Mapping Life by Rhythm, not by Rules

Summary

Bewildered Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: "Mapping Life by Rhythm, not by Rules"

Hosts: Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Date: September 17, 2025

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Overview

This episode of Bewildered explores how we can design our lives based on inner and natural rhythms instead of clinging to rigid cultural rules. As Martha and Rowan move house and approach new life transitions (Rowan turning 45), they reflect on the disruptiveness of change, the cultural defaults we unconsciously import, and how to harness disruption as a creative opportunity to realign with what truly feels good and authentic. With their signature blend of vulnerability, humor, and insight, the hosts advocate for a more intuitive, nature-responsive style of living—one guided not by oppressive "shoulds," but by our yearnings and vital rhythms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Disruptive Change as Opportunity

Timestamps: [00:28], [14:50], [15:20]

• Moving house and entering new life phases (like turning 45) are major disruptions that throw our day-to-day rhythms into chaos.
• Such moments are “an incredible opportunity to reset your habits, even your whole way of being” (Rowan, [00:28]).
• Martha: "The place where you live has an incredible impact on your quality of life... whenever there’s a big change, it’s an opportunity to reconstruct things" ([15:20]).
• They emphasize the difference between being passively acted upon by change vs. consciously designing new patterns in response ([18:22]).

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2. Rules vs. Rhythms—Rejecting the Cultural Checklist

Timestamps: [17:54], [23:31], [24:56]

• Our upbringing and society conditions us to wait for instructions—to have our time scheduled by others, whether at school or at work.
• Martha observes: "The cultural default basically says to the individual, wait until you are told by external forces how your time should be used... Don’t plan anything else because we want you at our disposal" ([24:56]).
• Even when we try to reclaim our time, we risk importing the same rigidity—“creating my own inner culture that is as rigid as another one” (Rowan, [33:31]).

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3. Day Mapping—Designing by Geography and Habit

Timestamps: [27:32], [29:03]

• Martha introduces the concept of a “day map”: literally charting where you are physically throughout the day and hacking habit change by gradually shifting your geography (e.g., driving to the gym parking lot, even if you don’t go in).
• “It was like training a dog” (Martha, [28:49]). Both hosts discuss the importance of small, approachable physical shifts rather than dramatic, willpower-driven changes.
• Positive reinforcement and incrementalism are encouraged.

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4. The Trap of Productivity and Rigid Self-Improvement

Timestamps: [22:46], [23:07], [33:31]

• Rowan describes her alternating extremes: relentless productivity or inertia.
• The hosts critique the cultural emphasis on high performance, strict planning, and self-control—even when pursuing “positive” change.
• “You start out with, okay, I am going to be wild and free and design my own life… and then you rigidly try to conform to that” (Martha, [33:31]).
• Drawing parallels with Mormon rigidity and their own experiences of unconventional living, they highlight how easy it is to replace one rigid system with another ([34:56]).

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5. Yearning as Compass—Letting Feeling Guide Design

Timestamps: [42:31], [44:04], [45:27]

• Martha pivots from rigid goal-setting to listening for “yearning”—a deeper, often less tangible feeling state we long for, distinct from specific desires.
  • “Yearning is like the tool of the human imagination that it uses to create unprecedented things” (Martha, [44:59]).
  • “Desire is like, oh, I see that car and I really want the car. Yearning is when you look at the car and suddenly you see yourself driving down a highway…” (Martha, [45:27]).
• The design process starts with identifying the feeling state you want (“vitality,” “strength,” “aliveness”) rather than externally-defined goals.
• Rowan: “It’s almost like yearning itself is the map.” ([44:56])

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6. Embracing Fluid, Responsive Structures

Timestamps: [48:58], [50:02], [51:25]

• Rather than setting rigid daily or weekly schedules, the hosts suggest a fluid, nature-responsive approach (e.g., “most days” rather than “every day”).
• Martha: “The way people try to change their lives is forceful and weak... What you want is something much more fluid and responsive to your true nature.” ([50:02])
• They discuss the necessity of treating your life patterns as a living ecosystem, not a factory schedule, adjusting for things like energy, sleep, season, and circumstance ([51:25]).

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7. Nature Knows—The Wisdom of Timing and Environment

Timestamps: [54:02], [55:38], [59:43], [61:09]

• Drawing on metaphors from farming and ecology: plant when the “aspen leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear” (i.e., not by the calendar, but by nature’s signs).
• “When you have a kid, [childcare] becomes a massive key ingredient... What is the aspen leaf or the kudu bark in your system that tells you you’re ready at the day to day level?” (Martha, [60:21], [61:09]).
• Tuning into “keystone” factors (like sleep, child care, energy, weather) helps you follow your own seasonal and daily cycles, rather than imposing order.
• Living by rhythm means allowing for necessary flexibility (e.g., if ill, rest), listening closely to internal and external feedback.

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8. The Third Way—Plans, Rhythm, and Responsiveness

Timestamps: [66:42], [68:01]

• The hosts propose a “third way”: holding intentions and plans and being responsive to feedback from self and environment.
• “It’s not about rigidity versus freedom... There’s a third way, which is designing a life with care and attention and then letting the ocean lead...” (Rowan, [68:01])
• Make a plan, but allow it to be alive (“The map of your life, the schedule—these are all living, growing things,” Martha [51:25]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You can decide to change your life at any time, but it’s very difficult to fight what’s already in motion—the inertia of whatever’s happening.” – Martha ([17:04])

• “The cultural default basically says ... wait until you are told by external forces how your time should be used ... Don’t plan anything else because we want you at our disposal.” – Martha ([24:56])

• “You import a cultural rigidity ... creating my own inner culture that is as rigid as another one.” – Rowan ([33:31])

• “Yearning is like the tool of the human imagination that it uses to create unprecedented things.” – Martha ([44:59])

• “Rather than making a schedule and forcing yourself, treat your life patterns as a living ecosystem.” – Martha ([51:25])

• On the mouse’s ear: “You have to be so attentive to the trees that you notice the day on which the aspen leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear ... There’s almost this artistic love affair with nature.” – Martha ([56:07])

• “It’s not about rigidity versus freedom ... There’s a third way ... letting nature co-lead us.” – Rowan ([68:01])

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Additional Highlights

• Comic Relief: The episode is full of playful banter, including a running joke about their child “marrying multiple sentient beings” (dogs, Rowan, and Martha herself) and cheeky asides about polygyny and polyandry ([04:16] – [37:31]).
• Cross-cultural observations: Rowan navigates American and Australian cultural differences, often with humorous confusion about American etiquette and “reverse osmosis” ([06:28] – [11:44]).
• Vulnerability: Both share candidly about their struggles—inertia, anxiety about aging, the challenge of moving, parental self-doubt, and failed attempts at personal transformation.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00] – Introduction to theme: living by rhythm, not rules
• [14:50] – Moving house as major disruption/opportunity
• [23:31] – The lure/trap of rigid productivity
• [27:32] – Martha explains "Day Mapping"
• [42:31]/[44:04] – The role of yearning in life design
• [50:02] – On fluid, responsive structures vs. forceful self-discipline
• [54:02]/[55:38] – The “mouse’s ear” and watching for nature’s signals
• [60:21]/[61:09] – Tuning into key personal/environmental factors
• [66:42]/[68:01] – The “third way”: blending structure and responsiveness

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Conclusion

Mapping Life by Rhythm, not by Rules is an invitation to drop the voice of cultural authority, embrace disruptive change as the fertile ground for self-invention, and create lives that are both structured enough and flexible enough to hold our dreams—without boxing us in. Martha and Rowan urge us to be visionary but not rigid, responsive but not passive—to create day maps guided by yearning and attuned to nature’s signs, so we can move forward gently, creatively, and vitally, together.

