Solo Episode: Staying Rooted in What You Want, and More Musings

Listen now (55 mins)

It’s just me in today’s episode.

You can also find this episode on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Photo Credit: Sarah Cramer Shields

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

ELISE:

So this episode, as mentioned, is a departure from my typical guest conversations today. It's just me. I have a few miscellaneous thoughts to share and then I'm going to get to some of the questions you sent through on Instagram, which were all great. Thank you. And if you miss that chance, I'll do it again. I'm going to try and do this every month. Here I go. I feel like I'm having a strange experience of time these days. I know I'm not alone. What do they say? Long days, short years, but suddenly it's October and I'm about to turn 45 and just wrote about it in my Substack this week. But I had this pass through experience last month where I was back in New York going to a workshop and I go to New York all the time to see my brother and for various work events.

So going to New York is nothing new. But what was new is that I was staying downtown. Typically, I've been staying in Midtown just because it's accessible to everything. And I checked into a hotel very last minute, sort of randomly, not even really sure where it was in Tribeca. And then as my cab pulled up, I realized that I was exactly one block south of my first apartment in New York City, which was on Canal Street above the Burger King. I lived in definitely an illegal sublet with a bunch of other people. I found the apartment on Craigslist as one did and likely still does. And I lived there for a year and it was a great apartment, although the plumbing was very iffy, the whole thing was very iffy. But I was newly graduated. I had no idea what I was doing with my life and I was full of fear, unsurprisingly, not full of vivacity and courageous desire.

I just wanted to be able to pay my cell phone bill, which was often a challenge. And I was really looking for stability in my life without sacrificing meaning. And it's so interesting to be back there. I realized half a lifetime, 22 years later, I was 22 when I moved there and I got on the subway that next morning to go and meet my brother for breakfast. And I got off where I used to get off for work at four times Square and I was like, this is a weird experience. I am traveling in time with myself 22 years later and wow how things have changed. And yet when I was 22, I could just see no way that I would ever have a career. I had a job, I had a freelance job, I had a job without benefits and it just all felt so impossible.

And here I was another 22 years later living a life that wasn't so far afield from where I was at 22. Although I will tell you I was in my favorite sneakers and I was no longer trying to do that subway ride in high heels, which was so silly. I'm sure you all can remember those sex in the city days where, I mean, I traveled around New York City in three inch stilettos, like a real dumb dumb. I can barely make it through a 30 minute cocktail party in heels these days to be young. But during the course of that trip, I experienced all sorts of what I would call pass-throughs. And I was with my friend Richard Christensen, who's been on the podcast before. And we had the same experience where we went to see Uta Opi at her hotel, which was as he came to understand immediately next door to his first apartment in New York.

And so we were both seeing our lives from an entirely different perspective, but we were also on the same spiral. And I feel like that is so much of life as you come to experience the same things again and again, I know we all have patterns which are persistent in our lives. And the question I always ask is I'm back in the same situation is, am I seeing this from a different perspective? Have I made any progress here on this Nautilus shell or am I still in the same place? And usually I've made some progress, but it's definitely an interesting experience to go and ReWalk your life from a different vantage point. Interestingly enough, the workshop that I was attending was about metabolizing and alchemizing these dual processes that happen in our lives. And so much of this horizontal living that we go through is about metabolizing, metabolizing food.

Yes, metabolizing experiences, metabolizing our emotions. It doesn't always mean that you get to the alchemizing point. I think the alchemizing is sort of what lifts you up the spiral vertically, whereas the metabolizing is what keeps you in the spiral. And don't be confused. We are supposed to be in the spiral and sometimes we need to metabolize things many, many times before we're really ready to move past it. I'm sure any of you who are listening who have been in a series of relationships that feel very different and very similar simultaneously know exactly what I'm talking about. Every one is often some sort of course correction. I left that workshop and then I went and taught a workshop that I wanted to talk about a little bit today with my friend Courtney Smith, who has been on the podcast a couple of times. And guess what?

