I and the tooth fairy

[A]

and the tooth fairy. And she had put in with her tooth, she had put a note that said, dear tooth Fairy, leave a dollar or else. Do you think? I mean. And that was the first tooth she lost. Can you imagine? I had to start saving up right away for her deciduous teeth to plop out of her head.

[B]

I am with Ellie on this one. 25 cents in the 90s.

[A]

You're right, you're right. I mean, so, okay, so performance anxiety, right? Like look, child, I brought you. I brought you a hand powered egg beater for Christmas. Yeah.

[B]

Mow my lawn and you can have ye a tuppence.

[A]

Tuppence. All right, so it's Easter.

[B]

It's Easter.

[A]

I'm fully aware that our place is crawling with bears, but you have memories from Australia of that beautiful little glint of a. Of a pastel colored foil under a leaf.

[B]

In Australia you hide the chocolate eggs. That's how it goes. The chocolate eggs are what gets hidden. There's none of this. Here's your basket. We've saved you the work stuff that I'm aware of. Unless it's changed.

[A]

You get an empty basket.

[B]

No, I never got a basket. Use your hands. That's what they were for. What do you got pockets for?

[A]

How are you gonna get to hell if you have no hand basket? Oh, you're in hell. I'm sorry, dissing Australia. I don't mean that. It's a gorgeous place.

[B]

It's fabulous. All right, so that. I just need to set that scene that in Australia you hide chocolate eggs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. Okay.

[A]

So we had purchased mountains of stuff and Carrie Coo was gone. So we sat there, we watched our TV at night. We missed Karen. And then it was like time to go to bed.

[B]

Moment silence for Karen, who was in Canada.

[A]

And then Ro was like, good night, sleep well. And I said, is, isn't this the night we do that? And she was like, oh, I nearly forgot. She was. But yeah, like, it's that weird thing where you're so obsessed with something and you prepare and prepare and then you're late to it or you sleep through it or something. It was, it was this terrifying moment. So of course we're like, oh my God, we gotta get us a second win. We got all the chocolate, all. We gathered it around to supplement the Easter Bunny and then we were out the door almost. And it was like one of those cartoon things where you're running and then you just stop.

[B]

Stop. Yeah.

[A]

And we just like Wile E. Coyote

[B]

a minute after he goes off the

[A]

cliff and before the end, and I looked at rock and I said, bears. Bears. Bears.

[B]

Oh, bears would like this. Yeah. And. Yeah. And so we were going to. Well, with the Easter Bunny's help, we were going to cover the well completely.

[A]

Cover the yard in chocolate.

[B]

Yeah. Not really a smart move thinking about it.

[A]

Right. So if you're in an area where, number one, the bears are waking up from their hibernation because in a weird parallel, they come out of a big hole where you Thought they might be dead for Easter. Which is where? Who knows? Like, whoa, right, that you thought they were dead. The rock is rolled aside. There is a bear, Bear is risen. I'm not saying that it's not true that I don't know what happened in the high and far off time, but what I do know is around Easter, those bears roll away the rocks and they come out and they are not dead, but they are hungry and very inquisitive. And they can smell a piece of chocolate from a distance of 19 miles,

[B]

just like our Lord Jesus Christ, famously.

[A]

And then, of course, back in the day in the Holy Land, Jesus saw his shadow and went back in for six more weeks of winter. It's confusing to be me.

[B]

It's confusing. Anyway, we saved.

[A]

We saved Easter. And the Easter bunny helped us hide all the eggs in the house. And they're probably still in many places. We haven't discovered them.

[B]

She found one last night.

[A]

See that? That was the great joy of my Easter as a child. We had 10 kids, eight kids and two adults living in the house. Maybe there were extras. I can't count that high. But the joy of it in this completely chaotic house with eight kids was that you would literally be. And we always went for were hard boiled eggs. There was no chocolate involved. We were in a cult. Right. No offense, I'm offending every religion I know.

[B]

No offense, Mormons, but you are in a cult.

[A]

So. I remember finding an egg when we were getting ready for the 4th of July. We were still discovering hard boiled eggs in the house. Yeah, that's what happened. And you know what?

[B]

What?

[A]

The bears would have liked that too. It's probably a good thing they never did it outside.

[B]

Yeah, there you go. I think we've all learned a valuable lesson today, which is let's do a podcast.

[A]

Oh, why not? Let's do it.