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“Make a plan, make a map, and then go out and be your whole self—directed by your vision, but also responsive to yourself and everything around you.”
– Martha Beck ([68:01])

Transcript

[A]

Hi, folks. This episode of Bewildered is all about how we consciously structure our lives. Not with rigid rules, but with rhythm. Whether you're moving house as we are, turning 45, as it turns out, I am. Or just realizing your schedule isn't working anymore, we're exploring what it means to design a life that fits you in the long term and the short term.

[B]

Yeah. So we'll talk about how change, especially disruptive change in your life, can actually be a really great opportunity to reset your habits, even your whole way of being. And how you can map your life not by looking at some cultural checklist, but by listening to your own inner rhythms and the rhythms of the natural world as well.

[A]

Also, our daughter is currently marrying multiple sentient beings. So clearly something about the way we're living is rubbing off positively.

[B]

Okay, stick around. This one's about making a life that's just structured enough to hold your dreams without boxing you in.

[A]

Hope you enjoy it.

[B]

So, as some of you listeners may know, a few months ago, Ro and I started something called the Wilder Community, which is kind of an online village where. Where people like us who want to find our true nature, even if it peels us away from culture, can get together, commune, make friends, and do things.

[A]

We have all kinds of regular events in there that are just so fun. We have a weekly hang where we get together and we have conversation and we make art in our own little rooms, in our own little places. But all together, there are group meditations that Martha leads that are crazy powerful, and there are just all kinds of, like, monthly themes and, like, personal development stuff that we work through together, and just a hive of activity and connection among really wonderful people.

[B]

Yeah. So if you're feeling drawn to belong to a community in these troubled times, give Wilder a try. It'[e-mail] all one word, and we hope we'll see you there.

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[A]

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

[B]

Yes, we're trying so hard and getting very, very little distance toward figuring it out.

[A]

It's pretty subjective. I think it, like, how close I feel to having it figured out on a given day is pretty much how I feel about everything else.

[B]

That's true. A couple of days ago, I really thought I almost had it all figured out, and then it just crashed and burned and I realized I have nothing figured out at all.

[A]

What are you working on right now as far as. On the whole figuring it out front.

[B]

You know, parenting, which you'd think by my age I'd be done, like getting it wrong, but no, because I recently realized, I thought that while we were in South Africa, our four year old Lila had married one single golden retriever puppy named Waffle.

[A]

Perfectly acceptable.

[B]

Yes. She proposed. They had a marriage ceremony. She refers to Waffle as her husband. Waffle is. Was eight weeks old at the time, which is more or less the patience. Yeah, but then you told me that on the little vacation that she'd taken to a different part of South Africa, she also married a multipoo. What was the other dog?

[A]

Let's not bring it all down to rice. She married another dog and.

[B]

Okay, she married another dog. So she's now married to. She's a bigamist. And I'm not sure that. I'm not sure that I'm giving her a pattern of living that's going to make her fit in really well at school.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's like the, you know that right wing shock jock line where it comes to gay marriage of if you let men marry men, what's gonna be next? People marrying cockatiels, People marrying golden retrievers. And it took our family to finally prove those people right.

[B]

Oh, yeah. It's so funny to hear you say that. It sounds so posh to an American when you say people marrying cockatiels and it's like shark jocks. People marrying cockatiels. That's kind of how a right wing shark jock talks in my mind. Not with this.

[A]

You know, we have so much crust.

[B]

Cockatoos.

[A]

Also. I don't know if I should bring it up or not now, but she also proposed. Lila, her daughter also posed to me recently.

[B]

That's true. And I think the flower troubling thing is you said yes.

[A]

Well, of course I did. I want all my little girls dreams to come true.

[B]

Oh, are we going to get bad mail from this? I don't know. I mean, this is. This is tricky territory. This is why I'm trying to figure it out.

[A]

That's why this is such a controversial podcast, guys.

[B]

It is.

[A]

We're prepared to say it like it is.

[B]

We're so controversial. What are you trying to figure out, Ro?

[A]

Something quite different. Oh, good. You know, like etiquette. I mean, I guess this is all about interpersonal stuff, right? Long time ago, I heard someone say that, like when you're hosting a party or whatever, which of course we do all the time, you're meant to like introd, like you're the host. A person comes in to the party. You bring them into the party. You spot someone who's already at the party. You navigate towards them with your new person. And then you say, diane, this is Robert. Robert works in landscaping. Diane is into. She has, like, a plot at a community garden. Talk about that. I'm out of here.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

And that's called etiquette. Right?

[B]

Classic. Classic wingman sort of wing host etiquette.

[A]

Yeah. So you find something that they have in common. So I'm often trying to, like, figure out. I was going to say marry, but that's not the best word.

[B]

Here it comes again.

[A]

I'm trying to reconcile the culture that I grew up with with the culture in which I now find myself, Australia to the US and always testing, like, what things apply in both cases. I'm always asking you and Karen, our other partner, like, do Americans say this? Do Americans do this? Would this be normal? I don't know why I'm asking you what would be normal.

[B]

But.

[A]

So this came up with Karen a few weeks ago. And I'm. Again, there's another layer to it, which is what's American and what's just Karen or you in a given moment. So here is what I'm trying to figure out.

[B]

Representative.

[A]

No, I do not think so. And yet you're my only go to people, really.

[B]

And he poured in a storm, honey.

[A]

Yeah. So a few weeks ago, someone came to fix something. I believe he was going to install reverse osmosis.

[B]

Water, whatever. Which.

[A]

Whatever. Whatever that is. Carol thought we needed it, so.

[B]

Sounds like aliens.

[A]

It does. It sounds like. Yeah. Or a surgical procedure.

[B]

Because if you learn by osmosis things soak into your head. If he came to do reverse osmosis, he's bringing something to the house that would soak us into it.

[A]

It sounds like to me, oh, my God, we're in danger.

[B]

We are.

[A]

I shouldn't have been worrying about etiquette at a time.

[B]

That's right. Run for your life. Reverse osmosis is coming for you.

[A]

So the guy's coming to do the thing, the mysterious thing, and he drives up, but he doesn't come into the house. And so it's already like a sort of charged etiquette moment. And luckily, in our household, it's often Karen who does the small talk dimensions. And, you know, people come to the house and she helps with them because we're way too autistic to do that.

[B]

We're hiding. We're hiding somewhere behind a mirror or something.