She is co-authoring a workbook with me for on our best behavior that will come out next year with the paperback. And it is so good you guys. I think in part because I have a co-author, I can actually say that with enthusiasm without feeling like I'm talking about myself because Courtney is an incredible coach and really how to drive people through a process of self-discovery. And so we did this workbook, which I will definitely talk about more as we approach as this complete act of co-creation and collaboration. I really haven't ever had this experience with someone where we, it's almost like we took a piece of paper and split it in two, worked our respective parts and then brought it back together into something whole. And we are very different in the way that we approach these things, and yet we are in many ways incredibly similar, but we come at it from two different angles.

And so it was so fun to create this workbook and we taught a workshop or we'll be doing more workshops, but we wanted to, we're sort of going at it in pieces also to understand how the work lands with people who are experiencing it. And so we taught a workshop about wanting, which is ultimately the drive shaft of on our best behavior and getting in touch with that wanting and using it as the GPS or the navigational star of your life. And so many women particular, I know men can relate to this too, subjugate what they want to other people's needs. And so that signal can get very dim. In fact sometimes even impossible to hear. And this was a really fun etymology that I learned from James Hollis actually in one of his books. I think it was a Life of Meaning. He writes about the etymology of desire, which means Ari, which is to lose one's navigational star, which I think is so powerful because wanting desire, all of these words get such mixed reviews culturally, we often code wanting as selfish and unquote extra.

And a lot of us have a lot of shame about wanting anything at all. And obviously it can be conflated with wanting material things, which are fine, but that's not really what we were talking about in this workshop. We were talking about wanting as that call and response from the soul. And there's some sort of other ways to understand it and to understand wanting, because what often happens with women as we do this work is one, we naturally, I do this, two, we transition the language from wanting to would think about it for a minute. It's very hard to say, I want the fried chicken. We just are conditioned to say, I would like the fried chicken. It sounds much more pleasant. And that's fine. When you're ordering at a restaurant, you can say, I would like, however, just try to say I want and notice what happens in your body.

Most of us, again, are so constrained around these words, it feels so shameful. And that's something that's worth just noticing and you don't have to necessarily do anything about it, but just be conscious of what happens. And then many of us when it comes to wanting are also used to triangulating our wanting. So instead of wanting something for ourselves, we choose to triangulate it through our children or our partners or the world. I want my kid to be happy. I want my kid to get into seventh grade. I want my husband to feel creatively expressed, whatever it may be. You get the point. And we also, instead of owning our wanting as something that we can directly empower or inspire, we often make our wanting conditional on getting from someone else or some other entity. So I want someone to give me a book deal.

I want someone to give me that job. I want someone to notice me and shine their light on me. Whatever it may. Maybe notice if that's how you are circuiting your wanting through, hoping that you can manipulate or control or get an effect, get someone or some place to do something that you want. It's cleaner and I think a lot, no, I don't want to say healthier, but more powerful to just own the want more directly. Make it more expansive. Make it not contingent on the world receiving you and your want. It's a creative process in part that puts you in conversation, a relationship with the universe. And it's Courtney and my perspective, or I guess you could say we have faith that when you start getting a little clearer, the universe kind of knows how to help you or how to be in conversation with you in a way that might not look exactly like what you would hope or construct for yourself, but might be exactly what you need or what benefits you.

And I write about this a lot, but it's always a fruitful exercise to look back at how something developed and to recognize the ways in which you would've engineered it to be different. And yet what you got was maybe better than what you could have ever actually articulated from that starting block. This happens to me all the time to the point where I no longer, I don't want to say I no longer because I'm very human, but I really try to go into every situation recognizing that I don't know what's going to, or is it my job to try to engineer certainty or predict the future, but just to stay directionally inclined toward where I feel called and where I feel drawn and to let go of the other attachment, the other mechanisms of control. And so that relates to wanting as do not use it again as a mechanism of control of what you are hoping you can convince or inspire someone else to do for you.

Just stay rooted in this is what I want, this is what I want. And as part of this workshop that we did, we did a bunch of different exercises. One of the most powerful and the most simple really to talk about. There are two that I want to talk about today, but one of them is Courtney talks a lot about embodiment and how disconnected we get from our bodies. And you can think about it this way too and interestingly and bringing it up because it was part of the workshop that I went to in New York as well, which was about aligning the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual in your life and not over-engineering your life towards whatever might be your strong suit. Most of us are really kinesthetically aware, which is physical or we might be really mental and cognitively inclined. That's my preference. We might be incredibly spiritual and tapped in yet not so good at the horizontal parts of getting your life done day to day or mentalizing things or being in your body.

