Reflecting On My Mental Flaws & Strengths | Modern Wisdom Podcast 263

Charlotte Fox-Weber is a Psychotherapist and an author. As a therapist of many years, Charlotte saw an opportunity to turn the mic around on me for once and ask some questions about how I see myself and why I do what I do. Definitely a change of pace today but I really enjoyed opening up. There are some takeaways in here which might illuminate your own mental state and thought patterns. Sponsors: Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Charlotte on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-fox-weber-aa287219/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #chriswilliamson #mindset #mentalstate - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  No one can beat you at being you. And as I've embraced my weirdness and the fact that I don't necessarily fit into an archetype, as tons and tons and tons of people do, they all feel this and they nerf the edges, they round off the edges of the interesting stuff that they do in life to try and make themselves fit into the bell curve of what normal is. If you're trying to be normal, by definition, you're regressing to the mean. Normal people get normal results, extraordinary people get extraordinary results. We all want somehow, everybody wants to both be the most popular, most liked person on the planet and also Elon Musk or Conor McGregor or one of the Kardashians or something. You think you don't get it both ways. Those people have ridiculous outcomes because they have ridiculous inputs. You can choose one, but you can't choose both.

• 0:49Chris Williamson?

  This year's been a year of living kind of Groundhog Day over and over again. It doesn't matter how varied your life is. Everyone in one form or another has had the guardrails brought in on variety in life. And I think what that can cause you to do is probably get into, in the same ways you get into lifestyle patterns habitually, you get into thought patterns as well. And that includes narratives around how you see things going, just how you perceive stuff. I walked back into my house when I got here and I looked at the kitchen and the kitchen looked different. Like it actually looked like the dimensions of things were different. I was like, has something been moved in here? And it worked out that I hadn't, but it'd been the best part of four weeks since I'd seen it. And

• 1:33Chris Williamson?

  there's a concept that the SAS use called a breakpoint. And it's the moment before they will breach a door. So they'll get stack up outside of the door and that breakpoint there is where they kind of rest, reset and plan to go in. And I kind of considered that trip out to Dubai as a little bit of a breakpoint.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:52Chris Williamson?

  It's a cool concept, isn't it?

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55Chris Williamson?

  But anyway, we're rolling. So Charlotte Fox Weber, welcome, welcome back. You are so much less super pregnant than the last time that we spoke.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  It's a pleasure to be here and I'm happy to not be pregnant, although I have a beautiful baby from it.

• 2:09Chris Williamson?

  You got a, you got a baby out of it. Yeah. But you just like now half the size.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:17Chris Williamson?

  So what are we doing today? You wanted to do this thing. You said, I have an idea for an episode. I want to come on and talk to you.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I, I have a real interest in understanding the life of a podcaster. And you're particularly good one. I shouldn't just generalize it as the life of a podcaster because there are so many and that, that doesn't narrow it down enough. You ask exceptional questions. You are constantly curious. I would say curiosity must be a driving force for you. What is it like to be a question asker, a seeker, a constant conversationalist? I want to get into your mind. I'm, I'm curious for what it says about you psychologically. I think that there are certain similarities between how you approach things and, and

• 3:04Speaker 01

  my work as a psychotherapist, trying to understand, inquiring, probing, looking at what's underneath, engaging intensely, wholeheartedly. But it can also be a way of avoiding and not disclosing. So I'm here to challenge you in a way because we've, we've had some very interesting exchanges and conversations and I just want to turn it around because that's what I do.

• 3:29Chris Williamson?

  That sounds good. Yeah. I, I'm not sure what I'm in for today, but yeah, let's get started. Let's do this.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Okay. You can always tell me when I'm pushing too much and, and you don't have to say anything you don't want to say. So what is it like to constantly ask questions?

• 3:48Chris Williamson?

  That's an interesting one. When I was in Dubai recently, we were, me and a friend that I was out there with, George, we were at a party that was very, very not socially distanced around a pool with a few hundred people. And three different sets of people said the same thing to both of us. And they asked us separately, why are you asking so many questions? In like kind of a suspicious way. The first thing that that identified was that we ask a lot of questions because we're curious. The second thing was that in a place like Dubai, which is perhaps a little bit showy and to do with wealth, it's obvious that the game of tennis that people play when they converse is I'm waiting for you to finish saying your thing

• 4:28Chris Williamson?

  so I can say my thing. Being honest, I was probably quite a selfish conversationalist for a long time. And it's been trained into me that actually in a conversation, the most selfish thing that you can do is ask questions because you don't know what the other person knows. You only know what you know. So by asking questions, you elicit very interesting stories. I tweeted something today, actually, about the fact that people who think they're introverts might not be introverts. They might just have friends that suck. And I certainly notice I ask fewer questions when I'm with people that I'm not really that interested in what they have to say, which sounds, sounds kind of terrible, but makes also makes sense. Like, you're not going to dig as hard in a gold mine that you don't believe there's

• 5:13Chris Williamson?

  any gold in. So yeah, I certainly have cultivated that. And I think weaponizing curiosity, or that's not right, disciplining curiosity into a effective mode of discourse is something that I've really, really enjoyed doing and has kind of been stepped up, especially this year. And I really feel that it's an art form, like the art of asking good questions without breaking the flow and without sort of losing where you're at and guiding the person that you're with has made for, outside of the show, it's made for some of the deepest connections that I've ever had. Me and my friend, again, George, we did this flight out to Dubai and from Amsterdam to Dubai is seven hours on the nose. And we didn't

• 5:57Chris Williamson?

  Stop speaking for the entire way there.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:01Chris Williamson?

