Parenting, Work, and the Fight Not to Disappear

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bewildered – "Parenting, Work, and the Fight Not to Disappear"

Hosts: Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Date: October 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this soul-baring, unscripted episode, Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan dive into the reality of juggling parenting, work, and personal identity in a culture that demands constant achievement—and often, self-erasure. With raw honesty and wry humor, the duo explores the conflict between cultural expectations and true self, centering especially on the exhaustion and fragmentation faced by parents (but resonant for anyone caught between obligations and longing for wholeness). The episode spans personal anecdotes, research insights, and real-time life coaching, offering listeners laughter, companionship, and a hopeful path toward reclaiming inner flame in a bewildering world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Unbearable Complexity of Modern Life

• Real-Time Exhaustion: Rowan describes attempting to do a podcast on her daughter’s very first day of school, having barely slept and feeling overwhelmed by competing responsibilities.

  • “You’re gonna hear me flat out live, coaching about role fragmentation and exhaustion… how you can find your way through this morass of obligations and maybe get a little sanity.” (01:04, Rowan)

• Humor in Overwhelm: The hosts banter about American vs. Australian driving (roundabouts and four-way stops), language quirks, and phones that only recognize them at their worst angles—all serving as metaphors for confusion and societal demands.

2. Role Fragmentation and Cultural Contradictions

• No Right Way to Win: Martha recounts her PhD research at Harvard on “role conflict” among American women entering the workforce while raising children—highlighting the contradiction between caring and achieving, obligation and selfhood.

  • “It was impossible to be a healthy woman by that culture’s definition, and a healthy person, which means you were always wrong if you were trying to act like if you were a woman.” (26:50, Martha)

• Social Fault Lines: Rowan describes the tectonic tension between personal needs, new parent social circles ("trying to clump in with the monkeys"), and institutional expectations (school forms, summer journals), feeling judged no matter what she prioritizes.

  • “Unable to give myself the luxury of total focus… ever present fear that there’s something I should be remembering... needing to be available for those thoughts when they pop up…” (29:25, Rowan)

• Judgment and Gender/Class: The discussion broadens to how these value conflicts are not “just bad for women”—they pain everyone and are intertwined with class as much as gender.

3. Sleep, Spoons, and the Impossibility Equation

• The Time Trap: Rowan laments that the math of time simply doesn’t add up: sacrificing sleep is often the only path to any personal fulfillment, yet chronic exhaustion destroys capability on all fronts.

  • “I spend so much... brain space trying to solve it for X. With X being: where’s the bit where I get to write?... The only place that it ends up coming to is it’s either going to eat out of my sleep early in the morning or it’s going to eat out of my sleep late at night.” (39:41, Rowan)

• Spoons Theory, Enhanced: Martha references spoon theory—each responsibility costs an energy “spoon,” and as stress grows, energy shrinks. They add: some creative or “ember” activities don’t just cost spoons; they make them.

4. Burnout and the Path to Inner Sanity

• Systems That Break Us: Martha recalls women in her research who, faced with complete exhaustion and contradiction, sometimes chose to “opt out” of societal approval, radically prioritizing their own presence and love for themselves.

  • “The woman I used to be was dead. The woman who went back didn’t give a shit about what anybody thought. And she was completely in her own skin all the time…” (45:47, Martha)

• True Recovery is Radical Presence: Martha cautions that self-analytical or social explanations, while informative, can pull us further from ourselves. Instead, she moves into real-time coaching, bringing Rowan back to body, sensation, and personal clarity.

5. The Ember: Reconnecting with Our Deepest Desires

• Ember over Obligation: The “ember” is the core activity or love that lights one’s inner flame—often something loved since childhood, giving energy rather than draining it.

  • “The ember is the thing that gives you spoons… the most important thing you can do… is to find the ember that lights the fire in your own heart.” (62:48, Martha)

• Creativity as Survival: For Rowan, this ember is making “sculptures out of language”—the simple, pure joy of creating with words.

  • “I want to make sculptures out of language. That’s the same thing. I want to make stuff out of language.” (61:51, Rowan)

• Brave Self-Trust: Martha insists that when we tend the ember—even in defiance of culture and logic—miraculous synchronicities occur. Citing their own meeting and pivotal life decisions, she describes how trust in one’s true desire seems to ‘play the Tetris’ of life for us.

  • “When you feed the ember in your heart, the other things go faster… it works. Things start to fall into place because you following your own truth is what your reality wants from you.” (63:55, Martha)
  • “Go towards the heat and you don’t have to be the one playing the Tetris anymore.” (66:16, Rowan)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Role Conflict:
  • "It was impossible to be a healthy woman by that culture’s definition, and a healthy person, which means you were always wrong..." (26:50, Martha)
• On Snapshots of Exhaustion:
  • "My phone will let me make a purchase by saying, yes, that is your face, only if I produce three to six chins..." (07:27, Rowan)
• On Societal Fault Lines:
  • “It keeps getting more… It’s like, the paperwork coming home from school nearly killed me…” (30:50, Martha)
• On Wonder as Compass:
  • “Every time I walk into my bedroom, I have this view of mountains… I have made a promise to myself that I will never take that view for granted… that’s like my touch point for stay in that feeling and let the Tetris play itself around me.” (68:51, Rowan)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–05:00 – Opening exhaustion, roundabouts, linguistic musings
• 15:08–18:04 – Introduction to real-time life coaching, Rowan’s overwhelm, Martha explains her PhD
• 22:12–29:16 – Martha on dual value systems (web of care vs. individualism), research findings about women and unresolvable expectations
• 29:16–33:43 – Rowan candidly describes the fragmentation and guilt of parenting and working
• 36:03–39:41 – The role of class, not just gender; endlessness of tasks and time
• 44:45–48:59 – Martha’s research: the group that breaks free (the “wild” group)
• 58:00–63:55 – Creativity as spoon-generating, rediscovering the "ember"
• 66:10–71:47 – Tetris metaphor for life: moving from struggle to surrender and wonder as guidance

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Episode Takeaways

• There Is No Cultural Solution: The roles of parent/worker are set up by society to be mutually exclusive—no matter what you do, some aspect is ‘wrong’ by cultural standards. This is universal and deeply embedded.
• You Cannot ‘Win’ by Playing Harder: Efforts to satisfy all demands only lead to exhaustion, anxiety, and loss of self—there will never be enough time or energy no matter how you strategize.
• The Escape Hatch is Internal: Radical presence and tending your “ember”—the unique passion or activity that enlivens you—restores energy, reconnects you with authentic self, and (paradoxically) seems to make the rest of life flow better.
• Follow Wonder, Not Just Duty: Reorienting towards what genuinely brings delight and meaning brings unexpected support and creates possibilities that the rational, controlling mind cannot anticipate.