A lot of spiritual people spend a lot of time not in their bodies or you might be really emotional where you just feel the room, you feel everything that's happening, which can be quite overwhelming. But each one has its own special powers. But in pursuit of wholeness and pursuit of bringing all of these systems online to work together simultaneously, it's important to check in almost across all four bodies. And when you do that, when you start to turn up the volume on these parts of yourselves that you might have dimmed or not used as much, it can be really interesting how what seem like an easy mental decision actually might be a full body no from your body or a full body. Yes. And so Courtney, in her work with women feels like women often are not used to consulting our bodies. And that can be one of the most powerful systems I think for all of us.

But we started the exercise or started the workshop with this process of just having everyone stand up and close their eyes and really feel your feet underneath you. And then in front of you, imagine that there's something unequivocally that you know want. It doesn't have to be complex. It can be a glass of water, it can be an ice cream sundae, it can be a hug from your child, it can be a kiss from your lover. It can be a delicious novel. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Just do something that you are not ambivalent about and imagine that in front of you and close your eyes and then just feel your body and reach your arms towards this object or person and just be present with yourself as you realize what it is to feel gravitationally pulled or compelled towards something that you know want.

And then you sort of shake it off and experience yourself having that experience and then you do it again. But this time what's in front of you is something that you know don't want as an easy example, I use a pile of dog poop, but it can be that visceral, it could be a toxic coworker, an ex-partner, whatever it is, something that you feel a certain amount of revulsion for. And then first, experience what it is to not want to put your arms toward it and then put your arms toward it and try to notice what it's like to make yourself feel compelled to go towards that thing that you know don't want. Because this is what we do all the time, right? All the time we talk ourselves into, I may be feeling revulsion for this project. I might be feeling like, no, this is a breach of my integrity or this is not aligned with what I'm here to do, and yet I'm going to convince myself I'm going to mentalize or bring my emotional system into this to convince me that I should feel bad if I don't do this to make myself move towards this thing which is a full body.

No. So this can be a really powerful exercise just to observe what's happening in your body and to recognize Courtney would call it energetic cost of propelling yourself towards the things that you don't want or just simply tuning out your body. Because her point is that most of us, because it's so difficult, it feels so bad to pick up that pile of steaming dog poop, for example, that we just disassociate. We just take our body, our kinesthetic intelligence offline because it's easier to not do that. So that's a really powerful exercise that I highly recommend you all do and then just use it. I sometimes will be talking to someone about a potential project or thinking about engaging with the author of a book, and I just bring my body online, do I feel compelled and be patient? Do not be immediately responsive. One of the most things I've learned to do in the last few years is not to respond immediately, but to let something sit with my system for long enough to actually know what my answer is. I was finding myself just saying yes out of compulsion to a lot of things that ultimately were a no. So now I just flag emails for follow up. I give myself a minute, I mean honestly much longer than a minute to really think about whether this is something that feels like a yes or is causing my energy to drop and is more of a no.

The other tool I wanted to leave with you from this workshop in the context of wanting is that we did a bunch of tools for understanding how to essentially reverse engineer into what you might be wanting. And one of these which will not surprise you if you've read on our best behaviors envy, which can be very difficult for us to identify because it's such a bad feeling that we typically repress and suppress and project it. And so you can use judgment to identify, I'm judging that person. You can use judgment to identify where envy is likely present and then envy shows up when someone has something or is doing something that we want for ourselves. So many of you'll recognize that from the envy chapter, but that can be a really powerful loop to tap into why am I judging this person? Why am I full of criticism for this person?

