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elizabeth day is a world-renowned podcast host she's a best-selling author she's a successful journalist i felt like a failure but i probably wasn't it was what i've been told to feel i've had countless failed relationships and then it sucks like heartbreak there is no pain like heartbreak i now realize that i learned something very instructive from each one of those relationships and from the fact that they ended it taught me something that i needed to know about myself infertility and miscarriage is not a mishap like for people who experience it it's a tragedy over which they have no control and the idea that i was exploiting it to make a full-time career out of it was so insulting because i know how [ __ ] painful and traumatic it is to go through [Music] being vulnerable something i think we all find it incredibly hard to do and after hearing my guest's story today i had tears in my eyes maybe three or four times and that's because she is willing to be vulnerable and honest and open about her truth her trauma and the things she's learned from her most testing times elizabeth day is a world-renowned podcast host she is a best-selling author she's a successful journalist honestly she's quite frankly one of the most wonderful smart lovely people i've ever had the privilege of doing this podcast with in fact today one of the issues i had with this podcast was we agree on so much that it's hard to play devil's advocate with her it was hard to challenge her views because so many of them represented mine it felt like she was reading out of my book i think that's powerful because she helped me build on my ideas and some of these ideas are controversial for some people may be too controversial it is remarkable how much societal expectations can [ __ ] your chance of happiness and i genuinely believe that if we had more
people in the world like elizabeth who were willing to say what she says today then maybe that wouldn't be the case without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the divers ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this yourself [Music] one of the things that i wrote recently which um after doing a little bit of reading about your story and your journey really really resonated with me um was this idea that the society's expectations of how your life is supposed to be going will [ __ ] you up and when i think about you know you've written this amazing book about called philosophy about failure i was thinking what is objectively like what is failure and um my conclusion was that failure is like a byproduct of social expectations um that's and as is success so could you talk to me a little bit about how social expectations have made you feel like a failure of course yeah i realized i had to define failure after i had launched a podcast called how to fail and after i had written a book called how to fail and then i kept getting asked this very reasonable question and i realized i'd never come up with a satisfying definition for me so the definition i came up with in philosophy is that failure is what happens when life doesn't go according to plan which totally taps into what you've just asked me about because then you need to start to think well where does the plan come from is it genuinely my plan is it genuinely will make me happy or is it what i've been told i should expect my life to be because when i looked at some of my metrics for how my life should be and i put that in quotation marks it kind of came from like 1980s rom-coms and and patriarchal society and conditioning and the idea that i've been raised in the 80s to be a nice pleasant pliable girl whereas boys were enabled to be mischievous and that was seen as kind of cute and charming
and that led to me being an investor at people pleaser which i know is something that a lot of people have in this kind of industry and it also led to me imagining that i wanted to be married and have children and that's what i tried to do and in my 30s i did get married to the wrong person i ended up getting divorced and i tried but failed to have babies and went through various fertility treatments that were emotionally devastating in various ways and it got to a point when i was 36 divorced didn't have children where i really did feel like a failure and the reason i felt like a failure is because that's what society had conditioned me to believe of myself because actually after i'd got over the pain and the grief caused by that seminal relationship ending and by all of the ivf and coming to terms with my first miscarriage and all of that i actually felt strong for having withstood it and i actually felt kind of liberated too because i had no plan for the future and having no plan for the future can be terrifying and it can also be this enormous opportunity to change your life and to redefine it according to who you really are once you've stripped back that pretense so that's one way in which i felt like a failure but i probably wasn't it was what i've been told to feel so i wanna i wanna like pick around this a little bit because i can resonate with this tremendously in fact that's why my book is has the name it does is because i was conditioned as a black kid who was broke to believe that the thing that would make me a success was becoming this happy sexy millionaire with a range rover and i mean so i wrote the front page of my diary that you know that's a kid from africa who in africa had nothing but was you know my family were happy bring that kid into a context or a con yeah a context where the context is telling me that unless you're this
you should feel like [ __ ] um that's why as a kid i was like well i need to happy sexy minute to be fair if i'd wrote something else it would have been white straight hair right i was relaxing my hair chemically from the age of about 12 till about 16 so my hair was straight but i want to i want to go back to this this point about society telling you um what you should want did you ever figure out what you actually wanted such a good question also thank you for sharing what you just did yeah because i know that yeah you believe like i do that vulnerability is the source of connection true connection and that was really beautiful um i think i have figured out who i am now but i sit here as a 42 year old having only just figured that out and the reason i figured it out is because of all of those things that went wrong those relationships that ended that imploded the jobs that weren't right for me like that was what prompted me to do the soul searching and i'm a big believer in things happening for a reason the universe unfolding as is intended even if you can't make something meaningful as and when it's happening because it's traumatic and it's devastating i tend to believe that there will be some meaning in there in the fullness of time there'll be something that i needed to learn i wish sometimes i'd learnt the lessons more quickly because i believe i kept being sent the same lessons until i really really learned the the thing that i needed to learn but i do think now that i'm aware of who i am because i've redefined my notion of success so in the past my success was not necessarily being a happy sexy millionaire although i wouldn't say no in the past i had a very different contextual upbringing from yours and i'm immensely privileged in many ways and one of the ways in which i am privileged is that there was a lot of kind of creativity and um cultural discussion in my home like i was surrounded by books i was never
taught to feel that that was odd that i read all the time or that i wanted to be an author even though there was no one in my family who did that so i had those kind of conversations and that's and that's an enormously wealthy way to be brought up and i even though we didn't have that much money that was very wealthy and so for me then success was about doing well at school it was doing well academically and i realized that when i did well on an exam i got approval and that for me became a substitute for self-worth so for a long time i was on this feedback loop where i was like if only i could just do better and do better at more things eventually i'll feel i'm worthwhile and i was on a hiding to nothing because actually i was outsourcing my sense of self to everyone else's opinions of me and to kind of external validation and i've now realized and it's taken me a long time to realize this that my only validation that means anything can come from within and from my cornerstone relationships so like the four or five people i love most in the world whose opinion actually means something to me that's what it is now having worked that out how can i bring my authentic self into every area of my life and that's why the podcast has felt and the books about failure have genuinely been such a gift to me because they've enabled me to connect with a really big audience whilst being my true self whilst taking the risk to be vulnerable and that for me is success being my authentic self in integrated selves so like professionally personally and when i'm asleep like i'm or in my friendship group or when i'm stroking my cat it's always the same me i talk in so i hate [ __ ] plugging my own book but it's the reason i'm doing it is because we very much think the same and one of the chapters in my book is about making your um your context smaller and healthier in an age of social media where i can compare myself
to a billion people who are all filtering themselves and fake i implore like people to make their context which is what you've described there's like four or five people much smaller like unfollowing me all the toxic people in your like comparison bubble or whatever and make it tight and healthy that's so hard these days if you're on social media platforms and following like the kardashians or whatever how does how does one do that and also stay on social media like well i need to ask you this so i'm going to ask you this after i've tried to answer it because i'm i'm you have to deal with it on such a massive scale and i'm just like a micro tiny thing in comparison no i don't think that's fine but the way to answer that truly honestly i'm still a huge work in progress in that respect because i have the capacity to be undone by criticism like i fi i take it really really personally tell me how personally give me an example so personally give me an example okay um two recent examples one is that i went um a few weeks ago i went on a lockdown walk with a friend of mine who i haven't seen for over a year socially distanced it was my daily exercise i was allowed to do with one person from another household and i posted a picture of us socially distanced in a park on instagram being like you know this was really good for my mental health such an enjoyable walk and someone commented saying i can't this is so irresponsible of you to post this because hospitals are overwhelmed with covered patients and you're encouraging people just like go out and about and i was like hang on a second i was like that's where i go with it oh my god i've done something wrong i've done something wrong and these poor nhs doctors who are working and i've just kicked them in the face metaphorically and i was and i had this process of like i've done something wrong i'm a terrible
