For me, staying creative is thought to light survival. I don't know where I would go if I wasn't making things Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Emma Gannon, a best selling author, speaker, novelist, and the host of the number one creative careers podcast in the UK called Control All Delete. Today, Eric and Emma discuss multiple books of hers, but the newest one is called Disconnected, How to Stay Human in an online world. Hi, Emma, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, so good talk to you. Thank you for having me. Yes, I am very excited to have you on. I have been looking forward to talking to you for a while. And we're going to talk about some of your books. We'll talk about a new book called Disconnected, we'll talk about a fiction book you wrote called Olive. But before we do that, will start, like we always do, with the Parable. There's a grandparent who's talking to their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves in it of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the others a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says which one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's so nice hearing you say you know that. I'm a longtime fan of the show, so I've listened to so many responses and obviously had mine prepared as you do. In the bath listening, and for me, I would say what I've realized is feeding the good wolf for me is synonymous with feeding my creativity. And there's something that I remember, I think Elizabeth Gilbert saying that if you don't feed your creativity, it will literally eat you alive, and you will find other things to do in that time. And I don't know if that makes me sound like a bit of a worker lick, but for me, staying creative is thought of like survival. I don't know where I would go if I wasn't making things. And I think she compares it to a laborador puppy that you know, if you don't feed that puppy, it will literally like pooh everywhere, eat the sofa, ruin your every eat all the food out of your fridge, like it will cause havoc in your life. And I think that's true for me definitely. I'll first comment on saying that you had prepared a great answer in the bath, because I literally an hour ago walked out of the shower and said to Jenny, I need a shower recorder because I feel like I write the best, or come up with the best ideas, or articulate my ideas the very best in the shower. I get out and I'm like, that's not quite I didn't didn't quite get it, so I relate. I want to ask you a little bit about the creativity. I am someone who thinks creativity is really important. But I think a lot of people would say, well, you know, maybe for you artistic types, but I'm not really creative. Is feeding my creativity important for me? What do you think about that? Yeah? Definitely. I get asked that a lot, and I am a firm believer that everyone is creative and everyone should be. I think it's helpful for our mental health across the board. I know a lot of people think they're not creative. I like to try and prove people wrong in that department, and I think it really comes down to as well. A lot of the work I've done around side projects. I started talking about side projects years ago, and then it became the side hustle and got really popular and got really cool, and everyone was talking about it, and I got pushed back. It was like, I don't want a side project, and why are you making me work more? You know what? What is this whole millennial thing of like having a million different jobs and never taking a break. And for me, a side project has always been about the passion project. It's about coming home from your job and channeling a different type of energy into something you love. And I've got a really close friend actually who's gone through a really hard time recently with a form of depression, and he has just started this little Instagram account where she's doodling every day. It's like super chilled out, She's just drawing. And for her this is literally like she's doodling once the day in order to get through the day. This is like basic creativity to get back on track. So I think it's something that well, I know that it is prescribed through healthcare and doctors they do prescribe creativity sometimes and I can see why. Yeah, I think we're a lot of times we get hung up is feeling like it has to turn into something. You know, it actually has to become a side hustle. When we say side hustle, we assume, you know that means we make some sort of money doing it. And there is this thing that we tend to do, like if somebody is even a little bit good at something that they enjoy doing, we say you should do that for a living, you know. I think it may have been in Oliver Berkman's recent book that I think you read and interviewed, where he talked about, you know, the real benefit of hobbies, you know, And I've talked on this show many times about when I was able to return the guitar to something I did because I love doing it instead of something that I had to accomplish and make things and have people recognize those things. Boy, it brought a sense of joy to me. Absolutely. I feel the same. And actually I write about indisconnected the reason why I'm trying to get back to the hobby again, the lost art of a hobby, because I've got to admit I did monetize and hustle and and turn a lot of my hobbies into my job, which I feel grateful for. I love the fact that I earned money from writing. It's a huge privilege. But I really want to get back to that and do something that never makes it on the internet. But we're in a really interesting, really exciting time in history where the reason why side hustles have become so popular is because there is a gap in the market for new jobs. So many old businesses are crumbling, so many new ideas can come through, so many people can start something accidentally and actually start making money. I think it's the great resignation within at the moment because of COVID, everyone's quitting their job and starting again. And it's kind of amazing that you start something for fun and it can turn into a business. I mean, you know firsthand that things can turn into things. So sometimes it's like sitting back and thinking, Okay, this is running away from me and turning into a job. Do I want it to be? And just making that discernment. I think absolutely. I mean I obviously turned this that I started out of a passion to do it into a business, and that is wonderful in almost every way. And at times I missed the innocence of not having to care about it from a financial perspective, definitely, And I've had it recently where I've realized that. And this is going to made me sound really ungrateful, and I'm not, I promise, But when I wrote my first novel, it was a hobby. I sold that novel not knowing if anyone would want it. I took myself off to the seaside in Margate's which is like a little seaside town down here, and wrote it for fun, genuine fun, like I was playing football or something like. It was my version of fun. And I got two book deal for that that book, which was incredible. But now I'm under contract to write the second book. There's something in my brain that does not want to do it, and it's so childish, but it's just like, oh, this is my job now, and it does take a minute to kind of