Is there something that they're doing or is there something that they have that I want for myself or would never allow myself to have? And can I sit with that and identify it and reverse engineer this whole pathway to understand what I want? This can be incredibly powerful work. Two of the other mechanisms that we worked with were complaining, complaining as a signal of what you want. Again, it goes to that. I would never let myself get away with that. It's a way of bringing up a lot of shadow material, not to introduce too many concepts, but when you find yourself complaining, which is another version of judging in some ways, but if you're constantly complaining about your partner and how they don't respect the house because they don't do the dishes and dah, dah, dah, is there a part of you that also would like that level of freedom, would also like to be released from caring about the dishes or caring about the laundry or whatever it is?

Are you wanting that ease, expansiveness and freedom? That can be a really powerful revelation. And then similarly, one thing to look out for is the ways in which you are using Courtney called this The language of obligation, which leads me to another amazing etymology because some people in the room had some questions about it. And so obligate, this will not surprise you, but it comes from OB oblig, which is bound by law. And so Courtney had defined it by areas in your life where you find yourself using should language or have to language, I should, I have to, et cetera. And this I think is a critical way to distinguish between those two things. Some things we're obligated to do. We're literally bound by law in America. We drive on the right side of the road in America, we stop at stop signs in America, we are not allowed to theoretically shoot each other, et cetera, right?

We all by being citizens of the United States, agree to be bound by a certain set of laws and everything outside of that, which we still call obligations, which is interesting, right? And in a way, if you think about this in the context, this is a very gendered and the feminine way to think about this. But if you think about patriarchy's roots with women as chattel and as essentially belonging to the husband's estate, keep in mind we couldn't even get credit cards or leases and without a husband or father's permission until the 1970s, we were obligated by law in some ways to do all the drudgery of the day. That was some ways as the men's property, we were obligated, but we're not obligated anymore in that strict legal sense certainly. And so gets really powerful work to start identifying where you are using a lot of shoulds and have toss as a mechanism for where you feel resentment and where you feel compelled and where you actually want something very different for yourself.

And I'll give you an easy example. I theoretically should send my kids to school with snacks. It's not even a should though. I mean, I want to nourish my kids. I like packing their snacks. It takes two minutes, but if that feels loaded for me with should and have to, then I'm looking for some more freedom there. So there are a lot of things that we do because in some ways we're bound to each other that are not shoulds and have tos. They don't carry that same heaviness. They're just the things that we do to make our lives functional. But we don't really think about them, we don't obsess about them. They don't feel so heavy with obligation. Another thing that I've been thinking about and writing about a lot is Richard Rohr and the Cosmic Egg. And for people who are unfamiliar with this concept, it is that there is the me story and it is nestled in the We story, which is then nestled inside of the story.

And at this moment in time, in the great cosmic pattern of order and disorder and reorder, we definitely have a broken egg. We cannot agree certainly on the story, even a really expansive story that would allow for all of our different we stories. We don't really have any reverence or respect for a collective. The story and our We stories are breaking too as we're trying to integrate new information and make them big enough to hold us all to really include and not exclude everyone. And it's a really huge cultural breaking point. And then the me story, which I think about a lot as a writer and someone who is participating in culture, and I work really hard. I didn't quite know this wasn't conscious for me, but I recognize it in my work. I really try probably to greater or lesser effect at certain times to connect the me story to the We story to the story.

And people ask me about my book a lot and the impetus to put myself in it, which wasn't my inclination. And I talk about the process with my editor in another episode of Pulling the Thread, and she really wanted me in there to guide people through the experience and to show how I related to each sin or concept. And it took me a minute to get comfortable with that in part because I hold this to be very true. Actually. I'm not that interesting. I read a lot of interesting things. I talk to a lot of interesting people, but my life story in and of itself is not that compelling. But I realize, oh, actually that's kind of the point because I can relate to each of these concepts in a way that is actually deeply, and not that I can speak for all women, certainly I would never presume to even attempt that, but that my experiences are not exceptional.

They are quite fundamental. And that in using memoir to bridge people to these concepts, I could build a bigger we. And so that was really the impetus for it. How do you use memoir to bridge and to bigger and bigger and bigger cohesive stories? And I think about this a lot because what I am observing, and I'm wondering if we're at the point where we see this dar to change because I read so many memoirs and many of them are incredible. The ones that I think are truly incredible in transporting, some are exceptional stories, people who have just lived a life that is wow, wow, that is a wild series of events, et cetera. That's sort of memoir in a class of its own. Those are stories that are singular. They are these brilliant examples of exceptionality. But what I see more and more and more is writers who maybe start from that place of telling a singular exceptional story and memoir and then it becomes their brand.