person i feel really bad about it what can i do should i reply i go through that that's the first place i go and then i tell myself no leave it 24 hours leave it 24 hours before you say anything and then i just feel i have this like harness that settles around me for a day of feeling unsettled and a bit worried and anxious and are other people thinking that is there a whole group of people out there that they're like meeting up behind closed doors to discuss how awful i am launching your council campaign like oh yes and it's ridiculous yeah it's awful and i saw other people had liked that comment i was like oh my god they hate me too i'm and basically i just have to sit with it for a bit and it helps me to talk about it even though i sound completely doolally but i do i'm lucky enough to have an incredible resource in my husband who is just not on social media at all and so it's a very kind of sane mind to bring to it and my best friend who's a psychotherapist and i spoke to her about it and she was like okay where i would go with it is what pain is that person in that they've lashed out in this way and that's very helpful because it encourages you to feel compassion instead of got at and anger i mean that's one tiny example another example was philosophy got reviewed in a couple of places and i you know i i'm really proud of that book but it's a physically small book i mean it's got a lot of good content in it don't get me wrong and as you know it's hard to make big ideas accessible but i did not expect it to get reviewed in the national press but it did and it got reviewed by people who wanted to find fault with it who did not like the fact that i seemed to be exploiting failure for my own success which is absolutely not the case like i want to share the stuff that i've learned that's all i wanted exploiting failure for your own success [ __ ] house anyway so that was that was just
like i went down a rabbit hole of looking at the reviewers instagram and all of that sort of stuff which is terrible anyway i know i shouldn't go down these rabbit holes of self-loathing and most the time i'm able not to but just occasionally if i'm feeling low or particularly sensitive that day it will affect me and my tactic for protecting myself is absolutely of you said as you said to unfollow and mute to curate my feed to keep my phone on airplane mode in the morning so my phone is not the first thing i look at when i'm writing i put my phone on airplane mode as well and i find it a real relief and also to try and practice the art of generosity and to believe in abundance because i think a lot of my mindset around competitiveness or envy is because i believe in a scarcity of resources and i believe success is scarce and i believe money is scarce and love is scarce and we all have to compete for it yeah like is there some game exactly and actually just flipping the switch and being like no the world is abundant and everyone's success can mirror your own like and if you give and if you come at life from a generous place then hopefully that will feed back to you so those are my tactics interesting how do you deal with it um so i think it's important to be honest as well i'm i've read a lot about this this topic i've spoken to psychologists i've sat here with guests and you know ask them about this and this is probably maybe a liberating but also a terrifying answer eve and i have exactly what you've described it feels so much better do you know what's funny the reason when i was laughing you when you said to me you went oh i know it sounds cucky i was laughing because it's you telling me my life oh you know what i mean like i will i will get one comment on one thing and i'll be like let's look at this jonathan davis and
find out all about you know what i mean his family are it'll be just it's just like flipping comment surrounded by a thousand positive ones but i'm like i'm gonna find this guy's birth records and we're gonna find out you know what i mean like private investigator and the way you describe that feeling of like it bothers you you're like shall i respond sometimes i respond i'm like then i delete it super fast because i'm like you know you rise above and then i've also felt in the bigger moments where something more controversial has happened i've also felt that like thing around me for about like 48 hours yeah that feeling of like anxiousness yeah like you described like wait does is this does everyone you think all your all my friends that are quiet they all think that i've i'm finished you know what i mean they're not saying anything am i adopted yeah he's like yeah so here's my he's my productive conclusion though is one of the things we're not taught to do is to use social media in a conscious way so we like sign up and then we just go with the algorithm and the algorithm will be like be pretty or and then they'll clap for you good good and it'll be like you do this and we cut and then it will tell us to follow lots of people who we compare ourselves to and create this really unhealthy context in which we our self-worth is clearly our you know achievements success and beauty is clearly less than all of these people and because it's so unconscious we become a victim to the algorithms and to this this like awful toxic experiment so the the answer for me is just to use social media in a much more conscious way you've described it there which is like unfollow people that are bad for you turn off your notifications um when i on twitter when i do a tweet and it goes like semi-viral i know that for the next 48 hours i'm gonna get all kinds of twitter eggs and all so i just mute it straight away i did it last night i did a tweet start getting
all these responses hit me and it's disappeared yeah i don't see any response and this is the like conscious you know effort that i have to make to keep my context healthy and to protect myself yeah do you know i had a really interesting experience on twitter recently and it's it's it's fascinating because i think i care less about twitter because i don't feel as myself on twitter i suppose because i'm super conscious of how you can send out an ill tweet one day and like lose everything the next instagram rightly or wrongly just feels safer it feels more like a warm bath whereas twitter's like a kind of shower of hail a lot of the time and but on recently on twitter someone messaged me saying oh that thing that was in the times magazine about you was so unfair and i hadn't read it and i then went and looked at the article and it was an interview with another author and the journalist had said had compared this person to me and a couple of other people and said you know now there's this trend i'm paraphrasing for people to use their mishaps and exploit them and turn them into full-time careers with non-stop webinars and instagram lives and she said like like elizabeth day with infertility and i was like that sits so badly with me because infertility and miscarriage is not a mishap like for people who experience it it's a tragedy over which they have no control and the idea that i was exploiting it to make a full-time career out of it with non-stop webinars and i've done a webinar in my life by the way was so insulting to me because i had a career apart from that and before that and it's that i choose to use my platform to talk about something that a great deal of people feel a great deal of misplaced shame over and that was one example in fact the only one i can think of where i did respond because it was so deeply
deeply personal to who i was and i felt an attack on my integrity and a complete misreading of what i was trying to do and i tweeted something that was really calm and that was like you know i refute this for these reasons and it was an excellent lesson in how sometimes it is important to stand up for something i had an outpouring of incredible support from other people who i'd never met which meant a great deal to me the journalists in question had the grace afterwards to apologize but they changed the wording and the online piece and if i hadn't sent out that tweet there would be no record of it having happened and these things are really important to call out sometimes so i think when it's an attack on the integrity of who you are and what you do then sometimes it is worth drawing breath and saying something calmly and just stating your position and in that case as well you're the courage shall i say to speak about to have that vulnerability creates a culture where more people will speak out and it's that and that is so powerful and helpful for so many other people who are going through that and can't and can't find um a voice that they can relate to and you could you know create that sense of um understanding by by hearing your story same with the mental health um conversation over the last 10 years if people weren't speaking about it the place would be and is quite terrifying to think of and you wouldn't say those people have exploited it right so it's just i mean it's such a nonsense thing for someone to write that i actually don't want to spend too much time talking about it quick one starting from the minute the lockdown is lifted we're going to start bringing in some of our subscribers to watch how this podcast is produced behind the scenes means you get to meet the guests meet myself and see how we put all of this together if you want that to be you all you've
got to do hit the subscribe button so let's talk about people pleasing yeah you said you're a people pleaser yes well i'm a reformed people please i guess you used to now don't give a [ __ ] what you thought okay i really do um yes so i like many women of my age was raised in the 80s and early 90s in a culture where it was still very very gender stereotyped i mean we've come so far in the last decade i think in understanding that but as a result i always thought that my worth as a person was predicated on keeping other people happy so i got into a series of long-term monogamous relationships from the age of 19 to 36 like that the biggest gap between those relationships was like a month no because i was like who am i unless i'm making someone else happy unless i'm being someone else's perfect partner unless i'm i'm trying to second-guess what they might want for dinner and when they ask me like where do i want to go for lunch i don't know where would you like to go like that was my life it was ridiculous and it manifested itself at work as well i was always the person who said yes to overtime yes to the commissions that no one else wanted because i thought eventually i'd be rewarded and i got a staff feature writer job at the observer a sunday newspaper in the uk when i was 29 and i was the youngest feature writer there and so i felt really intimidated and so part of my constantly saying yes and showing willing was to try and fit in and be accepted and actually you just become an easily exploitable asset and i realized after eight years of that job that i was never going to be moved anywhere i did ask i asked for like different roles different challenges and the answer was always no and it was because i was i was doing too much where i was like why would they want to move me i was providing them with an excellent service where i was i was making myself