[B]

Hi there, I'm Ro and I'll be your podcaster for today. Do you know how to tip your podcaster? It's actually pretty easy. You can rate our pod with lots of stars, all your stars. You can review it with your best superlatives. You can even subscribe or follow Bewildered so you'll never miss an episode. Then, of course, if you're ready to go all in, our paid online community is called Wilder A Sanctuary for the Bewildered. And I. I can honestly say it's one of the few true sanctuaries online. You can go to wildercommunity.com to check it out. Great review. Subscribe, join, and you all have a great day.

[A]

Now, so we talk a lot on the podcast about coming to our senses, which sounds like you could do it by yourself, but weirdly, it isn't.

[B]

No. You actually can't do it alone. And I think especially right now, when everything out there feels very polarized and overwhelming and noisy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People really often don't have a place where they can just go and be completely themselves.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So.

[A]

And that's why we started Wilder, which is our online community. And it's for people who really want kindness and connection and belonging without the strident, divisive argument that seems to be everywhere these days.

[B]

Yeah. In Wilder, we explore a new theme every month to help us stay in touch with our true nature. And there are all these live events on Zoom that are so fun. Fun from like, body doubling, co working,

[A]

parties, meditations, teaches meditations and classes.

[B]

Marty does Earth School, which is brilliant. And frequent meditations that we do together. And it is just a group of people who are the best. So if you've ever listened to this podcast and thought, I wish I could go deeper with this, or I wish I could talk to more people about these kinds of ideas, or Wilder is where that happens.

[A]

It really is. So if you want to come join [e-mail], we would love to see you there.

[B]

So, Marty, today's podcast is on a topic that you and I started chatting about after a peculiar event took place in our lives.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

We both suddenly were seized during a work meeting.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

With a very strong feeling that we would like to write marketing emails for a new product that is being developed. And for both of us, I think it's fair to say that this was a relatively novel.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Kind of experience.

[A]

It's like saying, wow, I'm looking forward to that root canal, you know?

[B]

Yeah. And yet both of us were like, you know, oh, yeah, let's do that. And I actually. I said, yeah, I can do that. Although it'd probably be better if Marty was there, too. And you're like, I can do that.

[A]

I want to do that. Yeah.

[B]

And it was so different from the kind of energy of. All right, well, I guess what makes sense is that I'll write it and I'll come to you and get some more.

[A]

And it is. We have done this in the past, and it is. It's kind of like now.

[B]

Sounds exciting.

[A]

I would literally prefer having a tooth pulled or whatever than to have to do an entire set of marketing emails. It's grinding, but. And we used to do it, and we'd say, it's kind of the old business.

[B]

If you get an email that says, love, Mom.

[A]

We did it.

[B]

She totally wrote it.

[A]

Absolutely. But, I mean, we're really pretty picky about that, actually. Like, what? Oh, we wouldn't.

[B]

We would never hire a copywriter.

[A]

Deer in the headlights look. Okay, so the old model of business is very much like, oh, we have. The marketing folks have given us an assignment. We know. This is how it works. We're gonna make this happen, aren't we? We're gonna make it happen. Yes. We're sitting there setting goals and giving ourselves rewards. So it's been hard to do this in the past. We've had to push ourselves incredibly hard. And so the weird thing was that we both said after the meeting, that's not a push, it's a pull.

[B]

Yeah. We both felt weirdly compelled. And it was so unusual. Like, it was so unusual for us both to be, like, kind of straining to get to work on this particular type of task that we kind of, like, took a minute, didn't we? And we were just like, what's going on here? And the answer is, we don't know.

[A]

And we don't know.

[B]

We don't know what's going on.

[A]

But we kind of do also, because

[B]

I love you

[A]

both our personalities, in, like, one moment, we knew that we were talking about something real. First of all, because we've both been through enough of life to recognize that one feeling is associated with a type of experience. As it plays out, they just like, if you push yourself, push yourself, it's hard, it makes you grumpy, you burn out really quickly. You don't want to do it again. You hate everybody. Like, it's pretty intense if you keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And we both done it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we both had the experience of being pulled towards something.

[B]

Yeah. The thing is that I think some of the time or a lot of the time, and I don't know how universal this is, but I think for me, and probably for you, usually when this happens, it's a little bit more predictable. Like, you have something you want to do that you're running towards, like a little puppy dog, and it's just pulling you towards it. Right. And then the things that feel like you're more like you're in quicksand and you have a rope. Right. Or you're. I'm so sorry to all the Gen X and. And elder millennials listening, but, like, maybe you're like the Artax, the horse in the never ending story. But anyway, I won't bring up that collective trauma, doesn't it? Oh, you're in quicksand with a rope. That's it. Yeah. There is no horse in a bog.