And then other people see that and decide that should be their brand as well. It's not the reason that we're sort of in this me obsessed culture right now, but it's certainly driving some of that of look how I'm going to mind my life for all these exceptional details, looking for that exceptionality rather than wees. And it's just something I've been noticing for a while and I'm just marking because I wonder if at a certain point we turn back or shift from those types of narratives, and honestly it's neither here nor there, but for anyone who's listening who's a writer, I think it's important to sort of mark that when you're thinking about material, if you're a memoirist or you're working on a personal project or that there are ways to use memoir and story and personal narrative as a structural point or a buttress for something that is bigger than yourself.

And the reason that I would encourage writers to really think about that and to really push themselves outside of the me frame is that if you stay in the me frame, then you are in a cycle where you have to perpetually mine your life and or engineer your life for exceptionality in order to have anything to write about or say. And I think that can be a very slippery hard road. And I think instead, if there's a way to shift to sort of push yourself past the boundaries or confines of your own life to look for those commonalities or the way that that is in some ways a structure for other people as well can ignite that story and make it far more powerful in service to bigger and bigger narratives about who we are. So just throwing that out there potentially advice that applies to no one.

I got a lot of questions on Instagram and I wanted to answer a few of them since this time goes so fast. This is a really interesting question. Someone asked, how do you balance research and new theories in your writing? And this is something that I really struggle with a lot and think about all the time and was thinking about it in the context of this metabolizing and alchemizing workshop that I went to as well. It's a theme in my life right now, which I'm encountering at a return as these things go in synchronicity. But this transition from knowledge to wisdom and how do you metabolize or alchemize everything that you're taking in and then turn that into wisdom that's sharing the moral of the story or what actually feels like soul food for other people rather than just a lot of knowledge. And so that's something that I'm wrestling with because my tendency is, and I've written about this, I wish I had a PhD, all of this bs, I recognize it as bs, but it doesn't make it go away.

All this search first, the scaffolding of academia or other people's ideas to support my own, which I use as a crutch. And it's not always in service to the reader who really doesn't care. So I did so much research for on our best behavior, and I'm so incredibly glad I did. And I ended up with 25,000 words and Endnotes, which is a lot of endnotes, and some people cherish those endnotes. And again, I am so grateful. But what I did was pass a line where instead of looking to support or buttress my ideas, I was then writing and then saying, someone else must have said this or thought of this. And then I would go and try and find someone post hoc. And my editor was like, what are you doing? Just say the thing. You don't have to just say it. And this is advice I would give to anyone else, and yet I struggled to give it to myself.

But with this next book that I'm working on, yes, I've done a ton of research and yes, I don't know when to stop and I'm struggling with that and fighting with myself right now. And I'm really grateful to be able to be in conversation with so many other thinkers and healers and therapists and writers and academics. And so I'll never fully devalue that, but I'm really trying to find the way between letting myself think and write and recognizing that I've internalized a lot of knowledge from a lot of different sources, from a lot of different fields that are not always naturally in contact with each other and that I can just share that. And so I'm balancing that and trying to go in that direction while also recognizing that research is a security blanket for me and it's really hard to let it go. So thank you for that question.

What would you do differently in how you've branched out into your great work and what was the tough thing about branching out on your own and the lessons that are learned? These are great questions, and I'll try to answer this succinctly. So in many ways, I've had many careers simultaneously throughout my life. I never have relied on a single job. I just couldn't. It was too scary to me to recognize that I could get laid off or this could evaporate or I'm a media person. So I've lived through so many evolutions in that business and watched it sort of fade and reconstitute itself in many different ways. And so I think that that hypervigilance, which is also I'm sure ancestral and definitely familial, really worked its way into me in ways that are both helpful and not. It was helpful in the sense that I have always been doing other things in addition to a full-time job for my whole career, namely ghostwriting and other projects like that.