readjust to that, I think, yeah, And I think there's something to also the amount of time you spend doing something. When I left my last job, my corporate job, somebody said to me, and I thought it was very prescient. They said, okay, well, now what's going to become your new side thing? Like what's going to be the little thing that you're going to pick up on the side because this thing that was on the side now occupy central space. And so you do it a lot of hours, which is wonderful, but you're gonna not want to do it all the time. So then he knew me well enough to know that I was likely to be like, we'll grab something else, you know, And so I think some of what happens too is it's just when we're doing a hobby early on, we're squeezing an hour in a day with it, you know, it's it's fresh, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, now I'm doing this, uh fifty hours a week. It's a different kind of animal. Anyway, I want to move on from that with talking about your new book, Connection, and I want to start with something you said that I heard it and I paused and I went, huh, and thought of it that way. And you basically say that online and offline lives are not separate realities anymore. We used to talk about them. We still talk about them as if there's an online life and an offline life, And you say, that's really becoming increasingly a false distinction, And I wonder is it a helpful distinction. So I think it takes a lot for us to wrap our headgrounds the fact that online and offline is the same, because I think we like to think of online life, or at least I do, is this sort of playground or fair ground or place to be a different self, for a place to just play around. And I think what we're seeing is the person you are on the internet is who you are offline, they are the same. We saw that in the lockdowns, Like we've spent our whole lives on the internet, and I think for me, it was this conversation around being an ally. And you know, if you call yourself an ally, which I know a lot of people don't, because it sounds almost like you're trying to wear a badge of honor. You know, your actions should speak louder than the words that you say. But if you're going to stick up for someone on the internet, you really need to be sticking up for someone on the street who's having a hard time. And I just think wouldn't it be nice to kind of bring some of that behavior that you think is part of you on the outside onto the internet, if that makes sense. So for example, instead of scrolling past someone having a hard time, you know, so if I see someone crying, which I do a lot actually on the train in London, I do say are you okay? But they got to a point where I was scrolling past people who were sort of trying to sort of ask for help on Twitter, for example, and I just wanted to make sure that I was doing the same online and offline, if that makes sense, That is really interesting, and you talk a lot in the book about how the feature of online interaction has changed over time. We used to have longer form interaction. I was on the internet in nineteen, I don't know, nineties six or nine seven as part of an email a a group that was so profoundly transformational to me. I've been part of anything like it in years. Because we scroll now, we like we don't engage as deeply exactly, And I really miss the nostalgia of the past, and when when I wrote Disconnected, it really is it is a bit of a walk down memory lane. I'm trying not to live in the past too much, because I do think even though I'm not like old yet, I feel like sometimes I act that way to Generation Z because I'm like, oh, you're all on TikTok, why don't you sit down and write a poem. No, they don't want to listen to that. But I think what I mean is I loved the fact that you could write a paragraph or an essay on a Facebook wall, or you could write long emails to each other. I amazing penpoal relationships. I struck up so many just incredible friendships with people over email. But on Twitter or in any sort of viral or very very short form internet platforms. You you can get into fights more easily. You can misunderstand each other so much more easily, and we're just we're just not hearing each other out, and I just think we're in a that's a really hard time to be in. Totally, it is, and I agree with you. One of the things I watched for in myself about getting old is when I start talking about how good it used to be. I'm like, that is a surefire symptom of getting old. It happens to everybody as they get older. And I'm like, I'm going to really watch that one in myself, you know, in my in my desire to remain young in the the useful ways as long as I can. Totally, And I read an amazing book recently by the New York Times editor of the book section, Pamela Pool. She's she's done a book called A Hundred Things We Lost to the Internet, and it's like losing the Polaroids picture or losing you know, the fact that we would have to read a real map and know where things are. These are things that I think we're allowed to be nostalgic about there was some really good times about the early days of the internet and how we were all finding our way and we were discovering new music and we were making playlists for each other and we I don't know, that was just such a kind of magical time. And I think I wanted to mix that nostalgia with what we can actually bring to now, because, like you say, there's no point living in the past. But I think that something is a bit broken with how we use the intert at the moment, and we're all just on edge and we're not connecting. And you start off by comparing connection or talking about connection in the context of Trees. Can you share that. I just thought it was a beautiful analogy. I think it's an analogy. I always get my literary terms mixed up there, but it's a beautiful way of thinking about it. And I'm a big fan of Trees me too. And by the way, this is sort of the first time I've spoken about the book, strangely because I'm about still my press in January, so this is really exciting for me to talk about it. But yeah, I got very into Trees, and I sort of start the book by saying, you know, I'm not hugging trees yet, but I'm close to doing that. But I did. I did a bit of research into trees. I didn't realize quite how they were a like the oldest living organism on the planet. Um, it's amazing when you look at a tree and you just think, God, that tree has seen a lot of things. It's just been here for so long. Looking down at all of us. And the way that trees are connected, the way their roots are all connected to each other, the fact that older trees have more knowledge, the fact that newer trees kind of get wisdom from older trees, the fact that they send nutrients to each other, and they send goodness to trees that are ill, and they can really sort of heal each other, but they can also compete with each other, and they can also kind of leave other trees out. Like this is all just so fascinating to me. And I was like, well, we are we are. We are the trees, and we us you know, billions of us on the internet, all connected to each other. We were like that, and we have the power to heal each other or we have the power to basically ruin the whole network. And sort of kill off everyone. So, yeah, I just wanted to get back to nature. That's