[A]

So I was in the communal area, not hiding for a While for long enough for Karen and I to go. It's weird that he's not coming in. The dogs are like, no, he's there. And they're driving in the way that dogs do. And still doesn't come in. And still doesn't come in. So eventually I'm like, karen, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to leave you with this situation and go hide.

[B]

Which is our process in this kind of situation.

[A]

Right. My. My curiosity about the mystery of the man in the driveway was not greater than my horror at having to make small talk. But a little bit later, he did come in, and I heard Karen talking to him, and I had to go downstairs at one point. I wouldn't have chosen it, but. And it was at this moment that I got my lesson from Karen in American introduction etiquette. I don't know if this is, like, funny or interesting if you don't know Karen, but this is how it went. I walk down the stairs into the kitchen, where I find Karen and a man chatting. Karen turns to me the second I walk into the room and says, at somewhat elevated volume, yes. With, like, apropos of nothing and with no preamp, she says, jason got his face eaten off by a dog.

[B]

Oh, no. Why are we laughing? That's wrong. Why are you laughing?

[A]

It's so terrible. Because I don't even know who. If this is Jason.

[B]

Did he have a.

[A]

Who's Jason? Is this Jason, or is Jason someone else?

[B]

Like, you didn't mention that.

[A]

No, because as soon as she said Jason got his face by a dog, I'm pudding. I couldn't look at his face in case he saw me looking at his face to see him.

[B]

Eaten off by a dog. Rowan, this is. I mean, we're gonna get in bad trouble for this. We should not be.

[A]

Not because our daughters.

[B]

It's the tension. It's horrifying. It's tension. It makes sense.

[A]

This is Marty being genuinely worried at this moment that I'm setting all these people up. I'm so sorry. She said. She didn't say, Ro. I've solved the mystery. It's a little bit awkward, but in his past, Jason had a traumatic experience with the dog, and so that's why he was, like, hesitant to come in while the two dogs living with us were being really noisy and sounding big, even though one of them in particular is not very big. So instead of like, so anyway, that's what happened. But this is Jason. He's going to reverse our osmosis somehow. He's had surgery, which I found out later. He looked completely normal. Oh, thank God. All that happened is she turned to me and in loud voice, just.

[B]

I remember this. I mean, I remember you saying, jason.

[A]

Got his face eaten off by a dog.

[B]

Like.

[A]

And I would ask you, in America, in American etiquette, what is the best rejoinder to such.

[B]

What did poor Jason do?

[A]

We all just stood there. I don't. I've repressed everything else because I was just like, I.

[B]

Like, what's she. Cherry?

[A]

I'm sorry.

[B]

Or.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting. Or are you better? How's the osmosis? Is it in? Is it going forwards or backwards at this point?

[B]

It is really, really. It did put you in a situation, I have to say. That's one I have not yet had to figure out. Thank God I was hiding upstairs behind a mirror, as is my won't.

[A]

I love the idea of situations. You behind a mirror and then someone comes to look in the mirror, and you're just this little voice going, oh, boy. Is that the best you can do? Wow, that must be disappointing.

[B]

That is what I say when I'm looking at the mirror from my side. All right, that is really. That's a hard one to figure out. And I don't know either, because I am completely socially inept myself, as I think we've proven in this episode. And I think probably we've alienated everybody who is not going to come to us and osmosis us to death.

[A]

Married to a dog or terrified of.

[B]

Dogs, or both could happen. Oh, we have so much to figure out.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Wow, wow, wow. This is. This is a new low, even podcast.

[A]

Wait for the most brilliant segue you've ever heard.

[B]

Ah, yeah. So.

[A]

So all this happened and we had to move house. 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 can honestly say it's one of the few true sanctuaries online. You can go to wildercommunity.com to check it out. Rate, review, subscribe, join, and you all.

[B]

Have a great day now. Hello, the lovely peoples. This is Marty Martha inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called Five Paths to youo 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 marthabeck.compurpose and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all.

[A]

We could no longer stay in the place where our daughter had been marrying multiple dogs. And Karen embarrassed a man whose unfortunate past included his face getting eaten off by a dog. So we're moving house. That's what's happening. And that was a segue. This is now us in the actual podcast talking about the podcast topic Moving house. Eh? Doesn't it just tend to disrupt, like, everything in your life?

[B]

They've done studies that show the place where you live has an incredible impact on your quality of life. So anytime you move, since we're territorial animals, there is the potential for huge disruption. Yes, I don't cope well.

[A]

No, you don't. And I was just thinking today, like, you really don't cope well and yet you've made more big cross country, cross international moves than most people. Like then that's true. Vast majority of people do in a lifetime.

[B]

I haven't thought of it that way. No. Now I feel better about myself because I can't count the number of. Of clients I've had who have moved. And I've told them it's going to. You're going to go through a phase of grieving and re patterning. And they're like, not me. I'm thrilled about this move. And then six months later they call me back and say, I hate my life. And I said, no, just, honey, you just moved. It's okay, you'll get better.

[A]

So what I'm thinking about, what we're thinking about, the vibe, is that since everything, all our daily rhythms are going to be completely upended because we're also moving to a different part of the country. Not very far, but enough that we're not going to any of the same places. Dentists, for instance.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I don't know what else. People go to dentists and things.

[B]

So dentists, reverse osmosis people. That's it.

[A]

That's all there is, really.

[B]

You're covered.

[A]

Yeah. So I was trying to think about, like, okay, how are we going to consciously repattern our days, like, take advantage of this upheaval to, like, re. Structure our lives day to day. It's exciting because you can.

[B]

You can decide to change your life at any time, but it's very difficult to fight what's already in motion, the inertia of whatever's happening.

[A]

So you're trying your damnedest right now.

[B]

Yes, I am. That. That's called inertness. Inertness is where you just sit in a lump and cry. Inertia is where you keep going in the direction that you're going until operated upon by an equal and opposite force. So all our lives are going forward with inertia, and that makes it kind of hard to shift major pieces of life. Unless something dramatic happens, you can do it. But if you have an upheaval, like you've decided to move house, it's actually an opportunity. Since everything's going to be sort of disrupted and deconstructed, you now have an opportunity to reconstruct things.

[A]

And I love what you were saying to me about how it's going to happen anyway. Right. So you've kind of got. When things are in upheaval, you've got this fork in the road between being acted upon by your new situation or circumstances and. And to some extent, choosing how to repattern your life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In the new space.

[B]

Yeah. So we thought, given that we're doing this right now, we would do an episode about how you consciously. I used to call what I do life design because it's more. They call it life coaching, which sounds sporty and fun, but to me it was more like a creative, like a design function that you're going to build your life with conscious attention to fit an inner map of beauty and joy and whatever is best in your life. And when disruption comes along, whether it's invited or whether it's just imposed on you by life and fate, you have this opportunity to sort of clear the slate and consciously design what comes next. Yeah, I'm going to use moving for that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Good.

[A]

And I'll say, though, that this life design stuff is. Is fun to work with even when you are more or less in a. In a rhythm. Like, it's not only during huge upper evil that you can make these changes, but it's all about us. And this is what we're living right now.