[A]

You're dragging yourself along.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And it's.

[B]

It's hard. So we had this one experience of, like, that's weird. That we feel pulled towards something that shouldn't feel pully. And we were like, what's that? And we started thinking about it.

[A]

Yeah. And thinking about how through our lives, there have been things and moments where we were pulled undeniably, like, inexorably. There's sometimes when you know what you like. And this is what you were saying about predictability. If you give me a list of things I like, I can pick them out and predict that I will want to go toward that. So it's sort of. It's a pull, but it's slight and it's consistent. But then sometimes there will be a thing that I don't. I shouldn't like in my own sort of personal history.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because there are many things that I've done them two or three times. Like trying to stay awake at the accountant's office. I have the worst insomnia in the world. And I used to go in to my accountant, and he would start explaining money, and I would literally wake up with my head on his desk, asleep, drooling. Oh, my God. Karen was gone.

[B]

For Karen.

[A]

Yeah. And there was one time they actually just put me to bed on a couch in a neighboring office so they could. And I don't fall asleep anyway, except there and talking about that. So I know that's a push. To try to even stay awake to talk about money is a push. Let alone pushing for something that is just about money cannot do it. But this experience of writing the copy defied the odds. And I started thinking, where else have there been things that generally feel like a push to me, but suddenly they're a pull? And I actually, looking back on a lifetime of that, I realized that it's like a series of poles. You were comparing it to a river. Like, there's a river that wants me to go to different locations on the landscape.

[B]

And all it can do is provide you with rock to rock. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So if you're traveling along through your life and you're just. This thing pops up. An email comes into your inbox about something or someone mentioned something in passing, you know, or you see something in a. In a magazine or something like. And you. And you go, yeah. And I feel like that's the Rock, you know, that's the next rock. And, and what I was saying to Marty is, what if we're in the flow of this whole river and. But we can't see the river. We're in the damn river. Yeah, like you can't see the river, but like, if you could zoom up, you would actually see that in these peculiar little pools. If you'll follow them, if you won't, you're going to spend your whole life dog paddling up river. Which is fine, if you like that sort of thing.

[A]

It's good exercise.

[B]

Yeah, but how delicious if we like, trained our sensitivity towards like, whoosh, whoosh.

[A]

Flowing.

[B]

Flowing from pool to pool.

[A]

Yeah, pool, pool, pool. From pool to pool, from rock to rock, rock to rock, pool to pool.

[B]

Sorry, I can't talk.

[A]

But here's the thing. That is not something that modern culture teaches us to do. It's very, very different from the way decision making is made from a rational perspective.

[B]

Right, right. And so I think what the, like what the culture would say about opportunities that arise. Like, let's, let's put it in that frame. Right. An opportunity arises one way or another, something that you haven't encountered before, and you can move towards it or away from it.

[A]

Okay, Right.

[B]

I think what culture would say is

[A]

our culture, modern, Western, blah, blah. Yes.

[B]

In, in the vernacular of our show, by culture, we mean the dominant culture that many of us live in today. If it's not your culture, don't send us emails. We're sorry.

[A]

Okay, go.

[B]

I completely forgot what I was talking about.

[A]

You're going from rock to rock.

[B]

Culture. Culture, culture, culture would say opportunity arises. Make a pros and cons list. Right. These are the pros. These are the reasons I should go towards it. These are the cons. These are the. And you know, the cons are going to say things like, haven't done it before. Seems scary, inconvenient, boring. Actually, it's less likely to be boring. And so what I think we're trained to do is see which one of those columns has the more items in it and follow that. And so it's like. It's a rational way of navigating. Yeah.

[A]

It's return on investment. It's calculating everything according to the reward you're going to get and minimize the effort, maximize the reward.

[B]

But you know what? What? It's not like return on investment. You can't know ahead of time. So it's only ever a projected return on investment. Right. And that's key, I think, because we're not Working. We're not living. We're not doing life in an environment where it is easy to project roi.

[A]

That's really true.

[B]

Whether. And we're talking financially, if we're talking about business or what, or if we're just talking emotional ROI or experiential roi, you know, like, how the fuck should we know how to do any of that anymore?

[A]

And we never actually. We have never been able to predict any of that. So what we end up doing is making everything.

[B]

Honey, I think if you'd stayed awake, the accountant might have had something to say about. We've never been able to predict roi. I think, like, there probably are some formulae.