too indispensable and i was absolutely refusing to complain that's what's going to say you ain't going to complain never and never ask for a pay rise stephen i mean which is actually makes me feel slightly sick now looking back because i am a feminist and i do believe women should ask for the pay that they deserve but i didn't i was too intimidated and um ultimately i think people pleasing can start from a desire to be nice and to think of others and that's a really beautiful thing but taken to its extreme which is where i would put myself it actually becomes very selfish because you never take the time to know who you truly are and that leads you into situations and relationships that you shouldn't be in because you're not fully giving yourself you're giving a version of perfection to someone that is never fully real yeah so i never felt able to show who i really was and and that's the state of mind i got married in and little wonder that it ended is that why you think it ended part of the um part of the reason like i definitely found it very difficult to find my voice for a long time what does that mean in a relationship um it meant that i was extremely conflict avoidant so instead of saying how i felt about something i would turn it inwards and be silent and then get mildly depressed so that's a difficult person to be with they don't seem difficult at all because they're like look i've cooked you dinner and i've got all your favorite things and i've come up with this perfectly thoughtful gift for christmas but that's all like distraction it's all like just don't look at the mess i actually am inside um so i had to do a lot of work on myself it was part of the reason it wasn't the whole reason um there was a whole pile of other stuff that i can't go into because it involves someone else
but that was definitely like i do think that when a relationship ends you have to look at yourself and be really honest about how you played into that dysfunctional dynamic to avoid making the same mistakes i'm not in a relationship i've actually really struggled with relationships and i was thinking about this last night when i was working out i was thinking much the reason why i've struggled is because i think i'm probably too selfish right i think that i'm uncompromising as well and it's something that i've tried over the last couple of years to really look like defeat in myself which is in in work i'm required to be a certain type of person to succeed which is like quite certain about the right approach focused hard working um a lot of things in the professional environment aren't actually democratic they're like the big decisions they they lack you the buck stops with you um in relationships um communication and compromise and being more democratic in things and really trying to meet um someone else's needs are the i guess the attributes for success yeah communication let's talk talk about that how important is it to um from your experiences in relationships that have you know gone done well by your definition and ended by your definition um to communicate how you're feeling and what your needs are it's so important it's everything i'm very interested in what you just said there so i'm going to come back to that question you asked me the the fact that you have that you believe you might need different modes of communication in business and in personal relationships slightly different and this is like super controversial because because people will think that so communication is incredibly important in my professional life yeah it's actually the things things
like so in my in my professional life if i don't want to do something or if i think it's a bad use of my time i say no don't don't do it cancel it whereas in my romantic life you can't do that if i don't want to do so i don't want to go down and walk walk in the park but i've got to be like fine yeah you know what i mean and and i can be i'm supe in my in my professional life i'm a radical about how i spend my time because i because you get so many things calling for your time you have to be like nope nope nope cancel it move it nope no no in my professional life it's like what do you want to do do you want to cook for two hours um fine you know and and i got my brains like wasted is that an efficient use of time you know so interesting because in your professional life as well you're in a position where you need to know the answers someone will come to you for a decision you need to know you need to be like a benign dictator and just be like right this that and and therefore do you think that in your personal life you don't think it's okay to say i don't know i don't know if i want to okay it's like a compromise of like not doing things i don't want to do so don't do things you don't want to do this is so interesting so my my now partner husband is amazing and he's a ceo and he said to me in the early days of my relationship i never do anything i don't want to do and i was like selfish i was like i'm a people pleaser so this is never going to work um but he's the knock-on effect of that basically what he was saying is i'm honest and i will tell you if i don't want to do something so if i say yes that yes is really meaningful and that's such a weight like it's such a weight off my mind because i'm not having to second guess whether he really means it when he says he'll come for lunch with my family or whatever yeah i know that he's invested in that so actually i'm your husband for a second okay
i go you say to me i'd love to go and walk in the park and i go nah i want to sit on my laptop and send these emails and then five minutes and ten minutes late you go oh i would love to cook with you and he goes nope i want to watch youtube videos about spacex okay so i'm your wife and i say i completely understand that because you're having a really heavy week at work i'd really like to go to the park because i really want to spend quality time with you and it would make me feel sad if we didn't do that then what would you say yes yeah there you go and do you think you'd want to say yes of course i would yeah there you go of course i don't know why i always fail on this thing i just think the amount of time and attention um my previous partners have um have asked of me i've not been able to deliver and i'm like i will go i'll text maybe once a day when i'm in my when i'm in like the tornado of the business yeah you'll say like justice is that really yeah and like it doesn't mean i don't love you it means that i'm in a mild crisis which i can't tell you about because i haven't got time to like divulge all of my [ __ ] so sorry how you're really young aren't you how old are you 20 28 now yeah and you're dating your age group i'm assuming typically a little bit younger like yeah you see that that it's that's very difficult it's so difficult dating in your 20s anyway full stop but when you're you and you're basically living the life and you have the wisdom of a 45 year old that's very difficult because the other person hasn't had that life experience yet to know oh you're so right yes you're right honestly you're sorry i'll set you up for 85 years is the be or end all for me and when i met justin who is now my husband it was a really difficult learning process for me because he had a very different mode of communication but he because he is a founder and a ceo and he didn't have time to text me and i
[ __ ] love text i'm a writer that's what i don't i hate a phone call i've had to get used to it now in the global pandemic but i would hate a phone call i always think i've done something wrong whereas justin was always like why would i take time to text you when i can just call you and convey the necessary information necessary information honestly and he said this thing well and i kept bringing it up and i was like if he if i don't hear from you for like three days that's really upsetting to me and it's not gonna work if that continues he's like okay i hear that he's like for me text is a very cheap form of communication and it's something you do when you don't really care and i do it a lot for work so for me it's much more important to spend time together anyway we've sorted it out and i think that's about having different love languages and i made him take the quiz and it was really helpful he was acts of service oh no way but he was awesome yeah there you go it's what you do oh that's so but he was also he wasn't interested in words of affirmation at all which is mine i might just compliment me all the time was he touch yes i thought sorry so am i oh my god you're literally like the same person yeah that's yeah and i was when he took that i was really surprised it was quite early days of our relationship and he hadn't given me the impression of needing touch and then once i knew that i was like oh that's lovely because i like that too are you quality time and there's quality times one of them yes and words of affirmation yes i'm totally so i was totally words of affirmation when we took the test but i think that's because i'd come off a a really bad patch of relationships where i didn't feel safe in those relationships so i was constantly looking for something to paper over the cracks and for me that papering came in the form of compliments
that was like the easiest thing to ask for and so that's what i thought i needed but now actually in my relationship i feel really safe so for me it is quality time it's still worth affirmation but quality time is super important and and i now realize that justin is very good at taking feedback that's because that's the business brain isn't it yeah yeah you have so i don't need to sugarcoat something i can say listen i need this or i feel this and sometimes he'll need time i hope he doesn't like me he's so private but sometimes he'll need times like uh think it through and sort of strategize it and like digest it and i always know it's never that he's forgotten he'll come back and he'll be like right i agree and this is the action that we're going to take and it's amazing and i love that i really love that i used to think it was unromantic it's not at all it's the most romantic thing because i'm being taken really seriously and i'm guessing this is a guess but i do say it to him without too much like emotion because he sounds like a very pragmatic guy so the way that i like to receive feedback like that from my ex was just very like without blame or like um too much emotion and just like here are the facts yeah that's the best way i like to receive you back you know yes completely but do separate to you getting feedback if your partner is emotional and is crying at a film or is sad about something so moved to tears or feeling anxious so therefore yes that's fine exactly the same it's just the feed you know because you know what i mean you do you want it with judgment yeah and you in his business i'm sure he'll deal with people all day who give him feedback in a very practical pragmatic way and that's the way you could come used to it and he'll have the same problem as me whereas sometimes in business you'll get feedback in a very quite unhealthy and a helpfully