  Just us asking like we went from our sex robots ethical to what's the future of Bitcoin to like everything. And there was this poor, poor girl sat behind him, who must have been the only British person probably within about three meters. And she didn't have any headphones in. She must have been thinking, just shut the fuck up. Because to everyone else, it was just foreign language noise. But to her, she was probably hearing our sex robot Bitcoin myriad discussion. So yes, that's it. I enjoy it. I enjoy asking questions. And it's something that I wish I'd known a lot, a lot sooner, that it makes for great connections, great friendships, and a wonderful conversation.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Fascinating. How old were you when you really discovered the value of asking questions?

• 6:46Chris Williamson?

  Only really since doing the show. You mentioned curiosity earlier on, which is the first of my five core values. And for everyone who hasn't gone and done it yet, Google Taylor Pearson core values, and the exercise will take you a couple of hours. But it's been one of the most important things I've done this year, which is to identify what my life is built around in terms of values. Spells out a word. The word is cases. And the C in cases is curiosity. So curiosity.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  I relate to that.

• 7:18Chris Williamson?

  Do you?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Oh, as a therapist?

• 7:20Chris Williamson?

  Professional psychotherapist of many, many years.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  There's nothing worse than a therapist who lacks curiosity. Be interested.

• 7:29Chris Williamson?

  Can you be a therapist without having curiosity?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  I mean, you shouldn't be.

• 7:34Chris Williamson?

  Right. Yes.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  And it's a sign of something. It can be a real sign of burnout as well. I think curiosity is a huge energy source.

• 7:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  So tell me how you feel when people ask you questions. Does it ever kind of make you feel uncomfortable or turn the spotlight on you in an awkward way?

• 7:57Chris Williamson?

  Not really. I think for a long time, again, only child background, and then coming into doing this sort of an industry, I've always been used to having at least some form of center of attention. And perhaps my desire now to kind of discipline my curiosity into questions is me casting off what was once

• 8:23Chris Williamson?

  Me very much being kind of selfish when it came to these sorts of conversations. It was all about me, me, me. And now this is me almost going in the polar opposite direction and still finding joy in that. I don't find it awkward at all. It's like a little bit of the old me comes out when I get to talk like this, where I get to indulge and it's my turn, it's me in the limelight. But I genuinely do enjoy creating a platform that allows whoever I'm speaking to to be at their absolute best. A ton of things that I give as advice to other podcasters, stuff, for instance, that the audience will never see. Like when I'm on a Skype call with someone, I'll nod all the time.

• 9:05Chris Williamson?

  Just as they're talking, I'll just keep on nodding like this, like that Churchill dog in the back of the car, like just constantly going away because I want the other person to feel comfortable and confident like they know.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  You're encouraging.

• 9:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I hear you. This is what you're saying. Keep on going, mate. Keep on going, mate. That sounds good. That sounds good. So I love, I love doing that. And that has been a really interesting transformation. And there may be, I think it's perhaps something that young guys get a lot, this sort of male posturing. When you're, you know, you break out of your teens into your twenties, you want to be an alpha guy. You want to be attractive. You want to be confident and charismatic. And you can often mistake brashness and over self sufficiency for that. And I think, yeah, by far, whether it's trying to get laid or trying to make mates, like having curiosity, genuine curiosity in what other people say. It was enough that a bunch of different people at a party who were drunk highlighted like,

• 10:00Chris Williamson?

  what the fuck are you doing, asking questions?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  So do you ever encounter people who really don't open up to you? And how do you deal with that?

• 10:09Chris Williamson?

  Being honest, my sample size for how long I've been doing this is probably not that big.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  How long have you been doing this?

• 10:17Chris Williamson?

  Eighteen months, I'd guess, speaking like this consistently.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:22Chris Williamson?

  And.

• 10:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think that was definitely one of the things. And again, any sort of budding aspiring podcasters out there, if you're not used to asking questions, that's probably the first skill that you need to learn that it's your job to just get that curiosity, turn it into like a pharmaceutical nuclear grade weapon and fire it at the other person as much as possible.

• 10:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so I sometimes people don't want to open up in person, but you kind of get that impression if you're not on the same wavelength. Anyway, if you're not vibrating at the same frequency, you kind of sense that.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  But I think it's very hard. I find it hard as a therapist. When people won't open up to me, it's something I've had to learn to tolerate.

• 11:04Chris Williamson?

  Is that not frustrating?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  It is. And and I also find it socially as well. It's something I've had to endure and and respect because not everyone is open. And that's okay. I don't need to hit it off and connect incredibly deeply with everyone. But that's something I've definitely had to learn and be patient about. And I don't know if you find that as well, that sometimes you don't you don't engage as intensely, you don't have a deep rapport with absolutely everyone.

• 11:36Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  So do you ever ask people questions where they just kind of avoid or don't go further, don't take the conversation anywhere? And and you have to deal with that?

• 11:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, sometimes. I think my capacity to deal with awkwardness is actually fairly low. And that's something I've had to learn to deal with as well. That sitting with silence and sitting with awkwardness as a podcaster or just a conversationalist is something I really didn't like. I think it was born out of a rooted lack of confidence in my own ability, either as sort of socially or as a podcaster. And silence to me meant I'm not interesting or they're not interested in me, or I'm not moving this conversation in the right direction, or they're going to think this sucks or whatever it might be. And yeah.

• 12:32Chris Williamson?

  For a long time, sitting with that silence was the most uncomfortable thing. And then some episodes that we've done, this guy called Daniel Schmachtenberger, who is a ridiculous polymath civilization engineer. And we did this two hour long episode where there was 30 second silences in there. And I just felt perfectly fine just sitting and letting him think. And he's thinking and thinking because that's the pace that he moves at. And that was really beautiful. And people commented on how nice it was to have that silence themselves as listeners. And I'm like, hang on a second, like, there's two people in this conversation and neither of them felt uncomfortable with it. And you don't even get to choose as the listener, when someone starts speaking again and you felt comfortable with it.

• 13:12Chris Williamson?

  So that really taught me a lesson about how silence is an important element of talking to people too. And it can actually be used as a feature rather than a bug.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. So do you find that applies in social situations as well?