[B]

But not anybody out there, you know, whether they want, for example, to reverse their osmosis or whatever they want to.

[A]

Do, it's actually reversible. I've heard people used to think it was progressive, but it's actually reversible.

[B]

I think it's remitting recurring osmosis. So anybody out there might say, oh, life design. That's kind of an interesting concept. I wish to do that despite the fact that my life is completely in a state of complete inertia. Yeah, you can do this anytime. But if there is a disruption of some kind, that's an especially exciting opportunity to. To make things different.

[A]

Yeah. And to avoid, like, potentially indulging all our, like, all those, like, ruts that we can fall into when we're not being conscious about stuff. Right. So, for instance, for me, I suddenly realized very recently, too recently, could have realized it earlier, that I'm about to turn 45 years of age. Oh. Could have predicted.

[B]

One would coulding that if you had applied your well trained mind to this issue, it could have been predicted.

[A]

No, that's true, that's true. But in fairness, you just did say, I can't count the clients who've said to me. And I'm like, well, look, neither of us is particularly good at math. Okay, so whatever. Like, we're doing our best. Stop moving.

[B]

They're all running about, how can I count them?

[A]

So I've managed to like, get to 44¾, as Lila would put it. And I just been stuck in the mentality of I'm probably about 22, so I'm probably like, fine to not really prioritize my health for any, you know, anytime soon. I'm 45. For some reason, like, literally about 48 hours ago, I went, that's.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

Okay, I'm gonna die. I should like, bone density and muscle mass.

[B]

Right.

[A]

These now things that mean something to me.

[B]

Perry something or other won't say what.

[A]

But yeah, like, shit's going down. So I'm like, okay, no more cruising on youth. I'm going to turn 45. I'm moving house right before I turn 45. Boom. Let's build healthy body things for an aging mortal human into our new day map.

[B]

Oh, that's so depressing.

[A]

Yeah, I know, isn't it?

[B]

But it's true. I remember the moment when I suddenly went, oh, I need to eat kale. Give me kale. I'm old. That's been my only reaction so far, but so I await disruptions more. You can just look at the calendar, the clock, but yeah, it's like, let's use this move and this moment, this unforeseeable moment of you turning 45 at some point in your life.

[A]

Yeah. Came out of nowhere to sort of.

[B]

Lay down some habits that support what we want going forward. Yeah, yeah, just slam some down. Yeah.

[A]

Because I think, like, I sort of have two modes, and we have discussed these ad nauseam on the podcast, but in case someone's tuning in for the first time, my two modes are I am a productivity junkie, and I, like, I am high performance. Or I sit still.

[B]

I not move.

[A]

I not move. I am of the not moving persuasion.

[B]

Yeah. So you either, like, run about doing things sort of without a plan or don't move at all, or I very.

[A]

I make very rigid plans that cannot be lived up to, and when I reach the point of not living up to them, I. I stay still.

[B]

These are really typical ways. I'm sorry, I'm gonna get all sociological. They're really typical ways to react in our particular cultural framework because there's so much rigid planning and there's so much performance focus. I was just talking to someone else because I'm trying to figure out. Figure it out. I'm trying to figure it out. So I was talking to someone and I said, what. What would you do if you were moving? And she said, oh, I think I would just. It seems like there would be a lot that I would have to do, so I would just wait until I figured out what I had to do and then I would do it. And I thought, oh, that is the cultural default that we have from, like, showing up at school and having our days given to us and not being allowed to say, no, I don't want to sit at the desk right now, I want to go somewhere else. Or, I would rather not learn Spanish, I would rather learn Japanese or whatever. Like, the. The schedule was given to us with some parameters, sort of changeable, but then. And then you go to a job and you're told what to do. So the cultural default basically says to the individual, wait until you are told by external forces how your time should be used and what your experience should be, and then do it. But don't plan anything else because we want you at our disposal. We want you to do whatever external forces impose upon you.

[A]

That's so true. Because I just think about, okay, finish. Just say, you know, there's variations. Finish school where your days are handed to you. Go to college where your days are handed to you. Bit more flexibility with your schedule. In Australia, there's a real thing between people who say schedule and people who say schedule. Oh, I won't.

[B]

Which is better.

[A]

Oh, mate, don't, don't. Let's not open that can of worms.

[B]

Oh, boy. I thought the multiple Dog marriages were going to get me in trouble.

[A]

No, you'll start a civil war. Go ahead, talk us through your schedule. So, so the cultural kind of thing that gets handed out is then you go to college, then you get a job and then you're like arguably in like an office under fluorescent lights. I always think of the fluorescent lights between 9 and 5 and at lunchtime the culture tells you you should get a salad. So you go get a salad in a plastic container and eat it with a plastic fork and like, like sit outside and look at the sky for about 35 seconds and then go back in. And then, and then I just realized how cultural the, like the other stuff is as well. Like just the fact that before work I go to the gym. Like there's just all these narratives about what you do with your non prescribed time as well. And you know, then circumstances often define a lot of them too. But so I think already the idea, there's something a little bit renegade about the idea of designing life at a, at a dated day level. Right. Because we're mostly thinking about that the aspects of choices we make are like what am I going to major in? Yeah, you know, what's, what should I, should I apply for this job or that job? Which are huge, but they're, they're at one level removed from what does our day to day look like. And I wanted to talk about day maps because this was something that you introduced me to.

[B]

I mean when I was trying to help people make big changes. And I realized that the amount of inertia that we go into our lives carrying the amount of habitual patterning we have makes it so hard to make changes. And I wanted them to. There's a lot of research showing that if you can do something called action priming, which is getting things ready for things to be different, instead of trying to make them different, you get to ready to make them different.

[A]

Yeah. Because you're, that's, that's a way of creating the path of least resistance.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. And it, it, it's a small disruption. It's like you introduce a small disruption. So what I noticed was that what I was doing had to, had a lot of, to do with where I physically was in space at any given time. So I wanted to make some changes. They were health related. I was about 45 and I literally just, I wrote on a clock face where I tended to be at any point in the day. So like I'd wake up in bed at like 7 o' clock and then I would sit on my meditation cushion until 8. And then I would go into the kitchen, and then I would. And I literally put the places that I went, and I just decided to change the places that I went during a given day. And I called this a day map. And I was not going to the gym at the time. I started going to a gym by just driving to the parking lot and then going home. As long as I knew I had to go to the. I would go there, park the car, start the car again, drive home. And then I did that four days in a row. Then it started to feel habitual. And then I actually went into the gym, came out, went home. I mean, it worked. It was really an interesting thing. It was like training a dog.

[A]

Yeah. And, I mean, we've talked a lot about how we have to train ourselves that way. You know, find. Find ways to manage the selves that we are. Yeah.

[B]

But a day map. Shifting a day map is one way you can start to get creative about your life.