emotional way yes and now you're trying to deal with us you're not sure which issue you're actually dealing with right so when you present it without the emotion i understand what i'm aiming at here it's the same as me yeah i feel like a bit of a scumbag for having uh acts of service as my no that's a really lovely thing but doesn't it sound cheap it's like i would like you to serve me with you know what i mean yes i was going through that love language thing and i was thinking why is it that someone getting me something that they knew would help me doing something that they knew would help me means so much to me because for me that because because my life is tough and challenging i see it as them showing an action which is action speak louder than words how much they cared about helping me yeah and for me that's like i'm like oh god you know and also probably because you've had to be incredibly self-sufficient yeah yeah you were like the definition of a self-starter you've had to rely on yourself so much that for someone else to step in and be like i've got this for you it means a lot it's so meaningful and you're carrying so much so if someone comes and says oh yeah i carry one of these bags for you it's like oh thank you yeah you know what i mean i totally get it interesting one of the things you said was that you're you were i guess um scared of being lonely at the end of your life oh my gosh yes that's my existential fear that and pigeons still interestingly the global pandemic has been so tough and so much tougher for so many people than it has been for me in myriad ways one of the unexpected side benefits is that i've really got comfortable with my fear of loneliness because overnight my diary was totally empty so i had no social engagements i couldn't see friends and it made me realize that i didn't really want to see the majority of people that i was going
to see like i'd said yes to social situations that i didn't really want to go to but i felt like i should and i didn't want to offend someone by not letting them down that's still the people pleaser in me um and having the freedom to choose who i wanted invest time in was hugely beneficial for me because i realized actually that my core my nucleus of people is very very small and actually if i've got justin and my best friend i'm good i'm good and beyond that you know my closest friends like i actively want to see them and but i realized that i was just spending a lot of time not nurturing those friendships because i knew that i would be able to step back into them and i knew that i'd be accepted because that's the level of great friendship isn't it like you're just always welcome back and i was spending a lot of time trying to nurture these other ones that were less meaningful to me that required more of it because they weren't as generous in their acceptance of me so actually my fear of loneliness has slightly lessened now it's good news yes isn't it and although you probably can't tell i am actually an introvert but i've successfully learned how to be extrovert and how to um pretend i'm confident when i don't feel it and all of that sort of stuff and i've realized that i'm also pretty resilient when my world shrinks so i think i'm going to be okay silver lining yeah on that point of confidence it's something that people ask me about all the time which is confidence seems to be one of the great barriers of people pursuing themselves as you describe pursuing their dreams pursuing who they are some people will know who they think they are but they don't have the confidence to take the leap per se are you confident um yes in certain things so i'm confident that i can write i'm now confident that i can podcast
i can do a good podcast um you're a great talker i was thinking this as you're speaking i'm thinking i was thinking yeah because i understand why she has a really good podcast oh thank you very you know you're very like articulate self-aware but you're really good at you know talking yeah it's like a strange thing to say yeah you know you are well i think i'm good at connecting with people and that's something that i really cherish because that's where all the good stuff lies for me like i love having a conversation like this on such a real level with someone and connecting that's heaven to me like this is introversion heaven it's like i don't want to be a big party like trying to have this conversation with you like that would be stressful um so i'm confident there and you'll notice that those are all things that i do i'm not hugely confident about myself in the sense that i still struggle with self-worth and i realized that that probably sounds really nauseating for me to sit here in this lovely place being interviewed for this fabulous podcast drinking my cup of middle-class green tea like it sounds absurd for me to say that and also self-indulgent but that's me being really honest like i've just got that that's something that uh i really struggle with like just feeling that i'm enough interesting so the conclusive chapter in my book chapter 20 is all about this topic okay yeah yeah and and i and i because i think i you know i spoke to some psychologists and stuff and i batted around with this idea of um this contradiction of how i could possibly be enough but ambitious yeah yes do you know what i mean like i know it feels like a contradiction yeah and that's that thing that i always fear if i if i tackle my self-worth and i cure myself will i just have no drive okay so this is chapter 20. okay and it's crazy because you would
have you'll resonate with this yeah i actually started the chapters set out to answer the question and i answered as i was typing and and so usually as you'll discover like in the book is um a lot of the time it's just a shitty use of words that are holding us back so one of the things like is you know is he your soul mate that there's so many presumptions within that like that you're that a soulmate exists you have one of them you'll be able to find them um and in fact if you ask yourself maybe the concept of a soulmate doesn't actually exist same thing with are you enough right so the term enough this was my conclusion first assumes that we can become less and more yeah how can we become less and more that's a good point in in innately and intrinsically how can we ever how can elizabeth ever be intrinsically innate like inside less or more you're always going to be you same hair same arms same legs same talent same skills you inherently like intrinsically never change yeah you never become less more enough you just are the the reason why we have these metrics again is because it's an external extrinsic comparison so i am not enough my nokia is not enough alongside an iphone so i thought in fact and then when you have that feeling of like being less and more of enough what you then pursue is the pursuit of becoming more but because it was driven by external factors your ambition becomes externally driven so for me i didn't think i was enough so i was trying to get a lamborghini and in fact it's the belief it's the knowing that you never become less moral enough that intrinsic feeling that makes you pursue ambition the right things for the right reasons so once i knew i was enough i then went after things i actually gave a [ __ ] about intrinsically i stopped going after lamborghinis and i started going after like
i would love to do a book i would love to learn piano and so my conclusive point is that in fact it's the it's the knowing that you're enough and that in fact you never become less or more regardless of what you achieve or accomplish that is the foundation of real ambition yeah real ambition is for you it's chasing what you want for your reasons that was my conclusion so the enough thing is actually [ __ ] which is just social which then causes [ __ ] ambitions like lamborghinis yeah and uh realizing that you never you know you never become less more or enough intrinsically allows you to have intrinsic ambitions and that is real ambition that's my conclusive point which is so so mind-blowingly good and also connects to that whole thing that [ __ ] about soul mates yeah because there's that belief that a soulmate will complete you now what are you saying there you're saying that you're incomplete in and of yourself yeah and that there's only one true way to like all of that i hate that yeah the question comes in a very innocent way it's like is he your soul mate and yes the moment you accept it but you also accept seven other pieces of unintended [ __ ] which is like that you're incomplete now that you you've done you're a failure at not finding this person and all of these other pieces of [ __ ] it's the same with like i for me it's the same as like are you in love or have you found your passion have you found your passion is it like a i posted about this other day it's like another just really difficult piece of [ __ ] um to to comprehend because found i've got to search for it my passion there's one of them and it's out there somewhere and once i find it it's going to feel great passion what's that how does that feel you've said the word are we thinking of the same thing the same so many pieces of [ __ ] which i now have to accept so if there was one thing that i've learned in the last couple years it's just like question the question yeah as much as you possibly can because the question
will [ __ ] you when you accept it oh my gosh i could not agree more like also passion [Music] is such an unhelpful word it's that thing of like oh did you feel did you feel passionate did you feel this sexual insane sexual chemistry did you fall in love at first sight and i'm like hang on a second what you're saying there is did you feel deeply unsettled and chaotic yeah because that's what passion it's like a disruptive force i'm like i don't want to feel i don't want to feel unstable and chaotic i want to feel safe and known that for me is like true romance yeah and a relationship or a business is not a failure because it ends again like you could have learned so much you could have learned what you needed to know and therefore you can evolve and grow yeah and as you say the act of finding something what if it's like inside you don't need to be yes something you love to do should be something you'd love to do without having to go on this quest yeah exactly yeah yeah but that's what you were saying earlier about ambition being an external driver really feeds into one of the most profound things i've ever learned from doing all this stuff about failure i met this man called mo gowda he used to be the chief business officer of google x but he wasn't happy and he has a lot to say about expectation versus reality so if we can manage our expectations of life so if they're equal to or less than our perception of events and how they turn out then we can be happy or contented and he was the one who really brought it home to me that we are not our worst thoughts that our thoughts are produced by our brain as organic matter in the same way that blood is pumped around our body by our heart like we wouldn't think we were defined by our blood so why would we think that we are our thoughts