• 13:30Chris Williamson?

  A little bit more difficult, often because it's not one on one. And in a big group, especially the sorts of circles that I'll sometimes traffic in, there will be varying degrees of sort of brashness, charisma, outgoing extraversion. And that doesn't, those sorts of people don't tend to allow for a 30 second pause, you know, for someone to consider what the future of civilization looks like or whatever it is. It's rare, rarer, should I say?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Do you find that when you can hold back, you can actually learn a lot more?

• 14:12Chris Williamson?

  I think so. Again, talking and not asking questions is on a gradation. And further down from that is asking questions too quickly and not giving the other person time to speak. I'm sure that you, what's it called? The use of silence or whatever it is in therapy that you guys use.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Sure, the use of silence.

• 14:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, it's just that I know that sitting and just letting the, what do you call it? Client, patient?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Client.

• 14:40Chris Williamson?

  Client, okay, a patient makes it sound a little bit dodgy, doesn't it?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Well, some therapists say patient, I say client.

• 14:46Chris Williamson?

  Cool.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  There's no, there's no perfect term. I don't really love either, actually. Person.

• 14:51Chris Williamson?

  Person, let the other person just sit and think, and then whatever comes to the forefront of their consciousness is what they say next, without you guessing what they want to say or something.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Without rushing things along or crowding, and I think silence sometimes gives space, but it's about dosage, because you don't want to give someone so much space. I, I went to a therapist once who was just

• 15:15Speaker 01

  horribly withholding with the silence, and, and it made me feel very uncomfortable. So I think it's about finding what fits, but letting things emerge. And I guess if you're kind of crowding someone conversationally, I know for me, when I get too nervous, I go into question mode, where I use questions as a defense. Not in therapy so much, but in social situations where I just start kind of firing off questions and, and it can be a way of hiding. So I'm really, really interested in what questions say about ourselves. And as a question asker, I'm now turning it on you. So I'm doing the same thing, I'm very aware, but I'm owning it. And I feel like we have that in common, that we, that we inquire, but where are we in all of that?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  What does that say about us? And what's it like to, to be asked questions? It's give and take. So it's, it's interesting just to think about where you are in all of this and, and what emerges from it. And, and how you kind of find your sense of self by constantly turning to others, like where, where does your voice come through?

• 16:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, again, I honestly think that this last year or so, last 18 months particularly, which has been shaped by this project, you know, again, for all that I say to people to try and find something that they love, to look at what they did when they were a kid between the ages of eight and 14, and then consider that that's some sort of evolution of that might be their passion as they get later into life. What is it that you can do for just unencumbered joy? For all I say that it's this kind of bottom up emergent way that you should try and find passion, this show very much has top down affected the person I am in what I would say is a very

• 17:02Chris Williamson?

  positive way. But it's like it's dictated or it's influenced the path that I've gone in terms of my own personal development. I walk away from the show and I take so much of this with me. I take so much of the way that I operate and hopefully that comes across, you know, like I want to be, I think this is one of the beauties of having long form conversations that people listen to regularly, you know, it's three or four hours a week of me doing this, although it's not usually me talking so much. And it's very hard to hide you in that. And for a very long time, as the listeners probably will be familiar with, I was living this kind of metacognizant,

• 17:42Chris Williamson?

  playing a role egoic game. And it shines a very bright light on you when you have to speak this much. And it forces you to really think like, okay, if I'm going to do this, if I try and play a persona, I'm going to be exhausted. So I just need to be rigorous and truthful. So yeah, it's, it's interesting. But again, there's, there's kind of two juxtaposed Christoffers here, one of them being the, the one that was probably very selfish up until maybe specifically five years ago, and then tapering up to like the last sort of two years or so. And then this one, which is very different, at least in terms of conversation.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Do you ever get really tired of asking questions or being curious? Do you get bored? And

• 18:29Chris Williamson?

  Almost never.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:31Chris Williamson?

  Almost never.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  So what what supplies you with curiosity? How do you? How do you keep that source alive?

• 18:41Chris Williamson?

  I'm not sure, but I just don't. I don't see any other joy. There is no greater joy to me than linking together two concepts that I didn't previously realize worked. Like, I'll find something out about the way that social media algorithms work, or the way that this particular star gravity time dilation happens when it goes into a neutron or star, or whatever it might be, like anything, whenever I learn any of this stuff, or a little pithy aphorism about life or anything, I adore it, and it makes me incredibly happy. And I think

• 19:19Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how much of that. So here's something that I was going to I was going to bring up with you, obviously, with your insights into psychology, was that how much do you think of the personal development world, the personal growth, self-development movement that we're seeing at the moment? Is people using that to hide from the a person that they don't like deep down? So if you say, I don't like me as I am now, but if I continue to grow every day between now and the day that I die, perhaps the person that I turn into might be acceptable and worthy of love. How often do you think it is that you come across people like that?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  It's a really interesting question. I like to think that Carl Rogers was right in saying that it's a paradox. We have to accept who we are in order to make changes. So I think that self-acceptance is often a part of growth. And it's the same conversation in a way, if that makes sense.

• 20:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get it. It's something I've been thinking about so much this year that I have some friends that I think their desire for growth comes from a really good place. I think it comes from a place of just wanting to be better without feelings of insufficiency that's driving it. But I also think that there is a huge group, perhaps even the majority, maybe not, but perhaps even the majority of people who are tumbling down the personal growth rabbit hole in a desperate attempt to try and find a person who they are going to be proud to look in the mirror and be.

• 21:00Chris Williamson?

