So this week it seems everybody’s talking about Steven.
By Steven I mean Steven Bartlett, the young entrepreneur who is best known for his incredibly successful podcast, Diary of a CEO. The podcast, which started in 2017 and mostly featured his conversations with other CEOs to reveal the mindset, habits and challenges behind some of the world’s most successful business people, has over recent years moved much more towards mental health, nutrition and “wellness.” Often featuring controversial guests and conversations.
A couple of weeks ago a clip from one of Bartlett’s podcast episodes divided the internet as Bartlett revealed that a couple of glasses of wine “ruined three days of his life”.
Shock horror!
At first I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about when every other podcast started discussing his statement. Aren’t we used to this kind of discourse from podcasters in the wellness space these days? Aren’t more and more young people shunning booze in favour of a healthy lifestyle? So why the outcry at this particular clip?
I think it was the straw that broke the self-optimisation camel’s back. I think we’re all getting exhausted of seeing ourselves as a problem to solve, our health as something to get right, our work as something we need to nail on the daily.
The duplicity of wellness
Feeling well is wonderful and something I aim for every day. Sometimes what I need to achieve this is a walk in the park, a yoga class, or a coffee with a friend.
However, modern wellness is inherently paradoxical. While looking after our health promises to heal and fortify, wellness these days often entails hyper-optimisation, strict rules and buying more stuff.
It’s interesting to me that as the wellness industry has grown in our society so too has stress, overwhelm and burnout.
I was listening to Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast yesterday where he was talking to renowned psychologist, Pippa Grange. Pippa spent 25 years working with the highest performers in the world of business and sport. Chatterjee starts by asking why Grange thinks so many people are struggling with burnout. She responds by explaining that she thinks it is actually a collective problem, a cultural phenomenon. Grange goes on to explain that she thinks it is because we are “over-performing in too many places.” Every thought and every action within our days is focussed around how we can progress and improve every area of our lives.
Grange describes this as a “market mindset” and unfortunately we are encouraged to view life in this way. If we are constantly working towards perfection and buying more things to fill the perceived gaps in our lives then bosses are happy, leaders are happy, banks are happy.
But are we happy?
It seems that we are applying this way of thinking towards far more than our work and bank balances these days. Now everything has to be optimised and productive, even our relationships, love lives and social time. Furthermore, we have been conditioned to believe that we should be exceptional, special, stand out from the crowd, when in actual fact all humans want to do is fit in and be part of a community. Not to be exceptionally succeeding over there somewhere on our own.
And it’s exhausting right?
Grange describes how there is a mismatch between what we are encouraged to do and the way we are as humans. She is a huge advocate for listening to nature. And reminding ourselves that we are not separate from this, we are ourselves nature, we’ve just become disconnected from it.
Nature doesn’t feel like a layabout when resting more in the winter, storing up energy for the more active seasons ahead. Nature doesn’t plough on when it is wounded. Nature doesn’t feel guilty if it didn’t yield the best crops this summer. Nature doesn’t feel shame for needing support to function and thrive. This is the normal pattern of things. Each season is different and we need different things at different times.
Similarly, it’s ok if we need more help in the winter months or the height of summer, there will be other months when we feel alert, creative and full of vim.
We can’t judge ourselves by what we do on one particular day, but by what we do over the months and years of our entire life.
Choosing wholeness
One of my favourite books of the past few years is Alison Espach’s The Wedding People. And there is an encounter between two of the characters that I think about a lot:
“I didn’t want to be saved from myself. Nobody does! All we want is permission to stand there naked and be our damned selves.”
…..This sounds like exactly what she wants, what she has secretly always wanted. To read books when she wanted to read books. To be sad when she was sad. To be scared when she was scared. To be angry when she was angry. To be boring when she felt boring. p.215
I loved this so much as it perfectly illustrates how we are beings with many different facets to our character. But when did we start being so hard on ourselves and each other? Where we thought that one hungover day at work would erase all of the good work we had achieved? Where we wouldn’t allow ourselves to be tired or boring for fear that we might not be viewed as fun? Where we felt shame for not being able to do it all with a smile on our face?
Back to the podcast with Pippa Grange, Grange advises that we start to see ourselves as a whole and to stop overriding the signals that our body is giving us. Far too often we are entirely focussed on what is going on in our minds.
She says “noticing is everything when it comes to this.”
Mindfulness can be really powerful for this. It is the exact opposite of trying to maximise our lives. It is an acceptance of how things are, as they are. Not trying to change anything. The realisation that we are whole and good enough as we are.
It’s not about checking out and saying “that’s it, I’m opting for the slow life, I’m not going to rush around anymore.” Grange asserts that there are different gears. And different points in our day and life when each of those gears is beneficial. When we stay stuck in a fast gear we deny ourselves rest and recuperation, when we stay in slow we avoid challenging ourselves and building resilience. But if we tune into what we need and what is required we realise that our bodies are more intelligent than we give them credit for and are always speaking to us. And we can seamlessly move through the different gears throughout our lives.
Grange suggests placing pause points throughout the day to listen to that body intelligence. Maybe in the morning, at lunch and at bedtime would be a good place to start. Perhaps even placing our hands on our heart or belly and really listening in.
And really listening and being honest with ourselves is important. We are all so different. What works for one person may not work for another. This is where the work comes in because we are surrounded by information and images of what it is to be successful, healthy and thriving.
Some days what we need is a good meal and an early night. And some days we may need a couple of drinks and a laugh with a friend.
Wholeness means building a relationship with ourselves. Realising that we don’t need to evaluate ourselves based on how happy we think we are, how much we can get done, how much stuff we have and how well we perform at work. Rather the more important questions to ask are perhaps: “am I being myself?” and “what do I need right now?”
We don’t need to do everything “well” but we want to be doing them as ourselves.
What a brilliant insightful piece again. 😘