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Final Words

This episode is a balm for anyone underwater with too much to do, too little time, and too many voices—internal and external—telling you you’re failing. Martha and Rowan’s blend of honest confession, scholarly insight, and improvisational, loving humor offers not just solace, but a clear invitation: let true self—not society—be your North Star. Let the Tetris play itself. Tend your ember.

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Stay wild.

Transcript

[A]

Sometimes in this crazy thing we call life, crazy old life, when you've had not enough sleep, not enough, and you have a kid who's having her literal first day of school, ever, ever, something in life prevails upon you and says, should really be recording a podcast today, don't you find?

[B]

Isn't it?

[A]

Yeah, Always the way.

[B]

It's like, yeah, I've 4,000 things to do. Yeah. And the. My child's fate rests in the balance. I'm gonna go off and make a podcast.

[A]

I'm gonna make a podcast.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And if you're me in this situation, and I don't see why you wouldn't be, you use the podcast as an opportunity to receive world class life coaching on just how hard it is to care for people, do a job, do a life, be a human.

[B]

It's rough. So you're gonna hear on this, on this podcast, this is as real as it gets. You're gonna hear me flat out live, coaching about role fragmentation and exhaustion and the pressures on you as a, as a human and caring for other people and your career and everything, and how you can find your way through this morass of obligations and maybe get a little sanity.

[A]

There will be complaining. There will be mixed metaphors.

[B]

There will be extensive Excerpts from my PhD dissertation. Wow.

[A]

What's not to love? We hope you'll stay and join us for Bewildered.

[B]

Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[A]

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

[B]

Figure it out, man.

[A]

What are you trying to figure out?

[B]

You said it was going to be easy. You said it was going to be fun. You said it was going to be good. What? Living in a city that uses roundabouts, you're like, in Australia, we don't have four way stops. Those are insane and require people to notice things. But roundabouts are heaven. I ended up going to Albany, which is literally thousands and thousands of light years away from, because I just. You're in this roundabout, you're going round and round and round like you're on a calliope or something. Wait, what's a calliope?

[A]

For the purposes of the tape, she did not go to Albany.

[B]

Anyway, I was on the way. I was on the way. I didn't have an exit for nine miles just because I like the distinction between the place I was supposed to get off the roundabout and the place I did get off the roundabout was incomparable. It was negligible. There was no way to tell the difference. How do you. It's insane.

[A]

The thing about Americans that I will tell you is the only time when they are not overwhelmingly confident, borderline rude, is when they're at a four way stop. When they become the opposite.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And they become like nervous little British penguins and they're all like, oh, no, no, he's after. After you. I couldn't possibly. Oh, no, I couldn't possibly. I mean, no, I wasn't paying attention. Which is my right.

[B]

My other right. Oh, please, please go.

[A]

All right, I'm going.

[B]

No, no, don't go.

[A]

That's a wave. That's a stop.

[B]

Do you see that? This is the heart center of American culture. This is the place of compassion and consideration for others. And you replace that with a roundabout and what do you have? Chaos and heartbreak.

[A]

If you're on the roundabout that you are yielded to, you yield to the person who is already on the roundabout. It's so easy. You don't have to set your watch to know who arrived first.

[B]

And so I'm just supposed to. Do I just go round and round and round and round? Like there were decisions to be made and no time to make them because I was going round and round and round and I just. It said go that way. And so I did, but it just was a slightly different way at first.

[A]

I think the problem is to do with navigation and not so much about rounding.

[B]

If you see it a four way stop, I would be like, ah, I see my way here, I'm stopped. Which means I evaluate the distance and the direction ahead of me. Not, oh, driving round and round and round. Make a decision. Now, now, now. Oops, too late. You're on the road to Albany. Two roads diverged in a roundabout.

[A]

Yeah. And I took the one to Albany.

[B]

And that has made all the difference.

[A]

Do I say Albany or Albany in my accent?

[B]

Albany. Because it sounds cooler to us.

[A]

Albany.

[B]

We say Albany, but I say Albany. I said Albany. Albany.

[A]

I can't make that noise.

[B]

Say Albany. I have a secret wish that our daughter retain her Australian accent because I think it makes her so much more adorable than anyone else I've ever met.

[A]

Yesterday she did a performance.

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

On a stage. There was no audience, but she enjoyed her performance very much. She used a hoop.

[B]

See, if she goes up to a teacher and says, I'd like a glass of water, they're gonna be charmed.

[A]

Water, you know, water is the hardest thing.

[B]

You don't say water. She's.

[A]

Because I can't anymore.

[B]

You say water. Water.

[A]

What does she say?

[B]

Water. Like a South African or English person. I don't know where she gets it.

[A]

I was on a plane and I asked for some water and they were.

[B]

Like, we don't have alcohol.

[A]

We don't have that. And I'm like, no, but water. And she's like, what? And then finally I just like sat there and I was like, hang on.

[B]

Water.

[A]

And it did the trick. And ever since, I've never been quiet. I've never really known where I had.

[B]

A. I know water that just really. It's the lowest way to say water.

[A]

It's the four way stop.

[B]

It's the four way stop of water pronunciation. What are you trying to figure out?

[A]

You know how we are a species who have mobile phones as like an extension of our own bodies at this point?

[B]

Yes. We've evolved to need them.

[A]

Yeah, we have. Yeah, we've evolved. They've evolved. We've co evolved. Like kind of like how wolves became dogs.

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

Right. And then like, who's wagging the what? You know?

[B]

I know, Right.

[A]

So here's the thing is usually my phone seems keen to please me.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Except in one key way.

[B]

What is that?

[A]

So I. When I do shop online, like 11:30pm on the TikTok shop on a weeknight, I'm like making a purchase. Yeah. And I want to look good.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I want to be like, at 11:30, I'm someone who's making a purchase. Don't mind if I do. Bartender, you know. But it turns out that the only way my phone will let me make a purchase by saying, yes, that is your face is if I like produce three to six chins. Like, otherwise it's like, know who that is? Who looks so good? And it'll just be like, face not recognized. Do you want to enter the like 90,000 character?

[B]

Oh my God, like password?

[A]

And so now I have to. I just had to do it downstairs for the parking. I had to install a new app. And I was on the street, Marty and I knew and people. And there was a guy running past.

[B]

On a bicycle yelling about that God.

[A]

Loved us and we needed to accept ourselves. But I. But I couldn't because the only way I could pay for our parking was to bring out all the chins. Oh, all the chins.

[B]

That's brutal.

[A]

I know, man.

[B]

You know, I was so photo shy that I actually became editor of the yearbook in high school to make sure there were no pictures of me in the yearbook. There were no photographs of me until I was like 35 and I started writing books and Everything. And. And now it's like every grotesque angle of my aging body is being, like, accidentally photographed by me.