  I read this quote the other day about how people who have a low sense of self-worth can sometimes find in development a hope for a better future, basically. Does that make sense?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  That makes a lot of sense. And I think I think that you're on to something really important, which is especially prevalent during the pandemic. There's a huge amount of pressure to self-actualize. And the wellness industry, the wellbeing industry suggests that we have to constantly be updating, improving, progressing, growing. And actually, what about self-acceptance? So I think there is that sense of coming to therapy thinking, fix me. And that can hide as I want to develop and grow. But actually, sometimes celebrating where you are already is is a profoundly important thing. And and I think people can come to therapy and discover that actually what they thought was a flaw turns out to be a strength.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  So, well, I'll give you one example, although you're totally doing your thing and turning this around on me. I see how you did that. But if you if you can see, I'm wearing a necklace, which is a ram with horns.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  A therapist I went to, one said to me, in I think quite an unkind way, you are like a ram with horns. And I think she meant it as an insult. It was an intervention. And I decided to take it as a compliment. And I began collecting rams with horns. And I I love rams with horns. When I was in Italy recently, I saw rams with horns and I related to them and felt like we were one. One of the things I took from that therapy was accidental. She didn't mean for me to take it. It's not what I thought I would get from it. But I arrived in therapy thinking, I need to let go of this aspect of myself. And I left thinking, actually, that's part of who I am. I don't really want to change that.

• 22:56Chris Williamson?

  What is a ram? What is a ram with horns?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  It means that I can be quite attached to certain things. And I probably get very assiduous about certain, certain issues and and struggle to let things go. And a ram with horns, I mean, it can be a good thing. It can be a bad thing. So there are times where I absolutely need to let go and not fixate and not obsess. But there are times where I think I'm very passionate and conscientious and I will go above and beyond for something. And that's part of who I am. So it's a strength and a weakness. But it's not, it's not just one or the other. And I've decided to kind of embrace that aspect of myself. So I think sometimes celebrating our flaws is a massive victory. And and it can take a lot of work to get there.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  It it's a kind of journey for many. I know it's an overused term to say journey. But I didn't always

• 23:53Speaker 01

  realize that I liked being a ram with horns. And actually, when she said it to me, I probably felt initially quite offended and hurt, but no longer.

• 24:00Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, a perfect example of that is I think I would have probably been called nosy as a kid.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  There you go. So same here. Totally, totally relating to that one.

• 24:10Chris Williamson?

  And what's nosiness? Like you roll that forward and then you discipline it down, you make it a little bit, you put a bow on it, you make the rough, the rough edges a little bit less rough. I really do think one of the things I'd love everybody to take away is the barbell or the, the two-sided coin paradox that is strength and weakness, that, you know, being nosey as a kid or being a gob shite, which would be someone who kind of talks a little bit too much.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Can I add to the list?

• 24:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Of things that are strengths and weaknesses.

• 24:39Chris Williamson?

  Make it longer.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Um, okay. So being nosey, definitely one. Sensitive, definitely another.

• 24:45Chris Williamson?

  Were you sensitive as a kid?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Of course. And most therapists are, I think. Some are insensitive maybe, but yeah, I was told I was sensitive and, and that felt like a weakness and now it's a strength. Absolutely. Empathy is one. I know it's very trendy now for children to be taught empathy. I, I don't remember thinking that it was an advantage because I felt things acutely. And I would hear about an upsetting story and it would really get under my skin and stay with me. And I didn't know how to kind of process it and, and now I, I've managed to make use of it because actually caring is a really good thing in, in my world. But I, I sometimes cared in a way that felt disproportionate as a child and.

• 25:33Chris Williamson?

  Do you cry at like, uh, romantic Christmas movies and like beautiful sort of sad films?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  I felt it all. I still feel a lot. Yeah. But understanding that, that strong feelings can actually be a wonderful life enhancing thing has taken time for me.

• 25:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. There was a, a question asked by an audience member when I went to go and see Jordan Peterson live in Manchester a couple of years ago, uh, and the question boiled down to the depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer. I'd prefer to be ignorant like my dog than have to, the, the, the, yeah, it's both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:14Chris Williamson?

  Um, and.

• 26:17Chris Williamson?

  I understood the question and I really sort of empathized with the question as well. But we don't have that luxury. We don't have that choice. It's like the allegory of the cave. Do you know that Plato's allegory of the cave? So I advise anyone who doesn't know what that is to just go and go on YouTube and learn about it. It's basically taking the red pill that once you see something, you can't unsee it. Once you learn something, you can't unlearn it. And that's the beautiful thing about having a conversation that when someone convinces you of something, it's like, it's literally like a parasite in your brain, but hopefully one that's good. Someone convinces you of something, you can no longer be unconvinced. And yes, I think that the depth of experience giving you that richness in life

• 27:02Chris Williamson?

  is something that can cause people to have turmoil, right? Like it can hurt. It hurts to feel things that you know other people probably don't even notice. That way that that person glanced at you, that slight shoulder turn, or the fact that they hugged everybody else and just gave you a handshake when they left, or whatever it might be, all of these little things. And even just the fact that I noticed this stuff, like these are all examples that I've seen, not on me, but in other people in the last month. Because I've been around, I'm not used to being around so many people. I was just like hyper social for four weeks and all I'm doing is observing, just looking at stuff. But what's that? That's the nosiness coming through again. That's the curiosity. That's the...

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Hypervigilance, I would call it too.

• 27:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, perhaps, perhaps.

• 27:53Chris Williamson?

  I'm trying to think about some of the other things. So certainly, coming from a working class town in the north of the UK, I don't have the accent. And again, at the time, that was a weakness. It was something that made me stand out at school in a definitely a suboptimal manner. But that has led now to me having an accent that can be understood by Americans like you, which is useful.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Well, so next up on my list for things that felt like a weakness that are now strength. I'm really loving this list. Being an outsider.

• 28:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Feeling like an outsider in my childhood was very uncomfortable and I wanted to fit in. And now I take pride. I don't necessarily have to match everyone else. That doesn't mean I have to be kind of...

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Provocative and make a point of always being an outsider. It's also great to connect and feel like I belong. But actually, accepting difference can can be a wonderful thing. And I kind of wish I could say that to my younger self. I don't know if you ever feel like.