And so I recognize what it is before I fully did it by myself to structure a life where you are managing a lot of different projects, timelines, and really constituents. So I would say that that gave me a leg up. And the other thing that's helpful is that I am, I guess you could call me a realistic wet blanket. I've been doing this for so long, I feel like I don't operate with any delusion about how media, which is what I'm primarily interested in, how that works and how hard it is. And so mistakes that I've made in my career have meant that I have been very careful about where I've decided to invest my energy and where I should plant seeds and maybe where I shouldn't. And so that's given me a fair amount of, I haven't wasted a lot of energy because I typically try and focus on the things that I know are likely to bear fruit.

And I'm focused on the whole ecosystem of being a writer and a podcaster and how these things need to supplement and feed each other. And it's really hard because, and I've written about this a fair amount because you can go out in the world and everyone will be like, do it. Just do it and hashtag women supporting women and we'll support you. And I feel like a lot of people get burned by some of the optimistic delusion in that. That said, I never want to be the person who discourages someone from pursuing their dreams by telling them that it will be really hard. But for anyone who's listening who wants to launch a podcast or start a Substack or write books, there are easier ways to make money. It's hard. Do I love doing this? Absolutely. But it's very hard, and I think we all get sort of suckered by these stories of the people getting a hundred million dollars podcast deals and or building TikTok audiences of millions overnight or selling hundreds of thousands of copies of books, whatever it is.

And those are amazing stories. They're quite rare, I would say exceptionally rare. And then they also, we tend to romanticize them. And often the people who seem to sort of burst onto the scenes have been at this for a really long time before their work takes flight. So I think that I have just been conscious of the fact that I need to start where I am and not have unreasonable expectations of what these different things will do. And to recognize that I'm in this for the long haul. I've been podcasting for six years and I love doing it. And I would do it even if nobody listened. Maybe I wouldn't, but I think I would. And it's how I do a lot of research for my projects and my books, and it's part of what I think I'm supposed to be doing here. And so of course I will keep doing it, but I would never start a podcast if my intention was to use it to make a lot of money or build a huge listenership or any of those things because it's really hard.

It's really hard. And so I think before I do anything, one, I've been better about doing that full body. Is this a yes for me or a no? But it's also, I think about this line from Carissa Schumacher who has been on the podcast many times, which is, and it sounds very new ag, but I'm going to break it down for you. Your vibration must be higher than what you create, otherwise you cannot manage it. And so I think about that all the time, and I am careful, and it might make some of my projects smaller than they need to be, but I'm careful to make sure that my vibration, my energy for something, the consciousness that I can bring to it is higher than what I create because I certainly have watched friends tip over and create these products or classes or whatever they are that they just do not have the vibration to match.

And then suddenly their world is run away from them and they have a lot of employees and they're trying to support an entity or business that they can't psychically keep up with or maintain at the level of integrity at which they initially intended. And so I think about that a lot with pulling the thread. For example, could I try and grow it? Sure, but do I have the energy for the, do I have the vibration to manage that or would it run away with me? So I think about that a lot in terms of what I decide to do, and part of it is reckoning and pushing against a lot of the cultural messaging that we have about scale. And I don't really care about scale, I care about depth. And what I'm really proud of in terms of what I've created is when I meet people who've listened to the podcast or read the newsletter or read my book, I'm so incredibly affirmed and I think that my readers and listeners are brilliant.

It doesn't give me an identity crisis ever to meet someone in the wild. And I think that what happens if you start playing for scale is that you really lose track of who your people are. And I really love my people and I think that part of it is that this is a tight community. Not that it can't be bigger, but that's not what I'm doing. I'm not click baiting people into engaging with my content. I was laughing because I was looking at one of these male podcasters who's built an empire and we both had the same guest on it was Lisa Moscone who's a researcher, incredible PhD, who studies women who studies the brain and women and menopause. She has like 11 NIH grants and she was on the podcast. I always cut a little promo for Instagram of my guest talking. I've noticed that typically what other people do is you'll notice this particularly with the men, it's them talking and the guest is sort of a prop for them, but it's mostly them talking.