[A]

Yes. Certainly in the formal sense, where you're going to. You're selling hamburgers or whatever. Yes, you can look at roi. But in terms of your investing all your energy into this one wild and precious life, there's no way of knowing how much joy you'll get out of something you can generally predict, but you cannot pin it down. You cannot say, this is going to be more rewarding to me as a being and know it for sure until you get there. And so we go on experience. I didn't like this. I didn't like this. I didn't like this. This probably won't be fun either. And if you're doing that just with your mind, you're going to stay in pretty much the same pattern. Anything that gives you positive reinforcement, you're going to repeat. And anything you don't know about, you're going to avoid because you don't know. And uncertainty is anathema from this perspective.

[B]

Right? Yeah. And so, in a way, your experience is going to fill out the pros and cons. Lists itself. Yes. Right.

[A]

But that's not the way culture tells us to plan it. It's like, make sure you know what's going to happen and plan something you know will be good and, you know, will bring you all. And so we really know we don't like marketing copy, so we understand that's important.

[B]

Carmen.

[A]

Yes, we should, like, by the lights of rational expectation, we should go away from it and assign it to somebody else. But that felt like, no. Like, I was like, no, I want to do it.

[B]

I know.

[A]

And it wasn't like, I'll do it.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And so we started thinking about, like, what if we're kind of being remote controlled a little bit sometimes? Like, I don't think it's like every time, every moment, like, walking on sunshine. I just mean that every now and again when you have those little. That's an unexpected little tailwind into a direction.

[A]

The other day in Wilder, our little online community, which is little, it's not so little and it's full. Like in terms of soul, it's immense. The most amazing people are there. So I was talking about pull and push and how we sort of feel pulled to. And one of our fabulous people, Tracy, said it's so interesting to her that when she's fallen in love, even if you don't really. She hasn't really known the person very well, there's a sense when you interact with someone where that's just happening, that they're also pulled toward you. So I was thinking, yeah, it's so interesting because you'd think if love were just random, then the good looking, sexy rich people would just be mobbed by people who want them and they would only fall in love with each other and it would be a miserable sort of numbers game. But that's not how it works. When someone is pulled towards someone else. I started looking back over my life and thinking there is this. It has turned out that they were also pulled toward me. And it's not just in love situations, it's in work and different things. So we started talking about what I called the third thing. So when I taught art as a teaching fellow at Harvard, my wonderful professor mentor, Will Ryman would tell us that, tell the students, when you put two objects up to do a still life, like it's an orange and a banana or whatever, you actually are drawing three things because there's the orange, there's the banana, and then there's the interstitial space between them. And it also forms a visual image. And if you're not careful and you're not taking care of the third thing, it can destroy the picture because the third thing is always there. So talking to Tracy, I was like, here we are, we're feeling pulled. Something else feels pulled to us. Just take it as a hypothesis. When you're feeling pulled to something, let yourself imagine that it's being pulled to you too. And that the third thing, what looks like empty space, is actually like mechanizing the whole process.

[B]

Or it's gravity. It's a gravitational force kind of pulling you together. And what I love about this idea of the third thing as well is there's any number of metaphors. Like magnet is the other one, right? And then we're back to magnetic, north and compasses.

[A]

Yeah, being pulled, pulled, pulled.

[B]

And I just love the idea of thinking about how we navigate Life as just with a little sprinkle of fairy dust on it and imagining, well, what if that, that nudge, the way you're like tiny ad in a magazine or something, that feels like a very old fashioned kind of example, but that just grabs your eye and you're like, can't stop thinking about it. But I love the idea that there is, like, I don't know, that there's something there that is not like a God on high with your destiny, but more like it's a little Easter egg in the video game or there's. There's something there that your higher self would like to experience or learn or someone you like to encounter right while you're here.

[A]

So instead of, instead of like, I love this, I love talking about this. You know I do. And even. It's funny talking about the culture because even in when people do want a little fairy dust, like one of the many years ago when the film the Secret came out, and the secret was that whatever you think about, you'll get. And like, people have been. That wasn't a secret. People have been working on that one for a long time. And it doesn't work for most of us most of the time. But it also felt like, hmm, like there's a reason that book really caught on. And maybe it's because people, first of all, let me say the people that I knew at that time were like, I'm gonna manifest abundance. I'm gonna manifest the love of my life or whatever. And they started working on it and they would work on it and they would make it a push. Like, I know I have it. Like I have to get my vision board exactly right. And then they would do and they'd be like, oh, no. But I'm feeling like I have to feel as if I already have the thing. I have to get happier. I have to get happier putting hundred thousand dollar bills on the roof of their. Like, we make everything into a push. But here's my point. The real thing is that we can live as if we're a magnet being just pulled toward things. Like we can live life not as a series of tasks, but as a series of magnets. Yeah.