actually as you know the premise of all meditation is that you can observe your thoughts who's doing the observing that's you that's you why would you need thoughts like you don't need to communicate yourself so your thoughts are just being produced by your brain constantly and i found that really helpful the idea that once you realize that you can train your brain to think differently and to replace negative thoughts with positive ones as much as you're able so he gave this incredibly moving example his son ali died at the age of 21 during a routine operation and in the aftermath of ali's death moe would wake up every morning with tears streaming down his cheeks and his first thought would be how he died and it was an unbelievably oppressive grief-stricken thought and after a few more weeks of it he was like i just can't live like this i can't live like this and so he challenged his brain to come up with a different thought and each morning he would wake up and he would still think and he died and he died he'd still be crying but he added something to that sentence and he added yes but he also lived and in that differently expressed sentiment was 21 years of memories of a father and son who were best friends and that was what enabled him to carry on living and if he can do that in that situation i sure as hell can do it when someone criticizes me on instagram it was a really helpful lesson we never really thought sort of taught to challenge our thinking right as you say yeah i think it's just we think it's reality we think it's true and we're taught to think we need to use it to be good at exams to get ahead to get a good job like that's all thought isn't it that's like the exercise of your brain and don't get me wrong i like love my brain and i'm happy that i have thoughts but it's that thing of understanding when
they're running away with themselves when they're in control of you it is the exercise of a life yeah it like it really is trying to rise above your own thoughts is like yeah or at least analyze them hold them out in front of you and examine them for validity i mean you mentioned working out earlier i definitely find exercise is a helpful way of doing that yes like and that's something again i never i never thought i was good at sport and i translated that wrongly as being like someone who doesn't like exercise until my 30s really until i went through all this stuff divorce all that sort of stuff and i needed to feel strong in myself but that started with feeling strong in my body and i realized that it was just an incredibly helpful way of being in my body and being out of my head and it was just such a relief to find that isn't it that's the the way that your brain thinks while you're exercising versus when you're just yeah you know in your normal life it's just it's bizarre it's like a different different person shows up and can suddenly see clearly totally and also for me it feels like i'm not really thinking when i'm outside but i am i will have like processed something that has been bothering me for days so fascinating i wonder why that is i bet somebody knows just the like monotony of doing a task or the you know whether it's a running machine or just lifting weights for some reason i don't know the brain just seems to go to a different place most of my good ideas if i have any come from uh come from the gym or the walking or the shower sometimes yeah well that's why people sometimes are kind enough to ask me for writing tips like how to write and one of the things that i say is like don't feel guilty for not actually doing the writing sometimes like sometimes you literally need to take a walk and um be around people or be on the top deck of a double-decker bus and look out the window
because your brain needs rest but it also needs like a creative fallow period where the field is left fallow and then it becomes more fertile in the future and all of that feeds into your inspiration it's so true i you know people don't appreciate that it's one of the real upsides of of exercise they think it's to make themselves look pretty but i think the benefit i've had to my mind through exercise is hard to put into words maybe the only thing that i love more in the world than huel is salted caramel and i've got some great news he'll have just released their salted caramel pure flavor and i am over the moon because i actually got to try this before it came out and genuinely no word of the lie there's my favorite flavor of everything i've got two favorite flavors toffee unsalted caramel and to hear that he'll now do salted caramel um has made my dreams come true i've been a heel fanatic for the last four years as a lot of you know it's the reason i'm in the ship best shape of my life it's the reason why i have the energy i have to do this podcast and to manage the schedule that i have and as we come into the summer months and my training schedule in the gym has started to change it's become more important than ever that i don't miss some of the sort of basic nutritional components of my diet like proteins and like amino acids and that is where heel fits so yeah thank you so much and [ __ ] me salted caramel dream come true i want to talk about failure yes now which seems like a good thing to talk about and in your book philosophy you you list uh seven failure principles so i'm sure you've done this a million times but i think it's a good good place to start so the seven failure principles yes number one failure just is yes so that actually just feeds in with what we were talking about which is the
idea that failure is a fact it's inevitable it's going to happen to all of us no matter how much we try to avoid it i guarantee that it will happen and that can feel scary but it can also feel liberating because once you've accepted it as a fact there's no point in trying to avoid it so you might as well take the risk so acceptance of failure starts with the observation of it failure is a fact but how you respond to it is within your control whether you decide to feel like a failure for many years after the thing that's happened or whether you think to yourself okay well that's taught me something and i'll do it differently next time i guess the risk there is one bad failure people stop trying exactly and then i i was thinking this is very similar to confidence in the way that like if you have one bad failure your performance next time you get an opportunity if you actually don't manage to just avoid it completely will probably be worse because of nerves and that you know the memory if i'm terrible and yeah and then that's going to increase your chances of failing again and then the kind of like self negative reinforcing cycle kind of continues and your your confidence and your sort of yeah your guts kind of cascade downwards and can for some people work in the other direction where you have a success your confidence builds you walk on stage to do that you know public speech next time around with a bit more confidence you do a better job which increases your chance of success and it cascades upwards is that how failure works from your experience it can work like that i mean to take the example you've just given one of the ways of looking at that if you're then stuck in a downward cycle and you're failing and you're trying the thing is that you're therefore in the wrong situation so you're in the wrong workplace for instance that
that isn't generous enough to like make you feel okay after your failures or doesn't make you feel like you can be your true self in which case i would argue you need to remove yourself from that situation and find the place that does suit you or it can be a question of mindset and a question of applying that mindset that we've just talked about which is okay i failed i'm feeling in a downward spiral how much of that is fact that's a very difficult thing to do on your own when you're a very low ebb and that's why i'm a huge advocate of therapy and again i know that i come from a privileged place where i can afford therapy but even if it starts with reaching out to your friend and talking about it or reaching out to your work helpline and talking about it or texting shout the mental health charity or calling the samaritans that's a really valuable step and the other thing that i would say there is that i'm very aware that my definition of failure which is what happens when life doesn't go according to plan has a fatal flaw which is that sometimes there are failures that are totally cataclysmic that we couldn't possibly have predicted that go against any plan whatsoever like a global pandemic like a terrible illness that you contract like the death of a loved one it would be monstrous for me to sit here and say those failures are as easily assimilated or learned from or dealt with as fading or driving tests and so i'm not saying that at all those kind of failures will require a process of mourning and coming to terms with the thing that you've lost and that's absolutely right and as it should be my only thing is the way that i choose to live my life is i mourn but i don't have to constantly relive the pain i can still feel sadness about something but i don't need to live in that place of reliving it constantly becoming a victim yeah and becoming defined by that
i can choose to be defined by something else i can choose to be defined by my response to it i can choose to find some kind of meaning in something that was meaningless at the time and that's how i choose to live my life because that makes it less sad and i and i think that that choice is available for most of us topic of conversation that i liked having on this podcast whereas you're alluding to there is about like personal responsibility and um you know we all have different starts in life and different you know quote-unquote advantages and disadvantages but um how important do you think personal responsibility is even in times where something happened and it's really not your quote-unquote fault yeah i think it's tremendously important i want to caveat what i'm about to say by saying i'm very aware that certain people are given more opportunities to fail because of the elitist society in which we live because of the racist society in which we live because of a society which marginalizes entire groups of people through no fault of their own i'm aware that i as a white middle-class woman have been given shitloads of opportunities to fail so so i'm totally aware of that that there's a sliding scale you have to say that right yeah of course i have to say that because because i don't want people to think that i haven't thought about it yeah and i also think that it's important to have the discussion it's crazy how many caveats we've got to do before we say anything these days like i don't care that much so you're gonna get me into trouble i find it i when i sit here and i i speak to guests and i watch them have to caveat something they're gonna say i just want it so funny because i'm like i personally do that to some degree but i also i'm like are you gonna i don't know it's interesting it's interesting because this is a growing thing because you're right if you hadn't have done that