a big theme of the book is getting back to nature. And I'm not someone that cared much about nature. I grew up in the countryside and ignored it my whole childhood. I just I couldn't wait to get to the city. I would google pictures of Soho in London. I wanted to be in the concrete jungle of just life. And I'm realizing now that, yeah, I want to get back to the seaside. Yeah, you say, like trees, whether we like it or not, we are all connected, even more so now through our screens and social media networks. The harsh reality is, like the trees, we actually have the power to make each other sicker or stronger. I just loved that. Did you read the book The Overstory? No, I haven't. Haven't read that. The author's name is Richard Powers, and I think he won the Pulitzer for it. But it's a great fiction novel, just a good story really. But through it he is weaving in all kinds of tree facts that are really real. So the trees are characters in the book, but their characters in a real way. It's an amazing book. So one of the things I am always interested in is the extent to which we're able to build community and connection online. I have a podcast that hopes to connect to people. I do virtual coaching work with people. We've got a Spiritual Habits group program where we try and bring people together, and I'm always looking for ways to do that better or more. I'm curious to what extent do you think that community online can be as connecting and powerful as community offline? Well, I think it can be everything to some people, you know. I I talk a lot about the positives of the Internet, being the fact that if you are someone with a chronic illness and you literally can't leave your bedroom, your laptop is your community. And I've been in situations where has been a lifeline and you just think, thank God for these people. What fascinates me and what always has, and especially in the podcast world, for example, is the fact that you can build community over the smallest, seemingly smallest thing, you know, the fact the fact that you're all fans of I don't know, collecting a certain type of vintage book, or you're all into Harry Potter, or you love plants, like this. This really is just an amazing time where you can bond with people over literally anything. And that is the one good thing about the Internet, and that is the one good thing about Google and where it can lead you. But I think we are crying out for community more than ever at the moment. I know that during the lockdowns it brought people back together again in their local communities. For example, I moved house now, but I lived in a in a massive block of flats during the first lockdown, and no one had said hello to each other basically, and they're like three years I've been there. People would avoid getting in the lift. They didn't want to talk to you. They would scurry out and like get their takeaway and run back in. They just no one wanted to talk to each other. And I was probably girls you of that sometimes. And I just remember everyone just really needing each other suddenly, And we had this Facebook group that that suddenly came alive, and we were borrowing tools from each other, People were making soup for each other. People were really there for each other for the first time in ages. So I don't know, I I kind of wanted to write the books. I feel like maybe at the start of that coming back, which is kind of exciting. Yeah, so let's talk about some of the ways that we can be more connected on the internet. I mean, some of the book is about connecting offline and moving offline, but a fair amount of it is also how we engage online in better ways. And one of the ways that you talked about that I really loved was you said, some days, I give myself a day off from having in an opinion. Yes, that is very crucial for me to remain sane. I think, you know, I'm lucky that part of my job is to have an opinion. I don't think I'll ever delete Twitter, because I I want to be involved. I want to have a finger on the pulse. I want to write books, I want I want to have opinions. But it's so freeing sometimes to just kind of take that hat off and just sit and watch and let the world go by. And also, I know you talk a lot about Buddhism and having this sort of mind that is sort of free of any sort of thought. You know, you're just you're just living in the questions, and I really want to live like that more so, Yeah, I think it's it's funny to kind of put a little ring fence in your diary and be like, I'm not going to have opinions today. I'm literally just gonna watch and I really recommend it. Yeah, you quote someone Time Chatfield who says the least viral thing to say is I don't know, which is so true, but boy, I love saying I don't know too, I really do me too, big thing of I don't know. It's funny because I actually tweeted out that quote and no one retweeted it, So I was like, like, this is such an example of this just not being something people are going to retweet, but you know what, that's okay and I and I guess in the book, I want to say that this stuff is actually quite hard, and that the reason why we're quite lazy with things like this is because it is easier to be kind of very opinionated, get a lot of eyeballs, get a lot of traction on something you don't even really think. But some of it is super hard. And there's something that I did last summer which I really recommend, but I know it's difficult and I don't know if people have the time for it necessarily, but I got into a little bit of a Twitter spat with someone. Well not really, but we were just both a bit like, we're not seeing each other here and it's really frustrating. So I actually think we want to have a connection on this, and so I just deemed them and I said, would you be up for having a Google hang out with me? I'd love to talk to you about this. I actually can't get my point across in these character limits. And I'm really fascinated with what you're saying, because we were getting quite sharp with each other, because that's the way the platforms set up, you know, the way that the way that the refresh button and the slide down button is literally like a slot machine. It's it's designed in a way to make you come back and to make you angry and to make you not want to leave. So, yeah, we had, we had a all and we had we had such a good conversation and we're friends now and I really want to do more of that. Yeah, I have had some of the best conversations I've had with people who have written me. What start off is really angry emails about something that was said in the show. And you know, I just try and share my perspective in a kind way, and very often it leads to a deeper connection and and a conversation that's useful. And they might see things in a different way. I might see things in a different way, but it's nice that way. That's sort of ability to disagree civilly, And even if you're not disagreeing civilly, it's okay to ask to try to do it right, like, hey, this conversation isn't going the way I want? Can we take it down? And not because I'm really interested in what you have to say, Like I love that you did that. That's so brilliant. It's true, and I think that's why we need to make an effort. This is why I want to write the book. And it's like full of tips as well, to say, come on, we