[A]

And then every angle, I think.

[B]

So anyway, back to your story.

[A]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think we need to stay here for a minute.

[B]

What just happened? Okay, here's what happens. We went to a fancy meeting of fancy people once in Hollywood. Remember the one where we had to paint your head? That's a whole different story.

[A]

Let's just move on and not explain that at all.

[B]

We'll come back to it someday. But all the fancy people in this meeting, all the women had their phones on leather straps, like a little purselet thing. So I need that, because if something's not strapped to me, God knows it's lost.

[A]

It's lost forever.

[B]

So what happens is I turn on the camera, like, if I go to take a picture of something wonderful, like a bear, and then I put the camera down, but it's touch activated. So it's swinging on its. I don't know what they call it. It's swinging on its strap, and I carry it everywhere. Like, I'll get out of the shower, put this thing on, and accidentally, I see dressed in nothing but a cell phone.

[A]

Accidentally. I was just stepping out of the shower, and I mean, my phone is touch activated.

[B]

And so am I, but actually. Oh, dear. You have not had nearly enough sleep, have you? Oh, my God.

[A]

That was so.

[B]

But it takes pictures you don't expect. Doesn't your phone do that? Like, it takes pictures of you doing, like, bad pictures?

[A]

Yeah, it takes pictures of me with all my chins out.

[B]

That's just normal.

[A]

It doesn't take pictures of me coming out of the.

[B]

But not like the way you take a picture artfully of someone, like, from under my armpit and stuff.

[A]

Okay, all right, Angel. I have so many questions that I'm rendered speechless.

[B]

All I'm saying is that if it used one of those as face not recognized, and I had to replicate the pose when my camera was swinging freely from its strap and it just flashed a picture of me, there's no.

[A]

Okay, wait, wait. So let me see if I've got this right.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You once went to a meeting in Hollywood.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And as a result, you now step out of the shower and immediately strap your phone to your butt. No towel. Let's not waste time with towels in Hollywood with their touch activated phones. I love the way the Hollywood meeting had to come into this tower.

[B]

Bad speak. Why the strap? And see, all of those women were so beautiful that literally you could take a picture of them with a camera just swinging anywhere around them and they would still look beautiful. Not so with yours truly, but I assume that's why they can tolerate the strap cameras.

[A]

I know that we have it because of the not sleeping.

[B]

Yeah, this is good.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Good.

[A]

It's all good content.

[B]

Keep it. Don't forget the bear. You got the Hollywood meeting, then the bear, which did come to our house and wait politely in the woods while we took its picture before attacking our garbage bin.

[A]

Yeah, well, during.

[B]

Well, during. So I had a lot of pictures of the bear, but then the camera took all kinds of pictures of me throughout the day from a lot of unflattering angles.

[A]

Psa. If you are the parent of a small child and a bear turns up, try to avoid doing this.

[B]

Hello, you're our friend. Hi, little guy.

[A]

Are you our friend? You are our friend. That's what you said to the bear. And then I tried to tell Lila that it would.

[B]

It was evil and would disembowel her. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not sure she believes. And so that's why I bought 97 locks, huge deadbolt locks yesterday. Not to keep the bears out, to keep Lila in.

[A]

And the bears are welcome.

[B]

Yeah, well, it's that they were there first.

[A]

Should we do a podcast, do you think?

[B]

Why not? Let's figure that out. All right.

[A]

Well, actually, that's.

[B]

That's there. Yeah.

[A]

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. Great review. Subscribe, join, and you all have a great day now.

[B]

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. All right, go ahead and introduce it.

[A]

Every now and again. Regular listeners to the show will know that sometimes it's just all a bit much. And if you've ever thought, wow, it must be nice to live with a life coach, these are the days when I am here to tell you, yes, it is. It's wonderful because sometimes you don't know what to talk about on a podcast. So you think my problems.

[B]

Well, this is exactly what happened. You are in this phase of life where you're just getting a kid ready to go to school while we're moving into a house, while you're trying to run a business.

[A]

During perimenopause.

[B]

During perimenopause. Menipause many pauses, she tries to call.

[A]

Me a young mother.

[B]

We have this mother of young is what I really mean.

[A]

But she's like, when you're just a young mother. And I'm like, I have gray pubes.

[B]

Oh, we didn't see. Now that you don't need a strap camera. Everyone knows.

[A]

Yeah, I never felt the need to prove it, just felt the need to say it.

[B]

Okay, we'll figure that one out later. But here's the thing. When I was at that stage of child rearing, when I was a mere wee Louse of 23, 24 years old, trying to juggle kids and work and getting a PhD and everything, the only way I could get my PhD was to write a PhD about what I was going through. So I wrote about role conflict in American women who were moving into the workforce while still trying to raise children. And I dissected the issue because that meant that when I. It counted as research, when I was just lying on the bed going, I cannot figure this out. So I did.

[A]

It really reminds me of when I was trying to get my PhD and the literally the only way that I could see before me to get the PhD was to write an email saying, I cannot do this PhD.

[B]

Bye, bye. Yeah, but it's kind of the same premise here, because I was so completely pressured, fragmented, torn in a thousand directions, Guilty all the time, running all the time, short of sleep, not understanding why I felt so horrible. And so I wrote a dissertation about it. And today you were feeling very much the same way. And we said, why don't we do a podcast on it?

[A]

Very much the same way, but without the dissertation.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. More of a podcast.

[A]

Yeah, well, actually, yeah, that's true. A podcast is a dissertation in a way.

[B]

In a way?

[A]

In a way.

[B]

I'm not sure what dissertation. Anyway, it's a discussion. It's a compare and contrast thing.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

All right, here are my problems.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

In no particular order.

[B]

So this is actually, like, we have not, like, scripted this at all.

[A]

I think that will become a bunch. All our listeners are like, why do.

[B]

They feel the need to tell us this? It's pretty obvious. Okay, go.

[A]

Here are my problems, in no particular order. Well, the gray pubes, for starters.

[B]

Alrighty. There are chemical solutions to that.

[A]

Oh, no, no, no.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So far, the life coach isn't helping.

[B]

Not at all. Nobody's brought that issue before. I wasn't prepared.

[A]

The next problem is that I think what people don't realize about doing a podcast, and this is true, is that sometimes you don't feel like doing a podcast.

[B]

What? Yeah, I always feel like doing a podcast.

[A]

You are so good at doing podcasts and being podcasty. I was lying that you don't even know if you feel like it or not. You just turn up.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I've completely lost to myself and just accommodating culture.

[A]

Do you know what this reminds me of? An Ani DiFranco song. Does it?