someone would have yeah and someone would think oh well it's all very well for her to say that and like it's just it's just a kind of acknowledgement that it's been easier for me in certain respects which is fair and it's been hard in other ways like everyone has their own lived experience you know like i'm talking from a place of you know i wrote a book called how to fail which was part memoir part manifesto like a memoir by its nature cannot be intersectional like i'm speaking from my own life and i'm bringing in voices of other people who can speak to those experiences because it would be delusional and offensive for me to try has anyone ever taken that shot or you've been like well it's easy for you to say oh yeah does it feel um be honest how does it feel well okay it did feel before i'd done the thinking like an attack it did feel like well hang on a second i have worked hard to be where i am and actually if you only knew like there are things that i never talk about or write about that will never be in the public domain because they involve other people okay so i just can't i choose not to go there and then and then i read more about it and talk more about it and it's absolutely true that i have had massive advantages in my life and that's a fact as is the fact that i've worked hard as well but i did have those advantages so for me to deny that feels really wrong and actually irresponsible and um now i feel like there's a certain dialogue that is had around women where i feel women are more often challenged for talking about their personal experiences than men are and maybe you can tell me that no i think you're telling the truth i think i would agree okay and i don't like that that's crazy that's so true yeah it's so true like i don't like the fact that i feel as though i constantly have to say i constantly have to show my battle scars and my wounds and my sadness in order to
earn the right to a platform from which i can speak and write as a woman now there are certain white middle class privately educated men out there who never have to do that apologizing they never have to do that caveat people just like oh they're quirky but they all say it with that they will like the quote is like say with your chest they will say it with their chest they'll talk about their success they'll give advice they don't caveat anything it's like this is how you do it and it's funny because i sat here with um maybe shouldn't say their name but i sat here with a young lady who's very successful yeah and she was educated at maybe the best university in the last race perfectly yes i heard it i listened to it yeah and i thought she dealt with it very elegantly and why she got to deal with elegantly and uh i sit here i think like this the point i was trying to make to her is like why is it that you and grace have to have to like do this like assault course of words and caveats because you will someone will say in the comments section oh it's very easy for but with my male guests no they don't do that and they don't have to and they don't get attacked can i ask you an off-topic personal question about race on the record on the record totally on the record so i felt really conflicted on social media around black lives matter and the horrendous tragic to my mind a legal death of george floyd and i was like but i don't i felt like i don't need to post on instagram that i think killing black people is bad like surely that's a given no no no elizabeth silence is violence i'm taking them first i know but i do so i would love to hear from you like what's my responsibility because i did post a black square because i was like if i don't post a black square then that i don't that feels wrong to me as well i
mean but this is just like this is a huge issue with society because um we're thinking in such binary [ __ ] ways about these really complex sensitive systemic issues it's in that moment and the reason i did this post on instagram it went viral and like everyone's seen it and i've talked about this podcast multiple times mainly because i just had adults on so i've talked about it there but obviously when uh we watch a a a black man get killed for nine minutes asking for his mum any sound sort of morally sound human being on planet earth will feel a bunch of emotions i watched it and i didn't say anything for three days because i just i just didn't want to see that [ __ ] clip again no i didn't want to talk about it i watched that clip and just thought oh i felt sick to my stomach and i was angry and i was sad and i just didn't want to and then my dms in my dms i've got all these dms from people black people going you've not stood with us you [ __ ] but i'm just thinking oh [ __ ] off like yeah i mean this isn't and in those moments what social media in the world will try and do is it will try and make you um fit exactly into a a camp that that think in one way that act in one way that use one hashtag that post one thing and i will not and i will not and so in that moment what i posted was defending white people i guess or everyone and said listen people process things in their own ways and that's normal obviously do you agree with that statement people process especially traumatic things in their own everyone agrees with that sentence and some people might be thinking they might be reading they might just be listening and that's okay and also my last point here is i'm gonna be black forever for my entire life my kids will also be have a little bit of black in them too maybe a quarter black depending on who i marry um and uh so if you actually give a [ __ ] about changing things your response isn't a black tile your response would be something much
more systemic your response might be educating yourself and your friends get virtue signaling on social media that for me that's a sign that you probably don't really care yeah if anything and like you can't say that unless you're black i'm the only person that can say that like i'm not the only one there's more of us but i mean like i'm in my friendship group i'm the only one because you'd be all of you be finished off every single one of you would get finished if you said anything like that so and and then it's a saddle while we live because i know everyone in this room agrees not one of you can say it and that's a sad place to be where this isn't a war of ideas this is a war of like virtue signaling like we're not it's not competition of the best ideas it's a it's a competition of like who is correct and who is incorrect cancel accept cancel accept and man oh what a sad place can't even have a conversation without someone's [ __ ] gonna lose your job i'm fortunately unemployed so no one can find me and i don't really need the money either so like you know what i mean like the podcast sponsors if they thought i was immoral or whatever they could pull out but now i think thank you because that's i think you're right and i think compassion and nuance can't be fitted into the binary world of social media a lot of the time never i'm really sorry because i've completely like really taken the thing that annoys me more is i don't think it can be fixed i don't know i don't know how it can be fixed i know the way that algorithms work and i know that they create echo chambers where everyone thinks like you so the minute anyone in your echo chamber is not thinking like you uh you the way that they reinforce and reward your thought using these algorithms you're not gonna get rewarded you're gonna get attacked and so it's it's fighting against it's fighting a losing
battle at some point i'll probably be cancelled for something i'm like pretty aware of this because i refuse to i like to think in nuance i like to think i don't think left or right i think usually the truth is somewhere in the middle often yeah more so than it is on the far left or the far right and that is a dangerous way to think is it's a crime and for me that's a form of imprisonment which is the the inability to think and speak for yourself that's a form of imprisonment in the same way putting someone in a cage it's and for me also not allowing people to express themselves we've seen the harm that does we've seen when people can't express their sexuality they kill themselves more so i will i was thinking i was like i will not allow myself to be imprisoned my thought to be imprisoned and my expression to be put in impressive because i actually think the net impact of that is much worse than just someone who's someone writing some [ __ ] in the comments section about me i'd like to be a free thinker what do you think of piers morgan sometimes he hits sometimes he misses he's got he's a bit of a narcissist in some ways sometimes he's like right sometimes he's wrong sometimes i agree sometimes i don't yeah shouldn't be de-platformed we can all scream at him but um he's not he's not like he's not a racist he's not um doing it he's not like encouraging people to like hurt each other he's not encouraging harm or violence he has an opinion which some people disagree with sometimes talking about sharon osborne she's been chucked off her show for defending pierce morgan and i watched the clip last night of um what she said and all she goes is you know what has he said that's racist and the host responds to him it's not what he said he hasn't said anything racist it's just his you know basically his attitude towards the situation oh come on [ __ ] hell but do you think
so but do you think that because we've had millennia of things one way the transitional phase is always going to have to be extreme as the pendulum swings to one to one end and so that it can then stabilize in the center and we're just living through an age of transition i like to think that sometimes but then i know how algorithms work and i think that the algorithms are reinforcing our echo chambers every single day my algorithm is telling me if i'm right or if i'm wrong and it's based on group think it's like these pockets of group think and the other thing is like just what i think about it logically i think you know i read this quote one day and it was like if your opinions and beliefs almost identically resemble the people around you then they're not your opinions and beliefs i thought about that a lot and i was like that's really interesting yeah if we want to get like really deep about this yeah most of our beliefs and opinions come from the society we live in and you've only got to go back five thousand ten thousand years and see the barbaric things we did that we thought were morally sound and okay to realize that in fact our opinions and beliefs are mainly given to us by society in fact good and bad if you look at what we did a hundred years ago if you look at what happened in certain parts of the world in you know history those people thought they were good and that was the right thing to do and so what are my opinions today the majority what social media and the world has told me is the correct thing to do how moral are we if we felt completely moral when we used to like behead people and kill black people a topic from anyway what was that i'm so sorry number two of fail philosophy i like lost my way in this quickly yeah got the list here as well so point number two in your book is you