[B]

And like being, I don't know, like manifesting stuff feels so much, just feels so materialist. And like, I just want to go whitewater rafting. Do you know what I mean? Like, I just want to. Like, what about the moving through space of it instead of the law of attraction and attracting stuff and attracting the car you want. What if it's like, I Want to go towards that. That feels yummy. And then you get to have agency and you get to. And you don't have to have a magic wand. You can just have curiosity and adventurous spirit, you know?

[A]

Yeah, I love that. And I like talking to Tracy and the. In the community. The other day I started to be so amazed. Have you ever played with magnets? When you were a little kid, did you first play with magnets?

[B]

I play with magnets every day. I have fidget toys.

[A]

Like, just the feeling of that pull or push through space is like, what is happening? This is magic. Right? It really feels like magic.

[B]

And mind you, so does microwave, but.

[A]

Well, it all feels pretty magical to me. I have to say anything except keeping seven years of records so that you can pay your taxes. No, that one is an active push for me.

[B]

Okay. No accounts.

[A]

Interesting. Because it's not. I'm actually. The push is coming reciprocally, too. If I'm pushing myself to do something, maybe that something is pushing away from me.

[B]

Your Honor, I couldn't do my taxes. They didn't want me to do them. Do you see?

[A]

They are magnetically opposed to me.

[B]

It was equal. I didn't want to do them. They didn't want to be done by me.

[A]

So that's really an interesting thing. Maybe the whole current of the place, the push and the pull. Maybe when you're doing something that you really don't like and you're pushing harder and harder to make yourself do it, and then you sort of surrender to exhaustion or whatever, so you don't do it and you get pushed away from it. Maybe it puts you in range of the magnet that's trying to pull you. Maybe if you never leave the push magnet, you never feel the pull.

[B]

That makes so much sense to me.

[A]

That's the kind of sense we like to make. None. No, it's not.

[B]

Well, yeah, because I always believe in this. And I know we must have talked about it before here, but like, in this idea of surrender as something to dive into joyfully rather than something to fall into in complete despair and exhaustion. You know, like. And I mean, you've talked about it before. Leaf in the stream. It's literally the metaphor we're playing with today is the current. But yeah, like I was saying before, that like remote control or tailwind or whatever, it's just like, it's so fun to think, why do I want to turn left at this intersection? What's around the corner? And I, you know, I remember. I don't know. Again, I don't Know if this is universal, but when I was young, from childhood right up Till probably early 20s, there was a lot more fairy dust on stuff. There was a lot more awe and wonder.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And some of that's how the brain works. Some of that's the kind of life you're leading at that sort of time, and all kinds of different reasons, but I. I can remember feeling like I was on adventures a lot more. And it's really fun to kind of think if I just jiggle my availability. Right. If I let go of pushing so hard against magnets that don't even want me attaching to them, then I could be writing marketing copy right now.

[A]

Oh, the joy.

[B]

The joy. Amazing.

[A]

It's interesting you talk about this. You don't know if it's universal, because I've had the opposite experience growing up. I felt no degrees of freedom. I didn't feel any degrees of freedom when I.

[B]

Not even when you were out in the woods with your bow and arrow? No. You didn't feel freedom.

[A]

No. I knew what my life had to be. I knew I was.

[B]

Oh, you mean possibility.

[A]

Yeah. I didn't like. I liked going to school, but I had to go to school. There was no thought of I'm off on an adventure ever, because I knew that I had to. Like, the things I had to do were all I believed. What the people around me told me was true, and what they were telling me was true is that even your thoughts are under scrutiny. You are not allowed to even think about something that isn't coherent with the gospel, the true church. This is one of the things that's so interesting in our relationship. There is no way to communicate what it is like to grow up thinking your role is so set. You will get to be 20, you'll get married, you'll have kids. That's your life. You will have 12 kids. That's your life. Like, watch the Sound of music for 130 times because that's your life. And when I left that religion, that was like the hardest pull, the hardest push I've ever had. Like, I was pushing myself to be good my whole life, and it just pushed back. There was something in me. There was something in the world that pushed me away from that and then pulled me incredibly hard out into something completely anomalous and new and terrifying to me. And that was when I started thinking, life is a big adventure.