[B]

Oh, my God. That's never happened before. Yeah.

[A]

And I can't remember it now.

[B]

That really has never happened before. But you Remember everything Ani DiFranco has ever written down, including, like, I don't know her.

[A]

I don't need to know what to say. I don't need to know where I stand.

[B]

I just gotta show up for the thing at hand. See, you're bringing me into your cult. I am. I Now adore Ana DeFranco, too, and I know a lot of her lyrics.

[A]

It's not so much a cult as a listening to music. But, you know, potato.

[B]

Potato. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Her daughter's been saying potato a lot, and she's the first person, I swear.

[B]

She's British.

[A]

Fred Astaire.

[B]

She's got some sort of not genetic, but epigenetic thing where something flipped in her genetic code and made British.

[A]

No one in Britain says potato.

[B]

Really?

[A]

No one ever has. No one says it. Do you honestly think people are walking around saying potato and you've never heard it?

[B]

What do they say in New Zealand?

[A]

Potato.

[B]

What do they say in South Africa?

[A]

They sort of say potato, I think.

[B]

I think in South Africa they say potato.

[A]

No, they say potato, but everybody says tomato.

[B]

You say tomato.

[A]

You know, I'm starting to really see why scripting These could be a good idea.

[B]

Moving forward, back to the topic at hand, Rowie.

[A]

Our daughter started school today. It was her first day of kindergarten. And I have to do a podcast today.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Also.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And that's not right, is it?

[B]

It's not easy. That's for sure. And I have seen.

[A]

And also, I was up for three hours with her in the night because.

[B]

She'S still basically a newborn, only now she's a newborn who has to act like an executive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you have to make her do it against her will, if necessary.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It doesn't. It really doesn't seem right. And when. And it's like all these stages of parenthood, people always say no one ever tells you. And then the kind of joke that's built in is that they do tell you, but they don't tell you. You can actually tell you how it's gonna feel in your body to actually try and do that shit.

[B]

All they can tell you is nobody told you, because when you get there, it is beyond description.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It is beyond verbal, Ken.

[A]

So could you fix me, please?

[B]

All right.

[A]

With your dissertation?

[B]

I will actually. Oh, gosh, I can't believe I'm going to do this. I am going to just summarize a.

[A]

Tiny bit of your dissertation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There are two from some university.

[B]

Oh. Little place called Harvard, which I want Lila to pronounce. Harvard.

[A]

Harvard.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I want her to pronounce it. Never heard of it.

[B]

There you go. Okay. So everybody out there can drink. Drink water because I said Harvard. Ooh. Drink again. All right, so here's the thing. There are two different value systems that feed into our culture. One comes from traditional societies, pre modern, pre industrial revolution, where if you look at pre modern societies anywhere, one of the highest values is giving up individuals self interest for the good of the group and to care for others. The web of care. Yep. And then you get this sort of individualized culture that started with Enlightenment Europe. I mean, it didn't start with it, but it was taken to a huge extreme by the Enlightenment philosophers of, like, the 18th century. And they imported it all over the globe, they exported it all over the globe. And in that culture, one of the highest values is competing against the group to achieve individual superiority. So all the structures of, like, work and school and everything are set up to make you act as an individual at the expense of your connections with others. But everything about mothering, everything about the way humans are actually designed requires the web of care. And this is the culture nature split here because in nature, we are social primates. We hang out together, we clump, we clot, we clump about, we get in little, little balls. I mean, it's so adorable when we're in South Africa, if it rains, to watch the vervet monkeys gather into a ball. Like the whole troop, like 20 monkeys will just gather into one ball to keep each other warm. Monkey ball, monkey ball. We call them monkey balls. And it's fun to be a monkey ball at home, cuddle. And we're meant to live in troops, in bands, and to take care of each other's needs in a kind of spontaneous, free flowing, natural ecosystem kind of way. And then you get modern culture, which is like, march up the steps of achievement and beat as many people as you can, get more than other people can get at many stages and train your child to act in these ways. Left hemisphere dominated, regimented, obedient, sitting still and then moving fast when they're told to move. So we have this whole premise in the podcast. What's culture doing to us and how does it contrast with our nature and how do we get back to our true nature? And what you're dealing with right now is this horrible, like, death grip of a parent who is trying to get a child not only to be a happy, thriving little person who needs to be with family and parents and constantly attended to and cared for in all these physical and mental ways. You're trying to raise a happy child while conforming and forcing. It's a wonderful school, but it's still the same system, getting the child to conform to the individualist system. And you're also trying to earn a living based in the individualistic system. So you, you have. And the thing about these two. Okay, I'm just going to say one more thing and then I'll, I'll, I promise we'll start talking about you. In the 1960s, somebody took, they did a study where they took a whole bunch of psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, right? And they had them make a list, three lists. One was a list of the characteristics of a healthy individual. And they put in like strong, assertive, confident, all these things. Then they had them make a list of the characteristics of a healthy male adult and a healthy female adult. They didn't acknowledge anything else, just male, female. Now the list of things that identify a healthy man in this were the same as the list of things that identify a healthy person. But the healthy woman, the list of those characteristics was the opposite of what characterizes a healthy person. So instead of strong, independent, capable, self sufficient, it was observing others, always willing to, you know, sacrifice, self sacrificing, sympathetic, empathetic, soft, all these things. So what became apparent is that it was impossible to be a healthy woman by that culture's definition, and a healthy person, which means you were always wrong if you were trying to act like if you were a woman. But it also pertains to anything men do that is empathetic and sensitive and supportive to others. They would move over into that list of things that were not characteristic of a healthy person. But yes, a healthy woman.

[A]

Yeah. So we're not really talking about men and women. We're talking about the cultural conception of masculinity and femininity.

[B]

There was such an assumption that gender and, and function and life orientation went together that they didn't even care. They didn't even question it. So what we've got is we've got the caring qualities of a traditional culture seen as not just the antithesis of the admirable qualities of the modern culture, but they actually work against each other. Like they are mutually incompatible. It's not just that they're different. If you're doing well in one, if you're self sacrificing on the job so that you can take care of your family, you're a bad employee. And if you're giving up time with your family to do your job, you're a bad parent. And this is baked deep into the core of our culture. And it results in what you're going through right now. Almost no sleep, constant fragmentation of attention. Not nearly enough time. Not if they give you twice as much as you have no sense of who you really should be. It gets so fragmented. Well, you tell me how you feeling?

[A]

I'd love to.

[B]

I asked 300 women how they were feeling and now I'm generalizing to you. I am so sorry, honey. Tell me how you feel.