can change things. Because even for example, the rise of the voice note, so leaving someone a voice note is so much more beneficial to our mental health than our kind of connection with each other. You know, I have friends who will leave me a long message and I'll think, Okay, I don't really know how they are, but they're checking in on me. And then I'll have that same friend leave me a voice note and just hearing their voice, I'm immediately happy, I'm immediately feel connected, I feel thought of, I feel loved, I feel seen. And it's these little things because body language and the way we sound and the tone of our voice is everything. And that static little profile picture that is on Twitter or that little avatar is like a gamification of being human. And that's why we dehumanize each other because they're just a little little profile picture. We don't know that they're a real person, but they are. You know, they're living, moving being as we as we all are. So I think we we do have to make an effort. I hope, I hope we will. You talk about how the more we spend time online. I'm sure some of this depends on how we spend time online, but you see, the more time we spend online, the more emotionally disconnected we feel, and the more emotionally disconnected we feel the more time we spend on quick fixed digital connection. So it's sort of this. We talk about these all the time on the show. Upwards or downward spirals. That's sort of the classic downward spiral. Yes, that's very up your street. I've learned a lot from you, Eric about the breaking the cycle, and that the action leads to the right thought, not the other way around. And I know now I know myself, and I know I wrote a book about sabotage, self sabotage, and I had to spot all these signs of myself. But my sort of internet addiction was one of those things where I really had to notice. My eyes glows over that moment of Oh, I'm in a loop. Now I'm in a cycle, and I can't get out of it. And it's almost like seeing myself from a bird's eye view and being like, God, you're in the trance. You're in the trance. Get yourself out of it quickly. Uh. And it's exactly that. It's like the more disconnected you feel, the more you go on there and you just feed this this endless cycle. What you really need to do, or what I need to do, is get off my phone, go and talk to someone, pick up the phone, go for a walk. You can connect through your phone. But for me, and this is, you know, a personal thing, but I've heard from other people that it helps. Your phone really should be the tool and the vessel to improve your offline life. At the end of the day. First off I could only read two books of yours in preparation for this interview, which is more than I normally do. And I really wish I had read sabotage because I would love to talk about that, and I may make you tell me about it here in a couple of minutes. But that did you little thing. I notice it sometimes in myself, and I just when I can catch it, I'm like, oh, and I just say to myself, what you're looking for is not on this device? Like I notice it when I'm grabbing the device a lot. That's my sign. If I keep sort of grabbing it, I'm like, I'm looking for something because I keep grabbing it, which says I'm I'm grasping. And then I after I do that a litt while, I'm like, oh wait, I'm locked in that cycle, and you know what I'm looking for is not on this device. Is a helpful one for me, definitely, And I do like to think about it in terms of the same sort of patterns as if you were sabotaging in other ways. For example, for me, it's like, why am I drinking that bottle of wine the night before a really early start where you know you've got an important meeting. Why am I therefore scrolling for hours before a big thing I need to do tomorrow. It's it's to me, it's the same. It's the same sort of endless search for something that's not really working. And you know when you see someone sometimes in you see them smoke, for example, and you think, oh, that really doesn't look very nice. And I've smoked in the past. I know, I know why people smoke, but I've seen people as well next to me on the train or whatever going in between Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever like on repeat for about half an hour, thinking oh my god, it looks it looks like smoking, And I then see it in myself and try not to do it. So when you see it for what it is, it's kind of scary what we're doing. So when you see that a pattern like that, whether it's I'm about to drink a bottle of wine the night before a early morning, I'm locked in my internet cycle, or other ways that you talk about sabotage, can you share a little bit about some of the wisdom from that book about what you do to get out of that or to try to limit the damage from that. Yeah, so I think First of all, it was really discovering how to talk to myself in a kind of way. That was like the first step of the self compassion thing of okay, right, self sabotage sounds very dramatic. It's not a bad thing, you know, it's not a blame game. I just don't want to go down that route of I'm a bad person. I self sabotage. I'm this, I'm that. It's not that. It's a friendly voice. It's like a friend of me. And I think someone was on your podcast recently talking about this. But that's sort of, you know, guidance that's looking out for you. Self sabotage really is self protection. It's your brain going okay, there's a little problem here, but we can fix it. It's all going to be fine. So for me, yeah, I wanted to talk about it, but in an accessible way. I actually read that amazing book that I know you've read, called On my Own Side by Dr Azi. I can't remember his surname, but incredible book. But my my books are very bite sized book on the topics. I wanted someone to pick it up when they're sort of in sabotage mode and quickly kind of have some tips on how to kind of dig deep on why it might be happening. And it's really about self discovery. You know, what is it, What is your trigger that is making you feel these things, and how can you flip it so that it might be for example, you're inner critic actually being a voice from the past. You know, even just noticing that that voice isn't necessarily you, It's come from someone else. The main thing, though, is something that blew my mind and it has changed my relationship with self sabotage is noticing the exact feeling you are having every single time you sabotage, because it's the same feeling. It's like when you're you're watching a crime movie and the detective needs to go back to the scene of the crime and be like, what happened? You need to almost walk back the steps to that point where the murder happened. And what I do now is every single time I reached the wine, every single time I'm refreshing Instagram, it's exactly the same feeling. And to me, it's like a self loathing feeling. That's what it is. It's a I'm not good enough, and it's it's that cloud of yeah, self self loathing, and once I notice it, I'm like, uhha, the self loathings, I actually can skip possas health sabotage. Yeah, you just described a big part of what I do in coaching work with people, which is, first, let's get conscious about the behavior, right, because a lot of times we don't even know that, Like we're refreshing Instagram because there's anything