• 28:55Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Like wanna go back.

• 28:57Chris Williamson?

  Probably one of the the most important things, if I could send it, you know, like a couple of sentence email. It would be to embrace weirdness.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:07Chris Williamson?

  The fact that your your weirdness is your competitive advantage. I've said this a million, a million, million times. Um, and your previous business partner, Mr. De Botton. Um, he has this fantastic video, Why We're Fated to be Lonely. And he says that loneliness is a kind of tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind. Uh, given the choice between honesty and acceptability, most of us choose the latter. Um, but that very much is your unique route to never being competed against. And that comes to within business, career, it comes for personally, everything. If you decide.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  No one else can ever be you.

• 29:47Chris Williamson?

  No, no one can beat you at being you. Um, and the the sooner that you can embrace that as not just a nice sort of pithy aphorism that reminds you, if you're feeling a little bit cast out, that it's okay, mate. Like that it it genuinely is the truth, as I've embraced my um weirdness and the fact that I don't necessarily fit into an archetype, as tons and tons and tons of people do. They they all feel this and they nerf the edges, they round off the edges of the interesting stuff that they do in life to try and make themselves fit into the bell curve of what normal is. Um, but as George McGill, a buddy that I went to Dubai with, said,

• 30:29Chris Williamson?

  if you're trying to be normal, by definition, you're regressing to the mean. Normal people get normal results, extraordinary people get extraordinary results. Like, we all want somehow, everybody wants to both be the most popular, most liked person on the planet and also Elon Musk or Conor McGregor, or, you know, like one of the, one of the like Kardashians or something. And you think you you don't get it both ways. Those people have ridiculous outcomes because they have ridiculous inputs. And you can choose one, but you can't choose both.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Right. So let's go back to you, if we can.

• 31:08Chris Williamson?

  Cool.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Tell us something disturbing, something surprising, take a risk. It doesn't have to be the big trauma with the capital T, maybe trauma with the lowercase t.

• 31:22Chris Williamson?

  Um, so I've certainly sort of realized a lot, kind of following on from what we just said there, realized a lot that the sort of insights that I've got by, by being an outsider are very liberating and very enjoyable, um, but at the time just felt like such a curse. Like I just didn't fit in, I couldn't, I remember I used to think about how other people dressed or find bizarre quirks in how groups of people that I wanted to, them to like me. What I thought it was they were doing that was binding them together as a group is like, oh, it's because they were all wearing like skinny jeans and I was wearing loose fitting jeans,

• 32:06Chris Williamson?

  or it's because they all walk this way to school, or I walk that way to school, or whatever it might be. Um, and I think that for a long time I was just confused by a lack of acceptance, especially as a young kid, and again, without necessarily a brother or a sister or someone who's kind of either always got your back and/or can teach you the common rules of socializing. Um, that was, that's really only something kind of like realizing the impact that my childhood had on me is very, very much only something that I've come back to. And in a way, it's really, I find it fascinating.

• 32:46Chris Williamson?

  I really enjoy tracking the line, tracing the route that different elements of me has walked and everyone that's listening can think the same, like. Everything that you are now is the flower that's grown out of a seed of something that was planted when you were much younger.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:06Chris Williamson?

  Again, another School of Life video is where they talk about bad inner voices and they say all bad inner voices were once a bad outer voice.

• 33:15Chris Williamson?

  And when you hear the way that you criticize yourself for underachieving at X or not being good enough at Y, or the shame that you feel when you make a blunder socially, whatever it might be, a lot of those voices, if you listen closely enough, they're spoken in a cadence of someone that you can remember from when you were much younger.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Sure. So for you, let's get specific, let's get personal.

• 33:41Chris Williamson?

  I don't know, being honest, like, this is why I asked you to be my therapist and you said that we know each other too well and you won't do it. But being, I haven't done this work, there is a...

• 33:51Speaker 01

  But there's work to be done.

• 33:52Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah, there's tons. And I find it interesting, like, I genuinely have embraced the opportunity to delve into

• 34:00Chris Williamson?

  into these sort of deeper areas of myself. But I don't know, like, I can listen, I can listen quietly enough to know that it's a familiar voice, but I don't really know what the amalgamation of everything is. And, yeah, but that was an interesting insight. You know, I've got a lot to thank your previous job at the School of Life for these insights that have sort of rolled forward and allowed me to see this sort of stuff. But yeah, I don't, I don't think that I know, I can't pick it apart. It's like a very messy sort of soundtrack at the moment and the texture of my mind when I try and get to that place is something that requires more work.

• 34:41Chris Williamson?

  It's like a glass ceiling and a glass floor that I can't really get past just yet.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  But see, what you've done is really brave, actually, because you have said, I don't know, which is a really honest part of any emotional discovery, that there is that bit of mess and uncertainty and kind of unknowing.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  That's part of learning and growing. So that's, that's a really genuine aspect of this process. And, and of course, this is not therapy in direct, it won't be your therapist, but we can have intense, deep conversations, of course, but I think, I think it's really important to not have it all be tidy and resolved. And there can be a sense that emotional epiphanies happen overnight and it's a creative process. And any creative process requires stages and steps and a bit of mess and experimenting.

• 35:38Chris Williamson?

  Given that we're talking about questions at the moment, have you got any of the favorite questions that you like to ask? Your clients as like opening questions that people who are listening can ask themselves and maybe to sort of take away from this and ruminate on over the next while?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, I don't encourage ruminating, but sure.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Tell me about a time that you thought you couldn't survive and tell me about what got you to the other side, or if you have gotten to the other side.

• 36:12Chris Williamson?

  That's a cool question.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  It's not a question I always ask, but I am asking you.

• 36:18Chris Williamson?