[A]

I feel harried, fractured. Unable. Like unable to give myself the luxury of total focus on anything because of the ever present fear that there's something I should be remembering, thinking, doing, and the, the sense of needing to be available for those thoughts when they pop up so that I can record them so that I don't drop a ball. Yeah, that will cause some sort of social shaming.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Or stigmatization. And man, first day of school.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

So what they tell you is, ah, school, awesome, that'll be great. And you're like, yay, gotta get, get her to school. And then everything will be fine. And then they're like, oh, no, like again, Disclaimer. Amazing school. But they're like, here's your things that you need to do in order to get your kid into our school. And that's quite a lot of work. And the summer journal and the.

[B]

And it keeps getting more. I mean, when I went to elementary school, I just walked over to the school and showed up. I mean, I think my mother took me the first day and that was that. I mean, it's not like we did a big journal or there were tons of paperwork to take home every day. When my three older kids started school, the paperwork nearly killed me. I mean, just the paperwork coming home from school every damn day. So, yeah, you were given this wonderful school's amazing basket of opportunity opportunities to do really difficult and complicated things to make sure that the five year old would walk in adequately prepared with teddy bear in one hand, briefcase in the other. It's crazy.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, like it just, it's so. It's such a. What's the word? When you've got like two plates, tectonic plates. Fault line. It's a fault line. Is the social element of it all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that there's, there's a, like a personal social element. Because now there's this new clump.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That I'm trying to clump in with the monkeys, which is the other parents. Right. And I'm trying to be in that little monkey clump. And I don't know what the. I don't really know the rules of the clump yet. And I speak weird and I accidentally called someone, someone else's name and there's someone else, the person who. Well, anyway, it was not a complimentary mistake to have made to the person I made it to. And there's a WhatsApp group and there's an email chain and there's a parent of the classroom and there's a do, do. And then there's like, what am I doing to her if I don't do the journal?

[B]

Right, right. I know. And she doesn't want to do the journal.

[A]

She doesn't want to do the journal.

[B]

She sounded just like me last night. I heard her. You were trying to get her to do the journal. And she was shouting at the top of her voice. I don't want to write anything. I'm like, oh, that's my inner voice.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, so right away, I mean, there's that joke comedian made where he's talking about being a math teacher and they're saying your job is to make children know math. And he's like, oh, they want to know math. No, no, you have to make them know it against their will. What you know, that doesn't happen in nature. So what you're in is a welter of social judgment and the social anxiety that comes with it.

[A]

Is there social judgment or is there just a perception of social judgment?

[B]

No, there is. Why? Because here's the thing, these value systems are really strong in the culture and you can find a lot. You know, if you wanna look online and get into this rabbit hole, prepare to get yourself torn apart. Because there's this idea of what you should do as a parent and how you should be as a parent, and how loving and how present and how you should show up at the PTA meetings all the time and you're gonna get judged if you don't. But there are also judgments about, like, do you have a profession? Do you keep the house immaculately clean? Are you doing all the other things that you're supposed to do? Are you getting enough exercise? Are you doing enough self care, like all these other things, but mainly focused on are you achieving and succeeding and are you making money more than anything else? That's the panic over on that side. But there's also judgment for a lot of people, less for us because we work at home and we do creative work. But there's a truth. And we're total weirdos, total weirdos. And we've accepted it. But you know, for a man, for somebody who identifies as male and is seen as male, to go over to the side of more care for the child and showing up the first day of kindergarten, massive social barriers to that. For women who want to be seen as super high achieving, which a lot of women do. Like, who doesn't want to be seen well by their society, who doesn't want to make lots of money and climb the pyramid, right? But then we end up bringing our kids to work because they're sick and there's social judgment there. So I'm just, I'm broadening the scope. But what you're going through is an example of that.

[A]

So I feel like there's something here that I want to dig into a bit more. Not for myself, but because I worry that we're saying. I always worry on. In these conversations that we have, I'm bewildered. I always worry that there's a tendency to say, before the Industrial revolution, everything was beautiful and perfect and now it's good for men and bad for women and.

[B]

No, it's bad for men too.

[A]

It's really bad for Men too. And. Or whatever. But this, this idea. And I was thinking about how you said, you know, there was the Enlightenment in the west and that got exported.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To around the world. But then. And so you're kind of locating that on a timeline. But when I was doing.

[B]

When I was at a little place.

[A]

Called the University of Melbourne.

[B]

Not too shabby. Not too shabby. I'll have a drink. My.

[A]

And I was. I was studying international politics. One of. And I think I've said this on the podcast before, like one of the real problems with human rights as a discourse is that it. It says the human being is the location of the. Like the one who receives the right is the individual right. And, and what many parties to the United nations were saying is that's a reflection of Western values. That is not a reflection of our values. Which would prefer to locate the unit of right. Have rights. Having the subject of the rights as the community.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And so there's. There's like, it's a. It's a continuous thing in time. But it's. Here's my graduate degree level analysis of the whole thing is. It was fucked up before when you were in the kitchen.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

It was doing that and raising kids and not able to go to amazing Ivy League institutions like the University of Melbourne. And. And it's all. It's all fucked up.

[B]

It's always been like that. Right. And also it's. Any agrarian society had the stratification where certain people would be the idle rich and they would make people below them in the hierarchy in terms of power, wealth and status, do all the grunt work. And so there's always been this.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And class is. Yeah, I would say class is at least as big a factor as gender.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

In it. Because. Yeah. Because in many cases the individual could be a healthy woman as long as she had a shit ton of things.

[B]

Exactly. And I've had people tell me, I've had both at Harvard and at. Just in life in general, they're like, well, you do this and this and this and it's really easy, you know, always have dinner at 6, do this. You know, make sure this happens and this happens and this happens and this happens. And I'm like, but who does it? And they say, well, the servants, of course. So really, let's take away male and female and let's say servant and higher up. You know, we're all supposed. You're in a place where you're supposed to be like the servant who takes care of the domestic scene. And also, like, the higher up, who is going to sit here and make a podcast and tell people what to think, you know, like, and those two things conflict.

[A]

Yeah. And I. And I can see how they're fluid roles that we move in and out of. But what I end up coming back to, and I know that you and Einstein are going to say I'm wrong about this, but, like, there's only so much time, you know, like. And it just. It keeps in my mind becoming a problem of time.

[B]

It is.

[A]

I spend so much time, much of this precious, precious brain space that I don't have, trying to solve it for X. With X being. Where's the bit where I get to write? I now have a bathtub near my bedroom. When do I get to take my bath?

[B]

You don't.

[A]

No.

[B]

But let me tell you something else. Even if you had 48 hours a day, it would fill every minute.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The nature of this is set up. You used the word fault line. I ended up.

[A]

When I eventually remembered what it was.