emotionally going on, right, we don't even know that. So it's first sort of starting to recognize that. And then like you said, what is it, what's happening? Can we zoom in on that moment and really look at it? What is it? What's happening? And you know, my partner Jenny said something so wise I've quoted on this show many times, but she was talking about for her a tendency to eat emotionally, and she said, you know, when I zoomed into that moment and I saw what was happening, was I was bored or I was lonely? She said, Once I did that, there were lots of cures for boredom. There's lots of cures for loneliness. When I thought that I wanted a cupcake, there's only one cure for one and a cupcake. It's to have a cupcake. And I just love that analogy because it says, once we know what's going on, as you said, we can find other ways to give ourselves what we emotionally need because that's what's happening. And you know, I would call it an emotional regulation failure, right, there's some emotion that you can't handle, absolutely, absolutely, and boredom, I've realized is a part of anxiety. It's a version of anxiety. Boredom and loneliness and lots of things, and and it's honestly been quite crazy just how much. Once you realize this stuff and you do your own crime scene detective route on yourself, you realize that actually, most things you're craving is the emotion of being peaceful or the emotion of feeling content. That's what I'm searching for at the bottle of wine. That's what I'm searching for on Instagram. That's what I'm searching for when I want more money or i want more x Li and Z actually don't want any of those things. I literally just want to kind of be less anxious. Yeah, it's such an interesting way of looking at things when you sort of look at everything you want and you go, oh, why do I want that? And then you might say again, well why does that? You know, you get to the point where you're, like you said, these things just represent something to us. We believe they're going to cause some emotional change in us, and it's the emotional change that we're after. Absolutely. The one thing for me that I've really started to unpick is this crazy thing. And you know, I'm all for reaching your goals and wanting what you want, and of course I want to make a living and I want to people to read my books, and I want all of those things. Of course I do. But what I had to sit down and look in the eye is this this this thought I had, which was I'm going to take this job and I'm going to do all this stuff for X amount of money so that I can then take some time off. And I thought that about five years ago. I've never really taken any time off. So it's everything I'm trying to do is so I can relax. Well I could relax right now. What's stopping me? And so now I'm realizing that I'm realizing that it's all about present moment, it's not about in the future, I will do this. That's that's been a huge thing for me. Yeah, one of the things I was going to ask you about because I see this emerging in you and your work, which is this sterning to become aware of what I think is a paradox that I've asked a lot of people about on this show, which is, how do you balance the paradox of being ambitious, of striving to be better, of doing work that you love right with being able to accept kind of right where we are in life and enjoy it. There seems to be in some ways an inherent tension or balance there, and I'm curious how you're thinking about that these days. Definitely. I mean the work of Seth Godin has been a huge influence on me. I've been reading and referencing his work for over a decade, and he just transformed everything for me because he really believes that you are doing a really great thing, and you've actually been quite generous. If you want your work to reach more people, if it's work you think will help people, it's like this idea of being in service, this idea of being an artist or a writer that yes, you want to be six sess etcetera. But more than that, you do actually want to help and you do want to contribute to society, and you do want other people to get inspired and make things, and you're part of something. You're part of a bigger picture. You're not just in your room, like making money and living alone and being alone like that to me sounds really miserable. And I don't want to be successful if I'm lonely. I would rather be less successful and have lots of friends and colleagues that like me. I'm you know that that's hopefully the goal. So for me, it's sort of what ladder are you climbing? And why for me, I actually do want to climb a ladder. In terms of if we're going to talk about traditional metrics of success, which is more people reading my books, it's because I genuinely believe in them. But when it comes to wanting shiny things, that's something I'm really stepping away from. And Martha Beck the Incredible Life Coach, she talks about Dante's Inferno and Mount Delectable, which is climbing this mountain of sort of you know, the glamorous things of going on the prevent free show and having millions of pounds, and she really breaks it down that that stuff genuinely doesn't make you happy. And I don't think we're there yet in society. Well, we believe people who say that. We think, yeah, yeah, you're a celebrity, you're going to say that. But you know, anyone that's watching the show Succession, I mean, none of those billionaires are happy. I really, I just really don't think they are. Yeah, it is so true. In psychology, they would call it effective forecasting, and we're terrible at it. We think we know what will make us happy in the future, and we are usually pretty wrong. Now, we may know broadly, like well, if I got a million dollars, I would be happy, and you'd be right that you would feel good for a while. There's you know, anybody listening if I just handed him a million dollars, they're going to feel good for a while. But the way that effective forecasting really goes wrong is we overestimate the duration that something will make us happy, and we overestimate the intensity with which it will make us happy. And it is just so true. And as someone who has gotten many of the things that I would have said I wanted you know, I don't have a million dollars, but I work for myself, right, I mean, I do work. I love. You know, if you told me, like twenty years ago this is where I would land, I'd have been like, I'll take it, sign me up. I will be happy every day in my life. And of course I'm not happy every day of my life. Yes, you know I have to do other things if that's what I'm after. Yes. And the consumerism culture, I mean, it's so out of hand, and it around Christmas, for example, and I just think we we should be able to see through this now. We should be able to see through the fact that the new pair of boots you've got last year made you so happy, but you've got another pair of boots on your Christmas list this year. You want more? We all want more? So what is at play there that we're not satisfied? And there's some research that I'm really interested in, Emma Hepburn, a psychologist told me about a while ago, which is the mathematics of it. So if you have a blank kit and a warm fire and a new pair of shoes, you're going to be ecstatic. But if you have five blankets and five fires and five pairs of