[B]

Oh, interesting. Yeah. Well, there you go. I mean, and it just shows that, like, when we can make ourselves available to that worldview, when we can stop Pushing against, like, all the systems or the institutions or whatever it is that. That are providing that push. And I think we get so hypnotized by the process of pushing away and being pushed away and how exhausting it is and everything.

[A]

But it's what we're supposed to do.

[B]

Yeah, but. But you can get so stuck in it. And. And so it does seem like at any point, if you choose to just kind of take a breath and. And step out of the struggle. Yeah. That there is that. It's this close, you know, it's so close. If you want to start following the. The river, this current.

[A]

And it is. I want to talk about how you feel for it and what it feels like.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But there is this tendency to have in our minds a kind of religion. Mine was a literal religion. But maybe you are an obsessive, like, reader of Martha Stewart Living magazine and you really think that the rule is you have to get up at 5 and grow a garden. You have to throw dinner parties at this kind of, you know, at this time. You have to put white.

[B]

It's actually my dream.

[A]

It is. You have to put. Well, the house has to be absolutely. Without any clutter whatsoever, and paint it in the specific Martha Stewart colors.

[B]

It's my nightmare there.

[A]

So whatever it is in your head that says, this is what I have to do, or I will be socially shamed and I will be shamed inside because I won't think I'm a good enough homemaker. Mother, man, whatever it is, the religion in your head, some of us have looser religions than others. Mine was very tight. Right. Very jammed in there. I was trying so hard to be good, and that's how we do bad things, because we're trying so hard to be good. Anyway, the difference between running on that, on the prescriptions and the rules and the law that is written either in the Book of Mormon or in Martha Stewart Living or Mechanics Digest or wherever, that's a real thing. I think the difference between running on book learning and running on internalized religious principles about whatever, and actually putting yourself into that river and like the feel of a magnet, it's not like anything else you'll ever feel. It defies so much of what you've ever experienced in the past. You drop a rock, it falls, unless it's a magnet, and you drop it near another magnet and then it goes up. Suddenly it breaks the rules in the most confounding way. And I think I'm always trying to help people do that, and they're just unfamiliar with following the pole.

[B]

So we want to come to our senses, right? Culture says, come to consensus, write your pros and cons list, be your housewife self. And we want to come to our senses. So in this case, in this conversation, what that means is we want to stop pushing long enough to be able to learn to follow the current and where kind of the adventure of life wants to take us, let's say. So can you help us to understand what's the coming to our senses process with this? What does it feel like?

[A]

It's really fascinating. Okay, so everybody's familiar with the push. Everybody, every single person out there has at some point just buckled up and said, I'm going to have to do this, even though I don't like it.

[B]

We did an episode about the Hustle recently that was very much on this,

[A]

where you push and you push and you push and it's really familiar. Most people don't love school. I loved school, so it was a pull for me. So I would look around me and think, why are these people so miserable in school? School is the best thing ever invented. Exactly fits my skill set. And something, the third thing wanted me there. So the push is characterized by a sense of heaviness, like a physical sense of heaviness, exhaustion. You get up in the morning, you already feel the weight of is. It grinds it like. And maybe it is a magnetic push where you, you start to go toward the thing and you start to. You will go to do anything. Like people talk about writer's block. When you sit down to write, that's when your house suddenly does need cleaning and you get up and you do all the things. So you'll be like sort of ricocheting away from it. You have to kind of. You sit down to think about it, your mind drifts. It's like, it is like trying to push a magnet toward an opposite. Or is it the opposite polarity?

[B]

Same.

[A]

The same polarity that deflects. And it is like that. It's like you move up closer to what you're meaning to do and your mind goes off. And then sometimes your body goes off too. And a lot of times people will end up doing things that are self soothing instead. Like, I have to work on this. It doesn't want me to work on it and I don't want to work on it.

[B]

Maybe if I give myself some ice cream, I'll be able to work on it.

[A]

Yeah, and you could not want the ice cream at all. But that's sort of a cultural paradigm. Well, you can eat, you can smoke, you can. Whatever it is. Everybody needs a little treat sometimes. Or shopping. Ro would buy herself soil. That's the thing she does these days. Lots of us. She keeps going off, y'.

[B]

All.

[A]

It's really. You know, I've heard people say my wife is spending way too much money at the. I don't know the first or. Excuse me. Well, Rogo's sneaking off in the car and she's going to buy. She's going to be shopping. And what she will come back with is 400 pounds of soil.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So anyway, that's something that you can do to self soothe if you were trying to do marketing copy and that you didn't want to do.