are not your anxious brain i think you've talked about that almost everything phil feels they almost everyone feels they have failed in their twenties i mean not you okay so it's stephen i'm pretty sure do you think you failed in your 20s probably personally sorry multiple no no no it's a good question actually multiple times yeah yeah started my first business at 18 it was clearly a failure left that when i was 20 years old failed in order relationships fail every day in business not the big like momentous failures other than my business that one would assert but probably more than anybody to be fair i think that's so great to hear yeah and also i think that a lot of people struggle in their 20s particularly in this day and age because of the curse of comparison and because we live in a culture of curated perfection where you're constantly comparing yourself to your peers filtered appearance on instagram and the life that they seem to be living so we're comparing our insides with everyone else's projection of their outside exactly yeah and for many people although i know not you but for many people it's the first time that they've come out of full-time education and come out of a system of exam and reward exam and reward and there is no exam that you can sit to show that you're being a good grown-up so you feel quite lost plus piling on top of that the pressure to find your passion to like make a career for yourself but also to earn enough to pay your rent living in house shares like just trying to make your way and trying to forge your identity in this day and age it's just so hard to do all that at once and then you're like oh and i should be having like a thriving personal life and i should either be in a long-term relationship or having one night sounds and making footloose and fancy-free and drinking modes and then
at the weekend making vegan brownies because i got to watch what i eat and all of that sort of stuff and it's exhausting and so really what i wanted to say in that failure principle was that so many people come on podcast and say that they feel they failed at their 20s and i think a lot of us fall into the trap and i did too of believing that we had to have our life sorted out by then and actually your twenties are a decade of transition of discovering who you are of grinding up the spices of life in your pestle and water and the older you get my experience has been the more you know yourself and the more you know what you want to do and that's where success lies i've had so many more opportunities after leaving my 20s behind in the rear view mirror wow everything else i've had you've really thought about that you wrote a book on it so yeah um number four breakups are not a tragedy your ex-partner has taught you something yeah one of the things you said which i which i thought was really really powerful is that um a relationship ending doesn't mean that it failed that's it in a nutshell like i've had countless failed relationships and and they and they and it sucks like heartbreak there is no pain like heartbreak i hate it it's the worst isn't it it's the worst it really i yeah i totally relate and i now realize that i learned something very instructive from each one of those relationships and from the fact that they ended it taught me something that i needed to know about myself and i realized that love that was ready for me i didn't need to fight to convince it like it would meet me where i was and it might not come in the package that i expected and it didn't i i met justin on a hinge date that i almost didn't go on and it doesn't and it doesn't immediately feel like the thing that you thought you wanted because actually that hasn't worked out for you so it's always better to make a
different choice i think so yeah it's just about how although relationships feel that they might be life-ending at the time they never never when they end they never never are and often someone has been sent to you whether it be a friendship a work colleague or a lover to teach you a lesson that you needed to know and when a relationship ends it's because you've been taught that lesson god it's a shitty lesson to learn and also like when you when you go through a breakup as you've described there um not letting it end is part in my experience of the reason why something new doesn't start yes oh that's so yes that's what oprah would call a teachable moment yeah you need to you need to create the space for the new thing to come in which means leaving something behind what i talk about a little bit before about quitting being just as much of a skill in an art form as starting we glamorize starting but there's a real talent not yet there's a real skill to knowing how to quit how to move forward because you know starting is great but the thing you do before you start something is to quit something else and yeah that is i i mean just from reading your books and stuff and listening to the the interviews you've done not appreciated enough because it involves uncertainty you're throwing yourself off a cliff sometimes and building the paraglider as you fly yes and we're also taught to avoid feelings of sadness like good vibes only and you're like no actually sometimes you need to be in that sadness you need to feel that discomfort to understand what life really is life is texture life is all sorts of emotions and when we feel grief because a relationship has ended or because we've lost someone that as that famous quote says is the price you pay for love and in a way it's a beautiful thing to feel because it's a signifier of how much you loved just sucks though i know it just doesn't
it just suck like i just giving people advice from heartbreak i feel like it's such a for me when i'm like in my dms and someone sent me something about i've just broken up with this person and whatever yeah it's such an intoxicating force like heartbreak yeah that i'm like my words aren't going to help you you just basically have to tough it out and to and to try as much as you can in believing that your future will be better yeah you'll get past this and believing that rejection is protection if you're rejected yes that person is not for you either because they've been stupid enough to [ __ ] reject you or because action is character and if they've dumped you it's like well do you really want to trust that person for the rest of your life no i'm gonna is is that is that true and i'm playing devil's advocate here intentionally because i'd actually know the answer it if you get rejected is that person not right for you it i mean yes i think but i suppose it depends on the nature of the rejection like it has to be a serious one um it can't just be an unread what's whatsapp message like that you're interpreting as a rejection they like full-on rejected yeah i think that's listen i don't know if it's true or not but it's what i choose to believe because it makes me feel better about life to believe i think that you're the definition you gave of like well they didn't appreciate you yeah what about like how if we think about taking responsibility in those situations and we say okay my relationship with this guy that i loved ended because i have problems because not when i say problems like i have jealousy or i have things that i haven't dealt with is that also you know that so it's hard for people to do that yeah lame is super easy in heartbreak you're so right and that's where personal responsibility comes in yeah and so in the immediate aftermath of a breakup
you're going to probably feel heartbroken and really sad once you've processed that then it's then your responsibility is to understand what part you played in the dynamic but for those first few weeks do whatever you need to do to get through and if you need to blame someone and just keep saying rejection is protection like what a loser do it because you just need to get through that initial phase of awfulness i actually my last serious breakup i was in such a dark place i googled how long does it take to get over heartbreak it's like actually that was a really good six weeks i did feel better it was a good it was like a manageable length of time and i was like okay i'm gonna feel miserable for six weeks and once you commit to the acceptance of that it becomes a lot easier to deal with because you're not struggling against feeling it you're like well i'm on track because i'm now week four so yeah i'm still feeling miserable that's okay and it somehow makes you feel better no i get that yeah are you post-breakup right now um not post-breakup no uh i'm i'm post um something ending okay um i'm sorry no no it wasn't it was it was um i consider it to be a choice that i made okay yeah so that's not necessarily the best example for me the the real significant heartbreak moments i had were all when i was when i was younger really and uh yeah and it just always sucked um but obviously i've got a lot of friends that are going through breakups and stuff and it's always difficult to give them advice because you're they're so their head is gone like there's no way i can describe it there's no sense there when in matters of love it's just all so yeah just asking them to tough it out i think is is all i've ever got in terms of it well now you can give them a copy there you go point number seven when we choose to share our vulnerabilities is when we feel most satisfaction most connection i think is what i said well i don't why does it
say satisfaction on momentum i like that too because you probably do feel personal satisfaction it's like but when we choose to be open about our vulnerabilities that's paradoxically when we find the most strength and the source of the most real connections with other people amen yeah and that's something that i have genuinely learned through the podcast the first season of the podcast i did i was very much i came from a very traditional newspaper journalist background so for me it was like i'm interviewing my guest i will ask the questions and i will listen and then i will ask another question and it was only as time went on that i felt more comfortable sharing my own experiences and whenever i did that i had such an incredible like feedback loop of like just amazing people sharing their stories and their vulnerabilities and also saying that they felt less alone because i shared mine and really that's what my entire life is about ultimately is connection and so i really want to encourage people not to be scared of opening up about the things that they perceive as their weaknesses because so often what you think of as your most personal shame turns out to have most universal resonance and that was certainly my experience talking about fertility and miscarriage and divorce like actually that's where i've had the greatest impact i think and i'm so grateful for that why do you think that is why do you think vulnerable in terms of like why it has such wide resonance why do you think that is because i think that when we're vulnerable we're being real and we're letting our masks slip and you'll see a glimpse of who the authentic person is and there's something just absolutely quintessentially human about that so it's a human recognizing another human it's a human recognizing another