It's very interesting to me. I'm sure it must work and that's why they do it, but that I don't think that guests are props in that way. So anyway, I digress. So I cut a clip of Lisa Moscone talking about menopause in the brain and put it up on Instagram to support the episode. And I was watching one of these guys and the trailer that his show cut, and again, it's like one of the biggest podcasts in the world, and it was like an SVU episode. It was like Lisa Mosconi saying, I just want everyone to understand Lisa Mosconi shares three unknown facts. It was an SVU Law and Order episode trailer. Anyway, I don't do that. I probably should do that, but that's just not what I'm trying to cultivate.

Okay, I'm going to do one more question. Oh man, what do you do for fun? It's so funny. I was talking to my friend Nora McInerney, and she's the host of terrible Things for Asking, and she has an amazing Substack called She Tried, and I love Nora. She is God, she's a gift. And she said, Elise, I really just want you to do an episode where you talk about the Secret lives of Mormons. I think I'm getting that name right. I haven't watched the show yet. And I was like, oh, Nora, what I'm planning to do is a whole episode about Love Island, the UK version, because that is what I do. And I read in Soya Al's book about resilience that Tetris has a really positive effect as a stress releasing mechanism. So sometimes I play Tetris, but what I do to relax, and this drives my husband and my kids crazy, even though I'm like, all I do all day is read hard nonfiction and interview people, give me a break.

But I watch Love Island and on my phone and I play a match tile game, and I find it just deeply calming and restorative. And I'm not a bachelor person, although I guess I should be, but I'm kind of a fan of Love Island. I've been watching, I started with the most recent episode with Mimi, and then I worked backwards and I'm in the season with the professional boxer and Molly May. Anyway, for those who haven't watched this show, watch the UK version. I find it so funny. I find the narrator really funny and compelling and loving. That is not what I expected, but because they're not competing, they're not. Occasionally they get into triangles, but they're mostly not competing for the same object of affection. I find it really fascinating. And watching these kind of kids develop and grow is quite moving. It can be quite moving, and the friendships that they form and their support for each other and the kindness, it's very counter programming in terms of how we would expect a bunch of hot 20 year olds to be on a reality TV show.

But I find it very sweet. I don't remember which season it was, but they were talking about, and this is kind of sad, this is the one thing I will say is that as they discuss during challenges, a lot of these women on the show who are all in their twenties, I don't know if they've had a 30-year-old, have had a lot of plastic surgery, whether it's boob jobs, Botox, they've all had Botox, fillers, et cetera. So I don't love that, although I think it's important that they actually talk about it, which they do, because I think it's important for people to recognize, I think anyone to do whatever they want to their body, but talk about it, don't disassemble and pretend because not of great service to other women. And obviously millions of people are watching these women and using them as standards of beauty.

And there is a good mix, I will say. Although they're all beautiful and they all have a hard bodies and they wear these song bikinis, which is very confusing to me. But I had to laugh because I identify with some of them and they look, I think because of what they do to their faces and the makeup, I feel like we're peers sometimes. And I'm in my forties, they're not. And I was laughing because in one of these challenges that they do on the island, as they get to know each other better, they were talking about the number of sexual partners they've had, et cetera. And one of the guys copped to having slept with a 41-year-old and the person he was coupled up with was shocked, dismayed. I would add that he had slept with a 41-year-old woman and she just couldn't get over it.

And it was like, what do you mean? I mean, that is so crazy. And I'm not saying it's not, it's a significant age difference, but I also was like, oh my God, I'm 44 and here I am thinking that we're all kind of the same age. Not apparently that was a long digression on Love Island, but I do watch sort of dumb tv. I'm not interested in watching hard things, which is what my husband always wants to watch. But I work my brain hard enough. There's enough pain in the world that I typically avoid difficult TV shows and movies and documentaries. So I like to learn through reading and I just go for the really dumb tv, but I'm finding Love Island to be weirdly wholesome. And you can come at me in the comments and maybe I'll do a whole episode about it per Nora's request.

But that's what I do for fun. I hope that's not too disappointing. Alright, friends, as predicted, I filled a huge amount of time. Thank you for listening. I'm going to do this again, so please send me your questions. If there's anything you want to know or recommendations you want for different books, therapist or modalities, I love to do that.