[B]

That soil is my north star. Okay. That soil could not be a bigger pool. It's pulling me in the car towards it, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's pulling me. I'm loving it. It's loving me. Pooh. And then, you know, you'll be eating the tomatoes of glory.

[A]

Well, that soil has certainly. Now there's a sufficient mass to pull you gravitationally. It doesn't need to be a magnet. I mean, all we have is dirt.

[B]

This woman who says never cook, then gets worried about the price of dirt

[A]

and I'm worried about the price of it is the compulsive manner in which you purchase it. Oh, my God. And it weighs 15 pounds a piece. I've never seen you lift more weight in your life. It's the pull. It's compulsive.

[B]

It's the pull.

[A]

Compulsive. Okay.

[B]

Nope, I won't hear it because I know what it feels like to be pulled.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

And I'm being pulled towards making a garden. And you can't shame me for my dirt. I'm very comfortable with my dirt.

[A]

Are you? Yes. All right. I guess I'll. That will be. That will be now the fourth person in our relationship. A huge mound of dirt that you're deeply in love with. No, it's wonderful. You're going to grow us all the food in the universe. I love you. Buy more soil, honey. It's good. Oh, my God.

[B]

This is going so weird.

[A]

Okay, get back, get back. Okay.

[B]

I was like the Beatles once said, get back.

[A]

Get back to where you once belonged. Okay. So we all know what the push feels like and the grind and the deflection and all of that. So instead of taking that. It's what you make. It's the meaning you make of that. I'm supposed to do this, but I'm a lazy Bastard. And I never get things done. Okay. That kind of thing. There's the self soothing that we do when we're trying to push and then there's the self loathing that comes up and it's just a mass of difficulty and pain because we're trying to push towards something that is actively pushing us away. And the third thing in the middle is saying that's not right for you.

[B]

Do you think that part of the suffering of that situation comes from the idea that we're. Do you think that the culture sells us the idea that things like that, that are that kind of deep push should feel like a pull and that that's where the self loathing and all the those behaviors to do those compuls, impulsive behaviors come from. Us thinking that there's something wrong with us because it doesn't feel like a way to live your life.

[A]

And the reason I'm spending so much time on it is that a lot of people think, well, if I don't push, I'm just going to sit around like doing gambling online or something. I'm going to do something bad.

[B]

Well, and also if I don't push, if I don't do something that I hate, I won't get my reward in heaven or on the corporate ladder. Yeah, that's what I'm saying is that it's all the same story. That misery leads to joy in some way.

[A]

Absolutely. And it does in the short term if all you do is keep the same mindset. So what it feels like to get pulled, you actually have to be out of the mindset of the culture. Tells me where I'll get my reward and I have to do my chores. You kind of have to drop out of culture and be sort of a freewheeling, independent object that is drawn to its own specific places. And for me, even as a little kid, school was that like school pulled me. I loved school and school loved me. And when you're in a place where you actually following the pull and you're not just getting a reward to make yourself feel better for not pushing, if you actually free yourself from the push, if you let it propel you away from it and then you start to feel the things that are calling you, there's a sense of surprise. That's my favorite part about it. What is happening? This happened in our meeting the other day. As silly an example as this is, what is happening. I don't want anyone else writing that marketing copy. I want to write it. And it seemed so fun, you know, and same thing Happened like I was with a steady partner, had been for decades. You came along and both of us were like, what is this? What's happening? Why are we polled? Why are we being pulled? Why does this. What? And I don't know how you felt it, but it was like, one of the most intense pulls I've ever had in my life. And I didn't know you well enough to realize what an absolute score I was making in terms of soil.

[B]

Yes, the soil you would one day

[A]

have the amount of soil this person would bring into my life.

[B]

That's right, baby.

[A]

No, it actually. It blows me away because we talk about following the river and feeling the pull and not knowing why you're going there, and you kind of tried to make up. Like, people made up reasons why we got together. Well, their sex life was boring or whatever. She was a gold digger. Yeah, we've heard it all. And in fact, like, all I knew was the pole. I didn't know you as well as I do, and then all these things about you sort of. I sort of discovered after it already happened, and I was like, this is exactly the person I most. I mean, everything you brought was so perfect that I would never have thought I would find it in one single person.

[B]

And you didn't.

[A]

Yeah, that's right.

[B]

That's why we have two partners.