human beneath the pretense and i think it also reassures people because as we've been talking about in this culture that we live in which is so defined by social media and how you appear and the currency of perfection again it's such a relief it makes you feel like you can breathe and someone's like oh god i'll tell you about today i sat in bed in my pajamas eating hummus direct from the top because i felt really down that's an act of singular generosity to someone else who can then have the space to talk about how they're feeling is there any such thing as too vulnerable or over sharing there's uh there's i don't think there's any such thing as too vulnerable i do think there is such a thing as oversharing and i only say i i say i make that distinction because over sharing is about telling your story to others and obviously there are right and appropriate times and places to do that i'm not advocating that someone goes into work and just starts sobbing at their desk there's there's definitely a time and place for that but i wouldn't suggest doing that every single day like to protect yourself you need to find a safe space that you can share those vulnerabilities with and then build up your strength and your confidence and realize what it is that you do want to speak more publicly about because i don't think that you can share with everyone immediately after you've experienced pain like that's too soon and also you can't trust everyone to honor what you're sharing so i don't think you can be too vulnerable but it's a question of choosing the things that you then take your vulnerability and share from and who you share them with that was such an ineloqua no it was good no no it's a reason basically about that no yeah i completely i completely i was thinking when you were saying it because i remember having a conversation with one of my team members in new york one day where um i was trying to you know the the issue you have when you're a ceo
um is someone might have some struggles some mental health issues or they might have some problems going on at home how do you tell them without being a dick to to not broadcast that every day to their team yeah below them but also knowing the importance of speaking an expression is part of the cure so i remember having a conversation with one particular person and just saying to them like the key thing is like knowing the right outlet for that yes and you've described it as like the safe space exactly and that can be a different safe space for different people it can be your therapist it can be your sibling it can be um the in-house therapy that your workplace hopefully provides but i also think that it goes back to what we were saying earlier if a team leader is in that position i think it's about being able to bring your authentic whole self to work but being able to show that you're not defined by the things that have gone wrong or if you are defined by it or defined in a good way in that you're choosing to lean into this particular feeling because it's going to teach you something that you need to know that's the sort of responsibility of a leader i think it's not to pretend that everything's fine and to wear this mask of the perfect boss it's to be someone who acknowledges that life can be touched tough and who shares what they're going to do about that i think we need to have confidence in our leaders that they have an idea about what to do with it when they're sharing it in the workplace and this is the problem with matt hancock being such a robot isn't it oh my gosh didn't even get me started on that i don't know if he experiences emotion i should probably shouldn't say that because that's unfair but i just i look at this guy and i think do you understand what people are
feeling i don't think you do it's the problem with so many politicians i was so inspired by angela merkel recently because she apologized for having overturned a lockdown ruling over easter she's like i'm really sorry i got that wrong i was like oh my gosh thank you thank you just quickly just go back to over sharing and jacinda oh my gosh jacinda is i mean we both need to get her on our perspective podcasts we really do um over sharing as it pertains to women just very quickly i think women are often shamed into silence and i've definitely experienced that so i'm being like why do you talk about all this stuff why don't you keep it private and i'm like precisely so that i attack that kind of narrative because i feel that so many people feel shame and stigma over things they don't need to feel it for and it's because people stay silent so i think it's also a bit of a stick with which to beat women i completely agree is there anything you wouldn't share that doesn't involve someone else oh that's a great question because every time i every time you hit a wall in terms of what you're willing to share it's because you say well that involves someone else so i won't share but is there anything about yourself that you wouldn't share that doesn't involve anybody else i am still determined to be a mother um when i get pregnant i will have i don't think i would share that publicly because i would feel fearful and anxious and also because i have such respect for women who are going through fertility issues that i would just never do that but that involves another person the one that i'm carrying so i'm not sure whether the parameters your question really fit right but that is one thing that i've thought about yeah so that's quite a heavy answer that's a really interesting point there about the you wouldn't want to share it
because you've probably um resonated well of course you are [ __ ] probably you've resonated with a lot of women who are going through that same experience and you've probably got a lot of those people in your audience so for some of those people it might i mean you know humans are humans the news that you know when you have your your own child might feel like [ __ ] to them definitely and i respect that because i've been there and i felt it and i feel it still and and i totally understand that i feel it as in it's like a jealousy of it's like an envy yes yes of women that have a child or that yeah i mean it's not it's never personally directed it's just a sort of envy or yearning would be a better word for an experience that thus far has been denied me and i think lockdown and the pandemic has been so hard for all women and it's been incredibly hard for people homeschooling their children but for people who don't have children and desperately long for that for people who are going through fertility treatment that's been delayed by the pandemic for people who've experienced miscarriages during lockdown as i have it's incredibly painful to see parents complaining about homeschooling and how difficult that is to have these children that they have to homeschool that's a very difficult thing now no one is to blame for that i take personal responsibility for my reaction and that's where i need to curate my social media feed that is absolutely not the thought of the parent question they should totally do that and lean into it and that is completely right and appropriate that's up to me to take that responsibility on it's just that i know i wouldn't feel comfortable shouting it from the rooftops because i know how [ __ ] painful and traumatic it is to go through i really do listen so your um your vulnerability and your honesty is is really moving and it's very very rare and you know i
can't i can't even begin to imagine how many um people women you've helped because of your vulnerability you probably don't even get to see it so i want to thank you on behalf of all those people as i was reading about your story and your journey i was like really taken aback by how open and honest you're willing to be because you don't need to be right um i'm sure that you know as you've described in some of the things you've written you've you've discovered that it's actually really almost paradoxically quite a selfish thing to be so selfless in that way but um yeah i think you're just remarkable and i think um what you've written and the work you've produced is phenomenal and i just wanted to thank you so much for coming here today and being as vulnerable with me as you have been across all of your other work it's um it's truly uh you know we're it's it's fortunate we're fortunate as a society to have people like you in it so thank you thank you for giving me a safe space and for making me feel like i can be vulnerable with you i have loved this conversation so much i really truly have and i love that i've been able to swear but i also love what you do and what you stand for and honestly your instagram page i don't know how you have so much wisdom at such a young age but we will find your perfect match all right please please do your book philosophy it's um everywhere i actually went down to the same pancreas yesterday just to get it got it off the shelf i think uh excellent yeah um where else can people find you and what else are you working on that they should check out the podcast as well how to fail yes that's a smash hit book sunday times bestseller yes uh i wrote another book before that called how to fail originally everything i've ever learned from things going wrong which is my memoir part memoir part manifesto the podcast
available on all podcast platforms um i'm on social media at elizabeth day and i've got a novel out my new novel is out in september and it's called magpie and um it is okay i have to be a bit vague because there's a massive twist in it okay and it's a sort of psychological twisty novel but it's about a lot of what we've been talking about today it's about dysfunctional motherhood and what happens when you think you know what you want and then your dreams come true and then it just turns out to be a total illusion have i sold it is it a thriller yeah it is it's basically a thriller driven by kind of warped characters okay interesting and i'm obsessed with magpies that's why it's called magpie okay sorry do you salute magpie i don't know i don't think i know no one ever told me that tell but um thank you so much again and it means well to me that you can make the time for this today and i'm sure that you've imparted a ton of important inspiration on our listeners so thank you thank you for having me [Music] [Music] oh you