[B]

I mean, I published a book which sank like a stone based on this, and it was called Breaking Point. Because no matter how much time you have to be a good parent, it will not be enough. And you will be judged. And no matter how much time you have to achieve as an individual and make a living and everything, it's infinite. It's internally contradictory, and it's just got its teeth into us that says we have to do infinite things. There is not enough time. Right.

[A]

But in the algebra that I was describing, what ends up like, you're like, something has to give in this because my soul will wither and die at a certain number of years in if I. All I do is podcast some white bottoms.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and so there's like this part of me that needs to spend some time in the driver's seat of myself. And what as I. As I try to solve and try to solve and try to solve, the only place that it ends up coming to is it's either going to eat out of my sleep early in the morning or it's going to eat out of my sleep late at night. And the shitty thing about that formula is that with not enough sleep occasionally or chronically, you can't parent, you can't domestic, you can't have a job, you can't do. Do a job. You can't function.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And yet it's like that. So ultimately that becomes the choice is how much sleep do I surrender for my soul.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And how completely inept do I And awful, feeling awful, but also performing for the culture terribly in my day to day life.

[B]

Because when you give up sleep, serious, I am serious as a heart attack here. You might as well be drinking poison. The lack of sleep is absolutely horrendous, as you know, for everything, every aspect of your health, every aspect of your relationships and performance. And that is the thing people give up. So I've been talking in generalities and I did interview all these women way back in the 80s 90s. So I have in my mind general things that happen. I know what I found the results were, but I'm kind of interested in like you as an individual because you really are in this state right now. And I don't. The first thing about it is if I tell you the dynamics that are going into it and the societal pressures and everything, what I'm doing is I'm pulling you into an analytical frame of mind and away from the center of yourself. And the one thing I found out, it's funny, I figured it all out societally and went to my advisors and said, incompatible value system, we're all screwed. And they were like, so what's the solution? I said, there is no solution. We've got an incompatible value. And they were like, no, there has to be. Which was very not scientific of them. There doesn't have to be. You can just describe a problem and leave it at that. But I was like, okay. And I went back to the data and what I found was that I would do these interviews and then after the interview was over and I would turn off the recorder, women would start telling me the truth. And I started looking at the data that wasn't in the recordings, that was in my notes that I remembered. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. And it kind of created the foundation for my whole life and my whole self help career was teaching people what I found. But I want to go through it for you because one of the first mistakes that people are taught to make is to abandon themselves emotionally, physically and intuitively. And if I lecture you about the social dynamics, I'm pulling you away from the ability to center physically, emotionally, intuitively.

[A]

Oh no, please lecture me more on social dynamics, please.

[B]

Seriously.

[A]

No.

[B]

Okay, good, good. Because like that's, I love that I can just go and go and go like a lumberjack.

[A]

Sometimes you forget that it's just like you and me in the car driving along and, and you start in on one and finally I'm just like, who are you talking to? Because you're saying, and furthermore, your honor I don't. A little bit.

[B]

I don't. I never say furthermore. Sometimes I say furthermore as you call me.

[A]

Your honor. But only in a kinky context with.

[B]

My, like, camo strap swinging wildly. Your honor. Your honor.

[A]

Taking selfie videos of your armpits from below.

[B]

Jacked. Okay, so. So I'm going to take what I learned from those women. You're so sleep deprived. It's really sad.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Instead of generalizing, I want to now particularize. I want to come into the present moment because. Okay, spoiler alert. What happened was that women who were trying to just be like good or people I was studying people who identified as women. Some of them wanted to be just stay at home parents. And they were stressed, really stressed, stressed beyond belief. And some of them decided they were not going to have kids, they were not going to get married, they were just going to pursue their careers. They were stressed because people thought they were bad for not doing those things. And then there were the people who were trying to do both, and they were really on the verge of death. They were so exhausted and conflicted. And then there was one more group. And these women were very different. And they weren't on the spectrum at all. They were not in society. So my discipline, sociology, starts when people start gathering and making groups. These women were not doing anything social. They were going wild. This is where wilder comes from. If it's a spectrum of places on the ground, they went up. And I do want to tell one quick story of this one subject that blew my mind. She was her husband. She was Mormon. So was I at the time. But her husband got terminal cancer and so he couldn't work anymore. No, she wasn't Mormon. She was a different religion, but similar. Anyway, she got a job to pay for his care, but then she couldn't care for him. And his cancer kept getting worse. It was terminal prognosis, but her family told her that it was because she was being evil and working, that his cancer was getting better. She had to stay home and care for him. So she did that. And then everybody got angry at her because she wasn't earning anything to support, like. So she decided to take his medication and end her own life. She took a whole bunch of his pain medication and bought a bottle of whiskey and took them to a lake. And she was going to take the pills and drink the whiskey. Lights out. And she thought about doing it. And then she realized, I'll be fine then. And then she realized she already felt fine. And so she decided to not end her Life physically, but to end her life in her own mind. She was dead and gone. The woman I was, she told me the woman I used to be was dead. The woman who went back didn't give a shit about what anybody thought. And she was completely in her own skin all the time. She went back to work, her husband died, she became a nurse. It was like she. She did really well with her life after that, but she was like. And so that was one case. But then I saw less dramatic examples, but it was always this. I decided to be myself in a present moment where I let everything else go straight to hell. And it was just me and what I was feeling.

[A]

Can I ask what? Well, no. Can I preface my question with.

[B]

You?

[A]

And I know of someone who had the experience as a kid of their mother deciding to opt out of doing the. Being at the breaking point.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[A]

High level career, two kids at home, like, and just literally put a sign up on the door, I'm not doing it anymore. And that was incredibly horrible. Horrible for the others involved. And that's why I feel like the, the. There are the two sides of the. They'll judge you for this or they'll judge you for that. But people get hurt if you bring that. If you bring that mystical go up instead of this way or that way. How do you reconcile that?

[B]

Well, I would say I don't know that woman personally, but I know what you're talking about. And I know that that person was very politically minded and was thinking in terms.

[A]

The mother.

[B]

Yeah, the mother.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Was thinking in terms of defying that stereotype and was probably very much in that. I'm going to still in that way of thinking. Because what happened with the women who left society entirely was that their underlying operating system came to rest completely on love. And the first thing they felt, it began with love for themselves, uniquely. They began in a moment when there was clarity. So the first thing I notice about you all day today is that your nervous system is highly frayed. It's dysregulated. I mean, you cannot go without sleep and do 20,000 things and have a regulated nervous system. So the first thing I was going to do is not lecture you, but just say, and this is for anybody out there who's feeling stressed right now. It's just you and me right here. Let this be all you think about for a moment. I know you're afraid of dropping the balls you're juggling. That's just gonna have to be a risk we take for you to be.