shoes. You're not five times happier, You're actually just as happy. So I think it's not about not having things to me, it's about not having excess. You know, have a lovely house, do you need five houses? Maybe you want that, but just no, it won't make you happier. Yeah, I agree. I think that the reason why it's so hard to see through that next pair of boots is because there is a little bit of pleasure in doing it and getting it. And it's the thing that's always amazed me about addiction, right, because people who have addiction, I I you start off with like this thing is awesome. You know, this drug is drink is awesome. And for people who ride the train far enough, it's pretty damn destructive. And yet there's just a whiff, there's just a whiff of that old pleasure that's there, and that just seems to be enough sometimes, you know. Yeah, or as you said, it's a distraction, right, it's a distraction from something else, trying not to feel totally. I mean it's scary for me. How now I notice it? Now, I notice how short the high is. I'll get something new, and the time that I feel good about it is less and less and less and less to the point where I'm probably it's probably gonna be five minutes, and I'm like, oh, and so actually, I'm grateful for that feeling. I'm grateful for the fact that I can pinpoint it now. And I of course we've got a caveat the fact that, you know, we are talking about privilege, and we're talking about totally going above a certain level of excess. Um, we're not talking about having money that will make your life better, because there is research around the money will make you so much happier, you know, paying your bills on time, having a better night's sleep, feeding your family, being able to literally have a better quality of life. But the research says that that's up to a certain level. I think it's up to fifty pounds. That's like seventy dollars a year. So that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, and and that can change people's lives. But I think there are a lot of people in this world who are so lost and have so much so something's gone wrong there. That's a very good point and a good caveat. Let's talk for a minute about sort of circling back to your book Disconnected. You say in that book you talk about cancel culture, you know, canceling people. I wonder if you could share a little bit about this. I know you've had some people on your show. This is something you've explored in in some depth on your podcast in your writing. I was wondering if you could share a little bit about it. Yeah, definitely. It's something that I'm super interested in at the moment. The fact that I think even about a year ago, we were on board for cancel culture. It's evened it seems like the Internet well, you know, we were happy about it. We were happy to publicly shame people for getting things wrong. It was a very tense time, and I remember even sort of, you know, looking at myself as a sort of social animal in that situation. I was going along with all sorts of things and jumping on bad wagons and pointing the finger. And I think even a year on, we're starting the tide is starting to turn, and we're starting to look at that and think that's really extreme. We're dehumanizing people on the Internet. Of course, you're allowed to ask a question. The minute that you don't ask a question or asking questions is banned is a really pretty scary time to live in society. We should always be open to discussion and questions. So I'm interested in looking at that area of how we're censoring ourselves and how it's damaging our art and how it's damaging creativity. This idea that if you don't say the right thing, you're out and you're canceled. And you know, we laugh about cancel culture a little bit because it sounds, you know, so kind of extreme, and but it's actually a really valid concern. Anyone really could be kind of canceled. You know, I could say the wrong thing tomorrow and genuinely be up all night, you know, sending for myself and my career. I hope that will never happen. That you just don't know. So it's a topic that's quite heated still, but I think we're ready, I hope to talk about, you know, making the online world human again, having uncomfortable conversations, getting into that discomfort of arguing and still liking the person you're arguing with, and that nuance. I think I think we're stepping into a new time where we can have these discussions that we couldn't have even a year ago. You're seeing the book that we're talking about very different things here when we cancel somebody who worded something incorrectly, versus saying in the same breath, someone like Harvey Weinstein, right, who has canceled for a very good reason. So it's not that there's never a reason to say like, uh, you know, like done, but as is so often the case on the Internet, the nuance is just often gone. Yes, definitely. So I make that distinction in the book about how it's actually really damaging to have an umbrella term for all those things. How can we have the same umbrella term that is Harvey Weinstein being in jail to you know, someone putting something on Twitter when they were fourteen that you know doesn't sound great. Now. I think this is like such a wide topic and that's why cancel culture the phrase I'm not a fan of. I don't think it's helpful. I don't think we need to use it anymore. Let's just talk about what it is, which is trying to make progress in society. And you know something that I you know, I'm finding a bit uncomfortable as well. Is this sort of trend to cancel books, for example, that came out like seven years ago, because they're just not really that up to date anymore. And I'm not talking about offensive language. I'm not talking about you know, really kind of awful, hateful speech. I'm talking about like a business book from two thousand and thirteen that is now mocked publicly because it feels so outdated, and I just think, well, we should be celebrating those things of being outdated. Time moves on, we move on. The fact that we can laugh at some feminist book from two thousand and fourteen means that thankfully we don't really need that version of feminism anymore, and isn't that great? So I just think we, I don't know, need to be a bit more open hearted with each other. I suppose. I think open hearted is a really good word. And I know that the distinction between intention and impact we say, like, it doesn't matter what you intended, it matters what the impact was. I understand and agree with that to a degree. But I actually do think intention matters. I think where someone's heart is and what they believe and what they care about and who they are. They may not know how to express that well. They may express that poorly. They may have some ideas that need updated. But I do think that that's another area where I feel like we've gone too far and we've said, well, intention doesn't matter at all, and I'm not sure I agree. I think I can understand where that comes from. If someone is hurt by something and then it's sort of used as an excuse, I can understand where that can be. But I completely agree that we need to be more curious with each other and really understand that someone is genuinely trying to learn when they are. And I think it's all in the action as well, isn't it. You know, I