  Uh, I can definitely take one from this year that going into the, I ruptured my Achilles three and a half months ago. And as someone who sometimes has catastrophic thinking, I just presumed that it would go badly. I didn't think I had a particularly good constitution to be resilient in that sort of situation. You know, if, if I can get sad and upset when there's ostensibly nothing wrong, when there's really something wrong, just how fucked am I going to be? Um, and I think I, I just presumed I was a lot more fragile than I was.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 37:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it was interesting. I, I found in myself a room, it was like living in a house for your entire life and finding a door to a room that you didn't know existed and you open it and it's like a fucking bunker and it's lead lined and there's a shotgun in there and you can take on a lot. It was very endogenous. It came out of somewhere inside of me. Um, and I think that that's reassuring for people who think. That maybe they don't have the resilience. They see people who go through much, much worse things than I do. You know, people have been like human trafficked or captured by terrorists or, you know, lost both of their legs, have been terminally ill, all of this sort of things.

• 37:39Chris Williamson?

  There is certainly something inside me and presumably other people as well. Because I heard these stories, right? You hear about this person had his arms stuck under a rock in the middle of the desert for 72 hours with no water and he survived and then did a ultra marathon back to whatever. And you see people like David Goggins getting after it. And you think like, what on earth is wrong with these people? I'm never going to be like them. But kind of when reality comes a-knocking, there is something that answers. And that for me was, that was a really interesting insight this year. That's probably one of the things I'm proudest about out of this year. Obviously, I'm happy with how this project's gone and other bits and pieces, but certainly my response, the way

• 38:22Chris Williamson?

  that I responded is one of the things I'm most proud of.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  So just to recap, you thought you were less capable, less resilient, less robust.

• 38:33Chris Williamson?

  Precisely.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  And actually, you've gotten to the other side. And when something really did go wrong, you were able to handle it.

• 38:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  How encouraging.

• 38:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very much so.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  I'm bolstering.

• 38:44Chris Williamson?

  But it makes me think, like, what on earth was going on? Why was there periods during my twenties where I wouldn't be able to get out of bed for days on end, just crushed under the weight of existence, when there was nothing wrong?

• 39:02Speaker 01

  So, sure. I mean, it's really interesting how there are times in life when stepping in a puddle is traumatic, and other times when you have a true disaster and you can actually deal with it. And I think sometimes it's harder when things aren't going wrong and you're just feeling a kind of despair. So I feel for the person in you where everything was ostensibly going okay and you were really suffering, just carrying the weight of existence. That's still hard, in some ways harder, because the world couldn't even see what was wrong. And you didn't even have any explanation for what was happening.

• 39:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the shame around depression was something that I took, it took me an awfully long time to deal with.

• 39:52Chris Williamson?

  Especially because of the asymmetry we see online now that we are, we all now not only have to live up to other people's ideals, but the ideal that we've set for ourselves on our own social media channel, right? Like you put yourself across as X, Y and Z and then one day you're fucking the Batman symbol and you think, oh, hang on, like I'm supposed to be X, Y or Z here. And you have to try and compensate. And yeah, I was so ashamed, like the fact, why am I in bed? Like, why can't I get out of bed? Why can't I feel good about life? I haven't got any problems.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  So it got very meta.

• 40:24Chris Williamson?

  Oh yeah, hugely. And obviously those thought loops kind of make everything worse.

• 40:30Chris Williamson?

  And I can rationalize, you know, I've got advice, I've given advice to tons and tons of people of how I tried to try and deal with depressive episodes. But at the time, it just feels like drowning in thoughts. Like that's what depression feels like. It feels like you're drowning under the weight of your own consciousness. And it's such a, it's such a heavy situation to exist in that it really doesn't surprise me how getting out of bed can feel like it takes a superhuman effort. You know, opening, opening the curtains requires the world's strongest man to give you a hand with it.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Totally. It's really interesting. In the course of five minutes, I feel like you've already changed gears in your attitude towards that time in your life. Because first you said, at first you kind of made light of it. And you said, you, you couldn't really cope with life at the time, but then you were able to cope with your Achilles. I, I feel like you've now become more compassionate to that, to that inner self.

• 41:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, maybe. I think there's probably a bit of defense mechanism that goes in there that if you can be flippant about a situation that once gave you trauma, that you kind of don't remind yourself of that. But one of the, one of my favorite episodes that I've done on the show was my experience with depression a few years ago now. And that I continue to get messages all the time from people who listen to that. And the insight, I think.

• 42:06Chris Williamson?

  I haven't heard many conversations from people where they've dealt with depression and it's been just, just because, you know, it's not the grand needed to go to rehab, overdosed on drugs, cheated on my girlfriend, got kicked out of the house, got found by the police.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  No situational stressor.

• 42:30Chris Williamson?

  But not even that, just that it's not, it's not, there's no glory or grandeur or even narrative behind it.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:37Chris Williamson?

  That, that to me is the real

• 42:42Chris Williamson?

  pain, I think, of depression in the 21st century, that it can be so comfortable, it can be so unremarkable, unremarkable depression. And you just think, what, why do I feel bad? Why do I feel this way? What is it about me? Why am I not strong enough to be able to get past this? Why am I dealing with these thoughts that I, why am I thinking? I'm just thinking the same thing over and over and I'm, the more that I think it, the more that I spend this time here, the more that I hate myself, the more that I wish that it wasn't the, the, the case.

• 43:17Chris Williamson?

  And it's a, a level of depression that doesn't end, it's not got suicidal ideations in it. It's not got that level of grandeur in it.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  It's less eventful.

• 43:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's totally unremarkable.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  What would you say to that time in your life, to that person you were?

• 43:32Chris Williamson?

  It was a long time, you know, like it doesn't, I, I still don't.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  What would you say to him?

• 43:39Chris Williamson?

  In the cold light of day, as we are now, it's very easy to think with the, the comfort of rationality, right?

• 43:48Chris Williamson?