[A]

Here it's so funny. Cause I was just thinking, as you were saying that. I was thinking, this is good. She's monologuing a little bit. This is the perfect time for me to check my watch and make sure we're within our allotted time in the studio.

[B]

What are we doing? Okay, what are we doing? What are we doing? Feel the quality of anxiety that drives that.

[A]

Yeah, that's.

[B]

That is so ubiquitous in our culture that we think it's normalcy. It's not. It's not. Animals don't need that. Okay. We don't. I don't believe we always need that. I think it's important. But the constant checking and the anxiety associated with it, it's like taking a cheese grater to your nervous system like a thousand times a day. So I'm not saying you don't check in on things. And it was good to check your watch and say, okay, we have whatever it is. How many minutes do we have? 30 or something. Then just, you know that we have this set up so that you'll know when it's time. So notice that you're not really here, that you're in the scatter. And that's a fight flight response went, what do I have to do? Where do I have to be? Okay, you're always in fight or flight. That's what dysregulates. Because other animals have moments of anxiety or they run from a predator, and then the predator's gone. And then they come back into regulation. But when someone like you or like me comes back into regulation in that scenario, immediately, that itself is a trigger to wait, wait, I'm out of control. I've got to. I've got to check. I've got to check. I've got to check. And Karen, our beloved third, is an absolute check monster. She's like, have you checked? Have you checked? Have you checked on. Like, if I ever relaxed very much as a mom, she'd be like, have you checked on the kids? Have you checked? And I don't know. She's. I'm not saying anything negative about her. We all get into this, and that thing of have we checked? Is a part of our. We see it as a virtue and a necessity. And in many ways it is necessary, but it's not a virtue.

[A]

But I don't think it happens because there's any confusion about virtuousness. I don't think.

[B]

I don't think it's articulated. But it's like, if I don't check on the thing, I'll forget to do the other thing. And then I will do something bad. I'll forget something and everything will be bad.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But right now you can take these chunks of time. And this is why I started meditating. And it's the only. I was so sick after years of this. I was so physically ill from not sleeping and from constantly. I mean, I literally would wake up every morning going like always. And that's if I slept, which wasn't always. But the regulation of your own nervous system is the bottom line and you are carrying any responsibility you have. It's like you're the firekeeper for the people who depend on you. In Scotland, where my ancestors roamed the peat bogs in the cold, it's really hard to start a fire in these damp places. So they would keep this lump of peat burning and someone had to take care of it. And that thing lit the fire for the whole village. And if it went out, they were screwed. Right? Your flame, your ember that you have to keep going is to be present with yourself in little islands of time where you just picture yourself pulling off velcro that's stuck to you telling you you should check on this and you should do that. And you have to think things through. And you've got to think about her college education. You've got to think about, you know.

[A]

Like, oh my God, I have not thought about her college education in like days.

[B]

Days. But we talk about it like, I mean it's. And it's like things are just clinging to you. They're like birds. Like there's so many things that are supposed to have your attention. It's like you've run through a field of birds and you're covered with them and you try to take them out, they stick into your fingers, they hurt. And you cannot, in that state of nervous dysregulation, survive. Forget taking care of things you can't survive. It becomes. And I saw people go from exhaustion to full on illness to death sometimes. There was one woman who said, if I go back to. She quit her job because she had cancer. And then she could have used her benefits to not work for a while and just take care of her family. But then she found out that the people at work weren't taking care of her project. And she told me, if I go back, this was a client, this wasn't a subject in the study. If I go back, I know I'll get cancer again. I know I'll die. But I have to go back because I can't stand to let them do this wrong. She got cancer again and died. I don't know if it was causal, but, like, it was weird that she would go back when she told me she knew that. Anyway. I know, you know, you can't do this indefinitely. I know you know you're too tired.

[A]

Yeah. And I want to, like, bring the conversation full circle with, like, the. The real. Like, how do we come to our senses? So let's just take a sec and then come back to that. The. The sleep thing. Like, because to me, I can actually hold the fracturing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If I can find. No, no, no. If I can find the time to be creative or to be still or to be silent. But I'm. But I'm still locked in that sleep or time dilemma, so I don't know how to.

[B]

When you said creative, I remembered, like, I flashed to that very period where I was writing that dissertation and I was also writing a novel. And we did an episode way the heck back on spoon theory. How much energy you have and every act you take during the day. Get your kid up, get your kid fed, get yourself dressed. It takes a spoon. And some of us have 50 spoons, and we can do things all day. And some of us have very few spoons. And my experience of people going through what you're going through is that the spoons shrink as you get more harried and more responsibilities and less sleep.

[A]

It's almost as if the number of things requiring spoons, hundreds of spoons.

[B]

Yeah, but. But the thing that we added to spoon theory, look it up, if you haven't heard of it, folks, is that you are the one who realized there are activities that actually gave you spoons, which thing I never had supposed. And I remember writing my dissertation, my hands would hurt so much, I'd have to put them in casts and just sort of club the keys. And then I would. I would decide to switch documents and go to my novel. And suddenly my hands would unlock, and suddenly my mind would unlock. And this is what these women did. They started. And men do this. I also found it among men in societies where they'd been tribal societies had been superimposed by modern ones. So it happens to everybody. If you can come to a place of genuine love for the self, not sentimental, not sort of. I've just taken a hot bubble bath and had a glass of red wine and I'm a new person. No, this is like a profound respect for the suffering you're going through and the demands being made on you. And then say, what do I love to do what do I love? Not whom do I love? That's part of it. But the thing that gets lost in all of this is, what do I love? And I was in therapy during the time I was doing this. And so I went to therapy, and this is why I started writing the novel. My therapist said I was telling her about doing all the research, and she said, when's the last time you read a book for fun? And I didn't remember. And I went to a supermarket and got Jurassic park, and I read it all night, and I had more energy the next day than I'd had for months. So I remembered what I loved, and I gave time to that, and I sacrificed sleep, but I gained spoons in some amazing way. And I remember one woman telling me, yeah, I. I totally gave up on my life as I lived it. And I felt the presence of guardian angels. And then she said, so now I drive like I always wanted to. And it's almost like that you start to drive like you always wanted to. And so, like, if you don't want to share this on the podcast, that's fine, but if I were coaching you, I would say, block out past and future. Come back to the R.O. who, like, read and re read books and said incredibly wild, poetic things about the moon when you were three years old. And, like, go back to the person who was born into this body. What did she love? What do you want to do?

[A]

Yeah, I want to make sculptures out of language. That's the same thing. I want to make stuff out of language.