have these arguments with family members who say they're well intentioned, which I'm like, you absolutely are. But if you say these things without learning or act like you're learning, then you don't get to say that anymore kind of things. So I think you can tell when someone's good intention because they listen and then they apply that, and I think that's really it. You know, around the time of the George Floyd situation, I had several conversations with people who were, you know, very strong in the anti racist community, and I have to admit I approached those conversations with a bit of trepidation because I was like, I don't know if I know how to say things the right way, Like I'm learning, you know, so I'm gonna I'm gonna be willing to sort of step out there and perhaps say something that isn't the right thing to say because I'm a fifty year old white man. But I kind of was like, I just hope that people will see the spirit and the intention underneath that is to learn. And we talked with Ebra Max Kendy, and he said something was so important for me in that evolution, and it was to be able to say I made a racist re mark. Not I am a racist, but I made a racist re mark. As long as I think, if I say something racist that makes me a bad person, then I'm going to defend myself against that allegation. But if I can just say, yeah, okay, I said that it was racist, and I apologize and I don't want to say anything like that again, it opened me up for a freedom a little bit, I think, to not feel the need to immediately go into defense mode. And that is an exercise I also did where I would acknowledge the racism and it was again, an open hearted journey which was led by no over read her book The Good Ally She she takes you through, step by step looking at these things, and Yeah, it's incredibly powerful to step into that space of I'm in such a place of connection that these things can now be said. And what an amazing time to actually be connecting again rather than shutting each other down all the time. Let's change directions again and talk about your fiction book Alive. I'm not going to give the whole book away, but there are some clear themes in the book, and you know, the big theme that sits in the center of the book is that Olive is a woman who does not want children and all her friends are having children, and it talks about what her experience of life is like trying to be a person who doesn't want to have children. And I think it does a beautiful job also of showing the way her stance affects the women who did have children. And I wonder if you could just share a little bit about that topic and why that was something that was important to you to write about. Yes, definitely, and thank you so much for reading it and saying that, because yeah, it's very close to my heart at the topic. And I'm really proud of it as a novel because it's my first novel, and you know, I could have maybe explored it through a nonfiction lens, or I could have written it as a magazine article, or I could have been a podcast series, but I just really wanted it to be a novel because it was just such a meaty topic that I wanted to explore from all angles and and sort of imagine this world where we could all just say what we want to say without it being me saying it. And yeah, I realized that in pop culture especially, we don't have really any child free sort of not role models, I don't really like that phrase, but sort of these sort of poster women of what that is and what amazing life that can be. You know, we've got Eat, Pray, Love, or we've got Sex in the City and Samantha Jones, or we've got a fused things, but we don't really have a main character who knows they don't want children. So yeah, Olive is a story of four friends, Olive being the main protagonist who just knows, you know, she's not someone who isn't sure. I mean, she kind of goes through that, but she knows, she knows step down it's not for her. And her friends are going through you know, motherhood in their own separate ways. There's a pregnant friend, that's a friend struggling and going through IVF, and there's another friend with you know, three kids and the kind of chaotic household, and it's just this feeling of drifting away from your friends a little bit because it's a huge part of our lives, and even women who don't do it are sort of defined by that a little bit. Yeah. I think that's the thing that I found so interesting is even if that's the choice that you make, as you said, you're defined by, you know, whether or not you have a child. It becomes a defining factor for a woman. And and i'll have just seems to kind of want to be like, what can I move out of that? And you create spaces in the book, and maybe they were based on real spaces, but you create spaces where she can sort of step into that role, but that in most places it's just not there. Yeah. I loved writing that book because you know, I am obviously partly olive. You know, she is a part of me. I you know, she's not me, but she's like a ramped up version of me, I would say. And I wanted to really get to the heart of how alienating it can feel sometimes. And this isn't like a woe is me. It's so annoying when people ask me if I'm gonna have kids a party thing, because we all make small talk, and there's nothing wrong with someone saying do you have kids? It's a question, like, you know, it's such a normal question. That's fine. But I think what can be alienating is if you're a woman who literally has no interest in it, like to the point where you're kind of bored by children and you don't really want to be around them, and you just want to be of your friends and you want to talk about adult stuff, and you you kind of want your friends to put their kids to bed so you can talk to them. You know, what does that feel like? As a woman, It kind of makes you feel a bit weird because you're not feeling maternal and and there are many women who feel like that. That's the thing. I interviewed so many women for this book. I wanted it to represent a lot of different women, not just like my thoughts about my own desires not to have children. So I interviewed women of all ages, of all backgrounds, like different reasons why they don't want kids, And there's so many of us out there, so it's been quite an amazing thing actually, to you know, get emails off the back of the book and people getting it and also getting the other women in the book. You know, lots of parents love this book, I have heard, which is nice. Yeah. I loved the way you portrayed the four friends, each of them and was really able to show how the behavior of one friend, or the things that one friend would say, how it could be hurtful to another friend without meaning to. And it leads me to the last thing I wanted to read from that book, which is you say, each woman I know carries it shame, but it's a different shape for us all. There's always a hidden shame related to motherhood, whether you want a baby or you don't, or whether you hate being a mother, or whether you love it more than anything else in your life. Say a little more about that. Well, I think this goes for everyone. I don't want to make it just a gendered woman thing, but I think shame is a massive part of being a woman. It's it's like a huge part of our existence because we're sort of