[A]

Yeah. I love the idea of adjusting the geography, because you don't hear that very often. But I think about myself, like, it's a hack. Right. And when people talk about hacks, they mean how to trick yourself. And so the way to trick yourself, because I think about, I don't go to the gym, so I need to go to the gym. I'm on the couch. I am inert on the couch, and I want to be inertured on my way to the. On my workout. But couch, to working out, that's too far. Right. That's. Those two states are way too different. And so what I can do is. Is say, this is just a nice little walk or car ride or whatever. That's nice. You can listen to a podcast in the car. That's all you're doing.

[B]

That's actually. I try not to get too coachy, but put some positive reinforcement in there. Like, listen to a podcast that you enjoy on your way. Ooh, it's gonna. You're going to find yourself repeating that action.

[A]

Yes. Like I was saying, I love how you're like, I'm a life coach. So I'm going to interrupt you saying the thing do. By saying, that's actually the thing to do.

[B]

I'm a coach.

[A]

Yeah, I know. That's why I was saying it, dude. So I. I can go from on the couch mode to getting to going towards the gym mode. And what I find is when I'm, like, at the gym, like, I've pulled up, I'm like, I would love to work Out. I'm already in motion.

[B]

There you go. Exactly.

[A]

And like, all I need to do is. Is like, lift a few weights, which is fun and never as exhausting as I think it's going to be. So, yeah, that sort of incrementalism. But starting with where are you? And for our lifestyle, that's really relevant. So, for instance, I'm with our new where we're moving to. We're moving to a much smaller place and I am looking into doing some of my work in a co working space for the first time. And I'm so excited about that. But it is going to radically change where I. Your day map at different times. My day map. And so it just, it feels like a really rich place to start. But before we do, I want to, like, backtrack and go, all right, so what is. What. What is our cultural kind of programming in terms of life design at the day level? And.

[B]

Yeah, forget the how. Let's go back to the what. What are. What does the culture tell us we're supposed to do with our lives?

[A]

Yeah, and I think it's like, generally avoid change, aim for comfort, stability, homeostasis.

[B]

Right. Yeah. And the cultural. A combination of the sort of socioeconomic rules and the cultural stories of how people live each day. When they go shopping, when they go dancing, whatever. In other words, as usual, culture is telling us you don't get to follow your own rhythms. You don't get to go to the places your day map looks like everyone else's day map, and it follows a cultural norm. And you just let that be. You don't mess with it. Yeah.

[A]

And it's funny because there's. It's all tricks and traps. Like, there's a trap in that. You can, like, import culture when you try to say, I'm taking control. I'm taking control of my own destiny. I'm going to marry two dogs and my mother. And. But then you end up importing, like, a cultural rigidity into that. Which is what I was talking about before with the now I'm a productivity maniac. And I wake up at five and I, you know, do three reverse osmosis backflips before I. Before I get out of bed or whatever. And yeah, like. And so there's like, strict schedules and stuff. And it's like, it's so me to do. To fall into this cultural trap where I'm like, creating my own inner culture that is as rigid as another one. Because I'm trying to solve productivity in some way, like by finding a shortcut where I always have to do the same thing. Because we think that's going to be easier.

[B]

Yeah. So you start out with, okay, I am going to be wild and free and design my own life. I'm going to make everything the way I want it to be. And you envisage what you think you want your life to be, and then you write out a day map and a schedule and everything about how it's going to be different. And then you rigidly try to conform to that. So what you've done is failed to notice that it's not just the day map, that where you go and what you do that is part of the culture. It's the idea of rigidly conforming to a pattern and forcing yourself to sort of toe the line, be at exactly that place at that time. So this is. This may sound contradictory because we're saying, invent your own way of doing things and then. And do it. But also we're saying maybe not do it the way you did the other culture. Maybe obsessive control is the part of the culture that you need to leave. People tend to change the form of what they do, but then impose very rigid rules on everything. I mean, as our listeners may not know if they've been like, if the manager runs screaming away from me every time I ever show up anywhere. I was raised Mormon, and it's really interesting that they went. The early Mormons went way outside the cultural rules by deciding that polygamy. Polygyny, actually one man marrying many women was the way that they were going to live their lives. But what was interesting was they went off the cultural map by being polygamous. I know I'm married to multiple women. Don't even. You didn't say it, but I saw it in your face. I know it's ironic. It's. Go ahead. Just press the irony button harder. Ro hurt me more. Well, all right.

[A]

Polygyny. It's the first time I've ever heard the word polygyny, and I was.

[B]

Polyandry is where one woman marries many men, and polygyny is where one man marries many women.

[A]

But that's just like going, mini vagina. Mini vagina.

[B]

No, it isn't.

[A]

Polygynie.

[B]

I will go to any graduate seminar with you, and I will raise my hand and say, polygyny, and you will say, mini vagina, and we'll see who gets better.

[A]

Mini vagina. Not mini vagina. My own wife can't even understand my accent. No wonder I struggle. Mini vagina. No.

[B]

Here's My point though, instead of saying we have this wild, free, crazy, hip lifestyle, the Mormons went, the only way that you can go to heaven is that every man has to marry many women and every woman has to be living in a so called plural marriage. And the people who don't have multiple women in a marriage don't get to go to the highest part of heaven.

[A]

Point of order. Yeah, I don't know much about maths as we've established.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Isn't there a problem if all men have to have multiple wives? Isn't there at some point going to be an arithmetical quandary?

[B]

Not if you kill enough men.

[A]

Now you're talking my language.

[B]

That is one of the points. But interestingly, historically, women were more religious than men and more women tended to end up in the Mormon church. But I've got a whole set of sociological observations around the results of polygamy that my own ancestors not too far back.

[A]

Sorry, Marty, I don't mean to be pedantic, but I think the term you're looking for is polygyny, which I'm looking for etymologically means many vaginas.

[B]

I think the term I'm looking for is fuck you. Sorry, sorry. I don't mean that little glimpse inside.

[A]

Our marriage there, ladies and gents.

[B]

Yeah, and it's so weird to be like those Mormons. They're so weird and polygamous. I have two wives, but I'm doing.

[A]

It in a cool way and they're doing it in a lame way. Losers.

[B]

Losers. At least I don't say everyone else is going to hell.

[A]

Well, that's true.

[B]

My point is that the rigid. I mean, I grew up in this weird culture where this super, super rigid deviation from the super super rigid monogamous culture had developed. Like everything was rigid. There were just wildly different sets. Now don't go. I'm sorry, you still not go there.

[A]

Oh my God. All right, listen.

[B]

You know what the answer to that is? Everything was rigid. That's what they said. Not she. They. Sorry. Oh, this is a terrible.

[A]

This is terrible. I'm so sorry.

[B]

That's what she said.

[A]

No, everyone knows.

[B]

Everyone knows it, right? Yeah. I used to know it growing up. So I had to learn. People think you're different because you're Australian. Try growing up Mormon.

[A]

No, thank you. The point. I want to make a point here.

[B]

A point.

[A]

Try to drag us back to the culture is not out there. Culture exists because of our psyches have certain tendencies and we tend to create in macro what we are in Micro. Right. And so. And they're all just hacks. Oh, it's more convenient to do it this way. And the same way I get addicted to productivity and get really rigid in that. That's what we do at societal level. So it's like culture is living inside us as well. And so, so we just have to keep an eye out for that. As we, as we have these conversations is. It's like you're going to keep slipping in there.