[B]

Okay, now, this will sound really weird to all of you, but this is how my coaching goes, and I'm actually coaching right now. When you said that, I got a rush of electrical inside the core of my own body. I know when that happens that someone is coming into truth for them. And I also know I can feel myself now sitting up a little straighter. I have more spoons. Because you said the phrase, I want to make sculptures out of language. And it just was like this energy came into the room that wasn't there before. Do you feel it?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. God, yeah.

[B]

And so now you have this. Really?

[A]

But I had the knowledge. I just didn't. Hadn't given it.

[B]

You didn't.

[A]

I hadn't verbalized it.

[B]

Center it in your attention. Like, what do we care for? The first thing we care for is the ember, and the ember is the thing that gives you spoons. It is not. I mean, yes, obviously you're going to help someone if they're drowning or Something. But aside from emergencies, the most important thing you can do for the people you love and for your career is to find the ember that lights the fire in your own heart. And it will be something you loved to do when you were little, when you were free. You're comparatively free and making sculptures out of language is one of yours. What are some others?

[A]

Well, so I love that you're asking this, but I also feel like.

[B]

I.

[A]

Personally have a really good knowledge of what I would love to do and what would light me up and give me spoons. The thing I don't know is do I sacrifice the sleep? Do I sacrifice the job or do I sacrifice the family?

[B]

Yeah. I started by sacrificing sleep. And it helped in two ways. Number one, it gave me more spoons even though I needed to sleep the next night. I couldn't do it every night, but it. And it gave me those spoons initially. And then it showed me that even though I had sacrificed sleep, honest to God. Try it and see. Try it and see. I've spent 30 years since then coaching people and it works. When you feed the ember in your heart, the other things go faster. They're more effective. Things fall into place. It's like, I know I'm going to sound so woo woo and new age, but things start to fall into place because you following your own truth is what your reality wants from you. And when you do that, in defiance of every part of the culture, when you go wilder, bizarrely, other things fall into place. It's insane. Okay. So shortly after that, I was going to go to my oldest had a kindergarten farm day. They were going to the farm. And as they. As my oldest, who's they? Them were leaving for the field trip. They said, you're coming with me. I told them you're coming. And my heart just was like stabbed because I was supposed to meet this very impressive professor from someplace who was going to make my whole career work. And I had this meeting set up with her and. But I had had this experience of what lights the fire and I wanted to go to the farm. And so I called and I talked to the secretary of the department and said I can't come in. And I went to farm Day and it was wonderful. And then I dropped my kid off, I went down to my office on campus to do some work and who should I run into but this very impressive professor who invited me for coffee. And we sat down and had a much, much better interaction than if I'd gone to the meeting. And Things like that happen over and over and over. You are a prime example of a miracle that happened to me because I was doing what I wanted.

[A]

So it's magic. We just need to do magic.

[B]

We need to do what gives us spoons and see what happens. And then it looks a lot like freaking magic. Ro. Yeah.

[A]

So the mistake that I've been making is thinking I was playing the Tetris. But what you're saying is, go towards the heat and you don't have to be the one playing the Tetris anymore.

[B]

The Tetris starts playing itself, the plays itself, and you realize it has always been playing itself. And it's been blocking me and blocking me and blocking me to try to get me to let go of the controls so that it can play it in a way that makes my life work. And I mean, think about.

[A]

Oh, my God, it's the perfect metaphor. It's the thing where you're building and you're building and you're just waiting for one of those long, long ones. And if you could get the long ones, it would all. But it's like you're not going to get that long one in time. And that's the big, huge, open expanse of time.

[B]

Yeah, Right.

[A]

And so you just have to get a line here and a line there.

[B]

I mean, why did we meet? Because I was running a ridiculously expensive seminar in South Africa. You were working in Australia. You did not have massive savings. You just said, yes, I'm coming to that seminar, and clicked the box that said you had the money. And then what happened? Tell the people, please, I got the money. Yeah.

[A]

Tell them how someone called me and said, could we get you to do some work, but could we pay you before you do it so that we can claim it in this year's budget?

[B]

And it was enough money to come to the seminar, and you spent it on this ridiculous seminar that cost like you were just a young, working, young mother. Wait, you had a kid? You were marsupial at the time?

[A]

No, but literally in my mid-30s.

[B]

To me, you seem tiny, but, like, you were like. Because you didn't have the role of parent and the role of entrepreneur and all these things you carry now, you felt free to just say, I'm going to do what I want with that money. I'm going to say, I'm going to do it before I even know how I'm going to do it. And then I'm going to trust Life Tetris to bring me the money. And it did. And you spent a Lot of people would have said, oh, good money. I shouldn't go to that seminar. I should spend it fixing the, you know, the weather vanes or something. You just threw it all into the spoon, give me spoons category because you felt you didn't have to be responsible for all these other things.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You still don't.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the courage to believe that you are more important than any of those social pressures is wild.

[A]

Oh, my God. It's about wonder.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

We've moved to this new house, and every time I walk into my bedroom, I have this view of mountains. And I have made a promise to myself that I will never take that view for granted. And every time I walk in and I see it, I gasp still. And I have that, like, moment of wonder. And so that's like my touch point for stay in that feeling and let the Tetris play itself around me. Because I think we do all have experiences.

[B]

And you didn't want to go to that seminar because you were going to take a treat for myself. Because I had, like. It wasn't something you decided to do that was frivolous. It was something that was very, very deep.

[A]

It was. Yeah.

[B]

And it felt like knowledge. It's a sense. I call it the sense of truth. This core deep sense of peace that this is what you're meant to do. This is what will keep the ember.

[A]

Burning when you know because you know, because you know, because you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There. It's just. It is an indescribable sense of fit. Like, I mean, and when you. When you do it, your. Your whole body opens up. Your shoulders move back, and I'm everybody's. You start to breathe more deeply. There's a sense of ease and relaxation. Even if you're making what looks like an insane decision. I'm going to spend all this money, this huge portion of my income, doing a seminar. It would have felt wrong to you if it were wrong to you. And saying that is irrational. I just made a completely irrational statement. I'm sort of claiming that you have some numinous ability to know what's right for you. Yep, that's what I believe.

[A]

So I think. I love this. And I think where we leap out of culture and into nature is when we take that, knowing that I think we all have. And we trust it enough to act on it.

[B]

We trust it more than we trust the teachers, the spouses, the institutions, the news. We trust it more than anything. Because choosing to trust anything else is another decision that is just as irrational about who should be the arbiter of your life. When you decide that you're going to be the arbiter and that your focus is number one, keep the flame alive and number two, go where the heat goes. You know, do what gives me spoons that the Tetris of life. I'm mixing a lovely metaphor here, is going to start playing itself in your favor, and I believe that. And I've seen it over and over through thousands of times.

[A]

Well, you fixed me, I'm going to do that. And I think that we've all probably had a lovely little masterclass in how to stay wild. 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 on 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.