always made to feel like we're doing things wrong or we're not having it all. You know, the kind of Helen Girlie Brown book that was meant to say that women are meant to be all these things. You want to be a mother, you meant to be a career woman, You're meant to be this that wife, sister, mother, and also you know, the diet culture, the way that women e pitted against each other in the media, still, the way that we're just meant to be all things to all people, that we should sort of put ourselves at the bottom of the pile and sort of serve our families or serve the people around us. You know, historically that's sort of what women did, and the roles in society being careers or being being that sort of nurturing sort of person, I guess can make you feel guilty for wanting to do your own thing and wanting to put yourself at the top of the pile and wanting to go traveling and being a career woman. Like these are things that have like historically kind of been looked down upon. You know, if you're not the mother figure. So I wanted to look at that. I wanted to look at the fact that so many women in my life who are mothers feel guilty all the time. They're guilty if they're not at home, they're guilty if they're in the office, like it's just a thing. And then for me, I'm guilty. I feel guilty that I don't want kids. But I wanted to unpick where that comes from because I think, you know, child free women are sometimes called selfish. Obviously, that is like an extreme thought on a lot of child free by choice women that were selfish because we want to just live our life on our own terms. But for me, I think being selfish would would be having a child and not being a on board. So yeah, it's a meaty topic and I love talking about it. It is a meati topic I was going to say, and you get very easily now with the state of the world and population, say choosing to have a child is a selfish gesture. I mean, you could play that card either direction, but I love the nuance that you talk about it, and I agree. I'm a man, but every woman I've known and women that I've worked with in my coaching and I've talked to you. You're right, there is this either I'm gonna stay at home mom, I should be working, or I shouldn't be working. I should be at home, or I should have kids or I shouldn't have I mean, it's just such a heavy, heavy topic. And I love the way you explored it through the book. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, it's a real thing, and especially for women my age. I think so, I'm, you know, in my thirties, so it's like the peak time where I'm asked all the time if I'm gonna have kids, and it's just it's an interesting one. But you know, if anyone listening here feels the same as me, filthy to reach out because you know, it's my imunity. I feel like I found a community, which is very exciting. That is wonderful. Yeah, you say in the book. And then bam, even though I should have seen it coming, babies are suddenly on the brain. There's an abrupt tap on the shoulder from friends, family, society, and suddenly it's the number one topic of conversation. Babies, babies, babies. When when when it really does happen like that though, it's like suddenly that's a flip, and I got married this year, so it's like, it definitely is the question by ramped up right. I was curious about that, and I don't want to go into your personal life, but I was curious, knowing you had written all of in the past and then gotten married, what impact getting married had on the way you viewed the topic or the pressure or any of that stuff. Yeah, it's funny because it really is the next step in the grand picture of society, like that is you get married, and then why do you get married? You get married to have babies, surely, So it's quite funny. I was actually in a taxi the other day and somehow we got onto it and they were like, oh, you know, you've just got married, and they were like, Oh, it's going to be so exciting. You're gonna have kids. Um, I love my kids, and I was like, oh, no, I don't think it's for me. And then she sort of said something which unfortunately is slightly offensive, and I don't think she meant it, but it was this sort of oh but you must, you must have kids, you'll never know what love is. And I just had that feeling of like, ah, there it is again. So That really is why I sort of wrote this book and wanted to talk about it. Is because it's not like strangers on the internet tempt saying this stuff. It's like everywhere, It's just everywhere. Yeah, totally, yes, everywhere. You also say that, like almost every time if you say I don't want kids, that it's followed up with some version of well if you change your mind, as if like it's natural that sooner or later you're going to come to your senses. Yeah. I had that actually when I was doing the press for Olive last year, did a lot of interviews and I loved it, but there are quite a few ones where the interviewer said, oh, ever I thought that at your age, I've got two kids now, and I was thinking, that's so weird and patronizing. But also, and this is a really really important thing. I think this whole conversation around having kids, we need to sort of address the elephant in the room, which is a lot of people can't have children who want them. And I just feel like, oh, we've got to stop doing this to each other, because you can get in that territory, you know, like the taxi driver saying, oh, you're gonna have kids next. It's a well meaning thing to say, but it's also like you don't they don't know what I've been through, like I could be someone who has tried and failed. So I think that's another part of the conversation I wanted to talk about, which is there's child free like choice women like me who is like waving the flag of like don't want them, and then there's women who are like in a lot of pain around this topic. So I think it's making that distinction as well, agreed, And I think in general just more sensitivity around how we discuss that and what assumptions we make. And it just to me has always felt like an area that like I would not wade into with someone I don't know. I would just not make try not to make any assumption one way or the other or say anything just because it's like, like you said, you just don't know totally. You know, well, we are at the end of our time. You and I are going to keep talking in the post show conversation because I could talk to you all day and listeners if you'd like access to that, as well as other post show conversation add free episodes, special episodes. I do solo. You can learn all about that and the other benefits of membership at one you Feed dot net slash Join Emma, thank you so much for coming on. It's really been fun. I was so honored to be on your show and I'm so happy to have had you on and letus get to deepen our connection. Thank you so much, Eric. I love talking to you, and honestly, I discovered The One You Feed last year I think early early last year, and it really helped me through a really dark time and I love your show so much. So thank you. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now. We are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level and become a member of the One you Feed community. Go to When you Feed dot Net slash Join The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.