[A]

But it's weird. I mean, Karen just left for, like, 10 days to go gallivanting with her sisters. And when the three of us were back together again, it's like, God, it was the magnet clicking again. And trying to push away from it, trying to say, this is too weird. We can't do this was one of the most brutal pushes I've ever tried to do. So much that, like, a couple of hours of it would almost destroy me. I mean, it was so intense. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, we talk about our relationship and us getting together a lot because I think it was so counter cultural and counter. What we know in the internalized culture is. Is just as alive and well as in us as anyone else. And. But I think, like. And what happened was we did it anyway. The pool was so intense that we did it anyway. But, like, with all these physics metaphors that I can't really work with because I don't really understand physics, that, like, some. Something happened where we kind of split the atom a little bit because everything in our lives at the time exploded.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

When we got together, like, socially, it was like, yeah, yeah, it went. Everything went completely crazy, and it was really tough.

[A]

Oh, my God. People did not approve.

[B]

No. And a lot of people projected a lot of stuff. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But the point was that it's sometimes it's big energies that you're working with here, you know, not all the time, thank God. Because that's, that's a heady. Yeah, that's a heady kind of thing. But.

[A]

And for true, it is the culture you will, that will fight you when you try to do this. And that was our, you know, the little posse of people we hung out with. That was our culture.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then when, when we got together, that culture was like, oh, no, no, no, no. And we lost it. Right. And it was like, what, what just happened to us. And what I think is true for the individual, there's also a group dynamic where there are times in your life where you're pushed and pulled into your own stream, where you will then leave the sort of pool, the, the waterfall, whatever it was. The eddy. The eddy, let's call it the eddy. You will leave the eddy where you'd been circling for a while and go off. And people will be like, what? Come back? And you're like, I will try. And you can't.

[B]

No. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, it's cool. And I mean, you talk about change back attacks. This is a great moment to mention that term because if anyone, like I'm picturing people listening, going, well, actually, I think I'm being pulled in this direction. And like, you can't. Having done this a few times, we can say it's not, it's. It's probably the right thing to do if you, if it genuinely feels that way. But you will get a bit of blowback.

[A]

Yeah. And that's why I was so cautiously saying it's not just giving yourself treats or anything. Like, because sometimes the people around you will say, you're off your rocker. You should not be doing this. Clearly you've slipped off the true path because you're doing dysfunctional things and that is not okay. So they will push you away from the thing that is pulling you. Does not make any sense. They'll try to drag you into the thing that is a push for you and try to keep you from the thing that feels like a pull. And so if you genuinely are doing stuff like online gambling to cope with your sense of being pushed, they will be able to say there, you're a bad person when you're not pushing. But you're not a bad person. You're self soothing because the push is so painful. And Then when you follow the pull, it's a totally different feeling. Soothing yourself is so perfect. It makes you feel less energetic, more self loathing. When you go with the pull, you are on a wild ride and you feel it and it's exhilarating and it's beautiful. And you say to your friends, something amazing has happened to me.

[B]

And they're like, we're worried about you.

[A]

Yeah. And there'll be none of that. Please.

[B]

We've been talking about you a lot and we don't think it's okay.

[A]

Yeah. So, yeah, I've had that every single time I've followed the pole. I've had a lot of cultural blowback every single time. So that's why I wanted to really say this feeling of the pole. Feel two magnets and then sense where

[B]

there's something that strong in each direction, in either direction. Like, where are you trying to move towards something that you don't want it and it doesn't want you?

[A]

And you know what this is? It is not a plan for what we should do to like, defeat the oppressor, but it is a genuinely seditious plan. It is because it's leaving all culture and saying, no, I'm gonna follow the third thing, whatever it is, the pull of my higher self or whatever, I'm gonna do that. And that means I will not be subjected to any culture or any religion, any dogma. Any dogma.

[B]

I'm impervious.

[A]

Right. And you can't talk me out of it because I know what a pull feels like.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think when we are in the river and we are following the pool, then that we've got to be stay wild.

[A]

Rephrase.

[B]

We're leaving this in, by the way.

[A]

Oh, okay. Just say it again

[B]

when you. Okay, so I think it's fair to say that when you're following the pull and you're in your river and you're pushing against the push, but you're letting go and you're in the river and you're flowing against the tide with the tide. That's how we stay wild.

[A]

Hello, the lovely peoples. This is Marty Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called Five paths to your Purpose. Probably the most common question I get from people is, how do I find my purpose? Why don't I feel that I'm on purpose? Well, it turns out there are certain things you have to do to find your purpose. And I broke them down into five and I made a little masterclass about it. So if you'd like to see it. Just go to marthaveck.compurpose and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all.