[B]

Yeah. We come to consensus with other people and then that consensus rules what we decide in our own heads. Yeah. So we have to get away from it.

[A]

How do we move away from consensus, Martha Beck, and towards coming to our senses?

[B]

Well, I will tell you in a minute.

[A]

So you are just about to tell us how we come to our senses.

[B]

Yes. In, in terms of utilizing a disruption in your life to practice some good old fashioned life design.

[A]

Remap our days.

[B]

Yes, remap your days. So it's not about making a different schedule that you can then follow rigidly in the manner that you have rigidly followed other schedules in the past. And it's also not about being complete, you know, curling up on the couch or behind a mirror and pretending that nothing is happening and going la la la la la for as long as you can and so that you never have to do anything. Total passivity. It's actually about crafting something that reflects your values, has an ideal of some kind, but also leave space to respond to nature. So the parallel of culture is nature. Yeah.

[A]

Right. So you're saying like, so my values are I, I want to age with as little decrepitude as possible for as long as possible. So that's, that's the value that I'm now following in how I'm approaching.

[B]

Yeah, this, you could call it an ideal. Whatever. What, whatever your objective is, what you want your life to be like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You choose the sort of, the general image of what you want to create. Coming from a design perspective, if you thought of it visually, you want a general image of something that for you looks healthy and vital and youthful.

[A]

I love this. Right. Because the reframe is like, I've just recently been reading more of these productivity and habit books. And so the cultural model is here is your goal. Right. And then incrementally, every day you take XYZ step and that is how you reach your goal in this finite number of steps. Do you know what I mean? Like it's, it's, it's rigid, but it's also very linear and very God help us. Numerical. And I love the way that what you're doing kind of brings it into more dimensions, like you're actually starting to draw a picture, and that feels more natural and less constrained.

[B]

Yeah. We really do live in this sort of arithmetic way of setting up tasks and time periods. And that is not how, you know, other animals that don't measure time, they still do things that please them, but they don't. They never get stuck in a mindset that goes away from their original nature.

[A]

Right, so overrides what?

[B]

Yeah, they never override nature with culture.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Unless they're, like, forced to or trained to by humans, who are the only ones who do it on purpose. But it starts as you said. Culture exists outside us, but then we import it into our heads. So it's inside our heads that we have to start shifting the map of our lives when we want to design a life that works better. And the way that I always start with people, with clients or with myself, is to look at the sense of yearning or longing, which is such an interesting. I actually thought years ago that I would solve yearning because I. I experienced it as painful. I still do sometimes, but the more I work with people and the more I work with myself, actually, as I get older, yearning becomes more and more and more central to forming the life that I want to have and helping other people form what they want because the rules are changing and society is sort of breaking down and getting weirder all the time. And what I found is that if you're mapping out beyond the known world, if you're in the place on the map where it says here be dragons, which is where a lot of us are these days.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The way you map the territory, the way you know which direction you want to go into here. Be dragons, into the unknown, is by feeling for what causes the sense of yearning and letting yourself sort of abide in the sense of yearning until it starts to draw you a picture or.

[A]

Sing you a song. It's very important information. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. It gives you information about what you want to experience. And that becomes a kind of compass. And you can start turning toward parts of the map that are likely to have that kind of experience.

[A]

Do you remember there's some scene from Seinfeld where George Costanza. I think they're in the diner, and George Costanza just says, do you yearn? I yearn. Oh, we're all yearning, but we're living in a New York sitcom. And we don't have a place for our yearning to become matter because we don't abide in it.

[B]

As you say, it's a sitcom about nothing, too. So we're all kind of. We think of sitting in a sitcom about nothing and finding your yearning and, like, actually sitting with your yearning and asking it for information about where you want to go next and what you want to experience.

[A]

It's almost like yearning itself is the map.

[B]

Yeah. I truly believe that yearning is like the tool of the human imagination that it uses to create unprecedented things. Because if it's precedented, if you already know what it is, you can desire it. But if you don't actually know quite what it is, yearning will tell you how you want it to be more or different.

[A]

Tell me the difference between the feeling of yearning and the feeling of desire.

[B]

Desire is like, oh, I see that car, and I really, really want the car. Yearning is when you look at the car and suddenly you see yourself driving down a highway in that car, and there's someone with you, and there's a song on the radio, and there's a feeling state of joy or liberation or whatever it is that you are now associating with that car. What you're yearning for is not the car itself. It might be involved in it. What you're yearning for is a feeling state. And that's what I've found people are always yearning for is a feeling state. Once you know the feeling state, then there are multiple ways you can go toward it. You don't need to get that car. You know, you don't need that specific thing.

[A]

So it's an interesting, like, take on manifesting as well. But that's. We'll put that aside for a different show. Yeah. So for me, I guess if I were to put what my yearning is as I alarmingly and unpredictably turn the next age that I'm turning is like vitality. Right. That. That's. What I'm yearning for is the feeling of being vital and being comfortable and strong in my body.

[B]

And if you start to think about the feeling state that you're yearning for, you'll find that images come up. Like, you'll find that when you're imagining that feeling, there are also, you know, people around you, things happening. A garden?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I thought you said a gun. No, just for. If it gets.

[A]

Just if I fail.

[B]

This is so problematic. Okay. Yes. A garden. For you. For you. The feeling of vitality involves a garden. When I think of vitality, it involves walking outside long distances. So the yearning is a feeling state that drags us into the design, which is Happening I think outside of the cultural mindset, which is like left hemisphere dominated and sort of thinking along established lines and into the unprecedented type of connections that are made mainly in the right hemisphere of the brain. Yearning is sort of the royal ticket to getting the map drawn for you before you even explore it.

[A]

Right. So we're moving towards like building our days and our day map around that yearning, but not, and not importing someone else's idea of what we should be doing to get there. Like it may not look like go to the gym at 7am and do burpees, but whatever they are.

[B]

So yeah, you can sort of combine the sort of practice of day mapping with the original design work of yearning. So the way. And you make a map, you make the day map you yearn for. So I could, I would make a day map that says 6 to 8am Go for a walk. I actually have been doing that.

[A]

Can I ask you though, are you, if you're doing this day mapping, is it, are you doing like a template for the ideal or are you actually in the morning about to set out your day? What, what are you describing?

[B]

Oh no, I set out the template in this sort of dreaming and scheming session.

[A]

That's what I thought.

[B]

Where. Yeah, you just dream up the ideal thing and then you, you do make a schedule and a phys, a map of where you're going to be physically at different points during the day. But that's where you want to watch out for that rigidity of the rule following nature of culture itself. Because what you want is something much more fluid and responsive to your true nature. You're setting out to, you make this map, then you go to explore and you're going to find things when you explore that are going to change your ideas.

[A]

Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Cool. So I just love this and we've sort of covered it, but it's like instead of writing exercise 7 to 8am we go to the. Our role at 7am or whenever, 9:30 is to go to the place where it makes it easier to move our body in the way that we yearn to. So like go to the walking path.