  You are so illogical in that situation, so unbelievably detached from what's actually happening. And sometimes this can be triggered by like something so small and. You know, all of the practical implications that I have, which are a couple of step process that you need to break down the things that you need to do into steps so small that even you can do them, which is I need to get out of bed. Okay. First off, I need to pull the covers off me. I need to put my right foot on the floor, then my left foot on the floor. Then I need to stand up. So you can break things down in that way. And that's a practical way. A warm shower, a walk, call a friend and have a big glass of water. Like those

• 44:28Chris Williamson?

  things will fix so much of the way that you feel. But when you can't get out of bed, or when you feel like you can't get out of bed, and you just want to hide under the covers from reality or existence, that feels very, very far away. So I don't, I don't really know. I don't think the solution is the rationality and

• 44:57Chris Williamson?

  giving yourself a

• 45:01Chris Williamson?

  aphoristic cerebral psychological

• 45:07Chris Williamson?

  solution to this also doesn't work because you're not thinking sufficiently clearly to be able to lean on that. George, again, tweeted something that said, telling someone to think their way out of overthinking is like telling someone to snort their way out of a cocaine addiction.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  That's very smart. I like that.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  So disputing it really doesn't help.

• 45:32Chris Williamson?

  Because it feels like that. And that's, that's the thing, I think, as well, that

• 45:37Chris Williamson?

  even, even with a drug addiction, people can see from the outside in, you know, like they can see that there's, there's some sort of physical dependency going on here. If they took me in a lab and they measured me, they'd know there was something wrong. Or if I was actually skinned, or I'd run out of money, or if I was actually broken a bone, or, you know, destitute, whatever it might be, it would feel more legitimate. I think it's the lack of legitimacy, this bizarre bourgeois fucking.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  You don't feel you have the right.

• 46:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, who am I? Who am I to feel sad? And yeah, that.

• 46:18Chris Williamson?

  That was something that I think was difficult to swallow as well, because even the stories that were given of depression are these ones of grandeur. I had this conversation with a buddy, one of the very early episodes, a guy called Mike Kazu, and I asked him whether or not he thought, he was addicted to heroin and cocaine by the age of 14. He was an alcoholic by the age of 16, and he bounced back to now be the CEO of this hugely successful company, won the CrossFit Games twice. But I asked him if he hadn't hit rock bottom, whether he would still be there.

• 46:52Chris Williamson?

  And it's this not, not good, not great, not average, but just sort of ambient dissatisfaction with life, sort of vacillating between just okay enough to think that life's all right, down to kind of existential bit of pain, and then wobbling back up again. That really

• 47:21Chris Williamson?

  doesn't give anyone the activation energy to bounce out of the bottom. And I wonder, I wonder whether sometimes a breakdown can actually be quite useful in that way.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I think so. But I think you're also really on to something with the kind of scolding that goes on internally. The telling off for you don't have a right to feel this way.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  It's so, it's so persecutory, it's so self-loathing on top of everything else. And I think it sounds like anger turned inwards.

• 47:55Chris Williamson?

  It really does. There's a, it's an, it's probably, very quickly, it becomes the majority of the weight that you're trying to bear. I think the self-referential, the narrative about the narrative. Because the first thing only exists, whatever it is that kicks off the bad mood, that first thing only ever exists for just, you know, a fleeting conversation, meeting, day, concern, whatever it might be. And then after that, it's the thoughts about thoughts.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  And the feelings about feelings. I often see this in therapy. You have the primary emotions, which, which just happen for various reasons, and they're fine, whatever they are. But it's often the secondary emotions that are so tricky. So. Feeling angry at yourself or feeling sad and kind of coming in with the judgment. So it's often looking at the secondary emotions that can be really helpful for then just accepting the primary emotions, if that makes sense.

• 49:00Chris Williamson?

  So you said, think about a time when you thought you couldn't survive. And then think about how you did. What's another one?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Another one, another question.

• 49:09Chris Williamson?

  That people can not ruminate on, that people can enjoyably think about.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  What would you say to the most fragile part of yourself?

• 49:22Chris Williamson?

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 49:28Chris Williamson?

  I think I take things very seriously. I take life very seriously. It's a function of someone who thinks a lot because small incidents get magnified up to take up more room than they deserve.

• 49:47Chris Williamson?

  I've certainly noticed this and other people who spend a lot of time in solitude. In fact, probably everybody throughout 2020 will notice that small incidents, whether good or bad, will have probably had a disproportionate effect on them because they've had the time to ruminate.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. That's why when you said ruminate, I had to come in.

• 50:06Chris Williamson?

  Reflect.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, because ruminating is just so huge right now. And we're in the kind of Zoom gloom and we don't have the normal camaraderie and incidental banter that helps diffuse things and we feel paranoid. We get a weird email, we get a weird text and then it just grabs hold and takes up residence and it's really powerful.

• 50:27Chris Williamson?

  That power of diffusory humor is something that I've almost totally forgotten about, which sounds stupid, but especially this year, the number of times where something's happened and you can just laugh it off. Like I was talking to a SAS operative a couple of weeks ago and he was saying that the use of very dark humor in the special forces is one of the ways that they deal with bad situations.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  That makes total sense.

• 50:54Chris Williamson?

  He's been next to guys who've been taking fire and one of them's been shot in the arm and he'll start laughing and everyone will start laughing. And you think, I mean.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Gallo humor.

• 51:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Makes sense.

• 51:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very much so.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Next question, what would you say to your 102 year old self? What, what has worked in your life? What has success meant to you?

• 51:25Chris Williamson?

  That's still something that I think is, I'm working out. I, I, I think that when you do a ton of self-work, which I've done over the last few years, and hopefully as more people listen to the show, they kind of get dragged through that world as well.

• 51:47Chris Williamson?

  I would find it difficult to work out a trajectory for me because I think I'm still at quite an inflection point.

• 51:54Chris Williamson?