[B]

Yeah. And the interesting thing about this is it's gentle but it's powerful. Usually the way people try to change their lives is forceful and weak. I'm gonna make these rules, I'm gonna change. I'm gonna do just what this book says I should do. I'm gonna, you know, take the crazy challenge that's supposed to kill you in six days or make you perfect and I'm gonna do that thing. And then it's. It's a very. It looks very intense, but it's very weak because its ability to thread its way into your natural biological process of living. Yeah, it's short. It's trying to avoid everything animal about you and turn you into a machine.

[A]

That's right. So what we're trying to do here, I guess, is we're kind of navigating between the rigidity of culture, whether it's externally made or whether we're creating it ourselves in that rigidity. And some. Like, the other extreme would be, like, some kind of totally unguided passivity where. Yeah, like, so it's like you. It's like we think we have to choose between, I will do it every day, no matter what, and I'll only do what I absolutely feel moved to do in the moment. Like, we've always got to, like, be trying to navigate between those two extremes because neither of them are sustainable. Right.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I definitely see this with writing, which is a big part of my life. Not recently, but it needs to be a bigger part of my life coming up. Because if I try to force myself to do it rigidly, I get writer's block. But if I say I'll only do it when the muse is upon me, I never, ever start. So it's about treating the part of you that's making your new life as a living thing. The map of your life, the schedule, these are all living, growing things. So think of it as an ecosystem instead of a factory with objects you can place different in different places. Instead, it's a system of living things that are all interacting with each other. And that means that you're responsive. Like, if I wake up and I have Covid as I did once, then I may not write that day. If I wake up and I feel a little better, I may write a few words and then stop short of my goal. If I feel really good one day, I might write for three hours. Whatever. We were talking. Do you remember we were talking to someone recently about the rains in Australia? I bless the rains down in Australia and how it was finally raining. And so the farmers were able to put the wheat crop in, and they had been holding back because the time to plant wheat had come and gone, but there was no rain. So if you put your wheat in the ground, it just dies. So they've been waiting, and now they were going to plant the wheat because the rain had come. So culture says, just plant the wheat, but they have that plan, and Then they have to be responsive to what nature is doing so that the wheat can actually grow. So, yes, being sensitive to nature as you set out to change your life and design your life is the fundamental ground of what will make you successful. You have to be sensitive to the fact that everything is nature, not culture.

[A]

And that means sort of understanding nature and really dwelling in nature. Right?

[B]

Yeah, that's the thing is drive to the gym, but then be very, very sensitive to what your own body is feeling.

[A]

You know, also listen, if the, if the roads are blocked by snow, understand enough about snow to go, oh, that might actually kill me.

[B]

Rather than making very much about snow. Do you?

[A]

I know less than another.

[B]

It's all right where we're going. You're going to get to know snow, honey. Oh, you're going to get to know snow so well. But you're absolutely right. The thing about nature is that we tend to trivialize it when we're in culture. Like when Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, a book that for the very first time said, we are part of nature and we are killing ourselves when we kill nature. She was absolutely. She was mocked right out of existence almost because people thought it was so stupid that nature had to be understood. What we need to do is follow our schedule. We are not nature. Nature takes, just does its stuff well.

[A]

And we dominate it into submission.

[B]

We dominate it? Yeah. We didn't even, even have the concept. And this was just in the 50s. This wasn't like hundreds and hundreds of years ago. This was in the 1950s. People really considered human life to be dictated by factory like schedules without any consequence from nature. And what we're saying is we are still sort of outgrowing our inability or our training that says we are not supposed to tune into every situation as it unfolds because it is filled with multiple interacting living factors.

[A]

And that's so hard to quantify in advance and build the template around in advance. And so that's why we try to create the full proof no matter what seeing. Oh, my God. Can you talk about the mouse's ear? The thing about the mouse's ear.

[B]

Oh, yes, the mouse. I hope this is a thing. I hope you don't have a mouth. You make a mouse's ear in your cupboard somewhere.

[A]

Not until I turn 45 and I need it for the ritual.

[B]

You will be given a mouse's ear. Yeah, I read once, like a farmer's almanac, and it was from the place where I grew up where there are a lot of aspen trees.

[A]

Can you see her like being so scared of being fact checked right now, it's like, well, no, I mean, this isn't for everywhere. It is literally true.

[B]

Well, this is just the point. It's not for everywhere. And you have to be that specific when you're dealing with nature. So it said that you. You. I can't remember what you were supposed to do, but I think it was putting in a crop of some kind. You were supposed to do it at the time in the spring when the aspen leaves on the trees were the size of a mouse's ear. Which is so like everyone, for one thing, everyone in that society knew how big a mouse's ear was, which not everyone does. And then you have to be so attentive to the trees that you notice the day on which the aspen leaves are the size of a mouse's ear. And you know that that's when the soil is right to put in a crop. The amount of. There's almost this artistic love affair with nature. The sensuousness of it. The sights, the sounds, the interaction with every bit of the ecosystem is so sophisticated. And we evolve to be completely responsive to that. And then we've been acculturated to be non responsive to it.

[A]

No, that's right. And it's not that it's completely responsive. There's still an order to be kept there. Yeah, yeah, there's still an order there, but it's not at 9am on January 15th. It's when this moment comes. And I would add that about a mouse's ear. Like, it depends on the mouse. So if you wake up and you've got Covid. How old mouse? Yeah. What. Which mouse is this? Speedy Gonzalez? Mickey Mouse I think you'll find very different. How do you like my American cultural reference? Yeah.

[B]

Thank you. What's Mickey Mouse? Okay, we'll do that some other time.

[A]

Go on. Yeah, we need to get a ruler out and figure this out. So if you did wake up with COVID that morning, you know that it's still going to be more or less a mouse's ear tomorrow. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not. We're not having to be to the millimeter. We're just getting a feel for the moment in the season. And I just love to think of how much reverse engineering, which is a terribly cultural way of. Of talking about it, but like, oh, yes, that we had a great crop the. The year that we planted when the aspen leaves were the size of a mouse. Oh, yeah, that's true. It was the Year that the aspen leaves the size of a mouse was here. I just love it. So, yeah, so it's like between. Between, like, rigidity and complete looseness. It's, like, informed and tactile and intuitive and moving.

[B]

There are these things in. In sociology, there are certain people that you call key informants because they're the people that watch all the other people. And it might be someone who, like, it's Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities or a, you know, a bar.

[A]

It's the busy body.

[B]

It's the busy body, yeah. Somebody who knows everybody and knows everything and wants to talk about it. They're called key informants. And then in biology, there's something called a keystone species, which is like a species that has an influence on the environment such that other animals sort of their lives sort of depend on the conditions created by the key. So beavers are the. The classic keystone species. They make these dams, then that creates ponds and wetlands. And suddenly you've got totally different biological systems arising, different numbers of moose and wolves, and everything different based on the fact that there are beavers in the area. So I like to look for what is the key thing? What is the key piece of information? What is.

[A]

Like that aspen variable leaf.

[B]

Yeah, the aspen leaf is like that. That is a tell for the whole of nature being ready to grow the crop then.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Because you can't follow everything logically. You can sort of intuitively, but you look at the thing like, for example, when we've been in South Africa, there's a particular barking sound where there are all these sounds going on in nature. But if there's a barking sound of a certain timbre, all the trackers look up and they look toward it because it is the bark of a kudu. It's the alarm call of a kudu.

[A]

Kudus never lie.

[B]

That's what we've been told. An impala will lie to you. A Sternbach lies. Liars, Waterbuck, Horrible liars. But kudu, they do not like. So all these species of antelope have these alarm calls, but they will alarm when they see anything, like a cloud. So you can't know when you hear an impala alarming that there's a predator nearby. But when a kudu barks, it's like, we're going over there. Because kudos never lie. That's the. The key piece of information. So for me, like, if you look for the key piece of information that says, are you ready to write or not? Right. For real. Like, if you were going to work on your writing. What's the key thing? What is the aspen leaf or the kudu bark in your system that tells.

[A]

You you're ready at the day to day level? Yeah, I have childcare for the next two hours. No, seriously, like if I was looking ahead, it's like if I don't have childcare that I know for a fact. Fact that I will never. I won't be able to enter the mental space that I need to sustain in order to write.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, that becomes really, when you, when you have a kid, that becomes a massive key ingredient, doesn't it?

[A]

What about you? What's your writing key style?

[B]

Have I had enough sleep? It's 100% sleep. And I've done so much writing at night, doing all nighters, trying to be a working mom. And I finally learned that is actually the way to destroy my body in my writing career. I have to have had sleep. And that was not the key thing I was looking at for a long time. And that's why I ended up being hospitalized for exhaustion. And it wasn't good writing at that point either. It was just kind of trying to drive it like a factory. It didn't work.

[A]

So there's those rhythms like, do we have childcare? Have I had enough sleep? But then there's also like, it strikes me like larger seasonal kind of things too that are like writing seasons. When you've got, you have like as, as someone who writes books, you've got very clearly delineated seasons where there's like a more amorphous one that you're in now where you're going to write a proposal, but then once the proposal has been accepted by a publisher, then you've got a due date and then you're very much in a writing season. And we, at that point, this is kind of interesting. I don't know if it is to anyone else, but we put in like your assistant and I change your calendar and the period first thing in the morning is a block every day. And it's called sacred writing time.

[B]

And that means I have to go to a place that my body associates with writing after I've done it a few times. And if I go to that place and I've had a decent amount of sleep, I can go a little short, but the map will carry me to that place at that time and I will be able to get some work done. And that actually is a really blissful way to live. To put the seasons in place for what you love and then to create this gentle way of moving the animal and its natural inclinations to the place where it will want to do its creative work.

[A]

Yeah, well, and hopefully this co. Working space is going to be that geographical node that becomes the keystone. Like a thing where if I need to be away from my child, I'll figure out something. I won't just leave her wandering around on the street. But. Yeah, so marrying dogs. Marrying dogs. Left, right and center. Yeah. And like, so for me, and I'm entering a season where suddenly, unforeseeably, I am going to turn 45 and my health suddenly steps forward and goes, are you ever gonna think about me? And yeah. And like, it's a different focus, too, in this season, because in the past, when I sporadically and occasionally think about my health, it's much more been like, a cosmetic thing. How is this gonna make, like, do I want to look nice?

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

And now it's much more about, like, strength and vitality and all that, like, bone density and stuff. And it totally has a different focus. So then I go to different places.

[B]

Right, right, right. Yeah. And it's. It's interesting because you've shifted from avoiding the bad, which is, you know, avoid the negative consequences, which is the way we're socialized, usually to. To keep ourselves in shape or whatever we think our health should be. Like, you've switched from that to the yearning for vitality, which is a very different. It brings in a different picture. And it means that you're cultivating the good instead of avoiding the bad. And cultivating the good requires that responsiveness to yearning, to responsiveness to seasons, responsiveness, to the way things shift and the aliveness of it all. So, like, living life this way, designing it, and. And living the design is not one of those set it and forget it things where you put in a schedule and just do it. It's more like. I had a client once who was a terrific surfer, and he said, when you go surfing, you're. You're dancing with the ocean, and she always leads. So you're. You take your surfboard out there, you take your yearning and your desire and your plan and your day map, and then you let nature lead.

[A]

Right? So we set intentions via our yearning, but as. As we enter the individual moment where we're alert to feedback from the environment. Right? Like, what's working, what needs adjusting, and that. That combination of factors keep us in, like, a gentle structure. Right. That keep us from, like, collapse or tyranny. Right? And. Yeah, yeah. And like, I heard this thing about most days as a As a way of looking at that. And I think most days could be a, like a way to operationalize this, what we're talking about, where it's like, yeah, on most days it matches my yearning to do this and I remain responsive to the environment.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's consistent, but it's soft as well. It's very, very different from the way most people think of designing their lives. They think of it as, I'm going to get a lookbook and I'm going to figure out exactly what everything's going to be and I'm going to force it to look that way. And that's very left hemisph dominated. And if you can take that plan, it's perfectly good. You just need to use all of your brain. So the left hemisphere that counts and controls will operate without the input from the right hemisphere, which is the part of us that does things like finding the meaning of our life. It's the part that yearns is the part that senses, you know, that uses the five senses. It's the part that is integrated with nature and. And it integrates the information from the left hemisphere of the brain. So it's not left hemisphere dominated versus right hemisphere dominated. Only the left hemisphere leaves out the rest of the brain. So really it's like, are you going to be your whole self? So make a plan, make a map, and then go out and be your whole self. Directed, sort of. Even. Even captivated by the vision of doing something new, but also responsive continuously to yourself and everything around you.

[A]

Yeah. Where you can hold plans and feelings at once. Right. So it's not about rigidity versus freedom. Yeah, It's. There's a. There's a, like, third way, which is designing a life with care and attention and then letting the ocean lead, like letting nature co lead us. And isn't that, in a way, like, the miracle of being human and having access to the kinds of minds we have is that we get to do both. We get to let these two capacities that we have support each other. And that's a nice feeling. Life. Yeah.

[B]

That is the feeling that people get when they go out to surf or they go out to play to. To. To do anything that makes us feel intensely and vitally alive. That is how we stay wild.

[A]

We hope you're enjoying Bewildered. If you're in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word wild to 570-873-0144. We're also an Instagram. Our handle is Bewildered Podcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at mbi. And remember, if you're having fun, please rate and review and stay wild.

[B]

People are always asking me, how did you get into training life coaches? And the answer is backwards. I did it backwards. That is, I didn't set up a program and then look for people to fill it. It's just that so many people were coming to me for coaching that I realized in order to serve the market, I was going to have to train other people in my methods. That was decades ago, and now the Wayfinder program contains all my very best wisdom and tools for living, boiled down to their savory essence. Now, if that sounds interesting to you, head on over to MarthaBeck.com and find your way.