  I get really jealous. That's one thing that I do get interestingly jealous about is whenever I meet people that have very concrete senses of where they want to be longer term. Um, I was talking to this guy while I was in Dubai who said, you know what it is, man? Like he's an architect, he's doing all of these different things, making a ton of money, like very successful, young guy as well. And he was like, you know what it is, man? Like I'm loving what I'm doing at the moment, but I just can't wait to own a bar on a beach with my wife and my couple of kids in somewhere hot.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Totally clear plan.

• 52:23Chris Williamson?

  And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, why, how, how, I was like that, and I had to call it out. I was like, dude, that's a, that's an incredibly precise, well-defined plan. And I didn't think that he was

• 52:36Chris Williamson?

  postulating or I didn't think that this was him putting on a facade. Like he just said it, like it was a fact, like drop the apple, it falls to the floor. And I was like, holy fucking shit. I'm so jealous of that. Like I've never been, I've never been certain about sort of long-term what that is.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  So lots of question marks.

• 52:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Which is, which is beautiful and great. For my 102 year old self, there are lots of question marks. There are some qualities that matter for a good, rich life. But it's not too specific. I think it's good to keep these things loose and, and allow space as well, space for surprise, discovery, growth.

• 53:18Chris Williamson?

  I think you're right.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Uh, you used a word that brings us to our next question, jealousy. When was the last time you felt incredibly jealous?

• 53:29Chris Williamson?

  That certainly comes to mind, that incident that I said there with someone who has this this super sort of tight trajectory. I mean, I, I think everybody feels envy on an almost second by second basis when they look at social media, right? Like, I've come back to the UK now and all of my buddies that I was out there with are still out in Dubai. And I think, oh, like, it's so nice and warm out there. But this is something I've certainly realised that

• 53:53Chris Williamson?

  the grass is always greener for us as humans. And this stems from evolutionary psychology that humans aren't built to be happy, they're built to be effective. We're literally wired to be, to find life unsatisfactory. Because if the first time that you had sex, you'd never had sex again. If the first time that you ate, you'd never hunt food again. You need to eat the deer, and it just not actually be quite as nice as you thought. You need to have sex, and it just kind of make you feel a little bit less fulfilled than you thought it was going to be. There's this, this quote, I can't remember who the philosopher is, and he says, after copulation, the devil's laughter can be heard. And the

• 54:31Chris Williamson?

  concept is a medical diagnosis for men that get brief, acute existential crises after they've come. And to the men who are suffering with that that are listening, like, it's not just you. But it's just a really hilarious way that our genes influence our emotions, because it's adaptive. It means that we're more likely to survive and reproduce, which is really all we're here for.

• 54:58Chris Williamson?

  So yes, I think that jealousy pops up fairly consistently for me when I see things. And

• 55:07Chris Williamson?

  another part of it, I think, is stems from an insecurity around not being all that I could be. That you think it's almost a jealousy for an imagined world in which I was fulfilling my potential.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  So you're, you're self envious?

• 55:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, very much so. I think I'd like, look at the world I could have. If only I wasn't spending as much time on my phone, not getting up until seven, I could be getting up at six, or I could be going to bed at whatever. I should be reading rather than watching TV.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  You're, you're competing with your ego ideal.

• 55:40Chris Williamson?

  Precisely.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  That's a really interesting and insidious competition that happens all the time. That we don't talk about enough. Where you are constantly looking at the kind of activated, potentiated you and falling short. And, and it plays out all the time, I think, in life. I don't mean you specifically, I just mean human beings.

• 56:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  So, thank you for offering, offering that up. You've been incredibly open today and you have actually spoken quite bravely and vulnerably.

• 56:14Chris Williamson?

  Thank you. Can we try and recap the questions for people so that they can remember what we went through?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So, question one.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Can we list some traits that felt like flaws in our childhoods, but actually turn out to be strengths? So identify those weaknesses and turn them around into sources of success?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Second question. Can you

• 56:43Speaker 01

  think of a time in your life that you didn't think you could survive, that felt traumatic and maybe unbearable? And what helped you get to the other side?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Third question. What would you say to the most fragile part of yourself?

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Fourth question, what would you say to your 102-year-old self?

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Fifth question, can you describe a time when you felt incredibly jealous?

• 57:17Chris Williamson?

  That's cool.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Okay. Thank you so much for being so open and brave and, and walking the walk.

• 57:25Chris Williamson?

  Well, thank you for being here. I'm glad that you bullied me into doing this. And so completely blindfolded led me into the room and then decided to do this. Um, do we know when?

• 57:37Chris Williamson?

  You're going to complete writing your book?

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm handing it in in May.

• 57:43Chris Williamson?

  Okay, and how long is that? Is that like six months from then until publish?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Um, I it'll be published early two thousand twenty-two.

• 57:51Chris Williamson?

  Cool. Well, depending on depending on how brave you manage to get me over the next year, we may be back on to do a similar episode and then you will absolutely be back on to talk about that. I really appreciate your friendship. I absolutely love the fact that we met each other a year ago and I'm very, very glad that you you pushed me into doing this today.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Same here. It's such a pleasure. I I did want to tell you what led me to want to ask you all of these questions as well, which was an Aesop fable. I could have said this at the beginning. Um, it's it's one of my favorite fables and I was actually reading it to my six-year-old son the other night. And there's a mother crab who is lecturing her baby crab on the importance of walking straight. And the baby crab says, but Mom, you're walking sideways. And I think it's a really beautiful, powerful story. I think of it as a therapist all the time of kind of doing as we say, practicing what we preach. So it just made me think, you're constantly asking questions. You're very good at digging

• 58:54Speaker 01

  deep. Um, I've been on the receiving end of that. You you bring out interesting quirky, idiosyncratic encounters all the time. And what is the life for you of of being that question asker? Um, I wanted to just have a sense of your interior world. So thank you for allowing us to see it.

• 59:14Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd, causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You're stalled, you're freezing there. That's what?

• 59:53Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under seventeen and a minute without parent.